Eddy Cochran, Jimi Hendrix, Lennon – death has only sanctified their contribution to rock music. Now Michael Jackson, presumably the most commercially successful musician of all time. Great far beyond his exuberant, mesmeric performance, but in his composition too.
And weird. But then, aren’t we all? Who amongst us from the age of eight could have withstood the tsunami of attention, adulation, adoration, mystification, and emotion? Others know the detail. I only know the music and the effect it had on me and my generation. I was the statutory 18 when he was eight. We got his rhythm.
But in later life I retreated, if not from his music, at least from publicly talking about it. The weird seriously assaulted the memory of the music and its impact. As with R Kelly’s I Believe I Can Fly, I kept quiet about how much I loved it after his court case, never confessing that should Desert Island Discs call, R Kelly would have to be there.
But so would Jacko. Reconciling the strange surgery and the even stranger, even sinister, delight in the menagerie of young children with whom he consorted in his home, undermined my total appreciation of what he achieved, perhaps the greatest recording artist of all time.
And the manner of his passing, matching his life: sudden. From birth to performance, from performance to death – sudden – leaving hundreds of thousands ticketed for the greatest come back never made.
This was an individual of whom, for an absolute certainty we can say, we shall not see his like again.
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The greatest tradgedy of Michael Jacksons death is that people will now appreciate that humans are vulnerable to all the stresses fame brings. This stress is the result of media frenzy hell bent on supplying a sinister public, who love to buy gossip and, see the demise of others. Capitalist greed matched with human evilness.
The loss of such a great singer that produced a unique sound, matched only by Elvis Presley, is a situation where people only appreciate what they had when they lost it. For America & the world, it’s a truly sad day.
Perhaps he’s best off out of this world full of awful people & situations.
Could hardly agree more – sad truth is – it is an awful world – and a great world in many repects – far too good for the human species – who are mainly sadly a nasty lot.
That was a well-written exact summation of how I feel.
Snowboy – please wear white socks today!
Great idea – I’ve got my white socks on today for sure.
What a sad day……
At a tender age of 25 now, I grew up watching his Moonwalk movie. My younger brother who’s just 18 now used to imitate him in one of the Smooth Criminal scenes by blowing white body powder everywhere in our Hong Kong flat.
What a great legend.
Yes, Jon, please wear white socks in remembrance of him tonight.
well put praise of the contribution 2 music without 4getting all the weird stuff
The last great pop performer , there has been nothing coming up the ranks since so maybe this is also signals the decline of pop music itself?
Dont forget Jon we need Gordon Brown’s reaction to this.
“Dont forget Jon we need Gordon Brown’s reaction to this”
Oh, that’s out already! He’s wheeled out and dusted down – a relatively thin layer of dust accumulated, mind you – last used for Jade Goody – the generic piece kept for the death of Slebs finishing with the ” thoughts are with the family at this time”
Michael Jackson was a MUSICAL GENIUS….No matter how controversial his personal life was, most of the world remember him for his songs. We will remember him not for the headlines but for his music…HIS MUSIC WILL NEVER DIE….
His life was a parable – apparently he had everything but nothing made him happy. I feel sad he’s dead but more sad for his life. It’s obvious that millions of people gained more than he did from Michael Jackson being alive.
I truly believe that he was an angel sent to be a sacrifice on how ugly the world can get. Especially when you are put in the spotlight. I think too many people took it to heart at the fact that he was trying to regain his childhood by cohorting with the much younger generations… Think about it… If you were pushed into stardom, what is the first thing youy would do upon your adulthood success??? My condolences to his family and everyone who truly loved Mr. Micheal Jackson.
Gone, but not forgotten.
As a musician, song-writer and performer, Michael Jackson was a genius.
For me, too many great songs to mention, but his music will live forever.
A legend….gone but not forgotten.
I find it interesting that channel 4 likes to dwell on the negatives. I am not a huge Michael Jackson fan but I am truely shocked and saddened by the news today. He was a great performer and it was so sad that his life had so many troubles. He was a gorgeous young boy but obviously (seen in his later life) a product of a harsh and unforgiving background (his father?). He made mistakes- we all do (even holier than thou reporters) but most of us have the luxury of not being in the public eye when we make them. Reporters would do well to remember that he was acquited of child abuse accusations. I feel strongly about this as I am a teacher and have seen colleagues suffer a similar fate because of false accusations. When accused of child abuse you are guilty until proven innocent. (In teaching you are out of your job until proven innocent!) Malicious accusations can ruin someone’s life even if proven innocent.It is absolutely awful for anyone and people MUST remember that. Many people never recover. It could destroy anyone. Perhaps Michael Jackson is an example of this? Today is a sad day. Lets not dwell on the tragedies he had in his life- lets celebrate his incredible talent. Michael Jackson has given thousands of people many happy times and much joy. I loved his early music. What a shame the pop industry no longer produces such amazing talent.
Have tried three times to congratulate C4 on its decision to show the tribute to MJ by just showing his videos with a very few inobtrusive tributes by his friends and peers. Very moving and thanks to the programmer / producer. Less respect for inpenetrable general response section of this website . Won’t bother again.. Rejected by an “!” instead of a “1″ in my postcode. 2nd go defeated by some comment about FAQ’s… Rubbish… C4 news and JS excellent.
