Michael Jackson part 1

For a while, I was wondering whether to include Michael Jackson in this list. Was he straight, gay, bisexual, or a pedophile? There are arguments to be made for all of the above assumptions. I even asked the question publicly, here, some time ago. One of the great friends of GCL (Alan) said "I think you should go with Michael. He's too important to ignore." That is my view as well. MJ is too important to ignore.

First let's make one thing clear: I will make no argument for or against his pedophile accusations. It's a sordid affair either way - if he really was, it's terrible, if, on the other hand, some money-grabbing parents used the fact that he liked to be surrounded by children as the means to blackmail him, that's sad, especially as to what it says about the morals of our society. Anyway, the man had an early death, which is punishment enough if he were guilty. As to why, in his own words, he liked having children around, his answer to musician Thomas Dolby was, "I never really had a childhood."

The straight or bisexual camp brings up his two marriages, to Elvis' daughter Lisa Marie Presley (1994-96) and to nurse Debbie Rowe (1996-99), as evidence, as well as his three children.

The gay or bisexual camp offers published testimonies to support its claim: Ian Halperin, in his unauthorised biography of Jackson, claims that the star was allegedly “madly in love” with a half-Asian construction worker, who was in his early 20s, an affair which began in 2007 in Vegas, as well as one with an aspiring actor, working as a waiter, who visited Jackson’s Hollywood Hills home almost every night for three weeks during a short but passionate affair.

Jason Pfeiffer, an executive working for Jackson's dermatologist Arnold Klein, alleges he enjoyed a string of dates with the superstar during his final weeks - and they became more than close friends.

Liberace's former boyfriend, Scott Thorson, insists he and Michael Jackson were lovers for 'six or seven years'. He allegedly met Jackson in the late 1970s, introduced to him by Liberace himself.

All these claims are neither here nor there. Neither his marriages are conclusive in themselves, nor these guys who made the above statements are altogether believable. So, let's describe his sexuality as (?) and go on with his story.

No single artist – indeed, no movement or force – has eclipsed what Michael Jackson accomplished in the first years of his adult solo career. Jackson changed the balance in the pop world in a way that nobody has since. He forced rock & roll and the mainstream press to acknowledge that the biggest pop star in the world could be young and black, and in doing so he broke down more barriers than anybody. But he is also among the best proofs in living memory of poet William Carlos Williams' famous verse: "The pure products of America/go crazy."

When Jackson died on June 25th, 2009, of apparent cardiac arrest in Los Angeles at age 50, the outpouring of first shock, then grief, was the largest, most instantaneous of its kind the world had ever known, short of the events of September 11th, 2001. What immediately became obvious in all the coverage is that despite the dishonor that had come upon him, the world still respected Michael Jackson for his music – for the singles he made as a Motown prodigy, for the visionary disco he made as a young adult, for Thriller, a stunningly vibrant album that blew up around the world on a scale we'll never see again, for his less impactful but still one-of-kind later work, even for his cheesy ballads. In 2009 Jackson was the biggest-selling artist in the world.

Michael's father, Joe Jackson, was a crane operator during the 1950s, in Gary, Indiana – a place in which, according to Dave Marsh's Trapped: Michael Jackson and the Crossover Dream, quotas were imposed on how many black workers were allowed to advance into skilled trades in the city's mills. Michael's mother, Katherine Scruse, was from Alabama but was living in East Chicago, Indiana, when she met Joe. She was a devout Jehovah's Witness, who had grown up hearing country & western music, and although she entertained her own dreams of singing and playing music, a bout of polio had left her with a permanent limp. Joe and Katherine were a young couple, married in 1949, and began a large family immediately. Their first child, Maureen (Rebbie), was born in 1950, followed by Sigmund (Jackie) in 1951, Toriano (Tito) in 1953, Jermaine in 1954, La Toya in 1956 and Marlon in 1957. Michael was born on August 29th, 1958, and Randy was born in 1961. Janet, the last born, wouldn't arrive until 1966. A sixth brother, Marlon's twin Brandon, died shortly after birth.

