This programme contains some strong language
CHEERING
MICHAEL LAUGHS
Woo!
This is really true.
A lot of people say, "You just made it up to have something to say."
But one day our television broke down
and we didn't have anything, really, to do,
like in the morning times.
So, what we started doing, we started singing,
my mother, my brothers,
and we started making harmony.
Next thing we know, we were singing in talent shows
and winning awards and trophies.
That's how it got started.
# You went to school to learn, girl
# Things you never, never knew before
# Like I before E except after C
# And why two plus two makes four
# Na-na-na
- # I'm gonna teach you - Teach you, teach you
- # All about love, yeah - All about love
# Sit yourself down, take a seat
# All you gotta do is repeat after me
# A, B, C
# Easy as one, two, three
# Simple as do re mi
# A, B, C
- # One, two, three - Baby, you and me, girl. #
'Hey, hey, hey, stop the film!
'Hey, stop the film, please!
'Hey, stop the film! Come on!
CHEERING 'Thank you.'
They want to hear I Want You Back and ABC and The Love You Save...
- Right. - ..and Dancing Machine, Sugar Daddy, I'll Be There,
Got To Be There, Rockin' Robin.
- You want to hear Daddy's Home? - CHEERING
Do you want to hear all the old stuff?
The number one reason I don't want to do the old stuff,
number one - it's old! OK?
Number two - the choreography is old!
Jackie's old!
CHEERING
- Wait a minute, Michael. - Do you care about that?
Do you care?
I'll tell you what...
..I'll do the old stuff for you, OK?
CHEERING
But I'm doing it for you, I'm not doing it for them.
I'm doing it for you!
MUSIC: I Want You Back by The Jackson 5
The Venom - $5 million GTD Poker Tourney Download AmericasCardroom.com
# When I had you to myself I didn't want you around
# Those pretty faces always made you stand out in a crowd... #
Their first four songs broke historical records
because they all went to number one, the very first four songs
they ever recorded,
- which was I Want You Back... - ABC, The Love You Save...
..and I'll Be There.
What happened after that was we went from being able to go anywhere,
get a hamburger, go to a movie, you know, go shopping,
to being able to go nowhere.
They became so successful so quickly
that none of us were prepared for it.
# Ooh, ooh, baby
- # I want you back - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
# I want you back... #
He used to sing songs with a lot of feeling and he would sing them
with a lot of feeling and a lot of moving
like he had been here before.
Like he had lived before.
Vocally, he was just leaps and bounds ahead of
what anybody could teach him.
He came here knowing that stuff.
It was in his DNA.
I discovered that Michael was very talented
when he was just about two or three years old.
Michael had a lot of rhythm and he loved to dance.
I think he was born dancing.
Michael told me, way back, he said, "Steve, I'm not going to be poor."
Imagine 11 kids living in a two-bedroom house in Gary, Indiana.
And Gary, Indiana is no Beverly Hills.
It was hard.
When you have all those kids like I had
and kids, you know, they like to eat,
so when they holler, they want some food,
you got to put something in their hand.
And I kept food on the table, plenty food spare.
Joseph had done a remarkable job creating the group.
I can remember how much it meant to all of them,
but particularly Michael, to make it.
I would say, to this day, Motown was the greatest school for me.
Really, it was the best.
I learned how to cut a track as well as producing.
I've learned so many things about writing.
Pretty much like a college that taught us everything
about songwriting and producing and everything.
And we learned so much about lyrical content,
how to produce songs and just being a great artist.
They had the best songwriters and artists in the world.
Here we are in Chicago.
You see here members of The Temptations.
Down here on the bottom is little Michael with his Afro
and I'm right next to him.
That's me, y'all.
What Michael learned is to be great
you had to be persistent.
You had to work. He got to watch people
like Diana Ross,
Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder...
The Temptations, Smokey Robinson.
All these wonderful guys
that we idolised.
And these were legends in the music industry
that he was able to observe up close in the studio
in their element.
I got my degree from Motown university.
It was really an atmosphere of competition.
Competition breeds champions, but you can't let the competition
overcome the love.
And so it was all built on love, and Michael was full of love.
And the atmosphere just suited him very well.
We learned so much being with all those great songwriters
and producers.
And at the time when it's taking place, you don't realise that.
We were kids ourselves, I didn't know how to do this.
And we were learning as we went together.
# Stop! Na-na-na-na
# You'd better save it
# Stop, stop, stop You'd better save it
# When we played tag in grade school
# You want to be It
# But chasing boys was just a fad
# You crossed your heart you'd quit. #
Yes, it's the same nerve The Beatles touched lo these many years ago.
Only this time, it's a group of black teenagers
fronted by an 11-year-old soul brother.
# Darling, take it slow
# Or some day you'll be all alone. #
It was so intense, this fan worship.
You have to understand that all the kids who were
responding to The Jackson 5,
hadn't had a Mickey Mouse Club with kids like them on camera.
They represented the first youth group of our contemporary times
for all these kids to identify with,
and, initially, they were all the black kids.
The beginning is, you know, when I first saw him
and that's the reason why I'm here.
That's what motivated me
and wanted me to do whatever it is that I'm doing right now.
You know, he was everything that...
That I aspired to be.
Those boys, they practise most of the time
because one of the kids who's out there...
running the streets and playing, he was in there
trying to get a song down or something.
He wanted to be the best at everything he ever did.
They were not at all concerned about the working.
We worked all day and all night.
I mean, this kid, at nine,
meant serious business.
I mean, this kid meant serious, serious business.
I mean, he was not kidding!
He questioned Nick and I
about our early Motown songs.
He always wanted to know, how did you come up with this idea?
What was this? What made you say that?
You know, songs like Ain't Nothing Like The Real Thing.
He was a real student.
I was fascinated by the fact that he had this kind of commitment
and this kind of dedication and was inquisitive about it.
He was always watching.
He would always be watching.
Well, who else do you think makes
the stage come to real life
besides me and Ed Sullivan?
LAUGHTER
Hold it, hold it, hold it.
You're beginning to steam me, kid. You understand that?
Best experience in the world.
Just sitting in the wings and learning.
Aw. I ate that up.
And he would sit with me at mixing sessions,
because I did a lot of mixing.
He would sit there for hours and hours.
I would tell somebody, one of my assistants, I'd say,
"My back is turned, but I know Michael is staring at me."
The thing I loved about Motown
was that Berry Gordy,
if he didn't like a song, he'd go in the studio and cut one himself.
- Yeah. - And so Berry Gordy, in my opinion, is probably
the greatest record man there ever was.
Berry was wonderful with taking a song
and leaning it to the right direction,
giving it the right flavours, to make it a hit.
He knew just what it takes, and everybody can't do that.
Ben is coming...
And this time, he's not alone.
And then came Ben, which was a soundtrack to a movie about rats.
Wherever we tour, the whole room demand to hear it.
We can't get off stage.
People start chanting for Ben.
This performance of Ben at the Academy Awards in 1973
was the first time that Michael really stepped out on his own.
The first nominated song is Ben from the picture Ben.
It'll be sung by a young man whose talent is mature,
but whose age suggests that maybe he shouldn't even be up this late.
# Ben, the two of us need look no more
# We both found what we were looking for
# With a friend to call my own... #
He was part of your whole life.
It was crazy, man!
When you were a little kid
with all the Jackson 5 songs
and when you're a little older then through your puberty,
your adolescence.
# Ben, you're always running here and there
And then when you go to college, and then...
He was always around, defining a part of your life.
There's so many steps in between that first day and Off The Wall.
For me, the most heartbreaking was when they left Motown.
# Dancing, dancing, dancing
# She's a dancing machine
# Aw, babe
# Move it, baby
# Automatic systematic
# Full of colour, self-contained
# Tuned and gentle to your vibes... #
They came in as bubble-gum.
No-one ever graduates from being a cute kid group
to being taken seriously.
There's no child singer that you could point to,
besides Michael Jackson, that went from being really big
to the biggest pop star ever.
Thank God for Dancing Machine.
What they were observing at the time at Motown,
what The Jacksons were observing, were a lot of artists
having creative freedom.
