by Joseph Vogel
In contrast to HIStory and Blood on the Dance Floor, there is a notable lightness to much of this material that seems to reflect Jackson’s state of mind in these sessions. Part of it was simply having time to process the tumultuous events of the mid-’90s; and part of it was due to having children. “They have changed me and my outlook on life,” Jackson acknowledged in a 1999 interview. Buxer remembers Jackson often changing diapers and feeding the kids in between recording sessions. As they got older they would hang around the studio, doing homework or working on art projects. “He was the best dad on the planet,” said Buxer. “The kids adored him.”
During these months, Jackson also worked closely with R&B songwriter and producer Elliot Straite, better known by his nickname, Dr. Freeze. Dr. Freeze rose to prominence in the early 1990s with songs like Color Me Badd’s “I Wanna Sex You Up” and Bell Biv Devoe’s “Poison.” As New Jack Swing faded, however, so did Dr. Freeze’s opportunities. That changed in a major way when he was introduced to Michael Jackson by John McClain, who was managing the pop star at the time. On McClain’s suggestion, Dr. Freeze sent Jackson some demos to consider. Days later, the songwriter/producer got a call from the King of Pop, saying he wanted to work with him.
Dr. Freeze remembers being intimidated his first few days in the studio. “It was pretty scary for me,” he recalled. “I felt like I was back in primary school….I was very nervous, very nervous but very honored!” He described his time working with the artist as attending “Michael Jackson University.” He learned about songwriting, about production, about storytelling. But Jackson appreciated what Dr. Freeze brought to the table as well. They had a natural chemistry and Dr. Freeze was capable of creating great hooks, not just beats. “Michael and I, we have a knack for melody,” said Dr. Freeze. That was apparent in the songs they worked on together.
Of the demos Dr. Freeze showed him, Jackson’s favorite was “Break of Dawn,” a sensual, mid-tempo R&B track that allowed the artist to really stretch vocally. According to Dr. Freeze, Jackson “adored” the song and made it blossom in the studio. “I did not give him orders,” he recalled. “He knew exactly what to do. He took control of the plane.”
The pair also worked extensively on a moody, cinematic piece called “Blue Gangsta.” The song was a sequel of sorts to the noir style of “Smooth Criminal” and featured an outstanding vocal by Jackson. In addition, they worked on a remake of America’s 1971 hit song “A Horse with No Name,” featuring a new title (“A Place with No Name”), as well as lyrics and harmonies. “I’m not certain if it was Dr. Freeze or Michael who kicked off the idea first,” said CJ DeVillar, who worked as engineer on the track, “but I know Michael loved the America song.” According to DeVillar, who also played bass on the song, there were many “musical explorations” like this, “with no specific outcome in mind other than finding a surprise in the process…and I’m certain what I saw was only the tip of that iceberg!”
Jackson and Dr. Freeze worked on about six songs in all, primarily at Record Plant in the summer of 1998 (though Dr. Freeze also remembers coming out to the Hit Factory later in the process). By 1999, Jackson had already recorded about thirty new songs in all. That February, with everyone in the industry in town for the Grammy Awards, the artist decided to give Sony and Epic executives a sneak peak of what he had come up with thus far. All the key figures came to Marvin’s Room studio to hear the new material—Sony head Tommy Mottola, as well as other key executives John Doelp, Polly Anthony, David Glew, and Cory Rooney. Jackson decided to play them just one song: “Break of Dawn.” The rest, he said, was just as good, but would have to wait.
