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Originally Posted by chtimixeur  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.  |
As I mentioned, the "negotiating" session that I had with Michael at Bernie Grundman's Mastering was simply to pare down what we had...perhaps 83:00 minutes of audio or so, as I recall...down to whatever was allowable on CD at the time. Surely, there were no songs that "made the final cut at the last minute". Bruce gave me the running order and copies of all the songs perhaps two weeks prior to mixing. I spent time making lots of test cuts, so I'd have options for Michael.
I did forgot to mention one thing upthread; as I did mention, Michael really didn't want to cut anything, and some of it was a given to my thinking...perhaps there would be 10 bars of just a drum beat/loop. I would suggest cutting it down to 8 bars or even 6, and Michael would immediately comment that each bar was imperative. As I also mentioned, Jimmy Jam was there, offering me support and telling Michael how much better things were tightened up a bit. But Michael was really not budging. What saved us all was Bruce coming in, appearing somewhat as an authority figure and simply telling Michael that I either had to make the cuts or we would have to cut one song off the album...the CD format was simply not capable of handling 80+ minutes. Thankfully, it was Bruce's matter of fact delivery that Michael could choose to leave one song off and/or make edits. From that point on...we knew we had a job to do, and we eventually got the audio down just low enough that it would fit on CD.
It is doubtful that Michael had any interest in achieving some particular running time. It was a really fun night, and I'm really hoping to get the video footage from it someday for keeping within my family!
It's been a very sad day, with the Memorial Service and all. But one thing I am heartened about...I feel that the overall coverage of Michael's passing has been much more focused on the many positives that he brought; the music, the voice, the dancing, the charity work, etc etc and much less on the eccentricities about which so much is written. The Michael that Rob and I knew was a tremendous person, polite, humble, and certainly a person who constantly strove to better his art. Also, he was really nothing at all like the person portrayed in the press, at least on a human level. I believe that the world is much worse off for losing him.