Long before Michael Jackson’s music video for “Come Together” appeared in Moonwalker, the song was connected to an ambitious animated film that never made it to the screen.
The film was called Strawberry Fields, and it was intended to be a kind of spiritual successor to Yellow Submarine, bringing together Beatles songs, traditional animation and some remarkably ambitious computer technology for the 1980s.
And Michael Jackson was part of the story.
A new Beatles animation
Strawberry Fields was developed by producer Al Brodax, the man behind the animated Beatles television series and the 1968 feature Yellow Submarine. The project began taking shape in the mid-1980s, with the New York Institute of Technology Computer Graphics Lab among those involved.
The idea was to create an animated feature built around Beatles songs and characters, but the technology and rights issues surrounding the project would eventually prove extremely difficult to overcome.
Interestingly, Michael Jackson’s connection to the project goes back further than the surviving footage might suggest.
A September 1985 report in the Los Angeles Times stated that Michael Jackson hoped to become involved with a Strawberry Fields animated feature then in development with ITC Films in London. The article described the project as one that would use a number of characters from Beatles songs.
By January 1988, the Gavin Report was reporting that ten Beatles songs were planned for the Al Brodax-produced animation and that Michael Jackson would “probably sing” “Come Together” for the film.
Michael Jackson’s “Come Together”
Michael’s recording of “Come Together” was made during the Bad era.
Session documentation places work on the song at Michael’s Hayvenhurst home studio on October 26, 27, 29 and 30, 1986, with Michael Jackson and Bill Bottrell producing.
The song was not released on Bad, but it eventually found its way into Moonwalker, where Michael performs it during the film’s closing sequence.
It was later released commercially as the B-side of “Remember The Time” in 1992 and subsequently appeared on HIStory: Past, Present And Future, Book I in 1995.
What makes the Strawberry Fields connection particularly interesting is that surviving footage of the unfinished film actually uses Michael’s “Come Together.”
So this wasn’t simply a case of a Beatles cover being associated with an unrelated project years later. The recording was incorporated into material from the unfinished animated feature.
But did Michael record it specifically for the film?
That is where things become less certain. The timeline creates an intriguing question.
Michael recorded “Come Together” in 1986, while Strawberry Fields was already in development. Contemporary reporting subsequently linked Michael and the song directly to the film. However, there is no solid documentation establishing that Michael entered the studio specifically because Brodax needed the song for Strawberry Fields.
In other words, the safest way to describe it is that Michael’s recording was used for the project, rather than definitively saying that it was recorded specifically for the project. That distinction matters.
What about “Strawberry Fields Forever”?
There is another Michael Jackson story connected to this project that has circulated among fans for years.
You may have heard that Michael also recorded The Beatles’ “Strawberry Fields Forever,” supposedly for his abandoned Decade greatest-hits project around 1989 or 1990.
Unfortunately, there is no reliable evidence that such a recording exists.
The claim appears to have originated with information published in the French fan magazine Black & White, which listed “Strawberry Fields Forever” among supposed unreleased Michael Jackson recordings. Subsequent fan research has pointed out that the same publication contained demonstrably false information and that people who worked with Michael had no knowledge of him recording the song.
There is also an important source of possible confusion.
The unfinished Strawberry Fields film was built around Beatles songs, and surviving documentation lists Michael Jackson’s “Come Together” among the planned or completed contributions. Other artists associated with the project included Cyndi Lauper, Crosby, Stills & Nash, Robert Palmer, Siedah Garrett, Cheap Trick, Luther Vandross and Stevie Ray Vaughan.
“Strawberry Fields Forever” itself was famously recorded by The Beatles in 1966, with John Lennon writing the song.
A separate cover by British duo Candy Flip was released in 1990, which adds another layer of confusion when looking through surviving lists of music connected to the period.
For now, therefore, there is no reason to claim that Michael Jackson recorded “Strawberry Fields Forever.” And perhaps that makes the genuine story even more interesting.
An ambitious experiment that disappeared
The Strawberry Fields project attempted something remarkably ambitious for its time.
Traditional hand-drawn characters were combined with computer-generated environments and effects. The animation process involved drawings being transferred into a digital environment, allowing artists to experiment with camera movement, perspective and compositions that would become much more commonplace in animation years later. But the project struggled.
The technology was expensive and difficult to manage, the production went through changes and the film ultimately remained unfinished. Surviving footage has since provided a fascinating glimpse into what the filmmakers were attempting.
Among that footage is a sequence known as “Meeting Flattop,” featuring Michael Jackson’s “Come Together.”
It is strange to watch today because it captures a moment when animation was caught between two worlds.
The hand-drawn characters are recognisably traditional, while the environments and camera movements point toward the digital future that was beginning to emerge.
Michael Jackson, The Beatles and a film that never was
There is something particularly fascinating about Michael Jackson’s connection to Strawberry Fields.
Michael had purchased ATV Music in 1985, giving him control of a huge catalogue of songs, including the publishing rights to many Beatles compositions. The same year, he was already being linked to the proposed animated project.
He would then record his own version of “Come Together” during the Bad era, a song that eventually appeared in Moonwalker and was also incorporated into the unfinished Strawberry Fields animation.
The film itself disappeared into the history of unfinished projects, leaving behind fragments rather than a completed feature.
And that may be why the surviving footage is so fascinating.
It isn’t a polished Beatles film. It isn’t a Michael Jackson music video. It isn’t a finished product at all.
It is a snapshot of an extraordinary moment when animators, musicians and computer artists were experimenting with what the future of animation might look like.
And somewhere in that unfinished experiment is Michael Jackson, singing a Beatles classic.
Perhaps we’ll never know exactly how “Come Together” found its way into Strawberry Fields. But the surviving footage gives us something that is increasingly rare: a glimpse at a Michael Jackson project that almost happened, but never quite reached the finish line.
