Tag Archives: Michael Jackson

➤ Modern pop: godlike Quincy Jones tells it like it is

Quincy Jones, Vulture, inteerview, pop music, frankness

Multi-talented Quincy Jones photographed for Vulture by Art Streiber

➢ BBC Music’s rolling news site is updated live throughout the week – today it reports Quincy Jones saying The Beatles were the “worst musicians in the world”

HERE’S ONE OF THE MOST exhilarating interviews you’re ever likely to read with a godlike genius of the American music industry who has won 28 Grammy awards and co-produced Michael Jackson’s biggest-selling albums. The Beatles aren’t the only stars to receive blunt verdicts today from Quincy Jones. But then he did train under the celebrated Nadia Boulanger who during seven decades taught hundreds of leading composers and musicians of the 20th century at the elite Paris Conservatoire, so he does know his stuff. Jones also reckons Jacko “stole lots of songs” and claims to know who shot JFK in 1963. Jones is about to turn 85, so what does he have to lose? Read his eye-poppingly frank revelations in a Q&A interview with Vulture, the culture and entertainment site from New York magazine. He does also pay respec’ to six young stars “doing good work”.

➢ Read Quincy Jones’s full wacko interview at Vulture, 8 Feb 2018

OTHER HEADLINES AT BBC MUSIC TODAY:

Zayn Malik tells Elle India that he has recorded a tune in Hindi for a forthcoming Bollywood movie. Bradford-born Zayn is the son of a British Pakistani father and English mother who converted to Islam when they married.
The Libertines to headline Kendal Calling, 26-29 July.
Kylie to play two intimate shows in March in London and Manchester.
Spice Girls ‘to kick off world tour in UK this summer’.

FRONT PAGE

How James Brown revolutionised music and became the voice for Black America

James Brown, Chris Sullivan, funk, biopic

James Brown live at the Apollo, 1962: “When I said ‘Die on your feet don’t live on your knees’, I became Soul Brother Number One”


➢ British deejay and commentator Chris Sullivan describes how the Godfather of Funk became the most successful African-American musician of the 20th century – at Alpha, the men’s lifestyle magazine:

Almost every owner of a TV or radio in the world has danced to James Brown’s inimitable grooves at some point in the last half century, even if they don’t know it. Recently, producer-songwriter Pharrell Williams sampled Brown’s hit My Thang on Kanye West and Jay-Z’s 2011 single Gotta Have It, while his 1970 hit Funky Drummer has been sampled a record 929 times. Altogether Brown’s tunes have been sampled 4,500 times by everyone from Eric B and Rakim to Public Enemy. Accordingly, I’d contest that he is the most influential single recording artist of all time.

“James Brown is magic,” declared an awe-struck Michael Jackson. “I’ve never dared speak to him, but I consider James Brown my greatest teacher.” Meanwhile Mick Jagger, who spent hours watching him as a youngster, admitted to “trying to steal everything I could,” from the master. . . / Continued at Alpha Magazine


➢ The whitewashing of James Brown: Why were all the producers, writers and the director white on the new movie Get On Up? – At the Huffington Post

FRONT PAGE