In Rhythm with Fame
Published in the Weekend Review section of Gulf News
17 July 2009
By Gordon Robison, Special to Weekend Review
Michael Jackson was a star in his time. Whether he remains so only time will tell.
Michael Jackson first entered my consciousness in 1971 through the unlikely avenue of a children's cartoon.
At the time I was 7 years old and paid little attention to pop music. Like many American children of my generation, however, I spent pretty much every Saturday morning camped in front of the television set, absorbing five or six hours of cartoons.
From 1971 to 1973 these included Jackson 5ive, in which cartoon versions of Jackson and his brothers tumbled through predictably ridiculous adventures under the nominally adult supervision of a cartoon version of Motown Records founder Berry Gordy.
If I gave the matter any thought, I probably assumed the Jackson Five were a creation of whomever it was that dreamt up Saturday morning cartoons. It was only some time in 1972 or 1973 that I noticed the songs from the TV show coming on the radio and it dawned on me that Michael and his brothers might exist in flesh and blood, not merely in pen and ink.
Michael, of course, was the star of Jackson 5ive. Even at the age of 10 he outshone his older brothers to a degree that, in retrospect, has to have embarrassed and galled them (have you ever known a teenager who enjoyed being upstaged by a pre-adolescent sibling?). A decade later the brothers were gone and Jackson on his own was so famous that when he recorded a couple of smarmy duets with Paul McCartney the critical consensus held that Jackson, not the former Beatle, was the one slumming.
Steve Knopper, in his highly readable account of the modern music industry, Appetite for Self-Destruction, credits Jackson with more-or-less singlehandedly saving CBS Records not once but twice: first with 1979's Off the Wall, which sold 8 million copies in the United States alone and rescued the label from a post-disco tailspin that had appeared terminal.
Three years later, with the label coming off its worst financial year since 1971, Thriller produced an unheard-of seven hit singles (most albums are lucky to have two) and sales figures that eventually made it the bestselling album ever.
Jackson, by then, had become an icon. Even if you loathed his music, as a cultural presence he was unavoidable. He was that rare pop star so big that even your grandmother knew who he was.
As it always does when someone this famous dies abruptly - even someone whose best work lay a quarter century in the past - the public and media reaction followed a predictable arc.
Initial shock quickly gave way to exaggerated public mourning marked by outsized claims that the deceased star altered society in some transcendent way. In the days after his death Jackson, as a black American, was compared to genuine public leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr and genuine social trailblazers such as Jackie Robinson (the first African-American to play Major League baseball).
Anyone taking his cue from the eulogies could be forgiven for believing Jackson to be the first black star who broke through to a mass audience in white America.
In fact, Motown's Berry Gordy had been earning enormous sums of money selling Black Pop to White America for a decade before he set eyes on Michael and his brothers. Motown itself built on the crossover success of an earlier generation of African-American artistes such as Harry Belafonte, Nat King Cole and Sam Cooke. We have now entered the requisite Third Phase of celebrity mourning. This is the part where the media, a bit embarrassed at having overdone it during Phase Two, remind us of the strange, and occasionally downright creepy, aspects of Jackson's life and personality: that decade-and-a-half during which his life became an uncomfortably public train wreck.
Michael Jackson c 1984 was an omnipresent pop star. Michael Jackson c 2005 was an over-the-top parody of celebrity weirdness (shopping in Bahrain while wearing a burqa? Really?).
Going forward, the seemingly inevitable battles over Jackson's estate and the custody of his three children are likely to keep these more sordid aspects of his life on public display for a long time to come.
The truth, of course, is that one cannot really judge a celebrity's cultural legacy or lasting impact in the weeks immediately following his or her death. Certain things become apparent only with time. In some cases death can bestow, or at least enhance, a role that was merely tangential while the celebrity lived. We are, right now, much too close to Jackson to say with any certainty how he will be viewed a decade or two hence.
It has long been one of the grim truths of the entertainment industry that an especially efficient way to achieve transcendent stardom is to die just as one's career seems poised to go into overdrive.
Would we remain obsessed with Buddy Holly if he were still around today, at age 72? A faded icon working the nostalgia circuit of small- and medium-size cities or finishing up his thirtysomethingth year as the headliner at some Vegas casino?
James Dean died in 1955, aged 24. Had he lived, would the star of Rebel Without A Cause and East of Eden, at 78, continue to be a box office powerhouse, such as Sean Connery (born a mere five months before Dean)? Or would he long ago have become one of those ageing ex-film stars who are trotted out to great applause at the Oscars each year but have not made a film worth mentioning since, say, 1980.
