Inside Michael Jackson’s Studio: Untold Stories from His Band Members

I didn’t know the song. I knew the album, and I knew Beat It and Billie Jean. So, I said to Michael, “Listen, Michael, I’d love to make something more elaborate.” Which Michael picked up on, cuz that’s what he wanted to do. His whole thing was we got to be good, it’s got to be great, it’s got to be big.  Michael Jackson never wrote down a single note of sheet music.

 Instead, he beatboxed, danced, and sang every bassline straight to his band. The studio was a pressure cooker of frozen rooms and pure creative madness.  He’s so great, so gentle and polite, and respectful of everybody who was working on the team. It was great.  These are the raw untold studio secrets from the legendary musicians who helped create the King of Pop.

Greg Phillinganes, keyboardist and musical director. Greg Phillinganes was an unparalleled translator of the musical sense of Michael Jackson. Spotted by Stevie Wonder, Greg worked along with the Jackson brothers through their transformation to Epic  in 1975, maintaining creative momentum through their late 1970s albums Destiny and Triumph.

 Being chosen by Quincy Jones as a main keyboardist of Off the Wall, 1979, and Thriller, 1982, Greg was the key link between the authentic R&B of Michael and its highly refined pop version. Since Michael was unable to read or write any official sheet music, he was wholly dependent on vocal beatboxing and imitation. Greg was sitting by the keyboards trying to interpret those human sounds into an electronic arrangement.

 In the song Thriller, Greg collaborated with Anthony Marinelli, who programmed synthesizers and debunked the myth of seven independent bass parts. Instead, they stacked and layered a single massive bassline by simultaneously mixing Minimoog, Roland Jupiter 8, Prophet 5, and Rhodes piano. Greg managed to convert Michael’s vocal instructions and bodily movements into the single thunderous sound of layered synthesizer bass.

Let’s take a closer look at today’s special topic. This image appears to show Michael Jackson standing face-to-face with legendary rapper Tupac Shakur, gently placing a hand on his shoulder. Tupac seems surprised, leading some fans to believe the two music legends were about to collaborate on a new project.

 But in the end, that collaboration never happened. The image and the story behind it have sparked plenty of curiosity, with many people wondering whether there’s any truth to it. What do you think? Share your version of the story in the comments. Jennifer Batten, lead guitarist. Jennifer Batten outshone other 100 guitarists to become a part of Michael Jackson’s historic 1987 Bad World Tour.

The audition itself was quite an isolating experience, because the guitarist had to step alone into a production room in Los Angeles, having only her guitar and a video camera with her. Not having any band with her, Jennifer proved herself worthy of the job by playing a funky rhythm, improvising her way through the blues, and making a two-handed tapping version of John Coltrane’s Giant Steps.

 After being hired, Jennifer  was placed into a highly productive system that required perfect accuracy of playing and extravagant showmanship on the stage. Michael himself needed a female guitarist to give his act more contrast and to encourage girls to play guitar themselves. For the sake of attracting attention from huge audiences, stylists gave her avant-garde looks, making her look like a rock star with big, gravity-defying white hair and extraordinary clothes.

Jonathan Sugarfoot Moffett, drummer. Drummer Jonathan Moffett came to Los Angeles from New Orleans in 1979. Following a one-day extension of the tryout by musical director James McField, he received an invitation to play for the Jacksons during their Destiny Tour auditions. Moffett left everyone shocked when he performed a full three-part studio drum overdub of “Shake Your Body Down to the Ground” solo.

 Michael paid keen attention to him, stopped all auditions, and gave him his nickname, Sugarfoot, because of his extremely precise bass drumming technique, saying that Sugarfoot never makes a mistake. This relationship led to decades-long cooperation, even including rehearsals of the 2009 This Is It tour. Together on stage, there was an unspoken connection.

