Matt Forger began working with Michael Jackson in 1982 for the Thriller album. He has continued to work in and around Michael’s music world ever since. Iconic caught up with the incredible engineer for Issue 14. Here is just a snippet from the interview…
I was going through Michael Jackson’s album credits and your role seems different in every single one?
It was! I was credited as technical engineer on Thriller and I also recorded some of the sounds for the album. In each subsequent album, I worked in a similar fashion but as time went on, my duties either grew or changed in nature. I grew to a position of supervising some of the work, not only hands on in the studio but also making sure the whole project ran smoothly.
Discussing Thriller 25…
Do you think the character of Michael’s songs was lost in the remixes on Thriller 25?
Well, the new versions were derived work from the originals and the producers added their own personalities into the remixes. I can only imagine what an immense task it was to take songs that are engraved in people’s memories and try to create something different.These are some of the greatest songsever recorded! How do you top what Michael did with Thriller?!
On talking about unreleased tracks….
Michael seemed shocked that fans knew about his song Michael McKeller!
Michael kept the work in progress very private. Michael always wanted the ideas to come out in the public eyes when they were fully realised and fully produced so that the public and the fans heard his complete vision.
The Dangerous Special Edition was the only one not to have any bonus tracks and there were rumours that a second disc was supposed to be included?When the album came out, I think it was 74 minutes which was maximum capacity for a CD. It wasn’t physically possible to include bonuses without a second CD and I believe it was a commercial decision taken by the record company not to go down the route of a second disc. But we had reviewed material in case we were given the go ahead.
The full interview can be found in Issue 14 of Iconic, where we talk to Matt about working on unreleased tracks, Thriller, Bad, Dangerous, History and projects for the Michael Jackson Estate.
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