by Joseph Vogel
Finally, after almost a year of preparing songs, they were ready to cook and season them with all hands on deck.
Westlake Audio, located on Santa Monica Boulevard in Los Angeles, was a bigger and better studio than Allen Zentz Studios, where they had recorded most of Off the Wall. From the outside it seemed like a rather ordinary facility, but inside was a wood-paneled enclave with state-of-the-art equipment, and—particularly during the Thriller sessions—some of the most talented players in the industry.
This not only included Jackson and the A-Team from Off the Wall, but also some key new contributors. Perhaps most prominent among these were members of the band Toto. Composed of four talented LA-based session musicians—David Paich, Steve Lukather, Jeff Porcaro, and Steve Porcaro—Toto had formed as a band in 1976. Their biggest album, Toto IV—featuring massive hits like “Rosanna” and “Africa”—came out while Thriller was being recorded. When they first arrived on the scene in the mid-’70s, most rock critics dismissed them as the embodiment of safe, slick, soft rock at a time when punk and new wave were ascendant.
In spite of such perceptions, they were talented and versatile professionals—and that’s what mattered most to Jackson and Jones. Jones had first worked with Toto on his 1981 album, The Dude, and came away impressed. Unlike most rock bands at the time, they understood R&B and enjoyed working with black artists. They subsequently played a big role on Donna Summer’s self-titled album, also produced by Jones. This chemistry and trust mattered. Members of Toto ended up featured in some capacity on every single track on Thriller, most significantly on “Human Nature,” which was cowritten by Steve Porcaro and John Bettis.
A NEW SOUND
Other important new members of the team included technical engineer Matt Forger and synth programmer Michael Boddicker. Like Toto, Forger was a carryover from the Donna Summer project. Given the scope and complexity of Thriller, he was charged with coordinating all the studio equipment and, in essence, serving as Bruce Swedien’s right-hand man. Boddicker, meanwhile, was the go-to guy (along with Steve Porcaro) for programming and playing the vast array of new synthesizers featured on the album.
Used sparingly on Off the Wall and Triumph, synthesizers were fully embraced on Thriller. They transformed Jackson’s music, creating new soundscapes, textures, and colors. The big brass-sounding synth blast at the beginning of “Thriller,” for instance, was created on the Roland Jupiter-8, a landmark keyboard synthesizer introduced in 1981. The opening gong on “Beat It” was created on the Synclavier, one of the first digital synthesizers. The shimmering, incandescent strings in “Human Nature” were created with the Yamaha CS-80, a polyphonic analog synthesizer also used for the soundtrack to Blade Runner. The spectacular robo-funk bass line on “Thriller” was achieved, according to Boddicker, with two “Richie Walbourn–modified Minimoogs, set side by side, with engineer Bruce Swedien’s special multiple-mono compression.” The Minimoog was also used on “P.Y.T.” to get those thick synth bass lines.
Jackson also contributed to the synth programming. According to Boddicker, that “nice little CS fuzz” you hear on “Billie Jean” was “Michael Jackson himself…on a [Yamaha] CS-80 in one take. No punches. No repairs. No sequencers or time correction. Seven minutes. Perfect performance.” On “P.Y.T.,” Jackson and James Ingram programmed a vocoder to get the helium-sounding vocal in the call-and-response. While Jackson famously replaced the Linn drum machine on “Billie Jean” with live drumming by Ndugu Chancler, many other tracks on the album keep it, including “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’,” “Baby Be Mine,” and “Thriller.” The Linn was often doubled with Roland 808s or acoustic drums to get a thicker sound. Jackson’s vocals were also slightly sped up on some of the rhythm tracks at his insistence.
Behind the control desk at Westlake usually sat Quincy Jones and Bruce Swedien. According to Swedien, Westlake had just installed a new Harrison 3232 mixing desk, from which he and Quincy ran the show. “I heard something in this [mixing desk] that I hadn’t heard before, and haven’t heard since,” recalled Swedien. “The EQ of this warm-sounding desk is legendary.”
