"Thriller" by Michael Jackson: Everything You Didn't Know

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Speaker 1: Too Much Information is a production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 2: Hello everyone, and welcome to Too Much Information, the show that brings you the secret histories and little known fascinating facts and figures behind your favorite TV shows, movies, music, and more. We are your two night creatures of the nitty gritty, your hounds of Hellish history, your foul stenches of facts parentheses, the funk of forty thousand years.

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Speaker 1: I'm Alex Heider. That's what he says, foul stenches. Not only the lyrics to that rap are ridiculous. Wow, the funk of forty thousand years is pretty great.

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Speaker 2: I got considering Michael Jackson was afraid of the word funky.

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Speaker 1: Hence smelly jelly if I believe. Yeah, Okay, that's correct, and I'm Jordan Rontg. There we go and Jordan. Today we're talking about the biggest Halloween song of all time with an earth shattering visual impact to match. That's right, we're talking about Michael Jackson's just the song in the video, though not the record because that would take days. Yes, Halloween season came around, you were like we should do another, Like what are the other music ones that we could do?

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Speaker 2: And since we already did Monster Mash. I thought back to all the Halloween music compilations I've heard in my youth, and it's it's it's monster mash, thriller and then a bunch of horror movie soundtracks.

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Speaker 1: That's all of them. The Purple People Eater, I guess if you scre sort of.

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Speaker 2: An edge case though, But yeah, what do you say about thriller?

00:01:35
Speaker 1: Dude? I mean, it's no monster mash, but that's true. That is true.

00:01:38
Speaker 2: But it's pretty, pretty, pretty deep, pretty good. Uh yeah, sold a bajillion copies, revolutionized the art form of the music video. Uh party standard from now Party standard, Yeah, viral dance success.

00:01:55
Speaker 1: Vincent Price got like, I don't know, a couple grand for it. List goes on, it's nice to see black people ripping off old white men for a change. Ah ah is that staying in I don't know.

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Speaker 2: I mean yeah again, do you say, dude, It's like the national anthem of October. It's in the firmament of American culture. There's like nothing it's thriller. You shut up? It's what do you have to say about it? This is gonna get me into trouble.

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Speaker 1: But it's not my favorite song on thriller by a long shot fair it's in like my lower half. I think, yeah, okay, so in descending orders for me, it's all about Billy Jean. Did they come up with that baseline while driving over a bridge like the Beg's did when they came up with jive talking going over a bridge in Florida. It's just like the tires would hit the grooves in the road at a weird, weird rhythm. It makes makes sense. I think that's maybe I might be making so but that's number one. Yeah, I want to be starting something. I think number two it's got that great soul Makosa sample which rips. That song's incredible, let's see pyt. Number three also rips what.

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Speaker 2: Is wrong with you that you have beat it so low? It's it's too rocky for me. I like more of the R and B stuff. It hurts my ears.

00:03:26
Speaker 1: It's telling the girl's mind is number four because Paul McCartney's got to be in the top half of whatever I'm ranking. Although that song, I hate that song. I know. It sounds like an eighties sitcom theme. It sounds like the family that does like no, no, no, no, Yeah.

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Speaker 2: I just think of the the there's like a clip or there's like an interview clip of Paul McCartney doing like a withering Michael Jackson impression that's been like burned into my brain.

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Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I think it's from you know what I think it's from.

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Speaker 2: I think it's from the it's VH Well, the one that I'm thinking of is I was I remember it because VH one's one hundred Most Shocking Moments in Rock and Roll came out when I was watching a lot of VH one lists, And yeah, it's when Michael Jackson bought the Beatles rights and and Paul tells that story about how on that video said he.

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Speaker 1: Was like, you know the real you know, the real money is and music publishing and uh and and Michael says to him, I'm gonna about your songs. We have we have to have like a like a trip like moment where how Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon do like dueling Michael Caine impressions. We gotta go do dueling Paul McCartney doing Michael Jackson's I'm gonna bouyt your songs. I'm gonna about your songs.

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Speaker 2: Paul Yeah, so uh yeah, girls, my god, that song sucks.

00:04:47
Speaker 1: I know, human Nature a good mid tempo cut, and then I think I'm up to Thriller and that's so that's my My sixth favorite song on Thriller is the title track. But I we talked about this during our spooky season last year, which I know is a lot more robust than this year's. I'm sorry. I take full responsibility for that, but I'm not really into Halloween. I know, I know, but I love how much you love it. It's so good.

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Speaker 2: I mean, it's great, man, I what what other like? It's the biggest artists of all time doing a Halloween song, right, Yeah, that's like where I'm trying to think of what else?

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Speaker 1: Yeah, man, I carry all over for Christmases you in terms of like that's a huge artists, huge holiday.

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Speaker 2: But I think ad but I think around the same time it would be it would like, oh god, we should just pitch other versions of this. What if the Eagles because that's the only the only band that's sold higher than Michael What Eagles did Thanksgiving Thanksgiving song?

00:05:51
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's what they would do. That's exactly what they did or fourth of July. I was going to say, I feel like they would maybe do Fourth of July. No Beach Boys would Fourth of July. God, that would can you imagine how much that would suck. I'm sure they did do a Fourth of July song at some point in their in their wilderness years that I've just not acknowledged. Old please not Eagles Thanksgiving. Maybe it's a bird Turkey eagle thing. Nope, they sure do Fourth of July. But it actually seems to be dramatically anti war.

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Speaker 3: Oh.

00:06:19
Speaker 1: I think it's because it was written by Dennis that's why. Okay, yeah, there is a an excellent Bollywood version of Thriller. Okay, it was like it made the rounds on YouTube. Like back when YouTube was was was brand new, it was more pure. Have you ever heard it? I don't think so.

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Speaker 2: Now maybe I just remember all the viral I remember all the viral dance challenges.

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Speaker 1: Well, no, that I mean this is like actually good. Like I actually think like the baseline in it, because it's such a wild rip like it's so clearly thriller, but it's like just different enough to not get sued. But the baseline of it I kind of prefer I want you to I want you to hear it and see what you have to say. You might remember this because I feel like it was big only E Bomb's world or something when we were freshman in college.

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Speaker 4: Live reacts, No, this sucks, It's awful.

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Speaker 2: That is the worst synth tone I've heard. Dancing's great though, Yeah, yeah, no, that sucks. What else you got?

00:07:42
Speaker 1: That's all I got? All right?

00:07:48
Speaker 2: Well, from the silent songwriter behind the monster hit to the truly mind blowing sales records notched to the landmark music video, here's everything you didn't know about Michael Jackson's thriller. Necessarily quick thumbnail sketch before we dive in. Michael Jackson obviously first rose to fame in the early nineteen seventies. This is the adorable, pint sized front man of Motown's Jackson five. We get a quick super Sounds of the seventies style montage of him in the platform shoes, dancing and then with Joe Jackson hitting him with a chair. The Jackson's left Motown in nineteen seventy five and released three albums on Epic, the most contemporaneous of the time, of which Destiny had peaked at number eleven on the Billboard two hundred and nineteen seventy eight. But then Jackson became a bonafide global solo superstar with his first album for Epic under his own name, Off the Wall.

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Speaker 1: When it came out in nineteen seventy nine, Epic made the then unusual move of promoting the album simultaneously to pop and RnB markets, which helped it become this just enormous crossover success. And then after that or Jackson and Quincy Jones producer Quincy Jones, who's what his producer?

00:09:06
Speaker 2: Quincy Jones producer quizy Yeah. If you don't know Quincy Jones, I can't help you. You're listening to the Rod podcast. Jones came back to help Jackson realize his vision of an album where every single song was a hit. That was what everyone who has been interviewed about Thriller said that they were going in and trying to do. Larry Williams, who played saxophone, flute and since on the album, said that to The New York Post in twenty twenty two. He said, that was the mandate.

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Speaker 1: I have a question for you just and this may be something that requires my research offhand, what are some other albums that you can think of that almost follow that same edict. I mean, the only one I can think of that comes close is Katy Perry. Katy Perry, Yeah, because she t tied or broke the record of the most number ones on one album. Yeah, I mean that they set out to do ahead of time either way. Either way, I don't know. That's an interesting question because I feel like it would kind of either ahead of time or just in retrospect, like why every single one of these either it was a hit or could have been a hit.

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Speaker 2: I mean even just going to the top list of all time California.

00:10:14
Speaker 1: As much as I hate to admit it, I.

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Speaker 2: Mean, Dark Side of the Moon is pretty up there when you think of like every single song on that album is actually like a banger. Like the weakest song on there is like.

00:10:25
Speaker 1: Eclipse, Yeah, maybe on the run, on the Runs, the one I can't deal with.

00:10:32
Speaker 2: Well, it's an instrument I mean I'm talking about the instrumentals. But like when you think about like Breathe Time, great gig and It's got money Us and them, like those are all like those. I mean it was FM radio rocks and maybe that's a bit of a dark horse.

00:10:48
Speaker 1: We gotta do dark Side we got somebody requested that and oh yeah, yeah yeah.

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Speaker 2: I mean the thing about Back in Black is that it is not it's not all bangers. But when you've got yeah, I guess it really was only three on that, man, it's kind.

00:11:02
Speaker 1: Of Hell's bells. The title one, You Shook Me. The rest of them are all kind of you know, yeah, come on over. Oh yeah, Rumors has filler on it, like oh daddy, Yeah, that song sucks, yeah it does.

00:11:23
Speaker 2: Secondhand News sucks. Oh Daddy also sucks. But the rest of these are all strong.

00:11:32
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, all right.

00:11:35
Speaker 2: Zeppelin four, oh yeah, good, but but there's not that many songs on that. It's only an eight song record the cars day, but they all oh man, Zeppelin fours for sure up there. The weakest one on Zeppelin four is like Battle of Evermore and four Sticks, and then every one of those other songs Smack, Black Dog, Rock and Roll, Stairway to Heaven, ste Mountain Hop, going to California when the Lemon breaks. Like that's that's a high batting average for a record. Car's debut, Sure, car a Dell twenty one. I feel like twenty one was really just like powered by Rolling Deep, Rolling the Deep, set Fire to the Rain, and someone like You. I'm gonna say nineteen eighty nine might have been the most recent Santana's Supernatural Oh oh well, okay, Yeah, Which doesn't that share a story with Thriller where they both basically had engineers engineers on four Yeah, Gurney's when they were done?

