A Tour of Neverland with Brad Sundberg, Part 2

Lisha: In Part 1 of our tour through Neverland Valley Ranch, Brad Sundberg gave us a detailed look at the first third of Michael Jackson’s incredible home, including the guard gate, the magical “ornate gate,” the train stations, the pastures, the water features, the guest villas, and the main house. Neverland guests would usually drive a mile or so onto the property to reach the ornate gate. From there, they could park their cars and walk through that gate, boarding a train that transported them to the next section of the property. This meant most guests would bypass the main residence altogether. Is that right, Brad?

Brad: Yes, most people wouldn’t go into the main house. That was really Michael’s private home. But VIP guests would certainly stay there, and if he wanted to bring his friends in there, that was for him to do whatever he wanted.

But then you keep going to that second third, the middle section, and that was the amusement park. And that’s what people have seen all the aerial photos of. I’ve had guests at my seminars who went there on special days. They got to go to the park. So if you were going to go to Neverland as a guest, that’s probably what you were going to see.

That’s where the theater was – that big beautiful theater on the left side of the valley.

And it really was a valley. Going back to my surfboard analogy, it would be like laying a surfboard down and having hills on either side of it. You just didn’t go up into those hills that much, unless you had a motorcycle or a horse or something. Most of the activity was down in the valley.

The bulk of our work was building all the music and all the systems for the park. We had a small stage there, where you could have a barbershop quartet or something. We had the Zipper and the bumper cars and the Ferris wheel and the carousel, and it just seemed like it was never going to stop. He would add one ride, and a month later he’d call me and say he’d bought another ride, and could I start coming up with some ideas for it.

Lisha: So he would call and talk to you in terms of what you were going to do with the rides musically, right?

Brad: Yeah, or I would go up there and we would have a meeting in his library, or he loved to have meetings in the castle. And he’d roll some plans out and start talking about what’s coming next. He was very specific.

It was kind of a cool relationship where he would – and it certainly was not just with me, I think Tony would say something very similar, or different people who worked up there – he would kind of tell us what he wanted to do, but then he wanted our ideas. You know, could we do this? Or what do you think of this? It wasn’t a dictatorship, by any means. Like I say, if you’re going to work with Michael, you’ve got to bring something to the table. You can’t just kind of sit there and wait for orders. You’ve got to contribute some ideas.

Willa: So he wanted your ideas about what kinds of sounds to provide? Or how to provide them? Or … ?

Brad: Well, I’ll give you a goofy example. Michael wanted music everywhere. Everywhere, everywhere, everywhere. He did not want a place on that ranch where it would just be quiet. So he came to me one day and said “I bought a Ferris wheel.” I said, “Of course you did. Why wouldn’t you?” And he said, “I want music on the Ferris wheel.”

Well, I’m a guy. I understand geometry and electronics and physics, and all these things make perfect sense to me. So I’m thinking about a Ferris wheel, and you’re picturing a wheel that’s turning. And then on that wheel there are 16 little wheels that are all turning. But you can’t get wire anywhere, because after two rotations the wire is twisted up and it’s going to break.

Willa: Oh! I didn’t think about that.

Brad: So, I don’t want to bore you with too much stuff. But with lights and things like that, you can have big pieces of copper and brushes that get the power across to the next set of wheels. But music is a whole different animal. It gets really tricky trying to have stereo speakers and wires.

So we came up with this whole complicated scheme of having a battery pack in each car, and a radio receiver and an amplifier and speakers, and then we would transmit music up to each car. And I designed the whole thing for him, and I said I can do this. But I said, good grief, Michael, the cost of this, and having to charge batteries and all the headache involved. I said, just let people take a breath! Let them just get to the top of the wheel and they can see the park, they can hear everything, they can hear kids laughing. We don’t have to flood them with more music.

And luckily, he agreed, because I didn’t want to build that. I was just like, this is the craziest thing I’ve ever designed. And it would have worked! I had a pretty good design. But, the point being, that he would listen. It was really nice when I could edit once in a while and say, just because we can doesn’t mean we should. So he was good about that. He gave me a tremendous amount of freedom.

And I’m actually going to elaborate on one point. I was a kid! I mean, I’m five years younger than Michael, and we build Neverland when I was in my 20s and into my 30s for the bulk of that work. So I’m working with him and Bruce in the studio, you know, for weeks and weeks and months and months. And then, once a project is done, he’s yanking me up there, and we’re building stuff up there. And this is Michael Jackson! He could have hired the best audio company in L.A. He could have flown people in from Berlin if he wanted. And the fact that he let me do it, and he trusted me, to this day it really humbles me, and it means so much to me.

I didn’t get rich. I was too dumb! I was charging a fair price but I was learning. He let me learn at Neverland, and that’s something I’ll never forget. He gave me a tremendous amount of freedom, and in return I gave blood, sweat, and tears. There’s not a single project that I did at Neverland that I wasn’t proud of. We really, really gave everything we had at that ranch. And I wasn’t the only one. But I’ve always been really proud of the fact that he trusted me that much. So, I’ll get off my soapbox but…

Lisha: I can definitely see why he valued you so much.

Brad: It’s something that I value to this day.

So, all through the ranch – and we’ll get to the zoo in a few minutes – but everything I’ve been describing to you, there’s always music. And Michael would hand-pick, well, he hand-picked probably 80 percent of the music. He had a playlist, and he would call me and say ok, I want you to make a CD, and I want this song and this song and this song.

And then he would repeat himself. He loved the song “Carol Anne’s Theme” from Poltergeist. It’s kind of haunting and beautiful. So he wanted “Carol Anne’s Theme” to play twice – not twice in a row, but he’d do “Carol Anne’s Theme,” and like then “My Favorite Things” from The Sound of Music, and then some Debussy, and then he’d want “Carol Anne’s Theme” again. And I’d say, Michael, we just did that. We just played that song 9 minutes ago. And he’d say, No, but it’s so beautiful I want it again. And you couldn’t argue with him!  It made no sense, but it worked!

And you’d hear music everywhere. You’d get on the trains, and there he gave me a little more freedom. I could kind of play what I wanted, but it was always classical. We never had Michael music. That was absolutely forbidden.

Lisha: Here’s the playlist Brad shared with us at his seminar and on Facebook:

Brad: Now in the later years, I’m told that people would go there after 2004, 2003, 2005, and they’ve told me it was Michael music everywhere, which is a little disappointing because that’s never what he wanted. He was so clear about the fact that he did not want his music played anywhere on the ranch.

So you’d just have this wash of music, and you didn’t know where it was coming from. It was just everywhere.

Willa: So was it the same playlist playing everywhere you went? Or would like different rides at the amusement park have different music?

Brad: Yeah, the rides were different. So as you’re walking or on a train or something, it’s the same lush beautiful music. But then on every ride we had very specific music just for that ride. And he would pick almost all of that music. So we would have to build these enormous sound systems. And I’m a carnival junkie. I love carnivals. I love Disneyland. We had annual passes to Disneyland before it was cool. So I love that kind of stuff. So yeah, the carousel, for example – on that one he would want Janet. That was when Rhythm Nation was huge. So we had a couple of Janet songs that we played on the carousel.

On the Zipper, which was his favorite ride … Do you know what the Zipper is?

Lisha:  Yeah, do you, Willa?

Willa:  Isn’t it kind of like a double Ferris wheel, but it flips you upside down?

Brad:  Yeah, it’s just the craziest, most awesome ride. That was his favorite ride, the Zipper, and for whatever reason he loved the song, “Owner of a Lonely Heart” by Yes. And good grief, everybody who would ride that ride would have to hear that song over and over and over again. It didn’t really make sense, but it was Michael! And you just had to accept it. This is what he likes.

I think in a certain way, he was very … um, what word am I looking for? Not predictable, but he liked routine. I haven’t really thought about this before, but I think there was something about, I’m on the Zipper so I’m going to hear “Owner of a Lonely Heart.” And that’s just what it was. You didn’t change it. You didn’t adjust it. It’s what he wanted.

Willa: Earlier you said something that was so fascinating. You said that going through the security gate and driving up past the sagebrush and going through the ornate gate – you said it was like the introduction to a song. And now it almost seems like, with the amusement park, you’re kind of getting some of the verses, the different verses of the song.

Brad: Yeah. I don’t want to try to get too poetic on it or anything. But Neverland really did have kind of a beginning, middle, and end, like a song. In the beginning you had the ornate gate, this “where am I?” moment, this beautiful entrance.

And then you’d get to the theme park, and that was just craziness: the superslide and the bumper cars and the Sea Dragon and music pounding from everywhere. And the theater was right there, and it was big and dramatic and bold.

And then maybe later in the day you’d go up to the zoo. And the zoo was much more soothing. So yeah in a sense, it was almost like an intro, verse, chorus, bridge, chorus, fade-out.

Willa: Oh, that’s fascinating! That’s really fascinating.

Brad: Michael loved drama. You could experience Neverland in a full day, and at the end of the day you’re up petting a giraffe and feeding a duck or something, and it’s calm again. It’s very, very soothing.

So yeah. Whether it’s was by design or by accident – I kind of lean toward design – it really worked out to be a unique experience for a lot of people.

Lisha: That is fascinating, and how it would unfold in a certain way, a kind of calculated way.

Brad: Yes. Now having said that, we had plenty of screw-ups! We would try anything. He wanted to do these goofy, you know, like at Disneyworld, the little autopia cars? Little go-karts basically. Well, we had this elaborate go-kart track that ran up the side of the mountain over by the superslide. And it was beautiful! I mean it was paved, and I have no idea the amount of time and money that was put into building this go-kart track. This was not some little figure 8. This was legit – up the side of a mountain and under the trees. It was beautiful!

And the stupid cars weren’t strong enough to take people up the side of the hill, especially the adults, and people would be out pushing the cars!  I’m not sure why we didn’t get bigger engines, but I think at that point they’d spent so much money that they had to cut their losses. So they moved the go-karts down to a flat track behind the theater. It wasn’t nearly as cool, but at least they didn’t have to have people out of their cars pushing them.

Willa: As a mom, I think having kids driving cars with big engines might be a safety issue!

Brad: Yeah, there were a lot of things that you just kind of had to bite your bottom lip and go “I hope nobody dies on this thing!” But, uh…

Willa: Oh no!

Brad: I’m kind of kidding! But you’ve probably seen pictures of the superslide. The slide was hysterical. It’s one of those big, yellow… I think it had four lanes or something like that.

Well, for Michael, nothing can ever be normal. It has to be, just crank it up to level eleven. So they found some Teflon spray or something. I don’t know if they got the stuff from NASA or where it came from. But you’d sit in a gunny sack, and they’d spray the sack with this spray … and it was terrifying! I mean I love any of this stuff, but you would go so fast you’d go airborne over those bumps and think you were going to break your back and be paralyzed! And Michael would just laugh until he’d almost pee his pants. Especially for someone like me who, you know, I’m not a small guy. And I would go down that thing, it seemed like 90 miles an hour, just bouncing from hill to hill.

Willa: I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to laugh!

Brad: It’s like, you’re going to kill somebody! Or another one was the bumper cars. I loved the bumper cars. And we’ve been pretty fortunate. We travel quite a bit, and so we’ve been in Europe several times. And I’m sorry, I’m a weirdo. I still, if there’s a theme park within 40 miles, I’m going to go to it. That’s just how I am. I could care less about a museum, but get me to a theme park.

And so we were at Tivoli, which was one of Michael’s favorite parks, in Copenhagen. This was just a couple of years ago, after Michael had passed. They had bumper cars there and it was the weirdest thing, because I was like thrown back to Neverland.

In Europe, and I’m not trying to stereotype, but there are just very different standards than in the US. I mean, it’s full speed ahead, smashing into people and thinking you’re about to knock your teeth out, where in the US everything is safety related and OSHA [Occupational Safety and Health Administration] regulated and everybody has to be safe.

Well, Michael didn’t really have a whole lot of OSHA going on up there. So his bumper cars were outrageously fast. They would just go. You’d think you were going to kill yourself! Then we’d fill that tent with smoke and black lights and strobe lights, and then a huge sound system. We had Joe Santriani – that was usually the sound track in there – and then these bumper cars would just go full speed ahead. And the same thing: Michael would just die laughing! It was, I hate to say it, but it was borderline dangerous. But it was so much fun you just didn’t care.

So I can’t talk about every single ride, but the other thing that I thought was really cool in the theme park was the castle. I don’t know if people have seen pictures of it. If you go way back, I’ve got some really cool pictures of the park when it was being built, and it used to be a tree house. Michael used to go up and watch people from the tree house, and it was cool but it wasn’t that big a deal.

Well, we had so much equipment coming in that we had to have a place for all of our power and our racks and amps and everything. So we decided to build a room on the bottom of the treehouse. Well, once again this is Michael Jackson, and you can’t do anything normal. So somehow that quickly escalated into the castle.

And so nobody ever got to go into the bottom of the castle because it was just an equipment room, and that’s where we kept all of our gear. But there was a big deck up on the side of the castle. And then above that, to one side was an office. And it was a really cool room that Michael could have meetings in. We’d sit up there and talk about rides that were going to come in. Or if he had to make a phone call or something, he could run up there. There’s no cell service at Neverland, and back then cell phones were pretty crude anyway. So it was just kind of a place where he could stay connected. You know, if he had some VIPs and they just wanted to get away, they could have lunch in the castle or something. It was just so unique and so different – a really, really beautiful little piece of architecture.

Then all through the park were the Disney animated butterflies, and the elephant that at night would kind of spray water in the air, but it wasn’t water. It was just lights.

And that’s another thing. During the day, the park was fun. It was an amusement park like nobody’s backyard anywhere. But at night, we would light that place up with, I don’t know if it would be millions, but tens of thousands of little twinkling lights in the trees.

In fact, I swear this is true. I shouldn’t swear, but I believe this is true. There’s these gigantic oak trees all through Neverland. All through the park I should say.

Willa: They’re the trees you see in the Say, Say, Say video, right? It was filmed there.

Brad: Was it?

Willa: Yes. So those big oak trees you see in the Say, Say, Say video, that’s at Neverland.

Brad: Ok. Well, those were covered, and I mean covered, with little twinkling lights – you know, the little tiny lights. And each tree had what’s called a 200-amp service. And now your music people just went to sleep when I say that, but that’s the equivalent of a normal size house in America. A normal size house gets 200 amps of electricity. That’s how much power those goofy trees needed for all the lights in them.

Lisha: That’s per tree?

Brad: That’s what I’m told. You know, I don’t want to take a lie detector test. But it was just enormous power that was feeding that ranch.

But that’s where all the lights came from. We didn’t have any street lights. It was all either lights in trees or lights from the amusement park, and that was it. And at night … I’ve been to some beautiful places, but Neverland at night ranks up so high. When it was in its prime and the rides were going, and the music was going, and it was lit up, I would pretty much put it right up with being in the middle of Disneyland, or Paris. It was really, really, really a magical place.

Willa: It sounds beautiful.

Lisha: A lot of the things that we’re talking about, such as the train system, and the park, and the flowers, and the clocks, and things like that, remind me so much of Walt Disney. And we know that Michael Jackson was a huge admirer of Walt Disney, who continually blurred the line between reality and fantasy with art and animation, until he finally built Disneyland. And the idea of Disneyland was that you were going to step into these fantasy worlds that he had previously created through art.

Brad: Stories, yes.

Lisha: It sounds like to me that Michael Jackson’s Neverland is so similar, and I’m just wondering about your take on that. You know Disneyland very well and you’ve also actually been on the ranch and know that very well too. But was there some kind of fundamental difference between those places?

Brad: Well let’s see. At Disneyland you’ve got 70,000 people on a crowded day, and at Neverland there were a couple hundred – that would be one difference! I mean, they were different experiences, obviously. Neverland was breathtakingly remarkable for somebody’s backyard. Yeah, it wasn’t Disneyland, but for being able to step out in your pajamas and go out to that park was just – and I’m not saying I did that – but that experience was unlike anything else.

Michael knew that I loved Disneyland and I’ve been a Disney fan my whole life. Brace yourself for something really syrupy, but I even proposed to my wife on the steamboat to Disneyland.

Willa: Oh, really!

Brad: Yeah, actually that was the same year that I met Michael. So we kind of had our little Disney connection. We never went to Disneyland together. We always talked about it, but for him to go was such an ordeal. So he would always ask me about it, and what was new, and what he should go see.

So yeah. Neverland – there were certainly, I guess you’d call them nods or tributes to Disney all over the place. And vice versa. I mean the Imagineers did more work than I really knew about at Neverland, like the animated figurines. When you went inside the theater, there were the two dioramas. One of them was Pinocchio, and the other one was Cinderella. And you’d push a button and these things would come to life – there were lights and music and motion and everything. And I believe those came from the Imagineers. I think Michael commissioned those to be built. So yeah, there was no shortage of nods to Disney.

Willa: I just found this video clip of the Pinocchio diorama, filmed when it was scheduled to go up for auction. I’m afraid the video quality isn’t very high, but it gives an idea of what happened when you pushed the button:

Lisha: That’s so interesting! I found a photo of the Cinderella diorama, which depicts the moment the Fairy Godmother turns Cinderella’s rags into a beautiful ballgown.

So both of these displays are focused on transformation: the moment when Pinocchio is magically transformed from a puppet into a real boy, and when Cinderella is transformed from a household servant into a princess.

Willa: That’s a fascinating observation, Lisha! – especially since transformations were such a recurring theme in Michael Jackson’s work. For example, I noticed there’s a small scene from the Smooth Criminal segment of Moonwalker tucked into a corner of the Pinocchio diorama, which I imagine the Imagineers added as a little surprise. It seems a little out of place here, but at the same time it’s kind of appropriate since Moonwalker is full of transformations. For example, the main character, Michael, transforms into a sports car, and a robot, and a space ship, and there are psychological transformations as well. (By the way, there are also a lot of tarantulas in Moonwalker, which reminds me of what you were saying earlier, Brad, about the tarantulas on Figueroa Mountain Road.)

Lisha: Brad, do you remember how Michael Jackson felt about his own image being added to the Pinocchio diorama?

Brad:  My recollection is that Michael did not like the Smooth Criminal in the diorama, as he had very few images of himself in the public areas of Neverland.

Another thing you said that I kind of thought about for a second, about how at Disneyland you would step into the stories or the movies. You know, Michael could have done kind of a Michael Jacksonland where the bumper cars would – you know, I’m just talking completely silly – but we could have themed things, like the Thriller bumper cars or something, and had “Thriller” playing and a bunch of zombies.

He would never in a million years have done something like that. Nor would I have suggested it. That’s not what he wanted. He wanted something that kids would love and appreciate, as well as adults. If anything, there was almost a noticeable absence of anything Michael Jackson at Neverland, except Michael. Does that make sense?

Lisha:  Absolutely.

Willa: It seems like he was really trying to create this fantasy experience, and the fantasies he drew on are all kind of nostalgic kid stories, like the teepee village, and cowboys – you said the people at the zoo dressed like cowboys – and the steam engine. They’re all evoking nostalgic kid’s stories and imagination games that boys, especially, used to play in the past.

Brad: Well, if there was one theme all through Neverland, it was Peter Pan. Obviously it’s called Neverland, so there is clue number one. It’s funny – I wrote a post on Facebook about this several months ago. You know, people send me pictures, and I’ve got a pretty amazing collection of pictures now from Neverland that people have shared with me. And I was going through a bunch of them one day, and there was a picture that just stopped me in my tracks.

Out behind the house there was kind of an office. And in that office, kind of looking out at the barbecue area on the back side of the house, was this Peter Pan figure. It was probably 24 inches tall, maybe 30 inches tall – something like that. And whenever I walked by it, I would always notice it. It didn’t move. There was nothing special about it. It was just this cool figurine of Peter with his hands on his hips and his little goofy hat and everything, just kind of proudly looking out at the backyard and the barbecue area.

And it always was just like, you know what? That is the coolest thing. And even though Michael’s got Rolls Royces and a steam train and everything you can imagine, there was something about that Peter Pan that just struck me. That may have been my favorite little part of the ranch. Because it was him. I mean Michael saw himself as Peter Pan. We didn’t talk about it. I mean, I don’t want to make it sound nutty. But you know Michael just had that Peter Pan connection.

When somebody sent me that picture, it just put a little bit of a lump in my throat because it was just a really cool memory from Neverland.

Willa: The teepee village is another Peter Pan reference. I mean, there’s a teepee village in Peter Pan – that’s part of the story.

Brad: Oh yeah. And in the big train station, up in the ceiling of the station, was this kind of a flying, it wasn’t full motion, but it was Peter Pan and a couple of the other characters. They were kind of suspended up there on string or rods or something. So they were flying above you when you walked into the train station.

Willa: Oh cool! I was just looking at an interesting post that had images of Peter Pan and Tinkerbell battling Captain Hook at Neverland. Were these up in the rafters of the train station?

Brad: Yes, great photos! There was something I was going to mention about the big train station a few minutes ago. Michael would have huge groups of guests, especially if his whole family came up. The ranch house itself was pretty funny because I think it only had four bedrooms, maybe five. There weren’t that many rooms. And there were only like five guest houses. Well, his family is huge, and then he’s going to have friends and different people. So [Brad] Buxer told me that they would actually have people sleep in the train station.

Willa: Really?

Brad: Oh, they’d sleep everywhere! They’d sleep in the theater – they’d be all over the place. But the train station was really just supposed to be a train station. There was never any forethought of needing beds in there. So I don’t know if they’d sleep on air mattresses or something. But there was no bathroom! And so Buxer talks about … I don’t know if it was the brothers, Tito or whoever – you know, if you wake up in the middle of the night you’d have to walk all the way down to the house to use the bathroom. Nobody ever thought about, gee, you might want to put a bathroom in here because people might sleep here. It was just supposed to be, come in, get some candy, and get on the train.

But Michael lived there, man, and that was his house. It was not a little stopover!

Willa: And the train station – that’s something he added, right? It wasn’t part of Sycamore Valley Ranch when he bought it?

Brad: Correct. The first time I went – I always get, you know, little giggles from some of my guests in the seminars when I talk about this – but my very first job at Neverland was putting music in the bedroom, in his room. So I put big speakers on either side of his bed, and I was pulling cables and built this cool little system in the bedroom.

And there was really not a whole lot else there. I mean there was the main house, and then there were the pastures way in the back. I don’t know when the theater was built, but I think he built that soon after he bought the place. I didn’t build the theater. Lee Tucker from Warner Studios built that. But then I wound up doing just about all the other projects.

So to kind of get to the third section – when you’re finally done with the park, usually guests could jump on the train, either the big train or the little train, and then go up to the zoo. Or you could walk up there. In fact, as the park kept growing, it kept getting closer and closer to the zoo. So if you go back to my surfboard analogy, the top of that middle circle started creeping up towards the far one, which was the zoo.

So then you get up to the zoo. The petting zoo was really cool. Everything was beautiful. I mean, it was manicured like nobody’s business. People were sweeping and cleaning. The petting zoo was one of the later additions. We didn’t have that for the first few years. In the early years, I think it was just… The elephants were pretty early. Kimba the lion was pretty early. Most guests didn’t get to see Kimba. Kimba was kind of kept up the hill a little bit because he was so mad at life!

Willa:  Oh no!

Brad:  He was just not a friendly animal. But if you went to the ranch early in the morning or right around sunset, that’s when Kimba was going to get fed. And that animal would roar, and it would scare you to death!  I mean, you could hear that roar two miles away. It was just this beautiful, angry, cool roar.

I don’t want to make it sound like like he was mistreated in any way because he wasn’t, but he was just not soft and cuddly, “come play with me.” I mean, he was just a … He was tough. So we kind of kept him a little further away from the kids, because you didn’t want to terrify them.

But we had the horse barn. We had the snake barn. That was another just complete work of art, in a weird way.

Lisha: The snake barn?

Brad: Yeah, the reptile barn they called it. It was right across the street. Now you’re way up in the zoo. And this is where the fire department is. Neverland always had, I believe, two full-time firefighters in the fire station. That was required by the county, if I’m not mistaken. Right across the road from them was the horse barn, and then the snake barn.

You’d go into the snake barn, and the first room was all of these cages. It’s funny how I think about this stuff, because the first room was kind of not that impressive. You’d go in and it was full of terrariums – almost like going to a science fair or something. And it’s kind of cool – it’s like, ok, there’s a lizard and there’s a snake and there’s hissing cockroaches. It was kind of like, yeah ok, I’m good. Let’s get out of here.

But then you go through a second set of doors – I never really thought about this before – and all the sudden you’re in a different place.

Willa: You know, it kind of reminds me of what you were saying earlier about going through the first gates and it’s not that impressive. But then you go through the ornate gates and, Wow! Now you’re in a different world.

Brad: Yeah! I swear, I’m not making this up! But I’ve never really thought about it before. I always kind of thought the first room was kind of like, yawn, whatever. But that was where you were welcomed. And we had these little – we called them spiels – which is like a little 30-second recording, you know, just like at Disneyland: keep your hands and arms inside the car at all times, permanecer sentado, por favor!

In this room, you’d walk in, and I recorded one of the the animal trainers. His name was Brock, not to be confused with Brick [Price], but Brock. We had Brick and Brock! And Brock just had this beautiful deep bass voice, you know, “Welcome to…” I can’t even do it – I don’t have a voice that deep. But it would be something like, “Welcome to the reptile barn. In this room we hope to teach you about unique creatures from all over the world. Please don’t tap on the cages.”

Willa:  Here’s an audio clip of that spiel that I found in a post on your Facebook page.

Brad: Yeah, and then you’d go through a second set of doors, and there was this dark, really cool hallway. It was just a long hallway all the way to the end of the barn. And then on either side of the hallway were these beautiful glass terrariums, and that’s not even the right word. These were enclosures. I mean, they were probably six feet wide, something like that, and I don’t know, three or four feet deep by five feet tall. I mean, they were big. And for some of the big snakes, they were even bigger than that. That’s where we had the rattlesnakes and the cobras and the reticulated python and Madonna, the albino python. And they were beautiful! 

Lisha:  Here’s a picture of “Madonna”:

Brad: I think they had one full-time snake handler, and at least one or two assistants. Now we’re not at the science fair anymore. Now we’re in a full blown, almost like a Sea World type environment. Those enclosures were beautiful – hand-painted, with water. They were really, really something to see. And then each enclosure would have its own little narrative telling a little 30-second story about that snake and where it came from.

But then Michael wanted to … Actually, I think this was my idea. I said, “Can I have a little bit of fun in here?” And he’s like, “Yeah, whatever you want to do.” So I put these hidden speakers all through the length of the hallway, down by people’s feet. It was kind of dark in there, and we had crickets sounds, and it was kind of … not creepy, but it was very authentic. And I did some recording in my front yard, of all places. I had ivy in my front yard instead of grass, so I pulled a cooler – like an Igloo cooler with a rope on it – I pulled it across the ivy and recorded that sound. Then I put that onto a play-back chip.

And about every nine or ten minutes people would be in the snake barn, and they’d be looking at snakes and kind of looking around. Then they’d hear this rustling at the far end of the hallway, and it would just go whizzing by them, down the hall of speakers. And they would jump and think some stupid snake had escaped from a pen! Michael would just die laughing! He thought it was the funniest thing.

So you know, it was all those little details that … there’s just no way the guests could take all that in one day. We put so many surprises and cool little treats up there that you really could explore it for a long, long time.

