Bad 25 (2012) Movie Script

1
THIS FILM CONTAINS SOME STRONG LANGUAGE
I feel rejuvenated, kind of,
because after working on it so long,
- it's so much work.
A lot of people, they're used to
just seeing the outcome of work.
They never see the side of the
work you go through to produce-
- the outcome, and I feel, you know,
rejuvenated and happy,
- it's a jubilation, is what it is.
It's like a celebration, it's like,
"We're done!"
People were holding on to the fact that Thriller
was the biggest selling record in the world.
How are you going to follow
up on something like that?
It's almost impossible.
Try telling that to Michael Jackson, though.
Thriller is the blockbuster
behemoth in the era-
- of blockbuster artists.
You know, that was the era-
- when you had Madonna,
Springsteen, Whitney Houston,
- so big stars, big albums, MTV era,
music videos are in ascendance.
And that's the signature album of that era.
Thriller sold over 100 million
copies worldwide to date.
35 million in the US,
over 70 million outside the US,
- and that's not even counting singles.
There was a mania around Michael-
- and Thriller for those three
years that was very difficult to-
- capture again, and you go
back to Elvis, or Frank Sinatra,
- or the Beatles, even today
with Justin Bieber or Lady Gaga,
- it's a space and time,
the window's only opened so far,
- and Thriller captured that.
It was magical.
Startin' somethin'
Startin' somethin'
Startin' somethin'
Startin' somethin'...
Thriller broke every record that existed,
and it sold more records-
- than any other album in the
history of the music industry.
To most of us he's just Wacko Jacko,
- and if some of the press are
to be believed, he bathes in-
- Perrier water, eats flowers for lunch,
and sleeps in an oxygen tent,
- often with a chimp, a snake,
- and an alien,
in a sort of bizarre love triangle.
All that stuff is trash,
- and it all comes from the fact
that Michael Jackson doesn't do-
- interviews, and they have nothing
else to write about him.
What surprises me sometimes,
the people that get distracted-
- and myopic about Michael's eccentricities,
when they listen to-
- his music and watch his performance,
that's like someone saying,
- "Hey, there's a cobweb on the
ceiling of the Sistine Chapel."
This article is from Playboy magazine,
January 1985.
It's called Freaks And The American
Ideal Of Manhood, by James Baldwin.
"He will not swiftly be forgiven for
having turned so many tables,
- for he damn sure grabbed the brass ring."
People tend to reduce the backlash
to Michael Jackson to these-
- eccentricities, but I think
that the James Baldwin quote-
- suggests that it was more than that.
Michael Jackson became-
- one of the most powerful figures
in the entertainment industry, and-
- certainly he was the most powerful
African-American to that time.
And in addition to that, 1985,
along with John Branca,
- he acquires the Beatles catalogue.
When we announced the
acquisition of the Beatles' catalogue,
- it was almost a feeling that
Michael didn't have the right-
- also to be a savvy businessmen.
It was a misconception that Michael
went behind Paul McCartney's back-
- to bid on the catalogue,
but that was absolutely not the case.
I remember when he
bought the Beatles' catalogue.
He came to me and he said they
want whatever it was at that time,
- 52 million, it sounds like too much money.
He said, "I think you're wrong."
A lot of those Beatles' songs are
considered sacred songs by people.
They are really just more
than pop songs on the radio,
- they meant something in their lives
beyond almost any songs they heard.
I mean, Sergeant Pepper,
particularly right?
And for him to take that catalogue
and use it the way he's used it,
- it's going to have some kind of backlash.
After Thriller, you know,
Michael had a few extra dollars to invest,
- and we had an investment committee,
and we used to look at-
- all sorts of possible deals for Michael,
- and he never had interest
in buildings, tax shelters,
- the kinds of things that other people-
- were interested in at the time.
One day Michael came to me and he said,
- "I saw Paul McCartney's song catalogue.
"He showed it to me. Do you think
you can help me buy copyrights?"
And I said, "Absolutely, Michael."
We bought a couple
Dion & The Belmont's songs,
Runaround Sue and The Wanderer.
Then we bought the
Sly & The Family Stone catalogue,
- which was a major
acquisition for Michael.
Michael's 28 years old now.
He's not a baby dumpling now.
He's grown,
he's listened, he's going up,
- and those are the kinds
of things he wants to say now.
I feel the stretches are there,
- but they don't feel like they've
been conscious stretches.
I think that things have just
occurred along the way to say that-
- this is the way I feel like thinking,
- and I feel like feeling at this time.
And one thing we've really tried not to do,
to sit down and worry about-
- competing with Thriller,
- because that's really self-destructive,
you know.
And it's dishonest.
He would always write with a red Sharpie-
- on his mirrors in his rooms,
wherever he was.
He would write 100 million albums
sold for Bad, to remind him,
- when he would stand in front
of the mirror, brushing his teeth,
- brushing his hair, doing himself up,
that that was his goal.
I remember sitting on Michael's mirror,
- he wrote the big note,
100 million albums.
And that was a goal that he set for himself,
but I remember one time,
- I was in Hong Kong with Michael,
and it was in between the records,
- and I said,
"you know, Mike, there's a lot of pressure.
"Maybe you should think,
- why not do an album of
cover songs that inspired you?"
"Jackie Wilson, James Brown,
just going little left of centre,
- so you don't feel like you
have to compete with yourself."
And he looked at me like I was from Mars.
Because Michael thrived on that pressure,
- he thrived on pushing himself,
and everybody else around him.
If this record doesn't do as
well as Thriller, and doesn't win-
- a whole bunch of Grammy awards,
he's going to be very unhappy.
He would call during the
Thriller and the Bad days.
"My record's not number one.
"My record's not number one,
what are we going to do?"
I said, "Michael, we're going to go to sleep,
we're going to get up tomorrow,
- and we're going to work on
getting you a number one."
Michael didn't have limits,
Michael thought bigger than anyone.
Off The Wall was a huge hit,
and when he told people after-
- that album, "I'm going to follow
this up with an album that's going-
- to sell twice as much as Off The Wall,
people didn't believe him." And he did it.
And so with Bad, he said,
"OK, I'm going to do it again."
Bad has the special distinction.
It's the first album in history
to generate five consecutive-
- number one pop singles,
and that record was only recently-
- tied by Katy Perry,
with her Teenage Dream album.
It started with I Just Can't Stop Loving You,
in the summer of 1987.
- Bad. - Then you had The Way You Make Me Feel.
- Man In The Mirror.
And finally, Dirty Diana.
It's a testament to his swag,
really, that he-
- even made another record after Thriller.
It did take in five years.
I was 16 years old when
the Bad album came out.
I remember being highly obsessed
with every aspect of that album.
We were just like,
"What is this going to be?"
Because this was a humongous deal.
I guess in some way or another,
my education of the industry,
- and those inside it and outside
it really starts with that record.
The original album title
was Smooth Criminal.
That was the original name of the album,
- and again, Michael called me up,
and said this is what he wants to do.
A couple of days later I got a call-
- from Quincy Jones,
"Larry, I got a problem with the album title."
I go, "Why? It's kind of cool,
it's edgy, it's kind of cool."
He says, "I understand Larry, but I will not
allow this album to be called Smooth Criminal."
He felt that the connotation
was inappropriate at this time.
So I said,
"Let me call Walter, I'll get back to you."
Because Walter Yetnikoff was
very involved with this project.
And Walter says,
"I don't care what you call it, just put it out!"
This was the most published
music image of the year.
We prepared for it for three days.
We were shooting the video in the subway in New York.
Every day after shooting,
we would go, "OK, let's do it."
"I'm tired. I got something to do."
Next day. OK.
"No, no, no, no, I'm tired."
OK, last day, Frank says,
- "Mike, he's been sitting here for
three days, you got to take this picture."
"OK, Frank." Three rolls of 12 shots
later he goes, "That's enough."
And this is what we came up with.
There was an album cover shot,
- and it was done in a very '30s style.
It was a copy of a Vogue photograph
of Gloria Swanson that had-
- been shot back in the '30s.
And they took a piece of lace,
and they stuck it-
- in front of the camera,
and they shot through the lace,
- Michael's face, it was just a
headshot, so it looked like-
- Michael was wearing a veil,
or a piece of lace on his face.
He did have a veil, and I said
"I'm not putting out an album cover-
- with that all over his face."
He called me up, and he went,
"That is not the album cover!"
We wanted a tough album.
We wanted a tough image, anyway.
You know, because,
- because it's important that you
keep trying to change, change up.
And this is the one where I'd
asked him to write all the tunes.
This room was built for Michael.
This studio D in Westlake-
- was built for Michael Jackson.
For specifically the Bad record.
I was in this big room here,
we had Phillinganes in the other room,
- E, I believe it was,
doing all the synth parts.
We had Jerry Hey and the other
guys doing other arrangements-
- in the other rooms.
We had this whole building locked up.
Locked out!
Everybody's working on different
tunes on the same record.
Well, the Bad song really
sets up the entire album,
- because this is a song in
which Michael's addressing-
- the huge backlash that
had taken place since thriller.
The whole world has to
answer right now, "Who's bad?"
Well... It is quite different from
anything I've ever recorded,
or I've ever written.
It's a bold statement to say,
but I mean it in all goodwill.
You know, so don't take it too seriously.
I'm saying, it's like a way of
saying you're cool, you're all right,
- you're tough.
I'm not saying I'm like criminally bad.
Of course, that's how people will take it.
It's a bold statement to make.
Opening line is,
"Your butt is mine," that's extremely...
You know, like, let's get it on!
So, I wanted to do a duet with Prince,
- and have the video with him
coming to kick Michael's ass.
The rivalry between the two of them,
between Prince and Michael,
- for real music lovers at
that time, and real music fans,
- that's a rivalry that is unmatched,
- and will go unmatched
for many, many years.
Michael impacted dances.
Nobody can touch him dancing.
When I try to dance,
I'd try, not to mimic him,
- but I try to, you know,
not let him down, in a way.
Prince impacted musicians.
Michael Jackson and Prince were
the polarising figures of the '80s.
Are you a Michael fan or a Prince than?
You can't do that! You know why?
Because I think that Michael-
- and Prince came into
our lives at a different point.
They're synonymous to me, they're equal.
Michael and Prince are our heroes,
they're our musical heroes.
My annual Michael Jackson
versus Prince party,
- that's something I've
been doing for a while,
- really just to pay homage and
tribute to those two artists.
I'm Michael Jordan,
Mike Tyson, Michael Jackson.
I met Michael once at,
ironically enough, a Prince concert.
I was performing with Prince in Vegas.
After the show was over was
when I met him backstage.
I thought that they had
nemeses all these years,
- but it turns out that Mike was
a pretty big fan of Prince as well.
So Michael said,
- "Branca, set up a meeting.
I want Prince to come over."
The meeting took place at
Hayvenhurst, 4641 Hayvenhurst.
And Bob Cavallo went over with Prince...
So, you actually met then?
They met in Michael's study, and I recall,
I wasn't there that night,
- but I remember, I was told the next day,
it was not a happy meeting.
Apparently Prince brought over
some sort of voodoo box, and Michael-
- was convinced that Prince
was trying to cast a spell on him.
If Quincy has gone to Prince and said,
"Write a song for you-
- and Michael to do,"
that song would have gotten recorded.
Not by Michael!
But Michael wouldn't have done it!
