Quincy Jones: True or False? His Wild Life and the Stories Behind His Wildest Claims

Quincy Jones brought truth through music. We heard what America really felt like in the albums he produced, and in the films he scored. At the end of his life he made wild claims; that Michael Jackson was a thief (“he stole a lot of songs”), that the Beatles were frauds (“no-playing motherfu*ckers”), and that he knows “who killed Kennedy” in part because of his relationship with Frank Sinatra. In this episode we dive into these crimes—-musical and otherwise—to determine if arguably the greatest producer who ever lived, the man who claimed “all I’ve ever done is tell the truth," was, in fact, telling us the truth. To listen to Disgraceland ad free and get access to a weekly bonus content and more, become a Disgraceland All Access member at disgracelandpod.com/membership https://disgracelandpod.com/membership. Visit www.disgracelandpod.com/merch https://cms.megaphone.fm/organizations/c83125d2-8508-11ed-bd28-ff0aff7ee233/podcasts/efca2ef8-85f9-11ed-8fe3-bb208936046f/episodes/d117e93e-5e36-11ef-8745-5373bae4c0ff/www.disgracelandpod.com/merch to see the latest Disgraceland merch! Sign up for our newsletter and get the inside dirt on events, merch and other awesomeness - GET THE NEWSLETTER https://mailchi.mp/doubleelvis/disgraceland-email-newsletter Follow Jake and DISGRACELAND: Instagram https://www.instagram.com/disgracelandpod/ YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@disgracelandpod X https://twitter.com/disgracelandpod (formerly Twitter) Facebook Fan Group https://www.facebook.com/groups/491024204626127/ See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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• 2:20Jake Brennan?

  Disgrace Land is a production of Double Elvis.

• 2:35Jake Brennan?

  This is a story about arguably the greatest music producer ever. A man who said, "All I ever did was tell the truth." But a man who clearly said some outrageous things. Things about The Beatles, about Michael Jackson, about Frank Sinatra. Claims that amount to musical crimes, fraud, theft, and murder. A man who, despite his statements about these musicians, made some of the greatest music ever put on tape. I'm talking about Quincy Jones. Yes, a man who made great music. Unlike that music I played for you at the top of the show, that wasn't great music.

• 3:18Jake Brennan?

  That was a preset loop from my Mellotron called "After P and Before R, M, K, 1." I played you that loop because I can't afford the rights to "God's Plan" by Drake. And why would I play you that specific slice of... I'm sorry, I find Drake to be so damn boring that I can't even find an interesting way to insult him. Cheese, could I afford it? Because that was the number one song in America on January 29, 2018. And that was the day Quincy Jones started talking to reporters at his advanced age and making outrageous claims nobody asked for, but that nearly everybody wanted to

• 4:03Jake Brennan?

  hear. On this episode, The Beatles as fraudsters, Michael Jackson as a thief, Frank Sinatra's front seat at the assassination, and the loose lips in unbelievable life of Quincy Jones. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is Disgrace Land.

• 4:48Jake Brennan?

  During the last years of his life, Quincy Jones, arguably the greatest music producer of all time, made some truly outrageous claims. Some involving crimes, musical and otherwise. He said that Michael Jackson stole a lot of songs, and that The Beatles didn't play their instruments, and that Frank Sinatra was the reason that he knew who killed Kennedy. Quincy Jones, age 84, when he gave these interviews to GQ and New York Magazine, was clearly out of fucks to give. He also told interviewers that he once dated Ivanka Trump, a woman 48 years younger than him, and more outrageously, the president's daughter.

• 5:30Jake Brennan?

  He also spilled the tea about Marlon Brando's sexual appetite, that he slept with Richard Pryor in Marvin Gaye, and that Brando would "fuck a mailbox." These claims, regardless of whether they're true or not, are hysterical, especially when you hear Quincy, or Q, as the world universally knows him, tell these stories in his unmistakable voice. These stories, though, they're not directly related to figures from music history, aside from Q's involvement, so I'm less interested in them than I am the claims about Sinatra, The Beatles, and Michael Jackson. It should be noted that after Quincy Jones made this claim about Michael Jackson, that

• 6:14Jake Brennan?

  he was a musical thief, that the Jackson family pushed back hard. Joe Jackson said that Quincy was jealous of Michael's talent, and an anonymous member of the Jackson clan claimed that Quincy Jones had been in the first stages of dementia when he said these things. Quincy Jones was a lot of things. He lifted himself up from a childhood of poverty through an oftentimes violent and racist music industry, to create music that not only sounded like what America really sounded like, but that also changed the way America sounded. More on that later. And Quincy Jones became, as I said before, arguably the greatest music producer of all time.

• 6:55Jake Brennan?

  A music producer who said, "All I ever did was tell the truth." Was he lying about Michael, about The Beatles, about Sinatra? Well, before we answer that, we must first look at who Quincy Jones was. Quincy Delight Jones Jr. was born on the South Side of Chicago, and he grew up in a neighborhood so violent that it was known as "The Bucket of Blood." His family moved to Seattle, where Quincy began his music career at the age of 12, playing trumpet and learning to write arrangements for jazz orchestras. This is where he later met and became friends with 16-year-old Ray Charles, backed Billie

• 7:39Jake Brennan?