# Dancing, dancing, dancing machine
# Watch her get down Watch her get down. #
We wanted to write, we wanted to produce ourselves
and our contract at Motown didn't let us do that.
And plus our contract was expiring at the time
and it was time to make a new change.
Two guys named Ron Alexenburg
and Steve Popovich, OK?
And they were with Epic, one was head of promotion,
one was head of A&R, and they came to me and said,
"We're going to sign The Jacksons."
You know, as a group.
It all started at the Warwick Hotel and there's nothing but kids
around the whole hotel. I went to the doorman and said,
"What's going on here?" And he said, "The Jackson 5 are here!"
It gave me the opportunity to go, just the way I am,
into the lobby, I picked up the house phone and I called and I said,
"Michael Jackson, please" and they rang right through to room 805
and he came downstairs with his dad. I looked at him and said,
"What do you want to do?" and he said, "Some day I'd like to
"do my own music." I said, "Really? What about now?"
The group wanted to leave Motown.
- Joseph... - My name's Joe Jackson.
..thought that he wanted to bring them and take them
to a whole other level that Motown just couldn't do.
But I was told not to sign him and I was told that
they were a cartoon act.
And I went to Walter Yetnikoff who was my boss and I said,
"Hold on. The Jacksons belong on this label.
"We call ourselves "the family of music", this is a family.
"I want to sign them."
I said, "Well, I don't know how many records they've sold."
So, I went to hear at the Westbury Music Fair.
Michael was 15 years old at the time.
He's singing a song to a dead rat, which you remember, named Ben, OK?
And I come back and I said to these guys, "Are you crazy?
"You want to give them 3,500,000?"
I said, "Walter, please. You're new in your job
"and you're really not qualified to judge this."
I was in the job, like, three weeks when that happened.
He was like, "OK, I'll go along with you guys.
"You seem to know what you're doing."
I said, "You know, you're probably right."
That was my brilliant move in signing The Jacksons.
# Like Ben
# Like Ben. #
APPLAUSE
The most tense time of life, for me,
was the changing from Motown
to CBS.
I was in a whole other world.
I was... Gosh.
I didn't know what was happening.
Understanding the challenge of a child prodigy having to make
a transition and now being a serious, serious artist
and how much courage it takes to actually step outside of that
and to come with a new sound,
that can be pretty damn scary.
Kind of a critical decision that The Jackson 5 with their father,
Joe Jackson, made to leave Motown.
And it resulted in a lawsuit out of which came a name change
to The Jacksons.
I was told I couldn't use the name "Jackson 5"
and I said, "It's OK, we'll call them The Jacksons."
Berry Gordy would not let that name go.
We were all sad that he was gone...
Jermaine stayed.
Jermaine Jackson was married to the daughter
of Berry Gordy, so probably not a good idea for him to leave Motown
with the rest of his family.
We respect Jermaine's decision because that was
a very difficult decision for him to make
and I respect him for that because
he did what he wants to do. I want people to do what they want to do.
Don't do what I want you to do, do what you feel that's best for you.
There's so much going on, so much tension.
I wasn't sure what was going to happen.
I asked Michael, "What's going to happen when people ask you,
"Why are you leaving Motown?" and he said,
"Because everything is possible with you at Epic Records"
and there was nothing more to be said.
And with Columbia Records, we want to sell twice as many records.
We want to do the things that we've dreamed of.
It was not a popular signing in the business,
nor was it in the building.
"Ron's lost his mind."
You know, "The Jacksons have had it, they're done."
The problem at that time is they had had a cartoon series,
and their credibility was questionable.
# 2, 4, 6, 8, who do you appreciate
# Please be my pride and joy
# 2, 4, 6, 8, who do you appreciate
# I wanna be your lover boy... #
I may be a little fella
But my heart's as big as Texas
I have all the love a man can give
And maybe a little bit extra.
I'm going to give them as much credibility as I possibly can.
We got on a train to Philadelphia,
Gamble and Huff opened their drawer full of hits...
When you think of disco, and when you think of quality disco,
you came to Philadelphia.
Two of the people that Michael Jackson learned from immensely
were Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff, who were the creators
and entrepreneurs behind Philly International.
The proprietors of the disco sound.
They had always wanted to write and produce their own records,
you know what I mean, and be a part of the process.
And that's pretty much what Philly International was,
it was a place where you had a lot of creative freedom.
They wrote tons of hits, I mean, tons, tons of hits.
We had Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes, we had we had the O'Jays...
Look to the roster!
We had Patti LaBelle...
- Archie Bell & The Drells... - Phyllis Hyman... - Billy Paul...
Lou Rawls, we had Teddy Pendergrass...
- Three Degrees. - Three Degrees...
We had to style these songs to fit these guys' voices.
- And that's what great producers do, right? - Sure.
We're right...almost in the middle of a recording session with
the Jacksons, and guess who is producing their brand-new album?
- Gamble and Huff. - That's right.
And why would you guys come all the way in from California
to cut some sides in an album in Philadelphia?
Because, er...the Gamble and Huff organisation is here,
and they're two of the best producers in the world.
Working with Gamble and Huff, they do it at a quicker pace -
three weeks to make a record.
I didn't know you could make a record in three weeks.
They were the Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis of the '70s.
And Michael always says he learned a lot
about the songwriting process from Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff.
How to structure a song, how to create great arrangements.
The Jacksons came to Philadelphia for two years to record two records,
The Jacksons and Goin' Places.
We try to write songs that people do all the time,
how people say things all the time.
# Enjoy yourself, enjoy yourself
# Enjoy yourself for me... #
People say that all the time, you know, "Enjoy yourself."
# You've got to enjoy yourself...
# Sayin'
# Enjoy yourself
# Get down, get down
# Get on down
# Enjoy yourself
# Get down, get down
# Get on down
# Enjoy yourself
# Get down, get down
# Let's get on down
# Enjoy yourself
# Get down, get down
# Just get on down
- # Come on - Come on
# Come on
# You can do it, You can do it You can do it, You can do it
- # Whoo! # - He was driven by the music,
- he loved the music and, er... - He got to learn.
One of the most important things to being successful is listening.
It's listening and watching.
And being a good person to work with, easy to work with.
Every song is a negotiation, every production is a negotiation,
if you're co-doing it with someone.
You know, the producer wanted me to pronounce words a certain way.
There was a song, and there's a line in it where he sings...
# Now I'm a man that's for all seasons
# And what the city offers me ain't naturally... #
# "Ain't naturally..." #
He sings that, and I go, "Oh, no, that's bad English."
So I say, "Hang on, Mike," and I come out, and I said,
so I say, "Isn't naturally - naturally? Or isn't natural?"
I told him you pronounce the word so precisely, it takes away
from the feeling of the song, and we got into a little thing with that.
There's a lot of give and take,
and sometimes you don't want to give, or sometimes you give
but you feel like, "I should have left it how it was."
Something said, in my brain, "Shut the fuck up!"
"Stop being the grammar police!
This guy's a genius, just get out of his way!"
I was right, and I won!
But, um... it was a good learning point.
You want to...
100% express your idea.
It's just 100% expression of me.
We have two albums...
I mean, two singles on the album coming out in December on Epic.
The first time we've written some songs on the album.
It was a different style, but still it was a hit record,
so when we started putting that together with what
we heard amongst the brothers, it created our own style of music.
It's time to write, so I'm letting you know
that it's time for you to go out and do it yourself.
So we decided to write and produce our own songs,
and we finally did,
and we went through so much, you know?
The...
People are not believing in your work, or saying,
"Are you sure, are you sure?"
We said, "Yeah, we know we can, we know what we can do."
And we went in and we wrote the Destiny album.
I felt it was something that came from within,
from us, that this was the Jacksons.
"This is us today."
On the Destiny album, which is the album that comes out in 1978,
a year prior to Off The Wall, he's starting to make those moves,
he wrote Shake Your Body (Down to the Ground).
Where were you when you first found out about that record,
- how'd it happen? - Er...
It was at home,
and Randy was playing this groove on the piano, "da-da-dah..."
I said, "What is that?" He said, "Oh, it's nothing."
