Some artists transcend seemingly all barriers to become known by so many people of so many walks of life. I mean, who hasn’t heard of Smash Mouth? Oh yeah, Michael Jackson was awesome back in the day, too!
Matt wrote a Morning Dump, and mentioned that he was listening to Michael Jackson classic ‘Beat It.’ FormerTXJeepGuy:
I still can’t believe Michael Jackson wrote a parody song of Weird Al’s Eat It.
Hoser68:
What I’m listening to.
Ironically, I was just listening to a cool story about Beat It.
Quincy Jones wanted a guitar solo for the song and asked Eddie Van Halen. Van Halen’s policy was that no band members did anything outside of the band, but Eddie was alone and figured why not? 20 minutes or so out of his time to record a solo.
Eddie did the solo for free, no acclaim, no royalties, no nothing. However, as he messed with the solo, he decided to do a key change in the middle of the solo. They recorded the solo, adjusted the track for the key change. MJ was a famous perfectionist and didn’t like people changing stuff that he had approved. However, as he heard the solo and the key change, he instantly approved.
Anyone from the era that heard the song absolutely knew that that guitar riff was not from MJ’s regular crew. Anyone that knew Van Halen knew exactly who was the guitarist. However, Eddie’s name isn’t on the record, Eddie didn’t get any money from it or anything. He just did it for fun.
Jack Trade told the same story!
Call me a heretic, but for me, the best part of Beat It is Eddie Van Halen’s righteous guitar solo.
Apparently, he actually made changes to what Jackson had in mind, and was worried Jackson would be furious; instead, Jackson loved it and thanked him for making the song better. Jackson was a complex guy with a lot of unsavoriness, but I love that tale for his recognizing craftsmanship for what it was.
ESO:
Steve Lukather from Toto plays all the rest of guitar on the track, including the bass.
He originally laid down a killer solo for it as well, but Quincy could tell that it was going to be huge hit and would be even bigger as a massive crossover hit if he could get the most famous and popular rock guitar player on the planet at that time to put his own solo in there instead of Lukather’s, who despite his incredible talent and achievements has never been really well known by his name alone.
He wasn’t wrong, and Lukather wasn’t mad. He and EVH were great, close friends.
Literally, everybody won on that that deal. Quincy really was a fucking genius.
Sid Bridge:
As a bass player, I highly recommend introducing your daughter to Billie Jean, which has one of the greatest bass lines of all time… in spite of the fact that it wasn’t actually played on a bass. Easy one of my favorite ones to jam.
These readers aren’t lying, Eddie Van Halen really did do the solo for free without any credit!
Antti wrote about Natalie Imbruglia’s Mercedes. Mechjaz:
All the fluid’s changed.
This is how shifts feel.
I am cold and I am shamed.
I think it is the heater core.
Ignition never changed.
Tires never squealed.
I’m wide awake and I can see.
That there never was much torque.
You’re a little late.
Headliner’s already torn.
Have a great evening, everyone!
Top graphic image: Screenshot: YouTube/Michael Jackson
I’m so old that when you say “early Michael Jackson”, my mind goes to such toetappers as “Stop! The Love You Save”, “ABC”, and “I’ll Be There”
But do you remember Foster Sylvers, is my question
Antti, that was a masterpiece.
Lukather is also responsible for making that EVH solo work with the rest of the track once they got it back.
I heard or read somewhere him recounting that they sent Eddie a slave reel that either didn’t have SMPTE or the key change was achieved with varispeed, so it had to be “flown” back on to the multitrack “wild” (line ’em up and let it rip!)
Lukather had to do a LOT of deft work to make it all fit together and maintain the pocket. I’m not good at playing and counting, but if I were, I would probably be able to explain the time signature shifting that happens to make it all work.
Film scores are similarly bonkers because they’re composed to picture – sometimes the timing has to do whacky stuff to make the hits land.
Yeah. Suddenly the click track in your ear starts having an aneurism and you get this single 3/16 bar out of nowhere, the notation is jacked but it ends up sounding fine on the other end. Took one job and said, no… not for me.
Lukather is an extremely talented and skilled musician.
He’s also one of the most disgusting sexist assholes I’ve ever seen on stage. I walked out of his set because of how he was treating his bass player, and older+newer interviews confirm he has some issues that could use a little introspection.
Yeah – I have been disappointed by so many of my favorite artists
I’ve found that most really talented and successful artists are simultaneously deeply flawed in other aspects of their lives, aside from the art they create.
For me, I’ve always tried my best to separate the art from the artist and enjoy the art for the happiness that I derive from it, regardless of the flaws and sins of the individual behind it.
I do admit that I’m not always able to do that, and I know others are the same as me in that regard.
