Fans of the late music legend Quincy Jones have been sharing a controversial interview in which he gave his true feeling about Donald Trump.
The producer, musician and songwriter died on Sunday (November 3), aged 91. His seven-decade career saw him collaborate with a who’s who of music history, including Ray Charles, Billie Holiday and Frank Sinatra, and he went on to produce Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller’, to this day the biggest selling album of all time.
Since his passing, fans have been re-sharing some of Jones’ most outspoken statements in recent years, including when he described The Beatles as “the worst musicians in the world”, and when he spoke about when U2 made him stay in Bono’s castle “because Ireland is so racist”.
It was in that same explosive interview with Vulture in 2018 – for which Jones actually later apologised – that he was unfiltered in his comments about the then-Republican president.
“I used to hang out with him,” Jones began. “He’s a crazy motherfucker. Limited mentally – a megalomaniac, narcissistic. I can’t stand him.”
“A symphony conductor knows more about how to lead than most businesspeople – more than Trump does. He doesn’t know shit. Someone who knows about real leadership wouldn’t have as many people against him as he does. He’s a fucking idiot.”
Trump is the Republican nominee at tomorrow’s (November 5) presidential election against Democrat candidate Kamala Harris.
Jones went on to cause further controversy when he claimed that he once dated Trump’s daughter Ivanka, when he was 72 and she was 25. He alleged that the fashion designer Tommy Hilfiger told him that Ivanka had requested dinner with him.
“I said, ‘No problem’. She’s a fine motherfucker. She had the most beautiful legs I ever saw in my life. Wrong father, though.”
Ivanka Trump has never commented on Jones’ claims.
Other eye-catching comments from Jones in the same interview included him claiming he knew who killed John F. Kennedy, and an allegation that Richard Pryor once had sex with Marlon Brando.
Writing about Jones’ life, NME has said: “The man they called LLQJ – loose-lipped Quincy Jones – had more than a few stories to tell. It’s hard to think of an area of contemporary pop culture that he didn’t help to shape in some way, from film and TV (via his production company Quincy Jones Entertainment) to, of course, music, on which he had as great an impact as anyone in the last 50 years.”
Among those to have paid tribute to Jones are New Order and Peter Hook, who credit the producer for “making us big in America”. He owned the Qwest label, to which the Manchester band were signed in the US, and created a famous mix of their single ‘Blue Monday’ in 1988.
