by Joseph Vogel
In footage shot by videographer Steven Howell around this time, Jackson is seen basking in the “magical” joy of his secluded estate. One day, he even receives a surprise visit from Snow White and the Seven Dwarves from Disneyland. He speaks of his love for animals, children, and nature. “They’re very inspirational to my work,” he says. “I play off of those things. They stimulate ideas….You just play off of life….You can feel the energy.” That was the energy Jackson wanted to infuse into his creative work.
Recording commenced on Triumph in the spring of 1980. The first song Michael developed was “Can You Feel It,” an ambitious disco–meets–prog rock anthem that established the group’s new sound and image. Written by Michael and older brother Jackie, it was a song that proved they could do more than dance music—a song with a message, intended to break down racial barriers and bring people together (“Yes, the blood inside of you is inside of me!” Michael sings). The song gave their Triumph Tour a sense of scope and purpose that wasn’t there before. It also became his first full-scale short film—called The Triumph—a nearly ten-minute cutting-edge sci-fi creation story that cost more than ten times the average music video on MTV.
Highlights abound in the song: the superhero charge of the choir and horns; the galloping beat (subsequently lifted by Madonna for “Material Girl”); the ferocity of Tito’s guitar playing; the anticipation that builds as Randy sings the first verse; and then the goose-bumps moment when Michael arrives in the second. While the song reached only #77 on the pop chart in 1981, it has become perhaps the Jacksons’ most enduring and well-known post–Jackson 5 song.
More important in 1980, it showed his brothers—and anyone else who was paying attention—that Michael was locked in and committed to the album. “He wanted the album to be excellent,” said Tom Perry, who worked as the sole engineer on the project. “He wasn’t the type of guy that would’ve taken it on if he wasn’t going to give it everything he had. He always gave everything he had.”
For Triumph, Michael didn’t want an album that sounded like Destiny 2.0. “Triumph will be much better, much more creative than Destiny,” he said in a 1981 interview. “We’ve learned a lot since we made that. We didn’t have a chance to be as creative on it as we would have liked. We were rushed. We were pressured. It was the first album we wrote—and we had to prove to the Epic people we could write. Now the pressure is off. We don’t have to prove anything anymore.”
Recording took place at Hollywood Sound Studios. It took about six months in all, from the early spring to the late summer of 1980. From the beginning, recalled Perry, Michael was in control: “He was the driver and creative force behind the brothers. He drove the sessions. The brothers had great input: Tito, Jackie, Marlon, and Randy. There was respect between them….They all had a hand in making this album, but the driving force behind it was Michael.”
Not only did Michael write or cowrite six of the nine songs (including the four best tracks—“Can You Feel It,” “This Place Hotel,” “Lovely One,” and “Walk Right Now”); he was also credited as coproducer of the album. “Michael Jackson was a genius producer,” said Perry. “He was a phenomenally talented human being. He wasn’t a schooled musician, but everything was in his head. He would have to try and convey his ideas to me, the arranger, and musicians. He wouldn’t stop until the music sounded the way it did in his head.”
Along with Perry, keyboardist Greg Phillinganes (who had also worked on Off the Wall) played a major role, serving as keyboardist and rhythm arranger, as well as associate producer for the album. “You could feel the sense of liberation and excitement that they were on their own,” recalled Phillinganes. That not only meant independence from their father, but also from producers or songwriters selected by Epic. Instead, Michael brought in several musicians he worked with on Off the Wall, including Paulinho da Costa (percussion), David Williams (guitar), and Jerry Hey (horns). Sessions tended to start at noon and ended whenever they ended, sometimes as late as two or three in the morning. According to Perry, Michael was usually the first to arrive and the last to leave.
The hard work paid off. The album charted new territory for the Jacksons as a group—and for Michael as a songwriter and producer. NME marveled at its achievement: “Rivaled in the exalted sphere of Superdisco by only Earth Wind & Fire’s I Am—by which it is more than a little influenced—Triumph is genius almost from start to finish….The scope of the production, the authority of the arrangements, the sheer strength of sound, all are dazzling.”