The thing I remember about Michael Jackson was just after the album ‘Thriller’, that was when the surgery began, it started with his voice, he can’t of been more than 18 or 16 at the time. I would love to know more about the surgeons who worked on him and whether they had, had mishaps during his surgery. For whatever he did, he never killed to cover it all up, the Lawers could not save his reputation but he just tried to carry on. He was not a monster. Just some poor kid they all indoctrinated and experimented with.
He was just a little younger than me when the Jackson Five first appeared. He was such a cute little boy and, as an adult, was a musical genius. Thriller, especially with Vincent Price narrating, was wonderful. Weird Al Yankovich had fun with Beat It (he called the song Eat It – is a genius in satire which is non-hurtful). In America, Jackson is innocent until proven guilty, as in the UK. I therefore will never judge him unless there is proof of any misdeeds. If there is no proof, we need to remember his contribution to the musical world and be sad at a death which was too soon.
Eat It was the perfect satire, and not hurtful (apparently MJ helped WAY with it); he was the total performer – you see those stadium clips, and 25 years on, you wish you’d had the sense to be there.
The media’s saying this is a Diana moment, but is it? I think he was bigger than Elvis or Sinatra, but it sort-of feels like just-news. Don’t know why.
I am very saddened by Michael Jackson’s death. He was one of our first Black icons along with Mohammed Ali. I grew up hearing his music from the outset when he first appeared as a member of the Jackson Five. We were always proud of his muscial achievements.Whatever your views about his personal life and personality we can not deny that he was a musical genius and a true professional. He really cared about his work and ensured that he gave nothing less than his best to his audiences and fans. They were never cheated or short changed. We are fortunate that we were able to witness a great talent in our life time – they don’t come very often.
I felt curiously unmoved by his death. This isn’t an unemotional music obsessive talking – I cried when Frank Zappa and John Martyn died and have felt nastily shaken by other losses in the music world.
It’s just that all the seminal moments in his music (the beat into Billy Jean is typical) were the work of Quincy Jones.
Jackson himself was a singer/songwriter and a spookily wonderful dancer. But he didn’t seem real. He seemed to me to lack substance. He had plastic surgery to look like Diana Ross. His camp spun stories like his hyperbaric chamber to keep him in the headlines during the long gaps between anything actually happening musically and when there was fresh product to promote.
His financial dealings and obsession with controlling the Beatles songbook suggested a very uncool and frankly unpleasant man.
Jacko was a man damaged by childhood abuse who gave alcohol to kids and took them to his bed. He kept his job because he was stinking rich and it was all fuel for the myth. Of course he was talented and he will be remembered. But he was only part of a very very brilliant machine.
Or maybe I was just missing something.
But to me his death felt like nothing more than the end of a long running and much loved TV series.
By the way, nice one Jon – lovely to hear a ’serious’ figure confess to a guilty musical pleasure. We all have them.
My comment on ur “took kids to bed”..to an innocent mind, far away from
the corrupt workings of warped minds -letting kids have the luxury of doubling up into bed with you can be just
as natural as anything…but ofcourse after the media turned this innocense to dirt, we all think twice about it now when its not our kids who come crawling into bed with us under any old pretext just
for a cuddle..maybe it will soon become illegal for our own kids to do so too..and by the way Frank who? John whatzhisname? never heard of them.
Who cares if Quincy Jones or Smokey Robinson wrote the song….
So what if he bought the Beatles song book…business is business…did they have a gun to their head to sell it?
Interesting immediately after Michael Jackson’s death to watch Glastonbury and see Neil Young and Bruce Springsteen. Both seem to me better musicians, with more to say, and to be able to handle the fame better.
Guess neither of them being child stars raised by an abusive father makes a big difference.
You can’t really compare Neil Young and Springsteen to MJ anyway, totally different music.
In any case, Jackson is a bigger star than either by any objective measure.
There is something clunky/stodgy about the Boss’s music, and can anyone name a Neil Young song?
MJ was a completely mixed-up person, but patently superior class.
I;m writing this only a mile away from the Jackson family home in Encino, Ca. Although the exact circumstances of Jackson’s death have yet to be determined, one common thread seems to run through the rock world and the deaths of several of its celebrities…they’re usually highly talented people from rather ordinary or even deprived backgrounds. They eventually find fame no respite for the pain and inner torment that plagues them. The money, the lifestyle and power they suddenly have is tempered with the eventual realization that they are only as good as their last success. Yet, Jackson went beyond being a rock star to an international phenom. This was a tremendous weight to place on a man who also found all his money couldn’t arrest his gradual physical and emotional deterioration of his being.
There has not been greiving on this level for a music star since Lenon or Elvis. And when they died there was no internet.
It is amazing the power of all the fans searching to confirm the death of Jackson, that it slowed down teh whole internet.
That’s crazy.
Am I alone in finding repugnant the willingness of Michael Jackson’s father to talk to camera about the musical abilities of the son he terrified and hurt, emotionally more than physically? Not an iota of self-knowledge by this patriarch. Also, by staying with the man who abused her son, Jackson’s mother effectively colluded in this lifetime damage. What kind of love is that? A question asked by many males in a similar situation. We need to think about alternative forms of rearing our children if we are to overcome ‘the sins of the fathers being visited upon the children’.
We will never have another Michael Jackson again…But, we were lucky to have him for as long as we did….
=Dennis Junior=
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