I said, "I'll say that it is something."
- And I just started singing to his playing. - Mm-hm. - And it came about.
I called some of my friends out here I had a lot of respect for,
that knew how to arrange. I thought...
the key to really making an album of a vocal band like this
is obviously great musicians, great arrangements...
Bobby Colomby convinced me that I should, er...
get more into arranging.
He said, "And here's who you're going to do it with."
Next thing you know, I'm in a room with The Jacksons!
Then we brought Greg in to help us with the record...
- Destiny album again. - Yeah.
- Man! - Amazing!
- Everybody was just great from the beginning. - It was supe then.
When I first heard the demo for Shake Your Body, it was...
You know, obviously, the melody was there, which was very strong,
and they had the basic piano part, you know, that you hear,
the "duh-duh-duh-duh..." All that rhythm was there.
# You walk around this town all with your head up in the sky
# But I do know that I want you... #
But there wasn't...as much going on rhythmically.
Greg came up with the "psst-psst-bah-dun-bah-dum."
"Psst-psst-bah-dun-bah-dum."
"Psst-psst-bah-dun-bah-dah."
That's the rhythm of Shake Your Body (Down to the Ground).
The average song was more like,
"Psst-tsst-tsst-tsst- tsst-tsst-tsst."
- It fit perfectly. - At first when he came up with that beat, I said,
"What is this guy doing?"
I said that to myself, I didn't say anything,
but I waited till he played it,
- and, man, when he played it... - Yes. - ..and we heard it on the record,
I said, "Oh, my God, this is the bomb!"
HE LAUGHS
Cos I'd never heard a beat like that before, you know? It was incredible.
Great beat.
I said, "If the Jacksons ever need a drummer,
"let 'em know your friend is in town."
It was a guy whose name is James McField, keyboard player,
who got me the audition.
And Tito said that - he had his arm on his guitar, and he said,
"Let's play Shake Your Body Down..."
This kind of look, he said, "You know that one?"
So I started playing the beat.
And they're looking at each other,
they're whispering in each other's ear, and they're looking,
and I'm saying, "Oh, no, I'm blowing it!"
Because that beat is very tricky.
You have to know when and how to cross your arms
to make the times happen,
the intricate hi-hat pattern,
and keep the beat going without losing any of the elements.
And then Randy said, "Nobody could play that beat!
That was a three-part overdub!"
And I said, "Really? I thought the guy played that one time."
And they were shocked and amazed that I could play it,
and they said, "You're our drummer."
We had Tom Tom 84 doing the horn arrangements,
who is a horn arranger out of Chicago
who did all of Earth, Wind & Fire's.
And then we have the horn arrangement,
then we got Earth, Wind & Fire's horn players come in and play
"Duh-duh-duh-duh-dah-da-da-da- dah-dah-dah,"
and the horn players loved that lick.
It's as dissonant and tension-provoking
a verse, musically...
You can't... And I'm, like, "What's going on?
"Where's the bridge, when's the solo? When are we...?"
I'm just used to other form.
Epic's really not interested in them at all at this point,
it was kind of like, "Oh, God, we've got to put this out..."
I get a call from Paris Eley.
He is head of promotion for the R&B department.
And he says, "Hey, man...
"..Shake Your Body's a hit."
I want to show you first of all the album,
and then show you the inside, if I may, and from left to right,
they are Randy and Tito and Jackie and Marlon and Michael,
and they are...
The Jacksons!
CHEERING
# I don't know what's gonna happen to you, baby
# But I do know that I love you
# You walk around this town with your head all up in the sky
# And I do know that I want you
# Let's dance, let's shout
# Shake your body down to the ground
# Let's dance, let's shout
# Shake your body down to the ground
# Let's dance, let's shout
# Shake your body down to the ground
# Let's dance, let's shout
# Shake your body down to the ground... #
That enabled people to see Michael Jackson finally as an adult.
Because it was musical, it was a long way from ABC
and I Want You Back.
# You tease me with your loving to play hard to get
# Cos you do know that I want you
# I need to do just something to get closer to your soul
# Cos I do know that I want you
# Let's dance, let's shout
# Shake your body down to the ground
# Let's dance, let's shout
# Shake your body down to the ground
# Let's dance, let's shout
# Shake your body down to the ground
# Let's dance, let's shout
# Shake it all now
# Shake it all now... #
There's a moment in the demo of Shake Your Body (Down to the Ground)
which clearly let me know that they had their eyes on a bigger prize.
It's 1978, and the biggest-selling album of all time
is Saturday Night Fever.
And there's a moment that you can hear Jackie in the background
say, "Pssh!
"I can't wait till the Bee Gees hear THIS shit!"
I want the Bee Gees to hear this shit!
Whoo!
# Let's dance, let's shout
# Shake your body down to the ground... #
Everybody!
# Shake your body down to the ground Let's dance, let's shout
# Shake your body down to the ground... #
Everybody!
We wrote, "Produced by The Jacksons. All songs written by The Jacksons."
Well, Mick Jackson,
a white kid that lived in England, wrote Blame It On The Boogie.
I didn't lie. His name was Jackson!
# Don't blame it on the sunshine
# Don't blame it on the moonlight
# Don't blame it on the good times
# Blame it on the boogie
# Don't you blame it on the sunshine
# Don't blame it on the moonlight
# Don't blame it on the good times
# Blame it on the boogie... #
Whoo!
# I just can't, I just can't
# I just can't control my feet
# I just can't, I just can't
# I just can't control my feet
# I just can't, I just can't
# I just can't control my feet
# I just can't, I just can't
# I just can't control my feet
# Sunshine
# Don't blame it on the moonlight
# Don't blame it on the good times
# Blame it on the boogie
# Sunshine
# Don't blame it on the moonlight
# Don't blame it on the good times
# Blame it on the boogie
# I just can't, I just can't
# I just can't control my feet
- # I just can't, I just can't - Whoo!
# I just can't control my... #
So Michael starts singing.
He throws the headphones down, and bolts out of the studio.
I turned to the engineer...
"Did he get feedback, is there something...?"
He says, "No, nothing." I go out to the hall,
he's dancing!
It was unbelievable, just spinning around, he goes...
"I'm sorry," he said, "I can't stand still and sing that section,
"I gotta get this out."
He'd watched James Brown, the Nicholas Brothers and Sammy Davis.
He had seen somebody dance one time,
like Fred Astaire and some of the other stars,
and he could do exactly what they...
Easy to catch on.
Jackie Wilson, which I used to watch from the wings every day on stage.
- Mmm-hmm. - We would play at the Regal Theater, six shows a day,
we would come on amateur hour...
- Oh, my gosh. - I would just watch him.
Sammy Davis Jr is another one of my favourites.
- You can't go wrong watching Sammy Davis Jr. - Oh, yeah.
To watch him and to see...
And suddenly see little flashes...
Flatteringly, I say this about myself...
Little flashes of me there, and go, "Wow," but he's extended it,
he's changed it, he's coloured it, till it becomes his own.
He introduced me to Fred Astaire and all these movies,
I had no idea who the hell these people were prior to that.
Right? And, er...
He just opened up my eyes to a whole other world of inspiration.
I just want to let you know I have all your films on tape,
and I watch them all the time.
And I want to ask you one question.
How do you do that thing when you, er...walk on the ceiling?
FRED ASTAIRE LAUGHS Dancing...
Really, I want to know, how did that work?
- The whole room and the camera turned. - So they both turned, right?
Yeah.
TAP DANCING
BIG BAND MUSIC PLAYS
TAP DANCING
Michael's dance is based on energy,
and he's...
He moves like an electric eel, he's got...
I think the adjective "electric" is good for him.
He's charged with energy. But he has the good...
inner sense, or wherever it comes from, his brain, wherever,
to just take it down and then up again quickly,
which good dancers naturally have.
I came out after the war,
after I was in the Navy,
and I wanted to dance for the common man,
I didn't want to dance in white tie or tuxedo and dressed up.
I wanted to roll up my sleeves and wear jeans and T-shirts.
The nearest thing I could get to dancing shoes were loafers.
And the white socks and the rolled-up jeans.
And he's dancing from the streets.
