Man in the Music

by Joseph Vogel

  That day, Jackson took the producer on a tour of Neverland as they talked about life and music. Riley remembers Jackson asking him specifically about a song he had recorded with Guy called “Spend the Night.” “He started scatting and beatboxing different parts of it,” Riley remembered, “wanting to know where I’d gotten certain sounds. He told me [it] was his favorite of my songs and wanted me to give him something stronger than that.”

  That night Jackson had a helicopter fly Riley to a Universal Hilton near Record One. “I didn’t check out until a year and two months later,” recalled Riley. Indeed, Riley spent about half the time sleeping at the studio.

  The next day, at Record One, Jackson listened attentively to the grooves Riley had brought with him as the young producer looked on. Jackson loved them. Riley used different chords than he was accustomed to; the rhythms were fresh and hip; the beats swung with velocity and cracked like whips. He was particularly into the grooves that became “Blood on the Dance Floor” and “Remember the Time.”

  Riley was relieved by Jackson’s response. “Our first day at the studio—just watching Michael listen to my music—was the biggest experience in my life,” the producer said. Still, in the early weeks, he was understandably a bit intimidated to be working with the King of Pop. Sensing this, at one point Jackson confronted him, saying, “Listen, you’re going to have to really produce me….I need you to talk to me, I need you to criticize me, I need you to comment, I need you to give me all of you.”

  Riley started at Record One, but after a few weeks he moved over to nearby Larrabee Studios. With Bottrell, Swedien, Loren, and others already at work on the project, there simply wasn’t enough room at the Sherman Oaks studio; besides that, Jackson didn’t want his various collaborators to step on each other’s toes and get territorial. According to engineer Dave Way, the move was also precipitated by differences in studio gear. Larrabee had equipment that more closely synced with Riley’s studio in New York. Larrabee, then, became Riley’s home base.

  In contrast to Bryan Loren, Riley didn’t want Dangerous to sound like Jackson’s earlier records. He was not going for retro; he was going for new. That’s why Jackson loved him. “We didn’t want to sound like another Thriller,” said Riley in 1992. “We wanted to top it, even though that’s impossible.”

  Yet as hip as Riley’s production style was, Jackson also wanted to be sure that he started with the fundamentals. That meant all the grooves the producer brought had to start back at P&P (pen and piano). “I learned from Michael the real way to compose,” said Riley. “Sit at the piano, get the music down [first].”

  Once in the studio, the producer learned Jackson’s likes and dislikes early on and was quick to adapt his signature sound. “I was using a lot of vintage stuff to get the sound we needed,” Riley recalled. “Reeds and SSL XLs were mainly the boards we used—I always loved vintage better than digital. It’s way better…much warmer.” Riley also remembers Jackson telling him: “ ‘You know what I’d like to have overlaid to New Jack Swing? I’d still like to have my strings. I want the strings to be really wide.’ So that’s what we did.”

  Interestingly, on many of their tracks, the bass—one of the defining features on Bad—was left out entirely. “When we dropped the bass,” explained Riley, “the rhythm was always pumpin’. The rhythm was between my music and Michael’s vocal. As long as we were hittin’, if we didn’t have to use the bass, we didn’t use it. A lot of people think that having a lot of music is the key to putting an arrangement together. But we don’t just add music or instruments just to be adding. It’s more about what you feel in the music, what you think is happening. Anything can go, as long as it’s hip or street.”

  Jackson also challenged Riley not to simply use stock synth and drum machine sounds—he wanted everything to sound fresh and unique. Brad Buxer and Matt Forger remember going out and recording different sounds that could be used as percussion—sweeping floors, breaking glass, hitting trash cans—at Jackson’s request. Riley even recorded samples from Jackson’s zoo at Neverland. On one song, “She Drives Me Wild,” Jackson and Riley actually built the entire foundation around such everyday sounds: horns, screeching brakes, slamming doors (though Riley later confessed he got these sounds from a CD of samples, rather than out in the field). “Working with Michael was like going to college,” asserted Riley. “He basically gave me the map.”