Would an old Dean, even one who had pulled off Hollywood's hardest trick and aged gracefully, have any chance of achieving the sort of transcendent fame his ghost has enjoyed for half a century?
Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain, River Phoenix, Aaliyah and, more recently, Heath Ledger. The list goes on and on.
These, however, are all stars whose tragedy lies in their lost potential. Michael Jackson was something different: a star whose best work was obviously behind him but who was trying to recapture the spotlight.
Thus, the best analogue to Jackson may be not Ledger or Dean but John Lennon. Like Jackson, the iconic Beatle died abruptly: murdered by a deranged fan on the steps of his New York City apartment building in December 1980.
Like Jackson he was past his prime but trying to launch a comeback - a few weeks before his death Lennon and his wife, Yoko Ono, had released Double Fantasy, his first album in five years. Similarly, at the time of his death Jackson, after a long absence from the public stage, was preparing for a head-spinningly long series of 50 concerts in London.
There are, of course, differences. At the time of his death Michael Jackson was a decade older than Lennon - and at least a decade further removed from his glory years.
Lennon's legal troubles over immigration and drugs seem almost quaint compared to the sensational accusations of child molestation and the circus-like legal proceedings that marked Jackson's final 15 years.
Perhaps most importantly, Lennon's posthumous metamorphosis into a something approaching a cult figure has had relatively little to do with his music. He has, in fact, become two people. First, there is "John", as in "John, Paul, George and Ringo". Then there is "John Lennon". The former was a rock star. The latter is a pacifist icon, one whose relationship to music often seems, at best, tangential.
Despite what some of Jackson's more enthusiastic eulogists have claimed, nothing in his life would seem to point towards this sort of apotheosis.
Jackson was supremely about music and the pleasure music can bring. Unlike Lennon or Bono, however, he never seemed to be about anything bigger than music.
That is not a criticism, merely an observation. It is nice when celebrities try to harness their fame to the service of something bigger but no law or moral code requires them to do so.
For now, any attempt to discuss Jackson's legacy may make an interesting parlour game but is ultimately premature. He was famous as a child, went on to become, for a time, the most famous person on Earth and ended up as the worst sort of cautionary tale about the dangers of celebrity.
Whether that, and a lot of songs that were hits 20 or 30 years ago, add up to immortality, time alone will tell.
Gordon Robison teaches political science at the University of Vermont. His opinion column on US politics appears alternate Wednesdays in Gulf News. Please visit his blog at: www.mideastanalysis.com.
Michael Jackson was a star in his time. Whether he remains so only time will tell.
Michael Jackson first entered my consciousness in 1971 through the unlikely avenue of a children's cartoon.
At the time I was 7 years old and paid little attention to pop music. Like many American children of my generation, however, I spent pretty much every Saturday morning camped in front of the television set, absorbing five or six hours of cartoons.
From 1971 to 1973 these included Jackson 5ive, in which cartoon versions of Jackson and his brothers tumbled through predictably ridiculous adventures under the nominally adult supervision of a cartoon version of Motown Records founder Berry Gordy.
If I gave the matter any thought, I probably assumed the Jackson Five were a creation of whomever it was that dreamt up Saturday morning cartoons. It was only some time in 1972 or 1973 that I noticed the songs from the TV show coming on the radio and it dawned on me that Michael and his brothers might exist in flesh and blood, not merely in pen and ink.
Michael, of course, was the star of Jackson 5ive. Even at the age of 10 he outshone his older brothers to a degree that, in retrospect, has to have embarrassed and galled them (have you ever known a teenager who enjoyed being upstaged by a pre-adolescent sibling?). A decade later the brothers were gone and Jackson on his own was so famous that when he recorded a couple of smarmy duets with Paul McCartney the critical consensus held that Jackson, not the former Beatle, was the one slumming.
Steve Knopper, in his highly readable account of the modern music industry, Appetite for Self-Destruction, credits Jackson with more-or-less singlehandedly saving CBS Records not once but twice: first with 1979's Off the Wall, which sold 8 million copies in the United States alone and rescued the label from a post-disco tailspin that had appeared terminal.
Three years later, with the label coming off its worst financial year since 1971, Thriller produced an unheard-of seven hit singles (most albums are lucky to have two) and sales figures that eventually made it the bestselling album ever.
Jackson, by then, had become an icon. Even if you loathed his music, as a cultural presence he was unavoidable. He was that rare pop star so big that even your grandmother knew who he was.
As it always does when someone this famous dies abruptly - even someone whose best work lay a quarter century in the past - the public and media reaction followed a predictable arc.
Initial shock quickly gave way to exaggerated public mourning marked by outsized claims that the deceased star altered society in some transcendent way. In the days after his death Jackson, as a black American, was compared to genuine public leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr and genuine social trailblazers such as Jackie Robinson (the first African-American to play Major League baseball).
