THE THRILLER: The Los Angeles Times is reporting that legendary pop super-superstar Michael Jackson has died at the age of 50 of an apparent heart attack.
Upon his 50th birthday last year, I described him as "an entertainer once of extraordinary talent but for whom 'messed up' doesn't even begin to describe what his upbringing did to him, or what he is generally believed as having done to child victims (or his face)." Right now, I want to focus on that talent, vocally and physically -- a remarkable child prodigy who transitioned into a solo career that blended disco, pop and funk to become a 20th Century global icon on the level of few others -- Charlie Chaplin, Elvis Presley, Muhammad Ali and Princess Diana, I suppose. The man desegregated MTV and turned music video from amiable shlock into art, and really was the defining cultural superstar of my life, to date.
And then, of course, there is the other stuff, and one cannot tell the story of Michael Jackson without speaking of his child victims. There is no ratio of compensation or artistic output which excuses or negates child molestation. None. And then there's the stuff which seems so silly in comparison -- the face, "Blanket," Bubbles, the Pepsi fire, the financial troubles, the Bashir documentary, the Elephant Man, the marriages, Neverland.
Tragedy is the word -- so much potential, so much greatness, and yet so much to decry. I wish my strongest memory would be of circling the Palace Roller Skating rink to "P.Y.T.," but the abused became an abuser and it all got complicated, and now it's over without an Act III that could have included apology and some redemption. Instead, I wonder how often he's been happy in his life. I wonder what happens to his kids. There is so much to say and be sad about tonight.
Matt: Adam’s completely right about how Jackson’s late-in-life, increasingly bizarre, conduct overshadowed his musical career, but what stands out to me is the diversity—from the pure Motown of “ABC” and “Ease On Down The Road” to the funk/disco inflected “Don’t Stop Till You Get Enough to the guitar riff and magnificent insanity in “Black or White” (George Wendt! Macaulay Culkin! Tyra Banks! Slash!) to the hyper-futuristic “Scream” and the pure cheese of “Will You Be There (Theme From “Free Willy”)”. That's what we've lost.
Isaac: First of all, the year that Thriller dominated the music world was a year when my entire playlist was Iron Maiden, Saxon, Fastback, older Deep Purple and Led Zeppelin, and whatever was playing on the King Biscuit Flower Hour. "PYT" was playing when my older sister and I got into a fight that remains legendary in our family and I pushed her through the sheet rock in the bathroom of our rental house. In a summer in which I was seeding a garden of cultural marginalization -- a small but not insignificant patch of which I tend to this day -- Thriller was a little like the "Imperial March" from the Star Wars score, the soundtrack of a vast army out to crush everything that was different and good. I was not entirely accurate in my reading of the music, having given Jackson too little credit and spandex too much, but I've never shaken that visceral reaction to Jackson's work. Later, I grew to despise Jackson the person. I harbor a deep conviction that he, more so than even OJ, puts the lie to the notion that we can punish misdeeds equally no matter how rich or powerful the perpetrator. Even leaving aside the stuff we don't know about or will never confirm, the things that are undeniable -- the opportunistic anti-Semitism, the baby-dangling, the race-masking plastic surgery, to name a few -- were plenty sufficient. I may like a few of his songs (more accurately, a few covers of his songs), but I'm unlikely ever to remember him fondly.
Kim: It's not so much that I will remember Michael Jackson himself particularly fondly, but it's hard for me not to remember the phenomenon that was Michael Jackson without a big helping of nostalgia and respect for a man who was, at one point, an unprecedentedly popular artist. If Wikipedia is to be believed, Thriller is the best-selling album ever by a multiple of two. I was 11 in 1982 -- right in the sweet spot of pop fandom. I remember two things particularly clearly: a junior high school classmate who wore one of those Beat It red zippery jackets for a solid year in seventh grade without a whiff of irony, and waiting, waiting, waiting at the United Skates of America roller rink that same year for the big video screen to unfurl from the ceiling and show us all the 13-minute wonder that was the "Thriller" video for the first time. My best friend had one of Jackson's own sequined gloves, given to her by a cousin who had some connection to the artist -- I remember thinking how oddly small it was for a worldwide star. Jackson obviously turned out to be a wackadoo of singular proportions -- almost as bizarre as he was popular for a period of time there -- but I can't think of any other artist at any other point in my life who owned the spotlight the way Michael Jackson did in the early-mid eighties.
Alex: My earliest memories of Michael Jackson were of cartoon form on "The Jackson 5ive" (yes, I am ancient) and in a duet with Roberta Flack from "Free to Be You and Me", which is all the more poignant today. But for me, Michael Jackson is best remembered by a cassette tape of Thriller purchased along with a cassette of 1999 at The Electric Fetus in Duluth, Minn., during my final summer at summer camp as a birthday present from my dad who had made the drive up to visit. Those two tapes, in many ways, always reminded me of that summer, one more rooted in my the bubble gum pop of my childhood, the other representing my expanding musical and cultural tastes. 1999 got more listens over the years, to be honest, but Thriller, still held a special place in my heart. I later got the chance to see Jackson live at the Palace outside Detroit in the summer of 1989 for free. By then my tastes had evolved way beyond Jackson and I remember heading into thinking I was going mainly for the camp value, but, wow, say what you will about the two decades that followed (at that point his eccentricities were still eccentric and not criminal), the guy could put on a show. It's a shame we'll never get to see if he could put it all back together again in the London shows.
The Pathetic Earthling:It was the fall of 7th grade when Thriller was released everyone – except the most culturally reactionary – was a fan. Like Isaac, I think I studied in such anti-populist sentiment. In retrospect, of course, Thriller was a brilliant album. Perhaps not as big of a break from Off the Wall than Off the Wall was from his Jackson 5 stuff, nor as revolutionary, but brilliant. But what gives me a bit of comfort is that the culture was blessed with the best of his work. Unlike the mid-to-late-1990s work of Stevie Ray Vaughn, or early 2000s solo work of Kurt Cobain, there’s no alternate universe that branched out from today where we would have seen anything worth missing. And so, for all time, people will have a chance to see the entire arc of a real talent. In all events, I hope he has found the peace that was so obviously missing from every moment of his life.
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