Michael and his siblings heard music all the time. Joe had a strong inclination toward the rowdy electric urban blues that had developed in nearby Chicago, and also for early rock & roll. Along with his brothers, Joe formed a band, the Falcons, and made some modest extra income from playing bars and college dances around Gary. When the Falcons folded, Joe retired his guitar to a bedroom closet, and he guarded it jealously, just as he did everything in his domain. Katherine, though, sometimes led her children in country-music singalongs, during which she taught them to harmonize.

Soon he was working all his sons into an ensemble. Though Joe was at heart a blues man, he appreciated that contemporary R&B – Motown and soul – was the music that attracted his sons. Joe groomed Jermaine to be lead singer, but one day, Katherine saw Michael, just four at the time, singing along to a James Brown song, and Michael – in both his voice and moves – was already eclipsing his older brother. She told Joe, "I think we have another lead singer." Katherine would later say that sometimes Michael's precocious abilities frightened her – she probably saw that his childhood might give way to stardom – but she also recognized that there was something undeniable about his young voice, that it could communicate longings and experiences that no child could yet know.

Michael was also a natural center of attention. He loved singing and dancing, and because he was so young – such an unexpected vehicle for a rousing, dead-on soulful expression – he became an obvious point of attention when he and his brothers performed. Little Michael Jackson was cute, but little Michael Jackson was also dynamite.

By Joe's own admission he was unrelenting. "When I found out that my kids were interested in becoming entertainers, I really went to work with them," he told Time in 1984. "I rehearsed them about three years before I turned them loose. I saw that after they became better, they enjoyed it more." That isn't always how Michael remembered it. "We'd perform for him, and he'd critique us," he wrote in Moonwalk. "If you messed up, you got hit, sometimes with a belt, sometimes with a switch… I'd get beaten for things that happened mostly outside rehearsal. Those moments – and probably many more – created a loss that Jackson never got over. Again, from Moonwalk: "One of the few things I regret most is never being able to have a real closeness with him. He built a shell around himself over the years, and once he stopped talking about our family business, he found it hard to relate to us. We'd all be together, and he'd just leave the room."

Around 1964, Joe began entering the Jackson brothers in talent contests, many of which they handily won. A single they cut for the local Steeltown recording label around 1967-68, Big Boy, achieved local success.

"At first I told myself they were just kids," Joe said in 1971. "I soon realized they were very professional. There was nothing to wait for. The boys were ready for stage training, and I ran out of reasons to keep them from the school of hard knocks." In 1966, he booked his sons into Gary's black nightclubs, as well as some in Chicago. Many of the clubs served alcohol, and several featured strippers. "This is quite a life for a nine-year-old," Katherine would remind her husband, but Joe was undaunted.

"I used to stand in the wings of this one place in Chicago and watch a lady whose name was Mary Rose," Michael recalled. "This girl would take off her clothes and her panties and throw them to the audience. The men would pick them up and sniff them and yell. My brothers and I would be watching all this, taking it in, and my father wouldn't mind." Sam Moore, of Sam and Dave, recalled Joe locking Michael – who was maybe 10 years old – in a dressing room while Joe went off on his own adventures. Michael sat alone for hours. He also later recalled having to go onstage even if he'd been sick in bed that day.

Michael and his brothers began to tour on what was still referred to as the "chitlin circuit" – a network of black venues throughout the US (Joe made sure his sons kept their school studies up to date and maintained their grades at an acceptable level.) In these theaters and clubs, the Jacksons opened for numerous R&B artists, including the Temptations, Sam and Dave, Jackie Wilson, Jerry Butler, the O'Jays and Etta James, though no one was as important to Michael as James Brown. "I knew every step, every grunt, every spin and turn," he recalled. "He would give a performance that would exhaust you, just wear you out emotionally. His whole physical presence, the fire coming out of his pores, would be phenomenal. You'd feel every bead of sweat on his face, and you'd know what he was going through… You couldn't teach a person what I've learned just standing and watching."

