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Man in the Music

Page 53

by Joseph Vogel


  “In all the swooning at”: Ben Beaumont-Thomas, “Dangerous Was Michael Jackson’s True Career High,” Guardian, July 6, 2009.

  “baroque,” “noisy,” and “excessive on every level”: Susan Fast, Dangerous 33 1/3 (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2014), p. 11.

  “offers Jackson on a threshold”: Ibid.

  “It was just a stripped”: Doerschuk, “Interview with Teddy Riley About Michael Jackson and Guy.”

  “ ‘Jam’ got bigger and bigger”: Sundberg, “In the Studio with Michael Jackson,” Facebook, June 17, 2018.

  “Why, Jackson asks, focus on”: Fast, Dangerous 33 1/3, p. 27.

  “I couldn’t believe it. I was floored”: “Profiles: Bernard Belle,” NJS4E, accessed July 1, 2018.

  “By keeping the beat straight-ahead”: Doerschuk, “Interview with Teddy Riley About Michael Jackson and Guy.”

  “It’s the kind of song that made”: Pareles, “Michael Jackson in the Electronic Wilderness.”

  “We used a variety of drum”: “Michael Jackson: Recording Dangerous with Teddy Riley.”

  “of the way it’s heard within”: Fast, Dangerous 33 1/3, p. 51.

  “a kind of peak in the principle”: Ibid., p. 23.

  “If there’s nothing new happening”: Chuck Eddy, “Sounds of Breaking Glass,” Village Voice, December 17, 1991.

  “Even the bass is a car”: “Michael Jackson: Recording Dangerous with Teddy Riley.”

  “I thought I was going”: “Teddy Riley Runs Down His Entire Catalogue.”

  “[He] was testing me to see”: Ibid.

  “[He] sang the first chorus”: “Post Here If You Worked on Michael Jackson’s DANGEROUS Album.”

  “One of the biggest things”: “Michael Jackson: Recording Dangerous with Teddy Riley.”

  “bringing back Michael to his R&B”: “Teddy Riley Runs Down His Entire Catalogue.”

  “of the James Brown sound”: “Michael Jackson: Recording Dangerous with Teddy Riley.”

  “nonstop, nonlinear barrage of bopgun”: Eddy, “Sounds of Breaking Glass.”

  “fiendishly intricate, loaded with scratching”: Beaumont-Thomas, “Dangerous Was Michael Jackson’s True Career High.”

  “When you’ve come through”: Fast, Dangerous 33 1/3, p. 76.

  “Michael then started singing”: Author interview, Brad Buxer.

  “We worked on it perhaps”: Brad Sundberg, “In the Studio with Michael Jackson,” Facebook, November 15, 2015. https://www.facebook.com/​inthestudiowithmj/​posts/​give-in-to-methe-dangerous-project-had-three-production-teams-bruce-bill-and-ted/​941360452704516/.

  “This is when I learned”: Author interview, Brad Buxer.

  “I called up every parent”: Author interview, Matt Forger.

  “As soon as we got to Westlake”: Buskin, “Classic Tracks: Michael Jackson ‘Black or White.’ ”

  “put down this big, slamming”: Ibid.

  “The guy’s an absolute natural”: Ibid.

  “For my part”: Ibid.

  “The process is creating a vocal”: “Michael Jackson Simulchat,” MTV, August 17, 1995.

  “Michael wrote the song”: Author interview, Bill Bottrell.

  “because by then it sounded”: Ibid.

  “He really wanted the bass”: Ibid.

  “in the realm of the Christian”: Fast, Dangerous 33 1/3, p. 111.

  “There was almost no”: Author interview, Brad Buxer.

  “The long ending was all”: Author interview, Bill Bottrell.

  “[‘Give in to Me’] was like”: Ibid.

  “A lot of magic is created”: Audio clip from Brad Sundberg.

  “I should have left it”: Author interview, Bill Bottrell.

  “He sent me a tape”: Goldberg, “Michael Jackson: The Making of ‘The King of Pop.’ ”

  “Michael Jackson was often”: Alan Keyes, “Michael Jackson: The Essential Playlist,” Rolling Stone, June 27, 2009.

  “one of the best efforts”: John Kays, “Michael Jackson’s Dangerous Stands as One of His Best Albums,” News Blaze, July 5, 2009.

  “He was brilliant with that stuff”: Author interview, Brad Buxer.

  “By this time he was getting”: Ibid.

  “He loved it and then”: Ibid.

  “It was modeled after”: Ibid.

  “It is exactly the same pattern”: Ibid.

  “one of the most beautiful songs”: Ibid.

  “So much for the charge”: Fast, Dangerous 33 1/3, p. 120.

