Quincy Jones: Michael Jackson didn't want to be black

Iconic music producer Quincy Jones was interviewed by Details Magazine, all to discuss Michael Jackson's life and work. It's a long interview, which you can read here, but Huffington Post has some of the best quotes. Quincy and Michael were professional and personal friends for decades, their collaborations going back to Thriller, Bad and Off the Wall. Many music critics point as that time period - the Quincy/Michael collaboration period - as Michael's best, most creative, and most iconic. In my opinion, Quincy was probably a lot more than a professional mentor to Michael - Quincy was probably the closest thing Michael had to a loving, benevolent father, considering Michael's actual father is a notorious bastard.

In the interview, Quincy riffs on Michael's plastic surgery, but avoids talking about Michael's sexuality. He also mentions that Michael was maybe worse off because he was a Virgo, which I think I knew at one point but had blocked from my memory.

Quincy Jones, the record producer who collaborated with Michael Jackson on Thriller, Bad and Off the Wall, has opened up to Details about his memories of his friend's life and speculations about his death.

On Jackson's ever-changing appearance:
Oh, we talked about it all the time. But he'd come up with, 'Man, I promise you I have this disease,' and so forth, and 'I have a blister on my lungs,' and all that kind of b.s. It's hard, because Michael's a Virgo, man–he's very set in his ways. You can't talk him out of it. Chemical peels and all that stuff.

On Jackson's skin condition:
It's ridiculous, man! Chemical peels and all of it. And I don't understand it. But he obviously didn't want to be black.

He also speculated on what exactly caused Jackson's death, citing recent comments made by Jackson's first wife Lisa Marie Presley:
I don't know, man. I'm a musician. I'm not a psychiatrist. I would think that the pressure of the concerts and the debt and everything else…I know that Lisa Marie Presley said that she always thought he was going to die like Elvis .

[From Details via Huffington Post]

I'm a Virgo, and I totally think Quincy has a point about Michael's sign adding to his own self-destruction. Not all Virgos are built the same, but we do tend towards the quirky and eccentric, to put it nicely. There are other words I could use, but I'll just say this… Hugh Grant is a Virgo. Beyonce is a Virgo. Michael Jackson was a Virgo. Judge for yourselves.

As far as the whole Michael Jackson didn't want to black' thing, I don't know if it was that simple. I tend to think Michael's self-image wasn't just about race, but Quincy would probably know better than me.

Quincy Jones and Michael Jackson are shown with Lionel Richie and Smokey Robinson on the HBO Special 'USA For Africa: The Story of ‘We Are the World'' in 1985. Credit: WENN.com. Quincy is also shown on 11/13/08. Credit: PRPhotos