I Want You Back
The breakthrough smash – composed by a new Motown songwriting team and sung by five young hopefuls delighted to be in sunny LA
When the Jackson brothers signed to Motown in 1969, they found themselves victims of a glorious culture shock: pulled from the amateurhour stages of the Midwest and the east Coast for a new life in the sun-drenched, star-studded el Dorado of hollywood.
“Riding down the street, seeing movie stars,” remembers Jackie Jackson. “At cafés, sitting outside eating, we’d say, ‘Wow, look at that car, look at this car!’ It was exciting to see for us, little boys from Gary, Indiana.”
“It was nothing to go down on Sunset Boulevard,” adds Tito Jackson, “passing the Whisky A Go Go, and see ‘Jimi hendrix tonight’, or ‘Tonight: Smokey Robinson’.”
even more striking than the palm trees or the movie stars, however, was the influence on the brothers of Motown boss Berry Gordy, who shepherded the group to no 1 with their first single, “I Want You Back”. Co-written by Gordy himself, the cut was painstakingly recorded, and turned out to be the label’s most expensive single to that point.
“Berry taught us about writing lyrics and producing a song,” says Jackie. “he told us that whenever you write a song, you make sure you get their attention right away…
[sings intro]. That makes you listen! If it’s not exciting, they’ll move onto the next song. That gliss on the piano?! I loved it!”
As Tito, Marlon and Jackie explain, their new-found success soon brought them a wealth of experiences – from near-riots at their schools and “tearing up” Diana Ross’ house, to meeting Jimi hendrix and hanging out with Bob Marley. now detailed in the brothers’ new book,
The Jacksons: Legacy, their journey from the backwaters of Indiana to Los Angeles and global stardom was quite the leap; especially so for a group who, when they recorded “I Want You Back”, ranged in age from Jackie, 18, to Michael, only just 10 when he recorded the song’s lead vocal.
“Pressure?” laughs Marlon Jackson today. “Kids don’t know anything about pressure – we were just excited to do it, and we had fun onstage. We didn’t feel any pressure. Winning a lot of talent shows when we were young kids, I guess in those days we probably had pressure, but not after that – it’s just magic.” TOM PINNOCK
MARLON JACKSON: We used to do amateur hour at the Regal Theatre in Chicago, Illinois – the headliners would be people like Gladys Knight or James Brown.
JACKIE JACKSON: And then we did the same thing at the Apollo, in harlem.
MARLON: Those days were magical days. Little Dion would come on, and Little Anthony And The Imperials. They were headliners, and we were just on amateur hour. And in between, we’d go watch the Three Stooges on the big screen, then it was showtime again!
JACKIE: I remember a couple of guys came on before us – and back then, if they didn’t like you, they would throw eggs at you. Michael was on the side of the stage, he was crying like a baby, he was scared to go out, ’cos we were next, and he thought
“Our mother made our uniforms. She used to make all that stuff before Motown” MARLON JACKSON
they were gonna do the same thing to us. I said, “Man, just do what you do, Michael.” We pulled it together, went out and they gave us a standing ovation.
MARLON: This is around ’67. We used to go to the Apollo Theater every Sunday every summer. Our mother made our uniforms. She used to make all that stuff before Motown, in Gary, Indiana. We took these white boots to the store and they dyed them a green colour for us!
TITO JACKSON: It was Gladys Knight and Bobby Taylor who discovered us.
MARLON: Gladys Knight tried to bring us to Motown first, but for some reason my father didn’t go. Then a few years later, Bobby Taylor talked him into bringing us to Motown. LOUIE SHELTON: Motown had just moved out to LA from Detroit, and The Jackson 5 were one of the first signed after the move.
MARLON: When we got to LA, we stayed at Diana Ross’ house. But first we stayed at a little place called the Tropicana, but we were tearing that place up, so they kicked us out. Little kids, running around making all kinds of noise. Then we went up to Berry’s house, hung out there, and Diana Ross lived right below, so we just lived at her house for a while. We tore up her house too, but she helped us, she tore it up with us!
JACKIE: Coming from Gary, Indiana, a cold climate, you come into LA, the hollywood hills, you see all the beautiful homes, Rolls-Royces going down the street, things we’d never seen before… all the palm trees and sunshine all the time. I couldn’t believe people were living like this all this time! Michael loved all that, going to hollywood, the palm trees…
MARLON: We started going to Bancroft Junior high, myself and Jermaine, but Michael was still in elementary school. I had just gotten to middle school, and he and I went to emerson for two weeks, then they had to take us out and put us in a private school.
JACKIE: Inglewood Forum was a big thing for us. My father told us that we’d gotta do a concert with Diana Ross – we’d never done a concert like that before, not that massive. She brought us out and introduced us to the whole world at that particular show, and she was one of the biggest superstars around, and Motown’s biggest superstar. For her to introduce us to the world was very, very exciting for us. We did our thing, and people loved us, and after that our career started, really. I think we might have been still working on “I Want You Back”, because we were working on it a long time. I remember hearing the demo. I thought it was a very exciting song.
SHELTON: I had just played on The Monkees’ “Last Train To Clarksville” and several other hits, and I assume that’s why the contractor for the Motown sessions called me to play on their first recordings. We recorded “I Want You Back” and all of the Jacksons’ first LP at the Sound Factory studio in hollywood. I believe we were still on 16-track recording at that time.
