Best Jackson Epitaph
Telegraph music critic Neil McCormick yesterday posted the best written and most bluntly honest reaction to Michael Jackson‘s life and passing that I’ve read thus far. Wait for dusk, take the IRT down to Astor Place, walk over to First Avenue and find a clean car to lean against, take out your iPhone or Blackberry and read it that way. Trust me.
“‘This is it, this really is it,’ announced Michael Jackson in his last official public appearance, at the O2 centre on March 5th, 2009. He could have had no idea how true that phrase would turn out to be. The self-styled King of Pop is dead. There was to be no triumphant comeback just a final bizarre twist in pop’s strangest soap opera.
“And that is what Michael Jackson’s existence had long since turned into, a particularly weird real life melodrama, played out in tabloid newspapers, gossip magazines, TV inquisitions and a succession of court rooms.
“It was a story of a prolonged and ugly fall from grace told in whispers and innuendo, but all too rarely (sadly) in song. It was eight years since he made a record, and probably twenty since he made a good one.
“Jackson rose like a showbusiness meteorite from much loved child star to the greatest pop icon of his time, but once installed on the throne he craved, he seemed to unravel before our very eyes. He mutilated his appearance in a vain attempt to turn himself into his childhood fantasy hero, Peter Pan, the boy who never grew up. He installed himself in a playground that he called Neverland, with monkeys and other animals for company. He entangled himself in inappropriate relationships with young boys.”
Wait…I have to stop here. “Inappropriate”? What’s wrong with diseased and predatory?
“He married and divorced Elvis Presley’s daughter. He acquired children through some surrogate shenanigans with his nurse. His nose apparently fell off. He blew an astonishing amount of money and wound up an itinerant superstar, pursued through the courts by creditors and sheiks baying that he owed them millions of dollars.
“Neverland closed its gates. His belongings were exhibited for auction, including such prize items as an actual throne and an oil portrait of Jackson as a fairy tale ruler. He grew skinnier and paler (quite something for a black man) and apparently explored every possible avenue to return to the limelight without actually having to perform live.
“And then he surrendered to the inevitable and announced his return to the stage. Only even then, he seemed to be simultaneously announcing his retirement, telling us it would be the last time we would ever see him, in London at least. Or the last 50 times. ‘This,’ he kept repeating like a mantra he didn’t even believe himself, ‘is it.’
“I was asked last week by the LA Times why I thought Michael Jackson was staging his comeback in the UK rather than the US. ‘Are the British more forgiving?’ the journalist wanted to know. My off-the-cuff reply was that because we watched the whole Jackson saga unfold across the Atlantic, tuning into scenes from LA on our home screens, we always treated it as a kind of fantastic Hollywood soap that said as much about America as it did about Jackson himself. And ultimately it didn’t really matter to us whether his comeback was a triumph or failure, we just wanted to catch the next episode.
“Well, this is it, this is really it. The final twist turns out to have been both impossible to predict, yet strangely anti-climactic, as our hero (or villain) shuffles off the world’s stage, not with a bang, but in an ambulance, to die behind closed doors, out of the public eye.
“I wanted to believe, against all the odds, that this rather lost and bewildered fifty year old superhasbeen was going to stage one last rally, that he had it in him to reconnect with his extraordinary talent. I tried to convince myself he was a showbiz trouper and that the call of the footlights, the impatient rustle of the audience gathering beyond the curtain, would somehow snap him out of his lethargic, disassociative state, and that he would rise to the occasion.
“But his behaviour at his press conference suggested otherwise. And rumours from LA grew steadily worse, as he failed to turn up to rehearsals, appeared at a dermatology clinic carrying a bag labelled ‘skin cancer’ (which seemed to be more of a photo op than an actual health complaint) and then postponed his opening shows for the vaguest of reasons.
“As famous last words go, ‘This is it’ has a certain iconic ring to it, but Michael Jackson’s final recorded public utterances are actually less edifying and a great deal more disturbing. ‘I don’t know how I’m going to do fifty shows. I’m not a big eater — I need to put some weight on,’ Jackson whined to fans gathered outside the rehearsal studio.
“So did the concert promoters do for Michael Jackson? They certainly have some questions to answer. It is pretty clear that he was, in some respects, a reluctant participant, driven back to the stage as a last resort to pay off overwhelming debts, whatever promoter Randy Phillips, head of AEG Live, has said about Jackson wanting to do it for his kids, while he still could.
“Dismissing rumours of Jackson’s frailty and ill health, Phillips declared on 21st May: ‘I would trade my body for his tomorrow. He’s in fantastic shape.’ I think this particular medical expert will probably be trying to keep a low profile for a while.
