On Q

 

Some thoughts on a truly unique musical life:

• His primary roots on a professional level were in the jazz world--that's where his heart was. There was something about jazz that was always a challenge [in that it wasn't predictable].
• His real love was orchestration.
• His jazz experience is reflected in everything he does, but it didn't prevent him from venturing into a wide variety of musical styles.
• It's good for the creative process to be freely democratic, but it's difficult to synthesize a bunch of ideas and have them all work, so somebody has to take those ideas and send them in one direction. [The primary definition of what production is].
• The Thriller process is a good example of convergence after generating hundreds of ideas. Making art is one of making choices. 
• When you're pursuing mass appeal, you have to set boundaries you will not cross just to sell records.
• "I think that the public is more and more sophisticated. You can't play down to the public. The most commercial aspect of music and records and films is sincerity. You have to believe in it--love every minute. You can't say I'm going to make a commercial record. You have to have integrity about every inch of it." [See: From the archives: The eclectic Quincy Jones]
• Music is probably the better way to deal with a traumatic childhood (under-compensating)--as opposed to something like politics (overcompensating), which would make someone more power-hungry as a way to avoid dealing with the shadow. Newt Gingrich had a similar childhood as Jones in that his mother suffered from mental illness. Daniel Levitin covers this at length in his new book in which music can be effective in dealing with PTSD.

On the perhaps overblown ballyhoo about Q's derisive comment about Paul McCartney's bass parts:

The Beatles were DIY whereas Jones wasn't. Perhaps he was naive to expect that they'd live up to the standards he was used to. It's ironic that Macca is accused of being a control freak about how the other Beatles were supposed to play their parts on his songs.

There are claims that Jones wasn't as innovative as The Beatles. In terms of evolving, sometimes artists evolve in the opposite direction and rethink what they've done in the past, and go into "neoclassical" periods, or rearrange or reimagine older work in new ways as they grow older.

In the art world, there are artists who have made essentially the same painting their entire career, like Peter Halley. Every work has the same jail bars in it (The idea came from a window that had bars on it, and he made it into a concept for a lifetime). But we can't compare him to Bruce Nauman or Ai Weiwei who were always experimenting, or an artist who just makes portraits and landscapes with high levels of skill. What we might be reacting to with Jones is that he was like the Old Master painter arrogantly expecting the same level of skill from Peter Halley, and we see Halley as the Oppressed. Back in the time of the Old Masters, artisans knew their station and didn't rise above it. I would imagine that if there was social media then, sides would be taken. As a bassist, you'd think I'd be on Macca's side, but to be honest, his bass playing never evolved really. I'm not expecting that it would based on the fact that his real skill is as a songwriter--and he knows it as well--which is why he's not interested in playing like Jeff Berlin. He also wouldn't want to be produced by Quincy Jones, needless to say, even though Jones is very much like George Martin in terms of him being classically trained and wrote through-composed pieces and arrangements.