Like I was. I believe that.
I was a teenager, and I was getting older.
I started to really understand...
the power of dance.
The way he could spin, stop on a dime
and point with such intensity - that's the power I'm talking about.
And I'd perfect a certain amount of moves.
There is beauty in simplicity, in really stripping things down,
and I learned that from him.
He impacted everything for me, absolutely.
He impacted my game on the court,
he impacted me now to this day in how I learn.
Watching him was like something I'd never seen before.
Um... It was something that was magical, that was creative,
that seemed like something that I could mimic.
That's how I found my love for dance before I found classical ballet.
I used to ask him, "How much do you practise?"
He said, "You know, I would dance until I can't dance no more."
I said, "What do you mean?"
He said, "I'd dance till my legs physically could not move."
There's a lot of people who just don't have that same type of drive.
You see it in an artist like Beyonce, that kind of drive.
You know, a lot of times when it comes to black artists -
it happened with Basquiat, with Miles Davis, with Michael Jackson -
people talk about their kind of "natural gifts",
as if there is not a strategy and skill and craft,
as if Miles Davis didn't go to Juilliard,
or Basquiat didn't know who Monet and Renoir were,
or Michael Jackson hadn't been doing this his entire life.
Some of my favourite writers are Johnny Mercer, Irving Berlin,
George Gershwin, Duke Ellington, Count Basie...
Oh, no, you gotta put the work in, man, you gotta put the time in.
And really, man, it's love that you're putting in.
You know, cos people that do this kind of stuff, man, we love what we do.
This is dated November 6th, 1979.
He was on the road with his brothers on the Destiny tour.
"MJ will be my new name. No more Michael Jackson.
"I want a whole new character, a whole new look.
"I should be a totally different person.
"People should never think of me
"as the kid who sang ABC/I Want You Back.
"I should be a new, incredible
"actor-singer-dancer that will shock the world.
"I will do no interviews. I will be magic.
"I will be a perfectionist, a researcher, a trainer, a master.
"I will be better than every great actor roped in one.
"I must have the most incredible training system
"to dig and dig and dig until I find.
"I will study and look back on the whole world of entertainment
"and perfect it,
"take it steps further from where the greatest left off."
You guys are really riding a big high now as far as
producing records and so on.
Do you think this is the peak of your career now, or have you
gone down a little bit, or are you expecting bigger and better things?
- What are you looking forward to in the future, Michael? - Recording other artists,
and going into acting. We get a lot of scripts in, but...
we haven't found the exact script that we want to use.
- Mm-hm. - So we're picking and deciding.
Think you may be a big movie star one day, huh?
- Yeah, I'd like to give it a try. - Yeah.
That's a good business to be in. You've got the looks, you know?
Fortunately I didn't...
- LAUGHTER - You know.
- What? - LAUGHTER
'With the advent of motion pictures came an abundance of Oz films.
'A 1925 version starred Oliver Hardy as the tin man.
'And who will ever forget the 1939 MGM musical version
'starring Judy Garland?
'In 1974, The Wiz opened on Broadway,
'winning seven Tony awards.'
I was a senior in high school.
And there was this girl named Barbara Hampton who I liked.
And I wanted to impress her.
I was working at Baskin Robbins. I just saved my money,
and I finally got up enough courage to ask her,
"Would you like to go see The Wiz with me?
"I got two great seats in the centre aisle."
She said, "Nah, I don't think so."
HE LAUGHS
Scalped them.
For double the price.
I took Michael the first time to see The Wiz, he went back 30 more times.
The Wiz, when it came out in 1978, was, er...
You know, Lumet's movie adaptation
of that great long-running play that was on Broadway
with Stephanie Mills.
# So it's real, real Real to me... #
There was a great debate, at least in my neighbourhood,
that Diana Ross was dope,
but the only reason they cast her was cos she's Diana Ross.
Stephanie Mills would have been a better fit for the film,
but for whatever reason, she didn't get the job.
We're not going to do it with an unknown young actress -
we have to have star power
to make it cross over.
It also was the most expensive movie ever made
with an all African-American cast.
So because of Car Wash and Sparkle,
you know, this happens in Hollywood,
were you designated as the go-to guy for black material?
- I was the black writer. - The black writer?
And Sidney was probably the number one American director
right then, cos he had done Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon,
Network, Murder On The Orient Express, I think all in a row.
He was king, and definitely king of New York.
Michael was desperate to play the scarecrow.
Always wanted to have a film career, there was some rumour that he was
supposed to start in the Frankie Lymon story that never happened.
The Wiz was supposed to be a huge film,
Diana Ross, his long-time pal, is starring in it.
He's no longer in Motown, and Michael called Berry Gordy.
We were doing The Wiz, Rob Cohen was handling it...
He was working for me at the time at Motown Productions.
It would have been very easy for him to say,
"Well, you know, Michael, you're gone now,
- "and I can find somebody else." - Hell, no!
Sidney was adamant that he didn't want Michael.
He felt Michael was over, and had been a cute little kid,
musical star, but hadn't grown into it, and I just said,
"You're making a mistake, and I want you to meet him."
Of course, Lumet fell in love with Michael.
Michael may be the purest talent I've ever seen.
He's incapable of a false moment,
he's so true that anything around him has to become true.
If you don't work honestly around him, you're going
to look as if you're faking it.
Well, yeah, he's all those things, plus this kid can dance
and sing like nobody else.
It was so obvious, the genius of this boy,
I mean, it was so effortless.
When I was real small, when I saw the original Wizard of Oz,
the Judy Garland version, I always fell in love with the scarecrow.
I think most kids do, because you feel sorry for him
and everything, and he's so...
his character, and I always watched them,
as a matter of fact, I had the step down that they did
when I was six, I would do it all around the house.
# Follow the yellow brick road! #
Ta-da! THEY GIGGLE
Whoo! Come on, Dorothy!
Come on!
Whoo!
# Come on and
# Ease on down Ease on down the road
# Come on
# Ease on down Ease on down the road
# Don't you carry nothing that might be a load
# Come on, ease on down Ease on down, down the road... #
As a matter of fact, that hill that we do
Ease On Down The Road on was going uphill, and Diana and me,
we were so out of breath, we had to do it a couple of times, really.
I mean, it was going straight up!
# ..keepin' on the road that you choose
# Don't you give up walkin'
# Cos you gave up shoes
# Yeah... #
He'd come in for a five-hour make-up call in the morning.
Get the make-up out of the way, right on the case,
he knew everybody's lines, everybody's songs,
he knew everybody's position, and he stood there almost at attention.
And I saw this uncanny-type discipline in such a young person.
Quincy, of course, was the musical director,
he was doing the score for The Wiz.
And you see him for a minute, right,
you see him for a minute conducting the band in the movie,
and I was a Quincy fan, you know, Smackwater Jack,
Walking In Space, Body Heat, all that stuff.
The Wiz seemed like a great combination
of all these things that he could do.
Lumet was very happy to have Quincy. We all were.
That just kind of guaranteed the musical portion
would hit a strong popular chord.
He didn't actually have a feature number in the film
when they hired him.
They didn't know about the dancing, a lot of things, and...
Eventually everybody came to understand what it was all about.
# You can't win
# You can't break even
# And you can't get out of the game
# People keep saying things are gonna change
# But they look just like they're staying the same... #
But I don't think they showed enough of his dancing.
The real night that Off The Wall was born...
We were doing the pre-records for the movie.
Quincy had, like, tunnel vision on Diana Ross.
Finally, about 2am...
Er... Q had what he wanted from Diana, and he goes, "OK, Michael,
"you come in on bar six."
- And Michael starts, like, at 1,000 watts. - # Whoo! Whoo! Ah!
- And he's doing everything... - # Ooh! #
..that became the signature Michael Jackson.
Whoo! Aah!
HE LAUGHS
- Come on, Dorothy! - He was...
And it was like a lioness who just suddenly sees a baby goat.
HE LAUGHS
It was just...zoom!
The more I knew him, the more I became fascinated with
the idea of maybe working with him.
It was a lot of fun working with all the greats -
Sidney Lumet, Quincy Jones, everybody.