  Holiday while he was still only 14, and talked his way into a future gig with bandleader Lionel Hampton. Quincy then headed to Boston to attend what would become Berklee College of Music, but at school, there was no action, so Quincy Jones then hit the road with Lionel Hampton, and the road was a grind. Eventually, Quincy relocated to the Bebop Center of the Universe, New York City, to try his hand as an arranger professionally. And in the Big Apple, his talent took off, but the money was slow to come, so Quincy split for Hollywood, and his career erupted. It is not a stretch to say that Quincy Jones worked with damn near everybody in the business during these years.

• 8:22Jake Brennan?

  In New York City, Quincy Jones got down to writing arrangements for Dinah Washington, Sarah Vaughan, Dizzy Gillespie, and others. He performed live on television as part of the Dorsey Brothers Band when they backed Elvis Presley in his first television performance. In 1958, he flew to Monaco with Frank Sinatra to conduct Frank's orchestra for Princess Grace. In 61, Quincy Jones was hired by Mercury Records as the first black vice president of a record label. For Mercury, he wrote and produced a smash number-one hit, Leslie Gore's "It's My Party." In 1964, Sidney Lumet hired Quincy to score a major motion picture, "The Pawnbroker." This led to director Richard Brooks asking Quincy Jones to score the film adaptation of Truman Capote's smash hit true crime story, "In Cold Blood." Truman told Richard Brooks,

• 9:06Speaker 03

  "Richard, I don't understand why you've got a Negro doing the music for a film with no people of color in it."

• 9:14Jake Brennan?

  Richard Brooks told Truman Capote to fuck off. Q was scoring his film. Q did just that, and Quincy Jones received his first Academy Award nomination. He was later nominated for either Best Score or Best Song for several films, including "The Wiz," "The Color Purple," and would eventually take home honorary Oscars for his humanitarian efforts and his lifetime contribution to cinema. On top of those two Oscars, Quincy Jones earned 28 Grammys, one Emmy, and one Tony. He's on a short list of EGOT winners that includes Steven Spielberg, Elton John, and Rita Moreno. Quincy Jones worked twice as hard as other composers. Most composers, most white composers, scored one film a year. Quincy Jones was black. Quincy Jones had something to prove.

• 9:57Jake Brennan?

  He didn't score one film a year, he at least scored two, sometimes three. He once scored eight films in one year. Throughout the '60s and '70s, he worked again with Sinatra, composed TV series themes for his buddies Redd Foxx and Bill Cosby, wrote and produced a song called "Soul Bossa Nova" that you recognize from Austin Powers, but it wasn't just glitzy Hollywood fun and games, not by a long shot. Quincy Jones collaborated with creative giants, Portier, Peckinpock, and most notably, from 1979 to 1987, his production work helped crown the king of pop, Michael Jackson. In the '60s, he was active in the civil rights movement in support of Martin Luther King Jr., and then alongside Jesse Jackson. Later, he teamed with Bono to launch the Just Listen Up Foundation to build houses

• 10:42Jake Brennan?

  in South Africa, and tirelessly advocated in support of the arts to President Barack Obama. Oh, and he also married Norma from Twin Peaks, actress Peggy Lipton. And Quincy was Rashida Jones's dad, you know her as Karen from The Office, and he was Tupac's ex-Kadada Jones's father, too. But what does any of this have to do with Quincy Jones and his claims that Michael Jackson was a thief, that The Beatles were frauds, that Sinatra was the key to understanding who murdered Kennedy?

• 11:16Jake Brennan?

  Well, with that incredible career, Quincy Jones was rewarded special access. And perhaps because of that special access, Quincy gained special insight, special insight to claim, as he did confidently, that he knew who killed Kennedy and to insinuate that this knowledge came from his relationship with Frank Sinatra. So let's look further into whether or not Quincy Jones was telling the truth. Let's first look into the crime of murder.

• 11:50Jake Brennan?

  Long before Quincy Jones wanted to be a musician, he wanted to be a gangster. The bucket of blood neighborhood on the south side of Chicago, where he grew up in the 1930s, was controlled by criminals and crooked cops. It was unsafe, uninspiring, and no place for a young boy to grow up. Black gangsters, the Jones boys, no relation, ran this black neighborhood. They robbed, stole, fought, and killed brazenly. Young Quincy Jones and his friends watched it all from the urine-stained sidewalks. And they saw black men in pinstripe suits stalking the streets with tommy guns, and the men who crossed them meet their makers. One morning, while on the way to elementary school,

• 12:34Jake Brennan?

  Quincy saw a man's body impaled on the iron rung of a telephone pole with an ice pick jammed into his neck. Aside from the racist cops who patrolled his neighborhood, like the notorious two-gun Pete officer who made his living shooting little black kids in the back with his twin revolvers, the gangsters were the only role models that Quincy Jones had at that young age. And as he recalls it, back in the 30s, with what limited exposure he had beyond the violent corner of the world where he grew up, aside from his hard-working, handyman father, there literally were no black men for him to look up to. That all changed when Quincy Jones

• 13:18Jake Brennan?

  and his family moved to Seattle when he was 10, and shortly afterward, found music.