Anyone taking his cue from the eulogies could be forgiven for believing Jackson to be the first black star who broke through to a mass audience in white America.
In fact, Motown's Berry Gordy had been earning enormous sums of money selling Black Pop to White America for a decade before he set eyes on Michael and his brothers. Motown itself built on the crossover success of an earlier generation of African-American artistes such as Harry Belafonte, Nat King Cole and Sam Cooke. We have now entered the requisite Third Phase of celebrity mourning. This is the part where the media, a bit embarrassed at having overdone it during Phase Two, remind us of the strange, and occasionally downright creepy, aspects of Jackson's life and personality: that decade-and-a-half during which his life became an uncomfortably public train wreck.
Michael Jackson c 1984 was an omnipresent pop star. Michael Jackson c 2005 was an over-the-top parody of celebrity weirdness (shopping in Bahrain while wearing a burqa? Really?).
Going forward, the seemingly inevitable battles over Jackson's estate and the custody of his three children are likely to keep these more sordid aspects of his life on public display for a long time to come.
The truth, of course, is that one cannot really judge a celebrity's cultural legacy or lasting impact in the weeks immediately following his or her death. Certain things become apparent only with time. In some cases death can bestow, or at least enhance, a role that was merely tangential while the celebrity lived. We are, right now, much too close to Jackson to say with any certainty how he will be viewed a decade or two hence.
It has long been one of the grim truths of the entertainment industry that an especially efficient way to achieve transcendent stardom is to die just as one's career seems poised to go into overdrive.
Would we remain obsessed with Buddy Holly if he were still around today, at age 72? A faded icon working the nostalgia circuit of small- and medium-size cities or finishing up his thirtysomethingth year as the headliner at some Vegas casino?
James Dean died in 1955, aged 24. Had he lived, would the star of Rebel Without A Cause and East of Eden, at 78, continue to be a box office powerhouse, such as Sean Connery (born a mere five months before Dean)? Or would he long ago have become one of those ageing ex-film stars who are trotted out to great applause at the Oscars each year but have not made a film worth mentioning since, say, 1980.
Would an old Dean, even one who had pulled off Hollywood's hardest trick and aged gracefully, have any chance of achieving the sort of transcendent fame his ghost has enjoyed for half a century?
Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain, River Phoenix, Aaliyah and, more recently, Heath Ledger. The list goes on and on.
These, however, are all stars whose tragedy lies in their lost potential. Michael Jackson was something different: a star whose best work was obviously behind him but who was trying to recapture the spotlight.
Thus, the best analogue to Jackson may be not Ledger or Dean but John Lennon. Like Jackson, the iconic Beatle died abruptly: murdered by a deranged fan on the steps of his New York City apartment building in December 1980.
Like Jackson he was past his prime but trying to launch a comeback - a few weeks before his death Lennon and his wife, Yoko Ono, had released Double Fantasy, his first album in five years. Similarly, at the time of his death Jackson, after a long absence from the public stage, was preparing for a head-spinningly long series of 50 concerts in London.
There are, of course, differences. At the time of his death Michael Jackson was a decade older than Lennon - and at least a decade further removed from his glory years.
Lennon's legal troubles over immigration and drugs seem almost quaint compared to the sensational accusations of child molestation and the circus-like legal proceedings that marked Jackson's final 15 years.
Perhaps most importantly, Lennon's posthumous metamorphosis into a something approaching a cult figure has had relatively little to do with his music. He has, in fact, become two people. First, there is "John", as in "John, Paul, George and Ringo". Then there is "John Lennon". The former was a rock star. The latter is a pacifist icon, one whose relationship to music often seems, at best, tangential.
Despite what some of Jackson's more enthusiastic eulogists have claimed, nothing in his life would seem to point towards this sort of apotheosis.
Jackson was supremely about music and the pleasure music can bring. Unlike Lennon or Bono, however, he never seemed to be about anything bigger than music.
That is not a criticism, merely an observation. It is nice when celebrities try to harness their fame to the service of something bigger but no law or moral code requires them to do so.
For now, any attempt to discuss Jackson's legacy may make an interesting parlour game but is ultimately premature. He was famous as a child, went on to become, for a time, the most famous person on Earth and ended up as the worst sort of cautionary tale about the dangers of celebrity.
Whether that, and a lot of songs that were hits 20 or 30 years ago, add up to immortality, time alone will tell.
Gordon Robison teaches political science at the University of Vermont. His opinion column on US politics appears alternate Wednesdays in Gulf News. Please visit his blog at: www.mideastanalysis.com.
