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Ten-time ASCAP songwriter of the year Ashley Gorley is donating royalties from the Billboard Country Airplay chart-topping hit “I Am Not Okay,” written by Gorley with co-writers Taylor Phillips and Casey Brown, and recorded by Jelly Roll, to help aid mental health initiatives for those in the songwriting community.
Gorley, who is also known for writing No. 1 hits including the Morgan Wallen/Post Malone 16-week Hot 100 chart-topping “I Had Some Help” and other hits recorded by Carrie Underwood, Chris Stapleton, Kelsea Ballerini and more, is commemorating the success of “I Am Not Okay” by supporting the launch of a program by The Onsite Foundation, aimed at helping the creative community. The Creatives Support Network will provide free mentorship, education, resources and mental wellness support specifically created to help members of the songwriting community.
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“A song about struggling to get out of bed in the morning is No. 1 and that really speaks to where we are in the world,” Gorley said in a statement. “It was important for us to take this moment to say ‘you’re not the only one,’ and to support a creative network with programming that is tailored to songwriters at any stage of their journey.”
Songwriter-focused intensives are a key part of the program, including two-day immersive, individual or group coaching and therapy sessions designed for creatives. The program also includes mentorship, social impact initiatives and online curriculum and conversation resources complimentary to the creative community, thanks to Gorley giving 80 grants for 80 individuals, in addition to program infrastructure support.
“This song in particular, along with the Jelly Roll Era, is creating a movement and timely conversation regarding the need to equip creatives with necessary tools to optimize their personal and professional pursuits,” Onsite’s Miles Adcox said in a statement. “I’ve been at the intersection of Music and Mental Wellness for the better part of my career and have experienced firsthand the challenges and opportunities facing today’s creatives. Music is medicine, and the comfort, relief, support, and overall impact it provides globally to humanity is immeasurable. Our storytellers are a national treasure we should pour into and protect at all costs. We’re grateful to Ashley, Jelly Roll, and the Tape Room writers for starting this conversation in the songwriting community and for lending their expertise and resources.”
The Jelly Roll hit “I Am Not Okay” offers an honest portrayal of the struggles many face with mental health issues. The song is from Jelly Roll’s recent Billboard 200-topping album Beautifully Broken.
Among Gorley’s recent accolades are ACM songwriter and song of the year for the Cole Swindell hit “She Had Me at Heads Carolina,” and ASCAP’s country song of the year with Wallen’s “You Proof.” Gorley was also honored as NSAI’s Songwriter of the Decade for 2010-2019.
In 2011, Gorley, a Belmont University graduate, also formed his own publishing company, Tape Room Music, with a roster that includes his “I Am Not Okay” co-writers Brown and Phillips.
Political spending among the major players in the live music industry has largely remained flat this election cycle, while contributions by individuals working at Live Nation were up slightly over past years and money spent on lobbying members of Congress dropped in 2024, according to election data reviewed by Billboard.
At Anschutz Entertainment Group (AEG), owner Phil Anschutz spent $1.9 million supporting this year’s Republican reelection efforts but opted not to throw any support behind presidential candidate Donald Trump. Anschutz has never supported the brash presidential candidate, but though AEG boss is sinking millions of dollars into efforts to flip the Senate for Republicans.
Live Nation chief executive Michael Rapino, on the other hand, gave $25,000 in political donations to mostly Democratic Senate candidates and causes, records show, while the usually politically active James Dolan, chairman of Madison Square Garden Entertainment, made a single $25,000 donation this election cycle to Secure NYS PAC, a shadowy political action committee created to defeat House member Tom Suozzi (NY-D).
At Live Nation, executives donated about $387,000 to mostly Democratic candidates, a drop of about 6% compared to 2020, when executives donated $410,000.
The spending cycle comes during an unusually politically active year for the concert business, with a major ticketing reform package inching forward in Congress and the Department of Justice’s investigation of Live Nation on anti-trust grounds making its way through the courts.
