Читать книгу Michael Jackson - King of Pop - Emily Herbert - Страница 8

The audience sat rapt, its collective gaze fixed towards the stage. It was 25 March 1983, a few hours into a large fundraiser at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium, Los Angeles. Everyone who was anyone was present. Titled ‘Motown 25: Yesterday, Today, Forever’, the show, taped in front of a large audience, was ostensibly to help fight sickle cell disease. Really, it was an opportunity to prove that the Motown record label was as important as it had ever been.

A few big name acts had recently left Motown, including Michael Jackson, Diana Ross and Marvin Gaye, and so naturally there was some curiosity among the audience, made up of industry bigwigs, star performers, the media and the myriad hangers-on that the music business attracts, as to which stars would appear. In the end, Marvin Gaye did perform, alongside The Miracles, Mary Wells and Martha Reeves, Stevie Wonder, The Supremes, The Temptations, and many more.

And then, to the delight of the audience, out stepped the Jackson 5. Throughout the seventies, the family had been one of the most important acts on the label: groundbreakers, money-spinners, and the jewel in the Motown crown. But that had been some years previously. Motown founder Berry Gordy described them as ‘the last big stars to come rolling off my assembly line.’

By the time of the concert, Michael was already an established solo performer in his own right: Thriller, the best-selling album of all time, had been released in December 1982, breaking one record after another since it first hit the charts.

Nor was this the first album he’d made on his own: indeed, he had been releasing solo material since he was a child, along with the recordings that he continued to do with his brothers. A major breakthrough had come a few years earlier, in 1979, with the release of Off The Wall, the album that established him as an adult singer in his own right. Even so, as far as public perception was concerned, there was still something of the adorable little boy lost that Michael had been when he first achieved massive fame at the age of 11; they still hadn’t quite got used to the fact that he was now a mature man.

The original five, Michael, Jackie, Marlon, Jermaine and Tito came out, followed by Randy, the youngest of the Jackson brothers, and performed some of their greatest hits: ‘I Want You Back’, ‘The Love You Save’ and ‘Say You’ll Be There’. It was the usual polished performance, laid on by one of the greatest entertainment groups of their day. That night something was slightly different, though. From the start, Michael had always stood out from his siblings, sheer talent and effervescence marking him out as something quite different, but he had always been very much part of the group.

Now, though, he was beginning to stand aside from the other brothers. He was dressed differently, too. They were all in stage costume, but Michael’s was not the same: slightly too-short trousers (so you could see his ankles), sharp white socks, a black glittery jacket, one white glove… it was the basis of the look that he was to have throughout much of the eighties, though still in its developmental stage back then.

And then, something strange happened. The other brothers left the stage, leaving Michael in the spotlight on his own. He bowed to the audience, thanked them for their applause, and then said that he loved the old songs, but the new ones were even better. Everyone was alert: no one knew quite what was about to happen. Suddenly, a Trilby appeared at his feet. Still, no one was any the wiser. And then… he struck a pose.

In the background, the band launched into his current chart hit, ‘Billie Jean’. Realising that something truly special was about to take place, the crowd erupted. And off he went, dressed in what was to be his trademark garb, flicking the hat away and launching into one of the sharpest dance routines ever seen on TV. Again, silence descended as the audience drank it all in: the high kicks, the twirls on the spot as he effortlessly hit the high ‘C’, over and over again. Then finally, the now-infamous moonwalk, the mysterious process by which his feet seemed to step forward, while he was actually gliding backward. The crowd erupted again, as they would do twice more for Michael that night, first when the moonwalk was repeated, and then finally as his performance drew to a close.

That was the night when Michael Jackson danced away from his brothers and into the history books. It was the moment when he went from being a cute child star to perhaps the greatest entertainer the world has ever known. This was a defining moment, not just for his career but for pop music too. And although massive success on a scale never seen before was just around the corner – the video of ‘Thriller’ had yet to be released – nothing in Michael’s life ever quite topped what happened that night. No other entertainer has ever managed to equal it, either. He was truly the King of Pop.

***

It was all a far cry from Michael’s birth, 25 years previously, when the only prospects that might seem to await him would have been blue-collar work in the American steel industry, just like his dad. Joseph Jackson was himself a highly musical man, although the only real success that he was to find in the industry came through the son that he helped create – and some would say, help to damage. Joe was born on 26 July 1929, in Arkansas, USA. The eldest in a family of four, born to Samuel Jackson and Crystal Lee King, he was to experience a disruptive childhood after his parents separated when he was just 12 years old.

