Updated: Questlove Gives NYU Students A Lecture On MJ

(February 28, 2013) "Professor" Ahmir Khalib Thompson - a.k.a. Questlove (The Roots) - is teaching a course at New York University's Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music (USA) entitled 'Topics in Recorded Music: Classic Albums'. The course runs close to three hours each week and this week it's "Michael Jackson Day". Michael Jackson hooks blare from the studio speakers. Questlove switches them with 'Starlight', the original recording of MJ's "Thriller" before "it got all Halloween," as he puts it. "I don't usually play songs in full," Thompson says, letting "Starlight" ride out a little longer than he's accustomed.

His signature Afro is tucked into a knit cap, he's wearing a Fishbone hoodie and working off two MacBook Pros simultaneously - flanked by co-professor Harry Weinger, industry veteran and current VP of A&R of Universal Music Enterprises.

This week the students in Thompson's class are learning about the 1979 classic 'Off the Wall'. Michael turned 21 at the time and left the comfort of his family band for a solo career. The median age of the student in the class is also about 21 - however translating an era that's further than a faint memory could seem like a daunting task, even for someone as passionate about his craft as Thompson.

He approaches the course from a storytelling angle and addresses the students directly, aware that this might be his only shot at bringing an analog love of music to a digital generation. Now, four weeks into the course, Thompson appears to have hit his stride. If he trails off into a music fugue, Weinger reels him back in. When Weinger journeys too far into the business aspect, Thompson drops in some musical darlings. It's a perfect balance, and the class appreciates it. Prior to the first day, Thompson purchased an iPod Nano for every student and filled it with an extensive history of music. If he included a hip-hop track, he'd also load the sample it leaned on. That little gift of music ran him in excess of $5,000. The students get to keep their iPods when they finish the seven-week course.

The crux of "Michael Jackson Day" includes hearing original demos (a USB drive was sent to Thompson while on the set for 'Late Night With Jimmy Fallon' as a 40th birthday gift). For example Questlove cues up several unused instrumental tracks to illustrate the genius of Quincy Jones' production oversight on 'Don't Stop Till You Get Enough.'

"My observation of this record was not what went into but what was taken away from it. This is universally regarded as a very timeless record ... When I'm working with a client, I might have an idea of where I think the song should go, but just for good solidarity, so they don't think you're a dictator, you might want to let them exhaust all their ideas. 'A/B-ing' means you try every idea under the sun and then you sit on it and come back to it, and if it sticks you use it; if it doesn't, you do away with it. On these [unused] tracks are a lot of ideas that I'm shocked they even attempted: There's theramin tracks, cheesy sirens, overdone disco string arrangements, overdone percussion.

Michael Jackson had a lot of ideas and he probably wanted to use all of them. ... I would like to have been there to see Quincy Jones talk Michael Jackson off the ledge. And sometimes Michael did win - Quincy to this day will say that he hated 'Billie Jean.' But clearly, underdoing it is the key to success here - understatement is the magic of it."

A playful moment occurs during a demo recording of "Don't Stop Till You Get Enough," where you hear teenaged Randy Jackson and a 10-year-old Janet yelling at Michael because the music is too loud in the headphones. That demo wasn't just played for entertainment value: The rough version of the song illustrates Michae's rigorous preparation and work ethic, and shows how complete many of the titles from "Off the Wall" were before the final recordings even began.

It's near the end of the lesson that things come together. It's very fascinating to hear four different takes of Michael's lead vocal on "She's Out of My Life." Questlove tells the story that Michael had recently broken up with Tatum O'Neill and was hurting at the time he recorded the song - and emphasized that he used that emotion for his art. As Michael is singing the song in the studio, he starts to cry. It might be one of the most vulnerable sounds to ever come from him, and he apologizes on tape for "messing that up."

Thompson explains that Michael used that vulnerability to his advantage during live shows, playing a clip as proof. "It's very rare that you can just bullseye a moment where you get to be that vulnerable and that wide-open, and just human which isn't necessarily the first thought that comes to mind when most people think of Michael Jackson. Part of the troubling mission of postmodern black entertainers is the need to be seen as human beings. I was curious to see if the caricature that Michael Jackson morphed into is still in your head when you hear this record, or do these moments where he allows his human side to come - do you guys feel a little different now that you've heard it in this way?" Thompson asks.

The class nods with a resounding "Yes!"

"Mission accomplished," Weinger says.

Source: MJFC / Rolling Stone / Billboard