• 13:29Jake Brennan?

  In 1943, Quincy Jones's family relocated to Seattle, and it was there that he took up trumpet. As a young teenager, Quincy immersed himself in Seattle's jazz nightlife and taught himself how to arrange music. After high school, he headed east to Boston and then to Manhattan. But even while learning from bebop giants, Quincy wanted more. So he headed to Paris to study with arguably the most important musical educator of the 20th century, Natalie Blonge, the woman who taught Igor Stravinsky. He then booked work as a performer, which took him to the Middle East and South America, and eventually all over Europe as a bandleader. All of this experience turned Quincy Jones into a genius arranger

• 14:14Jake Brennan?

  and opened doors for him in Hollywood to score films. Those doors wouldn't stay open on their own, however. Quincy Jones would have to use every ounce of his creative genius to keep them that way.

• 14:32Jake Brennan?

  Earlier in this story, I mentioned that Quincy Jones changed the way America sounded. This is what I meant. Before Quincy Jones started scoring films, major motion pictures had been scored almost exclusively by white men. Orchestral film scores prior to Quincy Jones were by design aspirational sounding. In other words, film scores prior to Quincy Jones sounded like a romanticized version of what America actually looked and felt like. Quincy Jones was the first film composer to introduce rhythm and blues into motion picture scoring, and thus, the first composer to implement truth into the sound of movies.

• 15:16Jake Brennan?

  R&B music in the mid-'60s represented what America actually sounded like. Motown ruled the charts alongside the Beatles, who were heavily influenced by rhythm and blues, as was Elvis Presley and the rest of the rock and rollers, white and black. If you drove through an American city in 1966 with the windows down and the radio on, you'd primarily hear R&B or R&B-influenced music. But if you went to the movies, the music you'd hear accompanying the story up on the screen would be orchestral, romantic, aspirational, more akin to classical music than the reality happening out on the streets. Quincy Jones changed what America sounded like

• 15:58Jake Brennan?

  by infusing his orchestral scores with R&B influences. And for the first time in the history of movies, the sound of the story sounded like what life for most Americans actually felt like. America at its most violent with Quincy's score for "In Cold Blood", its most racist with Quincy's score for "In The Heat of the Night", at its most absurd with Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice, and later, on television, at its most comical with Quincy's theme for Sanford and Son. Quincy Jones made movies sound the way that America felt at the time. It's a technique that most every notable composer after Quincy Jones has utilized:

• 16:42Jake Brennan?

  deploying reality over aspiration in film composition, and by extension, creating a permanent record for future generations to roll back the tape to hear what America really sounded like. The success of Quincy Jones's career as a film scorer and arranger led to incredible opportunities, most notably, for the purposes of this story, to his collaboration with a man who would become the greatest Italian-American entertainer of all time: Francis Albert Sinatra.

• 17:23Jake Brennan?

  Quincy Jones didn't know exactly who the two large Italian men were who were escorting him through the Sands Casino. These were Frank's guys, or more specifically, they were body men, muscle, that Frank Sinatra had hired out from the boys back in Chicago. Sam Giancana, one of America's most powerful mafia bosses, had a covert financial interest in the Sands Hotel and Casino. Giancana ran the skim off the Sands for the mob in a legal cash windfall that brought in millions. But Quincy Jones didn't know anything about that at the time. All he knew was that his new best friend, Frank Sinatra, was part-owner of the Sands Hotel and Casino,

• 18:08Jake Brennan?

  and that he and Frank were in town with Count Basie to cut a live album with Quincy conducting Basie's orchestra through an entire set of tunes he'd arranged. As Frank would say, cuckoo. But this was the mid-'60s, and Las Vegas was hostile to blacks, even if their names were up there on the marquee with Frank Sinatra's. Blacks still had to eat in the casino kitchens with the help. And it didn't matter if you were Sammy Davis Jr. himself or Harry Belafonte or Lena Horne. You weren't staying in the casino hotels. You were staying in the black hotels across the tracks. But Frank Sinatra wasn't having it. Frank hired a mob-connected bodyguard

• 18:52Jake Brennan?

  for each member of Basie's 18-piece orchestra, including, of course, the Count himself and Q. He then assembled Giancana's muscle and told them that, "If anybody even looks funny at any member of this band, break both of their fucking legs." Giancana's guys would see to it that if any of the racist locals got lippy or tough, they'd get sorted out Vegas-style, meaning, out in the desert, shot in the mouth, and left to rot in shallow graves. Needless to say, this did not happen. And so Quincy Jones and Count Basie and all the members of the Basie Orchestra had their run of Vegas. The result was one of the greatest live albums of all time:

• 19:36Jake Brennan?

