Exclusive: How Michael Jackson's 'Thriller' Changed The Music Business

'THRILLER' TIME

When Jackson first suggested working with Quincy Jones on "Off the Wall," Epic executives worried that the producer was too jazzy. But Jackson, who had met Jones when he played the Scarecrow in the movie version of "The Wiz" and Jones produced the soundtrack, persisted. At the time, Jones was struck by Jackson's "profound discipline and focus"; he knew that "he could still be bigger than everyone else was saying."

Jones began laying the foundation for "Thriller" in December 1981, when he took Jackson to Tucson, Ariz., to spend three days recording the Paul McCartney duet "The Girl Is Mine." "Michael and I just wanted to work with Paul, who I'd known for years," Jones remembers.



Work began in earnest in August 1982. Jackson wrote several of the songs: "The Girl Is Mine," "Beat It," "Billie Jean" and "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'." Among the other writers was former Heatwave keyboardist Rod Temperton, who wrote "Rock With You" on "Off the Wall." He brought them an "amazing" song he had titled "Starlight Love," Jones says, which eventually became the song "Thriller."

"Then one night we accidentally came upon a demo whose melody, later paired with lyrics by John Bettis, became 'Human Nature,' " Jones says. "After 'Off the Wall,' we were kicking booty and fearless; ready to do anything. It was a very exciting time."

Despite the success of "Off the Wall," Jones says, their working relationship was very much about creativity for creativity's sake. "You don't make records to say how many you're going to sell," he says. "You can't control that. You make something that touches you and will hopefully touch someone else."

All together, Jones and Jackson spent four months reviewing more than 700 demos. Eventually they settled on nine. Then four of those were replaced by "The Lady in My Life," "P.Y.T. (Pretty Young Thing)," "Human Nature" and "Beat It."

One priority was to balance "Thriller" between R&B and pop, disco and rock, funk and ballads. "We thought at one point we were done," recalls Greg Phillinganes, a keyboardist on the "Off the Wall" and "Thriller" albums. "And Quincy was like, 'No, not so fast. We need certain missing elements.' Michael was pretty disappointed but then that's how we got 'Lady' and 'Beat It.'"

At the time, disco still dominated the charts, and Jones and Jackson wanted to transcend it. " 'Beat It' came about with Eddie Van Halen because we wanted to do a black rock'n'roll song," Jones says. "The Knack's 'My Sharona' was No. 1 at the time, plus we had to crawl over disco, which was still so big. We wanted to find a way to transcend all that. By God's blessing, we got out of the box."