Jackson watched the ceremony at home, on television. In his mind, “Don’t Stop ’Til You Get Enough” should have garnered consideration not just in the narrow category in which it prevailed, but also for Song of the Year (an award claimed instead by the Doobie Brothers for “What a Fool Believes”)—and Off the Wall should have been in contention for overall awards like Album of the Year.
Jackson was keenly aware of how black musicians had been exploited or overlooked by the establishment over the years. (“Use the past as a teacher, as a reference as to what I should do,” he’d later write in an unpublished note.)9 When it came to the Grammys, the relative lack of recognition made him feel marginalized. He wasn’t interested in making black music, anyway. Since his early days with the Jackson 5, he’d spoken of making albums that transcended skin color; his stated goal was “uniting people of all races through music.”10
As disappointing as it was, Jackson’s Grammy letdown may have ultimately been a useful lesson. “That experience lit a fire in my soul,” Jackson wrote. “All I could think of was the next album and what I would do with it. I wanted it to be truly great. . . . I said to myself, ‘Wait until next time’—they won’t be able to ignore the next album.”
* * *
In the summer of 1982, Jackson summoned Quincy Jones and the rest of his A-Team to Westlake Recording Studios in Los Angeles to record his follow-up. The album that would become Thriller was known by a different name at first: Starlight.
Veteran songwriter Rod Temperton initially gave that name to the title track (with a chorus of “STAR-light! Starlight sun . . .”). And it would have stuck, had Jones not challenged him one night to come up with something better. Temperton went home and brainstormed hundreds of titles, including “Midnight Man.” He still knew he could improve on that; Temperton woke up one morning and the title Thriller popped into his head.11
The next task was to concoct some more hits. Michael Jackson didn’t only want to win awards and write perfect songs, he wanted to sell records—more than anyone else had ever sold. “Ever since I was a little boy, I had dreamed of creating the biggest-selling record of all time,” he wrote. “I remember going swimming as a child and making [that] wish before I jumped into the pool.”12
Jackson was so focused on his goal that when Jones and Temperton asked him if he’d be disappointed if Thriller didn’t top Off the Wall, he became angry with them for even suggesting the possibility. Fortunately, he had a fresh face to help him in the studio: a young sound engineer from Syracuse named Matt Forger. The son of a pilot, Forger grew up repairing mangled airplanes, learned to play guitar in high school, and studied mechanical engineering in college. In his spare time, he applied his multifarious talents by mixing live shows first for his friends; frustrated by the poor quality of the sound equipment at the venues where he worked, Forger started building his own.
“That challenge taught me a lot, but I wanted to get into a serious environment to be able to make recordings,” he says. “I understood very early in my life [that] I could be listening to the radio and three or four songs would play, and then one song would come on and it would be like, ‘Wow, this song is great—there’s something about it—there’s some quality that this song has that these other songs, while they’re good, they don’t seem to have this magic quality.’ ”13
He found a home at Westlake, working as a technology guru for Quincy Jones shortly before the production of Thriller began in earnest. When Forger met Jackson on the first tracking day for “The Girl Is Mine,” a duet with Paul McCartney that would become the album’s first single, the engineer immediately recognized Jackson as an avid accumulator of knowledge. A voracious reader, Jackson often spoke of studying the best to become better—in all sorts of fields.
“He didn’t study the greats just in music,” Forger remembers. “He studied people like Michelangelo, he studied the Beatles, he studied Thomas Edison, Henry Ford. . . . His quest was to figure out what it was, what these qualities are, how these people became successful.”
One of those qualities was attention to detail. Jackson and the A-Team listened to rough cuts of more than six hundred tracks, including thirty-three submitted by Temperton.14 Jackson himself wrote four of the album’s nine total songs, including “Billie Jean” and “Beat It.” To broaden the record’s appeal, he secured musical contributions from other big-time artists: a guitar solo from Eddie Van Halen, vocals by McCartney on “The Girl Is Mine,” and songwriting by Steve Porcaro (of the pop-rock band Toto) on “Human Nature.”