Next to that was the alligators. And then you’d go a little bit further, and it was the chimps – huge, huge chimp enclosure. And then the elephants. I tell people in my seminars that the only time I got yelled at at Neverland was when I put my hand in the elephant cage.

Willa: Oh!

Brad: You know, it’s common sense. But they’re big, beautiful animals and I wanted to pet it. And man, this trainer came and she tore my head off! She said never, ever, ever, put your hand between a steel fence and an elephant! Because they don’t know. I mean, they’re just going to lean 4,000 pounds against your hand, and now you’ve got a waffle for a hand! So I learned, don’t ever do that.

Another thing that I thought was a really nice touch was Michael had those beautiful giraffes. I’ve never really been around giraffes. Who has? It’s just not something that we encounter very often in L.A.! But he put in this deck. You’d go up like two flights of stairs, and then they had these big buckets of feed up there. And so now you’re literally eye to eye with these beautiful animals, and you’re feeding them. Any chance I got – you know, if I was going to be working up there for a day – almost without fail I’d make a buzz up to see the giraffes before I went home. They’re such beautiful, gentle giants. And to actually have them kind of push their big heads against your chest while you’re feeding them … Really, really cool stuff.

Willa:  Wow!

Brad: So I mean, it goes on and on and on. But, you know …

Now let’s say that I missed my ride, and I got left at the giraffe pen and had to get myself back to the ornate gate. If I had to guess, I’d say you’re going to be walking for the better part of 45 minutes. If you just, you know, put your head down and started walking. It was huge. You just didn’t really walk around Neverland. You’d walk around the area that you were in. But that’s why they had the trains and the golf carts, and I’ve seen pictures where they had trams. Because it was too big to walk it. I don’t think people understand how big it was.

Lisha: And we’re just talking about the part of the property that was developed, right? I mean, the majority of the property was not developed, is that correct?

Brad:  Yeah. I found some pictures – you know, like aerial photos – that show how big it was because, yeah, it went way up the sides of the mountains on either side.

Lisha: Here are the aerial photos from Sotheby’s Sycamore Valley Ranch website:

Brad: At the very, very far end of the ranch – past the giraffes and everything – was the train barn.  And I don’t think anybody really went there. There was nothing to see. But that’s where the little train would go at night for repairs and things like that. And that was about as far back as the ranch was developed.

And then after that you’d need a motorcycle or a horse or an ATV or something to keep going, exploring Michael’s land. So a big, big piece of property.

Lisha: How much of the property would you say was developed?

Brad: You know, I just don’t know how far it went. But I suppose if I had to guess, maybe it would be a quarter to a third, something like that. But a lot of it would just be, I mean, Michael had little gazebos, I want to say he had two or three gazebos up on the hills. And he was a goofball! I mean he would take his golf cart or his … What do you call those three-wheeled things that are so ridiculously dangerous? Maybe he rode a quad. I think he rode a quad.

Lisha: Ok.

Brad: Yeah, he would take those things up to his gazebos. He loved to be up there with a pair of binoculars, and he’d be watching people build stuff and workmen and the gardeners. And even there – it was the weirdest thing – there was a gazebo that was way above the park, and I don’t know how they even got power up there but they got electricity up there. And sure enough, man, he wanted music up there! And I’m like, Michael, no one’s ever going to come up here. “No, but I have to have music. I have to have my music!” So there we’d be, hauling speakers up the side of a mountain. I mean there were paths. And almost anywhere that you’d go – I mean, not on the horse trails – but any place that he would go or guests might go, there would almost have to be music playing.

There was kind of a joke whenever he would leave the ranch. You know, almost everyone at the ranch had a radio, and when Michael was on the ranch he was always referred to as “the owner.” They didn’t say, you know, Michael Jackson’s on property. There would just be an announcement, “The owner will be here in five minutes.” And it kind of means, you know, everybody be on your best behavior. When Michael would leave the ranch, security at the last gate would announce, “The owner has left the ranch.” And then there would be this yelling from the gardeners, “Shut the music off! Please, shut the music off!” You can only listen to Debussy and The Sound of Music so many times, and you just can’t take it anymore!

Willa: That’s funny!

Brad: So when he was gone, they would shut the music off. But man, when he was there, it had to be on!

Lisha: Interesting!

Brad: So that’s my little virtual tour of Neverland.

Lisha: Wow, that’s fascinating. Thank you so much, Brad! That’s really incredible.

Willa: It really is! And I’m so intrigued with this idea that visiting Neverland was like moving through a song. I’m really going to have to think about that some more.

Brad:  Yeah.

Lisha: I agree. You’ve given us so much to explore and think about.

Brad:  So any final thoughts or questions?

Willa: Well, we would love to include some pictures to illustrate some of the things you’ve been talking about. I know you have some pictures on your website, and there are a lot of pictures of Neverland online. Are there any specific things you’d recommend we include pictures of?

Brad: Well, everyone has seen pictures of the park. But I would say the carousel was kind of Michael’s crown jewel. Each one of those horses and animals was, I believe, hand carved. Those were really, really beautiful pieces of art. And then David Nordahl was one of Michael’s artists, and I believe David hand painted almost all of those animals.

Willa: Oh really? I didn’t know that.

Brad:  So the carousel is definitely something that people should see. You know, there’s pictures of the superslide and the old go-kart track. I’ve never found a picture of the reptile barn. Man, if one of your readers happens to have a picture of that, that would be a real treat. I have searched and searched trying to find one, and just can’t.

Willa: OK, we’ll be sure to pass that along. And thank you again for joining us!

Lisha: Yes, thank you once again, Brad, for being so generous with your time and knowledge.

Brad:  Thank you both. Have an awesome evening!

Willa:  So following up on Brad’s suggestion, here’s a YouTube video of the carousel at Neverland that focuses on the artwork on the horses and other animals:

During our chat with Brad, he mentioned the incredible attention to detail throughout Neverland, and you can really see that in the artwork on the carousel animals.

Lisha: Yes. I’m reminded of some of my favorite photos on the Terrastories website, from the article “Inside Neverland Ranch“:

Another great resource is Rob Swinson’s book, Maker of Dreams: Creating Michael Jackson’s Neverland Valley Park, which has many detailed photographs of the carousel at Neverland, as well as a lot of information about how the park was created. Here’s a teaser photo from the 25th Anniversary of Neverland Valley Amusement Park Facebook page.

According to Swinson, this is “a photo of the ‘Butterfly Cherub Horse’ with flowers woven into the mane that Robert Nolan Hall, Chance Rides Inc., personally custom sculptured, decorated and painted for Michael as his very own special gift. It was totally unknown to Michael at the time of delivery that it existed on his new 50′ Grand Carousel as one of the 60 different menagerie animals and horses.”

Swinson’s book also acknowledges Oliver “Brick” Price, of WonderWorks in Canoga Park, California, as an important member of the “Dream Team” who helped make Neverland a reality. Brick Price will be one of the special guests speaking at Brad’s MJU seminar next month. I hear this is something not to be missed!

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A Tour of Neverland with Brad Sundberg, Part 1

Lisha: Willa and I are thrilled to be joined once again by Brad Sundberg, a recording engineer who served as Michael Jackson’s technical director for the Dangerous and History albums. Beyond the studio, Brad designed and installed music and video systems in virtually every corner of Michael Jackson’s incredible Neverland Valley Ranch property. In addition to personal listening and dance studio systems, Brad created outdoor sound systems throughout the grounds with the exact same attention to detail.

At a recent In the Studio with MJ seminar, I was so intrigued by Brad’s description of Neverland and the work he did there, it left me wanting to know more! Thank you so much, Brad, for joining us again today for an in-depth look at Neverland Valley Ranch.

Willa: Yes, welcome, Brad. Thanks so much for joining us again! From everything I’ve heard about Neverland, it wasn’t just a home for Michael Jackson but also an extension of his artistic imagination. It’s almost like Neverland was a living work of art. So I’m really curious to learn more about this relatively unknown work of “art.”

Lisha: I have to say, Brad, your seminar gave me a sense of Neverland that I really hadn’t had before. We’ve all seen photos and aerial views of the property, but I don’t think I really had an idea of the true scale and grandeur of the property until I heard you describe it.

Brad: Ok, so what I want to try and do is give you guys a sense of the size of Neverland, and in a sense almost kind of walk you through it.

Lisha: Yes, being able to visualize Neverland from the ground level is what I think a lot of us are missing.

Brad: Right. Neverland was huge. You know, I’m not from Texas, and I don’t mean like Texas ranch huge, but it was 2,800 acres. To an American, that’s basically 2,800 football fields, if I’m not mistaken. It was big.

Lisha: There are many small towns that don’t have that much land!

Brad: Right. So when you went to Neverland, number one it was … I drove to Neverland countless times. I lived just outside of Pasadena, California, and Neverland is north of Santa Barbara. So you drive to Santa Barbara and get off the freeway, and then you start winding up the side of a mountain. And it’s like two-lane mountain roads. Bel Air and Beverly Hills are a million miles away. This is sagebrush and cattle and steep ravines, way, way outside of L.A. So it would take me about two and a half hours, two hours and twenty minutes, something like that, to get from the Pasadena area to Michael’s gate.

So when you drove down the road towards Neverland – and probably some of your readers have done this – I think it’s about seven miles down Figueroa Mountain Road, and it’s just a flat, pretty nondescript road. I’ll tell you one thing: that part of the country – this is going to creep some people out – there’s a lot of tarantulas. And I know about as much about tarantulas as I do writing an Italian opera, which is nothing. But tarantulas apparently live in the ground – and we’re way off topic but I’ll go fast – and I don’t know what month they come out, but I want to say it’s like March or April or something like that. And you’d be driving down Figueroa Mountain Road, and as you’re driving you would just hear this pop, pop, pop – and you’re driving over tarantulas, and they’re popping.

Lisha:  Ew!

Brad:  I don’t want to say that the road was covered in them, but there were times when I would be swerving because I don’t want to run over the little guys! But there were so many of them you couldn’t avoid them.

Willa:  Oh no!

Brad:  They come out of the ground, and they’re trying to warm up and find something to eat. I never really saw too many of them on the ranch, but it was always on that road out to the ranch. A few times a year they’d be all over the road, and it was really weird.

So you’d get to Neverland, and the first thing you come to is the outside gate – kind of the guard gate. And that’s where you’ve got to say who you are, and even me – and I’m not tooting my own horn – but man, every time I’d go to Neverland, I’d have to be on the list, and I’d have to be pre-approved, and I’d have to sign this three- or four-page release that I’m not going to talk about it – which of course I am.

Lisha: Every time? Every time you went?

Brad: Every single time. Every. Single. Time. Everybody in the car would have to sign this release. Whoever the guard was, they’d know me and they’d say, Hey Brad, how are you doing, and they’d get the release, and yeah. We would have to do it every single time.

So now you’re in, and it looks just like it does out. It’s sagebrush, and do you know what cypress bushes are? That’s kind of a California thing. Just kind of low, green – they’re not pretty but kind of desert-ish looking. And you drive up and over a hill, and I’ll never forget – now other people have written about this, I’m not the only one – but you would crest over this hill, and I think somewhere up there was a sign that said “Welcome to Neverland” with a cherub or a baby or something on it.

You’d come around a corner and over this hill, and then you’d start going down the other side. It wasn’t like a steep climb in the Alps or something – it was a just a road that went over a hill. And that’s when you’d start seeing the white fences and the green grass. And then you’d go a little bit further and you’d see the fountains, and the oak trees. And I think Michael kind of coined the phrase that it was like being in The Wizard of Oz where it goes from black and white to color. And it really was. It was very, very dramatic coming down that other side, and you’re like, Holy cow, I did not know this was here, because you can’t see any of that from the road. This is easily a mile or a mile and a half onto the ranch before you even see the ranch. Does that make sense?

Willa: It does. Rabbi Boteach talks about that a bit in his book. He has a quote where Michael Jackson says,

You know, it’s almost an act of psychology. . . .  I was gonna have people swing them [the gates] open and really kind of have them funky and tattered, just so psychologically you really feel like you’re coming to a ranch, so that when you go around the bend I want it to change to Technicolor, like The Wizard of Oz does.

So that’s exactly what you’re describing!

Brad:  Yeah. I mean the guard shack and the gate, they were nice. But it wasn’t until you got to the second gate – the ornate gate – that it really started to make a statement.

Willa: So the gates he was talking about in this quote, that’s the first gates? And then there’s a second set of gates?

Brad: Yeah, there’s the security gate out by the road, and then there’s what he called the “ornate gate” inside. So when you got to the second gate – like I say, I’m estimating – but it had to have been a mile, or maybe even a mile and a half, from the first gate to the second.

Then there was a huge parking lot that was on the left-hand side of that gate. And they did that because when we had a lot of guests, most people were not allowed to take their cars or buses into the ranch itself. You would stop at that second gate and park there. And then you would generally walk through the ornate gate. People have seen all the pictures of the black ornate gate with the gold crest and everything. And so at that point, that’s where we would unload the buses. You know, there might be kids coming in from L.A. or Santa Barbara or someplace, or Make a Wish kids or different things. That was kind of the staging area. Then they would walk through that gate. And that’s where the little train was waiting for them.

So when people would get out of their cars and buses, Michael wanted to welcome them to Neverland in a very grand way. So he asked me to build an enormous sound system right at that gate. So up to that point, there was no music, there were no lights. I remember leaving Neverland at night and, man, after you left that ornate gate, it was dark. There was just nothing up on that hill.

So our guests would show up to the gate, the gate would open up, and we would just flood them with music. And I don’t just mean a couple speakers hanging from a chain. I mean, if I’m not mistaken, we probably had 20,000 watts of power.

Lisha: Wow!

Willa: I don’t know much about electricity, but that sounds like a lot.

Brad: That’s a small concert system. So they actually built us a small building, kind of a shed next to the gate – I mean, not a shed, nothing at Neverland was ever a shed – but they built it just for equipment because we had so much power. Michael’s words to me were, “I want it to be loud enough to shake a bus.” So we built just this monster system. And that’s what would welcome people in. So they would walk through that gate, music is playing, and now they’ve kind of entered into Michael’s world.

Lisha: Amazing. Were there any light designs there?

Brad: Yeah, I’m glad you mentioned that! I didn’t put the lights in but we had a fiber optic guy, and at night that sign would just explode in lights. I cannot remember if it was just white lights or color. I seem to think it was just white lights. But you’ve seen fiber optic lights – you know, very Disneyesque – where they flutter from left to right. So there’s thousands of fiber optics in that sign.

Willa: This is the Neverland sign up above the gate?

Brad: Yeah, this is the big black Neverland sign, and it has the big gold crest above it. That whole thing at night was just outrageously beautiful.

So then you would walk through, and there’d be one of the staff or a couple of staff members to meet the guests there. And there’d be the little train there. Michael was very big into costumes – you know, he kind of took a cue from Disney where just about everybody at the ranch was in costume. You know, not silly, but the guys who worked on the train and the rides, they kind of had that formal kind of a conductor’s look with a conductor’s hat and a black jacket and the whole thing.

So this is an experience. You’re stepping into a different world.

Lisha: And I’ve seen maids in uniform, right? At the time, it wasn’t fashionable for wealthy people to have their employees wear uniforms, but I’ve seen pictures of the Neverland staff in maid costumes – that kind of Hollywood look?

Brad: Yep! All the security guys were in uniform. Back in the horse ranch, it was very much cowboy attire. The firemen wore firefighters clothes, and they were real. So yeah.

Lisha: And these are all elements of theater, right? We have wardrobe. We have sound. We have lights. We have these dramatic entrances and so forth. It’s very theatrical, wouldn’t you say?

Brad: Absolutely. And very planned. There was nothing at Neverland that was by accident or overlooked.

So there was a small train station right next to the big gate, and there’s something I talk about my seminars and that’s the details of Neverland. There’s that train station, and it’s smaller than a very, very small house – you know, like the size of a southern porch, maybe, or a very big gazebo. But this thing has a slate roof and architecture, and the railings and the pillars are just beautifully turned.

I’m trying to think of the word, but there’s almost like plaques or little things on the pillars – little paintings and etchings and things. It’s just gorgeous, and this is just the first train station!

Lisha: Unbelievable. Here’s the first train station as it looks now on the Sotheby’s website for Sycamore Valley Ranch:

Do you remember the name of the architect or designer?

Brad: Well, Tony Urquidez was the contractor. I don’t know who the architect was, but Michael was really good about using local guys.

Lisha: Do you think that he actually helped design it?

Brad: Oh, I’m sure Tony did. I’m positive Tony did.

Lisha: Do you think Michael Jackson also contributed?

Brad: I’m sure he might have done some rough sketches or something, but I think he was probably a little bit more involved on the concept. He would send Tony on trips. He and Tony would travel together and go to different parks and different cities and just look at architecture and get ideas. So yeah, Michael was very specific about what he wanted. But then he also kind of got a kick out of surrounding himself with creative people, and seeing what they could bring to the table. So I think the combination worked.

Willa: Brad, you mentioned earlier that everything was very carefully thought out for effect. So how would you describe the overall effect of the first gate, the drive, the ornate gate, the little train station? What I mean is, what effect or experience do you think he going for with that?

Brad: Well, I never like to try to crawl inside his head, but it was very theatrical. And you’re setting the stage. You know this is kind of the introduction – the song is beginning. And so you don’t want to flood people with everything at once. They just got off a two-hour drive, they parked, they’re finally here, and you know, it’s almost like the excitement is building.

So at that point the guests would get on the train. And it’s not that every day was the same, but the way that we designed it was they could get on the train there, and the train would, in essence, bypass the house. The house is kind of his private residence. But the train is going past the lake, and the swans, and the swan boat. And we’ve got music playing, and these gorgeous oak trees, and that’s slowly taking them up to the theme park.

Willa: And there are actually two separate trains – is that right?

Brad: Yeah. So other guests, depending on who they were, Michael might just meet them there with a golf cart, or different things would happen. You could walk to the main house, but I’m telling you  – getting from one point at Neverland to another on foot, you were hoofing it! It was a good little walk to get from the ornate gate to the house. But the house is kind of the first thing you come to. There’s pastures. There’s guest housing – I think there are five or seven guest villas. I forget. And then you get to the main house.

But then from there, you can walk further to the left, and again, it’s going to be a hike, but you’re going to go past security and past the video library, and Michael had some memorabilia upstairs. Then you keep going up the hill, and you’re coming up to the big train station. And people have seen pictures of that with the flower clock and the moving figurines. That was another just absolute piece of artwork. We had music playing there. We had cricket sounds and classical music, and all kinds of things.

Lisha: What were the cricket sounds?

Brad: Well, up in that part of California, believe it or not, it’s really quiet. Michael wanted to always be creating ambience of some sort. So we would have speakers tucked away in hedges and things just playing cricket sounds that we recorded. And there would be music playing so there were all these layers of sound. We’d have birds chirping in trees. It was funny, when you would shut everything off it was almost eerily silent. Michael always wanted something – even if people didn’t really notice it – something that just added to the ambience of Neverland.

Lisha: So there was an outdoor sound design at Neverland?

Brad: Yeah. We had these rock speakers that we got from a company called Rockustics in Colorado. They sound really good, but you know, instead of having two of them or four of them or six of them, we probably had close to 300 of them, just all over the ranch. We’d use them for music, and we’d have birds. Well, we had our own bird houses that we had built with speakers in them.

But then you would walk up to this massive train station, and this is just, I’m not quoting anybody, but I’m sure you guys have read stuff about Walt Disney. Walt used to have an expression he would use when he was building Disneyland, and it sounds kind of funny to say it, but it would be like when you go to a county fair or something, there needs to be a “weenie.” There needs to be something to get people’s attention. So at Disneyland, that’s the castle. At Epcot, it’s the giant golf ball.Well to me, at Neverland, it was that big train station. It was so beautiful and you could see it from so far away.

In fact, if I’m not mistaken, when you came over that first hill, I think you could see the train station almost right away. That thing was gorgeous. You’d go in there, and that’s where the big train would go.

So there were two trains at Neverland. There was the little train that was used to carry people really for transportation.  And then the big train was more of an attraction.  It was an actual steam engine, The Katherine, and that was really, really beautiful.

Willa: So it was a steam engine?  It was actually powered by steam?

Brad: Oh yeah.

Willa: Wow, I didn’t know that.  That’s wonderful!

Brad: Yeah, the big train was an actual refurbished steam engine. They sent a bunch of us out to, I think, it was Mt. Pleasant, Iowa, and that’s where the train was refurbished. It was an old functioning steam engine, steam train, and they rebuilt the whole thing in Mt. Pleasant. So we were out there for, I don’t know, two weeks.

Lisha: Were you working on the sound system for the train? Is that why you were sent out there?

Brad: Yeah. We were doing all the sound and lights, the generator, and the whole thing. Michael had no patience, in a good way. When a new attraction would come to the park, he would want to ride it that day. So they would actually send us away to work on stuff off site, so when the new thing would show up, we could just basically hook it up and he could jump on it and start playing. He didn’t want to wait two weeks for us to put music on the train.  He wanted us to go away and put music on it and have it show up just ready to go.

Willa: That’s great that he was so excited about it. Like a kid getting a new train set, only it’s a real train!

Brad: Oh, absolutely.

Willa: Did he have a water tower to fill the steam engine with water?

Brad: Oh yeah. Right by the big train station on the back side to the right, there’s a water tower. It was legit.

I believe the heat source was propane. They weren’t shoveling coal – it wasn’t quite that authentic. But no, there was nothing artificial about it. It was the real deal. They had two or three guys who were trained – no pun intended – to operate the train. It was not something where you’re going to have some 12-year-old kid jump in there and start pulling levers. There were places at the ranch where you could have all the fun you wanted, but there was stuff like that that was real deal.

Willa: That’s incredible.

Brad: So once you were at the big train station, it was basically, for lack of a better word, almost like a huge hourglass, where there was a loop on either end, and then a long path in the middle that would take you past the theater. There was a stop at the theater, and you could jump off there. And this was on what I would call the high side of the valley. If you’re in Neverland looking all the way down the valley, the big train was on your left and the little train was on your right. They both took you all the way to the back side of the valley.

So on the big train you could jump off at the theater or keep going into a giant loop back by the zoo and the chimps and giraffes and all that. So when you’re at the train station, you could either take the train or you could walk to the theater, if you really wanted to burn some calories. I didn’t have a smart phone with a GPS on it back then, but I’m guessing it had to have been the better part of three-quarters of a mile from the train station to the theater.

It was just big. When we were working up there, we always had our trucks or cars on the property because we weren’t usually there with guests, or it would be a small group of guests. It’s pretty hard for us to be there if there were going to be three buses of people up there. But you would jump on a golf cart or something to get around.

Now go back to the little train, over on the other side of the house – way on the other side – and that’s where the teepee village was. The teepee village and the waterpark. That was one of the only places where we did not put music. We wanted to keep that really authentic.

Willa: In the teepee village?

Brad: Yeah, there was no electricity back there. It was just the teepee village and the waterpark. And it was the coolest waterpark ever, because when kids would go back there, only at Michael Jackson’s ranch are there just barrels of water balloons that have already been filled up, and they’re all set to go for you. And you can just go crazy. So they had firehoses back there, and water cannons. Of course, California has been in a pretty vicious drought for a while so now it might be frowned upon just a little bit, but back then that wasn’t quite as big a deal.

Willa: I’m just imagining being the person whose job it was to fill water balloons!

Brad:  Well, I’m told that at its peak, Neverland had something like – I don’t want to exaggerate, and there’s people who have done more research than I have – but I’m told there was somewhere around 100 to 110 employees. Now about 60 or 70 of those were gardeners. The landscaping was just gorgeous. They had nurseries and fresh flowers all the time.

So yeah, I’m sure they had somebody who just filled water balloons for special event days. They had ride operators and zoo keepers and gardeners and housekeepers and cooks, and then just the ranch staff – I mean, the ranch manager and maintenance, and those kind of people behind the scenes. It was a full-blown operation. I’ve worked in some pretty astounding homes in my life, but this was on a whole different level. Really not like anything else.

Lisha: It sounds more like a hotel in that there were so many employees 24/7, right? It’s not like all the employees went home at night.

Brad: It was scheduled very well. It’s not like they had ride operators out standing by the bumper cars at 4 in the morning, wondering if someone is going to show up. It wasn’t quite like that. It was very scheduled where, if a big group was going to come on a Saturday, then they would have all the ride operators there, and the rides would be open for maybe six hours or something. If there were VIP guests there, then yeah, you could get spaghetti at 3 in the morning if that’s what you wanted. I don’t think a lot of people would do that. I mean it wasn’t that big. There weren’t that many guests. But yeah, Michael wanted his guests to be pampered to the nth degree.

Willa: Like a resort.

Brad: Yeah. So, I kind of treat the ranch in thirds. I’ve kind of taken you through the first third, which is the guard gate, the ornate gate, the pastures, the main house, the waterpark, the big train station. If you picture Neverland almost like a surfboard or something, the bottom third of it is what I have described.

Lisha: Ok, so for our readers, here’s a map of Neverland that illustrates the surfboard analogy quite well and how the ranch was divided in thirds:

Also, here is a link to some recent drone photography of the property, now called Sycamore Valley Ranch, for those who might not have seen it!

Stay tuned for Part Two of Brad’s description of Neverland, and thank you again, Brad, for being so generous with your time and walking us through Neverland Valley Ranch!

 

 

 

A Chat with Brad Sundberg about MJU

Willa: This week Lisha and I are very happy to be joined by Brad Sundberg, a recording engineer who worked with Michael Jackson for twenty years – is that right, Brad?

Brad: Oh yeah, right around twenty years, on and off, between various projects.

Willa: And you were the technical director for Dangerous, History, and Blood on the Dance Floor?

Brad: Well, really just Dangerous and History. I worked on some of the tracks for Blood – I was one of the engineers on several of those projects.

Willa: Ok, and then you also were a sound engineer at Neverland and worked on a lot of different projects there, right?

Brad: Yeah, I built most of the systems at the ranch and I worked on a bunch of his videos. So if it involved music or some sort of, you know, light control or something, I was probably involved.

Lisha: You also did the sound design at Neverland, correct?

Brad: I did the sound design. I stripped the wires. I pulled them through tubes. I carried speakers and ladders. I did it all – me and a small crew.

Willa: And you’ve also taken an active role in educating people about Michael Jackson as an artist. In fact you’re organizing something called MJU, or Michael Jackson University, that’s coming up in June. I was wondering if you could tell us a little bit about MJU and what it’s about.

Brad: Sure. Thank you both for having me back. It’s always great to chat with you guys.

Willa: Oh, it’s great to have you here!

Lisha: Thank you so much for joining us, Brad!

Brad: We just launched our website – or a new website, I should say – and in the process of doing that I was kind of given the task of counting all the seminars and events that we’ve hosted and where we’ve been. And we’ve done something like 75 live events to this point, in about 12 countries, and hosted somewhere around 2,400 guests. I’m pretty proud of that and I’m really pleased with our guests and the events that we’ve come up with.

So this summer we wanted to do something bigger, different … dare I say, something that no one’s ever really done before. We decided to call it MJU, and we want it to cover a pretty extensive portion of Michael’s professional life, starting at Off the Wall and going through Thriller, Bad, Dangerous, and so on all the way to This Is It.