  Jackson was just as appreciative of Riley. From early on, the artist knew he finally had the right producer onboard for the rhythm tracks. He was so pleased with Riley’s sound that he also tasked the producer with reworking songs he had generated with other producers. Riley began overhauling some of the songs Jackson had worked on with Loren, including “She Got It” and “Serious Effect.” Initially, Jackson also tried to integrate some of Reid and Babyface’s melodies with Riley’s grooves and production. While those tracks didn’t ultimately materialize, other songs did, including “Jam” and “Dangerous.” “Teddy was very professional,” said Bruce Swedien. “No problems. He’d come in with a groove, we’d say it wasn’t exactly right, and there would be no complaining. He’d just go back and then come back in and blow us away with something like ‘Dangerous.’ ”

  That track was originally recorded will Bill Bottrell, but Michael wasn’t totally satisfied with the production. “I told Michael,” recalled Riley, “ ‘I like Billy. I like his producing, and everything about him. But this is your album, Michael. If this is the right tune, I can utilize what you have in your singing. Let me change that whole bottom and put a new floor in there.’ He said, ‘Try it. I guess we gotta use what we love.’ And we did. I’m quite sure that if anyone else had come up with a better ‘Dangerous,’ [Michael] would have used that. So it’s not actually about me or Billy; it’s about the music. I always say that the music is the star.”

  Over a period of several months, the tracks started to come together. Jackson and Riley had at least half a dozen songs the artist was happy with, and several more in development. “He always pushed me to be different and innovative and strong,” said Riley. “He was demanding and we’d work on songs for a long time; we always had to get the mix right. We had the elements, but we had to get the mix right.” To verify their impact, Jackson cranked up the volume in the studio. “Michael likes to listen even louder than me,” said Riley in 1992. “His volume is past twelve. I’m maybe nine or ten. His volume is twelve-plus. Oh, man, he loves loud music. And he jams! Only way you know your music is right is if he’s dancing all over the studio.”

  Jackson was doing a lot of dancing with the Teddy Riley tracks.

  IN THE CLOSET WITH MADONNA

  On a piece of paper in the spring of 1991, Jackson wrote down the songs that were under consideration for the final track list. They included several of his collaborations with Riley—“Remember the Time,” “Dangerous,” and “In the Closet.” For “In the Closet,” Jackson wrote “MA and MJ duet.” “MA” referred to Madonna.

  Jackson and Madonna had briefly “dated” that spring, sending the media into a frenzy. Both were at the peak of their fame. Their relationship seemed to be a gift from the tabloid gods. Were the two biggest stars of the past decade actually a couple? Or was it just another publicity stunt by two media-savvy self-promoters?

  The King and Queen of Pop attended the Academy Awards together that March. Madonna looked like a modern-day Marilyn Monroe, while Jackson looked like, well, Michael Jackson. Over the ensuing weeks, the pair were spotted together multiple times. On April 9, they were seen leaving a restaurant in Los Angeles together, arm in arm. Later that month, in an interview, Madonna confirmed that the two stars were indeed working together—and that she wanted to give Jackson a makeover. “I have this whole vision about Michael,” she said. “We’re considering working on a song together.”

  The artists began work on that song at Jackson’s Neverland Ranch. “He wanted to
get to know me, and I wanted to do the same,” recalled Madonna. “When you write with somebody, it’s a weird experience, you feel vulnerable and shy….To write songs together is a very intimate experience, like getting tossed into a juggernaut: ‘On your mark, get set, create!’ You have to get past these hurdles, which are, ‘I want to impress this person, but will they think my ideas are stupid?’ You end up talking and gabbing and socializing, and you have to do that in order to get to the next level, to be creative. So that’s what we were doing: watching movies, having dinner, hanging out, going to the Oscars, being silly, seeing if we could work.”

  Ultimately, however, as with the proposed Prince duet for “Bad,” neither artist was willing to cede control and the collaboration failed to come to fruition. According to Madonna, she “started writing words and getting ideas and stuff and I presented them to him and he didn’t like them. I think all he wanted was a provocative title, and ultimately he didn’t want the content of the song to…sort of, live up to the title.”

