Michael Jackson - Rod Temperton Interview (口白)

Songwriter Rod Temperton reflects

on his first experience with writing

for Michael.

Well, back in 1979, I was working in

New York on an album for Heatwave

with Phil Ramone.

And one night, Quincy called the studio

and asked me if I could write sth. for

Michael Jackson. He was gonna do

Michael's first solo album.

So I said," okay, I will do my best to do

one song."

Cuz we were working in the studio from

10 in the morning till it's 3 or 4 the following morning.

So in the end I wrote 3 songs in order for

Michael and Quincy to choose one song

to become the album.

And they booked the studio in Los Angeles

at the weekends when I wasn't working.

And I flew in over the weekends to

cut the tracks.

At that point, I still haven't met Michael, Michael wouldn't come to the studio then.

And the following week I came back

again, the following weekend,

to do the vocals with Michael.

We did all the backgrounds and all

three tracks on the Saturday afternoon.

And then on the Sunday afternoon, we did all the 3 lead vocal tracks.

And Michael was amazing because he stayed up for whole of that Saturday night

to learn the lyrics off so that he wouldn't

have to read them off the paper.

It's kinda interesting I do remember the

very first session for Off the Wall that I

did this was on the Saturday that they

flew me in from New York,

On this Saturday afternoon, and Quincy

had said to me on the phone a couple

of days before, asked me what kind of musicians

I needed to record the tracks.

So, I said," well, two guitar players, a keyboard player, and drums, bass."

And I arrived that afternoon, came from

the airport directly to the studio.

Quincy met me at the door, basically, took me in the main studio room where all the

musicians were getting ready to play.

and said, "here is Rod hit-it."

And now, this was really my first session

outside my own bound.

Because I'dn't you know been playing

music and been in Heatwave for 3 or 4

years, and so, it's very used to that kind of

situation dealing with picked-up musicians

in the studio making those albums maybe,

but not with the situation where I was you know just

walking and called, meeting a whole bunch

of people I never knew, although they are

very famous names in the business.

And that, you know, I particularly remember

when, the first term day to that album,

Jerry Hey came in with all the

home players and I felt really inadequate

you know working in with my little notes of what I wanted them to do. and..

But it was one of those things where,

you were in a situation where the,

you put in the rheme there, everybody

was looking at you and it's sign that "you say something or get out of that."

Fortunately, I **my mouth and said something, so,well, you know,

we worked out nicely and we came away with the next exciting album.

And I said to Quincy at the end of

the session which song do you choose

for, do you want for the record.

He said he wanted all three.

What was you the title track Off the Wall,

a song called Burn this Disco Out ?

I knew that I could tell from Michael that

his, the melodies he would sing on

atempo songs, it was very

rhythmically driven.

And so I tried to write melodies that's

with short notes, and had a lot of short

notes to give him some staccato rhythmic

things he could do.

I think the Off the Wall the title song gives you the best example of that "~~"you know

that kind of melody rather than

really long note, long line melodies.

And the other thing I knew from

his previous records is that he loved

harmony work.

and you know, that's really the sight of me

that I would have brought from Heatwave

because Heatwave was very harmonically

driving group and so I kinda mixed

the harmony segments of my music

with this new idea of the short notes

melodies for Michael, and came out

with the Off the Wall and

Burn This Disco Out.