Rod also brought in "Thriller" and Michael sang his heart out on it. At one point during the session the right speaker burst into flames. How's that for a sign?
We finished the album the morning we needed to deliver the reference copy. We had three studios going all night long. Michael in one putting final touches on "Billie Jean," Bruce in another, and Eddie Van Halen, who I brought in, in yet another recording his parts for "Beat It."
We all gathered in Studio A to listen to the test pressing with this enormous anticipation. This was it, the eagerly anticipated follow-up to "Off the Wall." And it sounded . . . terrible. After all of that great work we were doing, it wasn't there. There was total silence in the studio. We'd put too much material on the record. Michael was in tears.
We took two days off, and in the next eight days, we set about reshaping the album, mixing just one song a day. Rod cut a verse from "The Lady in My Life," and we shortened the long, long intro to "Billie Jean," something Michael hated to do because he said the intro "made him want to dance."
MTV breakthrough
We delivered the album and watched "Billie Jean" -- thanks to Michael's debut performance of the moonwalk on the 25th anniversary of Motown special -- "Beat It" and "Thriller" just explode, fueled in part by heavy video rotation on MTV. Prior to "Billie Jean," MTV wasn't playing videos with black artists. After those three videos, virtually every video on MTV was trying to emulate their style.
Michael, the music and MTV all went to the mountaintop. It was the perfect convergence of forces. In the music business, every decade you have a phenomenon. In the '40s you had Sinatra, in the '50s Elvis, in the '60s the Beatles, in the '70s the innovation of Dolby, despite the best efforts of Stevie Wonder and Elton John. In the '80s you had Michael Jackson. He was the biggest entertainer on the planet. Followed up with "Bad" and the collective on "We Are the World," we all made history together. We owned the '80s and our souls would be connected forever.
There will be a lot written about what came next in Michael's life, but for me all of that is just noise. I promise you in 50, 75, 100 years, what will be remembered is the music. It's no accident that almost three decades later, no matter where I go in the world, in every club and karaoke bar, like clockwork, you hear "Billie Jean," "Beat It," "Wanna Be Starting Something," "Rock With You" and "Thriller."
In every language on the planet, from prison yards in the Philippines to Thrilltheworld.com, that will be the beautiful, grand legacy of Michael Jackson.
--
calendar@latimes.com
