look and feel like the audience was in a spaceship, along for the ride.
Captain Eo is about transformation and the way music can help to change the world. George came up with the name
Captain Eo. (Eo is Greek for "dawn.") The story is about a young guy who goes on a mission to this miserable planet run by an evil queen. He is entrusted with the responsibility of bringing the inhabitants light and beauty. It's a great
celebration of good over evil.
Working on Captain Eo reinforced all the positive feelings I've had about working in film and made me realize more
than ever that movies are where my future path probably lies. I love the movies and have since I was real little. For
two hours you can be transported to another place. Films can take you anywhere. That's what I like. I can sit down
and say, "Okay, nothing else exists right now. Take me to a place that's wonderful and make me forget about my
pressures and my worries and day-to-day schedule."
I also love to be in front of a 35 mm camera. I used to hear my brothers say, "I'll be glad when this shoot is over," and I couldn't understand why they weren't enjoying it. I would be watching, trying to learn, seeing what the director was
trying to get, what the light man was doing. I wanted to know where the light was coming from and why the director
was doing a scene so many times. I enjoyed hearing about the changes being made in the script. It's all part of what I
consider my ongoing education in films. Pioneering new ideas is so exciting to me and the movie industry seems to
be suffering right now from a dearth of ideas; so many people are doing the same things. The big studios remind me
of the way Motown was acting when we were having disagreements with them: They want easy answers, they want
their people to do formula stuff - sure bets - only the public gets bored, of course. So many of them are doing the
same old corny stuff. George Lucas and Steven Spielberg are exceptions.
I'm going to try to make some changes. I'm going to try to change things around someday. Marlon Brando has
become a very close and trusted friend of mine. I can't tell you how much he's taught me. We sit and talk for hours.
He has told me a great deal about the movies. He is such a wonderful actor and he has worked with so many giants in
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the industry - from other actors to cameramen. He has a respect for the artistic value of filmmaking that leaves me in
awe. He's like a father to me.
So these days movies are my number one dream, but I have a lot of other dreams too.
In early 1985 we cut "We Are the World" at an all-night all-star recording session that was held after the ceremony for the American Music Awards. I wrote the song with Lionel Richie after seeing the appalling news footage of
starving people in Ethiopia and the Sudan.
Around that time, I used to ask my sister Janet to follow me into a room with interesting acoustics, like a closet of the
bathroom, and I'd sing to her, just a note, a rhythm of a note. It wouldn't be a lyric or anything; I'd just hum from the
bottom of my throat. I'd say, "Janet, what do you see? What do you see when you hear this sound?" And this time she said, "Dying children in Africa."
"You're right. That's what I was dictating from my soul."
And she said, "You're talking about Africa. You're talking about dying children." That's where "We Are the World"
came from. We'd go in a dark room and I'd sing notes to her. To my mind, that's what singers should be able to do.
We should be able to perform and be effective, even if it's in a dark room. We've lost a lot because of TV. You should
be able to move people without all that advanced technology, without pictures, using only sound.
I've been performing for as long as I can remember. I know a lot of secrets, a lot of things like that.
I think that "We Are the World" is a very spiritual song, but spiritual in a special sense. I was proud to be a part of that song and to be one of the musicians there that night. We were united by our desire to make a difference. It made
the world a better place for us and it made a difference to the starving people we wanted to help.
We collected some Grammy Awards and began to hear easy-listening versions of "We Are the World" in elevators
along with "Billie Jean." Since first writing it, I had thought that song should be sung by children. When I finally heard children singing it on producer George Duke's version, I almost cried. It's the best version I've heard.
After "We Are the World," I again decided to retreat from public view. For two and a half years I devoted most of my time to recording the follow-up to Thriller , the album that came to be titled Bad .
Why did it take so long to make Bad? The answer is that Quincy and I decided that this album should be as close to
perfect as humanly possible. A perfectionist has to take his time; he shapes and he molds and he sculpts that thing
until it's perfect. He can't let it go before he's satisfied; he can't.
If it's not right, you throw it away and do it over. You work that thing till it's just right. When it's as perfect as you can make it, you put it out there. Really, you've got to get it to where it's just right; that's the secret. That's the difference between a number thirty record and a number one record that stays number one for weeks. It's got to be good. If it is,
it stays up there and the whole world wonders when it's going to come down.
I have a hard time explaining how Quincy Jones and I work together on making an album. What I do is, I write the
songs and do the music and then Quincy brings out the best in me. That's the only way I can explain it. Quincy will
listen and make changes. He'll say, "Michael, you should put a change in there," and I'll write a change. And he'll guide me on and help me create and help me invent and work on new sounds, new kinds of music.
And we fight. During the Bad sessions we disagreed on some things. If we struggle at all, it's about new stuff, the
latest technology. I'll say, "Quincy, you know, music changes all the time." I want the latest drum sounds that people are doing. I want to go beyond the latest thing. And then we go ahead and make the best record that we can.
We don't ever try to pander to the fans. We just try to play on the quality of the song. People will not buy junk.
They'll only buy what they like. If you take all the trouble to get in your car, go to the record store, and put your
money on the counter, you've got to really like what you're going to buy. You don't say, "I'll put a country song on
here for the country market, a rock song for that market," and so on. I feel close to all different styles of music. I love some rock songs and some country songs and some pop and all the old rock ‘N' roll records.
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We did go after a rock type of song with "Beat It." We got Eddie Van Halen to play guitar because we knew he'd do the best job. Albums should be for all races, all tastes in music.
In the end, many songs kind of create themselves. You just say, "This is it. This is how it's going to be." Of course, not every song is going to have a great dance tempo. It's like "Rock with You" isn't a great dance tempo. It was meant for the old dance the Rock. But it's not a "Don't Stop" or "Working Day and Night" rhythm or a "Startin' Something"
type of thing - something you can play with on the dance floor and get sweaty, working out to.
We worked on Bad for a long time. Years. In the end, it was worth it because we were satisfied with what we had
achieved, but it was difficult too. There was a lot of tension because we felt we were competing with ourselves. It's
very hard to create something when you feel like you're in competition with yourself because no matter how you
look at it, people are always going to compare Bad to Thriller . You can always say, "Aw, forget Thriller ," but no one ever will.