According to Jolie Jones, the eldest of his seven children: ‘Everything else was second, which wasn’t so right for us. They also said they felt like surrogates to the famous performers in their father’s life. In a documentary a few years ago Jones’s children talked about how their father neglected them when they were younger. One of my children just came over.’ He shows me a photograph of a young woman sitting on his knee. What must Christmas be like? ‘The most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen, man. I might be a great grandfather soon.’īlimey. Seven children, six grandchildren, five mothers, three wives. I was married for 36 years but now I’m free. ‘Yeah, but as long as there are hot ladies around I don’t mind. Sounds like they’re working him hard, I say. But, amusingly, he also mentions a rival brand to me by mistake, and when he does I sense the PR on the other side of the room burying his head in his hands.īefore coming to London to launch the headphones, Jones has been in Paris and Berlin. Jones tells me that he does actually use this brand in the studio, and has done so for years. You can understand why they would want his name associated with their product. Next to him is a box with one of the expensive Quincy Jones signature brand AKG headphones in it, strategically placed there by the PR from the manufacturers, Harman International Industries (who has insisted on sitting in on the interview, at the other end of the room and we won’t even know he’s there, honestly). He has a thin ’tache shading his top lip and although he talks in a jazz musician patois, he is articulate and his recall is excellent. A bit of a paunch maybe, but he dresses with the brio of a younger man, like an extra from a Seventies television show: safari suit, colourful scarf, orange shirt, dog tags, earrings.
Today, as he sits in a suite at the Dorchester, he’s not in bad shape for his age. On that occasion he pinned up a notice in the studio that the assembled stars could not miss: ‘Check your egos at the door.’ Not only that, but the most successful single, too, with We Are the World. He can also still claim, 28 years after Jackson’s Thriller first went on sale, to have produced the most successful album of all time.
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