A Half-Century of Wanting
A PLACE IN HISTORY FOR THE ‘HOT ROCK’ OF THE JACKSON 5
On this date in 1970, the Jackson 5’s “I Want You Back” skyrocketed to the summit of the Billboard Hot 100. It was the first chart-topper of the year for Motown Records, to be followed by six more Number Ones over the next 11 months – a historic high for the firm.
For everything that Berry Gordy expected – and drove his team to achieve – with “I Want You Back,” he could not have predicted its now-remarkable place in popular culture. To this day, the record seems to retain its vibrancy and innocence, despite everything which subsequently coloured the world of its front-and-centre singer. It’s a music milestone, as well as the quintessence of second-generation Motown.
The Jackson 5 rock The Ed Sullivan Show
How else to explain the scores of artists of every type and texture who have included “I Want You Back” in their repertoire? Among the better-known: Janelle Monáe, the Civil Wars, Taylor Swift, Graham Parker, K.T. Tunstall, Human Nature, Sara Bareilles, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Sheryl Crow, Of Montreal and Michael Bublé. You may know of other and perhaps unexpected interpretations, such as the Piano Guys’ mash-up of the song with concertos composed by Johann Sebastian Bach.
Of course, Motown stars also tackled it: David Ruffin, Martha Reeves & the Vandellas, and, in a hidden track on a 2009 album, Smokey Robinson.
Music critics have been challenged to define the magnetism of “I Want You Back.” Personally, I liked the attempt by the late Don Waller, who described the bass playing alone as “enough to turn your hair into snakes,” then added that Michael Jackson “sings as if his lungs are about to burst into flames any second.” Dave Marsh called it “the greatest debut single of any act since the fifties, and it’s certainly the greatest record ever made by a singer who has yet to reach puberty.” For its part, Billboard used standard trade-press prose in its November 8, 1969 review: “A hot rock item here…wild vocal workout…a mover from start to finish.”
‘SING WHAT YOU’RE TOLD’
It was equally tough for its makers to describe the magic; they mostly chose to illustrate the process instead. “As kids,” said Marlon Jackson once, “you don’t know how good those songs are. You just sing what you’re told to sing.” Jermaine Jackson wrote that “when we heard the finished product of ‘I Want You Back,’ it sounded incredible; the difference between a song sounding ‘sensational’ or like it contained everything but the kitchen sink.” Even with Jacqueline Onassis as his editor, Michael’s autobiographical recollection was primarily that the brothers were “particularly impressed with the ‘I Want You Back’ session then because that one song took more time (and tape) than all the other songs on [the group’s debut album] combined.”
The Corporation (well, 3/4) from left: Fonce Mizell, Deke Richards, Freddie Perren (photo: Universal Music)
Jacksons aside, the man who most often spoke about the record was the late Freddie Perren. He was one of “The Corporation,” to use the anonymous tag which Berry Gordy chose for the backroom team who wrote and produced the Jacksons’ first three Number Ones. Together with Gordy, they were Perren, Alphonso (Fonce) Mizell and Deke Richards. Both for Rolling Stone and The Billboard Book of Number One Rhythm & Blues Hits, Freddie talked to me (as he did to others) about the song’s origins, the recording sessions, the group’s way of working, and Gordy’s creative and supervisory roles.
“I knew this thing went up to a high E flat,” said Perren, “and thought, ‘Wow, this guy has really got to sing high to get this.’ I was worried about that more than anything else. Michael wasn’t as outgoing or playful as the other guys. He would just stand there, we were singing the song, and all the time I was showing it to him, I was thinking, ‘Can he reach these notes?’ Finally, we took a try at it and he just hit it the first time.” (For validation, listen to Michael’s vocal, stripped of instrumentation, on the accompanying playlist.)
THAT OCTAVE TELEGRAPH GUITAR INTRO
Perren went on to identify the players at work when the track was cut at Hollywood’s Sound Factory: guitarists Louie Shelton, David T. Walker and Don Peake, bassist Wilton Felder and drummer Gene Pello. “I was [on] keyboards,” he said, “and there were three guitarists. The way it starts out with the octave guitar, that’s Louie. Don Peake doubled the bassline. David T. did the solo.”