Now Prince wasn't doing no song
with Michael Jackson. All right?
That was a very optimistic
view that he would get down...
At that point, in the Sign
O' The Times era, he's rolling.
Oh, the cool thing about
playing on the title track, Bad,
- was I shared a solo with Jimmy Smith.
Jimmy Smith played on that,
jazz organist, played on that.
He was great.
That was the groove, you know.
And then Jimmy did this
organ solo on top of that.
And here he comes...
ORGAN SOLO
And here I come after that.
Watch out!
By '86 and '87, hip-hop is now
becoming the dominant thread-
- in a lot of aspects of
American pop culture.
Michael's responding to that to
some degree with the Bad video,
- and imaging of Bad, but it's
done in a Michael Jackson way.
The first step that was taken
was to bring in Martin Scorsese.
Martin Scorsese to direct the
first video from the album, and-
- Michael never called them videos,
it was the short film from the album.
You'd never hear him say "music video".
"I'm doing short films."
He wanted people not just
to hear the music, but see it.
We had a meeting with Quincy
and Michael in Los Angeles,
- and I found that really nobody had...
They were wide open to ideas.
Nobody had ideas what kind
of story we could make up,
- what kind of issue we could deal with.
And so I suggested that
I hire Richard Price,
- who just wrote Colour of Money
for me to do the script.
I just thought, Michael Jackson and
Marty Scorsese, that's way too...
That's way too bizarre for words,
absolutely I will do it.
If it's to be anything,
it should be something very,
- very different from what he's
done before, and that means-
- a dramatic piece, and something
with a lot of style, a lot of grit to it.
I don't remember exactly who
said this, but he said Michael-
- wanted to make a video to
show the brothers he's down.
So he goes to the, you know,
the Italian asthmatic, who goes-
- to the Jewish asthmatic,
and we're going to make Michael a homie!
We gave him these three ideas.
Michael and I both loved
the one called Pressure-
- that was the working title of this one.
About peer pressure.
I had just read this
article that a friend of mine,
Robert Sam Anson,
had written about Edmund Perry.
Within the hour, police revealed
more information about the death-
- of a young man from Harlem.
He had graduated with honours from
an exclusive New England prep school.
Edmund Perry was killed by a
police bullet on Morningside Drive.
They had read stories like
this before, too many of them.
Black kid, 17, from Harlem, poor,
- with another black youth,
tries to rob a white man,
- who turns out to be a plain-clothes cop.
Edmund Perry was a kid from Harlem.
He and his brother, Jonah,
had both gone to prep schools,
- said they were like, not privileged,
but they were exposed to privilege.
And this was a kid that was
very much kind of dealing with-
- what is becoming a more
common kind of internal conflict-
- among black kids who were
put in isolated environments...
I want to say before you go, you know,
you did a real good job this term.
Thanks.
...and are asked in that passage-
- to let go of the culture
that spawned him.
Yo, the black is back, my man...
So, I just ran off, and I wrote this thing,
and I rate in like two days.
You know, it's only ten pages,
and Marty thought it was great.
Oh, yeah.
He did ask me,
- he took me aside, and said,
"Do people live here?"
I said, "Oh, yeah, this is a good one,
- "because we went to some
others, and I was pretty..."
- Was he scared?
- A little bit, I think.
For him, I thought,
it was a shock to see that.
Folks, I think we better
go through a walk, man.
How did I get cast in this?
Audition, you know, we all had to audition.
Were there a lot of people?
It was quite a few guys,
I don't know exactly how many.
Wesley came in, there was no...
Yeah, there was no question.
And the guys I went in with,
- they all approached the
characters kind of B-boy-ish.
You know, characteristic of B-boys,
with the, "Yo, man, yeah."
This type of thing.
And that's not my particular style,
so I went the opposite direction-
- of what they did,
and I played it very, very subtle.
Yo, college? What's your major, man?
This is high school, there ain't no majors.
Then what's your minor?
Wesley Snipes, his appearance
in a video was probably one of-
- the most notable acting debuts,
- and the fact that he made his
mark known in a music video,
- everyone remembered
Wesley Snipes after that moment.
Are you bad?
Or is that what they teach you up
in that little sissy school of yours?
How to forget who your friends are.
Let me tell you something,
I don't care what-
- they teach you up there,
you either down, or you ain't down.
And one of the things that I
found was this piece of paper,
- which he wrote "Bad Film" on there.
And it's titled, "Today's Motto."
"Let nothing be a take unless
I'm extremely satisfied,
- "unless I felt it in my soul."
You want to see who's bad?
You want to see who's bad?
Well, come on, come on, let's do it.
Let's see who's bad, man.
Come on. Come on! Let's go.
As we're putting the piece together,
- working on the choreography,
- it's towards the middle of it that
they say, "We have a location,"
- so they took us to Brooklyn,
to the Hoyt-Schermerhorn subway station.
There is a place where the
train is actually running under us.
There's a midsection,
that's the place we went to.
The first time we walked in, we were
with Martin Scorsese, Quincy Jones,
- myself and Michael,
and we're walking through there,
- and Michael goes, "Wow, this is great.
"Yeah, it looks real.
Look, there's even some pee stains over there.
"Wow, it's really nasty,
yeah, that's great."
Well, even if we catch them
with the last two steps.
No, that's OK. That's OK.
Oh, sure, because he's hiding as well.
It's ideal if we don't see it.
And then we come back, and he's hiding.
He's frozen again, that would
be great if we could do that.
FOOTSTEPS
- That move is in Taxi Driver.
- Yeah, I like... Yeah, I like that.
Right, let's go again, same thing.
Same thing.
Speak. 19, Kansas, take five.
And action.
Give me a quarter.
Run, move, go! Run!
Cut.
I mean, there was a
moment there with the old man,
- when he said, "Gimme a quarter."
Give me a quarter.
Run! Go! Run!
And the guy... Something happened,
sort of hurt his arm a little bit.
- No, no, it's all right. It's all right.
- What can we do?
We're going to take care of it.
I promise you it won't happen.
No, please, do it in the same way,
I mean, it has to be done in that way.
The only time Michael
really became, I think, very,
- very concerned was at that moment,
where he begged me,
"Please don't do another take on the guy.
"I didn't want to hurt anybody."
I mean, really begged me.
I said, "No, no, no, it's all right.
Actually it's all very good."
"Please, I beg you."
It was true, we did have it, so...
You know, I went with that.
That's what I want to see.
It's going to be like this.
- He can't touch me though.
- No. - He can't touch me.
OK, so just run through the lines this way.
That's the way it's going down.
Huh? That's it?
Well, you ain't down with us!
You ain't bad, you ain't bad at all.
LAUGHTER
You know, Wesley's talking to him,
and Wesley's got this fierce-
- kind of profile and everything
like that, and it's almost like-
- I felt scared from Michael,
like he was going to get eaten.
I was so happy to see
Michael Jackson being tough.
I was so happy to see him in what
seemed like regular surroundings.
I think I was a little bit caught
off guard, because it was-
- like Michael talking, Michael sort
of being very rough, a little bit.
I don't know if he was trying
to reaffirm his connection with-
- the black community, or what he
was trying to do, but it was successful.
It's one shot.
Whatever is best for him.
Whatever is good to him at
this point, it's only one shot.
The thing is also,
when he drops down into it.
And everybody starts surrounding him.
If we drop down in front of the
three guys the opposite way,
- the three guys will be
in the way of the camera.
What I didn't realise is that, you know,
I have this like earnest social drama,
and all of a sudden it's
- going to end in this choreographed
big song, and it was like, "Huh?"
Oh, I remember this, yeah.
Now, the thing is...
Oh, this is pretty much, you know...
What are you going to do,
dance us to death? I think he says...
What, y'all going to dance us to death?
You got to be kidding me.
He probably was going
to dance them to death.
Because you ain't saying nothing here.
Raise up.
I think the Bad moment, outfit wise,
- was far more influential
than the Thriller moment.
Like, the Thriller moment
might have been more iconic,
- but Bad was more influential.
So, I like almost dress like that today.
When everybody's out,
they're all staring, and the pipe breaks.
- Yeah, right.
- Everybody looks.
So, what's up?
We're going to hold that a while.
Michael was very interested
in incorporating body popping-
- into his videos.
So, he feels like the dancers
themselves know more-
- about what we're doing,
so he chose to use the street dancers-
- to co-choreograph the videos with him.
I'm giving you on count of three
To show your stuff or let it be...
Now hit those little things like - boom!
Do the little moves,
those little up rhythms.
He would work with the dancers
in the daytime, but me and Casper-
- would go up to the Helmsley
Palace hotel and work with Michael-
- at night, and we'd be working
to 2.30, 3 in the morning.
And, you know, we'd take
turns creating different things,
- making different things happen,
and then he'd get in there,
- and he do his thing,
I'd get in to do my thing,
- and we would take turns doing that.
It wasn't like a dance-off,
like competing against each other,
- but like pushing each other,
inspiring each other,
- and pushing each other to the next limit.
So at first it was myself and
Casper and Michael only,
- then after I got hold of Gregg Burge,
- and Gregg Burge started coming
over to the rehearsals with us-
- as well. And we were just gelling,
just coming up with ideas,
- so there was nothing constructive yet.
You know I'm bad,
I'm bad Come on...
- I know people made a lot of, "What's a shamone?"
- Shamone.
Shamone is basically his
hat nod to Mavis Staples.
Shamone, shamone.
He could have went with James Brown,
and being like, "Lookee here,"
- or Marvin Gaye and "Hoooo!"
I love the fact that he played
that homage to one of-
- the under-championed
soul singers of her day.
Shamone, shamone, shamone...
Michael has this scooting move,
where he scooting forward.
That's a Michael signature step.
I said, "Michael, that has never
been done in a group before.
"Could you imagine if all of us-
- were scooting across
the camera like that?"
So now it's looking like a train,
"chuka-chuka-chuka-chuka..."
with a group of us doing it.
And it worked out beautifully.
You're throwing stones
to hide your hands
Well, they say the sky's the limit
And to me that's really true
And my friends you have seen nothing
Just wait till I get through
Because I'm bad,
I'm bad Shamone...
Were you familiar with the
Michael Jackson "grab the crotch"?
No, I was not familiar with that at all!
It's all through the whole piece.
The whole thing, it's all throughout.
Within the moves, it's right,
I mean, what can I say?
- The way he's moving.
- But it was a surprise, though, right?
Yes, it was, yeah.
You know I'm bad, I'm bad
You know it
You know I'm bad, I'm bad
You know it, you know...
He took what was
formatted as a choreography,
- and he learned it to the point
where he could break out of it when-
- he wanted to, and get right back into it,
without skipping a beat.
Michael would just spin and snap
out of it, and grab himself, "Hooooo!"
We never knew any of
this was going to happen,
- and that goes to show you his genius.
What makes one go out and mug a person?
I mean, there's so much involved
in a person who does that.
Insecurities, frustration,
resentment, all of these things.
In one movement, I had him lifting
the leg up, with that feeling-
- of wanting to fly, like we all want
to do, we want to fly, and the-
- next movement, it's just anger,
and the next movement, its tenderness.
Michael's seen West Side Story.
Michael knows Jerome Robbins'
choreography, I mean, I know-
- he does, because that's where
that looked like it came from, to me.
Gregg, he contributed, because
he's a technical dancer, you know,
- he's into jazz, and stuff
like that, so all the really-
- West Side Story-looking stuff
is what Gregg put into the piece.