  “The music of Negro religion”: W. E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk (New York: Cosimo, 2007), p. 116.

  “The lyrics are like a proper”: Kays, “Michael Jackson’s Dangerous Stands as One of His Best Albums.”

  “Sitting at a piano and having”: Glen Ballard, “Michael Jackson Remembered: Glen Ballard on Making ‘Man in the Mirror,’ ” July 9, 2009.

  “crying his eyes out”: Goldberg, “Michael Jackson: The Making of ‘The King of Pop.’ ”

  “We’re not going home”: Ibid.

  “Certain singers carry with them”: Joseph Vogel, “ ‘Gone Too Soon’: The Many Lives of Michael Jackson’s Elegy,” Atlantic, June 25, 2012.

  “It’s yours when you”: Author interview, Buz Kohan.

  “Those trips to California”: Vogel, “ ‘Gone Too Soon’: The Many Lives of Michael Jackson’s Elegy.”

  “One can never choose to forget”: Jason King, “Michael Jackson: More Than Black and White,” The New Black Magazine, July 7, 2009.

  “To me, it wasn’t contemporary”: Crystal Cartier v. Michael Jackson, 59 F. 3d 1046 (10th Cir. 1995), Music Copyright Infringement Resource, February 16, 1994.

  “When Michael suggested Teddy”: “Post Here If You Worked on Michael Jackson’s DANGEROUS album.”

  “a retreat from reality”: Fast, Dangerous 33 1/3, p. 128.

  “Jackson’s hard exhalations”: Ibid., p. 127.

  CHAPTER 5: HISTORY (1995)

  “a musical book”: Michael Jackson, Simulchat, MTV, August 17, 1995.

  “He’s wounded as a commercial”: Robert Hillburn, “Few Pillars, No ‘Thrillers’: Twenty-five Music Executives Rank Pop’s Commercial Powerhouses,” Los Angeles Times, October 22, 1995.

  “I would never say never”: Ibid.

  became increasingly upset: Mary Fischer, “Was Michael Jackson Framed?,” GQ, October 1994.

  “I had a good communication”: Taped phone conversations between Evan Chandler and David Schwartz on July 8, 1993, quoted in Fischer, “Was Michael Jackson Framed?”

  “whole thing was baloney”: Ibid.

  “It’s already set”: Ibid.

  “And if I go through with this”: Ibid.

  “Does that help Jordie?”: Ibid.

  “I turned on CBS This Morning”: “HIStory vs. EVANstory: The 1993 Allegations Part 2,” Vindicating Michael, April 20, 2011.

  “conduct a fair and thorough”: “Family and Fans Support Michael Jackson in Child Abuse Investigation,” Jet, September 13, 1993.

  “Competition among news organizations”: Mary Fisher, “Was Michael Jackson Framed?,” GQ, October 1994.

  “People who think Michael’s”: Ian Halperin, Unmasked: The Final Years of Michael Jackson (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2009), p. 107.

  “a frenzy of hype”: Fischer, “Was Michael Jackson Framed?”.

  “Nothing in the world”: Elizabeth Taylor, interview by Diane Sawyer, “Interview with Michael Jackson and Lisa Marie Presley,” Primetime, ABC, June 14, 1995.

  “I’m just very, very…sad”: J. Randy Taraborrelli, Michael Jackson: The Magic and the Madness, (London: Pan Books, 2004), p. 504.

  �
�As I left on this tour”: “Michael Jackson Ends World Tour, Blames Addiction to Painkillers,” Jet, November 29, 1993.

  “Imagine having someone going”: Taraborrelli, Michael Jackson: The Magic and the Madness, p. 501.

  “to submit to a dehumanizing”: Richard Harrington, “Michael Jackson: ‘I Am Innocent,’ ” Washington Post, December 23, 1993.

  Its three-hundred-page file: Federal Bureau of Investigation, “FBI Records: The Vault: Michael Jackson,” November 30, 2010, https://vault.fbi.gov/​Michael%20Jackson; Charles Thomson, “FBI Files Support Jackson’s Innocence; Media Reports Otherwise,” CharlesThomsonJournalist.blogspot.com, January 2, 2010.

  “I could never harm”: Sawyer, “Interview with Michael Jackson and Lisa Marie Presley.”

  “I never thought that Michael’s thing”: Carrie Fisher, Shockaholic (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2012), p. 64.

  “They had a very weak case”: Fischer, “Was Michael Jackson Framed?”

  “I talked to my lawyers”: Sawyer, “Interview with Michael Jackson and Lisa Marie Presley.”

  “You have to have that”: Edna Gunderson, “Michael in the Mirror,” USA Today, December 14, 2001.

  “In truth, I really didn’t want”: Michael Jackson: The Solo Years (London: Authors Online, 2003), p. 132.

