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Thriller 40th Anniversary

AlwaysThere said:
The thumbnail is confusing the hell outta me. It looks like MJ, but it also doesn’t. Help.
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They tampered this photo from the Bonnie Shiffman photoshoot:

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Alex Van Halen has revealed that he’s still bitter over his brother’s decision to play on Michael Jackson’s “Beat It.”
It was 1982 when Eddie Van Halen, guitar god for the biggest band in the world, was approached by producer Quincy Jones to play on Jackson’s song. Eddie knew that doing so would break a Van Halen band rule regarding outside work, but he decided to take the gig anyway, much to the dismay of Alex.
“Why would you lend your talents to Michael Jackson?” the drummer declared during a recent interview with Rolling Stone, his first since Eddie's death. “I just don’t ****** get it.”
Eddie’s solo on “Beat It” became one of the most identifiable guitar riffs of the ‘80s, rivaling anything he recorded with his own band. Alex saw it as treason.
“And the funny part was that Ed fibbed his way out of it by saying, ‘Oh, who knows that kid anyway?’” the drummer recalled. “You made the mistake! Fess up. Don’t add insult to injury by acting stupid.”
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ultimateclassicrock.com

Alex Van Halen: 'I Just Don’t F—ing Get' Why Eddie Did 'Beat It'

Alex Van Halen expressed anger over his brother Eddie Van Halen's decision to play on Michael Jackson's 'Beat It' in October 2024.
ultimateclassicrock.com ultimateclassicrock.com
 
‘beat it’ would have been a hit with or without eddie van halen. the guitar solo was only a small portion, that didn’t make or break the song. it’s just more rock snobbery. much like billy joel’s comments about ‘we are the world’. there’s a real ignorance among a certain demographic about michael’s legacy pre ‘thriller’. they act as if michael was a nobody who just got lucky. his career actually predated a lot of theirs.
 
83magic said:
‘beat it’ would have been a hit with or without eddie van halen. the guitar solo was only a small portion, that didn’t make or break the song. it’s just more rock snobbery. much like billy joel’s comments about ‘we are the world’. there’s a real ignorance among a certain demographic about michael’s legacy pre ‘thriller’. they act as if michael was a nobody who just got lucky. his career actually predated a lot of theirs.
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This 👆

Eddie did a decent piece of work, it's a bit showy, a bit predictable, too much 'shredding' for my liking but ... whatever. Yes, it's become a really famous guitar riff but ... so what? Not saying it wasn't a clever move on Quincy's part, bringing in an established rock guitarist. We all know the story and it does make sense.

Alex van Halen is probably just playing the media game, complaining about this precisely bc he knows it'll get him the coverage and headlines he wants. Fine. Knock yourself out, mate. But he sounds like a brat throwing his toys out of the pram. 🙄
 
zinniabooklover said:
This 👆

Eddie did a decent piece of work, it's a bit showy, a bit predictable, too much 'shredding' for my liking but ... whatever. Yes, it's become a really famous guitar riff but ... so what? Not saying it wasn't a clever move on Quincy's part, bringing in an established rock guitarist. We all know the story and it does make sense.

Alex van Halen is probably just playing the media game, complaining about this precisely bc he knows it'll get him the coverage and headlines he wants. Fine. Knock yourself out, mate. But he sounds like a brat throwing his toys out of the pram. 🙄
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this is very timely
 
Hmm I think the solo for Beat It is essential in recognizing the song. Maybe another guitarist would have done an equally fine job but that is not the point. The solo is very important for the status of this legendary song. Imagine Beat It without a solo…
 
Mister_Jay_Tee said:
Bro's just mad the band broke up. He's literally Jermaine for Van Halen.
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They didn't "break up", they were forced to stop after his brother died. Show some respect for God's sake.

Also, let's be real: Eddie Van Halen's contribution helped the song cross over to a rock audience who ordinarily never would have listened to MJ at the time. Between this and the duets with Paul McCartney, the fact is that Michael NEEDED the crossover appeal to help Thriller become the best selling album of all time. And it worked.
 
