by Alex Banayan
“Born and raised in LA,” I replied.
“No”—he shook his head—“I said where you from.”
“Oh. My parents are from Iran.”
“That’s what I thought.”
“How’d you know?”
Instead of answering directly, he launched into a wild story about his travels in Iran when he was eighteen; attending parties thrown by the Shah and sneaking out at night, meeting up with young revolutionaries trying to break the Ayatollah out of jail. Then he told me the story of when he dated a Persian princess.
“Khailee mamnoon,” Quincy said, laughing as he tossed out phrases in Persian. “I was in Tehran, Damascus, Beirut, Iraq, Karachi, everywhere. I’ve been traveling for sixty-five years, all over the planet.”
I’d researched his background before this interview, but now I was realizing how little I truly knew about the man. I already knew he’d been nominated for more Grammy Awards than any other music producer in history. I knew he’d produced Michael Jackson’s Thriller, the highest-grossing album of all time, as well as “We Are the World,” the highest-grossing single of all time. He’d worked with some of the greatest performers of the twentieth century, from Frank Sinatra to Paul McCartney to Ray Charles. In the world of film, he produced The Color Purple with Steven Spielberg, which was nominated for ten Oscars. In television, he created The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, which was nominated for an Emmy. As a mentor, he helped launch the careers of Will Smith and Oprah Winfrey. Quincy Jones is undeniably one of the most important figures in the history of entertainment, and now he was asking me, “You got a pen?”
I pulled one out of my pocket. He grabbed a sheet of paper from under the coffee table. He began drawing curvy letters, teaching me how to write in Arabic. Then he taught me how to write in Mandarin. Then Japanese. I had hated learning languages in school, yet Quincy made them seem as if they were the keys to the universe.
“Look here,” he said, pointing up to the living room’s arched ceiling. Twelve large wooden beams radiated from the center like rays from the sun. “That’s feng shui,” he said. “They symbolize the twelve notes of the musical scale, the twelve apostles, the twelve signs of the zodiac…”
He pointed around the room. Surrounding us were dozens of ancient-looking artifacts—a Chinese sculpture of a boy on a horse, a bust of an Egyptian queen—and each of them seemed to have its own vortex of energy.
“I’ve got Nefertiti over there,” Quincy said. “I’ve got Buddha there. The Tang dynasty there. Japan there. That’s Picasso there. Over there, that’s a model of the original SpaceX rocket. Elon gave me that. He’s my neighbor.”
My head spun and Quincy smiled, as though he knew something about me that I didn’t.
“It’s a hell of a world out there,” he said. “You’ve got to go to know.”
Our conversation moved faster and faster. One second he was talking about meditation, the next about nanotechnology; one minute he was talking about architecture (“Frank Gehry always says to me—he’s a Pisces too—he says, ‘If architecture is frozen music, then music must be liquid architecture.’ All great art is emotional architecture.”) and the next he was talking about directing (“When Spielberg came to my studio, he said he directs the same way I conduct. He creates a strong structure, and on top of that, he improvises. You have to give people room to put their personalities on it.”). Gems of wisdom kept dropping and I sat back on the couch, absorbing each one.
“I teach the musicians I mentor to become themselves. To know themselves and to love themselves. That’s all I care about…Know yourself and love yourself.”
“Young people are always chasing. It’s because they think they’re in control of everything. They have to learn to be connected to the universe. Just let it happen to you.”
“There’s a statute of limitations that’s expired on all childhood traumas. Fix your shit and get on with your life.”
Quincy reached under the coffee table for a book. He flipped through pages of black-and-white pictures. “Chicago in the thirties,” he said, pointing to the photos. “This is where I spent my childhood. My daddy was a carpenter for the most notorious black gangsters on the planet. They didn’t fuck around, man. I wanted to be a gangster when I was young. I saw guns and dead bodies every day.”
He pulled up his sleeve and pointed to a scar on the back of his hand. “You see that? Seven years old. I went to the wrong block. Some guys took a knife, used it to nail my hand to a fence, and then stuck an ice pick in the back of my head. I thought I was going to die.”
