"He always pushed me to be different and innovative and strong. It was so loud - I would never subject my hearing to that kind of volume level!" (Image credit: Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)Įngineer Bruce Swedien on the making of Michael Jackson's Thriller: "I went in when Eddie Van Halen was warming up and I left immediately. He pulled out one of my songs from the Guy album, which I sing, and he said he wanted that sound. "We talked regularly before I produced the album and he described everything he was looking for, sound-wise. I always feel my way - I never do anything the same." Teddy Riley on working with Michael Jackson There's no science to it, I just feel my way through the production. We used a drum machine, the Akai MPC-60, and a lot of the sounds from that and samples I had on my sample CDs. "The track evolved: Michael came in with the hook, I did the music and then we finalised the song. I went to my lab and put the track together. That was the name of the album, so we thought about doing a song called Dangerous, and Michael came up with the hook. "Dangerous was about a woman who was just so beyond, you know, beyond the best girl he's ever been with. With this album he's hinting at his past songs as well as trying to reinvent himself." 14. It reminds me of a more worldly version of She's Out Of My Life. I think he was trying to reinvent himself and become more credible more commercial and he achieves that here. If Michael had the chance he'd keep working on songs forever." 10. "Michael was taking so long and he brought Quincy in to hear it - he was like a quality controller for Michael. He heard it before it was released and he said this was a masterpiece, and that it's ready to come out. He left big footsteps! He did hear this album and he really gave me a great compliment on my production. "It was really difficult for me having to follow in Quincy Jones' footsteps. If Michael had the chance he'd keep working on songs forever. Quincy Jones was like a quality controller for Michael. I thought it would take someone like Quincy to get that sound, but Michael came up with it. I thought it would take someone like Quincy Jones to really put an incredible track like that together. You know, I think he went back to his roots of recording with this song to record an incredible track. I think he recaptured that sound on this song. "Throughout the album I was drawing off a lot of CDs I had hanging around, all played by myself. Back then I just had them lying around and I hadn't used them… But I really wanted to use them! "I made the sample CD myself - that was me playing instruments, then looping them up and having them lying around for potential projects. I thought I'd bring a shadow of some of the greatness of the James Brown production sound to this. "This was mostly from a sample CD that I just put together myself, and it kind of reminded me of the James Brown sound. I'd just jam with a riff and think, 'That's a cool bit there…' Yeah, it kinda really brought a lot to the production side. There were no samples of other people on that what I did was make the sounds myself - I was sampling myself. Sort of like the twisted samples I brought in. "The elements on this song that give it that New Jack Swing sound are the ones that I used when I recorded with Guy and Bobby Brown to pioneer it. He'd often record the vocals on a Dictaphone and take them into the studio and then see how it would all work out. I'd describe that sound as, really, like the New Jack Swing sound. Basically it was the sound I wanted on Dangerous and he loved it - loved it from the beginning. That was the sound I was thinking of for this album. "One of the biggest things Michael really surprised me with on the Dangerous album was his vocal deliverance on Remember The Time. When you're doing analogue it's pretty much, you know, getting everything on tape, you know? It's very warm. There's no studio trickery either, really. I think the longest part was writing everything and getting everything formatted. "The whole song didn't take long to produce, actually. I thought he was going to get another person to play on it but he wanted my good self playing! That was something special to me. "The element I'm most proud of in this song is my guitar playing. He was Michael's favourite rapper at the time." 2. It was my idea to get the rapper Heavy D to perform on there as well. He bought it to me as a DAT, and he told me there were things he wanted done, and I did them. He'd come in with an idea and I'd flesh it out in the studio. "That's the way it worked a lot of the time. He told me to see what I could do with it so I took it and created some more instruments and reproduced the record - and he loved it. "Jam was a track that Michael had the idea for.
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