I tried to keep some street stuff in it.
HE GRUNTS
You see those type of moves in there.
You know I'm bad, I'm bad
Shamone
You know I'm bad, I'm bad...
- The crane down...
- Oh, yeah.
Low ceiling, I mean, the ceiling was low.
You know, you know Come on
And the whole world
has to answer right now
When I tell you once again...
- There it is.
- Oh, my God!
I get that it wasn't funny,
but it seemed like a good idea at the time.
Something my daughter,
when she saw this, she said,
- "Dad, you were in jail?"
I said, "No, no, no, no!"
It was my intention to make
this dance move throughout this-
- subway, I wanted things to move.
The big issue of course, ultimately,
was for such a master of dancing,
- the concern was to show from head to toe.
I had to try and convince him-
- that I think the camera
moves could work all together.
And the whole world
has to answer right now
When I tell you once again
Who's bad?
It does come back at the end
to a reality in which they split.
And of course, it's all summed up,
which is an interesting idea,
- that Jackson came up with,
to do what he calls a breakdown.
A breakdown which turned out to
be in the tradition of a preacher,
- doing a sermon.
And we did that three cameras, live.
And Michael goes,
"OK, guys, I want you to just follow me."
I think I had to be one of
the only singers in the group,
- because a lot of the guys
were studying dance.
- Who's bad?
- Who's bad?
- Who's bad?
- Who's bad?
Oh, my God, it was church,
it was James Brown.
If any place reaffirmed him,
or if he was trying to reaffirm to-
- people who he was,
and where his roots were...
And the soulfulness
that he has, and frankly,
- the blackness that he was,
it is those last 30 seconds...
- You know
- You know
- You know it
- You know it
- You know
- You know
- You know it
- You know it...
Sometimes he lost us, you know...
"So, guys, naaa, naaa, na..."
- Ask your mother
- Your mother
- Ask your sister
- Your sister
- Ask me
- Ask me
- You've been doing wrong
- You've been doing wrong
- You're doing wrong
- You're doing wrong
- You're doing me wrong
- You're doing me wrong
- You're doing wrong
- You're doing wrong...
And this is something that he envisioned,
- and he was feeling,
and it finally got to that...
So, that's the way it goes down, hey?
There was a lot of talk at
first of doing a different thing,
- maybe everyone smiling,
and being happy with it.
18 apple, take three.
And action.
Yo, it's cool, all right.
I mean, there ain't no
hard feelings or nothing.
But then I just said,
"It just doesn't seem to work."
The fellas have to more or less except him,
- and they accept them,
and they go their own way, that's it.
Last week Michael Jackson
re-entered human history,
- to gladden mankind with his latest album,
- thus triggering a wave of
media silliness and cross-promotion.
CBS television let off the festival
of foolishness Monday night.
IT broadcast a half-hour special
on Jackson and his new album.
I mean, when that video
comes on Monday night,
- everyone's going to be
glued to their TV screen,
- with their friends saying,
- "did you see that?
Did you see that? Did you see that?"
It was before the age
of the internet, I mean,
- the most that I could do was
call somebody else's house-
- to have three-way, who called
another friend to have three-way,
- like seven of us watched this short film,
one three-way, in dead silence.
I was just transfixed in front of the TV.
We took all the documentary
footage we could find on Michael,
- from the very early stages,
when he joined Motown records,
- it ended with a video
clip of him in London,
- with hundreds of girls screaming
and yelling, and we put this rumble-
- track underneath the screaming
and yelling to really enhance it.
It was just like this with the Beatles.
And Michael just loved this comment-
- by this woman of
comparing him to the Beatles.
He lit up when he saw that,
he just turned to me from the chair-
- and said, "I love it, Larry. I love it."
If you saw it, you witnessed
one of the great bold-faced-
- masterpieces of promotional
hype in this hype-splattered decade.
This video is sending out some-
- very strange and mixed signals,
social signals,
- the cry for some critical
analysis in the media.
Some people in the press
got down on it because,
- firstly they were making
fun of Michael Jackson in it,
- and then some people got
onto the note of, "Is this racist?
"Are you exploiting a tragedy for
the sake of a music entertainment?"
You know, Marty's in Morocco,
- Quincy Jones is on the
red carpet somewhere-
- and I'm the idiot in Long Island
that getting all the calls.
"No, it's not racist, what are you talking about?!"
Freaking out, like a good liberal.
There was a ballad that was released,
- the first track from Thriller,
which was a duet with Paul McCartney.
He duplicated that by doing
a duet with Siedah Garrett.
25 years ago, I sat at this very spot,
- and played this very piano to
record I Just Can't Stop Loving You.
I just wanna lay next to you for a while.
You look so beautiful tonight.
Your eyes are so lovely.
Your mouth is so sweet.
A lot of people misunderstand me.
That's because they don't know me at all.
I just want to touch you.
And hold you.
I need you.
God, I need you.
I Just Can't Stop Loving You
is an interesting song-
- because it's the first
single released off the album,
- and so the firing squad was ready.
They would have ripped anything
apart because they were ready,
- they were ready to attack
whatever he threw out there.
In spite of that, it goes number one.
To me, I Can't Stop Loving You is like,
- close to his Burt Bacharach song.
It was actually intended as
a duet with Whitney Houston.
This award honours you
for your consistent artistic-
- and technical excellence
in all forms of video-
- and for raising the standard
of the art form to new horizons.
- Thank you, Whitney.
- You're welcome.
To all the fans around the world,
thank you very much, and I love you.
So Arista Records says,
"We don't want Whitney to be over-exposed."
Clive Davidson!
When I see Clive,
I'm going to give him hell.
Just kidding, just kidding,
everybody calm down.
I remember when it came
out I was really disappointed-
- because I was like,
you're going to put out a slow song-
- after this whole run of
Thriller and all these songs,
- you're going to put out a slow song?
Come on, this is the big comeback.
Where's the music video?
And who's that girl singing?
I only later found out
it was Siedah Garrett.
And there weren't very
many people in the studio.
It was just Michael, Quincy,
Bruce Swedien and me.
And Quincy just sort
of over his shoulder said,
- "Hey, Sid, you like the song?"
And I'm going, "Yeah." Knitting.
"Yeah, I like it."
He said, "You think you can sing it?"
I'm like, "Yeah."
So I walked in this room and
I see these two mic stands-
- and there's music
sheets on the mic stands-
- and in the moment that I saw
the music sheets where it said,
- "Michael, Siedah, Michael, Siedah,"
that was the moment I realised,
- oh, my God, I'm doing a
duet with Michael Jackson!
I hear your voice now
You are my choice now
The love we bring
Heaven's in my heart
At your call, I hear harps
And angels sing
I'm singing, my eyes are closed,
You know how I...
And Michael started tossing,
I think it was popcorn.
I'm singing,
my eyes closed and I'm feeling this,
- and then Quincy,
all Quincy sees is me, you know,
he said, "Sid, this is studio time, you're wasting time, Siedah,
- "you're wasting an expensive studio."
And Michael is cracking up.
I Just Can't Stop Loving You
started at 3am.
That's one of those you get
the phone call to wake up-
- and, "We need to record right now."
And we were done
probably in an hour and a half.
On the album version of
I Just Can't Stop Loving You,
- you make some very strong
sensuous remarks to a woman-
- that you're lying next to.
- I was in a bed when I was doing that.
- Really? - Yeah.
I was lying in bed,
the cover and everything.
At night when the stars shine
I pray in you I'll find
A love so true
When morning awakes me
Will you come and take me?
I'll wait for you
You know how I feel
I won't stop until
I hear your voice saying "I do"
I do
This thing can't go wrong
This feeling so strong
My life ain't worth living
if I can't be with you.
When I was recording my bits,
I didn't need any charts,
- I would just listen to the demo,
- really, internalise the parts that way-
- and in talking a little bit with Michael
and getting his wishes across, musically,
- I just translate all that and play it.
Hee-hee-hee, won't you, girl.
I was slated to be on the Bad tour.
I was convinced by my record
company and other people-
- that I needed to do a record
cos the duet had just come out.
I'd rehearsed with them for a week-
- when I decided I wanted to
do my record so I pulled out.
At night when the stars shine
I pray that I'll find
A love so true
The band used to bet on whether
Michael was getting excited-
- during the song. Now...
- Singing to you?
- Yeah. I say that's a stretch.
I'll wait for you
You know how I feel
I won't stop until...
Working with Michael and doing
the duet is really, it's intense.
Every time we do that,
it's a different experience, you know.
And he draws you in so much and
just singing a song into his eyes-
- and having him look at you,
it's really exciting.
This feeling so strong
My life ain't worth living
If I can't be with you
I just can't stop loving you
Oh! I just can't stop loving you
And if I stop,
tell me just what will I do?
I just can't stop loving you.
Michael Jackson has such a
great instinct for the groove,
- like the groove in Michael Jackson,
he was rocking at all times,
- he could hear the groove.
So if you take that groove and
you put it to orchestration,
- it makes it bigger,
it makes it more powerful.
- Quincy Jones/Michael Jackson
collaboration was historic.
It was a match made in
heaven because first of all,
- there was a tremendous
amount of mutual respect.
There is no-one in popular
music history like Quincy,
- as an orchestrator, as a composer.
Coming from all of his
background, Count Basie,
- Frank Sinatra, Dinah Washington,
playing trumpet in Lionel Hampton's band.
The most beautiful part about the
love affair, and that's what it is,
- the love affair between a producer,
whatever you want to call it,
- the person that's on the other side,
- a person that loves that artist enough
to never want to see him in trouble,
- and only wants to see
the best for that artist,
- to come up with the best results,
- is an incredible trust,
where you can say,
"Jump, Michael, there's no
parachute, there's no net,
- "there's nothing there,
there's 34 stories down, jump."
One of the great things about
Quincy is that he has this ability-
- of mixing all kinds of different genres-
- and personalities
into one beautiful blend.
Because he only uses the best,
the creme de la creme of musicians.
Working with Quincy
was like being at school.
I learned so much about separation,
- in trying to make a
record where everyone,
- he used to say, "Everybody can't
come in the door at the same time."
And he used to always say,
"You can't polish doo-doo."
You can't polish doo-doo. You know, you've
got to have a great song at the beginning.
When we look at the end of
a day and I have goosebumps,
- and Michael has goosebumps and
Bruce Swedien, the engineer, has goosebumps,
- then I think we've got something special.
And Quincy just puts his
little fairy dust over it-
- and it's a Quincy Jones project
and it's kind of, as he says,
- "Leave space for God to walk
through the door and create some magic."
Michael Jackson had been
into champagne music.
You know how in St Tropez
when you order champagne-
- they bring the sparklers out with the champagne?
Michael saw that 20 years ago ahead and made a sound.
Michael Jackson made the sound of fabulous.
Him and Quincy.
And Michael was one of those sources
of energy where he brought so much,
- so much originality but
also an amazing collaborator.
He's so disciplined and he's
got that perfect balance-
- of soul and science.
He knows the working parts of his craft.
And he has total trust in
an intuitive part of his craft,
- and so that's the balance.
The head and heart.
Off The Wall, Thriller, Bad.
They created three hurricanes that
basically went through the globe-
- and everybody got caught up and danced.
Well, we're here today
to try to finish up a session-
- with Michael Jackson singing
in Spanish and in French.
