Heard an interesting interview with Quincy Jones about M.J. today

[Trauma-san]

I heard this great hour-long interview with Quincy Jones about his work with Michael Jackson on XM radio today... just some things I remember from it off the top of my head, and straight from Quincy Jones' mouth.


--- Bad was originally going to be a duet between Michael Jackson and Prince... and the video was going to show film of Michael walking to the fight singing the song, then Prince, etc. and they would have this whole mock fight in the ring and all of this stuff... that's what the song was written about, and why it has the hard nature, it was going to be a friendly rivalry type thing.  Michael, Quincy, and Prince all met at Michael's house to talk about it one night, and Q said Prince showed up in one of his trademark long purple raincoats, lol and was sick... they talked about it for a while and finally Prince said that the song would be a hit with or without him and he'd rather do something that he could help make better, so he declined to be involved.  Michael told prince "I've never been to minnexoplis before!" and Prince said "It's Minneapolis!"  Quincy was just dying laughing the whole time talking about that meeting.

---  Michael's original idea was to call the "Bad" album "Smooth Criminal" and he had already drawn the album cover and everything, had a huge grandiose idea for what the song, album, and video would be about which eventually turned into "moonwalker".  Quincy wanted Michael to finish the album, then name it after whichever song was the most umbrellalike, representing the entire sessions, which he had done with "Thriller" and "Off the Wall". 


----  Quincy said that the way he sequenced Thriller with Michael was, he recorded tons of songs, then picked the top 12.  Out of the 12, he isolated the 4 that he thought were the best, and the 4 that he thought were the weakest, but still in the top 12 out of everything they did.... then, he cut the middle 4 out!  He said he cut songs that were actually better than some of the stuff on Thriller, but left in P.Y.T., Human Nature, Beat It, and the Lady In My Life which he called the 4 weakest songs... because he feels that by doing something like that, you craft a roller coaster of an album that flows better than if you just threw the absolute 8 best songs on there.  That's crazy.


----  He said that during the recording of "Thriller", everybody involved was basically fearless and they went in whatever direction they thought they wanted to go that day... he had Michael sing into the toilet, sing into 10 foot long tubes, etc. just to get different sounds... Michael went and saw some famous vocal coach for months and expanded his vocal range a quarter octave below and above where he was before.  He said Michael worked for 4 and a half months non-stop on Thriller and the E.T. soundtrack album which were recorded at the same time... and everyday showed up determined to work as hard as possible and never tired the entire time.  He called him one of the strongest, most dedicated hard working musicians he's ever worked with.


-----  He said that when he called Van Halen to do "Beat It", they hung up on him and cussed him out on the phone 3 times before he could get Eddie on the Phone, lol.  Eventually, he got him to the studio, and said that you couldn't write anything down for Eddie to play, he'd rather die than play something somebody else told him to, and he couldn't read it anyways.  So he just went in the studio with two gibson guitars and 'burned it up' (jokingly referring to how the amp caught on fire when Eddie recorded the solo for the song, lol). 


----   "Dirty Diana" he said Michael has made a career out of doing things that leave people wondering what he means... and he made a lot of money off songs like this, that he purposely wrote ambiguously so you wouldn't know who he was talking about... the song's meant to appeal (in Q's mind) to fans who might like "Black Rock" or R&B influenced rock and roll for black people... the same reason they wrote "Beat it" for thriller.


-----   "Thriller" was originallly called "Starlite Vibe" or something like that, and went "STARLIIIIGHT, STAR-LIGHT VIBE!" instead of "THRILLER! THRILLER NIGHT!" or whatever.  Then Michael got involved and it took this big Ghoulish turn.  They thought "Starlight Vibe" was too passive and they already had too many songs like that, and wanted something with teeth.  When he got Vincent Price involved, he said he recorded his part in 2 takes, getting the timing perfect even though it's spoken word and doesn't follow the beat.  He said they were in the Vaccum left by Disco, and that's why the song sounds kind of Discotequeish. 


----   He said he defies anybody to listen to a song like "The Way You Make Me Feel" and hear everything that's going on in 1 listen... he said they'd build the records so deep that you'd have to listen over and over again, and this time listen to the bass, then this time listen to the vocals, then this time listen to the synthesizers and couldn't possibly hear everything at one time, you had to pick what you wanted to pay attention to this time through.  He said that people told him several times that they bought 2 copies of some of these albums because they'd listen to the songs over and over again to hear the different things going on in the background.

----  Said that nobody understands the freedom he enjoys making music, and he'll get these Jazz geniuses saying things to him about his pop work and he says "We were fearless, and you expect me to be ashamed of those Michael Jackson records?  Are you kidding me?  You think I'm going to make a record and not give it my all, then be ashamed of my work?" or something like that.  Said he loves every record he ever made with Michael and said that a guy as great as Michael Jackson couldn't make a bad song sound good, but a good song could make a bad singer sound good.  Says that "I just can't stop loving you" was recorded at the last minute with Sideah Garrett (who wrote it) because they couldn't get Whitney Houston in time, and since the song was so good, it made Sideah sound good even though she might not be the best singer for the song.  Said Michael could have sang it with another dude and it would have sold, lol.

