In the September 6, 1980 Billboard, LaToya Jackson's first single debuted on the R&B Chart. Produced by Michael, "Night Time Lover" peaked at Number 59. Mother Katherine wasn't thrilled. She preferred the version Michael scrapped after "reconsidering" the song. "Michael's jealous," she told LaToya. "He's scared somebody in the family will be bigger than him, so he had to go back in the studio, make it different, and now it isn't as good." LaToya admits to liking the first take better. Still, she trusted her brother's instincts. She was surprised he was working with her at all. After they were finished recording, Michael confided he resisted initially only "because Joseph wanted me to." LaToya understood: "Nothing more needed to be said."
Michael used his voice in the studio. "Neither he nor I plays the piano expertly," LaToya explains. So, Michael sang the rhythm of instrumentation he wanted: "Dat, da-da-dat, dat, da-da-dat—okay, that's what the drums are going to do, while the bass is going, a-dum, dum, dum, dum, a-dum, dum, dum, dum." LaToya was shocked by his professionalism. "I expected we'd joke around," but Michael addressed her "over the studio intercom, as if talking to a complete stranger." What he produced sounds borrowed, a quick-tempo homage to Nile Rodgers' Chic disco. Musically, Michael's chorus evokes "I Want Your Love." But LaToya's delivery differs from the cool repose that Nile directs with precise phrasing. Chic's ladies want that love coyly, measured over syllables that bounce. They've noticed someone staring from across the dancefloor. They're flirting back melodically. The romance comes from hypnotic a-dum's and Nile's steady strum. LaToya's needs are a little more urgent. The sister who listened only to Frank Sinatra coos just as Michael wants: "Baby, save my soul tonight / I need your lovin' / This is right for me / Your touch is strong, you see / Can I hold on and be your night time lover?" That grip fills a hole.
Earlier that year, Michael's disappointment created another one. At the Grammy's, Michael won "Best R&B Vocal Performance—Male," the only nomination Off the Wall generated. "My family thought I was going crazy," Michael remembered, "because I was weeping so much." Michael didn't want to be relegated to R&B awards. That night, Dionne Warwick won for "Best Pop Vocal Performance—Female" and Donna Summer won for "Best Rock Vocal Performance—Female." He felt slighted by the industry, disconnected from everyday life. Working on Off the Wall compounded the isolation he carried already: "I had very few close friends at the time and felt very isolated. I was so lonely that I used to walk through my neighborhood hoping I'd run into somebody." According to LaToya, Michael's "an extremely sensitive soul, like Mother." He channeled his vulnerability then into "She's Out of My Life." He cried at the end of each take. After several tries, producer Quincy Jones relented and left the sobs in the mix. In Moonwalk, Michael explains the ballad's "about knowing that the barriers that have separated me from others are temptingly low and seemingly easy to jump over and yet they remain standing while what I really desire disappears from my sight."
"She's Out of My Life" vanished from Billboard's R&B Chart nine weeks before LaToya's "Lover" entrée. Michael's "Life" fared just slightly better, peaking at Number 43. But it shot up the Hot 100. With the ballad he thought "too personal," Michael became the first to have four Top 10 singles from one album. "It's a start," he offered about the accomplishment. He saw this last Wall single as a metaphor. The lryics admit the young man "took her for granted" and acted "so cavalier." But in Moonwalk, the song illustrates his troubles dating: "Something always seems to get in the way." Namely, his suitors pry: "The things I share with millions of people aren't the sort of things you share with one." Offstage, Michael prefers to hold his own despair close: "I believe I'm one of the loneliest people in the world." He hid his anguish so well then, his mother didn't know about it until she read his autobiography. "I do recall Michael's having a difficult time making friends his own age," she adds. "He had tried, but a couple of boys had been nasty to him—out of jealousy, Michael thought."
Michael had another chance to show his reserve. Six days after the Grammy's, brother Randy almost killed himself wrecking his Mercedes 450SL. His legs were shredded. His pelvis was cracked. Before the Jacksons arrived at the hospital, Randy nearly died again. A nurse gave him, not the other man in the room, a methodone shot. After the doctors started his heart again, they thought they might have to amputate. A policeman told LaToya and Michael he was shocked Randy was still alive, let alone conscious. They could hear Randy moan, "I'm in so much pain." Michael took his sister aside: "LaToya, don't say one word; don't show any emotion." She gasped when she saw Randy. She remembers how "Michael, exasperated, led me out by the arm and tried comforting me."
