For Steve Stevens, working with Michael Jackson in 1986 was one of the first times since establishing himself as Billy Idol’s foil that he’d flown from the punk singer’s nest, and the guitarist was a bag of nerves heading to the studio.
It was not only the size of the task that intimidated him. Michael Jackson had scored countless hit records and Grammy wins by the time writing for his seventh solo album beckoned. Stevens also had history to contend with. Eddie Van Halen had already helped the singer flaunt his rock side with “Thriller” four years earlier. How could he compare?
“I was kind of nervous because I wasn’t a ‘session guitar player,’” he tells MusicRadar. “I hadn’t really done stuff outside of Billy Idol.”
Working in the studio with legendary producer Quincy Jones and the King of Pop would provide no creature comforts. This would be a sharp learning curve, and as he flew to Los Angeles, his imagination started getting the better of him.
“When I got the call to go out to Los Angeles to record with Michael, I was thinking, Oh, there’s going to be an entourage, and the monkey’s going to be jumping around,” he says, referencing Jackson’s infamous pet chimp, Bubbles. “I thought it was going to be all this crazy shit!”
Then the truth revealed itself.
“When I got to the studio and opened the door, it was exactly like a Billy Idol session. It was just Michael, Quincy, and the engineer.”
No pop star, no chimp-infused anarchy. He could breathe a sigh of relief and get to work.
“I thought, Great, okay. And Quincy was just one of the great record producers. He really put my mind at ease.”
Jones began working with Michael Jackson on the Thriller LP and certainly knew how to work with guitarists. It was Jones who asked Van Halen to perform on “Beat It” (even if it took several phone calls to convince the virtuoso that the voice on the other end of the line really was Quincy Jones.)
On that same track, he’d asked Steve Lukather — who handled the main riff, rhythm guitar and bass parts — to “funk it up,” and practically coaxed the song’s iconic intro out of him.
In short, there was no better person that Jones to guide Stevens through his first real session job. Best of all, Jones trusted Stevens’ instincts as a musician.
“Once we had achieved all the stuff that they wanted, they said, ‘Now, come here and do whatever the fuck you want to do!’” Stevens recalls. “So, me doing that ended up being the solo.
“The original version that I played was something like seven or eight minutes. They edited it, but it was a great experience. Michael and Quincy were total pros. Being in the same company as Ed is pretty good company, too!”
Today, he remains rightfully proud of his work.
“I remember that I saw Ed soon after I did the session with Michael, and I said, ‘Hey, I was in the studio with Michael…’ Ed said, ‘Did he say to you that he likes the high notes?’ We kind of laughed over that because when I came into the studio, Michael actually did go, ‘Oh, I like the high notes!’”
And for Stevens, ‘86 would be a year of high notes. He secured a Grammy win of his own for his guitar playing on the Top Gun soundtrack that same year.
In related news, Stevens has explained how he got his infamous Hamer signature guitar on the back of Paul Stanley’s introduction to the firm and how he used toy ray guns for “Rebel Yell”’s classic solo cut.
Meanwhile, his musical partner Billy Idol told Guitar Player about meeting Les Paul in 1986 and getting him to sign the Les Paul Junior he used onstage and on the Rebel Yell album.
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