I’m pretty fortunate in that I know so many of those guys – Ed Cherney, Matt Forger, Jerry Hey, Brian Vibberts, Brad Buxer. And so we just started making some phone calls. I started calling guys. I sent emails, smoke signals, whatever it would take to see if I can get these guys interested in all of us essentially being in one place at one time. Well, it’s too many guys for one day, so we broke it up into a four-day event that we’re going to be doing on June 20th, 21st, 22nd, and 23rd at SIR studios in Hollywood.

June 20th, the first day, which is a Monday, is going to be kind of my solo show. That’s going to be the newest version of In the Studio with MJ and we’re going to spend a good bit of time talking about Neverland, and kind of the latest incarnation of my seminar, if you will. We’ve added quite a few new songs, some new material that we tried in Europe this past January, and it went really well. So the first day is going to be In the Studio with MJ.

Day Two we’re going to dig into what I call the early years. And that’s going to be where we’re going to go all the way back to Off the Wall and I’ve got Ed Cherney coming in. Ed was basically me several years before. He was Bruce Swedien’s assistant engineer.

Willa: Oh interesting.

Brad: I find it interesting sometimes to talk to the people behind the scenes because they are a bit more, you know, they were there but they weren’t really the star of the show. So Ed was there with Michael at a really cool time. I mean that was Michael’s first project with Quincy and Bruce and that team.

Ed’s going to be opening up Day Two, and we’re going to dig straight into Off the Wall. Then from there, we’re going to bring Matt Forger in and start talking about Thriller. Matt was the assistant engineer on Thriller. Matt actually recorded the Eddie Van Halen solo on “Beat It” and pieced that whole thing together.

Willa: Oh really!

Brad: Matt’s got some great stories. Matt is the sweetest, kindest man. I love Matt, absolutely think the world of him. So then Matt went on to do Captain EO. So he did that alone with Michael. We’ve done an entire seminar just on Captain EO. Lisha, were you here for that?

Lisha: Oh my god, it was incredible. Just incredible.

Brad: You’re so kind.

Lisha: No, I’m a huge fan of Captain EO, and not nearly enough has been written about it. Just in the history of the music video in general, it has not gotten its due. Hearing Matt Forger recall how it all came together was an amazing experience. I just loved it.

Brad: You’re very kind, thank you. We need to do another one.

Willa: Now you did that at Disney World, and you all actually saw the 4D version of Captain EO a couple of times, right?

Brad: Yeah, we knew that it was going to end, and Disney would never really say when the last day was. They finally did, but I was getting nervous that they were going to pull the plug on it. So I flew Matt out, and we had a good group. Yes, we did that here at Epcot. We did the seminar at – where were we? Stark Lake Studios? Do you remember, Lisha? I think it was at Stark Lake.

Lisha: Yes, that’s right, and then we spent the next day at Disney.

Brad: I think we saw EO three or four times – something like that.

So anyway, we’ll have Matt, and somewhere I’ve got a working copy of Captain EO – kind of a production print. So we might watch part of that. Then, all on that same day, we’ll jump into the Bad album. Matt was very involved in the pre-production of the Bad album, and so he recorded a whole lot of those early versions. And then Bruce and Quincy took it from there, and did kind of the final production on that album.

Willa: Now, when you say pre-production, do you mean creating the demos so they can decide if they want to move forward with that song? Or what does pre-production involve?

Matt: Well, in Michael Jackson world, it’s much bigger than for a lot of artists. Michael had his own studio – at Hayvenhurst, I should say – you know, his home. And so Matt Forger and Bill Bottrell and Brent Averill spent a lot of time at Hayvenhurst, in essence recording a good chunk of the Bad album: “Smooth Criminal,” “Liberian Girl,” “Bad,” “The Way You Make Me Feel.” Most of those songs were done before the album even started.

There’s all kinds of forums and goofy talk about this stuff where sometimes they’re referred to as the B Team, and I just think that’s tacky and uncalled for. These are Michael’s guys, and they did a really beautiful job. But Bruce and Quincy wanted to take it up even another notch, so some of those songs were re-recorded. But the melody is in – the core, the heart of those songs was done by these guys.

So we’ll have Matt there, and of course I was very involved with the Bad album. So we’ll be talking about that. And that’s Day Two.

I don’t know what time we’re going to crawl out of there that night, but Day Three we’re going to go in a whole different direction. We’re going to start talking about Michael’s short films, and the tours. I’ve got a guy by the name of Brick Price, and Brick is an old, old dear friend. See Michael had all these – you know, Michael was complicated, and he had friends in the film industry, he had artists, and just people – like he’d hang out with the Imagineers at Disney. Brick was one of these guys. I think he came from the Star Trek world. And Brick is really good at building spaceships, and so I know Brick was involved in Captain EO. But then he was very involved in Moonwalker, and I believe Brick was also involved in Ghosts.

Willa: Oh really!

Brad: Yeah, I could be wrong, but I know he was very involved in Moonwalker. I’ve got some other friends from Ghosts and I haven’t even reached out to them yet.

But Brick has some stuff up his sleeves. I don’t know what he’s going to bring. I mean he built like the Captain EO sets and all that stuff. He’s got some crazy stuff in his collection, and it’s just in a warehouse. So he’s kind of excited to, you know, pull it out and blow the dust off it and let us see it. He’s got some photos of Michael that have just never been seen. And he’s very protective of that stuff. And he’s just a good guy. He was with us at the ranch and did a lot of the visuals up there. His kids ran around the ranch like they owned the place. He was really good friends with Michael.

So we’re going to start Wednesday with Brick. And I don’t know how I’m going to stop, but at some point I’ve got to stop that and then we’re going to shift into the tours. At that point, my plan is to have Brad Buxer and Michael Prince. And there are other people I’ve reached out to, and they may or may not surprise us. I don’t know.

But we’re going to spend a good bit of time talking about what it was like to tour with Michael Jackson. That’s something I haven’t really dug into too deep in my seminars because I didn’t tour with him. I would do all what’s called the tour pre-production, where we would get the band trained on new songs. I wasn’t involved in any of the visuals on the tours but I was involved in the music. We’d have to change the tempo of songs, change the key – things like that.

Willa: And why would you need to do that?

Brad: Well, Michael liked shows to be fast and exciting. Most artists do this, especially pop musicians. You know, if you listen to the old Jackson song, “You’ve got me working, working day and night” – listen to the album speed, and then watch one of the videos where he does it live, it’s just ridiculously fast. So he wants the audience feeling that energy. He wants the really fast tempo that’s fun to dance to. And then we would pitch it way down so he could actually sing it, because you can’t sing at that key night after night. So we’d want to get it down into a register that he was comfortable singing at.

Willa: Oh interesting. I thought you were going to say just the opposite – that you would slow it down so he could conserve energy on a long tour and not wear himself out.

Brad: Oh no! No, he wanted the tempo to be just outrageously fast for all of those songs, and then we’d pitch them way down. So we’d work with the band, and that’s where Brad Buxer really comes in, taking Michael’s ideas musically and turning them into something that’s going to be fun for the band to play and for an audience to enjoy.

Willa: So if he would sing at the pitch that it was on the album, night after night, that would strain his voice?

Brad: Yeah. If you’re going to sing live, you want to pitch it down to a lower register. It’s just easier to sing. It’s pretty hard to hit those high notes night after night – that’s going to blow your voice out.

Willa: Oh interesting. I didn’t know that.

Brad: But some of the stuff that Buxer and I have talked about before is just, you know, things that I find interesting. I don’t know, maybe I’m just a weirdo but I’ve been to so many of the shows that, yeah, it’s kind of fun what goes on on stage, but I’m always curious about backstage, and how they traveled. The European tours where they had these giant Russian jets – Brad has told me about those, and that stuff’s just crazy.

They would have three stages. Michael would be on one stage on a Tuesday. The crew would be at the previous stage that same day, breaking it down in a previous city. And there would be another crew in a third city, setting the next stage up.

Willa: Oh, so they would leap frog?

Brad: Exactly. And the logistics of that – I love that kind of stuff – just to coordinate all of that activity. They actually had a baker that traveled on the crew with them, so every day they’d have fresh bread, fresh pies. Who does that?!

I love that kind of stuff. So we’re going to dig into the tours, on stage and backstage, on that Wednesday. And then if we have any strength left at all, we’re going to come back on Thursday and dig into the later years. And more than likely that’ll be Dangerous, HIStory, Invincible. And then all the way through the Vegas years, and the Apollo Theater, and the Dubai show, and the Clinton – what was it? The Democratic National Convention whatever it was.

Willa: Oh, the inauguration?

Brad: No, I think it was a Clinton gala or something.

Lisha: Yeah, he actually did both.

Brad: Ok. And then we’ll take it all the way to, you know – it’s like I sometimes say, the story doesn’t really have a happy ending, but we’ll talk about This Is It. Brad Prince was with Michael that last night, and you know, I think it’s a good story for people to hear.

So that’s MJU. We’re kind of taking my seminar and just blowing it up over four days. And I’m bringing in the people that were there. And I could go on and on and on. There’s plenty more people I’d like to bring in in the future.

Willa: It sounds like it could go on for four months. I mean, that’s a semester’s worth of material you’re covering.

Brad: There’s actually one guy I inadvertently overlooked, and that’s Jerry Hey. Jerry’s going to be there on Day Two, the early years. Jerry is a sweet, sweet, remarkably talented man. Jerry was the lead horn player for Seawind, and he went on to build what’s called the Seawind Horns in L.A. And these guys played on all of Michael’s records – the horn section – and Quincy’s, and all over town they played.

But Jerry also was very involved in a lot of the vocal arrangements and background melodies and all that, and he’s just a funny guy. He’s another piece to the puzzle that people may not sit up and go, Oh wow, Jerry Hey’s going to be there. But you don’t want to miss Jerry. He has so much knowledge, and Michael loved Jerry so much. I haven’t really hung with Jerry in years. Jerry had a little bit of a health crisis this past summer, and thankfully he’s doing well. But I’m really, really excited to have Jerry with us on Day Two.

And then Day Four we’ve got Brian Vibberts and Rob Hoffman, who both were with us on the HIStory projects and stayed with Michael beyond that. So you know – let’s see, what more can I give? We’ve really pulled out all the stops, and I’m really excited about this.

Lisha: Wow, it sounds absolutely amazing.

Willa: It does, and I also think it’s really important. There have there been more than a few critics – and I think this is changing somewhat – but there have been quite a few people who have made it sound like Michael Jackson was a very talented singer and dancer, but that basically he was just a performer. That he didn’t have a vision. It was really Quincy Jones’ vision or Berry Gordy’s vision, and Michael Jackson was just performing. They were really the people creating the art.

Brad: Right.

Willa: And I think your seminars have really countered that and shown that Michael Jackson was very active in the studio and an artist in the fullest sense of the word.

Brad: And he was smart. I mean, to surround yourself with people that you trust. You’re in essence kind of putting your career into their hands and saying, That was great, now where are we going to go next? That takes a lot of guts. And so he would surround himself with good people – some would stick around for a while, some would kind of come and go.

You know, I think if there’s one thing you’re going to see in people that I use in my seminars, but also people that really worked with Michael for long term, they’re just good people. And they’re approachable. And they’re funny. And they might be a little bit eccentric, but they bring something to the table that Michael knew. And Michael loved that. He loved having a variety of people around him. We just didn’t have a lot of crazy egos in the studio with Michael. I think people see that in my seminars – that we just don’t have egomaniacs. Michael just didn’t work well with people like that. So they’re really cool guys, and I’m pretty proud and pleased that they’re willing to kind of go on this journey with me.

Willa: It sounds fabulous.

Brad:  So buy your tickets! Get on my website and buy a ticket. It’s the biggest facility – well, we had a big facility in Tokyo – but this is probably the biggest facility that we’ve used in the States. It’s a big room where people are going to be able to stretch out, and the sound system there is unbelievable. It’s really going to be a special event.

Willa: So how many people can that studio hold?

Brad: I’m told that we can do about 100, maybe 120 – something like that.

Willa: So it will still be really intimate?

Brad: Oh yeah. We’re not talking thousands. No, it’ll certainly be comfortable. And it’s a funky dark studio that people like. I do these all over the place, and some places are so clean and pristine that it’s a little boring. I kind of like something that’s got a little more grit to it. This is a place that just has years of history. So I hope people will consider coming.

Willa: And you’ll be bringing your tapes and pictures and stories?

Brad: We’ll be bringing all kinds of stuff. I haven’t really publicly announced this yet, but tentatively we’ve got a really heavy collector – I don’t want to mention his name – but he’s offered to come and bring some crazy, you know, one of the original gloves, several of the jackets. He just has a remarkable collection. And he’s offered to come in and set that up. People aren’t going to be able to try on jackets or anything, but you know.

And then at night, we’re kind of kicking around the idea of having a Moonwalker night, and just some fun extra things that we might put together. We’re putting our heart and soul into it, and I think it’s really going to be a cool event.

Willa: It sounds very fun!

Brad:  So June 20th through 23rd, in Hollywood, California.

Lisha: If anyone would like more information, check out Brad’s beautiful new website.  Even if you can’t go to the seminar, you’ll definitely want to spend some time looking around on this site. There’s lots of great information on Brad’s In the Studio with Michael Jackson Facebook page, too.

Thanks again, Brad, for giving us a sneak peek of MJU!

Willa: Yes, thanks so much for talking with us! And we’ll continue our conversation soon, when we talk about Neverland.

Brad: Thank you both!

 

Ghosts and Some Questionable Family Values

Willa:  Happy Holidays!  As many of you know, Joie and I started this blog more than four years ago as a place to have in-depth discussions about “Michael Jackson, his art, and social change.” It’s been fascinating talking with you all about these ideas – I have learned so much the past four years. Michael Jackson’s full body of work – his music, dancing, lyrics and poetry, his concerts, short films and other visual art, his creative process and innovative production methods, his public persona, his costumes, his face and body, and above all his overarching aesthetic and deeply held beliefs about social justice and the power of art to bring about change – these are all so rich in meaning it really does take a village to even begin to grasp it all, and I sincerely appreciate everything you all have shared.

About a year ago Joie decided to devote herself fully to a new career, and since then she hasn’t been participating here at the blog. I’m very excited for her but I miss her terribly. To be honest, my first impulse was to retire this space, but Joie convinced me to keep it going. However, I’ve really struggled since she left, as many of you have probably noticed. I’ve been joined by some wonderful guests this year – Raven Woods, Eleanor Bowman, Joe Vogel, Nina Fonoroff, D.B. Anderson, Marie Plasse, Toni Bowers – and I deeply appreciate their involvement and support. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed our conversations. However, this blog was conceived as a partnership, and it works best when there are two of us fully committed to it, week after week, post after post. And I’m starting to realize that I just don’t enjoy doing it on my own. Running the blog with Joie was a blast. Doing it by myself is not.

After a year of feeling kind of lost and overwhelmed, I decided I really need another partner to keep this blog vibrant and functioning well. So I asked Lisha McDuff if she would be willing to take that on, and I’m so grateful and happy that she has agreed. As many of you know from past conversations, Lisha is extremely knowledgeable about music and the entertainment industry in general, and about Michael Jackson in particular. She’s a classically trained musician who for 30 years made her living as a flutist, performing in orchestras and major touring productions like Wicked and Phantom of the Opera. Three years ago she decided to temporarily leave the orchestra pit and go back to school, and in June 2013 she received a Master’s degree in Popular Music Studies from the University of Liverpool. She’s continuing her studies at McMaster University, where she is working on a major research project about Michael Jackson, with Susan Fast as her director.

Lisha, thank you so much for joining me! I can’t tell you how grateful I am. And how fun that you’ve been working with Susan on Michael Jackson! What could be better than that?

Lisha:  No kidding! Talk about some serious brain power. Susan Fast is everything a popular music scholar should be, in my opinion.

Willa:  Oh, I agree! I love her work. She blows me away with her insights and depth of knowledge time after time. You’re both so knowledgeable about music and have such fascinating ideas – how wonderful that you’re working together! I know how busy you are right now, so I felt kind of guilty even asking, but I am so excited and relieved and happy to have you here as my new writing and blogging partner. Thank you sincerely from the bottom of my heart for accepting.

Lisha:  Honestly, I’m thrilled you asked, Willa. I have gained so much from your work, especially your conversations with Joie and all the other amazing contributors here. Every post has been like a roller-coaster ride for me, so I’m excited for the opportunity to participate on a regular basis. Before we get started though, there is something I’d really like to say: I miss Joie’s contributions terribly as well! I’m sure we all do.

Willa:  Oh, I miss her every post. But we keep in touch and she seems really happy in her new career, so I think it’s been a good move for her. And maybe we can convince her to come join us sometimes …

Lisha:  I certainly hope so!

Willa:  So today we’re going to look at the evolution of the 40-minute short film, Ghosts. Lisha, this all began when you found a clip of an early version of Ghosts, which was filmed in 1993. Here’s a link:

Thank you so much for sharing this! You’ve been trying to track this down for quite a while, right?

Lisha:  Yes, I have been curious about this early footage for years now. I’d heard rumblings about it and I’d seen a few screenshots here and there, but I never had any luck in finding a way to view it. I just couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw it had been posted to YouTube.

Willa:  Oh, it’s fascinating! I was so excited when you told me you’d found it. There are quite a few demos available of Michael Jackson’s songs where we can see how his ideas progressed, but it’s rare to have a demo version, as it were, of one of his videos. And how wonderful that it’s Ghosts, which is so complex. It’s so interesting to have this opportunity to peek inside his thought process as he was developing it.

Lisha:  Definitely. And after speculating about it for so long, it’s incredibly satisfying to finally get to see it.

Willa:  It really is! So as I understand it, this early version was shot in 1993 as a promo piece for the feature-length film, Addams Family Values. But work on it abruptly stopped when the Chandler scandal broke and Paramount decided they no longer wanted Michael Jackson’s help promoting their film. Then the project resumed in 1996 as a stand-alone project, separate from Addams Family Values. Is that right?

Lisha:  Yes, according to an interview with the original director, Mick Garris, that’s exactly what happened. A couple of weeks into the shoot, false claims generated by Evan Chandler began circulating in the media and, sadly, the project had to be scrapped. When the work finally resumed, Garris was no longer available so Stan Winston was asked to direct the final version.

At the time, few had any way of knowing it was Evan Chandler who should have been under investigation and Michael Jackson who needed police protection from him. Neither the police nor the press seemed interested in investigating that possibility. As a result, the damages sustained by Michael Jackson were very, very high – personally, professionally, and financially.

Viewing this early version of Ghosts, I began to realize I had assumed this was going to be some sort of cameo appearance for Michael Jackson in Addams Family Values. Now I am thinking it was intended as a Michael Jackson short film that would double as cross-promotion for the motion picture. If true, it’s an interesting idea from an artistic and marketing point of view. I can’t really think of a parallel move, but surely someone else has done this.

Willa, can you think of another music video that has also served as cross-promotion for a major motion picture or entertainment product like this?

Willa:  Hmmm … Now that you mention it, no I can’t. I know there’s been a lot of cross-pollination between movies and popular songs before. Just look at the James Bond movies, which have featured theme songs by Paul McCartney, Carly Simon, Adele, and others. And some of the biggest-selling albums of all time have been soundtracks – for The Bodyguard, Dirty Dancing, Saturday Night Fever, Titanic, South Pacific, West Side Story, My Fair Lady, The Sound of Music, … The list goes on and on. So there’s a long history of the music industry and film industry promoting one another. But off the top of my head, I can’t think of another case where a music video has been created to promote a film.

Lisha:  Those are all great examples, and you’re right there has always been a strong synergy between music and film. Popular songs are often featured in motion pictures, and movie songs frequently become hits. Many don’t realize the musical short is as old as sound-film and television itself. They were produced and widely distributed long before MTV.

But for some reason I just can’t think of another music video that includes characters from another current movie or project. The only Ghosts/Addams Family comparison I can come up with is the Black or White short film, which ends with a clip of The Simpsons.

Willa:  Yes, but I think that Simpsons clip is there for thematic reasons, not to promote the show. What I mean is, I think it’s significant that Black or White begins and ends with a white boy (Macauley Culkin and Bart Simpson) dancing to Michael Jackson’s music, and then rebelling against his father when he tries to shut the music down.

Lisha:  That’s true. Although The Simpsons are funny-looking lemon-yellow cartoon characters, their language and behavior codes white. That’s an important point that Susan Fast makes in her book on the Dangerous album – that the Black or White short film is literally framed by whiteness.

And I totally agree that The Simpsons clip in Black or White functions independently of any possible marketing strategy. But at the same time, I can’t help noticing its promotional value, which would have given the series massive global exposure via a Michael Jackson short film. Now I’m curious as to whether or not that ending was monetized in some way.

Willa:  That’s an interesting question. I have no idea. Michael Jackson did participate in a Simpsons episode, though that wasn’t confirmed until years later, but I don’t think he was paid for it.

Lisha:  I wouldn’t know, but there are some interesting possibilities there, for sure.

Willa:  That’s true. And the draft version of Ghosts does have quite a few references to the Addams Family, like Thing (the disembodied hand) skittering around, and the sudden appearance near the end of the Addams children: Wednesday, Pugsley, and Pubert. They aren’t in the final version. By the way, here’s a link to the final, for comparison purposes:

Lisha:  No matter how often I’ve watched this film, and I’ve seen it quite a few times, I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of it. It’s so brilliant on so many levels. It’s hard to understand some of the reviews that characterize it as a “huge flop.”  

Willa: I think a lot of critics don’t like it because it draws on the aesthetic of the grotesque, which is alien territory to a lot of people. It’s an ancient form that’s disruptive to the status quo, and it makes people feel unsettled and uncomfortable – especially people in power. That’s its function, to unsettle things. But a lot of people don’t like that feeling, and feel threatened by it. And perhaps they should feel threatened. It can be very powerful.

So my sense is that a lot of critics don’t like Ghosts because it’s so different, it makes them uncomfortable, and they don’t understand it – just like a lot of the villagers in Ghosts don’t like the Maestro because he’s so different, he makes them uncomfortable, and they don’t understand him … at least, not at the beginning. It’s another one of those loop-de-loop situations where Michael Jackson’s art reflects and predicts what will happen in real life. We see that happening over and over again with Michael Jackson, and Ghosts is a great example. He almost seemed to predict the future with that film, in a number of ways.

Lisha: You are so right. Ghosts is a powerful film that both reflects and predicts “what will happen in real life” – eerily so. And your point is well taken about the aesthetic of the grotesque and how fiercely it challenges the status quo. Ghosts is also a brutally honest work of art. Michael Jackson lets us in on the fact he’s known all along what we’ve been saying about his artistry, his face, his weirdness, his childlike innocence. Now that we have this early version available to study, I’m even more fascinated by some of the issues it raises.

Willa:  So am I. And it’s really interesting to compare the two versions to see the development of his ideas. Some changes are obvious, like when the Maestro disappears at the end of the 1993 version. Of course, that version is incomplete, so it could be his return was planned but just wasn’t filmed yet when work was suspended. Still, it’s unsettling to see the Maestro disappear and not come back. At the end of the 1996 version, he definitely returns and is even stronger than before – he’s been accepted by the villagers and it’s the Mayor who’s disappeared.

That brings up another important difference: the actor who plays the Mayor in the original version is not Michael Jackson. The original Mayor does turn up a couple times in the final version though. Here he is at 1:32 minutes, entering the Maestro’s home:

Lisha:  Good eye, Willa! I hadn’t seen that, but you’re right. That cut appears to have been lifted directly from the original.

Willa:  Yes, instead of reshooting everything in 1996, they reused a lot of the footage from 1993 – like this shot of the original Mayor, which you don’t notice if you aren’t looking for him. At least I never noticed him before. A lot of the special effects sequences are the same also.

Lisha:  I have to say, overall, I was surprised by how similar the unfinished rough cut is to the final version directed by Stan Winston. I had imagined there would be more drastic differences, but much of it looks remarkably similar.

Willa: That’s true. There are some significant differences, but the overall structure was pretty much there in 1993, and many of the scenes are very similar, as you say. But even so, sometimes subtle changes shift the feeling of what we’re seeing and how we respond to it. For example, both films feature the “Welcome to Normal Valley” sign in the opening scenes using the exact same footage. But the background music has changed and that affects our emotional response to the sign, even though the visuals are the same.

Lisha:  The musical score in the finished product is very well done, I think. It adds so much to the dramatic impact of the film. I noticed a comment on YouTube claiming the 1993 rough cut has temporary music only, taken from other films. I don’t know if that’s true or not, the music and sound effects are well synchronized already, but it also makes sense. I wouldn’t expect the musical score to be added until after the film editing was complete.

Willa:  That’s an interesting point, Lisha. I really don’t know how that typically works. For music videos, which were Michael Jackson’s forte and where he served his apprenticeship and learned his craft as a filmmaker, I assume the music would come first. But for a feature-length film, I imagine you’re right and the visuals come first and the music comes later. For something like Ghosts, which lies somewhere between a feature film and a video, I simply don’t know.

Lisha:  I think you’ve got it, Willa. For the musical numbers, the music is produced first and played back at the film shoot so the performers can synchronize their movement with the music. For the dramatic scenes, the music and sound effects are added later, so they can be synchronized to the visuals.

Brad Sundberg just gave an interesting interview where he described working on the Ghosts film shoot. It’s a pretty entertaining story, as is the entire interview. Skip to 1:00:30 for the part about Ghosts and how loud Michael Jackson wanted the playback!

Willa:  That’s funny! Especially his description of their struggles to get enough volume in the huge space they were using for filming. He said they built an “enormous sound system” and had speakers the size of “two refrigerators side by side – two American refrigerators.”

Lisha:  Yes, and don’t confuse those enormous speakers with the size of a small Asian or European refrigerator! Sounds like they were going for the “Are You Nuts!?!” volume levels.

Willa:  Could be! By the way, I noticed Brad mentioned “Ghosts” and “Is It Scary” together, and that reminds me of something Debbie Rowe said during the AEG trial. She said that, originally, “Ghosts” and “Is It Scary” were one song, but later it was divided and developed into two songs. After she said that, I noticed some interesting connections between them – like they both begin with the lines, “There’s a ghost out in the hall / There’s a ghoul beneath the bed.” They also come one after the other on the Blood on the Dance Floor album, and there’s an interesting parallelism between them in Ghosts. The Maestro turns into a skeleton and dances to “Is It Scary.” Later the skeleton turns into the Monster Maestro, enters the Mayor, and then he dances to “Ghosts” in a way that feels reminiscent of the skeleton dance.

Lisha:  Wow, that’s really interesting. For some reason I don’t remember that from the AEG trial, but now I want to go back and re-read it.  And I think that’s absolutely right, that “Ghosts” and “Is It Scary” are just two different versions of the same song. Don’t you think so?

Willa: They are very similar – in fact, I used to get them confused when I’d listen to them on my car stereo. I thought I was just being a scatterbrain, but maybe there’s a reason I confused them! If you’re able to track down Debbie Rowe’s testimony, I’d love to look it over. I know I was really struck by what she said, but I’m just going by memory, and my memory’s not the best …

Lisha:  Gee, I can relate to that! Ok, Willa, here we go – found a link to Rowe’s testimony.

Willa:  Thanks for tracking that down, Lisha. So here’s what Debbie Rowe said:

I remember “Ghost” was split in half, for some reason, or “Do you think it’s scary.” It was originally going to be called “Ghost,” and then it was “Is It Scary.”

That is so interesting.  I’d really like to look into that some more …

Lisha:  I would too.