00:12:40
Speaker 1: Yeah?

00:12:41
Speaker 2: Interesting thought experiment. Maybe Born in the USA? Oh, Born Run?

00:12:47
Speaker 1: Maybe too?

00:12:49
Speaker 2: I don't think so. Yeah, I want to elaborate on that run Born and Run has Born to Run?

00:12:56
Speaker 5: Yeah?

00:12:57
Speaker 1: No, David Lynn choice, No, any what's the David Cross in the rest of the development? Do you want to try that a little bit simpler?

00:13:09
Speaker 3: No.

00:13:10
Speaker 1: Asked in two thousand and nine by Rolling Stone about Thriller, Quincy Jones was admirably a forthright about the fact that it was a team effort.

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Speaker 2: He said, Michael didn't create Thriller. It takes a team, right, It takes a team to make an album. He wrote four songs and he sang his ass off, but he didn't conceive it. That's not how an album works. Real talk facts aside from engineer Bruce Swedeen Sweden Swedeen Sweden with Sweden Swedeen Bruce Sweeden who will get to but English songwriter Rod Temperton is the guy who comes up most in the discussion of Thriller.

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Speaker 1: For good reason.

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Speaker 2: Temperton is such a relentlessly low key dude though, that his nickname and the title of a documentary about his career by the DBC was the Invisible Man. He grew up a musical kid. I think both his parents were classically trained musicians. I grew up in Lincolnshire and he eventually joined a multi racial disco funk band called Heat Wave heat Wave Whips. Yeah, I imagine you pulled that out in your DJ knights.

00:14:20
Speaker 1: I pull that out at home.

00:14:22
Speaker 3: Well.

00:14:22
Speaker 2: His biggest hits for the band, Boogie Nights and the Ballot Always and Forever, were both million sellers, and they helped break the band in America, which is how Quincy Jones heard about him. Producer Barry Blue were called to the BBC that despite this, Temperton was hardly living large at the time. He had a very small flat, so everything had to be done within one room, and he had piles of washing and he had the TV on top of the organ. It was a nightmare. He had trams running outside, but he made it, just absorbed himself in the music, and Rod seemed to come up with these amazing songs. So Rod left Heatwave in nineteen seventy eight after writing another hit for them, the Groove Line, with the intention of focus on his writing. It was not a career decision in the sense of I knew what I was going to do, he told the BBC. I had no idea where I was going. If I was any good, somebody will call me, I guess. Obviously that person ended up being Quincy Jones, who, based on the heat Wave hits, called Temperton in nineteen seventy eight and liked his demos enough to fly him to la on weekends to work on Off the Wall. Jones said in twenty seventeen that Temperton had asked Jones to manage heat Wave, but he wasn't interested in doing that, but they hit it off, and Temperton contributed rock with You, Off the Wall and Burn this disco out to the Jackson record Off the Wall. Intention was for that was to actually have Jackson and Jones select just one song for the record, but they liked all of his demos so much that they went with three.

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Speaker 1: So Michael Jackson was only twenty four at the time, and he wrote four of the nine songs on Thriller himself. Want to be starting something, which borrows heavily on Solmakosa, which I feel like I should splice in now to the tune of getting sued, Right, did they get sued? Who? I mean taking a shot at Michael Jackson? You better not miss wow? Uh that's who is that? Hugh Massaa?

00:16:13
Speaker 6: Yeah, mam, I.

00:16:45
Speaker 1: Mean it's the same song. I mean I maybe he was arguing that it was sampling before sampling was heavily. You know, I had a precedent of, oh, you got to pay these people for this. Oh no, it was man It was man U Dubongo, not huge massee Kela. Oh I thought funny. I thought it was he Mesagia too. Yeah, whoops, we're racist.

00:17:06
Speaker 2: Yeah, because he sued Jackson and won in nineteen eighty six, and then he also sued Rihanno when she sampled right for.

00:17:16
Speaker 1: Place of Stuff the music. Yeah, but yeah, I don't think I realized until right this moment that Jackson wrote my favorite songs on Thriller. I want to be starting something. The Girl is Mine Paul McCartney, Beat It and Billy Jean, and the other songs for Thriller were selected by Quincy Jones and Rod Temperton in two thousand and one autobiography Q The Autobiography of Quincy Jones. I love him so much, he said Rod Temperton, and I listened to nearly six hundred songs before picking out a dozen we liked, And in another interview he cited this figure as eight hundred, but he's consistently seemed to say that thirty or so of these songs were written by Temperton. That's a hell of a batting average for that songwriter. Good lord. He said.

00:18:02
Speaker 2: They would all come with like alternate titles and lyrics too, Like he submitted a bunch of different versions of He's like well in case you don't like it with this title in these lyrics, like he was like a three other alternates.

00:18:12
Speaker 1: So he essentially would write all of these songs like three times. That is wild, and that is what he did with Thriller. Temperaman explained to m magazine that as you got to know Jackson better, he honed in on Michael's love of movies, and that was the prompt that generated thriller. He said, I came up with the idea that I should write something really theatrical. This is him talking in twenty twelve. I've been really impressed with Michael's participation in the rhythm section when recording don't stop till you get enough, so I wanted to write something with the same power, but a really dramatic melody structure. Michael's love of movies did not extend to horror, however. Michael described himself as being too scared, and this probably came from when it comes to talking about Michael's trauma where else his father Joe in that what you've described as our second Arrested Development reference on this episode a hilariously tragic prefiguring of the That's why you Don't Lie bit from Arrested Development. Joe Jackson tried to teach his kids a lesson about leaving their bedroom windows open by climbing through their window one night in a mask and shouting at Michael, which gave him recurring nightmares about being kidnapped. I mean, you have to need a mask, Joe. Climbing through your window period in the middle of the night is scary enough.

00:19:34
Speaker 2: You have to laugh because otherwise you cry. But like, what an insane person thing to do to your child and largest breadwinner of your.

00:19:45
Speaker 1: Family, to take it much kidnaps. He was so mad about the window being open.

00:19:53
Speaker 2: He was like, I will risk, and not risk, but I will permanently damage my son and the man who makes enough money for all of us to live because leaving the.

00:20:06
Speaker 1: Damn window open. It's kind of it's like sort of the ultimate dad thing to do. Oh yeah, it'd be like if you wanted to teach your kid a lesson about leaving the thermostad on by like faking a house.

00:20:16
Speaker 2: Fire or something like kind of shocked. He never did that, to be honest. Uh, Temperton continued. I remembered messing around with bass patterns and drums until I came up with the core baseline that runs through the piece. Then I started building chords on top to grow the tune into its climax. I wanted it to build and build a bit like stretching an elastic band throughout the tune to heighten suspense. Actually I should have put this in from the top.

00:20:41
Speaker 1: Uh. I guess you can kind of hear that. You're right, It's like, m.

00:20:48
Speaker 2: Well, I just want you to sing it, but you got to listen to this. This is a bass player named Ian Martin Allison who does a lot of stuff with a sight that I and social bass channel Scott's Bass Lessons, and he does a great bit on this bassline.

00:21:02
Speaker 5: So but really, what I'm trying to do is think about this tune in the way that a keys bass player would think about it.

00:21:14
Speaker 1: But doo dooo do don't.

00:21:15
Speaker 5: Go short notes right, short notes, cut off, muted notes.

00:21:22
Speaker 2: It's a great part, so you can actually hear how everyone thinks that bassline is doom doom, doom doom, butting doom doom, doom doom.

00:21:30
Speaker 1: But it's got that extra little punch, that low one in it.

00:21:33
Speaker 2: That does make a difference. Yeah, great, great bassline. The demo was done in Temperton's usually humble circumstances. He said he lived in Germany at the time and he was recording with a two track revox, so he'd put drums on one track, then play the bass live, bounce back the drums record that in the other track. Uh, just a lot of self recording and bouncing over to a new channel. And he did that with guitars keys and vogels.

00:22:01
Speaker 1: That is insane.

00:22:03
Speaker 2: It really is nuts when you hear that, which we will plug in in a second. That the scrapped version of this before it was thriller, but like how fully formed it was.

00:22:12
Speaker 1: Was he like some kind of songwriting virtuoso? I want to know, did he start writing when he was a kid and sell like a panale that?

00:22:20
Speaker 2: I don't know, man, I don't really. There's he did like three interviews in his life, and then there's that documentary, so we don't really know a ton about him. He's no Quincy Jones, right, yes, I.

00:22:32
Speaker 1: Mean, just you think about I was watching something about a documentary about ten CC recently, and I didn't realize that one of the guys in a Glenn Goldman as like a fourteen fifteen, sixteen year old would write these incredible sixties pop hits, things like a lot of Holly songs like Bust Stop Now.

00:22:52
Speaker 2: He started out as a drummer, then moved to keyboards, and I guess just discovered that he could write really well.

00:23:00
Speaker 1: Yeah, that the guy from ten CEC wrote for Your Love and Heartful of Soul for the Yardbirds. I didn't, Yeah, I had a bunch of Holly songs too, look through any Window, Bustop no Milk Today for Herman's Hermons. That's why they were so good at aping that pop sounds, but with like a weird art school twist, because he got to start as like a fifteen sixteen year old writting these pop songs for British pop groups, and I just, yeah, that's weird. I would have thought Temperton had a similar background because he's churning them out single handedly. Wow. But getting back to Thriller, the song's lyrics and title did not arrive fully formed, and in fact they went through a few iterations, Temperton told The Telegraph in two thousand and seven. Originally, when I did my Thriller demo, I called it Starlight. That scans really well. I can totally hear that. Yeah, Quincy said to me, you managed to come up with the title for the last album. See what you can do for this album. I said, oh great, So I went back to the hotel, wrote two or three hundred titles and came up with the title Midnight Man, which a kind of rules. I like that.

