by Joseph Vogel
TOO MUCH MATERIAL
By November 1982, every song was finally recorded. Jackson and Jones had navigated the tensions and compromises, and both were pleased with the final track list.
Over the final week, they worked up to eighteen hours a day, putting on the finishing touches. “We did the final mixes and fixes and overdubs up until nine o’clock in the morning of the deadline for the reference copy,” remembered Jones. “We had three studios going at once.” Finally, it seemed, the album was complete. Bruce Swedien took the tapes to audio engineer Bernie Grundman for final mastering. That night (or morning, since it was about 5:00 a.m.), Jackson slept on Jones’s couch in his den, collapsing in exhaustion. He was back up a few hours later to hear the test pressing of Thriller.
Everyone was anxious to hear the final product. Finally, after several whirlwind months of planning, creating, rehearsing, recording, and polishing, the album was done. Everyone gathered at the studio to listen: Jackson, Jones, Temperton, Swedien, and Michael’s managers, Freddy DeMann and Ron Weisner. It was the moment they had all been waiting for.
“It was a disaster,” Jones recalled. “After all the great songs and the great performances and great mixes and a great tune stack, we had 24-karat sonic doo-doo. There was total silence in the studio. One by one we crept across the hall for some privacy: more silence ensued.”
Tears streamed down Jackson’s face. “I felt devastated,” he remembered. “All this pent-up emotion came out. I got angry and left the room. I told my people, ‘That’s it, we’re not releasing it. Call CBS and tell them they are not getting this album. We are not releasing it.’ Because I knew it was wrong. If we hadn’t stopped the process and examined what we were doing, the record would have been terrible. It never would have been reviewed the way it was because, as we learned, you can ruin a great album in the mix. It’s like taking a great movie and ruining it in the editing.”
By this time, the first single from the album, “The Girl Is Mine,” had already been released. The album was supposed to be done, and Jackson and Jones were feeling the heat from CBS/Epic. Ultimately, however, they were able to convince executives that a little more time was needed.
Jones knew what the problem was: “We’d put too much material on the record….You need big fat grooves to make a big fat sound. If you squeeze it into thin grooves, you get tinny sound. We had twenty-eight minutes of sound on each side….With vinyl you had to be realistic; it had to be under nineteen minutes of music per side….Deep down inside we must have all known this all along as we were working, but chose not to deal with reality in our fatigue and musical euphoria.” At Quincy’s recommendation, everyone took a couple days off to take a step back and clear their heads before returning to remix the entire album in two weeks.
Paring down an album was always a brutal process for Michael Jackson. He loved long intros and outros. The original pressing of Thriller was around fifty-two minutes (twenty-six minutes per side). But no one wanted to lose a song at this point. So what was cut? “Human Nature,” originally over seven minutes, was pared down to about four. “P.Y.T.,” likewise, was shaved down by a few minutes. A verse was taken off “The Lady in My Life”; “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’ ” and “Beat It” were both trimmed; the interlude in “Thriller” and Vincent Price’s rap were condensed. Perhaps most difficult for Jackson was paring down “Billie Jean.”
Quincy and Michael butted heads on “Billie Jean” more than any track on Thriller. It started with the title. Jones wanted Jackson to rename it “Not My Lover” so people wouldn’t mistake the subject of the song with renowned tennis player Billie Jean King. But Jackson wouldn’t budge. Jackson also stood his ground on the extended bass intro. “The intro to ‘Billie Jean’ was so long you could shave during it,” recalled Quincy Jones. “I said we had to get to the melody sooner, but Michael said that was what made him want to dance. And when Michael Jackson said something makes him want to dance, you don’t argue, so he won.”
Jackson did make some concessions, though, as the final hour drew near, paring down the song by about a minute, mostly in the intro (which was trimmed by about twelve seconds) and the outro (which was cut by about a minute). With all the edits, the album was now down to a slim, trim forty-two minutes and nineteen seconds. Other minor tweaks were made to make songs hit with maximum vitality. “We put it dead in the pockets,” Quincy noted, “mixing one tune per day.”
