Night Beat (39 page)

I remember a friend telling me, during that New York visit, “If Jackson had never gone out on this tour, I would still resent him, and so would other people. The awful thing is, Jackson consciously wanted the biggest audience in the world, but he didn’t want to give them anything too revealing or risky.”

This was true: Michael Jackson wanted it all, and got it. It is obvious, in retrospect, that
Thriller
was designed with mass crossover audiences in mind. Jackson put out “Billie Jean” for the dance crowd, “Beat It” for the white rockers, and then followed each crossover with crafty videos designed to enhance both his intense allure and his intense inaccessibility. But as a ploy, was that really such a bad thing? Was it, for that matter, any different than what Elvis Presley did with his hillbilly/blues/rock & roll crossover music, and what he accomplished in his Dorsey Brothers and Ed Sullivan TV appearances? In fact, wasn’t Presley initially a song and dance act, somebody who captured the moment of a transition in pop culture, somebody who took his personal fearfulness and made a public passion out of it, and won intense mass affection as a result? Didn’t Presley, too, set out to capture the biggest audience in the world—and isn’t that still (at least for some people) one of the most evident dreams pop can aspire to? Why, then, did we need to condemn Michael Jackson for his popularity?

The truth is, by the mid-1980s, some music partisans just weren’t terribly fond of the idea of Presley- or Beatles-sized popularity anymore (and that’s even more the case in the late 1990s). That, plus the notion that Jackson didn’t, for some, really fit the modern definition of a pop hero: He wasn’t somebody with literary or sociopolitical aspirations or dreams of sexual revolution. But as another thoughtful friend pointed out to me, there was an even touchier problem about Jackson’s success—one that made the temporary vexations of the Jacksons tour seem paltry. “What turned me off to him,” this critic told me, “was his eagerness to trade his former black constituency for an overwhelmingly white audience. Plain and simple, he doesn’t want a black identity anymore. He records with proven white stars like Paul McCartney and Mick Jagger, and he’s allowed the tickets to be priced so high for this tour as to exclude the majority of working or young black fans in this country. Just look at the makeup of these audiences
—barely
ten percent black. But what really drove the nail into the coffin is that Jackson appeared at the White House with Ronald Reagan. That announced to everybody that he’d divorced himself from the concerns of the black audience at large.”

I couldn’t argue with that one. Certainly, it would have been better if Jackson had refused the invitation to the White House, in protest of the administration’s anti-black policies. It would have been even nicer if he had openly repudiated Reagan. Still, many of our best pop stars have made some unworthy choices, including Elvis Presley and James Brown aligning themselves with Richard Nixon—and don’t forget, Neil Young was once an outspoken fan of Reagan (though he reportedly later switched to Jesse Jackson—weird guy, that Neil). As fans, we can boycott or condemn our pop heroes for such lapses, or mourn their tastes in politics while marveling at their artistic sensibilities. I’ve been doing the latter with Frank Sinatra for more years than I care to count.

Interestingly enough, about the only person I heard defend Jackson during my New York visit was James Brown, and it almost cost him the affection of a fawning music business audience. The moment came at the New Music Seminar during the artists panel that featured Brown, among others. A member of the audience asked the panel what an artist’s responsibility is to his fans, given the outrageous prices the Jacksons had imposed on their following. Brown agreed that the ticket price was unrealistic, regardless of the tour’s supposed overhead costs, but went on to say that he didn’t think it fair to expatriate Michael Jackson or his brothers on the basis of their bad business sense. “It’s a mistake, let’s hope it doesn’t happen again, but believe me, these are good people. Give them another chance.”

Cries of angry disagreement shot up from the floor. The mood in the room became riled, like that of a piqued political caucus. But Brown stood his ground. “You don’t really know what Michael had to go through to make this tour happen. I won’t stay here and let you attack somebody who isn’t present to defend himself.”

What Brown didn’t mention is that he had reportedly declined Michael Jackson’s invitation to sing with the group at Madison Square Garden because he privately felt the ticket prices would exclude any real soul audience. He could have scored big and easy points with the NMS crowd by divulging that, but it was a testament to his integrity, and to his respect for the difficulty of Michael Jackson’s position with the press and public, that he kept his censure measured, and made his defense sound reasoned.

Of course, it would have been even better if Jackson had expressed more concern for the audience who sustained him during his singular rise to pop stardom. But like Presley before him, Michael Jackson was now in uncharted territory, and every move he made would either map out his redemption or his ruin.

THE JACKSON’S TOUR came to its close in early December 1984, with six sold-out performances at Los Angeles’ Dodger Stadium. I almost skipped the whole thing. I was weary of all the arguments and vitriol surrounding Michael Jackson by this time, plus I’d already seen the show in Kansas City and Manhattan, and the experience hadn’t been worth either trip. But on the tour’s last night, I went. It was my job.

As it turned out, this was the only Victory tour show I saw that had a good dose of something that the other dates had lacked: namely, Michael Jackson’s unbridled passion. Let me say it without apology: It was a hell of a thing to see.