DARKCHILD
The early months of 1999 were very productive for the artist. During a writing session with Carole Bayer Sager, he was introduced to red-hot R&B songwriter-producer Rodney “Darkchild” Jerkins. “[She] called me and said that she was gonna have a writing session at her house with Michael Jackson and she wanted me to do a track,” the producer recalled. Sager wasn’t the only one vouching for Jerkins. He also came recommended by Sony, who had signed the producer that year. By 1999, Jerkins had an impressive résumé, having already crafted hits for the likes of Brandy (“The Boy Is Mine”), Monica (“Angel of Mine”), Jennifer Lopez (“If You Had My Love”), and Destiny’s Child (“Say My Name”). The son of a minister from New Jersey, he was mentored by none other than Teddy Riley. “I’ve always heard people that worked with him before say, ‘When you meet Michael, it’s crazy!’ ” Jenkins said. “But I’m the type of guy who is like, ‘Nah, I’ma be okay. I’ma be cool. It’s just another artist.’ And then once I got there, and was in his presence, I was like, ‘Whoa, this is crazy!’ ”
That session ultimately resulted in the powerful anti-violence anthem “We’ve Had Enough.” More important, it established a crucial partnership for the Invincible album. Building the relationship, however, took some time. As he’d done with Teddy Riley, Jackson challenged Jerkins to come up with some grooves that he could review. The young producer was thrilled with the opportunity. For the next few weeks he and his writing partners—Fred Jerkins III and LaShawn Daniels—went to work at Record One, working such long hours they sometimes slept in the studio. They came up with more than a dozen demos, tailor-made to what they thought Jackson would like. Most of them were a mix of retro and contemporary R&B, including “You Rock My World.” When Jackson heard them, he liked them—but didn’t love them.
The songs, to him, sounded too much like other R&B on the radio. He wanted something more innovative and fresh. “He changed my whole perception of what creativity in a song was about,” said Jerkins. “I used to think making a song was about just sitting at the piano and writing progressions and melodies. I’ll never forget this crazy story. Michael called me and said, ‘Why can’t we create new sounds?’ I said, ‘What do you mean?’ He was like, ‘Someone created the drum, right? Someone created a piano. Why can’t we create the next instrument?’ Now you gotta think about this. This is a guy—forty years old—who has literally done everything that you can think of but is still hungry enough to say, ‘I wanna create an instrument.’ ”
Jerkins didn’t back down from the challenge. He remembers going to a local junkyard and hitting trash cans and old cars, trying to come up with new sounds. “Michael said, ‘Go out in the field,’ ” recalled Jerkins. “That was his term. He used to say, ‘Go out in the field and get sounds. Don’t do it like everybody else.’ ”
Back in New Jersey, Jerkins came up with a new song he was really excited about—so excited that he couldn’t wait to share it at a studio; instead, he played it for the artist over the phone. When Jackson heard the groove, noted Jerkins, “he went crazy. He was like, ‘That’s what I’m talking about! That’s what I’m talking about!’ ” It had fresh sounds, it had syncopation, it made him want to dance.
Jackson was so enthusiastic he began scratching down lyrics right away and insisted on recording vocals immediately. Since Jerkins was in New Jersey and Jackson was in Los Angeles, they used EDNet—a technology that became popular after it was used on the 1993 Frank Sinatra album, Duets. That allowed Jerkins to hear and record Jackson through a phone line with near-perfect fidelity while the two were in different studios. Jackson laid down all his background vocals at Record One as Jerkins recorded them from New Jersey. The producer flew out to LA soon after to record Jackson’s lead.
With the chemistry beginning to click, Jackson decided to move production of the album from the West Coast back to the East Coast. As with HIStory, Jackson worked out of Sony Studio and the Hit Factory, this time living at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in Midtown Manhattan. “I have an album coming out for the new millennium,” Jackson said in an interview that April, “which I’m halfway through. It’s going to be the best thing I’ve ever done. I’m putting my heart and soul into it because I’m not sure if I’m gonna do another one after this. This will be my last album, I thin
k.”
Around the same time, Jackson also worked with Walter Afanasieff, the in-demand producer behind Céline Dion’s smash 1997 ballad, “My Heart Will Go On.” The song he submitted to Jackson was called “Fall Again.” It was a gorgeous, understated ballad with jazz-inflected chords. But Afanasieff, like Jackson’s other collaborators, could tell the artist was juggling a lot. “He’ll be in, like, ten different studios with ten different people. Just getting him to come in and finish is the thing. I’m halfway through my song with him, and I’ve just got to get him back in the studio….[But] he’s the master. He’s the king, man; that’s not a phony title. He’s a really talented person.”