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83magic said:
‘beat it’ would have been a hit with or without eddie van halen. the guitar solo was only a small portion, that didn’t make or break the song. it’s just more rock snobbery. much like billy joel’s comments about ‘we are the world’. there’s a real ignorance among a certain demographic about michael’s legacy pre ‘thriller’. they act as if michael was a nobody who just got lucky. his career actually predated a lot of theirs.
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Hopefully we get to hear the original version with Tito on guitar before Eddie came in
 
I’m not an expert on rock. it’s my least favourite genre, and the guitar is my least favourite instrument. I do know that pete townsend of the who was also considered for ‘beat it’. I agree that it would be interesting to hear tito on the demo. he played on ‘heartbreak hotel’ after all, and all of the jacksons hits. michael was known to hum every note for the musicians to play. the pieces all came from his mind.

I view the guitar solo in ‘beat it’ the same way I view the horror speech at the end of ‘thriller’, or the chipmunk voices in ‘p.y.t (pretty young thing)’; minor embellishments that helped give the songs extra character. however, I don’t think they were vital foundational components. radio/single edits prove that the songs are perfectly capable of surviving without them. the guitar solo on ‘beat it’ was heavily edited together by engineer bruce swedien. as evidenced by the ‘victory’ concert in dallas, it was unable to be replicated live..

I found eddie van halen’s comments regarding michael to be offensive and dismissive; ‘who’s gonna know if I play on this black kid’s record?’. which he loved to parrot every time he told the story of the origins of their collaboration. his bandmates gave him sole credit for the success of the song, and the ‘thriller’ album keeping theirs off the top spot. the same way that some american rock radio stations wrongly, and deliberately, announced ‘beat it’ as a eddie van halen song, and ‘state of shock’ as a mick jagger song. completely removing michael from his own creations.

it’s the same racial and musical bias that led to the anti disco movement. the belief that rock, despite being originally created by black musicians, is the only ‘real’ music, and that anything else is somehow less than. the dismissal of dance as an art form to be used in live music performances. industry gatekeepers perpetuate this hierarchy to keep everyone in their place. ‘off the wall’ not being recognised by the grammys, despite being the first album to generate 4 top ten singles, and michael being rejected by rolling stone magazine for a cover feature, are examples of this.

michael was a lover of all music. his personal tastes and his own work reflected this. he hated labels and wanted to escape them. he had been successful in the business for 13/14 years. yet his collaborators eddie van halen, and even john landis, only remembered him as ‘the little boy who sang abc’. the very image that michael wanted to eradicate as an adult solo artist..

at least paul mccartney came off better in that regard. he respected michael as an equal, and the two were genuinely friends who enjoyed working together. I don’t think their duets made a lasting impact in the long run. though it’s possible that ‘the girl is mine’ was also a strategic effort to crossover to a ‘mainstream’ audience (just like ‘beat it’), it wasn’t critically acclaimed.

it wasn’t a number one hit either. that honour went to ‘billie jean’, a song that michael wrote, composed, and sang by himself. it reached the top spot on both sides of the atlantic before the video was accepted by mtv, and before the legendary motown 25 performance💜it relied solely on the strength of the song. it was not only the biggest hit from the album, but of michael’s career as a whole.

though I wouldn’t change the outcome of ‘thriller’ whether it’s the music, or the success of it, I do find it sad how michael had to prove himself to an audience that never respected him in the first place. I love these documentaries, but this particular episode was bittersweet for me..
 
From reddit:
"Over a year after Thriller was released it was still selling 1 million albums worldwide every 4 days. In 1984 in some record stores they were selling over 500 copies of Thriller a day. - Billboard March, 17 1984"


GalVY_vaIAADjfc




Also on reddit, source not cited:

over-a-year-after-thriller-was-released-it-was-still-v0-l9fctp9rpiwd1.jpg
 
zinniabooklover said:
From reddit:
"Over a year after Thriller was released it was still selling 1 million albums worldwide every 4 days. In 1984 in some record stores they were selling over 500 copies of Thriller a day. - Billboard March, 17 1984"


GalVY_vaIAADjfc




Also on reddit, source not cited:

over-a-year-after-thriller-was-released-it-was-still-v0-l9fctp9rpiwd1.jpg
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This is truly a foreign world. Why was this even necessary, genuinely? Did everyone in a family have a copy? Did near everyone on earth legit buy a copy?
 
Mister_Jay_Tee said:
This is truly a foreign world. Why was this even necessary, genuinely? Did everyone in a family have a copy? Did near everyone on earth legit buy a copy?
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I guess you dont remember or never experienced consuming music before the internet.