By 1982, most professional studios had twenty-four-track analog capability. For Thriller, however, a new method referred to as the Acusonic Recording Process was used, in which multiple twenty-four-track tape machines were synchronized to create unprecedented numbers of tracks. Technical engineer Matt Forger saw it as a studio breakthrough on par with what the Beatles and the Beach Boys had accomplished in the mid-’60s. “What we did on Thriller was the extension of that,” said Forger. “We were able to warp the technology and stretch it to such an extent that we were able to make the technology adapt to whatever it was Michael or Quincy creatively wanted to achieve.”
While having so many tracks to work with was great, figuring out what to do with them wasn’t easy. Quincy Jones compared the manual process to painting a 747 jet with a Q-tip. “[Quincy] loves creating these textures and colors,” explained Forger, “and the way he creates them is layering sounds that are sometimes similar and sometimes dissimilar. But when they combine they create the unique character.”
When others in the industry heard the incredible richness and depth of Michael Jackson’s solo albums, they tried to imitate this texturing by simply stacking parts. “There was a misconception,” said Forger, “that ‘Oh, if I play the same guitar part six times it will make it thick and rich.’ ” Instead, the result was often mushy and overproduced. “We didn’t use all these tracks just to record over and over again,” said Forger. “We used them so that Quincy could layer different sound characters together very strategically so that the textures that were created had this richness and depth.” The result was a vibrant sound that set a new standard for popular music.
MICHAEL JACKSON’S “THRILLER”
From the beginning, Thriller was behind schedule. Interruptions and complications were the norm. Having finally gained some momentum, the album was abruptly put on hold again in September after Jackson and Jones committed to helping Steven Spielberg with an E.T. storybook (an audiobook and soundtrack to the film). Initially, they assumed that meant contributing just one song, which Jones quickly delegated to Rod Temperton and celebrated songwriters Alan and Marilyn Bergman, resulting in the aching Jackson-sung ballad “Someone in the Dark.” But it turned out that Spielberg also wanted Jones to compose the rest of the forty-minute storybook album and Jackson to narrate it.
Not only did that take up almost the entire month of September; it also led to a massive standoff between CBS/Epic Records (Jackson’s label) and MCA Records at Universal (the studio behind E.T.) regarding Jackson’s participation in a project outside his home label, among other issues. “I was getting faxes and conference calls all day during the session and in the middle of the night about the E.T. storybook album while trying to work on Thriller,” recalled Jones. “It went on for months, corporate lawyers yammering back and forth as only they can.”
Between the corporate disputes and the enormous expectations accompanying Thriller, the atmosphere wasn’t always as relaxed as it was for Off the Wall. In addition to external pressures, a simmering tension was developing between Jackson and Jones.
Off the Wall had gone about as smoothly as an album could go, but with Thriller Jackson sometimes became frustrated with Jones’s attempts to “control” the project. Part of this may have had to do with the artist’s tendency to chafe against the authority of father figures, but part of it was that he simply wanted it to be his album. He had spent a year working on dozens of songs on his own, some of them nearly complete, before Jones even showed up, he vented to associates. And still, the producer insisted on getting more than half the album’s songs from other sources.
According to close collaborators, Jackson was furious when Quincy Jones decided to scrap the artist’s demo for “P.Y.T.”—and tasked James Ingram with rewriting the song. “Michael didn’t really w
ant that version on the album,” said one source. Jackson also found it suspicious that Jones gave himself a cowriting credit on the track when it appeared that Ingram had composed the song.
The artist was even more frustrated at Jones’s continued reliance on Rod Temperton. While he valued the British songwriter’s abilities, he felt his own material was better. He was baffled by what he perceived as Jones’s preferential treatment of Temperton’s work. This tension came to a head with the title track. When Temperton brought the song in, it was called “Starlight.” Jackson liked it, and recorded a guide vocal, but felt the lyrics were silly and out of place. Jones and Temperton, meanwhile, were not only pushing for the song’s inclusion on the track list, but believed it should be the title of the entire album. Cover art was even developed with the “Starlight” concept in mind, featuring Jackson holding a Star Wars–like lightsaber.
