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The Discussion of MJ's Unreleased Tracks

Soldier of Love said:
By the way, those Denver newspapers give a pretty clear timeline of his stay in Denver:

According to this paper you posted, their first Denver concert was the previous night (Sept. 7th), so this paper was published on Sept. 8th. It states that Michael had been in Denver since the previous Sunday, which would be Sept. 2nd (actually the night of the Philadelphia concert).

He went to the Sheplers Western Wear on Monday night (Sept. 3rd) to buy the cowboy clothes. He visited the Ramses II exhibit at the Denver Museum of Natural History on Tuesday (Sept. 4th). He had may have initially checked into the Embassy Suites Hotel, but later reports stated that he was at the Fairmount Hotel during the brothers' concerts. Michael wandered off on Wednesday (Sept. 5th) around 9PM (probably for some photoshoots).

The two concerts were held on Sept. 7th & 8th, but the concert scheduled for the 9th was cancelled. The Jacksons held a party at the Fairmount Hotel on that day instead. While it was reported that Michael and his brothers were leaving Denver the following Sunday (Sept. 9), Michael was actually going to Caribou Ranch.

He arrived at the ranch on Monday Sept. 10th and checked into the Park Suite Hotel. He was originally going to commute between a Denver hotel and the ranch, but he loved the ranch so much that he ended up staying there for 5 days. On Tuesday (Sept. 11th), the ranch manager Sandy Tomes, his daughter Margo Preston, and ranch owner James William Guercio's daughter, Katy Guercio took Michael horseback riding. He also spent Tuesday Sept. 11th and Wednesday Sept. 12th in the recording studio working on song ideas (but not complete songs). Michael left the ranch on Friday Sept. 14 for the Montreal concert in Canada.

So, any recording that Michael did at Caribou Ranch can be narrowed down to September 11-12, 1984. (y)

LINKS:
The Rocky Mountain News (Daily) - Sept. 10, 1984
The Rocky Mountain News (Daily) - Sept. 15, 1984
The Mountain-Ear - Sept. 21, 1984
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Michael being there September 10th - 14th ties into Barnes saying they were there for 3 or 4 days. Going through more notes, Barnes later reiterated Turning Me Off and We Are the World were done in Los Angeles but didn't rule out Loving You being recorded at Caribou

Turning me off was done in Los Angeles. We are the World demo was in Los Angeles as well. I was in all these places working with Michael. - John Barnes
 
BlackAnon said:
Michael being there September 10th - 14th ties into Barnes saying they were there for 3 or 4 days. Going through more notes, Barnes later reiterated Turning Me Off and We Are the World were done in Los Angeles but didn't rule out Loving You being recorded at Caribou

Turning me off was done in Los Angeles. We are the World demo was in Los Angeles as well. I was in all these places working with Michael. - John Barnes
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The Xscape credits state Loving You was recorded at Red Wing Studios, if accurate: https://images.45cat.com/f/cd/michael-jackson-88843053663-cd.jpg

Maybe that piano snippet of Loving You was cut at Caribou, since they only really recorded song ideas during those two days. Maybe they did a piano demo of it at Caribou, then Michael did a proper recorded version of it at Red Wing in basically one session and was never touched again after Matt Forger mixed it at Hayvenhurst.
Redwing Studios was where the WATW demo was done, iirc.
 
Eventidescape1 said:
The Xscape credits state Loving You was recorded at Red Wing Studios, if accurate: https://images.45cat.com/f/cd/michael-jackson-88843053663-cd.jpg

Maybe that piano snippet of Loving You was cut at Caribou, since they only really recorded song ideas during those two days. Maybe they did a piano demo of it at Caribou, then Michael did a proper recorded version of it at Red Wing in basically one session and was never touched again after Matt Forger mixed it at Hayvenhurst.
Redwing Studios was where the WATW demo was done, iirc.
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The piano snippet lead was used on the official song and more production and vocals were added later on
 
