PART 2 -- Review
I am really glad that so far people seem to be enjoying my review of Brad’s Orlando seminar. Like I said in my previous post, I am breaking this down into shareable parts because I am a wild animal when it comes to note taking and I went INSANE. Now I have 10,000-ish words to somehow turn into readable posts so that’s what I’m doing now. This is my second installment.
Once again, want to remind you of a few things:
- This contains “spoilers” for the seminar, obviously. If you plan on going anytime soon, I would not read this.
- Even if you read all of what I share, I strongly recommend you attend one of these seminars no matter how hard it is to do so lol. I forgot to mention this in my previous post but several people in attendance had attended Brad’s seminars in the past. One couple, probably in their late 50s/early 60s, had attended about fifteen of his seminars. So, clearly there is a lot to gain from these and I, personally, think they are entirely worth the money. I will be going again if the opportunity strikes.
- I feel kind of bad sharing so much detail because I really do want people to support Brad and what he is doing. Not that I think my reviews in ANY way stack up against attending, I guess I just want to reiterate how fond I am of Brad after this entire event and how much I hope fans continue to support what he is doing.
Ok, that’s all. Let’s get into it!
My previous post covered large parts of what Brad shared regarding the Bad album, or “the project,” as the team referred to it back then and that Brad seems to prefer doing even to this day. Something I forgot to mention is that before each “era” was covered, Brad introduced us to the “world” that era came out of with a short video. This video would include a quick rundown of the major fads, news stories, images, etc. of that year, ending on the Billboard top 10, so that we could get a reminder of what the music scene was like around the time of the album’s production. Pretty cool.
Some highlights of the Dangerous album/era portion of the day:
- Starting with a personal anecdote about Michael, Brad shared a photo of the two of them sitting at a table together playing Jenga. Apparently, Michael was extremely competitive and one time when he lost a game he completely freaked out. As Brad said, he was “screaming in his pink socks” and Brad was kind of shocked (and amused). I found this story so delightful because it’s something that makes total sense for Michael (given his perfectionist nature) but is not something I ever would have expected.
- Stripped down (acoustic?) version of In the Closet – honestly, I cannot for the life of me remember why we listened to this. It’s not something we talked about a lot, so it may have been sort of a “transitional” song into the overall discussion of the album. But wow. This was not a YouTube style stripped down mix either, but felt like a very real version of the song that could have easily been released. But, again, like the IJCSLY intro, listening to this song stripped down, at max volume, on top quality speakers, in a room full of people was something. If you know me at all beyond these posts, you know I was dying inside. I had so many questions I wanted to ask (such as wtf was going on in the recording of this song?!) but I was too affected by the whole experience and trying so hard to stay quiet and relaxed and sane that I didn’t ask anything. But good lord. Those adlibs on a massive speaker system radiating out into a crowd of people…that was something altogether mad.
- Michael and Bruce Swedien “comping” Jam – earlier this summer, Brad shared a very brief clip (about 20 seconds or so) online of Michael and Bruce Swedien working in the studio, going through various takes of Jam. It’s cool content, right? Well, in this seminar Brad shared about five full minutes of this process and honestly wow. It was incredible. For one, it was completely adorable. Michael and Bruce are totally immersed in their work, patiently listening to each take of “go with it, go with it JAM” and ranking them for which ones they thought worked the best. Tedious work, but according to Brad, these two were the best ever at it. As they are doing this, Brad starts filming. He’s walking between them, circling around them, getting in their face, stepping back, you name it. Immediately upon noticing the camera, the two of them start to fix themselves – sit up straighter, touch their hair, adjust their clothing. Both self-conscious, but also kind of delighted. Michael, especially, seemed shy, sipping constantly on tea, fiddling with his pencil, whereas Bruce would twirl his moustache and make jokes. However, despite his shyness, I can honestly say that (at this point) this was the most real and relaxed I have ever seen Michael look in any footage. He was completely at ease in this environment. But really, this was the theme of all the footage in the entire seminar. Michael being himself, truly comfortable with people he unequivocally trusted. It is hard to even describe it, but I felt like this was the first of many times throughout the day that my eyes were sort of opened to who Michael really was as a person, and the high of that was truly astonishing.
