Quincy Jones: Part 2 – The Global Infrastructure 🏗️🌍💎

S2 E13 | Quincy Jones: Part 2 – The Global Infrastructure 🏗️🌍💎

From the "Celluloid Skyscrapers" of Hollywood to the "Diamond-Encrusted" legacy of Thriller, Max & Mello deconstruct the era where Quincy Jones became the Owner of the Skyline. 🏙️✨

Inside the Job Site:

• 🎞️ Hollywood Re-Zoning: How Q tore down the "Celluloid Ceiling" to score the history of cinema. 🎬✍️

• 💎 The Jackson Joint Venture: Inside the 98.8% Rejection Rate that built the world’s biggest-selling album. 🏎️🔥

• 🌍 The Global Contractor: Managing the "Ego Site" for We Are The World. 🤝⚡

• 🏛️ The 126th Street Lockdown: MAX’S FIRST-HAND ACCOUNT as the Apollo Audio Head, graced with the best seat in the tent—onstage with the musicians—calling the rolls for Q, Ray Charles, and Chaka Khan. 🎙️🔥

Don’t just listen—learn the specs from the man who was on the stage. Tune in and keep the fire burning! 🎧💥

Max & Mello's Architects of Soul' isn't just a podcast – it's an experience. Join the conversation. Learn something new. Feel the music like never before."so come along for the ride” ✨

Let’s keep this funk train moving! 🚂💨

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:10

Hey, welcome back to the Jobs I fam. I'm Max Sowell, and we're unrolling the second half of the blueprints for the master architect, Quincy Jones. Part one was about the foundation, but part two is about the global infrastructure.

SPEAKER_03 0:21

I'm Mello Sowell and Max, we're moving from the Vegas penthouse heading to the celluloid skyscrapers of Hollywood.

SPEAKER_00 0:27

That's right. So continuing on from part one, it's the late 50s, and Quincy was doing a lot of work for Basie, and Basie started noticing the visual quality of Quincy's arrangements. Well, Count Basie realized that Quincy wasn't just writing notes, he was literally writing atmospheres. He said to Quincy, Hey, your music has a very cinematic infrastructure to it. You know, you may be wasting your time just writing for the stage.

SPEAKER_03 0:48

Right, Max. He told Q, You need to go to Hollywood, man. That's where the big buildings are. And the Count wasn't alone in this observation. His old mentor from Seattle, Bumps Blackwell, also hammered this home.

SPEAKER_00 0:58

Yes, he sure did, Mello. Bumps saw that Quincy's technical literacy, thanks to the Parisian audit with Nadia Boulanger, as well as Basie saw it. Well, this game a set of tools that 90% of jazz musicians did not have. He told Q he was overqualified for the clubs. Q had a new goal in life, I guess, Mello.

SPEAKER_03 1:14

He sure did, Max. And of course, nothing happens overnight.

SPEAKER_00 1:16

No, never.

SPEAKER_03 1:17

There was roughly a five to seven years structural lag between the initial observations from Basie and Bumps in the late fifties and Quincy's first major film breakthrough with the pawnbroker in 1964.

SPEAKER_00 1:27

True, Mello, but that gap wasn't an empty time. It was a period of high-intensity diversification. Quincy was busy building a proof of concept in every other sector of the industry to prove that he could handle the Hollywood load.

SPEAKER_03 1:38

Yep, Max. Q took the task at hand to start to connect those dots. So before he could bridge into film, Quincy had to survive three major project phases that eventually made him too big to ignore for Hollywood.

SPEAKER_00 1:48

And the first mellow was the free body financial collapse. In late 1959 and early 1960, Quincy formed a massive 16-piece dream band. Massive. So he built a massive 18-piece dream band for a European tour called Free and Easy. And the show was an artistic masterpiece, but it was a financial disaster. Q ended up 100 grand in debt, which just like a million dollars in 2026 money. I ain't no chunks of it. No, no, no. But that's quite a lesson for Quincy, wasn't it, Mello?

SPEAKER_03 2:19

Yeah, this was his bankruptcy audit max, basically.

SPEAKER_00 2:21

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 2:22

What a lesson, right? Right.

SPEAKER_00 2:23

It's unbelievable.

SPEAKER_03 2:24

He realized that being a great draftsman wasn't enough. No, because you didn't have any money. Right. He had to master the business infrastructure. He famously said, I learned the difference between a band and a business.

SPEAKER_00 2:33

You hear that, Sofem. There is a difference. Remember that. And I bet he did learn it, but he learned it the hard way. So now we mentioned this in part one. Because of that huge debt, Q had to take a corporate gig. So he became vice president at Mercury Records, which was a pivotal moment that broke racial barriers in the music industry.

SPEAKER_03 2:50

Later on, Q would go on to also become the first African American to be the musical director and conductor of the Academy Awards.

SPEAKER_00 2:57

Quite a big thing.

SPEAKER_03 2:59

But first, he was the first black executive to hold that VP position at a major label. Here's where he improved his ever-growing skill set.

SPEAKER_00 3:06

Yeah, he had one hell of a toolbox, Mel. This is where Q learned the production management. Now, he wasn't just arranging, he was zoning artists, managing budgets, and learning how to market a product to the masses. This corporate literacy is what eventually made Hollywood directors trust him with their multimillion dollar budgets.

SPEAKER_03 3:22

Yeah, and let's not forget that last piece of the puzzle. The Leslie Gore success happened right before Hollywood opened up for Q. He had produced It's My Party for Leslie Gore.