I may be, I don't know, one of the few people who really loved The Wiz.
There's some great representation on film that we hadn't seen before.
When The Wiz came out, I was seven years old.
That was an event for black America.
I can't speak for all of New York City, I can't speak for
all of the country, but everybody in my neighbourhood
in Harlem was going to see The Wiz because of Mike Jackson.
So this is a big moment for Michael Jackson, he gets to
fulfil his acting desires and he's finally in a big Hollywood film.
So he and his sister La Toya moved to New York.
I found him an apartment on 400 East 56th Street
off First Avenue.
In the summer of '77, a legendary summer, there were blackouts,
there was a serial killer, David Berkowitz, the Son of Sam,
who was doing all these random killings, people were terrified.
The first summer of disco, it was the time in which all of these
nascent music forms were coming up - punk, hip-hop, disco was huge.
And there are all these different elements that were
happening in New York at the same time that were sort of
coming in contact with each other or clashing with each other.
I have a feeling that's probably where he first heard
a lot of early hip-hop, the beatboxing that he was basically
doing on a song like Working Day and Night. Even though
he was only 19, he was going to Studio 54 on a regular basis.
Perhaps you've heard the name Studio 54.
It attracts the rich, the famous, the glamorous and the powerful.
They come to this disco palace in New York City
just about any night of the week.
He was making all kinds of eccentric and unusual friends that,
you know, now we see the photos of and it looks really strange.
He's hanging out with Liza Minnelli.
Hi, sweetheart!
- You're just hanging out in New York? - Yes, Studio 54. - Come here a lot?
- Oh, God, yes. - Why? - Because I like the atmosphere at Studio 54.
I've been to a lot of discotheques and I don't like them.
What's the difference?
I don't know, the feeling, I mean, the excitement of the props
coming down and the balcony, it's just exciting, honestly!
I'm certain that his experience and going to Studio 54 during the
filming of The Wiz
played a big part in where he wanted this album played.
It doesn't mean he wanted to make a disco record.
He is a dancer, he's a marvellous dancer.
He's an influential, innovative dancer.
Why do you dance for fun?
Because you're just being free then.
Most of the time it's set choreography when were on stage,
stuff you have to do every night.
When you dance here, you're just free, you dance with whoever
you want to, you just go wild!
What about the craziness? It gets crazy and wild...
No, it doesn't.
No, not only is it fun to dance, it's fun to look at,
you know, other people.
You walk around and you see all kinds of things,
like Darth Vader was here the other night!
It was incredible.
I'm sure he was making these observations
of what was going on around him.
He was kind of self-conscious about himself and kind of shy.
So he wasn't trying to be around all the wildness, all the freakiness.
You know what I'm saying?
He would go in the DJ booth and just watch people
and make these mental notes. And I'm sure musical notes also.
I think all of this shows up on Off The Wall because it's certainly
one of the most sensual albums he ever released.
It contains the sort of exuberance and the sexuality.
It's where you come when you want to escape. It's really escapism.
When we left Motown, you know, a certain amount of hours
for The Jacksons and a certain amount for me as a solo artist.
He's coming out as an autonomous figure,
separate from his father, separate from his brothers,
and really establishing himself as a solo act.
I mean, there was some speculation, you know,
would Quincy be the right guy?
He's a jazz guy, would he be... You know.
They didn't think that he could make him a contemporary hit record
that everybody in the whole world would like.
Well, I don't think it's possible to sit down and try to intellectualise
or theorise about how you can make a record that can appeal
to many, many people.
The people in this room, you know, it's very difficult to try
and make a record that everybody in this room would like.
The label had other ideas about who he should go with.
They wanted Maurice White, was one of the people,
and they also wanted Gamble and Huff to work with him.
Michael came back all teary-eyed one day and said,
"The people at Epic don't want to use you. They said you're too jazzy,
"you know, you don't understand this kind of music."
But they don't know, you know, these guys don't know.
The A&R men, they're A&R men, they don't know!
Thank God he went back with Freddy DeMann and Ron Weiser
and they fought and they said, "He's doing it."
Quincy called me one day and said,
"we're going to do Michael Jackson's album, his first solo album,"
and I thought to myself, "Holy cow, I better get serious."
Cos I don't get those kind of calls very often.
When you discover Off The Wall for the first time, forget all the
music for a second, let's just talk about the sonics, the sound of it.
The sonic of that album stands up against any album right now, period.
Because it's raw, it was before drum machines,
before heavy computer programming.
Making an album is totally different today than what it was,
because when we made those albums back in the day,
we had live musicians, live drummer.
That's where you get magic, you know? You get a little bit of magic.
And somebody's playing just a little bit under or something like that,
- that's all part of making the record breathe. - That's the pulse.
Yeah, it's the pulse, yeah. Today everything is right on.
Everything is right-on today.
These were, like, living, breathing recordings that...
were for the dance floor.
I mean, machines are great, but...
incredible musicians, I feel like, beat it every time.
I'm always telling engineers, like, "You better study and listen.
"If they were able to accomplish that type of fullness
"and that type of sound... they were able to do that then,
"you better be able to do something great now...
"or you're fired."
What Quincy has is an extraordinary history.
- He's leading the band behind Count Basie. - Working with Frank Sinatra.
- Sammy Davis Junior. - Pawnbroker. - Heat of the Night. - Sanford & Son.
He studied in France under a great orchestration.
Nadia Boulanger, who taught Ravel.
He's unlimited musically, he can... You want anything, he can do it.
Jazz, folk, pop, classical, soul, gospel, anything.
Michael wrote three songs on the Off The Wall album -
Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough, Working Day And Night
and Get On The Floor.
He wanted the freedom to develop as an artist
and writing these three songs was very important to him.
# Don't stop 'til you get enough
# Keep on with your heart don't stop
# Don't stop 'til you get enough
# Keep on with your heart Don't stop... #
The demos are kind of a revelation, in that they really illuminate
Michael's abilities as a songwriter and show
how developed his songs were when he brought them to Quincy Jones.
You really see Michael's rhythmic sophistication.
Dum-dum-du-dum. Dum-dum-du-dum.
That's what did it.
Boom-boom-da-doom. That's the phrase that pays.
That's the hook right there.
Michael ain't got to say a word yet, they could play that bassline
and they can run it, nonstop. And we're good.
The opening bars of the record is just like,
you could be playing the worst set of your life,
or at a wedding, at a club, and... "dum-dum..." it's just like, "Ah!"
You kind of get this little tick that's going on,
anybody, they just down for it,
even the guys try to be hard, like...
You know, you just in there!
You know, I was, I was wondering, you know,
if you could keep on,
because the force, it's got a lot of power,
and it make me feel like, ah...
it make me feel like...
oooh!
# Lovely
# Is the feelin' now
# Fever
# Temperature's risin' now
- # Power - Ah, power
# Is the force, the vow
# That makes it happen
# It asks no questions why... #
It's the song I use to reset my day, it's the song that I use
when I need to be motivated,
it's my absolute favourite Michael Jackson song.
"These are my own songs, I'm going to communicate my own thoughts,
"my own emotions, my own ideas,
"my own rhythmic sensibility..."
Vocal trademarks - you hear a lot of that in these songs,
completely uninhibited.
You feel his energy coming through because you feel that freedom.
"Oooh!"
That's the first time we heard that iconic yell.
That's his "free at last!"
I was in Buffalo with you, fantastic show, you darn near blinded me
there, man, that thing is dynamite
when you come out, they have to see that, you jumping out of there.
Oh, "Don't Stop".
Ooh!
Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough had this kind of, this opening groove,
and the opening groove
kind of sets you off, if you were a dancer, you let that sink in.
I always use Michael first and foremost as a vocal inspiration.
And Off The Wall was definitely
the one that made me feel like I could sing.
I found my falsetto because of Off The Wall,
Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough.
# Lovely
# Is the feelin' now
# Fever
# Temperature's risin' now
# Power
# Is the force, the vow
# That makes it happen
# It asks no questions why... #
And it had these bizarre lyrics, to me, bizarre lyrics
that were quoting Star Wars.