We all know Michael was a multi-faceted person. And I don’t want to speak for anyone else with this particular reflection, but sometimes I have struggled to understand how one person could be so many different things. For example, we hear about Michael being this childlike, excitable person full of wonder, who loved Disney characters and water balloon fights, etc. But then we (especially many of the women of us lol) also see this other side of him – the dynamically sensual, “sex symbol” of a performer side. I have spent time in enough fan spaces to know that a lot of fans struggle to see him in both lights simultaneously, with some fans living in massive denial of his sexuality and inherent masculinity, while other fans might overly sexualize him to the point of not seeing him as a full person. I was always somewhere in the middle. Though in theory I could hold both of these truths about him at once, I always sort of wondered how in the world those seemingly oppositional sides of a person could fit into one embodiment of a man without feeling…unnatural? I bring all of this to light because I can honestly tell you this footage in the studio, this was the first time I felt like I actually got it. I could really see him as a full person, when before I only really thought of him as one. Does that make sense? I don’t even think I realized how much I struggled still with that until this footage, actually. But in watching Michael in these moments, I feel like it finally all made sense to me. This footage was Michael just living his life, in the studio, being himself, not trying to impress anyone, not worrying about his image, not holding back in any way beyond the normal way we all kind of hold back when someone suddenly starts taking video of us. I don’t want to over-emphasize this part for the men reading (and those who just don’t see Michael this way) but God, he was just totally sexy. Just completely relaxed, completely comfortable. The way he embodied himself was magnetic. He made all kinds of facial expressions to the camera, funny, sexy smirks, along with little moments of authentic shyness. At one point he was sipping tea and didn’t seem to realize the camera was there. He glanced up, rolled his eyes all embarrassed, and smiled so small, like he had just realized he was being watched, or had completely forgotten anyone was there. I also noticed his voice was different. Just a little bit deeper, but so much more relaxed. He had more of an accent, spoke with more swing. While the point of the clip was surely to show us how detail-oriented both Bruce and Michael were, what it did for me was remind me of just how much of a man Michael really was. Yes, he was soft-spoken, unique, not like any other men. But he was also tremendously sexy in every movement because it all was so fluid. He moved and existed so easily in this footage. I really was overwhelmed by it. I can’t express enough how exciting it was to see him in this light. And I apologize for the very verbose reflection on this moment (which, in my effort to trim down, I actually ended up tripling in length lol). I know a lot of people reading may not care about this side of Michael and probably wouldn’t be watching that kind of footage through the same lens as I was (i.e. overflowing attraction haha) but…listen…this is my reflection and I can only trim so much of myself out of it 
- Alternative/demo version of “Someone Put Your Hand Out” – This one was shocking. It felt 100% different from what I’m used to hearing. I mean, Brad even introduced it to us with an “any idea what this song is?” trivia question. There was a ton of beat-boxing, so much funkiness and personality. It just felt so uncontained. To be honest, I preferred this version to the one that we have and it made me wonder why Michael always wanted to polish his work to such a degree. The funky spontaneity of this one was very exciting to me and I noticed that to be a common characteristic in a lot of the unreleased stuff that Brad shared. As much as I love everything about Dangerous, this kind of made me ache for another version of the album.
- Next, we listened to a demo of Black or White that was made with Bill Botrell and had a very clear Southern Rock influence. It sounded like a true rock song and it was absolutely incredible. Brad played a clip of a conversation with Bill Bottrell in which Bill shared a story about Michael. In this clip, he explained that he and Michael used to hang out a lot and one time, during the Dangerous recordings, they hung out at Neverland for a day and ended the evening watching movies. Michael suggested To Kill a Mockingbird, but didn’t explain why and didn’t really discuss it. Bill said it became clear to him why he did this only a few years later when it occurred to him that Michael had strategically shown this to him during the recording of Black or White because he wanted Bill to understand the racial tension he was trying to explore in the song.
