On Monday, October 15, 2001, Quincy Jones appeared on the USA television show "Oprah," to talk about his new autobiography "Q." Michael Jackson joined the interview by telephone. Below is a transcript from that segment of the interview between Oprah Winfrey, Quincy Jones, and Michael Jackson.
Oprah: ....OK. Quincy doesn't know this, but there is somebody on the phone who wanted to be here today but could not. Most of the world knows him as the King of Pop. Say hello to Michael Jackson. Michael. Michael. So, hi, Michael.
Michael: Hi.
Oprah: Hi. Thanks for joining us.
Michael: Oh, I'm honored. I'm very honored.
Oprah: What's it like, the experience of working with Mr. Jones?
Michael: What was it like working with Quincy?
Oprah: Yeah.
Michael: It's, it's very professional, very talented, and he's a musical visionary. He's been around, as you know, a very long time. (Quincy gives a funny look. Audience and Oprah laugh.)
Quincy: Michael?
Michael: Yes?
Quincy: This is Quincy. Can I call you by the name we used to call and talk to each other by?
Michael: Yes, if you want. (giggles)
Quincy: Well, OK, s...
Michael: I'm scared. (audience laughs)
Quincy: Smelly.. What'd he say?
Oprah: He said 'I'm scared.' (more laughter)
Quincy: Smelly. OK.
Oprah: Now where did that come from? That...
Quincy: That's very affectionate, because Michael does not use any profanity, ever. Right, right, Smelly?
Michael: No P no. That's right.
Quincy: And, and so when it got good, we'd say 'That was funky.' He said "Don't say that, it's smelly jelly," you know? (audience laughs) It's smelly jelly, so from now...
Oprah: You don't even use funky?
Quincy: No. Michael doesn't say that word. If..
Oprah: No, no.
Quincy: No.
Oprah: Doesn't say any, any kind of bad words at all.
Quincy: No, I've heard a couple, yeah.
Oprah: Yeah. OK
Quincy: But, but not.. that
Michael: From who?
Quincy: Haha..from, from you!
Michael: Not me..., is it?
Quincy: Oh no, no.
Oprah: No, so that's why you started....
Quincy: Just smelly jelly.
Oprah: That's why you started calling him Smelly.
Quincy: Yes.
Michael: Yeah.
Oprah: What have you learned from Q that you take with you for the rest of your life, Michael?
Michael: I learned a lot. You once said something to me, Q...Quincy. I don't know if you want it repeated. But it was just beautiful. You said 'You don't write music. You let the write..the music write itself. Let it create itself. It's like we're just the source from which it comes.'
Oprah: Yeah. I've heard him say he always leaves room for God to walk in the room.
Michael: There you go.
Oprah: Yeah.
Quincy: The divinity is most important.
Oprah: Well, thank you Michael for joining us. Thanks for taking the time to call up and say, 'Hey Q!'
Quincy: I love you, Smelly.
Michael: I love you more, Quincy.
Oprah: All right. All right.
Quincy: The show was great in New York.
Michael: Thank you.
Oprah: Weren't you doing the show with him in New York when the Trade Center...
Quincy: Yes. The show was the night the...was the night before.
Oprah: Was the night before.
Quincy: Yeah.
-Michael Jackson Talks To MTV-
December 11, 1999
At the end of 1999, MTV aired a special video countdown: 'MTV's 100 Greatest Videos Ever Made.' Michael Jackson's 'Thriller' video was chosen as the # 1 video of all time.
During the special show, which aired on MTV USA on December 11 and MTV Europe on December 18-19, 1999, the music channel showed excerpts of an exclusive interview with Michael Jackson. Here is a transcript of what Michael said about making videos.
Michael Jackson about 'Billie Jean' video:
"I think it was Billie Jean. It's kind of surreal and it's different. I didn't come up with that concept. It was - I think a British fellow - Steve Barron - and I thought he had wonderful ideas but I let him go with it. The only part I wrote in the piece was - I said: "I just want a section." I said: "Give me a section here I could dance on." 'Cause he said no dancing in the whole piece - so the whole section where you see this long street and this billboard of these two girls, one of them Billie Jean and I'm dancing - that's the only part I contributed."
Slash introducing 'Beat It' video:
"Alright. This is hm... Oh beat it. One more of my acquaintances and friends and musical partners but this is I think one of the things that took him over the top of his solo career. This is 'Beat It' by Michael Jackson.