For Michael, his biggest achievement on the album, besides “Can You Feel It,” was “This Place Hotel” (originally titled “Heartbreak Hotel,” but renamed due to Elvis Presley’s 1956 song of the same name). This was a watershed track for Michael—its darker tone and theme foreshadow later classics like “Billie Jean” and “Dirty Diana.” The song opens with a foreboding instrumental prelude, before a piercing scream (performed by sister LaToya Jackson) unleashes the song’s Gothic funk. “The scream was the kind that normally shatters a bad dream,” Jackson later wrote, “but our intention was to have the dream only begin, to make the listener wonder whether it was a dream or reality.” It is also, as Nelson George observed, one of the first examples of “a cinematic use of sound effects, horror film motifs, and vocal trickery to convey a sense of danger in his work.”
The lyrics, meanwhile, dealt with paranoia, regret, and fear. Jackson sings of “Faces staring, glaring, tearing through me.” According to recording engineer Tom Perry, Jackson spent more time on the track than any other on the album. Not only did he write, arrange, and produce it, “he did all the harmonies….I’m still amazed by his vocals on it from his low to high harmonies. We would double each harmony. We had enough [vocal] tracks to do that. If he sung a third, fifth, or seventh, we’d double or triple them to make them sound fuller. In my opinion, this was the standout track from the album….It should’ve been a bigger hit than it was. It may have been a little bit ahead of its time.” Michael, likewise, called it “the most ambitious song [he] had composed.” The single reached #22 on the pop chart (and #2 on the R&B singles chart).
The album’s biggest single, “Lovely One,” was more of a throwback to the disco era with its Earth, Wind & Fire–like funk and prominent horns. Michael later expressed some misgivings about the production on some of the songs, feeling they were too close to the Destiny sound, and suffered “from too many cooks and not enough broth.” Next to the cutting-edge sound of Thriller, one can certainly understand his point. Thriller made Triumph seem dated. But appreciated for what it is, Triumph is probably the Jacksons’ best album top to bottom. “You can hear [Michael’s] confidence surge on Triumph,” observed music critic Rob Sheffield. “It’s like watching how different Pacino is in the first two Godfather movies, knowing that he had a smash in between with Serpico.”
Triumph was released in October 1980. The album cover signaled the new era that was dawning. Gone were the large afros and bell bottom pants of the past; the Jackson brothers now appeared sharper, more sophisticated, and more contemporary. The feel of the artwork was more futuristic, with a glowing blue-silver haze emanating from the title and just above their heads. It became the Jacksons’ most successful album to date. It was their first album to reach #1 on the R&B chart since 1971 and sold more than three million copies in its initial run.
The Triumph Tour, at Michael’s insistence, was much shorter than the Destiny Tour, lasting just three months, from July to September 1981. It concluded with four sold-out shows at the Forum in Los Angeles. Having fulfilled his obligations to his family, he was now eager to get to work on his own record.
“THIS BASS LINE CREPT OVER ME”
Since recording didn’t officially commence with Quincy Jones and the A-Team until 1982, the year 1981 is generally not included in accounts of Thriller. But it should be. Long before sessions commenced at Westlake Studio, Jackson was quietly work
ing on new material by himself. Quincy Jones hadn’t yet heard most of these songs. The producer and much of the A-Team were still in the middle of production on Donna Summer’s next album, which would continue through the rest of the year.
But Michael wasn’t wasting time. In a tape recording from that year, he can be heard dictating the structure of a new song. “Let the song create itself,” he reminds himself. “Let the strings tell you what to do, where they should come. Let the piano tell you what chords to hit, whatever it feels. Let the bass tell you what it should be doing. Everything. Let it create itself. Let it form. Let it do what it wants to do. Don’t force upon the song; let the song force upon you. Let it tell you where to go.” Then he works out the various parts of the song: the melody, the verses, the chorus, the bridge; he hums the strings and beatboxes the rhythm.
The song was “The Girl Is Mine.” He wanted a song with a great melody, in part because he wanted a song like that on his album, but also because of who would be singing the song with him: Paul McCartney. Jackson further developed the track at his home studio and Allen Zentz Studios before revealing it to McCartney that December.