My take is, “All artists are crazy; only some of them get caught at it.”
I can and often do appreciate the art of the ones that got caught.
It also means that I don’t have to spend any of my money reinforcing their negative behavior.
I have a variation on this. I think anyone that performs for a living is crazy. However, if they can play an bad, evil, naughty character, they tend to be more stable since this persona seems to allow them to vent the crazy into a character.
For this example, EVH sort of a Dennis the menace character on stage. Well, assuming that Dennis had found out about booze and girls. However, from what I can tell, he seemed to have a pretty stable life off-stage considering the mega fame he had. While MJ was the perfect good little kid in the 70s that was the star of stage and movies and music videos and never lost that “little boy” persona, even when he got older and the weird and creepy started leaking out of his private life.
Yep same
The difference between a good group and a great group is many times more to do with ACTING then performance. Especially in the 80s with the importance of music videos, but even to this day, image is as or more important than actual performance most of the time.
In movies, there’s almost a given that a person that plays a villain regularly is generally a nice person behind the scenes, but some of the biggest messes off set are the ones that play heroes regularly.
It sort of feels this way with MJ and EVH. MJ had this squeaky clean image, especially back then. The idea of him being a gangster and acting tough in the video for Beat It was fun and funny to most of us. The same words on a song by a band with a reputation for being actual thugs would have had a completely different vibe. However, behind the scenes, MJ’s life was a trainwreck, with an abusive father and what had to be mental illness and the like. Meanwhile, Van Halen had an image of being a group of 13 year old boys that had just discovered booze and boobs (played to with Hot for Teacher). It wasn’t until much later, when I saw EVH interviews did I realize that behind that act was a serious musician that was a bit of an introvert. From what I can tell, behind the scenes, Van Halen was much more stable than MJ.
EVH and his brother AVH were also piano prodigies in their youth, coming in first and second in most of the competitions they entered.
There is a great interview with him at a college (I think) on youtube.
Also, “Eat It” was a great video, especially when the guitarist blows up after his solo.
In many respects, Weird Al’s band is the best cover band in the history of cover bands. However, they cheat sometimes. Eat it was Rick Derringer instead of Jim “Kimo” West. Rick was a hired gun for a lot of songs of the era.
One of my favorite Weird Al videos is actually this one. If you don’t know the song, it’s Craigslist, which sounds like a Door’s Parody, but is actually an original song in the style of the Doors. Someone Al got the original keyboardist of the Doors (Ray Manzarek) to do the keyboards. In the Video below, you can see that Ray didn’t have music, he just had Al telling him when the changes were coming. The video feels like that this same process likely happened in decades before with the Doors.
https://youtu.be/Ra5x88C0yQY
I’m (obviously) a huge fan of Lukather as an artist and have been able to see him play live dozens of times since 1980, from tiny clubs to super stadiums and everything in between.
I’m fortunate that I’ve never witnessed what you did, as it would have definitely taken my regard for him down several notches.
I’ve interacted with him a number of times away from the performance stage and found him to be generally personable and very funny.
The caveat to that is the majority of those interactions were a long time ago and he and I were both heavy alcohol users during those times. Looking back now, I do find some of what was said and done back then very cringy, as a lot of people do when looking back on their past. What seemed funny back then can seem crude and embarrassing now.
Different times back then, different codes of conduct, a little revisionist history now, I dunno.
I would hope that he has personally grown and evolved in positive ways like I have since then, but that’s his life to live.
My wife and I saw him perform just a few weeks ago and he was as always,
a brilliant player, and thankfully not offensive in any way (at least to me).
YMMV, I guess…
The specific incident: his band included Tal Wilkenfeld on bass. She was 21 or 22 at the time. Most of his stage banter was things like “come on, how many of you wouldn’t want to have sex with her?”
(That’s a verbatim quote. I’m not going to forget it)
I was afraid she was to whom you were referring, I remember her playing with him for a short while, years ago.
Yeah, so not cool. It never really would have been, but it would have been more tolerated in earlier times, things were different way back when, but this was much more recent and as disgusting as you describe.
His onstage “humor” has always been juvenile and crude to a point, but when I was younger and juvenile and crude myself, I absolutely loved it and believed everyone else did too. I came to shudder when he was still doing it years later, even though he appears to have toned it WAY down in recent years.
I’m sad to hear that, and when I see him now, it’s really only to hear him play and I really don’t wish for him to open his mouth, but to sing.
That onstage banter that I used to find so entertaining has long lost it’s allure to me and I’m also very much aware now that nobody else in today’s world wants to hear it either, especially when it’s publicly demeaning to a young woman. 🙁
If you and I could do what Lukather has done, we wouldn’t be here writing about him, different people would be here writing about US!