“The death of someone so famous shakes us to the core, because it is like a death in the family. Love him or loathe him, Michael Jackson was part of the fabric of all our lives. Or maybe worse, it is like the death of a God, a sudden unexplainable absence in the mythos of the times. President Kennedy, Elvis Presley, John Lennon, Lady Diana: these are the kind of deaths that confront us with our own mortality, the realization that the end is unavoidable, death stalks us all, no matter how anointed by the fates.
“Such a death is usually greeted with a kind of incredulity. But this is it. This is really it.”
“That said as much about America as it did about Jackson himself.”
Just wanted to make sure all the douchebag apologists out there didn’t miss that one.
I love that statement that he wanted to do it for his kids. That’s big enough motivation to go back on stage.
“probably twenty since he made a good one.”
what an asshole! “Dangerous” is arguably his best album,that was 18 years ago.
I’m sick of all these post-mortems from people who think they know more about the man than they read in the headlines. And you’re dishonest for forwarding such simple-minded garbage.
Turning himself into Peter Pan? People really believe this? Ridiculous.
Anyone who thinks Jackson’s plastic surgery was anything more than an obsession with health as an extension of his lupus condition is simply addicted to the perpetuation of myth. Sickening, journalistically obscene and absolutely, uncontrollably, mean-spirited.
Read Deepak Chopra’s Huff Post op-ed for some true, knowledgable insight. Enough of this cheap bullshit dime-store skepticism.
Listen, Kris — you have to get something straight in your head without any pussyfooting around. Michael Jackson was a gifted singer and performer who, as a solo artist, had eight or nine great years when things were really popping, and 15 or 16 years as a increasingly deranged, self-mutilating, young-boy-blowing, baby-hotel-dangling Frankenstein freak. He epitomized a a super-affluent form of neuroticism and deranged-fantasy-tripping and reality-denying horseshit that sane people worldwide have come to be righteously appalled by. Deepak Chopra’s HuffPost piece is gentle, self-deluding crap. A friend of Joseph Goebbels or Attila the Hun or one of the Milli Vanillia guys could have written the same thing,.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/deepak-chopra/a-tribute-to-my-friend-mi_b_221268.html
“young-boy-blowing”
This is what gets me. Every uses the death as an excuse to come out with declarations they know nothing about, declarations unproven, assured in their heads. It’s incredibly scary and dangerous (no pun intended).
But I’m glad everyone, especially folks like you, Jeff, somehow think you’re in a more omniscient place.
Did you see Chopra’s CNN interview with Blitzer? He wasn’t exactly gentle. He dug right into the drug thing and offered the most level-headed assessment of things I’ve come across. I respect that more than the sensationalist musings you seem more intent on offering and conveying.
Shameful.
*EveryONE uses
I think this pretty much says it all…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06K82xsG6vE
Because Chris Rock taking cheap, easy shots is pretty much gospel.
Idiot.
I really liked this piece
http://ernesthardy.blogspot.com/2009/06/michael-jackson-bless-his-soul.html
But Polanski’s just “misunderstood” and the judge just had it in for him, right Jeff?
Tapley, did you see the 60 Minutes interview Rock is talking about?
Michael Jackson died for me a long, long time ago. But I’m glad you enjoyed his work enough to resort to insulting a stranger. Idiot.
Jeff, you seem obsessed with the pedo stuff, almost unnaturally preoccupied by it. You seem to be getting off on harping on it. But that’s the half of it….
Tapley is spot on…this armchair psychoanalysis bullshit is tiring and plain laughable. Everyone knows better, right? Jesus, shut up. What the makes you and the rest of the pool of untalented hack journalists and bloggers, comforting yourselves while savaging another man’s legacy, think you have anything insightful to add to the spectacle? This blog-roll circle jerk is embarrassing, not to mention unnecessary, as we all observed Jackson for the last two decades. We all saw it. Peter pan? How profound!
Anyway, spiritually, what killed Jacko was Obama. Since he was no longer the new kid on the block brothers and sisters looked up to, Michael had nothing left to offer to the public. Sort of like how synth and anthem music is really what killed The King, since he was an old-time performer who relied more on the mic than on the background music to do his magic.
Yeah, I saw it, Mick. All it was was eccentricity as far as I’m concerned. And you linked to a Chris Rock performance and said “this pretty much says it all,” in lieu of something substantial. So yeah, I called you, and anyone else who wants to offer up tabloid skepticism, an idiot. Stranger or not.
I think Rock’s routine does say it all. He’s talking about a man who had about as much public good will as anybody could imagine and he squandered it.
Jackson was accused in the early 90s of sexual abuse involving minors. Maybe it was true, maybe it was a scam. For the sake of argument, let’s say it was a scam.
Ten years later, however, he’s in trouble again for the same kind of stuff. Again, maybe it was a scam.
