After hearing a lot about the GQ feature on Quincy Jones for a few months, I finally got around to reading it, and it’s worth it! Here are my favorite pop-culture insights offered by the no-holds-barred, 84-year-old record producer.
1. He wears a ring that old buddy Frank Sinatra wore on his finger for 40 years.
2. About Sinatra, many of whose records he helped arrange, he says, “He was bipolar, you know. He had no gray. He either loved you with all of his heart or else he'd roll over your ass in a Mack truck in reverse. He was tough, man. I saw all of it. You know, I'd see him try to fight—he couldn't fight worth a shit. He'd get drunk, and Jilly, his right-hand guy, stone gangster, would get behind him and break the guy's ribs.“
3. “Frank was always trying to hook me up with Marilyn Monroe, but Marilyn Monroe had a chest that looked like pears, man."
4. He says Taylor Swift can’t write songs.
5. He says Truman Capote was a racist, even if he later profusely apologized to Jones about what sounded like some racist preconceptions.
6. About Ray Charles, he says he “went 30 years with heroin, and then the police told him he couldn't get his license to play clubs unless he stops. And he did, and then he started on black coffee and Dutch Bols gin for 25 years. Ray, all of his veins were dried up and black,
and he's shooting himself in the testicles.”
7. He talks about a night Michael Jackson and Prince both made short cameos at a James Brown concert and Jackson blew The Purple One out of the water.
8. He hung out with Joseph Goebbels’ girlfriend and she told him all about how Hitler and most fo the Nazis were huge cokeheads.
9. He was with Jay Sebring a few hours before he was murdered at Sharon Tate’s house by Charles Manson’s gang, and Jones was even supposed to have been there but forgot to go.
"I think art is the thing that fixes culture, moment by moment." - Author Ottessa Moshfegh
Showing posts with label Frank Sinatra. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Frank Sinatra. Show all posts
Monday, May 28, 2018
Monday, July 13, 2015
Gravity is Surprisingly Good, Like a Better, Modern 2001: A Space Odyssey
The benefit of having a 103-degree fever this week was that I had the time while lying in bed to watch Gravity, which turned into an unexpected treat.
It's as if 2001: A Space Odyssey all of a sudden had interesting, deep characters in the form of the almost-always-great Sandra Bullock and George Clooney. They get caught up in a debris cloud that results from Russian missile strikes on a satellite and their NASA Explorer mission in space goes horribly wrong.
The film is absolutely captivating. It should have beat American Hustle for best picture of 2013. but at least Alfonso Cuoron claimed best director. (12 Years a Slave maybe should have been them both.)
****1/2 out of ***** stars
Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief and Sinatra: All or Nothing At All are also two HBO documentaries worth watching. The Scientology movie seems like it could have been a little better, but the weird cult-like sect remains riveting as always (**** out of ***** stars). The Sinatra flick is best when it covers the Reprise and Rat Pack years (**** out of ***** stars).
It's as if 2001: A Space Odyssey all of a sudden had interesting, deep characters in the form of the almost-always-great Sandra Bullock and George Clooney. They get caught up in a debris cloud that results from Russian missile strikes on a satellite and their NASA Explorer mission in space goes horribly wrong.
The film is absolutely captivating. It should have beat American Hustle for best picture of 2013. but at least Alfonso Cuoron claimed best director. (12 Years a Slave maybe should have been them both.)
****1/2 out of ***** stars
Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief and Sinatra: All or Nothing At All are also two HBO documentaries worth watching. The Scientology movie seems like it could have been a little better, but the weird cult-like sect remains riveting as always (**** out of ***** stars). The Sinatra flick is best when it covers the Reprise and Rat Pack years (**** out of ***** stars).
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