by Joseph Vogel
Occasionally, Jackson even snuck tapes back to Hayvenhurst to tweak them. This was the case with “Speed Demon” in the winter of 1986. When Jones found out about it, he was so furious he walked away from the project for a while. “[Quincy and I] disagreed on some things,” Jackson later acknowledged. “There was a lot of tension because we felt we were competing with ourselves. It’s very hard to create something when you feel like you’re in competition with yourself.” But eventually, concessions were made. Quincy Jones accepted that the songs on this album were going to be almost entirely by Jackson—not by Temperton, Toto, or any of his other go-to songwriters. He also accepted that the Synclavier—and synthesizers more generally—were going to play a prominent role. Jackson, meanwhile, agreed to part ways with the B-Team (at least officially) and tried to be open to Jones’s production suggestions. Bruce Swedien was a good mediator. He recognized that the tracks Jackson brought to Westlake already sounded incredible. And he was more familiar with the new technology than Jones. Given the ambition of the project, it would have been impossible not to use it.
At Westlake, Swedien took the Hayvenhurst tapes and recorded them on sixteen-track tape, as on Thriller, to get that “fat, analog rhythm sound” Jackson loved. Jones described it as “big legs and tight skirts.” Then it was transferred back to digital. According to Swedien, Bad had the “widest variety of soundfields” of any album Jackson had yet done. The layers of synth and drum programming—created on everything from Roland Jupiter-8s to Yamaha DX7s to the vast archive of sound characters and grooves made on the Synclavier—continued to grow at Westlake. Assistant recording engineer Russ Ragsdale remembers “synth stacks filling up the entire large tracking room, taking up every available space, as well as the largest Synclavier in the world at the time operated by Chris Currell….It took over eight hundred multitrack tapes to create Bad; each song was a few hundred tracks of audio.” That hadn’t happened overnight. It was the result of hours of work and sweat and innovation. “A lot of people are so used to just seeing the outcome of work,” Jackson explained in a 1987 interview. “They never see the side of the work you go through to produce the outcome.”
A DAY IN THE LIFE
Recording at Westlake took place primarily in Studio D. A typical day at the studio began at 10:00 a.m. and stretched into the evening. Given exclusive access for Spin magazine, journalist Quincy Troupe described the scene like this: Jackson walks in with sunglasses, a brown fedora, and a red corduroy shirt accompanied by his chimpanzee, Bubbles (Jackson would also sometimes bring in his python, Muscles). Quincy Jones is sitting on the floor taking notes while eating; “walrus-mustached” Bruce Swedien is in the control room along with Jackson’s manager, Frank DiLeo, who is “sending long streams of cigar smoke curling toward the ceiling.” On the other end of the studio, there is a “spread of fried chicken, potato salad, greens, and coleslaw.”
On many days, techs remember Jackson showing up wearing a parka with a fur-lined hood in the middle of summer because he didn’t like how cold it was in the studio with the air-conditioning. “We tried our best to just treat Michael like a regular guy,” recalled Russ Ragsdale. “We didn’t go out of our way too much.” Occasionally, said Ragsdale, “Michael would want to get out of the studio for a bit. At the time I had a big full-sized Ford pickup truck with tinted windows. Michael loved riding in that truck and got real excited because he was able to sit so much higher off the ground than in his Mercedes.” Jackson also sometimes retreated to a small, private, second-floor room that looked down on the tracking room, where he would often doodle, munch on popcorn, and brainstorm.
Although some tension and big expectations were inevitably present, just about everyone who worked on the album at Westlake remembers the atmosphere in the studio as one of “love” and “camaraderie”—a creative climate attributed to both Jackson and Jones. Jackson started a tradition called “Family Night,” in which all the family members and friends of the studio crew were invited on Fridays to dinner in the studio, which was prepared by Jackson’s cooks, Catherine Ballard and Laura Raynor (affectionately nicknamed the “slam-dunk sisters”).
THE PRINCE SUMMIT
Of course, every now and then, those involved with the album were reminded of who they were working with—for example, when George Lucas showed up. Or Elizabeth Taylor. Or Prince.
