Quincy Goes Off: To Music Snob or Not to Music Snob

Quincy Jones just did a very egomaniac and judgemental interview with Vulture

A lot of his opinions were true and lot were bunk, but mostly he’s a very educated musician from the school of musicial theory who believes in harmony study and virtuosity.

I admire guys with musical knowledge who were virtuosos. I have the album cover of John Coltrane’s Blue Train posted on my bedroom wall, but as you can tell from the name of my site I also believe in guys that can just somehow hear the music in their heads like Elvis and Keith Moon.

Elvis likely knew almost nothing about music theory and rules or the right to break those rules. He did however listen and sponge up every type of music, rhythm and blues, gospel, country, and blue grass and mixed them all and created something new and endlessly exciting. Elvis cared more about mood and feel than he did about perfection. People would constantly tell Elvis that he was singing something technically wrong and Elvis didn’t care because he had done it on purpose and he was right.

Now Quincy’s most audacious comment was that Paul McCartney was the worst bass player he had ever seen. This rightly upset many people as Paul McCartney is viewed as the greatest pop music bass player of all time, but Quincy was commenting on meeting and seeing Paul at 21. Quincy was used to hanging with Charlie Mingus. If you put Paul in a Jazz improv session with Mingus and his crew at 21 he would be lost. It’s not a controversial statement, but if you turn the bass way up on Sgt Pepper be prepared for pure genius.

There is a rock and roll snobbery among Jazz musicians. Witness this scene of a down and out Charlie Parker seeing a once great Jazz musician sell out and play R&B from the movie Bird.

Knowing music theory and I tried it’s really really hard is wonderful, and especially helpful during improvisation, which Jazz artists feel is the highest of musical abilities.

I don’t I believe the highest is creation of great songs and getting that material on everlasting records.

I’ve read tons of books on Jazz and tons of anecdotes. During the big band Golden Age, there were guys who knew every rule and could read music and arrange and there were guys who couldn’t read a lick and played by ear. John Coltrane knew infinitely more musical theory than Louis Armstrong. Who was the bigger figure and innovator is a argument I won’t go into here, but people in the know probably pick Armstrong. A lot of guys just hear cool things differently, revolutionize music and then others figure out why it works musically and build on it.

Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie knew their theory, but when Parker needed an accompanist he chose a man with a less busy style, who had dropped out of Julliard because he was learning more from the guys playing in clubs on his off time – Miles Davis. Miles also would learn tons of music theory.

It’s the same with art. The educated always say, “You have to know the rules to break them.” Well, to me that’s completely not true because there is recorded music out there that is amazing and it was all feel and inspiration – see Jimi Hendrix or Keith Moon. In fact, in my experience the bigger more revolutionary stuff comes from artists who don’t know the rules, because they aren’t held back from doing anything “wrong” they just hear new revolutionary things.

Quincy claims that Jimi Hendrix was scared to jam with the elite of the Jazz world. Maybe he was, but I guess that if Jimi was leading a session those Jazz guys would be intimidated too. Miles Davis had the biggest harshest ego in the world and loved Hendrix and wanted to work with him, he also made Bitches Brew, which was unlikely to ever have happened without there being Jimi Hendrix.

The worst thing Quincy said musically was his scolding and mocking of Cyndi Lauper during the We Are the World session. Well Q, We Are the World is a well meaning but horrible song, and the only redeeming part of it is Cyndi Lauper even if she was nervous and a pain in the ass. Oh and Q, Miles Davis recorded Cyndi’s Time after Time.

If you watch the movie Whiplash you can see that music schools are filled every year with incredibly talented virtuoso musicians who work their ass off. On musicianship alone they are leagues ahead of pop artists or even well respected Jazz artists, but that doesn’t mean that they can come up with anything original and lasting.

Jones does admit that unless you have a good song no amount of virtuosity can save it. A ton of 60s music was all performed by great session musicians like the Funk Brothers, The Meters, The Wrecking Crew, Jimmy Page, and Booker T and the MGs. Musically, the only guy in the Beach Boys who could hang with the wrecking crew on his instrument was Brian Wilson, but he was the unquestioned leader of his sessions and he wrote and inspired all those great performances, even if the brilliant Carol Kane provided the actual bass playing.