SPEAKER_00 3:31

And that literally knocked it out of the park, Mel. Q realized that the physics of a hit applied to pop just as much as jazz. And guess what, Soul Fam? It became a number one hit.

SPEAKER_03 3:39

And because it hit number one, Max, it proved to Hollywood that he wasn't just a jazz specialist, he was a global architect who knew how to capture the commercial frequency of the youth market.

SPEAKER_00 3:47

That's right, Mel. And that transition from the Vegas penthouse to the Hollywood soundstage was truly at that time a total technical pivot that most industry insiders absolutely thought was impossible for him to execute.

SPEAKER_03 3:57

In the early 1960s, the zoning laws of Hollywood were rigid. Jazz was for the clubs, and orchestral scores were for the old guard European style composers.

SPEAKER_00 4:07

Now he needed that missing piece. Once Quincy got moving in LA, he needed an inside architect to show him the building codes of Hollywood. And that architect behind the scenes that we always talk about, this time it was actually someone that everybody knows.

SPEAKER_03 4:20

Right. You are Max. Not an unknown this architect.

SPEAKER_00 4:22

No, no, no, no, no.

SPEAKER_03 4:23

Make no mistake about that fact. The person was Henry Mancini, whose brilliance brought us the Pink Panther and Moon River, just to name a few.

SPEAKER_00 4:30

Tad-um. Exactly. Quincy, man. Mancini was one of the few established Hollywood composers who respected the jazz language Melo. He mentored Quincy on the surgical timing required for film. How to write music that hits a specific frame right to the millisecond.

SPEAKER_03 4:49

At the time, Hollywood directors were terrified of hiring a black composer for a straight dramatic film, Max.

SPEAKER_02 4:54

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 4:55

They didn't think he could handle the structural load of a two-hour film score that required precise timing and dramatic tension. They thought a jazz man would just jam all over the movie.

SPEAKER_00 5:03

Oh, yeah, that's right. Like I'm just gonna write 12 bars and we're just gonna jam on it.

SPEAKER_03 5:07

Yeah, yeah. But Sidney Lemette was a risk architect.

SPEAKER_00 5:10

Yes, of course, he definitely was. He was willing to push that line, Mellow. Sidney Lemette didn't want a traditional sugary Hollywood score for the 64 film The Pawnbroker. He wanted something urban, cold, and technically precise.

SPEAKER_03 5:22

And of course, just like we hear all the time, the studio executives or the zoning board, as we as it were, said no.

SPEAKER_00 5:28

Oh, yeah, they said no.

SPEAKER_03 5:29

Yeah, and Sidney Lemette said yes. Yes, he did. And then he hired Quincy.

SPEAKER_00 5:32

Yes, he did.

SPEAKER_03 5:33

He saw that Q had the technical literacy, thanks to the Parisian audit with Boulanger, to handle a complex psychological drama.

SPEAKER_00 5:39

And that final take home is that it was a masterpiece of cinematic engineering. Q didn't just write jazz, he wrote a score that used silence and tension as structural materials. Sidney Lemette was so impressed that they teamed up again for the Wiz in 1978, which is where Quincy finally met Michael Jackson, which we'll get to.

SPEAKER_03 5:56

Hang in there, Soul Fam. Remember the strings.

SPEAKER_00 5:58

So much in the strings.

SPEAKER_03 5:59

Yeah, so Sidney Lemette was looking for a fresh, gritty sound for the palm broker. Q had his eyes on those celluloid skyscrapers and the mountain it would take to climb up there. And Max, it truly was this combination of Basie's blessing and Mancini's technical guidance that made Quincy the only man for the job.

SPEAKER_00 6:15

And Create did Melo. This was a high-stakes surgical audit for Q. So he used his knowledge of the universal code and he created a score that was cold, urban, and haunting, proving he could design music that wasn't just background, but part of the film's infrastructure. And using that Parisian audit, the theory that Nadia showed him to prove that he could speak the language of the symphony as well as the language of swing, well, he bang that out the park. 1967 was the breakthrough mellow. If the pawnbroker was the permit, in the heat of the night was the skyscraper. Quincy performed a technical integration that Hollywood had never seen before. Q didn't just bring soul to the screen. Man, he brought technical integration. He used Ray Charles to sing the title track for his grit. Then he mixed it with avant-garde jazz and used symphonic tension to tell the story.

SPEAKER_03 7:04

He and Sidney went on to make another film, The Deadly Affair. Quincy Jones was teaching the industry that soul wasn't a genre, it was a technical tool. He was tearing down the celluloid ceiling brick by brick, making room for every new vibe composer that followed. He was proving that if you knew the universal code, you could score the world. And when we come back, we're going to talk Q and MJ. You're kicking it with Max and Mello's Architect of Soul, and we'll be right back.

SPEAKER_00 8:16

So the story of how Q got the musical director chair for the Wiz is a classic case of technical seniority. Wasn't just a job offer, it was a rescue mission.

SPEAKER_03 8:24

By 1977, Sidney Lemette was moving the production of the Wiz from the Broadway stage to the big screen, and he knew he was dealing with a massive structural load. He had Diana Ross and a young Michael Jackson, and he needed someone who could bridge the gap between Broadway tradition and modern soul frequency.

SPEAKER_00 8:40

Right, hello Q. So Sidney needed the right guy for the big ass, but Sidney Lemette didn't go through a talent agency. No, he went back to the architect that he trusted most.

SPEAKER_03 8:48

He did indeed, Max. Lemette and Quincy had already worked together on the pawnbroker and the deadly affair.

SPEAKER_00 8:53

As we spoke about last segment.