The legendary meeting with Prince took place in September 1986. The two artists had met a handful of times before, including once at Jackson’s Hayvenhurst house around the time of Purple Rain. That meeting had been arranged by Jackson’s attorney, John Branca, who knew Prince’s managers, Bob Cavallo, Joseph Ruffalo, and Steve Fargnoli. It didn’t go well. Prince brought a white box filled with strange items. “Michael thought it was a voodoo box and Prince was trying to mess with him,” said Branca. “He was like, forget this guy. He scares me.”
But by 1986, he had warmed to the idea of a collaboration. He had a demo finished. The song featured a killer synth bass hook and an exploding chorus. Prince accepted an invitation to hear it at Westlake. His entrance in the studio seemed surreal. There the rivals were, in the same room, both at the peak of their powers. Jackson and his team—including Quincy Jones, manager Frank DiLeo, and recording engineer Bruce Swedien—looked on as Prince listened to the track in the control room. “It was a strange summit,” wrote Quincy Troupe for Spin. “They’re so competitive with each other that neither would give anything up. They kind of sat there checking each other out, but saying very little. It was a fascinating stalemate between two very powerful dudes.”
As Jackson envisioned the release of “Bad,” they would begin leaking stories to the press about an escalating rivalry (which wouldn’t be a difficult sell, given the media’s interest in any sign of conflict between the artists). Prince, who was no slouch at manufacturing publicity himself, was intrigued but skeptical. He was interested in working with Jackson, but didn’t like that Jackson was in control of the project. He felt Jackson was setting himself up to look better in the music video and the song. “Prince was like, ‘Oh, he wants to punk me out on record. Who does he think I am, crazy?’ ” recalled Prince’s former manager, Alan Leeds. “He couldn’t get outside himself enough to realize that it was the kind of thing that probably could have benefited both of them. Still, it would have forever been Michael’s video with Prince as just a guest. So that captured what the relationship couldn’t be. They were like Ali versus Frazier. And the media couldn’t get enough of pitting these guys against each other.”
Prince later explained to comedian Chris Rock the basis of his decision to pass on “Bad”: “Well, you know, that Wesley Snipes character, that would’ve been me. You run that video in your mind. The first line of that song is ‘Your butt is mine.’ Now I said, ‘Who’s gonna sing that to whom? ’Cause you sure ain’t singing it to me. And I sure ain’t singing it to you….’ So right there, we got a problem.”
Ultimately, Prince offered a different song in place of “Bad,” reportedly sending Jackson an updated demo of “Wouldn’t U Love to Love Me” (which was later recorded by Prince protégé Taja Sevelle). Jackson, however, decided to pass. Both artists ultimately couldn’t bear to cede control of the project.
As Prince left the “Bad” summit, he turned to Jackson and his team and said, “It will be a big hit even if I’m not on it.” And thus ended the closest possibility of a collaboration between the two legends.
FINAL DECISIONS
Jackson at one point envisioned Bad as a three-disc album. The new material continued to flood in—and even with his high standards, Jackson believed a lot of it was good enough to release. According to Rolling Stone, “Jackson had sixty-two songs written and wanted to release thirty-three of them as a triple album, until [Quincy] Jones talked him down.”
This trimming led to some excellent tracks being left on the cutting-room floor, including songs like “Turning Me Off,” “Make
or Break,” “Fly Away,” “I’m So Blue,” “Throwing Your Life Away,” “Scared of the Moon,” “Cheater,” “Price of Fame,” and “Streetwalker.”
The decision on “Streetwalker” came down to the final weeks. Jackson was trying to choose between that song and the Captain EO anthem, “Another Part of Me.” Quincy Jones favored “Another Part of Me” (partly because he associated “Streetwalker” with Bill Bottrell, who produced the song); Jackson favored “Streetwalker” (mainly because the public had already heard “Another Part of Me”). As the story goes, they brought in manager Frank DiLeo for an outside perspective to see which way he leaned. “Another Part of Me” was ultimately chosen after it inspired the stout DiLeo, unprompted, to get up and dance. Everyone knew dancing was the ultimate Jackson barometer for a rhythm track.
