Lord of the Hair has gone on record about this, but is there any merit to this?
I haven't read this anywhere except from the Queen camp. Although, MJ was always notorious about not revealing his sources.
Nope. But AOBTD was BASS-ically lifted from CHIC's GOOD TIMES. Taking out a few pieces.
Same with John's guest bass gig on that cool song by JUNIOR JIVE & MAN FRIDAY err whatever.
...THAT was lifted from the EVELYN CHAMPAGNE KING song "LOVE COME DOWN"
Though it could be argued that ALL those songs were derivative.
But Thriller hell no.
Michael DID steal Freddies gall to wear glittering onesies ....but that on itself could've been taken from liza Minnelli.
Maybe MJ was influenced by the rock element of songs like Dragon attack, AOBTD from The Game and some live renditions of Back Chat and staying power.
Also he has borrowed the intro of Pain is so close to pleasure 12'' remix to his song the way you make me feel.
Dim wrote:
Maybe MJ was influenced by the rock element of songs like Dragon attack, AOBTD from The Game and some live renditions of Back Chat and staying power.
The first two - perhaps.
The latter two - a lot of the album had already been written and recorded by the time Queen began performing those two tracks on-stage.
...aaaand erabt they are talking about the studio long play not the song. Otherwise my understand is that "Hot Space" was AN influence of inspiration to the studio l.p. "Thriller". Not the only one by a long shot I'm sure.
Influence can mean so much. It can be simply "Lets mix dance and rock like those guys" and it can be "These guys did that, I bet I could do it better".
People are influenced by all sorts of stuff, good and bad. Small things, big things.
AlexRocks wrote:
...aaaand erabt they are talking about the studio long play not the song. Otherwise my understand is that "Hot Space" was AN influence of inspiration to the studio l.p. "Thriller". Not the only one by a long shot I'm sure.
I can't see how it could have been inspired by AOBTD.
'Beat it', 'Billie Jean' and 'Wanna Be Startin' something' are the three MJ written songs.
We know The Knack's "My Sharona" was the inspiration for Beat it, And Wanna Be Startin somethin was written in 1978.
The Jackson / McCartney written "The Girl Is Mine", is.... also on the album .... and has been the subject of a few plagiarism lawsuits.
i think it's taken out of context. if a musician (ie. MJ) was inspired by Hot Space around the time he was writing or almost finished writing the songs to Thriller - it could be elements of Hot Space, production, editing, etc not necessarily specific songs, groups of songs or the entire album as a whole. it could have been as simple as, MJ heard Hot Space and it inspired him to write the bridge to Wanna Be Startin' Something or the driving bass and tone in Billie Jean How, why and which song are irrelevant.
the songs in HS that may have inspired MJ... Staying Power, Dancer, Back Chat, Body Language and Cool Cat. Who knows - maybe he heard Body Language, played the bass part on the keyboard and slowed it down, and changed the notes around a little. It's not impossible. The brass parts in Wanna Be startin something could have been inspired by Arif Mardin's horn section in Stayin Power - how? they weren't there to begin with - MJ heard Stayin Power - boom adds brass instruments to Wanna Be Startin Something, and like that it went from epic to uber-epic.
also just because a song was written at an earlier date - doesn't mean the song's present form on Thriller couldn't have been inspired by something off Hot Space. Yes, he wrote Wanna Be Startin' Something in 78, but you could argue that only after listening to HS is when he deiced that he could make it a hit by using a beat, rhythm pattern, or adding a yee haw hear or some guitar parts to the song.
If MJ says HS inspired him to write some of thriller - then you can't discredit it. But what would he gain by stating this? HS already flopped by the time Thriller was a hit. So it's not like he was expecting to give Queen a hand.
Anyways those are my thoughts.