But if you ‘re him and you care about yourself and you care about your millions of fans and if you respect the seriousness of charges involving the sexual abuse of children, you don’t show up late for court, you don’t show up dressed inappropriately and you don’t continue hanging out with other people’s much-younger kids. Jackson, however, did all of those things.
What you call Rock’s “cheap, easy shots” sound to me like the straightforward observations of a reasonable human being. Rock also sounds like a fan who got burned by an irresponsible hero, which makes it even sadder.
Frankly, I’m sick of the whole subject.
Why post this astonishing writing by Neil McCormick, then insert you own prejudicial bullshit in the middle of it? You suck for that. It interrupted the flow in a major way for me. Maybe that was your intent.
Your own feelings about Jackson are REALLY QUITE CLEAR, Jeff, and though I have a polar opposite view, I thought YOUR post was as exceptional – strong and concise and, in the case of your video, even haunting, every bit as profound as this beautifully written piece by McCormick. So why even post this if you have to have your say again and again.
Well, it’s your blog column thingie so I guess you can do what the fuck you want.
But it sucked having an injection of you in the words of another.
Again, there are opinions out there that differ than yours and it doesn’t mean we are delusional or mistaken…just see things differently than you. You do this a lot (from way back when, according to you, Julia Roberts was an ornery bitch, Eddie Murphy was and still is the supreme asshole, Roman Polanski got a raw deal, fidelity is archaic or whatever, etc. ad nausea) – what is “obvious” to you because of shit you hear or even witness in the twin superior cities you’ve lived in while writing this blog column thingie is always stated as fact, and those who have a different opinion are demeaned or ridiculed.
The use of exciting, shiny adjectives still doesn’t mean your OPINIONS are THE ONLY TRUTH -and I’ll believe those who knew the subjects of your rants more than the lazy, “don’t you all get it” insistent tripe that’s easier to declare.
Jackson was a mess, and as one of his true fans, every time I saw or heard the latest outrageous or absurd act, I would roll my eyes and shake my head. NO doubt his demons are strong and I hope they are, like him, put to rest. But his music and the memories from that music are strong enough, for some of us, to transcend the ridiculousness of his later years.
And we’re allowed to believe in that music and those memories, allowed to know that his music and the memories are stronger than any detractors, and should be allowed to state it without being dismissed. Those who feel completely different and detested him certainly have been allowed to state theirs.
If you don’t mind being offended, read this: http://www.frankieboyle.com/stuff/articles/260609.doc
The newspaper (The Daily Record) refused to print it so he quit!
“Anyone who thinks Jackson’s plastic surgery was anything more than an obsession with health as an extension of his lupus condition is simply addicted to the perpetuation of myth.”
What? Are you kidding? Anyone with eyes in his head could see what Michael Jackson was doing — trying to turn himself into a young white girl.
I am not even a proper Jackson fan (or Motown fan, really, apart from Stevie and Smokey), but Jeff, the reason why so few people have focused on the dirt of Jacko’s life in the tributes, reports and eulogies is because the entire world has been watching him dying, slowly, since the late 80s. The self-loathing and pain that most people have, but are able to control and live with, was personified in his mutilated face, ravaged body and scandalous public life.
It is it brave or great journalism to type a few paragraphs about what a freak he was and what a holllow shell his life was? Not really. His life cannot even be a cautionary tale, as being on the treadmill since age 4, he never had any healthy sense of self to begin with. His life was, simply, sad.
And that, is the reason why people have been blasting “Billie Jean” and “Jam” from their cars and why radio stations have played “I Want You Back” and “Rock With You” on a loop for the past couple of days. Looking at Michael Jackson’s face was been The Void looking back into us. He’s finally passed, and he and we are the better for it. The song and the dancing remain.
Not that I’m defending any potential Jackson action, but there does seem to be a double standard against him, considering most people let Jerry Lee Lewis and Elvis’s marriage slide…Hell, even R. Kelly never got this kind of bad-mouthing, and everyone definitely knows he was a pedo. Really, most people making those negative comments are just jealous of his success, and they get a kick out of knocking him down a peg. Christ, Robert Downey, Jr. looked like shit once, too, but everyone was ready to forgive him. And Mike Tyson did actually get convicted for rape, and tore off his opponent’s ear, to boot; but suddenly, everyone’s treating him like another “big lug” who simply “doesn’t know his own strength”.