  Jackson, of course, saw things differently. He felt Madonna was too explicit and didn’t understand the art of concealment and mystery. Ultimately, he decided to keep the version of the song he had written for the duet and replace her part with someone else. Credited as “Mystery Girl” in the liner notes, the singer was actually Princess Stéphanie of Monaco. Unknown to most Americans at the time, Princess Stéphanie was not just royalty; she was an aspiring artist. Her dream was to break into the American music scene. She released her first album in 1986, which performed quite well in Europe. In 1987 she moved to Los Angeles, hoping to establish herself with a wider audience. She and Jackson met in the late ’80s. The two shy, soft-spoken celebrities immediately hit it off. (There were some rumors that they carried on a secret relationship.)

  After Madonna dropped out on the song, Jackson decided to reach out to Princess Stéphanie, who had recently signed a record deal with Sony for her next album, about the part. She was thrilled by the opportunity. In the studio, she remembers him putting her at ease, making her laugh, and giving her advice on her music career.

  SLASH

  According to Jackson’s handwritten list of songs, in addition to “In the Closet,” he also wanted Teddy Riley to work on “Messin’ Around” (a demo from the Bad era), “Ghost” (which ended up on Blood on the Dance Floor), “Joy” (a ballad Riley subsequently used with his group Blackstreet), and a couple of other unspecified “killer dance” grooves that Jackson believed were “better than Knowledge” (a reference to his sister Janet’s song).

  Among the other twenty or so songs on Jackson’s list were tracks that would remain unreleased, like “Call It Off,” “Verdict,” and “Deep in Night,” as well as songs that would resurface on his next album: “Planet Earth” (which became “Earth Song”) and “They Don’t Care About Us.” The list also included a handful of songs from other collaborators: “Gone Too Soon,” written by Buz Kohan and Larry Grossman, and “Keep the Faith,” written by Siedah Garrett and Glen Ballard (the same tandem that had composed “Man in the Mirror”).

  Meanwhile, the artist continued to fine-tune and polish the album. Former members of the A-Team, including David Paich, Marty Paich, Steve Porcaro, Greg Phillinganes, Paulinho da Costa, and Michael Boddicker were invited to help on certain tracks. For “Will You Be There,” and “Keep the Faith,” Jackson also brought in the Andraé Crouch Choir (which had performed so memorably on “Man in the Mirror”).

  Jackson reached out to Guns N’ Roses guitarist Slash for parts on “Black or White” and “Give in to Me.” The meeting with the legendary guitarist took more than a year to coordinate. Like many other collaborators, Slash wasn’t sure what to expect from the pop star. He had grown up listening to the Jackson 5 and admired Jackson’s abilities, but all he really knew about the artist came through his music and media accounts. After finally meeting Jackson in person, he came away impressed. “He’s a fucking brilliant entertainer,” Slash acknowledged, “a complete natural. He’s the only guy I’ve ever met that’s real—for that kind of music.” Slash and Jackson became good friends—not only would the guitarist contribute to subsequent albums, he would also join the artist for several live performances.

  As with Eddie Van Halen and Steve Stevens, Jackson gave Slash free reign in the studio. “I get a basic framework,” explained Slash to Rolling Stone in 1992, “and I just make up my part and they edit it. I wonder sometimes what it’s gonna sound like, [laughs] but every time, they do a great job.” Asked in a 1995 interview what the artist was like, Slash responded: “He’s very shrewd. He’s got a great, sarcastic sense of humor. People always ask me, ‘Is he weird?’ Well, he’s different. But I know what it’s like to be weird, growing up in the music business. I have to admit working with Michael Jackson is different than working with your basic, gritty rock ’n’ roll band. One time when I went to play for Michael, he walked in with Brooke Shields, and there I am with a cigarette in one hand, a bottle of Jack Daniel’s in the other, and my guitar hanging low around my neck. And he doesn’t care. That’s not the way he is, but I don’t have to change for him. He accepts me for what I am.”

  “WE BUMPED THE PUMPKIN”

  As was becoming customary for a Michael Jackson album, multiple deadlines for Dangerous came and went. Jackson believed he was on a roll and wasn’t ready to stop recording. Sony, however, felt they had been patient enough. They wanted the project done.