Neither political cause has driven major spending by Rapino or his long-time rival Anschutz, who has once again sunk hundreds of thousands of dollars into an effort to flip the Senate over to the Republicans. Anschutz, a Colorado billionaire who made large parts of his fortune in energy, railroads and communications, has long supported groups like the National Republican Senatorial Committee. This year, Anschutz made more than 200 donations totaling $1.9 million to right-leaning political groups, the bulk of which went to political groups supporting Senate Republicans like John Cornyn, John Thune and former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. Anschutz also spent $1.9 million during the 2016 cycle and $836,000 during the 2020 cycle.
Rapino spent considerably less than Anschutz this election cycle, with his biggest political contribution being the $10,000 he donated to Live Nation’s political action committee, which gave $200,000 to candidates from both political parties this cycle. As an individual donor, Rapino cut about $4,600 in donations to Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Jacky Rosen in Nevada and supported Adam Schiff’s campaign for Senate in California, as well as the campaigns of high-profile California House members Katie Porter and Eric Swalwell.
Meanwhile, Gregg Maffei, president/CEO of Liberty Media and the chairman of Live Nation Entertainment, spent more than $112,000 on conservative politicians and political causes, mostly supporting the presidential candidacy of Trump and Senate Republicans. That’s significantly down from the 2020 election cycle when Maffei spent $420,000 on right-wing political causes and politicians, and the 2016 cycle when he spent $324,000.
In the future, every technology company will have a celebrity advisor.
The latest is Timbaland, who is working with the generative AI company Suno on “day-to-day product development and strategic creative direction,” according to a late-October announcement. Timbaland is a hip-hop and R&B icon — a star songwriter, an innovative producer and a compelling performer. (His performance at the June Songwriters Hall of Fame gala was stunning.) As much of a genius as Timbaland is, however, it seems reasonable to wonder where he’s going to find the time for software development.
It also seems reasonable to wonder whether Suno hired him for more than his vision. As Suno faces controversy and litigation from rightsholders arguing that AI companies need to license the music they use to train their software, Timbaland may be there to make a case that this doesn’t matter that much. (Neither Suno nor a representative for Timbaland would comment on the nature of Timbaland’s deal.) In other words, Timbaland is there to do for Suno what Limp Bizkit and Chuck D tried to do for Napster — position the company with users but against the majority of creators and rightsholders.
It seems like ancient history now, but within a month after Metallica sued Napster in April 2000, Limp Bizkit and Chuck D stood with the company against the band, Dr. Dre (who sued a few weeks later) and most of the music business. Limp Bizkit played a few weeks of Napster-sponsored free shows, and Bizkit frontman Fred Durst said the company offered fans a great way to sample albums before buying them. Around the same time, Chuck D wrote a New York Times op-ed supporting Napster and announced that he was working with the company on a contest. The company’s subsequent bankruptcy filing contained a reference to a payment to Chuck D for “the cost of speaking engagements and support,” according to Joseph Menn’s excellent All the Rave: The Rise and Fall of Shawn Fanning’s Napster.
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Then, and perhaps now, the idea was to position a startup backed by venture capitalists as being on the side of artists. Suno is “the best tool of the future,” Timbaland has said. “It allows you to get any idea in your imagination out of your head.” Suno has already positioned itself as a disruptor, arguing in its response to the major label lawsuit that “What the major record labels really don’t want is competition.” Maybe. But the lawsuit is over Suno’s alleged ingestion of copyrighted recordings in order to train its software.
This kind of maneuvering isn’t so unusual. For decades, Silicon Valley has introduced innovations with a predictable strategy: Ask forgiveness instead of permission, then take political issues directly to users. This strategy, as much as the technology involved, allowed Uber and Airbnb to grow so big that it can be hard to remember that they are basically high-tech ways to get around local taxi and hotel regulations. Uber and Airbnb are essentially in the business of regulatory arbitrage — they face less regulation than their legacy-company competitors, so they often come out ahead. And they were able to stay in business at least partly because they very quickly grew too big to fail. No politician wants to be known for making it harder to book a car or a hotel.
Suno and other generative AI platforms are less problematic, because they would compete more fairly with other tools to make music. The only question is whether the company should compensate rightsholders — including, presumably, Timbaland himself. The lawsuit against Suno will get complicated — one of these AI cases could end up going to the Supreme Court. But creators who want to be compensated for the use of their work aren’t against AI music tools any more than Metallica was against digital distribution — they want to get paid for the use of their work.
