Interview with Michael Jackson's HIStory producer Jimmy Jam

By October 1994, Michael had been working on his new album,HIStory,for six months. As he continued to come up with new ideas, super producers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis were asked to contribute a track, as Michael wanted to record a first ever duet with his little sister, Janet.Jam and Lewis had been working with Janet since 1985, and by 1994 they had produced her last three solo albums – includingRhythm Nation 1814, which Michael loved.Jam and Lewis have moreBillboardnumber one singles than any other songwriting and production team in history, and have won five Grammy Awards.For my research onHIStory, I wanted to speak to Jam, who had more involvementon the album than Lewis. In February 2012, I visited the pair's studio in Santa Monica, but they were out of town.Finally, in May 2013, I spoke to Jam on the phone. It was a long interview which went on for over an hour. Jam spoke about each subject at length, and was a pleasure to interview.Here is the interview in full, with a few outtakes which wern't published inMaking Michael.You worked with Michael on theHIStoryalbum. How did that collaboration come about?Myself and Terry Lewis first met Michael in Minneapolis in 1988, when he played a show there for the Bad Tour. We actually recommended the hotel in which he was staying and he loved his suite. He invited us to the show, which was great, and then for dinner after at the hotel. It was just surreal to be in his presence.Then, in 1994, Janet called us and said, ‘My brother wants to do a duet’. So we asked her how she felt about it, because obviously we were very loyal to her and didn’t want to create a conflict of interest. But she was fine with it and said Michael wanted us to produce the song. Because Janet was fine with it, we were fine with it.Michael didn’t really give us any direction. He just said, ‘Come up with a bunch of tracks and I’ll listen to what you come up with’. So over a period of three or four days we began creating about five different tracks at our studio in Minneapolis. We had Janet come over because we wanted her here for inspiration; we felt it was important for the tracks to have a Janet vibe. So Janet listened to the tracks and for one of them, she said, ‘This is the one he will like’. So Terry and I were like, ‘How do you know?’ And Janet just said, ‘I know my brother’. And then after listening to another one of the tracks, she said, ‘I hope he doesn’t like this one, because I want it’!So we flew to New York and met Michael at the Hit Factory studio. Now the Hit Factory studio had great speakers, but Michael brought in his own speakers, which were even bigger, he had an entire wall of speakers. It was literally the loudest thing I have ever heard. Ever. So Michael greeted us… Janet was there and we began listening to the tracks, which we had narrowed down from about eight to six. They were all just music, no lyrics. I thought Michael would listen to each track for about a minute, but I was surprised because he listened to each song the whole way through. He really liked what he heard, he was like, ‘Wow I like them all, you guys really listened to me’.So he chose his favourite track, and we played it back, and sure thing, Michael’s favourite was the one Janet said he would like. Michael said, ‘This is the one I want, it’s angry, aggressive, that’s what I wanted’. Janet just started laughing and said, ‘Told you so’. She was just glad he didn’t like the track she wanted for herself, which actually ended up being ‘Runaway’ from her albumDesign of a Decade,and she recorded it about a year later. I actually thought that would be a great choice for them to sing together. But Michael had other ideas, and the track he chose was perfect for what he wanted to do.So what happened next?The next day, we went to Michael’s apartment. So Michael said, ‘I have an idea’, and began coming up with a melody and rhythm for the track, but no words. Then he started singing the melody, but we realised it was too low for Janet. It was more to his strengths than hers and we needed to make sure Janet fared well, but she just said, ‘It’s his album, his song and his feeling, and I’m just the guest’. She had no expectation beyond helping her brother.”Michael came up with most of the actual lyrics, he knew exactly what he wanted lyrically, something aggressive. Because he knew what he wanted, he wrote everything very quickly. He was very fast, very intense.Then we went into the studio. So we were sat there, Terry, Janet and myself, and Michael is wearing these hard shoes and some kind of jewellery, which you’re not really supposed to in case it interferes with the vocal. Everything is fine…Michael said his headphones are OK, and his voice is smooth after he drank his usual hot water with Ricola cough drops. So he says, ‘Let’s give it a go’. The music comes on, and for about ten seconds, Michael just starts dancing around, stomping…snapping his fingers…clapping, which is really unusual. And suddenly, he just started singing.We were blown away. I had never seen or heard anything like it in my entire life. We had to almost hold onto our chairs due to the sheer energy and force of his singing. And when it was over, Terry and I were speechless. So Michael’s like, ‘How was it?’ And we’re like, ‘Yeah…great’, and Michael then asks us if we want him to do another vocal, and we’re like, ‘Sure!’ And he nailed it in about four or five takes. Then Janet turns to us and says, ‘I think I’ll do my vocals in Minneapolis!’ I mean, how do you follow that?! When Janet was leaving, Michael said to her, ‘Are you not doing your vocals now?’ And Janet says, ‘No, I’m doing them in Minneapolis’.Michael and JanetSo we went back to Minneapolis, where Janet did her vocal, and she did great even though the song wasn’t her key or style, and we sent Michael a rough mix. Michael loved Janet’s vocals and the mix and then said, “I want to redo my vocals in Minneapolis”! He said, “Maybe there are different things I can do”. It really showed his competitiveness and his perfectionism.Of course we told Michael that he was welcome to come to Minneapolis. He came and rerecorded his vocal. It was good, but it didn’t have the same feel or anger that his New York vocal had. Or the initial energy, The final vocal pretty much ended up being the vocal he recorded originally.When the time came to mix, Bruce [Swedien, engineer] was ready but Michael wanted to use our guy, Steve Hodge. In the end the mix was a collaboration between Bruce and Steve because Steve knew Janet’s sound and Michael’s vocals were Bruce’s domain.There were a few hiccups with the mix. Coincidentally, I was at Neverland for the album wrap party. Janet called, and she said, ‘Jimmy, have you heard the mix of ‘Scream’ they put on the master tape?’ I said, ‘Yes, what’s wrong with it?’ After hearing the new mix they put on the masters, it was clear someone had gone in on Michael’s behest and turned down Janet’s vocals, because they were now lacking their original power. So I said to Michael, ‘This isn’t the right mix.’ And he said, ‘Oh really? I didn’t know.’ But I think he knew – there was just a real element of sibling rivalry. Michael was really competitive with Janet, even though she was his sister. He wanted perfection. So we went back in and corrected the problem, tweaked her vocals and put some handclaps in.Did Michael and Janet work differently?Yes, their approach to making music was completely different; Janet works very simply and very quickly, whereas Michael was a little more methodical. He’s a perfectionist and tends to cut a million songs, then pick the best of what he has.You have a production and writing credit on the song ‘Is It Scary’. Did you work on that song forHIStory?While Michael was in Minneapolis, he told us about the lyrics and melody for this song idea he had. I think he had already worked with Teddy Riley on a track with a similar theme. He asked us to write the music track for this song he had in mind, and we just created this sort of sinister track. We weren’t sure if Michael was going to include the song on the album or what he wanted to do with it.Although Michael had done his lyrics, the track wasn’t fully finished so we went in later and finished the track and mix.Were you involved when Michael tweaked the song to include on theBlood on the Dance Flooralbum?No, the only work we did with him on that song was duringHIStory.You also worked with Michael on three more songs forHIStory;'Tabloid Junkie', 'HIStory' and '2 Bad'. Did Michael tell you at the beginning that he wanted to work on more music with you after the Janet duet?No, we were originally brought in just for the Janet duet, but Michel really liked another of the tracks that we played for him in New York, He said it sounded similar to Janet’s song ‘The Knowledge’, which he loved. That was ‘Tabloid Junkie’. The song was really simple, Michael had a concept for it already and wrote the melody and the lyrics, and we brought in the completed track and did all the blurbs that feature on it.What about 'HIStory'?Michael needed a title tune, and wanted a really big, anthemic song. I think he gave it a couple of tries himself but then asked us to give it a go. So we went back to Minneapolis and made the music track, and then Michael did his thing on the melody.Mixing that song was a bit of a nightmare. We were all under extreme deadline pressure, so with about a week left we still had to mix ‘Tabloid Junkie’ and ‘HIStory’. We knew ‘Tabloid’ would only take about one or two days, but ‘HIStory’ would take four or five days to mix. But then Michael asks for the DAT of the mix, and after he heard it, he wanted some minor handclaps or finger snaps turned up. So we were like, “Sure Michael”, and did what he wanted doing. The next day, the same things happens, Michael asks for the DAT and still wants changes made to the handclaps. These weren’t major changes but it took about four days before Michael approved the mix, which didn’t sound any different to one made four days previously, and we really need to mix ‘HIStory’, which was going to take a long time.We wanted to pare it down to 96 tracks so mixing would be easier but Michael did not want to sub mix anything. It was a logistical nightmare and we were running out of time. We were saying to each other, ‘How do we sync these machines together?’ So somebody suggested we link the boards together. The problem of course became the time constraints, but we needed to get it done, so we stayed at the studio and barely slept.I wasn’t happy; you shouldn’t rush a production like this. And then Michael began altering the mix, turning up claps and snaps again. There were elements of that song that I just didn’t feel were right. We needed more time, but it is what it is, in the end we just gave up and let Michael have his way.Did you play a big role in the production of '2 Bad'?I played bass on and helped to produce ‘2 Bad’.Did you advise Michael on things like the album tracklist?I was just around, I felt I could be trusted. It was mostly me there and not Terry, I wasn’t an advisor as such, just a confidant. I could make musical decisions and Michael was always inquisitive as to how I did certain things.What was Michael like to work with on a professional level?Working with Michael was a great and unique experience. He was a guy who loved being in the studio, he would work all hours; he didn’t care. I’ve never seen anybody work any harder than he does, and that’s coming from somebody who has worked with Prince – now Prince is a hard-working guy.Michael worked with all these top producers in his career, which was both a gift and a curse. The gift was that Michael grew up with Motown, and learnt from the best of the very best, such as Berry Gordy, Freddie Perren, Gamble and Huff, and then after that Quincy Jones. So he would have absorbed their ways of production like a sponge and made mental notes. That meant production wise Michael learnt from the very best, but that quest for perfection was the curse, and as a result Michael was not good at making definite decisions. Michael would always say, ‘We need to really challenge ourselves, push ourselves as far as we can go’. He just did not want to commit – he could not let go of a song or an album. In his eyes it was never ready.He needed a producer around him who could put his foot down and make those calls, and when he stopped working with Quincy that stopped. Michael would work meticulously, whereas Prince would be more prolific and record whole songs in a single day, and you can’t argue with either approach. But Michael never had natural constraints – who is going to tell him that his budget is restricted or that he only has a certain amount of time when he keeps making record-breaking albums?What are your favourite anecdotes from working with Michael?We used to have long conversations about all sorts of stuff. Once Michael said to me, ‘Jimmy, how do you want to be remembered when you die?’ I said to him, ‘I want to be remembered as a nice guy’. So Michael goes, ‘No, I mean how do you want to be remembered?’ He meant how many number ones I made, what kind of producer I was, just statistics. And I said, ‘Michael, they’re just statistics. They aren’t who I am.’ He just didn’t get it…he was totally puzzled.A year later, I needed to get a sample cleared with Michael for using ‘Billie Jean’. Before I could ask him anything, he said, ‘Remember what you said about how you want to be remembered? Every time someone asks me about you, I just say, he’s the nicest guy.’ And I said, ‘Michael I’m glad you understood.’ And he just got it in that one moment. It’s a conversation that I’ll always remember. Although Michael had all those groundbreaking hits, albums, tours and videos, he was simply one of the nicest people I’ve ever met and worked with.One day when we were in the studio we were waiting in the lounge for Michael and my wife was there, as was Lisa Marie Presley, who we knew through Janet. And my wife asked Lisa Marie what she saw in Michael. Lisa just gave a genuine response. “He is the kindest, nicest person I have ever met”, she said. And it was accurate; he was just a great dude.You were on set for the filming of the ‘Scream’ video. What was that like?Michael and Janet were very competitive, and I was the only person accepted by both camps. It was funny, because I would be asked to go into Michael’s trailer, and then somebody would tell me that Janet wanted me in her trailer, and I would be going back and forth. When I went into Michael’s trailer, he had a new video game, he thought he could beat me but I kicked his ass! Then the next thing I know, I’m back in Janet’s trailer.I actually disagreed with Michael and Sony on what should be the first single from the album. They wanted ‘Scream’, but I felt it should have been ‘You Are Not Alone’.Firstly, Michael was very much in love with Lisa Marie and they were happy. I thought they should have let people see that they were in love and ‘You Are Not Alone’ was the perfect song for that and perfect for a big ‘Welcome Back’. The public were excited about Michael’s new music and I think what had happened with the accusations was beginning to drift away. I just felt that the nature of ‘Scream’ would bring everything that had happened back up, just as it was slowly being forgotten about. But Michael was angry about what had happened and wanted ‘Scream’. I’m not the record company, but I just felt it reopened the wounds a little.I also felt ‘You Are Not Alone’ was perfect for following Michael’s previous tendencies to open an album with a ballad, like ‘The Girl Is Mine’ onThrillerand ‘I Just Can’t Stop Loving You’ onBad.I have also publishedthe full transcript of my interview with Rob Hoffman, an engineer who worked closely with Michael during the entireHIStoryrecording process.A short-film on the making of 'Stranger in Moscow' is currently in editing. Coming soon.Read:Michael Jackson's HIStory in the making, PART ONERead:Michael Jackson's HIStory in the making, PART TWORETURN TO BLOG