00:24:04
Speaker 2: I don't care what you say, like it does be Getting back to Arrested development. It just makes me think of like the Man and me right, yes, you know, like, yeah, Michael Jackson, of all people should not be singing a song called the Midnight.

00:24:18
Speaker 1: Midnight mat Yeah. Yeah. The next morning, this is temperament continuing. I woke up and I just said this word thriller. Something in my head just said, this is the title. You could visualize it on the top of the Billboard charts. You could see the merchandising for this one word. How it jumped off the page as thriller. So wait, I have a question. You did was Quincy assigning him to basically just write a title for the album, and then once he had thriller, he realized.

00:24:44
Speaker 2: That it fit the Starlight song I don't know. And to distract you, we're now going to listen to the Starlight demo. Oh I've never heard this. I'm excepting because I don't know. This is including on one of the massive Thriller box sets that came out, so it is up on all the streamers.

00:25:04
Speaker 1: Wow, that's that's there.

00:25:20
Speaker 7: The rubber bands pulling it back, that's in the case shot.

00:25:39
Speaker 8: Stunning name shut. It's always trying to pat it down.

00:25:50
Speaker 1: Now I'm leaving until until the chorus drops in.

00:25:56
Speaker 7: I want to hear him.

00:25:57
Speaker 1: Sorry, I can forget soon. I kind of like it better.

00:26:26
Speaker 2: Oh I don't like spooky things, so yeah, well it doesn't you know, it doesn't have uh, it doesn't have room.

00:26:34
Speaker 1: I'm not hearing Vincent Price monologue in there. That's still okay, fair. We're gonna take a quick break, but we'll be right back with more. Too much information in just a moment.

00:26:56
Speaker 2: I can't believe they put Thriller together in two months. He's the craziest thing, not the song, the whole album.

00:27:02
Speaker 1: How am was mixing? Was mixing well? Or get to mixing okay? Recorded by Bruce Swede Swedeen swydey Ian. His name is spelled s w e d i e n so tweet elis.

00:27:19
Speaker 2: If you were a loved one, know how to pronounce Bruce Swedian's name.

00:27:23
Speaker 1: Westlake Recording Studios in LA. Seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars was the budget, which in today dollars is nearly two point four million. The entire production team worked around the clock. On an interview with the BBC, Quincy Jones said they would carry the second engineers out on stretchers and the musicians too. Bruce and I would stay up for five days, five nights.

00:27:44
Speaker 2: The passion drives you and the cocaine yeah yeah, but the supernatural thing is real too. That was another thing for because Clive was so obsessed with making making Supernatural a hit. So they I think they were literally working in like twenty four hour shifts on this when Union rules said, like that guy has to stop mixing your duet with the guy from Everlast, And then another guy would come in the Union steward tapping his watch, Yeah, no more, ever Last, stop comping Everlast Vocals.

00:28:15
Speaker 1: The guy with the gurney comes in, haulsome out and puts him an ivy drip. He's like, I don't want to go back, Clive, please get back there and mix the guy from Everlast vocals.

00:28:27
Speaker 2: Cut me, Clive, cut me, cut me. I can't see Clive, I can't see you. Gotta cut me, guy. I hate Santana so much.

00:28:38
Speaker 1: This is a question, I mean, because you know a lot more about this stuff than I do. I have no concept of what a budget for a big name, a list musician album is, like like two point four million dollars today? Is that normal? For what would like, I don't know, Maroon five, Adele. I mean, it's definitely interesting. It's it's an interesting thing that's evolved at the cost of it has evolved. Like back in the day when you were doing this with musicians, a lot of those fees would be eaten up by just having people cycle in and play oh okay, everything right, because like Steely Dan the class example for Asia, when they were just like calling in every top session guitarist in LA and giving him a crack at one song solo and being like, Nope, that wasn't it.

00:29:27
Speaker 6: Uh.

00:29:28
Speaker 2: You know, those guys were all making scale union fee. And then you have engineers at least two probably more percession, a head engineer, a head you know producer. Nowadays that is all probably getting eaten up by like producers and programmers, like because everything is done so piecemeal. You would you know, have a guy who's doing sequencing and programming, and then you have like a lot of top people have their preferred vocal engineer. So you see the engineer lists nowadays are so long because it'll be like someone engineered the basic tracking and then someone came in and did Taylor Beyonce's vocal or whoever. As far as an average cost, I don't know. I feel like I've been interviewing you on this episode. Sorry, I just you know a lot more about this than I do. I mean, even just going back like the top Google results, Invincible supposedly is the most expensive record ever made, the last Michael or the sort of basically last Michael Jackson one. Yeah, yeah, at thirty and forty million.

00:30:32
Speaker 1: Jesus Christ. Yeah, I mean how much that was hush money?

00:30:37
Speaker 2: Well exactly, I mean, you know, the first out so this is again just going by Wikipedia. The first album to cost over a million was actually believed to be Tusk, and then it was Guns N' Roses Chinese Democracy, but that album took you know, fourteen years, fifteen years to make. Yeah, and one of the more recent ones is actually My beautiful, dark, twisted Fantasy by Kanye and that is I'm gonna go ahead and say due to just hourly studio costs getting all these different producers in there and having them hit their hourly. Because he's also on there for Jesus Watch the Throne is also on there. You know, it's a really surprised one.

00:31:16
Speaker 1: Ricky Martin that doesn't surprise me that era in music, and like the late nineties, I'm sure there were the producer on that. I'm sure there was some big name producer that I'm forgetting. Great question.

00:31:27
Speaker 2: Oh Desmond Child, Yeah, yeah, yeah, Emilio Estefon Yeah, and our boy Walter Fantasy, writer of All I Want for Christmas. Yes, that's funny. They put a lot of money behind that record. The Darkness is one way ticket to Helen Back is on here.

00:31:45
Speaker 1: That's so weird. I just reference The Darkness today, which I do maybe bi annually.

00:31:52
Speaker 2: It's interesting because it becomes a thing about like Hollywood accounting too, because it gets into promotional costs too, like when you budget. You know, again, Michael Jackson's History in nineteen ninety five is the most expensive marketing campaign ever supposedly, but you know, something like a Virgin is the other thing that's sponsored or cited in here had a two million campaign from Warner Brothers. But like recently ten years ago, Born This Way by Lady Gaga cost three million, but apparently that was sponsored by Amazon. So it does come become a really interesting case of accounting where it's like when do you consider the line cut off? Is like what the label paid. Is it the money that was paid for the studio musicians? Is it money that was paid for mixing and everything?

00:32:36
Speaker 1: So? Where were we talking about how much I hate Santana?

00:32:40
Speaker 3: Oh?

00:32:40
Speaker 2: Yeah, I wanted to know what your favorite song is? Supernatural is uh it's like a quick look here, deep.

00:32:50
Speaker 1: Cut, no hits you don't get I mean smooth? Is that someone Marie Marie on it? Yeah, and might have to go with that, Yeah, probably, but nothing nothing well. Compare with Game of Love written by Greg what's his name? The guy who wrote You Get What You Give by the New Radicals. Oh, Game of Love is incredible. I was thinking of damp.

00:33:17
Speaker 2: There's this songar on here with Dave Matthews, Love of My Life. Oh God, I hate Santana.

00:33:24
Speaker 1: All right, there's swid.

00:33:26
Speaker 2: Swedeen's parents gave him recording gear for his tenth birthday. By the age of fourteen, he wasn't only recording everyone anyone who wanted to swing by, he was also broadcasting his projects on the neighborhood radio station he set up himself. At nineteen, he was establishing his own commercial studio in Minneapolis, and by twenty one he was recording the Chicago Symphony Orchestra professionally for RCA Victor before moving on to Universal the following year. Quite a wunderkin.

00:33:52
Speaker 1: See, this is what I thought Ted Templeton would have had his background like that, kind of like started young and was just a virtuo so at writing pop.

00:34:00
Speaker 2: It's interesting because Swedeens has Swedeens has kind of a he's got a real mix of high and low culture. Like Michael's vocals on this album are recorded on the same model mic that you and I are both using.

00:34:14
Speaker 1: That's insane wo wow.

00:34:16
Speaker 2: In a full disclosure for podcasts set up, this is like a three hundred and fifty dollars mic as opposed to use like the probably staple for a lot of recordings around this time would have been Annoyman, which are like three thousand dollars two mics. So yeah, that's that's interesting. Do you think it was because he would just belt? Thank you, James Burrown. That's an interesting question.

00:34:43
Speaker 1: Some of what he did well, I mean some of the engineering that he did was actually uh to get the sound of Michael's dancing involved, because Michael would dance while he was moving, and so they talked about recording. Uh, well, he was recording me this is Yeah, it didn't start on this album, but it actually started on Bad, which I think Swedeen also engineered.

00:35:09
Speaker 2: But yeah, they would set him up on a drum riser and use a bunch of baffles around it so that his dancing and vocals wouldn't echo. But they would actually use a bunch of like different mics pointed around to get that sound as well as just one on his voice. But I mean they also had him do like on Billy Jean, the like I think it's the you think twice, like one of the backing vocals is him like singing through like a cardboard, like a gift tilepper tube. Yeah, gift wrapping tube because it was like long. There's another weird thing that people have always parsed in the liner notes. It has recorded and mixed by Bruce Swedeen using the ACU Sonic recording process, and everyone thought it was this like weird piece of outboard gear or like rack mounta gear that And believe me, there are extensive documentations of the rap gear that he used on this. If you want to know the exact compressors and e U used on this, you can find it, but no, this is actually like basically just like an overdub and sinking process without getting too much in the weeds. It's like a two step process. Basically, he would record the rhythm tracks and then lock the master tape away for those and never touch it again until it was time to do a final mix. So every subsequent overdub was done on like a scratch track, a temp track, a temp comp of all the rhythm tracks, so that when they went to do the final mixes, all the rhythm tracks wouldn't have been degraded by constant overdubs, which, as you remember from the Bohemian Rhapsody episode, you know, they literally overdubbed the tape into transparency, and so Bruce's whole thing was like, well, if you don't want that to happen, you need to keep the original tape as pristine as possible. The other part of it that he would that this ACU sonic thing entails is basically just the other part of the Bohemian Rhapsity thing that we talked about, where you just record a bunch of overdubs, mix them down into a sub mix, bounce that onto a smaller part of the tape and then you can just you he was recording on twenty four track, but there's way more than twenty four tracks on these because of that process.