McCartney wasn’t the only legend with whom Jackson was collaborating at the time. It is hard to overstate how hot and in-demand the artist was in the year leading up to Thriller. Steven Spielberg wanted to work with him. Andy Warhol wanted to interview him. Diana Ross (his one-time mentor) wanted him to write a song for her (Jackson complied with “Muscles,” which became a Top 10 hit for Ross in 1982).
Meanwhile, Jackson continued to churn out demos for his own album. According to Quincy Jones, the artist was “writing music like a machine” during this period. He typically dictated song ideas into a tape recorder (as with “The Girl Is Mine”) first, inventing beats and rhythms, imitating instruments, and humming melodies. Then he would flesh out the song further in the studio, sometimes with musicians or engineers or sometimes with the assistance of his sisters or brothers.
That fall Jackson was listening to Hall & Oates’s new song, “I Can’t Go for That (No Can Do),” when inspiration struck. He couldn’t get that simple, stark drumbeat and moody bass line out of his head. He wanted to write something similar but distinct, “and a few days later,” he recalled, “this bass line and this melody crept over me.”
The song was “Billie Jean.” Years later, during the recording of “We Are the World,” Jackson told Hall & Oates that their bass line on “I Can’t Go for That” inspired his biggest hit. They were surprised by the revelation, as the songs are very different, but flattered nonetheless and graciously complimented him on what he’d done with it.
Jackson continued to work on “Billie Jean” for months. He knew he had something special and was determined to translate what he was hearing in his head as precisely as possible. He was so consumed by it that, as legend has it, he hardly noticed when his Rolls-Royce caught fire on his way home from the studio one day. Recording engineer Nelson Hayes was driving as Jackson sat in the back, wearing headphones. They had just pulled off the Ventura freeway in Los Angeles when a motorcyclist motioned to roll down the window and pointed to the hood. Smoke was coming out. Hayes pulled off to the side of the road and evacuated the vehicle, but Jackson remained so absorbed in the song he hardly processed what was happening. “Even while we were getting help and finding an alternate way to get where we were going,” Jackson recalled in his autobiography, “I was silently composing additional material.”
The 1981 “Billie Jean” demo offers insight into Jackson’s evolving abilities as a songwriter. The lyrics aren’t all there yet, and the chorus is in a different key. But all the main ingredients—the drum machine, the bass line, the verses, even the strings and guitar parts—were in place before he ever brought it to Quincy Jones and Bruce Swedien. And this was only the first iteration. As the song evolved, Jackson brought in several musicians to help bring the song to life: Tom Perry (who had worked on Triumph) helped handle the engineering; Bill Wolfer played keyboard; Greg Phillinganes provided the original bass on a Minimoog synthesizer; and Jerry Hey contributed the synthesized strings. Jackson, meanwhile, played orchestrator and director, fleshed out the lyrics, and polished his vocals.
This was his process for all the songs he wrote for Thriller. On the 1981 demo for “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’,” the arrangement, instrumentation, and lyrics were mostly in place. The trademark shouts (“yeah yeah”) and interjections (“hee haw”) were there, as were the culminating chant (“ma ma se ma ma sa ma ma coo sa”).
Jackson worked on a number of other quality songs, in the pre-Westlake period, that didn’t make the album. He wrote the original “P.Y.T.”—a smooth, mid-tempo track he developed with Greg Phillinganes. That song was later replaced by a completely different, more up-tempo “P.Y.T.,” created by James Ingram. Another song, “Got the Hots,” was a funky rhythm track with smooth harmonies. “I loved that one,” said Jackson, “[but] Quincy and Rod didn’t think it was good enough. I thought it was wonderful.”
The artist was also excited about a song called “Behind the Mask.” The futuristic, synth-colored piece came from the Japanese electronic group Yellow Magic Orchestra (YMO). Jackson modified the track, writing his own lyrics, creating a new melody and vocal arrangement, and giving the song a traditional verse-chorus structure. The result was a striking synth-pop cut that would have undoubtedly made the album, and likely been a hit. Unfortunately, even though an agreement about songwriting credits and royalties was signed, the song was not used on Thriller due to creative disagreements (a decision YMO later regretted).