The album was coming along nicely. By the early summer of 1999, he had a great collection of songs from a variety of collaborators, including Rodney Jerkins, Brad Buxer, Dr. Freeze, Cory Rooney, Babyface, Walter Afanasieff, and Lenny Kravitz, among others. Sony president Tommy Mottola told the press it was “some of the best music Michael’s ever made.” It included songs like “Break of Dawn,” “You Rock My World,” “Escape,” “A Place with No Name,” “Fall Again,” “Angel,” “Speechless,” “Beautiful Girl,” “I Have This Dream,” and “We’ve Had Enough.” (Fewer than half of these songs would ultimately appear on the album.)
Confident with what they were hearing, Sony set the release date for November 9, 1999. Jackson would have the summer to select, tweak, and polish about twelve or thirteen tracks. Then, in the midst of the pop revival, he would make his triumphant return.
It didn’t happen.
DETOUR
That June, Jackson left the country to perform in two large-scale charity concerts: one in Seoul and the other in Munich. He had first announced the concerts a few months earlier from the home of Nelson Mandela in South Africa. The proceeds from the shows would be donated to the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund, the Red Cross, UNESCO, and relief efforts in Kosovo. Called “Michael Jackson & Friends: The Adventure of Humanity,” the concerts featured performances by Jackson as well as a host of other major stars, including Luciano Pavarotti, Andrea Bocelli, Mariah Carey, Boyz II Men, and Slash.
Overall, the shows were an enormous success—both sold out, raising an estimated $3.3 million for charity. In the second performance, in Munich, however, part of the onstage set—the raised steel bridge supporting Jackson—collapsed while he was singing “Earth Song.” With pyrotechnics blasting and Slash shredding away on guitar, a cable snapped and the artist plummeted more than a hundred feet before landing in the orchestra pit in front of the stage. Most of those in the audience assumed it was part of the show. Security ran out to check on the artist, but he was already crawling back up onto the stage. Miraculously, he finished the performance. Minutes after the show, however, he was rushed to the Klinikum Rechts Der Isar hospital in Munich. Initially, there was some bruising and bleeding on his head. But the fall had also caused damage to his back that would need long-term management. That meant painkillers.
Since the 1993 allegations, Jackson’s dependence on painkillers—including Demerol, OxyContin, and morphine—had ebbed and flowed. It tended to be at its worst when Jackson was touring. During the HIStory World Tour, to deal with persistent insomnia, he also reportedly began taking propofol, a sedative agent generally used as an anesthetic. “Physically, touring takes a lot out of you,” Jackson acknowledged in 2001. “When I’m onstage, it’s like a two-hour marathon. I weigh myself before and after each show, and I lose a good ten pounds. Sweat is all over the stage. Then you get to your hotel and your adrenaline is at its zenith and you can’t fall asleep. And you’ve got a show the next day. It’s tough.” Jackson reportedly traveled with an anesthesiologist (who would sedate the singer at night) during much of the HIStory World Tour.
Through most of 1998 and 1999, Jackson had been lucid and healthy. But beginning in the early 2000s, the artist reverted back to destructive habits. In public his eyes often looked glassy, and behind the scenes he was consulting a revolving door of doctors. Medications were often prescribed under aliases. Some days and weeks, collaborators and friends say he remained highly functional and focused; other days and weeks he seemed dazed and lost. In addition to dealing with pain and insomnia, he was also being treated for intense anxiety with benzodiazepines, like Valium, Xanax, and Lorazepam.
Many family members and close friends who became aware of Jackson’s addiction tried to help him. There were serious talks and even a few staged interventions. But the problems persisted. “He was surrounded by enablers,” said longtime friend Deepak Chopra, “including a shameful plethora of MDs in Los Angeles and elsewhere who supplied him with prescription drugs. As many times as he would candidly confess that he had a problem, the conversation always ended with a deflection and denial.”
More obvious to the public at the time was Jackson’s ongoing addiction to cosmetic surgery. The exact number of procedures he underwent is unknown; but it is clear Jackson continued to struggle with his appearance, which changed dramatically from 1995 to 2001. “I wish I could never be photographed and I wish I could never be seen,” he confessed in 2000. When Jackson began promoting Invincible in the fall of 2001, many fans were stunned by how different he looked from just a couple of years earlier.
Adding to these personal struggles was a seemingly endless litany of lawsuits, contract disputes, and financial entanglements. His representation, like his doctors, seemed to change every month. In this chaos and disarray, the artist’s carefully constructed empire began to unravel from within.
