Last post on 1975-78 - https://www.filmtracks.com/scoreboard/forum.cgi?read=139941
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Michael Jackson had been singing with his brothers since 1964 when he was eight years old, but by the early seventies he was looking to define himself as a solo artist. After mounting frustrations with Motown Records’ constraints (and subpar sales for Michael’s third and fourth solo albums) most of the family left the label. Michael knew his next album had to be a massive departure not just from the Jackson 5 but also the overall Motown style (“all bubblegum,” as Quincy once put it). Running into Quincy when he did, when all he had was concepts in his head, was thus fortuitous, and Quincy felt the same. “Everybody said nobody can make him any bigger than he already is. [But] I felt a lot of things inside that nobody had heard before, untapped vocal equipment, that could take him much further.”
Michael wrote some of the songs himself, but otherwise Quincy summoned a legendary roster of contributors including Rod Temperton, Paul McCartney, and Stevie Wonder. The end result was an event. Off the Wall remains the most essential of the genre fusion albums Quincy worked on in the 1970s, and in hindsight perhaps the variable quality of his earlier records in the back half of the decade (several of them seeming to abandon jazz) was a necessary process of experimentation to arrive at something this potent. It became a global phenomenon, selling over 10 million copies and having almost all of its songs dominate the singles charts, with Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough remaining one of Michael’s most iconic songs.
But the Grammy Awards largely ignored Off the Wall, with just one song getting a nomination and no consideration for Quincy’s treasured recording engineer Bruce Swedien, plus Quincy (who also oversaw the Gold-certified Rufus & Chaka Khan album Masterjam in 1979) lost Producer of the Year to Kenny Rogers’ producer Larry Butler. While the decline of disco - akin to bossa nova fading at the end of the 1960s - perhaps had something to do with its marginalization, Michael and Quincy both still felt the Grammy voters had unfairly pigeonholed him and his music as just disco or too Black (it’s often the go-to example when the organization’s history of racial bias is brought up). Michael vowed it would never happen again. Their next effort had to be better.
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The early 1980s was where the term producer seemed no longer adequate for the kind of continued success Quincy experienced. Superproducer perhaps? In addition to seeing Off the Wall dominate the charts, 1980 also had his work on jazz guitarist George Benson’s funk/R&B/soul album Give Me the Night - Quincy’s first release from his new record label Qwest Records - which went Platinum in multiple countries and took home four Grammy awards; Quincy at the time called Benson the best guitarist he’d ever worked with. Light Up the Night (no relation) for the Brothers Johnson was also a big success, the duo going four for four on records with Quincy hitting Platinum, though it would be their last as future collaborations were contractually prohibited after Quincy left A&M Records in 1981.
An army of old and new collaborators - including Toots Thielemans, Stevie Wonder, Rod Templeton, Johnny Mandel, Herbie Hancock, the songwriting duo Barry Mann & Cynthia Weil, and even Michael Jackson who sang backing vocals on one track - was assembled that same year for The Dude, a remarkably coherent album despite being a mix of hits rearranged by Quincy and separate showcases for Patti Austin and newcomer James Ingram, who got on the album after Quincy heard his demo recording of Just Once (and who would be heard a few years later by film score fans on Song of the Year winner Somewhere Out There from An American Tail). Winning three Grammy awards and earning Quincy his first nomination for Album of the Year, The Dude - another Platinum record - remains most notable today for Ingram’s Just Once and One Hundred Ways, the head-banging funk of The Dude, and the synth-powered redo of Chaz Jankel’s Latin-infused dance track Ai No Corrida. Austin and Ingram would record the hit duet Baby Come to Me later in the year for another album produced by Quincy, and rounding out 1981 was a producing credit for singer Lena Horne’s one-woman show on Broadway and a spirited concert performance in Budokan.
Budokan concert video - https://youtu.be/WfdeGYu5PKw
But all of that was just a warm-up act for the album event of 1982: a reunion of Michael Jackson and Quincy Jones. And no, we’re not talking about the audiobook album they both did as a companion to the E.T. soundtrack, a release that won a Grammy but also prompted legal action that quickly pulled it from the market because MCA Records jumped the gun and released it before Epic Records had released their Michael Jackson album: Thriller.
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Thriller. Billie Jean. Beat It. Wanna Be Startin’ Something. Most artists are lucky enough to have one song like those their whole career. Michael had all four on one album.