Some summers his dad took him to Louisville to visit his grandmother, a former slave. She would tell Quincy to go to the river and grab rats that still had their tails moving. She fried the rats with onions on her coal stove for dinner.
When Quincy was ten, his family moved to Seattle. One night, when he and his friends were breaking into a recreation center to steal food, he stumbled into a room with a piano. It was the first time he’d seen one. When Quincy’s fingers touched the keys, he remembers it feeling like a moment of the divine. “Everything changed for me,” he said. “I loved music so much I wrote songs until my eyes would bleed.”
Quincy learned to play any instrument he could get his hands on—violin, clarinet, trumpet, sousaphone, B flat baritone horn, E flat alto peck horn, French horn, and trombone. He began sneaking into nightclubs to meet jazz musicians who passed through town. When he was fourteen, Quincy slipped into a club and met a blind teenager who was two years older. They hit it off and the older teen began to mentor Quincy. They became close friends. That blind teenager was Ray Charles.
“I met McCartney when he was twenty-two; Elton John, seventeen; Mick Jagger; all those guys. I found Lesley Gore when she was sixteen.”
Lesley Gore’s “It’s My Party,” which Quincy produced, was one of the biggest songs of 1963.
“How did you find her?” I asked.
“Through her uncle, who was Mafia. He went to Joe Glaser, who worked with Al Capone. Back when I came up, everything in music was Mafia. The booking agencies with Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Lionel Hampton—all Mafia. It was fucked up, man. There were exploitations of blacks like you cannot believe. Back then is when I learned that if you don’t have a master, a negative, or a copyright, you’re not in the music business. I learned the hard way.”
Quincy had composed ten original songs for the iconic bandleader Count Basie. A music executive named Morris Levy called Quincy into his office to sign a publishing contract. The contract was on the table—and all of Levy’s cronies were behind him. “You can ask for anything you want,” he told Quincy, “but you’re only getting one percent.”
“I signed the contract,” Quincy told me, “and before I walked out of his office, he owned all my shit.”
Quincy laughed gently as if recounting a fond memory, but for some reason I felt my whole body stiffen.
“I was young and I learned my lesson,” Quincy said. “The second time I did Basie’s album he asked me, ‘What are we going to do about the publishing?’ I told him, ‘Nothing. I’ll publish it myself.’ He said, ‘Now you’re getting smart, kid! Why didn’t you think of that the first time?’ ”
Quincy laughed some more.
“The Mafia took all my shit,” he added. “I’m still getting it back.”
“That’s fucked up,” I said, my anger surprising us both. With hindsight, I can see where it came from. I was still so upset over what happened with Zuckerberg that even the smallest reminder of being screwed by someone in a position of power set me off.
“It’s all good, man,” Quincy said, putting his hand on my shoulder. “That’s how you learn.”
As Quincy and I locked eyes, something within me clicked. I felt as if my body had been an overinflated tire and Quincy had just hit a valve, all the excess pressure rushing out.
“You have to cherish your
mistakes,” he said. “You have to get back up no matter how many times you get knocked down. There are some people who face defeat and retreat; who become cautious and afraid, who deal with fear instead of passion, and that’s not right. I know it seems complex, but it’s relatively simple. It’s: let go and let God.
“You can’t get an A if you’re afraid of getting an F,” Quincy added. “It’s amazing, the psychology of growing in your field, no matter what you do. Growth comes from mistakes. You have to cherish them, so you can learn from them. Your mistakes are your greatest gift.”
* * *
We spent the rest of the evening talking for hours about everything from the pyramids in Egypt to the samba dancers at Rio’s Carnival. Quincy was making me realize that I’d spent the past five years constantly looking up—up at the richest man in the world, up at the most successful investor, up at the most famous director. And now it was hitting me how badly I wanted to go wide—to travel and explore and absorb the magic of the far corners of the world. Quincy was instilling a new hunger in me. It felt like as one stage of my life was closing, a new one was beginning.
