ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Do you think the music business will eventually recover from where it is now?
QUINCY JONES: Who the hell knows? I think the passion for music is as high as ever. I think the distribution system is a disaster, totally flawed. It's a misunderstanding between Silicon Valley and the corporate bean counters at the record companies. And I don't think anybody knows what to do. Binary numbers are not new — they had binary numbers in Egypt, in 3500 B.C. That's still what drives all the high-tech stuff: permutations of zeros and ones. Once you get into the area of a CD or a DVD, you're handing your customer a smoking gun, 'cause it has the same power as a master. You couldn't do that with vinyl — vinyl would wear out and they'd have to buy another copy. It's changed so much. The technologies ran by the record business. The genie's out of the bottle, never to return. That's what I think. What do I know? I'm old-school, man! [Laughs]

Michael's also been recording an all-new album of his own. As someone who's collaborated with him closely, where would you like to see him go with his music?
I don't know. Right now, I haven't been concentrating on that. I've been involved in a lot of things, mainly my foundation — running all over the world, trying to figure out what to do about these kids that are having a real difficult time in Cambodia, Rwanda, the favelas, Katrina, everywhere. I care about that more than anything in the world. I'm going to be 75 this year. At that age, you've got to come up with some big solutions.

Given all that, would you say music is in the past for you?
God, no. Are you kidding me? People couldn't live two days without music. It's powerful stuff, man. It's the only thing in the world that engages the left and right brain simultaneously, emotion and intellect. Can you imagine one month with no music at all, not one note? You'd go out of your mind.

What about you personally, though? What would get you excited about making music again?
I'm going to. I'm working with Snoop Dogg, Joe Pesci...Tony Bennett called me a while ago, to do an album with him and Stevie Wonder. Music's always going to be a part of my life, man. I don't even know how to drive, so I guess I was born to do that.

Can you tell me anything else about those projects? What are they going to sound like?
I don't know. I just listen to God's whispers and when it's time to go, just go. I like it best when there's no time for paralysis from analysis. We ended up making Thriller in eight weeks, the entire album. We didn't have time to think about all that intellectual stuff. It's about blink! Malcolm Gladwell was absolutely right. You realize that we are all vehicles for a higher power to express what this is about. Music is a strange element of the planet, really. You can't see it, taste it, touch it, smell it — but you sure can feel it. Since I was 12 years old, all I've ever wanted to do is orchestrate, arrange, compose, and so forth. And most people are serious about their music. That's where it comes from. Mozart was not worried about making money off of music, you know. Money and bling-bling and Benjamins and all that stuff ain't about nothing. When we came up, we couldn't care, 'cause our idols were the raggediest dudes in the world.

Maybe these changes in the industry will help bring people back to what's important about music, then.
Yes. It's interesting to watch, though, isn't it? Especially when you get older. You start to have a different perspective on what it's really all about. I've been blessed enough, man, to work with almost everybody in the last 55 years of American music. It's a huge blessing.

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