Inside the life of Quincy Jones: The genius behind Thriller

As the music giant who produced everyone from Frank Sinatra to Michael Jackson, as well as composing myriad film and TV scores, Quincy Jones reputedly had the biggest address book in Hollywood.

He also had a wonderfully indiscreet anecdote for almost every entry in that book.

When the immensely talented and versatile producer – who knew Malcolm X, Buzz Aldrin, Marlon Brando and even Nazi filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl, not to mention the kings and queens of jazz, pop and rap – sat down for interviews, publicists would hover nervously, waiting for him to drop the next bombshell.

It was Jones, for example, who revealed the full extent of his pal Brando's rapacious sex drive, telling an interviewer in 2018: 'He'd f*** anything. Anything! He'd f*** a mailbox. Richard Pryor. Marvin Gaye.'

The widow of Hollywood comedian and actor Pryor later confirmed the truth of his claim, saying he'd always been open about his bisexuality with close friends.

It was Jones, too, who said Elvis couldn't sing and the Beatles couldn't play. Yet even the stories that sounded too far-fetched, such as his claim to have gone out with the far younger Ivanka Trump (which she denied), often turned out to be true.

Yesterday, it was announced that Jones had died aged 91. The man who was married three times and had seven children by five women including actress Nastassja Kinski was surrounded by his family when he passed away peacefully at his home in Bel Air neighbourhood of Los Angeles on Sunday night.

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When he was 84, he boasted that he had 22 girlfriends who all knew each other. But then Jones, whose smooth affability was a major reason so many artists wanted to work with him, was always happy to share outrageous revelations about himself, not least his sex life and drug-taking. He said he lost his virginity aged 12 and got hooked on heroin at 15.

As befitting the man who produced the biggest-selling album in history, Michael Jackson's Thriller (as well as Bad and Off The Wall), Jones had plenty to say about the superstar who recorded it with him in just eight weeks in 1982.

They had fun working together, he said, except perhaps for the time when the King of Pop brought his pet boa constrictor, Muscles, into the studio and it wrapped itself around Jones's leg. On another occasion, Jackson's pet chimpanzee, Bubbles, bit Jones's young daughter, Rashida. However, Jones had few illusions about Jackson. In a 2018 interview, Jones accused the performer of filching other star's songs – citing the similarity of Donna Summers's State Of Independence with Jackson's Billie Jean. 'The notes don't lie, man. He was as Machiavellian as theycome,' he said.

'Michael stole a lot of stuff. He stole a lot of songs… Greedy, man. Greedy,' he said. 'I hate to get into this publicly, but Michael stole a lot of stuff.'

Although he amassed a fortune estimated at $500 million, Jones – who won 28 Grammys over a 70-year career – was born into poverty in Chicago in 1933, or as he put it, 'the biggest black ghetto in the worst depression – there was nothing but gangsters round us'. His paternal grandmother was a former slave from Kentucky who was raped by his grandfather, a Welsh slave owner.

Jones's schizophrenic mother was committed to a mental hospital when he was very young, and he was raised by his carpenter father, who worked for local criminals. He started getting into trouble at an early age and, when he was seven, a local villain nailed his hand to a fence with a switchblade, leaving Jones with a scar for life. He vowed to become a gangster himself when he grew up.

Then the family moved to Seattle where Jones recalled how, aged ten, he and his brothers broke into a community hall.

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'I saw this piano in the dark. I walked in that room and touched the keys and every cell of my body said, 'This is what you're going to do for the rest of your life',' he said. 'That day I stopped wanting to be a gangster and started wanting to be a musician…I'd have been dead or in prison if I hadn't done that.'

He started practising the trumpet and took up jazz. His first band was short-lived after their car was hit by a bus, leaving four of the members dead and only 14-year-old Jones alive.

Jones, who claimed to know 26 languages including Mandarin, Arabic and Japanese, earned a scholarship to music college at 15 and never looked back. Although in a tribute to his early days he continued to carry a gun, he played trumpet for the studio band that supported Elvis and in various jazz bands before moving in the early 1960s into the more lucrative career of composing. He became the first black vice-president of a major record company in 1961, one of many firsts in a pioneering career.

His film credits included The Italian Job and In The Heat Of The Night while he arranged music for Ella Fitzgerald, Nana Mouskouri and Frank Sinatra.

Working with the notoriously aggressive Sinatra (for whom he scored Fly Me To The Moon) was challenging. 'It takes a lot of guts to tell Sinatra what to do, man. You better have your stuff together because the man takes no prisoners,' said Jones in 2006. He made sure he never criticised Sinatra in public. The star easily resorted to violence – 'You might say the wrong thing. Didn't take much,' recalled Jones. 'But he 'couldn't fight for s***.'

As for the Beatles, calling them the 'worst musicians in the world' in a notorious 2018 interview, he went on: 'Paul was the worst bass player I ever heard. And Ringo? Don't even talk about it.

'I remember once we were in the studio with [Beatles producer] George Martin, and Ringo had taken three hours for a four-bar thing he was trying to fix on a song. He couldn't get it.'

It wasn't only musical icons he was ready to trash. Black cultural heroes were also in his sights. Jones claimed he and jazz legend Ray Charles bought heroin off future black civil rights activist Malcolm X when they were teenage members of Jones's first jazz band. 'Everybody in the band' bought heroin off him, he added.

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Jones, who was 15 at the time said he was 'hooked' on the drug for five months but realised he had to give it up after he fell down five flights of stairs.

Jones's love life was similarly colourful, although one woman it never included was Marilyn Monroe. 'Frank [Sinatra] was always trying to hook me up with Marilyn Monroe, but Marilyn Monroe had a chest that looked like pears, man,' said Jones with his usual delicacy in 2018.

There might have been more girlfriends than the 22 he still claimed aged 84, but his daughters begged him not to go out with women younger than them. 'When you've been a dog all your life, God gives you beautiful daughters and you have to suffer,' he said.

For their part, they complained he sorely neglected them for his career. 'Everything else was second, which wasn't so right for us. But that's how it was,' said Jolie Jones, the eldest child.

In later years, Jones spent six days a year at a Stockholm clinic being treated with cutting-edge medical technology that he predicted would allow him to live to 110. It must have been one of the few goals he never achieved.