Michael Jackson about 'Beat It' video:
"Well, when I wrote 'Beat It' - I don't know why, but I did - about, you know, two gangs coming together and the song is so self-explanatory that it's so easy to make this short film. And I'd seen - I think it was a McDonald's commercial - and I said: "God, I like the rhythm and the cut of this commercial." I said, "I want this director for this piece." So I reached out to him." [Bob Giraldi directed 'Beat It'.]
Michael Jackson was asked what makes a great video:
"In my opinion, it has to be completely entertaining and have a sense of, a linear sense of continuity."
Michael Jackson talking about 'Thriller':
"Hi, I'm Michael Jackson. My idea was to make this short film with conversation ... in the beginning - I like having a beginning and a middle and an ending, which would follow a story. I'm very much involved in complete making and creating of the piece. It has to be, you know, my soul. Usually, you know, it's an interpretation of the music."
Michael Jackson about John Landis:
"I love working with John Landis cause we laugh a lot. We are never serious on the set. [laughs] So it's fun working with John. I used to throw water balloons, and stink bombs and everything at him. That's a ritual for me. After we rap up each video, I throw a lot of stuff at everybody. [smiling] So that's funny."
Michael Jackson about Vincent Price's contribution to the 'Thriller' video:
"That was one of the first raps, actually. I've known Vincent Prince since I was 11. He did a great job. The first time I met him, it was at NBC studios. He said, "Come here!" like that [MJ pointing his finger], in his kinda gruesome voice, and I started to cry because I was - I thought he was serious. I used to see him by turning the channels and those kinda things. I think he was in 'Raven' and 'House Of Wax' or something, so he scared me.
Michael Jackson about the zombies appearing in 'Thriller':
"I like the scene when all these zombies are coming toward us and she thinks she's safe with me, you know, being her boyfriend, and she looks over to me and I become one. And then we do these famous fall in and pull out movements. The Hitchcock move. And I love that moment. I remember my original approach was how do you make the zombies and monsters dance without being comical. So I got in a room with Michael Peters. He and I together kind of imagined how zombies should move. I thought it should start, you know, like - that kind of thing [miming the dance], going into this kind of jazzy stuff."
Michael Jackson about creating videos [version I]: *
The idea is to take it a step forward and to innovate or else why am I doing it? I'm just - I don't wanna be just another can in the assembly line. You know, I want to create, do something that's totally different and unusual.
Michael Jackson about creating videos [version II]: *
"You know, I want to, you know, create, do something that's totally different and unusual, to take it a step forward and to innovate, or else, why am I doing it? I knew if we did something with substance and content that people would watch and it had a great entertainment value and if it held you, I knew it'd be okay."
-Michael Speaks to Ebony Magazine-
May 1992 (Africa)
Ebony/Jet: Do you have any special feeling about this return to the con-tinent of Africa?
Michael Jackson: For me, it's like the "dawn of civilization." It's the first place where society existed. It's seen a lot of love. I guess there's that connection because it is the root of all rhythm. Everything. It's home.
Ebony/Jet:: You visited Africa in 1974. Can you compare and contrast the two visits?
Michael Jackson: I'm more aware of things this time: the people and how they live and their government. But for me, I'm more aware of the rhythms and the music and the people. That's what I'm really noticing more than any thing. The rhythms are incredible. You can tell especially the way the children move. Even the little babies, when they hear the drums, they start to move. The rhythm, the way it affects their soul and they start to move. The same thing that Blacks have in America. . .
Ebony/Jet:: How does it feel to be a real king?
Michael Jackson: I never try to think hard about it because I don't want it to go to my head. But, it's a great honor....
Ebony/Jet:: Speaking of music and rhythm, how did you put together the gospel songs on your last album?
Michael Jackson: I wrote "Will You Be There?" at my house, "Never Land" in California.... I didn't think about it hard. That's why it's hard to take credit for the songs that I write, because I just always feel that it's done from above. I feel fortunate for being that instrument through which music flows. I'm just the source through which it comes. I can't take credit for it because it's God's work. He's just using me as the messenger....
Ebony/Jet: What was the concept for the Dangerous album?