Joe spent the rest of his childhood with his father in Oakland, California, but moved to East Chicago, Indiana, to be near Crystal, at the age of 18. It was an odd foreshadowing of what would happen to his most famous son: as a child Michael was also dominated by his father and ended up being closer to his mother, although in every other way he had a very different upbringing to Joe.

Joe had a brief early marriage, which was annulled, before wooing and wedding Katherine Screws on 5 November 1949. He enjoyed a short career as a boxer (sport and music were two of the main routes for black Americans to scramble their way out of poverty in the 20th century), but ultimately that came to nothing, too. He then went on to work as a crane operator at the Gary-based U.S. Steel. In the mid-fifties he took a short break, forming an R&B band, The Falcons, with his brother Luther; it was their lack of success that made him drive his own sons so hard in the years ahead. Eventually he was forced to return to the day job, although he and Luther would often jam together in the evenings after work.

Michael was to be much, much closer to his mother. Katherine was born Kattie B. Screws on 4 May 1930 in Barbour County, Alabama, to Martha Mattie Upshaw and Prince Albert Screws, which is the real reason why Michael named two of his children Prince and not the self-aggrandisement later claimed by many. When Kattie was four, her father changed the family surname to Scruse; he also changed his daughter’s name to Katherine Esther Scruse and moved the family to East Chicago, Indiana. Later, Katherine would meet Joe there. Sadly, her childhood was marred when she contracted polio at a very young age. Although a full recovery was made, from then on she walked with a limp.

Despite her physical weakness, Katherine was to prove the lynchpin of the family. She was the absolute rock at its base when fame began to take over and then, in later decades, when it drove a wedge between some of them, and they were exhausted by the stress and pressures that enormous success brings. She provided Michael with complete emotional support and stability; she was the mainstay in a rapidly shifting world. Throughout his life, he was to remain devoted to his mother, naming his daughter after her, and his sons after her own father, speaking often of the love he felt for her and all she had done for him. But it wasn’t easy for Katherine. A devout Jehovah’s Witness, apart from seeing her children go out on the road for very many months of their childhood, she knew that Joe wasn’t a faithful husband and she was forced to suffer a great deal in silence. However, her devotion to her children was palpable: right up to the very end, she was there for Michael.

Michael Joseph Jackson was born on 29 August 1958, the seventh of Joseph Walter and Katherine Esther Scruse’s nine children. There is a good deal of confusion as to the pecking order, but the siblings appeared thus: Rebbie was first, followed by Jackie, Tito, Jermaine, La Toya, Marlon, Michael, Randy and Janet. In addition, Joe went on to father one child outside marriage: Joh Vonnie Jackson, the youngest of the lot.

Michael was just four when his father hit on the plan to bring fame and fortune to his family. Having got nowhere with The Falcons, his kids would take to the stage instead. And so the first manifestation of the group came into being, made up of Jackie, Jermaine, Tito and Marlon, initially known simply as The Jacksons. At first, Michael would watch his brothers performing. A year later, at the tender age of five, he began singing and

dancing himself, copying not only what his brothers were doing, but also learning from the biggest stars of the day that he studied on TV.

Even then Michael’s voice stood out from the crowd, while dance-wise, he was capable of imitating the moves of James Brown. Never slow when it came to spotting earning potential in his children, Joe brought him into the group. Of course, at that stage no one realised that Michael would eventually become the dominant figure, head and shoulders above the rest.

Initially, both Michael and Marlon acted as back-up musicians, playing congas and tambourine. But Michael had started to sing, and what a voice he had. Even when he was very young, it had a unique clarity and purity that made him stand out from the crowd. As time went on, these qualities began to show more and more.

It was when he was just eight that Michael and Jermaine took over lead vocals and the Jackson 5 was born. In the early days, the band was a family enterprise, with both parents involved. Money was tight and so Katherine made her sons’ costumes: ‘She always made all of our clothes,’ Michael told Jesse Jackson on the radio show Keep Hope Alive in 2005. ‘My mother would sew and stitch everything – everything we wore before we were really making it in Motown.’

Meanwhile, through watching other performers, Michael increasingly learned his trade. Now beyond doubt a child prodigy, as far as singing and dancing skills were concerned, he demonstrated abilities far beyond his age. Years later, in 1993, in a major television interview with Oprah Winfrey, Michael recalled those formative influences. ‘I think James Brown is a genius, you know, when he’s with the Famous Flames, unbelievable,’ he told her.

