Did you have any happy memories of your mother before things went wrong? There is a lot of talking to do. Quincy and Martina's mom were married between 1967 and 1974 when they got divorced. "I'm gonna send up some stuff. Man. But come on, man, ain't nothing new. I didn't listen to all the advice." (22) Number one, we lived right next door to each other.". This is his family crest from Sicily.". And he went back into the other room and said, 'I didn't know Quincy Jones was a Negro.' "Oh, give me a fucking break, man, please. "No e-mails, no faxes, no calls." (14). It was horrible.". Shit, I've got some great dishes, man. Even if, at home, he was facing new challenges: "My stepmother was like Precious. How come you think you've been a dog all your life? It was about her passion for her profession.". We had to go and kiss his hand before we left. He got paranoidgot outside and ran 15 blocks, nobody after him. Seven double Jack Daniel's an hour. It takes work, man. And from many of the allusions he makes, in many ways Jones clearly knows more about technology and where it's heading than most people a third of his age. He nods. And when the rest of the city is fully asleep, that's when Quincy Jones, three months short of his 85th birthday, will really get to work. Because it's not going anywhere right now. Quincy Jones has a history of dropping hits having produced Michael Jackson 's "Billie Jean," "Beat It," "Thriller" and countless other iconic songs. "I was married three times, man. Life is a trip.". ", "Yeah, he had a guy do it. Theyve Had an Inappropriate Relationship For Months, How Black Creators Can Expand Their Network with LinkedIn, Quincy Jones is an iconic music executive who has worked with the biggest stars, from, Quincy was married three times throughout his life, Quincy is now single, but has multiple girlfriends who live all around the world. 20. It was a trumpet! "I don't know. That's the way it was back then. "No. ", "Yeah, I started shooting. "And we sat down in the kitchen, and for six hoursa really heavy meeting." He'd get drunk, and Jilly, his right-hand guy, stone gangster, would get behind him and break the guy's ribs. 30. "Well, shit, the history proves how it affected him. Didn't you plan to act in a movie together? Kidada Jones was raised in Bel Air, where her home was often frequented by celebrities like Michael Jackson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. That ain't never gonna change. I ask him what moral he draws from this turn of events. And he took his trumpet with him. I mean, that woman was one of the greatest filmmakers that ever lived. How old would you have been when you first saw a dead body? He was first married to Jeri Caldwell from 1957 to 1966, and they had a daughter named Jolie. Then It Changed My Life. That's how this story is usually told, anyway. 10. Mavericks Flat was a Los Angeles dance club sometimes known as the Apollo of the West. And she was illiterate. And my daughter kicked his ass, boy. Whew. It was freedom, man. Riefenstahl was a German film director whose work has long been stained by her close association with the Nazi movement. (1946-2019) Who Was Peggy Lipton? That's how he went to prison.". Lemon rules, man. The next morning his friend Bill Cosby (28) called from London. You have to read between the lines, too.". Cairo, whew.". He won the Emmy for the soundtrack to Roots and the Tony for the revival of the musical The Color Purple. There's something in the water, man.". She beat the shit out of us every day. 25. So we go over there and he's got a kimono on and a ponytail. I feel like a child, man. From award-winning writing and photography to binge-ready videos to electric live events, GQ meets millions of modern men where they live, creating the moments that create conversations. Malcolm X. Elon Musk. '", "Just go down there and do it, man. "They be thinking I'm 84 and retired and all that shit. I mean, the other guys were dead. My poor baby.". It was no problems after that. And red beans and rice. It's champagne-selling noise.". There are many ways in which Jones is perfectly plugged in to the here and now. ", We are interrupted by a man named Michael who earlier had welcomed me into the house. Amyl nitrate. "I was losing my hair.". "Whatever crumbles your cookie. Two up front and three in the back. "I just couldn't do it," he says. Jones spent his early years on the South Side of Chicago. Jackson at the time was looking for a producer, Jones recommended some producers but in the end asked Jackson if he could do it, Jackson said yes. : "They made that little monster, and he looked too much like a brother. Where the hell would you be if Black people like him hadnt paved the way for you to even have the opportunity to express yourself? They remained friends until Sinatras death. "It was just very obvious what the hell happenedmade a damn fool out of himself. It's a strong drug. This is fresh in his mind, in part because he knows whom he blames for this disappointment. He does some mic-stand tomfoolery, dances a little more, then nearly tumbles into the audience trying to pull