As for the Beatles, aside from horns or strings or something George Martin would play and rare guest appearances by Billy Preston or Eric Clapton. Every note on the Beatles’ albums was played by one of the Beatles.

Watch this speech by Todd Rundgren as he gives the commencement speech at Berklee, one of the most acclaimed music schools.

In it he admits that he is the worst and least knowledgeable guy in the room at playing music and can’t even read music, but look who is giving the commencement speech and it’s doubtful any of the kids in that audience will ever have a career approaching Todd’s.

Aimee Mann is one of my favorite artists and very educated. I believe she also went to Berklee. For a while she was obsessed with Noel Gallagher and Oasis, and peppered Noel with questions about his chord changes and the theory behind them. Noel’s reflection on this period in true Noel fashion was essentially, “I have no fucking idea what you’re talking about I just write and play I have no idea what chords I’m playing most of the time.”

No matter how much you study and practice. There is still the possibility that some passionate kid with modest musical skills can come up with something better despite his lack of virtuosity. Listen to Jon Brion here who knows everything about music and can play every instrument like a virtuoso go on and on about the miracle that is Kurt Cobain’s Lithium.

Could Keith Moon has sat in for Elvin Jones? Hell no! Did Elvin Jones hear Keith Moon’s records in awe – apparently yes. You can’t explain Keith Moon, and he wouldn’t have fit with many other bands or formats, but he was as he said at the end when his skills were slipping with alcoholism “Still the best Keith Moon style drummer in the world.” There is a Who documentary called Amazing Journey where an educated drummer talked about Moon in amazement. He noted that in one song Keith went from playing his bass drum right-footed to playing it left-footed, which is completely insane, but he acknowledged that even though no drummer ever would do that, what Moon did was the only way to get it to sound that way!

As for Quincy, he knows tons of theory, he can probably play any type of music in any style. If versatility and virtuosity is your goal he is your man. He will tell you that he was the mastermind behind his two biggest albums, Michael Jackson’s Off the Wall and Thriller. Others like critic Dave Marsh argued that Jones actually held back Michael’s burgeoning creativity, and how does Quincy feel about the man who really helped Michael cross over. Eddie Van Halen, who tossed off the Beat It solo, did it for free and forgot about like it was no big deal.

Musicians have huge egos. I’ll admit that I had to listen to John Coltrane’s Giant Steps at least ten times before I began to understand it. Quincy said it was as radical as anything Coltrane ever recorded even his later free jazz albums which I can’t make any sense out of. Than just to be cranky Q accused Coltrane of stealing it from the music theory books he had been reading.

Finally, just one anecdote.

John Hammond discovered a black kid who played electric guitar named Charlie Christian out in the boonies and brought him to the very educated Benny Goodman. Goodman took one look at how he was dressed and wouldn’t even listen to him play. Some of Goodman’s band sneaked Christian onto the stage. Infuriated Goodman called for the band to play the whitest thing he could think of a song named “Rose Room. Christian, though, knew the song and the band played it for what some say was 45 minutes with Christian outdoing every solo with another even more outrageously better solo. Goodman hired him and he went on to invent Be Bop with Parker, Gillespie et al before sadly dying very young.

There is no answer to this especially for someone who understands music theory as much as I do. I took Harmony at Northwestern because I wanted to learn it for my guitar playing. It was the hardest thing I ever took and I barely passed, and I still don’t understand what makes something right or wrong. Sometimes genius comes from just being born with it. Enjoy whatever you enjoy listening to. If you know about music theory and want to talk about it with your brilliant friends – cool, but sometimes it doesn’t matter how educated you are – people are just struck with brilliance.

By the way. BB King played some amazing music and he would admit up front to you that he had no idea how to play most chords or why you should.

I don’t care about virtuosity. I don’t care about knowledge. Just put your records up to be judged by experts and ignorant music lovers and see what endures. If you want to argue that what endures is crap that’s fine too. Chet Baker went up to Miles Davis one day and apologized to Miles. He said I love your music, and I love playing in that style, but I feel terrible that you are so much better than me, but I outsell you because I’m white and pretty. Miles accepted the apology because it was honest and Miles was not a forgiving man.

Meanwhile both of these are brilliant and beautiful: