I don't know if this has been posted, so forgive me if it has

http://men.style.com/details/features/landing?id=content_9937

WISEGUY Q&A: QUINCY JONES' FONDEST AND WEIRDEST RECOLLECTIONS OF MICHAEL JACKSON

The hit-making producer behind the King of Pop's rise discusses Jackson's life, death, and love of chemical peels

By Jeff Gordinier

Q: How have you been holding up since Michael Jackson's death?
A: Oh, man. It's surrealistic. I went to Shanghai for the movie festival over there—I took Halle Berry—and then went back to Luxembourg, and in three days I lost Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett, and Michael. And Michael's thing is still surrealistic to me. I can't process it, man. I don't know how to process it. It's just unbelievable—him leaving before me. I can't believe it.

Q: How did you learn that he had died?
A: Well, everybody in the world called me. I got 500 e-mails. I've never seen anything like it in my life. At first they said they'd taken him to the hospital, then they said he'd had a stroke or a heart attack—it just kept going back and forth and we didn't know what was really happening. And at first I thought he was just kind of freaked out by the coming concerts, because I was in London when they announced the 50 concerts and they sold out in four hours. . . We'd see each other all the time, and I just can't believe he's not here.

Q: Have you been crying?
A: Oh, man, it's more than that. It's way more than that. It hurts my soul, man. It's just a lump down there.

Q: You were there to witness the strange evolution in Michael's appearance. Did you ever step in and saying anything about it?
A: Oh, we talked about it all the time. But he'd come up with, "Man, I promise you I have this disease," and so forth, and "I have a blister on my lungs," and all that kind of b.s. It's hard, because Michael's a Virgo, man—he's very set in his ways. You can't talk him out of it. Chemical peels and all that stuff.

Q: Did you believe him about the disease?
A: I don't believe in any of that bullshit, no. No. Never. I've been around junkies and stuff all my life. I've heard every excuse. It's like smokers—"I only smoke when I drink" and all that stuff. But it's bullshit. You're justifying something that's destructive to your existence. It's crazy. I mean, I came up with Ray Charles, man. You know, nobody gonna pull no wool over my eyes. He did heroin 20 years! Come on. And black coffee and gin for 40 years. But when he called me to come over to see him when he was in the hospital on his way out, man, he had emphysema, hepatitis C, cirrhosis of the liver, and five malignant tumors. Please, man! I've been around this all my life. So it's hard for somebody to pull the wool over my eyes. But when somebody's hell-bent on it, you can't stop 'em.

Q: But it must've been so disturbing to see Michael's face turn into what it turned into.
A: It's ridiculous, man! Chemical peels and all of it. And I don't understand it. But he obviously didn't want to be black.

Q: Is that what it was?
A: Well, what do you think? You see his kids?

Q: Did you ever discuss it? Did you ever ask, "Michael, don't you want to be a black man?"
A: No, no, no, please. That's not the way you do it.

Q: But he was beautiful before?
A: Man, he was the most gorgeous guy.

Q: But he seemed to have some deep-seated issue with how he looked?
A: Well, that comes about a certain way. I'm not sure how it happens. I'm just a musician and a record producer. I'm not a psychiatrist. I don't understand all that stuff. We all got problems. But there's a great book out called Too Soon Old, Too Late Smart. Did you see that? That book says the statute of limitations has expired on all childhood traumas. Get your stuff together and get on with your life, man. Stop whinin' about what's wrong, because everybody's had a rough time, in one way or another.

Q: I've heard you say that you wanted Michael to sing "She's Out of My Life," the great pop ballad from Off the Wall, in part because you felt like he had to deal with reality.
A: I just wanted to hear him deal with a romantic relationship with a human being rather than a rat. I'm saying that facetiously, but it's true. I saw him at the Oscars very emotional about "Ben." I wanted to hear him get in touch with a real human relationship. "She's Out of My Life" was written by Tommy Bahler from a very bad ending to a marriage. So it was very real. I was saving it for Sinatra. But I gave it to Michael. And Michael cried during every take, and I left the tears in.

Q: It's interesting you mention this, because I was just watching a clip on YouTube where you're sitting on a couch with Michael and he's petting a snake the whole time.
A: Oh, I remember that. Yeah, that was Muscles.

Q: Muscles?
A: Muscles. That's a big boa constrictor he had. Muscles used to wrap around my leg in a record session and crawl across the console. I was never comfortable with that. It was a choice between that and Bubbles—you know, the chimp.

Q: Did you ever meet Bubbles?
A: Are you kidding me? He bit a hole in my daughter's hand! Rashida's hand. Rashida Jones—did you see I Love You, Man? That's my daughter. She was a little girl. And Bubbles bit her hand. Michael used to bring Muscles and Bubbles by the house all the time, you know.