We've spoken about
this for years and years,
- from when we were doing
Off The Wall and we were doing Thriller,
- but we never got around
to it because by the time-
- we finished the album, we'd do disco
versions and we'd do videos et cetera-
- and I think inside we weren't really
sure whether we could make it work.
Como la briza...
The one thing I didn't think was possible-
- was just to do a translation of the song.
- Word for word, you mean, right?
- Yes.
So what I said was,
"Let me understand the song-
- and I'll be as close as I can
to what the song was about."
Tu me haces sentir
Deseos de vivir
Junto a ti por siemp're
Tu amor es mi suerte
One more.
I think I need more level in the phones,
- like I'm drowning the track out.
It was a privilege for me to
watch the way he performed-
- and the way he handled this.
He felt perhaps a bit vulnerable.
I'm sorry. You can continue. Here we go.
When you control the whole thing,
- all of a sudden now somebody's
telling you how to do something-
- in a language that is not yours,
and so you are vulnerable.
And I made it my main effort
to make him feel comfortable,
- not to feel that I was in any way
mocking him because it's not easy.
This is the first time he ever tried to
do anything in Spanish that I know of.
I wanted Michael to sound like,
you don't know who that is.
The pronunciation was so good,
- that... I was stunned.
Y cuando no estas
No hay felicidad
Both of them: "Mi vida no es vida."
My life is not a life.
Si tu te vas, if you leave.
Si tu te vas.
Todo me amor eres tu - all my love,
you are all my love.
Todo mi amor eres tu.
When people found out that
Michael Jackson had sung a song in Spanish,
- they were very, very,
very proud and happy.
Well, The Hayvenhurst studio
is located in a guest house here-
- at the Jacksons' property, at their home,
- and the studio was used
for recording demos-
- and I worked with Michael recording
and developing his ideas, his songs,
- his arrangements,
his productions for the Bad album.
Over a two, three year period of time,
- it was just a non-stop work in progress.
The number of demos that we worked
on for Bad was 60, maybe 65 demos.
When I received the demos,
they were in really good shape at that time.
I guess I didn't realise at the
time but what we were doing-
- was we were forming the B team.
Quincy always called his team the A-Team.
His engineer, Bruce Swedien...
...John Robinson on drums...
- ..arranger Jerry Hayes...
- ..Nathan East on bass...
Keyboards would have
been Greg Phillinganes.
I started with Michael here at Hayvenhurst.
We were the kind of initial
team which was John Barnes,
- myself, Michael,
Bill Bottrell, Chris Currell.
And then at times other
musicians would come in,
- most prominent would be David Williams,
who is no longer with us.
And in some ways I think
Michael kind of liked that vibe.
He kind of liked the vibe of,
you know, having a little competition-
- to see who could come
up with the best thing.
I think this is one of the things that
he learned from his Motown days,
- something he learned from Berry Gordy.
We weren't making demos,
we were making records.
Anybody else would be perfectly happy-
- to accept a Michael
demo as a finished record,
- let me put it that way.
We would work every single day on
creating individual sounds for songs-
- that were going to
ultimately be on the record.
We'd record them,
re-record them, different keys,
- different speeds,
different instrumentation,
- and so that became kind of an
experiment in how far can we push.
Michael would say,
"You know, it starts in this very room."
And from this room it goes out
and it spreads over the entire world.
It's...
quite an experience to be back here,
- at Hayvenhurst studio,
- just as it was when I last
left it, almost 25 years ago.
We never knew what we were
going to do when we showed up.
If Michael was inspired, we followed it.
So this is Michael singing
multiple harmony parts.
This is Michael double-tracking,
the mid, the low, the high parts.
There is actually ten tracks of Michael
singing his own backgrounds on this song.
The way you make me feel
You really turn me on
You knock me off my feet.
You can hear the difference in
sound quality from being out here-
- in the music room,
to walking into the bathroom.
Now this room was one of
Michael's favourite places-
- because of the nature
of the surfaces in this room.
One of the things that we would do is we would
record with the door to the shower open,
- much more reflective,
a lot of what we call early reflection,
- a lot of brightness, a lot of
reinforcement to how things sound.
I like the style of your
walk your talk, your dress
I feel your fever from miles around
I'll pick you up...
...paint the town
Just kiss me baby and tell me twice
That you're...
I know this part!
The way you make me feel
Ha, I know that!
It really turns me o-o-on
Knocking me off of my feet now, baby
Lonely days are gone
I met with Quincy,
Quincy Jones and Frank,
- to find out what they
were looking for in the video.
And they said, basically, we want
to take Michael to another level,
- especially with his
relationships with women.
And then I talked to Michael and I said,
"Where do you want it to happen?" He said, "Skid Row."
We wrote a long prequel,
just like they did in Bad.
- I contacted August Wilson.
- Yeah?! - Yeah.
Cos I'm from Pittsburgh and so was he.
- What did August say?
- No. He said no.
I did this little documentary
about the guys on the street,
- real, real stuff,
and showed it to Michael.
He looked at it and actually said,
- "Can we make the video look like this?"
Because it was all handheld and jerky.
And I said, "If that's what you want.
You're sure you want that?" He said, "yeah."
Get out of here, man!
Check out that rear end! Whoo!
Don't touch my head!
No!
You're acting like a little tramp!
And we actually used real
gang members in the video.
We had the V13s down here on this corner-
- and the Crips on this corner,
and some of the guys were smoking-
- and Michael came and he said,
"Jo, the guys are smoking down there.
"It's kind of bothersome."
And I just turned and said,
- "Will you fucking guys
quit fucking smocking?!"
And Michael, he almost panicked,
he almost hid behind me-
- because this is all these gang members,
- we had cops everywhere, though.
It wasn't a problem.
Hey!
When he sees the girl,
he did a thing with his fingers going...
It happened once, my brother was operating the
camera and caught it. I said, "Oh, my God, thank God."
Michael had the best-sounding fingers,
didn't he?
I don't remember which song it is,
- but on Bad he has
a credit for finger snaps.
One of the most amazing moments
that I remember was Michael walking,
- walking, walking,
and catches up to Tatyana,
- and sings for the first time...
You knock me off of
my feet now, baby, hoo!
Everything stopped.
We had to stop shooting because people just froze.
They actually froze.
Hoo!
To play a shuffle like that
for 12 minutes is not easy.
Michael's mother,
she has this song in mind.
She says, "Michael, you've
got to come up with a song-
- that has this real
shuffling kind of rhythm."
And Michael says,
"OK, I'll see what I can come up with."
Shuffles have a unique rhythm.
Most songs you hear are kind of linear.
Shuffles have an extra
rhythmic element going on.
You can have a cowbell underneath
the backbeat to reinforce the sound.
None of the backbeat that
you hear on that album-
- is going to have just a basic,
typical snare drum sound.
I recorded the drums on a wooden platform.
It minimises what is
called secondary pick-up,
- which is where the
other mics in the room-
- pick up from those sound sources.
And then we got the idea,
- why doesn't Michael stand
on that when he sings?
And he did, and it sounds glorious.
Hey, pretty baby
with the high heels on
You give me fever like
I've never ever known...
This was my first album
ever as a little girl.
I cried and cried to my mom,
begged her to please buy this for me.
I would play this like crazy,
and dance with it.
I mean, this was a dream come true.
This was something I had fantasised-
- and dreamed about since
I was five or six years old.
You're the one for me
The way you make me feel...
The girl that we finally chose,
Tatiana, wasn't in my first five.
I didn't like her.
And I showed Frank DiLeo,
his manager, the casting tape-
- and he said,
"That girl's running around with Prince.
"If Michael finds out, he'll be upset."
"And that girl's running around with so-and-so,
- I'm not going to name names."
He said, "I can't say."
Cos it was Quincy Jones.
I think. As I remember.
She seemed physically to be the
female version of Michael Jackson.
There may have been, in his head,
an interesting idea about,
"Wow! This is almost kind
of my perfect complement."
I like the feelin' you're givin' me
Just hold me,
baby and I'm in ecstasy
Oh, I'll be workin' from 9 to 5...
She was the finest thing around at that time.
I wanted to be Michael.
I wanted to be Michael,
walking right beside her,
- standing on cars and being...
I wanted to be Michael that day.
Promise, baby,
you'll love me for ever more
I swear I'm keepin' you satisfied
Cos you're the one for me
- The way you make me feel
- The way you make me feel
- You really turn me on
- You really turn me on
You knock me off of my feet now...
I first got hooked up with
Quincy through a band I was playing in,
- in Los Angeles, called Seawind.
We were playing at a club.
Quincy, always being at the
forefront of finding new talent,
- heard about us as a horn section,
called up one night.
- "Jerry, this is Quincy Jones."
- "What?"
- "Yeah, you want to play on a record?"
- "Of course."
- "You want to do an arrangement?"
- "Oh... OK."
He said, "And how about tomorrow?"
And that was kind of the beginning-
- of this 30-plus year
relationship with Quincy.
Our horn players are two saxophone players,
- Kim Hutchcroft and Larry Williams.
The trumpet player, Gary Grant.
The trombone player, Bill Reichenbach.
Vamp out.
Again, two trumpets, two saxes.
The day of the audition,
I wore a dance skin,
- a black dress with boots
and bracelets, bangles,
- which was kind of like my
signature thing at the time.
And I heard that Michael liked my look.
He liked the whole style of
what I had done, so he kept that.
We created a complete look for her.
Hair extensions,
we changed her make up completely.
I had two dresses at that time.
One was pink, one was black.
And the black one was kind of
reminiscent of a Tatiana dress.
That's the way I was living.
Go on, girl
Go on
Ow!
Go on, girl
Oooh!
Ooh!
The Way You Make Me Feel video,
um, you know, when he's chasing-
- the girl around, that was kind
of how I pictured my Baby video.
We kind of based it off of that.
In my video,
you can see I'm in a bowling alley-
- but it's kind of like a modern version.
I'm chasing her around,
trying to get her to like me.
The way you make me feel
The way you make me feel
You really turn me good...
Mike called me and said,
"I told Joe Pytka,
- who's directing it,
that I wasn't doing any dancing."
"But the more I listen to it,
I think I want to put some dancing in there."
"Could you go to a studio
and work on some stuff,
- then I'll come in and join you."
Joe came in to see,
heard this music going on-
- and was like,
"What the heck's going on in here?"
I see this beautiful piece
being choreographed,
- but the idea that I'd had for the
video didn't have a place for that.
We had to very quickly
improvise where to put that.
That's where the fire
hydrant idea came from.
The way you make me feel
You really turn me on
You knock me off my feet...
Fans were always
bombarding me with the question,
"Why does he chase you throughout
the video only for a hug and not a kiss?"
Joe Pytka, the director,
he whispered in my ear right before the-
- very last scene where we hug,
and he told me, he said, "Don't kiss him."
I thought the kiss was too corny.
I'm not even sure I wanted
him to get that close.
I wanted him to maybe stop like here.
But it worked out with
the caress and the hug.
He says,
"Because you were originally supposed to kiss,
- but Michael is too shy
for that so don't kiss him."
When Michael did finally come out
and we got close and we hugged,
- I could smell like a minty,
minty fresh scent from his breath.
That was a signal!
I kind of think he came prepared but...
Being told not to kiss him,
and that he couldn't handle it,
- he was too shy, I didn't want
to take advantage like that.
Oh, listen, Tatiana was not shy.
