Q on producing
MICHAEL JACKSON
Chapter 6
mIchAel JAckson Q produced three of Michael Jackson’s solo albums: Off the Wall, Thriller, and Bad. He also produced Michael’s tracks on The Wiz and E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial. Off the Wall, released in 1979, was the first album to generate four U.S. Top 10 hits, including the chart-topping singles “Don’t Stop ’til You Get Enough” and “Rock with You.” It reached No. 3 on the Billboard 200 and eventually sold more than 20 million copies worldwide. Thriller, released in 1982, was certified by the RIAA for shipments of at least 29 million copies in the United States alone, giving it Double Diamond status and making it the all-time best selling album in the States. In addition, it sold millions and millions around the world. It was, and currently remains, the best-selling album of all time, with more than 110 million copies sold worldwide. Bad, released in 1987, had lower sales than Thriller, but was still a substantial commercial success, with seven hit singles in the United States, five of which reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 charts: “I Just Can’t Stop Loving You,” “Bad,” “The Way You Make Me Feel,” “Man in the Mirror,” and “Dirty Diana.” Bad has sold more than 30 million copies worldwide.
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lot of jazz guys were attacking me when I first produced Michael Jackson. They’d say I was lowering my standards or selling out, or that I was too jazzy. I didn’t have to sell out for that. We had played everything growing up. I said, “Man, I’m not following a trend. I’m stretching out. We’ve been doing that all our lives.” Ray was the same way. He was heavily influenced by Charlie Parker,
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and he sang like Charles Brown and Nat Cole. Then he brought gospel influence into pop music. He met a lot of resistance over that, but he was a revolutionary. Did they really think I would be following fads? There was nobody to copy to do Off the Wall or Thriller. That’s nonsense. We didn’t follow a fad—we started a fad!
The Wiz
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Even though I had met Michael when he was 12 years old, the first time we worked together was in 1978 doing The Wiz, with Sidney Lumet directing. I didn’t want to do the picture at first—I really didn’t—but Sidney said, “You owe me,” and I said, “You’re right, you’ve got me.” I loved working with Sidney. He and Richard Brooks were the only guys who’d call me before they called the actors. When they do that, you’ll do anything for them. You’ll do ten times the amount of work you need to do because they trust you so much. When we started The Wiz, Michael was getting ready to do his own album on Epic. He asked me to help him find a producer and I said, “Michael, I don’t want to talk about that now. We’ve got to prerecord first. You don’t even have the song in the movie yet.” Prerecording is the most vital part of a musical, because that’s what the actors sing to on film! Whatever sound you get, better be right. It’s very delicate stuff, so you’ve got to really concentrate on that step in the process of filmmaking. We finally came up with “You Can’t Win” for Michael (Scarecrow) to sing with the crows; the only other song he was singing was “Ease On Down the Road,” with Diana Ross. After we got the prerecords finished, we were at the Brooklyn Hotel and Sidney Lumet was blocking the four principals: Michael, the Tin Man, the Lion, and Diana. They’d mark off everywhere where the actors had to be during the scenes, and then they’d walk them through it. I was starting to watch Michael. He knew everybody’s
MICHAEL JACKSON
songs and all the dialogue. Plus, he’d have to get up very early in the morning to get the prosthetics put on. That took five hours, man, to get all that muddy stuff put on his face to turn into Scarecrow. One of the things Michael’s character did was pull little pieces of paper out of his chest and quote great philosophers. He’d say the quote and then the philosopher’s name, “Blah, blah, blah…Confucius,” or “Blah, blah, blah…Kierkegaard,” or whatever. When he got to Socrates, he pronounced it “So-KRAY-teeze.” I said, “Who?” and he said, “So-KRAYteeze” I didn’t correct him in front of everyone, because that’s not the right way to handle those kinds of things. Never embarrass someone in front of a group of people. He kept pronouncing it the same way, over and over. The second day I took him aside and said, “Michael, it’s ‘SOCK-ra-teeze,’ not ‘So-KRAY-teeze’.” He said, “Really!” and he had the sweetest look, you know, like a deer in the headlights. I saw something in him I’d never seen before: a special kind of innocence and sensitivity. It was in that Socrates moment that I felt inside that there was a lot of potential in Michael. Everybody said, “You can’t make Michael any bigger than he was in the Jackson 5.” I said, “We’ll see.” I heard things in Michael I hadn’t heard before in the Jackson 5. I was very interested in hearing him sing in a lower register. I’d seen Michael on the Oscars singing “Ben,” a love story about a rat, and I knew he had more to offer than just dance music, but I was interested in seeing how he’d handle a song about an actual emotional relationship between a man and a woman. I’d been hanging on to a song called “She’s Out of My Life” that I was going to give to Sinatra—Tommy Bähler wrote it when his marriage with Karen Carpenter broke up. I was thinking I’d love to hear what Michael could do with that song.