  Sinatra at the Sands with Count Basie and the orchestra, arranged and conducted by Quincy Jones. An album that was made possible in part due to Frank Sinatra's connection to the mafia, an organization Quincy Jones would later insinuate was responsible for the killing of President John F. Kennedy.

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• 21:22Jake Brennan?

  So, did Quincy Jones's relationship with Frank Sinatra burden him with the knowledge of who killed JFK? Before we can answer that, we have to look into another claim by Mr. Jones. This one concerning the crime of artistic theft. Did Michael Jackson, who was without a doubt an otherworldly talent and who Quincy Jones worked with on all three of his seminal albums as producer, Off the Wall, Thriller, and Bad, did Michael Jackson steal, quote-unquote, "a lot of songs"? Well, let's find out.

• 22:01Jake Brennan?

  The muse comes differently to different artists at different times. Sometimes she smacks you in the face. Sometimes she just nods in a certain direction. Other times, she shakes you by the shoulders. Inspiration gets expressed both directly and indirectly. Most artists are careful not to think about it too much. They take it as it comes, like George Harrison, who didn't question the melody for "My Sweet Lord" until it was pointed out to him in court that his melody sounded exactly like "He's So Fine" by The Shifans. In 1981, George was forced to pay a settlement of more than half a million dollars for subconscious plagiarism. And then there's the story of George's ex-bandmate, John Lennon,

• 22:46Jake Brennan?

  who sang "Here Come Old Flat Top, He Come Groovin' Up Slowly." John, cheeky bastard that he was, was nodding to his hero Chuck Berry in his song "You Can't Catch Me." But Morris Levy didn't care about artistic nods or the muse. And Morris owned the publishing rights to Chuck Berry's song, and he threatened to bring John Lennon to court claiming that he was owed royalties. John agreed to record three songs from Levy's publishing catalog and was ultimately forced to pay Levy nearly $700,000 in damages. Now, a lot has been said about these cases. One thing that I always say is that great musicians are criminals. Now, Steve Jobs has said something else.

• 23:31Jake Brennan?

  He said, "Good artists copy, great artists steal." Steve thought that he was appropriating that line from Pablo Picasso, but Steve was wrong. Picasso never said that. T.S. Eliot said something similar. He said, "To imitate was shoddy, and to steal was praiseworthy." So let's praise old T.S. for nicking this phrase from Alfred Tennyson, who said that "great poets imitate and improve, whereas small ones steal and spoil." Another way of putting all this is, immature artists blatantly steal, while mature artists are more skilled at hiding their theft. To me, this sounds too cynical. To me, a great artist like John Lennon

• 24:15Jake Brennan?

  works pieces that inspire them into the whole of their own creation in ways that render the original inspiration barely recognizable anymore. Now, back to Quincy Jones. Quincy Jones claimed that John Coltrane's masterpiece, "Giant Steps", was stolen from Nicholas Slominsky's book on 12-tone theory. It probably was, but you wouldn't recognize it. What you might recognize immediately is Michael Jackson's "Mama Se, Mama Sa, Mama Fusa" melody from his 1982 hit, "Wanna Be Startin' Something." Now, that's a direct rip from the Cameroonian songwriter and trumpeter, Manu de Bango's 1972 composition, "Sol Mokosa." Michael thought, I guess, that he could steal that melody

• 25:00Jake Brennan?

  and no one would notice. But unlike Coltrane's subterfuge, MJ's "His Theft" is blatant. Brazen, actually. So, de Bango sued Michael Jackson. He settled out of court for $1 million and no claim on future royalties. But that's not the song Quincy Jones name-checked when he claimed that Michael Jackson stole a lot of songs.

• 25:30Jake Brennan?

  The song Quincy Jones name-checked as an example of Michael Jackson being a creative thief is Donna Summer's "State of Independence", which has a bassline that turns up again in Michael's "Billie Jean". As Quincy said, "The notes don't lie, man." Now, if the "Billie Jean" bassline is stolen from "State of Independence", it's not immediately recognizable. The tempo of the song is radically different, and the feel of "State of Independence" is more reggae than it is disco-influenced pop. This one isn't as blatant as Michael's "The Theft" in "Wanna Be Startin' Something." In fact, I can barely hear it, and Donna Summer never sued Michael Jackson. This is an example

• 26:14Jake Brennan?

  of the artist working his inspiration into the whole of his work rather than being as Machiavellian as they come, as Quincy Jones said about Michael Jackson. A better example of Michael Jackson being Machiavellian would be his stealing the ownership of The Beatles' catalog out from under Michael's good friend at the time, Paul McCartney. And Quincy Jones, in those wild interviews toward the end of his life, had some choice words for The Beatles' bassist. Specifically, that when it came to playing his instrument, Paul McCartney, just like George, John, and Ringo, was a no-playing motherfucker.

• 26:57Speaker 07

  We'll be right back after this word, word, word.

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• 28:08Jake Brennan?