Eventidescape1 said:
The Xscape credits state Loving You was recorded at Red Wing Studios, if accurate: https://images.45cat.com/f/cd/michael-jackson-88843053663-cd.jpg

Maybe that piano snippet of Loving You was cut at Caribou, since they only really recorded song ideas during those two days. Maybe they did a piano demo of it at Caribou, then Michael did a proper recorded version of it at Red Wing in basically one session and was never touched again after Matt Forger mixed it at Hayvenhurst.
Redwing Studios was where the WATW demo was done, iirc.
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Wouldn’t rule that out. Had the idea at Caribou, jotted the demo down and got back to it after the tour
 
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The day Michael Jackson knocked on my front door...

There was a knock on my front door and I knew who it might be… A few hours earlier I had gotten a call from Larry Cummings, owner of Can Am Studios in Tarzana two miles away. He said, “Hey are you booked today?” I said "no, we’re free... had a cancelation.” Then he laid it on me. “Well I have a very special client I’m gonna send over: Michael Jackson!” I exclaimed “What!?!” Cummings went on, “yeah, all my rooms are booked today and Michael just finished a new song with Lionel Ritchie and wants to record a demo today…” The song was "We Are The World!" So when I heard the knock I rushed to open the door. What I saw was pretty amazing. Michael was standing there solo in a huge afro wig and sunglasses. He had driven over from Encino in a black 450 SEL Mercedes (he was still living with his parents at the time). A few minutes later his keyboard player (John Barnes) arrived with some roadies and loaded in a massive Synvlavier synth system and various keyboards. Back in the day Synclavier was THE ultra high end synth system (I think this one was $100K worth). As they started setting up his gear, Michael explored Redwing’s control room, studio and waiting room. I had a video camera in the studio because it was situated behind the control room and Michael turned the camera lens towards the wall… apparently no cameras allowed!.Amazingly he asked if he could record the vocals in the shower! Redwing had a bathroom between the two gigantic Altec 604E double 15” speaker systems in front of the control room. He liked the way it sounded in there so I set up a mike and headphones and ended up engineering the session. Then John Barnes pointed to the Linn 9000 sitting in the control room and asked if I could program the drum machine for Michael. I knew Roger Linn pretty well. His company Linn Electronics, was located in the same industrial complex as Can Am and I was beta testing the Linn 9000, so I knew it well. The next morning I happened to look in the shower where Michael had sung his vocals and saw a lyric sheet taped to the shower wall. When Michael came in the next day he walked right through the control room and into the bathroom and grabbed the lyrics. He liked recording there so much he stayed for six months, working on the music for the Captain Eo attraction at Disneyland and a bunch of demos for the “Bad” album. - Tom Seufert
 
BlackAnon said:
Wouldn’t rule it out that out. Had the idea at Caribou and jotted the demo down and got back to it after the tour
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Note how in the 1984 report posted upthread said that Michael didn't do any real recording, but appeared to jam on ideas with John Barnes & David Williams... So the idea for "Loving You" was probably jammed on right then at Caribou Ranch.

He probably revisited the idea in Spring 1985 at Red Wing, while the studio at Hayvenhurst was being upgraded. And while at Red Wing, did a proper demo recording of the song with a drum machine, i.e. the one you hear on Xscape. But that's my thinking anyway.
 
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Fuzball said:
The day Michael Jackson knocked on my front door...

