Bracie Smathers
Footballguy
Lots of great trivia connected with this song.29. Michael Jackson - Beat It
... Since I just put Van Halen in as a sub its a good time to post a song highlighting Eddie's guitar work.
Eddie's guitar work was so incendiary that his solo LITERALLY caught the studio on fire.
According Rod Temperton, who wrote the title track to Thriller, a mystery blaze broke out in the control room as Eddie van Halen played his guitar solo. "Eddie was playing and the monitor speakers literally caught on fire," recalled Temperton to Q magazine. "The speaker caught fire and were all thinking, like, 'This must be really good, this solo!' That technicians had to race into the control room with fire extinguishers and put it out."
By using Eddie MJ got a lot of cross over fans, Beat It is considered the one song that helped launch him to superstar status as it brought him so many extra fans that didn't listen to him previously.
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That unique/cool sound at the beginning?
For those who guessed Synclavier you're right but I had no clue what a Synclavier is. From Music Radar:
Anyone who knew their way around a Synclavier at the time probably thought the song's intro synth sounded familiar. According to the album's engineer, Bruce Swedien, it was a stock Synclavier patch.
"Any Synclavier will make that sound," he told MusicRadar. "We liked it but we wanted everything to be unrecognizable, unique, so we didn't want to use that sound, but Michael loved it and made us keep it."
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Oh and the album/songs were so popular it forced MTV to play black artists who had never been able to get songs aired on the channel prior to MJ.
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