Steve Lukather talks about recording Beat It guitar riff

[Galactus123]

Great interview:

At 3:47. So he recorded a much more heavier sounding riff at first and Quincy liked it but didn't want to use because the song needed to be on pop and R&B radio. I wish they would release this version too.

 

[Fuzball]

Wish Steve and MJ had rerecorded a HM version if BI for T25.

 

[BlackAnon]

Hopefully one day we hear the demo with Tito on guitar

 

[Mister_Jay_Tee]

Wish Steve and MJ had rerecorded a HM version if BI for T25.

They can always do it for Thriller 50.

 

[filmandmusic]

Does Rick Beato rate MJ’s music highly or not?
I watch his youtube videos regularly but he never really talked about MJ yet

 

[Fuzball]

"metall Michael"

same story again (1:06:30f)

 

[RIP_2009]

Love his guitar playing on 2010 version of DYKWYCA

 

[Eventidescape1]

To add my thoughts on Lukather's "Beat It" story: it's more widely accepted that Eddie did the solo at Westlake rather than 5150 (it probably wasn't even finished yet, the studio). Donn Landee, Bruce and Matt Forger attested to it being at Westlake Studio B...

But here's where it gets interesting... Anthony Marinelli showed the original Union contract from the Eddie Van Halen session on an Instagram reel (Stories In The Room), confirming it was Westlake. Still, Steve Lukather replied in the comments calling that absolute BS - "is this like Obama's fake birth certificate?" He had so much conviction in his story that he refused to accept it was at Westlake, and chances are he wasn't even there when Eddie did the solo. Questionable, that!

 

[Eventidescape1]

What we do know for sure: two takes of that solo were done over the verse section instead of the chorus (it worked better for Eddie), and they'd edit the tape afterwards to restructure it at Westlake. Obviously, that did mess up the SMPTE code on the multitrack that they'd need to sync up with other reels to get the complete song.

What doesn't make sense, though, is what Lukather said was on the multi-track tape they overdubbed to - just a case beater, Eddie's solo and the vocals (all first generation)?? Like, is that it?? And using the headphone bleed on the vocal track for reference?

Usually, on each slave reel, Bruce would make a stereo cue mix of the basic track, and the musicians would overdub to that. That would have had a drum machine on it. In that case they don't need to create a manual click track...