- On the subject of Black or White, Brad shared how strange it was to watch the premiere of the video along with the rest of the world. He said it was hard for him sometimes to wrap his head around the fact that this person he knew and worked with all the time was the same person who was this gigantic superstar. So, I asked a question I have always been curious to know the answer to when it comes to any person who has a close working relationship with a mega talent like Michael. I said that for so many fans we are envious of Brad’s relationship with Michael – the fact that he watched him record most of his songs, that he could see his artistry up close, that he could spend time with him, working with him at home and in the studio, etc. But with this, I can’t help but wonder if he is ever envious of us, the fans, who are able to experience the pure magic of Michael as an artist, whose music is so important to us and so quintessential to the cultural fabric, without it being colored by a personal relationship to Michael. When I asked this question, he sat back and got quite emotional. He actually choked up quite a bit and said that he didn’t feel like he could fully answer that question without falling apart. But he did share that he has a hard time listening to Michael at all and really can barely do it outside of seminars. He even said that if he’s in public and he hears it playing somewhere, he sometimes has to leave because he can’t handle hearing Michael’s music in that context. It’s too painful and too close to his heart. He did however say that whenever he gets in a really bad head space, or is really struggling, he finds that if he sequesters himself and listens to Michael, specifically the version of “someone put your hand out” that he played for us, he can find peace again.
- Later Brad shared the story of how Give into Me came into existence. Now, recently I discovered a clip of this early demo that was leaked from one of his seminars a couple years ago. So I sort of knew (or thought I knew) what this was all about. I was wrong. Here’s the story: One day, Brad and Bill Bottrell were just hanging out in the studio and Michael showed up. He said Michael seemed to be in kind of a weird mood, perhaps a little sad, maybe a bit contemplative, but very talkative otherwise. He started asking them questions about their childhoods, their lives in general, memories from normal life, etc. Somehow it evolved into a discussion about music. He asked what kind of music they were listening to recently and if they would play him their current favorite songs. I can’t remember if this is something I cut out from the Bad portion I posted the other day, but Brad told us more than once that Michael really did not listen to contemporary music. He barely knew what was going on out there. Though he loved all kinds of music, he was really consumed with the music he most connected to (Motown, classical, older stuff, etc.) and so Michael really didn’t have a pulse on what was happening in the current landscape. So when Michael asked about their favorite music at the moment, Brad and Bill started sharing ACDC, Def Leopard, etc. Music Michael wasn’t very familiar with, but was quickly very into. After a while Bill started playing around on guitar and Michael started ad-libbing lyrics and melodies. They recorded it and this whole session is what Brad played for us. Nothing I am going to say can capture what this was like, but this session was incredible! Not only does it contain the bones of how Give Into Me was birthed into reality, but there are also little bits of conversation between Michael and the guys. They are talking about technology in music, certain sounds they like, etc. Just casual conversation among friends and colleagues. But what was, of course, the most incredible was the evolution of how this song was formed. It started out with Bill just messing around on guitar and Michael singing kind of gibberish words. Humming, beat boxing a little, and just vocalizing possible melodies. He sang out some lyrics, off-the-cuff, including segments of the chorus we now know. Though he was chewing gum during a portion of this singing (which honestly was kind of charming to hear simply because it emphasized just how casual this entire moment was), he was also singing these high gorgeous notes, truly stunning, and just very much creating the entire song on the spot. We listened to about a five-minute clip which was spliced together from what I believe was about a thirty-minute songwriting process to form Give Into Me. I got chills many times and felt it in my soul. That’s not an exaggeration. It felt like actual magic being birthed into the world. Toward the end of this unbelievable session, we had this incredibly endearing moment when we can hear, after some mind-blowing musical magic, Michael’s little voice go, “Something like that.” This became a joke the rest of the day anytime Michael did something both off-the-cuff and incredibly brilliant, without seeming to realize how special it was to everyone else around him. We made that joke a lot.
I still have SO much more to share about Dangerous, but I need time to work on those parts and I am traveling right now, so it is tough. I’m going to share this bit for now. I actually chose not to trim quite as much out this time and, like I said above, I ended up actually lengthening sections. I am an emotional fool and I have a lot of feelings and it can’t be helped.
I’ll share more soon!