  We now have two unanswered questions, sort of. Was Frank Sinatra the key to Q knowing exactly who killed President Kennedy? And was Michael Jackson a creative thief who, as Quincy Jones said, stole a lot of songs? Before we can answer these questions one way or another, we have one final batshit crazy Quincy Jones claim to investigate. And this one involves the musical crime of fraud. In 2018, Quincy Jones told New York Magazine that his first impression of The Beatles was that they were no-playing motherfuckers and that Paul McCartney was the "worst bass player I have ever heard." Q then went on to detail his experience with Ringo Starr in the studio.

• 28:55Jake Brennan?

  In 1970, Quincy Jones was hired by his friend, the longtime Beatles producer, George Martin, to arrange a song for Ringo's solo debut album, "Sentimental Journey." In the studio, as Quincy recalled, Ringo struggled to nail a simple four-bar drum part. After three hours of laboring away at this part with no luck, Ringo was encouraged to take a break. He split from the studio to go grab a beer. As Q's story goes, in Ringo's absence, Quincy and George Martin brought in ace jazz drummer Ronnie Varell to have a go at what Ringo couldn't play. In Quincy's words, Ronnie tore it up and finished Ringo's drum part in 15 minutes.

• 29:39Jake Brennan?

  Ringo returned from the pub a few hours later, listened to the drum part that Ronnie had played without knowing Ronnie had been in the studio, and said, "That didn't sound so bad." To which Quincy thought, "Yeah, motherfucker, because it ain't you." This experience obviously informed Quincy Jones's opinion of Ringo Starr as a musician. But what proof did Quincy Jones offer about his claim that Paul McCartney was the worst bass player I'd ever heard? None. And this is, of course, an absurd statement. Paul McCartney is not only a great bass player, he's one of the greatest musicians and composers of all time. A giant worthy of being mentioned in the same breath

• 30:23Jake Brennan?

  with the biggest and best to ever do it, Mozart, Michael Jackson, and, yes, even Quincy Jones.

• 30:31Jake Brennan?

  So what was it that informed Quincy Jones's opinion that The Beatles were no-playing motherfuckers?

• 30:42Jake Brennan?

  Quincy Jones likely first saw The Beatles perform in early 1964 along with the rest of America, when The Beatles invaded the States with their arsenal of early hits, "I Want to Hold Your Hand" and "She Loves You" among them. These tunes were excellent pop songs, the recordings of which were carefully crafted in the studio by classically-trained producer George Martin. Part of Martin's genius was that he allowed the Fab Four to retain their performances in perfections on tape. In "I Want to Hold Your Hand", there are numerous points where John and Paul flubbed the lyrics. In "Hold Me Tight", George Harrison strains to reach a high note in the harmony vocal and the result is less than harmonious. In 1965's "Ticket to Ride",

• 31:27Jake Brennan?

  Ringo heads into the second verse, playing a completely different beat than he was in the first. In "I'm Looking Through You", drum hits are missed, and there are points where the guitars slip out of tune. To George Martin, fixing these mistakes in the studio would have sacrificed the infectious energy captured on tape, but to season jazz musicians, this move was heresy. Jazz players reasoned that you needn't sacrifice playing for energy, because as a musician, it was your duty to perform the songs perfectly and with the correct energy. But this is like comparing apples to carburetors.

• 32:09Jake Brennan?

  The Beatles' energy was born from endless hours spent woodshedding their playing in front of violent and rowdy crowds, mainly soldiers and prostitutes at the Star Club in Hamburg's Reeperbahn district. The only way for the band to make it through their Star Club shows, sets that were sometimes six, eight, even 10 hours long, was with levity. Levity led to drunkenness and, yes, imperfection. The result of this performance reality was a band that could not only play, but a band that had serious charisma, energy, that George Martin was keen to get down on tape, even if it meant sacrificing some of the perfection

• 32:50Jake Brennan?

  of the band's recorded performances. To season jazz musicians, it all amounted to a level of unseriousness, a style of musicianship that would never fly in the Manhattan bebop clubs Quincy Jones and his contemporaries came up in. With their flubbed notes, missed drum hits, forgotten lyrics, and out-of-tune guitars, it's easy to understand how a jazz musician, specifically a master of bebop, would refer to The Beatles as "no-playing motherfuckers".

• 33:29Jake Brennan?

  Okay, so what exactly does a "no-playing motherfucker" or "non-playing motherfucker" mean? Well, in jazz speak, it's a specific type of contempt reserved, not only for musicians who aren't skilled enough technically, or who lack feel or authenticity in their playing, but is also meant to call out musicians whose playing does not warrant their commercial success. As Miles Davis said in his autobiography about Steve Miller, "I was pissed because I got to open for this non-playing motherfucker just because he had one or two sorry-ass records out". I love Miles, but that was back in 1970. This is 2026 as I record this,

• 34:13Jake Brennan?

  and the phrase is back in the lexicon of popular music with the release of Red Hot Chili Pepper's bassist Flea's solo jazz album, The Excellent Honor of. Now, in the lead-up to the album's release, Flea went on record about the "imposter syndrome" that he felt as a rock musician, venturing into jazz with an album he plays trumpet on alongside some of the best modern jazz musicians on the planet. Flea said he worried that the band he'd put together would see him, Mr. Uplift Mo' Foe Party Plan, as, quote, "a non-playing motherfucker". Is Flea, to use Miles and Quincy's phrase, a "non-playing motherfucker"?

