On December 4th, 1978, 20 year old Michael Joe Jackson took a break from planning the release of The Jacksons' third LP on Epic Records titled "Destiny", to start production on his fifith solo effort.
Going into the studio with producer Quincy Jones, they set out on making an album that blended genres while bringing something new to the platform of pop and R&B music.
Destiny was released on December 17th and Michael and his brothers quickly went into promotion, appearing on such shows such as American Bandstand, Soul Train, and Top of The Pops as well as touring Europe and the United States, all the while, Jackson would catch flights back to Los Angeles to studios such as Cherokee Studios, Allen Zenth Recording, and Westlake Audio to continue recording for the solo project which was at the time titled "Girlfriend"
In the beginning, Michael was not exactly sure what he wanted as the final product but one thing he knew was that he didn't want to sound like a Jacksons album and strived for the individual and creative freedom that a solo album granted him, which was not something he had on his previous solo efforts at Motown, which were recorded at the same time his albums with The Jackson 5 were being recorded, even during the same sessions (for example, songs from Forever, Michael were recorded during the same session as songs from Moving Violation)
Michael began writing songs for the album around late 1977 after the filming of "The Wiz" and two of the songs from those early writing sessions were included on the album "Don't Stop Til You Get Enough" and "Workin' Day And Night", which early demos were recorded in 1978 with the help of his younger siblings Randy, then 17 and Janet, then 12 at the family's home recording studio at Hayvenhurst.
Another key writer on the album was Rod Temperton, who had been working on an album with Heatwave when Jones called him to write some songs for Michael.
Rod told him he’d write a song, and wrote 3 songs for Michael and Quincy to choose from. The duo booked a studio on the weekend when Rod wasn’t working with HW. Rod flew in (while Michael wasn’t there, most likely working promoting the Destiny album) to work on the tracks. He came back to Los Angeles the following week to work with Michael on the vocals, doing all of the background vocals for Rock With You, Burn This Disco Out, and Off The Wall that Saturday afternoon and all of the lead vocals the next afternoon. Michael spent the whole Saturday night learning the lyrics so he wouldn’t have to read off the paper.
The first session with Rod, Quincy asked him what musicians did he need to record the tracks, and Rod told him he would need 2 guitar players, a keyboard player, drummer, and a bass player. When he arrived to the studio, Quincy took him to the room with the musicians and told them “Here’s Rod, hit it!” This had been Rod’s first time without his own band.. Temperton had been in Heatwave for sometime and had gotten used to that environment and this was new atmosphere for him. He recalled feeling inadequate being in the studio when Jerry Hey and the other horns players arrived. At the end of the sessions, Temperton asked Quincy which songs had they picked, and Jones told him they wanted all 3. Temperton recalls Jackson singing uptempo grooves was very rhythmically driven and tried to write melodies with short notes to give him enough staccato, along with mixing them with enough harmonies.
Temperton took a different approach to his song writing after spending some time researching the background to Jackson's music style. Temperton mixed his traditional harmony segments with the idea of adding shorter note melodies to suit Jackson's aggressive style.
Other key contributors were Greg Philiganes who had worked on The Jacksons' Destiny album and would go on to collaborate with Michael on Thriller, Bad, Dangerous, and tour with him for the Victory, Bad, Dangerous, and HIStory Tour., The Brothers Johnson, especially Louis Johnson who co-wrote Get On The Floor with Michael which was created around the bass groove. Johnson had been playing around with it when he played it for Michael. He liked it, they went into the studio and collaborated on the song
other contributors included Stevie Wonder (co-writer of I Can't Help It with former Supremes Susaye Greene), David Foster and Carole Bayer Sager (It's The Falling In Love), Paul McCartney (writer of Girlfriend who would later record The Girl Is Mine, Say Say Say, and The Man with Michael in 1982), and Tom Bahler(writer of She's Out Of My Life)
The album did have obstacles. The recording of the album coincided with the European tour of The Jacksons' Destiny World Tour and the promotion of the Destiny album. Many observers feel that maybe Quincy's role in the production of the album has been overexaggerated.
Quincy's main role of the album was quality control, cutting down extra instrumentation and runs and getting particular people in the production. He was the person who got people like Temperton, The Johnsons, John Robinson from Rufus, and Patti Austin on board.
As time went on, Michael felt the direction of the album should be more dance and funk oriented but Quincy wanted a strict, conservative yet versatile album and the duo butted heads over the overall direction, comprising, and finding constant solutions.
Quincy also knew about balance and editing the album to fit the direction, which showed on the final result.
At the end of June 1979, audio mixing was handled by Bruce Swedien at Westlake Audio, after which the original tapes went to the A&M Recording Studio, also located in L.A. for mastering by Bernie Grunman.
OFF THE WALL initially debuted at #48 on the Billboard 200 but peaked at #3 26 weeks later, staying in the top 10 for 29 non consecutive weeks and stayed on the chart for over 2 years. It also peaked at #1 on the Billboard R&B album chart for 16 weeks, along with peaking at #5 on the UK album charts, selling over 19 million copies worldwide, making it the best selling album by a black artist of all time, for 3 years.
Billboard Album 200: #3
Billboard R&B Album- #1 (for 16 weeks)
UK Album Chart: #5
Australia- #1 (for 2 weeks)
Canada- #4
Finland- #9
France- # 27 (1988)
Germany- #25
Holland- #7
Ireland- #12 (2004)
Italy- #21
Japan- #26 (LP), #28 (cassette)
New Zealand- #2
Norway- #4
Sweden- #26
Zimbabwe- #1 (for 7 weeks)
