Pop session guitarist Michael Thompson is arguably one of the most influential session guitarists in history. He has worked with the who's who of the pop world, including Celine Dion, Michael Bolton, and Shania Twain, and is the guitarist behind some of pop's most iconic solos and riffs. His resume also includes the King of Pop, Michael Jackson.
In a recent interview with Vertex Effects, Thompson gives more insight into how he ended up working with Jackson in the first place, and in particular, on 1995 smash Earth Song.
“He had it [Earth Song] cut a bunch of times,” Thompson says. “I just know that other drummers played on it and he did different versions. And then at the 11th hour he called David [Foster, Grammy Award-winning record producer].
"I remember, because I went up to David's for a session, and he said, ‘Check this out.’ He played me that message from Michael. And it was kind of like, desperate, you know, like, ‘David, you gotta help me.’
“He got in touch with him. And they flew all my stuff to New York. And I stayed at the Four Seasons – it was great.”
Thompson ended up in the HIStory: Past, Present and Future, Book I sessions, which Jackson released in 1995. His assigned track was the inimitable Earth Song.
“He had like, four or five Studios in New York going, mixing this tune and cutting this tune. We were at Sony Studios, and Michael wasn't there for the first hour and a half or something. We were trying parts. I was doing the EBow [thing] that actually never ended up getting heard on the intro.
“The studio was really dark, because everyone knew that Michael wanted it really dark. I mean, really dark. And I look up and he's sitting right next to me, right close to me. He had come in while I was doing that [the EBow part]. He was right there, and he was really nice. He was super-fascinated with the EBow.
“I showed him how it works. And he hung out for about 20 minutes and moved on to the next studio. And that was our little hang thing. But I finished that tune and I came back home.”
That wasn't the end of Thompson's work with Michael, however. As soon as he got back home from the Earth Song sessions, he received another call from Jackson's team.
“‘Can you come back to New York?’ And I think by then, my stuff was on its way back here to do this other song for Michael. That gives you some idea of the budget he was on. He spent a lot of money doing these records.”
The other song was They Don't Care About Us, a session that proved technically challenging for Thompson.
“I did it with this guy, Michael Boddicker, a famous synth guy who had worked with Michael quite a bit on his records. He had a studio, so I went over there and I recorded that whole little thing, which they called the speed racer section, at half-speed. It was all written out. We took like four bars at a time or whatever.”
The part Thompson refers to comes in at 2:07 and only lasts a few seconds. However, it's incredibly fast to the point that Thompson spent hours working on it.
“Even when I hear it now, I go, ‘Even at half-speed. How did I do it?’ I mean, you know, it's very muted and stuff, and it ends up sounding light, and there's a synth doubling. But that's a guitar. At the session, it took six hours to do that, this one thing. People don't realize the work that it takes to do a little section like that.”
