We just clicked, Our musical sensibilities were very compatible. There are some people where you can speak and they know exactly what you’re speaking about. There’s so much more than language can express, there’s a whole other spiritual part that you’re either in tune with or not. That’s how it was with me and Michael”. In addition to their chemistry, Jackson valued Barnes’s versatility.
Growing up, Barne’s two passions were music and technology: he studied philharmonics, orchestration, and music theory in school, and bough his first Apple ocmputer and synthesizers in teh late ’70s. But, according to Barnes, MIchael Jackson really allowed him to combine the two in ways he never could have imagined. “For the first time in my life” he reflected, “I was in an environment when absolutely everything eas possible. He pushed me with his talent and energy and ambition- I could really explore how far we could stretch. Most projects couldn’t afford it and most artists weren’t that talented and ambitious. But with Michael that was never an issue. Money wasn’t a factor; the music was the factor.”
In addition to Barnes, the artist enlisted some of the brightest minds in the world of synth programming and sound technlogy. In 1984 he reache out to Denny Jaeger, the Steve JObs of sound design.
Around this time the artist’snew and improved, forty-eight-track home studio at Hayvenhurst was completed. Jackosn nicknamed it “the Laboratory” He envisioned it as a very distinct space from Westlake Studios- a space without pressures or expectations, a place where he could simply brainstorm ideas, experiment, and innovate. “Michael was always serching for something new,” said Forger.
John Barnes remembers trying all kinds of things with the new Synclavier. “We were just being as creative and innovative as we could be,” he recalled. “We’d make new sound characters, combine them, collect sound, record them on portable recorders, and put them into the Synclavier.
All this cutting-edge technology had a big impact on the way Bad was made and the way it sounded. “It really opened up another realm of creativity,” said Matt Forger, It was an exctiting time for Jackson, in which the possibilities seemed unlimited-and the album was just getting started.
The handful of musicians and engineers Jackson assembled to work with him in the Laboratory came to refer to themselves as the “B-Team”-a self-deprecatory play on Quincy Jone’s legendary A-Team. There were no big names on the B-Team. Even after Bad came out, most people never heard of them. It was also a much smaller crew than Jones typically assembled-for the better part of two years, it comprised just four individuals: John Barnes, Bill Bottrell, Chris Currell, and Matt Forger.
After a lifetime of working with perfectionist like Berry Gordy and Quincy Jones, Barnes and Bottrell offered Jackson an alternative approach. “My proces,” explained Bottrell, “was contrary to the whole Westlake scene in that I would jump and run around quickly, in an attempt to get a fresh performance from the artist. This was contrary to the Q-Swedien idea where every little thig is important and worthy of minute attention, and the artitst had to wait similar to making a movie.” That approach had its merits, of course, and Jackson never entirely abandoned it; but he also felt it could stifle creativity. “It’s just a different sensibility,” Barnes pointed out. “They cam from recording Frank Sinatra and guys like that were everthing was pristine. We could be highly technical and detailed, but we could also say, this hasa great natural feel, let’s keep that. We moved quicker and had less preestablshed expectations”. Jackson also liked the fact that he as in complete creative control.
For Jackson, The B-Team was about freedom and independence. “Michael was maturing and coming into his own”, explained Barnes.
For the next year and a half, beginning at Sound Castle and eventually at his home studio at Hayvenhurst, this was the small team that worked with Jackson day in and day out, allowing the artist to create his most personally realized album to date.
Barnes remembered some of these songs coming together almost through osmosis. “With ‘Liberian Girl,” he recalled, “when we started into it, it was almost like it was a magical, spiritual experience and everything jus happened at light speed. Within three or four hours, all the main parts were in place.”
The B-Team would have impromptu jam sessions, long discussions, sometimes even pop in a movie. When Jackson got an idea, they would go to work, fleshing it out as far a they could. Jackson developed a special trust and chemistry with each memeber of the team. “After a few weeks of working closely together,” recalled Currell, “we both realized that our ability to communicate together was a bit unique. We just both understood each other about musical ideas and grooves. We noticed that words were used less often and we just “knew what we were feeling or thinking. It quickly got to the point where michael would say to me “make me a sound that makes me do this”… and he would do a dance move. I got it right away… and I could make him the sound that he was feeling. I have never worked with anyone else where we had this kind of muscial rapport.”
Barnes, Bottrell, and Forger felt the samw way-not only with Jackson, ut with each other. “John and I developed a strong process,” noted Bottrell. “We worked fast, John working on synthesizers and me running the console…He was amazing in finding the right sound and playing the parts while I mixed and affected the tapes.” The atmosphere was loose but invigorating. Somehow, even though they were working for the biggest star on the planet, it felt intimate, like a garage star-up. “There were ot a lot of people; no egos to deal with; a lot of sidetracks down rabbit holes, but that was the point,” Bottrell recalled. “I think Michael was quite relaxed the whole time… It was really magic”.
The B-Team is an example of Master mind.
Power is essential for success in the accumulation of money. Power may be defined as “organized and intelligently directed knowledge” The sources of knowledge are Infinite Intelligence, Accumulated Experience and Experiment and Reasearch.
Master mind may be defined as : “coordination of knowledge and effort, in a spirit of harmony, betwen two or more people, for the attainment of a definite purpose.
So you may better understand the “intangible” potentialities of power available to you through a properly chosen Master Mind group. Tha Master Mind will have two characteristics, the economic in nature, and the other phychic.
Economic advantages may be created by people who surround themselves with the advice, counsel and personal cooperation of a group of people who are willing to lend them whole hearted aid in a spirit of perfect harmony. This form of cooperative alliance has been teh basis of nearly every great fortune.
The phychic phase of the Master Mind principle is much more abstract, mjuch more difficult to comprehend, because et refers to the spiritual forces with which the human race, as a whole, is not well acquainted. You may catch a significant suggestion from this statement: “No two mind ever come together without thereby creating a third mind.”
Keep in mind that there ara only two elements in the whole universe- enery and matter. When the mind of two people are coordinated in a spirit of harmony, the spiritual units of energy of each mind form an affinity, which costitutes the “phychic” of the Master Mind.
When a group of individual brains is coordinated and functions in harmony, the increased energy created through that alliance becomes available to every individual brain in the group.
Michael had his own master mind with the B-Team.
(Sources: “Man in the music” By Joseph Vogel and “Think and grow rich” by Napoleon Hill.)
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