• 34:54Jake Brennan?

  I don't think so. Were The Beatles? Hell, no. But was Quincy Jones on to something bigger with his comments about The Beatles? Were they worse than no-playing motherfuckers? Were they frauds?

• 35:12Jake Brennan?

  In 2004, Bernard Purdy, one of the greatest session drummers of all time, a musician who kept time for some of the greatest of all time—James Brown, Aretha Franklin, Hall & Oates, Steely Dan, B.B. King, Al Green, and so many more, including recent recordings with Wolfpack—Bernard Purdy said, quote, "There are four drummers on The Beatles' music. Ringo's not one of them."

• 35:43Jake Brennan?

  At various times throughout the course of his life, Bernard Purdy elaborated on his claim that The Beatles were frauds. He took it further by claiming that in the summer of 1963, before The Beatles broke in America in early 1964, that Beatles manager Brian Epstein paid Purdy five figures to play drums on 21 tracks on the first three Beatles albums prior to their release. Hold up. If this isn't the definition of "no-playing motherfucker", then I don't know what is. Bernard Purdy is claiming Ringo literally did not play drums on a large percentage of Beatles songs on their early albums. But

• 36:24Jake Brennan?

  is it true? Nobody from The Beatles has ever commented on Purdy's claims. There's been no denial, which I find curious. However, there's also no record of Brian Epstein being in America prior to November 1963, but just because there's no record of him being here doesn't mean that he didn't make the trip. If I were about to pay one of the best drummers on the planet to surreptitiously replace the drummer's tracks—the drummer in the band that I represented, get him to do all that subterfuge so that we could trick the record-buying public into thinking he was a better drummer, well, I wouldn't actually make a record of my trip. But still, this doesn't prove anything. What I think happened

• 37:06Jake Brennan?

  is that Bernard Purdy was hired by Brian Epstein to record replacement tracks for live Beatles albums that were being assembled. Live Beatles albums, okay? Recordings from the band's raucous sets in Hamburg. Now, is this fraud? No, not really. Ish, I guess. It was, and to some degree still is, common practice to re-record in the studio different instrumentation—drum parts, guitar solos, even vocals—to enhance the artist's live recordings. Now, what is uncommon is bringing in a ringer to play those parts instead of

• 37:46Jake Brennan?

  relying on the band members themselves. Was Bernard Purdy that ringer? It stands to reason that, yes, he was. Was Purdy chosen to record those tracks over Ringo because Ringo was a "no-playing motherfucker"? I don't think so. Not really. You have to remember, by Purdy's timeline, this is the summer of 1963. Ringo Starr had been in the band for less than a year by that point, and it's likely that in the summer of 1963, Beatles management had better things for Ringo Starr to do over in Europe than to fly to America to overdub drum parts. If this happened at all, I'm betting that the decision was made for efficiency's

• 38:31Jake Brennan?

  sake and was less a creative decision. Either way, having Purdy play on those tracks—if true—instead of Ringo is still kind of bullshit and, yes, fraudish. Worse, it muddies the greatness of the band and validates Quincy Jones's claim that The Beatles were "no-playing motherfuckers"—again, if this is true. If it's not true, if Bernard Purdy was lying, why didn't The Beatles ever deny his many claims? Why not directly confront the claim that Ringo's parts were replaced? After all, when Quincy Jones made his statement about Paul McCartney that he was the worst bass player I ever heard, Paul McCartney

• 39:15Jake Brennan?

  was anything but quiet.

• 39:23Jake Brennan?

  Paul McCartney handled the stove top in the kitchen of a St. John's Wood home like a Reeperbahn bouncer handled unruly Star Club patrons. Roughly, and with little care. Paul was in a good mood. It was early 2018, a new year, and he was putting the finishing touches on his 17th solo studio album, Egypt Station, an album that Paul would see go to number one on the Billboard charts. But first, there were eggs and chips to make. Paul's favorite dish—simple, humble, utilitarian, just like the best little rock and roll

• 40:02Jake Brennan?

  groups—they got the job done. Paul was grooving around the kitchen to the sounds of St. Vincent's Mass Education. Paul's friend had sent him this album, and he loved it. The twitchy groove went well with the wine, and Paul was in a good mood. And then, the phone rang. Is this Mr. McCartney? Yes. Quincy would like to speak with you. Unreal. The dude called Sir Paul and put him on hold. Paul didn't really care. The wine was too good, and so was the music. Quincy Jones's voice came through on the other end of the line. Paul, how you doing, man?

• 40:44Jake Brennan?

  I'm doing great. How are you, you motherfucker? Quincy went on the defensive. Paul, I didn't really say that thing. I don't know what happened, man. I never said that. You know, I love you guys. Paul then tore into him. If you had said that, you know what I would have said? Fuck you, Quincy Jones. And then, they both laughed, exchanged pleasantries, and hung up. Paul went back to his eggs and chips, and Quincy Jones went back to playing defense. He had a couple more phone calls to make, most importantly, to his attorney.

