Rod Temperton, who wrote the 1970s disco classic Boogie Nights and went on to compose some of Michael Jackson's biggest hits, including Rock With You and Thriller, has died.
Temperton, a British-born keyboardist and songwriter, was a member of the disco-funk group Heatwave when he caught the ear of producer and composer Quincy Jones with Boogie Nights and other songs on the group's debut album, Too Hot to Handle, released in 1977 in the United States.
When Jones began working with Jackson in 1978 on his first solo album in four years, he invited Temperton to submit songs. Temperton responded with Off the Wall, which became the title track of the album, released in late 1979, as well as Rock With You, which reached the top of the pop and R&B charts and became one of the biggest hits of 1980, and Burn This Disco Out.
For Jackson's next album, Temperton wrote another three songs, Baby Be Mine, The Lady in My Life and Thriller, the title track. Thriller became the best-selling album of all time.
"Originally, when I did my Thriller demo, I called it Starlight,' Temperton told the Sunday Telegraph in 2007. Jones sent him back to the drawing board for a better title. After coming up with several hundred alternatives, he settled on Midnight Man."
"The next morning, I woke up, and I just said this word," he continued. "Something in my head just said, this is the title. You could visualise it on the top of the Billboard charts. You could see the merchandising for this one word, how it jumped off the page as Thriller".
Rodney Lynn Temperton was born in Cleethorpes, in Lincolnshire, on October 9th, 1949, according to his family.
“My father wasn’t the kind of person who’d read you a story before you went off to sleep; he used to put a transistor radio in the crib, right on the pillow, and I’d go to sleep listening to Radio Luxembourg, and I think that had an influence,” he said in a BBC documentary.
He began playing drums while attending the De Aston School in Market Rasen and later turned to keyboards. After leaving school, he worked in the office of a frozen-fish factory in Grimsby while trying to start a musical career.
In 1972, answering an advertisement, he travelled to Worms, in West Germany, and, with guitarist Bernd Springer, formed Sundown Carousel, a group that performed cover versions of soul hits in clubs around Germany. Two years later, responding to an ad in Melody Maker, he teamed up with two Americans, Johnnie Wilder Jr and his brother Keith, to form Heatwave.
That band also initially performed covers, but Temperton soon started writing his own material. Heatwave's first album, Too Hot to Handle, consisted of nine songs, all written by Temperton.
After writing most of the songs on the group's second album, Central Heating (1977), which included the hit The Groove Line, Temperton left Heatwave to concentrate on songwriting.
Often working with Jones, he wrote hits in the late 1970s and early 1980s for Rufus and Chaka Khan (Live in Me), the Brothers Johnson (Stomp!), George Benson (Give Me the Night), Donna Summer (Love Is in Control) and Patti Austin and James Ingram (the duet Baby, Come to Me).
Miss Celie's Blues (Sister), which he wrote with Jones and Lionel Richie for the film The Color Purple (1985), was nominated for an Academy Award as best original song.
In 1986, Temperton composed the score for Running Scared, a police buddy film starring Gregory Hines and Billy Crystal, and wrote five songs as well, including Sweet Freedom, performed by Michael McDonald, and Man Size Love, performed by Klymaxx.
Two of his songs were recorded by British soul singer Mica Paris on her album Whisper a Prayer, released in 1993.
He is survived by his wife, Kathy.
New York Times News Service