beat it

For a beat, it seems like he’s going to whack her and leave her for dead.

“It’s no accident that almost three decades later, no matter where I go in the world, in every club and karaoke bar, like clockwork, you hear ‘Billie Jean,’ ‘Beat It,’ ‘Wanna Be Starting Something,’ ‘Rock With You’ and ‘Thriller.’

For Beat It, he thought the single needed a rockier edge, so he recruited Eddie Van Halen to contribute a guitar solo.

The album earned Jones and Jackson the Grammy Award for producer of the year, while Thriller was named album of the year and Beat It won record of the year.

Beat It was crucial to the project - because it was designed to get Jackson played on US rock radio, an unheard of prospect in the heavily-segregated music industry of the 1980s.