“I feel like a different person,” I said as our conversation wound down. “You know, you taught me something tonight I wasn’t expecting to learn.”
“What’s that?” he said.
“You taught me to be a full person, a person of the world.”
“That’s amazing, man. It’s true. Nat King Cole used to always tell me: ‘Quincy, your music can be no more or no less than you are as a human being.’ ”
“That’s what the world gives you,” I said.
“No,” Quincy said, correcting me. “That’s what mistakes give you.”
It was as if he was going to keep repeating that lesson until it sank in. And now it had. In a moment of clarity, it dawned on me that advice from Bill Gates was never my Holy Grail. My mistakes on my way to get to him were what changed me most.
I’d always seen success and failure as opposites, but now I could see they were just different results of the same thing—trying. I swore to myself that from now on I would be unattached to succeeding, and unattached to failing. Instead, I would be attached to trying, to growing.
It’s almost as though Quincy could see the gears turning in my head, because he slowly put his hand on my shoulder and said, “You got it, man. You got it.”
Before I could think of a response, he just looked at me and said, “You’re a beautiful, beautiful human being. Don’t ever change, motherfucker.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Getting in the Game
THREE MONTHS LATER, AUSTIN, TEXAS
We stepped toward the nightclub and approached a line so chaotic it looked like a mob. Matt Michelsen, the founder of Lady Gaga’s social network, pulled me close and led me through the crowd. Broken beer bottles littered the ground, the moonlight glinting off the shards. A pack of bouncers guarded the entrance.
“The party is at capacity,” one said, stepping forward.
“We’re with Gaga,” Matt replied.
“She’s already inside. No one else is getting in.”
There was a brief silence, then Matt stepped forward too. He said something into the guard’s ear. The guard hesitated—then stepped aside.
As soon as the door opened, the thump of techno music made my whole body vibrate. Matt and I pressed through the crowd on the dance floor. Hundreds of people were gawking in one direction, holding their phones in the air, taking pictures. Standing on an elevated VIP platform, under a glowing white light, was one of the most famous pop stars in the world. Lady Gaga’s platinum-blond hair dangled past her waist. She balanced on shoes at least ten inches high.
The VIP platform was packed and a bouncer guarding the stairs said there was no way in. This time, Matt didn’t bother talking to the guard. We moved to the front of the platform, directly below where Lady Gaga was standing.
“Hey, L.G.!” Matt yelled.
She looked down and her face lit up. “Get up here!”
“It’s too packed,” Matt replied. “They won’t—”
“Get the fuck up here!”
Seconds later, two bodyguards grabbed us by the arms and led us up the platform. Matt headed straight to Gaga. I stayed back, giving them space.
Minutes later, Matt pointed in my direction. A bodyguard gripped my shoulder, pulled me through the crowd, and planted me next to Matt and Lady Gaga. Matt put his arms around us both, pulling us in.
“Hey, L.G.,” he shouted over the music. “Remember that thing I told you about called the Third Door?”
She smiled and nodded.
“And remember that story I told you about that kid who hacked The Price Is Right? The same kid who went with his friends to Warren Buffett’s shareholders meeting?”
Her smile grew bigger and she nodded even more.
“Well,” Matt said, pointing at me, “he’s standing right here.”
Gaga’s eyes widened—she turned to me, flung her arms up, and gave me a giant hug.
* * *
Ever since Elliott introduced me to Matt at the concert in New York City, Matt had become a mentor. I’d stayed at his guesthouse for weeks at a time, traveled with him to New York and San Francisco, and when I’d found myself in trouble with Zuckerberg, he immediately tried to help. Even when it came to setting up an interview with Lady Gaga, I didn’t have to ask. Matt brought it up himself and offered to make it happen. He’s that kind of guy.
The afternoon after I met Gaga in the nightclub, I was on a couch in Matt’s hotel suite when he walked in, his phone to his ear. Matt paced across the room. When he hung up, I asked who he was talking to. He said it was Gaga—and she was in tears.