Willa:  Anyway, like you I love the music in the final version and strongly prefer it to the music in the original – not just Michael Jackson’s songs (of course!) but also the background music, and the feeling it creates.

I also prefer the scenes of the villagers marching toward the Maestro’s mansion in the final film. In the 1993 version, those scenes are in color and the villagers are individualized. We see their faces and hear their voices. The final version uses footage from that same shoot, including some of the exact same scenes, but the film has been rendered black-and-white in the final version, and it’s been edited so it’s much more abstract. We know the townspeople are upset and angry, but for the most part we don’t see their faces or hear their voices except as a murmur behind the music. So what we see in the final version isn’t so much specific people anymore, but more an abstract idea of an angry mob.

Lisha:  That’s a really great point and I think you’re right. Those small details make it a little more vague, which better illustrates the mob mentality that is so central to the story.

Willa:  I think so too. The problem isn’t these specific people so much as the phenomenon of fear and intolerance leading to mob violence, and the final version conveys that much better, I think.

There’s a similar shift in the dialogue. In the draft version, things tend to be spelled out in rather explicit, straightforward terms. But the final tends to be more subtle and more nuanced. For example, in the draft version the villagers begin to chant, “Come out where we can see you. Come out where we can see you.” That’s been dropped in the final. Instead, we simply see them looking for the Maestro. We also see that they’re both eager to find him and kind of fearful about it too. That kind of emotional complexity is conveyed much better in the final, I think.

Lisha:  It is definitely more subtle. In the original, I feel like the demand for the Maestro to leave town is quite explicit.  It’s very clear that the townspeople have entered the Maestro’s mansion for the specific purpose of running him off. In the final version, the mayor similarly states “we want you out of town,” but it’s more vague as to whether or not that is simply his wish or if that is what the townspeople had hoped to achieve by going there.

Willa:  That’s a good point. I hadn’t thought about that before, but I think you’re right – and that’s an important change. Again, it makes the story more subtle and more universal, and also opens it up to multiple interpretations.

There’s a similar shift in the setting, meaning how the Maestro’s mansion is conceptualized and presented. In the original 1993 version, there are several shots of the exterior of the house, like this one, which stays on screen for a fairly long time:

Here’s another exterior view, this time from closer in:

And here’s another, closer still. If you look closely, you can see the left window in the door has been broken by one of the villagers. We don’t see them engaging in that kind of violence in the final version, though the potential for mob violence is definitely there.

Shots like these present the Maestro’s mansion as a specific, physical place. But almost all of these exterior shots have been removed from the final version. Instead, the house is presented in a more abstract way. We only have two brief glimpses of the entire house – one at the beginning behind the title block, and the other 44 seconds in, when lightning illuminates the house for just an instant. So our sense of the Maestro’s house is more impressionistic than in the 1993 version. To me it feels more like a memory or an imagined place than a real place.

This is reinforced by the shot immediately after, at 45 seconds in, of the sign identifying this as Someplace Else – not 4641 Hayvenhurst Avenue or Westlake Studios, but Someplace Else.

Lisha:  I think that sign is hilarious: “Someplace Else.”

Willa:  I do too. Here’s a screen capture of it, with a flaming torch passing by:

The effect of all this is to make the Maestro’s mansion feel more like a mythic space, a space located in our own imaginations, rather than an actual physical place. It’s subtle but very well done, I think.

Lisha:  It reminds me of the jump from black-and-white to color in The Wizard of Oz, signaling the move into the imaginary or mythic realm.

Willa:  Yes, and that jump to color happens in Ghosts also – the film switches from black-and-white to subdued color when we enter “the imaginary or mythic realm” of the Maestro. That’s a great way to put it, Lisha.

It’s in this realm that the Maestro engages and ultimately alters the villager’s hostile feelings toward him, but in unexpected ways: with the help of special effects, he stretches his eyes and mouth to grotesque proportions, or rips his face off altogether so there’s nothing but a laughing skull, or pounds himself to dust on the stone floor. For the most part, these scenes are pretty similar in the two versions. In fact, many of the special effects sequences are identical. Interestingly, Stan Winston, who acted as the director in 1996, as you mentioned earlier, was in charge of special effects in 1993, so those sequences are his. He created them.

Lisha:  That would certainly explain why they look so similar!

Willa:  Yes, it does. But again there are some significant changes. Some new special effects sequences have been added in the later version, like the dancing skeleton, and the Monster Maestro, and the huge face filling the doorway. And a few have been deleted, like the one where they can’t get through a locked door, and suddenly one of the villagers starts gagging and coughs up the key.

Lisha:  I noticed another interesting sequence from the early version that was later omitted. It’s the black-out at around 3:50, when the mayor lights some matches to see where they are going. Suddenly we see torches on the wall that begin to fire up on their own, and they appear to be held by human arms coming out the walls. This scene is strikingly similar to one in Jean Cocteau’s 1946 film La Belle et la Bête, or Beauty and the Beast. Here’s a trailer that shows the human wall sconces at about 30 seconds in:

Willa:  I had the exact same feeling! Those light fixtures made of living human arms are very evocative of Cocteau’s film, aren’t they? In fact, I see a lot of connections between Cocteau and Michael Jackson. I wonder why that detail was removed from the final version?

Lisha:  Good question. I see some connections as well and really like the reference.

Willa:  I do too. I also like the fact that when the Maestro first appears in the original, he’s among the villagers – he’s one of them.

Lisha:  I thought that was fascinating – how the Maestro disguises himself among the crowd, hiding in plain sight. It reminds me of how Michael Jackson reportedly went out in public wearing various disguises. I wonder how many people have been standing next to Michael Jackson at some point in their lives and never known it.

Willa:  That’s an interesting connection, Lisha. I hadn’t thought of that. I just like the implication that he is one of the villagers, part of the community, not someone separate.

Lisha:  Yes. And that is really spelled out in the final version where Michael Jackson plays the roles of both the Mayor and the Maestro.

Willa:  Oh interesting, Lisha. I hadn’t thought of it that way. It’s true that in some ways he seems more connected to the villagers in the final version. For example, when he begins to interact with the villagers in the 1993 draft version, he seems pretty fearful of them, and hurt – emotionally hurt – by their animosity toward him. And I imagine that’s a pretty accurate reflection of his emotions in 1993, just as the Chandler schemes were unfolding.

Lisha:  I would agree.

Willa:  But his interactions with the villagers in the final version feel different to me. He seems much more comfortable with them, and more confident. It’s like he thoroughly understands the villagers and what motivates them, knows how to change their minds, and that knowledge helps him maintain total control of the situation. He’s the Maestro, and he knows his power. That’s the feeling I get from the final version – not so much in the draft version.

Lisha:  Although in the original, the Maestro displays considerable power over the villagers as well, like when he signals the doors to magically close, preventing his “guests” from leaving the room.

Willa:  That’s true.

Lisha:  But I agree that the power he wields is more apparent in the final version.

Willa:  It seems that way to me, and not just his magic powers but his bearing and facial expressions – his confidence in his abilities as an artist to touch people’s hearts and change their minds.

Another very important “lost” scene is the children’s response after the Maestro turns to dust. In the 1993 draft version, the children immediately rush to him and begin shaping the dust back into human form – creating fingers, making him whole – until he is restored. So in a very literal way, the children re-create him and bring him back to life in the original version.

Lisha:  Their concern, innocence and sheer delight in his imagination and playfulness sparks the power that reanimates the Maestro.

Willa:  That’s a great way to interpret it, Lisha! I really like this sequence, but it isn’t in the final version. Instead, the Maestro is restored to life in a very different way. And actually, while I love the idea of the children bringing him back to life, I think the final version works better.

While the children don’t bring him back to life in the final version, they are more vocal about protecting him and more involved in the discussions among the villagers. For example, as everyone is standing at the gate looking in, before they enter the Maestro’s home, one boy says, “Why don’t we just leave him alone?” and another says, “He hasn’t hurt anybody. Can’t we just go?” But then the brother of the second boy blames him, saying, “It’s your fault, jerk. You just couldn’t keep your mouth shut.” None of that is in the original version.

Lisha: This scene really jumped out at me as I rewatched my VCD copy of the film. (YouTube quality doesn’t really do it justice!) In the opening dialogue you described, the mother also whacks her kid on the head and says “you did the right thing.” The dissonance between her whack on the head and her reassurance of the child is confusing and unsettling.

One of the most interesting and important things about Ghosts is how it can be interpreted as an artistic response to the false accusations made against Michael Jackson in 1993. But I wonder if there is any possibility that the original concept for Ghosts predates Evan Chandler’s extortion scheme, given the amount of time it takes to put a film together and the fact that the media construction of  Michael Jackson as a “weirdo” from “Someplace Else” was already firmly in place.

Willa:  That’s a really good question, Lisha. The accusations became public in August but private negotiations had been going on for quite a while before that, so it’s not clear how much Michael Jackson knew before work on Ghosts began. I think Chandler says he first confronted him about his “suspicions” before Memorial Day weekend of 1993, so that would have been in May, probably. Then the phone conversation David Schwartz taped – the one where Evan Chandler says he’s hired a lawyer, “the nastiest son of a bitch I could find,” that “it could be a massacre if I don’t get what I want,” and that “everything is going according to a certain plan that isn’t just mine” – that all happened on July 8th, and Michael Jackson was given a copy of the tape soon after. The dental visit where Chandler put Jordan under sedation and asked him questions was July 16th, which is so backwards: the fact that Chandler hired a lawyer before his son had even agreed to the allegations says a lot about where those allegations originated. And then the scandal broke in late August.

Lisha:  You’re so right about the timeline. Both Raymond Chandler and Geraldine Hughes claim that Evan Chandler hired attorney Barry Rothman in June 1993. Just like the Arvizo case, the timeline makes no sense whatsoever.

Willa:  No, it doesn’t – or rather, it makes sense only if you realize that the allegations began with the parents and not with the children. Simply looking at the chronology of events of both cases tells a lot.

Lisha:  It’s shocking, really.

Willa:  It really is. How could the police and the press miss something so obvious?

Lisha:  You got me. Motivated reasoning? That’s my best guess.

Willa:  I think you’re right. But anyway, by the time the scandal became public, Chandler had already been negotiating for weeks, trying to get a $20 million deal in exchange for his silence. So I suspect the way things went is that Michael Jackson was asked to do a song and promotional video for Addams Family Values in early 1993, before there was a problem with the Chandlers. But then things started getting ugly with Evan Chandler – in private – right around the time he started developing the plot and ideas. And then the scandal broke publicly two weeks after they started filming.

Does that sound plausible to you, Lisha, or not really? I honestly don’t know how long it would take for the screenplay and everything to come together once they started working on it. You have a lot more insight into that side of things than I do.

Lisha:  Michael Jackson was certainly aware of what Evan Chandler was up to well before they began filming, so yes, it is definitely plausible. But I also think analyzing the story as a response to negative media portrayals holds up either way – before or after Chandler. 1993 was the year that Michael Jackson began defending himself against all kinds of unfair media characterizations that had turned really mean and nasty. I mean, looking back, how crazy is it that he had to go on primetime television in February of 1993 to tell Oprah he was a gentleman, who suffered from vitiligo, and did not sleep in a hyperbaric chamber? In hindsight, why was that so necessary?

In some ways, it would be interesting if Ghosts was initially conceived before the Chandler extortion plot. What I’m trying to say is, there were already a lot of mean-spirited media portrayals going on before Evan Chandler and Barry Rothman implemented their “plan.” And there is no doubt in my mind that the reason many people fell for the false accusations is that they intersected with the negative media portrayals already in circulation.

Willa:  I agree. By the way, here’s an article by Stephen King, who worked on the Ghosts screenplay, where he describes Michael Jackson’s initial concept for the short film. Interestingly, it seems that King himself interpreted the concept one way before the scandal broke – as a response to anti-Rock & Roll feelings – and another way after the scandal:

The core story he described to me that day was about a mob of angry townspeople – buttoned-down suburbanites, not torch-carrying peasants – who want the “weirdo” who lives in the nearby castle to leave town. Because, they say, he’s a bad influence on their children. I associated that with the view parents held toward rock & roll when I was growing up, and still held toward the odder artists of the breed, like Ozzy Osbourne and Marilyn Manson (who in 1995 would release an album called Smells Like Children). I didn’t know that rumors about Jackson and child abuse had begun to circulate.

I also thought it was significant that Stephen King says Michael Jackson told him the “core story” before he began writing the screenplay. So the initial concept was definitely Michael Jackson’s. King also says the final screenplay “had wandered a far distance from my original script.” So while Stephen King is generally credited with the story, I think Michael Jackson was at least equally involved, from beginning to end.

Lisha:  That’s an excellent point and just what we needed to know – that the story began with Michael Jackson and evolved over this specific time period.

By the way, I’d like to know how it is that Michael Jackson got constructed as the Rock & Roll “weirdo,” with the likes of Ozzy Osbourne and Marilyn Manson around? That would be really funny if I didn’t sense something so ugly behind it all. At the same time Michael Jackson was pigeonholed as a “pop” artist, and therefore ineligible for the cultural status given to serious rock musicians, he was also the ultimate Rock & Roll “weirdo.” That doesn’t add up.

To my way of thinking, the vilification of Michael Jackson occurred long before Evan Chandler got dollar signs in his eyes. Chandler and Rothman simply capitalized on the hysteria that already existed.

Willa:  I think you’re right.

Lisha: Garris, who initially met Michael Jackson on the set of Thriller, was asked if he thought Michael Jackson was just being playful with all of this “monster” imagery. Ultimately, he didn’t think the response was very funny either:

He was very playful with that image, though as the press got meaner, he was definitely hurt by it, and pulled back and became more reclusive.

Willa:  Yes. And this is kind of off topic, but how interesting that Garris was involved in Thriller, playing the role of one of the zombies, and then ended up as the director for the 1993 filming of Ghosts. That’s amazing! He’s like the Forrest Gump of Michael Jackson videos …

Lisha:  Pretty wild. Small world, isn’t it?

Willa:  It really is. And it’s true the media attacks on Michael Jackson began long before the allegations. Just look at the Leave Me Alone video, which was released in 1989 – four years before the Chandler allegations.

Lisha: I read an interesting article by media scholar John Nguyet Erni, who studied these negative portrayals and argued that “if Michael Jackson’s troubles preceded the scandal, it is critical for us to understand the source of those troubles and their discursive life, especially in the media.” In his May 2009 article published in Critical Studies in Mass Communication, Erni cites cultural critic Michele Wallace, who questioned the breadth of the Michael Jackson controversy early on. In 1989, Wallace noted the abundance of media criticism directed toward Michael Jackson and pointed out how it totally lacked a focus:

Where does this controversy focus its attention? Is it on his videos, his music, his wealth, his fame, his sexuality, his race, his lifestyle, his aesthetics, his unwillingness to be interviewed, his family, his plastic surgery, his skin lightening, or is it some ineffable combination of any or all of the above?  What, at this moment, at the peak of his career, is he being attacked and criticized [for] on all sides?

These are complicated questions, but it seems obvious that the false allegations provided a target or a resting place for all of these free-floating anxieties.

Willa:  I agree, and how prescient that Wallace was raising these questions in 1989. But as Wallace asks, Why? What gives rise to this criticism? And later, in 1993, what was it exactly that made the public – white Americans, especially – predisposed to believe those allegations, regardless of the evidence? It’s like, once again, the chronology is reversed. Looking back at media coverage of Michael Jackson in the 1980s and 90s, it’s not true that the allegations came out and then people turned against him, though that’s the narrative that’s been repeated over and over about him. Instead, there was significant uneasiness toward him before the scandal, and then the allegations simply validated that unease.

Lisha: You’re right. There is a resilient narrative out there that goes something like: The public greatly admired Michael Jackson’s talent from the time he was a small child. But due to the perils of success, he lost touch with reality and began acting out in tragic ways. Some are still blinded by his celebrity and talent which causes them to irrationally reject all negative information about him, primarily jurors and fans.

Yet there is ample evidence to suggest people wanted to believe just about anything negative about Michael Jackson, regardless of the evidence, especially when it involved a lot of condemnation and ridicule. You know, I think Susan Fast really nailed it when she described the Michael Jackson controversy as “difference that exceeded understanding.”

Willa:  I agree.

Lisha: Willa, in your journal article for Popular Musicology Online, you discuss how Ghosts addresses our fear of difference at the level of “sensation and affect,” a place where unowned cultural biases can overwhelm and distort judgment and sound reasoning:

Drawing on his own case history as a guide, Jackson uses Ghosts to map out an artistic approach for attacking cultural biases not only in an intellectual way but at a deep psychological level – in a place of sensation and affect, a place resistant to evidence and reason, a place where our most primal fears, prejudices, and desires hold sway. Significantly, this is also the place where hysteria arises.

For example, in the 1993 film, Michael Jackson first appears at approximately 6:20, as the mayor and the townspeople are hysterically confronting the Maestro. They claim the Maestro scares their children, but these are the very same children who smile warmly at him, giggle a lot, and are clearly delighted by his antics:

Maestro: Here I am. What do you want?

Mayor:  We want you out of town!  You don’t fit in here!

Townswoman:  You’re not like us!

Maestro:  Why do I have to be?

Townsman:  You’re not like anybody. You’re weird! These kids think you’re scary. (The mayor’s son shrugs his shoulders, as if he has no idea why he is saying this.)

Maestro: I’m scary?  (pauses, looks at the boy) Son, do you think I’m scary?

Mayor’s son:  (shakes his head “no,” but the mayor ventriloquizes his head up and down to indicate “yes”)

Mayor:  You bet you’re scary!  You’re a weirdo and we want you out of town.

Willa:  This is such an important scene, especially when the Mayor grabs the boy’s head and forces him to nod “yes” when he was really nodding “no.” A similar example occurs 1:40 minutes in, when the Mayor’s son tells him, “Daddy, I’m scared.” He replies, “Sure you are. It’s a scary place.” But his son says, “No, I’m scared of them,” and nods toward the villagers with their flaming torches. Then he asks, “What’s going to happen?” That’s what scares him – the villagers’ aggression – not the Maestro.

Lisha:  Yes!  The kids are clearly confused and disturbed by all this hysteria and intolerance.  

Willa:  Exactly. Repeatedly we see that the children respond in a very different way than the adults do – specifically, they’re much more open and welcoming of difference. But the adults don’t seem to realize this. Instead, they project their emotions onto their children, and then use that as justification for their intolerant actions.

That scene you mentioned, Lisha, of the Mayor “ventriloquizing” his son shows this very clearly. The boy isn’t scared of the Maestro – the Mayor is. But he says his son is scared so he can justify his attempts to drive the Maestro from his home. This is all spelled out pretty explicitly in the 1993 version. It’s central to the final version also, but it’s handled more subtly.

Lisha:  Yes, I agree, the psychological projection is depicted even clearer in the earlier version which brings up another point Erni makes in his study of the media scandal. There is language in the illegally leaked copies of Jordan Chandler’s “witness testimony” that exhibits an obvious ventriloquism. Jordan Chandler’s complaint contains a lot of specialized language that a detective or a therapist might use, which is not the language of a young teenager. Erni discusses “the confluent forces that accumulate around the testimony, forces that ventriloquize the teenager’s sexual knowledge and memory, voices that speak for him – and therefore without him.”

Willa: This is such an important point.

Lisha:  It is. And as you mentioned earlier, much of the action and dialogue in Ghosts is so prophetic and insightful.  I mean, isn’t this exactly what happened to Michael Jackson in reality?

Willa: Yes, it is. Ghosts provides such an interesting window into his perceptions of what was happening and why – as well as what was about to happen. He was uncannily accurate in predicting what would happen in the future.

Lisha: When the hysterical mayor cries: “You’re a weirdo and we want you out of town!” it suggests to me that as early as 1993 Michael Jackson knew there were some who literally wanted him gone for no other reason than he was a “weirdo” and not like anyone else. He wouldn’t actually have to leave his home for another 12 years, but in fact, this did happen. You and D.B. Anderson were just discussing this in terms of racial politics:

D.B.: … this type of attack just fits with everything else we have seen from the white male heterosexual press. It is necessary to diminish someone else only if you are trying to establish or maintain your own dominance. If that person happens to be an extraordinarily potent black man…

Willa:  … then there’s an impulse to trivialize his accomplishments. Yes, I agree.

D.B.:  Or throw him in jail.

Willa:  Or publicly humiliate him and drive him from his home.

It’s worth giving this some serious thought. Driving Michael Jackson out of his home was precisely what happened as a result of the false allegations – allegations that were originally manufactured by parents, police, therapists, and/or the press, and later ventriloquized through children. I don’t need to remind a Michael Jackson fan that to this day there is not one single instance of a child spontaneously making a criminal accusation against Michael Jackson. Not one. They all follow some kind of bizarre timeline where parents, police, therapists, lawyers, and/or Martin Bashir create a claim – which is later ventriloquized as “witness testimony.”

Willa:  Absolutely. To my mind, the clearest example is the Jason Francia case. His mother goes on a celebrity news show, Hard Copy, and says her son may have been molested by Michael Jackson – and she does this before talking to a guidance counsellor or psychologist about her concerns, or even talking to her son about it. As a mom, that just boggles my mind. Her first step is to say something like that on a nationally broadcast television show before she’s even discussed it with her 12-year-old son? That goes against all my instincts as a mom.

Lisha:  It’s unreal.

Willa:  It really is – just unbelievable. So the police question her son about it and he says no, nothing happened. But they keep pushing him to say something did happen until he finally tells them, “If he really did touch, it was in the arcade.” This is such a clear case of the “ventriloquism” you pointed out in the 1993 version, Lisha. The boy shakes his head no, but the Mayor grabs his head and forces him to nod yes. That’s it exactly – a perfect description of the Chandlers and the Francias.

Lisha:  That gets us into another troubling aspect of the media scandal Erni identified, which is the commodification of “witness testimony.” Accusations against Michael Jackson were bought and sold for years and it was big business. Even today we could debate whether or not there is still a market for accusations against Michael Jackson.

And what is the end result of all this? Michael Jackson suffered millions and millions in damages and was driven out of town by the Sheriff. I know I’m repeating myself, but this was the 1990s and 2000s, not the wild west! So it bears repeating: despite being exonerated in a court of law, Michael Jackson was driven out of his own home and out of his community. And not just any home. From what I understand, to call Neverland a home misses the point entirely, according to those lucky enough to have been there.

What D.B. Anderson mentioned in the previous post about cultural dominance is consistent with everything I know about how the social hierarchy works. Cultural dominance (for example white, male, heterosexual positions of power) is often maintained through the most everyday, ordinary things we take for granted. Images in the press or in popular culture often work to solidify (or sometimes challenge) the dominance of one group over another. Oftentimes we so thoroughly accept what the culture considers “normal” that we don’t even think to question our own beliefs about it. It’s simply the way things are.

Willa:  Exactly. It’s so “normal” we can’t even see it, or imagine a different way.

Lisha:  Yes. That’s why interrogating what is “normal” is so crucially important to understanding how society works. I think that’s one reason scholars have been interested in studying Michael Jackson and the way he seems to challenge normativity at every turn. These challenges have intersected with the very mechanisms of control, such as law enforcement and the media, which often speak in one voice when it comes to Michael Jackson.

Willa:  That’s a really important point, Lisha, and it lies at the heart of Ghosts, doesn’t it? I mean, that’s precisely what this film is about. The residents of Normal Valley feel threatened by the Maestro because, like Michael Jackson, “he seems to challenge normativity at every turn,” as you say. And they respond by trying to reassert their control (over their children, over their town and who is allowed to live there) and reestablish the normalcy that has been disrupted by the Maestro by invading his home and trying to drive him out of town.

And of course, that’s true of Michael Jackson in real life as well, with the police and the media acting like the residents of Normal Valley to maintain the established social order by forcing him out – not just out of Neverland but out of the country.

Lisha:  Well said. As an American citizen, it’s so troubling to me that this happened at all, but especially in my own lifetime.

Michael Jackson posed a threat to normativity that wasn’t just a lofty statement attached to a work of art. It was a very real threat to the established order, and we can find a mountain of evidence to corroborate how the culture worked very hard to contain him.

Willa, you have described Michael Jackson’s Ghosts as a new kind of art – one that isn’t necessarily confined to artwork itself, but art that is also located in our everyday lives through social discourse and other kinds of media we consume:

Through this new kind of art, Jackson captured the cultural narratives that were being imposed on him – narratives of race, of gender, of sexuality, of criminality, of celebrity and monstrous excess – inflated them to grotesque proportions, and then reflected those narratives back at us, forcing us to confront and grapple with them, and maybe reconsider them. This new genre is mediated through the tabloids and celebrity television shows and even the mainstream press, and it includes the many “eccentric oddities” (to borrow a phrase from “Is It Scary”) that came to define Jackson in the public mind.

Willa:  Yes, I strongly believe that. Ghosts functions at several different levels at once. On one level, it is itself a fascinating work of art. But on another level it’s art talking about art – specifically, how art (an expanded definition of art that includes his public persona and the popular press) can bring about social change.

Lisha:  You’ve definitely convinced me.

Willa:  Part of what Michael Jackson was trying to address in his promo piece for Addams Family Values – the work that became Ghosts – were all the suspicions directed at him. Which makes it all the more disappointing what happened after Paramount severed ties with him. Not only did they no longer want him promoting their film, but they added a scene to Addams Family Values that played right into those allegations. Here’s a clip:

So instead of challenging the suspicions and discomfort felt toward him, as Michael Jackson intended, it did just the opposite and reinforced them.

Lisha:  Wow. So there it is – everything we’ve been talking about in one 15-second clip. That gag would have worked just as well in February 1993 – at the time of the Oprah interview and several months before the accusations were made – as it did in November 1993, when Addams Family Values was released.

Willa: Though it definitely gained currency after the allegations became public …

Lisha:  Making it very clear what the public was being cued to do:  be very afraid of Michael Jackson!

Willa:  Yes. It’s shocking to see his message of tolerance supplanted by this …

Lisha:  … a message of total intolerance.

Willa:  Yes, it feels that way to me too.

Well, there’s so much more to talk about with Ghosts, but we should probably wrap it up for today. Again, thank you so much for joining me, Lisha! – both today and in the weeks to come. I am so happy to have you here with me. What a wonderful way to start the new year!

Announcement: Brad Sundberg Seminar in Boston

Willa: I recently heard from our friend Marie Plasse that she and Joe Vogel are helping Brad Sundberg organize a seminar in Boston, with special guests Brad Buxer and Michael Prince. Joe and Marie will be on hand as well.

Lisha McDuff and I had a wonderful conversation with Brad back in January of last year after his seminar in Toronto. A few weeks later, Eleanor Bowman, Veronica Bassil, and Sylvia Martin joined Lisha and me for a post about his Captain EO seminar in Orlando, Florida. Brad’s seminars include stories and sound recordings from his days working with Michael Jackson, as well as insights into his recording process.

The venue for the Boston seminar hasn’t been selected yet, but the date is Saturday, December 5, and tickets are already on sale.  Here’s a link for more information, and here are a couple of posters Brad has created for the event.

Summer Rewind 2014: Brad Sundberg and Captain EO

The following conversation was originally posted on February 27, 2013. To read the original post and comments, please click here.