The most famous site on these tours was the Apollo in New York, where the Jackson 5 won an Amateur Night show in 1967. Joe had invested everything he had in his sons' success, though of course any real recognition or profit would be his success as well. While on the circuit, Joe had come to know Gladys Knight, who was enjoying a string of small successes with Motown, America's pre-eminent black pop label. With the encouragement of both Knight and Motown R&B star Bobby Taylor, Joe took his sons to Detroit to audition for the label. In 1969, Motown moved the Jackson family to Los Angeles, set them up at the homes of Diana Ross and the label's owner, Berry Gordy, and began grooming them. Michael remembered Gordy telling them, "I'm gonna make you the biggest thing in the world… Your first record will be a number one, your second record will be a number one, and so will your third record. Three number-one records in a row."

In 1959, Gordy founded Tamla Records – which soon became known as Motown – in Detroit. By the time he signed the Jackson 5, Motown had long enjoyed its status as the most important black-owned and -operated record label in America, spawning the successes of Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, the Temptations, Mary Wells, the Four Tops, and Diana Ross and the Supremes, among others. In contrast to Stax and Atlantic, Motown's soul wasn't especially bluesy or gritty, nor was it a music that spoke explicitly to social matters or to the black struggle in the US. By its nature the label exemplified black achievement, but its music was calibrated for assimilation by the pop mainstream – which of course meant a white audience as much as a black one (the label's early records bore the legend "The Sound of Young America"). At the time, rock music was increasingly becoming a medium for album-length works. By contrast, Motown maintained its identity as a factory that manufactured hit singles, despite groundbreaking albums by Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye. Gordy was looking for a singles-oriented group that would not only deliver hits for young people, but would also give them somebody to seize as their own, to identify with and to adore. The Jackson 5, Gordy said, would exemplify "bubblegum soul."

The Jackson 5's first three singles – I Want You Back, ABC and The Love You Save – became Number One hits as Gordy had promised, and so did a fourth, I'll Be There. The group was established as the breakout sensation of 1970. Fred Rice, who would create Jackson 5 merchandise for Motown, said, "I call 'em the black Beatles…It's unbelievable." And he was right. The Jackson 5 defined the transition from 1960s soul to 1970s pop as much as Sly and the Family Stone did, and at a time when many Americans were uneasy about minority aspirations to power, the Jackson 5 conveyed an agreeable ideal of black pride, one that reflected kinship and aspiration rather than opposition. They represented a realization that the civil rights movement made possible, and that couldn't have happened even five or six years earlier. Moreover, the Jackson 5 earned critical respectability.

I Want You Back, released on October 7, 1969, was a dynamite debut, which would eventually sell six million copies worldwide and be inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. It ranks #121 on Rolling Stone's list of the '500 Greatest Songs of All Time' and also ranks ninth on Rolling Stone's list of the '100 Greatest Pop Songs since 1963'.

I Want You Back was also in their debut album, Diana Ross Presents The Jackson 5, which peaked at #5 in the US. In the same album there was also their rendition of Smokey Robinson's Who's Loving You:

Their second #1 single was the title track of their second album, ABC (#4, US), released in 1970.

The Love You Save, their third #1 single, was also found in this album:

Their fourth #1 in a row, another classic called I'll Be There was the lead single from their third album, simply titled Third Album (#4, US), also released in 1970.

The most successful single ever released by the Jackson 5, I'll Be There sold 4.2 million copies in the United States, and 6.1 million copies worldwide. Not only that, but when it was covered by Mariah Carey in 1992 and was released as a single, it flew yet again all the way to the top of the charts.

The second single from the Third Album, Mama's Pearl, broke their string of US #1 singles, but only just; it peaked at #2.

