Michael Jackson Factbook

Music #6

"Once the music plays, it creates me. The instruments move me, they control me. Sometimes I'm uncontrollable and it just happens. Boom, boom, boom - once it gets inside of you."

Michael Jackson.

Ebony: You seem impressed by African art but what about African music and dance?

Michael: When we came off the plane in [Dakar, Senegal] Africa, we were greeted by a long line of African dancers. Their drums and sounds filled the air with rhythm. I was going crazy, I was screaming. I said, "All right!" They got the beat and they got the rhythm.... I just was so glad about the whole thing. This is it, I said. This is where I come from. The origin ...

Ebony: You were obviously impressed by your musical roots, so where do you think the Africans derived their musical influence?

Michael: Music started with nature. Music is nature. Birds make music. Oceans make music. Wind makes music. Any natural sound is music. And that's where it started... You see, we're just making a replica of nature, which is the sounds we hear outside.

Ebony magazine interview ,1984.

Question: 'Invincible' was several years in the making. Does your perfectionism slow the process?

Michael: It did take a while because I'm never happy with the songs. I'll write a bunch of songs, throw them out, write some more. People say, "Are you crazy? That's got to go on the album." But I'll say, "Is it better than this other one?" You only get 75 minutes on a CD, and we push it to the limit.

Question: Did you approach 'Invincible' with a single theme in mind?

Michael: I never think about themes. I let the music create itself. I like it to be a potpourri of all kinds of sounds, all kinds of colors, something for everybody, from the farmer in Ireland to the lady who scrubs toilets in Harlem.

Question: Has it become easier to write songs over time?

Michael: It's the most effortless thing in the world because you don't do anything. I hate to say it like that, but it's the truth. The heavens drop it right into your lap, in its totality. The real gems come that way. You can sit at the piano and say, "OK, I'm going to write the greatest song ever written," and nothing. But you can be walking down the street or showering or playing and, boom, it hits you in the head. I've written so many like that. I'm playing a pinball machine, and I have to run upstairs and get my little tape recorder and start dictating. I hear everything in its totality, what the strings are going to do, what the bass is going to do, the harpsichord, everything.

Question: Is it difficult translating that sound to tape?

Michael: That's what's frustrating. In my head, it's completed, but I have to transplant that to tape. It's like [Alfred] Hitchcock said, "The movie's finished." But he still has to start directing it. The song is the same. You see it in its entirety and then you execute it.

From Interview by Edna Gunderson, USA TODAY, 2001.