#StoryOfTheDay...Carole Bayer Sager, (here in picture celebrating Elizabeth Taylor's 55th birthday in her house), talks about why Invincible didn't work out and other details about his friendship with #MichaelJackson in a revealing interview with Elizabeth Taylor. Below are the excerpts in which she quotes Michael.
" There were two blessed people (About Elizabeth Taylor and Michael Jackson) and I am still shocked and saddened and still in disbelief about the death of Michael Jackson. He was one of, if not the greatest artist of all time and was without a doubt the greatest musician I have ever witnessed in the studio. He was my friend. He recorded a song of mine on his wonderful album Off The Wall and we did some songs during that time together.
In 1980 he gave me a song of his and produced it for me on my album and even sang this song almost like a duet with me, the song is called "Just Friends", it is a beautiful song of friendship and affection. We spent a lot of time together between 1999 and 2004 working on some songs. The time we spent the most time together was in 2002, when he stayed for almost two months with me at my home and I saw him in a totally different light - like a consolidation of a loving father. I was very honored by the dedication of the album Invincible to me. We work hard to do the best job possible on Invincible. There is a song that I helped you compose called "You Are My Life" that is on the album and it was one of the best things that I have helped to conceive in my entire life. "You Are My Life" is one of the most preferred things my.
But there are other beautiful memories of other songs that we compose and have never been released as a song called "You Are The One" and another song called "I Have This Dream" that David Foster helped us write and produce. I think everything he put his hand on was much better and more dignified, he had a spectacular view of things. I remember when we wrote a song that was released a few years ago called "We've Had Enough" that Michael said he didn't want to talk about beautiful and beautiful things, in which case he said he didn't want to be fanciful in this particular song. He wanted to shock, he wanted that when people listened, they felt like they were being psychologically slaughtered. The song is actually a contestation for everything that happens to us badly now and then. In fact, we always question the fact that this is happening to us and put the name of God on everything, of course everything is possible if God allows it, but does everything have to do with God or with ourselves? I really hope that one day "We've Had Enough" will be released to the general public, that it will not be lost like other precious songs that were never released. I also hope that the other songs we did between 1999 and 2000 are also released, they are "I Have This Dream" and "You Are The One". I can say that working with Michael never felt like an obligation in terms of work, but it was always something very pleasurable. The way of making music with Michael was so special, because he always listened to his suggestions and opinions and accepted them.
In Invincible Michael totally changed the way he worked, he was really determined to make his album with the greatest number of singles. In songs from the Invincible era, he was usually taking two composers to create the music. In my case I worked with Michael, Rodney Jerkins, BabyFace and David Foster. For example, in the song "You Are My Life" my role was to help Michael write and create the melody, while BabyFace's role was to help more in the melody and the music itself, in this case the instrumentation. So the same thing was working with Rodney Jerkins - Michael and Rodney did the musical part (instrumentation) and Michael and I created the melody and wrote the lyrics. When I said that in Invincible he thought of being his album with the most singles, it was because he invited me to work with him. Then he told me how he would like the album to look like a large collection of successful singles. When he asked me to collaborate on his album in early 1999 with him and David Foster it would be just 1 song that we would make. However, the album was postponed and Michael gave up releasing the songs that had been created before and in the year 1999. So we started to work on other things after all this. I worked hard on creation alongside him and Rodney Jerkins and BabyFace. Michael used a formula similar to the one he had learned at the time of Motown for the first time, which was the combination of several great composers and music writers, using the best that each one had. As I had said before. We were a kind of The Corporation by Motown in order to create the biggest hits on the planet. The combination was perfect because Rodney at the time was, I think 18-19 years old, he was very young and knew what the audience wanted to hear at that moment, I had the vision of the best possible music and Michael of the genius and timeless touch and the perfect melody. It was a great combination of the current (Rodney), the old guard (Me) and the timeless and brilliant (Michael Jackson). It is a great pity that Michael did not use the first songs we made, it had a bold and different flavor. When asked what happened to the album Invincible I always bow. However, as I am not one to give interviews, I would say that it was an album marked by several and several backstage disputes between Michael with his team against Sony and his team and vice versa. Few know that Michael owns half of Sony’s music catalog, and it is this fact that was the direct contributor to all the problems of Invincible, the other related problems are only mere facts that were caused by this. Michael didn't usually talk about these matters to anyone, but when he spent time at my house, one day we were in my studio working on a song - it was the year 2002 and he revealed to me very disappointed that he had abandoned the album Invincible and that I would never make an album of unpublished ones for the Sony label again - And then I started to get into the subject slowly and then he started to release certain things that made me very sad and worried about Michael's well being and life. He revealed to me that since 1995 Sony has been trying in every way to get his catalog back from his hands and that they were really playing dirty and getting tough against him. He told me that all of this got even worse because he had stopped authorizing some projects that Sony had between 1998 and 1999 and that could only be done with his authorization. I remember that Michael had a lot of problems with releasing this album, which was to be released in 1999 and ended up being released in 2001. Before Michael came to my house he told me he was going to work for a video for the song “Unbreakable”, it was January 2002, he called me so excited, a month later he told me that Sony had given a paltry budget for the video for this song. "Unbreakable" would be directed by Michael with the help of Mel Gibson, but the budget of video was somewhere around 10 million, it would be a mini-film, Sony only offered about $ 300,000. So Michael after this incident with the video for " was put in place of one of the rocks on the disc. Michael intended to release "Whatever Happens" as a single shortly after "Unbreakable" was signed, but nothing went ahead. He even took pictures for the single for "Unbreakable" and "Whatever Happens". When he thought about releasing "Unbreakable" and "Whatever Happens" in early 2002, he had already turned the page on his conflicts with the label, but not Sony, Sony would make things worse.
So much they did backstage against Michael that he decided to go out in public against Sony, Michael had so many wonderful things that he would have liked to do at that time and nobody supported him, when I speak nobody is nobody at all, the whole music industry has turned its back for Michael Jackson and no one has any idea what this manipulation is like. Nobody has any idea when nobody wants to put something in their work. People think it is easy to launch projects, even more difficult to continue with no one to support. So even when they put two singles that were not intended to work, even when they refused to release a benefit single, even with all of this Michael turned the page and wanted Invincible to work his way. He would work on "Unbreakable" and "Whatever Happens" and he told me that right after these two singles he was going to release a ballad, and he was between "You Are My Life" and "Speechless". And it would be a great dispute because they are two things in my view that are wonderful and above anything musical or on the same level as so many beautiful things that we have heard since listening to music." #CaroleBayerSager