There was a knock on my front door and I knew who it might be… A few hours earlier I had gotten a call from Larry Cummings, owner of Can Am Studios in Tarzana two miles away. He said, “Hey are you booked today?” I said "no, we’re free... had a cancelation.” Then he laid it on me. “Well I have a very special client I’m gonna send over: Michael Jackson!” I exclaimed “What!?!” Cummings went on, “yeah, all my rooms are booked today and Michael just finished a new song with Lionel Ritchie and wants to record a demo today…” The song was "We Are The World!" So when I heard the knock I rushed to open the door. What I saw was pretty amazing. Michael was standing there solo in a huge afro wig and sunglasses. He had driven over from Encino in a black 450 SEL Mercedes (he was still living with his parents at the time). A few minutes later his keyboard player (John Barnes) arrived with some roadies and loaded in a massive Synvlavier synth system and various keyboards. Back in the day Synclavier was THE ultra high end synth system (I think this one was $100K worth). As they started setting up his gear, Michael explored Redwing’s control room, studio and waiting room. I had a video camera in the studio because it was situated behind the control room and Michael turned the camera lens towards the wall… apparently no cameras allowed!.Amazingly he asked if he could record the vocals in the shower! Redwing had a bathroom between the two gigantic Altec 604E double 15” speaker systems in front of the control room. He liked the way it sounded in there so I set up a mike and headphones and ended up engineering the session. Then John Barnes pointed to the Linn 9000 sitting in the control room and asked if I could program the drum machine for Michael. I knew Roger Linn pretty well. His company Linn Electronics, was located in the same industrial complex as Can Am and I was beta testing the Linn 9000, so I knew it well. The next morning I happened to look in the shower where Michael had sung his vocals and saw a lyric sheet taped to the shower wall. When Michael came in the next day he walked right through the control room and into the bathroom and grabbed the lyrics. He liked recording there so much he stayed for six months, working on the music for the Captain Eo attraction at Disneyland and a bunch of demos for the “Bad” album. - Tom Seufert
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Source link here, for those wondering: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/visu...on-my-front-activity-6947205289775386624-uI6D
 
Fuzball said:
The day Michael Jackson knocked on my front door...

There was a knock on my front door and I knew who it might be… A few hours earlier I had gotten a call from Larry Cummings, owner of Can Am Studios in Tarzana two miles away. He said, “Hey are you booked today?” I said "no, we’re free... had a cancelation.” Then he laid it on me. “Well I have a very special client I’m gonna send over: Michael Jackson!” I exclaimed “What!?!” Cummings went on, “yeah, all my rooms are booked today and Michael just finished a new song with Lionel Ritchie and wants to record a demo today…” The song was "We Are The World!" So when I heard the knock I rushed to open the door. What I saw was pretty amazing. Michael was standing there solo in a huge afro wig and sunglasses. He had driven over from Encino in a black 450 SEL Mercedes (he was still living with his parents at the time). A few minutes later his keyboard player (John Barnes) arrived with some roadies and loaded in a massive Synvlavier synth system and various keyboards. Back in the day Synclavier was THE ultra high end synth system (I think this one was $100K worth). As they started setting up his gear, Michael explored Redwing’s control room, studio and waiting room. I had a video camera in the studio because it was situated behind the control room and Michael turned the camera lens towards the wall… apparently no cameras allowed!.Amazingly he asked if he could record the vocals in the shower! Redwing had a bathroom between the two gigantic Altec 604E double 15” speaker systems in front of the control room. He liked the way it sounded in there so I set up a mike and headphones and ended up engineering the session. Then John Barnes pointed to the Linn 9000 sitting in the control room and asked if I could program the drum machine for Michael. I knew Roger Linn pretty well. His company Linn Electronics, was located in the same industrial complex as Can Am and I was beta testing the Linn 9000, so I knew it well. The next morning I happened to look in the shower where Michael had sung his vocals and saw a lyric sheet taped to the shower wall. When Michael came in the next day he walked right through the control room and into the bathroom and grabbed the lyrics. He liked recording there so much he stayed for six months, working on the music for the Captain Eo attraction at Disneyland and a bunch of demos for the “Bad” album. - Tom Seufert
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There’s that Linn 9000 talk. Sounds like it was being used prior to official release.
 
BlackAnon said:
There’s that Linn 9000 talk. Sounds like it was being used prior to official release.
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Yup, that was because the studio owner (who made the post) happened to have access to the Linn 9000 drum machine in late 1984 before its release. You can hear it on the demo of "We Are The World" cut in January 1985 at Red Wing studios.
Michael eventually got his own Linn 9000 for use on Captain EO & Bad - "Another Part of Me", "Dirty Diana", "Cheater", "We Are Here To Change the World", "Turning Me Off" and many more.
 
