I was about eleven years old when my mother, the wife of comedian Larry Storch, my stepfather, called to tell me about this incredible six year-old kid who had performed with his brothers in an opening act at a gig Larry had done in Gary, Indiana. The brothers were all good, she said, but this kid – well, he was going to be the biggest star ever.
About a month later, I began hearing “I Want You Back” on the radio. Two weeks after that I had bought the vinyl. Forty-six years later, I’m sitting here wondering why MSM can’t place MJ within the pantheon of stars to which he belonged – the tradition of black showmanship tread before him by the likes of Sammy Davis, Jr. (here’s a great video of Jackson performing before Sammy himself) – and afterwards, most recently, by Usher; why we can’t see beyond the salacious facts of his life to its narrative: here was a man who never had a childhood; who by his own account, even before the scandals, didn’t particularly like sex(his older brothers had forced him into inappropriate encounters with female fans before puberty); who grieved over the the loss of his own privacy even as he luxuriated in the fame and fortune it brought him.
Jackson was post-racial before we invented the word; but few remember how his spate of operations that edged toward bizarre began: he wanted to look like Diana Ross, the superstar who had discovered him and his brothers.
Most of us boomers grew up dancing to Jackson at parties; but it was his star turn on the Apollo’s twenty-fifth anniversary that became his breakout performance – this is the clip that endless tv shows threw away in the days after his death. The show had been billed as a reuniting of the long dormant Jackson 5. It became the moment that Michael Jackson came into his own, literally, as he left the stage with the brothers and reemerged from behind the curtain to sing “Billie Jean” and introduce the Moon Walk, a slick refinement of the dance being done everywhere then on street corner. The next morning every black person in America was talking about this performance. Then came “Off the Wall.” And then “Thriller.”
But as Jackson’s balloon exapanded, a new kind of music – rap, the the gangsta image that accompanied it, was also growing from the streets, threatening Jackson’s innocent image, his melodic tunes, and his story-driven videos. The obits Wednesday night kept saying Jackson fell into the giant hole of arrogance when he said his next album would top even Thriller, which would have been almost impossible, since that album remains the only one in the history of musicmaking that’s ever been certified platinum 28 times. ”Bad” sold something like 7 million copies, if my memory serves correctly, and had four #1s. But that same year saw the emergence much harder edged singers like Outkast, Ja Rule, and Nelly Furtado. Jackson failed, and in failing, began to also see the arc of his career swinging down. And it was then that he began to go crazy with the desparation: how would he live, if not as a star? How could he be, if not on stage?
Jackson’s gradual fall from grace also coincided with the growth of the 24-hour news cycle and it’s hyperactive focus on celebrity. The first child molestation case practically built CNN and Entertainment Tonight, and presaged the later hype around Britney Spears. Ironically, it would be TMZ, the celebrity news service which led the pack, for better or worse, on the Spears story, that would be the first to break the news about Jackson’s death.
The best of all the obituary tv moments last nite came on CBS’ “48 Hours,” which had the good sense to run about five minutes of an interview which the now-deceased Ed Bradley did w/ Michael in 2003, in the midst of the craziness around the second child molestation case(the interview itself is textbook how to press while refuse to take the b.s. for an answer). Bradley had first interviewed Michael just after the “Off the Wall” album, and I remember talking to the CBS correspondent about what a sheltered, isolated life Jackson led. Bradley didn’t think Jackson had ever even had a girlfriend. I remembered wondering aloud how, then, Jackson could have written a song as compelling as “She’s Out of My Life.” (note from my colleague David Hadju: ”She’s Out of My Life” was written by one of Quincy Jones’ arranger friends, a guy named Tom Bahler, who ghosted voices for the Partridge Family. What you and Bradley were getting at still holds true, of course: Jackson SANG the song as if he wrote it.) And I remember Bradley looking at me as though I must be a total simpleton. ”Imagination!” he retorted. Bradley said he thought Jackson was probably the most talented entertainer of his generation. I agreed with him on that. Some time later, I did an in-house video for Sony Records. As I watched the footage of Jackson’s breakout performance at the Apollo, it reminded me of one of Sammy Davis, Jr.’s album covers. As I dug out some clips of Davis dancing I found a moment where I could dissolve from Davis using his top hat to Jackson picking up the hat, in such a way so as to symbolize the passing of the torch.
But when the news first broke, it wasn’t Sammy Davis that I first thought of. It was Marilyn Monroe. Like Marilyn, Jackson died in part because he couldn’t think of a way to grow up, to grow old, gracefully, in a way that would allow his audience to love him. And if audiences didn’t love him, then how could he face the Man in the Mirror? That’s the parable of Jackson’s life that the thin veneer of media hype got right, while ignoring the rich vein beneath: the bitter price we exact from the superstars he most admire; the tragic consequences of fame.