Quincy Jones proved to be a big help in convincing some of those guests to record. He lured Van Halen to the studio with two six-packs of beer and the promise of a killer guitar solo on “Beat It.” The song turned out to be so hot that, in the midst of an early playback, it caused a speaker to actually burst into flames.
Sound equipment wasn’t the only casualty of Thriller’s aural pyrotechnics. One day on his way home from a recording session, Jackson found himself lost in the melody of “Billie Jean,” which he was composing in his head at the time. He was so wrapped up in the music that he didn’t notice the smoke spewing from the bottom of his Rolls-Royce until a man on a motorcycle pulled up to his window and shouted, “Your car’s on fire!”15
In the 1980s, computers and samplers weren’t commonplace, and digital music was in its infancy. But the A-Team had mastered the technology of the day, namely the twenty-four-track tape. In particular, Bruce Swedien had gotten into the habit of using dual multitrack tapes and linking them together with a synchronizer. So instead of having twenty-four audio tracks, there would be nearly twice that number (forty-six, to be exact, as two tracks had to be devoted to time codes). On Thriller, he and Forger took that strategy to extremes, often using a dozen different twenty-four-track tapes per song. A less advanced recording might use one track for the entire string section, but the A-Team could dedicate an entire track to a single violin.
“One of the things that created the richness and the character and the sound of Thriller was this ability to use this vast number of multitrack tapes,” says Forger. “There was an entire organizational strategy of how to make this work. . . . We sat in the studio every single day and utilized this technique. And with Quincy’s vast knowledge of how to draw on sound characters and textures, Rod’s arrangement ability, Bruce’s knowledge of the sonic quality of how to create these signature sounds . . . everything was driven by the creative sense of how to create and make the best recording possible.”
While Epic prepared to release “The Girl Is Mine” as the album’s first single in October 1982, Jackson and the A-Team worked feverishly—often stringing together multiple sixteen-hour days—to place the finishing touches on the rest of Thriller. The day before Epic’s drop-dead date to turn in the album, a group including Jackson, Branca, the A-Team, and Yetnikoff gathered in the studio to hear the final mix for the first time. As they listened, it quickly became clear that something was wrong.
“It doesn’t make me want to dance,” Jackson said.16 He put it more bluntly in his autobiography: “Thriller sounded so crappy to me that tears came to my eyes.”17
The problem was not the songs themselves, but the sound quality. In an effort to fit the long intros that Jackson favored—he dubbed them “smelly jelly”—they’d packed twenty-eight minutes of sound on each side of the record. On a digital album, that wouldn’t have been an issue. But on vinyl, where each track must be physically cut into the actual record, it’s a different story. In order to cram half an hour of audio on one side, each groove must be a little narrower than usual. For Thriller, the initial result was a thin, tinny sound that wiped out the A-Team’s tireless work on sound quality. And Jackson wouldn’t let it be released in such a state.18
The Thriller team took a weekend to cool off before embarking on a grueling schedule of revisions, editing, and remixing the entire album in a week. They all made compromises. Jackson agreed to wipe away some of his treasured “jelly,” while Te
mperton chopped a verse off of “The Lady in My Life.” They managed to shave a handful of precious minutes from other places as well, leaving the final product with about nineteen minutes on either side. At last, they were able to cut a record that had what Jones described as the “big fat grooves to make a big fat sound.”19
Swedien still remembers Jackson’s reaction when he first heard the retooled record: “His eyes lit up and he said, ‘Oh, it makes me want to dance!’ ”20
Still, Jackson had his doubters. In advance of the album’s release, Yetnikoff and Branca lobbied Rolling Stone chief Jann Wenner to run a story on the nascent King of Pop. Though he had put Michael on the cover during the Jackson 5’s heyday, Wenner wasn’t interested in the singer as a solo artist. His reasoning at the time: “Michael Jackson’s not cover material.”21
* * *
Shortly after Thriller finally made its debut, Quincy Jones found himself in a panic. He’d discovered that Jackson had decided not to renew the recently expired contract with his managers DeMann and Weisner (both declined to comment for this book;22 “I’m tired of talking about Michael Jackson,” added the latter23). With no agent and no manager, it seemed the young singer had sabotaged what he’d envisioned as his greatest triumph.