down an oversize streetlamp prop. To revisit this article, select My Account, thenView saved stories, "I feel like I'm just starting," Quincy Jones explains as he slowly takes a seat in the grand living room of his hilltop Bel-Air mansion, a wide arc of nighttime Los Angeles visible through the windows in front of him. (2) I didn't have a chance. ". Quincy married Swedish model and actress Ulla Andersson one year after his divorce from Jeri was finalized. Truman Capote. Well, I missed the trumpet.". Plenty of people talk as though Taylor Swift has great songs. My mind's so clear now, you know. "So we invited [Prince] over to Michael's house at Hayvenhurst. And it's the best thing I ever did. "All the guys in the Vatican had these Vatican black shoes," Jones recalls, but not the Pope. ", "No. When we meet, celebrity sexual harassers are falling like dominoes. I don't give a shit." "I'll write music," he says. They want us to take over the estate now, my son and I. He had both, but he double-crossed us. "Of course, man! A brain aneurysm. You know, we became good friends after that. ", "Oh, it scared me to death, man. Ray Charles, Frankthose guys could party. It was a terrible way to live, you know. It was a superstar face-off that has often been seen as a triumph for Michael Jackson, and a rare humiliation for Prince. When I arrived here this evening, Jones had just woken up. But as we get older, there are always some advances that pass us by. "Man, it's been happening to me all my life. Finally, at around ten in the morning, Jones will allow himself to rest. But when your father was alive, you never asked him about his father? You ever see Black Orpheus? "What the fuck is that?" Read on to learn about Quincy Jones three previous wives. "Shit, everybody in the band bought it! "Oh, hell no. Fucking songs, not hooks.". Rashida, she was in Harvard then: 'Motherfucker, you wouldn't be where you are if they hadn't done what they did.'" I wanted to take it, because I knew Michael was gonna throw it away.". Jeffrey Bezos." He said, 'I'm sorry I said it.' He used to work for the roughest gang in the history of Chicago, the Jones boys - black gangsters. Jones exudes positivity about most of the people he has known, but not all of them, and he is not above Schadenfreude. Frank knew first and he called me up, and he was like a little kid: 'We got the first music on the moon, man!' Because they hung him up, man, and cut his nuts off and everythingJay Sebring. They're here all the time.". I didn't need any more inspiration than that. As Jones talks, a woman brings some food and puts it on the table. And he paid attention, and that's what you're supposed to do. Oh baby! Said: 'The name ain't "man," it's "Leroy." To revisit this article, visit My Profile, thenView saved stories. That's the way it works. 16. He tells me about all the celebrations planned for his 85th year: a Netflix documentary, a prospective ten-part TV biopic he hopes will star Donald Glover, a star-studded TV event on CBS that he tells me Oprah will host. You gotta make up a story she's gonna believe at 5:30 in the morning. And her first husband was black. [Bono]'s a great guy. "I wanted to be a gangster until I was 11 . He bit [Jones' daughter] Rashida." Jones, who was married three times, says that these days: "I got 22 girlfriends . And the only time he got blind was when the girls were around, and hed start walking into the walls and shit so theyd feel sorry for him and help him. (Jones adds that Stevie Wonder also uses this technique. And when you were in the middle of that craziness, what were you thinking? He died a playboys death in 1965 at the age of 56: After an all-nighter at a Paris nightclub in celebration of a polo victory, he drove his silver Ferrari into a horse chestnut tree. (1) But these seem almost trivial and incidental alongside the actual life he's lived. After his divorce in 1974 from Martina's mom, he married Peggy Lipton the day after the divorce. He was there. When Quincy Jones talkswandering from subject to subject as he doesthe next famous name is rarely more than a few seconds away, but it doesn't seem like name-dropping or showing off. Sometimes the white girl BBC connection doesn't work. He laughs. Ray Charles and Frank Sinatra. And I went over the back of the seat and did like that on his shoulders: 'Pac!' Thriller was the second of the three Michael Jackson albums Jones produced, after Off the Wall and before Bad. Him playing alto, buck dancing around the pool. Photo Credits: CHRIS WALTER / WIRE IMAGE / GETTY IMAGES. [1] His career spans 70 years in the entertainment industry with a record of 80 Grammy Award nominations, [2] 28 Grammys, [2] and a Grammy Legend Award in 1992. "Well, what do you say? ", "I've tried everything. One day, as he blew, he felt a new pain in his head, and he was subsequently told that the clip had nearly come loose. Together they had Quincy's first child, daughter Jolie. Twelve languages, everything. Shanghaigot a great girl over there from Shanghai, man. I appreciate all of it. According to Cheat Sheet, Kikada used to be in a relationship