Up jumps *****
MICHAEL Jackson was planning a revolution. "I hope you're ready," Jackson told producer Teddy Riley. "We're going to shock the world."
Riley was ordered to be in London from July, 2009, where Jackson had sold out 50 shows at the O2 Arena.
"I was supposed to go to London for three weeks to work with him in the studio," Riley says.
"Michael was hungry. He wanted to do those shows so badly. He told me once he did the first week of those concerts, he would be ready to cut a record."
Riley had not written anything specific for the album.
"I made music on the spot with Michael and this (London session) would be no different," Riley says.
"I knew his style. We would write at the piano, demo, and retest it to see if it was worth completing.
"For Michael, I got everything to the finish line, to a point where it was ready for the streets."
A few weeks after the conversation, Jackson shocked the world - though, not the way he had planned. He died of a heart attack on June 25, 2009.
This month, a posthumous album, Michael, was released.
It features 10 songs Jackson recorded with unknown collaborators in 2007.
Some are unused songs from Jackson's Thriller (1982) era. Another is a duet with Akon, recorded in Las Vegas three years ago.
Riley, who Jackson nicknamed The Finisher, brings his production sheen to Michael's demo quality songs and sketches.
"My job was to get the feel and sound of the album to what Michael would have expected," Riley says.
"His expectations were all about the music. Michael would want this album to be great musically and sonically it must slam."
Indeed, Riley gets *****'s groove back on a new song, Hollywood Tonight.
But, elsewhere, on cuts like Monster and Breaking News, the source material is too weak to be saved.
The tracks, co-written with unknown producer Eddie Cascio, are way below par. Eddie is the son of Dominick Cascio Sr, a former manager at a New York hotel frequented by Jackson in 1984.
Jackson befriended Cascio, his wife, Connie, and sons, Eddie and Frank, and regularly stayed at their home in New Jersey. In 2007, after a three-month stay at the Cascio home, Jackson recorded 12 songs with Eddie.
"They were his surrogate family," Riley says. "He lived with them when he didn't have anything to do. When Michael wasn't busy he would go straight to their home and stay."
Eddie Cascio, now 28, was three when Jackson came into their lives.
"Eddie has been studying Michael, the music and the chords, since he was a kid," Riley says.
"Michael advised him and mentored him. As Eddie grew up, he grew into making music.
"Eddie showed Michael some tracks he had. Michael liked them. And they started writing together."
But the Cascio co-writes are charmless and predictable. Both wallow in complaints about paparazzi and everybody wanting a piece of Jackson.
It gets worse. On Monster, Jackson sang his vocals through a PVC pipe.
"You use what you have and it becomes history," Riley says.
Riley says Jackson used a low-cost Shure microphone on Wanna Be Starting Something, the opening track on Thriller.
"Now that's a cheap microphone," Riley says. "But he sang into that and the music industry couldn't believe it. But it became famous and everybody began using Shure."
Asked if Michael is up to standard of previous Jackson albums, Riley answers: "I think it is. All of Michael's albums were innovative. But they were all different from each other."
Riley says Eddie Cascio is in the same spot he was when Jackson asked him to oversee the 1992 album, Dangerous.
Riley followed Off The Wall, Thriller and Bad, all produced by Quincy Jones.
"How do you follow Quincy?" Riley asks, laughing.
"But you have to remember - Michael is the one who co-signed these new songs. Michael is the one who put his pen to it. Michael is the one who put his vocals on it."
heraldsun.com
