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Guitarist Eddie Van Halen would play a crucial role in pop star Michael Jackson’s hit song
Beat it from his 6th album Thriller.
The guitarist was taken by surprise when Thriller came out in 1982 and his name was nowhere
to be found.
Not only that, but Eddie wasn’t the original guitarist who was asked to play on the song
and you're probably wondering.
What's the full story?
. Stay tuned to find out The Who's guitarist Pete Townshend would claim
that he was originally asked to play on the song Beat It, but was unable to do so and
instead recommended Eddie Van Halen telling Rolling Stone
“I was once asked by Michael Jackson to play electric guitar on the Thriller album,”
“I said I couldn’t do it but recommended Eddie who called and we chatted.
He was utterly charming, happy about the connection, but told me how much he was enjoying playing
keyboards.
His smile was just classic.
A man in his rightful place, so happy to be doing what he did" he'd say
Eddie Van Halen was personally called by Thriller’s producer Quincy Jones to help with the song.
Eddie admitted in a 2012 interview with CNN that he didn’t know a person named Quincy
at the time and thought the phone call was a practical joke saying:
“I went off on him.
I went, ‘What do you want, you f-ing so-and-so!,’” “And he goes, ‘Is this Eddie?’
I said, ‘Yeah, what the hell do you want?’
‘This is Quincy.’
I’m thinking to myself, ‘I don’t know anyone named Quincy.’
He goes, ‘Quincy Jones, man.’
I went, ‘Ohhh, sorry!’”
Eddie agreed to do the track but was also skeptical about how much he had in common
with Jackson considering they played different styles of music.
But in reality Michael Jackson had actually written “Beat It” to be a rock song, helped
in large part Toto guitarist Steve Lukather who also played on the track.
Van Halen had a break in their working schedule and according to the Eddie he did the session
for free and it only took about 20 minutes and his part amounted to about 20 to 30 seconds
of guitar soloing on the track,.
Quincy Jones wanted the guitarist to improvise recalling in a BBC documentary about Jackson
"I'm not gonna sit here and try to tell you what to play.
"The reason you are here is because of what you do play."
And Eddie would play the solo and according to engineers in the studio it was during that
session that one of the speakers caught on fire.
And ne of the engineers in the room would exclaim “this must be really good.”
Right before Eddie’s guitar solo begins, a noise is heard on the track that sounds
like somebody knocking at the door.
It was originally reported that the knock was a person walking into Eddie's recording
studio.
A different story though claimed that the sound was simply the musician knocking on
his own guitar but the sound, however, is that of Michael Jackson knocking on a drum
case, as he is credited in the album's liner notes.
Eddie would tell CNN he listened to the track and re-arranged the entire track while Jackson
was out of the studio, but the popstar had no issue with the new arrangement as he would
say here.
One of those things it was.
you said it's funny because at the time i played on Beat It on Michael Jackson's record
and his album went to number 1 and our album was number 2 our single was number 1 and his
single was number 2 and then he did that pepsi commercial and burned his hair and he stayed
at number 1.
Selfish selfish!
To this day the guys in the band still blame me for that album not being number 1.
The funniest thing of all was I actually rearranged the song the section they wanted me to solo
over was just you know there's no chord changes underneath it so i had them re-arrange it
and then Michael came in and i said oh i hope you don't mind i changed your song and he
listens and he goes and no i like that high fast stuff you do and that was it.
Eddie would also claim in the same interview that Jackson’s band was very insular and
that they rarely asked for outside help from musicians on records.
Eddie was not credited on the album, he didnt get paid and he wasn’t in the music video,
but he did make several live appearances with Jackson..
In fact Eddie would tell Piers Morgan in 2012 that he was naive about the album and whether
anybody would hear it saying “whose gonna know if i play on this black kid’s record?”
And Eddie was probably right to be a little naive considering this was 1982 and MTV wasn’t
playing a lot of black artists, in fact I’ll be doing another story in the future about
how playing Michael Jackson became a huge fight for MTV and how the king of pop literally
saved the network, but that’s a story for another time.
Following the release of Thriller, Eddie recalled being at Tower Records and hearing the song
playing in the store and how some people were critical of his guitar playing on the track
claiming.
"The solo comes on, and I hear these kids in front of me going, 'Listen to this guy
trying to sound like Eddie Van Halen.'
I tapped him on the shoulder and said, 'That is me!'
That was hilarious."
Beat It" was released as the third single from Thriller on Feb. 14, 1983, following
"The Girl is Mine" and "Billie Jean".
It became a number 1 hit for 3 consecutive weeks and would go on to become one of the
best selling singles of all time, while Thriller the album would go on to become one of the
most successful albums of all time Following Jackson’s death in 2009 the guitarist
paid tribute to the king of pop putting out a statement via the Van Halen News Desk saying,
"I have a lot of respect for Michael," "He's going to be sorely missed.
I'd be curious as to what he'd be doing right now" he'd say.
That does it for today's video guys thanks for watching be sure to hit the like button
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