 Michael used slight body movements to communicate any changes in the performance. At such huge stadium concerts as the 1984 Victory Tour, Moffett adjusted himself and sounded much heavier, giving perfect score to Michael’s choreographic performances with pops and spins using powerful rim shots and drumming accents. Ricky Lawson, drummer.

Ricky Lawson was under immense pressure touring with Michael Jackson’s Bad World Tour, 1987 to 1989. With Lawson’s audio monitors drowned out by the roar of the crowds, he had no choice but to look at the movement of Michael’s feet and use those as his constant guide for maintaining his tight choreography in place of any acoustic lag time.

 In the Dangerous Tour of 1992, the pop music style was dominated by loops from the industrial age and digital sequencing. To adapt to this situation, Lawson augmented his acoustic drum set with electronic drum pads and digital triggering. It took superhuman strength for Lawson to maintain the razor-sharp, lightning-fast syncopation of New Jack Swing for more than 2 hours a night.

Lawson maintained a delicate balance between sheer brute force power of a live rock performance and the crisp, precise air pressure of the digital studio master. David Williams, guitarist. David Williams was the mastermind of some of Michael Jackson’s most enduring rhythms. During the 1982 Thriller recording sessions, Williams added important human grease to the song Billie Jean.

 Using his Fender Stratocaster guitar, he played a precise and percussive scratch rhythm guitar role that fit right into the groove between the kick drum and snare drum parts. Obsessed with the micro syncopation of Williams, Michael made him play his part countless times. Williams was Jackson’s leading rhythm guitarist during the Thriller, Bad, and Dangerous eras.

Williams turned polished studio recordings into hard-hitting stadium rock performances. As Jennifer Batten was responsible for flashy solos, Williams was the sound foundation of the band performing fast and precise funk riffs in front of 100,000 fans. Michael greatly relied on Williams’ rhythmic sense before dance parts of the songs.

Williams managed to combine precision of the studio recordings with the roughness of the live performance. Steve Lukather, Toto guitarist and session musician. Steve Lukather, a founding member of Toto, played an important role in defining the dichotomy of sound on Thriller. In Beat It, Eddie Van Halen recorded his signature guitar solo without the click track, unintentionally altering the rhythm structure of the master tape.

 To repair the disaster, Lukather recorded hard rhythm guitar riffs, as well as the baseline of the song, while drummer Jeff Porcaro had to manually correct the groove. After several days at Westlake Studios, Lukather switched over to record the intricate and chorus-filled guitar riffs of Human Nature. Recording sessions under Quincy Jones were conducted in a manner of military precision.

 In a cold recording studio, there was no room for mistakes, and Lukather had to switch to another guitar if his riff failed to impress Michael Jackson. The dancer’s innate dance sense was the guiding star of the session. Paulinho Da Costa, percussionist. Paulinho Da Costa, the Brazilian percussionist, provided the organic, multi-layered pulse of Michael Jackson’s two key phases.

 Provided absolute freedom of expression by Quincy Jones when recording off the wall and thriller. Da Costa came to Westlake Studios with a trunk full of street objects, toys, and pots and pans. In Don’t Stop Til You Get Enough, he created a sophisticated polyrhythmic backdrop along with Michael and Randy Jackson using metal spoons on Perrier glass bottles to give personality to the robotic sound of the Linn drum machine.

He combined the rhythms of wood blocks, log drums, and jawbones in Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’. Bruce Swedien and Matt Forger, engineers from that time, remember him as a storm of movement who could effortlessly overdub many tracks. The special ability of Da Costa to work with rhythmic dynamics enabled him to combine Afro-Brazilian folklore and pop funk and create a rhythm for everyone in the ’80s.

Quincy Jones, legendary producer. Quincy Jones was the director who managed to make Michael Jackson’s solo career reach its pinnacle,  serving not only as a music producer, but also as an extraordinary psychological strategist. At the time of recording The Lady in My Life from the Thriller album, Quincy Jones switched off the lights in the recording studio in order to make Michael sing in a begging voice.