Another battle took place over “Smooth Criminal.” Quincy Jones didn’t want it on the album; Jackson did. As with “Billie Jean,” Jackson refused to budge on this one. “I gotta be honest, I was never a big fan of that song,” acknowledged Jones. “[But], you know, Michael loved it to pieces.” Indeed, Jackson loved the song so much he initially favored calling the entire album Smooth Criminal. Epic Records was onboard with the title. They felt it fit the edgy approach of the album. Jones, however, hated it, and resorted to calling Larry Stessel, senior VP of marketing at Epic Records, to protest. “I will not allow this album to be called Smooth Criminal,” he told Stessel.
More drama ensued, but ultimately Jackson relented on the title—in part, because he also liked the proposed alternative, Bad; and in part, because he still got the song on the album. In the back of his mind, though, he knew this would be his last album with Quincy Jones.
Unbeknownst to Jones, Jackson was still working out of two studios in early 1987—he would often spend most of the day at Westlake and then come home and work in the Laboratory with Bill Bottrell at night. Since Bottrell was working on important songs—including “Speed Demon,” “Leave Me Alone,” and “Streetwalker”—Jackson made one last attempt to bring him over to Westlake. But Jones still refused to work with him. Bottrell was officially “fired” by Jackson’s manager, Frank DiLeo, on January 22, 1987. Jackson told Bottrell he was really sorry, but promised him he’d be back for the next album.
By February 1987, the album was coming together, but the artist still wasn’t satisfied. “A perfectionist has to take his time,” he explained. “He shapes and molds and sculpts that thing until it’s perfect. He can’t let it go before he’s satisfied; he can’t.”
As with Thriller, his patience paid off, yielding the album’s climactic high—and what would become Jackson’s signature anthem—in the final months: “Man in the Mirror.” Written by Glen Ballard and Siedah Garrett, Jackson delivered a jaw-dropping performance in the studio that left even his longtime collaborators stunned.
For all the drama and surrounding pressures, these were the transcendent moments that kept everyone pushing. Visiting the studio in the spring of 1987, journalist Quincy Troupe marveled at watching Jackson in his element: “Alone in the semidarkness, illuminated softly by a single spotlight, he starts to sing. This, finally, is what it’s about….There are no problems, no merchandise deals, no deadlines, no family rivalries. It’s just Michael and the song. Suddenly, he is no longer the dreamy, whispering recluse. He is no longer soft. He attacks the song, dancing, waving his hands, moving with unexpected power. He is in his own world….For these few moments, at least, he is neither a joke nor an icon, just a very, very talented singer.”
A firm deadline was finally set for July 1987. “You need a dramatic deadline,” Quincy Jones explained to Rolling Stone. “I swear to God, we would have been in the studio another year without that deadline.” This time they hit their mark. The final touches were made over the first week of July and the album was sent to Bernie Grundman for mastering on July 10. After more than two years of recording with the B-Team and eleven months at Westlake, it was done at last. The world would finally get to hear the long-awaited follow-up to the bestselling album of all time.
THE WHOLE WORLD HAS TO ANSWER
Bad was released worldwide on August 31, 1987. It was promoted with a CBS special called The Magic Returns, which recounted the Jackson story up to Thriller before debuting the highly anticipated eighteen-minute, Martin Scorsese–directed short film, Bad.
The now-iconic album cover, featuring the artist in black leather and buckles with the title graffitied in red, was a last-minute switch-out. Jackson wanted a design from a photo shoot with Greg Gorman that showed his face superimposed by lace with a black backdrop. The design was inspired by a 1928 black-and-white Vanity Fair photograph of actress Gloria Swanson. That concept was ready and approved by Jackson; ultimately, however, it was vetoed by Epic head Walter Yetnikoff, who felt it was too artsy, soft, and feminine when they were trying to establish a tougher, hipper image. The cover photo was subsequently pulled from a brief photo shoot by Jackson’s personal photographer Sam Emerson during the filming of the short film for the title track.