‘I used to watch him on the television, and I used to get angry at the cameraman because whenever he would really start to dance, they would be on a close-up so I couldn’t see his feet. I’d shout, “Show him, show him!” so I could watch and learn.’

Other early influences were Jackie Wilson, Sammy Davis Jr, the Motown artists and later, more surprisingly, the Bee Gees. Music was everywhere. Joe might not have been a professional musician himself, but he continued to play in private, something else that was to make an impression on his sons. One of the great tragedies of Michael’s childhood was that his father wasn’t as much of a beneficial influence as he should have been: after all, the two did have a lot in common. Joe, however, ruled not by encouraging love, but through fear.

In later life, Michael talked a great deal about the fear of his father, but he was capable of remembering happier times, too. ‘This period for me which stands out is because I was so young around that time,’ Michael told Jesse Jackson. ‘I was like 8… 8 or 9. I just remember the environment, what it was like, all the music I was hearing. My father played guitar, my uncle played guitar. Every day they would come over, and you know they would play great music. And we would start to perform to the music.

‘I remember seeing marching bands go down the street. I would remember the rhythm of the band and the beats of the drum. And every sound around me seems to record in my head and start making rhythms and dancing. I use to dance to the rhythm of the washing machine. My mother went to the corner store to wash the clothes. I would dance to the rhythm and people would crowd around; I remember those kind of stories. They would crowd around pretty much and watch me, those kind of little things.’

But while Michael’s recollections in that interview were positive, life was far from idyllic back then. From the age of five, his life as a normal child was effectively over. Perhaps this was something that might have occurred anyway, given the massive weight of the stardom about to fall on his shoulders, but it was incalculably made worse by his father’s behaviour.

Determined his sons would make it in a way that he himself never could, Joe instigated a regime that some would call barbaric. For a start, the boys were to call him Joe, never anything else. While not unkind in itself, this rather emphasised the professional aspect of his relationship to his sons was paramount. But that was nothing compared to what came next: Joe was harsh on all the children, but Michael, a particularly sensitive child, would take it especially to heart. Joe told him he was ugly, that he had a big nose – and it doesn’t take Freud to see that this was sowing the seeds of a later obsession with plastic surgery. Worse still, he sometimes physically chastised his sons if ever they hit a duff note.

According to Michael’s lifelong confidant J. Randy Taraborrelli, on one occasion Joe entered Michael’s bedroom through an open window wearing a fright mask, screaming and shouting. He said this was to teach Michael not to leave his windows open; Michael later admitted it gave him nightmares for years to come.

Indeed, talking to Oprah Winfrey, he revealed that he was so frightened of his father that he would sometimes vomit when he saw him, something that continued into adulthood. In the other major interview he gave in his later years – the one that would ultimately lead to his destruction – he told TV journalist Martin Bashir in a documentary broadcast in February 2003, ‘If you didn’t do it the right way, he would tear you up, really get you.’

In later years, Joe Jackson attempted to dumb down some of the stories, although in truth, he probably succeeded only in making himself seem even harsher than his son had already described him. In 2003, he gave an interview with presenter Louis Theroux, in which he admitted some physical abuse, but denied it had gone as far as others suggested.

‘I whipped him with a switch and a belt,’ he admitted. ‘I never beat him – you beat someone with a stick.’ And as for claims that Michael would ‘regurgitate’ when he saw his father, Joe responded, ‘He regurgitates all the way to the bank. That’s right.’ When asked about Michael’s by-then extensive plastic surgery: ‘He can do what he likes with his nose.’ Of course, Michael could, and he did, but it was almost impossible not to conclude that Joe had no idea of the terrible damage he may have done to his son.

At that stage in his childhood, as he took over as lead singer of the Jackson 5 along with Jermaine, Michael was totally unaware of what a talent he had, being so young and knowing nothing else. As a child we naturally accept what is around us as the norm and at that point, not realising quite what a strange upbringing this was becoming, Michael thought his experience was the same as everyone else’s.

‘You know when you have a special ability,’ he told Jesse Jackson. ‘You don’t realise it because you think everybody else has the same gift that you have, so you don’t realise it. When I used to sing at such a young age, people were so inspired by my singing and they loved it. I didn’t realise why they were clapping or crying, or starting to scream. I really, truly didn’t, Jesse. And just later on in life, people would come up to me and say, “You know, do you realise you have a special gift?” or “you have a special talent.”