 Later on, when the first bass-heavy master version of the album caused vinyl needles to fly out of their grooves, Jones ordered a nightlong remix session with Bruce Swedien. The sessions were always controlled by Jones, and he kept control rooms extremely cold in order to keep musicians alert. Jones did not hesitate to confront Michael’s creative impulses in any way.

 In fact, he insisted that Michael cuts the introductory part of Billie Jean.  [applause]  And the latter argued that he wanted to dance because of this groovy rhythm. Jones conceded Michael’s intuition. Bruce Swedien, chief recording engineer. Bruce Swedien, chief engineer Thriller album, preferred organic sounds rather than heavy processing.

 In order to record the famous drums introduction of Billie Jean, Swedian made a doghouse, which is basically a wooden box with blanket insulation, for capturing only the kick drum sounds of Leon Ndugu Chancler. The drum kit was placed on an 8-ft by 8-ft plywood platform, raised up from the floor for detaching low frequency sounds.

 In addition, cardboard tube technique was applied in order to add an acoustic delay to Michael’s vocal sounds. Singing through a 5-ft shipping tube into an RCA Swedian’s  method of Accusonic recording process consisted in synchronizing tape machines by the means of slave reels recording each day, because this was the way how to preserve pristine master transients without playing them over and over again.

 Swedian did not use compressors at all during the recording of lead tracks. He only recorded Michael Jackson’s vocal parts with Shure SM7 microphone. Teddy Riley, producer. In order to get Michael Jackson’s music updated for the ’90s, Teddy Riley introduced the concept of New Jack Swing at Larrabee Sound and Record One Studios.

 After upgrading from the older technology to the Akai MPC 60 and Ensoniq EPS, Riley used swing quantization, which means playing drum hits a few milliseconds off digital beats to create an irresistible groove or pocket. Jackson himself was the best radar. If a beat didn’t cause him to dance within 10 seconds, he would not use it.

 With Remember the Time, Riley substituted the orchestral arrangements with simple basslines and syncopation in the snare. He forced Jackson to perform a more percussive staccato singing style. For Dangerous, Jackson wanted a rough, mechanical factory beginning with his voice. Teddy Riley then took the foundation of industrial elements and injected his characteristic hard, syncopated street beats to perfectly anchor the track.

Brad Sundberg, technical director and sound engineer. As a technical director and engineer in Michael Jackson’s team for more than 20 years, Brad Sundberg turned unusual creative concepts into reality. During the sessions for the album Dangerous, song Jam at Record One Studios, Sundberg prepared the vocal booth with complete blackening of it.

 Jackson then sang as many as 50 layers of raw and aggressive vocals and percussions by memory as Sundberg made perfect track separation on the master tapes. Outside the recording studio, Sundberg created complex and multi-layered audio equipment for Larrabee and Neverland ranches. He knew how Jackson thought. Music for him was something tangible, and for a full experience, it was necessary to play loud enough that he could actually feel the air pressure on his chest.

 As a balanced technical specialist during crazy recording sessions, Sundberg made sure that all these grandiose projects sounded eternal. Bill Bottrell, producer and engineer. Producer and engineer Bill Bottrell released Michael Jackson from strict studio conventions with a sense of unrestrained spontaneity through sessions held at the Jackson’s Hayvenhurst residence.

 With Michael randomly performing some beatboxing in his room, Bottrell incorporated this vocal loop to become the rhythmic base of the song Black or White. Rather than using this as the base for a drum machine, Bottrell buried the beatbox under layers of sound in order to create the rhythm behind his guitar riff performed on a Gibson Les Paul.

 Through Bottrell’s creative encouragement of Michael to treat the whole house as an instrument, he recorded the slamming of kitchen doors and the clanging of metal pipes, thus forming dirty loops which resulted in the formation of the basic structure of the title track Dangerous. The producer created the 6.

