Big as Quincy Jones was, there’s arguably a bigger truth underlying his genius.
“I saw a little piano in the room and I closed the door. Something said to me, ‘Idiot, go back in that room!’ I went back in the room and touched the piano…and every drop of blood in my body said, ‘This is what you’re going to do for the rest of your life.’”
As readers can likely guess, those are the words of the late, great Quincy Jones. They made it into the various tributes to Jones that followed his death at 91. Jones and friends were hungry, and looking for food. In their pursuit Jones spied a piano which plainly changed his life.
It turns out Jones – like Paul McCartney and so many of the great musicians – quite simply had it. He could just look at an instrument and get it. Seeing the piano put him on a musical path that led to him performing around the world, scoring movies and plays, and becoming one of the all-time great record producers, including his production of Off the Wall, Thriller, and Bad, easily Michael Jackson’s most consequential and best-selling albums.
In reading about Jones laying eyes on the little piano, it’s easy to forget or take for granted how such a scenario wouldn’t have revealed itself just anywhere, or at just any time.