Willa: This week I’m thrilled to be joined by four people doing fascinating work researching, thinking about, and writing about Michael Jackson. Lisha McDuff is a professional musician and musicologist whose graduate research focused on Black or White. Sylvia J. Martin is a visiting assistant professor of anthropology who has written numerous articles on Michael Jackson’s cultural function, both in the U.S. and around the world. Several of her articles can be accessed from our Reading Room. Eleanor Bowman is an environmentalist with a master’s in theology, and she is currently working on a book that looks at how Michael Jackson’s art can help move us toward a new relationship with nature. And Veronica Bassil has a Ph.D. in English and American literature and has written two books on Michael Jackson: Thinking Twice about Billie Jean and Michael Jackson’s Love for Planet Earth. Thank you all so much for joining us!

So you all recently attended Brad Sundberg’s seminar in Orlando. Lisha and I talked with Brad in a post a few weeks ago as he was preparing for it, and it sounded wonderful! I’m so curious to hear all about it.

Sylvia: The seminar was fantastic. It was also great to meet each other and everyone else who attended.

Lisha: Oh, I agree. What a treat it was to meet you, Brad, Matt, and all the other seminar participants. It was an incredible weekend.

Eleanor: Yes, it was really wonderful. I just wish everyone in the Dancing with the Elephant family could have been there! Just getting to meet Veronica and Lisha and Sylvia and talk about Michael in person would have been enough for me, but then we got to meet other MJ fans and hear their stories – and then, on top of all that, we got to hear from Brad and Matt and hear all about their up close and personal experiences with MJ. Well, it was almost too much for me to take in.

Veronica: Yes, I learned a lot, and it was great to be with everyone sharing our love for Michael and his work. And it was especially great to meet the posters from Dancing with the Elephant – Lisha, Eleanor, and Sylvia.

Willa: So what were some standout moments for you?

Sylvia: It was fascinating to be able to hear isolated tracks of Michael harmonizing on “Liberian Girl.”

Lisha: Wasn’t that amazing? Brad played the background vocals for “Liberian Girl” and then isolated the tracks so we heard each part separately as Michael Jackson sang the four-part harmony: soprano, alto, tenor, and bass. It really showed his amazing vocal talent, his wide vocal range, and his impressive command of music theory and harmony. Every note had to be chosen so carefully to create those close, dense harmonies.

Brad and Matt talked about how Michael Jackson had all of these parts worked out entirely in his head, something that really amazes me. They, too, were blown away by Michael Jackson’s mastery of song construction and marveled at how he could sing every line of each individual part in its entirety, knowing exactly how each part should fit in with the other elements of the song.

I remember that in Toronto Brad also talked about Michael Jackson’s background vocals. He said each line of a four-part harmony like this would typically be doubled, or stacked, four times. That means a four-part background vocal would have a total of 16 tracks or 16 vocal parts. It’s like hearing a small choir of only Michael Jackson’s voice.

Veronica: Yes, that was really fantastic, and you said it well: “a small choir” of just MJ singing all those different harmonies! Matt also emphasized the amazing ability Michael had to know exactly where all the sounds would go in a musical creation – the harmonies, the melody, the music, the ad libs – he knew where everything would go in a stereo performance. I loved hearing those extraordinary harmonies from “Liberian Girl.”

Eleanor: And we heard them on the speakers they brought from the Westlake Studios! It was like hearing Michael Jackson for the first time. I was just stunned.

Lisha: I thought those speakers had such a luscious, refined sound – absolutely beautiful. Brad said those were the exact speakers Michael Jackson used at one time for listening to playback. I was thrilled to get to hear what they sounded like.

Sylvia: The weekend was made extra special by being able to visit Epcot the next day with Brad and Matt and hear the behind-the-scenes from Matt about Captain EO.

Eleanor: I have to admit that going to Epcot to see Captain EO was a peak experience for me. And, I got to see it sitting right next to Matt Forger! What a privilege. Brad had reserved the theater for us and I was looking for a seat when Matt motioned me over to a seat next to him. I think it was the best seat in the house for the best sound and 3D experience. Actually, it was 4D – the seats moved and bumped with the movement of the spaceship. It was fantastic.

Lisha: I was absolutely crazy about Captain EO too, for so many reasons. For starters, I think the storyline is brilliant. It’s the hero’s journey – an epic tale of good versus evil using the power of sound and music as a vehicle in the transformation of consciousness. In the hands of Michael Jackson, this epic story is cleverly disguised as a 17-minute Disney attraction.

Veronica: Yes, Lisha, that’s an excellent point. And the songs “We Are Here to Change the World” and “Another Part of Me,” as well as the storyline of transforming a deadened, mechanized planet into a vibrant, pastoral world, emphasize the change to global harmony.

Eleanor: Yes, I loved the storyline and the way it was realized, with all the special effects. In fact, I was so focused on Michael in 3D that I could hardly concentrate on the story. After experiencing Captain EO, I think Michael should be 3Deified in all his short films, and concert videos. And even though Michael didn’t write the story (I asked), we know he never sang a song that he didn’t believe in, so I’m sure Captain EO perfectly represents Michael’s vision of the ills besetting our planet and how to fix them.

So, for me, with my environmental interests, everything about Captain EO was mesmerizing. It seemed so revelatory of who Michael Jackson was and is, his role as a change agent, his concern for Planet Earth – even though it supposedly took place in a galaxy far, far away. The film shows a planet that has become a wasteland, as Veronica says, deadened and mechanized – a vision of our future? our present? But Michael sees its underlying beauty, and through his love, his deep sense of connection, expressed in the song “Another Part of Me” and sent out through the lightning from his fingertips (“sending out a message to you”), he transforms the Supreme Leader from a monster into a beautiful woman and her dying planet into a world filled with life.

Like Lisha says, it is an epic tale about the transformation of consciousness, a transformation that we desperately need, a transformation that I believe Michael, through his art, is bringing about. Speaking personally, I can attest to the fact that he certainly transformed mine.

Lisha: I think that’s a wonderful interpretation, Eleanor – it really makes sense in the context of his larger body of work.

Sylvia: I appreciate its environmental transformation, but I don’t care for the characterization of the Supreme Leader. The Disney and fairy tale trope of ugly equals bad and beautiful equals good is to be expected but eye-rolling nonetheless. Why must her supposed inner beauty be externalized? Who does that benefit, and why? Once again, a strong and flawed woman needs to be neutralized; after her transformation she is silent, passive, and pleasing to look at.

Veronica: Thanks for your comment on the Supreme Leader, Sylvia. I read some posts from people who saw the film as young kids, and they spoke about how scary it was for them – and the portrayal of the Supreme Leader was part of that. Indeed, one could argue she is a kind of Medusa figure, with metallic coils instead of snakes in her hair.

I agree that EO is the main character/hero and the Supreme Leader (Anjelica Huston) is rendered into a passive beauty at the end, silently waving as she sits on the shoulders of her attendants. On the other hand, her initial intent is definitely hostile – she wants to turn her captives into “trash cans” and give EO “100 years of torture” in her “deepest dungeon” – so he has to resist that or there would be no more story.

Eleanor: I agree that if you understand the Supreme Leader as symbolizing the feminine, the film is sexist and offensive. But if you see the Supreme Leader as symbolizing nature, as I do – which makes sense as nature traditionally has been symbolized as feminine, and clearly the Supreme Leader is an extension of her planetary world, just as it is of her – then the story is inspiring. And EO’s use of the term “beauty” reminds me of the slogan “Black is Beautiful,” where beauty was a term used to express value and worth, not just physical attractiveness. And maybe this is a stretch, but the use of 3D may be a clue that we are to look deeper – that the story, like most things, can be read on many different levels. The medium is the message.

This is the way I read Captain EO: in telling the Supreme Leader that he sees her beauty, EO is telling us that “beauty is in the eyes of the beholder” and that traditional Western attitudes toward nature – that “behold” nature as something to be controlled, that “behold” matter and the material world as inert, dead, mechanical, worthless (ugly) – are cultural constructs which can and should be changed. If we can change our perceptions of nature, if we can see its worth and understand that we are “just another part of it,” we will change the way we interact with it. Who benefits? We all do.

Veronica: Eleanor, I like your reading that the Supreme Leader is a reflection of her planetary world, and that when EO makes a comment about “someone as beautiful as you,” he is seeing the intrinsic worth and value of the natural world, which is “another part” of us all – “not dangerous.” I appreciate too your reference to a powerful message of the 60’s: “Black is Beautiful.” EO tells the Leader she lacks a “key to unlock” her beauty, and this key (music) is his gift, which transforms the planet, as well as the Leader and her people. I compared her to Medusa, and it is interesting that when Medusa is defeated by the hero Perseus, the winged horse Pegasus, is born. Pegasus is a symbol of imagination and creativity, and a freedom from restrictive mental constructs that distort our ability to see the world and each other.

MJ sings that the planets are all in line “waiting for you” – waiting for us to join in and no longer be isolated. The metal coils and cables bind the Leader so that she is suspended above the ground and limited in her movement, compared to the final scenes when she walks on the ground and joins the community, one formed by dance as well as music. The power of music (in the form of MJ’s “lightning bolts”) changes the warriors into dancers who follow his beat, and MJ’s dancing is part of his transformative creative energy.

Sylvia: Also, after the male hero essentially “rescues” the female protagonist (from herself), there’s no hint of a romantic pairing. This is a Disney film, after all, and an interracial pairing probably wasn’t on the agenda. In fact, I always notice how right after EO kisses her hand, he steps right in front of her, completely obscuring her face with his, giving a big grin to the audience who are on the receiving end of his joy. It’s all about EO!

Eleanor: Yes, there is no hint of a romantic pairing, but I don’t think this is a romance. This is a mythological representation of an interaction between humanity and nature, where humanity, as usual, is represented as male and nature, as usual, is represented as female. But, in EO, the symbol for humanity is also black, which is nontraditional. Since the standard for the fully human in our society is usually the white male, the fact that EO is black is pretty revolutionary. As a nontraditional representation of humanity, EO is not bound by traditional perceptions. He can establish a new relationship, a non-exploitative relationship, with nature. Like MJ, EO is a black change agent in a white society. I did note the fact that MJ upstaged Angelica at the end, but after all, for his fans, it is all about MJ.

Lisha: I have to agree with you, Eleanor, that EO is taking us into the symbolic, mythic realm. I love the idea that the Supreme Leader could be seen as symbolizing Mother Nature herself – especially since she is so agitated at the moment, unleashing her terrible, destructive forces on her inhabitants who are so thoughtlessly invading and destroying the planet. Personally, I have no problem whatsoever mythologizing that kind of power as uniquely feminine. To my way of thinking, the forces of nature, mythologically speaking, belong in the realm of the feminine.

But I have to say, Sylvia’s point is well taken too. This story can be seen as reinforcing the Evil Queen trope that is so prevalent in fairy tales such as Disney’s Snow White, which is highly problematic from a feminist point of view – “eye-rolling,” as you said, Sylvia. I can think of some other problematic readings of the story too, in terms of one group of people invading and conquering another and then imposing their beliefs and ideals onto that group.

But for me, the more symbolic readings of the story offer the most satisfying interpretations. Another way to look at it would be from a Jungian point of view, a framework that Michael Jackson himself was interested in. The Supreme Leader from this perspective could be seen as representing Captain EO’s own psychological projections. In this scenario, the hero’s journey is a metaphor for a battle that is fought from within the human psyche.

According to Carl Jung, the dark, shadowy, unknown parts of the male psychology are known as the “anima” or the inner feminine. (In female psychology, this is the animus, or the inner masculine – think Beauty and the Beast.) The anima is the ugly, unwanted, unclaimed aspects of the self that must be discovered and battled against so that the whole, enlightened self can emerge. Because very few of us are truly aware of our own negative tendencies, the truly repulsive, monstrous, disowned parts of ourselves must be projected onto others. Myth is a powerful way of speaking to the unconscious mind – that frightening, unknown territory where we do battle with the forces of evil. According to the myth of Captain EO, music is a vehicle for this inner awareness and transformation.

Sylvia, I thought you identified an incredibly important moment towards the end of the film when Captain EO bows before the Supreme Leader, kisses her hand and then turns to face the camera, expressing his joy that the light of dawn has arisen and the forces of darkness have been dispelled. The Supreme Leader is now in her true form of goodness, truth, and beauty. If you look closely, when Captain EO turns towards the camera, the Supreme Leader doesn’t completely disappear behind him. She is quite tall, even taller than Captain EO. (In the theater, you can see this especially well.) For a brief moment, they appear to merge into a single being, symbolically integrating the masculine and feminine – the conscious and the unconscious – which is often spoken of as enlightenment, or dawn.

Willa: Oh, I love your reading of that, Lisha!

Lisha: In Jungian terms, this is known as the bright anima projection. No doubt I’m being influenced by the music here too – this is also the cue for “Another Part of Me” to begin. The story has many other elements of myth as well, such as Captain EO’s small helpers who assist the hero in his journey.

Veronica: Yes, and I’d like to mention EO’s helpers: Hooter, the elephant; Idey and Odey, the hairy, two-headed navigator; and Fuzzball, the flying monkey with butterfly wings who saves EO from menacing warriors by tying their whips together. These creatures are talking animal companions and goofball comics, especially Hooter, and give the film lightness and show EO as decidedly non-heroic. Indeed, at the start of the film we learn he and his crew are about to be booted out of the fleet. Hooter and Idey and Odey were performed by real people in costumes, including the robot Major Domo; Fuzzball was a puppet. Fuzzball and Hooter were a big part of the EO franchise.

Lisha: From the mythic point of view, these helpers magically appear just when the hero seems doomed. From out of nowhere, they provide some small assistance that literally saves the day, such as when Fuzzball ties the whips together. He ends up freeing Captain EO at precisely the moment he seemed trapped and destined to fail.

It was so wonderful to experience the film’s 3D effects on the big screen and get a sense of how the little character Fuzzball would whisper into Captain EO’s ear or zoom right off the screen and fly right up to the viewer, as if making a personal connection. There were many little details like that are missed if you don’t see the film in a theater designed to show the film.

Eleanor: Seeing Captain EO at Epcot was the first time I had ever seen it. I wanted my first-time experience to be spectacular, and it was. I am so grateful to Brad and Matt for making that possible and for enabling us to share the experience with each other. I heard that Disney is planning to discontinue showing Captain EO, which makes me very sad.

Veronica: Absolutely, Eleanor, seeing Captain EO as it was meant to be seen – in 4D – was a peak experience for me too. I have to say, Captain EO blew me away. I saw it three times, and its excellent 3D and 4D effects make one appreciate how this film, created in 1986, is still so engaging and exciting today. Not only did the seats shake, but there were blasts of air around my legs to simulate the feel of the whips threatening Michael. The 3D effects made EO’s spaceship and his little companion Fuzzball appear to hover in the air in front of our seats.

Seeing Michael as Captain EO in 3D is of course wonderful, and it was heart-warming to see crowds of people, from all age groups, enjoying this film, as we saw while sitting outside talking to Matt. Matt told us that in the early days, Captain EO was the premier attraction and there were long lines to see it.

Willa: I can vouch for that – I was in those crowds in the 1980s.

Lisha: That’s so cool, Willa!

Veronica: The song “Another Part of Me” was later expanded for the Bad album, released in 1987. On the Bad tour, Matt said it would always drive the crowd wild. He was asked during the seminar why it was chosen over “Streetwalker” and speculated that it helped to tie in with Captain EO, but perhaps more importantly “Streetwalker” was too similar to “The Way You Make Me Feel” in tone and subject.

Lisha: Yes, I remember one of the seminar participants raising the point that “Streetwalker” has a similar theme to “The Way You Make Me Feel,” making “Another Part of Me” a better overall choice for the album. We got to hear some early demos of “Streetwalker” that I thought were fabulous, as well as some later revisions. I’d love to know more about how Michael Jackson felt “Streetwalker” might have fit into the Bad album.

I will say, it was pretty intriguing to hear Matt and Brad speak of what a crowd-pleaser “Another Part of Me” was in live performance. It’s not like Michael Jackson was short of crowd-pleasing material for his concerts! So, I was surprised to learn “Another Part of Me” was such a stand out in terms of crowd response.

Veronica: Joe Vogel describes “Another Part of Me” as “the spacey synth-driven groove about the cosmic power of music to bring about global peace and harmony.” It is also associated with the Harmonic Convergence of the planets that occurred in 1987, to which the lyrics refer:

The planets are lining up
We’re bringing brighter days
They’re all in line
Waiting for you

Willa: Oh that’s interesting, Veronica. I didn’t know that, and always wondered what that line meant about “the planets are lining up.”

Veronica: In August 1987 there was an alignment of eight planets in the solar system in a grand trine. This alignment was, according to José Argüelles, a key leader of the Convergence event, to usher in a period of cleansing before the Mayan calendar date of 2012, and indicated an energy shift from war to peace. Well, we are still waiting for that to happen. But I am so glad that MJ sent us his “major love” and considered us all another part of him, another interconnected part of a global family.

I attended a local gathering to celebrate the Convergence. It was a big deal in 1987. Does anyone else remember it?

Eleanor: Yes, Veronica. I remember it well.

Sylvia: Yes, I remember it, too.

Eleanor: I was living in Huntsville, Alabama, at the time, and there was a convergence in downtown Huntsville to celebrate it. I had no idea that Michael was referencing the Harmonic Convergence in the lyrics of “Another Part of Me.” That is so fascinating. Layers on layers. But, of course, it fits perfectly.

Veronica: It was an important worldwide, cultural phenomenon and was supposed to signal the beginning of a new dawn, a new evolutionary cycle. Argüelles asked people to gather at sacred sites at dawn and hold a vision of healing and peace in a moment of unified collective consciousness, the first time this had been done on a global scale:

There comes a point when things have to change. A vibration signal was sent out. Where the signal was coming from–whether it was coming from our genetic coding, whether it was coming from the Earth, whether it was coming from outer space, or whether it was coming from all of those–this signal went out and people responded to a signal. It is very much like when a species gets a signal to change the direction of its migration pattern. The signal was, “go back to the Earth … if you want peace on this planet, go back to the Earth.”

Argüelles believed the positive, peaceful energy of people’s synchronized thoughts and feelings would create a “circumpolar rainbow bridge” around the Earth: “This is a positive visualization. A rainbow bridge around the Earth is a totally healing image. This is the healing of the Earth, the healing of our hearts, and the healing of our lives, and instant evolution.”

There were Native American prophecies about “Rainbow Warriors” who would emerge to save the Earth: “There will come a time when the birds will fall from the trees, the rivers will be poisoned and the wolves will die in the forests. But then the warriors of the rainbow will appear and save the world.” I find it so fascinating that the rainbow is also identified with Captain EO, on his t-shirt, where it even lights up, and when he leaves the planet, there is a rainbow sheen that flickers around his ship.

And things did change in unexpected ways not too long after this – the Berlin Wall came down, the Soviet Union fell apart, Nelson Mandela was released, and the apartheid regime in South Africa ended. Around the 2012 date, we have large democratic uprisings in various countries protesting unjust and oppressive governments, such as in Egypt and the Ukraine, and other changing attitudes, such as the growing acceptance of same-sex marriage and the decriminalization of cannabis. Maybe a transformation of consciousness, such as MJ envisioned, is happening after all?

Eleanor: Well, we know where the signal was coming from: Michael Jackson!

Veronica: That’s funny, Eleanor! To add another comment on Captain EO, in Michael Jackson: Grasping the Spectacle, edited by Christopher R. Smit, Carl Miller’s chapter on “‘We are Here to Change the World’: Captain EO and the Future of Utopia” draws an interesting parallel between MJ and Captain EO. The author sees MJ in his portrayal of Captain EO as representing a kind of cyborg, an amalgamation of animal, human, and mechanical, a transgressive composite that shows the open-endedness of the future: in this way MJ is “the archetypal postmodern figure of utopian potential.” The world of the Supreme Leader is in fact close to what our own world is becoming; thus, Captain EO‘s “rewriting” of that world is like the historical re-evaluation of MJ’s legacy that led to the re-emergence of Captain EO in Disney’s theme parks: “the revival of Captain EO offers a testament to both the transformative dimensions and the contemporary relevance of Jackson’s art.”

Sylvia: I haven’t read Miller’s piece yet but it sounds interesting. In the meantime, I want to approach the idea of “utopian potential” a little differently.

I remarked to Lisha after one of our viewings that MJ was like a black Luke Skywalker, that franchise having recently left its indelible mark on pop culture when EO was made. And in fact, an intriguing interpretive lens for Captain EO is Afrofuturism. Afrofuturism is a term which was coined in the 1990s, and you may hear it applied to the work of Janelle Monae today, yet it really started to become evident in literature, music and popular culture in the 1970s. Afrofuturism draws from Black Science Fiction and cosmology, and, as writer Ytasha L. Womack explains, refers to the past as well as to the future (in fact, here she references Michael’s moonwalk as part of the cosmology).

With regards to Afrofuturism’s roots in “ancient African culture” and mythology that Womack mentions, we can think of Remember the Time. In fact, at various points in Michael’s body of work there are engagements with the past/futurist themes of Afrofuturism; in addition to EO there was his reading of the ET storybook, the imagery of The Jacksons’ Can You Feel It music video, and Scream’s space ship.

As Afrofuturism scholar Valorie Thomas and others have noted, musicians who are considered foundational to Afrofuturism include George Clinton with his P-Funk mythology and 1975 album Mothership Connection, which includes the character of Starchild, an alien who arrives on earth in a spaceship. In the song “Mothership Connection,” Clinton sings that they’re “Gettin’ Down in 3D” – a lyrical call to which Michael would respond a decade later with Captain EO.

Willa: That’s really interesting, Sylvia. I hadn’t heard of Afrofuturism until a few weeks ago, and I still know very little about it, but from what I’ve read it really does tie in with Michael Jackson in so many ways. For example, many works described as Afrofuturism offer a kind of gritty utopian vision of a truly multi-cultural society – one that incorporates Difference and Otherness in positive, even joyful ways. That’s very Michael Jackson.

And as you mentioned, Sylvia, it’s futuristic, but in a way that doesn’t deny the past, but merges the past and present into the future. It reminds me of Light Man at the beginning of This Is It – he’s a being from the future, but he’s wearing a spacesuit made of video screens that display important scenes from the past.

Veronica: Yes, that’s a great point about Light Man and the blending of past, present, and future. I see EO as part of this. In fact, our discussion here is reminding me of my own past – memories of the Harmonic Convergence and a lecture I attended in 1982 by the historian of religions, Mircea Eliade, titled “Waiting for the Dawn” (and we know the name EO means “dawn” in Greek). In this lecture, Eliade suggested that the most significant event of the century was the re-valuation of non-Western spiritual traditions, namely Asiatic and Third World, including so-called “primitive” traditions, such as shamanism:

The discovery (or re-discovery) of the value and significance of non-Western spiritualities represents a cultural innovation, for it launches a dialogue and an interrelationship with the others, that is, the representatives of the Asiatic and archaic traditions.

In his view a human being is “par excellence an historic being” in the sense that any human “is continually fascinated by the chronicling of the world,” by what happens in the world or in the soul. Thus, the “essential necessity” of stories, of narrative and the imaginary world, whether of myth or artistic creation, each of which creates “imaginary universes.”

Lisha: Looking at Michael Jackson through the lens of Afrofuturism is pretty fascinating when you think about Scream, for example, as part of an album titled HIStory: Past, Present, and Future. That’s an album concept I find very intriguing. I’m also thinking about the feature film Moonwalker, with its futuristic sci-fi effects blending into the past and present in the Smooth Criminal segment set in the Club 30s.

Sylvia:  HIStory: Past, Present, and Future fits very well into the Afrofuturism canon, and there is much to be said about that album!

Lisha: Most definitely.

Willa: I agree. In fact, much could be said about all those examples. You’re right, Sylvia, Afrofuturism really is a fruitful way to approach Michael Jackson. And Lisha, I agree that those sci-fi elements of Moonwalker are heightened by the fact that they’re embedded in a 1940s-style film noir setting, so we really do see the “Past, Present, and Future” blending together.

Lisha: Moonwalker also fits into the themes we see in Can You Feel It, and Captain EO. As Eleanor pointed out, Michael Jackson wasn’t credited for writing Captain EO, but I can certainly see his influence throughout. The concept of Afrofuturism helps to clarify this. I also think it’s worth mentioning another one of Michael Jackson’s sci-fi adventures, the video game Space Channel 5.

Sylvia: Yes, as you can see, Afrofuturism is a very useful perspective on Michael’s body of work; not only do we observe these past and future references in his work, but his apparent otherworldliness was, and is, evident to fans. And Margo Jefferson makes her own reference to Michael’s otherworldliness (and Clinton’s alien?) in her book with the choice of her title for the chapter on Michael’s uncanny child star experiences, “Star Child.”

Afrofuturism, as Chardine Taylor Stone writes, is a space for imagining all kinds of transformations and possibilities for members of the Black Diaspora, formed as it was by the experience of being snatched by violent intruders to a strange, new land(s). It is a way to envision new relationships to space, technology, power, fashion, and sexuality, among other things.

In EO, a black man is captaining a ship and entrusted with gifting the Supreme Leader – a not insignificant responsibility which Michael carries out in a unique manner. In fact, we can think of Michael’s experience of making EO with its new spatial dimensions and his working in a leadership capacity with the best that Disney and Lucas (Industrial Light and Magic) had to offer in technology and resources as an off-screen Afrofuturist endeavor.

Willa: That’s a really interesting way of looking at that, Sylvia – that in his work as a businessman, industry leader, and artist, Michael Jackson is enacting off screen the heroic journey he’s depicting on screen.

Sylvia: Yes, Willa, I think so, too.

Veronica: Speaking of fashion in Afrofuturism, Sylvia, EO’s spacesuit was quite wonderful, as well as the one he wore on stage when he emerged from a spaceship! The portrait of him by Arno Bani, apparently meant for the cover of Invincible, is in that mode as well.

Lisha: You know, these mythic storylines are so entertaining and fun that it’s easy to forget how deeply instructive they are for the human psyche. When you think about the influence of African American musical achievement globally, it’s easy to see that this is not just fantasy escapism but a powerful factor in “imagineering” the future of the planet and beyond, to borrow a term from Disney himself.

Sylvia: It is sobering to have this conversation about Afrofuturism given what has happened in the past year in one of the American states which hosts the Disney fantasyland where EO continues to play and where we also all converged for the seminar: Florida. The historical legacy of white male fear of, and violence towards, young black males – and its sanction – continue to play out in the so-called “postracial” world and in fact not far from where a Black futurist vision continues to be screened and celebrated.

Lisha: I agree, Sylvia. The reality is that we still see many counter examples to this vision of the future, which naturally is deeply disturbing.

Sylvia: As soon as I landed at the airport in Florida for the In the Studio with Michael Jackson seminar, my first thought was, “This is the state where a jury found George Zimmerman innocent.” Then, this past week another Florida jury found another white man innocent of murdering yet another black male teen: Jordan Davis. While Captain EO may have striven to transform consciousness through music, we learn of Michael Dunn’s fury at the loud “thug music” Jordan and his friends were playing and we see in that instance a complete breakdown in the vaunted power of music to unite us, derailed as it was here by deep-rooted racial prejudice, gun violence, ignorance, and arrogance. Tensions between the past, present, and future become poignantly apparent within this geography.

Veronica: Excellent point, Sylvia, in terms of the recent deaths of two young black men at the hands of white/Hispanic men in Florida juxtaposed to the supposed harmony envisioned in Captain EO that we saw at Epcot. It’s true that music was the source of conflict and death and did not unite in the event you refer to – but does that mean it can’t unite or that it hasn’t transformed people? Recent studies have shown the healing power of music – for example, music therapy has helped a number of people, including shooting victim Senator Gabrielle Giffords.

