Author of Bombshell Quincy Jones Interview Says That Was Just the 'PG-13 Version'

The internet is still reeling from Vulture‘s jaw-dropping interview with Quincy Jones on Wednesday. The expansive chat contained revelation after mind-blowing revelation — He dated Ivanka Trump! He knows who was behind JFK’s assassination! He says Marlon Brando had a fling with Richard Pryor! He claims the King of Pop stole songs! — but perhaps the craziest part is that, according to author David Marchese, that was just the toned down version.

“I asked him what I thought was a pretty generic question about Michael Jackson — you know, ‘What’s something people don’t get about Michael Jackson?’ — thinking that he would say he was a better songwriter than he was given credit for or something like that, and he was like, ‘Oh yeah, he stole songs,'” Marchese told BuzzFeed News on Thursday. “I was like ‘Huh, so that’s how this is gonna go.'”

The veteran interviewer admitted to feeling more than a little thrown by the 84-year-old music legend’s extremely candid answers to his queries. When asked to name the most jarring moment, he insisted there were “a handful” of such instances.

“When he called me a motherf—ker, that’s one where I’m like, ‘OK, I’ll take a minute and figure out if you’re saying that playfully or if you’re actually calling me a motherf—er.'” He was also quick to cite the time Jones characterized Brando as one who would “f— a mailbox.”

For all endlessly quotable, and sometimes head-scratching anecdotes, Marchese insisted that the wildest material wound up getting cut.

“I don’t even know if I want to get into this too much, you know, this is like the PG-13 version of how the conversation actually went,” he said. “There was stuff said that, like, this is not, I cannot, I’m not going to wade into these waters. So there was a lot of like jaw-drop moments.”