One Eddie Van Halen solo set the studio on fire: “This must be really good”
There’s no understating Quincy Jones’ importance to Michael Jackson. When Jackson was freed from the shackles of his own family band, ready to emerge as the biggest solo artist of the late 20th century, Jones stepped in and delivered a compelling sound that put him to the top of the charts.
In Off The Wall, he laced Jackson’s vocals with the warm backbeat of disco with tracks like ‘Rock With You’ and ‘Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough’. Those tracks were a smooth segue from the child darling of Motown to the seriousness of adult solodom, allowing Jackson to thrust his star ever further into the sky. But right after came Thriller, the album that changed it all and made Jackson a bona fide pop star.
The disco sounds were still there for sure, but alongside it were pop behemoths like the title track and ‘Billie Jean’, as well as raucous rock hits like ‘Beat It’. The genre shift was an exuberant example of Jackson’s confidence in the early 1980s, whereby he could put his voice to nearly any style and experience wild success.
Remembering the genesis of that track, Jones said, “I said let’s do a ghetto rock and roll song, and Michael said, ‘I got one,’” adding, “I decided to call Eddie Van Halen, and I didn’t know him, to come play the solo on ‘Beat It.’”
He continued, “Then Eddie came in and I said, I’m not going to sit here trying to tell you what to play. The reason you’re here is because of what you do play. So let’s try three or four takes and sculpt it.”
But Van Halen very nearly didn’t come in to provide the now iconic guitar solo, simply because of rock star negligence. In keeping with the bratty style of an early ‘80s rock star, Van Halen answered the prospective call with the sort of impudence that would have him blacklisted from Jones’ studio.
He said, Jones “called me up, and I was out in the back in the studio when I picked up the phone, you know, and this guy’s going, ‘Eddie, Eddie?’ And I hung up, you know, just whatever. He couldn’t hear me.”
He continued, “I basically hung up on the guy and said, ‘Fuck you, you asshole!’ and finally, he heard me. And he’s going, ‘It’s Quincy, is this Eddie?’ I was like, ‘yeah, what the fuck you want? you asshole! And he’s going, ‘it’s Quincy Jones, man,’ and I’m going, ‘sorry, sorry!’”
Hastily realising that this was a recording royalty on the other end of the line, Van Halen began to grovel and regain favour. Joining Jackson in the studio, he laid down a solo that was caustic and sharp in nature, giving the audience no choice but to view this as Jackson in uncharted rock territory.
Van Halen left nothing on the table during that session, maybe in a bid to rectify his initial rudeness. But when he got to the studio, he realised that Jackson and Jones wanted rock in its purest form and so unleashed that iconic solo with a fury that ended up in a fiery blaze.
A studio engineer from the session remembered that “The monitor speakers literally caught on fire. The whole speaker caught fire. And we’re all looking at it. This must be really good, this song. The technicians had to race into the control room with fire extinguishers and put out the fire. This story has become a bit legend in the studios, but it did happen.”
Ironically, though, Van Halen couldn’t bring the same fire to his own tracks. When his 1984 album rose to number 2 in the American charts for three weeks in March of that year, it was held off the top spot by Thriller.