The making of Thriller - an album where Michael wanted every track to be “a killer” - is the stuff legends are made of. Quincy and Rod Tempeton running through 400 songs to find ones they liked. Multiple studios operating simultaneously. Equipment catching on fire. Paul McCartney joining a track. Eddie Van Halen breaking one of his band’s rules to play a guitar solo. Vincent Price! Michael breaking into tears because he didn’t like the initial mixing choices, necessitating weeks of fine tuning. But the epic battles to make it were worth it. Released in November 1982, Thriller became the best-selling album of all time, owning the number one spot on the Billboard 200 for much of 1983 and 1984 and at its peak selling one million copies worldwide a week. It was one of the first albums to take advantage of an ascendant MTV to bolster and extend its popularity, including via a 14-minute music video for the spooky song Thriller (“the Citizen Kane of videos” as Quincy called it at the time) helmed by The Blues Brothers director John Landis. Per Quincy, “that song didn’t make sense to anybody until the video was made. Michael and MTV rode each other to glory.”
BBC piece on the making of Thriller - https://youtu.be/e-H1mCEAoiA
Thriller transcended genre and redefined what was possible in popular music for a Black artist in America, something Count Basie told Quincy when he saw him a year after the album came out. It even catalyzed another 10 million purchases of Off the Wall. But did Michael succeed in his ambition to have every song on Thriller be a hit? Probably not with its first single The Girl is Mine underwhelming critics at the time, though while the James Ingram-penned P.Y.T. is generally considered a weak link I’d argue the least impressive song is the album-ending The Lady is My Life which drags the singer into generic R&B romance territory (there’s a reason it’s one of only two songs from the album that lacks its own Wikipedia page). Still, when half your album is all-time pop hits perhaps you’re allowed some leeway. And - unlike Off the Wall a few years earlier - Thriller owned the Grammy Awards, winning Album, Record, and Producer of the Year.
The initial triumph of Thriller - and its continued hold over pop culture - was so overwhelming that it’s easy to forget that Quincy had a hand in another album in 1982: singer Donna Summer’s tenth album Donna Summer. This was a rare case where the artist didn’t seek him out, rather record label boss David Geffen mandated she stop working with producer Giorgio Moroder (and by extension Harold Faltermeyer) as her prior album with them underperformed. Faltermeyer was bummed that the completed album he recorded in 1981 was shelved and seemed to be unaware decades later that it was actually released in 1996. Quincy’s replacement album sold well, staying in the Billboard 200 for 37 straight weeks and producing the hit single The Woman in Me and her charting cover of Vangelis’ State of Independence, but it didn’t return her to the heights of her 1970s disco fame. Summer didn’t have a great time, later saying “sometimes I feel it's a Quincy Jones album that I sang on.” And while her next album - produced not by Quincy but by Michael Omartian who’d recently had success with Christopher Cross’ debut yacht rock record - sold better, it was through Mercury Records rather than Geffen’s company. A rare case where everyone lost.
He still got some pretty famous folks to sing backup vocals on one song though - https://youtu.be/WIOUaJQYjj8
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Next time: Once more with Frank, Purplegate, implosion
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1979-82: Film & TV scores
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1979-82: The essential albums
Off the Wall https://open.spotify.com/album/2ZytN2cY4Zjrr9ukb2rqTP
The Dude https://open.spotify.com/album/2GD9TjWG3Tu4JygAZniBY0
Thriller https://open.spotify.com/album/2ANVost0y2y52ema1E9xAZ
1979-82: Other albums
Quincy’s
Quincy Jones Live at Budokan https://open.spotify.com/album/6iYipso0ZtEj8T06iDEoj5
Done for the Brothers Johnson
Light Up the Night https://open.spotify.com/album/4DN3DenoWmadGEayQw2tDp
Done for others
Masterjam https://open.spotify.com/album/2myey2664YObEQ2hs2YJeE
Give Me the Night https://open.spotify.com/album/6qwOcN9wZgVF0bishcfFsh
Every Home Should Have One https://open.spotify.com/album/6j8fP0fRB4TqeJiNJdSVlU
Lena Horne: The Lady and Her Music https://open.spotify.com/album/6lIB44EKKdGhvzu5YwBHup
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial audiobook https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VB9v_BBi6Cg
Donna Summer https://open.spotify.com/album/5FrCkoFG25Zd6QVJTtviYW
