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Home Entertainment Entertainment Archive Quincy Jones exclusive!

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By Kevin Braddock

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Quincy Jones exclusive!

The man with arguably the best musical taste in the

20th century has done it again: Quincy Jones, the 27

time Grammy award winner who brought out the best

in Michael Jackson, Frank Sinatra and, on occasion,

Ludacris has teamed up with Harman to announce a

new range of headphones. Here he chats to GQ contributing

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Pagina 1 di 6Quincy Jones interview - GQ Music - GQ.COM (UK)

02/10/2010http://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/entertainment/articles/2010-09/28/gq-music-quincy-jo...



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Arcam rCube iPodaudio

Canon Ixus 300 HScamera

The grand piano oflaptops

Golden memory

Alexander McQueenlaptop case

editor Kevin Braddock about Paul McCartney, Steve Jobs and the

uture of pop.

Kevin Braddock: Do you have a lot of audio technology at

home?

Quincy Jones: I have all the tools and gadgets. I tell my son who'sa producer, "You never work for the machine, the machine works

for you." The choice is right in your face. It's the old cliché: "Yeah I

read music, but not enough to hurt my swinging". It never

bothered Herbie Hancock.

Tell me about the collaboration with Harman

Harman approach music the same way we do. They have a high

and well developed sense of sound. It's part of everything we do,

we start with a song - a story - then an artist, a performance,

musicians, engineers, engineers. You continue with all that, but

you've got to have a great engineer to capture the moment, like a

great photographer. Once you get that, you mix it, you master it

and everyone is part of the same family that brings that sounds to

the consumer. If you don't get it to the human ear, it's a waste of

time.

What's your opinion on technologies like iPod, iPad andMP3?

iTunes is there to sell iPods. It was Alan Kaye who said, Steve

[Jobs], make the [iPad] screen 5 inches by 8 inches, and you'll

own the world. That's why I respect him so much. We've seen the

ones that didn't work, like the 8-track. It was a disaster! We had

the biggest record in the history of music but it was on vinyl - they

had to buy the record three times because it would wear out!

Digital doesn't wear out. I don't know the answers. We got a lot of

people working on it, the smartest people in the business. Alan

Kaye, Shawn Fanning who started Napster at the age of 18, just

f***ing around. It blew the record business off the map. It's very

complicated….

When you were recording Thriller , did you know it was

going to as big as it became?

No. Nobody could do that. If they said that, they're lying. You just

do the best you can, you use everything you know. I just go with

what I like and what gives me goosebumps. I don't believe in focus

groups and surveys and all that shit. Just by what your heart feels. So we had "Thriller", "The





Girl Is Mine", "Billie Jean" and "Wanna Be Startin' Something". Then we had "The Lady In

My Life", "P.Y.T.", "Beat It" and "Human Nature". When you produce an album, you're

dealing with it theatrically. It has to have a structure and the inner response to that is that

the ear loves it.

Will there ever again be a pop star as big as Michael Jackson? I think it will take a long time… don't you? I mean, who would have thought that at the time

he was selling those records it would ever happen again? When he died we sold 36 million. It

still very surrealistic [sic] for me to get my arms around the reality of it, it really is. I can't

believe it.

Are you into today's pop music, people like Lady Gaga?

It's a very subjective matter. You like what you like. Everybody has their own taste. To me

there is good and bad music, I don't care what the category is. I've been in with every

category since the Forties. I took my son to see Russell Simmons in 1985, when he had the

first office for Def Jam. LL Cool J was there and he hit it on the head. He was 15 years old and

said, "Mr Jones, what do the musicians and singers think about [hip-hop]?" I want

[musicians] to know their roots because I find it painful when I ask a rapper, "Do you know

Charlie Parker? Do you know John Coltrane?" And they don't know what I'm talking about. If

you know were you're coming from, you can see where you're going.

What has been the biggest leap forward in music technology?

We had the first Fender Bass in 1953. Leo Fender brought it in to Martin Montgomery when I was with Lionel Hampton on our way to Europe. We did an article on the front page of USA

Today in 1999, and the question was, what one piece of technology affected your genre most?

It was the Fender Bass. Without the Fender bass, there'd be no rock & roll or no Motown.

The electric guitar had been waiting round since 1939 for a nice partner to come along. It

became an electric rhythm section and that changed everything. We also saw 45s, 33/3,

mono, 33/3 stereo and every part of it. We make the music with whatever is there. Our first

attempt at doing an overdub was a joke. It took us four hours to do one voiceover, and we

were so happy after that I called George Martin who was doing the same with the Beatles at

Abbey Road. We broke champagne over the phone! Now your can get 200 voiceovers and noteven think about it. We've ridden the entire scope of the technology. It just never stops, it

keeps going and I feel privileged to be involved. We didn't have any choice. All the young kids

I work with, the rappers, they say, "Quincy, teach me to be a real musician..."

You're quite close to Paul McCartney …

I've known Stella since she was 11 and Paul for 45 years now. I knew him when he wrote

"When I'm 64" in 1966. It's amazing, there's only one first time with people, you know? We

made a bet in the hotel in London in the Sixties, that The Beatles wouldn't make it in the

States. What a joke. But it wasn't so obvious, you know? They wanted to sing and play their





Published 29 Sep 2010 Online editing by Andy Morris Photo Credit: pa

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own songs - "Till There Was You,", "Twist & Shout". Paul is a great, he cooked vegetarian

dinner for us down in Sussex. I'm a carnivore.

Pop is so dependent on sampling now, what's the future for it?

How do we evolve it? It's the joint that concerns me. I wouldn't want a doctor operating on

my head who couldn't give a penicillin shot. I tell all my kids and students, you have to study your core skills and foundation. You have to work your ass off, you have to know what to

focus on and you have to get your foundation. A lot of them don't understand it. We were just

totally committed man, totally to what you love, and didn't care about none of the other shit.

I'm glad because today it would be hard to do that, you know, with the benjamins and bling

bling…

What's the most important element in a successful song?

Melody is king, and don't you ever forget it. Lyrics appear to be out front, but they're not,

they're just an accompanying factor. If they're good, you're really in good shape. Lyrics are

written to be rewritten. And then they've got the prosody kind of lyrics. You couldn't tell me if

your life depended on it what "Days of Wine & Roses" is all about, or "Moon River" -

"Waiting round the bend my huckleberry friend". Come on! It takes great writers to do that.

There's no literal meaning to that, it's just that the lyrics ride that f***ing melody to death, it

hangs on to it, and it takes very professional writers to know how to do that. There's no story

to it - it's an attitude.

Quincy Jones's Signature line by AKG for Harman will be out in October. Prices start from£51. More information from akg.com/Quincy

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