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I was chatting about the late Michael Jackson with Curtis Shaw the other day.
Shaw is the lead singer of a local funk/R&B band called Bee’s Knees, and he pointed out what a shame it is that so many young people will only know Jackson for his scandals.
Trust me, young’uns, there was a time when it was very good to be Michael Jackson and to have been seen enjoying his music.
Which brings me to my Michael Jackson tribute, something I know you have been looking forward to, given the general lack of such tributes in the world.
It was on a family vacation to Orlando, Fla., in 1978 that I discovered the Jacksons’ “Destiny.”
Thanks to my proto-Walkman (a boom box that looked like a Geiger counter with a pair of headphones that resembled, in style and sensibleness, Princess Leia’s hairstyle in the first “Star Wars” film), I was able to enjoy a cassette version of this album, and I became besotted with the song “Shake Your Body (Down to the Ground).”
I am not sure how this song strikes people at first listen today, but back then it sounded like a startlingly fresh batch of dance-pop, not beholden to Motown or disco.
It had an epic quality, despite its silly lyrics. It not only presaged Jackson’s solo material but Prince’s future music as well.
So obsessed was I with all things Jackson back then that I actually bought LaToya Jackson’s self-titled debut (not as bad as you’d think) and Janet Jackson’s self-titled debut (way worse than you’d think).
I saw the Jacksons live in Buffalo, N.Y., during the “Destiny” and “Triumph” tours and then later during the “Victory” tour, and I can report that I was one of few white people in the audience at the first concert. And there weren’t many black people at the latter concert.
While I am usually more than happy to portray an ethnomusicologist, I wouldn’t begin to pretend I have any insight into that trend. It’s just something I noticed.
What I can say is that the music performed during the “Victory” concert was quite a bit colder and more mechanical than the music performed during the “Destiny” concert.
It was in YouTube-free 1983 that I watched Jackson blow everyone away on national TV with his performance (fortified with moonwalk) of “Billie Jean” on the Motown 25th anniversary special.
But the moonwalk is not what I most remember about that appearance.
What I remember is how confident he seemed on that stage.
He had not yet started calling himself (rather desperately, it must be said) the “King of Pop,” but he really did seem kingly in that moment – a musical monarch who would have a long reign.
That reign was even briefer than most pundits acknowledge.
The first reports of Jackson’s odd behavior started surfacing only three years or so after that Motown special and “Bad,” his follow-up to “Thriller,” was a commercial and critical disappointment.
While Jackson continued to sell millions of records and videotapes, his career never really regained the swagger and air of apparent invincibility it had during that three-year period.
But what a three-year period that was.
People whose patience and discernment have been worn to nubbins by decades of unjust rumor-mongering and genuinely cringe-inducing behavior might have a hard time grasping this, but there was a time when Jackson was beloved by all.
Even rock-music fans who normally wouldn’t have touched a dance-pop album with a 10-foot fret board bought copies of “Off the Wall” and “Thriller.”
We now know that whatever sense of self-assuredness Jackson projected was at best an act and at worst a delusion.
His life ended much as Elvis Presley’s did.
He was a victim of his own lack of coping skills, discernment and perspective, but his downfall was aided and abetted by “friends” with an incongruously destructive definition of friendship.
There have been lots of sad revelations in the past week, but the worst moment – it seems to me – was when Jackson’s father Joe used a news conference about his son’s death to announce his new record label.
Michael Jackson may have died a 10-year-old boy in a 50-year-old man’s body, but I suspect part of the blame lies with Joe, who once made a 10-year-old boy work like a 50-year-old man.