There were other gasps on Thursday, September 6, 2001 at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City. Boy-banders 'N Sync just bounced through "Pop" for MTV's annual Video Music Awards bash. The group's video would win four, including the fan-voted "Viewer's Choice" award. After shoulder shimmies and gee-whiz pelvic grinds, they returned center stage, where a larger-than-life Etch-A-Sketch had descended. Static interrupted their song's electronic pulse. On the board were the words "King of Pop." Then, a familiar profile drew itself. The Etch-A-Sketch lifted for Michael to bound out of light and smoke. The beat resumed for 40 seconds of Michael poplocking. Accompanying him was Justin Timberlake beat-boxing.
It was either an inter-generational romp or a vain attempt to demonstrate Michael's continued relevance. The New York Times' Jon Pareles saw the latter when Michael reprised a similar matching with Justin's then-girlfriend Britney Spears. The two dueted "The Way You Make Me Feel" the next night, for the first of his 30th Anniversary concerts. At Madison Square Garden, Jon Pareles saw desperation. Michael "looked not like the song's smitten suitor, but a stalker hoping her popularity might rub off on him." At the Opera House, Michael blew kisses to the audience for longer than he danced. He posed with the bottle of pop Justin held to introduce the number. Michael didn't have any of Justin's irony.
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YOUR GUIDE TO THE MICHAEL JACKSON™ WHO PRODUCES OUR KING OF POP
This Day in Michael starts August 24, 1993. Certain days of the King of Pop's life expand far past their 24-hour periods. From there, this blog catalogs 100 days in the public life of Michael Jackson. It orders those calendar days chronologically but draws from any of the years Michael has lived.
Read from where you will. This Day in Michael's introduction lies below these Michael snapshots.
reading This Day in Michael
“Michael understands drama. He really does. … He’s been onstage since he was five years old.”
—Quincy Jones
Everyone thinks they know too much about Michael Jackson. Few appreciate how he modeled that speculation. Particularly since Thriller’s heights, he has influenced the public conversation about him with coy determination. As if from his own sidelines, he customizes the commodity known everywhere on a first-name basis. Michael stays in print by offering himself as a palimpsest. He’s an Etch-A-Sketch with which we can draw our fantasies and nightmares.
Michael’s achievements stand. But his charm also takes form in planted lies followed by indignant denials and sly explanations. Not the first but a notorious example of that celebrity method came in 1986. The cover of The National Enquirer’s September 16th edition declared that Michael slept in a hyperbaric chamber. Publicly, he disparages the exposé while his mother concedes it “had been spread by Michael’s own people.” According to biographer Randy Taraborrelli, Michael was elated. “We can actually control the press,” Michael gushed to Taraborrelli. “I think this is an important breakthrough for us.” Whether Michael admitted his complicity matters less than its plausibility.
Questions about Michael’s intentions only complement the lurid, reported details of his life offstage but never quite off-camera. For two decades now, Michael has orchestrated a renegade reality show that appreciates the fitting fantasy that should be celebreality. Unlike the stars parading themselves on VH1, apart from whatever vehicle made them known, Michael has never seemed regular. Nor does he stray from the vision that makes him alluring. That's how he maintains the product Michael Jackson™—with his singular showmanship. He's not joking when he confides, “I'm not like other guys” near the beginning of the “Thriller” video. He's shown us that consistently with the usually-disregarded design of his tabloid broadcasting. With those “silly reports,” as his mother calls them, Michael Jackson™ instructs how he should be regarded. They reveal less than they offer instead a theory on the sensational spectacle of being known that this book respects. This Day in Michael will demonstrate it’s not what you read about Michael, but how.
<the introduction continues below>
About Me
- Seth Clark Silberman
- New York, NY, United States
- I organized the first academic conference on Michael Jackson at Yale University September 23-24, 2004.
Blog Archive
Fame makes being in two places at once possible. The more famous, the more that star can multiply—and the more some find him falling apart. If he endures a media life, he knows that those who claim his irrelevance contribute to his legacy. The shreds they make from him sparkle like they're twisting together in a kaleidoscope. Controlling the coloring of that sight doesn't matter as much as making it worth watching and revisiting. Shaping it into a good mystery with the help of conspicuous discrepancies doesn't detract from deserved celebrity. It proves its tenacity by inspiring debate and research. A public life becomes a library. A documented past thus accumulates clues. It signals an audience’s collective viewing. Their memories are more palpable than the star they assemble.
Re-reading Michael Jackson™ requires a calendar. With This Day in Michael, I chart a daily career that proves why Michael matters still. Each entry recalls moments from the many years of Michael’s public life. Taken together, they coalesce the monumental with the anecdotal. That story relies on assessing a record not always accompanied by music. It also doesn't presume to represent—or pity—Michael’s inner thoughts. I have no access to Michael, but I do Michael Jackson™. I follow how intertwined his attributed actions are with the publicity that shapes them. With This Day in Michael, I want to consider how a celebrity reared by cameras understands the power of suggestion.