The only person left on Jackson’s business team was Branca, the baby-faced lawyer who’d been with the singer for just two years. Jones picked up the phone and punched in the attorney’s number.
“Branca, what’s going on here?” the producer asked urgently. “It’s like a 747 with no pilot!”24
“There is a pilot, Quincy.”
“Who?”
“Michael.”
Chapter 5
* * *
KISSING THE MONSTER
“Michael’s not going to kiss the monster,” growled the voice on the other end of the line.
“What are you talking about?” asked Branca, who’d just been rushed from a meeting to take the call.
“Tell ’em he’s not kissing the monster!”1 2
The voice in question belonged to Yetnikoff. The monster in question was E.T., the lovable alien with a penchant for racking up terrifying intergalactic phone bills. He was also the titular character in a film that had captured the imagination of millions—including that of Michael Jackson, who’d agreed to record a song and narrate the movie’s companion audiobook at the personal request of director Steven Spielberg. Jackson was set to appear on the LP’s cover embracing E.T.; MCA Records would release the package. But the label hadn’t obtained the proper clearances from CBS, and Yetnikoff was irate.
Success had made the blustery executive even more confident—and cantankerous—than usual. Under his watch, other top CBS artists including Bruce Springsteen, Marvin Gaye, and Billy Joel had seen their latest releases rocket into uncharted commercial strata. And he certainly wasn’t planning to let Michael Jackson appear on a rival company’s product so close to the release of Thriller.
“The monster, he’s not kissing the monster!” Yetnikoff repeated. “You can tell those fucking guys at MCA to go fuck themselves, they’re not using my artist.”
Yetnikoff ended up threatening to sue MCA unless the label pulled the E.T. album from stores or provided proper compensation. “I was very litigious,” the former CBS chief recalls with a hint of glee. “We’d always duel. . . . I was always suing MCA.”
After getting off the phone with Yetnikoff, Branca panicked. He thought Jackson might blame him for the situation, perhaps even fire him. But the singer recognized his lawyer wasn’t at fault. Eventually, MCA settled with CBS, agreeing to pay $500,000 to put the matter to rest.3
It was Jackson, however, who’d eventually reap the biggest reward from the fiasco.
* * *
In 1983, there were 9.1 million cars sold in the United States.4 That same year, Michael Jackson’s Thriller moved more than 10 million copies.
For what would become the bestselling album ever, though, commercial success accelerated more like a Pinto than a Porsche. The full Thriller LP was preceded by its first single, “The Girl Is Mine,” which eventually reached number 2 on the Billboard charts. Critics blasted it as a step back from the diverse rhythms of Off the Wall. One reviewer from Rolling Stone called it “wimpoid” and lashed out at the song’s featured guest, Paul McCartney, for being too “tame.”5 (Given that the chorus ends with the line “the doggone girl is mine,” he may have had a point.)
The complete album would earn a much warmer reception from other critics and consumers. Thriller hit stores on November 30, 1982, making its debut at number 11 on Billboard’s Top LPs & Tapes chart (the precursor to today’s Billboard 200), behind such classics as Built for Speed by Stray Cats and . . . Famous Last Words . . . by Supertramp. Still, it was a strong opening—back then, albums rarely debuted at number 1, and the most common path to the peak was a slow climb.
Reviewers seemed to like Thriller much better than its first single. Billboard praised its “irresistible pulse and energy,”6 while the New York Times called it “a wonderful pop record, the latest statement by one of the great singers in popular music today.”7 Perhaps more important, Yetnikoff loved the album. After hearing the final cut—and seeing its early sales—the CBS chief offered Jackson his thoughts with the same obscene fervor he’d employed with Branca just a few weeks earlier.
“You delivered like a motherfucker.”8
“Please don’t use that word, Walter.”
“You delivered like an angel. Archangel Michael.”
“That’s better. Now will you promote it?”
“Like a motherfucker.”
