I must have been around five years old when my mother first played Michael Jackson‘s Thriller at home.
It happened one afternoon after I got home from school, and my mom was very eager to get home and play the vinyl record she had just purchased. She rushed to the living room, ripped the plastic wrap off of the record, and began playing the album on our old turntable.
I can still remember taking a look at the album cover art and seeing Jackson wearing a tailored white suit as he lay down on the floor posing with a panther. “Wow! Courageous,” my five-year-old mind thought. Little did I know how much Jackson would need that courage in ensuing years.
My mother and I danced the night away, as she held both my tiny hands and told me stories how my father and her shared their first dance to a Jackson 5 song the night they met at a school dance.
I grew up during the MTV generation, watching “Thriller” on television and was actually scared when Jackson turned into a werewolf. I liked nothing better than watching Jackson dance so perfectly to every song. One afternoon, my mother came home to find my baby brother and I learning to moonwalk as we copied Jackson in front of the TV. I, of course, was dressed in glittery silver socks beneath my black pants. After all, if I wanted to dance like him, I certainly had to look like him, didn’t I?
Almost thirty years later, Jackson is still considered the King of Pop: just ask the celebrities who attended his long-awaited 30th anniversary celebration Friday night at New York’s Madison Square Garden.
The concert began an hour late, as Jackson made a fashionably late entrance, escorted to his seat by his best pal, Elizabeth Taylor, actor Macaulay Culkin, and Jackson‘s parents, Katherine and Joseph, The Associated Press reported.
The show lasted nearly five hours. Jackson had invited the biggest names in the music world to join him in celebrating his career, and they responded with gusto. R&B singers Usher and Mya opened the night’s festivities with “Starting Somethin’,” and surprise guest Whitney Houston joined them halfway through the song.
Marlon Brando arrived onstage to talk about child abuse, starvation and disease, and said that Jackson was generously donating money to build a children’s hospital in Florida.
Among the other performances were Shaggy, Ray Charles and Marc Anthony’s melodic “She’s Out of My Life”; Gloria Estefan and James Ingram’s beautiful duet “I Just Can’t Stop Loving You”; and Liza Minelli sweet croon of “You Are Not Alone,” backed by a gospel choir walking through the stadium holding candles.
Motown legends, The Jackson 5, moved the crowd with renditions of “ABC,” “I’ll be There” and “I Want You Back.” They were joined by pop sensation ‘N Sync to get down to “Dance Machine.”
“I love you…I love you,” Jackson shouted twice to the audience, the AP reported, as his brothers left the stage after a 20-minute set.
Jackson was later joined onstage by former Guns n’ Roses guitarist Slash for the epic “Black or White,” and replicated a scene from the video. “Beat It” was also performed by Jackson onstage, complete with ghetto dancers and choreography straight from the video.
The finest moment of the night came when Jackson walked out onstage with a small carrying case and pulled out his black sequined jacket and white glove for his performance of “Billy Jean,” moonwalk and all.
(Of course, for those willing to spend a little extra cash, there was a Wizard of Oz-themed after-hours party with Jackson at the Tavern on the Green restaurant. The cost? A mere $20,000 per person.)
Jackson‘s concerts (there is a second tribute set for Monday night) are not just a tribute to himself, but also an attempt to revive his legendary career, which many argue is no longer extant.
More than ever, it seems his marriage to Lisa Marie Presley, his numerous plastic surgeries, and sex molestation charges have made Jackson a cause of laughter and scorn among many in the media. Some even claim that Jackson has lost his touch.
Much of the ridicule levied against Jackson simply isn’t justified.
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Myth #1: Michael’s oxygen chamber
Jackson does not sleep in an oxygen chamber, nor has ever purchased one, as many tabloids have reported in the
past.
Myth #2: Michael’s skin color
In 1993 word leaked that he suffered from vitilligo, a traumatic disease that strips the color pigmentation from the skin. To cover it, Jackson wears heavy makeup and a mask on his face. Jackson has done nothing to lighten his skin himself.
