Michael Jackson Bad

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.

"Want to Be Startin' Somethin'" by Michael Jackson

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.