Bad 25 (2012) - full transcript

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-

- 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! ♪