When I was 13 I was a huge Michael Jackson fan. I won’t go into too many embarrassing details but I had loads of rare vinyl, went to see him perform at Wembley in 1992 and knew more of his dance moves than was healthy. Pride of my collection was an ultra-rare pack of red vinyl singles from Bad which would surely be worth quite a mint now. I even had the white glove.
Then, in 1993, the horrendous pictures of the “hole” in his nose hit the front page of the Daily Mirror. Worse was soon to follow in the form of the shocking child abuse allegations that rapidly made Michael Jackson probably the “uncoolest” pop star in the world. Suddenly it became very embarrassing to be a Jacko fan and before long, I’d sold all of my collection back to the second hand record shop I’d bought them from in the first place for about a third of the value – much to the amusement of the owner. A year or so later, I discovered Oasis and then rock-and-roll and never looked back.
Until his recent death, I’d barely listened to any of his music in almost 20 years. However, I’ve been revisiting all those old albums and tracks I still know off by heart and it’s been like traveling back in time. To my surprise, I can see exactly why I was such a fan too. Put aside all of his eccentricities and controversies his music was absolutely brilliant pop. From the early 70’s right up until the mid 90’s, surely no one in the history of music has produced such consistently great pop music. And he wasn’t a product like many of today’s pop “stars” – he was writing, choreographing and singing all of his material. The man lived and breathed music and dance and believed in what he created. Jackson was an all round singer, songwriter, dancer and pop phenomenon. A unique product of the 80’s MTV generation and as with Elvis, the likes of we’ll never see again.
Listening to old interviews with him has also made me feel a bit guilty. When all the child abuse allegations came out and he paid-off Jordan Chandler to prevent it going to court, I was inclined to believe that the out-of-court settlement was an admission of guilt. I think it would have been much better, if very painful and embarrassing for him, to have let it go to court and cleared his name. However, from the way he says the police treated him during the investigations and the publicity surrounding the trial, I think there was also probably a vendetta to get “the weirdo superstar pedophile” prosecuted. In the eyes of most adults – especially those in a police uniform – Jackson was an effeminate immature millionaire superstar oddball who needed bringing down a peg or too. I’m sure Jackson was terrified that he would be prosecuted whether he was guilty or not and I can now understand why such a shy and private person paid off Chandler. Since the case, Chandler has admitted that Jackson didn’t abuse him anyway.
Having re-watched several old interviews with him including the infamous Bashir one, I think it’s clear that Jackson never grew up and he honestly thought there was nothing wrong with sometimes sleeping with kids in his bed. But I don’t believe he did anything sexual with them and his heart was most definitely in the right place. If you think about the number of kids that must have passed through Neverland over the 20 years he lived there and only 2 made allegations, why aren’t all the other kids lining-up to claim their millions? It seems more likely a case of opportunism by cynical and greedy parents who wanted a slice of the richest and most naive entertainer in the world at that time. But while Jackson may have been naive, he wasn’t stupid. Would he really be stupid enough to admit he saw nothing wrong sharing his bed with children and holding hands with a child on camera as he did in Bashir’s documentary if he was a genuine pedophile considering everything that had gone before him? He admitted it because in his innocent eyes, he had nothing to hide. In the eyes of the cynical adult world however, it looked dodgy as hell.
As regards his skin changes, I also believe his claim that he had Vitligo and was something that he couldn’t help. There’s no “skin bleaching” process that can make someone that white. There are pictures of him in the 1980’s too that show his skin displaying the blotchy effects of the illness in it’s early stages which his makeup artist says she regularly tried to cover-up. His claim in Bashir’s documentary that he’d only had 2 nose jobs I find harder to believe but who knows, and really, who cares? What’s clear is that his understandable hatred of his vicious (and clearly still money grubbing) father compelled him to change his look as much as possible to avoid looking anything like him.
Jackson had many faults. Like many superstars, he sang songs about “healing the world” and taking a look at “the man in the mirror” while at the same time, living an extravagant lifestyle that hardly practiced what he preached. To his credit however, he did at least set up his own Heal The World foundation, give a lot of money to charity (including in his will) and did a lot for sick kids. Like many pop phenomenons however, I don’t think he could ever face that he was past it though by the mid 1990’s and it was probably a combination of his ego, debts and drugs that finally killed him.
But I think he was an extremely big hearted person at heart. Yes, he sounded effeminate, made you cringe at times (such as when he hung his baby off the balcony in Berlin) and like Diana, often courted publicity as much as he hated it (it’s said that he himself put out the stories of him sleeping in a oxygen chamber and buying the elephant man’s bones). But at the end of the day, Jackson was an extremely kind hearted and innocent man who due to the circumstances of his “stolen” childhood, had enough wealth to decide to remain a child for the rest of his life. It’s called Peter Pan syndrome and if he was guilty of anything, that was it.
I don’t think that he killed himself either. For an unbelievably sensitive guy, Jackson must have been very resilient to deal with the scrutiny, criticism, legal trials and accusations that were thrown at him. Even though he had pretty much hit rock bottom financially in the run-up to his upcoming tour, it sounds most likely that he over medicated himself. If anyone is to blame, it is the doctor – possibly Arnold Klein – that prescribed him the anesthetic Propofol to help him sleep. However, Jackson was a determined guy used to getting what he wanted and I wouldn’t be surprised if it emerges he was also dangerously addicted to a cocktail of drugs. Probably a result of all the trials and tribulations he had been through and both the physical and emotional fear of having to do a world tour of 50 dates at the age of 50 when he thought he’d only signed up for 10. It also sounds like The Nation of Islam had gotten their greedy hands on him in his later years and were bleeding him dry financially while taking an increasingly influential role in his life. By the time he died, the once most powerful entertainer in the world had virtually no control over his own life.
RIP Michael Jackson and thank you for the music and fond childhood memories.