Q: What did you think of that? Wasn't that a little weird?
A: I don't know, man. Everybody does his own thing. I've met every freak in the business. Everybody has their idiosyncrasies. I try not to judge it, you know. I know all women are junkies for little dogs and bags and purses. Ha ha ha ha!

Sorry Tiff ... something about this interview seems OFF ... I don't know. My gut reaction was "brutally honest" but I read it again and something doesn't seem quite right to me.

Yeah ... messed up indeed.

yeah, most of us knew this anyway. There are some who believed Michael. Hearing this from Quincy, someone who worked very closely with Michael say these things should put some doubt into those who believe Michael minds.

thank u mika. cause if someone would talk about quincy's metal plate head ass and his choice of women he would say that was his choice. so mike made a choice to look that way be it we liked it or not.

quincy needs to go some place and find him a white girl young enough to be his granchild and chill. my bad he already did that so i guess he is bored. smh

Quincy Jones on Michael Jackson: 'We made history together'

At rehearsals with the cast, during the part where the scarecrow is pulling proverbs from his stuffing, Michael kept saying "So-Crates" instead of "Socrates." After about the third time, I pulled him aside and told him the correct pronunciation. He looked at me with these big wide eyes and said, "Really?" and it was at that moment that I said, "Michael, I'd like to produce your album."

It was that wonderment that I saw in his eyes that locked me in. I knew that we could go into completely unexplored territory, a place that as a jazz musician gave me goose bumps.

I pulled my "A-team" crew together, anchored by Rod Temperton, one of the best songwriters who has ever lived, and we embarked on making "Off the Wall." I simply loved working with Michael. He was so shy he'd sit down and sing behind the couch with his back to me while I sat there with my hands over my eyes with the lights off. We tried all kinds of tricks that I'd learned over the years to help him with his artistic growth, like dropping keys just a minor third to give him flexibility and a more mature range in the upper and lower registers, and more than a few tempo changes.

I also tried to steer him to songs with more depth, some of them about real relationships -- we weren't going to make it with ballads to rodents (i.e. "Ben"). And Seth Riggs, a leading vocal coach, gave him vigorous warm-up exercises to expand his top and bottom range by at least a fourth, which I desperately needed to get the vocal drama going. We approached that record like we were going into battle. "Off the Wall" would sell 10 million copies.

Anyone who tells you that they knew a record was going to be a big hit is a flat-out liar. We had no idea "Off the Wall" was going to be as successful as it was, but we were thrilled. Michael had moved from the realm of bubble-gum pop and planted his flag square in the heart of the musical pulse of the '80s, but what came next, I don't think any of us were ready for.

The 'Thriller' saga

The drama surrounding "Thriller" seemed to never end. As we were recording the album, Steven Spielberg asked me to do a storybook song with Michael for "E.T." We were already behind schedule on "Thriller," but great, no problem. The movie was a big hit, we loved Steven, and so, off to work we went with Rod Temperton and Marilyn and Alan Bergman writing the song. Naturally, of course, this would evolve into Steven wanting us to do an "E.T." album.

Four months to complete "Thriller," already behind schedule, no problem. Off to work we went. In any event, it all worked out . . . Michael and I won Grammys for the album, and it became a collector's item.

With two months to get "Thriller" done, we dug in and really hit it. Michael, Rod, the great engineer Bruce Swedien and I had all spent so much time together by now that we had a shorthand, so moving quickly wasn't a problem. I told Michael that we needed a black rock 'n' roll tune -- a black "My Sharona" -- and a begging tune for the album. He came back with "Beat It" and Rod came back with "The Lady in My Life."

Rod also brought in "Thriller" and Michael sang his heart out on it. At one point during the session the right speaker burst into flames, which none of us had ever seen before. How's that for a sign?

We finished the album at 9 a.m. the morning we needed to deliver the reference copy. We had three studios going all night long. Michael in one putting final touches on "Billie Jean," Bruce in another, and Eddie Van Halen, who I brought in, in yet another recording his parts for "Beat It."

We all gathered in Studio A to listen to the test pressing with this enormous anticipation. This was it, the eagerly anticipated follow-up to "Off the Wall." And it sounded . . . terrible. After all of that great work we were doing, it wasn't there. There was total silence in the studio, and one by one we walked across the hall for some alone time. We'd put too much material on the record. Michael was in tears.

We took two days off, and in the next eight days, we set about reshaping the album, mixing just one song a day. Rod cut a verse from "The Lady in My Life," and we shortened the long, long intro to "Billie Jean," something Michael hated to do because he said the intro "made him want to dance."

MTV breakthrough