00:37:08
Speaker 1: And then there's stuff about he.

00:37:10
Speaker 2: The way that he would like sync it up to keep track of all this stuff, but it's really not it's not like a single piece of gear or anything. Oh and yeah, if you see the drum set that he made for this to get like the isolation of the drum sounds is really funny because he basically like he took the kick drum apart and put like a cinderblock in it and like a furniture blanket, so it's this really diy kind of jury ragged looking thing. And then he would I think he enclosed or separated the snare and high hat with pieces of wood.

00:37:42
Speaker 1: Like.

00:37:42
Speaker 2: So he just made all this like custom carpenter style, like really literally built stuff to isolate all the drum sounds and get them as crisp as sounding as possible. And this went as far as building a ten inch drum riser because he knew that the low end vibrations from the kick drum and the low tom's could bleed into the walls and floor and affect the resonant frequencies of the room. So yeah, that guy's a nerd.

00:38:16
Speaker 1: But I'm sure that there wasn't It wasn't all electronic drums. I think I just sort of assumed they were drummer shans. I think it's a little early. I mean, there is Michael's credited with using the lin drum on this, which is like one of the first ones Roger Lyn's drum, and that's in particular for a lot of Prince stuff. But I think at this point in the eighties they would have been using it for like hits more than actual full tracks. Do you know that the lin drum is samples of the Tom Petty and the Heartbreaker's drummer? No really? Yeah, oh no, so i'vecked it up.

00:38:52
Speaker 2: Actually, the L one is mostly samples from Ronnie Wood's brother Art Wood, and then the clap sounds come from Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. So when you hear that early LM one, let's.

00:39:07
Speaker 1: See if I can find it actually that was.

00:39:14
Speaker 2: Is that that supposedly supposedly the Tom Petty.

00:39:18
Speaker 1: From the Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers sessions. Is that the sound that opens uptown Funk? Probably that little weasels. Oh, I like Mark Ronson, Yeah you would, Oh, I meant Bruno Mars. I have no quarrel with Mark Ronson. Oh yeah.

00:39:38
Speaker 2: So you know we've talked about this, this wild Prince Michael Jackson rivalry and multicaseted long, decades long thing. But one of the funniest influences on Thriller is specifically from Prince's nineteen ninety nine and let me backtrack a little bit. Filling out the ranks of the people who played on Thriller is a group of known Quincy Jones collaborators Greg Filling on synths, Rhoades, David Williams on guitar, guys Jerry Hay, Gary Grant, so close to Carry Grant, Larry Williams and Bill Reichenbach on various horns. Brian Banks, who also played since, told the Telegraph it was late in the evening one night, which is so.

00:40:17
Speaker 1: Close to Monster Mash. I don't know if he knew that he was doing that. It would have been.

00:40:21
Speaker 2: Amazing if in this interview Brian Banks was like, we were working in the lab late one night. So he said, it was late in the evening one night and we were working Quincy came to us. He wanted this huge chord sequence. He said, there's this sound I've got in my head. There's this underground this new artist that nobody's ever really heard of. But he's great, he's hot, he's got this great song. And he pulled out the album and it was nineteen ninety nine by Prince and so he says, you know that opening sound on nineteen ninety nine, that was the sound that he wanted, but bigger that Quincy Jones wanted for thriller. So let's take a listen to that. And there's a bit of non musical stuff that goes into the thriller as well, which we will now let's get into that before we get to uh, get into the rest of the song.

00:41:38
Speaker 1: Jordan take it away. Talking to music radar Bruce Swedeen, the engineer explained that the wolf howls were Rod Temperton's idea. He said, at the time, there was a Sherlock Holmes movie, The Hound of the Baskervilles, and they had this huge dog, a great Dane, and that did some howling, and of course I had that in my mind's ear, my mind's ear like that, I automatically thought of my great Dan, who I figured ought to be in show business. So I tried to get him to do those howls, and you know what, he never did it. We put him up in the barn at night to listen to the coyotes, and I had my tape machine ready to record him. He was a fantastic dog, two hundred pounds. His name was Max. But you know who it is doing those wolf howls. That's Michael Jackson. We had to get Michael to do it instead, but he did so great. There's some library stuff in there, but Michael did those lone wolf howls. I had no idea. That's that's very good. I'm also obliged to mention at this point that Brian Wilson of my beloved Beach Boys got his dogs Louis and Banana to bark in the studio for the end of Caroline No. On one of my favorite albums of all time, Pet Sounds. They were champs on like we was the guy's this putts yes, Get me the Dog from Pet Sounds.

00:42:53
Speaker 2: I don't care how much it costs Michael's underwritingness, Bring me the Dog.

00:43:00
Speaker 1: What are their names? Louis and Banana, bring me Louis and Banana put it on Quincy's bill. That was the most organic use of the cigar shopping executive that we've had in a long time. He's got to come for a while, but that was a good one. Bruce whote and continued. For the creaking doors, I went to Universal Studios in Hollywood, the movie lot and rented two or three sound effects doors and brought them to Westlake and spent a whole day auditioning these doors and Miking ma Hinge is real close. Got the eighties record industry, had more money than he knew what to do with. They spent the day checking out these doors. That was a real door. I recorded and I added it onto the track. Come to think of it, that might have been Michael doing those footsteps too. Actually, God, I love it. What a town. Sorry, anything he couldn't do.

00:43:56
Speaker 2: Lastly, we've got to talk about Vincent Price baby bisexual icon once taught Johnny Carson had a cook fish and a dishwasher.

00:44:06
Speaker 1: You could have made all of that up for all I know. They think they think he might have been bisexual. Well, I met more of the I was more referring to the cooking fish and a dishwasher. What's that about? Oh well, great question.

00:44:18
Speaker 2: Vincent Price was a big fan of a big cooking guy, and among his many culinary endeavors was simple, easy ways to cook. And when he was on Carson and he uh, pulling the clip up. Now, this might be the most clip rich episode we've ever done. Yeah, well, you know you gotta pull out Vincent doing the dishwasher.

00:44:40
Speaker 3: You put this in the oven.

00:44:41
Speaker 1: You don't put it in the oven?

00:44:42
Speaker 9: No you don't.

00:44:43
Speaker 3: Well, I'll tell you what you do.

00:44:44
Speaker 1: Put such distinctive voice. It is true the dishwasher.

00:44:49
Speaker 3: Absolutely, absolutely true. Now I give you my word that an hour before the show's we cooked exactly that meal in this dishwasher on the full cycle, mind you, on the boat cycle. The water and everything. Yeah, no rints, no rent, no, and no soap, but the drying and everything, the whole bit. Now here it all is. There are dishes and they're hot. Now they're hot, and we hope they're done. And I'm sure they are done because they've tried it and it was successful. And you'll take a look first at the why why do you use the dishwasher just to because it steams and it heats, and fish is one of the few things you couldn't do, you know, meat or anything, wipe that it. But fish cooks and only a very short time, and it really is kind of beautiful.

00:45:35
Speaker 1: Because it steams and it heats. That's incredible. That's a great household tip. That did not make it to TikTok yet. Yeah.

00:45:44
Speaker 2: Right, wait, do they get a load of Vincent Price's dishwashers?

00:45:47
Speaker 1: Salmon?

00:45:49
Speaker 3: Uh?

00:45:49
Speaker 2: Temperton said an interview included on the CD reissue of Thriller. I had always envisioned a talking section at the end, but I didn't really know what to do with it. It turns out that Quincy Jones' wife then wife.

00:45:59
Speaker 1: Wasn't he like seven wives?

00:46:01
Speaker 2: Yeah, Quincy John's wife of the moment, Peggy Lipton, at the time best known as Julie from The Mod Squad but now beloved as Norma from Twin Peaks, knew the legendary horror actor Vincent Price. Funnily enough, the twenty seventeen biography of Temperton, The Invisible Man by Jed Pittman, contended that Temperton's original choice for the voiceover was Elvira, Mistress of the dark, but her image was probably a little too sexy for a.

00:46:26
Speaker 1: Prudish little Mikey.

00:46:28
Speaker 2: Temperton later said the idea was that Price would just talk some horror talk like he would deliver in his famous roles. The night before our session, Quincy called and said, I'm a bit scared. Perhaps you better write something for him. So Temperton wrote one verse of that talking part while waiting for a taxi to the studio, and then two more verses during the ride. Vincent apparently recorded this in two takes. And hear a bit of studio banter from that recording session. And if you ever wanted to hear two men who sound like old women, here it is.

00:47:03
Speaker 1: Listen to this show, Okay, anytime you want. Hi, This is Michael Jackson.

00:47:13
Speaker 2: This is Vincent, so you can hear how his voice drives and doing the Vincent Price voice the thriller.

00:47:21
Speaker 1: Do we both say it? Say it together? It's in my ears.

00:47:27
Speaker 8: Anti.

00:47:33
Speaker 9: Hi, this is Michael Jackson and this is Vincent Price, inviting you to the Thriller. Darkness falls across the land, the midnight hour is close at hand.

00:47:49
Speaker 8: Creatures crawl in search of blood to terrorize yours neighborhood and whosoever shall be found without the soul for getting down incredible?

00:48:04
Speaker 1: Did he ryan blood with the hood?

00:48:06
Speaker 2: He sure did. He also said yawls, which is very funny. Yeah, tatter raise Yoel's neighborhood. Was there visuals with that or was it just the audio?

00:48:16
Speaker 3: Nah?

00:48:16
Speaker 2: He does A photoshopped image of Vincent Price holding Michael Jackson's head severed.

