Man in the Music

by Joseph Vogel

  BEATLES FOR SALE

  Michael Jackson, then, wasn’t a mere victim of the media. But he also didn’t foresee how quickly the game he was playing could turn malicious and destructive. Author James Baldwin did. In his 1985 essay, “Freaks and the American Ideal of Manhood,” observing the growing circus around Jackson, he wrote:

  The Michael Jackson cacophony is fascinating in that it is not about Jackson at all. I hope he has the good sense to know it and the good fortune to snatch his life out of the jaws of a carnivorous success. He will not swiftly be forgiven for having turned so many tables, for he damn sure grabbed the brass ring, and the man who broke the bank at Monte Carlo has nothing on Michael. All that noise is about America, as the dishonest custodian of black life and wealth; the blacks, especially males, in America; and the burning, buried American guilt; and sex and sexual roles and sexual panic; money, success and despair….

  Baldwin dialed in on some of the deeper underlying issues surrounding Jackson. “Freaks are called freaks,” he wrote, “and are treated as they are treated—in the main, abominably—because they are human beings who cause to echo, deep within us, our most profound terrors and desires.” In Jackson’s case, those terrors and desires were numerous: they had to do with race, with confusion about his changing appearance, with contempt for his eccentricities, and with fears about his power.

  Power was an often overlooked part of the equation. By 1985, Jackson had achieved unprecedented heights for an African American artist—or an artist of any race. On top of his own achievements, that same year, he purchased the crown jewel of music publishing: the ATV music catalog, which included the entire catalog of the Beatles. That deal, which cost Jackson $47.5 million, was described at the time as “the most expensive publishing purchase ever by an individual.”

  Ironically, Jackson had been introduced to music publishing by none other than Paul McCartney back in the early ’80s while working on songs together prior to Thriller. A few years later, in September 1984, while Jackson was on his Victory Tour in Philadelphia, Jackson’s attorney, John Branca, informed the artist that the ATV catalog was up for sale. “What’s that?” Jackson asked. “Well, it includes the Northern Songs, Michael. You know—Lennon-McCartney,” Branca replied. “The Beatles!” Jackson exclaimed. He couldn’t believe it.

  While McCartney subsequently claimed Jackson “stole” the catalog from him, the former Beatle actually had the opportunity to bid for it himself. “Michael told me, ‘Branca, you gotta call Paul, you gotta call Yoko and make sure they’re not bidding on it,’ ” recalled Branca. Jackson’s attorney did as instructed, calling Yoko Ono personally (who gave Jackson her blessing, preferring that an artist own the catalog over a corporation) and Paul McCartney’s attorney, John Eastman (who said the former Beatle wasn’t planning to bid, because it was “too pricey”). Knowing he wouldn’t be bidding against either of them, Jackson gave Branca the green light to proceed. Over the next several months, the attorney engaged in a long, drawn-out chess match that included several other bidders. Jackson stayed keenly informed about the negotiations, in one handwritten note imploring his attorney, “John, please let’s not bargain. I don’t want to lose the deal.”

  He didn’t. Branca finally closed the deal for Jackson on August 10, 1985. Now he was not only the most successful artist in the industry; he owned the catalog of the most successful group in history.

  “WACKO JACKO”

  Around this time the tone of media coverage surrounding Jackson began to turn. That same year, the British tabloid The Sun began calling him “Wacko Jacko,” a term Jackson despised. The nickname had racist connotations. “Jacko Macacco” was the name of a famous monkey used in monkey-baiting matches at the Westminster Pit in London in the early 1820s. Subsequently, the term “Jacco” or “Jacco Macacco” was Cockney slang to refer to monkeys in general. The term persisted in the twentieth century as “Jacko Monkeys” became popular children’s toys in Great Britain in the 1950s. They still remained common in British households in the 1980s.