JACKIE: It was written and produced by Alphonso Mizell, Deke Richards, Freddie Perren and Berry Gordy, they called them the Corporation, all those guys together.
MARLON: Freddie was the score and Alphonso was the arrangements, and Deke was more the lyrics, and Berry with the melody.
TITO: Freddie was more musical with the scoring and arrangements. It was a great team.
SHELTON: As with most of the Motown sessions, the artists were not allowed at the session, so we didn’t get to see the Jacksons at all at that point. The recording of “I Want You Back” was probably the most handson involvement of the Corporation that I experienced during all of my sessions with the Jackons – they were in there with us
musicians working out every note of the arrangement. We had three guitar players – myself, David T Walker and Don Peake – along with the bass, drums and piano. We pulled the arrangement together and recorded it in about an hour.
JACKIE: There were many variations of “I Want You Back”; it took a while to get that song right. It was the most expensive Motown single to that point…
MARLON: Trust me, they got their money back!
JACKIE: We’d leave school, walk not even a block, and go to the studio, and the kids had no idea that we were recording these songs. I remember being in the classroom, I was always kind of quiet, and this girl used to sit behind me, and she was always pinching my butt all the time, but during the whole time in school I wouldn’t say anything. Screaming girls would come from other high schools, like LA High School, and they’d scream and scream – teacher didn’t know what was going on, the kids didn’t know who we were, because we kept it quiet. People were coming from other schools, cutting class, just to see us in the classroom. It was pandemonium.
SHELTON: The Jacksons didn’t play on the first two albums. I think they started playing on the third album.
TITO: We didn’t care that we didn’t play on the recording – I mean, how can you argue with the guys that Motown had? They were pros. They had some of the most brilliant musicians in the business at the time. They just had it.
SHELTON: I was called back later that night to do a guitar overdub. When I arrived, Michael was doing his lead vocal. That was the first time I’d seen him and I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I’m very grateful to have been one of three people that witnessed that vocal go down. He put 1,000 per cent into that vocal.
JACKIE: Michael pretty much ad-libbed himself. We’d record the song, then come back the next day and make another change – it was like four weeks of doing that stuff! Because it was our first song coming out and they wanted to leave an impression… There was a lot of stiff competition out there – Stevie Wonder, The Temptations, The Mamas & The Papas…
MARLON: The Carpenters… TITO: The Beatles…
JACKIE: After hearing “I Want You Back” so many times in the studio, especially mixing the song, it was time to release it. But hearing it on the radio was a different feeling. I remember my first time hearing it, I pulled over to the side of the road and started hollering! Then I turned to another station and they were playing it. And another! It was just blasting all over.
MARLON: Back in those days, the acts used to try and find out, “When are you dropping your record?” Because they didn’t wanna drop them at the same time, try and stay out of each other’s way. We played “I Want You Back” first on …Hollywood Palace – that show was magical, because I think Sammy Davis Jr was on it. That introduced us to the world. Were we happy with the live versions in those days? Man, we were kids, we were happy with whatever Motown did.
TITO: What did we have, a three-piece, four-piece band?
MARLON: They did a great job. One keyboard player, a guitar player, a bass player and a drummer. Ha ha! Michael, myself and Jackie, we did our choreography. People think Cholly Atkins did our choreography, because he did a lot of Motown acts, but we actually did our own. Susanne [De Passe] was in charge of us, and she was only 21 at the time! Damn, Susanne! JACKIE: We were all in love with her.
MARLON: We used to go to rehearsal after school, every day, for our first tour. We’d get out of school around 2.30pm, run into the house, grab something to eat, then go to the studio. We get there one day, and the rehearsal hall is not empty. Three o’clock passed, 3.15 passed, and then finally around 3.30, the door opened up and Jimi Hendrix walked out.
JACKIE: He said, “Hey guys, how you doin’?” He had a girl on this hand, another woman on this hand, and two weeks after that, he passed.
MARLON: Later, when we played Jamaica and Panama, Bob Marley & The Wailers opened up for us. When we were in Jamaica, he said, “Come on up to the house.” So we go to Bob’s house, all of us, hanging out, and he’s smoking a joint that’s about this big and about that long… JACKIE: Yeah, and Marlon took a puff on it!
MARLON: I was a kid! No… you didn’t believe him, did you?
JACKIE: You didn’t have to, it was in the air! But he was the coolest guy. Food laid out everywhere.
MARLON: We still have the same work ethic, to make sure we get it right. Kids today don’t know nothing about that, and the analogue sound, they don’t know how to get all the meat out of a track. They created a Jacksons sound, which still you hear today. When you hear “I Want You Back”, “ABC”, “Sugar Daddy”, they were written by the same people, they’ve got that same energy, that same sound.
MARLON: It was a new feel, it was new music, and the kids were gravitating towards it. And it was amazing, because they’d never seen young guys, young boys, perform this new kind of music, and they had some choreographing too, they were able to move and dance at the same time.
SHELTON: ’Til this day, “I Want You Back” remains to me one of the best tracks I ever played on, an amazing tight arrangement.
JACKIE: Every time I hear “I Want You Back”, I enjoy it. I’ll never get tired of listening to it [sings the intro].
MARLON: Great music don’t die. JACKIE: People hear it and they feel the same way I do. They hear it and they know what that is. It’s a classic.