ONE MORE CHANCE
Of course, not all of this was immediately apparent when Jackson got back to work on the album in August 1999. Spirits were still mostly high. The outlook on the comeback album was still optimistic. Jackson moved back to New York City that month, this time staying in a town house on the Upper East Side.
He worked on a couple of tracks—“Cry” and “One More Chance”—with R. Kelly, and continued to develop material with Brad Buxer and Rodney Jerkins. But it soon became obvious he wasn’t going to meet the November deadline. He wasn’t satisfied yet with the material—especially the rhythm tracks. Jackson kept challenging Rodney Jerkins and his team to “dig deeper,” to push for greatness. “He is the best,” Jerkins said in an interview that year. “There’s no other artist at his level—and I’ve worked with many. He is great to work with because he knows exactly what he wants….He is so innovative—he doesn’t want the usual stuff that they play on the radio all the time, and he is very hands on. Everything has to be as he wants it.”
But that perfectionism could be difficult. At one point in early 2000, Jackson insisted they scrap everything and go back to the drawing board. “He was like, ‘Let’s start from scratch,’ ” recalled Jerkins. “ ‘I think we can beat everything we did.’ That was his perfectionist side. I was like, ‘Man, we have been working for a year, scrap everything?’ But it showed how hard he goes.” In a 2001 interview, Jackson did say that he was hard on the young producer. “I pushed Rodney. And pushed and pushed and pushed and pushed him to create…to innovate more. To pioneer more. He’s a real musician. He’s a real musician and he’s very dedicated and he’s real loyal. He has perseverance. I don’t think I’ve seen perseverance like his in anyone. Because you can push him and push him and he doesn’t get angry.”
That loyalty and perseverance were enough to convince Jackson that his work with Jerkins could end up comprising a good chunk of the album. To that end, he made Jerkins promise he would not work for any other artist while working on Invincible. Jackson was willing to compensate him accordingly. Jerkins agreed. Over the ensuing months, they worked on dozens more tracks, including “Get Your Weight Off of Me,” “Pressure,” “Privacy,” “The Pain,” “Invincible,” and “Rampage.”
Jackson was fine with some retro elements in the music. In fact, while many producers were switching to digital recording, Jackson insisted on the warmth of analog
recording. “He was a little scared of Pro Tools,” said Rodney Jerkins, referring to the digital audio editor that was quickly becoming the industry standard. “We tried to get him to use it, but he didn’t want to go that route yet and I understand: He came from the school of analog.” The new team of recording engineers did use Pro Tools to manage tracks for Invincible, some of which had at least thirty different versions. Pro Tools was also sometimes used to record Jackson’s scratch vocals, instead of his old tape recorder.
But whatever his recording preferences, stylistically, Jackson did not want a throwback album. “You Rock My World” was the exception to the rule. He told Jerkins over and over again that he wanted the album to be forward-looking and futuristic. Gradually, Jerkins got a feel for Jackson’s expectations. “He was so hands on,” said Jerkins. “I’m talking about from the hi-hat to everything. The sound quality was so important to him. He looked at everything under a microscope, like, ‘The middle frequency is too much’—he was very technical. He used to always say, ‘Melody is king,’ so he really focused in on melody.”
Over years of working closely together, Jackson and Jerkins developed a close rapport that went beyond making music. Still, nothing was quite as thrilling to the producer as getting something right and feeling the warmth of Jackson’s approval—as, for example, when he brought the artist a demo of “Heartbreaker.” It represented exactly the kind of sonic innovation Jackson was seeking.
In the winter of 2000, Jackson moved back to Neverland with the album release date uncertain. Rumors circulated that he had submitted a full album of songs to Sony and they had rejected it. Over the next several months, the artist spent time with his children at home, traveled, and found other distractions, but the album seemed to have stalled. That May, fans were at least given a glimmer of hope when Jackson appeared at the World Music Awards in Monte Carlo, looking healthy in a svelte, all-black, dragon-emblazoned outfit to receive a special millennium award for the world’s bestselling recording artist. He concluded his acceptance speech with the confident declaration, “You ain’t seen nothing yet!”