5 minute-long industrial sound collage of mechanical factory noise and hydraulics, which became the basis of Michael Jackson’s musical development of the 1990s. If you are watching this video, please subscribe to our channel and hit the like button. Rodney Jerkins, producer. Producer Rodney Darkchild Jerkins orchestrated Jackson’s Invincible album in 2001 under a stringent instruction.

Shun all traditional commercial samples in favor of totally unheard sounds. Using portable recorders in automobile dumps, Jerkins struck rusting doors and crashed warped metal sheets in order to create an aggressive and raw urban landscape. Once back at Criteria Studios in Miami, he digitally modified these metallic clinks to produce unique snare drums and pounding bass drum sounds for songs such as Unbreakable and Invincible.

  This collaboration was successful because of Jerkins’s programming skills, which allowed  Jackson’s hypersensitive acoustic ideas to be structured in an effective manner. In order to ensure utmost physicality, Jerkins recorded and threw away hundreds of custom tracks for years before the album, together with sound engineers Bruce Swedien and Stewart Brawley.

 For the leading single You Rock My World, Jerkins successfully incorporated a classic Rhodes piano with digital percussion to make Jackson’s beatboxing concept timeless. Vincent Paterson, choreographer and director. Smooth Criminal’s Vincent Paterson, co-choreographer, was responsible for the 1930s underground setting in Club 30.

 He rejected pop music backing tracks and trained the group of street dancers so they could integrate the Hollywood style of Fred Astaire into the syncopation of the streets through jazz. He used levels including balconies and tables in order to construct a multi-dimensional environment. Working closely with Jackson to develop the famous gravity-defying lean through specially designed floor pegs and boots, Paterson was entrusted with directing and choreographing for the 1993 Super Bowl 27 halftime show because of his excellent staging skills. He changed

stadium performance through his coordination of thousands of kids in the formation of mosaics on the field and through his tight commercial cue points. Patterson did an impressive opening by arranging look-alikes on the Jumbotron prior to Jackson’s entry onto the stage where he stood for about 2 minutes. Michael Peters, choreographer.

Michael Peters was a choreographer who revolutionized commercial dance by introducing an element of authentic reality to Michael Jackson’s videos. In Beat It, Peters worked with the LAPD and Michael Jackson to recruit 80 real-life Crips and Bloods gang members for their respective roles in the video.

 While the Hollywood dancers performed the intricate dance routine of jazz isolation, the amateurs contributed background hostility and street credibility when there were moments of confrontation in the video. In Thriller, Peters worked with Jackson over the course of several weeks to avoid turning his dance into a parody of Halloween.

 He told his dancers to envision the experience of emerging from a grave. This gave birth to the memorable disjointed hip movements, arm falls, and lurches. Peters even got in front of the camera to become the lead zombie that accompanied Michael in his walk out of the fog. Travis Payne, choreographer. In his role as associate producer and choreographer of the 2009 This Is It residency, Travis Payne made use of Michael Jackson’s exceptional photographic memory during the arduous rehearsal process held in Los Angeles

Forum and Staples Center venues. Notwithstanding the 10-year period without tours, Jackson’s photographic memory allowed him to remember every little movement and cue that had been set years ago. Dealing with Jackson’s physical stamina at 50, Payne was able to create a special rehearsal setting for him.

 The choreographer utilized an auditioned team of the most professional backup dancers across the globe, who would bear the main burden of high impact staging, thereby saving Jackson’s energy for vocal recording and general direction. Once Jackson got fully involved in the process, his exceptional rhythm was even better. Working together, they created an epic show, combining classic choreography and contemporary staging.

Jeffrey Daniel, choreographer and Shalamar member. Prior to his famous performance at the Motown 25 show in 1983, Michael Jackson had a mentor in the form of a fellow musician, Jeffrey Daniel from the group Shalamar. In an exclusive studio, Daniel taught Jackson the underground West Coast street dance style of popping known as the backslide, which involved deconstructing the techniques used to shift the weight back.