Michael Jackson: I wanted to do an album that was like Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite. So that in a thousand years from now, people would still be listening to it. Something that would live forever. I would like to see children and teenagers and parents and all races all over the world, hundreds and hundreds of years from now, still pulling out songs from that album and dissecting it. I want it to live.
Ebony/Jet:: I notice on this trip that you made a special effort to visit children.
Michael Jackson: I love children, as you can see. And babies.
Ebony/Jet:: And animals.
Michael Jackson: Well, there's a certain sense that animals and children have that gives me a certain creative juice, a certain force that later on in adulthood is kind of lost because of the conditioning that happens in the world. A great poet said once. "When I see children, I see that God has not yet given up on man." An Indian poet from India said that, and his name is Tagore. The innocence of children represents to me the source of infinite creativity. That is the potential of every human being. But by the time you are an adult, you're conditioned; you're so conditioned by the things about youand it goes. Love. Children are loving, they don't gossip, they don't complain, they're just open-hearted. They're ready for you. They don't judge. They don't see things by way of color. They're very child-like. That's the problem with adults they lose that child-like quality. And that's the level of inspiration that's so needed and is so important for creating and writing songs and for a sculptor, a poet or a novelist. It's that same kind of innocence, that same level of consciousness, that you create from. And kids have it. I feel it right away from animals and children and nature. Of course. And when I'm on stage. I can't perform if I don't have that kind of ping pony with the crowd. You know the kind of cause and effect action, reaction. Because I play off of them. They're really feeding me and I'm just acting from their energy.
Ebony/Jet:: Where is all this heading?
Michael Jackson: I really believe that God chooses people to do certain things, the way Michelangelo or Leonardo da Vinci or Mozart or Muhammad Ali or Martin Luther King is chosen. And that is their mission to do that thing. And I think that I haven't scratched the surface yet of what my real purpose is for being here. I'm committed to my art. I believe that all art has as its ultimate goal the union between the material and the spiritual, the human and the divine. And I believe that that is the very reason for the exis-tence of art and what I do. And I feel fortunate in being that instrument through which music flows....
Deep inside I feel that this world we live in is really a big, huge, monumental symphonic orchestra. I believe that in its primordial form all of creation is sound and that it's not just random sound, that it's music. You've heard the expression, mu-sic of the spheres? Well, that's a very literal phrase. In the Gospels, we read, "And the Lord God made man from the dust of the earth and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and man be-came a living soul." That breath of life to me is the music of life and it permeates every fiber of creation.
In one of the pieces of the Dangerous album, I say: "Life songs of ages, throbbing in my blood, have danced the rhythm of the tide and flood." This is a very literal statement, because the same new miracle intervals and biological rhythms that sound out the architecture of my DNA also governs the movement of the stars. The same music governs the rhythm of the seasons, the pulse of our heartbeats, the migration of birds, the ebb and flow of ocean tides, the cycles of growth, evolution and dissolution. It's music, it's rhythm. And my goal in life is to give to the world what I was lucky to receive: the ecstasy of divine union through my music and my dance. It's like, my purpose, it's what I'm here for.
Ebony/Jet:: What about politics?
Michael Jackson: I never get into politics. But I think music soothes the savage beast. If you put cells under a microscope and you put music on, you'll see them move and start to dance. It affects the soul.... I hear music in everything. [Pauses] You know, that's the most I've said in eight years You know I don't give interviews. That because I know you, and I trust you. You're the only person I trust to give interviews to.
-OK Magazine Interview-
April 4 & 11, 1997
Michael permitted 'OK' magazine (a British mag) to publish photographs of his first born baby boy, Prince Michael Jackson Jr. An interview with Michael and Debbie accompanied the photo spread.
The King Of Pop And His Little Prince
Interviewer: Michael, how does it feel to be a father?
Michael: It was an incredibly joyful experience. I'm in bliss 24 hours a day.
Interviewer: Can you talk us through the birth of your son?
Michael: It's hard to take it step by step, but the snapshots inmy mind from the birth show our excitement and nervousness. Debbie was so strong throughout the delivery. There were shouts of joy when the baby was born. I couldn'tbelieve the miracle I had witnessed. It was unbelievable!
Interviewer: Michael, describe the relationship between yourself and Debbie?
Michael: Debbie and I love each other for all the reasons you will never see on stage or in pictures. I feel for the beautiful, unpretentious, giving person that she is, and she fell for me, just being me.
Interviewer: Debbie, what are you current feelings for Michael?