SPEAKER_03 8:54

Yeah. Lemette knew that Q was the only guy who could manage a multimillion dollar orchestral budget while keeping the grit of the street in the arrangements.

SPEAKER_00 9:01

That's right. Sidney called Quincy and told him the production needed a general contractor who could handle the symphonic soul requirements of a massive, massive film. Massive, massive. He needed someone to take Charlie Smalls' Broadway score and overclock it for Hollywood. It's funny, Max.

SPEAKER_03 9:16

Quincy almost didn't take the gig. Can you imagine? He was already a Titan at this point, and film musicals are notorious for being logistical nightmares. Yes. But Q took the MD chair because he saw the social infrastructure of the project. This was a massive all-black cast production of a classic American story. He realized it was a chance to rezone how the world saw black musical theater.

SPEAKER_00 9:37

And the orchestrations, Mellow, well, he didn't just conduct, he completely redesigned the sound. He brought in his surgical team of arrangers and musicians to give the Wiz a technical polish that made the Broadway version sound like a demo by comparison.

SPEAKER_03 9:48

And coming together between Quincy and Michael Jackson on the set of the Wiz is really where the global infrastructure of part two really kicks in.

SPEAKER_00 9:55

Correct the Mundo Mello. Michael was playing the scarecrow and he was struggling with some technical cues. And Quincy, the musical director, pulled him aside and realized that Michael was a frequency sponge. Must have talked to Jackie Wilson about it. I'm guessing.

SPEAKER_03 10:06

Quincy watched Michael's discipline and his oral sensitivity and realized that MJ wasn't just a pop star, he was a precision machine looking for an architect.

SPEAKER_00 10:14

And because of this burgeoning onset relationship, Michael asked Quincy to help him find a producer for his next solo record. Well, Quincy looked at him and said, I'd like to take a shot at it. And well, here we go. The label executives or the zoning board, well, they didn't want you. They said he was too jazzy and too sophisticated for a pop record. Where's Barry Gordy when you need it? They thought he'd overbuild the project. It just seems people they don't ever learn.

SPEAKER_03 10:36

Right, Bax. There's a big string in it.

SPEAKER_00 10:38

Oh, a huge string. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 10:39

Anyway, Quincy took everything he learned from Leslie Gore's pop hooks, Basie's minimalism, and Mancini's cinematic timing and poured it into Off the Wall.

SPEAKER_00 10:47

Yeah, Q was on it. He didn't just hire a band. He contracted specific specialists like Lewis Thunderthumbs Johnson on bass, one half of the brothers Johnson, who Q also produced, naturally. And his slap technique provided the high tension foundation for tracks like Get on the Floor.

SPEAKER_03 11:02

John J.R. Robinson on drums. Seems that Quincy found him playing in a club and realized he had the most consistent internal clock in the business.

SPEAKER_00 11:09

I guess till he found Leon. Right, Mello? Well, he's the one who does provide that legendary kick on rock with you. And there is no leaving out our man Greg filling gains on keyboards. The architect of Harmony, Greg was Stevie Wonder's protege and became the chief engineer of the synth and piano layers that gave this record its sophisticated sheen.

SPEAKER_03 11:25

That's right. And we must include Bobby Watson from Rufus. By the way, J.R. Robinson is also in band Rufus, who Quincy was producing at the time as well.

SPEAKER_00 11:32

Right.

SPEAKER_03 11:32

Uh along with Chaka Khan for the uh Master Jam album.

SPEAKER_00 11:34

Our girl Chaka, we love her.

SPEAKER_03 11:36

Yes, right. And he contributed heavily to the low-end theory of the album.

SPEAKER_00 11:39

Yes, and we'll be visiting her at some point in the future. Oh, absolutely. But right now, let's get back to Quincy. So then there were the horn arrangements, the structural steel of the builder. Quincy used his bassy red pencil on the arrangements to ensure that the horns were atomic. The Seawin horns, led by my man Jerry Hay, a badass. The section was known for surgical accuracy. They didn't just play the notes. Man, they engineered sonic stabs that cut through the mix like a laser.

SPEAKER_03 12:02

And then Q brought in Tom Ballard to handle the complex vocal arrangements and backgrounds, ensuring the frequency of the harmonies was perfect.

SPEAKER_00 12:10

By then, Quincy realized that to rezone Michael Jackson as an adult, he needed prime material. So he enlisted Rod Temperton, who was a British songwriter from the band Heat Wave. We all know that always and forever. So Quincy brought him in because he had a mathematical approach to melody. He wrote Rock With You Off the Wall and Burn This Disco Out, not to mention all the songs that he wrote on Thriller.

SPEAKER_03 12:30

And of course, Q used Stevie Wonder, who contributed I Can't Help It, which allowed Michael to showcase the vocal jazz literacy he'd been developing.

SPEAKER_00 12:37

How could you not have Stevie involved? Of course. And don't forget Paul McCartney. He wrote Girlfriend, bridging the pop rock sector into the project. And then on tracks like Don't Stop Till You Get Enough, well, Q used his film scoring background to create atmospheric tension. He treated the intro like a movie scene, building the frequency until the beat finally drops.

SPEAKER_03 12:54

But despite the massive success of Off the Wall Max, it didn't win album of the year at the Grammys, which Michael took heavily to heart as he he was very, very depressed. Oh, yeah. Michael considered it a structural defeat. It was a failure. He told Quincy he wanted to build the biggest selling album of all time.