Those final efforts paid off. This time Jones, the A-Team, and, most important, Michael Jackson were satisfied. “When it was done—boom—it hit us hard,” Jackson pointed out. “CBS could hear the difference, too….It felt so good when we finished. I was so excited I couldn’t wait for it to come out.”
A GROWING AVALANCHE
Thriller hit record stores on November 30, 1982. To the chagrin of the record company, they missed the Thanksgiving holiday—one of the most lucrative shopping weeks—but it wouldn’t matter. Radio stations began playing the album before it was even officially released—uncommon practice at the time—and the audience response was off the charts. “The phones lit up,” wrote biographer Steve Knopper. “Listeners actually drove to [local LA radio station KDAY-AM] in an attempt to buy the album.”
Because of the leak and overwhelming interest, CBS/Epic decided to go ahead and release the album a few days early. They knew they had something special and began executing a globe-conquering game plan. “From the beginning,” wrote Billboard’s Gail Mitchell, “Epic intended to live up to its name. The [record] label made Thriller the first major release to debut worldwide simultaneously, the first album to be worked for close to two years instead of the usual six or eight months and the first album to spin off seven singles to radio—more than double the normal number.” Still, while Thriller sold well from the beginning, it was more a growing avalanche than an instant sensation.
The album cover—taken by portrait photographer Dick Zimmerman—featuring the now-iconic image of a lounging Jackson in a white suit, seemed rather conservative, hardly indicative of the revolutionary content inside. Like the Off the Wall cover, it was intended to project chic sophistication. What was striking about this new image, however, was Jackson himself.
Everything about him had seemingly been polished and fine-tuned. “His nose is now streamlined and sculptured,” observed biographer J. Randy Taraborrelli, “a tribute to a twentieth-century Michelangelo—his plastic surgeon. The new face has been skillfully enhanced: almond-shaped eyes outlined in black and lightly shadowed, high cheekbones emphasized by the merest hint of rouge, lips glossed to a subtle sheen. His former Afro hairstyle has been replaced by soft curls which frame his face; two wisps adorn his brow.” His caramel skin, meanwhile, is radiant, while his entire body glows with an aura of otherworldly beauty. GQ magazine said he looked like an “iconic sun-god relaxing after quitting time.”
CBS/Epic decided to make the lead single from the album “The Girl Is Mine.” While catchy, it seemed more what people would expect from an easy-listening R&B singer like Lionel Richie or, well, Paul McCartney. It made some wonder if Jackson was now playing it safe, rather than building on the innovative spirit of Off the Wall. “From Prince to Marvin Gaye, from rap to Rick James, black artists have incorporated increasingly mature and adventurous themes—culture, sex, politics—into grittier, gutsier music,” wrote Rolling Stone at the time. “So when Jackson’s first solo single since 1979 turned out to be a wimpoid MOR [middle-of-the-road] ballad with the refrain ‘the doggone girl is mine,’ sung with a tame Paul McCartney, it looked like the train had left the station without him.”
Jackson and his team, however, had a strategy. “When you have two strong names like that together on a song,” Jackson explained in his autobiography, “it has to come out first.” It made sense—and the song was indeed a big hit, reaching #2 on the Billboard Hot 100 and #1 on both the Adult Contemporary chart and the R&B singles chart.
That meant it was crossing over exactly as intended.
But it also allowed them to stun people with the material that followed. Quincy Jones called it their red herring—because after “The Girl Is Mine” came “Billie Jean.” The dark, sinuous track was released as a single in January 1983 and cracked the Top 10 in mid-February. If “The Girl Is Mine” was a concession to racialized radio programming, “Billie Jean” was a dare. The song sounded “black” to listeners; it clearly wasn’t rock. But it didn’t matter. It was too good to deny and resonated across all races and demographics.