  “I was on tour”: Robert E. Johnson, “Michael Tells ‘Where I Met Lisa Marie and How I Proposed,’ ” Ebony, October 1994.

  “The brilliant thing about us”: Ibid.

  “We fell in love”: Lisa Marie Presley, interview by Oprah Winfrey, The Oprah Winfrey Show, ABC, February 10, 1993.

  “flowers, calls, candies, you”: “Elvis’ Girl,” Rolling Stone, April 2003.

  “Our relationship was not ‘a sham’ ”: Lisa Marie Presley, “Lisa Marie Presley Reflects on Michael Jackson’s Death,” Oprah.com, October 21, 2010.

  “He lived and breathed”: Steve Knopper, MJ: The Genius of Michael Jackson (New York: Scribner, 2015), p. 229.

  “who was truly original”: Bruce Swedien, In the Studio with Michael Jackson (New York: Hal Leonard, 2009), p. 55.

  “I’ll never forget the first”: Ibid, p. 63.

  “a library of sounds”: Ibid.

  “They were so nice to me”: Mike Smallcombe, Making Michael: Inside the Career of Michael Jackson (London: Clink Street, 2016), p. 221.

  “They acted like two kids”: “Post Here If You Worked on Michael Jackson’s DANGEROUS Album,” Gearslutz, June 27, 2009.

  “How do you know”: The Official Michael Jackson Opus (Guernsey: Opus Media Group, 2009), p. 132.

  “He’d listen to each track”: Ibid.

  “It was amazing”: Ibid.

  “Janet is a little more”: Robert Seidenberg, “Jimmy Jam’s Work on ‘HIStory,’ ” Entertainment Weekly, June 23, 1995.

  “They were reminiscing about”: Jon Bream, “Jackson’s New Jam,” Minneapolis Star Tribune, June 18, 1994.

  “He was a perfectionist”: Amarudontv, “Terry Lewis Interview—‘Working in the Studio with Michael Jackson’ (Amaru Don TV),” YouTube, December 22, 2011. https://www.youtube.com/​watch?v=X8LM9558Sug.

  “Michael asked me to bring”: The Official Michael Jackson Opus, p. 132.

  “The better I got to know”: David Foster, Hitman: Forty Years Making Music, Topping Charts, and Winning Grammys (New York: Pocket Books, 2008), p. 133.

  “I know that he and Lisa”: “David Foster Talks About Lisa Marie and Michael Jackson,” Back in Memphis, January 10, 2011.

  “He actually worked”: Foster, Hitman, p. 133.

  “I think very few people”: “Post Here If You Worked on Michael Jackson’s DANGEROUS Album.”

  “He’s the only person”: “Michael Jackson Remembered: Wyclef Jean on the Man Who Left Him Speechless,” Rolling Stone, July 9, 2009.

  “Michael’s the most intense person”: “Michael & Me,” Vibe, June/July 1995.

  “Working with Michael is a different”: Ibid.

  “Later that night, while mixing”: “Post Here If You Worked on Michael Jackson’s DANGEROUS Album.”

  “Sometimes we’d look up”: “Interview with Jimmy Jam,” Black & White, October 1999.

  “ ‘I’m sorry, but I don’t think’ ”: “Post Here If You Worked on Michael Jackson’s DANGEROUS Album.”

  “This was no small undertaking”: Ibid.

  “No applause, no comment”: Swedien, In the Studio with Michael Jackson, p. 56.

  “It’s now common for albums”: Author interview, John Branca.

  “The clip doesn’t just”: Chris Willman, “Michael’s Back, and He’s Big…Really Big,” Los Angeles Times, June 5, 1995.

  “nothing to do with politics”: Sawyer, “Interview with Michael Jackson and Lisa Marie Presley.”

  “a monumental achievement of ego”: Stephen Thomas Erlewine, review of HIStory: Past, Present, and Future, Book I,” AllMusic, June 1995.

  “His rage keeps ripping through”: Jon Pareles, “Michael Jackson Is Angry, Understand?” New York Times, June 18, 1995.

  “HIStory’s ultimate goal”: James Hunter, review of HIStory: Past, Present, and Future, Book I,” Rolling Stone, June 1995.

  “It’s insipid”: Armond White, Keep Moving: The Michael Jackson Chronicles (New York: Resistance Works, 2009), p. 64.

  “I don’t know that many people”: “Post Here If You Worked on Michael Jackson’s DANGEROUS Album.”

  “vast musical resources”: Daniel Sweeney, “An Incredible New Sound for Engineers,” ASC, June 1995.

  “The music comes on”: Mike Smallcombe, “Interview with Michael Jackson’s HIStory producer Jimmy Jam,” Making Michael, June 16, 2016.