Louie Shelton with Lionel (details below)
This month, Louie Shelton also recalled for me “that first magic session” with Perren, Mizell and Richards. “The three of them were in the studio with us musicians working out every little detail of the arrangement. It was a little different approach than most of the other Motown sessions [in California] where they relied on an arranger such as Gene Page or James Carmichael to work it out with the musicians. There was no arranger and barely a chord chart for us.
“But Freddie, Deke and Fonce were all very excited about this tune. It was a very pleasant experience as they went about working out the individual parts, the bass line and the drums, and I finally came up with the octave telegraph guitar intro that seemed to glue everything together, so they had me play that all through the song. It’s one of the best arrangements for a song, and it sounds as good today as the day it came out. I often play my instrumental version of it on live gigs, and it always get a great response.” (A performance by Shelton can be heard here on his YouTube channel.)
There has been some dispute over who built the bass foundations of “I Want You Back,” despite Perren citing Wilton Felder of the Crusaders. Shelton believes it was Ron Brown – who has played on albums by B.B. King, Lamont Dozier and the Temptations, among others – but adds, “I’ve had a lot people say they thought Wilton played bass on that.” Another musician mentioned in that context is Bob Babbitt, but in 2002, the Funk Brother responded on the Soulful Detroit website’s Motown Forum. “Even though sessions on the Jackson 5 were recorded in Detroit as well as Los Angeles,” he wrote, “the record ‘I Want You Back’ was from L.A., with Wilton Felder playing the bass.”
FROM JUSTICE TO JANELLE
Regardless of all that, the authority and electricity of the Jackson 5’s original has been no deterrent to young, contemporary artists over the past 20 years or so. British girl group Cleopatra scored a Top 5 U.K. hit with their 1998 take. Victoria Justice, star of Nickelodeon’s TV show Victorious, recorded a lively rendering in 2010, produced by the well-regarded Raphael Saadiq. In 2011, “I Want You Back” became part of Taylor Swift’s concert set as she embarked on her “Speak Now” world tour. More recently, K-pop girl gang Twice have encircled it.
All the hits, quadraphonically mixed for vinyl
Janelle Monáe began featuring the number in live shows from 2012, if not before. In June that year, she performed it during a Nobel Peace Prize concert in Norway, where one reviewer wrote that she “squeezed her voice into the shape and timbre of a ten-year-old boy’s.” That November, she even sang “I Want You Back” in front of Berry Gordy, when he was honoured at a fundraising gala for the History Makers organisation.
The following year, Monae’s studio version was included in a select edition of her album, The Electric Lady. And during Barack Obama’s last year in office, she sang it at the White House during July 4 celebrations. “We want you back, Mr. President,” the singer implored. “We don’t want you to leave.” (Several years earlier, Sheryl Crow, too, had performed it for President Obama. Nice outfit, Sheryl.)
Clearly then, “I Want You Back” has proven itself as a timeless piece of popular art, with a lyrical sentiment for the ages. A mover from start to finish, as Billboard declared. Happy 50th anniversary!
Music notes: with so many different artists drawn to this song, who to include in this playlist? (And that’s to say nothing of samples, of which there have been dozens.) Many versions of “I Want You Back” are available on digital streaming platforms, but there are exceptions. One is the quadraphonic mix of the Jackson 5’s original, first issued on a Japanese-only edition of their Greatest Hits, and made available elsewhere on vinyl at the end of last year. Another is Smokey Robinson’s laid-back rendering from 2009. The album on which it appeared, Time Flies When You’re Having Fun on the master’s own RobSo label, is on streaming platforms, but “I Want You Back” seems well and truly “hidden” there. Your only option may be to locate the physical version on compact disc, where it nestles as track 12, unlisted on the packaging. And what about Louie Shelton and Lionel Richie, as pictured above? Well, the guitarist played on the singer/songwriter’s hits “Hello” and “Stuck On You,” as well as on an abundance of other Motown recordings in California, not least of all, Marvin Gaye’s “Let’s Get It On.” Finally, if you need more on “I Want You Back,” there’s this Studio 360/BMP Audio radio feature about the 50th anniversary of its release, including (ahem) a few words from yours truly.