They released a third album in 1970, their fourth in less than 12 months. It was a Christmas album. Their next album proper, Maybe Tomorrow, was released in 1971 and peaked at #11. Never Can Say Goodbye was their first single off the album; like the single before, this also peaked at #2.

Gloria Gaynor's disco version was released in 1974 and made #9 in the US and #2 in the UK:

In 1987 the Communards took the song to #4 in the UK and to #2 on the US Hot Dance/Disco chart.

The title track of Maybe Tomorrow was their folow-up single; it peaked at #20:

From the same album, which was the first Jackson 5 album I ever bought, here's the album track She's Good:

Just two years after their first release, the Jackson 5 were popular enough for a Greatest Hits album. It contained all their singles, plus a new recording, Sugar Daddy, which was released as a single and peaked at #10, US.

And though they functioned as a group, there was no question who the Jackson 5's true star was, and who they depended on. Michael's voice also worked beyond conventional notions of male-soul vocals – even worked beyond gender. Cultural critic and musician Jason King, in an outstanding essay, recently wrote, "It is not an exaggeration to say that he was the most advanced popular singer of his age in the history of recorded music. His untrained tenor was uncanny. By all rights, he shouldn't have had as much vocal authority as he did at such a young age." So, naturally, Michael was groomed for a parallel career as a solo act. His first solo single, Got To Be There, released on 24 January 1972, peaked at #4 in the US, at #5 in the UK and at #3 in Canada.

His follow-up solo hit was Rockin' Robin, a cover version of Bobby Day's 1958 hit. It equalled Day's #2 peak in the US, and peaked at #3 in the UK.

His follow-up was I Wanna Be Where You Are (#16, US):

... while in Europe his third solo hit was Michael's version of Bill Withers' Aint No Sunshine (#8, UK and #17, the Netherlands):

The song that made me fall in love with Michael was Ben. Ben was originally written for Donny Osmond, but was offered to Jackson as Osmond was on tour at the time and unavailable for recording. It was the song that played during the closing credits of the movie of the same name, the sequel to Willard. Ben was a killer rat. I didn't know that at the time (no Internet, you see). I thought the song was sung to a boy like me. The lyrics could certainly be construed as such:

Ben, the two of us need look no more
We both found what we were looking for
With a friend to call my own
I'll never be alone
And you my friend will see
You've got a friend in me

Ben, you're always running here and there
You feel you're not wanted anywhere
If you ever look behind
And don't like what you find
There's something you should know
You've got a place to go

I used to say "I" and "me"
Now it's "us", now it's "we"

Ben, most people would turn you away
I don't listen to a word they say
They don't see you as I do
I wish they would try to
I'm sure they'd think again
If they had a friend like Ben 

The song won the Golden Globe and was nominated for the Best Song Oscar. It peaked at #1 in the US and Australia, #6 in Canada, #7 in the UK, #15 in Ireland and #18 in New Zealand.

Ben was also the name of Michael's next album (1972, US peak: #5). From the same album, here's Greatest Show On Earth:

Meanwhile, the Jackson 5 were also active: Lookin' Through the Windows was their 1972 album (#7, US). The lead single was Little Bitty Pretty One, a song written and originally recorded by Bobby Day, and popularized by Thurston Harris in 1957. The Jackson 5 version peaked at #13, US:

Their next single was the album's title track. It peaked at #16, US, as well as at #9, UK:

Doctor My Eyes, a Europe-only single (UK #9) was a cover of the Jackson Browne US hit:

Their next album was Skywriter (1973). This is one of the least successful albums the Jackson brothers ever created (#44, US). Lead single Corner Of The Sky made #18 in the US:

Hallelujah Day peaked at #28 in the US and #20 in the UK:

Meanwhile, Michael's next solo album was released on April 13, 1973. Called Music & Me, it peaked at #27 in Australia, but only managed #92 in the US. Lead single was Happy, the theme song from Lady Sings the Blues, the Diana Ross starring Billie Holiday biopic. The song was written by pop royalty, Michel Legrand and Smokey Robinson. However its chart fortunes were not good: #21 in New Zealand and #31 in Australia. In the UK, where it was released as a single later on, it could only reach #52.