With the packaging in place, hundreds of thousands of albums went out to record stores in late August. The looming question was this: Would it top Thriller? By the end of September, it had already surpassed the one million mark and had hit #1 on the Billboard 200 chart. Time called it “a state-of-the-art dance record.” Veteran music critic Robert Christgau concurred: “Anybody who charges studio hackery is too narrow-minded to be able to hear pros out-doing themselves. Studio mastery is more like it, the strongest and most consistent black pop album in years.” Rolling Stone believed it was his best album to date: “Bad is not only a product but also a cohesive anthology of its maker’s perceptions,” wrote Davitt Sigerson. “Comparisons with Thriller are unimportant, except this one: even without a milestone recording like ‘Billie Jean,’ Bad is a better record….Leaving the muddy banks of conjecture—as to sales, as to facial surgery, as to religion, as to, Is he getting it, and if so, from whom or what?—we can soar into the heart of a nifty piece of work.”
Many others, however, were more interested in Jackson the celebrity than the actual music. “Jackson the singer can get bushwhacked by Jackson the persona,” acknowledged Jay Cocks. “The Man in the Mirror most people will see is not the conscience-racked singer (‘I’m starting with the man in the mirror / I’m asking him to change his ways…’), but the Captain EO of theme-park fantasies or the peekaboo celebrity, recumbent in his isolation tank or cornered by paparazzi flashes, wearing his Elephant Man surgical mask and upping his bid for the remains of John Merrick.” In nearly every other contemporaneous review of Bad, Jackson’s tabloid image took up the vast majority of space.
With the release of the album’s lead single, the Jackson-penned ballad “I Just Can’t Stop Loving You,” you might have assumed from the reviews that it was the worst piece of music ever created. “With a face as plastic as the disc it covers, Wacko Jacko steps back into the limelight…even more of a girlie than before,” wrote one reviewer. “Jackson might have telephoned these vocals through,” wrote another, while a third assessment described it as an “ocean-sized drip of blustering sentiment.”
Such critiques were absurdly hyperbolic and reactionary. While the song didn’t represent the album’s best material (just as Thriller’s lead single, “The Girl Is Mine,” didn’t), it was also clear from the beginning that, regardless of merit, Bad had no chance of topping Thriller. There was too much headwind. In a 1988 Rolling Stone poll, this reality was confirmed as Jackson was voted “Worst Male Singer,” while Bad was voted “Worst Album” by readers of the magazine. “The backlash has more to do with the singer’s quirky personality than his music,” reasoned Rolling Stone music editor David Wild. “People are responding negatively to his image and to the hype. The category he should have won is ‘worst image’ or ‘least understood.’ ”
Bad was also criticized for lacking substance. In his 1
987 review for The New York Times, Jon Pareles claimed that artists like Carole King, Fleetwood Mac, Pink Floyd, Bruce Springsteen, and Prince went deeper than Jackson: “They also have lyrics that try to go beyond typical pop sentiments, and those lyrics found a response outside the usual pop audience.” Such assessments, however, revealed some critical blind spots and biases. “Many of the attacks [on Jackson’s artistry],” observed Quincy Troupe, “came from white rock critics who suddenly seemed to resent his unparalleled success. Jackson didn’t fit the model for rock-critic idolatry. Someone like Bruce Springsteen plays the guitar, writes songs that are subject to literary criticism, and dances like a white guy. Whereas Michael Jackson represents a black cultural heritage that white critics either don’t know about or would rather appreciate nostalgically from someone who’s dead.” What is perhaps most surprising, however, given how much white rock critics lavished praise on acts like the Beatles or David Bowie or Pink Floyd for their studio mastery, is how little recognition Bad received for its sonic innovation. One would be hard-pressed to find another album in the 1980s that pushed harder into the future than Bad through use of cutting-edge technology and imagination.
WHO’S BAD?
Still, in spite of the backlash (and the comparisons to Thriller), Bad became an enormously successful record. In its first few months, it sold briskly, staying at #1 for six consecutive weeks in the fall of 1987 in the United States. And it outsold the rest of the Top 40 combined.
Bad also revealed Jackson’s increasing global popularity, reaching the top of the charts in a record twenty-five countries. Bad became Jackson’s bestselling album in the United Kingdom and outsold Thriller in most other countries besides the United States. When Jackson traveled to those countries in the ensuing months and years on his Bad World Tour—including Japan, Australia, France, and Italy—he was greeted with Beatles-esque pandemonium (Japan dubbed his visit “Typhoon Michael”).