SPEAKER_00 13:09

So that's the fuel for thriller. So I imagine Q said that. I'm on it. Right. And the response was to treat the thriller sessions like a global engineering product. He wasn't just making a record, he was designing a sonic super weapon. So then they had to pick the music.

SPEAKER_03 13:23

Right, Max. To get the final nine tracks on Thriller, Quincy and Michael vetted over 800 songs.

SPEAKER_00 13:29

Must have been talking to Clive Davis.

SPEAKER_03 13:31

Yeah, 800 songs. 800 songs. That is a surgical level of quality control. Quincy used the bassy red pencil on a global scale. If a song didn't have the structural integrity to be a number one hit, it was demolished.

SPEAKER_00 13:42

Yeah, Quincy famously put a sign up that said, Leave your ego at the door. He knew that the project was way bigger than the individuals. So the general contractors on this job site were the same elite squad from off the wall, but overclocked.

SPEAKER_03 13:53

Bruce Swedeen was the lead engineer. He also has a long pedigree as an architect. We first mentioned him in the Jerry Butler episode, season one, episode 22, y'all. He was the man who pioneered the acusonic recording process. He didn't just record sounds, he zoned them. He recorded the drums in the hallway to get a natural reverb that felt like a stadium.

SPEAKER_00 14:13

On the song Billy Jean, Quincy wanted a beat that was so clock-like it felt industrial, but with a human snap. So here's how Leon and Dugu Chancellor, who played drums, and Bruce Swedeen built it. Leon played that core four on the floor beat for the entire duration of the song. And Bruce famously built a custom plywood drum case. It's a literal box around the kick drum. And he used a lead-weighted blanket to make sure there was no frequency bleed. He wanted the kick to hit like a hammer on concrete.

SPEAKER_03 14:40

Also, Bruce didn't record the hi-hat at the same time as the kick and snare. Yeah, no bleed. Quincy had Leon to record the hi-hat as an overdub. This allowed them to zone the high frequencies perfectly and keep that mechanical precision throughout the track.

SPEAKER_00 14:53

And let's not forget that while we're talking about Billy Jean, one of the most famous stories involves the structural tension over the intro of that song. So Quincy thought the intro with that iconic bass line, that Leon and Doo Goo hit we've been talking about was too long. He wanted to cut it down to get to the vocal faster. That's the Mancini precision approach.

SPEAKER_03 15:10

But Michael insisted on keeping it, Max. He told Q, that's what makes me want to dance.

SPEAKER_00 15:14

That's exactly right. Like Quincy was like, no, no, no, no, no. And Michael's like, but Quincy, he makes me want to dance. What is Q gonna say? What would you say? You know that's how we sounded. Exactly right. So Q took a second look, and the architect Quincy was realized that for this specific build, maybe the vibration of the groove was more important than the economy of the song. Okay, so he let the architect, that was Michael, call that one. Man, he let that intro stay, and it became one of the most recognizable foundations in pop history. As a boy, Michael.

SPEAKER_03 15:44

Yeah, just one of the multitude of stories attached to this record.

SPEAKER_00 15:46

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_03 15:47

Okay, back to the band. And that means that we can't forget the return of Rod Temperton, the mathematical draftsman returning to write the title track Thriller, Baby Be Mine, and The Lady in My Life.

SPEAKER_00 15:57

A killer.

SPEAKER_03 15:58

Yeah. There's so much about this record we can talk about, and we will cover that when we do our deep dive on Michael post-Jackson 5.

SPEAKER_00 16:04

That's right. Thriller is a masterpiece, and its own movie included the addition of Vincent Price. So Quincy used his Hollywood casting skills to bring in the horror legend for the thriller rap, giving the song a total cinematic infrastructure.

SPEAKER_03 16:15

And that idea started after the name change, Soul Fam. You see, when Rod Temperton wrote the song Thriller, it was originally titled Starlight.

SPEAKER_00 16:23

Not much for a horror movie, really.

SPEAKER_03 16:24

Nah, but once they pivoted to the horror theme, Rod knew the track needed a cinematic infrastructure to close it out.

SPEAKER_00 16:29

Oh, that's so right, Mel. Rod Temperton suggested they needed a spooky voice for the spoken word section. And he famously said to the Q, hey, we need the voice of horror on this track. And you know who he was talking about. And he specifically thought about Vincent Price, who was a legendary horror actor, and all of us growing up knew about Vincent Price. And because Quincy had spent years rezoning Hollywood through his film scoring, well, he had the structural reach to actually get a legend like Vincent Price on the phone. So he did. He picked up the phone and he called Vincent.

SPEAKER_03 16:56

Yes, Max. Vincent Price was a peer in the Hollywood ecosystem. Yeah, and he agreed to do the session for a relatively small fee of only around $20,000. Price famously arrived at Westlake Studios and nailed the rap in just two takes. Professional. Yep. Quincy's ability to direct the performance ensured it didn't sound like a gimmick, but like a foundational part of the song's atmosphere.

SPEAKER_00 17:16

You know, no, I can't imagine that song without Vincent's reading. Right. It was a killer with that groove underneath it. And speaking of groove, let's go back to the badass band that you brought to the table, the Toto connection. Because it's one of the most critical subcontracting moves Quincy ever made.

SPEAKER_03 17:31

While J.R. Robinson was the internal clock for the Off the Wall Foundation, Max, Quincy realized that for Thriller he needed a specific kind of studio sophistication, and he knew just who that was.

SPEAKER_00 17:40

It seems like he always knew who to bring in on every session he didn't, Mel. Rick talks about it, Larry talks about it, Luke talks about it. Quincy always knew. So he brought in the heavy hitters from Toto, Jeff Percaro, Steve Lukather, and David Page to act as the specialized engineering team. Some badass motherfuckers.

