Eddie Van Halen deconstructs his collaboration on 'Beat It'

[Baby Lee]

Van Halen: I'll never forget when Tower Records was still open over here in Sherman Oaks. I was buying something,

What are the odds he bought whatever he bought from Jimmy Pardo?

Ironically, Jimmy, Matt, and Gillmartin did a round robin of Thriller [along with several KISS albums and Chicago's Greatest Hits] to see who was stumped for a track first on the most recent Never Not Funny.



Beat was THE SHIT in '83. One of my funniest [dryly funny] remembrances of JHS was the 83/84 JHS talent show.
Thriller had JUST come out, this was Dec '83, or Jan 84, can't recall exactly, and a 9th grader had already mastered all of MJ's moves, the Moonwalk, the hip point, the front kick, the jizz spray rotate, all of them.

And he did a move for move performance of 'Beat It' for the talent show to much acclaim. Had backup dancers to do the easy moves while he moonwalked back and forth, even found a guy who could do the jackhammer chin move that one dude did at the 'big fight.'

Well, I participated in the TS was well soloing in the JHS jazz band performance of 'Take the A-Train' [decent, capable, but not accolade garnering]. There was a guy who played trombone in the band who was the epitome of a teenaged William F. Buckley, ever patrician, ever nerdy, yet ever apparently cerebral to a JHS cohort. I was standing beside him just after our performance watching Mr. Moonwalk strut his stuff and he stared in awe and announced to all within earshot 'that man is a hell of a performer.'

A memory as fresh as the day it happened.