Music and Me only managed to make an impression in the Netherlands, where it peaked at #29:

Michael's last solo album for Motown, Forever, Michael, was generally well received by contemporary music critics, but was not commercially successful worldwide. Except for the peak position of #101 in the US, the album did not chart on any other music charts. The closest it got to a hit single was with Just a Little Bit of You (#23, US):

It did however contain One Day in Your Life. At the time it was just an album track, but was released as a single in 1981, to cash in on the success of the Off The Wall album. It was a clever decision, even if it only made #55 in the US, because it made #9 in Australia, #2 in the Netherlands and #1 in Ireland and in the UK, where it was the sixth best-selling single of 1981:

Meanwhile, the Jackson 5 released a second album in 1973. G.I.T.: Get It Together peaked at only #100 in the US, although it did make #4 on the R&B chart. The single Get It Together was a #28 Hot 100 hit and a #2 R&B hit:

It was with Dancing Machine that the Jackson 5 returned to their former glory: a #2 Hot 100 hit and a #1 R&B hit, as well as the receiver of a Grammy nomination. The song, which reportedly sold over three million copies, popularized the physically complicated Robot dance technique, devised by Charles Washington in the late 1960s.

Dancing Machine, originally recorded for the group's 1973 album G.I.T.: Get It Together, was also the title track of their 1974 album Dancing Machine released in 1974 as a remix for a response to the success of the single. After two less successful albums, this one returned the group to the Top 20 in the US (#16) and Canada (#12). Whatever You Got, I Want was also a single, a #38 Hot 100 hit and a #3 R&B hit:

I Am Love was an even bigger hit: #15 Hot 100 and #5 R&B:

Their last Motown album, Moving Violation, was a lesser hit (#36, US). The only single from it to make the US pop chart was Forever Came Today (#60 Hot 100 and #6 R&B):

All I Do Is Think of You didn't make the Hot 100. It peaked at #50 on the US R&B chart, but over the years, the song gained cult status as a ballad favorite for Jackson 5 fans:

For at least the first few years, Michael and his brothers seemed omnipresent and enjoyed universal praise. But soon they experienced some hard limitations. The music they were making wasn't really of invention – they didn't write or produce it – and after Michael was relegated to recording throwback fare like Rockin' Robin, in 1972, he worried that the Jackson 5 would become an "oldies act" before he left adolescence. The Jackson 5 began pushing to produce themselves and to create their own sound. Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye had demonstrated an ability to grow and change – and sell records – when given creative leeway, and with 1974's Dancing Machine, the Jacksons proved they could thrive when they seized a funk groove.

Motown, however, wouldn't consider it. "They not only refused to grant our requests," Michael said in Moonwalk, "they told us it was taboo to even mention that we wanted to do our own music." Michael understood what this meant: Not only would Motown not let the Jackson 5 grow, they also wouldn't let him grow. Michael bided his time, studying the producers he and his brothers worked with. "I was like a hawk preying in the night," he said. "I'd watch everything. They didn't get away with nothing without me seeing. I really wanted to get into it."

In 1975, Joe Jackson negotiated a new deal for his sons – this time with Epic Records, for a 500 percent royalty-rate increase. The contract also stipulated solo albums from the Jacksons (though the arrangement did not include Jermaine, who married Gordy's daughter Hazel and stayed with Motown, creating a rift with the family that lasted for several years). Motown tried to block the deal, and in the end stopped the brothers from using the Jackson 5 name; the group would now be known as the Jacksons.

The Epic deal proved to be a good one for the Jacksons as a group, but it was Michael's solo career that would rise to the stratosphere. This is a good place to stop. Next time we'll deal with the epic Epic years. See you then!