SPEAKER_03 17:57

Oh yeah. And specialized they were, man. Oh, they were. These guys weren't just session players, they were the elite drafting team of the 1980s.

SPEAKER_00 18:04

And Jeff, one of my favorite drummers, really the architect of the badass groove, Jeff Procaro, who never took a drum solo. One of the most prolific drummers of our time. On a track like Beat It, while JR handled that first kick drum hit, it's Jeff who is sits as drummer on that song.

SPEAKER_03 18:20

Q knew that the entire total rhythm section provided that industrial pulse, the pulse that kept going in lockstep. Jeff Procaro's ability to lock in with the bass was legendary. He provided the steel girders that held up the high frequency rock elements.

SPEAKER_00 18:34

And since it was his partner in crime since high school, Steve Lucather, well, it was a lock. And Luke is all over Thriller. He played the heavy rhythm guitar and the bass on Beat It. That's his lick. That's all Luke. Now he also played on This Girl is Mine, and he brought that West Coast precision that Quincy loved. Luke is another guy I love learning from. And before we talk about the rest, since we're on this Luke and Jeff story, this part of it must be told. So there's a specific structural distinction between the very first sonic hit and the actual drum performance on Beat It.

SPEAKER_03 19:05

The first thing you hear, Max, those ominous low frequency gong hits wasn't a drummer at all. It was a synclavier 2 synthesizer. Quincy and the team use a factory preset, which was the bell sound, to create the cinematic tension before the beat drops. And once that synclavier intro fades, there's a massive atomic drum fill that knocks the door down, kicks the door down. According to JR, he was the one who came in to perform that specific surgical strike.

SPEAKER_00 19:30

One hit.

SPEAKER_03 19:31

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:31

One ping only the city. Just for that. One ping only.

SPEAKER_03 19:34

To start the track. And Quincy wanted that J.R. snap to announce the arrival of the song, but the main body was Jeff Percaro.

SPEAKER_00 19:41

Now, this is an amazing story that not everyone knows, Mel, but it's a testament to the incredible musicality of Jeff Procaro and Steve Lukather. Okay, you ready, Soul Fam? Because this is badass. So Michael had recorded a demo for the song Beat It, where he was literally banging on a bottleneck in a wooden crate to get to the rhythm he wanted. So they started building the master recording with this. But because Michael's crate and bottleneck demo was so damn raw, they needed a technical pulse to keep the project on track. And here comes another set of architects who will cover at some point. So it was primarily Steve Porcaro, Jess Brother, and Greg Filling's we were talking about before. And this name you'll definitely hear plenty as we keep going through all these architects. So they were working with the Lindrum LM1 drum computer. And at the time, the LM1 was the new industrial tech. Drum machines were new. They were not what they're like today, you know, is nothing like that back then. So they used it to program a surgical version of Michael's beat so they could start building off that. And they had a clean and steady grid to lay down Greg's keyboard parts and an original bass line. Jeff hadn't even played drums yet. So they used this programmed steel to support the building while they were still figuring out the final structural design. But then Eddie Van Halen came in and changed the dynamic, having the engineer perform a surgical tape edit. And because of that, the program Lin1 grid became the very thing that broke. And guess what? It couldn't sync with the new sliced-up master tape. So here they were building a track at Westlake Studios. And then the project hits this major structural defect because of Eddie Van Halen's solo. And there's a story behind that, kids. So it seems that when Eddie came into the studio to cut the solo, well, Michael was working on the ET project at the time, so he left the room to go do it. He left him and Quincy alone with Humberto Gatica, who was the engineer. So Quincy says, Oh yeah, you're gonna give you total architectural freedom. So Eddie listens to the track. He realized that the section that they wanted him to solo over, the chorus, well, it didn't have the right structural integrity for his style. He felt the chord changes were too static for the shred solo that everybody was looking for, and believe me, they were. So here comes the chop job. Now remember, Soulfam, there is no such thing as a DAW at the time. No digital audio workstations, no computers that take digital audio, nothing. It's about analog tape. Two inch 24 track analog tape. We edited that shit with a razor blade. So now Eddie turns to the engineer Umberto Gatica and directed a massive edit of the two inch analog tape. Master tape. How frightening is that? He had them cut and paste a section of the verse and pre-chorus underneath the solo section because the chord changes there gave him some more harmonic leverage. And he essentially redesigned the middle of Michael's song to fit his own industrial spec so he could kill it on the solo, which he did. He then proceeded to improvise two takes of that solo over this newly rezoned section. So Eddie cut this famous solo, it was amazing, and they cut the two-inch master tape to fit the solo in, which caused the song, which of course to lose its SIMT time code, which now we got a big, big one. It's all a lot of time now. Yeah. So now we have a rescue mission at Sunset Sound. Quincy calls Luke and Porcaro into Sunset Sound and basically says the track is broken. It won't sync up. Why? Because it was cut. Yeah, okay. So I have Michael's vocals and Eddie solo on a tape with no timing. Can you guys fix it? Well, there are two guys who never said no to anything. So there they are, tucked away in a tiny room. And the only scaffolding they had was Michael's vocal track and the sound of Michael hitting a drum case and a bottleneck crate for the demo sound. So leaking that through the vocal mic. So to find the pulse, Jeff is a genius. Jeff didn't use a click track because there wasn't one. So he went into the room with two drumsticks and a microphone. He cranked Michael's vocal into his headphones and used his sticks to tap out a click on a plastic cymbal case or a trap case and to match Michael's internal rhythm. Now, once Jeff laid down that cymbal case foundation, they had a click. He and Luke were able to record a full kit and that iconic guitar riff over it so that the solo could sit in there. They literally reverse engineered the song around Michael's vocal and Eddie's solo. Tommy Nightmare solved. What a fucking story.

