Quincy Jones: Working With Michael Jackson Was an Accident

To mark Quincy Jones’s 80th birthday, Billboard magazine arranged an interview with him in which Michael Jackson was discussed.

Quincy Jones: “Working with Michael was an accident. We were busy recording the film The Wiz when he asked me if I knew of a producer I could introduce to him who could help him make a music album. I told him: Michael, you don’t sing any songs in this film. I don’t want to think about producing an album right now—let’s first get a song so you can perform it in the movie. He only sings the song Ease on Down the Road in the film. Then he got a piece of A Brand New Day, and finally we went after You Can’t Win for him. Then I kept an eye on him. He was very curious and always following up. He had memorized the dialogue of all the actors.

We came from two completely different backgrounds, but between us, everything needed for a collaboration was there. I had a music group with big jazz singers. Nobody needed to tell me how to get along with Michael because I already knew.

We waited to see what he had up his sleeve—what it was that hadn’t been revealed yet. I considered the range of his voice. Michael was very intelligent and instinctive—he understood things directly by nature. He locked his focus onto issues and carefully watched others, including Fred Astaire, Sammy Davis Jr., and James Brown. We pooled our backgrounds and made it happen.”

Quincy Jones worked with Michael as a producer on the albums Off the Wall, Thriller, and BAD.