‘I just remember from my mother, who is very religious, always telling us to always thank God, to thank Jehovah God for your talent, your ability. You know, it’s not from, it’s not our doing, and it’s from above, so we were always humbled by people who would come with accolades or you know, adulations or whatever it is. You know, it was a beautiful thing.’

It was not long before talk of the extraordinary new group, five brothers headed by an eight-year-old with an amazing voice, began to spread. Initially, the band played in local venues around Gary, Indiana, but soon achieved a reputation for excellence. From 1966 to 1968, they began touring extensively throughout the Midwest.

Often they would perform at nightspots known as the ‘chitlin circuit’, black clubs that were frequently striptease venues. No life for a child, it set down the marker for what was to be the norm for Michael, again reversing the natural order so that what might seem to most people to be extraordinary became the stuff of everyday, and vice versa.

‘On stage for me was home,’ Michael told Oprah Winfrey, and if truth be told, this set the pattern for the rest of his life. It was to be all he really knew: the acclaim and applause of the audience was something he both needed and feared as he made his way through life. Even then, it was beginning to take a terrible toll: ‘I was most comfortable on stage, but once I got off, I was like, very sad… Lonely, sad, having to face popularity and all that… There were times when I had great times with my brothers, pillow-fights and things, but I used to always cry from loneliness.’ That little bit older, his brothers were often far more interested in bedroom antics other than pillow fights.

In 1966, the Jackson 5 had the first of several breaks that would lead them to the very top of the show-business tree. With Michael on lead vocals – still just eight years old – the brothers won a major talent show, performing various Motown classics, and a James Brown song, ‘I Got You (I Feel Good)’. This alerted various local record labels to the group and in 1967, they recorded several songs for Steeltown, including a number called ‘Big Boy’. This was great for Michael’s career, rather less so for his social development.

Much has been made of his lost childhood, not least by Michael himself, and already it was clear that his was to be a solitary life, dominated almost entirely by work. Michael had no friends of his own age: because he didn’t go to school, opportunities were limited and the world in which he now lived was entirely an adult one. Sadly, he was to spend the rest of his life attempting to get his childhood back, something he would never succeed in doing.

‘I would do my schooling – which was three hours with a tutor – and right after that, I would go to the recording studio and record, and I’d record for hours and hours until it was time to go to sleep,’ Michael told Oprah. ‘And I remember going to the record studio and there was a park across the street, and I’d see all the children playing and I would cry because it would make me sad that I would have to work instead.’ But no one seemed to understand that the little boy was suffering so badly: as long as he was performing well and earning money – which he was – then as far as everyone else was concerned, all was well in his world.

Matters would soon intensify, because the group was about to make a massive breakthrough – and after that, there really was no turning back. In 1968, the Jackson 5 came to the attention of the Motown record label, probably still the most famous name for black artists worldwide. After some equivocation, they were snapped up. Jesse Jackson asked Michael who had initially discovered them for Motown – at the time it was put about that it had been Diana Ross. Although she and Michael would become close friends, this was not quite what happened back then.

‘Well, in complete truth, it was Gladys Knight and a guy named Bobby Taylor,’ Michael replied. ‘And they were on the bill of some of the shows… you would do a show and there would be like, twenty or thirty acts. It was pretty much like Bonneville. You would do just a certain number of songs and you would go off. They were always on these shows. And they would watch us and they were so impressed with what we were doing. And Berry Gordy wasn’t interested at first, but eventually he loved us and wanted to sign us.’

Bobby Taylor proved instrumental to the Jacksons’ success. He was a performer and producer who had watched the act at The Regal nightclub in Chicago in 1968. Afterwards, he was insistent Berry Gordy should also see them perform. The first time Gordy saw the Jacksons, it was not actually live – rather, it was an audition tape – but this was enough to convince him that here was a group capable of stratospheric success.

It was then that the Diana Ross connection started: her enormous clout in the industry was put to use to launch the Jackson 5. ‘After being signed, since Diana Ross was their biggest star at the time… he used her as the vehicle to introduce us to the public,’ Michael continued. ‘The first album was called Diana Ross Presents the Jackson 5.’ The other, very important woman they met back then was Suzanne de Passe, creative assistant to Berry Gordy, who was responsible for nurturing the band, developing their act and even such necessities as helping to choose their outfits when they appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show. She was one of the key figures to be responsible for their success.

