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E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (Storybook Album) / "Someone in the Dark"
Date Confirmed in Mike Smallcombe’s “Making Michael” and assessed from the fact that in an August 20, 1982 interview, Michael implies work is about to start on the E.T. album, since he was “just meeting and talking about it...for I don’t know how long”
Michael Jackson, narrator/singer, Rolling Stone interview
In doing the narration, I felt like I was there with them, like behind a tree or something, watching everything that happened...That's what I loved about doing E.T. I was actually there. The next day, I missed him a lot. I wanted to go back to that spot I was at yesterday in the forest. I wanted to be there.
Steven Spielberg, “Time” magazine (March 19, 1984)
Director Steven Spielberg has remarked that "if E.T. hadn't come to Elliott, he would have come to Michael's house." He reflects that Jackson is like a hybrid of outer space's most famous tourist and of Chauncey Gardiner, the video-bedazzled innocent whom Peter Sellers portrayed in Being There. "I think Michael can be hurt very easily," Spielberg says. "He's sort of like a fawn in a burning forest." Jones watched Michael break down several times while recording She's Out of My Life for Off the Wall, and eventually just left the crying on the track. Jackson also teared up repeatedly while recording the children's album E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. During a break in a photo session for the album, Spielberg saw Jackson chatting and swapping gestures with E.T. "It's a nice place Michael comes from," Spielberg observes. "I wish we could all spend some time in his world."
Matt Forger, sound engineer, MJ Data Bank interview
MJ data bank: The E.T. Storybook : I consider this is one of the most fascinating recordings ever made by Michael Jackson: how hard was it to adapt the film and turn it to a 30 minutes plus LP?
Matt Forger: The effort both creatively and technically was an enormous undertaking that no one fully realized at the onset. The idea seemed simple, but the execution required developing new approaches to the studio process in order to accommodate the creative forces at work. To have Quincy, Steven Spielberg and Michael all working on the telling of the story in the most effective way meant we had to be able to change direction at a moment's notice. Extensive pre-production was in place when we started the studio recording of the album and I was trying new techniques to make the job of the producers as easy as possible.
That was like trying to walk a bull through a china shop. not because of the personalities involved, everyone was absolutely in sync on the work, but the challenge of making the story the star of the record.
MJ data bank: Do you think getting involved in the storybook got the team less focused on Thriller?
Matt Forger: In a way yes, it took a lot of time from the work on Thriller, but it also made us realize that we were involved with history in a big way, we didn't realize it but it was a glimpse of what was to come.
MJ data bank: I think E.T. has this visual approach that the song Thriller also has. You happen to be the person who worked on many soundtracks used by Michael Jackson during his tours, performances or films (Kreeton Overture on Victory Tour, Captain Eo, special montages and concepts for performances like Superbowl 93): how is it to work with that visual approach? What elements do you bring to get that visual approach into the music?
Matt Forger: When you are working on a song that has such a strong visual component it amplifies the storytelling aspect of a piece of music. It has to make sense from several perspectives, so you consider it from more than one angle. How is the story being told visually and how is the story being told from the song or lyric aspect. Working with Spielberg was an insight into the storytelling aspect of things from several angles. The story, told by the narration, the music from the point of the score, the nature of the visual as a reflection of the film and the emotional thrill ride of the combined elements. You really feel the excitement of the story.
Bruce Cannon, sound effects, Telegraph (November 25, 2007) (archived) (mirror) (archived mirror)
I was an assistant editor on the film E.T. Following that, Steven Spielberg and Kathy Kennedy had me help out on a record they were doing with Michael Jackson called 'The E.T. Storybook Record', which was produced by Quincy Jones, and Bruce Swedien was like his mixer. It was Michael narrating - I'm only laughing because he was very emotionally involved when he was performing, reading the lines - at times he almost breaks into tears telling parts of the E.T. story.