----- Said that recording "Wanna be startin' somethin" was incredible, they got these people in there to chant "Maamaa Sayy Maaammaa Sounnnddd Maaa Kuu Sonn" or whatever, and it sounded so incredible they did a stop motion part with it where they just stopped the music and dropped it down to that chant and Michael screaming over it (it's on the record at the end) and said the energy was incredible in the studio when they did that, he has vivid memories of how great that session was.

[Don Seer]

nice post

[Meho]

nice post

[GangstaBoogy]

interesting

i still say "Dirty Diana" was aimed at Diana Ross

[jeromechickenbone]

Props that was dope.

That's crazy about cutting out the middle 4 songs.  Trauma, I think you need to dig those up for us.  You're telling me that there's 4 songs that are better than PYT, Human Nature, Beat It, and Lady of My Life

[Juronimo]

Props that was dope.

That's crazy about cutting out the middle 4 songs.  Trauma, I think you need to dig those up for us.  You're telling me that there's 4 songs that are better than PYT, Human Nature, Beat It, and Lady of My Life

I was thinking the same ting 

Great interview!

[Trauma-san]

That's what Quincy Jones himself said.  Legend has it (lol) and always has, that Michael has tons and tons of songs locked in his vaults.  About 7 or 8 decently realized songs have leaked out that I know of, and supposedly there's hundreds more unreleased... Michael was intelligent enough (recording as a kid) to pay to have all of his music recorded himself.... so he owns all of his masters.  Not only can Sony not release his music, they actually don't even possess his music, he owns the physical tapes the songs are stored on.  He simply doesn't let them anywhere near it, and nothing's ever leaked out because Michael's literally got them locked in a closet at Neverland.

There's tons of "rare" songs that you can get, but they were all officially released, only a small handfull of unofficial songs have ever made it out, and Michael swears to God that he records 100 songs for an album. 

[Trauma-san]

He said that him and somebody were listening for tracks for the album, and Rod Temperton had sent over a demo.  They were listening to the demo, and were talking about something else, and the tape just kept playing, and on the end was Rod doing some kind of scat singing, like old be-bop shit which of course Quincy was way into... so there was just this little simple melody at the end that went "Why... Why? Doo daaa daa daaa.... Why? Why?  doobie doobie doo doo" and they thought "damn, that's good" so they got a songwriter involved, and when they played it for Michael, he was way into it and turned it into this really strong performance with lots of key changes and modulations and things.  At the end of the song, Mike goes "Why? Why? Doo doo daa daa dop dopp daa daa!" to kind of respect the original version of "Human Nature".   He said Michael used to do it live with a mirror ball and all the lights out and it was simply an incredible performance in person, in front of you. 

He said that when they recorded, the most important thing was being 'fearless', he kept going back to that, meaning try anything you thought would work for the creative part... he said that if you tried to do something you had thought out in advance, it was 'bullshit' and said Michael wouldn't cuss but he called it Voodoo... like "That's Voodoo, it won't work".

Said that a woman sued Michael, claiming that "Billie Jean" was about her, and that he was the father of ONE of her twins. .... ?

Said that all of the legends of R&B had jazz influences, and that he thought as a child Michael must have heard a lot of jazz because it's all through his music.

Said that he calls synthesizers 747's.  Q said that synthesizers are just a beam of noise and then you sculpt it any number of ways... and the possibilities are endless.  He said that the band would be like "no, lets do another take, i can make it better!" and it would take forever since there were so many possibilities with synthesizers, but he'd tell them 'no, don't make it better, because you'll change it!" and make them keep it how it was.  He said synthesizers take forever, it's like painting a 747 with a q-tip.

[T-Dub]

I think the Prince story was on the re-release of Thriller that came out 4 or so years ago.  Thanks for recapping, there was a lot of interesting info.  Props.

[GangstaBoogy]

ever since i read this ive been singing "starligh vibe" in my head all day lol

[Word to Everything]

http://www.careerbuilder.com/monk-e-mail/?mid=11141365

[ecrazy]

LMAO^^^

[QuietTruth]

Interesting..

[Tha_Blaq_Sinattra]

"human nature", "pyt", and "lady in my life" were probably 3 of the strongest. I did'nt really like "beat it". I liked weird al's "eat it" better

www.myspace.com/thablaqsinattra

[LyRiCaL_G]

whats crackin with him now? i heard mj moved to live in europe? he runnin away.......whats the word on his music? did quincy say why he wont work with mj no mo?