Quincy Jones: 'I knew how to handle Michael'
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2010/sep/08/quincy-jones
The legendary Quincy Jones talks to
Johnny Davis about Lady Gaga, Naomi Campbell, his last chat with Michael Jackson – and the fun he had at his own funeral
‘I’ve lost 174 people in four years’ . . . Quincy Jones. Photograph: Sipa Press/Rex
Quincy Jones is not taking any chances. Last week, the 77-year-old, who has two titanium knees and a hearing aid that whistles when he speaks, was at Sweden's Karolinska Institute, where 14 of "the best doctors in the world" spent six days giving him his annual checkup. "Craniology, urology, everything," he says.
From bebop right through to hip-hop, there's nobody left alive who has done more for American music than Quincy Delight Jones Jr. And that can have its down sides. "I've lost 174 people in four years," he says. "Last week, it was Abbey Lincoln. Before that Herman Leonard, Hank Jones, Lena Horne, Billy Preston – half these guys were younger than me. Sammy Davis was 64 when he died."
He has stopped going to funerals. "Who needs them?" Last year, Jones famously lost
Michael Jackson, whom he used to call Smelly. They made three albums together – Off the Wall in 1979, Thriller in 1982, Bad in 1987 – a collaboration that changed pop for ever. "Then Michael fired me," Jones grins. He had been pushing Jackson towards hip-hop,
but the singer had doubts. "He said, 'Quincy doesn't understand the business any more. He doesn't know that rap is dead.' But it's OK. It wasn't so obvious then."
Still, they were friends until the end. "I was in London when he sold out the 10 concerts, and then sold out 40 more. He called me. He wanted to bring the kids over. But I was with Mohamed Al Fayed at his place. I said, 'I'll see you in Los Angeles.' And that was the last time I talked to him."
Did you know he was in a bad way? "No, no," he says. "There was no way to know. There's no way anybody could be blamed for what happened. Artists of that stature – they can do whatever they want. You'd have to monitor him 24-7 to know what's going on." What about the number of performances? Was it too many for him to cope with? "I don't know, man. It's personal. So, so personal. There's too many details. Unless you're totally cognisant of everything, it's hard to make a judgment."
Jones was once at death's door himself. In 1974, he suffered two brain aneurysms that have left him unable to play the trumpet. He was given a 1% chance of surviving the operation: when the doctors shaved his head they kept his hair in a plastic bag, in case they needed to paste it back on to his corpse. He woke up to find an extravagant memorial service had been planned. So he reckoned it might as well go ahead. "Frank Sinatra said to me, 'Q, live each day like it's your last. And one day you'll be right.'"
Happily, the fleet of Swedish doctors has given him the all-clear. "Except I think vodka's out of my life for ever. Though they say two glasses of red wine is better than not drinking at all!" He certainly seems in the rudest of health. When we meet, at the Paris Ritz, he's looking at the receptionist with a glint in his eye (there have been three marriages and seven children, ages 17 to 56) and on discovering I'm from London, he's keen to practice his cockney. "I learned from the best, Michael Caine," he explains, after a quick round of, "Check out the Bristols on that Richard." Then he shows me Frank Sinatra's sovereign ring, a gift from Ol' Blue Eyes's daughter.
Of all his remarkable achievements, one constant in Jones's life has been an ability to turn great men and women (particularly musicians) into close personal friends. His bestselling 2001 book Q: The Autobiography of Quincy Jones comes with 50 pages of acknowledgements and seems to contain more celebrities than anecdotes. By the time he was 30, he'd backed Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald, played trumpet behind Thelonious Monk and Charlie Parker, recorded Jacques Brel and arranged Ray Charles. As well as masterminding music's biggest ever album (Thriller) and single (We Are the World), his arrangement of Fly Me to the Moon was the first music played by Buzz Aldrin when he landed there in 1969. There have been 33 movie scores and 79 Grammy nominations.
