Sponsored by
Rod Temperton : The light behind Michael Jackson's star
Tuesday, 3.30pm: AS THE world mourns the passing of pop prince Michael Jackson - with a funeral and memorial service taking place today in Las Vegas where he died of a suspected heart attack on June 26 - we look back over time to the Market Rasen origins of the man who helped to shoot the star firmly into the pop stratosphere, Rod Temperton.
In the modern era Market Rasen's De Aston School has an envied reputation for music which is hardly surprising given the talent that has emerged from within its classrooms over the years.
One of the school's most famous old boys is Bernie Taupin songwriter to Elton John and another more recent alumni is James Dring, cousin to Blur star Damon Albarn, who found himself in the nominations for a Golden Globe award and shortlisted for an Oscar this past spring.
But rank among them is the hugely successful Rod Temperton - known principally as the man behind Pop's biggest selling album Thriller which made Michael Jackson the first, and still the biggest, pop phenomenon on the global music scene.
As well as songwriter for Jackson, Temperton penned composed and arranged for Quincy Jones, The Brothers Johnson, Donna Summer, Herbie Hancock, Aretha Franklin, Jeffrey Osborne, Manhattan Transfer, George Benson, James Ingram, Anita Baker, Micah Paris and Mariah Carey among many other greats. He also produced on many of the most enduring and famous of tracks and wrote several songs on a 1979 solo album for Karen Carpenter of The Carpenters.
He undoubtedly holds his own place in pop music's hall of fame - but also in De Aston's hit parade.
Temperton was a boarder at De Aston in the 1960s and whilst former music teacher Ted Gledhill remembers both he and Taupin, it is with Temperton that a friendship remains since the lyricist spent his formative years as a boarder in the schoolmaster's house.
Born in October 1947, Rodney Lynn Temperton harks from Cleethorpes. His home now is in Mulholland Drive, Los Angeles, neighbouring actors George Clooney, Jack Nicholson and Bruce Willis, and his wealth is such that he also owns properties in the South of France, Fiji and Switzerland - not bad for someone whose first job was in a Grimsby fish finger factory.
"He played drums at school and I remember him forming a group," recalled Mr Gledhill. "He later changed to keyboard, which is where his talents remain. In those days pop music was a bit frowned upon I suppose.
Ted now lives quietly in retirement with wife Margaret on The Ridings estate in Market Rasen and his own musical fame these days is limited to being organist at the town's St Thomas Church.
"I get a Christmas card from Rod every year. He keeps in contact regularly and we have stayed in his house in Switzerland.Rod was so very unassuming at school and he still is." These and other memories have previously been relayed by Ted for a radio programme about the erstwhile De Aston boarder.
Temperton, approaching his 62nd birthday, really made his name as a writer for top US music producer Quincy Jones, with whom he still works - after Jones picked up on the hit Boogie Nights which Temperton had written as a debut single for the disco band Heatwave.
There is more on this in this week's Rasen Mail. Heatwave was his second stab at a musical career after starting out with a South Yorkshire collaboration The Hammer, for which he answered an ad in a local paper.
It was his work with Jones that led to his association with Jackson and ultimately the 1982 smash-hit Thriller.
The pair had first collaborated with Michael Jackson on his album 'Off the Wall' in 1979, Temperton writing the two biggest hits, and Temperton returned to write ‘The lady in my life' and 'Baby be mine' before turning to the track 'Thriller'.
It was Temperton who came up with the album’s title too - after going through two or three hundred possibilities and settling on Midnight Man. “Bit I woke up the next morning and I said this word, thriller,” Temperton has been quoted. “Something in my head just said, ‘this is the title’. You could visualise it at the top of the Billboard charts, you could see the merchandising for this one word, how it jumped off the page as Thriller.”
The rest, as they say is history and it certainty is history with Thriller still holding the record for highest sales, having sold 109 million copies alone as part of Jackson’s 750 million sales homes around the planet. The associated video for Thriller also changed rock history in itself.
Jackson is known to have kept Temperton in deep and close affection and respect and so too do many of this fans
* In an impromptu online tribute following Jackson’s death, blogger Kevin Boatang referred to Temperton as ‘the forgotten Michael Jackson man’.
He wrote: “There is a man that is always forgotten. This morning, and in the coming weeks, one man's name will not be mentioned. Quincy Jones will get due credit for basically making Michael Jackson what he was, but someone else will be cast adrift. That man is Rod Temperton.
His songwriting credits are on another planet. There is some rubbish, but there are also some massive songs.
He wrote the title track for the biggest selling album of all time, although not a number one it was the song (and video of course) that launched Michael Jackson into megastardom. And he never gets mentioned for it.
In years to come it will be the music that is remembered rather than the allegations and freak show lifestyle. And the people who made and wrote that music should be equally remembered. Rod Temperton should be near the top of that list.
I feel sorry for him really, he should have an OBE or something from this country, but he is just unknown.”
* What are your thought? Share them with the Mail by emailing jason.hippisley@jpress.co.uk.
De Aston schoolboy Rod Temperton (third left front row) with his housemaster Ted Gledhill (centre seated) and fellow boarders at De Aston School in 1963.
Email to a friend
Print this page
Looking for...
Featured advertisers
Jobs
Search for a job
Motors
Search for a car
Property
Search for a house
Weather for Market Rasen
Saturday 26 May 2012
Today
Sunny
Temperature: 11 C to 20 C
Wind Speed: 21 mph
Wind direction: East
Tomorrow
Sunny
Temperature: 11 C to 21 C
Wind Speed: 17 mph
Wind direction: East
