Rod Temperton

Rodney Lynn Temperton (9 October 1949 – 25 September 2016) was an English musician, songwriter, and record producer.

Temperton was the keyboardist and principal songwriter for the 1970s funk band Heatwave, writing songs including "Star of a Story", "Always and Forever", "Boogie Nights", and "The Groove Line". After he was recruited by record producer Quincy Jones, Temperton wrote several hit songs for Jones' protégé Michael Jackson, including: "Thriller", "Off the Wall", and "Rock with You". Interviewed for the BBC Radio 2 documentary The Invisible Man: the Rod Temperton Story, he said that he was a musician from an early age: "My father wasn't the kind of person who would 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."

Temperton attended De Aston Grammar School, Market Rasen, Lincolnshire, and he formed a group for the school's music competitions. He was a drummer at this time. "I'd get in the living room with my snare drum and my cymbal and play along to the BBC test card, which was all kinds of music they'd be playing continuously." On leaving school, he started working as a fish filleter for Ross Frozen Foods in Grimsby, Lincolnshire.

Despite the slick American sound, Temperton's working surroundings were still far from glamorous. Alan Kirk, a Yorkshire musician with Jimmy James and the Vagabonds who toured with Heatwave in the mid 1970s, remembered: "Always and Forever was written on a Wurlitzer piano at the side of a pile of pungent washing. Sorry to disappoint all the romantics." Producer Barry Blue recalled: "He had a very small flat, so everything had to be done within one room and he had piles of washing, and had the TV on top of the organ. It was a nightmare [...] he had trams running outside [...] but he made it: he just absorbed himself in the music and Rod seemed to come up with these amazing songs."

Songs written for Michael Jackson Temperton's work attracted the attention of Quincy Jones, and he asked his engineer Bruce Swedien to check out the Heatwave album. "Holy cow! I simply loved Rod's musical feeling. Everything about it—Rod's arrangements, his tunes, his songs—was exceedingly hip", Swedien said, calling Temperton "the most disciplined pop music composer I've ever met. When he comes to the studio, every musical detail is written down or accounted for in Rod's mind. He never stops until he feels confident that the music we're working on is able to stand on its own." In 1979, Jones recruited Temperton In 1982, he wrote three songs, including the title track, Of the title "Thriller",

Other songwriting successes Temperton wrote for other musicians, his hits including disco classic "Stomp!" for the Brothers Johnson; Temperton also wrote the film's score.

Personal life and death After leaving Heatwave to concentrate on his songwriting, Temperton shunned the celebrity lifestyle and remained a very private man.

Temperton is survived by his wife Kathy.

Songwriting credits

YearSong First charted by USR&B UKSinglesChart Other chartingversions, Rufus and Chaka Khan Nikki YanofskyNikki Yanofsky–––"Bubbles"––– "–" denotes releases that did not chart.

Production credits The Running Scared soundtrack album, 1986 (with Dick Rudolph and Bruce Swedien) "We Belong to Love" by Jeffrey Osborne from Emotional, 1986 Kiss of Life by Siedah Garrett, 1988 (with Dick Rudolph) Back on the Block by Quincy Jones, 1989 (associate producer) "Givin' In to Love" by Patti Austin, from Carry On, 1991 "You Put a Move on My Heart", "We Were Made for Love", "Two in a Million", and "Love Keeps Coming Back" by Mica Paris, from Whisper a Prayer, 1993 "We Are the Future", from We Are the Future: You Are the Answer, 2004 (with Sunny Levine)

Arranging Back on the Block, with Andrae Crouch, Quincy Jones, Quincy Jones III, and Bill Summers; Wee B. Dooinit, with Siedah Garrett, Jones, Mark Kibble, and Ian Prince; Birdland (winner of the 1991 Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Arrangement), with Jerry Hey, Jones, and Prince; Tomorrow (A Better You, Better Me), with Hey and Jones; The Secret Garden, with Garrett, Hey, and Jones, from Back on the Block, 1989 You Put a Move on My Heart, with John Clayton; Rock with You, with Jones, Jones III, and Greg Phillinganes; Stomp, with Hey and Jones; Heaven's Girl, with Hey, Jones, and R. Kelly; and Slow Jams, with Clayton, Hey, and Phillinganes, from Q's Jook Joint, 1995 Lovelines, If We Try and My Body Keeps Changing My Mind, from solo album by Karen Carpenter recorded in 1979–1980, released in 1996.