Authors: Steve Knopper
“He knew what he wanted”
: Hey interview.
“Dit dit dit dit!,”
“No, it’s not gonna go,” and “Billie Jean” bass description
: Author interview with Louis Johnson (not to be mistaken with the choreographer for
The Wiz
).
“The girl in the song is a composite”
: Michael Jackson,
Moonwalk
, p. 191.
“There was a story”
: Author interview with Ndugu Chancler.
Theresa Gonsalves claim
: Author interview with Theresa Gonsalves.
“He knew how to make”
: Forger interview.
“Two records per household”
: Ray interview.
“Hey, Quincy’s guy” and
“Human Nature” story
: Author interview with Steve Porcaro.
“What’s that sound?” and drum packaging
: Author interview with Bruce Swedien.
“In its day”
: Author interview with Brian Banks.
Van Halen’s version
: George and Rowland, “Michael Jackson’s Perfect Universe,” p. 54.
“Me and [drummer] Jeff Porcaro” and “It’s too much”
: Lukather interview.
Golden Bird, food details and “Bawk, bawk!”
: Ray interview.
“There were always good meat/carnivore jokes”
: Chancler interview.
“We thought at one point”
: Gail Mitchell, “How Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller’ Changed the Music Business,”
billboard.com
, July 3, 2009.
“
I’d always envisioned this talking section”
: Peter Lyle, “Monster smash,”
The Telegraph,
November 25, 2007, Seven supplement, pp. 12–19.
Vincent Price story
: Temperton interview, “Rod Temperton: The Invisible Man.”
“Black Friday” and
Thriller
deadline concerns
: Mitchell, “How Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller’ Changed the Music Business.”
Champagne bottles
: Jones,
Q
, pp. 238–39.
“It was a disaster”
: Ibid.
“Oh my God,” champagne, and bad feeling
: Author interview with Larkin Arnold.
“You need big, fat grooves,” “unreleasable,” and “Smelly finally agreed”
: Jones,
Q
, pp. 238–39.
“I’m not exactly sure,” pumping up kick drum, and “There’s more depth”
: Author interview with Bernie Grundman.
KDAY and “You’ve got to take it off!”
: Author interview with Jon Badeaux.
“It was so electrifying”
: Author interview with Elroy Smith.
Analysis of race and post-disco radio, including top-ten singles
: Steve Greenberg, “Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller’ at 30: How One Album Changed the World,”
billboard.com
, November 29, 2012.
“It wasn’t any less racist”
: Author interview with T. C. Thompkins.
Delicatessen meeting, Arnold’s agreement, and “This was an attempt”
: Author interview with Larkin Arnold.
“I had this idea”
: Author interview with Frank DiLeo, for Steve Knopper,
Appetite for Self-Destruction: The Spectacular Crash of the Record Industry in the Digital Age
(New York: Free Press/Simon & Schuster, 2009).
“What are you doing?”
: Author interview with Fred Jacobs.
Album-oriented rock, “Historically, the Michael Jackson sound,” and “Can you play it again?”
: Author interview with Lee Abrams.
$50,000 budget, “Billie Jean” video details, and “He burst into this incredible movement”
: Author interview with Steve Barron. MJ put the budget at $250,000, in
Moonwalk
(New York: Harmony Books, 1988).
“Taking black people back” and MTV’s attitude toward videos by black artists
: Robert Sam Anson, “Birth of an MTV Nation,”
Vanity Fair,
November 2000, p. 72.
“He called up Bob Pittman”
: Author interview with Ron McCarrell.
“People ask me”
: Author interview with Les Garland.
“If key CBS executives are lying”
: Rob Tannenbaum and Craig Marks,
I Want My MTV: The Uncensored Story of the Music Video Revolution
(New York: Penguin, 2012), p. 143.
“He broke the boundaries”
: Author interview with will.i.am.
“Look, here’s what we’re looking to do”
: Weisner interview for Knopper,
Appetite for Self-Destruction
.
“Smacking each other around”
: Tannenbaum and Marks,
I Want My MTV
, pp. 150–51.
“These people switched”
: Author interview with Popin Pete.
Michael Peters background
: Daniel Chu and Barbara Rowes, “Michael Peters Is the Hot New Choreographer Who Makes Dancers Out of Video’s Rock Stars,”
People,
June 25, 1984, p. 119.
“I worked with him totally”
: Michael Peters interview,
Great Performances: Everybody Dance Now
(PBS, October 2, 1991).
Real switchblade and “That’s illegal”
: Tannenbaum and Marks,
I Want My MTV
, p. 151.
“Most of the gangbangers”
: Pete interview.
“Back when MTV was in its music-video heyday”
: Author interview with “Weird Al” Yankovic.
“As you back up”
: Chu and Rowe, “Michael Peters Is the Hot New Choreographer,” p. 119.
De Passe negotiations with Ross and Gordy begging
: Gerald Posner,
Motown: Music, Money, Sex, and Power
(New York: Random House, 2002), pp. 304, 306.
“Nobody’s asked my brothers,” Gordy asking MJ to do “Billie Jean,” “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” “because they’ll never get the groove,” and lip-synching
: Author interview with Suzee Ikeda.
“Nobody else worked with him”
: Ibid.
Bill Bailey and Mr. Bojangles
: “Michael Jackson’s Origins of the Moonwalk,”
youtube.com/watch?v=xH7VymwHLmo
.
Influence of Marceau and mime via Shields and Yarnell, Boogaloo Sam, Electric Boogaloos
: Author interview with Toni Basil.
Damita Jo Freeman’s claim
: Author interview with Damita Jo Freeman.
MJ tracking down Cooley and Casper, “Where did it come from?,” “I can’t feel it!,” and “I understood that”
: Author interview with Cooley Jaxson.