Matt sat down and explained the situation. Gaga’s first two albums had been blockbusters and catapulted her to the top of the music industry, but then, just in the past year, she had broken her hip, underwent emergency surgery, been confined to a wheelchair, and had to cancel twenty-five dates of her tour. She then fought with her longtime manager over the direction of her career, and when Gaga fired him, it made headlines. Her manager, the one who had rejected my interview requests in the past, told his side of the story to the press, but Gaga remained quiet, which only raised more questions. And then just weeks later, Gaga released her third album, ARTPOP, which critics ripped to shreds. Rolling Stone called it “bizarre.” Variety labeled some of the songs “snoozeworthy.” Gaga’s previous album sold over a million copies in its first week. ARTPOP didn’t sell a quarter of that.
That was four months ago, and now Gaga was about to step back into the spotlight. In two days she would film a segment on Jimmy Kimmel Live in the afternoon, perform a concert at night, and give the South by Southwest Music keynote the following morning.
The keynote worried her most. It wouldn’t be a short speech in front of her fans. This would be an hour-long interview in a ballroom full of music executives and journalists, many of whom were friends with her former manager. Gaga feared some would be hoping to see her fall flat on her face. It wasn’t hard to imagine the kinds of questions she might be asked: Do you see ARTPOP as a failure? Was firing your manager a mistake? Will your crazy outfits work against you now that your album sales have dropped?
That’s why Gaga had called Matt in tears, asking for help. She felt misunderstood. She knew she had been true to herself when she’d made ARTPOP, but she couldn’t find the words to explain what the album meant. The next few days were Gaga’s chance to start a new chapter in her career and she didn’t want the baggage of the past year weighing her down.
After Matt finished explaining this to me, he called one of his employees and within an hour they were sitting beside me in the hotel suite, brainstorming a narrative Gaga could use throughout the week. Matt’s employee was in his late twenties. I knew he had studied business in college, and all I heard coming
out of his mouth were buzzwords: “ARTPOP is about collaboration!” “Synergy!” “Connection!”
I wanted to scream, “That’s not how you describe an artist’s soul.” But I felt it wasn’t my place to say anything, especially after how generously Matt had treated me. He was arranging for me to interview Gaga later this week, and on top of that, he was letting me stay in the extra room in his hotel suite. So I remained quiet.
But ideas rumbled within me. I had already read Gaga’s biography, buried myself in articles about her, and studied ARTPOP’s lyrics endlessly. As I listened to Matt and his employee, I felt like a basketball player sitting on the bench, legs twitching, dying to get in the game.
An hour into their brainstorm, Matt looked at me, frustrated. “Don’t you have anything to contribute?”
“Well…” I said, trying to hold myself back; but instead, almost uncontrollably, lessons I’d learned from my journey combusted with everything I’d read about Gaga and it all erupted from my mouth. “Art is emotional architecture, and if we view Gaga through that lens—her foundation, her wooden beams—it all traces back to her childhood. When she was a kid, she went to Catholic school and felt stifled. The nuns measured her skirt. They made her follow their rules. Now when Gaga wears dresses made out of meat, she’s still rebelling against those nuns!”
“Everything Gaga stands for is creative rebellion!” Matt said.
“Exactly! The founder of TED once told me, ‘Genius is the opposite of expectation,’ and now that makes perfect sense! Whether it’s her music or outfits, Gaga has always gone against expectations.” I jumped off the couch, feeling alive in a way I’d never felt before.
“Gaga’s hero is Andy Warhol,” I went on, “and using a Campbell’s Soup can as a subject is also the opposite of expectation! Critics slammed ARTPOP for being too fringe and not resonating with the masses like her last album, but what if that was the point? Gaga’s album had to come out the way it did! All of her art is the opposite of expectation. It only makes sense that if she was at the peak of Top 40, she had to do the opposite. ARTPOP wasn’t Gaga losing her touch. ARTPOP was Gaga being completely herself!”