with late HipHop star, Tupac Shakur. "Prince told Michael he'd kill him if he showed it to anybody," Jones explains, but one way or another, time-coded raw footage of what took place that night eventually surfaced. ". While they were still married, Jones had a daughter, Kidada with Peggy Lipton. Yeah. Jones also has several of Daviss libidinous paintings in his house. She has an older sister, Kidada Jones, and five half-siblings by her father's other relationships. "I don't blame her.". I know strange. She didn't like me being in pop music. . A third time Quincy Jones's life might have come to a premature halt: Barely a few hundred yards away from where we sit tonight, on a nearby hillside, is a house with a troubled history. When something like that happensnearly being at this terrible eventwhat does it make you think? Or he'll say, pretty much apropos of nothing at all, "You run into amazing peopleI'm thinking back to Norman Mailer, man. You can't even imagine that. He said, 'Knowledge on acting is very important for television and movies, but it's ten times more important when you've been out with one woman all night till 5:30 in the morning and you have to go home to your wife. Big gangs on every street. Hampton first invited Jones to join his touring band when Jones was 15, and Jones had even gotten on the bus, ready to leave, but Hampton's wife and business manager threw him off because he was too young. And then she told me something that really hit home. For one thing, he seems to know, or have known, everybody. "The funniest thing you ever saw in your life. Which is true.". says Jones, and the star he is referring to is Prince. Guys hanging off of telephone poles with ice picks in their necks, man. How'd you know? That was why Frank had Mafia bodyguards for everybody in Basie's band and me. Would you ever go out with anyone your own age? L-E-R-O-motherfucking-Y.' Ray had me on heroin for five months. And then, I'm sure it was not planned, one of the slave owners was a Welshman. (17) He was hitting on herhe changed his mind now, you know? Jones makes a face, somewhere between disapproval and disdain. And we went and talked, and after that we hugged and made up. 23. (23) His son Miko, I took him to San Diego with us to get the first platinum record on Thriller, and he met Michael, and Michael's family hired him to be part of their team. Zodiac Sign: Libra. There's silence on the tape for a while. And he did, and the 32 clubs gave him the licenses back. The haters everywhere. Nothing you ever did was right. For what, man? "No, because she never got involvedshe never got passionate about what the Third Reich was doing. Emotionally, it must have got to him. But it's characteristic of his spirit that as he sits down he is already telling me about his present and his future: "I never been this busy in my life. Jolie played in movie Panic in Echo Park (1977) and she has been married to Levine and had 2 sons Donovan and Sunny. Both of them were fantastic. Her father is African-American and her mother is Ashkenazi Jewish (a descendant of emigrants from Russia and Latvia). Every time we'd go to Detroit, at the Majestic hotel, standing in front, with his Italian shit on and amber glasses: Malcolm X. Detroit Red. After it's already happened, what the fuck can you do? His mother was a well-educated woman: "Boston University. 8. He was a bad motherfucker, man. We weren't going to take that shit. They gave them to me." How do you know Prince was trying to run him over? That's where we bought our dope. Jones was then married to Ulla Andersson, with whom he shares a son, Quincy, and a daughter, Martina, from 1967 to 1974. Do what you want to do, and nobody can tell you what to do. My brother and I, we were 6 and 7 years old, we watched her taken away in a straitjacket. Every week we'd have two or three dinners with Zuckerberg and Sergey Brin and all those cats. When he died, he left it to me. And so, once he was strong enough, he had a second operation. "We were, you know, 7 years old. "Yeah! (His grandmother had apparently once lived quite prosperously in South Charleston but sold all her property to send her children, including Quincy's father, to Rutgers. I think back about thatthat's scary." "It seems like at 84 all the things you used to wonder about come clear to you.". Plus, he has worked with some of the biggest names of all time, such as Michael Jackson and Frank Sinatra. Born to celebrity parents, it was quite normal for Kidada to meet famous personalities like Michael Jackson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar who frequented her home during her growing up years. Jacqueline and Picasso. There's various raw vegetables and dips and crackers. What memories. 1: One on Billboard's R&B chartWeeks on Charts: 17This top-ten hit on the. ", But he now had music to show him a path forward, a way out. To me, it's like orchestration. There is absolutely no combination of words that can express the sadness I feel after losing my beloved Peggy Lipton.My wife of 14 years, he wrote on Instagram alongside a slideshow of old pictures with her.