The next month, after lengthy and combative negotiations, the music video—which contained an actual story line, a rarity at the time—broke the color barrier on MTV, becoming the first video by a major African American artist to be featured on the network. Again, the response was overwhelming. “Billie Jean” hit #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 that same week. It stayed there the following week. And another four weeks after that, becoming the biggest single in Jackson’s career.
While “Billie Jean” was still reigning at the top of the charts, Epic released “Beat It.” The conventional wisdom in the industry was to allow a single to run its course before introducing another. But at the behest of Frank DiLeo, head of promotion at Epic (and before long, Jackson’s manager), “Beat It” came out just a month after “Billie Jean.” “CBS screamed, ‘You’re crazy. This will kill ‘Billie Jean,’ ” recalled Jackson. “But Frank told them not to worry, that both songs would be number one and both would be in the Top Ten at the same time. They were.”
Indeed, just one week after “Billie Jean” bowed out of the top spot, “Beat It” took its place, propelled by the iconic video featuring Jackson in signature red leather jacket mediating a gang war.
BIGGER THAN THE BEATLES
Thriller reached #1 in February 1983, around the same time “Billie Jean” and “Beat It” were climbing the charts. It stayed there seventeen consecutive weeks, well into the summer. The buzz that had been gradually building had now reached freight-train-level volume and momentum.
Over the course of the next two years, the album spent an astounding eighty weeks in the Top 10 in the United States. Thirty-seven of those weeks it was at #1. “At some point,” wrote biographer J. Randy Taraborrelli, “Thriller stopped selling like a leisure item—like a magazine, a toy, tickets to a hit movie—and started selling like a household staple.” Within the first year alone, it sold twenty-two million copies in the United States, more than double the sales of David Bowie, the Police, and Duran Duran—combined.
With each new single, video, or performance, Thriller continued to fly off the shelves, sometimes selling more than a million copies a week—for example, after the airing of Motown 25 in May 1983, when Jackson unveiled the moonwalk. In November of that year, just when it seemed the album’s momentum might finally be slowing down, the Thriller short film premiered at the Metro Crest Theatre, stunning viewers with its riveting visuals, special effects, choreography, and production values.
Soon after the premier, the short film made its way onto MTV, Showtime, and VHS home video, becoming a cultural phenomenon in and of itself. People were talking about it at work and at school. Decades later, many people still remember where they were the first time they saw it on TV. The single, meanwhile, released in early 1984, peaked at #4, becoming the album’s seventh Top 10 single—yet another record. Perhaps just as remarkable, however, was the fact that it was now two years after the initial release and the album was still on fire.
That year, the Guinness Book of World Records declared Thriller the bestselling album of all time. Meanwhile, Rolling Stone, the same magazine that had denied Jackson a front cover for Off the Wall a few years earlier, pronounced him “the biggest star in the pop-cultural universe—if not bigger than Jesus, as John Lennon once boasted of the Beatles, then certainly bigger than that group, or any other past pop icons.”
JACKSON MANIA
In the wake of Thriller, Michael Jackson became indelible to life in the ’80s. His image seemed to be everywhere—on TV, in commercials, magazines, posters, T-shirts, even replica dolls. When the artist suffered burns on the set of a Pepsi commercial in 1984, it evoked such widespread concern that the president of the United States wrote him a get-well card.
Everyone became familiar with Jackson’s array of unique trademarks: the single sequined glove, the fedora, the red leather jacket, the black pants and white socks; the kicks, spins, and toe-raises; the moonwalk; the choreographed dances; the sculpted face, the aviator sunglasses, the Jheri curl.
For fans, he seemed to possess a certain aura, as if walking straight out of one of his music videos, fully costumed and in character. The effect was startling to those who saw him in person, often inciting pandemonium, bordering on hysteria. When Jackson visited Madame Tussauds in London in 1985, his car was surrounded by thousands of screaming fans. Police were forced to push back the crowd to prevent the artist from being mobbed. This happened wherever he went.