She was not a shy girl.
And in fact,
going on with this story is little bit,
- she was told,
"Definitely don't kiss Michael onstage."
He was complaining she'd become too
aggressive on stage and everything.
I made a joke,
"Is this going to be X-rated, this thing?"
I said, "Michael, why don't you
just go fuck her? Fuck her one night.
"Get it over with."
He started laughing and Frank said,
"What the hell are you doing?
"I've got enough Goddamn trouble
without you trying to get him-
- involved with this girl."
But for me,
it became policy because I said,
- "OK, if Michael doesn't
kiss in the video,
- I don't think anybody
should kiss in the video."
So since that day,
I always edit out kisses in videos-
- and one in particular,
Justin Bieber made a video.
He was going to kiss
the girl and I went crazy.
And I went crazy,
A - because he wanted to kiss the girl,
- and B - she was a black girl.
And I was like, "OK, you're about
to mess up your whole thing, man."
Oh, oh, look, Granny.
It-it's...
Ah... it's-it's... Mmm... mmm... ah!
M-M-M...
Mantovani?
No. Michael Jackson!
Michael Jackson!
Speed Demon is a song that
maybe people aren't as familiar with-
- on the album, but actually serves
as a metaphor for the entire album.
Because what Michael is trying
to do with this album is escape,
- escape from all the
things that are confining him,
- all the things that are suffocating him.
There he is!
Hey, buddy, how about an autograph?
Would you autograph my tummy?
Speed Demon was my song.
I'm a percussionist and that song
was 100% syncopated adrenaline.
In the James Brown mode of rhythm
arrangement where you use-
- instruments as percussion.
Speed Demon
Speed Demon...
It was pretty much clay-mation, you know,
- matted into live action settings.
It was a real mix.
The whole idea of that
music video, that short,
- was really to merge live
action and clay-mation together.
There was one place in
the story where, you know,
- he turns into our character Spike Rabbit,
- you know, as a way to sort of get
away from the paparazzi and so forth.
Our Spike character wanders
through in this incredible chase,
- but when they come back and they separate,
they separate like this and
- so Spike's still there and Michael's
right there and they do a duet.
A little dance thing.
So we had to make Spike Rabbit
dance right alongside Michael.
That was really,
really fun because, for one thing,
- we had to work out the choreography
between what he was going to do-
- and how we were going to do it,
and figure out exactly how the-
- moves were going to work,
and work it right to the music and so on.
Instead of easing into it,
maybe just really hit it. Full load.
I wish I could. I feel so limited.
This stuff is so tight on me.
Upon finishing with Speed Demon,
he called up one day,
- he got around to saying how
much he loved the California Raisin-
- commercials,
so I realised where he was going.
And I said,
"Michael, you should be a raisin."
"Yeah!"
"Will, I really need you to call
me pertaining to the backup guys,
- the character's got to be much stronger."
"It doesn't hit it right on."
"This is very important.
Thank you. Bye."
The rap raisins materialising behind me,
- I want to define their character.
And from his expression,
which is 99% of it.
The one guy has the glasses,
and he has the type of attitude that-
- he's so cool that I'm
fortunate that he's here.
And he's much too cool for,
like, one of these.
And the other one is like a sarc...
sarcasm.
It's like, "What you looking at?"
The other raisin would be this style.
No glasses.
So his eyes are most of the expression.
Like...
Like that.
I heard it through the grapevine
Raised in the California sunshine
Heard it through the grapevine, baby
Michael!
Oooh
And I think I'm about to lose my mind
Oooh!
Wow!
Must have been something I ate.
Right now on the decks I have
the 12-inch single to Liberian Girl-
- and Run DMC's beats to Sucka MCs.
It sounds something like this.
Quincy wanted some kind of
African little intro thing here.
So this was Michael Boddicker on synth-
- and all these effects-
- are kind of giving an
African sunrise sort of thing.
Naku penda piya-naku
taka piya-mpenziwe.
I mean, people underestimated
how radical that was.
Nobody else was writing
songs about African women-
- as beautiful in 1987-1988.
- It's so nice to see you again.
- Nice to see you too.
I've had the time of my life here.
I'd had so much fun.
I hate to leave.
Here's the biggest pop star in the world,
- who quote-unquote is making
himself look white, and yet he's very-
- engaged with beauty and the
idea of Africa as a site of beauty.
It's just speaks to the fact
that Michael had a very strong-
- African consciousness.
He went to Africa a lot.
He was very engaged with the continent.
Is there a Liberian girl in your life?
No. I wrote that at my house,
in the game room.
I guess I was playing
some pinball or something.
And the song just popped into my head.
I think I ran upstairs,
put it on tape and it became Liberian Girl.
When it was created,
it just happened like lightning.
It was just an instant thing.
Normally, it took a lot of
time to put things together.
That one happened in three or four hours.
I'm a great believer in sonic fantasy.
Not sonic reality.
Sonic fantasy means creating
a soundscape that exists-
- only in your imagination.
That only you can see.
So I could see these incredible
soundscapes, and I thought...
Liberian Girl?
- Liberian girl is...
- My man!
...Is a perfect example.
I did a little synth work on that.
That part right there.
And it's got a little bird thing
happening there on the end of it.
Quincy said, "Give me some
of that bird stuff, Boddicker."
That's got a little bit of it.
The next time is even more so.
So... there's this part that I wrote.
I played drums Speed Demon, Liberian Girl.
That was good, Liberian Girl
was a fun song to do-
- because everyone would always ask me,
- "Why did Michael write a song
about a lady working in a library?"
Yeah, there's a little sexy
lady behind the counter with-
- the glasses and the pencil in her hair.
Then she drops her
hair and does that thing.
I thought that's what he was talking about.
No, that's not...
That was just... he thought that was
the funniest thing he's ever heard.
The video for Liberian Girl
is probably the point where-
- they may have run over budget.
It just has a bunch of celebrities-
- that are waiting for Michael to show up.
With two lovers in a scene
And she says, "Do you love me?"
And he says so endlessly
"I love you, Liberian girl"...
Michael was not in Liberian Girl-
- because I think he got
tired of making videos.
I was talking to
Walter Yetnikoff about it and he said,
- "You've got to get him in the video."
So I called up Michael and said,
- "You've got to be in
this video someplace."
And he goes,
"OK, I have an idea."
And he goes, "You got one take.
You got 15 minutes."
One sec. Just let me tell you when I'm ready. One sec.
- Ready?
- Almost.
And he got in the chair, they raised
it up in the air, and said, "Action!"
Action!
OK, everybody.
That's a wrap.
Cut!
They didn't even shut the engine off.
They got out of the car,
no make up, got in the chair.
It was one take.
In, out, and Michael left.
I'm going to mock myself.
I watch you on the floor
Cheek to cheek
She's getting to you
You didn't see
her eyes on me, no...
More time, please.
How did Just Good Friends
make that album? Well...
Michael or Stevie could've
written a better song.
- Exactly.
- Taken something from their back catalogue.
An album should be built
with peaks and valleys.
Michael Jackson with Bad
actually tried to achieve 11 peaks.
I believe that in Michael's
head everything had to hit you-
- out the box, and absolutely
become a monstrous single.
And because they were
attempting to go for the single,
- and the summit meeting
between two former child prodigies-
- from the Motown school,
that you expected fireworks.
You know, Just Good Friends
just wound up being a little-
- coffee break in between
Liberian Girl and Another Part Of Me.
I think there was a lot that
did exist at that point that-
- would have been...
as strong or stronger.
I mean, his vault has got to be staggering.
- My man Stevie wonder.
- I mean, unbelievable talent.
And he's another worker like that.
He'd be working and recording every day.
I had on my album that I wanted
him to do... my character's album,
- which was Get It.
So we sort of both did each
other a favour, favour, favour.
But I made sure the song
he did of mine I wrote.
Yeah.
My baby love me
- I'm her doggone lover
- You don't know...
That one, we couldn't get the right song.
I know I didn't have the right song so...
If somebody says that didn't work,
I know it didn't work.
- Hoo-hooo!
- Doot-Do-Do-Doo
- Hoo-hooo!
- Doot-Do-Do-Doo...
- It's starting to get stinky now.
- I can just punch that part in.
Excuse me? Great.
Can we go home?
- Is that it?
- I just ran off, didn't I?
Another Part Of Me.
My favourite cut on the Bad album.
All the instruments
incorporated in that song,
- as well as just his vocals, nobody
can kind of, you know, teach that.
I think that's just natural.
So whatever he was on at that time,
when he was just like,
- "Yo, I'm in this. I feel this.
I need to do this."
Like, I just think that's his blessing.
The song itself actually wasn't
going to make it onto the album-
- because he'd recorded it earlier.
And he actually preferred
a song called Streetwalker.
Pretty baby I got kisses for you, lover
I really get it when
you're next to me...
The litmus test is always,
what song gets Michael dancing?
So when Quincy saw Michael
dancing all round the studio to-
- another Part Of Me said,
"That's what makes this song go on the album."
Michael Jackson's Bad is black music,
- dare I say,
pop music's first stadium album.
Every song, I can hear it being
thought of in his head as,
- "This is what I want it to be-
- when I perform it in front
of 60.000 to 80.000 people."
Hey! Hey! Hey!
We're taking over
We have the truth
This is a mission
To see it through
Don't point your finger
Not dangerous
This is my planet
You're one of us
We're sending out
A major love
And this is our
- Message to you
- Message to you
The planets are lining up
We're bringing brighter days
They're all in line
Waiting for you
You're just another part of me
Heee-heee
Ow!
Over the nation
Fulfil the truth
The final message
We're bringing to you
There is no danger
Fulfil the truth
So come together
We mean you
I'm sending out
A major love
And this is our
- Message to you
- Message to you
The planets are lining up
We're bringing brighter days
They're all in line
Waiting for you
They're just another part of me
Heee-heee
Ow!
Do-do-do-do
Ow!
Hee-hee-hee!
Hee-hee-hee!
I'm sending out
A major love
And this is my
- Message to you
- Message to you
The planets are lining up
We're bringing brighter days
They're all in line
Waiting for you
They're just another part of me
Hee-hee!
Ow!
Another part of me
We're taking over
This is my plan, baby
Hee-hee!
Ow!
Another part of me.
People forget that
Michael Jackson's a soul singer.
Michael Jackson grew
up watching Jackie Wilson,
- James Brown and the whole circuit,
- so his default move is always to go raw.
- I love Dirty Diana. That's probably
one of my favourites. - Why?
Because it's a life story of a groupie,
- I hate to say the word
groupie but that's what it is,
- and it's something that I've experienced-
- and a lot of people
who grew up on the road.
Dirty Diana.
Who knew that one day I
would live that song in real life-
- so many times over.
I like Dirty Diana. I've met her.
I've met Dirty Diana many times.
Thank you.
Thank you, Michael, for making
that small piece of the soundtrack-
- to my life on tour.
When we were kids, we thought,
"Was he talking about Diana Ross?
"Did he have an affair with Diana Ross?"
No, that wasn't the case at all.
But as kids we didn't know what
was going on. Who was Diana?
What she did dirty!
I got a phone call out of
the clear blue from Quincy-
- and I thought somebody
was fucking with me.
So he goes, "Um... it's Quincy Jones.
"We're working on Michael's follow-up to Thriller.
We've got a rock track."
I'm not a session guitar player, man.
I don't, you know, I'm not that world.
