Thriller Cover — Encino, Los Angeles

The Jackson family compound at 4641 Hayvenhurst Avenue in Encino — the home Michael Jackson grew up in and where he lived during the recording and release of "Thriller" — is the biographical centre of one of the most commercially successful albums in history. The "Thriller" album cover was shot by photographer Dick Zimmermann at a studio in Los Angeles, showing a young Jackson in a white suit on a pink background — simple, elegant, and entirely controlled. The record itself was released in November 1982 and went on to sell an estimated 66-70 million copies worldwide.

"Thriller" produced seven Billboard top-ten singles from a single album — a record — including "Billie Jean," "Beat It," "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'," and the title track, which was accompanied by a fourteen-minute short film directed by John Landis that transformed the music video from a promotional tool into an art form. The album's success was built on the partnership between Jackson and producer Quincy Jones, who had worked together on "Off the Wall" (1979) and whose combination of meticulous production and Jackson's extraordinary vocal and physical gifts produced something unprecedented in popular music.

The Hayvenhurst compound, behind its gates and walls, is a private residence that has housed the Jackson family for decades. It is not open to the public, but Encino's streets and the compound's exterior are visited by fans. The Encino area of the San Fernando Valley — suburban, affluent, and far removed from the urban intensity that Jackson's music described — is an incongruous origin for some of the most kinetic records of the twentieth century.