At least one creator will almost certainly make a lot of money from Suno: Timbaland. And although it might look bad for him to be on the other side of the issue from most musicians, this has been a reliable way to make money. One of the big winners of the Early Digital Music Age — the 1999 introduction of Napster to the 2011 U.S. launch of Spotify — was Alanis Morissette.
Yes, really.
When MP3.com sponsored one of her tours, in 1999, Morissette invested $217,355 into early-stage shares of the company, which — well, it was never entirely clear how it would actually make money, but that address was really hot at the time. She made more than a million dollars selling only some of the stock.
At the same time, it’s worth remembering how these moves look years later. From a 2024 perspective, it seems smart that Metallica and Dr. Dre sued Napster, because that company’s demise paved the way for licensed, commercial streaming services. Cracker frontman David Lowery and Taylor Swift can also say they were on the right side of history when it comes to creators’ rights. In retrospect, Limp Bizkit and Chuck D seem a bit naive. Years from now, Timbaland, as talented as he is, may seem the same.
This is The Legal Beat, a weekly newsletter about music law from Billboard Pro, offering you a one-stop cheat sheet of big new cases, important rulings and all the fun stuff in between.
This week: Young Thug ends his years-long YSL RICO case with a guilty plea that results in no prison time; UMG accuses distributor TuneCore of “industrial-scale copyright infringement”; Ed Sheeran wins a case over “Let’s Get It On,”; Metro Boomin faces a sexual assault lawsuit; and much more.
THE BIG STORY: Young Thug Heads Home
And just like that, it was all over for Young Thug. More than two years after the Grammy-winning rapper was arrested as part of a sweeping Atlanta gang case, he pleaded guilty and was sentenced to serve just 15 years probation with no prison time — a stunning end to a legal saga that rocked the music industry.
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Pitting prosecutors in America’s rap capital against one of hip-hop’s biggest stars, the case against Thug and his alleged “YSL” gang raised big questions — about the fairness of the criminal justice system; about violent personas in modern hip-hop; and about prosecutors using rap lyrics as evidence.
Thug, a chart-topping rapper and producer who helped shape the sound of hip-hop in the 2010s, was accused of being the kingpin of a violent gang that had wrought “havoc” on the Atlanta area for nearly a decade. But the case was a mess from the start, featuring endless witness lists, procedural missteps, a jailhouse stabbing and a bizarre episode that saw a judge removed from the case.
How did Young Thug go from that mess — the trial had no end in sight and was set to run well into 2025 — to walking away a free man? Go read my deep dive on the YSL endgame to find out.
Other top stories this week…
“RAMPANT PIRACY” – Universal Music Group filed a lawsuit against TuneCore and parent company Believe over allegations of “massive” copyright infringement, accusing the digital distributor of serving as a “hub” for the widespread dissemination of illegal copies of songs on streaming platforms and social media services, including those by Justin Bieber, Ariana Grande, Rihanna, Kendrick Lamar, Lady Gaga and many others. Seeking a whopping $500 million in damages, UMG claims TuneCore pursued “rapid growth” of its DIY distribution services by turning a blind eye to “rampant piracy” among its users: “Believe is a company built on industrial-scale copyright infringement,” said the lawsuit. In a statement, Believe and TuneCore said they “strongly refute these claims” and would “fight them” in court.
“MUSICAL BUILDING BLOCKS” – Ed Sheeran won a ruling at a federal appeals court confirming that his “Thinking Out Loud” did not infringe the copyright to Marvin Gaye‘s “Let’s Get It On,” effectively ending one of several cases over the sonic similarities between the two hits. The lawsuit argued that Sheeran copied a chord progression and rhythm from Gaye’s iconic track, but the appeals court said the two songs share only “fundamental musical building blocks” that are “ubiquitous in pop music” — and that granting a “monopoly” on them to any single songwriter would “threaten to stifle creativity.”
METRO ALLEGATIONS – Superstar producer Metro Boomin was hit with a civil lawsuit over allegations that he raped and impregnated a woman named Vanessa LeMaistre during a drug-and-booze-fueled incident at a recording studio in 2016. The lawsuit claimed that the alleged assault was referenced in a song he produced — a surprising accusation, given that Metro does not write lyrics or rap himself and the lyrics in question were by 21 Savage and Offset.