SPEAKER_03 23:32

Yeah, think about that.

SPEAKER_00 23:32

That is some story.

SPEAKER_03 23:33

And we cannot say enough also about Greg Fillingames.

SPEAKER_00 23:36

No.

SPEAKER_03 23:36

He's the glue max. He sure is. Yeah, Greg wasn't just playing keys, he was the translator.

SPEAKER_00 23:41

Yeah, because Michael would sing to him what he wanted. Exactly. And Greg had to figure out how to make that work. Exactly.

SPEAKER_03 23:46

And Greg took Michael's vocalized ideas and turned them into the roads and synth textures that defined the record. He worked with the drum programming to ensure that the harmonic frequency matched the rhythm frequency. He was the joint that connected the floor to the walls, in other words.

SPEAKER_00 23:59

Until Van Halen mucked it up.

SPEAKER_03 24:00

Until Van Hillen mucked it up. Exactly. And they needed the Toto rescue. That's right. While Greg Philling Gaines was the chief architectural engineer for the keyboards and the harmonic structure, he was joined by another Toto member.

SPEAKER_00 24:11

Right, Melo. We can't fail to mention the amazing David Paige, who played keyboards and synthesizers also in Toto. Paige was instrumental in the atmospheric zoning of the record. He helped craft the synth layers on The Girl is Mine and Human Nature. And Melo, the story behind human nature is another amazing happening.

SPEAKER_03 24:27

Yeah, this is one of the most famous happy accidents in the history of the music business. And it's the perfect example of why a master architect always keeps their ears open to the ambient frequency of the room. It wasn't a planned submission, it was a technical overlap.

SPEAKER_00 24:40

That's right. So this is definitely a you never know story. So Quincy asked David Page to send over some demos for the thriller session. Now at the time, David sent a cassette tape, because for those of you who even remember what a cassette tape is, that's what we used to listen to. Right. So it was two sides to the cassette. So anyway, the cassette was filled with several song ideas that he'd been drafting, but only on the A side. And the songs Quincy was supposed to hear were there. So Quincy listened to him, and to be honest, well, he wasn't feeling their structural integrity, apparently, of those particular tracks from Michael. So he left the tape running. And as the legend goes, it finished, and he or his assistant just flipped it over without thinking, because that's how it was. We just flipped it over and put the B side on. So they put the thing on, and all of a sudden they hear this rough, unfinished sketch that Steve Porcaro had been working on. Now Steve had written it after his daughter had came home from school crying because the boy had been mean to her. He was just messing around with the track and didn't even think it was a song yet. It was just a vibe blueprint. But he laid it off to finish it later, not expecting anyone to hear it at that point. He was just trying to work out how to create something for his daughter. So when the tape played, it had that cascading synth intro that everybody loves. Quincy famously said that strong had structural magic he hadn't heard in years. And the why why hook, it was already there. Well, when Michael heard it, he didn't just say he liked it. He saw the atmospheric potential. He realized that this track would allow him to use a different vocal register, more vulnerable and cinematic, which would eventually bridge the gap between the club tracks and the storytelling tracks on the record. And naturally, Q brought in the rest of the Toto guys to play on it because that ensured the high-end sheen was consistent with their studio signature. Badass.

SPEAKER_03 26:15

Oh, yeah. And Q brought that bassy red pencil we talked about in part one to the studio. Oh, he sure did. Yeah, for the thriller sessions, they they looked at 800 songs just to pick nine.

SPEAKER_00 26:25

Telling you, we definitely got to call up and talk to Clive because these two guys are nuts.

SPEAKER_03 26:30

Well, yeah, think about that. That's a lot of music. Can you imagine the 8.8 rejection rate?

SPEAKER_00 26:34

Just think about sitting there and listening to 800 songs. I can't imagine. Think about that. That's not it's not even that you got rid of them. It's how bad they were, and you had to listen to all of them to find what you wanted. Where was the jewel, right? Well, think about eight songs as an album. I know. They listen to 800. 800. And that's the lesson for every modern producer now. The song is the sight. Hugh used Big Band Attack to design paw pits. Those horn steps on Thriller, well, that's the basic blueprint updated for the digital world. He was overclocking the soul and engineering a perfect frequency that the whole world can tune into and tune into it, they did.

SPEAKER_03 27:07

He taught Michael and all of us, really, that the technical perfection is the baseline. He squeezed that coal until it became the biggest selling diamond in history. Sure as hell does. And if you like this content, please give a like and subscribe to our channel.

SPEAKER_00 27:19

And remember, there is a video version available on our YouTube page if you feel like watching it instead of just listening. And on that note, we're gonna take a quick break. Listening to Max and Mell's Architects of Soul.

SPEAKER_03 27:29

And we're talking about the master, Quincy Jones. Next up, we are the world.

SPEAKER_00 27:33

Yep, no, another amazing story to stick around for, Soul Family.

SPEAKER_03 27:36

We'll be right back, y'all.

SPEAKER_00 28:18

Hey, welcome back. In 1985, Hugh became the general manager slash contractor for humanity. For all of humanity. All of humanity. Managing forty-five of the world's biggest superstars in one room for twelve hours. Wow. Mel, that's an engineering nightmare. Now, before we get to that, let's talk about the seed that started this most amazing gathering of stars to create something magical that still stands tall right up to today.