00:48:24
Speaker 1: Temperton elaborated to m Magazine. I told the driver to drive round back to the studio, and I raced in and told the secretary to photocopy what I've written, and was able to walk into the studio and calmly hand the copy to Vincent, who recorded it in two takes. He was just fantastic. Wow. So he didn't have that the night before and like prepped it. Man's prize. That's nuts. That's what you get making seventeen movies a year with Roger Corman. True. According to Sonic Fantasy, a documentary about engineer Bruce Swedeen, Vincent Price had never used headphones before and was star OpEd when he put him on to record and thriller blared out. Now I find that hard to believe. I mean, I don't know, man, I don't know what he did.

00:49:10
Speaker 2: He record a Calypso album like everybody else was doing in the sixties.

00:49:16
Speaker 1: I mean, maybe during his radio days or whatever.

00:49:18
Speaker 2: But like, well, I guess you're right, I guess I guess that doesn't seem to track because he was nominated for a Grammy No why for what his voice work in the nineteen fifty nine album Great American Speeches.

00:49:31
Speaker 1: Huh huh.

00:49:35
Speaker 2: He read on the War of eighteen twelve by Henry Clay the Crime against Kansas by Charles Sumner, for which he was nominated for a Grammy Award. Anyway, that's just what That's just what the documentary said, so sue me.

00:49:49
Speaker 1: But as you alluded to earlier, Vincent Price recorded more than what's heard on the final track of Thriller, and he only performed the monologue live on TV once, during an episode of The Tonight Show hosted by Joan Rivers. I guess she was the guest host back in nineteen eighty seven.

00:50:06
Speaker 2: Yeah, And he was offered a flat fee for his work on the track or a cut of the profits, and he chose poorly. The figure that I keep seeing is twenty grand, which not bad for a couple hours work. But you know when you later find out that this is the most the highest selling record of all time. It did indeed rankle Price after the song became a hit. John Landis, who directed the Thriller video, told the Telegraph Vincent called me about a year later and said, look, the kid made the most successful record of all time, and I made less than one thousand dollars. Michael won't take my calls. I'm very upset about it. Let me see if can do that in his voice.

00:50:43
Speaker 1: Vincent called me about a year later and he said, look, the kid made the most successful record of all time, and I made less than one thousand dollars. Michael won't take my calls. Very upset about it. It's very Stewie.

00:50:56
Speaker 2: Yeah, I didn't. Yeah, strike that in crisis. Price's daughter Victoria wrote a biography of her dad, and in it she wrote word eventually trickled back to Michael Jackson that my father was upset about the money. One day, I answered the door at my father's house to find three members of Jackson's entourage. They came bearing the gift, a letter of thanks from Jackson and a large frame containing a poster of the pop star and one gold and two platinum albums, all dedicated to Vincent.

00:51:25
Speaker 1: Post is not even autographed.

00:51:27
Speaker 2: Needless to say, this framed wal art, coming from one of the richest art people in the world, did not mollify Price. He attempted to get paid for the usage of his voice in the music video, but there was a clause in his contract about video rights that was buried in it, so he didn't get any further money from that either. And at that point, Victoria wrote, Vincent agitated to have the gold disc auctioned, with the proceeds to go to his gallery at East Los Angeles College. She continued in a truly stunning PostScript that when news of Jackson's multi million dollar settlement to one of his alleged victims was made public, Vincent Price quipped, all I can say is Michael Jackson, me and I didn't get paid for it.

00:52:11
Speaker 1: Stunning line reading there too. That's good.

00:52:16
Speaker 2: As you meditate on that, We'll be right back with more too much information after these messages, we will spare you from the torturous details of post production on thriller. But one illustrative antidote is that Bruce Swedeen did ninety one mixes of Billy Jean, ninety one separate mixes.

00:52:45
Speaker 1: Guess which one they used Number two. Also complicating matters was that they had actually too much music, which is an interesting archival or no, what's the word I want to use, old timey, antiquated, antiquated, an antiquated concern from God, I'm getting old, an antiquated.

00:53:12
Speaker 2: Concern from the vinyl pressing days. The more music that you have on a disc, the thinner the grooves have to be. And thinner grooves do not transmit lower frequencies as well. You need wide, deep grooves for that. And Quincy Jones, obviously thinking with the mind that this was going to be a hit pop dance record, wanted thinner, deeper grooves, so they actually had to cut stuff out of this. They cut down the intro to Billie Jean, and they cut a verse from the Lady in My Life.

00:53:39
Speaker 1: I didn't realize that. Wow, Yeah, a lot of there are problems on I think mixing some early Beatles singles where the bass when it went too low would cause the record to the needle to jump out of the grooves.

00:53:50
Speaker 2: I thought it was the distortion I thought it was when they made they pushed the distortion on those too much.

00:53:57
Speaker 1: I think it was both. Sometimes it was the lower base stuff things like Paperback Rider. But that's interested.

00:54:02
Speaker 2: That also plays into the sequencing that they would do on records from this era, where they would have your side one track one is your banger because that's going to have the deepest base response and everything, and then the crews get thinner as it goes towards the center. So that's why traditionally in these big classic rock albums, the end of both sides is like a smaller acoustic number or like something that doesn't have to be as hard I did.

00:54:27
Speaker 1: I just thought that was a show busy thing. Although I guess you're going to have an intermission like on the ending of a side or ending of an album. I guess that sounds like you want to end with something huge anyway. So that's interesting. Well, speaking of interesting things. Despite the heavy marketing push behind Thriller, the brain trust behind that push, which is Michael Jackson, his lawyer and very close advisor John Branca, and CBS Records chief Walter Yetnikoff and epic heead of promotion for Frank de Leo did not include plans for a third video, and certainly not a video of the title track, which wasn't even going to be released as a single. No Thriller was not going to be released as a single, to which I say, good, my sixth favorite track on the album.

00:55:11
Speaker 2: They should have made another video for the Girl as Mine.

00:55:14
Speaker 1: Yes, I focus more on Paul Walter. Yetnikoff, the head of CBS Records, told Vanity Fair, who wants a single about monsters? The prevailing thought seventeen billion Americans can't be wrong. Bobby Boris Pickett also this despite the fact that Jackson was batting a thousand at this point after the videos for Billy Jean and Beat It. Part of the success of those videos was yet Nakoff threatening to pull CBS and Columbia's acts from MTV's rotation unless they played Michael's videos. At the time, MTV had a no black Axe policy, which I'm sure was not written in such stark. I mean, I was an unreal in the rule. I would imagine.

00:56:01
Speaker 2: Yeah, you remember there's that clip of David Bowie pushing someone on air.

00:56:07
Speaker 1: Mark Goodman. He's a friend of mine. Now I like Mark Goodman. Wow, sucks to be him. I know I felt bad for him when I saw that clip resurface. Recently realized it was him. But yeah, MTV had this unspoken but strictly enforced no black acts policy at this time.

00:56:24
Speaker 2: Buzz Brindle, MTV's former director of music Programming, told Jet magazine in two thousand and six MTV was originally designed to be a rock music channel. It was difficult for MTV to find African American artist whose music fit the channel's format that leaned towards rock. Out the outset sounds like a weak excuse, although you know Les Garland, who isn't the Networked co founder also talked to Jet. He said, we just had nothing to pick from. Fifty percent of my time was spent in the early days of MTV convincing artists to make music videos and then convincing record labels to put up money to make those videos. That's interesting, I buy that. I'm sure like convincing people to spend money on music videos was an uphill battle.

00:57:07
Speaker 1: I could have sworn there was another famous example of somebody of a very famous artist. Maybe it was maybe it was Michael oh Rick James, not who I was thinking of. But yeah, Rick had.

00:57:18
Speaker 2: To battle Motown for money to make videos Forgive It to Me Baby and Super Freak. Actually funny enough, the director of those, Nick Saxton, did Can't Stop Till You Get Enough.

00:57:27
Speaker 1: Oh wow, that's a really groundbreaking video. But put the bubbles and stuff in the background. I guess it was green screens, but I'm sure at the time it was. Wow.

00:57:35
Speaker 2: This is actually really fascinating. This is on lit Hub by Raymond Hervey the Second. He basically along and short of this is that there was a Billboard Music Video conference held in New York and Gail Sparrow, who's a vice president of MTV, who you may remember from our Osborne's episode I Want to Say or cribs how that name rings a bell?

00:57:57
Speaker 1: Nuppy Baby got back. Yeah.

00:58:00
Speaker 2: So this guy, Raymond Hervey the Second, proposed that Rick James philed the artist slot on this panel, and he said the panel discussion was well attended. When it came time for Rick to speak, he started out on point, but within a few minutes went off script and pointedly attacked MTV's programming format for being discriminatory and racially biased. He took the exact stance we had told him to avoid, and his comments created a media firestorm contrary.

00:58:26
Speaker 1: To my vision.

00:58:28
Speaker 2: Ah yeah, this is an interesting side tangent that I did not know anything about. This made it as far as the La Times. Rick did an interview with The La Times. He accused MTV of being racist, Oh Rob Tannebaum and cred marks in I Want My MTV. The Uncensored Story of the Music Video Revolution said that MTV's lone black executive, Carolyn Baker, took credit for rejecting Rick's Super Freak video. She said, it was an MTV that turned down Super Freak.

00:58:58
Speaker 1: It was me.

00:58:59
Speaker 2: I turned it down, you know why, because there were half naked women in it, and it was a piece of crap. As a black woman, I did not want that representing my people as the first black video on MTV far out.

00:59:11
Speaker 1: Oh where were we? I think we were about to tell us about another factor in the thriller videos conception?

00:59:17
Speaker 2: Oh sure, well, another factor in the thriller videos conception was that in June nineteen eighty three, the album, after four months at number one on the Billboard two hundred chart, was bumped from the top slot by the Flash Dance soundtrack. It briefly crawled back atop the chart in July before him being bumped again by the Police's synchronicity. So the three remaining singles from the record want to be starting something released in May, Human Nature scheduled for July, and PYT Pretty Young Thing for September. We're not a pretty own thing. We're not expected to drive album sales as much as Billy Jean or beat It had, and were not pegged as good material for videos. But for the extremely competitive MJ, who was obsessed with beating his peers like Prince and Madonna and his constant yardstick by w she measured his own success the Beatles, this was cause for alarm. Walter Yetnikoff and Larry Stescil, Epic's West Coast marketing executive, told Vanity Fair that they started getting calls in the middle of the night from Michael Jackson.

