“We’d be on the phone and he goes, ‘It’s too metal. I gotta get it on pop radio! Use the small amp, not so much distortion’”: Steve Lukather on how Quincy Jones saved Michael Jackson’s Beat It from becoming a metal track

Steve Lukather onstage with his signature Ernie Ball Music Man electric guitar in blue.

Michael Jackson’s mammoth hit Beat It may have benefitted from some incendiary electric guitar flare at the hands of Steve Lukather and Eddie Van Halen, but legendary producer Quincy Jones saved the song from becoming an out-and-out metal track.

Jones is credited as the man behind the desk for many of Jackson’s biggest hits, including Thriller, Bad, and Billie Jean, but his influential oversight of Beat It could potentially have been his most impactful contribution to the King of Pop’s back catalog.