I didn't even know he was saying, "Keep on with the force don't stop,"
I thought it was about forks.
When I was a kid I was like, "Keep on with the forks!"
I didn't know what the forks were!
HE BEATBOXES
Ow!
Woo!
I remember the video, I mean, he just looked like a million dollars.
I think that's before they had a million dollars to spend.
So it was done for relatively a small amount of money,
and yet he had to single-handedly sell it.
# There ain't nothing that you can do
# Relax your mind
# Lay back and groove with mine
# You gotta feel that heat
# And we can ride the boogie
# Share that beat of love
- # I wanna rock with you - All night
- # Dance you into day - Sunlight
- # I wanna rock with you - All night
# We're gonna rock the night away... #
That was the skaters' anthem.
There was a skate obsession in the United States in '79, '80,
where it was like, "I'm going to roller-skate!"
A good song to roller-skate should feel like the floor to your skates,
it should be the foundation for all of that...flowing.
# Just take it slow
# Cos we got so far to go
# When you feel that heat
# And we're going to ride the boogie
# Share that beat of love
- # I wanna rock with you - All night
- # Dance you into day - Sunlight
- # I wanna rock with you - All night
# Gonna rock the night away... #
Rock With You seemed like there was symbolism behind the video.
They had a halo around the angels, the shiny suit,
he made that look cool.
I could never pull that off.
I can listen to Rock With You and know where I was
the first time I heard it, at Pegasus.
When that song came on, people just stopped in the club.
They just...froze.
You know... And then slowly,
one by one, they got on the dance floor.
- # I wanna rock with you - All night
- # Girl - Sunlight
- # Yes, rock with you Rock with you, yeah - All night
# Rock the night away
- # I wanna rock with you - All night
- # Dance you into day - Sunlight
# I wanna rock with you, yes
# Rock the night away
- # Just feel that beat, feel the beat - All night
- # Rock you into day - Sunlight
- # I wanna rock - All night
# Rock the night away
# Put 'em in the pocket, yeah
- # I wanna rock it, rock it, rock it - All night
- # I wanna rock it, rock it, rock it - Sunlight
- # I wanna rock it, rock it, rock it - All night
# I wanna rock with you
# Come on, girl
# Rock with me, come on and...
# Heeeee... #
It's up-tempo but it's smooth. That's fast. That's fast.
It's hard to make up-tempo music where you can dance
and be emotional at the same time.
Most people just get into a groove
so most of the time you don't get that much of a real song there,
so they don't stand up as well as a good storytelling ballad.
Through the years, you want stuff that's going to have legs, hold on,
and his up-tempo really does hold on
because he really crafted a real song on top of a great groove.
I loop that breathing exercise on Working Day And Night,
I loop that for at least a minute before I let that song go.
Like, I hold people at bay, like I'm holding back 12 pit bulls...
get 'em!
Ow!
I'm embarrassed to even say this
but I used to dance by myself... Ha! ..to that song.
# Uh ah
# Ooh ah
# Ooh, my honey
# You got me workin' day and night, ah
# Ooh, my sugar
# You got me workin' day and night, ah
# Scratch my shoulder
# It's aching, make it feel all right, ah
# When this is over
# Lovin' you will be so right, ah, uh
# I often wonder if lovin' you will be tonight
# Well, uh
# But what is love, girl
# If I'm always out of sight, ooh!
# That's why you got me workin' day and night
# And I'll be workin' From sun up to midnight... #
# You got me working day and night. #
# You got me working Working day and night. #
You could tell where he was rhythmically
just by the ones he was writing.
Really catchy, rhythmic dance songs.
Michael's reference is certainly American R&B and soul and funk,
but I also hear Africa in there.
You have to also remember
The Jackson 5 toured Africa in the '70s.
# You got me workin' day and night
- # And I'll be workin' - Everybody!
# From sun up to midnight
- # You got me workin' Workin' day and night - Oh, no!
# You got me workin'
- # Workin' day and night - I'm so tired, tired
# You got me workin' Workin' day and night... #
- It's crazy... - MIMICS HORN LINE
That was just the high watermark of horn lines to me.
There was all these instrumental stretches and breaks in these songs
that give the musicians some shine too.
- David had this certain sound... - That bite. He bent it...
He hit 'em so hard.
OK, David! You got this!
Sometimes he would take it upon himself
to bring the rhythm that he wanted and that really influenced me.
He always had an idea of what he wanted every instrument
to sound like, that's how he recorded.
You came in a studio and he told the guitar player...
SHE MIMICS "Working Day And Night"
He would sing every part.
He didn't play it. But he can sing it.
And if you didn't play like he sang it,
he would sing it till you played it like he sang it.
Goddammit.
I do believe deeply in perfection.
I'm never satisfied. I'll cut a track, go back and back and back,
"Darn it, I should have done this!" It's number one on the charts,
still screaming about what you should have done.
It's evident...when you see somebody's work,
you can see the details and if they actually truly love what they do.
If they really do pay attention to the craft.
Perfection was the name of the game,
it's about the content of what you do.
The quality, the heart, the soul, the love.
I think this generation, the perception has become skewed.
The love for the craft
will come secondary to the love of fame and notoriety.
My generation - the Jordan generation,
Bird, Magic, Michael Jackson.
They focused on what they loved to do.
One of the hidden gems is Get On The Floor.
Which was co-penned by Louis Johnson and co-written with Michael.
I don't know if everybody knows this but you're also a composer.
One of my favourites was Michael Jackson's Get On The Floor.
Originally that song was created by the bass, I just had that groove.
There were routines in the playground
and you know, I'm dating myself, OK,
but you would bring the little radio,
or sometimes if you were really tacky, you would bring the portable
record player, plop it down in the park, drop the needle, heck yeah.
If you were dancing to that song,
more than likely you were going home with somebody.
Because that's not a song you dance on your own to.
You don't dance to Get On The Floor by yourself.
# Dance across the floor
# Cos there's a chance for chances
# And the chance is choosin'
# And I sure would like just to groove with you
# So get on the floor
# And dance with me... #
Off The Wall is a DJ's dream.
The A-side seems to have been tailor-made for the dance floor.
You basically have five songs.
The first four songs on side one,
and the first song on side two, Off The Wall.
My favourite record on Off The Wall -
I like Off The Wall.
That's one of my favourite records.
I took a chance with a composer
that I have loved his work for a long time,
and I could never figure out how he could be from Grimsby, England,
living in Worms, Germany, and understand Ain't No Half-Steppin,
you know, and all those different terms that he was writing.
Just incredible talent.
He ended up in Germany, and being turned on to soul music
by a bunch of the black army people that were there.
- INTERVIEWER: Black American soldiers? - Yeah.
And going, "Wow, this is a lot more interesting than what I'm doing,
"and girls come to these shows."
In early Heatwave,
you can hear those influences
in songs he wrote for Michael.
I mean, it's just a natural progression.
We recorded Burn This Disco Out,
Off The Wall, and Rock With You.
Wow.
HE LAUGHS
Rod Temperton did good.
Off The Wall is an example of him bringing that
slightly, like, proggy fusion aspect to it.
It's a really unconventional start for a disco record,
especially, like, the title track of an album, it starts with that.
It starts on the offbeat, it starts on the two,
it has that weird vocal thing in the background.
It's totally proggy.
That intro with the kind of ghoulish voices and so on.
You start to hear that again, of course, on Thriller,
with the Vincent Price.
# When the world is on your shoulder
# Gotta straighten up your act and boogie down
# If you can't get with the feeling
# Then there ain't no-one who's gonna put you down
# Cos we're the party people night and day
# Livin' crazy, that's the only way
# So tonight
# Gotta leave that nine to five up on the shelf
# And just enjoy yourself
# Groove
# Let the madness in the music get to you
# Life ain't so bad at all
# If you live it off the wall
# Life ain't so bad at all
# Ooh
- # Live your life off the wall - Yeah
# Do what you want to do
# There ain't no rules
- # It's up to you - Ain't no rules, it's all up to you
# It's time to come alive
# And party on right through the night. #
Girlfriend was a song on the London Town album by Paul McCartney.
"Girlfriend, I'mma tell your boyfriend."