Cassettes and vinyl were the only way to consume music.

People had a record player in their house, a cassette player in their car, and a cassette player as their personal way to listen to music.

It was normal to buy multiple albums in multiple formats.

The vinyl album would be used on the record player for communal music, at parties, or during meals or familt and friends listening to music hang out time.

People would have a collection of cassettes in their car to listen to music when driving.

People would have a collection of cassettes for their personal use, in cassette players/ boom boxes.

For something like Thriller which we would now call a viral album, people would start off with their preferred format. But then would want to listen to it in a different location or on a different format, so would buy it again.

Then theres all the vinyl and cassettes which got damaged. Records got scratched and warped or broke. Cassette tapes got eaten by the machines. Most times people would just not bother replacing a format that got damaged. But because Thriller was viral , people did replace them.

You also have to remember that the only way to get album songs, was to buy the album. So Beatles / Paul McCartney fans would have to buy Thriller to get The Girl Is Mine.
 
Mister_Jay_Tee said:
This is truly a foreign world.
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I get where you're coming from.

Mr JT do you remember this:
Mister_Jay_Tee said:
Hot Take: I don't really care about physical sales anymore. It mattered more in the pre digital age. But even then it was,, never actually a perfect measurement? [...] Not really any different than streaming and the music videos. I pay more attention to those statistics.
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zinniabooklover said:
Just so massively different I don't even know where to start, lol. The record you want is out of stock? Oh, you'll have to come back next week! And we did.
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All of which leads us to this:
Mister_Jay_Tee said:
Why was this even necessary, genuinely? Did everyone in a family have a copy?
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No.
Mister_Jay_Tee said:
Did near everyone on earth legit buy a copy?
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No.

But it was a different era. Dark Side of the Moon came out in March 1973 and didn't drop out of the charts for the rest of the year, iirc. It was normal to walk down the street and see multiple people (OK, usually guys!) with a copy under their arm. Same with Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells. Cassettes were around in the 1980's but vinyl was still the main format and replacement copies of fave albums was a normal part of life.

Plus, Michael-mania. It was a thing. I don't know if it was bigger than Beatles-mania and I don't care. It was the 80's and it was its own thing and it was huge. That Billboard graphic I posted states sales of 2 million in 1984 for the UK. I don't know how many households there were in the UK in '84 but the population would have been approx. 50 - 55 million. So 2 million UK sales in a single year sounds about right to me.
 
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zinniabooklover said:
They're off. Already trending

https://twitter.com/x/status/1849670684374602212


https://twitter.com/x/status/1849824749037420820
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Yes, the challenge has started again. Right now there is a streaming party that I’m in on the app ‘Stationhead’. It’s very fun, every few songs Thriller comes on and the rest of it is just MJ and related songs. A song of Paris even played.
The Stationhead app created a special Moonwalker station after the Thriller Challenge of last year.
There are about 90 people in that station right now so it is really fun chatting with the other fans while listening to the music.

If some of you would like to join:

I will put a link right here to the app and the moonwalker channel (if it is allowed).

You need to log in with you Spotify premium or Apple music account.
stationhead.com/c/moonwalkers
 
michaeljackson.nl said:
Yes, the challenge has started again. Right now there is a streaming party that I’m in on the app ‘Stationhead’. It’s very fun, every few songs Thriller comes on and the rest of it is just MJ and related songs. A song of Paris even played.
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Oh, that's a clever idea.

michaeljackson.nl said:
The Stationhead app created a special Moonwalker station after the Thriller Challenge of last year.
There are about 90 people in that station right now so it is really fun chatting with the other fans while listening to the music.

If some of you would like to join:

I will put a link right here to the app and the moonwalker channel (if it is allowed).

You need to log in with you Spotify premium or Apple music account.
stationhead.com/c/moonwalkers
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https://twitter.com/x/status/1849850320937157096
 
michaeljackson.nl said:
Yes, the challenge has started again.
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By the way, there is a lot of information about the Thriller Challenge on this website:
thrillerchallenge.com

Thriller Challenge

The Thriller Challenge is where Michael Jackson fans come together every October to get the King of Pop's spooky hit song Thriller up the charts for Halloween.
thrillerchallenge.com thrillerchallenge.com
 
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