01:00:13
Speaker 1: Walter the record, isn't it number one anymore? What are we going to do about it? Walter Yetnikoff recalled. He said, We're going to go to sleep and deal with it tomorrow. And it was Epic head of promotion Frank Delo who first mentioned the idea of making a third video and pressed Jackson to consider the album's title track, I work with people like that. That sucks.

01:00:36
Speaker 7: Somehow.

01:00:36
Speaker 1: Despite not really being a horror ficionado, Michael had seen an American Werewolf in London, John Landis's groundbreaking horror comedy that featured Oscar winning makeup SFX icon Rick Baker. I shouldn't take this. He's a hero. As you take this. I do love Rick Baker. What else do we talk about him? We talked about him in one episode The Thing? Yes, so John Landis. I also, did you know Blues Brothers killed some kids? Has a really fail son? Did he kill the kids?

01:01:06
Speaker 2: There was just a stunt man who died. I think it was both. Yeah, so that's the Twilight Zone movie. But you know he also did Blues Brothers, so got to break a few eggs.

01:01:21
Speaker 1: Landis told The Telegraph.

01:01:22
Speaker 2: Michael contacted me and asked me if I would make a video with him, and I said no actually because they were basically commercials, right, But he persisted and he said no, no, no, I really want to make it. So when I returned to La I called Rick Baker, who had done the makeup effects for American Werewolf, and said, Rick Michael Jackson wants to become a monster. It's funny because when Landis and Jackson met for the first time, Landis was talking to Vanity Fair. They did a great oral history of the video. John land has apparently teased Michael Jackson when he asked him about seeing American Werewolf in London.

01:01:51
Speaker 1: He said, Michael, what about the sex? And Jackson said, I closed my eyes.

01:01:57
Speaker 2: Another funny anecdote, according to Quincy Jones's autobiography, when they were recording thriller re Beat at one of them. In Quincy Jones's word, a healthy California girl walked by the front window of the studio there's one way mirror facing a street, and pulled her dress up over her head. She was wearing absolutely nothing underneath, and Michael Jackson ducked behind the mixing console so that he wouldn't look, while Quincy Jones and all the studio musicians augled. This this woman who for whatever reason just decided to flash a mirror.

01:02:28
Speaker 1: I guess, you know, I don't know.

01:02:29
Speaker 7: LA is weird.

01:02:33
Speaker 1: The funniest thing that my father has ever seen. And I hope it's this thing right now so that he can he can have a good laugh at this. It was I think it was out of Ripley's Believe it or Not Museum, and they had a mirror and they had like a plaque in front of it that was talking about like, you know, only one in ten people can like do the cloverly thing with their with their tongue, and like only one in four can like roll your tongue into like a tube that goes straight up and down, and only one in eight can do it to face into the left and right. And you're in front of this mirror and you're making all these like you're testing this out with your tongue and doing all these goofy things with your lips and everything. And then you go through the entire museum. It's like all one track and it takes like an hour to get through. At the very end, you just go there's a big window the sign over that says monkey House, and you realize that that mirror with the tongue stuff was a one way mirror, and you're just watching people just like making stupid faces in the in the window. And my dad thought that was the funniest thing you ever seen. A friend of the pod Big dig Tun, Yes, John Landis told Michael Jackson that he didn't want to direct a music video and instead wanted to think of the production as an actual short film shot on thirty five millimeter with multiple locations, a show stopping dance number as you wrote, and Ted Baker's makeup not Ted Baker, Rick Baker, Ted Baker does Baker, it's a clothing brand, It's a that's more my speed. And Landis's budget for the short film nine hundred thousand dollars or nearly two point nine million dollars today. Landis recalled that when Michael called CBS had Walter Yetnikoff with that figure after CBS had already dropped a quarter million dollars for Beat It Yetnikoff screamed so loudly that the director had to literally hold the phone away from his ear, a move I've only seen in cartoons. Really, steam coming off. I was gonna say this like air coming out of the phone, blowing Landis's hair to the side. When Landis hung up the phone, Jackson said, calmly, it's okay, I'll pay for It's okay, I'll pay for.

01:04:47
Speaker 2: My MJ's getting there. I'm gonna start calling you in the middle of the night. I need practice doing weird MJ monologues.

01:04:57
Speaker 1: Jordan, do you ever think do you believe in an afterlife? Okay, we'll talk in the moment, just thinking about you, or just do it like what else?

01:05:09
Speaker 2: I just do Werner Herzog monologues. Hang on, let me see where I can find my favorite one. This is Verner her monologue from A Burden of Dreams Less Blank documentary.

01:05:20
Speaker 1: Oh that's blank.

01:05:21
Speaker 3: Yeah.

01:05:21
Speaker 1: Yah. About the making of fitzcrado Kinski always says it's full of erotic elements, I don't see it so much erotic. I see it more full of obscenity. Nature here is vile and base. I wouldn't see anything erotical here. I see phonication and asphyxiation and choking and fighting. Of course, there's a lot of misery, but it is the same misery that is all around us. The trees here are in misery, and the birds are in misery. I don't think they sing, They just screech and pain. That goes on. Do the end of seven and he's having way once rote the world's a fine place and worth fine. I agree with the second part. I don't know why that was the one that came up with Oh what the hell are.

01:06:17
Speaker 3: Oh so?

01:06:17
Speaker 1: Land has hung up the phone. After being yelled at by the head of CBS for asking for a nine hundred thousand dollars budget, Michael Jackson said, calmly, I can't do it in his vace. It's okay, I'll pay for it. CBS ultimately spent another one hundred thousand dollars towards the video, which still left a huge shortfall, so they came up with a unique solution. They decided to film the behind the scenes on sixteen millimeter for a nearly forty five minute documentary called Making Michael Jackson's Thriller, which bundled with the Thriller video could be sold to cable for eight hour special What the video itself is thirteen fourteen minutes forty five minutes special He got four hour ray MTV agreed to pay two hundred and fifty thousand, and Showtime agreed to pay at three hundred thousand for the one hour package. Jackson would cover the assorted costs up front and be reimbursed by them. And then also Vestren came in, I don't know what Vestrin is and offered a distribute, making Michael Jackson's thriller as a twenty nine to ninety five sell through video on VHS and Beta Max, which was a pioneering deal of its kind. What is Vestan, Imagine it's just a distribution company. Yeah, something like that. Uh, you have another story from landis I do?

01:07:29
Speaker 2: I don't know how much he's full of shit, but he told the Telegraph that a part of the costs where that he insisted that this would be a union shoot, which most music videos at the time weren't, and that the team of dancers that he assembled be given two weeks to rehearse. So make of that what you will. The plot of the film is and Michael's sort of look is loosely based on I Was a teenage Werewolf, which is Michael Landin?

01:07:55
Speaker 1: Is it Michael Lane?

01:07:55
Speaker 3: Yeah?

01:07:56
Speaker 2: I think there's a nod to a boatload of other horror movies in there. And they needed a love interest for Jackson, and they landed on Ola Ray, a former Playboy playmate, which obviously caused some consternation from Jackson and has told Vanity Fair, I auditioned a lot of girls, and this girl, Ola Ray. First of all, she was crazy for Michael. She had such a great smile. I didn't know she was a playmate. I said, Michael, she's a playmate, but so what She's not a playmate in this Ola Ray and Michael Jackson got on well. She told Vanity Fair that she had a hilarious exchange with Jackson's makeup artist. Michael Jackson would watch her do her makeup and wanted to get tips from her for his makeup artist. He said, I have this shine on my nose that I can't get off. And then when Ray tried talking to Michael Jackson's makeup artist, that person responded to her, don't you know that how much powder I put on his nose, it's gonna shine? Do you know how many nose jobs he's had? And this is news to me.

01:08:53
Speaker 1: The pair even had something of a real life romance, or at least as close as you could get to it. With a heavily ammatized Michael Jackson on the set of the video. Ray described this to Vanity Fair thusly, I won't say that I have seen him in his birthday suit, but close enough kissing and puppy love makeout sessions and a little bit more than that.

01:09:15
Speaker 2: Gross she actually sounds really like down bad for Michael Jackson out a after years for this, Like she just talks about how head over heels she was for him. Everyone remarks on their chemistry, and there's a really heartbreaking quote in Vanity Fair where she's like, she says something to the effect of, like, I just wish I had been allowed in Michael's life more because I feel like I could have helped him.

01:09:40
Speaker 1: Oh wow, which is just so crushing. Yeah.

01:09:43
Speaker 2: She also appeared on Cheers and in Beverly Hills cop Too, but her only other notable music video was give Me the Night by George Benson, a single also written by Rod Temperton and produced by Quincy Jones. Isn't that funny? I love that connection. She and Jackson did not have a happy ending. She sued him in two thousand and nine for non payment of royalties, saying I got the fame from Thriller, but I didn't get the fortune.

01:10:08
Speaker 1: This was surely the worst thing to happen to Michael Jackson. In two thousand and nine, heyo, I want to say, hey.

01:10:15
Speaker 2: Oh boy, Jordan, let me just take this next juck Okay.

01:10:22
Speaker 1: Makeup artist Rick Baker told the Telegraph. I got a call from John Landis and he was like, you know who Michael Jackson is And I was like, yeah, kinda. He's the guy from the Jackson five, right, And he said, well, he's got the song called Thriller and he wants to do a short film. And I said, I didn't want to do it. It's not the most popular job being a makeup artist. It's like being a dentist in a way. They have to sit in a chair for hours while you work on them. It's uncomfortable. It's not something actors look forward to. Baker continued, You start with the casting of the actor's face than the latex the contact lenses. Michael's makeup started more as a werewolf and then became more like we made he elaborated on this, Rick Baker did to Vulture in twenty ten. We made him into more of a wear cat, which I didn't I wasn't aware it was a thing.