Michael believed in the power of music to transform and uplift, not just on an individual level, but on a larger social scale. Whether right or wrong, or just a quixotic effort, he tried to heal through his music and art. It’s sad but perhaps more realistic to think that this was just a dream – as he sang in “Earth Song”:

I used to dream
I used to glance beyond the stars
Now I don’t know where we are
Though I know we’ve drifted far

Captain EO shows an optimism that MJ later countered with trenchant social-political criticism on the HIStory album, released after the first allegations.

Sylvia: Thanks, Veronica. And you’re right, music can and certainly does unite people and mobilize communities all over the world – it has for centuries. But as with the Jordan Davis murder, we see how in a certain context music becomes racialized and even criminalized to the degree that that it is used as an excuse to act in such a hostile manner. I guess, though, this is one reason why Afrofuturism resonates for some – it allows for imagining a less restricted existence. And Michael certainly did that through his music and art, as you mention.

Willa: Yes, he did. Though to me, even the murder of Jordan Davis, as terrible as it was, points to the power of music. Music can unite us, sometimes in positive ways but sometimes in tyrannical or authoritarian ways  – the Nazis’ use of Wagner is one extreme example. But music can also be powerfully disruptive and transgressive. The Civil Rights movement and the anti-Vietnam War movement in the U.S. were both energized by music, and in a more recent example, the band Pussy Riot is at the forefront of a rising feminist, anti-homophobia movement in Russia.

So music can give disenfranchised people a way to come together and resist a repressive majority, and this disruptive power of music lies at the heart of hip hop. That’s what Jordan Davis and his friends were doing with their “thug music,” I think – they were using music to stake out an identity that critiques and disrupts the dominant majority. And Michael Dunn felt so threatened by that – by the disruptive power of music – that he began firing bullets into their car.

Eleanor: Yes, as Sylvia says, “deep-rooted racial prejudice, gun violence, ignorance, and arrogance” are alive and well in Florida, as they are in most parts of this country, and music can certainly arouse angry reactions, as Michael knew. Just think of the way the dad reacts to Macaulay Culkin when he pumps up the volume in Black or White. But I have not given up on Michael’s dream of using music to change the world. And I don’t think he did either. How he held onto it, given all he went through, amazes me.

Veronica: Yes, Eleanor, his determination and courage to hold to his values were unfailing, and he sought to empower others to do the same. He sings in “Another Part of Me”: “This is our mission / To see it through.” And he certainly did see it through all the way to the end of his life, as we see in This Is It and his message of love and protecting the environment as an individual responsibility: “They? They who? It’s us, or it will never be done.”

Lisha: Music is a powerful force – religions, politicians and rebels use it, governments and the status quo fear it. I’m convinced Michael Jackson never lost sight of that. It’s awe-inspiring to think about the massive number of people who may have seen a Michael Jackson work like Captain EO and been influenced by it on some level.

Matt said when Captain EO opened it was the number one attraction at Disney. People (like Willa, for example!) had to wait in line for hours to get to see it. We were unbelievably fortunate to get a private showing with Brad Sundberg and to hear about the music production directly from Matt Forger, who recorded, mixed, and designed the sound.

Sylvia: Overall, the two of them provided quite a window onto the sonic experience of working with MJ. Both Brad and Matt (and Brad’s daughter Amanda) are extremely personable, patient, and generous. We peppered them with lots of questions!

Lisha: Yes, I felt like I got a very good idea of why Michael Jackson valued and trusted them so much. Spending so many hours in the studio, month after month, you can see why he needed people who were extraordinarily fun to be around, but also incredibly talented, competent, and deeply committed to their work. I saw for myself that Brad and Matt are genuinely that way, and there is no doubt they felt the same way about Michael Jackson.

Sylvia: They humanized Michael, yet they also presented a very professional and very gifted individual. Also, this may seem a mundane point, but I appreciated that Brad and Matt pointed out the amount of organization and coordination that the whole process of recording, mixing, and finishing required. Matt mentioned that besides the creative and the technical aspects, the studio engineering process for a hugely commercial album necessitates a lot of logistics, even down to numbering and naming tracks. As he remarked, organizing tracks and tape reels is dull work, but mandatory in order to deliver a product on that scale to the record label. I know this from my own experiences in editing. Bruce Swedien was apparently a mastermind at overseeing the logistical work and efficiency that went into engineering an album, particularly in the analog era.

Matt’s point underscores Michael’s situation as a commercial artist: a free-floating gift – in this case, song – must nevertheless submit to the rationalization process for the capitalist market with efficient systems for organizing labor and the materials necessary to carry out the work. And that is a complex thing, with all sorts of implications. Anyway, there are a lot of people who played a part, however small, in getting these amazing albums (and short films) to us!

Eleanor: Yes, Sylvia, and not just in getting them to us, but in the creation itself. I really had no idea what a huge part the sound engineers played in the production of music. I learned so much. I hate to reveal my ignorance, but I used to think of the recording process as just that, the process of recording a musical performance as played and sung, with the goal being to reproduce the sound as perfectly as possible. The performance was the art, the recording was just … the recording.

But, listening to them, I began to understand the whole process so differently, and appreciate the incredible amount of work that went into the album production. But the greatest revelation for me was that, in so many instances, they were in on the performance itself from the outset – working right along with Michael, midwifing his music into being. I was so moved by their dedication and commitment to helping Michael achieve his artistic vision – if someone can have a vision of a sound. Their connection with Michael was so deep and personal that they became an extension of his musical imagination.

Willa: That is so interesting, Eleanor. I’ve been doing a little bit of research about the history of popular music, and apparently the way artists think about the recording process changed radically in the 1960s. Before then, the goal of music recording was simply to capture a snapshot of a musical performance – as you say, Eleanor, “to reproduce the sound as perfectly as possible.”

But then in the mid-1960s, with the release of more experimental albums like the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds and the Beatles’ Revolver and Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, that flipped upside-down. Bands began experimenting with sound and creating things in the studio which they then struggled to reproduce on tour. So it’s like the center of creativity shifted from the stage to the studio, from the act of performing live to the act of creating new sound experiences in the studio, which makes the work of people like Brad, Matt, Bruce Swedien, and Quincy Jones incredibly important. They aren’t just trying to duplicate what audiences hear at a Michael Jackson concert – they’re actually “an extension of his musical imagination,” as you said so beautifully, Eleanor. So it’s really fascinating to hear details from Brad and Matt of how his albums evolved and came together in the studio.

Eleanor: Yes, Willa. Things really did get completely “flipped upside-down.” I remember Michael, in This Is It, saying that he wanted to make sure that the musical performance was as close as possible to the music created in the studio, the music as heard on his albums. He said that was what the fans came to hear and that was what he wanted to give them.

Willa: That’s a great example, Eleanor! It perfectly illustrates this – that in his concerts he was trying to recapture what had been created in the studio, rather than the studio recording trying to capture what had happened on stage.

Eleanor: But, in fact, it really was impossible for Michael Jackson to exactly reproduce his music, as recorded, on tour. For starters, he couldn’t sing the lead vocals and the backup vocals simultaneously! It was, as you say Willa, a struggle.

Lisha: That’s exactly right. You’re raising such an important point, and I think this is something Matt and Brad indirectly helped us to understand. In popular music, the recorded work of art in many ways challenges the definition of the musical work itself. The roles of the composer, lyricist, performer, producer, and engineer have begun to blur all together, so much so, that it sometimes difficult to define the true authorship of the record.

From a performance point of view, “Man in the Mirror” is a great example. We all know the song was composed by Glen Ballard and Siedah Garrett, but it is often referred to as a song “by Michael Jackson.” Somewhere along the way Michael Jackson’s performance, frozen in time through recorded sound, has assumed ownership of the song, in that any other performance we hear today would be understood as a cover of a Michael Jackson song.

Record producers and engineers also challenge traditional ideas of authorship in that they often contribute so much to the sound of the recording that they take on a significant creative role. Record producers such as Phil Spector, George Martin, and Quincy Jones are certainly thought of in this way. The same could be said of innovative recording engineers like Mark Linett (Pet Sounds) and Geoff Emerick (Sgt. Pepper) and Bruce Swedien (Thriller, et al.).

Sylvia: Good point, Lisha. It’s somewhat similar in Hollywood film and television production. For instance, a lead actor on a long-running TV show may claim ownership of the character she plays even though writers, directors, producers, editors, and studio executives author the role in various ways, as it is her performance that is visible to the public. This is especially the case if the show’s writers, directors, and producers come and go but the actor remains the same.

Lisha: One interesting side note is that Matt told us both George Martin and Geoff Emerick were present in the studio for the recording of “The Girl Is Mine.”

Willa: Wow! That’s sure intriguing, isn’t it? I wonder if there’s any footage of that?

Lisha: I’ll guess that if anyone knew the answer to that, they probably wouldn’t tell us! But surely there must be – talk about a historic moment.

I was thinking Captain EO is a good example of how challenging it can be to really define the authorship of recorded music. We know Michael Jackson was the composer, lyricist, performer, and producer of the songs heard in Captain EO, but we learned there was also a tremendous amount of responsibility given to Matt Forger, who recorded and mixed the songs. Matt described John Barnes as “a one-man band” working with Michael Jackson on “We are Here to Change the World” and “Another Part of Me.” Matt was also the theatrical sound designer for EO, working for the first time ever in 5.1 surround sound – a technology that was developed by Disney specifically for Captain EO – so he and the Disney engineers made an incredibly important contribution to Captain EO as well. But the entire film, really, is a recorded musical work – many contributed to it from a variety of disciplines.

Eleanor: I agree with you, Lisha, that in the production of music, especially today, the lines are blurred. The extent of Brad’s and Matt’s involvement in the creation of Michael’s music really made me question the whole idea of authorship or ownership, especially when an artist’s vision requires the knowledge and expertise – and artistry – of others to realize it. In trying to resolve this issue in my own mind, I thought about the music of classical composers and how I knew a piece of music was “theirs.” For example, I used to be able to recognize a piece of music by Bach, whether or not I had ever heard it before and regardless of who was playing it or singing it, from hearing only the first few notes, not because I know anything about the structure of his music, but because I have learned to recognize my own experience of it – a certain kind of “feeling tone” – as unique to Bach. And, based on my emotional experience, I recognize the music as indisputably Bach’s. It’s like it is an expression of his DNA. Is it the mark of great artists, and of great artistry, that their art is instantly recognizable as theirs?

Lisha: It’s hard to say, I suppose just about any kind of music could potentially have some recognizable features, good or bad. But it’s certainly true that in popular music, the demand for distinctive, original material is extremely high and there is no doubt that Michael Jackson met that demand. One of the things that really sets him apart is how he merged his distinctive sound with equally impressive visuals and original dance moves.

Sylvia: Yes, there is a totality to Michael Jackson’s work that few in popular music can match.

Eleanor: Michael Jackson’s dancing certainly sets him apart from anyone else on the stage. It is instantly recognizable – as is the feeling it gives me. Does Michael Jackson’s music – the music on his albums – carry his own unique artistic stamp? I believe it does.

Lisha: I believe it does too.

Eleanor: Matt said that, in producing music, Michael wanted to hit a target emotionally and that it was his job to interpret what that meant. I really liked that Matt said that. And, in my estimation, no one hits a target emotionally as perfectly as Michael Jackson does. I guess that in the final analysis, my feeling is that the power of Michael Jackson’s artistic vision was so strong that it influenced every aspect of the production, from start to finish, including the choice of a song, if it was written by someone else, the choice of a producer, or the choice of the sound engineers. And the power of his vision, among other very important, things, sets him apart and makes the music “his.” Which is not to diminish in any way the extraordinary contribution of the sound engineers and the amount of teamwork involved.

And I wanted to add that Michael’s vision, and playful, open approach, extended to “found sound” as well as surround sound. Brad told a funny but painful story about Michael repositioning a plywood screen to give himself a little more dancing room while recording “Dangerous.” The panels fell on him and the sound of them falling and hitting him was picked up by the mic. It was kept in, and a version of “Dangerous” containing it was ultimately released. Brad said that, in true MJ style, he finished the recording, and then Brad took him to the hospital to be checked for a concussion.

Lisha: Yes that’s a painful story, but from a musical point of view it is absolutely hilarious that he chose to put the sound of a studio accident in a song titled “Dangerous”! And how long have we been listening to this song without knowing what it was we were hearing? The fact that the engineers can take the ordinary sound of some objects falling and create a musical joke is utterly fascinating to me. The creative process seems limitless – contributions can come from anywhere within the system.

Sylvia: The issue of fluid forms of authorship is just another reason why the seminar – although geared towards MJ fans and MJ music aficionados – could actually be an appealing experience for anyone who is interested in music, performance, engineering, or the recording industry in general. There’s definitely a wider audience for this type of seminar. Brad and Matt’s memories and observations are really a testament to the possibilities and innovations of 1980s and 1990s American studio engineering for popular music. What other solo artist at that time was operating on this scale of resources?

Lisha: That’s probably the biggest question on my mind right now. Is there another artist in history who has ever created such massive musical productions with these huge multi-million dollar budgets? I certainly can’t think of one. I agree that learning about these recordings would be of interest to anyone interested in music as recorded art.

Eleanor: Yes, I think, as you point out, Sylvia, that the resources Michael had available allowed Matt and Brad to really push the envelope. So we were learning from the best about the best!

Lisha: Matt and Brad were quick to credit their employer, Michael Jackson, as well as their superiors, especially Bruce Swedien and Quincy Jones. They displayed a tremendous amount of respect and admiration for everyone involved and felt it was ultimately a group effort. It was definitely quite a team.

Veronica: I agree so much with what you all said about the complex teamwork needed to bring an enormous and ground-breaking project like Captain EO into being. Matt Forger, who worked on Captain EO throughout, all the way to its star-studded opening, was a marvelous window into that experience. He emphasized the evolving technology: in music, from large 24-track analog tapes, which were then transferred to laser disks, to digital recording – and in film, finding ways to create all those special effects before computers and CGI were available, using what Matt called “stop and go” special effects and building miniatures.

Brad and Matt emphasized that Michael was a “team player” and worked well with others. Brad talked about how the general motto in the studio was “Take the work seriously, but not yourself,” something that Quincy repeated with his saying, “Leave your ego at the door.” Matt emphasized over and over that MJ’s “work ethic was second to none,” and that others, including himself and Brad, would put in 16-hour work days, and sometimes MJ and Bruce Swedien even slept in the studio.

Lisha: Yes, and this went on day after day, week after week, year after year. I don’t think it’s generally understood how long and how hard Michael Jackson and his team worked to create these albums. Even before the formal recording sessions started, Michael Jackson could have a group working at Hayvenhurst for a year or more before even getting to day one of the formal recording process. Who knows how long he might have been working on a song even before that!

Veronica: Matt pointed out that in all MJ’s projects, “The creative intent is the highest priority.” And the creative intent was to strive for “the strongest emotional connection” possible, to make the listener feel the music emotionally. The songs were often born years, even decades, before and slowly worked their way into being. The albums took years, Matt said.

Eleanor: Yes, that really impressed me, Veronica! Although many people see art and technology – just as they see art and pop music – as occupying separate spheres, Michael clearly saw technology and popular music as a powerful means of achieving “the strongest emotional connection” and expressing himself as an artist.

Veronica: Matt also explained that the surround sound system for Captain EO was calibrated to meet specific music standards for highs and lows, designated by THX-approved systems, and that the four places where the film was shown – Anaheim, Epcot, Paris, and Tokyo – were checked through equalizers for sound quality.

Captain EO was shown in those four theaters for a relatively short time, from 1986 to the mid-90s, when the allegations caused the removal of the movie, and it was only restored in 2010 after MJ’s death. It is a work that has not yet received the full attention it deserves, having disappeared for such a long time. I agree with Sylvia, it is an important part of MJ’s Afrofuturism, as well as an even earlier work The Wiz – artist Derrick Adams sees this film as foundational for Afrofuturism. (Here’s a link.) I like Lisha’s reference to the “mythic” qualities in EO – such as the rainbow on his shirt and the name EO, meaning “Dawn” – and in MJ’s art in general. (And, Lisha, yes, the title HIStory: Past, Present, and Future is a very puzzling and intriguing title. It’s a fluid and complex “HIS story” for sure!)

I just wish that the film could somehow be made more generally available. There is so much there and I feel very grateful to Matt and Brad for bringing a greater understanding of the effort and dedication of so many to bring Michael’s “creative intent” into being. As Matt said, “The logistics were huge.” By the way, a recent interview with Matt is on Damien Shields’ blog, and a worthwhile video on The Making of Captain EO shows how meticulous the work was.

Lisha: Yes, I’m with you on that, Veronica. I would really like to see Captain EO made available to the public in some form or another – it is certainly worthy of much more attention. What a fabulous weekend we had learning about it and so many other Michael Jackson projects. Brad and Matt have more seminars coming up. I hope we get to do it again soon!

Brad Sundberg and Captain EO: “Just Another Part of Me”

Willa: This week I’m thrilled to be joined by four people doing fascinating work researching, thinking about, and writing about Michael Jackson. Lisha McDuff is a professional musician and musicologist whose graduate research focused on Black or White. Sylvia J. Martin is a visiting assistant professor of anthropology who has written numerous articles on Michael Jackson’s cultural function, both in the U.S. and around the world. Several of her articles can be accessed from our Reading Room. Eleanor Bowman is an environmentalist with a master’s in theology, and she is currently working on a book that looks at how Michael Jackson’s art can help move us toward a new relationship with nature. And Veronica Bassil has a Ph.D. in English and American literature and has written two books on Michael Jackson: Thinking Twice about Billie Jean and Michael Jackson’s Love for Planet Earth. Thank you all so much for joining us!

So you all recently attended Brad Sundberg’s seminar in Orlando. Lisha and I talked with Brad in a post a few weeks ago as he was preparing for it, and it sounded wonderful! I’m so curious to hear all about it.

Sylvia: The seminar was fantastic. It was also great to meet each other and everyone else who attended.

Lisha: Oh, I agree. What a treat it was to meet you, Brad, Matt, and all the other seminar participants. It was an incredible weekend.

Eleanor: Yes, it was really wonderful. I just wish everyone in the Dancing with the Elephant family could have been there! Just getting to meet Veronica and Lisha and Sylvia and talk about Michael in person would have been enough for me, but then we got to meet other MJ fans and hear their stories – and then, on top of all that, we got to hear from Brad and Matt and hear all about their up close and personal experiences with MJ. Well, it was almost too much for me to take in.

Veronica: Yes, I learned a lot, and it was great to be with everyone sharing our love for Michael and his work. And it was especially great to meet the posters from Dancing with the Elephant – Lisha, Eleanor, and Sylvia.

Willa: So what were some standout moments for you?

Sylvia: It was fascinating to be able to hear isolated tracks of Michael harmonizing on “Liberian Girl.”

Lisha: Wasn’t that amazing? Brad played the background vocals for “Liberian Girl” and then isolated the tracks so we heard each part separately as Michael Jackson sang the four-part harmony: soprano, alto, tenor, and bass. It really showed his amazing vocal talent, his wide vocal range, and his impressive command of music theory and harmony. Every note had to be chosen so carefully to create those close, dense harmonies.

Brad and Matt talked about how Michael Jackson had all of these parts worked out entirely in his head, something that really amazes me. They, too, were blown away by Michael Jackson’s mastery of song construction and marveled at how he could sing every line of each individual part in its entirety, knowing exactly how each part should fit in with the other elements of the song.

I remember that in Toronto Brad also talked about Michael Jackson’s background vocals. He said each line of a four-part harmony like this would typically be doubled, or stacked, four times. That means a four-part background vocal would have a total of 16 tracks or 16 vocal parts. It’s like hearing a small choir of only Michael Jackson’s voice.

Veronica: Yes, that was really fantastic, and you said it well: “a small choir” of just MJ singing all those different harmonies! Matt also emphasized the amazing ability Michael had to know exactly where all the sounds would go in a musical creation – the harmonies, the melody, the music, the ad libs – he knew where everything would go in a stereo performance. I loved hearing those extraordinary harmonies from “Liberian Girl.”

Eleanor: And we heard them on the speakers they brought from the Westlake Studios! It was like hearing Michael Jackson for the first time. I was just stunned.

Lisha: I thought those speakers had such a luscious, refined sound – absolutely beautiful. Brad said those were the exact speakers Michael Jackson used at one time for listening to playback. I was thrilled to get to hear what they sounded like.

Sylvia: The weekend was made extra special by being able to visit Epcot the next day with Brad and Matt and hear the behind-the-scenes from Matt about Captain EO.

Eleanor: I have to admit that going to Epcot to see Captain EO was a peak experience for me. And, I got to see it sitting right next to Matt Forger! What a privilege. Brad had reserved the theater for us and I was looking for a seat when Matt motioned me over to a seat next to him. I think it was the best seat in the house for the best sound and 3D experience. Actually, it was 4D – the seats moved and bumped with the movement of the spaceship. It was fantastic.

Lisha: I was absolutely crazy about Captain EO too, for so many reasons. For starters, I think the storyline is brilliant. It’s the hero’s journey – an epic tale of good versus evil using the power of sound and music as a vehicle in the transformation of consciousness. In the hands of Michael Jackson, this epic story is cleverly disguised as a 17-minute Disney attraction.

Veronica: Yes, Lisha, that’s an excellent point. And the songs “We Are Here to Change the World” and “Another Part of Me,” as well as the storyline of transforming a deadened, mechanized planet into a vibrant, pastoral world, emphasize the change to global harmony.

Eleanor: Yes, I loved the storyline and the way it was realized, with all the special effects. In fact, I was so focused on Michael in 3D that I could hardly concentrate on the story. After experiencing Captain EO, I think Michael should be 3Deified in all his short films, and concert videos. And even though Michael didn’t write the story (I asked), we know he never sang a song that he didn’t believe in, so I’m sure Captain EO perfectly represents Michael’s vision of the ills besetting our planet and how to fix them.

So, for me, with my environmental interests, everything about Captain EO was mesmerizing. It seemed so revelatory of who Michael Jackson was and is, his role as a change agent, his concern for Planet Earth – even though it supposedly took place in a galaxy far, far away. The film shows a planet that has become a wasteland, as Veronica says, deadened and mechanized – a vision of our future? our present? But Michael sees its underlying beauty, and through his love, his deep sense of connection, expressed in the song “Another Part of Me” and sent out through the lightning from his fingertips (“sending out a message to you”), he transforms the Supreme Leader from a monster into a beautiful woman and her dying planet into a world filled with life.

Like Lisha says, it is an epic tale about the transformation of consciousness, a transformation that we desperately need, a transformation that I believe Michael, through his art, is bringing about. Speaking personally, I can attest to the fact that he certainly transformed mine.

Lisha: I think that’s a wonderful interpretation, Eleanor – it really makes sense in the context of his larger body of work.

Sylvia: I appreciate its environmental transformation, but I don’t care for the characterization of the Supreme Leader. The Disney and fairy tale trope of ugly equals bad and beautiful equals good is to be expected but eye-rolling nonetheless. Why must her supposed inner beauty be externalized? Who does that benefit, and why? Once again, a strong and flawed woman needs to be neutralized; after her transformation she is silent, passive, and pleasing to look at.

Veronica: Thanks for your comment on the Supreme Leader, Sylvia. I read some posts from people who saw the film as young kids, and they spoke about how scary it was for them – and the portrayal of the Supreme Leader was part of that. Indeed, one could argue she is a kind of Medusa figure, with metallic coils instead of snakes in her hair.

I agree that EO is the main character/hero and the Supreme Leader (Anjelica Huston) is rendered into a passive beauty at the end, silently waving as she sits on the shoulders of her attendants. On the other hand, her initial intent is definitely hostile – she wants to turn her captives into “trash cans” and give EO “100 years of torture” in her “deepest dungeon” – so he has to resist that or there would be no more story.

Eleanor: I agree that if you understand the Supreme Leader as symbolizing the feminine, the film is sexist and offensive. But if you see the Supreme Leader as symbolizing nature, as I do – which makes sense as nature traditionally has been symbolized as feminine, and clearly the Supreme Leader is an extension of her planetary world, just as it is of her – then the story is inspiring. And EO’s use of the term “beauty” reminds me of the slogan “Black is Beautiful,” where beauty was a term used to express value and worth, not just physical attractiveness. And maybe this is a stretch, but the use of 3D may be a clue that we are to look deeper – that the story, like most things, can be read on many different levels. The medium is the message.

This is the way I read Captain EO: in telling the Supreme Leader that he sees her beauty, EO is telling us that “beauty is in the eyes of the beholder” and that traditional Western attitudes toward nature – that “behold” nature as something to be controlled, that “behold” matter and the material world as inert, dead, mechanical, worthless (ugly) – are cultural constructs which can and should be changed. If we can change our perceptions of nature, if we can see its worth and understand that we are “just another part of it,” we will change the way we interact with it. Who benefits? We all do.

Veronica: Eleanor, I like your reading that the Supreme Leader is a reflection of her planetary world, and that when EO makes a comment about “someone as beautiful as you,” he is seeing the intrinsic worth and value of the natural world, which is “another part” of us all – “not dangerous.” I appreciate too your reference to a powerful message of the 60’s: “Black is Beautiful.” EO tells the Leader she lacks a “key to unlock” her beauty, and this key (music) is his gift, which transforms the planet, as well as the Leader and her people. I compared her to Medusa, and it is interesting that when Medusa is defeated by the hero Perseus, the winged horse Pegasus, is born. Pegasus is a symbol of imagination and creativity, and a freedom from restrictive mental constructs that distort our ability to see the world and each other.

MJ sings that the planets are all in line “waiting for you” – waiting for us to join in and no longer be isolated. The metal coils and cables bind the Leader so that she is suspended above the ground and limited in her movement, compared to the final scenes when she walks on the ground and joins the community, one formed by dance as well as music. The power of music (in the form of MJ’s “lightning bolts”) changes the warriors into dancers who follow his beat, and MJ’s dancing is part of his transformative creative energy.

Sylvia: Also, after the male hero essentially “rescues” the female protagonist (from herself), there’s no hint of a romantic pairing. This is a Disney film, after all, and an interracial pairing probably wasn’t on the agenda. In fact, I always notice how right after EO kisses her hand, he steps right in front of her, completely obscuring her face with his, giving a big grin to the audience who are on the receiving end of his joy. It’s all about EO!

Eleanor: Yes, there is no hint of a romantic pairing, but I don’t think this is a romance. This is a mythological representation of an interaction between humanity and nature, where humanity, as usual, is represented as male and nature, as usual, is represented as female. But, in EO, the symbol for humanity is also black, which is nontraditional. Since the standard for the fully human in our society is usually the white male, the fact that EO is black is pretty revolutionary. As a nontraditional representation of humanity, EO is not bound by traditional perceptions. He can establish a new relationship, a non-exploitative relationship, with nature. Like MJ, EO is a black change agent in a white society. I did note the fact that MJ upstaged Angelica at the end, but after all, for his fans, it is all about MJ.

Lisha: I have to agree with you, Eleanor, that EO is taking us into the symbolic, mythic realm. I love the idea that the Supreme Leader could be seen as symbolizing Mother Nature herself – especially since she is so agitated at the moment, unleashing her terrible, destructive forces on her inhabitants who are so thoughtlessly invading and destroying the planet. Personally, I have no problem whatsoever mythologizing that kind of power as uniquely feminine. To my way of thinking, the forces of nature, mythologically speaking, belong in the realm of the feminine.

