GATES: How did you get here? You were a poor kid, right?
JONES: Oh, man, we were so poor we had to go outside to change our mind. No, we paid our dues, man.
GATES: Really?
JONES: Oh, yeah. We had rats, man, in Louisville. My grandmother, the security system was a bent nail over the back door. Kerosene lamps and coal, no electricity. I know what both sides feel like so when something good happens I appreciate it because I know what it’s about. I used Grab those rats’ tails still moving, some greens, man.
GATES: Did it taste good?
JONES: Seven years old, I didn’t know the difference. She was a slave, man, she knew how to survive.
GATES: Somebody in your family knew how to survive because you have not only survived but thrived. What do you attribute your — I know it’s a hard thing to answer but what do you attribute your success? Your brother’s a judge, right?
JONES: Yeah.
GATES: How did you guys make it from —
JONES: I don’t know. We were talking about that with Oprah. We talk about well adjusted, well nurtured kids and everything else. I guess most of the people I know that are really doing it have had the brains kicked out when they were kids. And there’s a hole down in that inner child that sometimes — I know it’s happened centuries ago. The creators, the classical composers and so forth that had that hole that they had to fill with something and so if it’s going to be aesthetic beauty, that’s good enough.
I used to go in this little closet and anything that happened to me negative I would try to find a way to go into this other world, music world, and just get out of whatever was going on because I couldn’t handle it, and just crawl into that world. I’ve been crawling into that world for a long time. Beauty and creativity and just convert that same energy — you can use it. If it comes out bitterness it destroys you, and I’m not going to destroy myself so it’s a conversion. It’s like taking garbage and making recycled paper out of it, whatever it is. Recycle that energy and guide it that way and put it in whatever it is, a record or movie, a tune, arrangement, whatever.