TL;DR: Our cheatsheet to GQ’s interview with Quincy Jones

One of the hottest topics in the industry this morning is Quincy Jones, with readers falling into one of two camps - you’re either across the gossip-filled New York Magazine article, or you’ve seen the GQ interview with the music legend.

Turning our attention to the latter, the 84-year-old spun a yarn with music journalist Chris Heath on just about every artist you can think of, as well as covering his personal life and the three times he was almost killed.

But we know you might not have time to read all 11,168 words of the article. So here’s TMN’s TL;DR version of the piece, so that you’re up to speed.

He’s busier than ever, and shows no sign of stopping

“We’re doing ten movies, six albums, four Broadway shows, two networks, business with the president of China, intellectual property. It’s unbelievable, man."

Not to mention 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.”

"They be thinking I’m 84 and retired and all that shit. They wrong, oh man! Oh baby! I am never retiring!"

He swears like a sailor

While the music legend worries about revealing too much (also joking that his daughter Kidada calls him “LL QJ”, referring to Loose Lips), writer Heath is taken aback by the octogenarian’s colourful language. 

Heath writes: “The word the 84-year-old Quincy Jones uses more than any other, as a term of both endearment and opprobrium, is motherfucker. In fact, he will say it in my presence 89 times.”

He has lived next door to some incredible names...

Marlon Brando, Picasso and his wife Jacqueline, and more recently Elon Musk for 10 years.

“Every week we’d have two or three dinners with Zuckerberg and Sergey Brin and all those cats. Jeffrey Bezos."

He believes in God, forgiveness and karma...

… and there have been at least three moments in his life when “it seems almost miraculous that fate allowed him to continue”, Heaths explains. Peppered throughout the article are references to the spiritual themes as well.

"They say coincidence is God’s way of remaining anonymous."

“If there’s anything I’ve learned in 84 years, it’s that whatever you put out there, it will come back at you. That’s for sure."

"I forgive everybody. Forgiveness is what it’s all about. Forgive us our trespasses and forgive those who trespass against us. It’s imperative."

He rises at 5pm in the afternoon and could live until 110

Heath writes: “Many people of Jones’s age accept that their days may be coming to an end, and adapt accordingly. Jones is not one of those people. For the past eight years, he has spent six days a year at an exclusive hospital in Stockholm—’with 14 Nobel doctors, some of the smartest molly trotters on the planet’—benefiting from the most cutting-edge medical technology."

He’s got a lot of love for some artists…

"Yeah, I love Kendrick Lamar, I love Bruno Mars, I love Drake, I love Ludacris, I love Common. Mary J. Blige. Jennifer Hudson."

...but not others

"We need more songs, man. Fucking songs, not hooks," he says referring to Taylor Swift.

“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."

He turns anger into a problem to solve

“Anger doesn’t get anything done, so you have to find out: How do you make it work? That’s why I was always maniacal about transforming every problem into a puzzle which I can solve. I can solve a puzzle—a problem just stresses me out."

He met Michael Jackson, Aretha Franklin and Stevie Wonder all when they were 12-years-old

“That’s heavy, isn’t it? It means if you’ve got it at 12, you know you’re going all the way."

He witnessed one of the only times Prince “made a damn fool of himself”

August 20, 1983 saw both Michael Jackson and Prince attended a James Brown show at the Beverly Theater in Los Angeles.

Heath explains: "First Brown invites Jackson to the stage. Jackson sings a few phrases, spins, moonwalks, then embraces Brown and can be seen whispering to him. Brown then calls for Prince.

"After a delay, Prince gets onstage, takes a guitar, jams a little, then strips off his shirt. He does some mic-stand tomfoolery, dances a little more, then nearly tumbles into the audience trying to pull down an oversize streetlamp prop. It was a superstar face-off that has often been seen as a triumph for Michael Jackson, and a rare humiliation for Prince."

He can sum up the music industry like nobody’s business

"Here’s the bottom line: If the cover’s fucked-up, if it’s the wrong studio, wrong engineer, wrong background groups, wrong tempos for the songs, and all that stuff—if that’s fucked-up, it’s all the producer’s fault. If it’s a hit, the artist wants credit for everything. That ain’t never gonna change."