EVH + Michael Jackson
the *real* story behind Beat It
RIFFS:
We’ve heard the official story for years.
Quincy Jones urges Michael Jackson to write a rock song. Together, they create Beat It. They spent a huge amount of time on the vocal—layering five different parts & comping together the best takes.
Quincy then brings in Eddie Van Halen, who cuts the solo in one pass, declines payment for his services, and leaves.
Except… that’s not what happened.
After Quincy & Michael get the vocal down at Westlake, they send the master tape over to Van Halen’s original 5150 studio. Recording engineer Don Landee helps Eddie edit the tape—splicing the solo into a different section than Jones envisioned.
He cuts two solos, then sends the master back to Quincy.
They wrecked the tape.
Somehow, the only thing left was Eddie’s solo and Michael’s vocals. If Quincy wanted to keep that magic, he’d need to rerecord the rhythm section.
But that posed a problem.
These days, it’d be easy.
In this day & age, we record to a click. Everything is on the grid, laid out in front of us on the computer screen. You want to duplicate a section? Swap different ideas in & out? No problem.
But this was 1982.
Quincy asks drummer Jeff Porcaro if it can be done.
Jeff listens to the vocal comp. He can just barely hear the original track bleeding into the vocal mic from Michael’s headphones. He goes into the drum booth, cranks the mix up unbearably high, and clicks his sticks along with the song, creating a simple click track.
Then he & Steve Lukather go to work.
Lukather & Porcaro create a new rhythm track.
Beat It hits #1 and stays there for three weeks. It goes on to sell 11 million copies—one of the best-selling singles of all time. The R&B + Rock formula paves the way for rap-rock—Walk This Way, Rage Against The Machine, 311, Linkin Park…
RECS:
I wasn’t there. I’m not a historian.
This is Steve Lukather’s telling of events, taken from this video:
It’s really funny… and very profane.
If you’re offended by cuss words and immature, perverted humor, you’re gonna want to skip this one.
CHARTS:
Here’s a chart for Beat It.
In that Dropbox folder you’ll find:
PDF
Sibelius file
musicXML file
And here are SoundSlices for:
SMARTS:
1 - the tuning
The guitars on this are all a half-step down.
I wrote the chart with the assumption that you’d play a detuned guitar.
But for the SoundSlices, I tuned the audio up so you can play along without retuning.
2 - the push
See how the riff starts before the downbeat?
This accent on the + of 4 is called a “push” or an “anticipation.”
There aren’t any in this song, but you’ll also see pushes on the + of 2.
A good example is the keyboard part in the intro of Tom Petty’s Breakdown.
3 - the four-measure repeat
There are three kinds of measure repeats:
1-measure → play the previous bar again
2-measure → play the previous TWO bars again
4-measure → play the previous FOUR bars again
The default for 1-measure repeats is to number them, usually every four bars.
I’ve taken to numbering the 2-measure repeats too:
4 - the chorus form
In CHORUS 1, we play the four-bar riff 3x:
For the rest of the choruses, we play it 4x:
This is less weird than it seems:
CHORUS 1 is basically an 8-bar chorus…
…with an extra 4 bars of riff tacked on to smooth the transition back into the verse.
Choruses 2, 3, & 4 are all double choruses—8 bars, two times.
That’s all I got this week.
See you next Wednesday,
Josh
Trivia question: What are the diamonds in your first chart? Usually I see those in a guitar chart for harmonics. Clearly this is something different. Cheers.