Quincy Jones was the producer behind Michael Jackson’s biggest albums. But when the two of them first sat down to make one, there was a problem nobody would guess.
Michael couldn’t bring himself to sing with Quincy watching.
Quincy told the story himself. He wrote it down in a tribute in 2009, and it’s one of the sweetest pictures anyone has ever given of the young Michael.
The two had met on the 1978 movie “The Wiz,” where Michael played the Scarecrow. Afterward, Michael asked Quincy to help him find a producer for his first solo album for Epic Records. Quincy had a better idea.
“Michael, I’d like to produce your album,” he told him.
Quincy talked about the album in an interview later on, and it’s a treat to hear him look back on “Off the Wall” himself.
Quincy Jones talks about making “Off the Wall” with Michael
That album became “Off the Wall.” They recorded it from Dec. 4, 1978, to June 3, 1979. Michael was only 20 for the whole thing. Quincy remembered him as very shy and quiet back then. Singing with your new producer just a few feet away can be a lot for anyone that age.
So Quincy got creative. He wrote that they used “all kinds of tricks” to help Michael grow as a singer. Some were musical, like dropping the keys “just a minor third” and making “more than a few tempo changes.” The first song to come out of those sessions shows how well it all worked.
Michael’s official video for “Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough”
Those were the kinds of tricks any good producer might try. One of them, though, had nothing to do with music at all, and it’s the one Quincy chose to put in writing.
Here’s how Quincy described it, in his own words: “He was so shy that he’d sit down and sing behind the couch with his back to me while I sat there with my hands over my eyes with the lights off.”
Read that again. A world-famous producer sat in a dark studio with his hands over his eyes, just so a 20-year-old could feel comfortable enough to sing. And Michael sat behind a couch with his back turned, singing his heart out to nobody he could see.
It’s a funny scene, but it’s a tender one too. Quincy could have pushed. He could have told Michael to stand at the microphone like everyone else and get over it. Instead he met the young man where he was, in the dark, and let him find his voice his own way.
It worked. “Off the Wall” became the first album by a solo artist to produce four US Top 10 hits. Two of them went all the way to No. 1, “Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough” and “Rock with You.”
The dark stayed with Michael, too. Bruce Swedien, one of Michael’s recording engineers, said in a 2009 interview, “we always recorded with Michael in the dark – he hated light.”
The album’s second No. 1 came out of those same sessions with Quincy. Listen to how relaxed and easy Michael sounds on it.
Michael’s official video for “Rock with You”
In that same tribute, Quincy summed up the whole experience in one short line.
“I simply loved working with Michael.”