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A look back at Michael Jackson's collaborations with some of rock's greatest guitar players
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Michael Jackson’s albums have always featured the most talented studio musicians available including guitarists Larry Carlton and Phil Upchurch who both contributed to his 1979 album Off The Wall. However, it wasn’t until Thriller in 1982 that Jackson began to work with some of rock music’s most popular guitar heroes and venture into the rock genre.
His first high profile collaboration was with Eddie Van Halen who was asked by producer Quincy Jones to contribute a guitar solo for the song Beat It. Van Halen initially thought the call was a prank, but after confirming that he really was speaking with Quincy Jones, recorded the solo as a favor never asking for any compensation in return. The (poor quality) video below shows Eddie Van Halen performing the song on stage with The Jacksons during their July 4, 1984 performance in Dallas, TX.
For the song Dirty Diana on Jackson’s 1998 release Bad, he sought the talents of Billy Idol’s former guitarist Steve Stevens. In a promotional effort to gain airplay on rock radio stations in the US, Jackson’s record label asked stations to play the song at least once to gauge reaction from their audience. Despite the performance of Stevens and the album’s sales success, listeners of Houston’s Rock 101 KLOL lit up the phone lines for days after the song had been played. Overwhelmingly, they expressed their disdain for hearing Jackson on the station.
In 1991 with Guns N’ Roses at the height of their popularity, Jackson brought in guitarist Slash to play on Give Into Me and Black Or White for his album Dangerous. The latter song became a number one hit thus earning Jackson the distinction of being the first artist to have number one hits on the Billboard singles chart in US during the 1970’s, 1980’s and 1990’s. It is quite possible that if a new song by Jackson is released before the end of the year, the 2000’s could easily be added to that list given current resurgence of his back catalogue.
Although it did not gain as much attention as his previous collaborations, Jackson recruited Carlos Santana in 2001 to play guitar on Whatever Happens for his album Invincible.
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