The story of Q being mad because Michael was sneaking to produce songs is crazy......Michael had a whole studio at Hayvenhurst before he even began working with Q and Q getting "tired" doesn't sound too far from the truth but John Barnes' story regarding the contract deal for 3 albums makes the most sense to me since he was with Michael heavily during this era
"Just to clear the air, we didn't go to Michael's house to do demos to hand over, we went to make the record and there was a conflict in understanding as to whether Michael had the right to proceed forward without Quincy Jones or not. There was a misunderstanding let's just say. When that film was done [E.T.] and there was a record soundtrack that was released, Quincy had a relationship with Michael that was to cover 3 projects. Michael thought those 3 had been fulfilled so that's the environment we believed we were coming into. It ended up proving out that E.T. was viewed as a soundtrack [and] not a record so we lost our positioning on Bad."