Even as Thriller sailed off record store racks, Jackson wasn’t satisfied. He still hadn’t hired a manager, assigning most business-related tasks to Branca and picking up the rest himself. He’d call Yetnikoff at all hours to discuss the latest sales numbers on his album. And he was right to think more was possible.
By the early 1980s, promotion meant much more than just convincing radio DJs to spin a hit single: to truly break Thriller as a mainstream pop album, Yetnikoff needed to get videos played on MTV. The network had only been on the air since August of 1981, but in barely a year, its reach had grown from 300 cable outlets and 2.5 million homes to 2,000 affiliates and more than 17 million households. Partly due to the new burst of exposure, the music industry went from negative growth in the late 1970s to a 5 percent uptick in 1983.
“Since the beginning of time—1956—rock and roll and TV have never really hit it off,” the Rolling Stones’ Keith Richards told Time. “But suddenly, it’s like they’ve gotten married and can’t leave each other alone.”9
Jackson had planned to take advantage of that trend with an initial vision for Thriller that called for three videos. Brimming with ideas in the wake of his involvement with The Wiz and “Can You Feel It,” he was determined to personally elevate the music video genre, which he saw as “primitive and weak” in the early 1980s. He believed videos shouldn’t be treated as promotional throwaways, but as works of art in their own right.
Jackson convinced CBS to shell out $250,000 to fund production for “Billie Jean.” Helmed by Steve Barron (who would go on to direct Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in 1990 and Coneheads in 1993), the video featured Jackson twirling through a desolate film noir landscape (the singer had to convince Barron that there should be dancing in the video at all). Throughout Jackson’s quixotic romp, he is tailed by a nefarious paparazzo. In the climactic scene, Jackson sneaks into a hotel room and slips into bed with a figure obscured by sheets—presumably Billie Jean herself. Just as the snoop arrives at the window to take a photo, Jackson vanishes in a golden glow that explodes like a miniature atom bomb beneath the covers.
“I wanted something that would glue you to the set,” Jackson later wrote. “I wanted to be a pioneer in this relatively new medium and make the best short music movies we could make.”10
Though Jackson had certainly lived up to his end of the bargain, Yetnikoff encountered fierce resista
nce when he tried to get the video played on MTV. The network’s brass insisted that Jackson’s music wasn’t rock; they played only rock videos because that’s what their listeners wanted. The subtext: they essentially only played music by white musicians.
“[MTV] just had this real apartheid mentality toward black music,” recalls Fab 5 Freddy, who went on to host the show Yo! MTV Raps after the network eventually expanded beyond rock. “They were trying to mirror the segregated format of mainstream radio at that time.”11
Jackson wasn’t happy about that reality. Neither was Yetnikoff, particularly now that the policy was affecting his biggest artist—and CBS’s bottom line. He placed a call to MTV’s offices. Within moments, he had chief executive Bob Pittman on the line. As usual, he didn’t start with pleasantries.
“Are you the chief schmuck?” Yetnikoff remembers asking.12
“Yeah . . . ?”
“I want you to play [‘Billie Jean’].”
“It’s not up to you.”
“Well, let me tell you what’s going to happen,” Yetnikoff continued. “I’m going to pull every [CBS Records video].”
“What are your artists going to do?”
“They’re not going to have to worry about MTV. If I pull everything, Quincy Jones, who is very close to Steve Ross, who owns the other half of MTV, is surely going to pull out. And then you’re going to have Warner Bros. and CBS pulling their stuff.”
Not all of CBS’s acts were actually making videos at that point, but in theory, Yetnikoff’s ultimatum meant that MTV would never get to run anything by major acts like Billy Joel and Bruce Springsteen. To add pressure, Yetnikoff told Pittman that he’d publicly brand MTV as a bunch of racists if the network continued to refuse to play Jackson’s videos. (“I don’t think it was racism in the sense of ‘We don’t like black people,’ ” Yetnikoff explains. “I think it was racism in the sense of, ‘We’re a white rock and roll outlet and we want to play white rock and roll.’ ”)
Michael Jackson, Inc. Page 7