SPEAKER_03 28:42

And the architect of this project idea was originally sparked by Harry Belafonte, who wanted to use the power of the industry to create a relief fund for famine in Ethiopia. He called Ken Cragen, who was Lionel Ritchie's manager, and that's when the architectural team was formed.

SPEAKER_00 28:56

So Ken Cragan reaches out to Lionel first, and Lionel realizes immediately that they need a master architect who could handle the structural load of 45 icons. Who are you gonna call? Well, it ain't Ghostbusters, but it sure as hell is Quincy Jones.

SPEAKER_03 29:08

Quincy, yeah, he's the man.

SPEAKER_00 29:09

But boy, a lot of egos, man.

SPEAKER_03 29:10

Exactly. Well, Lionel told Quincy that they wanted to do a charity single. Quincy's first move wasn't to say yes. No, it wasn't. No, it was to check the feasibility study. He knew this wasn't just a song, it was a logistical siege. Oh, yeah. Once the Q was in, he brought in the foundation specialist. Guess who? Michael Jackson.

SPEAKER_00 29:27

Of course, Michael. Who else? Well, no, Michael and Lionel didn't just write the song either. They lived in it for weeks. They locked themselves in Michael's home at Havenhurst to draft the blueprints. Michael and Lionel spent days listening to national anthems from all over the world USA, UK, Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, blah, blah, blah. Everywhere. Brazil, Spain, is oh my God, they were just insane. So they wanted a melody that had universal structural integrity. Something that a person in any country could hum even after one lesson.

SPEAKER_03 29:56

And that's a lot of anthems to listen to. Oh my god. Quincy would check in on them acting as the chief inspector. He told them, I don't want it to sound like a pop song. I want it to sound like a hymn.

SPEAKER_00 30:06

Yes, Dad.

SPEAKER_03 30:07

He wanted a high-frequency message that felt permanent like a monument.

SPEAKER_00 30:10

Like he was scolding them. And then Quincy and Cragen, well, they looked at the pragmatic end of doing this and realized that they had a massive massive logistical roadblock. How do you get 45 of the world's most expensive general contractors on the same job site at the same time without spending millions of dollars on travel?

SPEAKER_03 30:28

Well, it's easy, Max. The answer was the 1985 American Music Awards. How do you like that? Since everyone was already in town for the awards at the Shrine Auditorium, Quincy scheduled the recording session for 10 PM that same night at AM Studios. Imagine the technical shift, Max.

SPEAKER_00 30:44

Can you?

SPEAKER_03 30:44

You go from one of the highest-stakes red carpet events in the world straight to a construction zone that has to be finished by dawn.

SPEAKER_00 30:51

That's right. It's a monumental ask for that many high-level artists. So to ensure that no one knows, well, they didn't tell the artists the location until the very last minute. It was a total blackout operation. As the legend started arriving, Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, Ray Charles, Diana Ross, they were met by that famous handwritten sign from Quincy. Check your egos at the door.

SPEAKER_03 31:12

Quincy had already taped the floor with everyone's names, Max, along with Tom Bollard, who was the vocal arranger. He had pre-assigned the zoning for every singer. He knew that if he let 45 icons pick their own spots, the structural integrity of the session would collapse into a 12-hour audio.

SPEAKER_00 31:26

Hell yes.

SPEAKER_03 31:27

And then that's that's the truth.

SPEAKER_00 31:28

I want to stand here. No, I want to stand there. I gotta do this, I gotta do that. No, that only would send Quincy screaming down the street if you asked me. I mean, that's amazing. Quincy wasn't just a producer that night, he was literally a conductor of personalities. Bob Dylan was famously struggling with his solo. He didn't think he fit the frequency of the song. So Quincy took him aside, cleared the room, and had Stevie Warner sit at the piano to help Bob find his vibration. And Stevie wanted to add lyrics in Swahili. Well, Mello, Whalen James famously walked out and said, No good old boy sings in Swahili.

SPEAKER_03 32:02

I remember hearing about that.

SPEAKER_00 32:03

Quincy had to manage the cultural friction on the fly to keep that project from stalling. What a load of egos.

SPEAKER_03 32:08

Man, that is ego management at the highest level, man.

SPEAKER_00 32:11

And remember, not everybody got a solo. Right. So you had might have been in the chorus and you'd get a line.

SPEAKER_03 32:16

Exactly. That's where Quincy and Tom Bollard figured out who would sing what or whatever. Q used his technical literacy to speak to everyone from Springsteen to Diana Ross in their own dialect. He kept the project from collapsing under its own weight.

SPEAKER_00 32:27

Except Swahili.

SPEAKER_03 32:28

Well, yeah, except Swahili. He kept the project from collapsing under its own weight of those massive personalities by focusing everyone on the structure of the mission.

SPEAKER_00 32:36

He showed us that a master architect isn't just a musician. He's a project manager. He realized that the shared vision is the only thing that keeps a massive, massive job from falling apart. We're going to have a lot of fun with massive all season long, apparently. He was building a bridge across the globe using nothing but melody and mission.

SPEAKER_03 32:52

And speaking of missions, ours is to take a short break.

SPEAKER_00 32:54

You think? So stick around. Let's stick a fork in this amazing story wrapped from an incredibly cool perspective.

SPEAKER_03 33:01

Stay with us, y'all. You're kicking it with Max and Mello's Architect of Soul, and we'll be right back.