01:11:11
Speaker 2: I've always thought that was the weirdest thing where I'm like, you what, we.

01:11:18
Speaker 1: Made him into more of a wear cat just because I didn't want to do another were wolf. I guess because he'd just done on an American werewolf in London with John Landis. At first I was thinking it would be almost like a black panther thing, but I ended up putting a longer made of hair on Michael and bigger ears. You've also read that the wear cat approach was also because of Jack Wells, so they said, they said because of Michael's delicate features.

01:11:46
Speaker 2: And I didn't parse it any more than that. But there's obviously two ways that that phrasing could be interpreted, and I think one of them is that his nose was simply structurally too delicate to support the larger muzzle aesthetic that our fine features just I literally delicate nos. Okay, that's what I that's what. There's just a tinfoil hatchet on my end. But you know, I have my theories because it's a really dumb looking wear cat.

01:12:12
Speaker 1: Sorry, it's no bad looking. The zombie dancers were also subjected to a makeup routine. Michelle Simmons, one of the dancers, told the Telegraph, they took most of our teeth for the dancers that they put in our mouths. You put those in your mouth and now you can't close your mouth. And when you can't close your mouth, the saliva falls out too, and they just said, this is great. Let's just put some food color and die in there and make it really nasty looking. That was part of the deal. That's so cross it is. Another dancer, Lorraine Fields recalled, I remember at one point they got some dirt on the floor and stuck it on my face and said this looks good. Yeah.

01:12:50
Speaker 2: Baker said he was frustrated because ordinarily they would have done individual casts of every every dancer's face for it, and instead they weren't given that much time, and so they instance had just kind of made three like rough prosthetics that were kind of like a like small medium in large size, and then just slapped him on everyone. So Jackson's iconic wardrobe in the video was the work of Deborah Landis, John Lance's wife, who you will perhaps recall from Raiders of the Lost Arc Yeah long d Hollywood wardrobe designer. Since the video would be shot at night with a relatively subdued palette, she told Vanity Fair, I felt that red would really pop in front of the ghouls. Find that word so inherently comedic, you know, in front of the ghouls, And so she elected to make both his jacket and jeans red to make Jackson appear taller.

01:13:43
Speaker 1: The shoulders of that jacket gave him some virility, she told the Telegraph, praising the socked. The socks and shoes were his own. He took that directly from Fred Astaire, who always wore soft leather loafers.

01:13:55
Speaker 2: To dance in and socks. One of those jackets the Jackson wore four. The video was sold to a Texan gold trader named Milton Varren Thomas Pinchin ass name and character in twenty eleven for one point eight million.

01:14:11
Speaker 1: You gotta ask, I mean, do these people just like put that on? I mean, I can't imagine Texas gold trader with fitting the Michael Jackson's fill of jacket, but like you know, he puts it on and does the dance, I mean, like risky business style, just like sliding around the slipping room in the thriller jacket. Yes, I think I saw one of the like b thriller jackets in the in the hard Rock vault in Orlando that I tore it a bunch of years ago, which is one of the most real things I've ever done. It's like a BJ's Sam's Club sized warehouse in the Orlando ever Glades and you walk in and it's just you know, first of all, one of the entire walls is just completely filled with guitars. They go all the way up to the ceiling. It's gargantuan, and they just have rosebund rose, bun rose. It looks like prop warehouse. But it's just everything is like, oh, this is from the YouTube Pop Tour, This is from Lady Gago's Monster Ball. This is anything anything good. Though a lot of the good stuff I think was in more climate controlled stuff. I'm trying to give me a second. I don't care, no, no, I gotta eat dinner, keep going.

01:15:23
Speaker 2: I truly don't give a about the hard rock of old I think you need to understand that, my friend.

01:15:31
Speaker 1: The iconic choreography in the video came about in conjunction with beat It choreographer Michael Peters. Jackson said it was a delicate thing to work on. I remember my original approach was, how do you make zombies and monsters dance without it being comical? This is Michael talking to MTV News in nineteen ninety nine. So I said, we have to do just the right kind of movement so it doesn't become something that you laugh at, but it just has to take it to another level. I got in a room with choreographer Michael Peters, and he and I together kind of imagine how these zombies move by making faces in the mirror. Second reference to making faces and mirrors in this episode. I used to come to rehearsal sometimes with monster makeup on and I loved and I love doing that. So he and I collaborated and we both choreographed the piece, and I thought it should go into this jazzy kind of step, you know, kind of grewsome things like that. Michelle Simmons, one of the dancers, told The Telegraph that the rehearsals were held in Debbie Reynolds Dance studio in North Hollywood. That's amazing, speaking of buying stuff, one of the largest Hollywood memorabilia collections in history. That's true. Yeah.

01:16:37
Speaker 2: In the Making of Thriller, the making of video that accompanied this, Peters, the choreographer, Michael Peters, choreographer, talks about Jackson's physical facility with these steps. He said, Michael danced in front of eighteen professionals who spent their lives training to achieve what Jackson picked up in minutes, he said, purely on rhythm.

01:16:54
Speaker 1: He works.

01:16:55
Speaker 2: I give him the rhythm of a step and he does it. You say, this is the beat you know, don and he does. It's really wonderful to watch because it's an innate gift. He's a dancer in his soul. The thriller dance has become so beloved that you remember that when they were going around in the early web two point zero days, you know, I remember everyone's the remembers the guy the prison version of the Prison Thriller.

01:17:18
Speaker 1: Oh my god, I forgot about that. I haven't thought about that in years and then.

01:17:22
Speaker 2: But did you know that the world record for the most people doing the thriller dance at once was achieved by thirteen thousand, five hundred and ninety seven participants in Mexico City in August of two thousand and nine.

01:17:34
Speaker 1: I did not. I assume this was in tribute to the then recently departed King of pop. It was I'm just trying to set up The thriller.

01:17:50
Speaker 2: Shoots took place at the Palace Theater in downtown Los Angeles. The Zombie sequence at the junction of Union Pacific Avenue in South Calzona Street. And East Los Angeles and the final house scene at thirteen forty five Carrol Avenue in the Angelino Heights neighborhood of Echo Park. Marty Thomas, the video's props assistant, recalled the atmosphere around the shoot to the Telegraph. I remember we had to sign a non disclosure agreement not to tell anyone what we were filming, not to tell family or anything. What they would do is print up maps to the location and leave them around, but they were false locations. Some of it from the press would sneak on set and steal these maps, and they were just sort of locations of the shopping mall that's closed way way out in the valley.

01:18:25
Speaker 1: He continued. We couldn't believe this was sure just one music video. It was a small city.

01:18:30
Speaker 2: Everywhere we went there was a lot of police, a lot of security, and John Landis he would let people who made it there get pretty close, but behind a barrier. They had third and fourth and fifth assistant directors handling the crowd, which would be in numbers of two, three to four hundred who had figured out where to go or had heard from one of the film crew wherever there watching on the.

01:18:48
Speaker 1: Set filming, unfortunately, was occasionally marred by Jackson's eccentricities we'll call them. One telling detail in Vanity Fair's profile of the shoot had him showing up forty five minutes late to a makeup session, infuriating John Landis, the director, and returning from a bathroom break carrying his Boa constrictor called muscles in a pilow case, which he then proceeded to drape around the neck of a reporter. The shoot was also marked by a series of high profile visitors. We got Rock Hudson, Fred Astaire, which must have really made Michael happy. Jackie Kennedy O NASA's who would later edit Michael Jackson's Moonwalk autobiography. I didn't realize that although our Hollywood heavy in your parentheticals, pun intended visiting was Marlon Brando, who was giving Jackson acting advice. One day, when Landis chastised Jackson for flubbing his lines, Jackson said, Marlon told MA, can't do it. Marlon told me to always go for the truth, not the words. Other less fun visitors included Michael's parents, Joseph and Catherine Jackson, which caused a minor stir. Landis told Vanity Fair. Michael asked me to have Joe removed. He said, will you please ask my father to leave? So I go over to mister Jackson. Mister Jackson, I'm sorry, but can you please?

01:20:08
Speaker 7: Who are you?

01:20:09
Speaker 1: I'm John Landis, I'm directing this well, I'm Joe Jackson. I do what I please, I said, I'll have to ask security. It's a movie. If you don't leave now. John this told the magazine that he had a policeman escort at Joe Jackson off the set, which Jackson, through his lawyer, denied in the Peace Damn Oi.

01:20:30
Speaker 2: As the project moved out of shooting and began into the editing stage with a slated premier date at the Crest Theater in Westwood of November fourteenth, nineteen eighty three, Jackson's religious beliefs nearly derailed the entire thing when he called his lawyer, John Bronca and ordered him to destroy the negative of Thriller two weeks before the premiere.

01:20:52
Speaker 1: This is just for the making of video. This is funny.

01:20:54
Speaker 2: Landis added up all the footage that they shot and realized that they were at twenty six minutes rather than the half hour they were aiming for so he dug through Jackson's closet for the old eight millimeters home videos that you see in there to pad out the running time. Anyway, Michael Jackson had eventually divulged on the phone to Bronco that the Jehovah's Witnesses, and at this time Jackson was a devout practitioner. He would go door to door proselytizing as the religion demands, wearing a fake mustache. I'm not making that up anyway, that Jehovah's witness had gotten wind of Thriller in the Thriller video and told him that it promoted demonology and that they were going to excommunicate him. Bronco smartly got John Landis to remove the film canisters from the processing lab and lock them up in his office. Landis said that he heard from Jackson's security chief, Bill Bray, that the star had been in his room with the door locked for three days, refusing to come out. So he drove to Michael's Encino estate and with Bray kicked the door down. Michael said he hadn't eaten in three days, so after getting into the doctor, Landis said that Jackson apologized the following day for wanting to destroy the film, at which point Landis then had to explain to him that they had ignored those orders from the jump. Bronca eventually resorted to just lying to his client to preserve the work. He told Vanity Fair, I said, Mike, did you ever watch Bella Legosi in Dracula?