TEKASHI ARRESTED – Tekashi 6ix9ine (Daniel Hernandez) was arrested and charged over allegations that he violated a plea agreement struck with prosecutors when he infamously agreed to testify against his former Brooklyn gangmates back in 2018. The provocative rapper had just six months left on the five years of supervised release he secured under that deal, but prosecutors accused him of traveling to Las Vegas without permission and failing a drug test for meth. Tekashi denied the charges at an arraignment hearing, but the judge — the same one who signed off on the plea deal — cited a “full spectrum disregard for the law” and ordered him held until his next court date later this month.
MEGAN THEE PLAINTIFF – Megan Thee Stallion sued a YouTuber and social media personality named Milagro Gramz (Milagro Elizabeth Cooper), accusing her of “churning out falsehoods” about the criminal case stemming from the 2020 incident in which Tory Lanez shot Megan in the foot. Calling Gramz a “mouthpiece and puppet” for Lanez, the superstar seemed intent on using the case as a warning shot to other bloggers who allegedly share false information about the high-profile case: “Enough is enough.”
“OPAQUE AND UNFAIR” – A federal appeals court ruled that Live Nation and Ticketmaster must face a class action claiming they abuse their dominance to charge “extraordinarily high” prices to hundreds of thousands of ticket buyers. In doing so, the court rejected Live Nation’s argument that fans had signed agreements that required them to resolve disputes via private arbitration. The court not only called those agreements “unconscionable and unenforceable” but also “opaque and unfair”; “poorly drafted and riddled with typos”; and “so dense, convoluted and internally contradictory to be borderline unintelligible.”
CASSIE VIDEO CLASH – Prosecutors in the case against Sean “Diddy” Combs told a federal judge that they had not been behind the leaking of the infamous 2016 surveillance video showing the rapper assaulting his ex-girlfriend Cassie Ventura, arguing that such accusations were merely gamesmanship by Diddy’s defense team with the goal of trying to “suppress a damning piece of evidence.”
DIDDY ACCUSER UNMASKED – A federal judge in one of the many civil cases against Combs ruled that one of his accusers cannot use a “Jane Doe” pseudonym, saying her right to avoid “public scrutiny” and “embarrassment” does not trump Diddy’s right to defend himself against such “heinous” allegations. The ruling is not binding on other judges, but it could influence how they handle the issue of numerous other cases that have been filed against Combs by Doe plaintiffs.
MADLIB v. EGON – Hip-hop producer Madlib filed a lawsuit against his former manager Eothen “Egon” Alapatt over allegations of “rank self-dealing,” claiming the exec abused his role to claim undue profits from Madlib’s music and commit other alleged misdeeds. The case claims that Egon believes he can “keep profiting from Madlib work and goodwill because there is nothing Madlib can do about it” and is demanding that the artist “buy him out” if he wants to end the relationship.
The world’s biggest broadcast company, iHeartMedia, has laid off another round of employees in recent days, as the debt-plagued radio industry continues to contract during the music-streaming era. “Right now, it seems like the business model they’ve had the last few years, of making one person do 40 people’s jobs, is where it’s going,” says Nick Jordan, an assistant program director of Raleigh, N.C., country station WNCB until he lost his iHeart job Monday (Nov. 4). “But we did a good job, for as long as we could, keeping everything local and community-oriented.”
A rep for iHeart, which owns 860 stations in 160 U.S. markets and advertises “there’s a local iHeartRadio station virtually everywhere,” would not specify the number of recent layoffs, which follows a wave of job cuts in March and others since the pandemic. Radio-news outlets such as Radio and Music Pros and Barrett Media have listed more than a dozen laid-off names this week, including morning-show hosts, promotion and programming execs and big-city regional directors. Jordan said he was watching a video Monday morning of Bill Squire, an iHeart colleague who lost his job in Cleveland, when “one of the big bosses” walked into his own station to deliver the news.
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“S— happens,” says Jordan, 31, a nine-year industry veteran. “It’s part of the radio business.”
Although radio listenership has declined, according to some studies, the business remains resilient, drawing 82% of adult Americans as of 2022. And while major labels such as Universal and Atlantic have correspondingly laid off radio-promotion employees over the past year, the medium is still important for breaking hits, especially in country and other genres.