Pass it off, if you like, as Jackson’s possible sense of relief at leaving the long debacle behind, but from his wild, impossibly liquid-looking glides and romps during “Heartbreak Hotel” (still his best song), to the deep-felt improvisational gospel break at the end of the lovely Motown ballad, “I’ll Be There,” and the fleet-tongued, raw-toned scat-rap exchange he shared with Jermaine at the end of “Tell Me I’m Not Dreaming (Too Good to be True),” Michael accomplished as much as was likely possible that night—short of kicking his brothers offstage and setting Don King afire. At moments, he seemed so refreshingly lively and acute that it almost worked against him. What I mean is, watching Jackson at this peak is a bit like watching pornography—something so provoking it can rivet you and seem incomprehensible (maybe even unbearable) at the same time. Which means a little goes a long way, and a lot can seem plain numbing.

In any event, on that last night I thought: Maybe there’s hope for the guy after all.

FOUR YEARS LATER I was on the Michael Jackson road again, writing coverage (this time for
Rolling Stone
) of the opening dates of his first solo tour. Jackson had a recent album to promote,
Bad,
and once again he was nominated for some key Grammy Awards. But in 1988, Jackson was up against some hard competition. Artists like U2 and Prince had fashioned some of the most ambitious and visionary music of their careers—music that reflected the state of pop and the world in enlivening ways. By contrast, Jackson’s
Bad
seemed mainly a celebration of the mystique and celebrity of the artist himself.

More important, in 1988 there was suspicion among many critics and observers that Jackson’s season as pop’s favorite son may have passed. When Jackson arrived in New York to attend and perform at the Grammys and to give a series of concerts at Madison Square Garden, he was met with some bitter hints of this possibility. In the 1987
Rolling Stone
Readers and Critics Poll, Jackson placed first in six of the readers’ “worst of the year” categories (including “worst male singer”); in addition the 1987 Village Voice Critics Poll failed to mention Jackson’s
Bad
in its selection of 1987’s forty best albums. This was a startling turnaround from four years before, when Jackson and his work topped the same polls in both publications.

Plus, Jackson still possessed a knack for grand gestures that often seem overinflated. I remember one morning in a Manhattan disco, where Michael Jackson stood, smiling uneasily before a throng of reporters and photographers. The occasion was a large-scale press conference, convened by Jackson’s tour sponsor, Pepsi, to commemorate a $600,000 contribution from the singer to the United Negro College Fund. But the philanthropy of the event was somewhat overshadowed by Pepsi’s other purpose: namely to premiere Jackson’s flashy new four-episode commercial for the soda company, which would make its TV debut the following night, during the broadcast of the Grammy Awards at Radio City Music Hall. All in all, it was an odd excuse for a press gathering, and Jackson looked uncomfortable with the stagy formality of the situation. Not surprisingly, he was willing to say little about the occasion, nor would he take any questions from the nearly five hundred journalists who were crowding the room. In short, like most Michael Jackson press conferences, the event proved little more than a grandiose photo opportunity—and yet it had all the drawing power of a significant political function. In a sense, it’s easy to see why. It’s as close to Michael Jackson as most members of the press will ever get, and though many reporters remain put off by the singer, they still find him fascinating and are quite happy to ogle at his transfixing, part beautiful, part grotesque countenance.

But why Jackson would find it necessary to endure an occasion like this is another story. According to one associate (who like most people around Jackson would prefer not to be quoted for attribution), high-profile media galas like this—or the following night’s Grammy program—have a special significance for the singer.

“You have to keep in mind,” the associate told me, “what happened to Michael during the 1980 Grammy Awards. His album
Off the Wall
had sold over 6 million copies. In effect, Michael was the biggest black artist America had ever produced. He fully expected to be nominated for the Album of the Year and Record of the Year awards, and he deserved to. But instead, he won only one award—best male R & B vocal.

“That experience hurt Michael, and it also taught him a lesson. You could be the biggest black entertainer in history, and yet to much of the music industry and media, you were an invisible man. That’s why he aimed to make
Thriller
the biggest record of all time, and that’s why he has aligned himself with Pepsi. Pepsi gave him the biggest commercial-endorsement contract that anybody has ever received, and to Michael, the more accomplishments to your name, the more people have to recognize you. That’s what an event like this is all about. Michael still wants the world to acknowledge him.”

THE NEXT NIGHT, as the Grammy show progresses, things go better and worse than expected. The good news is that Jackson turns in an inspired performance that also serves as a timely reminder of an almost forgotten truth about him: Namely, that whatever his eccentricities, Jackson acquired his fame primarily because of his remarkably intuitive talents as a singer and dancer—talents that are genuine and matchless and not the constructions of mere ambition or hype. Moreover, it is also plausible that in certain ways, Jackson’s phenomenal talent may not be completely separable from his eccentricity. That is, the same private obsessions and fears and reveries that fuel his prowess as a dancer and songwriter and singer may also prompt his quirkiness, and perhaps without all that peculiarity he would be far less compelling to watch.