  The nickname was quickly picked up by other media outlets. Reading news and magazine articles from this period, the transformation is striking. Suddenly, the eccentricities that had been alternately intriguing or overlooked just months earlier were now characterized as “bizarre” and “strange.” “In record time,” wrote Spin journalist Quincy Troupe, “he went from being one of the most admired of celebrities to one of the most absurd.” Critics maligned him for buying the Beatles catalog, mocked his changing appearance, called him a sissy, questioned whether he actually wrote his songs, reduced his art to commercial ephemera.

  Spin magazine described it as “the most powerful backlash in the history of popular entertainment.” America had a tendency to elevate and then crucify its own creations. Jackson, it seemed, would fall prey to that ritual as well.

  Ironically, one of the other sensational stories circulating around this time was Jackson’s supposed desire to purchase the bones of the Elephant Man, Joseph Merrick. A Victorian-era “freak,” Merrick was born with a rare congenital disorder called Proteus Syndrome, which caused severe deformities to his face and body. Later in life, he was exhibited as a curiosity by traveling showman George Hitchcock. Jackson learned of his story through the classic 1980 David Lynch film, The Elephant Man, and became fascinated with Merrick. “I visited [his] remains [and] I feel a closeness to [him],” Jackson confessed in a 1987 interview. “I love the story….It’s a very sad story.”

  In certain ways, Jackson was beginning to feel, similar to Merrick, less like a human being, and more like an exhibit or a curiosity. He had been an entertainer since he was a young boy. It was all he knew. But now the expectation to “perform” was almost constant. His identity was becoming inextricably wrapped up in the persona, the character. He was, for better or worse, “Michael Jackson, the greatest show on earth.”

  When manager Frank DiLeo was asked by Rolling Stone in 1987 about dialing back the publicity stunts because of the toll on his client, he responded: “It’s too late, anyway. He won’t have a normal life even if I stop.” But for Jackson, the price of the ticket was high. By the time Bad was released, the human being no longer seemed to exist to a public fed on sensationalism and hype.

  Later that year, in the midst of his Bad World Tour, Jackson scribbled a letter to the press (published by People in 1987) from his hotel room, which read in part: “Like the old Indian proverb says, do not judge a man until you’ve walked 2 moons in his moccosins [sic]. Most people don’t know me, that is why they write such things in wich [sic] most is not true. I cry very often because it hurts….Animals strike not from malice, but because they want to live, it is the same with those who criticize, they desire our blood, not our pain….But have mercy for I’ve been bleeding a long time now.”

  EXPERIMENTS IN SOUND

  While all these new narratives about Jackson’s “bizarre” eccentricities and seclusion swirled publicly, behind the scenes the artist spent most of his days in the studio with a handful of musicians and engineers, quietly working on new music.

  By 1985, almost three years had elapsed since the release of Thriller, and fans were anxiously awaiting the sequel. Following up the most successful record in the history of the music industry, however, was not an enviable task. Jackson added to the pressure with his own lofty expectations. On his bathroom mirror, he wrote “100 million,” the number of copies he expected his next album to sell. The figure was more than double the amount of copies Thriller had sold up to that point. “I can’t answer whether or not I like being famous,” he would later write in his autobiography, “but I do love achieving goals. I love not only reaching a mark I’ve set for myself but exceeding it. Doing more than I thought I could, that’s a great feeling.”

  The commercial ambition is what most media narratives focused on when Bad came out. But the more interesting story had to do with his creati
ve ambition. With his new album, he not only wanted to write and produce every song; he wanted to create a pop album unlike anything anyone had heard before.

  The years 1985 and ’86 have long represented one of the most mysterious stretches in Jackson’s solo career. Even when journalists called up Quincy Jones, they got nothing. The producer wasn’t being reticent; he simply didn’t know much. Only a handful of people at the time did, and, at Jackson’s direction, they weren’t speaking to the press. One person who had a front-row seat to just about everything Jackson was working on in these years, however, was John Barnes. Jackson had gotten to know Barnes, a talented but mostly unknown musician and synth programmer from Watts, during the Jacksons’ Victory album sessions in 1983. Prior to that, Barnes had worked with Michael’s brothers Jermaine and Marlon. But it was a song Barnes cowrote and produced for Janet—called “Don’t Stand Another Chance”—that really got Michael’s attention. He liked the sound and feel of it—enough to call Barnes up soon after hearing it. “I like to experiment with different kinds of sound,” Barnes remembered Jackson saying on the phone. “Are you into stuff like that?” Barnes said yes, that was one of his passions. “How many sounds do you think you can create?” Jackson pressed. “That depends on how much time you have,” Barnes responded.

