Michael Jackson

My dear friend Adrian, was introduced to me by Paul who was a friend of my lovely Mum, back in the 80’s.  Paul basically managed the entire Dynacord Rhythm Stick licence deal for me, and financed the early development of The Jamma. 

Without Paul, The Jamma would not even be a story. It would just be an idea.

Adrian’s career speaks for itself and his connection with Michael was solid. As founder of Michael’s UK fan magazine, Off The Wall, he had unique access to Michael and, his trust. 

So. It's November 1994. I’d arranged  a trip to New York. With the help of Adrian and The Trust Network, I secured meetings and demos with Michael Jackson, Frankie Knuckles, David Morales, Satoshi Tomie and ‘Peace’ from ‘Eight Ball Records’.

This was the era of me trying to relaunch The Jamma V1 after the catastrophic end of the Dynacord licence agreement.

As I’ve shared, I was severely depressed at the time, which really hindered what could have been.

It's not a ‘hero worship thing’ I don't do that. It's a ‘human story thing’. And it's a tale to be told…

The Hit Factory NYC 1994

So I'm there to demo V1 to Michael and others.  He’s recording HIStory at The Hit Factory Studios in NYC. I’m 32 at the time.

When I arrived for the demo, I had VERY clear instructions from the (not unassuming physical presence) of Bob Jones, Michael’s Vice President of Communications at the time; about what NOT to do. 

There were four very, very, clear rules:

1. Never try to touch Michael.

2. Always call him ‘Michael’ not Mike’.

3. Stand up when he enters the room.

4. Do not swear in Michael's presence.

I broke them all in 10 seconds.  

I'm sitting on the sofa, waiting for Michael to enter the control room.  I'm there with the sound engineers, tech people and supporting musicians. I’ve set up the kit for the demo, and actually, it got boring.  Michael may have been the biggest ‘star’ of the time but WTF, I'm bored of waiting and wondering if I’m wasting my time.  

So I'm sitting on the sofa. Suddenly there is a fizz and tech dudes rush around adjusting lights and sound levels on the mixing desk.  It was frenetic. I’m thinking OK, maybe Michael’s coming now…

So this bloke walks into the room.  He’s got a red baseball cap on, a plaster over his nose, and he is not very tall.  His skin colour was like a mixed race Black and caucasian man.  I make an unconscious instant assessment that this is another sound tech.  

But I notice I am staring at people's knees from my sofa seat.  Then I click, Michael appears whiter, and smaller than the videos I have seen.  That was my self-made assumptions I guess. I learnt from that...

How not to meet Michael Jackson...

Then, feeling rude and disrespectful, I stood up and said “Shit, sorry Mike!” I walked over to him, and shook hands, Simple and real.  Michael was completely open and cool with me.  He said “Hey Pete, it’s nice to meet you. I’m excited to see what The Jamma can do…”

So, I explained the concept and demoed the basic principles of The Jamma V1 using a basic drum kit set of samples.  See the Sound Lab for the video of what I showed Michael.

Michael is a musically incredible man, he looked at each explanation I gave, looked me in the eyes , nodded, and got it within seconds - faster than anyone I have met in decades of demoing The Jamma. 

Billie Jean and my rock guitar...

In preparation for the NYC demos, I’d taken the liberty of illegally sampling Michael’s epic tune ‘Billie Jean’ and adding some of my own rock/punk electric guitar so I could layer it over the top of the main bass riff, (you know it, ‘dum, dum, dum, dum, dom dom, dom, dom…).

So there I am, illegally jamming Michael’s own music to Michael.

After about 30 seconds, he just simply holds his hand up and says “Stop”.  

The whole control room fell completely silent and motionless.  Then Michael looks at me, pauses, and glances over his shoulder to the engineer. 

And Michael says, “turn it up”.

So the engineer turned the volume up to the next chinagraph pencil marker point on the mixing console.

Michael looks back at me and nodded with a smile. I nodded back with a smile. We were now completely musically and humanely connected. No language was needed. It was like we were the only two people in the room.

And I did. 

I jammed a mashup of Michael’s ‘Billie Jean’, full on. I mean full on, very loud - with Michael Jackson as the audience.  

He, (and techs, and the ‘audience of famous people’) just watched me. After a few minutes of my mash up, with the basic ‘Billie Jean’ groove, my rock guitar, and extra drum loops layered on top, I stopped.  I'll show you the demo I played to Michael in the Sound Lab.

To this day, I can still feel the rush of kinship I shared with Michael at that moment.

When you invent an instrument and a musician you respect, completely ‘gets it’ - just like that - it's better than any drug imaginable. This I know.

After that, I spent an hour or two showing Michael how to play The Jamma V1.  And yeah, I broke the ‘don’t touch’ rule so many times, showing him how to best position his hands etc. But by then, we were completely at ease with each other.

We all know Michael is a musical genius, but I can personally share with you, he’s also a really nice bloke!

There’s a lot more background to this story, including how Jermaine Jackson said to me at a concert in Germany; many, many, years earlier, “my brother would love this”... 

Yep, I should've followed that up eh?! Just like the U2 story!  Join The Tribe for more.

I did send Bob Jones a fax (yep! Hi tech eh!) later that year and got a nice reply saying ‘Mr Jackson’ was enjoying The Jamma but i've only got a small snippet image of that from my old website because some twat burnt my home down and my carefully stored paperwork went up in smoke.