Eventually, Jackson spoke out. He felt “Starlight” was too corny and detracted from some of the edgier material he had written for the album. He wanted something different. In interviews, Temperton acknowledged that, by this point, “Michael had already written fantastic songs for the album, which we knew would be cornerstones of the album” and that “[‘Starlight’] did not meet the chemistry and the atmosphere of strong titles like ‘Billie Jean’ or ‘Startin’ Somethin’.” He said that as this dawned on him, he “went home and wrote down two hundred to three hundred titles with the favorite being ‘Midnight Man,’ and then went to bed. In the morning I woke up and said this word—thriller. You could visualize it on the top of the Billboard charts. You could see the merchandising for this one word, how it jumped off the page as ‘Thriller.’ ”
Yet according to others close to the artist, it was Jackson who prompted the switch. “Michael came in and changed the whole concept,” said one inside source. “He had the horror theme, the movie concept, everything. It was his idea. And he wasn’t credited for it. That bothered him.”
It wasn’t just about a songwriting credit for Jackson; more often than not, he felt that his creative instincts were right, but Quincy Jones and his crew were sometimes slow to adapt and trust his intuition. Now twenty-four years old, with a number of self-composed hits already under his belt (“Shake Your Body,” “Don’t Stop ’Til You Get Enough,” “Can You Feel It”) and his finger on the pulse of the culture, he was beginning to feel that he was outgrowing the older generation behind the control desk.
SONIC PERSONALITY
Still, Jackson and Jones were professionals, surrounded by professionals. Whatever was going on behind the scenes, they managed (mostly) to set those things aside when they were in the studio. David Paich describes Jones as “a producer’s producer. He has a plan, but he still always makes sure—Quincy has a saying—to ‘leave a little room for God.’ That’s such a great expression. It means don’t try and fill up and plan everything—leave a little room for magic to happen.”
By October, the album was beginning to take shape. Side A, which included “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’,” “Baby Be Mine,” “The Girl Is Mine,” and “Thriller,” was mostly complete. For “Thriller,” legendary horror actor Vincent Price was brought in for a spoken rap. The day before he arrived at Westlake, Jones asked Temperton to come up with some lyrics. In his typically efficient manner, Temperton managed to piece them together on a taxi ride to the studio. Price came in and nailed his narration in just two takes.
The A-Team meticulously worked over Jackson’s demo for “Billie Jean,” knowing it was a centerpiece of the album. According to Bruce Swedien, the goal was to give it “the most unique sonic personality” of any song they had recorded. This was accomplished by details that have now become folkloric: Jackson singing vocal overdubs through a five-foot-long cardboard tube; Ndugu Chancler replacing the drum machine with one continuous live-drum take (captured with a special plywood drum platform constructed with a kick-drum mic zipped in to capture the fullness of the sound); Louis Johnson going through just about every bass guitar he owned to capture the sound Jackson wanted on the bass line, finally settling on a Yamaha with a thick, buzzing sound; jazz saxophonist Tom Scott playing what Bruce Swedien described as “a very unusual instrument, the lyricon, a wind-controlled analog synthesizer whose unique, trumpet-like lines are subtly woven through the track.”
The perfectionism continued into the mixes. Recalled Swedien: “I was up to mix number two and I thought it was killer! I called Michael, Quincy, and Rod into the control room and played [it] for them. They loved it! They were all dancing and carrying on like crazy. Then Michael slipped out of the control room, turned around and motioned for me to follow him. Then he whispered to me, ‘Please, Bruce, it’s perfect, but turn the bass up just a tiny bit, and do one more mix, please.’ I said to him, ‘Okay, Smelly [a nickname Jones had given Jackson because the artist often referred to a great groove as “smelly jelly”], no problem.’ ” Swedien did as Jackson asked, but then Quincy wanted some tweaks. Eighteen mixes later, they still weren’t satisfied—until they relistened to mix #2. “Everyone was grooving and dancing,” noted Swedien. “Mix #2 was the final decision and that is exactly what you hear on the record.”