Myth #3: Michael’s plastic surgery
Jackson‘s nose jobs and the cleft he added to his chin are also constantly in the press. In August of 1992, London’s Daily Mirror scorned his looks, saying that a lifetime of plastic surgery had left him to “a phantom with a sadly scarred face that seems ready to fall apart.” A letter of apology was printed in 1998, saying they had seen Jackson‘s face close up and indeed, that was not the case, which lead to an amicable resolution of litigation against the paper.
Myth #4: Sexual molestation charges
Jackson was accused of molesting a 13-year-old boy in a case that was settled out of court for an estimated sum of $20 million. After spending millions of dollars in two jurisdictions and two grand juries who questioned close to 200 witnesses, including 30 children who knew Jackson, not a single corroborating witness could be found.
Still, Jackson‘s return has not been as thrilling as expected, when his first single, “You Rock My World,” was made available on his official Web site, www.michaeljackson.com starting on Aug. 24, and sent to radio the same day.
“The excitement was there initially,” Dave Morales, music director for KHKS-FM in Dallas, TX told Reuters. “We got the single, we heard it and put it on the air…and it was sort of there.”
“Only time will tell if [the song] is a hit,” said David Lawrence, the host of the Net Music Countdown, “Jackson’s been out of the business for a number of years and has been reinventing himself.
“There are lots of artists who release a song that programmers don’t perceive it as a hit. ‘Smooth’ by Santana was a good example of one that eventually caught fire,” Lawrence said.
The big question is if Jackson will be able to effectively resurrect his career?
Simply put, the answer is: yes.
Jackson has become a victim of his own success and is now trying to outdo the phenomenon he caused with Thriller. Of course, it’s very hard once you have an album that ranks among the best-selling albums in the United States ever, to re-establish a similar career almost thirty years later.
Jackson can certainly do it. He will have to concentrate, though, on passing the genius of his music, his singing, and his natural presence as an onstage performer, to those who haven’t paid much attention to him in many years, and to may others who haven’t ever seen him perform live.
The doubters don’t see a man who stopped performing at the peak of his career. They don’t even see the “normal” married man, a father of two sons, Prince 4, and Paris, 3, with wife Debbie Rowe-Jackson. All they see was the career he walked away from.
Critics say that those who grew up listening to Jackson became marginalized due to his eccentricities while the newer generation is still trying to make sense of who he is.
Sadly enough, most people have lost faith in Jackson because of the way he looks or because of the bad reputation he has gained over the years or because of the rumors that surround him. Many of them base their impression of Jackson‘s talents on what he looks like or what they see written about him on the paper, and not on what really matters–his music.
But Jackson has always been innovative and been able to reinvent himself before.
Thus, it was no surprise that hundreds of artists wanted to join him for his 30th anniversary celebration, for Jackson is an artist whose talents will never be able to be duplicated. Even young artists, like Eminem and ‘N Sync wanted to be a part of the event where the biggest name in the music business would be honored.
“Michael doesn’t do anything small,” producer Rodney Jerkins, who produced most of Invincible, Jackson‘s upcoming album, told the AP.
Jackson is responsible for many happy moments in my life. My father’s first gift to my mom when they were still teenagers, was a 7-inch album of the Jackson song “Music and Me.” The first vinyl I ever owned was Thriller, and the first concert I ever attended with my parents was Jackson‘s “Dangerous” tour in Brazil, where I saw my parents fall in love all over again.
As I looked for research materials on Jackson, I sat around the living room floor looking for the Michael Jackson’s Thriller album. My mom noticed me looking at the album’s cover like I did when I was a little girl, still admiring his looks as he posed with the panther. My mother gently took the record and placed it on the turntable–yes, we still have one–and she took my hands as we danced to “Thriller,” just as she did that afternoon 19 years ago.
