Quincy Jones Pens Memoir

NEW YORK (AP) - Super-producer Quincy Jones has laid it all out - from his days of playing with Count Basie to producing Michael Jackson's "Thriller'' album - in a new memoir that includes chapters by Ray Charles and family members.

In "Q,'' Jones recalls how in 1964 he and the other black members of Basie's band were expected to enter the Sands hotel in Las Vegas through the kitchen, even though they were playing the main room.
That night, Frank Sinatra, who Jones calls "a brother in disguise,'' hired a bodyguard for each member of the band.

Jones writes that Sinatra told the bodyguards that '"If anybody even looks funny at any member of this band, break both their ... legs.'''
He writes that Jackson "was so shy he'd sit down and sing behind the couch with his back to me while I sat there with my hands over my eyes with the lights off.''

But he explains that the enigmatic King of Pop "lived in a fantasyland, because that's what worked for him. ... I don't know how anybody could expect him to end up like Mr. Joe Next Door, given that he's been in the public eye since he was 5 years old.''