According to Wendy Goldberg, an iHeart spokesperson, “very few jobs” have been affected in the 10,000-employee company. She rebuts data that suggests a decline in audience consumption.
“Our broadcast radio audience has more listeners than it did 10 years ago,” she says, citing a Nielsen study that shows that younger listeners increased slightly in the third quarter of this year. She adds that iHeart remains “the No. 1 podcast publisher, bigger than the next two combined, and we’re five times the size of the next largest digital-radio service.”
“We’ve been able to achieve this by modernizing the company and increasing our use of technology,” Goldberg says in a statement. “These changes are another step in that journey.”
Squire, a stand-up comedian who has co-hosted the Alan Cox Show on Cleveland rock station WMMR since 2013, received the news of his layoff by phone Monday a.m. “They assured me it’s not performance-based: ‘There are big cuts across the company and there’s nothing they can do,’” he recalls.
Squire, who plans to return to the road as a touring comic, promoting his album We’re Getting Famous, says the radio business is “cutting costs wherever they can.” While Jordan is hopeful the “pendulum will swing back a little bit,” Squire says of media cuts: “You see it in radio, you see it in TV, a lot of Hollywood is out of business right now. The entertainment field has changed so quickly with the Internet and YouTube and podcasts that legacy media is just trying to catch up and figure out how to adapt to it.”
Universal Music Group (UMG), ABKCO and Concord Music Group have filed a lawsuit against Believe and its distribution company TuneCore, accusing them of “massive ongoing infringements” of their sound recordings, including tracks by Justin Bieber, Ariana Grande, Rihanna, ABBA, Kendrick Lamar, Lady Gaga, DJ Snake, Aqua and more. The companies are seeking “at least $500,000,000” in damages.
In a complaint filed Monday evening (Nov. 4) in Manhattan federal court by Andrew Bart and Gianni Servodidio at Jenner & Block, UMG, ABKCO and Concord Music Group accuse Believe of being “overrun with fraudulent ‘artists’ and pirate record labels” and distributing copies of those fraudulent recordings to various streaming services and social media sites.
Lawyers for the plaintiffs claim that “Believe makes little effort to hide its illegal actions” and that the allegedly infringing recordings are “often minor variants on the names of… famous recording artists and titles of their most successful works.” The complaint says the alleged fraudsters attempt to avoid detection of the allegedly infringing recordings — some of which, they claim, are “sped up” or “remixed” versions of popular songs — by using misspellings of popular artist names, including “Kendrik Laamar,” “Arriana Gramde,” “Jutin Biber” and “Llady Gaga.”
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“Believe is fully aware that its business model is fueled by rampant piracy” in “pursuit of rapid growth,” the lawsuit claims, adding that the company has “turned a blind eye” to the infringing content that makes its way to social media and streaming services through its platform.
Additionally, lawyers for UMG and the other plaintiffs say that “Believe has taken advantage of the content management claiming system” on YouTube “to divert” and “delay… payment of royalties” that belong to the record labels. It is “telling,” they add, that after YouTube resolves these conflicts regarding the rightful ownership of these sound recordings, “Believe continue[s] to distribute the exact same track to other digital music service providers and to seek royalties for use of that track from those providers.”
This is not the first time bad actors have been accused of using YouTube’s content management system to claim royalties that are not rightfully theirs. In 2022, two men in Phoenix, Arizona pled guilty to claiming $23 million worth of YouTube royalties from unknowing Latin musicians like Julio Iglesias, Anuel AA, and Daddy Yankee despite having no actual ties to those artists. To facilitate claiming those royalties, the two men, operating under the company name MediaMuv, used AdRev, a rights management firm owned by Downtown.
“Believe is a company built on industrial-scale copyright infringement,” said a spokesperson for UMG in a statement. “Their illegal practices are not limited to cheating artists on major labels but artists on independent labels as well — including artists on the independent labels within the trade bodies of which Believe is itself a member. It’s no wonder that Believe has been outspoken against the streaming reform principles for which so many major and independent labels have been advocating. Why? Because such reforms would undermine and expose their system of building scale and market presence by distributing music for which they have no rights and illegally collecting royalties to enrich themselves and their co-conspirators.”
