Quincy Jones Interview

I didn’t love any of their post-Beatles solo albums (though McCartney’s s/t debut and it’s follow-up, Ram, have their charms), and I’ve always felt it was because their collective chemistry is what made The Beatles as good as they were. It was the songwriting and harmony singing (modeled on The Everly Brothers, whom they idolized). On his own, Paul is too sweet for my taste, John too sour. Plus he had Yoko dragging him down ;-).

George was always my "favorite Beatle", but he wasn’t much of a singer. He put out a pretty good final album, though. It included a recording of an obscure 1950’s Rockabilly song ("Got My Mind Set On You") that I liked a lot, produced by the great Jeff Lynne of ELO. The music George and Jeff made together in The Traveling Wilbury’s is by far my favorite that any of them made post-Beatles.

Good point mapman, about the Lennon/McCartney songs authorship. Once they went solo, it became rather apparent, if one couldn’t already tell, which of them wrote any particular later Beatles song. I believe by the time of Rubber Soul, they were no longer writing together. Also, as time went on, the writer of the song sang the lead vocal or melody. They even let George sing Taxman. ;-)

By the way, that song has a fantastic guitar solo (go ahead, listen to it right now!), which even a Jazz guitarist would be proud to say he played. It was, in fact, played by Paul McCartney. Anyone who says The Beatles weren’t good musicians has a very different concept of good than do I.

"I have no idea why Cream broke up. Eric wanted to go solo maybe?"

Eric revealed why he ended Cream in his interview in The Last Waltz:

"Music had been going in the wrong direction for a long time. When I heard Music From Big Pink (The Band's debut album, of course), I thought: Well, someone has finally gone and done it right. The album made me excited, but also disturbed."

Somewhat paraphrased, but that's the gist of it. Eric bought a case of Music From Big Pink LP's, put them in the trunk of his car, and gave a copy to everyone he knew, telling them "You've GOT to hear this." He told Jack and Ginger he wasn't interested in continuing Cream, and went up to Saugerties, New York (where The Band lived) to hang with The Band, waiting, as he now laughs about, for them to ask him to join. It finally dawned on him they didn't require or desire his services, so he left, and started on the second phase of his musical career.

Think about that for a second. The leader of the biggest band in the world dissolves that band because he hears an album by another band, one that makes music he feels makes his own irrelevant. Music From Big Pink had that effect on every musician I knew, completely changing our idea of how music should be played, of what made a band good, of what superior musicianship was. I had to start over from the beginning, learning how to play all over again, but now at least knowing what really made a musician a "good" one.

For me (and a lot of musicians I knew), groups like The Beatles were over; their time had past. They made some great music, some pretty good music, some okay music, and some dreadful music. To critique them in terms of their individual technical abilities is so wrongheaded as to defy belief!

I realize the above could be interpreted as supporting the argument that the members of The Beatles weren't "the best" musicians around. So what? They were good enough to play the kind of music they were making REALLY well. Their music was not about the technical abilities of the individual musicians---they were a Pop Group, not a Jazz quartet. Horses for courses!

John Lennon was a very good rhythm guitarist (Don Everly was a FANTASTIC one!). Is Quincy Jones even aware of the function rhythm guitar plays in Rock ’n’ Roll music? I doubt it. That is just one example of what makes his opinion of The Beatles as musicians irrelevant. The fact that playing rhythm guitar does not take a lot of technique does not mean it is easy to do well, or that it does not require skills of a particular sort. Technique is a matter of the body being trained to perform physical acts, and is only one element of musicianship. Part of superior musicianship is knowing what NOT to play (a non-technique skill), and that is a major element in the playing of rhythm guitar. Rock ’n’ Roll music greatly benefits from superior rhythm guitar parts. That’s why Jeff Lynne’s production of Tom Petty was so successful; there are acoustic rhythm guitar parts all over that album, and Petty’s music is the better for it.

The thing is, Jazz guys don’t respect Rock ’n Roll as a music, and don’t understand the principles involved that make one practitioner of it superior to another. The skill set involved in R & R music are very different from that in Jazz. As Keith Moon replied when asked if he could play in The Buddy Rich Big Band: "No, and Buddy Rich couldn’t play in The Who."

tubegroover, if you reread my post you’ll notice I thought better of what I had said about Jones’ music, and beat the 30 minute clock.

My beef with Jones’ opinion of the early Beatles musicianship is his (and a lot of other people’s) underlying assumption that a more, let’s call it accomplished, musician, will, by virtue of that fact alone, make better music than that of a less accomplished musician. That is a fallacy, just as is being a "trained" singer automatically makes one a better singer than an untrained one. Imagine if the only criteria in judging athletes in The Olympics was in the area of "difficulty of execution". Judging musicians by that criteria alone reduces the making of music to just that---an athletic endeavor.

I like people who are opinionated, and/or have a point of view. But The Beatles the WORST musicians in the world? Jones has obviously never heard The Shaggs ;-) . It takes advanced technique to play Jazz really well, other musics not so much. Just like in the world of automobiles, it’s a matter of "horses for courses". A 4-wheel drive Jeep is great for off-roading, but you wouldn’t want to drive one across the country. And a sports sedan is great for cruising down the Interstate, but you’re not going to go camping in one. What makes for superior musicianship in one style of music is not necessarily what does in another. What makes George Harrison’s little guitar break (commonly referred to as a solo, but in this case it’s not actually an improvised solo, but more a "song part") so incredibly musically delicious has NOTHING to do with the technique that Jazz guys are listening for in their effort to access the talent of a musician. Those Jazz "rules" are inappropriate for Pop or Rock ’n’ Roll music---they don’t apply. Quincy Jones, for all his knowledge and talent, is apparently ignorant of that fact.

Guys who came up in the world of Jazz tend to think that all music can be assessed in comparison to it. When Buddy Rich was in the hospital the last time, a nurse asked him if there was anything he couldn’t take (meaning medicines, of course). His reply was "Yeah. Country music". Pretty funny, but I’ll bet he never heard Jerry Douglas’ dobro playing.

Danny Gatton was (R.I.P.) an amazing guitarist, and the music he made got tagged with the label Redneck Jazz (and it’s the title of one of his albums). He liked guitar players who came before him from all styles---Hillbilly, Rockabilly, Rock ’n Roll, Blues, Jazz, and everything else. He was no Jazz snob, yet could play that music as well as any guitarist you can name.

I see musicians my age doing nothing but bitching about current music, how it all sucks. They don’t remember hearing "their" music (1960’s, mostly) denigrated the same way by the WWII generation, who pined for the days of the Big Bands. It comes of ignorance, partly. If you don’t understand a music---what makes it work, what principles are involved, you aren’t a person who is qualified or entitled to judge it. And besides, it isn’t being made for you, any more than that of The Beatles (or anyone else of that time) was for fans of Big Band, Jazz, or Classical music. There’s a lot of good music being made today in all genres. It can’t ALL be on the radio, or performed at half-time. The music business is going to push what it wants, so if you don’t like that music, don’t listen to the radio or watch the half-time show.

As for Quincy Jones’ opinion on ANYTHING, I couldn’t care less.