So I said to Quincy,
"The only thing I ask is that Michael-
- be in the studio and we work together."
He said, "Of course he'll be in the studio.
It's his fucking record, man.
"He's going to be in the studio."
I opened up the studio door
in Westlake and three guys,
- Bruce Swedien, the engineer,
Quincy Jones and Michael Jackson,
- and the first thing I noticed
was Michael had penny loafers on-
- and they were like
pristine and I was like,
- "I'll be all right.
He's wearing penny loafers."
This is the actual guitar that
I recorded Dirty Diana with.
By and large,
I'd say it's probably been in the case.
Maybe it's only been opened one time,
- I don't really play this
kind of guitar that much.
The backing track was
about eight minutes long-
- and as the track is playing down,
- Michael is like right
here and he's going...
And he was really adamant
there's that little space-
- on the third phrase,
it's a subtle thing-
- and I didn't catch it right away.
That little thing was-
- so important to Michael,
to catch that little space there.
I was like, "Why is he making such
a big thing about it not playing?"
It's brilliant though.
It's as important what you
don't play as what you do play.
Dirty Diana, nah
Dirty Diana, nah
Dirty Diana, no
Dirty Diana...
It's still good.
..Dirty Diana,
nah Dirty Diana, no...
We wanted to do Dirty Diana-
- and so both videos
were to kind of change-
- the public's perception of who he was.
First one was to get him a girl
and the second was to make him-
- a heavy metal kind of guy.
...Diana!
Diana...!
The original idea was to have...
The thing finished in a
monsoon or a rainstorm.
The second day, we were going
to have the whole stage blow away-
- and have him finish in the rain totally...
The wind and rain and stuff,
- and I think we were going to sweep
away the audience and everything.
But the first day he was doing these
knee slides and didn't put pads on.
He came to me the second day when
we were ready for all this rain stuff-
- and said, "I can't dance any more."
So we couldn't resolve it that way,
but it didn't matter.
You see the wind and
stuff on the first day,
- it starts, and I guess there was
going to be a deluge after that.
They didn't even tell me that-
- It showed up one day and I went,
"I can't... Are you kidding?"
Michael always was able to
think outside the box of what-
- black artists were supposed
to do and create his own space.
There was this internal mechanism
that Michael had when he felt-
- the music. When the rhythms were
right and when the beats were-
- happening, when the correct emphasis
was happening and the syncopation,
- he'd have to move, he'd have to
dance and when he'd start to dance,
- we would know that the balance
was correct, the elements had-
- the right character, the syncopation
was hitting in the right fashion.
Michael gave me the
music and he said, "Listen,
- "don't impose your opinion,
or your feelings, or your choreography,
- or your thoughts on the music."
"Let the music talk to you and
tell you what it wants to be."
First time we discussed it,
he had got these-
- visions in his mind of
what he wanted to do.
The robot, the car, the kids, the drugs.
Every kid in this whole world
can take drugs because of me.
And how do we bring it all
together into a story that had-
- a piece in the middle,
which was the song and dance.
So we started working on some stuff,
it was called Chicago Nights,
- which was really Smooth Criminal.
He was a huge fan of Fred Astaire
and wanted to make sure-
- that he paid homage to
Fred Astaire in the movie.
"For Criminal Dance,
look at all the great dances on tape.
Study the great and become greater.
Get all Bob Fosse movie, dances.
Study these inside out,
knowing every cut, move, music etc.
Flashdance, All That Jazz,
Band Wagon, girl hunt..."
This is a drawing titled "Criminal Jacket,"
- and you can see that he has
created the basic outline for the jacket-
- that he wound up wearing in that
short film, including the armband.
And he also made a note
to himself that he needed to-
- get his Kenny shoes now so
that he could break them in.
But when it came to style,
I showed Michael an all-time favourite-
- of mine which was The Third Man,
because it's sort of gangster-ish.
"We should shoot it in that kind of style,"
- and he just loved that style.
And making use of the
shadows that they had with that-
- sort of film noir look.
As he came into the window
It was the sound of a crescendo
He came into her apartment
He left the bloodstains on the carpet
She ran underneath the table
He could see she was unable
So she ran into the bedroom
She was struck down
It was her doom...
There's a story actually that
Quincy told me years ago-
- and what he said was that Michael
had the ability to come in, he could-
- lay down the lead vocal of a track
and then he could sit there, listen,
- just put the time in and figure out
where all the harmonies should go-
- and then do that, not leave
until he had the harmonies right.
When I think of Smooth Criminal,
I will just impress again the vocal.
He could sing bass, baritone and tenor,
- but he chose to sing mostly tenor.
Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh.
He goes straight down to bass low C,
that is low, that is a bust out-
- pitch and Michael would go
right on down there with vibrato-
- and clear up to a G above high C.
I mean, that's enormous,
that's more than three and a half octaves.
He really didn't want to grow up.
He wanted a child's voice-
- and I always tried to encourage him
to use his beautiful speaking voice.
I was in Europe one time and
the phone rang and he said,
- "Hello," in a perfectly male voice,
baritone and I said,
- "Michael, why don't you use that."
He said,
"I don't like it down there. I like it up there."
Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah...
How long you want to stick with this?
I want to be all the way open.
With some of the songs that he was singing,
- he needed a much wider vocal
range and with the exercises that-
- Seth Riggs provides for him, it enabled-
- him to open up his range so he
can sing much higher and much lower.
Mah, mah, mah, mah, mah...
I had to make sure he and his voice-
- was even from bottom to top.
I have some very strange exercises-
- that are different from most people's,
- they're called speech-level singing,
- so we started doing these crazy things.
Brrr-brrr-brrr...
Brrr-brrr-brrr...
Rrr-rrr-rrr...
Rrr-rrr-rrr...
Gee, gee, gee, gee, gee, gee...
Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh...
Sometimes there is...
Ahhhhh...
I sampled P.Y.T for Good Life.
I actually met him at Leo's house.
He said he liked my voice and then-
- I think I took that too seriously-
- and I did a whole singing album.
This is the mic that are used on
Michael at about this distance-
- through for all the recordings.
Except one, Earth Song.
- What about yesterday?
- What about us?
- What about the seas?
- What about us?
This is actually a mic that is
designed for narration recording,
- however, I knew that the
sound of this mic would work-
- well with Michael's voice.
Annie, are you OK?
Annie, are you OK?
Are you OK, Annie?
Annie, are you OK? Annie, are you OK?
Are you OK, Annie?
I've never quite understood who
Annie was and why did it matter-
- if she was OK or not.
Who is Annie? I never knew that as a kid.
Let me know who Annie is.
Over in this corner there
was a green fibreglass case-
- and there was a CPR dummy in the case.
Michael had been given CPR lessons.
The first thing that you do when
you're going to administer CPR-
- is you make a determination
of the condition of the victim.
He's about to do CPR on someone,
he's like, "Are you OK? Are you OK?"
Wow! Whose life did he think
he was going to have to save?
CPR dummies are all named Annie.
He just kept asking was Annie OK?
How many different ways can you say,
"Annie, are you OK?"
And he found like 15 different ways to say,
"Annie, are you OK?"
It's like, "Are you OK? Are you OK?
Are you OK? Are you OK, Annie?
"Annie, are you OK? Are you OK?
Are you OK, Annie? Annie, are you OK?"
It's like, OK, I don't think she's OK.
I've got to be honest,
I was never a big fan of that song.
You know, Michael loved it to pieces.
I remember we went to do
the video on that, I never heard...
It must have then 135 decibels.
Loud! Man, ears were falling off.
We started with maybe like
10 or 12 dancers and he then-
- introduced me to Jeffrey and
he said, "I'd like Jeffrey to be-
- part of this and maybe there's
some street stuff, because I've been-
- working with Jeffrey privately
and he is teaching me some staff."
The thing about it is Michael can
go out to clubs and hang out-
- because he's Michael Jackson.
So through me he was picking up
what was happening in the hood-
- and I'm taking it to his gallery over
at the Jackson house in Hayvenhurst.
My name is Phyllis Brooks-
- and I want to direct my
question to all you guys.
Who taught you guys your dance steps?
She's gonna really blow your mind...
This one guy I saw on the show,
Don Campbell, he changed my life.
He did not dance like everybody else,
- he didn't move like
everybody else, he was-
- just walking to the beat, walking.
Walking. Walking.
Jump up, stop, stick out his own hand,
give him some five,
- hunch his shoulders, point it, pop.
And that was locking.
You could see Michael doing like...
You could see him doing those...
He's putting this locking in his...
He was just incorporating
little things into his...
Stepping like that, you know.
Funky chicken, that's the funky chicken,
- so these dances came
from Soul Train too.
Michael Jackson, he loves it,
- he loves the locking,
he loves the popping.
When you see him on
stage and he is ticking,
- Michael is deep into the urban
contemporary dance because I don't-
- call it street dance no more.
It left the streets years ago.
I'd created movement for Michael
from his passage in to his passage out.
There were a couple of places
where I said, "OK, you know, Jeffrey,
"why don't you do this?
When he comes around the pool table,
- "I'd love you to do something
here and make this work over here."
I'd got this from a Bugs Bunny cartoon.
These gangsters with these gangster hats-
- and they are all
bouncing like this, coming.
I was just trying to capture
that kind of animated thing.
OK, here we go, same thing.
Boom, boom.
And again right after the hat,
I think it's the hand. Boom, boom.
Bang!
Ba, ba, ba, ba, ba!
Bang, bang, boom!
Some of the moves they did...
Maybe you'll find out.
I still don't know how they did that thing.
The whole thing with the lean,
I had done the lean-
- in a Paul McCartney movie called
Give My Regards To Broad Street.
When I'm on the plane,
when we take private jets,
- we always, when it's taking off,
- we lean forward to try to
do the same move as Michael,
- so it kind of looks the same!
So what, you want to
know how it was done?
Even to this day,
- I will reference the
Smooth Criminal lean...
...and people instantly
know what I'm talking about.
There was a break in Smooth Criminal
that was never supposed to be there.
The music breaks down.
Everything gets cool.
They show a cat walking across
the piano, the lights go blue.
We did not know about this.
Ssh!
- Oh! O-o-oh!
- O-o-o-oh!
For that break in the middle,
- he just wanted to let
the dancers feel the set.
I mean, we'd been shooting
for quite a while by then,
- and he just said, you know,
"I don't want anything to disturb us,"
- and I said, I was shooting
five cameras at the time,
- plus Jerry had five cameras,
- so it was ten cameras shooting-
- and you know, we didn't know
how long it was going to go on for.
Annie, are OK?
Are you OK, Annie?
Annie, are you OK?
So Annie, are you OK? Are you OK, Annie?
Annie, are you OK?
So Annie, are you OK?
Are you OK, Annie?
Annie, are you OK?
So Annie, are you OK? Are you OK, Annie?
Annie, are you OK?
So, Annie...
A lot of the songs he
writes about being observed,
- either from the point
of view of, he's the object-
- or that he becomes the person
looking at someone like him,
- or the objective person.
Are you OK?
Are you OK, Annie?
Annie, are you OK?
So Annie, are you OK?
Are you OK, Annie?
Annie, are you OK?
So Annie, are you OK?
Are you OK, Annie?
You've been hit by...
For someone who
grew up in the spotlight,
- being watched is a very big
part of how you see the world.