The complaint specifically charges Believe with direct copyright infringement, contributory copyright infringement, vicarious copyright infringement, direct infringement of pre-1972 sound recordings, contributory infringement of pre-1972 sound recordings and vicarious infringement of pre-1972 sound recordings.
Representatives for Believe and TuneCore did not immediately respond to Billboard‘s requests for comment.
It’s been a busy year for TuneCore’s parent company Believe. On March 1, the French music giant, which was publicly traded on the Euronext Paris stock exchange, announced that its board of directors had approved the move to take it private and that there was an “interested party” looking to acquire it. First, however, the bidder was requesting due diligence information and financial data ahead of making a formal bid. Later that month, the name of the bidder was revealed when it was announced that Warner Music Group (WMG) had issued a formal notice to disclose its interest in acquiring Believe, which also owns publishing administrator Sentric as well as labels like Naïve, Nuclear Blast and Groove Attack.
In early April, however, WMG called off its plans to submit a formal offer. The label did not elaborate on its decision, stating only that it was made “after careful consideration.” On April 19, Believe’s board of directors announced it was supporting an offer to take the company private at 15 euros ($15.98) per share from a consortium of funds managed by TCV, EQT X and Believe chairman/CEO Denis Ladegaillerie. The board’s three independent members unanimously voted in favor of an opinion that the bid was in the interest of minority shareholders.
Fraud and copyright infringement have been hot-button issues in the music business as the industry becomes more and more democratized, offering anyone the opportunity to release music in hours — sometimes minutes — at the click of a button. In response, TuneCore, along with CD Baby, Distrokid and other competitors, set up “Music Fights Fraud,” a coalition designed to stop bad actors from hopping from service-to-service to release songs they don’t own the rights to. A number of initiatives, including Credits Due, have since launched to try to fix metadata problems in the music business that can leave artists susceptible to royalty stealing and fraud, particularly on sites like YouTube.
Still, despite these efforts, TuneCore and other DIY distributors have been accused of allowing bad actors to use their sites to upload infringing or fraudulent content. In August 2020, Round Hill Music’s publishing arm sued TuneCore for “willful and unauthorized use” of 219 of their sound recordings. And in 2022, Billboard reported that some music executives believe Create Music Group games the system on YouTube to claim royalties, with one label source claiming the company was doing so “egregiously.”
Just last month, TikTok also rang the alarm bell about fraudulent content when it backed out of licensing negotiations with Merlin, a coalition of indie labels and distributors, to allegedly curb users uploading works they don’t own the rights to on the platform. TikTok said it would instead pursue individual licensing deals with labels and distributors that it considered to be safe.
The Recording Academy has let its members know, via email, of some changes, one of which will likely be unwelcome news to many: It will no longer provide complimentary tickets to its official Grammy afterparty to all current year nominees. This year’s Grammy Celebration, the afterparty’s official name, will be hosted by the Grammy Museum […]
Greg Phillinganes, a keyboardist from Detroit, was in Stevie Wonder‘s Wonderlove band in the early ’70s when prolific producer and composer Quincy Jones invited him to play on a session with jazzman Billy Eckstine. The collaboration led to a nearly 50-year relationship, in which Phillinganes appeared on “Q”-produced classics such as Michael Jackson‘s Off the Wall and Thriller, plus albums by Patti Austin, George Benson, James Ingram and Jones himself. By phone from New York, where he is working with Pink Floyd‘s David Gilmour on his Luck and Strange tour, Phillinganes remembers Jones, his friend and mentor, who died Sunday at 91.
The first time I met him, I was still in high school. I was 18, living in Detroit. Quincy was in town for a signing of his new album You’ve Got It Bad Girl [in 1973]. I left school early and I went downtown to Hudson’s [department store] to meet him. I bought an album and stood in line. I remember shaking hands with him, we talked for a couple minutes and I told him I was a musician. I remember him asking me what I play, and I said keyboards, and he asked me if I had a Fender Rhodes. I told him, “No, but I get to use one in the band I play in.” He was supportive and wonderful and encouraging.