It marked the height of Michael Jackson mania. The world couldn’t get enough—whether through his albums; his music videos; concert tickets and memorabilia; or books and magazine features. People were fascinated. Who was this childlike recluse who turned his home into a miniature Disneyland? Who barely spoke above a whisper when accepting awards, then electrified audiences onstage?
The pinnacle of the Thriller era came that February at the 26th Annual Grammy Awards at the Shrine Auditorium. Jackson had already dominated the American Music Awards, where he was nominated for a record eleven awards and won eight.
But the Grammys were the moment he had been waiting for. He arrived decked out in a glittering blue military-style jacket, trimmed in gold; black high-water pants, white socks, and loafers; aviator sunglasses; and a single white sequined glove. He was accompanied by actress Brooke Shields and child star Emmanuel Lewis. Watching footage of the show, one can sense how much the evening meant to him. All the rejection he felt three years earlier; all the hours he put into his craft going back to his childhood in Gary, Indiana; all the goals and plans and dreams he had brooded over had materialized in this ceremony, in which he was acknowledged by his peers, the industry, and the world.
Accepting award after award onstage, he was by turns grateful, funny, humble, and proud—but above all, dizzy with joy. He went home that night with a record haul of eight Grammy Awards (an even more impressive feat at the time since there were far fewer categories than today), including for Album of the Year.
THE JACKIE ROBINSON OF POP
Michael Jackson is not always thought of as a racial pioneer the same way as, say, Jackie Robinson. But what he achieved in the early ’80s was just as significant to the music industry as what Robinson did for baseball.
In its 1982 review, The New York Times not only praised Thriller as a “wonderful pop record”; it called it “as hopeful a sign as we have had yet that the destructive barriers that spring up regularly between white and black music—and between whites and blacks—in this culture may be breached once again.”
In the early ’80s, it is often forgotten, music was very segregated, even more so than in the ’60s. As author Nelson George notes, “the best year for crossover was 1970, when fifteen of the top black songs in America reached the top fifteen on the pop chart, and seven went to number one,” including four by the Jackson 5.
Yet from 1970 to 1982 there was a steady decline in diversity, particularly on radio, which became dominated by album-oriented rock. Some saw it as a retrenchment on the part of mostly white gatekeepers to keep music segregated in the wake of major inroads for black music in the 1960s. MTV, operating on similar “narrowcasting” logic, targeted white audiences and was dominated by “rock”—a kind of euphemism for white music, whether rock, punk, R&B, or new wave. The same lack of diversity permeated prominent music and entertainment magazines, from Rolling Stone to Billboard
to People.
Michael Jackson changed the landscape. “When Thriller came along, it really changed everything,” observed music producer and executive Antonio “L.A.” Reid. “Because all of a sudden music—for the first time ever—music didn’t have a color. He was too good to be denied. He was too good to be put into any box and it didn’t have a color. So whether it was rock, or whether it was pop, or whether it was R&B, whatever it was, Michael defied categorization with that album. And as a result of that he really broke the barrier.”
Part of that was strategic—Michael Jackson was clearly trying to hit different genres and capture different audiences with Thriller’s diverse lineup of songs. How could FM radio deny a duet featuring beloved former Beatle Paul McCartney and rising star Michael Jackson? “Beat It” pushed the conundrum even further. “The sound of ‘Beat It’ was simply outrageous, for both R&B and rock listeners,” explained Rolling Stone in a 2009 retrospective. “The music was undeniably great, it was a rock song (albeit a new kind of rock), and it featured the most famous guitarist in the world, Eddie Van Halen. Long before Run DMC and Aerosmith brought down walls on ‘Walk This Way,’ Michael Jackson helped demolish the longstanding segregation between black and white music with ‘Beat It.’ Crossover songs like these opened the door for tracks like the African-rooted ‘Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’ ’ and the dark rhythm and blues of ‘Billie Jean.’ ”