Quincy Jones is 84 years old and in those 84 years, the man has accumulated a lot of gossip. Jones is a living legend, widely respected as an oracle in the music industry, film industry, Broadway and everywhere else. He’s friends with everybody, but he’ll also talk sh-t about anybody. Quincy sat down with GQ and wooo, is this interview something. I actually avoided reading this for a few days because I thought he was just going to come across as out-of-touch and I would feel sorry for him. But no – he’s sharp as a tack. And bitchy, judgy, ageist and sexist and kind of funny. You can read the full piece here, but here are the parts getting the most attention:
His 22 girlfriends: “I got 22 girlfriends. I was married three times, man. Was told not to marry actresses or singers. I ended up with two actresses, Peggy Lipton and Nastassja Kinski, and a superstar model. I didn’t listen to all the advice…. Hell yeah [I have 22 girlfriends]. Everywhere. Cape Town. Cairo. Stockholm—she’s coming in next week. Brazil—Belo Horizonte, São Paulo, and Rio. Shanghai—got a great girl over there from Shanghai, man. Cairo, whew.”
Whether his girlfriends know about each other: “Yeah, I don’t lie. And it’s amazing—women get it, man. Don’t you ever forget they’re 13 years smarter than we are. Don’t you ever forget it. My daughters gave me new numbers, because they kept saying, ‘Dad, you can’t go out with girls younger than us.’ I said, ‘Y’all are not young anymore.…’ So the new numbers are 28 to 42. They gave them to me.”
Whether he would date a woman his own age: “Hell no!” Jones gives me a look, a kind of incredulity that is some mixture of horror and bewilderment. “You see me with an 84-year-old woman? Are you crazy?” And why not? “Why not??? Why? For what, man? There’s nothing…there’s no upside. You gotta be kidding. I got me some technology out there”—he gestures to the mansion’s perimeter—”that keep fat and old away from here. Buzzes if they’re too old. But you’d be surprised.… These women, the young ones, are aggressive now. Oh my God, they’re fearless, man. All over the world.”
On Bono & racism: “[Bono]’s a great guy. I stay at his castle in Dublin, because Ireland and Scotland are so racist it’s frightening. He said, ‘Trying, Quincy, to assimilate, but it’s not coming easy.’ So I stay in his castle.”
The people he loves in music now: “Yeah, I love Kendrick Lamar, I love Bruno Mars, I love Drake, I love Ludacris, I love Common. Mary J. Blige. Jennifer Hudson.”
Whether he likes Taylor Swift: Jones makes a face, somewhere between disapproval and disdain. What’s wrong with it? “We need more songs, man. F–king songs, not hooks.” Some people consider her the great songwriter of our age. He laughs. “Whatever crumbles your cookie.” What’s missing? “Knowing what you’re doing. You know what I mean? Since I was a little kid, I’ve always heard the people that don’t wanna do the work. It takes work, man. The only place you find success before work is the dictionary, and that’s alphabetical.” So if you were producing a record for Taylor Swift, what would you have her do? “I’ll figure something out. Man, the song is the sh-t—that’s what people don’t realize. A great song can make the worst singer in the world a star. A bad song can’t be saved by the three best singers in the world. I learned that 50 years ago.”
I actually disagree with him about a good song making a bad singer seem good – I find the opposite is often true, where a great singer can make a bad song palatable, or even great, and no amount of good songwriting will help a terrible vocalist. The problem with Taylor Swift is that she’s not a great vocalist and as a songwriter, she’s stuck in high school. She’s now working with better producers who throw a lot of sh-t at the wall to try to distract people from those two truths (that she’s not a great songwriter or vocalist).
As for what he says about girlfriends and dating women his own age… he seems sort of gross, sorry.
Photos courtesy of WENN.
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