It’s all total bullshit. The naysayers just have it in for Jackson, because he was so prominent in the public eye. And yet he still managed to retain his fanbase, because he didn’t try to act “fake” in front of the camera while hiding his baggage like Gibson, or lecturing to the rest of the public like Cruise. He just tried to keep the embers of his glory days hot for the fans; he never quiet succeeded, but he at least didn’t “sell out” by dumbing down his music and/or trying out another genre which was totally out of his element. And, hey, speaking of his music, at least I can listen to it legally on Youtube without it being muted out (*cough* Prince *cough*) or having to wait for the record company to shake down Google for more money than the song’s worth. (*cough* Time Warner *cough*) And Michael was a guy who genuinely could’ve used that kind of dough, too. But, hey, what the hell did he ever do for any of us, except brighten our lives during two of the most tumultuous decades of the last century, while helping us to believe in the American Dream? Oh, wait, who the fuck cares about that, when we’d rather knock anyone who’s more talented than us, which is why we elected Bush twice in a row.
See the problem on this site is that none of these people were emotionally invested in Jackson. They all missed it, they werent born or just werent into his music. They’re all detached observers, his death is shocking to them but not personal because they werent there. They missed it. All of them, even Jeff, especially Jeff. But if you were a kid in the 70′s and especially if you were black, this guy and his family arrived like a meteor into your life, and you rode with him for 30 fucking years. But the people on this site didnt have that luxury, they missed it. No matter how many videos or songs you see or hear, by the 80′s you were late..
marriages*
People seem eager to eviscerate Jackson for the mutilation he did to himself, but no one seems inclined to acknowledge the changes wrought by others before he was even out of his teens. He was a normal black teenage boy until SOMETHING happened to turn him into what he became, and I think we all know in our hearts what that was. It wasn’t his doing; he was still a boy, and there was millions to be made in keeping him one. Yes, his childhood was taken from him, but not just because of an adult-sized work schedule.
As I stated above, I was not a Jackson fan (born in 1981, the effect of “Thriller” and “Bad” passed me by thanks to my father’s folk and hard rock leanings, my steady diet of Madonna and Kylie up until the age of 8, and that I never discovered soul or R&B until the early-90s with Prince, Sade, Salt’n'Pepa and Boyz II Men, whilst everyone else was mad for Cobain), I must take issue with the suggestion that Jacko had done nothing musically of relevance for 20 years.
In 1997, the 5 track disk he released that contained “Blood on the Dance Floor” (an ace, hit-the-floor, club track) was critically acclaimed and stands up as really interesting stuff. It has a very sharp, disturbing industrial sound, and parts of it were close to sublime. “Morphine” is an incredible piece of writing and production and his vocals are chilling. As for the lyrics – you can guess how they read now, Don’t make the mistake of using a quick Google of the Billboard charts as a template for an artistic legacy,
vansmith, your comments are so right and true that I’m good with this thread. I wish there was a way to put your comments FIRST…would have saved me a lot of frustration.
I don’t think anyone could have said it better. I am grateful for you clarity for sure,
Late to the party here. But, I wholeheartedly agree with what Jeff has written. As well as McCormick’s well written observations.
Reading all the articles and ‘news’ generating across the world, I am thunderstruck by the level of denial of most of the fan posterers who gather around the comment pages. They are in denial at every level of what went on in MJ’s world over the years. Even during the the few years – waaaaay back when – where he creatively burned very very brightly.
I do pity MJ now, as he has lost control over his domain, and his freak circus of a family now has free rein to do what they want with his name and memory. Apparently LaToya has already been rummaging through his rented house looking for things to sell, and ‘bags of money’ he may have stashed around. And apparently the family are looking to do a MJ Tribute Tour featuring the entire family. Ick.
daisy: Dunno if I’m in denial, but he’s long paid for whatever happened, which is more than I can say about Polanski. And if that guy can be forgiven to the point that he gets an Oscar, I’m not sure why fans can’t be allowed to keep their positive memories of Michael. Hell, you let Kurt Cobain’s “suicide” slide; and the conclusion there was as reliable as your conclusion about this case. But since Jacko’s an easy target, he must have done it.
According to CNN and AP, the only Jackson at the home yesterday when the moving vans were there was Janet – the rest of the family was in Encino with Jesse Jackson. In no statement does any member of that family talk about a tour – I am sure they are still in shock about losing their son/brother.
And I would call 1968 (first Apollo appearance) through 2001 a little longer than a “few” years.
“daisy” you are as bad as any gossip rag out there if you believe any old crap anyone can say and throw it out as fact.
No true fan is in denial about anything. And because you have a different opinion makes you no expert on anything, though you are certainly allowed to state it.
The only person in denial is you, for not allowing fans to also grieve and recognize his impact. Read vansmith’s post, as as it describes people like you perfectly.
Guess I wasn’t through with this thread after all.
Actually, daisy was correct. My mistake.
LaToya was there, along with Janet.
Though there was no evidence or validity to “rummaging” or looking for money.
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Anyone who thinks Jackson’s plastic surgery was anything more than an obsession with health as an extension of his lupus condition is simply addicted to the perpetuation of myth. Sickening, journalistically obscene and absolutely, uncontrollably, mean-spirited.
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