Jackson’s interest in the song, however, showed his desire to branch outside of traditional pop and R&B and experiment with cutting-edge sounds. While not widely known in the United States at the time, YMO were pioneers in the use of synthesizers, drum machines, and sequencers. Their sound and futuristic presentation had a big influence on technopop, cyberpunk, and new wave. Jackson was into numerous other avant-garde artists at the time, including Kraftwerk and Grace Jones. “Once I was out at Michael’s studio on Hayvenhurst,” recalled recording engineer Russ Ragsdale, “and I was going through a stack of vinyl records sitting by the console. One of the records I came across was Grace Jones’s Nightclubbing. I picked it up to look at it front and back and Michael got kind of excited about it too. He took the record from me and asked if I’d like to hear a song that was very influential to him, and I thought, Are you kidding? Yes, please! He put on a song called ‘Feel Up’ from that record and I about fell over!”
POLAROIDS
Quincy Jones was surprised by how much progress Jackson had made without him. The producer had been checking in with Jackson now and then, occasionally offering suggestions. By 1982, Jackson already had an album’s worth of quality songs. Now that Jones was finished with the Donna Summer album, his attention shifted to Thriller. He began in earnest to listen to what Jackson had recorded and to sift through potential songs by other songwriters. He referred to this process as “Polaroids.” Each song was examined quickly to see if it contained the right qualities—including tempo, key, and mood—that would work with Jackson’s strengths and vision for the album. The best of these were brought to the studio and tested out.
As with Off the Wall, besides Jackson himself, Quincy’s go-to songwriter was Rod Temperton. According to Jones, Temperton wrote more than thirty potential songs for Thriller “with complete bass lines, counter lines, and all, recorded [along with]…ten to twenty-five alternate titles for each song, with the beginnings of lyric schemes.”
When the songs were introduced to Jackson, said Swedien, the singer would take them home, “stay up all night, and memorize every one of his demos” so that he “never had a piece of paper in front of him” in the studio. Among the Temperton tracks were cuts like “Baby Be Mine,” “Hot Street,” “Slapstick,” “Rolling the Dice,” “Groove of Midnight,” “Lady in My Life,” and �
�Starlight.”
Not all of those tracks were easy for Jackson to figure out vocally. On the demos, some of the keys were high and the artist had a tendency to slip into falsetto too much. On an early demo of “Baby Be Mine,” it’s clear he can’t make up his mind about how to approach the song vocally. Eventually, he nailed it, but the demo is instructive. Jackson didn’t simply walk into the studio and ace everything on the first take. He worked hard to achieve what was heard on the final record.
Of the dozens of songs Temperton worked on, three ended up on the album—“Baby Be Mine,” “The Lady in My Life,” and the title track. Along with the songs Jackson had already written, that left just a few spots in the final lineup, with at least ten still under consideration.
PASSING THE TORCH
April 14, 1982, was a nice, mild day in LA—mid-sixties, breezy. Magic Johnson led the Lakers to a victory over the Utah Jazz that night. Joan Jett’s “I Love Rock and Roll” was #1 on the pop chart. But whatever else was going on in Los Angeles paled in comparison to the gathering inside Westlake Audio—the official beginning of the Thriller sessions.
Present were not only Jackson, Jones, and the rest of the A-Team, but also Paul McCartney, Beatles producer George Martin, and Beatles engineer Geoff Emerick. The summit represented a kind of symbolic passing of the torch between two generations of music legends.
This first burst of sessions only lasted three days—from April 14 to 16—resulting in the completion of “The Girl Is Mine.” For those in attendance, it could not have been a more electric beginning. There was a sense, even in the moment, that history was unfolding. Bruce Swedien remembers a number of famous musicians wanting to sit in and watch, including members of Fleetwood Mac. Dick Clark was even there. Keyboardist David Paich described it as “one of the most exciting and memorable moments of my life….There’s George Martin and Quincy Jones and Paul McCartney and Michael Jackson and they’re all gathered around the piano and I’m playing—I had to mentally pinch myself and say, ‘Snap out of it! You’re not dreaming here.’ ”