But I have to say, Sylvia’s point is well taken too. This story can be seen as reinforcing the Evil Queen trope that is so prevalent in fairy tales such as Disney’s Snow White, which is highly problematic from a feminist point of view – “eye-rolling,” as you said, Sylvia. I can think of some other problematic readings of the story too, in terms of one group of people invading and conquering another and then imposing their beliefs and ideals onto that group.

But for me, the more symbolic readings of the story offer the most satisfying interpretations. Another way to look at it would be from a Jungian point of view, a framework that Michael Jackson himself was interested in. The Supreme Leader from this perspective could be seen as representing Captain EO’s own psychological projections. In this scenario, the hero’s journey is a metaphor for a battle that is fought from within the human psyche.

According to Carl Jung, the dark, shadowy, unknown parts of the male psychology are known as the “anima” or the inner feminine. (In female psychology, this is the animus, or the inner masculine – think Beauty and the Beast.) The anima is the ugly, unwanted, unclaimed aspects of the self that must be discovered and battled against so that the whole, enlightened self can emerge. Because very few of us are truly aware of our own negative tendencies, the truly repulsive, monstrous, disowned parts of ourselves must be projected onto others. Myth is a powerful way of speaking to the unconscious mind – that frightening, unknown territory where we do battle with the forces of evil. According to the myth of Captain EO, music is a vehicle for this inner awareness and transformation.

Sylvia, I thought you identified an incredibly important moment towards the end of the film when Captain EO bows before the Supreme Leader, kisses her hand and then turns to face the camera, expressing his joy that the light of dawn has arisen and the forces of darkness have been dispelled. The Supreme Leader is now in her true form of goodness, truth, and beauty. If you look closely, when Captain EO turns towards the camera, the Supreme Leader doesn’t completely disappear behind him. She is quite tall, even taller than Captain EO. (In the theater, you can see this especially well.) For a brief moment, they appear to merge into a single being, symbolically integrating the masculine and feminine – the conscious and the unconscious – which is often spoken of as enlightenment, or dawn.

Willa: Oh, I love your reading of that, Lisha!

Lisha: In Jungian terms, this is known as the bright anima projection. No doubt I’m being influenced by the music here too – this is also the cue for “Another Part of Me” to begin. The story has many other elements of myth as well, such as Captain EO’s small helpers who assist the hero in his journey.

Veronica: Yes, and I’d like to mention EO’s helpers: Hooter, the elephant; Idey and Odey, the hairy, two-headed navigator; and Fuzzball, the flying monkey with butterfly wings who saves EO from menacing warriors by tying their whips together. These creatures are talking animal companions and goofball comics, especially Hooter, and give the film lightness and show EO as decidedly non-heroic. Indeed, at the start of the film we learn he and his crew are about to be booted out of the fleet. Hooter and Idey and Odey were performed by real people in costumes, including the robot Major Domo; Fuzzball was a puppet. Fuzzball and Hooter were a big part of the EO franchise.

Lisha: From the mythic point of view, these helpers magically appear just when the hero seems doomed. From out of nowhere, they provide some small assistance that literally saves the day, such as when Fuzzball ties the whips together. He ends up freeing Captain EO at precisely the moment he seemed trapped and destined to fail.

It was so wonderful to experience the film’s 3D effects on the big screen and get a sense of how the little character Fuzzball would whisper into Captain EO’s ear or zoom right off the screen and fly right up to the viewer, as if making a personal connection. There were many little details like that are missed if you don’t see the film in a theater designed to show the film.

Eleanor: Seeing Captain EO at Epcot was the first time I had ever seen it. I wanted my first-time experience to be spectacular, and it was. I am so grateful to Brad and Matt for making that possible and for enabling us to share the experience with each other. I heard that Disney is planning to discontinue showing Captain EO, which makes me very sad.

Veronica: Absolutely, Eleanor, seeing Captain EO as it was meant to be seen – in 4D – was a peak experience for me too. I have to say, Captain EO blew me away. I saw it three times, and its excellent 3D and 4D effects make one appreciate how this film, created in 1986, is still so engaging and exciting today. Not only did the seats shake, but there were blasts of air around my legs to simulate the feel of the whips threatening Michael. The 3D effects made EO’s spaceship and his little companion Fuzzball appear to hover in the air in front of our seats.

Seeing Michael as Captain EO in 3D is of course wonderful, and it was heart-warming to see crowds of people, from all age groups, enjoying this film, as we saw while sitting outside talking to Matt. Matt told us that in the early days, Captain EO was the premier attraction and there were long lines to see it.

Willa: I can vouch for that – I was in those crowds in the 1980s.

Lisha: That’s so cool, Willa!

Veronica: The song “Another Part of Me” was later expanded for the Bad album, released in 1987. On the Bad tour, Matt said it would always drive the crowd wild. He was asked during the seminar why it was chosen over “Streetwalker” and speculated that it helped to tie in with Captain EO, but perhaps more importantly “Streetwalker” was too similar to “The Way You Make Me Feel” in tone and subject.

Lisha: Yes, I remember one of the seminar participants raising the point that “Streetwalker” has a similar theme to “The Way You Make Me Feel,” making “Another Part of Me” a better overall choice for the album. We got to hear some early demos of “Streetwalker” that I thought were fabulous, as well as some later revisions. I’d love to know more about how Michael Jackson felt “Streetwalker” might have fit into the Bad album.

I will say, it was pretty intriguing to hear Matt and Brad speak of what a crowd-pleaser “Another Part of Me” was in live performance. It’s not like Michael Jackson was short of crowd-pleasing material for his concerts! So, I was surprised to learn “Another Part of Me” was such a stand out in terms of crowd response.

Veronica: Joe Vogel describes “Another Part of Me” as “the spacey synth-driven groove about the cosmic power of music to bring about global peace and harmony.” It is also associated with the Harmonic Convergence of the planets that occurred in 1987, to which the lyrics refer:

The planets are lining up
We’re bringing brighter days
They’re all in line
Waiting for you

Willa: Oh that’s interesting, Veronica. I didn’t know that, and always wondered what that line meant about “the planets are lining up.”

Veronica: In August 1987 there was an alignment of eight planets in the solar system in a grand trine. This alignment was, according to José Argüelles, a key leader of the Convergence event, to usher in a period of cleansing before the Mayan calendar date of 2012, and indicated an energy shift from war to peace. Well, we are still waiting for that to happen. But I am so glad that MJ sent us his “major love” and considered us all another part of him, another interconnected part of a global family.

I attended a local gathering to celebrate the Convergence. It was a big deal in 1987. Does anyone else remember it?

Eleanor: Yes, Veronica. I remember it well.

Sylvia: Yes, I remember it, too.

Eleanor: I was living in Huntsville, Alabama, at the time, and there was a convergence in downtown Huntsville to celebrate it. I had no idea that Michael was referencing the Harmonic Convergence in the lyrics of “Another Part of Me.” That is so fascinating. Layers on layers. But, of course, it fits perfectly.

Veronica: It was an important worldwide, cultural phenomenon and was supposed to signal the beginning of a new dawn, a new evolutionary cycle. Argüelles asked people to gather at sacred sites at dawn and hold a vision of healing and peace in a moment of unified collective consciousness, the first time this had been done on a global scale:

There comes a point when things have to change. A vibration signal was sent out. Where the signal was coming from–whether it was coming from our genetic coding, whether it was coming from the Earth, whether it was coming from outer space, or whether it was coming from all of those–this signal went out and people responded to a signal. It is very much like when a species gets a signal to change the direction of its migration pattern. The signal was, “go back to the Earth … if you want peace on this planet, go back to the Earth.”

Argüelles believed the positive, peaceful energy of people’s synchronized thoughts and feelings would create a “circumpolar rainbow bridge” around the Earth: “This is a positive visualization. A rainbow bridge around the Earth is a totally healing image. This is the healing of the Earth, the healing of our hearts, and the healing of our lives, and instant evolution.”

There were Native American prophecies about “Rainbow Warriors” who would emerge to save the Earth: “There will come a time when the birds will fall from the trees, the rivers will be poisoned and the wolves will die in the forests. But then the warriors of the rainbow will appear and save the world.” I find it so fascinating that the rainbow is also identified with Captain EO, on his t-shirt, where it even lights up, and when he leaves the planet, there is a rainbow sheen that flickers around his ship.

And things did change in unexpected ways not too long after this – the Berlin Wall came down, the Soviet Union fell apart, Nelson Mandela was released, and the apartheid regime in South Africa ended. Around the 2012 date, we have large democratic uprisings in various countries protesting unjust and oppressive governments, such as in Egypt and the Ukraine, and other changing attitudes, such as the growing acceptance of same-sex marriage and the decriminalization of cannabis. Maybe a transformation of consciousness, such as MJ envisioned, is happening after all?

Eleanor: Well, we know where the signal was coming from: Michael Jackson!

Veronica: That’s funny, Eleanor! To add another comment on Captain EO, in Michael Jackson: Grasping the Spectacle, edited by Christopher R. Smit, Carl Miller’s chapter on “‘We are Here to Change the World’: Captain EO and the Future of Utopia” draws an interesting parallel between MJ and Captain EO. The author sees MJ in his portrayal of Captain EO as representing a kind of cyborg, an amalgamation of animal, human, and mechanical, a transgressive composite that shows the open-endedness of the future: in this way MJ is “the archetypal postmodern figure of utopian potential.” The world of the Supreme Leader is in fact close to what our own world is becoming; thus, Captain EO‘s “rewriting” of that world is like the historical re-evaluation of MJ’s legacy that led to the re-emergence of Captain EO in Disney’s theme parks: “the revival of Captain EO offers a testament to both the transformative dimensions and the contemporary relevance of Jackson’s art.”

Sylvia: I haven’t read Miller’s piece yet but it sounds interesting. In the meantime, I want to approach the idea of “utopian potential” a little differently.

I remarked to Lisha after one of our viewings that MJ was like a black Luke Skywalker, that franchise having recently left its indelible mark on pop culture when EO was made. And in fact, an intriguing interpretive lens for Captain EO is Afrofuturism. Afrofuturism is a term which was coined in the 1990s, and you may hear it applied to the work of Janelle Monae today, yet it really started to become evident in literature, music and popular culture in the 1970s. Afrofuturism draws from Black Science Fiction and cosmology, and, as writer Ytasha L. Womack explains, refers to the past as well as to the future (in fact, here she references Michael’s moonwalk as part of the cosmology).

With regards to Afrofuturism’s roots in “ancient African culture” and mythology that Womack mentions, we can think of Remember the Time. In fact, at various points in Michael’s body of work there are engagements with the past/futurist themes of Afrofuturism; in addition to EO there was his reading of the ET storybook, the imagery of The Jacksons’ Can You Feel It music video, and Scream’s space ship.

As Afrofuturism scholar Valorie Thomas and others have noted, musicians who are considered foundational to Afrofuturism include George Clinton with his P-Funk mythology and 1975 album Mothership Connection, which includes the character of Starchild, an alien who arrives on earth in a spaceship. In the song “Mothership Connection,” Clinton sings that they’re “Gettin’ Down in 3D” – a lyrical call to which Michael would respond a decade later with Captain EO.

Willa: That’s really interesting, Sylvia. I hadn’t heard of Afrofuturism until a few weeks ago, and I still know very little about it, but from what I’ve read it really does tie in with Michael Jackson in so many ways. For example, many works described as Afrofuturism offer a kind of gritty utopian vision of a truly multi-cultural society – one that incorporates Difference and Otherness in positive, even joyful ways. That’s very Michael Jackson.

And as you mentioned, Sylvia, it’s futuristic, but in a way that doesn’t deny the past, but merges the past and present into the future. It reminds me of Light Man at the beginning of This Is It – he’s a being from the future, but he’s wearing a spacesuit made of video screens that display important scenes from the past.

Veronica: Yes, that’s a great point about Light Man and the blending of past, present, and future. I see EO as part of this. In fact, our discussion here is reminding me of my own past – memories of the Harmonic Convergence and a lecture I attended in 1982 by the historian of religions, Mircea Eliade, titled “Waiting for the Dawn” (and we know the name EO means “dawn” in Greek). In this lecture, Eliade suggested that the most significant event of the century was the re-valuation of non-Western spiritual traditions, namely Asiatic and Third World, including so-called “primitive” traditions, such as shamanism:

The discovery (or re-discovery) of the value and significance of non-Western spiritualities represents a cultural innovation, for it launches a dialogue and an interrelationship with the others, that is, the representatives of the Asiatic and archaic traditions.

In his view a human being is “par excellence an historic being” in the sense that any human “is continually fascinated by the chronicling of the world,” by what happens in the world or in the soul. Thus, the “essential necessity” of stories, of narrative and the imaginary world, whether of myth or artistic creation, each of which creates “imaginary universes.”

Lisha: Looking at Michael Jackson through the lens of Afrofuturism is pretty fascinating when you think about Scream, for example, as part of an album titled HIStory: Past, Present, and Future. That’s an album concept I find very intriguing. I’m also thinking about the feature film Moonwalker, with its futuristic sci-fi effects blending into the past and present in the Smooth Criminal segment set in the Club 30s.

Sylvia:  HIStory: Past, Present, and Future fits very well into the Afrofuturism canon, and there is much to be said about that album!

Lisha: Most definitely.

Willa: I agree. In fact, much could be said about all those examples. You’re right, Sylvia, Afrofuturism really is a fruitful way to approach Michael Jackson. And Lisha, I agree that those sci-fi elements of Moonwalker are heightened by the fact that they’re embedded in a 1940s-style film noir setting, so we really do see the “Past, Present, and Future” blending together.

Lisha: Moonwalker also fits into the themes we see in Can You Feel It, and Captain EO. As Eleanor pointed out, Michael Jackson wasn’t credited for writing Captain EO, but I can certainly see his influence throughout. The concept of Afrofuturism helps to clarify this. I also think it’s worth mentioning another one of Michael Jackson’s sci-fi adventures, the video game Space Channel 5.

Sylvia: Yes, as you can see, Afrofuturism is a very useful perspective on Michael’s body of work; not only do we observe these past and future references in his work, but his apparent otherworldliness was, and is, evident to fans. And Margo Jefferson makes her own reference to Michael’s otherworldliness (and Clinton’s alien?) in her book with the choice of her title for the chapter on Michael’s uncanny child star experiences, “Star Child.”

Afrofuturism, as Chardine Taylor Stone writes, is a space for imagining all kinds of transformations and possibilities for members of the Black Diaspora, formed as it was by the experience of being snatched by violent intruders to a strange, new land(s). It is a way to envision new relationships to space, technology, power, fashion, and sexuality, among other things.

In EO, a black man is captaining a ship and entrusted with gifting the Supreme Leader – a not insignificant responsibility which Michael carries out in a unique manner. In fact, we can think of Michael’s experience of making EO with its new spatial dimensions and his working in a leadership capacity with the best that Disney and Lucas (Industrial Light and Magic) had to offer in technology and resources as an off-screen Afrofuturist endeavor.

Willa: That’s a really interesting way of looking at that, Sylvia – that in his work as a businessman, industry leader, and artist, Michael Jackson is enacting off screen the heroic journey he’s depicting on screen.

Sylvia: Yes, Willa, I think so, too.

Veronica: Speaking of fashion in Afrofuturism, Sylvia, EO’s spacesuit was quite wonderful, as well as the one he wore on stage when he emerged from a spaceship! The portrait of him by Arno Bani, apparently meant for the cover of Invincible, is in that mode as well.

Lisha: You know, these mythic storylines are so entertaining and fun that it’s easy to forget how deeply instructive they are for the human psyche. When you think about the influence of African American musical achievement globally, it’s easy to see that this is not just fantasy escapism but a powerful factor in “imagineering” the future of the planet and beyond, to borrow a term from Disney himself.

Sylvia: It is sobering to have this conversation about Afrofuturism given what has happened in the past year in one of the American states which hosts the Disney fantasyland where EO continues to play and where we also all converged for the seminar: Florida. The historical legacy of white male fear of, and violence towards, young black males – and its sanction – continue to play out in the so-called “postracial” world and in fact not far from where a Black futurist vision continues to be screened and celebrated.

Lisha: I agree, Sylvia. The reality is that we still see many counter examples to this vision of the future, which naturally is deeply disturbing.

Sylvia: As soon as I landed at the airport in Florida for the In the Studio with Michael Jackson seminar, my first thought was, “This is the state where a jury found George Zimmerman innocent.” Then, this past week another Florida jury found another white man innocent of murdering yet another black male teen: Jordan Davis. While Captain EO may have striven to transform consciousness through music, we learn of Michael Dunn’s fury at the loud “thug music” Jordan and his friends were playing and we see in that instance a complete breakdown in the vaunted power of music to unite us, derailed as it was here by deep-rooted racial prejudice, gun violence, ignorance, and arrogance. Tensions between the past, present, and future become poignantly apparent within this geography.

Veronica: Excellent point, Sylvia, in terms of the recent deaths of two young black men at the hands of white/Hispanic men in Florida juxtaposed to the supposed harmony envisioned in Captain EO that we saw at Epcot. It’s true that music was the source of conflict and death and did not unite in the event you refer to – but does that mean it can’t unite or that it hasn’t transformed people? Recent studies have shown the healing power of music – for example, music therapy has helped a number of people, including shooting victim Senator Gabrielle Giffords.

Michael believed in the power of music to transform and uplift, not just on an individual level, but on a larger social scale. Whether right or wrong, or just a quixotic effort, he tried to heal through his music and art. It’s sad but perhaps more realistic to think that this was just a dream – as he sang in “Earth Song”:

I used to dream
I used to glance beyond the stars
Now I don’t know where we are
Though I know we’ve drifted far

Captain EO shows an optimism that MJ later countered with trenchant social-political criticism on the HIStory album, released after the first allegations.

Sylvia: Thanks, Veronica. And you’re right, music can and certainly does unite people and mobilize communities all over the world – it has for centuries. But as with the Jordan Davis murder, we see how in a certain context music becomes racialized and even criminalized to the degree that that it is used as an excuse to act in such a hostile manner. I guess, though, this is one reason why Afrofuturism resonates for some – it allows for imagining a less restricted existence. And Michael certainly did that through his music and art, as you mention.

Willa: Yes, he did. Though to me, even the murder of Jordan Davis, as terrible as it was, points to the power of music. Music can unite us, sometimes in positive ways but sometimes in tyrannical or authoritarian ways  – the Nazis’ use of Wagner is one extreme example. But music can also be powerfully disruptive and transgressive. The Civil Rights movement and the anti-Vietnam War movement in the U.S. were both energized by music, and in a more recent example, the band Pussy Riot is at the forefront of a rising feminist, anti-homophobia movement in Russia.

So music can give disenfranchised people a way to come together and resist a repressive majority, and this disruptive power of music lies at the heart of hip hop. That’s what Jordan Davis and his friends were doing with their “thug music,” I think – they were using music to stake out an identity that critiques and disrupts the dominant majority. And Michael Dunn felt so threatened by that – by the disruptive power of music – that he began firing bullets into their car.

Eleanor: Yes, as Sylvia says, “deep-rooted racial prejudice, gun violence, ignorance, and arrogance” are alive and well in Florida, as they are in most parts of this country, and music can certainly arouse angry reactions, as Michael knew. Just think of the way the dad reacts to Macaulay Culkin when he pumps up the volume in Black or White. But I have not given up on Michael’s dream of using music to change the world. And I don’t think he did either. How he held onto it, given all he went through, amazes me.

Veronica: Yes, Eleanor, his determination and courage to hold to his values were unfailing, and he sought to empower others to do the same. He sings in “Another Part of Me”: “This is our mission / To see it through.” And he certainly did see it through all the way to the end of his life, as we see in This Is It and his message of love and protecting the environment as an individual responsibility: “They? They who? It’s us, or it will never be done.”

Lisha: Music is a powerful force – religions, politicians and rebels use it, governments and the status quo fear it. I’m convinced Michael Jackson never lost sight of that. It’s awe-inspiring to think about the massive number of people who may have seen a Michael Jackson work like Captain EO and been influenced by it on some level.

Matt said when Captain EO opened it was the number one attraction at Disney. People (like Willa, for example!) had to wait in line for hours to get to see it. We were unbelievably fortunate to get a private showing with Brad Sundberg and to hear about the music production directly from Matt Forger, who recorded, mixed, and designed the sound.

Sylvia: Overall, the two of them provided quite a window onto the sonic experience of working with MJ. Both Brad and Matt (and Brad’s daughter Amanda) are extremely personable, patient, and generous. We peppered them with lots of questions!

Lisha: Yes, I felt like I got a very good idea of why Michael Jackson valued and trusted them so much. Spending so many hours in the studio, month after month, you can see why he needed people who were extraordinarily fun to be around, but also incredibly talented, competent, and deeply committed to their work. I saw for myself that Brad and Matt are genuinely that way, and there is no doubt they felt the same way about Michael Jackson.

Sylvia: They humanized Michael, yet they also presented a very professional and very gifted individual. Also, this may seem a mundane point, but I appreciated that Brad and Matt pointed out the amount of organization and coordination that the whole process of recording, mixing, and finishing required. Matt mentioned that besides the creative and the technical aspects, the studio engineering process for a hugely commercial album necessitates a lot of logistics, even down to numbering and naming tracks. As he remarked, organizing tracks and tape reels is dull work, but mandatory in order to deliver a product on that scale to the record label. I know this from my own experiences in editing. Bruce Swedien was apparently a mastermind at overseeing the logistical work and efficiency that went into engineering an album, particularly in the analog era.

Matt’s point underscores Michael’s situation as a commercial artist: a free-floating gift – in this case, song – must nevertheless submit to the rationalization process for the capitalist market with efficient systems for organizing labor and the materials necessary to carry out the work. And that is a complex thing, with all sorts of implications. Anyway, there are a lot of people who played a part, however small, in getting these amazing albums (and short films) to us!

Eleanor: Yes, Sylvia, and not just in getting them to us, but in the creation itself. I really had no idea what a huge part the sound engineers played in the production of music. I learned so much. I hate to reveal my ignorance, but I used to think of the recording process as just that, the process of recording a musical performance as played and sung, with the goal being to reproduce the sound as perfectly as possible. The performance was the art, the recording was just … the recording.

But, listening to them, I began to understand the whole process so differently, and appreciate the incredible amount of work that went into the album production. But the greatest revelation for me was that, in so many instances, they were in on the performance itself from the outset – working right along with Michael, midwifing his music into being. I was so moved by their dedication and commitment to helping Michael achieve his artistic vision – if someone can have a vision of a sound. Their connection with Michael was so deep and personal that they became an extension of his musical imagination.

Willa: That is so interesting, Eleanor. I’ve been doing a little bit of research about the history of popular music, and apparently the way artists think about the recording process changed radically in the 1960s. Before then, the goal of music recording was simply to capture a snapshot of a musical performance – as you say, Eleanor, “to reproduce the sound as perfectly as possible.”

But then in the mid-1960s, with the release of more experimental albums like the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds and the Beatles’ Revolver and Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, that flipped upside-down. Bands began experimenting with sound and creating things in the studio which they then struggled to reproduce on tour. So it’s like the center of creativity shifted from the stage to the studio, from the act of performing live to the act of creating new sound experiences in the studio, which makes the work of people like Brad, Matt, Bruce Swedien, and Quincy Jones incredibly important. They aren’t just trying to duplicate what audiences hear at a Michael Jackson concert – they’re actually “an extension of his musical imagination,” as you said so beautifully, Eleanor. So it’s really fascinating to hear details from Brad and Matt of how his albums evolved and came together in the studio.

Eleanor: Yes, Willa. Things really did get completely “flipped upside-down.” I remember Michael, in This Is It, saying that he wanted to make sure that the musical performance was as close as possible to the music created in the studio, the music as heard on his albums. He said that was what the fans came to hear and that was what he wanted to give them.

Willa: That’s a great example, Eleanor! It perfectly illustrates this – that in his concerts he was trying to recapture what had been created in the studio, rather than the studio recording trying to capture what had happened on stage.

Eleanor: But, in fact, it really was impossible for Michael Jackson to exactly reproduce his music, as recorded, on tour. For starters, he couldn’t sing the lead vocals and the backup vocals simultaneously! It was, as you say Willa, a struggle.

Lisha: That’s exactly right. You’re raising such an important point, and I think this is something Matt and Brad indirectly helped us to understand. In popular music, the recorded work of art in many ways challenges the definition of the musical work itself. The roles of the composer, lyricist, performer, producer, and engineer have begun to blur all together, so much so, that it sometimes difficult to define the true authorship of the record.

From a performance point of view, “Man in the Mirror” is a great example. We all know the song was composed by Glen Ballard and Siedah Garrett, but it is often referred to as a song “by Michael Jackson.” Somewhere along the way Michael Jackson’s performance, frozen in time through recorded sound, has assumed ownership of the song, in that any other performance we hear today would be understood as a cover of a Michael Jackson song.

Record producers and engineers also challenge traditional ideas of authorship in that they often contribute so much to the sound of the recording that they take on a significant creative role. Record producers such as Phil Spector, George Martin, and Quincy Jones are certainly thought of in this way. The same could be said of innovative recording engineers like Mark Linett (Pet Sounds) and Geoff Emerick (Sgt. Pepper) and Bruce Swedien (Thriller, et al.).

Sylvia: Good point, Lisha. It’s somewhat similar in Hollywood film and television production. For instance, a lead actor on a long-running TV show may claim ownership of the character she plays even though writers, directors, producers, editors, and studio executives author the role in various ways, as it is her performance that is visible to the public. This is especially the case if the show’s writers, directors, and producers come and go but the actor remains the same.

Lisha: One interesting side note is that Matt told us both George Martin and Geoff Emerick were present in the studio for the recording of “The Girl Is Mine.”

Willa: Wow! That’s sure intriguing, isn’t it? I wonder if there’s any footage of that?

Lisha: I’ll guess that if anyone knew the answer to that, they probably wouldn’t tell us! But surely there must be – talk about a historic moment.

I was thinking Captain EO is a good example of how challenging it can be to really define the authorship of recorded music. We know Michael Jackson was the composer, lyricist, performer, and producer of the songs heard in Captain EO, but we learned there was also a tremendous amount of responsibility given to Matt Forger, who recorded and mixed the songs. Matt described John Barnes as “a one-man band” working with Michael Jackson on “We are Here to Change the World” and “Another Part of Me.” Matt was also the theatrical sound designer for EO, working for the first time ever in 5.1 surround sound – a technology that was developed by Disney specifically for Captain EO – so he and the Disney engineers made an incredibly important contribution to Captain EO as well. But the entire film, really, is a recorded musical work – many contributed to it from a variety of disciplines.

Eleanor: I agree with you, Lisha, that in the production of music, especially today, the lines are blurred. The extent of Brad’s and Matt’s involvement in the creation of Michael’s music really made me question the whole idea of authorship or ownership, especially when an artist’s vision requires the knowledge and expertise – and artistry – of others to realize it. In trying to resolve this issue in my own mind, I thought about the music of classical composers and how I knew a piece of music was “theirs.” For example, I used to be able to recognize a piece of music by Bach, whether or not I had ever heard it before and regardless of who was playing it or singing it, from hearing only the first few notes, not because I know anything about the structure of his music, but because I have learned to recognize my own experience of it – a certain kind of “feeling tone” – as unique to Bach. And, based on my emotional experience, I recognize the music as indisputably Bach’s. It’s like it is an expression of his DNA. Is it the mark of great artists, and of great artistry, that their art is instantly recognizable as theirs?

