From idol to freakshow
Lately I have been thinking about Michael Jackson. It started when I read a snarky news report about preparations for his London concert.
Apparently Jackson could only perform for 13 minutes at a time, leaving the show’s survival in doubt. Another website reported that in reality Jackson has a deep, manly voice like his brothers; that high, childlike voice is a put-on.
Snark is about all we read of Michael Jackson these days; and to think he was once worshipped as the King of Pop. In the mid-‘90s the media stopped talking about his music and started reporting on the weirdness. Neverland, Bubbles the chimp, the bones of the Elephant Man, the molestation cases, the marriage no one really believed, the children’s faces concealed by veils, the child dangling off the balcony, and the cosmetic surgery to turn him into a white woman. Of the music that just about united the planet, whose influence we hear today every hour on the radio, nearly nothing.
Ironically, if it hadn’t been for the music he wouldn’t be in our consciousness at all. It’s as if we’re embarrassed at having lavished too much praise on Michael Jackson, at having bought too many copies of “Thriller” and having attempted “The Moonwalk” so often that we feel compelled to turn on him.
True, he has provided plenty of cause for ridicule, but we routinely condone strange behavior in our idols and explain it away as artistic eccentricity. In the case of Jackson we have gone a few steps further. The idol, with his complicity, has been transmogrified into a freak show.
In the 1980s we had a pop trinity probably unrivaled in the history of the music industry: Michael Jackson, Madonna, and Prince. Interestingly enough they were born within three months of each other in 1958, and Elvis Presley died on Madonna’s 20th birthday. Madonna was the monstrously ambitious working class girl who turned out to be a marketing genius — she could and still can spot a trend from a year away. Her musical talent was limited but that is beside the point: Madonna is the message.
Prince was the monstrously talented androgyne who invented his own rules as he went along. Have you listened to When Doves Cry lately? His biggest hit has to be one of the oddest number one singles ever. It has no bass line, yet it works like a dream.
Michael Jackson we had known since he was the cute moppet singing and dancing with his brothers in the Jackson Five. I had a 45 rpm single of Ben, a love song to a rat. In 1979 Jackson released “Off The Wall,” an album of hypnotically catchy pop that included Don’t Stop Till You Get Enough and Rock With You, a song that cannot be destroyed by a jillion covers by every band in every bar in the Philippines. The songs addressed the musculo-skeletal system directly: the listener had no choice.
The three divided the turf amongst themselves. Madonna wanted money and sex, which are indistinguishable in the Madonna-verse (she created her own). Prince wanted total freedom to do whatever Prince wanted to do, even if it meant going to war with his record label and changing his name to a glyph no one could pronounce.
Ithink that of the three, Michael Jackson was the one who wanted approval and adoration. He had been a child star, a phenomenon that carries its own special curse. As a child the message you get is, “We love you, don’t ever grow up.” But you do grow up, and then they tell you, “Why don’t you grow up?” Maybe he never stopped being the child who had to earn his parents’ love. If you think about it, isn’t a child automatically entitled to love just by existing? Perhaps at the height of his fame he was still working for his parents’ approval, except that the audience had become his parents.
Money and control can be attained, but love is too volatile a quantity to fully grasp. And of the three, Jackson seemed to have the least control over his own life.
But this is all cheap pop psychology.
We all have our adolescent quirks, and mine was to reject whatever everyone else (i.e. The Herd) wanted. I listened to a lot of obscure acts; it turns out most of them deserved obscurity. Prince the funky little Mozart troll met my credibility test — I wore out my copies of “1999” and “Purple Rain,” and I still listen to those albums today. I wanted a copy of “Thriller,” but perversely denied myself the pleasure.
Over a quarter-century later someone gave me the “Thriller 25th Anniversary Edition” CD. I’ve been listening to it for the last few days. It doesn’t take much to understand how “Thriller” became the biggest-selling album of all time. It is an infectiously catchy fusion of R&B, funk and rock. It makes you want to dance. For some of the most overplayed tracks known to man, they do not grate on the nerves despite repeated play; you can listen to Billie Jean (think about it: a song about a paternity suit), Beat It, Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’ and Thriller indefinitely.
P.Y.T. (Pretty Young Thing) is unfortunate in the light of all the molestation cases brought against Jackson, but it’s a really good pop song. By the way, if Michael Jackson really is a pedophile, why has he not done jail time? Surely not every case could be settled with money.
The 25th Anniversary CD includes a DVD featuring the music videos for Billie Jean, Beat It and Thriller, and Jackson’s famous performance at the Motown anniversary show. The birth of “The Moonwalk” — when Michael Jackson glides across the stage on an invisible conveyor belt it’s an electrifying moment. Some people argue that the real genius of “Off The Wall” and “Thriller” was the producer Quincy Jones, himself a jazz great. Maybe there’s something to that, but Michael Jackson was already a music biz veteran by the time he worked with Jones, and damn it, he could dance. I’m probably overreading, but in mid-step his poses recall the posture of John Merrick, the Elephant Man. Perhaps Jackson had already identified himself as a freak.
Back in school my friend Aye was the music oracle and source of photocopied Rolling Stone articles, so I asked her how “Off The Wall” and “Thriller” changed the music industry. “Both albums produced hits that are still credible and digestible three decades on,” she replied. “Both albums topped the charts in the age of British synth-pop groups (the New Wave). Both albums recall the time MJ meant Michael Jackson — fantastic singer, songwriter, dancer, not Michael Jordan, NBA superstar.”
In closing I asked myself: Is my enjoyment of “Thriller” in any way diminished by the public perception of Michael Jackson as a weirdo and child molester who changed his skin color and appearance into that of a white woman?
The answer is no.
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