Michael: I love him even more now than before our son was born. Fatherhood has brought out a very protective streak in him. He is so loving and strong.
Interviewer: What is the boy's name? Why is he so named -- and which of you does he look like the most?
Michael: His name is Prince Michael Junior. My grandfather and great-grandfather were both named Prince, so we have carried on that tradition, and now we have a third Prince in the family.
Debbie: He's so beautiful! I think he has my eyes.
Interviewer: Michael, among all your life's glittering achievements, how does fatherhood rate?
Michael: Words can't describe it. There is no miracle in life that compares with watching your son some into the world.
Interviewer: Has the baby smiled or responded in any way to the two of you yet?
Michael: He smiles all the time and his eyes twinkle when I sing to him. He definitely knows my voice. Debbie tickles his chin and he giggles.
Interviewer: Debbie, does Michael change the baby's nappies, get up in the middle of the night to feed him and do his share of the chores?
Debbie: Yes, Michael does everything. He loves being involved in every aspect of caring for the baby. He is such a wonderful father, feeding him, holding him, and, of course, singing to him.
Interviewer: Debbie, you have married and had a baby with the most famous man on earth. What effect has that had on you?
Debbie: I have married and had a baby with the man I will always love and I am on top of the world. The only time I feel sad is when I see quotes attributed to me that I never said or when I hear late night comedians taking cheap shots at my husband when they are not true. Don't believe 99% of the garbage you read or hear. I know that we will be under increasing public scrutiny and I don't look forward to that, but I know that will always be a part of being married to Michael.
Interviewer: Michael, you so rarely give interviews. What is the one thing you would like to say to your fans at this time?
Michael: Thank you to all of my fans for understanding how important it is to me to protect my family from the public eye. I have lived in a "fishbowl" all my life and I want my son to live a normal life. You've stood by me throughout my career and now you share my greatest joy. I love you.
OK - Part 2 -
Interviewer: Michael, what are your hopes for Prince Michael Junior’s future?
Michael: I want him to grow up surrounded by love and family, to receive the best education I can provide him with, to discover and develop his talents, and to use his resources to make life better for those less fortunate than he.
Interviewer: Are you preventing Debbie from seeing the child?
Michael: No, that is completely false. We have been together as a family since the birth of our son, and we've cherished every moment as a family.
Interviewer: Michael, what has been your family's reaction to the birth?
Micheael: They are all very excited. I'm already getting lots of tips and advice about schools and such.
Interviewer: What sort of dad will you try to be?
Michael: The best! My father was always there for us through the stardom of the Jackson Five and through many of the ups and downs that followed. I, too, will always be there for my son. It's the most important thing in the world to me.
Interviewer: Debbie, what are your family's feelings about Michael?
Debbie: They're crazy about him. They were delighted to discover how warm and genuine he is.
Interviewer: And how would you describe Michael's strengths as a father?
Debbie:He's very patient and protective. He never rushes what he's doing with the baby. I was very proud of how tough he was about our privacy. He's incredibly strong.
Interviewer: Michael, are you still close to your family? How often do you see your parents, brothers and sisters? Have they met your baby yet?
Michael: We talk and see each other all the time. We recently had a big 'get-together' where all the cousins met one another for the first time.
Interviewer: We believe the child's godmother may be Elizabeth Taylor. What is it that draws you to Elizabeth? Many would call it an unlikely friendship. What do you have in common?
Michael: Elizabeth knew many of the things I went through growing up in the spotlight. I can say a few words or just sigh sometimes, and she knows what I'm feeling. It was wonderful to find someone who understood me so well. I pray for her, and I want her to share the joy of my son's birth for many years to come.
Interviewer: What sort of gifts have you received for Prince Michael Junior?
Michael: We've received some fantastic gifts. Wonderful treasures, stuffed animals, toys and baby clothes from around the world. We would like to take this opportunity to thank all my wonderful fans [preach it Michael!] for helping to welcome our baby into the world.
Interviewer: Michael, what are Debbie's strengths as a mother?
Michael: Debbie is a very strong and caring woman. She's a wonderful mother!
Interviewer: Can we expect a song about your son on your new album?
Michael: The birth of my son has been very inspirational to me artistically, and there will definitely be a song in the future.
Interviewer: And one about Debbie, too?
Michael: Any song about my son has to be about Debbie as well.