This is a guy who-
- was never not in the newspapers-
- every single day-
- being ridiculed, "Wacko Jacko,"
I mean, he's a kid - on the inside,
he's a kid.
How that stuff doesn't penetrate
you and hurt you, hurt your spirit.
"Michael Jackson's got a
shrine to Elizabeth Taylor.
"He's got an amusement park.
He's had a lot of facial surgery,"
- so I said,
"Michael, when you're in the school yard-
- and you are the smallest
and you get teased a lot,
- it's really only fun to
tease you if it bothers you.
"If it doesn't bother you, they move on,
- so why don't we just take all
this crap being said about you-
- and why don't we say at?
Why don't we put it to visuals?"
Leave Me Alone - it was a lot of
fun to play that. It had that intro.
But there was also a string part-
- that kind of played the same
thing but was just accenting that...
And he was just kind of saying,
"Dig in," you know.
I remember him standing
right next to me, going...
See, a lot of people that misunderstand me,
- it's because they don't know me.
I guess that's true.
People probably have a lot
of crazy stories they read.
You ever want to lash
out in any type of way-
- and say, "Hey, that's not true"?
Yeah, a lot of times.
I don't care what
you talking about, baby,
I don't care what you think...
You can see, you know,
- how he's starting to
feel like he's a spectacle.
In the video, he's tied down.
It's inspired by Gulliver's Travels-
- and he's tied under a roller coaster-
- and you see these
dogs with corporate suits,
- banging the pegs,
trying to tie him down-
- in this big kind of
amusement park setting.
I only got a glimpse of what
his life must have been like-
- when I would be in Europe-
- and our limousines
would be attacked by mobs,
- with them thinking that
Michael was in our limousine-
- and if that's your initial
introduction to the universe,
- when you're a five-year-old,
- then that has got to inform
what you feel like the world is like.
I'm waiting for Michael,
and a guy comes up-
- and I don't see Michael.
He goes, "Hi, Jeffrey, how you doing?"
"All right."
He says, "Are you ready to start?"
I go,
"Yeah," but I'm not looking at Michael.
I'm looking at these bushy eyebrows,
- a short Afro wig and these
sideburns and this make-up on.
Michael had been out going door-to-door-
- for his Jehovah's Witnesses.
He put on a disguise,
- so people wouldn't know
Michael Jackson was knocking on their door.
I'm sure some people were
slamming the door in his face,
- like, "Jehovah's Witness,
get out of here!"
Sometimes I want to sneak into places-
- and not have any hoopla or, you know...
...and it doesn't work all the time.
I went to the shrine auditorium-
- and a guy tapped me on the back-
- and I turned around
and it was an old man.
I said, "What is this?"
He said, "It's Michael!"
I said,
"Man, you scared the mess out of me!"
I have incredible disguises.
I can fool my own mother-
- and I enjoy doing it-
- because I get to see life
the way it really is sometimes.
One day, he said,
"You know, my brothers are in town-
- "so I'm going to see them tonight."
I said, "That's cool, all right."
So the next day I came onto the set-
- and Michael goes,
"Yeah, I waited for my brothers all night.
"I fixed my hair and everything
but they didn't show up."
Sorry this bothers me,
- but he said, "I would give anything
just to be able to go to a party-
- and stand in a corner somewhere,
- stand behind a curtain and put
my head out and be able to see-
- what it's like for real
people to just be real people."
The choice that we make
and the choice you will take
Who's laughing, baby?
Just leave me alone
Leave me alone!
Leave me alone...
When you see that film,
- with all of those images,
- every image that you see of Michael-
- started out as 35mm movie film,
- which then turned into a
stack of photo prints this tall,
- which people sat around
for two weeks, cutting out.
There was one guy whose job
was just cutting out Michael's hair.
The Charlie Chaplin ball
and chain idea was Michael's.
We knew we had a sequence where-
- we wanted to have a dance
sequence with the Elephant Man's bones,
- and so Michael showed up the
day of the shoot with that piece.
Leave Me Alone was
extremely ahead of its time.
Leave Me Alone was my favourite
video and song off that album.
Just, even the amusement park setup-
- and the way they chop the graphics up.
There is nothing that compares
to that, even to this day,
- as far as visuals go.
Michael's quest for creative independence,
- which started when he
and his brothers left Motown,
- continued through
Off The Wall and Thriller,
- reached a high point with
the Bad album and the Bad tour.
He didn't tour with Thriller,
- and then with Bad,
he finally had an opportunity-
- to create the kind of
show he wanted to create,
- the kind of show that
represented him as a solo artist.
It was Michael's first solo tour-
- and in fact, it was the only tour
in the US that Michael ever conducted.
What a night! What a crowd,
- what a gig, what a venue.
Who'd have thought Wembley Stadium,
- the home of Live Aid,
the home of Nelson Mandela-
- and now, the home of the king of it all!
It's a gruelling tour.
It starts in September 1987
and goes until January 1989.
He did 15 different countries,
- 123 different shows,
- and it proved to be one of the
most successful concert tours in history.
The Bad world tour set three
Guinness Book of World Records.
One was the highest
grossing tour of all time,
- the most attended tour in history-
- and then, the shows that
he did at Wembley in London-
- were the most consecutive shows
an artist had ever sold out in history.
The tour generated a lot of income-
- and Michael Jackson
donated a lot of that income-
- to charities of his choice.
We're making a very,
very large contribution-
- to the Prince's Trust fund-
- and it will go to the
Ormond Street Hospital.
Camp Goodtimes,
Ronald McDonald House...
The United Negro College Fund-
- and the Burns Center,
the Michael Jackson Burns Center.
I love you!
This is hard, um...
My brother, the legendary
King Of Pop, Michael Jackson,
- passed away on Thursday, June 25,
- 2009 at 2.26pm.
I...
...had performed about a year
or so before then in Australia,
- and I remember having this dream-
- that I was listening to the radio and...
...on the radio came that
Michael Jackson had died.
Then I woke up, you know,
sweating and nervous-
- and just really going crazy.
Where were you when you heard Michael died?
Um, I was in Montreal.
I was directing a project
for Cirque du Soleil.
I was sitting here in
this chair in this room.
I was in Savannah, Georgia.
I was at my own studio.
When he died,
I was supposed to go meet him.
I was supposed to see
him at the Staples Centre.
I think I was in a car.
I was actually driving in the car.
I know I was home that day.
So I turned on the radio.
Then I hear...
I was on a radio promo
tour and I was just in the car,
- going to my next radio station.
I was on the set.
I was shooting... um, Boardwalk Empire.
At my job, Late Night With Jimmy Fallon.
I was in London, going to get
some bottled water from the store.
I was at my house in L.A.
Los Angeles.
No, no, no. I was in Panama.
I was actually working.
I had a Blackberry I picked up
in Moscow and the person said,
- "He's gone."
Wow. I was in Sony when I
heard Michael Jackson passed.
I was in my office,
having an audition with some artists.
My doorman said to me,
- "Mrs Robinson, Michael Jackson died".
Actually, my security guard at
that time came in and told me that-
- and he's just wrong all the time.
I just didn't buy into it for one second.
I couldn't believe it and there
was nothing on the news up there,
- telling me that this was true.
I said,
"What? Come on... Don't listen to that."
I didn't believe it.
It just didn't seem real.
I thought it was... a lie.
I couldn't believe it.
People must've called,
I must've gotten 50 calls.
Don't call me and tell me that!
Because it's not true!
I think I started crying on the spot.
I couldn't even breathe, man.
I couldn't even breathe,
I just collapsed right there on the ground.
We all kind of stayed in a daze.
Everything just became a blur.
I immediately called
my friend Bruce Swedien...
...and he was in shock as well.
Everything stopped.
Couldn't do anything.
Sorry.
It was like...
Sorry.
Sorry, man. I...
...I really loved the guy.
I miss his hugs.
Just his friendship.
Um...
Just being around him.
Uh...
Just to know he's around.
And I had just seen
Berry Gordy several days earlier-
- and we sat at the Mandarin
Oriental hotel and we were just talking-
- and I said, "Think Michael's going
to do those shows in London?"
And he went, "I don't know."
I, er, was at the funeral, and I sang...
I've never sung at
a funeral before, ever.
So, this is Michael Jackson's funeral,
and they come in-
- and go, "Mariah, you're on first."
I Never Dreamed You'd Leave In
Summer was a song that myself-
- and Syreeta Wright...
...well, she was my first wife,
Syreeta - wrote together.
When I sang it, at Michael's...
homecoming service,
- I never, ever imagined that I
would be outliving Michael Jackson.
Um...
...It's very, very painful.
It's still unbelievable to
me that he's actually dead-
- and we should all be ashamed.
Each of us to a one.
And I don't know who to look at.
Michael said, I guess,
look at the man in the mirror.
Just like when John Lennon died,
people turned to Imagine,
- when Michael Jackson died,
people turned to Man In The Mirror.
It really doesn't have that
inspirational pop anthem on it,
- like Greatest Love of All,
Whitney Houston, Saving All My Love For You,
- that kind of thing,
and it's interesting that Bad does.
We kept talking about how nice
it would be to get an anthem-
- that had a good feel to it,
you know, just like-
- some sunshine on the world.
So he called a meeting with
his West Coast songwriters,
- I think there were like, six of us.
He said he wanted something upbeat,
- he said he wanted
something that felt good...
Whitney Houston's second solo
album was storming the charts-
- and I think she provided
a little bit of heat,
- and I think that the label was
concerned about how to kind of-
- appeal to this audience that
had gravitated to Whitney Houston.
Went to Glen Ballard's house,
who was my writing partner at the time,
- I said, "This is what Quincy wants".
He said, "Well, let's just
see what we come up with".
He stands up, goes over to the keyboard,
- turns on the keyboard-
- and starts playing...
So I'm flipping through my lyric book...
While he's playing these...
Just getting sounds on the keyboard.
Cut to two years before this meeting.
I'm writing with John Beasley,
jazz pianist.
His phone rings,
- and he picked the phone up instead
of letting the machine pick it up.
"Yeah, what's happening?
I'm not doing nothing.
And I'm thinking,
"He's doing something!"
And I'm flipping through my book,
- no, he didn't say he's not
doing nothing. No, he didn't.
So I'm flipping through this book
and I hear him say, "The man?"
"What man?
Oh, the man in the mirror."
I wrote, "man in the mirror".
So two years later,
I'm at Glen's house and the phrase-
- "man in the mirror"
just popped out at me-
- and I started writing these lyrics-
- that I couldn't write them fast enough,
I couldn't get it all out fast
enough and in like, 15 minutes,
- we had the first verse and
the chorus for Man In The Mirror.
"I'm certain there will be a change-
- and starting with
that man in the mirror..."
The lyrics evolved into what they are,
- but these are the humble beginnings.
Glen said,
"You go finish the lyrics,
- and I'll finish the track and
we'll demo the song on Friday".
Friday night we finished it after
the Quest publishing was closed.
I'm starting with the man in the mirror
I'm asking him to change his ways...
So I called Quincy at home.
He said, "I'm having a meeting, I can't...
"You can't drop it off.
Just take it to the office on Monday."
I said, "I...
"I can't wait till Monday.
"Let me just, let me just drop it...
"Sied..." "Quincy, let me just..."
"All right, shit."
And I go to his house...
I give Quincy this really quickly,
this cassette, I say just,
- "All I ask is you just
call me as soon as..."
He said, "All right, shit".