In 1984, Michael was set to provide his voice to a show he was working on called "The Michael Jackson Show". He was also working on a song dedicated to Brooke Shields

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All of these sources of information and tidbits just show massively his work ethic changed from Bad and earlier, to post Bad.

After Bad it's like the majority of "leaks" are beats that MJ may or may not have heard, added spit vocal ideas to and then left. It's been interesting to read up on all this but it's such a shame that he went from creating fully fledged out ideas in the 80's to having to rely on others so heavily for the rest of his career - with the worst example being Invincible.
 
innuendo141 said:
All of these sources of information and tidbits just show massively his work ethic changed from Bad and earlier, to post Bad.

After Bad it's like the majority of "leaks" are beats that MJ may or may not have heard, added spit vocal ideas to and then left. It's been interesting to read up on all this but it's such a shame that he went from creating fully fledged out ideas in the 80's to having to rely on others so heavily for the rest of his career - with the worst example being Invincible.
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He had such a strong drive to create new things and often said that the best ideas come in an instant moment. Many of his producers mentioned that Michael Jackson was constantly coming up with new ideas, and as a result, older ones would get pushed aside, so not much was ever truly finished. However, if he felt a song had real hit potential, he would make it a priority. We also don’t know exactly how much he actually completed, as his estate has never conducted a thorough inventory of what exists in the archives.
 
Would love to hear the earlier version of TDCAU.

«They Don’t Care About Us» was a song that MJ had written a long time ago, and it got resurrected on every album from what I heard. We finally got it right on HIStory. It was basically a click track for the longest time with Michael and Brad adding new percussion elements everyday, and Andrew and I building sample libraries for it every night. Sticks, claps, snares, hits. Basic groove was started on the MPC, the rest of the perc was EIII and EIIIxp. Brad’s 909 is the main kick. Some of the crazy fx sweeps and sounds were added at the very end by Chuck Wilde. The bridge of that song is crazy. We had tons of programmers and guitar players come in and everyone filled up their own 24 track tape with overdubs — Jason Miles, Jeff Bova, Trevor Rabin, Slash, and many more. Poor Eddie had to sit with MJ towards the end of the record and go through it all just so it would fit on the master 3348 tapes. Here’s where my guitar credit comes in. Apparently after Trevor and Slash played their parts, someone realized they had played the wrong notes on the main bridge riff. They pulled me in to replay it. I prayed every time they recomp’ed the bridge tapes, and it survived until the end. Thus, my first guitar credit on a record is with MJ !!! - Rob Hoffman
 
innuendo141 said:
All of these sources of information and tidbits just show massively his work ethic changed from Bad and earlier, to post Bad.

After Bad it's like the majority of "leaks" are beats that MJ may or may not have heard, added spit vocal ideas to and then left. It's been interesting to read up on all this but it's such a shame that he went from creating fully fledged out ideas in the 80's to having to rely on others so heavily for the rest of his career - with the worst example being Invincible.
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I'm not sure I'd attribute it to work ethic entirely. By all accounts he was still fully invested for Dangerous and maybe only slightly less for HIStory. It's only during the Invincible era where he clearly seems less involved (and it shows in the final product). Part of it also seems to be a shift in how he worked and recorded, e.g. a bigger emphasis on not wanting to lay down vocals until the idea is fully fleshed out.

That said, yeah, it does seem clear he had a period where he was churning out ideas left and right, from the late 70s until the mid/late 80s especially. Most songwriters have this type of magical phase, where ideas just seem to come to them non-stop and everything happens almost effortlessly. This type of creative zenith does not seem to last forever for anyone. Add to that the accusations, shifting priorities as a dad, being in the business since childhood, and all the other issues MJ was dealing with, and it's no wonder really...
 