  It had been more than four years now since Jackson’s last album. In that time, fellow stars like Prince and Madonna had released multiple records. Jackson, meanwhile, had not only spent an exorbitant $10 million to record, including renting out three major studios, but he had also signed an unprecedented new six-album contract with Sony. “In a thriller of a deal,” wrote the Los Angeles Times in the fall of 1991, “pop icon Michael Jackson has signed a long-term contract with Sony Corp. that guarantees him an unprecedented share of the profits from his next six albums, his own record label, a role in developing video software products and a shot at movie stardom.” The contract was described as “the biggest ever awarded an entertainer,” worth up to $1 billion with incentives. It was an enormous investment. But it depended on Jackson producing at a quicker rate.

  Everyone involved with the record began to feel the pressure. As usual, Jackson was juggling a number of things at once, including the filming of the ambitious music video for the lead single, “Black or White.” Bill Bottrell remembers the atmosphere being much more compartmentalized and isolating in the final year than it was on Bad. The main collaborators worked in separate studios, and Jackson slipped in and out.

  Still, going into the fall of 1991, with Sony breathing down his neck, Jackson refused to stop recording new songs. “When the deadline came,” Teddy Riley told Rolling Stone, “he wanted to do more and more songs. And his manager came in there and said, ‘Teddy, you and Michael, you’re not up to your sneaky stuff. Do not write another song.’ And then when Michael saw the commercial for Dangerous, the David Lynch [teaser], we started working hard to get it finished.”

  Fortunately, Jackson had more space to work with in the final track list, thanks to advances in technology. With vinyl, albums generally couldn’t go past twenty-one minutes per side without sacrificing sound quality. Thriller, consequently, was about forty-two minutes in length. Bad was a little over forty-three minutes (forty-eight minutes on the CD, with the bonus track “Leave Me Alone”). But by the early ’90s, the industry had shifted almost exclusively to cassette tapes and CDs (the latter emerging as the dominant format). CDs could hold about seventy-five to eighty minutes. Dangerous, accordingly, was a sprawling seventy-seven minutes.

  Not that the album didn’t still require some excruciating cuts in the final weeks. After working together for more than a year, none of Jackson’s collaborations with Bryan Loren were included in the final lineup. Loren was devastated. Jackson felt terrible about it,
but the bottom line for the artist was the music. He simply preferred Riley’s more aggressive street sound to the bright retro funk of his tracks with Loren. None of Jackson’s work with LL Cool J, L.A. Reid, or Babyface made the cut, either. Among the seventy or so tracks Jackson worked on in these years, many others were left on the cutting-room floor or shelved for later, including gorgeous ballads like “For All Time” (cowritten with Steve Porcaro) and “Someone Put Your Hand Out” (cowritten with Teddy Riley), as well as excellent rhythm tracks like “They Don’t Care About Us,” “Ghost,” and “Blood on the Dance Floor.”

  The clear winners were Bill Bottrell and Teddy Riley. While Bottrell was disappointed that “Monkey Business” and especially “Earth Song” didn’t make it, four other tracks he produced or cowrote did: “Black or White,” “Who Is It,” “Give in to Me,” and “Dangerous.” Riley, meanwhile, was ecstatic to learn that half the album would feature his work with Jackson. Not only was he given credit for coproduction, but also as cowriter for seven tracks. “I felt confident ‘Remember the Time’ would make the cut but I was blown away when he mentioned the names of six other songs we’d done together. ‘These are all great!’ he said.”

  Over the final two months of recording, Jackson and Bruce Swedien stayed at a hotel just minutes away from Record One so they could get back to work as soon as possible. “We’d drive to the studio and work until we couldn’t work anymore,” recalled Swedien. “Then we’d drive back to the hotel, go to sleep and then go back in the morning and hit it again.”

  Jackson’s perfectionism meant he refused to consider something finished until it was absolutely exhausted of its potential. “I’m never satisfied with anything,” he confessed, “After I’ve cut a track, I’ll come home and say, ‘Oh no, that’s not right,’ and you just go back and back and back.” This became frustrating to collaborators, who sometimes felt it was too much. At some point, they couldn’t hear the songs anymore. If not for being cut off by Sony, some believed Jackson might have been in the studio another year.