From the beginning, Jones and Jackson planned to make Thriller a blockbuster pop album.
“We went through 800 songs to get to nine,” Jones said. “That’s not casual.”
The work was exhausting. At one point, they were working in three studios simultaneously… until the speakers caught fire.
Beat It was crucial to the project – because it was designed to get Jackson played on US rock radio, an unheard of prospect in the heavily-segregated music industry of the 1980s.
Jones had told Jackson to write “a black version” of The Knack’s My Sharona – the 1979 hit song that sold more then 10 million copies. But Jackson was one step ahead. He had a demo that fit the bill, albeit without a hook or lyrics.
While Jackson worked on those elements (you can hear his first, wordless attempt at the melody on his YouTube channel, external), Jones called on Eddie Van Halen to perform the guitar solo.
“He came in and he stacked up his Gibson [guitars],” Jones later recalled.
“I said, ‘I’m not going to sit here and try to tell you what to play… Let’s try three or four takes. Some of it will be over-animated, some of it will be long, and we’ll sculpt it.
“And he played his ass off.”
The song, with its West Side Story-inspired video, landed just as MTV took off, making Jackson a permanent fixture in living rooms across America.
But for all the commercial focus of the Thriller project, Jones always maintained that the music came first.
“I’ve never, ever in my life done music for money or fame – because that’s when God walks out of the room,” he said.