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Rod Temperton

Without ever becoming a household name, Rod Temperton wrote at least one song that everybody knows-the title track from Michael Jackson's Thriller-and additional smashes for Jackson, George Benson, Patti Austin & James Ingram, and his own band Heatwave. Though strongly associated with American R&B, Temperton was an Englishman, born in Cleethorpes, Lincolnshire. He played drums and keyboards in school and dance bands, but had no real success before answering a Melody Maker ad from singer Johnnie Wilder Jr., who was putting Heatwave together. Though it was originally a cover band, Temperton's material took Heatwave to a different level, and three of his songs became international hits: The ballad "Always and Forever" and the dance numbers "Boogie Nights" and "The Groove Line". This brought him to the attention of producer/arranger Quincy Jones and they began a long string of successful collaborations, starting with Michael Jackson's Off the Wall album which had three Temperton songs including the hit "Rock With You." He retired from performing and became a full-time songwriter after leaving Heatwave. The silky Jones/Temperton sound largely defined R&B in the '80s, on hits from Donna Summer ("Love is In Control"), George Benson ("Give Me the Night"), and two James Ingram duets, "Baby Come to Me" (with Patti Austin) and "Yah Mo B There" (with Michael McDonald). Their crowning achievement was the best-selling album of all time, Jackson's Thriller which again had three Temperton songs including the title track and the Paul McCartney duet, "The Girl is Mine." As Temperton explained, the concept for "Thriller" came to him after he'd come up with hundreds of possible titles for the song, nearly settling on "Midnight." He continued to work on Jones' solo albums and his film projects, earning an Academy Award nomination for "Miss Celie's Blues (Sister)," which he wrote with Jones and Lionel Richie for The Color Purple. Following this run of success, Temperton simply disappeared. As the '90s approached he gradually stopped producing songs, and was notably absent from Jackson's followup album Bad. He lived reclusively in the Kent countryside with his wife Kathy, rarely seen in public and maintaining no online presence. When the BBC produced a 2006 documentary, "The Invisible Man," it took four years of persuasion before Temperton agreed to an interview. Nothing more was heard until October 2016, when it was announced a few days after the fact that he had died from cancer.