  “The two of them singing”: “Post Here If You Worked on Michael Jackson’s DANGEROUS Album.”

  “I was in the room when”: Author interview, Rob Hoffman.

  “profane, obscure, angry, and filled”: Bernard Weinraub, “In New Lyrics, Jackson Uses Slurs,” New York Times, June 15, 1995.

  “The idea that these lyrics”: White, Keep Moving, p. 55.

  “deeply disturbing’ ”: Steve Hochman, “Jewish Leaders Call Jackson Lyrics Anti-Semitic,” Los Angeles Times, June 16, 1995.

  “There has been a lot of”: Jerry Crowe, “Jackson Promises Disclaimer in Future ‘HIStory’ Albums,” Los Angeles Times, June 17, 1995.

  “[Jackson] gives the lie”: Pareles, “Michael Jackson Is Angry, Understand?”

  “Michael Jackson is a much greater artist”: Cynthia Fuchs, ed., Spike Lee: Interviews (Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2002), p. 152.

  “[In the early stages the song] was”: Author interview, Rob Hoffman.

  “The bridge section consisted”: Ibid.

  “finest track since ‘Billie Jean’ ”: White, Keep Moving, p. 61.

  “ethereal and stirring description”: Tom Molloy, “Michael Jackson Seemingly Gives His Side of Story on Decade-old Album,” Associated Press, May 23, 2005.

  “It fell into my lap”: Michael Jackson: For the Record (London: Authors Online, 2009), pp. 234–35.

  “No, no, I want to just work”: Author interview, Brad Buxer.

  “I played him a verse”: Ibid.

  “Just like with poetry”: Ibid.

  “I was the tape op for the recording”: “Post Here If You Worked on Michael Jackson’s DANGEROUS Album.”

  “The word pictures he paints”: Jonathon Conda, “A Stranger in Moscow,” Couch Sessions, June 30, 2009.

  “[They] were perfect. The pain”: Author interview, Brad Buxer.

  “Michael was the biggest kid”: “Michael Jackson Remembered: The Tributes,” Rolling Stone, June 25, 2014.

  “That’s when I was like”: “Dallas Austin on Michael
Jackson’s Lesser-Known Work: His Paintings,” Rolling Stone, August 21, 2009.

  “He was quite an imposing”: “Post Here If You Worked on Michael Jackson’s DANGEROUS Album.”

  “[When] Michael came in”: Ibid.

  “We popped it up on”: Ibid.

  “I was in…a hotel”: Joseph Vogel, Earth Song: Michael Jackson and the Art of Compassion (Boston: CreateSpace, 2017), p. 25.

  “It became quite the obsession”: Author interview, Bill Bottrell.

  “an ominous sound, the beginning”: Author interview, George del Barrio.

  “very modern, very avant-garde”: Author interview, Matt Forger.

  “That’s what gave it”: Author Interview, Bill Bottrell.

  “It’s this very heroic”: Ibid.

  “The real drums just move”: Vogel, Earth Song, p. 36.

  “We gave them a tape”: “Post Here If You Worked on Michael Jackson’s DANGEROUS Album.”

  “It crossed formats”: Author interview, Matt Forger.

  “We talked about John Lennon”: “Post Here If You Worked on Michael Jackson’s DANGEROUS Album.”

  “I think Earth feels”: Alex Pasternack, “Was Michael Jackson the World’s Biggest Environmentalist?,” Treehugger.com, June 26, 2009.

  “I’m still very proud”: Author interview, Bill Bottrell.

  “open up people’s consciousness”: Bryan Monroe, “Q&A: Michael Jackson in His Own Words,” Ebony, December 2007.

  “I have not, shall we say”: Steve Chawkins, “Tom Sneddon Dies at 73; D.A. Best Known for Prosecuting Michael Jackson,” Los Angeles Times, November 2, 2014.

  “That was one of the”: “Post Here If You Worked on Michael Jackson’s DANGEROUS Album.”

  “He was a good friend”: “Nile Rodgers Owes Career to Michael Jackson,” Celebretainment, June 15, 2018.

  Vanderbilt, Morgan, Trump, Rockefeller: “What Does He Say in ‘Money’?” MJJCommunity.com, April 19, 2009.

  “It turns out that he’s the nicest person”: Michael Jackson: The Legend Continues (Motown Video, 1989), VHS.

  “We will always remember you”: @YokoOno, Yoko Ono, Twitter, 2:16 p.m., July 7, 2009.

  “I just went in and in one”: Crystal Cartier v. Michael Jackson, 59 F. 3d 1046 (10th Cir. 1995), Music Copyright Infringement Resource, February 16, 1994.

 

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