“A break-dance step”
: Michael Jackson,
Moonwalk
, p. 210.
“We kind of ended up”
: Jaxson interview.
“I’m sure he was doing the moonwalk”
: Katherine Jackson testimony,
Katherine Jackson, et al., vs. AEG Live, et al.,
California Superior Court, July 19, 2013. For this case, the court does not provide original transcripts, attorneys on both sides refused to make them available, and a professional service, Alliance Court Reporters, did not to respond to repeated inquiries. I went with the transcripts posted by MJ fans, publicly available at
scribd.com
. A
Los Angeles Times
reporter who covered the trial told me: “I did find the transcripts the fans posted to be accurate. The only place they could have gotten them was from the court reporter.” I attended a small portion of the trial and the transcripts match my notes.
“I pretty much stood there”
: Michael Jackson,
Moonwalk
, p. 209.
Ross, Courvoisier and stomach flu
: Posner,
Motown
, p. 306.
“Now what
Adams Ant
had to do with Motown”
: Author interview with Valerie Simpson.
Adam Ant, Motown, brocade jacket and “How the fuck do you follow that?”
: Author interview with Adam Ant.
MJ’s live microphone during
Motown 25: Author interview with Rus Terrana.
Black jacket borrowed from Katherine
: Katherine Jackson testimony,
Katherine Jackson vs. AEG,
July 19, 2013.
Other costume details, including 1,200 rhinestones
: Posner,
Motown
, p. 307.
Speech by Buz Kohan
: Author interview with Buz Kohan.
“He must have made me rehearse”
: Author interview with Nelson P. Hayes.
“My crew just went”
: Terrana interview.
“
When everybody ran up”
: Simpson interview.
Fred Astaire call
: Michael Jackson,
Moonwalk
, p. 213.
“Oh, come on”
: Author interview with Seth Riggs.
“You’re a hell of a mover” and “It was the greatest compliment”
: Michael Jackson,
Moonwalk
, p. 213.
“Our sales just exploded”
: McCarrell interview.
twenty-two million copies
: Bob Cannon, “A Giant Step for Jackson: Michael Jackson moonwalks—the music icon seized the pop culture moment in March 1983,”
Entertainment Weekly,
March 25, 1994, p. 68. Bill Wyman of
The New Yorker
has challenged the widely used 100 million number with regard to
Thriller
worldwide sales; Ron McCarrell, Epic’s head of marketing from 1979 to 1987, tells me, “My gut feeling on that is 100 million is a pretty aggressive number. If somebody said to me 50 to 70 million, I could buy into that.”
“The
Thriller
phenomenon”
: Author interview with John Branca.
MJ swung the ax and 2 million
: J. Randy Taraborrelli,
Michael Jackson: The Magic, The Madness, The Whole Story 1958–2009
(New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2009), p. 250
Weisner received letter from attorney
: Author interview with Ron Weisner.
expired contract, “There are a lot of leeches,”
and “I don’t know what would make”
: Paul Grein, “Who Guides Jackson’s Career: Singer’s Father, Management Team in Power Struggle,”
Billboard,
June 25, 1983, p. 3.
DiLeo background
: DiLeo interview for Knopper,
Appetite for Self-Destruction
.
DiLeo singing “Born to Run”
:
People,
May 9, 1988, pp. 42–43.
Beverly Hills Hotel and “Gee, Michael”
: DiLeo interview for Knopper,
Appetite for Self-Destruction
.
“Blocking back”
: Author interview with Jim Murray.
“I think it should be ‘Thriller’ ”
: DiLeo interview for Knopper,
Appetite for Self-Destruction
.
“He lived in a room upstairs”
: Author interview with John Landis.
$1.1 million, twenty times, $100,000, “Who wants a single,” and MJ offering to make up the difference
: Nancy Griffin, “The ‘Thriller’ Diaries,”
Vanity Fair,
July 2010, pp. 60–79. George Folsey Jr. confirmed the numbers in this article, although he says the $900,000 budget figure actually was “a few hundred thousand less than that.”
“Michael Jackson wanted to do ‘Thriller’ ”
: Author interview with Bob Pittman.
Folsey’s idea
: Author interview with George Folsey Jr.
$29.95 and $1 million
: “Top Videocassettes,”
Billboard,
December 15, 1984, p. 30.
MJ relationship with Landis
: Folsey interview.
“The socks and the shoes” and “I have a shine on my nose”
: Griffin, “The ‘Thriller’ Diaries,” pp. 60–79.
“It was within what I would call reason”
: Author interview with Anthony Marinelli.
“When you’re a foot away
”: Author interview with Steve Jander.
“I always felt he looked so good”
: David Gest interview,
Michael Jackson: The Life of an Icon
(David Gest Productions, 2011).
“George, I’d like to introduce you”
: Folsey interview.
“John, do you know”
: Landis interview.
“What’s the matter?”
: Ibid.
“Do you know who I am?”
: Ibid.
“This is not a glamour gig” and “It always makes me sore”
: Author interview with Kim Blank.
Locking the canisters, “I feel so bad,” and “No matter how wacky”
: Griffin, “The ‘Thriller’ Diaries,” pp. 60–79.
“Show the goddamn thing again!”
: Ibid.
“We saw the ratings spike”
: Garland interview.
thirty-three million copies
: Peter Carlson and Roger Wolmuth, “Tour De Force,”
People,
May 7, 1984, p. 42.
“After
Thriller
came out” and “The best offers coming in”
: Todd Gold,
Michael Jackson: The Man in the Mirror
(New York: Pan Books, 1989), pp. 132–33.
“Only a fairly small sum” and Don King’s attire
: Joseph Jackson,
Die Jacksons
(Munich: Random House Germany, 2004), pp. 146–47.