Michael Jackson Remembered: Wyclef Jean on the Man Who Left Him Speechless

Wyclef Jean

My first meeting with Michael was when I was 22. Michael Jackson called me and said he was coming to see me — I was recording at the Hit Factory and he was working on an album and needed some music. He's the only person in my life where, when I saw him, my whole voice-box went. I didn't know what to say. My hands were trembling. He seemed a little shy, but very approachable. He talked about how he went to Jamaica when he was young and he said I reminded him of somebody there with the long hair. I was like, "Are you talking about Bob Marley?" And he was like, "Yeah!" He thought I was from Jamaica.

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Song Stories

“All Along the Watchtower”

The Jimi Hendrix Experience | 1968

Jimi Hendrix got hold of Bob Dylan's early John Wesley Harding tapes and in late 1967 recorded a version of "All Along the Watchtower" with the Experience in London. Dissatisfied with that first development, Hendrix brought those tapes with him to New York in early 1968 when he began work on Electric Ladyland. Eddie Kramer, Hendrix's engineer at the time, told Rolling Stone that Hendrix "was still looked upon by his basically white audience as the mammoth black guitar hero. There was a constant fight within him to expand himself." Hendrix's successful take on Dylan's work has long been recognized by the songwriter. "I liked Jimi Hendrix's record of this and ever since he died I've been doing it that way," Dylan wrote in the liner notes to his Biograph box set. "Strange how when I sing it, I always feel it's a tribute to him in some kind of way."

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