SPEAKER_00 33:53

So in 1990, I was the head of the audio department at the world-famous Apollo Theater. One of the most wonderful times and experiences of my life. As I've said in whenever our architects intersect with my journey. So the release of the documentary Listen Up is planned for the theater with an after party across the street after the showing of the film. For those of you who don't know, it was called Listen Up the Life of Quincy Jones, which of course we've just talked about two episodes. The guy is amazing, and we left out a billion things that we could have talked about. So Q and some of the most talented artists and entertainment people were coming to my theater. The Apollo Theater, the original job site for so many. And the documentary, it was revolutionary, Mello, because it didn't use a narrator. It used the voice of Q's peers, celebrating his life and his brilliance. And since it was the premiere and at the Apollo, well, how can you not invite the baddest cats to back up the baddest cats? Not just play the film, but staging a live recording and jam session that brought the blueprints of the movie to life on the stage across the street at behind the Apollo theater. I wasn't just hearing the music at that point. I was in awe, witnessing the structural alignment of the icons I grew up and learned from. How cool is that for a guy who showed up to the world of black music, asking to be let in and being absorbed by the most wonderful multicultural cross-pollinating people I have ever been blessed to be a part of. It was a wonderful gift. I have been given among the many that I have received Mellow. It was the moment where your life as a musician and your life as an engineer hit the same resonant frequency. Bam.

SPEAKER_03 35:14

And you weren't just in the building, Max. You were on stage after parties.

SPEAKER_00 35:18

Indeed, I was, Mellow. I was in heaven. First and foremost, I'm a musician. So being graced with that space on the stage with the players, it was everything. I had the best seat in the tent on 126th Street. I was right there on stage with the musicians. I was acting as the AD, calling tape role cues, making sure that every nuance on that stage was piping back across the street to the tape machine running in the cutting-edge studio we had upstairs in the theater, a once-in-a-lifetime jam session on 126th Street, Melo.

SPEAKER_03 35:42

What a great place to be a fly on the wall with a purpose, Max.

SPEAKER_00 35:45

Certainly not as good as playing with them, but surely a wonderful place for the engineering geek that I apparently am, Mello.

SPEAKER_03 35:50

So quite a position to find yourself in when you think about it, Max. You're up there ensuring that history is being captured while the master architect himself is sitting there and you get to watch as it all happens.

SPEAKER_00 36:00

And that's the thing, Mellow. So I look over, and Q's got a drink in his hand, the biggest twinkle in his eyes, and the widest smile you ever saw. He wasn't working the room, he was savoring the build. So I was lucky enough to meet him a few times, got a lot of turns to talk to him, and he was always so open about what he learned. And standing on that stage, man, that ticked a bunch of boxes on my life list. It was the ultimate technical and spiritual audit. It was like a dream as I think back on it. Q sat and watched his lifelong partner, Ray Charleston, one of his favorite singers and ours, Chaka Khan, get into a vocal duel on that stage that felt like the building was going to lift off its foundation. Somewhere in this jam session that followed the premiere is buried, and it has never seen the light of day. But it was the stuff of the Industrial Legends. And what a whirlwind of a week that was culminating in that incredible jam session. And oh my God, I hope that one day that that thing shows the light.

SPEAKER_03 36:49

Somebody must have recorded parts of it at least.

SPEAKER_00 36:51

No, it was all recorded. No, the entire thing was recorded, but it's never seen the light of day. So wherever the 24 or 32 track or 48 track that we did, depending on what machine we were using at the Apollo at the time, that's where it is. And that stuff is long gone because once the Suttons got rid of the Apollo and um Time Warner took it over, well, you know, everything went back to inner city broadcasting. So who knows who's got it?

SPEAKER_03 37:16

Wow, Max. That's some memory. It would be something to hear that recording, I bet. And hey, you thought we forgot.

SPEAKER_00 37:21

No, we didn't. So if you like this content, please give a like and subscribe to our channel.

SPEAKER_03 37:25

And remember, there's a video version available on our YouTube page if you feel like watching instead of just listening.

SPEAKER_00 37:29

That's right, Mo. And on that note, Mel and I are going to take a short break, and we'll be right back to Stamp a Seal on it. You're chilling with Max and Millens of Architects as well. So, Mello, we're back for the final inspection. Quincy Jones taught us that authority is earned through literacy. He didn't just want to be good, he wanted to understand the source code of every sound on the planet.

SPEAKER_03 38:32

From the armory to the Apollo, his journey shows that the new vibe and everyone's vibe that discipline is the only shortcut. He never stopped learning, even when he was at the top of the skyline.

SPEAKER_00 38:41

No, indeed he did not, Mello. Probably right to his last breath. He was a student of life who just kept evolving. A massive giant of an architect he was. And before we wrap this build up, we'd like to feature the words of the master himself.

SPEAKER_03 38:53

The music business is only 10% music. The other 90% is business, psychology, and the ability to stay a human being in the midst of it all.

SPEAKER_00 39:00

You have to be a master of the technology, but a slave to the soul. If you ever let the business dictate the art, you've already demolished the building before the first brick is laid. Hear that soul fam? Chrissy Jones telling us never to lose our humanity.

SPEAKER_03 39:13

A valuable lesson, y'all.

SPEAKER_00 39:14

And as always, we want to close with our final thought. And our hope for all of us are art, our craft, and our creations.

SPEAKER_03 39:20

Keep that soul fire burning. Protect your sound, nurture your creativity, own your voice, and remember the lessons from the giants who came before.

SPEAKER_00 39:28

And yes, protect your masters and seek out wise majorist who can guide you on your journey. And until next, we meet.