  Soon after, Barnes found himself in the studio with Jackson, working on a new song the artist had written called “Buffalo Bill.” “That was the first song we worked on together,” recalled Barnes. “We just clicked. Our musical sensibilities were very compatible. There are some people where you can speak and they know exactly what you’re speaking about. There’s so much more than language can express, there’s a whole other spiritual part that you’re either in tune with or not. That’s how it was with me and Michael.” In addition to their chemistry, Jackson valued Barnes’s versatility. “Out here,” explained Barnes, “it was very uncommon to have black players that were able to program. They weren’t in the recording community that much. So it was always viewed that you got the Michael Boddickers and people like that—who were great programmers and great guys—but you got them to create sounds and then the black guys would come in and play. I did both.”

  Growing up, Barnes’s two passions were music and technology: he studied philharmonics, orchestration, and music theory in school, and bought his first Apple computer and synthesizers in the late ’70s. But, according to Barnes, Michael Jackson really allowed him to combine the two in ways he never could have imagined. “For the first time in my life,” he reflected, “I was in an environment when absolutely everything was possible. He pushed me with his talent and energy and ambition—I could really explore how far we could stretch. Most projects couldn’t afford it and most artists weren’t that talented and ambitious. But with Michael that was never an issue. Money wasn’t a factor; the music was the factor.”

  After working on a few songs together, Jackson decided to hire Barnes full time. Along with recording engineer Matt Forger, they would show up in the studio five to six days a week, working on songs, creating new sounds, and translating Jackson’s ideas. “In those days,” recalled Barnes, “his home studio wasn’t complete so we would go into other studios [including Can-Am, Red Wing, and Sound Castle] and book six-hour sessions. Michael always wanted to have something complete or close to complete when we would leave. It was fertile ground. No restrictions. He was our guide. If he wanted us to shift to something else, we’d put our focus on that.” By early 1985, Jackson and Barnes had already worked on several songs together. But there still wasn’t much talk about an album. Jackson was taking his time to lay the foundation.

  In addition to Barnes, the artist enlisted some of the brightest minds in the world of synth programming and sound technology. Jackson had used synthesizers liberally on Thriller, but he took it to an entirely different level on Bad. In 1984 he reached out to Denny Jaeger, the mastermind behind the landmark digital synthesizer, the Synclavier. Jaeger was, in essence, the Steve Jobs of sound design. From the Bay Area, he was instrumental in the pioneering work of New England Digital in the late ’70s and ’80s, helping transform the Synclavier from a revolutionary but clunky audio system, used at a handful of universities, to the premiere digital synthesizer of the decade.

  Jackson not only formed a creative relationship with Jaeger, who is credited for synth programming on “Dirty Diana” and “Smooth Criminal,” but he also sent John Barnes to New England Digital to help design the system they would use for the Bad album. “We helped develop a big step forward for the Synclavier,” said Barnes. That model—known as the Synclavier PSMT—was essentially a fully self-contained workstation. Released in 1984, it cost over $200,000, more than the average house in Los Angeles at the time. Before it even hit the market, Jackson had one of his own, personally customized, and was using it to develop songs for his album.

