Rod Temperton

From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Artist

Rod Temperton, in full Rodney Lynn Temperton, was an English musician, songwriter and producer, born in 1949 in Cleethorpes in Lincolnshire. As a boy he played drums and after school worked in a fish factory before becoming a keyboard player in dance bands. That took him to Worms in Germany. In 1974 he answered an advertisement in Melody Maker and became the keyboard player of the funk band Heatwave. There he wrote songs such as Boogie Nights, Always and Forever and The Groove Line. In 1978 he left the band to concentrate on writing.

Music and breakthrough

The producer Quincy Jones heard his work and in 1979 brought him in for Michael Jackson's album Off the Wall. Temperton wrote, among other things, Off the Wall and Rock with You for it. For Thriller from 1982 he wrote three songs, including the title track, and also the spoken words for Vincent Price. He also wrote for George Benson (Give Me the Night), for Patti Austin and James Ingram (Baby, Come to Me), for Donna Summer and for the Brothers Johnson. His colleagues praised him as highly disciplined: he had every detail on paper before he came into the studio.

Influence

Temperton mostly stayed out of the spotlight, but his songs defined the sound of soul, funk and disco in the late 1970s and early 1980s. In School of Rock he is the writer of Rock with You, a supple disco song with a soft, precise voice.

Listening

In School of Rock

The chapters, maps and magazine stories of School of Rock are currently available in Dutch only.

• Mixtape 6: Fear of a Black Planet^NL Reader