• 41:45Jake Brennan?

  Months before Quincy Jones's infamous phone call with Paul McCartney, Quincy Jones was awarded $9.4 million in a lawsuit against Michael Jackson's estate for unpaid royalties. And by 2018, Michael's estate was gearing up for an appeal, an appeal that eventually in 2020 would reverse $6.9 million of the award from the original lawsuit. And in the end, Quincy Jones walked away with $2.5 million. And who knows how much of that that he actually retained after legal fees? So it's safe to say that when Quincy Jones gave his infamous interview in 2018 and said that Michael Jackson was a thief and that Michael was as Machiavellian as they

• 42:29Jake Brennan?

  come, it's safe to say that Q had a bit of an axe to grind against the Jackson family. But how does this information help us determine whether Quincy Jones was telling the truth about Michael Jackson, that he was a thief? And what, if anything, does it say about Q's other claims that the Beatles couldn't play their instruments, that they were frauds, and that he knew through Sinatra who killed Kennedy, about who was responsible for the president's murder? We'll take one final look at all of these facts and determine if Quincy Jones was being straight with us when he said, "All I've ever done is tell the truth."

• 43:12Jake Brennan?

  The ring Quincy Jones wore on his finger in the last decades of his life, the one he never took off, the gold Signet ring, it sported a family crest, except the family crest didn't represent Quincy Jones's family. It represented Frank Sinatra's. Frank left the ring to Quincy when Frank passed, and Q put it on and then never took it off. That's how close the two men were. They loved each other. Another one of Frank Sinatra's friends also wore a pinky ring, Sam Giancana. Giancana hired his muscle out to Frank in Vegas years earlier to protect Quincy Jones. Giancana died in 1975. No amount of muscle could have protected him in the end. That's what

• 43:57Jake Brennan?

  happens when you know too much. Giancana was killed in cold blood, shot at close range seven times in the back of the head, through his face, his mouth, his neck, and left to bleed out on his kitchen floor with his sausage and peppers still sizzling on the stove top. Because Sam Giancana, Frank Sinatra's friend, knew it all. He knew not only who killed Kennedy, but who pulled the trigger. Because Sam Giancana helped orchestrate the killing. Because Sam Giancana hired the trigger man. Because the mafia was double-crossed by the Kennedys. Giancana, without a doubt, knew who killed President Kennedy because Giancana made it

• 44:41Jake Brennan?

  happen for the Commission, the mafia's governing body of nine crime families that controlled and profited from the majority of organized crime in America. In his 2018 New York Magazine interview, when asked, "What's something you wish you didn't know?" Quincy responded with, "Who killed Kennedy?" And the reporter asked Quincy Jones, "Who did it?" Quincy responded, "Giancana," and then elaborated, "The connection was there between Sinatra and the mafia and Kennedy." But this is 2026. Everybody knows this. Everybody knows that JFK's father, the powerful businessman Joe Kennedy, cut a deal with the mafia for their help to get his son elected president.

• 45:24Jake Brennan?

  The mafia, through Sam Giancana's efforts, would help the Kennedys secure votes in Illinois. And in exchange, when elected, the president would go easy on the mafia. But ultimately, the president and his tenacious and self-righteous little brother, Robert F. Kennedy, did the opposite once they took power. They turned the heat up on the mob. What could Quincy Jones have known that made him so sure? Most mob guys, most connected guys, are just like the rest of us. They talk, they gossip. Frank Sinatra and the guys that he ran with, guys Quincy Jones was around most every time he worked and socialized with Frank Sinatra from the early 60s until the

• 46:07Jake Brennan?

  time of his death in 1997, was around a lot of these dudes. No doubt, they gossiped like bored housewives. You see it in every mob movie ever made, every mafia book ever written, the loose-lipped gangster on the telephone, in the social club, on the long drive, on a wiretap, going to the mattresses, talking, gossiping. I believe that in the many years he spent in close proximity to Frank Sinatra and the boys, that Quincy picked up specific information about who killed Kennedy pertaining to Sam Giancana's involvement, and not just the Cliff's Notes version of the story that we all know, which I outlined a moment ago. I think Quincy knew specifics. Otherwise,

• 46:52Jake Brennan?

  he wouldn't have said what he said, because at that point in 2018, most anyone who had any interest in the assassination of the president already knew the broad strokes Quincy laid out about Sam Giancana. Quincy likely knew some choice facts that are largely unknown to the public, but can be found in the research from mob historians. Facts like this, as detailed in the documentary Momo: The Sam Giancana Story. Giancana's brother, Pepe, claims Sam told him that a New Orleans mafia lieutenant's nephew by the name of Lee Harvey Oswald was recruited as one of the gunmen in the Kennedy assassination by New Orleans mob boss Carlos Marcello,

• 47:36Jake Brennan?

  and that Sam Giancana himself supplied the other three shooters, the ones on the Gras Cino, a crooked Chicago cop named Richard Kane, and Chicago gangsters Chucky Nicoletti and Milwaukee Phil Aldericio. According to Giancana's brother, the cop, Richard Kane, was on Sam Giancana's payroll. Official CIA records available in the National Archives specifically identify Kane as a Sam Giancana associate, and they show Kane's involvement in passing information relevant to the plot against John F. Kennedy. Were these three men the actual shooters? I don't know. And neither do you. In this

• 48:17Jake Brennan?

  war of information era that we now live in, there's so much out there, on this story in particular, that it's impossible to cull through it all and conclusively say. But that doesn't mean that in the years and short decades after the assassination, that the truth was less murky, and I believe available to Quincy Jones, given his proximity to the men involved.

