Rodney Lynn Temperton (9 October 1949 – 25 September 2016) was an English songwriter, producer and musician. Temperton was the keyboardist and main songwriter for the 1970s pop music, disco and 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, he wrote several successful singles for Michael Jackson, including "Thriller", "Off the Wall", and "Rock with You". He also wrote songs for George Benson, including "Give Me the Night" and "Love X Love", along with Patti Austin and James Ingram's United States number-one single "Baby, Come to Me", among many others. Temperton wrote the soundtrack for the 1986 film Running Scared. In 1990 he won a Grammy Award for Best Arrangement, Instrumental or A Cappella for Birdland. Biography Early years Rodney Lynn Temperton was born in Cleethorpes, Lincolnshire, on 9 October 1949. Interviewed for the BBC Radio 2 documentary The Invisible Man: the Rod Temperton Story, Temperton 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. Heatwave Temperton soon became a full-time musician as a keyboard player, and played in several dance bands. This took him to Worms in Germany. In 1974, he answered an advert in Melody Maker for a keyboardist, placed by Johnnie Wilder Jr., and as a result, became a member of the pop, disco, and funk band: Heatwave, which Wilder was putting together at the time. "He was the first British guy that I had ever met personally. He spoke kind of funny but he had a good sense of humour and he was a very friendly guy. After meeting him and then