Crib Notes

Upon checking out Q: The Autobiography of Quincy Jones from the library three weeks ago, the first page I flipped to was chapter 28: “Thriller.”

Maybe it was Michael Jackson’s recent announcement that he planned to perform 50 concerts at the O2 arena in London, but for some reason his collaborations with Quincy Jones [Off the Wall (1979), Thriller (1982), Bad (1987)] had been heavy on my mind. If ever he was desperate to make a comeback — as critics were suggesting the scheduled string of concerts proved — all MJ really needed to do was head back to the studio with Q one last time and do it again.

Not to take anything from the other producers he worked with post-Thriller — such as Teddy Riley who oversaw production on Dangerous (1991), or Rodney Jerkins who contributed significant production to Invincible (2001) — but when you look at MJ’s solo discography nothing stacks up to the Quincy Jones years. They made magic together.

In the following excerpt from his 2001 autobiography published by Doubleday, Jones talks about some of the collaborators who made Thriller the greatest selling album of all-time and reveals how Michael Jackson earned the well-deserved nickname “Smelly.”

The making of Thriller in a little more than two months was like riding a rocket. Everything about it was done at hyperspeed. Rod Temperton, who also co-wrote several of the album’s songs, and I listened to nearly 600 songs before picking out a dozen we liked. Rod would then submit to me about thirty-three of his own songs on totally complete demos with bass lines, counter lines, and all, recorded on the Temperton high-tech system of bouncing the sound of two cassette recordings between ghetto blasters, and ten to twenty-five alternate titles for each song, with the beginnings of lyric schemes. He was absolutely the best to work with—always totally prepared, not one drop of b.s. We have always kept it very real with each other, exchanging strong opinions and comments without ever “throwing a wobbly”—British slang for “losing it.” He’s the kind of warrior you want at your side on the battlefield.

Michael was also writing music like a machine. He could really crank it up. In the time I worked with him he wrote three of the songs on Off the Wall, four on Thriller, and six on Bad. At this point on Thriller I’d been bugging him for months to write a Michael Jackson version of “My Sharona.” One day I went to his house and said, “Smelly, give it up. The train is leaving the station.” He said, “Quincy, I got this thing I want you to hear, but it’s not finished yet. I don’t have any vocals on it.”

I called Michael “Smelly” because when he liked a piece of music or a certain beat, instead of calling it funky, he’d call it “smelly jelly.” When it was really good, he’d say, “That’s some smelly jelly.” I said, “Smelly, it’s getting late. Let’s do it.”

I took him to the studio inside his house. He called his engineer and we stacked the vocals on then and there. Michael sang his heart out. The song was “Beat It.”

We knew the music was hot. On “Beat It” the level was literally so hot that at one point in the studio Bruce Swedien called us over and the right speaker burst into flames. We’d never seen anything like that in forty years in the business. That was the first time I began to see the wildness that was in Michael’s life during the Thriller sessions. One time we were working in the Westlake studio and a healthy California girl walked by the front window of the studio, which was a one-way mirror facing the street, and pulled her dress up over her head. She was wearing absolutely nothing underneath. Rod and Bruce and I got an eyeful. It was right on time in the middle of intense deadline pressure. We stood there gawking. We turned around and saw Michael, devoted Jehovah’s Witness that he was, hiding behind the console.

We did the final mixes and fixes and overdubs up until nine o’clock in the morning of the deadline for the reference copy. We had three studios going at once. We put final touches on Michael’s vocals on “Billie Jean,” which he sang through six-foot cardboard tubes. Then Bruce put his magic on the final overdub of Ndugu Chancler’s live drums, replacing the drum machine. I took Eddie Van Halen to another small studio with two huge Gibson speakers and two six-packs of beer to do his classic guitar solo, dubbing the bass line on “Beat It” with Greg on mini Moog. Bruce liked to record our rhythm tracks on sixteen-track tape, then go to digital to get that fat, analog rhythm sound that we all loved and called “big legs and tight skirts.” He left witht he tape to go to Bernie Grundman’s studio to master the record: Bernie’s the absolute best in the business. In the meantime I took Michael to my place, laid him out on the couch in my den, and covered him with a blanket for a three-hour nap at 9 a.m. By twelve o’clock we had to be back to hear the test pressing that was going out to the world. I couldn’d sleep myself; the anticipation was tremendous. We’d all worked ourselves into a near-frenzy. Meanwhile, back at the studio, Larkin Arnold, the head honcho of black music at Epic, was popping champagne, anxiously waiting to hear the final mix.

(Photo courtesy Sony)

Bookmark to:

Posted in Music news | Add a comment

Tags: Michael Jackson, Q the Autobiography of Quincy Jones, Quincy Jones, Rodney Jerkins, Teddy Riley, the making of Thriller.