Still The King said:
He had such a strong drive to create new things and often said that the best ideas come in an instant moment. Many of his producers mentioned that Michael Jackson was constantly coming up with new ideas, and as a result, older ones would get pushed aside, so not much was ever truly finished. However, if he felt a song had real hit potential, he would make it a priority. We also don’t know exactly how much he actually completed, as his estate has never conducted a thorough inventory of what exists in the archives.
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Indeed. There’s only so many songs that Michael could work on at one time, so certain ones had to take priority… Not to mention Michael had at least 3 different production teams at work at the same time, starting from Dangerous. So there’s ideas coming from all angles.

There are songs which nearly made the cut, such as Hot Street for Thriller, Streetwalker for Bad, SPYHO, BOTDF, Earth Song & Monkey Business on Dangerous, Is It Scary on HIStory. But most of these have since been released & updated in some form.
 
innuendo141 said:
All of these sources of information and tidbits just show massively his work ethic changed from Bad and earlier, to post Bad.

After Bad it's like the majority of "leaks" are beats that MJ may or may not have heard, added spit vocal ideas to and then left. It's been interesting to read up on all this but it's such a shame that he went from creating fully fledged out ideas in the 80's to having to rely on others so heavily for the rest of his career - with the worst example being Invincible.
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Probably because he had to answer to Quincy, so it provided more motivation to flesh out ideas and get them as complete as possible.

And also, maybe he was just tired and needed more breaks away from music.
 
innuendo141 said:
After Bad it's like the majority of "leaks" are beats that MJ may or may not have heard, added spit vocal ideas to and then left. It's been interesting to read up on all this but it's such a shame that he went from creating fully fledged out ideas in the 80's to having to rely on others so heavily for the rest of his career - with the worst example being Invincible.
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I personally think it’s a case of MJ losing faith in his own abilities as a songwriter. On History, for example, despite having written the majority of the album, the most successful song was YANA, written by R Kelly.

So going into Invincible, MJ is still trying to stay on top of the pop charts and compete with stuff like Destiny’s Child and Nsync. So if you’re MJ, you choosing between “Cry”, written by the guy who got you a number one record last time, or “The Way You Love Me”, a song you love but don’t think will be a hit.
 
Fuzball said:
Would love to hear the earlier version of TDCAU.

«They Don’t Care About Us» was a song that MJ had written a long time ago, and it got resurrected on every album from what I heard. We finally got it right on HIStory. It was basically a click track for the longest time with Michael and Brad adding new percussion elements everyday, and Andrew and I building sample libraries for it every night. Sticks, claps, snares, hits. Basic groove was started on the MPC, the rest of the perc was EIII and EIIIxp. Brad’s 909 is the main kick. Some of the crazy fx sweeps and sounds were added at the very end by Chuck Wilde. The bridge of that song is crazy. We had tons of programmers and guitar players come in and everyone filled up their own 24 track tape with overdubs — Jason Miles, Jeff Bova, Trevor Rabin, Slash, and many more. Poor Eddie had to sit with MJ towards the end of the record and go through it all just so it would fit on the master 3348 tapes. Here’s where my guitar credit comes in. Apparently after Trevor and Slash played their parts, someone realized they had played the wrong notes on the main bridge riff. They pulled me in to replay it. I prayed every time they recomp’ed the bridge tapes, and it survived until the end. Thus, my first guitar credit on a record is with MJ !!! - Rob Hoffman
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Agree on TDCAU! There are at least three 24-track tapes with different arrangements. It’s fascinating to hear how the song evolved. There were actually more changes to the instrumentals than to the vocal takes.
 
arisenow said:
Agree on TDCAU! There are at least three 24-track tapes with different arrangements. It’s fascinating to hear how the song evolved. There were actually more changes to the instrumentals than to the vocal takes.
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Those three 24-tracks Rob was talking about were full of instrumental overdubs that were selected from for the final album version. Michael had multiple reels of tape for each given song, which has been the case since Off The Wall.
 
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@Eventidescape1: there're earlier recordings from previous album sessions. For history every song the team has worked on was created from scratch - except Earth Song.
 
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