Lisha: It’s hard to say, I suppose just about any kind of music could potentially have some recognizable features, good or bad. But it’s certainly true that in popular music, the demand for distinctive, original material is extremely high and there is no doubt that Michael Jackson met that demand. One of the things that really sets him apart is how he merged his distinctive sound with equally impressive visuals and original dance moves.

Sylvia: Yes, there is a totality to Michael Jackson’s work that few in popular music can match.

Eleanor: Michael Jackson’s dancing certainly sets him apart from anyone else on the stage. It is instantly recognizable – as is the feeling it gives me. Does Michael Jackson’s music – the music on his albums – carry his own unique artistic stamp? I believe it does.

Lisha: I believe it does too.

Eleanor: Matt said that, in producing music, Michael wanted to hit a target emotionally and that it was his job to interpret what that meant. I really liked that Matt said that. And, in my estimation, no one hits a target emotionally as perfectly as Michael Jackson does. I guess that in the final analysis, my feeling is that the power of Michael Jackson’s artistic vision was so strong that it influenced every aspect of the production, from start to finish, including the choice of a song, if it was written by someone else, the choice of a producer, or the choice of the sound engineers. And the power of his vision, among other very important, things, sets him apart and makes the music “his.” Which is not to diminish in any way the extraordinary contribution of the sound engineers and the amount of teamwork involved.

And I wanted to add that Michael’s vision, and playful, open approach, extended to “found sound” as well as surround sound. Brad told a funny but painful story about Michael repositioning a plywood screen to give himself a little more dancing room while recording “Dangerous.” The panels fell on him and the sound of them falling and hitting him was picked up by the mic. It was kept in, and a version of “Dangerous” containing it was ultimately released. Brad said that, in true MJ style, he finished the recording, and then Brad took him to the hospital to be checked for a concussion.

Lisha: Yes that’s a painful story, but from a musical point of view it is absolutely hilarious that he chose to put the sound of a studio accident in a song titled “Dangerous”! And how long have we been listening to this song without knowing what it was we were hearing? The fact that the engineers can take the ordinary sound of some objects falling and create a musical joke is utterly fascinating to me. The creative process seems limitless – contributions can come from anywhere within the system.

Sylvia: The issue of fluid forms of authorship is just another reason why the seminar – although geared towards MJ fans and MJ music aficionados – could actually be an appealing experience for anyone who is interested in music, performance, engineering, or the recording industry in general. There’s definitely a wider audience for this type of seminar. Brad and Matt’s memories and observations are really a testament to the possibilities and innovations of 1980s and 1990s American studio engineering for popular music. What other solo artist at that time was operating on this scale of resources?

Lisha: That’s probably the biggest question on my mind right now. Is there another artist in history who has ever created such massive musical productions with these huge multi-million dollar budgets? I certainly can’t think of one. I agree that learning about these recordings would be of interest to anyone interested in music as recorded art.

Eleanor: Yes, I think, as you point out, Sylvia, that the resources Michael had available allowed Matt and Brad to really push the envelope. So we were learning from the best about the best!

Lisha: Matt and Brad were quick to credit their employer, Michael Jackson, as well as their superiors, especially Bruce Swedien and Quincy Jones. They displayed a tremendous amount of respect and admiration for everyone involved and felt it was ultimately a group effort. It was definitely quite a team.

Veronica: I agree so much with what you all said about the complex teamwork needed to bring an enormous and ground-breaking project like Captain EO into being. Matt Forger, who worked on Captain EO throughout, all the way to its star-studded opening, was a marvelous window into that experience. He emphasized the evolving technology: in music, from large 24-track analog tapes, which were then transferred to laser disks, to digital recording – and in film, finding ways to create all those special effects before computers and CGI were available, using what Matt called “stop and go” special effects and building miniatures.

Brad and Matt emphasized that Michael was a “team player” and worked well with others. Brad talked about how the general motto in the studio was “Take the work seriously, but not yourself,” something that Quincy repeated with his saying, “Leave your ego at the door.” Matt emphasized over and over that MJ’s “work ethic was second to none,” and that others, including himself and Brad, would put in 16-hour work days, and sometimes MJ and Bruce Swedien even slept in the studio.

Lisha: Yes, and this went on day after day, week after week, year after year. I don’t think it’s generally understood how long and how hard Michael Jackson and his team worked to create these albums. Even before the formal recording sessions started, Michael Jackson could have a group working at Hayvenhurst for a year or more before even getting to day one of the formal recording process. Who knows how long he might have been working on a song even before that!

Veronica: Matt pointed out that in all MJ’s projects, “The creative intent is the highest priority.” And the creative intent was to strive for “the strongest emotional connection” possible, to make the listener feel the music emotionally. The songs were often born years, even decades, before and slowly worked their way into being. The albums took years, Matt said.

Eleanor: Yes, that really impressed me, Veronica! Although many people see art and technology – just as they see art and pop music – as occupying separate spheres, Michael clearly saw technology and popular music as a powerful means of achieving “the strongest emotional connection” and expressing himself as an artist.

Veronica: Matt also explained that the surround sound system for Captain EO was calibrated to meet specific music standards for highs and lows, designated by THX-approved systems, and that the four places where the film was shown – Anaheim, Epcot, Paris, and Tokyo – were checked through equalizers for sound quality.

Captain EO was shown in those four theaters for a relatively short time, from 1986 to the mid-90s, when the allegations caused the removal of the movie, and it was only restored in 2010 after MJ’s death. It is a work that has not yet received the full attention it deserves, having disappeared for such a long time. I agree with Sylvia, it is an important part of MJ’s Afrofuturism, as well as an even earlier work The Wiz – artist Derrick Adams sees this film as foundational for Afrofuturism. (Here’s a link.) I like Lisha’s reference to the “mythic” qualities in EO – such as the rainbow on his shirt and the name EO, meaning “Dawn” – and in MJ’s art in general. (And, Lisha, yes, the title HIStory: Past, Present, and Future is a very puzzling and intriguing title. It’s a fluid and complex “HIS story” for sure!)

I just wish that the film could somehow be made more generally available. There is so much there and I feel very grateful to Matt and Brad for bringing a greater understanding of the effort and dedication of so many to bring Michael’s “creative intent” into being. As Matt said, “The logistics were huge.” By the way, a recent interview with Matt is on Damien Shields’ blog, and a worthwhile video on The Making of Captain EO shows how meticulous the work was.

Lisha: Yes, I’m with you on that, Veronica. I would really like to see Captain EO made available to the public in some form or another – it is certainly worthy of much more attention. What a fabulous weekend we had learning about it and so many other Michael Jackson projects. Brad and Matt have more seminars coming up. I hope we get to do it again soon!

A Conversation with Really, Really Brad Sundberg

Willa: This week Lisha McDuff and I are so honored to be joined by Brad Sundberg, who worked with Michael Jackson for nearly two decades. He served as Technical Director on the Bad, Dangerous, and HIStory albums, and helped design the sound system at Neverland. While working on Bad, Michael Jackson gave him the nickname Really, Really Brad, as in “I’m Brad, I’m Brad, I’m Really, Really Brad.” That cracks me up!

Over the past year Brad has been offering seminars in the U.S., Canada, and Europe to share his insights as well as sound recordings from his work with Michael Jackson. Several of our friends and contributors – Lisha, Susan Fast, and Joe Vogel – attended his recent seminar in Toronto, and from everything I’ve heard it was incredible! Lisha asked Brad if he’d like to talk with us, and he said yes. Brad, thank you so much for joining us!

Brad: Thanks Willa, great to be able to hang out with you and Lisha.

Willa: I’m eager to hear more about your seminar, In the Studio with Michael Jackson. And I understand you’re planning a very special one at Walt Disney World about recording Captain EO. Is that right?

Brad: The seminars are a lot of fun, and I think this will be my 10th one! Each one is a little different, sometimes I add or remove segments as time dictates. Back in 1984 I first met Michael at Westlake Studios where he was recording Captain EO with Matt Forger. Matt and I have remained friends over the years and have worked together on countless Michael projects. Disney has strongly hinted that EO will be closing in 2014, so I thought it would be fun to bring Matt out to Orlando and do a seminar with Matt, with a strong emphasis on the Captain EO project. To make it even more fun we will do one full day in the studio for the seminar (with “Family Friday” dinner included!), then attendees will have the option to meet up with us at Epcot the next day to watch EO a few times together, ask more questions, and hang out in the park all day. I think it is going to be an amazing weekend for MJ fans.

Lisha: I’d say that’s an understatement! The seminar I attended in Toronto was truly incredible, plus I don’t think nearly enough has been said or written about Captain EO, so this is something I wouldn’t want to miss. Watching Captain EO at Disney’s Epcot Center is a totally different experience than seeing the film any other way, right? Not only was Captain EO the first film to include 4D effects (it is a 3D film that includes special effects inside the theater as well), it was also the first surround-sound film ever made.

Brad: That is correct! I was talking with Matt Forger several months ago, and we were talking about EO. I was a runner (get food, vacuum, roll cables, etc.) at Westlake in ’84/’85, when Matt was recording Captain EO. Disney actually developed a true-digital surround-sound system just for EO. Matt had to replicate how the theater would sound in the studio, so he had speakers all around the room, cables everywhere … it was awesome! But it allowed him to mix the music so it still sounds like Michael, but it also fills those giant theaters that Disney built.

Lisha: I’ve always wondered how that was initially planned and worked out, so I’m really anxious to hear more from Matt Forger about this. I did have the opportunity to see the film at Disney a while back and I remember there were speakers all around the theater, even in the back of the house behind the audience. Captain EO is historically important for a number of reasons, I think, especially in how it conceptualizes sound and the 4D effects. It must been have a thrill, Brad, to have witnessed all this being put together.

Brad: Here’s a funny side-note: my wife and I have always been Disney fans, and we would often go to Disneyland on Sunday nights for dinner. We were there on the Captain EO opening weekend, along with half of Los Angeles, and it was fun to see something I had been a very small part of in the studio take over Disneyland! We still have our original t-shirts, geeky as that may sound. And yes, the theater does have some Disney “4D” effects in it that make the experience far more immersive than seeing it on a computer screen. Plus the theater sound systems were originally tuned by Matt, so they sound amazing.

Lisha: I don’t think that sounds geeky at all! I’m sure you’re glad you hung onto to those original t-shirts – that’s such a great memory. And I agree that the sound system is amazing, plus I love all the special theatrical effects as well.

For example, I remember there are cables under each seat that create movement that is synchronized with the film. When the spaceship does its crash landing you can actually feel the impact of the crash in your seat. Another great effect is that there are tiny fans and misters installed in the seat backs, so when Hooter makes his elephant sounds, you get a little blast of air and mist right in your face, as if it’s coming right from his trunk!

Willa: That’s funny!

Lisha:  It is! There are lots of special lighting effects too coming from every imaginable direction, even from under the seats, and a sparkling disco ball effect that happens when the “Supreme Leader” is transformed into a beautiful goddess. On the big screen there are lots of details that you can’t see watching it any other way, like the small colorful lights that ornament Michael Jackson’s electrified costume.

I thought the surround-sound effects were really fun, too. I especially remember the battle scene and the sound of laser gunfire moving rapidly throughout the theater. I could hear it zoom overhead from the back of the theater all the way to the front, immersing the viewer into the action of the film.

I’m afraid once Captain EO closes at Disney, there won’t be a way to experience the film as it was originally intended by its creators, Michael Jackson, George Lucas, and Francis Ford Coppola, one of the most stellar creative teams ever assembled! This could really be the last chance to get to experience it.

Willa: Wow, Lisha. You’re making me feel like I really need to get down there before it closes. I haven’t seen Captain EO since, hmmm … 1986, I think, at Epcot Center. And I remember the seats jolting and vibrating but I don’t remember any mist from Hooter’s trunk! And I don’t remember that soundscape you’re describing so vividly – I can tell you’re a musician! I just remember that the sound and visual and physical effects were all pretty incredible.

Brad: Captain EO is unlike any sci-fi movie or music video (short film) ever created. It was a huge budget (for the time), and the talent pool is pretty remarkable. Yes, the costumes and hairstyles scream 80’s!! But it was the 80’s, and it was fun. I can’t say, nor do I know for certain when the attraction will close, but the rumors are growing that its days are numbered, so I would rather do an event now than wish I had in a few months.

Lisha: I understand the budget for this film was unprecedented. At a cost of $30 million for a 17-minute film, that comes to $1.76 million per minute! It’s the most expensive film per minute ever made, and it was a major undertaking for Disney, Lucas, Coppola, and Michael Jackson. As you said, Brad, half of Los Angeles turned up for the premiere!

For the fans who never had the opportunity to see Michael Jackson perform live, the 4D film experience might be as close as it gets, don’t you think?

Brad: Sadly, I suppose that is true. Did either of you ever get a chance to see him live?

Lisha: No, unfortunately! I’m one of the new fans. Several people have said it’s impossible to know what it was like to see Michael Jackson perform live unless you actually experienced it for yourself. How about you, Willa? That’s something I’ve wanted to ask you. Did you ever get to see Michael Jackson perform live?

Willa: No I didn’t, and for the opposite reason. I’ve felt a strong connection to Michael Jackson since I was really young, in elementary school, and it just felt so intensely personal I couldn’t imagine seeing him in a stadium with thousands of screaming people. And he never did a concert anywhere near where I happened to be at the time – I’m sure if he had, I wouldn’t have been able to resist. But still … I should have gone anyway. It’s hard to explain, but the first concert I ever saw was Aerosmith – a friend talked me into it and it was really fun, but pretty overwhelming for me – and I just couldn’t picture seeing Michael Jackson that way. It just didn’t feel right. I really regret it now though.

Lisha: Oh, me too. I really regret it – what was I thinking?

Willa: How about you, Brad? I imagine you were able to see him a few times. …

Brad: Can I tell you a quick story or two? When I was still in college in 1984 the Victory tour tickets went on sale in LA at Dodger Stadium. I really wanted to go, but you had to buy tickets in clusters for four in sort of a lotto set-up. It was complicated and expensive, and I just didn’t make it. Fast forward just four years to 1988, and I was watching the show with my wife from backstage at Madison Square Garden!

Willa: Wow!

Brad: Now here’s the crazy thing – I had worked with and been around Michael extensively on EO and Bad, but I had never seen him on a stage. It was electrifying – it was like I knew him, but at the same time I had no idea who he was.

Willa: You know, I’ve heard several people say that, like Bruce Swedien and Frank Cascio, and I’m so curious about it. That must have been amazing to see him transform from his off-screen self to his on-screen self.

Brad: I was fortunate to see him perform many times on the Bad, Dangerous and HIStory tours, as well as during his rehearsals with the band and dancers. During one show in Paris in ’97 during the HIStory tour, my daughter Amanda (7 at the time) was on stage with several other kids during “Heal The World.”

Willa: Oh, that’s wonderful!

Lisha: Incredible.

Brad: That was fun to see. But my favorite tour story was backstage during the Bad tour, at MSG NYC. Pepsi was the sponsor, and they had a “VIP Lounge” backstage. My wife Debbie and I were roaming around backstage, and I ducked into a bathroom. On the way out, headed back to the stage, I walked into the “VIP Lounge” to grab a Pepsi. There was only one other person in there: super-model Christie Brinkley! I said hi and we chatted very briefly, and I said I hoped she would enjoy the show, and walked out. Deb was waiting for me a short distance away, and she started laughing as soon as she saw me. I kept walking, and she laughed harder. I was dragging about 6 feet of toilet paper on my shoe. I told her who I had just met, and she laughed all the harder! OK, I’m getting off topic, and I’m embarrassing myself… what was the question again?

Lisha: Ok, I’m crying with laughter. Sorry, but that’s really hysterical! I hope that everyone is getting a sense of how much fun it is to hear you tell these stories!

Willa: That is funny! So I know very little about how musical films are made. Which generally comes first – filming or recording? What I mean is, with Captain EO were the songs recorded first, and then Michael Jackson sang to match them during filming? Or did the filming come first, and then he sang the songs to match the film? And at what point did you become involved in the Captain EO project?

Brad: That’s a great question, and the truth is somewhere in the middle. The music is recorded first, but sometimes the music needs to be edited to fit a certain scene. He was lip-syncing on film to the music Matt recorded in the studio. Captain EO was (to the best of my memory) in very early production when I started working at Westlake.

Willa: And what does that mean, “very early production”? I really do know very little about all this. Were the storyline, characters, songs, dialogue, choreography all pretty much set, or were details still being worked out?

Brad: I don’t know for certain, because we were only working on the music. Having been around many productions, my assumption is that most of the story had been written, but ad-libs and last-minute changes generally come in to play.

Willa: That’s interesting. And how involved was Michael Jackson in those last-minute changes and other decisions? Was he focused pretty exclusively on performing, or did he also have ideas about how he wanted the final piece to look or sound?

Brad: I know that Michael loved being around film productions. He loved to watch and learn the process from the pros. Knowing him, I would imagine he was very focused on his performance, and likely trusted the production team. After all, it’s hard to go wrong with Francis Coppola and George Lucas.

Lisha: Brad, can you tell us how you started doing your seminars, and what someone can expect if they would like to attend one?

Brad: Great question. The very short version of a long story is that I was approached by some French MJ fans to share my stories with them nearly two years ago. I flew to Paris for a few days in the summer of 2012, and we had a group of about 12 in a studio. I brought loads of tapes and it was somewhat disorganized but a lot of fun. I would grab a tape, play an old mix, and tell some memories I had about it.

Willa: Oh, that sounds fabulous! What an incredible experience.

Brad: They really enjoyed it, and I thought I would try it again in New York the following spring. I did two seminars there, but I added some video, and made it a bit more chronological in terms of my years working with Michael. Those seminars also went very well, and pretty soon I was doing them in Orlando, then Paris, Stockholm, Toronto, and now back in Orlando on February 8th.

Michael had a unique connection with many people, through his music, his dance, his benevolence, his humor, and maybe his pain. I didn’t walk in his shoes, nor was I his best friend – but I loved working with him, and I am proud to be able to call him a friend. I can still hear his laugh, I can still see his excitement over a great mix in the studio, or a new ride at the ranch. He was like no one you have ever met before. He was Michael – and if I can give people a sense of what it was like to be around him, that makes me happy.

Willa: That sounds wonderful. Everyone I’ve talked to who’s been to one of your seminars, Brad, just raves about it. For example, Stephenson went to one in New York and sent us an email about it with lots of interesting details and good comments, like this one:

He played parts of a 2 hour recording of MJ and Bill Bottrell creating Give In to Me – it was so amazing because the song – the music and lyrics – slowly emerged from the experimental sounds of Bill’s guitar and MJ’s singing, and you could hear it taking form piece by piece. WOW!!!!!

And just the incredible sound quality alone of your seminars … I’ve been told it’s like you’re hearing his music – I mean, really hearing it – for the first time. Following that with Captain EO at Epcot Center, with the full sensory experience as it was originally envisioned, is an added bonus.

Brad: Rumor has it that Disney is going to close Captain EO after an amazing run, so I reached out to Matt Forger and asked if he would join me for a seminar with a section specifically on Captain EO and Thriller. He agreed, so it will be a pretty special day.

As to what to expect, that’s a hard one. I go into each seminar with a bare-bones flow, and just see where it goes. Sometimes we spend a bit more time on Bad, or we dig deeper into Dangerous. I like to keep it fairly loose and not overly structured. There are certain moments that have been written about, and attenders really want to experience those, but I like it when someone comes and has no idea what to expect. I had one guest who brought her husband, who you would not describe as a mega-fan. He was a really cool guy, and it meant so much to me that he said he really enjoyed the day. I like to think that learning about Michael’s working style, and the group of amazing people in the studio could be of interest to a lot of people who may not think they are MJ fans. Having said that, I have certainly met some incredible fans who are so appreciative of what I am doing.

Willa: Oh, it sounds fabulous, and I would love to learn more about his working style and creative process! As I understand it, he composed most of his songs by capturing ideas with a tape recorder – is that right? He’d sing the melody, the harmonies, even sounds approximating drums or strings or horns or guitar licks to indicate how he wanted the instrumentation to sound. So he’d bring that into the studio, and then what? What’s the process for turning his ideas on a tape recorder into a song on an album?

Brad: We would sometimes give Michael a tape recorder, but keep in mind – Michael would lose something within 45 seconds of giving it to him. Seriously. It was more common for him to call Matt (or one of the team) and meet at a studio. We might bring John Barnes or Michael Boddicker to help get the track put together. Michael would sing the melody line, and the rhythm parts, and we would start putting it together in a sequencer. Other times he would simply sing the parts right to tape, and we would replace his voice with instruments later.

Willa: That’s so interesting! Lisha speculated that he did that – sang parts that were later replaced by instruments – in a post we did a few weeks ago. Lisha, you were right!

Lisha: I am so fascinated by how that worked!

Brad: He would also love to collaborate with other songwriters like Siedah Garret or Bill Bottrell on some songs. Once the song was past the demo stage, we would start bringing more musicians in to really take it to a new level. During my years with Michael, we never used digital pitch correction on his voice. He sang every note, every line, every part. I go into great detail about that process in the seminar.

Lisha: You mentioned in Toronto that Bruce Swedien’s secret for getting a great lead vocal is to just choose the right mic and record it properly in the first place! I’m not sure if people realize how closely you got to work with Bruce Swedien.

Brad: Oh man, Bruce is a dear friend and my mentor. My years with Michael would not have happened without Bruce, period. In 1986 I was working sessions at Westlake, and Bruce and I were becoming friends. I think he saw promise in me and asked if I wanted to sit in for the recording of Michael’s new album. Can you imagine?? I jumped at the chance!

Lisha: Unreal!

Brad: During the day I would work on Taco Bell commercials (“Run for the Border!”), and at night I would watch Michael sing “Man in the Mirror” or “Smooth Criminal.”

Willa: Wow, that’s a contrast!

Brad: It was nothing short of amazing. When the album was released, Bruce’s assistant Craig went a different direction, and I became Bruce’s assistant (“Technical Director”) for nearly a decade. Next came Quincy’s Back on the Block, then Michael’s Dangerous and HIStory. The crazy thing is that each of those projects took sometimes two years or more when you factor in all of the production time, remixes, dance mixes, video mixes, on and on. Bruce is a master, is the master of his craft. His humor puts everyone at ease, but his ability to record and mix music, to create a sonic soundscape is beyond compare. There is no one like Bruce, and I am grateful for all that he has taught me.

Lisha: I read your interview in Bruce Swedien’s new book, The Bruce Swedien Recording Method, and I thought you really nailed it when you said, “when Bruce finishes a mix it actually leaves the speakers – it floats in front of you and all around you.” It’s just a magical experience listening to what Bruce Swedien can do with sound.

We all know there is a lot of technical know-how that goes into being a great sound/recording engineer, but I’m not sure it’s really understood how much artistry and just plain old good musicianship is required as well. For instance, at your seminar, Brad, I noticed that as you were speaking to the group, you were constantly listening and adjusting the way your voice sounded through the speakers. You reached over several times and made tiny changes that produced the most gorgeous quality of sound. It struck me as similar to the way a good musician listens and adjusts to what they are hearing.

Willa: That’s interesting!

Brad: Wow, Lisha, you were really paying attention! I drive my girls nuts because I will adjust the EQ in their cars, or make sonic adjustments when we are watching TV or a movie at home. I have even walked out of a movie theater during a movie because the sound was so bad.

Lisha: Occupational hazard! You also told a fascinating story about working with Bruce Swedien under less than ideal circumstances, and how you watched in amazement as he found a way to make it work. It really convinced me that the equipment and all the technical wizardry involved in recording is secondary to the artistry of the person running it.

Brad: I was working with Bruce one time in a home studio in LA. It was far from our typical pristine places like Record One or Hit Factory. It was a console in a living room with couches and lamps and typical residential surroundings. Nothing wrong with that, but not quite what we were used to.

Lisha: That’s putting it mildly!

Brad: Anyway, Bruce does a mix on this older console that gave me chills – it still does. It was so transparent and punchy, it didn’t match the place where it was born. Like going to Dairy Queen and getting a perfect rack of lamb chops and great bottle of wine. Bruce brings a level of talent to any room that no equipment, software, or gadget can replicate. God blessed Bruce with an amazing set of ears, and the talent to create sounds in a class all of their own.

Lisha: Speaking to a group of students at Full Sail University, Bruce Swedien said something that really stopped me dead in my tracks. In a very emphatic tone of voice he said: “The first thing I want to tell you is – no matter how good a song is, or how accomplished the musicians playing it are, a poorly done recording and mix of that song will leave you cold.” Here’s a clip:

What a dramatic statement to make! And I think he’s right. At the end of the day, the musicianship displayed by the recording/sound engineers is at least as important as any other musical element in a song. You and your colleagues played such a vitally important role in creating some of the finest records ever produced. It was truly a collaborative effort, and I feel like Michael Jackson understood that in a big way.

Brad: In no way is this meant to sound arrogant, but it is hard to describe how amazing it was to be in the same room with Quincy Jones, Bruce Swedien, Rod Temperton, Bill Bottrell, David Foster, Teddy Riley, Greg Phillinganes, Steve Porcaro, Siedah Garrett, Michael Boddicker, John Robinson, David Williams, Paulinho De Costa … The list goes on and on. Amazingly talented people, all working together, pooling those talents to make Michael’s records as musical, creative, and sonically incredible as possible.

It took an artist like Michael to bring that type of production army together. I hear things in those albums that bring back countless memories – but overshadowing everything was a love for what we were doing, and a love for who we were working for. I think Michael knew that, because he would work just a little bit harder than any of us. I don’t live in the past, but I was so blessed to be a part of something bigger than I could have imagined, and I am thankful to have been a small part of it.

Lisha: I just want to say that although you are very humble and self-effacing, Brad, no one should be fooled! It was apparent to me from watching you work that there’s a reason you got to be in the room with the greats. I can see that you strive for excellence in all that you do – in the seminars, in the studio, and at Neverland Ranch. I really think I understand why Michael Jackson valued and trusted you so much.

Willa: And I’m glad you’re sharing your memories of working with Michael Jackson and that incredibly talented team of musicians and recording artists, both through your seminars and with us today. It’s been really wonderful to hear you talk about it!

So I know Lisha is planning to attend your February 8th seminar in Orlando. If others want to come too, or want to find out about other seminars, how can they sign up or get more information?

Brad: February 8th in Orlando is going to be an amazing day. I haven’t seen Matt in years, so having him in the same room, sharing his stories and memories is going to be awesome. We will cover Thriller, Captain EO, Bad, Dangerous, and HIStory, plus a few surprises. It all takes place in a beautiful studio in Orlando, and I will bring my Westlake speakers. These are the exact same speakers Bruce used to mix Dangerous and HIStory. You will hear the music and mixes exactly the same as Michael did.

Additionally, I am bringing my catering rock star, Linda, back to prepare an amazing meal just like we used to have on “Family Fridays,” where Michael would encourage us to bring our families to the studio for a couple hours of laughter, stories, and great food.

Tickets are available here. There’s also more info on my website and Facebook page. I look forward to meeting new friends, and sharing an amazing day together.

Lisha: I can’t wait! See you there.