  Around this time the artist’s new and improved, forty-eight-track home studio at Hayvenhurst was completed. Jackson nicknamed it “the Laboratory.” He envisioned it as a very distinct space from Westlake Studios—a space without pressures or expectations, a place where he could simply brainstorm ideas, experiment, and innovate. “Michael was always searching for something new,” said Forger. “How much stuff could we invent ourselves or research and find? There was a whole lot of that going on. That was what the Laboratory was about.” John Barnes remembers trying all kinds of things with the new Synclavier. “We were just being as creative and innovative as we could be,” he recalled. “We’d make new sound characters, combine them, collect sounds, record them on portable recorders, and put them into the Synclavier. One day we recorded those poppers that you throw on the ground, those fireworks—loaded that sound in. Nobody had done that kind of stuff before. You can actually hear them on ‘Smooth Criminal.’ ”

  In 1985, Jackson decided to create an official company based on the sonic enterprise they were engaged in. He called it Experiments in Sound. Along with Jackson, John Barnes was co-owner of the company. All this cutting-edge technology had a big impact on the way Bad was made and the way it sounded. “It really opened up another realm of creativity,” said Matt Forger. It was an exciting time for Jackson, in which the possibilities seemed unlimited—and the album was just getting started.

  THE B-TEAM

  If it had been up to him, Jackson would have parted ways with Quincy Jones after Thriller. Not because there was some dramatic falling-out; the artist was simply ready to take the next step without the legendary producer’s oversight. In any case, he reasoned, the producer was busy with other projects, including the soundtrack for The Color Purple, another collaboration with Steven Spielberg. Jackson’s contract with Jones was for three albums, so eventually the artist knew the producer would likely be involved. But, as with Thriller, he had no intention of waiting around. He wanted to get going on the album.

  The handful of musicians and engineers Jackson assembled to work with him in the Laboratory came to refer to themselves as the “B-Team”—a self-deprecatory play on Quincy Jones’s legendary A-Team. There were no big names on the B-Team. Even after Bad came out, most people never heard of them. It was also a much smaller crew than Jones typically assembled—for the better part of two years, it comprised just four individuals: John Barnes, Bill Bottrell, Chris Currell, and Matt Forger.

  Like Barnes, Bottrell got to know Jackson through the Victory album and could play the role of both engineer and musician. Prior to working with the Jacksons, Bottrell was mentored by acclaimed songwriter, instrumentalist, and producer Jeff Lynne of Electric Light Orchestra (Lynne also worked with George Harrison, Bob Dylan, and Tom Petty). The first song Bottrell helped produce for Jackson was his 1984 duet with Mick Jagger, “State of Shock.” “I just did what I wanted to do [with the demo],” recalled Bottrell, “while he stood there and watched, and I rocked it up really good….So I think Michael picked up on my openness to experimenting and that wide-open/what-can-this-be
approach. You don’t bring a lot of techniques or set goals, and that’s what was fortuitous.”

  Jackson was drawn to Bottrell’s loose, improvisational approach. He also liked his versatility and willingness to try new things. “I was an engineer when he first hired me,” noted Bottrell. “I worked by the hour all around LA. Michael just started asking me, unlike many of my other clients, to take more responsibility.” While Bottrell wasn’t well-known to the wider public, he had earned a strong reputation within recording circles, especially in the studio where he worked the most in the mid-’80s—Sound Castle, in Glendale, California. “Bill was on staff there,” said Barnes. “He was a legend over there; that’s how we met.” That’s also where they began working with Jackson.

  After a lifetime of working with perfectionists like Berry Gordy and Quincy Jones, Barnes and Bottrell offered Jackson an alternative approach. “My process,” explained Bottrell, “was contrary to the whole Westlake scene in that I would jump and run around quickly, in an attempt to get a fresh performance from the artist. This was contrary to the Q-Swedien idea where every little thing is important and worthy of minute attention, and the artist had to wait similar to making a movie.” That approach had its merits, of course, and Jackson never entirely abandoned it; but he also felt it could stifle creativity. “It’s just a different sensibility,” Barnes pointed out. “They came from recording Frank Sinatra and guys like that where everything was pristine. We could be highly technical and detailed, but we could also say, this has a great natural feel, let’s keep that. We moved quicker and had less preestablished expectations.”