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Off The Wall
Quincy Jones Collection
Once things settled down with The Wiz, I told Michael that I’d like to do the album—that I’d like to take a shot at it. He went and told Epic and they said, “No way, Quincy’s too jazzy. He’s only done the Brothers Johnson. He’s a jazz arranger and composer.” They didn’t know about my background—they just didn’t know. And they said, “No, Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff should do it.” Michael came back and he was crying, but I said, “Don’t worry about it. We’re gonna be fine. If it’s meant for us to work together, God will work it out.” Michael and his managers, Freddie DeMann and Ron Weisner, insisted, and said, “Quincy’s doing the album.” And we did. Off the Wall was the biggest-selling black record in history at the time. Epic was getting ready to fire their executives, but Off the Wall saved the jobs of all the executives (even all the black executives) who were saying, “Quincy was the wrong guy, he’s too jazzy.” We didn’t have any more nonsense after that. Michael’s father did the contracts, and he would only give me a $30,000 advance! That’s nothing! Absolutley nothing! And he tried to pay me through Jackson 5, Inc., which he controlled. I said, “No way! Not a chance!” I refused and insisted that I get paid straight from Epic Records. The contract also said that if I didn’t get two Top 30 records, they’d get somebody else to do the next record. Man, please! We had four Top 5 records. Two of them, “Don’t Stop ’til You Get Enough” and “Rock with You,” were No. 1—they sold 2 million apiece! Even though the advance was nothing for an album like this, the real money is in the royalties. So, it’s okay, I made it up on the back end. Despite the objections by my best friend [music executive and producer] Clarence Avant, Joe Jackson refused to pay me more than a $30,000 advance for Thriller. During the entire ’80s, which we literally owned, this man never offered one kind or appreciative word, and I couldn’t care less. Not even a little bit.
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Quincy Jones Collection
MICHAEL JACKSON
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grammy.nominations.for.Off the Wall 1979
Producer of the Year Best Disco Recording: “Don’t Stop ’Til You Get Enough” (Michael Jackson); single from Off the Wall (Epic).
the.KILLer.Q.poSSe Building a solid project, with a chance of succeeding, is about having all the bases covered. If you want to produce great music, you need to develop your core skills—you must get good at what you do. You also need to understand the importance of working with the best people you can find at every step. Anything else is counterproductive! Michael Jackson had more talent than I had ever seen: dancing, singing, and performing. In addition,
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Quincy Jones Collection
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he’d been developing his musical passion and experiences since he was a little kid. I had years of experience producing, arranging, and composing for so many fantastic artists and for film, and I’d developed my craft. I was mentored by all the jazz guys growing up, and I studied with one of the best composition teachers of all time. We had Bruce Swedien with his Acusonic Recording Process, using SMPTE timecode to synchronize up to 15 24-track recorders, plus all the depth and experience that he contributed. It was a powerful team with everyone operating in their strengths. We just put everything together and were ready to change the world. I’ve been blessed to work with the best musicians on the planet! I had what I called the Killer Q Posse, which consisted of Bruce, Rod Temperton, Jerry Hey, Greg Phillinganes, Louis Johnson, John Robinson, Paulinho Da Costa, and Ndugu Chancler. We’ve also had Paul Jackson, Nate East, Steve Porcaro, David Paich, Steve Ferrone, Michael Boddicker, Jeff Porcaro, Steve Lukather, and the list goes on. That’s an amazing group of musicians, and we attacked each album with a vengeance.
rod.teMperton Rod Temperton came out from the U.K. to visit me six months before we did Off the Wall. He wanted me to manage their band, Heatwave, who had a hit with “Boogie Nights” in 1976. I heard their music and just fell in love with it. I told Rod that I didn’t want to be a man-
MICHAEL JACKSON
ager, and that I had only managed the Brothers Johnson because we couldn’t find the right person. But we really connected. He knew his stuff. He had an excellent compositional instinct and wrote great music. We just became brothers right away. I called him three or four months later to write a couple of songs for Michael, and also a couple for Rufus and Chaka, who I was also producing at that time. Thinking we’d probably pick one of the songs he was submitting for Michael, he sent us “Off the Wall,” “Rock with You,” and “Burn This Disco Out”—we ended up using all three! Then he also wrote “Masterjam” and “Live in Me” for Rufus and Chaka. We’ve been working together for 36 years. Rod is a masterpiece of a human being, and I love him from the deepest part of my heart. He doesn’t stop. Seriously, his creativity never stops! He’s the best friend and brother you could ever work with. He doesn’t stop— he just doesn’t stop! “Baby, Come to Me,” “Give Me the Night,” and on and on. Rod played lateral thinking games. He’d go on all night long with these mental puzzles, and he’d never give us any clues. He was disciplined enough to hold out all night long, or longer if he had to, and make us figure them out. Sometimes in the studio you start to burn out or just get bored, so it’s necessary to find something to keep the mood up. Rod’s games helped keep us sharp and alert. For instance, Rod would say something like, “A guy goes into a bar and he asks the bartender for a glass of water. The bartender reaches under the bar, picks up a gun, and just holds it up to his head and puts it back. And the guy says, ‘Thank you very much,’ and gets up and leaves. So what happened?” The stuff is very literal, so it has a logical ending. What happened? So think, he asked for a glass of water, and the gun to his head did the same thing—so what could that be? Hiccups! The remedy for hiccups is fear and drinking a glass of water. But he had a hundred of those, man. I’d say “Goddammit, tell me man!” He wouldn’t let us know; he’d hold it for three or four days. But you get really silly in the studio sometimes, especially on the big projects. But as long as you bring it home, that’s all that’s important. Like junkies we made a lots and lots of good music together in the studio. We also made an art out of staying up for five days and nights in the studio. It was all joy and no pain.
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