Fifteen days ago, Vulture published an interview with Quincy Jones in which the record producer/arranger/music legend made several extraordinary claims.
He dragged his most fruitful musical collaborator Michael Jackson as a semi-plagiarist, said the Beatles and Jimi Hendrix were poor musicians, made a veiled brag about doing it with the president’s daughter, and offhandedly revealed his belief that Marlon Brando had sex with James Baldwin, Marvin Gaye, and Richard Pryor. His remarks lit up the internet, occasioning outraged rebukes from the families of Jackson, Pryor, and Brando, and inspired at least one 7,000-word essay on Slog.
Today, either because the furor over his interview has not subsided, or precisely because it has, Jones issued a sincere, if conditional apology on Twitter, blaming his “’wordvomit’ & bad-mouthing” on the fact that he only stopped drinking three years ago, and on being “an 85 year old bow-legged man who is still learning from his mistakes.” “I’m sorry to anyone whom my words offended,” he wrote, adding that he is “especially sorry to my friends who are still here with me & to those who aren’t.”
His full apology is below:
pic.twitter.com/xCYAqJ6oD2
— Quincy Jones (@QuincyDJones) February 22, 2018
That be one crazy old man. But his graceful and humble apology could serve as guidance for more then one public official I know.