- SHE LAUGHS - Love it.
# Girlfriend
# I'm gonna tell your boyfriend
# Yeah... #
I felt like Michael was singing to me on that one, I did.
If we go out together and a bunch of girls start following me,
let's hear what you'd say to them to make them go away.
Get away from him. He's mine, not yours.
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
Um, same question, number two.
Yo, listen, OK? Michael Jackson is mine!
LAUGHTER
Some of the songs that I sing, my favourite is ballads -
I kind of listen to the words,
and it's really relating something.
I wrote She's Out Of My Life as a result of being
very much in love with a wonderful young woman.
You ever get so upset that you're speaking to yourself out loud?
Well, I was. I was in the car, on the Pasadena freeway,
and I'm saying, "Man, she was there for you,
"she loved you, she wanted to marry you.
"You're the one who said no. Face it, she's out of your life."
Saturday morning, the phone rings, and it's Q, and he says,
"Hey, man, you been writing?" And I played the song,
and it's ringing out, and he said, "Play it again."
I played it again. Played it eight times in a row.
At the end of it he said, "What are you going to do with it?"
I said, "Well, I made a deal with Snuffy yesterday.
"He's going to do it with Sinatra."
And he says, this Q-ism,
"Sinatra'll do it anyway." And I said,
"OK, Q, then who do you want to do it with?"
He said, "I haven't got a clue." He said, "Man, if you'll trust me,
"I promise you
"an unforgettable recording of this song."
And we sat on it for almost two years, Spike.
To write a great ballad, first of all, lyrically,
the content has to connect, and to me,
part of what makes a song connect
is that it's personal,
but it's also universal.
Michael Jackson - yes, he was a great entertainer,
he was a great dancer,
but he was also a great singer.
Not a good singer, but a great singer.
I liked his performance on She's Out Of My Life.
It was really emotional.
The quality of Michael's voice
was so incredibly pure.
# She's out of my life
# And I don't know whether to laugh or cry
# I don't know whether to live or die
# And it cuts like a knife
# She's out of my life. #
I cried every time that he performed She's Out Of My Life,
and he would cry, too.
Everyone relates She's Out Of My Life to Eddie Murphy, right?
Anyone who was growing up in the '80s - we saw Delirious first.
That's Michael's hook, is his sensitivity.
Lots of women be saying, "Michael's just so sensitive."
LAUGHTER
They eat that shit up. Mike knows, too. He be using women.
In concerts I've seen Mike walk up to girls in the audience and say...
Can I come down there?
And the women go, "Ahhhhhhh!"
APPLAUSE
Then if you don't scream, Michael'll get real sensitive
and cry on your ass.
Ever hear that record She's Out Of My Life? Michael go...
- IMITATING MICHAEL'S VOICE: - # So I've learned
# That love's not possession
# And I've learned
# That love won't wait... #
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
# Now I've learned
# That love needs expression
# But I've learned too late
# And she's out of my life
# She's out of my life
# Damned indecision
# And cursed pride
# Kept my love for her
# Locked deep inside
# And it cuts like a knife
# She's out of my...
CROWD SCREAMS
# Life
# Mmmm, mmmm... #
CROWD SCREAMS AND CHEERS
HE SOBS
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
HE SOBS
- IMITATING MICHAEL'S VOICE: - Tito, get me some tissue.
And I had an opportunity to listen to the stems
where he's trying different takes,
and he actually apologises
for messing the song up.
I'm sorry I messed it up.
It was amazing, cos every time he sang it he cried,
and I was trying to pick out what relationship he had, you know,
that he could identify with that.
He did it two or three times and said,
"That's the way it's supposed to be," and just let it stay in there.
A lesser producer would have milked it for all it's worth,
milked all that drama for all it's worth.
Like, trust me, if Puffy were producing
- She's Out Of My Life... - LAUGHTER
Puffy would have had the whole...
He would've had Kleenex, like, sponsor the tour.
You had people talking about, "Well, what was he crying about?"
Who was he talking about? Is he talking about Brooke Shields?
What girl is he talking about?
You know, is he still talking about Ben, that rat?
We'd seen him out publicly with Stephanie Mills,
we'd seen him out with Tatum O'Neal,
with Maureen McCormick from The Brady Bunch.
Girls would get together, like,
"I wonder who he's talking about," you know what I mean?
And you would look at the Tiger Beat magazine
to look for the gossip and everything.
"Who made Michael cry?" That's how we took it.
Not that I made Michael cry, cos I would never make Michael cry.
She's Out Of My Life is,
in my opinion,
one of the two songs on Off The Wall
that there's nothing on Thriller that tops it.
Quiet storm was huge in the 1970s,
which was a kind of radio format of black music
that celebrated intimacy and sensuality and ambience,
softness and quietude.
Can't Help It was really the quiet storm demographic, right?
It was really the kind of late-night boudoir romance thing.
It's the first time that you really hear Michael sounding like...
to me, sounding like an adult.
And sounding outside of his R&B thing.
It's jazzy.
Susaye Greene had started working on it.
She was in The Supremes, and had also sung with Stevie.
It could have fit on Songs In The Key Of Life, really.
That was supposed to be one of the songs on Songs In The Key Of Life.
- Ooh! - See, I didn't know that!
He had the...
- SHE SINGS: - "I can't help it if I wanted to" - the hook.
Yeah, I think she wrote a lot of the lyrics
when we actually were in the studio,
- messing around with it. - That's right.
HE HUMS I Can't Help It
# I can't, mmm, mmm... #
HE HUMS
I Can't Help It is my favourite. Stevie overdid it with that song.
The nature of the chords is very nocturnal, you know?
It doesn't sound like a sunny day to me.
It sounds like a beautiful paradise evening,
somewhere untainted by the humans, you know?
Mystical world.
You know, unicorns walking past and shit.
My sister Renee had been hearing me play this cassette.
She and Michael were friends.
And she took it over to let Michael hear it,
and I think it was great that he did it.
I mean, really, he did an incredible job.
The melodies are very seductive.
They carry some of those signature Stevie lines,
but also the signature Stevie chords.
I really believed in the album.
First of all, I believe in Michael Jackson.
Stevie Wonder. Love Stevie Wonder.
Being with Stevie Wonder. Being in his sessions,
just sitting in and learning, just is incredible.
You could put on I Can't Help It now and I'd still find something
I haven't heard, or it will remind me of something,
or the warmth of the bassline would just be, like...
just kind of wash over you.
It's just, like, you don't get sick of that music.
I did a record back in 1977.
We did It's The Falling In Love.
- We co-wrote it together, and I know you played on it. - Yep.
- I think my record served as a nice... - Demo. - As a demo.
Patti Austin was a singer in the Quincy Jones arsenal.
The very first time that I've heard Patti Austin's voice
was It's The Falling In Love.
The thing that really steeps a record in its era
and that can make it sound dated is relying heavily
on very specific technology of the time.
And in the '80s, it was very much about '80s reverbs.
In the late '70s, you had these big, massive disco claps.
This album was perhaps, maybe,
one false step away from being a very dated disco record.
Didn't have any of those, like, tricks or gimmicks.
It was pretty much... Even though it was immaculately arranged,
and all the percussive parts,
and all the way the parts worked together,
there's nothing other than a bunch of dudes
playing the shit out of a song in a room. That will never date.
In a lot of ways Off The Wall
is probably the culmination
of classic disco.
Came out in August 1979 -
the Disco Sucks movement started just the month before in July,
where shock DJ Steve Dahl in Chicago
gathered a lot of people together
at Comiskey Park in Chicago to burn disco records,
which was a really, I think, implicitly racist
and kind of homophobic movement.
People wanted to shift the dial of popular music
back to where they felt comfortable,
which was not black, not gay, not Latino.
Burn This Disco Out actually might have been an apt title,
because it was coming literally at the end of the disco era.
Just at the edge of being a disco record,
but moving the genre forward.
Far from the disco factory music
that was just churning out factory beats.
You can feel that kind of visceral energy.
I mean, Off The Wall really is like lightning in a bottle.
You really capture Michael Jackson at 20 years old
with all of that excitement and energy and passion.