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It led to another meeting, which happened after I joined Stevie’s band. He had me come down to A&M Studios to play on a little ditty that he was producing on Herb Alpert. The name of the song was “The Best Thing,” which was a single for this little artist named Billy Eckstine [the great jazz singer]. Not too long after that, I ended up on most everything [Jones] did. The thing about Quincy is, if he invites you in, it’s assumed you are worthy of being there.
He has a gentle way. If he’s sweating, he never lets you see it. He’s always able to bring out not only the best in you, but qualities in you that you didn’t even know you had. It’s only after the fact that you realize you’re a better musician than before you went in.
That was a wonderful surprise, to be called to participate in Michael Jackson’s first solo record [Off the Wall]. [Jones] asked me to arrange the song “I Can’t Help It” that was written by Stevie. We got the demo, we’re in the studio, we heard it. It was an up-tempo Latin feeling. Quincy gave me the responsibility of handling it. I thought, “Great, I’m going to do the same kind of thing Stevie did, and really amp it up and make it jazzy.” I did a demo. I had Sheila E. playing on it and Michael sang on it. I played it for Quincy and he said, “No.” Quincy said, “No, we have to slow it down and make it sexy.” Quincy was trying to establish Michael as an adult. When I understood that assignment, I jumped all over it and put a beautiful Rhodes on it and sexy synth bass and these gorgeous lush synths and overdubs. That is the version that’s on the record.
I had a nickname that was not from Quincy. It originated from junior high school in Detroit. This guy started doling out nicknames to people, and I happened to be there. He got to me and said, “We’re going to call you Mouse.” From that day on, everybody called me that. When I got older, it got less cute to me. “Hang on, I’m an adult, and I’m already small in stature, I don’t need to be reminded of it.” I grew in popularity quite heavily in Detroit, and I was playing in bands around town, everybody knew me by that name and it just stuck. I moved to L.A. in June ’75 and I felt this sense of freedom: “I’m starting a new life and nobody knows who I am — and more importantly, no one knows me by that dreaded nickname.” But guess what? There was a buddy of mine, another musician who also played keyboards, who started working with Quincy before I did. He told Quincy about me, but he told him that name. So the second time I met Quincy, the first thing he said to me was, “How you doin’, Mouse?” I went, “AAAAIEEEE! AAAAAGGGGHH!” Not just him. He would introduce me to friends of his, like Arthur Ashe, Colin Powell — he would say the nickname. It’s like, really, Quincy? Really?
When he developed the talk show Vibe [in 1997], he called me in his office and said, “I want you to be the musical director of this show.” I said, “This is incredible, I’ve always wanted to have a band on a TV talk show.” He paused and said, “There’s this one thing. I want you to use that name.” I said, “Aw, come on, man, you’ve got to give me a break on that. People are going to spot me in the mall and go, “Hey, that’s Mouse.” He looked at me and said, “That’s the idea.” Well, you couldn’t fight that. It got to the point where I accepted it from him, because his tone of voice, the way he called me that, it was just so endearing.
The last time I saw him was June 17. It took months of planning. I’d been desperately trying to contact him and it was so tough because the family were really keeping things tightly monitored, and understandably so. It was finally arranged and we talked and reminisced. He said things like, “Life is amazing, isn’t it, Mouse?” He was sitting in a chair and I stood behind him and he held my hand and kissed it. Just so beautiful and intimate, and I will never forget it.
It goes back to the directive that his mentor [French composition and orchestration teacher] Nadia Boulanger told him, and he has since told me, and I have since told every kid I meet: “You are never more of a musician than you are a human being.” Quincy was one rare, loving, passionate, soulful, funny and generous human being.
— As told to Steve Knopper
Mexican music hitmaker Geovani Cabrera has signed an exclusive global publishing deal with Universal Music Publishing Group (UMPG), Billboard has learned. Born in Sinaloa, Mexico, the 15-year music veteran has penned a number of hit songs, including “JGL” recorded by Luis R. Conriquez, Christian Nodal‘s “Se Me Olvidó” and “A Través Del Vaso” by Los Sebastianes, to name […]
Billboard’s peer-voted Power 100 Players’ Choice Award is back for 2025 and asking music industry members from all sectors to honor the executive they believe had the most impact across the music industry in the past year. Voting is open to all Billboard Pro members, both existing and new, with one vote per member per […]