THE NITROGLYCERIN
As October arrived, Quincy Jones was on the lookout for a song that would bring a different dimension to the album. A few demos were under consideration, among them “Nightline” by Glen Ballard and “Carousel” by Michael Sembello. Jones had also been asking David Paich of Toto to submit something. Finally, after a few weeks, Paich sent in a cassette tape of demos. It was on this tape that Jones fortuitously stumbled upon a rough sketch of a song called “Human Nature.”
That song was actually not among the three Toto intended to submit, but once side A of the tape finished, the player automatically switched to side B. “Human Nature” began playing and Jones’s ears perked up. The lyrics were mostly missing besides the “Why, why” and “Tell him that it’s human nature” in the chorus, but the melody was gorgeous. He shared it with Jackson, who had a similar response. “[Jones] and I both agreed that the song had the prettiest melody we’d heard in a long time,” recalled Jackson.
Jones quickly reached out to David Paich, who wrote most of Toto’s songs, but Paich revealed that this one was created by Steve Porcaro. Porcaro had been inspired by a conversation he’d had with his daughter after a bad day at school. He was thrilled to hear that Jackson and Jones were interested. But they needed lyrics for the verses. For that, Jones turned to seasoned lyricist John Bettis, who had written for the Carpenters and Donna Summer, among others. His lyrics were written in two days, and perfectly captured the mood they were looking for.
Soon after, Steve Porcaro and David Paich went to work on the synth programming for the track and watched it blossom as Jackson recorded his vocal in just a few takes. Things seemed to be falling into place. As Quincy put it, there was no time for “paralysis from analysis.” The producer describes the final months of recording Thriller as “like riding a rocket. Everything about it was done at hyperspeed.”
Still, knowing Jackson’s ambitions for the record, the consensus was that the album still needed a high-energy, crossover rock song. “The Girl Is Mine” might capture the adult contemporary audience, but they needed something else to really put the album over the top.
For weeks, Jones claims, he pestered Jackson about it, challenging him to compose a black version of the Knack’s 1979 hit “My Sharona.” Unknown to Jones, the song was already under way, but Jackson was reluctant to present it in its early stage. “I like my songs,” he reflected in his autobiography, “but initially I’m shy about playing them for people, because I’m afraid they won’t like them and that’s a painful experience. He finally convinced me to let him hear what I had. I brought out ‘Beat It’ and played it for him and he went crazy. I felt on top of the world.”
Jackson’s goal for the song was simply to “write the type of rock so
ng that I would go out and buy, but also something totally different from the rock music I was hearing on Top Forty radio.” Once again, Jackson’s demo is instructive. He gives a brief introduction: “This is the vocal harmonies and choruses, uhhh, ‘Beat It.’ Ummm, I’ll do the verses and then the chorus.” Then he counts off and delivers the song that would be heard around the world in just a matter of months.
The demo for “Beat It” was notably more sparse than those for “Billie Jean” or “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’.” There is no instrumentation: just Jackson’s voice, beatboxing, and incredible stacked harmonies in the chorus. But Jones had no trouble hearing its potential. “We knew he’d come up with the nitroglycerin,” Jones said. As legend has it, while listening to a mix of the song at Westlake one day, a speaker burst into flames, something not even Quincy Jones had seen before.
Meanwhile, Jackson was laying down vocals for some of the final songs, including the new version of “P.Y.T.” and the Rod Temperton–penned ballad “The Lady in My Life.” For the latter song, Jones challenged Jackson in a similar way to “She’s Out of My Life” from Off the Wall. “[It] was one of the most difficult tracks to cut,” Jackson recalled in his autobiography. “We were used to doing a lot of takes in order to get a vocal as nearly perfect as possible, but Quincy wasn’t satisfied with my work on that song, even after literally dozens of takes. Finally, he took me aside late one session and told me he wanted me to beg. That’s what he said. He wanted me to go back to the studio and literally beg for it. So I went back in and had them turn off the studio lights and close the curtain between the studio and the control room so I wouldn’t feel self-conscious. Q started the tape and I begged. The result is what you hear in the grooves.”