Two, three hours later,
I get a call and Quincy goes,
"Sied, this is the best
song that I've heard-
- in ten years".
And I'm like...
The key...
...was one step too high for Michael,
- so Quincy wanted me to
re-sing the demo in the new key.
So I come here and I'm singing
the demo in the new key-
- and Michael... is filming me.
Whenever you're ready, Miss Siedah.
Gonna make a change
For once in my life
Gonna feel real good
Gonna make a difference
gonna make it right
As I turn up the collar on
My favourite winter coat
This wind is blowing my mind
I see the kids in the street
Not enough to eat
Who am I to be blind?
Pretending not to see their need...
A willow deeply scarred...
I got that image-
- cos I was walking down the
street in New York, walking past-
- this brownstone that had been
torn down and it was fenced.
Just a lot with broken glass-
- and this tree...
...that someone had carved
their initials into this tree...
..Somebody's broken heart
And one man's soul
They follow each other
on the wind you know
Cos they got no place to go
That's why I want you to know.
It was really a great song from inception,
- but I think what Michael
did is he took that song-
- and he made it his own.
In popular music, there's often
this idea that you are either-
- the songwriter of your own material-
- or you are the interpreter.
The interesting thing about
Michael Jackson is that he was both.
You may not even know
what he's talking about,
- a broken bottle top,
all kinds of images are floating,
- but it's the conviction
and the fervour with which-
- he brings to the song
that is really spectacular.
He said, "Andrae, I got a song.
"If you were listening to this and
wondered where a choir should be..."
He said, "I would love to have a
choir and I've heard your music."
If you wanna make
the world a better place
Take a look at yourself
and then make that...
"Change," I said,
"Right there, you're exactly right".
And the choir sang...
Man in the mirror
Oooh oh-ooh-oh
- Ow!
- Yeah!
Oooh oh-ooh-oh
Make that change...
Andrae Crouch's choir
seriously threw it on the end-
- and it featured all kinds of singers, including,
I didn't realise the Winans were on there!
My brother Marvin asked him,
- "Exactly what do,
how do you want us to do it?"
He was whispering into Quincy Jones' ear-
- and Quincy would actually...
...relay the message to us-
- and my brother Marvin said,
"Well, Michael, can you talk?"
Mike broke out of the shell,
sat down on the piano,
- started playing the part...
I didn't even know Michael PLAYED piano.
OK, here's my favourite link, right here.
Whoo!
That's when I was hot, back in the day!
Man In The Mirror,
Quincy said give me the masterclass.
Those handclaps, that's what you hear.
The three of us would surround the mic,
we'd nail it in real-time.
Then, what we would do,
- we would speed this machine up maybe 15%,
- so the track's going by really fast-
- and we're still clapping the same thing,
then when you play back at a regular speed,
- it's fat, so we have two
sets of claps - in real-time-
- and the fat claps underneath
which are exactly in the same time.
That's why if you listen to
all those records we've done-
- some of the best clap
sounds you'll ever hear.
Once we cut the track,
Andrae Crouch and his wonderful singers-
- came in here and Bruce Swedien
had them all up on this stage.
Bruce is such a genius,
he would have them-
- actually stand along this side,
then stand along the side,
- then they'd stand in the middle, cos he
wanted to get all this really incredible imaging.
That's why it sounded like 57.000 people!
Man in the mirror
You got to move, chamon...
OK, now bring the choir in,
gently there...
Yeah, baby!
When the session was over,
everybody was going back to their cars-
- and I was listening to it with Quincy.
I said, "Quincy, you know what?
We should have put "change" at the end.
He said... "Yeah".
They were getting into their cars
in the parking lot and I whistled,
- I said,
"Come here, we've got to do something else."
And they came in. I said, just say...
Change...
And then Michael said,
"Make that change!"
- "Make that change."
- Ah!
Somewhere between Michael Jackson,
Quincy Jones, Bruce Swedien,
the musicians - Greg Phillinganes,
and all these guys-
- something took place
in those sessions that...
...technically sounds better than
any record ever made to this day.
Michael Jackson meant that the
unachievable was achievable,
- that you could be respected,
- you could be successful on a
global level as a person of colour.
There's no-one that will take his place.
The discipline imposed upon him-
- for good or for bad,
from the time he was a baby,
- It's not even legal to
replicate that in today's world-
- Michael is the most professional
performer I've ever worked with in my life.
He made it all look so simple.
He made it all look so natural.
And he really worked so hard to do that.
I remember watching...
...him on stage,
perform and how he would...
...just glide and...
...make it seem like...
...the music was just going through him.
I mean, he would close-
- his eyes and walk across the stage-
- and I'd sometimes wonder to myself,
- he could fall, he could trip,
he doesn't know where he's going.
But he never did.
Whether it's Beyonce or Lady Gaga
or Chris Brown or Usher-
- or will.I.am or Justin Bieber
or Justin Timberlake,
- there isn't a musician-
- that doesn't quote
Michael Jackson as being their idol.
I don't think there's anybody
who comes close to having-
- that type of work ethic.
They say that Willie Mays was
one of the only five-tool players-
- in the history of baseball.
A player that could run, field,
hit, hit for power and throw.
And in the music business,
- I'm not sure there was
ever a five-tool player-
- other than Michael Jackson.
Michael could write the songs,
he could produce them,
- he could sing them,
he could certainly perform-
- and dance them and he set
fashion trends with his sense of style.
That's six tools you just named.
Well, I consider performing
and dancing one and the same.
Hey, I'm with you all the way,
six tools, I'm wit' you!
- Willie Mays and Michael Jackson, that's great.
- There it is.
He did everything.
He wrote, he performed, he danced,
- he did the business part of it,
he counted his royalties!
Sometimes,
it's hard to believe he's even gone.
Just the amount of music that I hear,
- the number of times that
I hear people telling me-
- about children that are
discovering Michael for the first time,
- all these things, it's like this
energy that just does not go away.
The divinity that that
guy was so tapped into.
There was a reason that he was unique-
- and he was different than any
other artist that we've ever seen-
- and he had something that
was not definable to me.
Whenever he stepped out and sang,
whenever he made that connection-
- with people,
the molecules changed in the room.
You know, that was what he could do.
There are people that can go out-
- and you can be wowed by their technique,
- but he changed the molecules.
No-one can quite say what
the creative process is,
- because I have nothing
to do with it, almost,
- because it's created in space,
it's God's work, not mine.
Gonna make a change
For once in my life
It's gonna feel real good
Gonna make a difference
Gonna make it right
As I turn up the collar on
My favourite winter coat
This wind is blowing my mind
I see the kids in the street
With not enough to eat
Who am I to be blind
Pretending not to see their need?
A summer's disregard
A broken bottle top
and one man's soul
They follow each other
on the wind, you know
Cos they got nowhere to go
That's why I want you to know
I'm starting with the man in the mirror
I'm asking him to change his ways
And no message could
have been any clearer
If you wanna make
the world a better place
Take a look at yourself
and then make the change
Nah nah nah
Nah nah nah,
nah-nah, nah-nah
Oh-ho
I've been a victim of
A selfish kind of love
It's time that I realised
There are some with no home
Not a nickel to loan
Could it be really mean
Pretending that they're not alone?
A willow deeply scarred
Somebody's broken heart
And a washed-out dream
They follow the pattern
of the wind, you see
Cos they got no place to be
That's why I'm starting with me
I'm starting with the man in the mirror
Ooh!
I'm asking him to change his ways
Ooh!
And no message could
have been any clearer
If you wanna make
the world a better place
Take a look at yourself
and then make the change
I'm starting with the man in the mirror
Ooh
I'm asking him to change his ways
Ooh
And no message could
have been any clearer
If you wanna make
the world a better place
Take a look at yourself
and then make that
Change!
I'm starting with the man in the mirror
Oh, yeah
I'm asking him to change his ways
You better change
No message could've been any clearer
Whoo-hoo
If you wanna make
the world a better place
Take a look at yourself
and then make the change
You gotta get it right
while you got the time
Cos if you close your heart
then you close your, your mind
That man
That man in the mirror, oh yeah
I'm asking him to change his ways
You better change
No message could have been any clearer
If you wanna make the world
A better place take a look at yourself
And then make that change
Whoo! Whoo!
Nah-nah-nah Nah-nah-nah,
na-na, na-na
Whoo! Whoo!
Oh, yeah
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Nah-nah-nah, nah-nah-nah
Na-na, na-na
Gonna make that change
Gonna feel real good, come on
Change
Just lift yourself, you know it
You got to stop it yourself, yeah
- Whoo!
- Make that change
Gotta make that change today
Man in the mirror
You got to move, you know it
You know it, ow!
Yeah!
Make that change
You know all about it.
Man in the mirror
You know it, you know it
You, you
Yeah!
Make that change
Man in the mirror
You know it, you know it
You do, you, you
Yeah!
Make that change
Gonna make that change today, yeah
Man in the mirror
Na-na-na, mm, yeah, yeah
Yeah, you gotta
Yeah, make that change
Man in the mirror
You know it, you know it you, you
Whoo!
Yeah, make that change
Man in the mirror
Stand up
Yeah, make that change
Stand up for each other
Man in the mirror
You know it, you know it
You know it, you know
Change...
Make that change.
I love you!
Hee-hee-heee
Chamon!
Are you ready for a
real good time, my love?
Are you ready for a good treat?
There'll be so much as it singing
Uh, uh, uh
You, yeah, what you mean to me
So don't be messin' round
Don't be messin' round with me
Don't be messin' with
With me, hey hey
So don't be messin' round
Don't be messin' round
Don't be messin' with With me
Hey hey
Don't be startin' nothin' then if
If you say this really ain't your crowd
I'll be so proud if you let me
Only girl let me love
you for a little while
But don't be messin' with
Don't be messin' with
Don't be messin' round with me
Hey hey hey
So don't be messin' with
Don't be messin' with
Don't be messin' round with me
Hey
Aha, yeah
Oh-ho yeah
Aha, yeah
Oh-ho yeah
Ooh ooh
Now she's started
finger-poppin' to the beat
So I said, "Let's do that on the floor"
She said to keep your mind on dancin'
Won't be no romancing
Lord no, don't mess around with me
I ain't playing
Don't be messin' with
Don't be messin' with me
Don't be messin' round with me
Hey hey
So don't be messin' with
Don't be messin' with
Don't be messin' round with me
Hey hey
Bridge
Doo-doo doo-doo doo-doo doo-doo
Doo-doo doo-doo doo-doo doo-doo
Doo-doo doo-doo doo-doo doo-doo
Doo-doo doo-doo
Pu pu pa-rup pa-rup
Pu pa-rup pa-rup
Pu pa-rup pa-rup
Pa pu pa pa pu pu pa-rup pa-rup
Pu pa-rup pa-rup
Pa pa-rup pu pa-rup
Ba-ba ba buh
Chi pah chi pah chi pah chi pah
Chi pah chi pah chi pah chi pah
Chi pah chi pah chi pah chi pah
Ooh...
...So don't be messin' with
Don't be messin' with
Don't be messin' with me
Hey hey hey
So don't be messin' with
Don't be messin' with me
Don't be messin' with, with me
Hey hey
So don't be messin' round
Don't be messin' with me
Don't be messin' with, with me
Hey hey
So don't be messin' with
Don't be messin' with me
Don't be messin' with me
Hey hey...
This is the thing.
Whoo!