Few stars of his stature talk to the public so infrequently. His television interviews with Oprah Winfrey, Diane Sawyer and Martin Bashir were more than newsworthy. They were rare opportunities to ogle at a notoriously shy and beguiling curiosity. Every videotaped gesture competed with whatever he said—or mostly didn’t—about a life so familiar it’s hardly his own. So often, the arrangement of Michael’s apparent biography suits the designs of others. As the precocious Jackson 5 lead or as the best-selling Thriller, he represents crossover dreams. As the acquitted expatriate appearing to be cross-dressed in Bahran and France, he’s a kind of Frankenstein. His plastic surgery confirms he’s a monstrous shell of his past peak. Against recent tales of Jesus Juice, his purported vitiligo pales by comparison. Or, he’s a hapless victim, an easy target. Whatever story appeals, Michael remains metaphoric.
<the introduction continues below>
where i'm quoted about Michael
- The Washington Post (June 14, 2005): "One Strange Case: The Real Michael Jackson Remains at Large" by Libby Copeland
- Newsday.com (May 23, 2005): "Simmering race issue" by Tina Susman
- The New York Blade (April 22, 2005): "Gonna be startin' somethin': How has Michael Jackson's trial affected public perceptions of gay men?"
- salon.com (March 26, 2005): "The man in America's mirror" by Farhad Manjoo
- ABCNews.com (February 23, 2005): "Why Are Michael Jackson's Fans So Devoted?" by Bryan Robinson
That symbolism pronounced itself where This Day in Michael opens: Tuesday, August 24, 1993. That night, Michael launched the second half of his Dangerous tour. Hours before he took the stage in Bangkok, Los Angeles' KNBC was scrambling to report veiled allegations. In L.A., it was August 23rd. The day before that, a freelance journalist tipped off the network about a police raid at Neverland ranch. No one knew why. Monday's investigations answered little. Seven minutes before the 4:00 p.m. broadcast, KNBC received finally a vague confirmation from the L.A.P.D. On air, the anchor relayed the statement: "We are conducting an investigation on Michael Jackson for a criminal offense." That incomplete revelation exposed what we suspected already. The news accumulated illicit details that fueled a worthy scandal. Television testimony sounded like innuendo. Michael seemed equally suspicious. Reporting on the police investigation became its own industry. Defending Michael rested in swaying the coverage. Reasonable doubt had to shape the press.
Now, his interest in young boys justifies the Michael we need. For some, Michael's purported predilections prove what his recent trial couldn't. Or, his company confirms a childlike innocence more alien than journalists find his face. The mêlée publicizing the 1993 case characterizes the contemporary Michael debate. With its suspicious multi-million dollar settlement and complicit cast, it also signals what Michael learned from P.T. Barnum. That impresario and architect of modern popular culture appreciated the value of controversy. Barnum stayed in newspapers with compelling hoaxes he called humbugs that didn't lose their allure once exposed. Deceit's manipulation fascinates as much as its spectacle. Michael attracts attention by never fully explaining events so conspicuous and consonant they seem staged. Photos like his mug shot only contribute. That quizzical look works like a mirror. As one of four decades of performances, it reflects our interest in analyzing, lamenting, and protecting the King of Pop.
Throughout This Day, I adhere to Michael's consistent carnival, both with and apart from his melodic feats. After all, his appearances outside a Santa Barbara courthouse compete with his iconographic choreography. His late, disheveled arrival in pajamas couldn't have been better scripted. The gasps, applause, and snickers Michael generates coheres his media saturation. Parsing the telltale from either the juridical or the musical ignores the market that perseveres as Michael Jackson™. Thus, I place published details of his life, either attributed or irrefutable, alongside my readings of his videos and concerts. Leading it all is the undeniable drama of a man who exploded an industry's possibilities. He also appreciated the fantasy of celebrity. He teased us with an intimacy meticulously packaged. The man who started “making-of” programming for music videos with “Thriller” understood what cameras did "behind the scenes." They documented performances for an acknowledged audience. The VHS tapes sold as The Making of Michael Jackson's Thriller offered a first run of Michael Jackson™’s reality. Then, the child star who doesn't remember a life not looked at saw himself in a biography of P.T. Barnum. In 1985, Michael gave the book to his manager and lawyer. “This is going to be my Bible and I want it to be yours,” he told them. “I want my whole career to be the greatest show on Earth.” This Day in Michael details that profound pageantry.
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