MJ (52 page)

That last reference scared Prince and Paris, who tweeted,
“I am going to clarify right now that what has been said about my grandmother is a rumor and nothing has happened, she is completely fine,” then added, in a pointed tweet to her uncle Randy, “hello dear FAMILY member I don’t appreciate you telling people things that aren’t true thank you very much.” It turned out Katherine was in fine health, staying at an Arizona resort and spa called Miraval, worrying mostly about her inoperable hotel-room TV. While she sat around playing Scramble with Friends on her iPad, her family frantically searched for her, as did her new attorney,
Perry Sanders of Colorado Springs. The last thing Sanders needed was for a court to decide Jackson was somehow unfit as guardian of MJ’s children. He booked a last-minute flight to Tucson to meet with Katherine. He didn’t find her, although her associates convinced him she was okay.

Later, at the new family house in
Calabasas, two SUVs, carrying Randy, Janet, Jermaine, and several of Michael’s nieces and nephews, pulled abruptly through the front security gates, breaking a metal barrier in the process. As Jermaine distracted the security guards, Janet
went for Paris and Randy approached Prince. Sheriff’s deputies eventually pulled up and talked the siblings into leaving. “Gotta love fam,” Paris tweeted. When Katherine’s hotel power finally returned, she learned on TV she had been abducted and in ill health. Upon her return, she pretended the whole thing hadn’t happened.

The Jackson brothers’ Unity tour proceeded, ironic name and all, stopping October 20, 2012, at the
Beau Rivage casino, a few blocks away from Jackson Street in Biloxi, Mississippi. The concert was small, just a showroom containing a few hundred fans. But the brothers’ harmonies still sounded sweet. They acknowledged Michael’s absence with a lengthy photo montage. They began with their anthem “Can You Feel It,” and rushed through “Shake Your Body (Down to the Ground),” “ABC,” and Michael’s own “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’.” Jermaine was the focal point, which he seemed to enjoy, his high voice smoother, more romantic, and less straining than it had sounded on “I Want You Back” so many years ago. Tito played the familiar Motown guitar lines in his sparkly costume and bowler hat. Jackie twirled. The show lasted an hour and a half, and nobody attempted to do the moonwalk. Marlon was the only Jackson who really danced. It was a pleasant concert of R&B oldies.

Afterward, in a back hallway adjacent to the casino showroom, the four brothers made brief small talk about the show. Somebody started humming “Hold On, I’m Comin’,” the old Sam and Dave hit from Stax Records, Motown’s rival label in the sixties, and the rest of the brothers joined in. They sang softly for a few seconds before the elevator arrived to take them up to their rooms at the casino. The Jacksons, for once, were in spontaneous harmony.

*  *  *

Nothing in the entirety of pop music captures the same youthful spirit of the Jackson 5’s “I Want You Back.” No dance song opens with as much cathartic tension-and-release as “Don’t Stop ’til You Get Enough.” The
MJ performance of “Billie Jean” during the
Motown 25
broadcast lives forever in a billion YouTube links. All of MJ’s short films are viewable for free, and it’s easy to kill a day reliving the pointed cartoon playfulness of “Leave Me Alone,” the cluttered insanity of “Black or White,” the grace and showmanship of “Smooth Criminal,” and the white-T-shirt sexiness of “Remember the Time.” And while critics have instructed us
Off the Wall
and
Thriller
were the essential MJ albums,
Bad
,
Dangerous
and even most of
HIStory
and
Invincible
show Michael as a grown-up, airing his fears and ambitions just as Bob Dylan’s
Blood on the Tracks
, Bruce Springsteen’s
Tunnel of Love
, and Madonna’s
Ray of Light
had done for them late in their careers. In her elaborate, eloquent defense of MJ’s
Dangerous
, Susan Fast quotes a
New Yorker
critic:
“One of the cruelties of stardom is that you never know when you’ve reached your apogee. For Jackson, decline set in almost as soon as
Thriller
fell out of the No. 1 spot, in April 1984.” Fast responds: “Just so we’re clear, that would mean tracks like ‘Man in the Mirror’ are part of a decline. Okay, got it.”

Michael spent his early years trapped in a constrictive frame of reference, growing up in segregated Gary, Indiana, surrounded by an abusive father, an enabling mother, and mocking brothers. He would use his talents to expand his boundaries to an almost impossible degree of freedom and creativity—he would swing too far, succumbing at times to megalomania, surrounding himself with sycophants, even persuading a succession of reputable doctors to push their legal and ethical rules to accommodate his whims. The true creative decline of Michael Jackson came around 2001, when he applied this no-limits philosophy to his lifestyle but was no longer using it to pioneer music, dance steps, or shows. He returned to these things too late, when he was in questionable physical condition, pushing himself further than an out-of-shape fifty-year-old could be pushed. For nearly three decades, he was supernaturally graceful, the rare show-business renaissance man who could sing, dance, and write songs. But nobody can sustain such youthful glory forever.

“You got little kids that run around and try to sing, but yo, this boy right here, he was just straight
golden,
man. He was a
genius
,” says Ghostface Killah, the Wu-Tang Clan rapper whose solo songs have sampled MJ tracks. “When God gives you a gift like that for the whole world to love you, it’s something
special
. He was popular almost like how the
prophets
was popular, because he had the whole world fucking fainting at his feet. But his death was cut at fifty years old. So there’s a balance to things. Okay, he fucked around and died at fifty, but he put all this work in, and was the best fucking singer ever on planet Earth. Motherfuckas fainted at him, crying at concerts, all through Europe and Africa and Asia. All that love that God blessed him with, it had to equal out.”

The Jackson 5 in Gary, Indiana, before the Motown years (Tito, Jackie, and Jermaine,
top
; Marlon,
middle
; Michael,
bottom
). “Their voices blended together like—I don’t know how to explain it, but it was beautiful,” says Earl Gault, one of the group’s early drummers. “They had it.”
(Cache Agency)

In the early days of the Jackson 5, shown here in the ’70s, MJ “copied a lot of things from a lot of people,” Carl Fisher of the Vibrations recalls. “He was a natural at what he did anyways—a born, natural talent.”

Michael Jackson on the basketball court. The Jackson 5 later appeared in a surreal 1971 TV special, “Goin’ Back to Indiana,” playing hoops against a team of athletes including Bill “Skyscraper Jones” Russell, Elvin Hayes, Elgin Baylor, and Rosey Grier. Jackie led them to victory. Bill Cosby and Tom Smothers were on hand for comic relief.
(Cache Agency)

They may not have always liked it, but the Jacksons were MJ’s most sympathetic backup band—Jermaine’s Four Tops–like yearning played the perfect vocal foil, Jackie’s falsetto covered the gaps, Tito was an economical funk and blues guitarist, and Marlon was an accomplished dancer.
(Cache Agency)

“People responded viscerally to Michael Jackson’s beauty”: The Jackson 5 (Jackie, Jermaine, Tito, Marlon, and Michael), early ’70s.
(Cache Agency)

Michael Jackson in the
Thriller
era. The year after this backstage shot, at LA’s Pantages Theatre for Lena Horne’s “The Lady and Her Music” in 1982, MJ unveiled the moonwalk during Motown’s twenty-fifth-anniversary special.

“He’s all colors”: Michael Jackson and Quincy Jones at the 1984 Grammy Awards, celebrating
Thriller
.
(Cache Agency)