That still really comes through on that record.
This is the very last 8-track that my parents bought me
before I stopped buying 8-tracks.
I remember Off The Wall coming out
the second week of August in 1979.
Departure album is sort of an album that is in a person's canon
in their career of which they make a 180 turn
from what they were known from.
He was no longer the teenybopper act,
he was no longer the socially shy, awkward, maladjusted guy with acne.
He was suddenly exuberant, confident.
You look at the album cover of Off The Wall -
it's like his prom picture. He's in a suit and tie
in a kind of Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis mould.
Now he's this freewheeling playboy
that you can imagine out on the streets of New York.
Again, life-changing.
I think sophisticated,
I think glamour,
I think provocateur,
I think everything that I wanted to be.
Oh, yeah, I'm interested in promotion.
I want to do things that have never been done before.
If it wasn't for promotion, who would know about The Jackson 5?
Who would know that we exist?
I wouldn't be able to translate my music to different countries -
Africa, Japan, New Zealand, Scotland,
all the way to Australia.
There is a universal core in music that I think transcends
even what a crossover is about.
Here we view a crossover as being, you know, black and white markets,
which we've been faced with for years,
but I think Michael's thing went even past that.
When you get into Argentina and Israel and Spain
and Scandinavia and Australia.
I tell people fashion and music is a universal language.
Wherever you go, you're going to hear
the same songs in certain countries,
and when people come together for those songs,
they're all happy, they're all at peace.
Cos a lot of people don't even speak English
when you travel the globe, but they know the song,
they know the music, and they'll learn the lyrics somehow.
And that's just so wonderful,
how you can bring people together just through your music.
Michael Jackson can come out on stage and not say anything,
and you'd know that he cared. 100,000 people in an Olympic stadium
feel that he's right there for them.
Everyone thinks, you know,
like, they've had such a personal connection with him.
But that's how great he was.
He made you feel like that.
Michael just inspired me to be a better person.
I actually do believe that the blessing that the Lord
gave this family, the musical blessing -
the true mission behind all of that, I believe,
is to unify the world together through your music as one.
And it's about changing the world
for a better place for our kids to grow up in.
He had seen what had happened to artists like
James Brown, Little Richard, Jackie Wilson -
sometimes the industry wasn't fair to black artists.
I remember fighting in a meeting, like,
"How come Michael's not on the cover of People magazine?
"How come he's not on the cover of Us?
Pop radio stations didn't want to play Off The Wall in the beginning.
Publicity lady would tell me,
"Well, if a black person is put on the cover of these magazines,
"they won't sell."
Michael Jackson is a viable artist all by himself,
and if they gave him the opportunity,
he could win the radio stations over. And he did.
He just made us feel like this is...
Where we are is where we always were. And we weren't.
There are kids that, like, were born when Obama was in office,
so they don't understand a world where there was a white president.
They don't even know what that feels like.
I didn't know what it felt like to not have black pop artists,
because he made us feel and believe that
that was just the norm.
He took black music to a place where it became human music.
Music has no colour,
and it shouldn't have colour,
and I don't believe in that.
What I do, I don't want it labelled black or white.
I want it labelled, it's music.
It was a simpler time,
and radio had everything to do with it.
Hey, let's go out with some up-tempo first,
get ourselves positioned, bang, then we'll come in with that ballad.
And you know, you'll go gold. You'll go platinum.
Four singles in the top 10 and Billboard,
not counting it being number one on R&B radio stations.
It had never been done before.
Some people looked at it as a disco album,
which in retrospect is kind of foolish,
because it's one of the most
creatively influential albums in history.
You look back at the awards for Off The Wall, they're R&B awards.
The music industry, still very segregated at the time,
and Michael was only nominated for R&B awards, and he won.
# Fever
# Temperature's risin' now
# Power Oh, power
# Is the force, the vow... #
He thought it wasn't fair.
He thought they'd snubbed him. It wasn't fair.
He came and he told me, he said,
"Mother, next year, they're going to have to give it to me."
- INTERVIEWER: - And that was Thriller, huh? - That's right.
Off The Wall really kind of set the blueprint for R&B,
and I think most artists today acknowledge that.
It's hard to come up with something fresh and new all the time.
They go back and they say, "What was great?
"What was done that was just great?"
And they find themselves listening to Off The Wall.
And then they take a little piece, and they say,
"See how he did this? We've got to do that.
"See how they made this sound? We've got to do that."
I do that, so I know.
That album, you hear it in music all the time.
Pharrell to Justin Timberlake.
My music would not be here if it weren't for his influence,
Off The Wall and the next album after that as well.
Like, I wouldn't have music.
I don't think there's any way there's any other record
I've played more music from, in the course of 20 years of DJing.
10,000 to 15,000 times, I have released the vinyl on those songs.
Off The Wall is the album I still play to this day.
It's the album that I put on
when I want to teach my daughter how to dance.
It was soul music's epoch of magic realism.
And when I say magic realism, I mean it was transformative.
It takes you someplace else.
It's so rich, musically.
The arrangements, the singing, the background vocals.
Michael taught me, melody's king.
He was like, babies don't sing lyrics.
They hum melody.
A-B-C-D-E-F-G -
they may not know all the letters in the alphabet,
but they know that melody to that song.
That was the way I saw music.
I always saw music as, like, these little portals.
It's like, you listen to a song -
OK, I'm going to take you into this land, every time.
In its first year alone, that album sold over six million copies.
It's been overshadowed because of the Thriller album.
There would be no Thriller without Off The Wall. Everybody knows that.
When he went into the studio to make Thriller, he was intent,
actually intent, on making the biggest album in history.
And the amazing thing is that he actually did.
Whatever your top game was, you're going on top of that one.
That was his gift.
You're dealing with a true artist.
Devoted to the art,
and everything else is secondary.
I think it's very easy for people to get sidetracked,
and talk about his complexion.
No, focus on what this man was and how he was that.
And how you can learn from that.
You approach things the way he approached music,
then you will be phenomenal.
And the idea of being separated from your brothers, does that hurt?
No, it doesn't.
It, um...
Cos there are other kinds of sounds and music that I love to do.
It hurts when it's inside of me
and it can't get out and it's hidden from the world.
When I do those solo albums
and I'm doing all kinds of different music, it's wonderful,
I feel like I'm accomplishing what I'm supposed to do.
And you don't feel guilty or worried about your brothers?
No, cos they understand.
Why hide something, why hide it? Share it.
Off The Wall will live for ever.
That was 1979, but this is just the beginning for that record.
It's just the beginning.
New people will explore and discover it today and tomorrow
and it'll be something new to them today and tomorrow.
It's just the beginning.
He transcended sexual barriers,
racial barriers, he brought everybody,
brought in everybody, old people, young people, gay, straight.
I mean, wherever you went, there was a smile.
But the beauty of his artistry and what he has left us with
so much joy and, like,
so much thankfulness...
..for all that he had given to me.
You know, given to everybody, but...
I'm just going to be selfish here for a moment,
what he gave to me, and I'm glad that I found that joy again
and I think that, in that way, his spirit is still with me.
He surpassed what I...
..ever expected of him.
I expected a great deal of him, and he surpassed that.
There's an element of God that's in people.
Some people, God laid his hand on longer and held it there.
Secretly and privately, really deep within, there's a destiny.
And just for me to stay on that track and follow it.
I really believe and feel I'm here for a reason
and that's my job, you know, to perform for other people,
and if they accept it, I'm rewarded.
If they want to put me up on that pedestal, I feel even better.
Do you ever want to stop?
No, don't stop 'til you get enough!
- And you haven't had enough? - No way! No way.
SONG: Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough by Michael Jackson
Don't stop till you get enough.
Whoo!
# Lovely
# Is the feelin' now
# Fever
# Temperatures risin' now
# Power
# Is the force, the vow
# That makes it happen
# It asks no questions why... #
CROWD CHEERS
CROWD CHEERS AND YELLS
SCREAMING AND CHEERING
Man, Brooklyn...
..this feels so good.
Brooklyn, we love you, Michael, yes?
CROWD SCREAMS AND CHEERS
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