Quincy Jones on the making of Thriller

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Maybe it was Michael Jackson’s recent announcement that he planned to perform 50 concerts at the O2 arena in London, but for some reason his collaborations with Quincy Jones Off the Wall (1979), Thriller (1982), Bad (1987) had been heavy on my mind. If ever he was desperate to make a comeback - as critics were suggesting the scheduled string of concerts proved - all MJ really needed to do was head back to the studio with Q one last time and do it again.-

Not to take anything from the other producers he worked with post-Thriller - such as Teddy Riley who oversaw production on Dangerous (1991), or Rodney Jerkins who contributed significant production to Invincible (2001) - but when you look at MJ’s solo discography nothing stacks up to the Quincy Jones years. They made magic together.-

In the following excerpt from his 2001 autobiography published by Doubleday, Jones talks about some of the collaborators who made Thriller the greatest selling album of all-time and reveals how he came to call Michael Jackson “Smelly.”-

The making of Thriller in a little more than two months was like riding a rocket. Everything about it was done at hyperspeed. Rod Temperton, who also co-wrote several of the album’s songs, and I listened to nearly 600 songs before picking out a dozen we liked. Rod would then submit to me about thirty-three of his own songs on totally complete demos with bass lines, counter lines, and all, recorded on the Temperton high-tech system of bouncing the sound of two cassette recordings between ghetto blasters, and ten to twenty-five alternate titles for each song, with the beginnings of lyric schemes. He was absolutely the best to work with-always totally prepared, not one drop of b.s. We have always kept it very real with each other, exchanging strong opinions and comments without ever “throwing a wobbly”-British slang for “losing it.” He’s the kind of warrior you want at your side on the battlefield.-

Michael was also writing music like a machine. He could really crank it up. In the time I worked with him he wrote three of the songs on Off the Wall, four on Thriller, and six on Bad. At this point on Thriller I’d been bugging him for months to write a Michael Jackson version of “My Sharona.” One day I went to his house and said, “Smelly, give it up. The train is leaving the station.” He said, “Quincy, I got this thing I want you to hear, but it’s not finished yet. I don’t have any vocals on it.”-

I called Michael “Smelly” because when he liked a piece of music or a certain beat, instead of calling it funky, he’d call it “smelly jelly.” When it was really good, he’d say, “That’s some smelly jelly.” I said, “Smelly, it’s getting late. Let’s do it.”-

I took him to the studio inside his house. He called his engineer and we stacked the vocals on then and there. Michael sang his heart out. The song was “Beat It.”