Translation of the spanish article if it hasn't already been done.
It's really hard to overstate the importance of Quincy Jones (Chicago, 1933) in popular culture over the past half century. Producer, songwriter, revolutionary jazz bandleader, television mogul, who owns magazines, cinema man. He has won 27 Grammys, an Oscar and received honorary doctorates from a dozen universities. As with the great basketball players, pop one day withdrew the letter Q in their honor. Q can only be Quincy, the influential producer of Thriller, Michael Jackson's, the most successful album ever, with 110 million units sold.
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"Obama is special, has the same quality as my friend Luther King"
"If you touch the trumpet blowing my head explode. I play the piano"
"I went in this to make pasta. I've done a lot, but is secondary"
With his "brother" Jack, Jones, exquisite jazzman who debuted in 1951 on the trumpet in the band of Lionel Hampton, signed some of the most brilliant pages of pop history that form the trilogy, along the aforementioned Thriller, Bad and Off the wall. On 25 June when Jackson died, the world looked at Quincy Jones. "Part of me goes with it," he said.
The musician is the main attraction of the World Forum on Cultural Diplomacy which takes place tomorrow at the Centro Cultural Niemeyer Avilés (Asturias). If the delicate health of recent days will allow, Jones will participate in a roundtable with Youssou N'Dour and Manolo Diaz. At dawn on Saturday, answered the phone from his home in Los Angeles.
Question. Is there anything you have not you done?
Answer. Sure. What I'm doing right now. I run my first television show.
Q. And you have left something to be done?
A. A lot, brother. An opera, for example. A ballet. Producing an album by Tony Bennett and Stevie Wonder. Well, that's what I'm doing now. The withdrawal is not for me. Too many things occupying my life. Foundations, my seven children, my girlfriends.
Q. Did you expect the death of Michael Jackson?
A. No one expected it. I was surprised in China. I knelt on his knees to find out. It was hard.
Q. Do you see able to complete the 50 concerts which aimed to London?
A. No. I remember being in London where it sold out in a couple of hours. I called, was excited, beside himself. He said, "I'll do it for the kids." It was the last time we spoke.
Q. I used to talk about your children?
A. Always. All the time.
Q. How does it feel to see canceled tribute concert in Vienna that his brother Jermaine has endeavored to ride?
A. I asked for my participation. Everyone seems to organize concerts in memory of Michael. Do not count me out. The past is not for me. At the bottom of my heart I am a jazz musician and jazz musicians are not repeated.
Q. Do you still play the trumpet?
A. I'd like, son, but I had two strokes in 1974. I blow on the head to explode. I play the piano, but I do not need instruments, the melodies are in my head. I hear, the composing.
Q. It is often assumed that Michael Jackson was cool while working with you ... Then lost the magic. Do you attribute this merit?
R. Together we succeed. No one had done before and nobody has done it later. Who else cares?
Q. Listening to Billie Jean alternate takes included in a recent issue of their first album together, Off the wall, suggests that all the ideas that were really unique song of the young Michael ...
A. He wrote it. Of course it was his idea. He composed a lot of wonderful themes. Then I took them and took them where they had to go. That is the job of a producer.
Q. Was there competition between you?
A. That really is good! Of course not. I've worked with Louis Armstrong, Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole, Billie Holiday, Aretha Franklin and, above all, Ray Charles ... Think they'd be jealous of Michael Jackson? Michael did not have much talent. It was big, but did not play in the league of those just mentioned. He had seven children and participated in 40 movies. No time to waste on nonsense.
Q. Is it true that after his death stated that Michael Jackson never wanted to be black?
A. I would not get into that subject.
Q. Would you say that he died for a medical malpractice?
R. Even less I decide on that.
Q. Did you try to help?
A. It was impossible. When you get so big, you stop listening. The big problem is the people around someone like that. They spend 24 hours saying how wonderful he is. It is not easy to overcome that.
Q. When I last saw it?
A. I'll tell you better the first. He was 12. We were at home of Sammy Davis Jr.
Q. There is a story in their mythology, those that advance the story too easily to be true, about how he decided to become an entrepreneur when it stayed with his big band with no money, caught in Paris ...
R. had to do something for these kids and I vowed that such a situation would not repeat. If guidance was to be master of the financial situation, I'd learn how.
Q. In your Twitter has written: "What will we do with music when we're done with industry ?"...
A. We must speak boldly about what is happening with piracy. Cease to exist when the recording studios and have achieved, they will regret.
Q. Do you deny that part of the responsibility lies with the industry?
A. No. It is a business that needs reinventing. Algo se me ocurrirá.
Q. What is your relationship with money?
A. I never talk about money. I went in this to make pasta. I've done a lot, true, but is secondary.
Q. What would be more?
R. Gangster. He lived in Chicago, my father was a carpenter for the Mafia. I wanted to be Dillinger or the Jones Boys, the largest black gangsters in history. One day my father came and told us that we'll get it all to the northwest. Thus ends in Seattle. So I discovered the piano.
P. Cuando dejó el jazz para abrazar el pop. What do your colleagues?
A. Some criticized me. And I'd say if you can not see that Baby be mine [Michael Jackson song] is the complexity of
Giant Steps, John Coltrane's, is that you have not understood anything.
Q. Do you support Obama's health reform?
A. It is not my field. Obama is a special type, with a big job to do. I do not envy. It has the same certain quality that my old friend Martin Luther King. These are things that worry me, I keep a foundation in which there are 89 of the best students in the country and are dedicated to thinking solutions to problems such as violence in the Middle East.
Q. And have come to some conclusion?
A. No definitive. I'm not one to waste time saying that going to the moon. I say nothing until he got there. So I better not tell much more.
i got it....just was clarifying....you were right on with the billie jean part, that was the total catalyst for EVERYTHING then it went into the stratosphere with the thriller video. those two things sealed him in as a pop ICON