Richard Pryor was open about his sexual history with men. (Richard Pryor: Live on the Sunset Strip/Serge Balkin/Condé Nast via Getty Images)
(Updated – Paul Mooney responds below) Quincy Jones’ blunt and revealing responses in a Wednesday interview continues to make headlines, but perhaps none of it is making waves quite like him saying Richard Pryor had sex with actor Marlon Brando.
“[Marlon] Brando used to go cha-cha dancing with us,” the legendary producer told Vulture Wednesday, Feb. 7. “He could dance his ass off. He was the most charming motherf—– you ever met. He’d f— anything. Anything! He’d f— a mailbox. James Baldwin. Richard Pryor. Marvin Gaye.”
And while the internet completely lost it over the revelation, Pryor’s widow, Jennifer Lee, said the comedian wouldn’t have an issue with Jones’ disclosure — he’d even laugh about it. In fact, she said Pryor was open about his bisexuality and documented it in diaries she aims to publish this year.
“It was the ’70s!” she told TMZ Wednesday. “Drugs were still good, especially quaaludes. If you did enough cocaine, you’d f— a radiator and send it flowers in the morning.”
But comedian Paul Mooney, who was Pryor’s friend and writing partner, doesn’t share Lee’s happy-go-lucky attitude on the matter. He tweeted Thursday, Feb. 8 that he’d been “getting too many calls from irrelevant, sick n thirsty gravediggers who’ll do/sell anything for a dime or relevance.”
https://twitter.com/PaulEalyMooney/status/961672555194089474
The comic had also been the subject of a ’70s roast where Pryor joked about Mooney’s homosexuality.
Aside from the sexcapades, Jones’ interview also hit on other subjects.
For one, he had a breakdown after writing the score to “The Color Purple,” which was directed by friend Steven Spielberg.
“I was a producer on that movie and everybody went on vacation after we finished filming — everybody except me,” he said. “I had to stay home and write an hour and 55 minutes of music for the movie. I was so f—— tired from doing that, I couldn’t see. I put too much on my plate and it took its toll.”
He also touched on the “mentality of the people making the music” today, which he says has led to worse music than before.
“Producers now are ignoring all the musical principles of the previous generations,” Jones said. “It’s a joke. That’s not the way it works: You’re supposed to use everything from the past. If you know where you come from, it’s easier to get where you’re going. You need to understand music to touch people and become the soundtrack to their lives.”
And while he proudly proclaimed his greatest musical innovation is “everything I’ve done,” Jones admitted that his last album, 2010’s “Q: Soul Bossa Nostra,” was a mistake that he’s learned from. The record featured R&B, hip hop and pop acts recording new versions of some of Jones’ classics.
“I was not in favor of doing it … I said to them, ‘Look, you got to make the music better than we did on the originals,'” he said. “That didn’t happen. T-Pain, man, he didn’t pay attention to the details.”
But T-Pain tweeted that he had no interest in re-recording Michael Jackson’s “P.Y.T. (Pretty Young Thing)” with Robin Thicke on the LP.
“For the record, I told my managers (at the time) and I told @QuincyDJones in his face ‘I don’t want to remake any of your past records because I know I’m gonna f— it up. I’ll never be able to reach the greatest of MJ,'” the rapper tweeted Wednesday, Feb. 7. “It took them hours to pump me up to even go in the booth.
“And I still hated it when I came out of the booth,” he continued. “Then the song came out and it was even worse than it sounded in the studio. This is legit one of the reasons I don’t work with the managers I had anymore because if I said I was uncomfortable doing something they didn’t care.”
Then, T-Pain called out Jones for not providing more direction.
https://twitter.com/TPAIN/status/961387562186264576
