For Quincy Jones, nothing is off-limits — except Bill Cosby

Suzy Byrne
·Editor, Yahoo Entertainment
Quincy Jones and Bill Cosby at a 2004 tribute to Ray Charles: The producer is still loyal to his old friend. (Photo: Gary Friedman/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)
Quincy Jones and Bill Cosby at a 2004 tribute to Ray Charles: The producer is still loyal to his old friend. (Photo: Gary Friedman/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)

Quincy Jones seems to have been sipping on truth serum, because his last two major interviews turned into salacious tell-alls.

The music producer, 84, claims he dated Ivanka Trump. He outed Marlon Brando and Richard Pryor as lovers. He said he saw Ray Charles shoot heroin into his testicles. He turned down Marilyn Monroe. He thinks the Beatles sucked. He alleged that Michael Jackson stole songs. He insisted he knows who killed President John F. Kennedy. The list goes on.


But when talking sexual misconduct in Hollywood with Vulture, he was asked specifically about the alleged behavior of his old pal Bill Cosby — who has publicly been accused of raping, drugging, coercing, or sexually assaulting nearly 50 women since 1965 — and he surprisingly didn’t have anything to say. Instead of answering, he replied, “It was all of them. Brett Ratner. [Harvey] Weinstein. Weinstein — he’s a jive motherf***er. Wouldn’t return my five calls. A bully.”

The interviewer continued to press him, in this exchange:

What about Cosby, though?
What about it?

Were the allegations a surprise to you?
We can’t talk about this in public, man.

In his previous, very buzzy interview with GQ, he didn’t give anything else about the man he recorded albums with. (Jones also composed the theme to The Bill Cosby Show.) During the chat, Jones saw a photo of himself with the disgraced comedian and said, “Cosby … Jesus” without further comment.

Quincy Jones and Bill Cosby have been friends and collaborators. Here’s the album <em>The Original Jam Sessions 1969</em>, which they worked on together.
Quincy Jones and Bill Cosby have been friends and collaborators. Here’s the album The Original Jam Sessions 1969, which they worked on together.

While most of the people — sorry, Ivanka — that Jones has dished on recently have passed away, making it easier to tell the tales and not face, say, slander lawsuits (Richard Pryor’s widow actually confirmed that her husband allegedly had a sexual relationship with Marlon Brando), the fact that he has stayed silent on the topic of Cosby hasn’t gone unnoticed. And he’s been called out on social media.

Mostly there were funny memes though.

Others didn’t seem surprised, because there are obviously legal ramifications.

Even Evan Handler, of Sex and the City and Californication, had opinions. He said future interviewers “should hit that a little harder.”

For the record, Jones didn’t give much on the Clintons either. He dropped how he was hanging around the White House for eight years when President Clinton was in office, but after offering that Hillary’s keeping secrets hurt her success, he clammed up.

As for the latest on Bill Cosby’s legal saga, his sexual assault retrial is set to begin on April 2. But his lawyers are hard at work in hopes of postponing it. The comedian, who is 80, recently performed in Philadelphia and didn’t mention the allegations against him.

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