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Current mood:  quiet Category: Life
This article was in the Tennessean newspaper on June 26, 2009, and I thought I would share it ...
Guitarist Dann Huff recalls studio sessions with Michael Jackson
www...Tennessean.com
June 26, 2009
By Lucas Hendrickson
For Tune In Music City
For
a guy who’s been making music professionally for three decades, you’d
think Dann Huff would have a ton of great tales filed away.
Not so much.
“A
lot of people ask me for anecdotes from the studio, and I’m the worst
about that,” says Huff, a producer for some of Nashville’s biggest
names, such as Keith Urban, Carrie Underwood, Rascal Flatts, Faith Hill
and Tim McGraw. He's also a veteran session guitarist who’s worked with
artists ranging from Amy Grant to Megadeth.
But Huff says he
does have very specific memories of a handful of sessions in 1986 for
Michael Jackson’s Bad album, the follow-up to the monstrously
successful (in more way than one) Thriller.
“I was 25 years old,
and obviously, to get called in to play on a Michael Jackson record
right after Thriller was pretty much a defining moment for me,” says
Huff, a Nashville native who relocated to Los Angeles in the early ’80s
to become an A-list session player.
“It was a big call for me,
to work with (producer) Quincy Jones and all the nerves that ensued
were appropriate. It said, ‘You’ve arrived. You’re in the club.’”
Huff
played on sessions that became Bad’s first radio single “I Just Can’t
Stop Loving You,” as well as the gargantuan hit “Man In The Mirror.”
That one's ironic, considering Huff’s very first interaction with
Jackson featured the man and a mirror.
The sessions took place
at Westlake Recording Studios in West Hollywood. When Huff entered the
facility’s lounge area, he saw a strange sight through an open bathroom
door.
“There was this guy sitting in front of mirror taking off
a wig,” Huff says. “I was a little confused, because it looked like a
street person, a very hobo- esque kind of look."
The man
continued to take off pieces of movie-quality prosthetics and makeup,
and the person who emerged from the lavish disguise was Michael
Jackson. “I introduced myself, and I couldn’t help but stare, but he
was operating as if this was an everyday occurrence,” Huff says. “He
told me, ‘The only way I can go out on the street and enjoy walking
around, looking in shops, is to put on makeup like this.’ "
Huff
says Jackson was as soft-spoken and polite as descriptions always made
him out to be, and that his musical curiosity shone through, making the
working environment very comfortable.
“He was pretty questioning
about gear and specific parts, and he just enjoyed it,” Huff says. “He
asked about how I could get a certain sound. I think that was the
secret with him and Quincy. They didn’t micromanage people.
“I learned a lot from that, and have tried to implement that in the way I work with people," Huff adds.
"They
had definite ideas, but they were leaders by example. They hired and
cast the people they thought were the best for the job. You weren’t
just a subcontractor that was hired to pound nails. They made you feel
like the reason you were there was because you were special.
“And then when he’d step behind a mike, it was very much ‘pinch myself’ time.”
6:34 PM
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