01:22:12
Speaker 1: He goes why?

01:22:13
Speaker 2: I said, do you know that he was a devout Christian? I was just making it up, And I said, did you ever notice there were like disclaimers on those movies? He goes, no, So, Michael, before we destroy this film, let's put a disclaimer on it, saying this does not reflect the personal convictions of Michael Jackson.

01:22:30
Speaker 1: Is that I'm there. I don't remember that. Oh yeah, narrator voice, they did. Yeah.

01:22:34
Speaker 2: The whole thing opens with due to my strong personal convictions, I state that this film does not endor let me find it? Why am I trying to paraphrase it? Due to my strong personal convictions. I wish to stress that this film in no way endorses a belief in the occult. That's just like the title card.

01:22:52
Speaker 1: Well that's settled. Thriller premiered at the five hundred seat Historic Crest theater, which I believe is the movie theater used in the video itself. Attended by the likes of Diana Ross, Warren Batty Prince and Eddie Murphy, John Landis warmed up the audience with a new print of a Mickey Mouse cartoon called the Band's Concert. For some reason, to need something to do with it, or just I can imagine Michael just being really pumped to see a Mickey Mouse cartoon. Yeah, and fourteen minutes later, after Thriller had been received with a rapturous standing ovation, Landis found himself stuck with what to do next until Eddie Murphy yelled out, show the damn thing again. Show the damn thing again. You could probably cut that. That's verging on the racist. That's pretty good. That was accurate, though. Thanks. The video premiered on MTV on December second, nineteen eighty three, and former MTV executive Les Garland told Vanity Fair the network settled on a saturation strategy, which he describes as every time we played Thriller, let's tell them when we're going to play it again. We played it three to five times a day. We were getting audience ratings ten times the usual when we popped Thriller. Showtime meanwhile aired, making Michael Jackson's Thriller six times that February. Within months, the Vestern release had sold a million copies, making at the time the biggest selling home video release ever. Sadly, like so many other things in Michael's life, Thriller was subsumed by the financial chaos of his fame. In January two thousand and nine, six months before his death, John Landis and co producer George Folsey, filed suit against Michael Jackson and his company, Optimum Productions for breach of contract, alleging that they had not been paid their fifty percent of royalties in many years and accusing Jackson of quote fraudulent, malicious, and oppressive conduct end quote.

01:24:46
Speaker 2: So this is good as time as any to get into the insane numbers that Thriller, the song, and the album put up. For context, it is important to understand that the American record industry was literally in the toilet before.

01:24:57
Speaker 1: This album came out. It was in its second slump in three years.

01:25:01
Speaker 2: Well, the United States was still in the middle of a deep recession. Unemployment was at a four decade high. I am just spitballing here. But I have to assume that the oil shortage played into this, well just for like making yeah, the actual vinyl. Yeah maybe you think maybe thanks for me? All right, I won't.

01:25:21
Speaker 1: Tell if you don't.

01:25:24
Speaker 2: Billboard reported that record shipments had declined by fifty million units between nineteen eighty nineteen eighty two. CBS staffers referred to August thirteenth, nineteen eighty two as Black Friday. Their vice president of merchandising told Reuters, we had a major layoff that day. Half the marketing department was let go at epic. Good come anyone that looks like them. It's a training day quote for you. Yeah, oh man, I should do what training day monologues are there?

01:25:57
Speaker 1: Ys? Michael Jacks, King Kran you gotta do the King Kong one?

01:26:04
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I would like to hear this.

01:26:09
Speaker 1: I think I think our fans would also. I think IDDS would also like to Oh you motherers, Okay, all right, I'm putting cases on all you bitches. You think you can do this, Jake, you think you can do this to me? You motherickers will be playing basketball on Pelican Bay when I get finished with you. Shoe Program twenty three hour lockdown. I'm the man up in this piece. Do you think you're sicking with I'm the police. I run around here. You just live here. Yeah, that's right. You better walk away. Go on and walk away because I'm gonna burn this mother for down. King Kong ain't got you on me, That's right, I don't. I'm winning anyway. I'm winning an motherfucking way. I can't lose. Yeah, you can shoot me, but you can't kill me. Thank you, probably Instentiam Bernard hung Well. Originally, the label Epic planned for a Christmas nineteen eighty two release for Thriller, but then they were going to push it to January nineteen eighty three as Jones and Jackson continued to fiddle with it. But the album leaked to radio and stations began playing multiple cuts, forcing the label to release Thriller on November thirtieth, nineteen eighty two. The first single, the Girl Was Mine. Of course, they went with the Girl as Mine. It's got Paul McCartney on. It went to number two, and then the label made the decision to go for broke and release Beat It. While Billy Gan was also still climbing the charts. Real Flex Yeah, When the Thriller video came out, sales reduced again. Epic was shipping one million copies a week, with thirty two million copies sold worldwide. By the end of nineteen eighty three, Thriller became the best selling album of all time and was ratified by the Guinness Book of World Records on February seventh, nineteen eighty four. I wonder how much that pissed off Paul McCartney, because that is the twentieth anniversary of the Beatles' arrival in the United States. It was the best selling album of nineteen eighty three worldwide, and in nineteen eighty four it became the first album to become the best selling in the United States for two years in a row. As of May twenty twenty two, Billboard put its global sales at over one hundred million copies, though you've seen figures closer to seventy million.

01:28:41
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm always interested in sales figures for this kind of stuff. I don't know how people exactly certify it.

01:28:46
Speaker 1: And then especially when you get into nowadays, when it's like how many streams count towards a sale or whatever, So, but you know, it's still in the top.

01:28:54
Speaker 2: It's kept from the top slot by their greatest hits, by the fucking Eagles.

01:29:01
Speaker 1: It also pulled in eight Grammys, with seven for Jackson and one for Bruce I forgot how to say it already, Sweideen Sweet Sweets.

01:29:09
Speaker 3: And.

01:29:12
Speaker 1: Michael Jackson's incredibly high royalty rate two dollars per album helped him become ludicrously wealthy. So let's think about that. Thirty two million copies sold worldwide at the end of nineteen eighty three, two dollars an album. So that's sixty four million on record sales alone. Good god, let's see me. Let's just go for the inflation calculator. I'm gonna say six sixty four million turns into one hundred and ten million, as my guess, all right, was this eighty four you said?

01:29:39
Speaker 2: Yeah, one hundred and eighty nine almost one hundred and eighty nine point six million dollars christ.

01:29:46
Speaker 1: Not counting tours, not counting singles sales, YEP, radio play man, that's just know it's I mean, that's it. That's the top of the mountain. That's that's exactly it.

01:29:57
Speaker 2: And it's it's so funny because this album, I mean, obviously what do you do? But it did become something of the albatross around Jackson's neck, and he fully expected it, perhaps in the depths of his delusion, that this would just be a stepping stone onto bigger and better things. I think there's a quote it's from one of his team at some point where they're like, well, you know, Michael, how do you how do you feel? And he's like, well, the next one's going to be bigger. Like I think he expected Bad to sell like or no, you know what it was.

01:30:25
Speaker 1: It was he was disappointed when Bad came out and sold twenty million because he thought it was going to sell better than Thriller. But yeah, man, I mean it's just like, yeah, where do you go from the top of the world. You go on a post nine to eleven road trip with Elizabeth Taylor and maybe hang out in your private zoo.

01:30:46
Speaker 2: Was that Elizabeth Taylor nine to eleven thing disproved that actually happened?

01:30:49
Speaker 1: I think it was disproved. Yeah, bummers, Michael Jackson, Elizabeth Taylor, and Mylon Branda. That was someone weirder. For those of you who have no idea what we're talking about, there's a a I'll call on been legend that on nine to eleven, Elizabeth Taylor, Michael Jackson, and somebody else. I thought it was Marlon Brando. Was Marlon Brando? You okay, fled New York City in a rental car. I don't think they even had a driver. I think they in the story they all took turns driving.

01:31:16
Speaker 2: And this disproved disproved by Tim Mendelson, trustee of Elizabeth Taylor's estate.

01:31:22
Speaker 1: I think Liz Leonard wrote that. Liz McNeil wrote that, yeah, you know what people call it, bomber. Well, I have a question for you about Thriller before we end did it end up? Did it end up in the Library of Congress? It sure did, Thank god, thank god. It truly is the top of the mountain. Yeah.

01:31:45
Speaker 2: I mean again, it's like we were saying at the top of the episode, like Thriller Man. Nancy Griffin writes in Vanity Fair, it just feels like not just a high water mark for music, but culture period. She wrote, Thriller seems like the last time everyone on the planet got excited at the same time by the same thing. No matter where you went in the world, they were playing those songs. You could dance to them. Since then, the fragmentation of pop culture has destroyed our sense of collective exhilaration and I miss that. Well, folks, this has been too much information. Thank you for listening, Thank you for hanging tough with us.

01:32:26
Speaker 1: I'm Halloween on Halloween, I'm out Tigel, and I'm Jordan run Tug. We'll catch you next time. Well, folks, after we stopped recording, Heigel delivered us a little treat. Thankfully I had a backup recorder going, so please enjoy. You know what you look like to me, with your good bag and your cheap shoes. You look like a rube, a well scrubbed, hustling rube with a little taste. Good nutrition's given you some length of bone. But you're no more than one generation from poor white trash. Are you agent starling accent? You've tried so desperately to shed pure West Virginia? What is your father, dear? Is he a coal miner? Does he stink of the lamp? You know how quickly the boys found you, all those tds, sticky fumblings in the back seats of cars, while you could only dream of getting out, getting anywhere, getting all the way to the FB I Too Much Information was a production of iHeart Radio. The show's executive producers are Noel Brown and Jordan Runtog. The show's supervising producer is Michael Alder June. The show was researched, written and hosted by Jordan Runtog and Alex Heigel, with original music by Seth Applebaum and the Ghost Funk Orchestra. If you like what you heard, please subscribe and leave us a review. For more podcasts on iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Expect Mom and