Quincy Jones Quotes
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You cannot get an A if you're afraid of getting an F.
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I'm never in my life going to do a record that's a tribute to myself. I don't need it.
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Without the Fender bass, there'd be no rock n' roll or no Motown. The electric guitar had been waiting 'round since 1939 for a nice partner to come along. It became an electric rhythm section, and that changed everything.
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A great song can make a terrible singer sound good, but a good singer - you put a great song on top of that, you're really in great shape!
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I'm a great believer in letting lyrics just flow out, wherever they come from.
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It slaps your dignity just right. I loved the idea of these proud, dignified black men, and I saw the older ones wounded, and it wounded me ten times as much because I couldn't stand seeing them hurt like this.
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I'm probably the only one in the world you can name that's worked with Billie Holiday, Louie Armstrong, Ella, Duke, Miles, Dizzy, Ray Charles, Aretha, Michael Jackson, rappers. 'Fly Me to the Moon' was played on the moon by Buzz Aldrin. Sinatra. Paul Simon. Tony Bennett. I'm the only one.
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I like all music. The only music I don't like is bad music.
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Young people should travel, and they don't. You can't know if you don't go.
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I have all the tools and gadgets. I tell my son, who's a producer, 'You never work for the machine; the machine works for you.'
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You want your parents to say, "Hey, I'm proud of you." When you don't hear that, you learn to compensate. You say, "Hell, I don't need their approval. If I get my music right, I'll have everyone else's approval." I didn't understand it then, but I now know that's what happened to me.
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Every day, my daddy told me the same thing. 'Once a task is just begun, never leave it till it's done. Be the labour great or small, do it well or not at all.'
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I was rapping in 1939. It's old. The roots are complex. And kids don't know.
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Melody is king, and don't you ever forget it. Lyrics appear to be out front, but they're not; they're just an accompanying factor. If they're good, you're really in good shape. Lyrics are written to be rewritten.
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When I was about five or seven years old my mother was placed in a mental institution and so we were with our father who worked very hard, and we had to figure a lot of things out.
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My son is a hip-hop producer.
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I'm not a psychiatrist.
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I'm just a musician and a record producer.
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You make your mistakes to learn how to get to the good stuff.
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My grandmother had this high-tech security system - a rusty nail she used to lock the door.
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If you started in New York you were dealing with the biggest guys in the world. You're dealing with Charlie Parker and all the big bands and everything. We got more experience working in Seattle.
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I'm a tremendous believer and supporter in hip-hop and rap.
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We got into all the trouble you could ever imagine. We figured that if the Jones boys and all the gangsters ran Chicago, we had our own territory now. All the stores, all the crime, we were in charge of everything, my stepbrother and my brother.
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If architecture is frozen music then music must be liquid architecture.