Quote:
Originally Posted by Resonater  The final days of that album were made interesting, by Bruce giving me the task to sequence the album and edit it down to a size that we could fit onto a CD. This was no small undertaking, as about 7 minutes needed to be trimmed somewhere. I laid this all out in Sound Tools and came to know every bar of every song very intimately. I found places where songs could be tightened up and came up with many suggestions. On the night of mastering, I was put in a room at Bernie Grundman's with my Sound Tools rig, and in this room, I would have to "negotiate" with Michael about what to take out. I'll never forget this night...Michael came in, and Bruce told MJ that we would have to remove either 1) one whole song or 2) edit the others to fit onto a CD. We chose the latter...I started with song one and played Michael my edits, "Oh no, we can't take THAT out...it's my favorite part of the album!". OK. Let's try another, "Oh no, we MUST keep those four bars". OK...let's go to the vamp, which carries on for two minutes...how about removing these eight bars, "Oh no, that's my favorite part of the vamp!". Well, you get the picture. Meanwhile, Jimmy Jam was in with us, telling Michael that all these edits were killer and actually make things better. And over the course of about 5 hours, we got it down |
First of all, thank YOU for those amazing stories about Michael's experience in the sudio.
You talked about sequencing HIStory, and recording over 40 songs for this project.
Did some songs make it in the "final cut" at the last minute ?
There was a rumour about Come Together replacing another song at the last minute : is it true ? If so, what song was it supposed to be ? (is it "Face", or maybe "Fear" ?)
Did the sequencing of the album change a lot ? Was Scream always intended to be the opening track, and Smile the last one ?
Was Michael adament about the
77:07 length of the album (Dangerous, HIStory and Invincible are all 77:07 long) ?
Thanks in advance if you answer those questions.