In 1969, about a year after they’d signed with the label, the Jackson 5 was ready to go. That August a coming-out party was held in their honour at the Beverly Hills Club and a few days later, the band opened for the Supremes at the Los Angeles forum. Shortly afterwards their debut single, ‘I Want You Back’ was released and the world of show business was stunned. They caused a sensation. Rolling Stone magazine put Michael on the cover under the headline, ‘Why does this 11-year-old stay up past his bedtime?’ Inside, he was described as a ‘prodigy’ with ‘overwhelming musical gifts’. The magazine noted that he, ‘quickly emerged as the main draw and lead singer,’ when performing with his brothers. Rolling Stone was right in every particular: from the very beginning, it was Michael who was clearly going to be the star.

All the seeds were being sown for what would make Michael Jackson great and yet destroy him in the end. Had anyone but known it, his story started as bubblegum pop and ended pretty much a Shakespearian tragedy. But the Jackson 5 was ready to go. Rarely has a group had such a spectacular debut: their first four singles all reached No. 1. They were: ‘I Want You Back’, ‘ABC’, ‘The Love You Save’ and ‘I’ll Be There’. Right from the word go, they were breaking records and Michael was becoming, courtesy of that first single, the youngest-ever singer to get to No. 1.

‘I Want You Back’, released in 1969 from the album Diana Ross Presents The Jackson 5, summed up the strange life Michael now had. Originally intended for Gladys Knight and the Pips, and then for Diana Ross, under the title ‘I Wanna Be Free’, the song is about a lover who realises he shouldn’t have ditched his partner – an adult theme, if ever there was one. When Michael sang it, he was just 11 years old – although the publicity people were allowing him to be thought even younger. It was to summarise a strange pattern in his life: as a child, he was plunged far too early into an adult world, while as an adult he spent the rest of his life trying to regain the status of a child.

All this was simply exacerbated by the success of the song. It reached No. 1 in the USA and No. 2 in the UK, sold 6 million copies, has been ranked 120 on Rolling Stone’s list of the 500 Greatest Songs Of All Time, number 9 on Rolling Stone’s 100 Greatest Pop Songs Since 1963 and cited by the Daily Telegraph as ‘arguably the best pop music single of all time’.

But it also sealed Michael’s fate. Now that both his father (by then very much the Jackson 5’s manager) and Motown saw what a money-making machine the youngest Jackson had the potential to become, there was no way they would let their protégé do much else but work. And the public adored him from the word go. Fizzing with energy, bubbling with charm, Michael was a most engaging little boy, seemingly totally normal and happy in the world in which he now lived.

Meanwhile, massive changes and upheavals were afoot. For a start, Michael, his brothers and Joe began spending lengthy periods in LA, while Katherine and the other children remained behind in Gary. Michael was thus deprived not only of the company of other children but the home he had always known, as well as his mother, to whom he was exceptionally close. Enchanted as anyone to meet the new young sensation, Diana Ross took him under her wing, but this was no substitute for having his mother around. More isolated than ever, he was still so young and unable to comprehend what was going on. When he wasn’t in the studio, he was spending all his time with big stars. For some time, his life hadn’t had a great deal to do with the real world, but now he was increasingly cut off and alienated from the way the vast majority of people live.

Still, there was work to be done. The following year saw the release of the Jackson 5’s next single, ‘ABC’, from the album of the same name. Like the earlier single, it was written and produced by The Corporation, which was made up of Motown royalty: Berry Gordy, Freddie Perren, Alphonzo Mizell and Deke Richards. ‘ABC’ was first heard on American Bandstand in 1970 and promptly knocked The Beatles’ ‘Let It Be’ off the No. 1 slot. Michael would later become friends for a time with Paul McCartney – indeed, would record with him – but could not have imagined back in those days the relationship that was to ensue.

By now, the Jackson 5 was also heading 20,000-seater stadiums themselves. Their next single, ‘The Love You Save’ (also released in 1970), knocked another Beatles’ number off the top slot, in this case, ‘The Long And Winding Road’. Also written by The Corporation, it was another unusual song for a very young boy to sing, telling a ‘fast’ girl to slow down.

If anyone deemed this inappropriate for a small boy who hadn’t yet reached puberty, then they were keeping quiet. By then, the cash tills were ringing loud and clear. Before they moved to LA, the entire Jackson clan squeezed into a small, two-bedroom house in Gary, Indiana. Now it seemed a real possibility that the family would become seriously rich on the back of its children’s talent, especially Michael. In later years, Katherine was to reminisce that her happiest times had been while they were still together, all of them in that little house, before the Jackson 5 made it. Perhaps if they had stayed in that set-up, Michael might have thrived but, already, far too much was at stake for anyone to be overly concerned about that.