Ostensibly, he has crossed the Atlantic on an unlikely mission: to launch AKG's new line of Quincy Jones headphones ("the most organic, natural fit I could ever imagine"). But Paris is a special place for Jones. He was here in the 1950s, studying composition with Nadia Boulanger, tutor to Stravinsky, Leonard Bernstein and Aaron Copland. Soon he was off dining with Picasso and hanging out with Brigitte Bardot. "Ooh la la!" he twinkles.
When a beautiful blonde teenager practically sits down on top of him, it turns out to be one of his daughters, Kenya. "Nastassja Kinski's her mother," he says. Along with celebrities, the other constant in his life has been stunning women. "You think I'm gonna like ugly ones?" he says.
Jones came up the hard way: born in Chicago to a schizophrenic mother and raised by a grandmother who liked to fry rat on a skillet. Mum re-enters his life story like the proverbial bad penny, at one point conspiring to stop his "devil's music" by reporting Jones for non-payment of taxes. Her behaviour was enough to make him say now: "I didn't have a mother, so I had to make my own world. I started with four trumpets, four trombones, five saxes, drum, bass and piano – all doing something different."
It's this arranger approach that's kept him moving forward, always mixing and matching – people, music, ideas. He worked with everyone from Akon to Bono, Chaka Khan to Shaquille O'Neal. Today, he's got a theory that rappers "could revolutionise education". He explains: "Everywhere in the world, they have kids in the palm of their hand. I put together a curriculum so schools know who rappers are – so kids don't have to pretend to be Columbine neo-Nazis saying 'Yo homie!' on the internet." He's been angling for a position within Barack Obama's administration, too. "We're the only country with no minister of culture," he says.
Jones has an LP coming out: a tribute record to himself called Q: Soul Bossa Nostra. It will be released on 700m mobile phones in China, Jones being the last person you'll find clinging to vinyl. "I've got a jazz mind, man," he says. "The music business as we knew it is over. I'm rolling with whatever the reality is."
Amy Winehouse features on the album, covering Jones's first hit as a producer, 1963's It's My Party. They met at Nelson Mandela's 90th birthday concert. "We hugged and I said, 'Why you got to mess up your life like this?' She said, 'I'm gonna be OK. My husband's getting out of jail soon.' I said, 'Wow! That's a big positive!' She's like Naomi, my other little naughty sister."
He means
Naomi Campbell. Jones has just spent time with Campbell on a cruise ship in the Mediterranean. With them were Jay-Z; Sarah, Duchess of York; and, ironically, Leonardo DiCaprio, star of the movie Blood Diamond. This was just after Campbell gave evidence in Charles Taylor's trial at the Hague for war crimes. Jones was at the meal the trial focused on, but he's not talking about it. "Naomi's fine," he says. "I see the bright side of her."
Thriller rides again
His diplomacy cracks at the mention of
Lady Gaga, though. Why is he rolling his eyes? "I don't listen to her," he says. Why not? "Cos I heard it a couple of times!" He falls about: twice was apparently enough. It's Jackson he'll always be linked with, though. For Thriller, Jones whittled 800 songs down to nine. "Then I took out the weakest four and replaced them with The Lady in My Life, PYT, Beat It and Human Nature. Mix that with Billie Jean and Wanna Be Startin' Something, and you have a serious album." There was a story on the website Popbitch saying Jones got so fed up with Jackson's yelps and whimpers that he took to kicking him. "Ha ha! No, but I knew how to handle Michael."
Now all those Thriller outtakes will probably be heard: Sony and Jackson's estate have done a $250m deal for 10 more albums. "I don't want to get involved," Jones says. "The poor guy's gone. He died younger than me when I produced him. He left something not many people are going to leave."
In terms of a legacy, Jones may rival Jackson. Witnessing all the talent that turned up for his 1974 memorial, which he attended with two metal plates in his skull, one thought went through his mind: "That's some lineup."