Quincy Jones, Thriller Special Edition (2001) Interview
We got kind of trapped on “Thriller” because we had about four months to do it, which isn’t a long time on an album when you’re following [sales of] 10 million albums [of “Off The Wall”] y’know, ‘cause it does affect your head. And there is no spiritual way to connect with saying “okay, we’re going to make a bigger album than that,” y’know. You can’t. You have to do something that gives you goosebumps and say “Yeah, man! That really turns me on!” because if you get turned on a lot, you’ve got a chance of somebody else getting turned on. You just still have to go with God’s divining rod, which is the goosebumps and everything else. And so we had to do E.T. first, that's what we got in trouble with, 'cause you gotta do the E.T. Storybook... I had just met Steven [Spielberg (director of film E.T.)], and I introduced Michael to Steven... he was doing E.T., [unintelligible], and I was doing "Thriller" with Michael. And so, we were really cross-pollinating everything, he was coming over to the sessions, I'm going to the lead, Michael's going over there, Michael loved [unintelligible] and it was a fever. And, ironically, we were both making two huge pieces of stuff at the time, but, then, nobody knew. You never know. The song for E.T.? Please, I love it. That's why I asked that group of people writing... That combination, I was gonna say, one of the most rewarding parts of it is, after having worked with so many heavy people, is to congress combinations together, that really knocks me off... So we were just gonna do the song first, this was this new love affair with Steven and I, and so we did the song great, we're through... We had to take the biggest film in the history of the cinema, successful, and visual, and reduce it to an oral 40-minute version, for people that had never heard it before…
Steven Spielberg, director of “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial” film, UPI (December 25, 1983) (Quote in brackets found in "Rock Rap" Super Teen Special No. 10)
Spielberg, director of 'E.T. -- The Extra-Terrestrial,' told Rolling Stone magazine earlier this year that even E.T. would have been attracted to such a gentle spirit.
'If E.T. didn't come to Elliot, he would have come to your house,' the director told Jackson. [“I wish we could all spend time in his world.”] It was Jackson who narrated the E.T. soundtrack, and continually broke down in tears during the recording sessions.
'Michael is one of the last living innocents who is in complete control of his life,' Spielberg said. 'I've never seen anybody like Michael. He's an emotional star child.'
Mike Smallcombe, author of “Making Michael”
It was September 1982, and the team were working hard in the studio in order to meet the record label’s Thanksgiving deadline for completing Thriller. The task was about to get much harder.
Film director Steven Spielberg asked Quincy if he could cut a song for the E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial storybook album, with Michael singing. The film, directed by Spielberg, had been released a few months earlier and was already a huge box-office hit. Quincy agreed because it was only one song, and asked Rod Temperton to write it, together with Academy Award winning songwriters Marilyn and Alan Bergman.
Spielberg loved the song, which became ‘Someone in the Dark’, so he asked Michael and Quincy if they would record the entire soundtrack album. “This was quite a challenge given that we had to boil down a two-hour-long visual experience – one of the most successful films in history – to a forty-minute listening experience,” Quincy said. “Steven had no idea of the kind of time involved in putting together this kind of record.”
But for Michael, this was a chance not to be missed. “He felt like this was a window of opportunity and took up the offer,” Matt Forger said. “But the project wasn’t as quick and easy as they thought – it took up a few weeks right during the middle of the Thriller sessions, which meant we were working on both albums at the same time.”
Although Quincy and his writers didn’t have to write any more material, as they were using composer John Williams’s E.T. film score, they still had to rewrite the narrative and transform it into an audio experience. “It was a nightmare,” Quincy admitted.
For Michael it was far from a nightmare; he developed a sense of attachment to the alien character while narrating the story. “I felt like I was there with them, like behind a tree or something, watching everything that happened,” Michael said. “That’s what I loved about doing E.T. I was actually there. The next day, I missed him a lot. I wanted to go back to that spot I was at yesterday in the forest. I wanted to be there.”
MCA Records, which distributed the E.T. storybook, got into a bit of bother with Walter Yetnikoff and CBS after not getting the necessary clearance for Michael to feature on the album. It was eventually agreed that MCA could release it, but only after Christmas 1982 so it wouldn’t compete directly with Thriller. ‘Someone in the Dark’ was also prohibited from ever being released as a single.