 While Daniel was responsible for the basic illusion, Michael Jackson introduced his trademark moves such as toe stand, making it into what is now known as the moonwalk. This collaboration extended through the late 1980s, as Jackson enlisted Daniel for the position of choreographer, consultant, and dancer in the video Bad to keep the style of the choreography in its raw form.

 Additionally, Daniel worked for months on end to choreograph the complex sequences of dance for Smooth Criminal in Club 30 and had a brief appearance along with Jackson in the same video. Lavelle Smith Jr., dancer and choreographer. Choreographer Lavelle Smith Jr. took Michael Jackson into military grade speed in the 90s era of his shows with his dangerous and ghostly work for the films.

 Breaking with traditional jazz dance, Smith devised extremely exhausting high-speed moves, which required rapid isolation of movements and violently syncopated breaks. In the lengthy filming sessions of Ghosts, Smith maintained the energy level ensuring the synchronized army of ghosts was hitting the beats with deadly accuracy along with Jackson.

 Smith became an indispensable person through his protection of the naturalness of black street dancing in the Bad, Dangerous, and History World Tours. Considering performance as a top sporting event, he trained the dancers for days on end in their poses in order to make sure that they moved with deadly accuracy.

 This shield of creativity allowed Jackson complete improvisation, while Smith served as a bridge connecting millions of dollars of tour pressure. Siedah Garrett, vocalist and songwriter. Songwriter Siedah Garrett found herself entering the world of Michael Jackson through his album Bad. She collaborated with Glen Ballard to write Man in the Mirror, and Michael loved her demo so much that he recorded her version in order to match her phrasing and vulnerability.

 While she did not plan on becoming part of the spotlight, Garrett had a surprise when producer Quincy Jones caught her off guard. Following the passing of singers such as Whitney Houston,  Quincy would bring Garrett into the studio as if she were there to record background tracks. Only to give her a lyric sheet for the lead duet of I Just Can’t Stop Loving You.

Garrett went from behind the scenes to the stage as she performed with Jackson as his female lead backup singer on the Dangerous World Tour in 1992. She and Jackson would sing their duet to audiences of 70,000. While she handled the physical demands easily,    Guitarist arrived at the Hollywood Record Plant, where Jackson was spending time with actress Brooke Shields.

 All the star did was give him everything he wanted and then headed off to eat, leaving him all alone with the producer. Slash laid down his heavy metal solos without any control at all. The same creative freedom could be seen when Michael Jackson took to the stage with Slash in 1995 at the MTV Video Music Awards.

 Using Slash’s temperament to his advantage, Jackson let his solos go beyond what was on record. When playing such huge shows, Slash discovered that Jackson was at ease only when performing on stage, since it freed him from his celebrity life. Paul McCartney, musician and legend. In April 1982, the universes of the rock elite and the rising king of pop met in Los Angeles at Westlake Studios to record the single song The Girl Is Mine, which was destined to be the first number on the Thriller album.

 Quincy Jones was looking for a playful song about two buddies arguing about the same girl. And the recording session was the perfect embodiment of that idea. Instead of recording the song separately, Michael Jackson and Paul McCartney stood facing each other, recording their voices together through one studio mic.

Everything around them was full of jokes, insults, and kidding, as the process was called by Jackson, one of the most fun recording sessions ever, where there were lots of kibitzing and throwing things at each other. They became good buddies during those sessions, thus giving us several hit singles. Man,  Michael didn’t just make music, he ran a whole sonic laboratory.

From frozen rooms to trash can percussion, these musicians survived the wildest, most brilliant pressure cooker in pop history. But hey, that’s what it takes to build a king. Which studio secret blew your mind the most? Drop a comment below, hit that subscribe button, and we’ll catch you on the flip side. Stay groovy, people.