• 48:44Jake Brennan?

  Quincy Jones, because of his talent, spent his life working with and around some of the most gifted, complex, and powerful people the world has ever known. Frank Sinatra, Michael Jackson, Ringo Starr, to name just the three most relevant to the question we're trying to answer in this story, was Quincy Jones telling us the truth? There's a myth that surrounds these types of people. We see it play out in music biopics, on the pages of their autobiographies, in their obituaries, this myth that their lives, not just their personal lives, but their creative lives, that they're black and white,

• 49:24Jake Brennan?

  easy to explain and even easier to understand. Michael Jackson was an otherworldly talent. The Beatles were just a great little rock and roll band. Frank Sinatra was the most successful Italian-American entertainer ever. Quincy Jones, in the end, was an old man in the first stages of dementia with an axe to grind. These myths obscure the truth. The opposite is always true, that their lives aren't lived in black and white, they're lived in technicolor, and they aren't easy to explain, and they're often very difficult to understand. Michael Jackson was an otherworldly talent, yes, but he was also, at the same time, a

• 50:08Jake Brennan?

  creative thief. Quincy Jones told us so, but the proof isn't in Billie Jean. It's in the comparison between wannabe starting something and soul mukasa. The Beatles were just a great little rock and roll band, but they also were, yes, by Quincy Jones's estimation, no-playing motherfuckers, as demonstrated with Ringo's struggles in the studio, and by the fact that the Beatles never denied any of Bernard Purdy's claims, particularly as they might pertain to overdubs on the early live recordings. And yes, Frank Sinatra was the most successful Italian-American entertainer ever, and his deep relationship with the American mafia, and specifically with Sam Giancana, is well

• 50:52Jake Brennan?

  documented and beyond dispute. So doesn't it stand to reason that Frank would be privy to the answers behind the mystery to what happened on America's darkest day? Finally, was Quincy Jones old? Yes. Did he have signs of dementia in his final years, at the age of 84 in 2018 when he gave these interviews, six years before he died in 2024, at the age of 91? No, I don't believe so. And there's no public medical record or indication from anyone other than Michael Jackson's estate claiming he did. No, I believe Quincy

• 51:33Jake Brennan?

  Jones was one of the greatest musicians of all time. A musician who became the role model he never had to generations of other musicians, regardless of color or background. A musician who, because of his talent, had unprecedented access to some of the most talented and powerful people in the world. A musician whose music was so pure, so perfectly tuned to whatever era it was made in, always spoke honestly. Just like the man himself, Quincy Jones, who said it straight, "All I've ever done is tell the truth." And that is anything but a disgrace.

• 52:15Jake Brennan?

  I'm Jake Brennan, and this is DisgraceLand.

• 52:25Jake Brennan?

  All right. Thanks for checking out this episode on Quincy Jones. What do you think? Was Q telling the truth or what? You know, I think I made myself clear in this episode, and I have no reason not to believe the man. So it's kind of a dumb question for this week, 617-906-6638. Do you believe Quincy Jones? Do you believe what he was saying? Let me know. Side question, who's your favorite music producer of all time? Is Quincy Jones the guy who made the records you can't live without? 617-906-6638. Voicemail and text to let me know at disgracelandpod on the socials, [email protected].

• 53:04Jake Brennan?

  DisgraceLand was created by yours truly and is produced in partnership with Double Elvis, the Exactly Right Network, and iHeart Podcasts. Credits for this episode can be found on the show notes page at disgracelandpod.com. If you're listening as a DisgraceLand All-Access member, thank you for supporting the show. We really appreciate it. And if not, you can become a member right now by going to disgracelandpod.com/membership. Members can listen to every episode of DisgraceLand ad-free. Rate and review the show and follow us on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, and Facebook @disgracelandpod, and on YouTube at youtube.com-at-disgracelandpod. Rockerola.

• 53:46Jake Brennan?

  He's a bad, bad man.

• 53:50Speaker 05

  I'm Lacey Mosley, author, actor, stand-up comedian, creator, and host of Scam Goddess Podcast, the true crime comedy podcast all about robbery, fraud, and those who practice it. Each week I bring on an amazing guest. Ooh, I scam them. What? I could talk to you for an hour. You're a generational yapper like me. That's why I had to make yapping a job. And now you can catch full episodes of my show on YouTube. Start listening to Scam Goddess on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.