Upon hearing the death of Pop star Michael Jackson June 25, 2009, at age 50 of cardiac arrest, brought about not surprisingly by a combination of prescription drugs the singer was likely addicted to, I did not do an imitation of his famous moonwalk dance as fans did.
I did not go out the next day like countless fans to spend hundreds on Michael Jackson CDs, magazines, and anything else they could get their hands on.
If I shed any tears for the singer, which will remain my secret and mine alone, I would have done it in the heat of the moment; the result of reading all the coverage on a variety of news websites that night, which almost completely overshadowed the death of actress Farrah Fawcett who had passed away hours earlier at age 62 from cancer.
What I did do after hearing that the King of Pop was gone, I began recalling several of Jackson’s hits from the early 1980s l enjoyed hearing like “Beat It” and “Thriller.” The one tune I could not get out of my head that day was “Billie Jean.”
Then there was the 1983 music video “Say, Say, Say,” I watched on www.youtube.com where Jackson collaborated with ex-Beatle Paul McCartney. The two played a couple of conmen named Mac and Jack who sell a magic potion “guaranteed to give you the strength of a raging bull.”
It was over twenty years since I last heard that song and it was a joy to see and listen to it again.
There is a certain kind of nostalgia that came to mind recalling those songs. That nostalgia was the ushering in of VHS video recorders and the arrival of pay cable television. Living in Chicago at the time and unlike most of my friends whose parents either had cable or owned a VCR, or both, we never got a video recorder until my grandparents bought us one for Christmas 1983, along with our first VHS owned movie, “Raiders of the Lost Ark” (1981), which back then cost $50.
Whereas everyone I knew got to see Jackson’s 14-minute dancing zombie video, “Thriller,” on MTV three weeks before Christmas in 1983, I didn’t get to see it until the summer of 84’ when it came out on video cassette. Honestly, my only interest in seeing it was not so much Jackson as it was seeing the singer turn into the undead and start dancing alongside several other rotting corpses.
Whereas I thought the song’s best selling point was actor Vincent Price’s ghoulish monologue near the end, the music video’s selling points were that it was directed by John Landis, who helmed “Animal House” (1978) and “The Blues Brothers” (1980) while the visual effects were handled by Oscar winning special makeup artist Rick Baker (“An American Werewolf In London” = 1980).
The fact I had seen George Romero’s 1978 horror sequel, “Dawn of the Dead,” a couple weeks earlier, however, increased my interest. The film was about four survivors who take refuge in a shopping mall from flesh eating zombies who have taken over the world and I assumed Jackson’s “Thriller” would have almost the same premise but set to music.
I admit, perhaps shamefully, that I owned one of Jackson’s greatest hits CD and sometimes had it playing in the car as I made my hour long drives to and from work at my former IT job.
As the pop star’s private life and eccentricities got stranger and more out of control over the years, however, I had a hard time comparing this talented dancer and singer from Gary, Indiana whose music videos from the 80s I saw on MTV (when we finally got cable) and heard on the radio with the person who in recent years was being accused of child molestation charges. By the time those allegations hit, whether he was guilty or not, or paid off his accusers to buy their silence, I decided that was it. I said to myself, “Jackson had crossed the line”, and I wasn’t going to listen to songs that were written by someone who might possibly be a pedophile.Yet still, there is no arguing that the guy was not talented, much like John Belushi, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Heath Ledger, Jim Morrison, Marilyn Monroe, and Elvis Presley before him who died giving in to the demons of illegal or prescription drug use.
The day after Jackson passed away, the pop star’s ex-wife, Lisa Marie Presley, who was married to the singer from May 1994 to January 1996, wrote in her online blog that the King of Pop told her that his death would echo that of her father, Elvis Presley, who died at the age of 42 on August 16,1977. Presley’s official cause of death was cardiac arrhythmia and was supposedly attributed to prescription medications but never proved because the autopsy report was sealed.
"I promptly tried to deter (Michael) from the idea, at which point he just shrugged his shoulders and nodded almost matter of fact as if to let me know, he knew what he knew and that was kind of that,” Presley wrote on her blog. "The hardest decision I have ever had to make, which was to walk away and let his fate have him, even though I desperately loved him and tried to stop or reverse it somehow."
Perhaps the saddest revelation on whether Jackson, who was about to kick off a comeback tour of 50 shows in London in July ironically titled “This Is It”, was really happy with his success came from the singer himself when friend Uri Geller asked him if he is lonely.
The King of Pop’s response was “Uri Geller, I am a very lonely man.”
If there is any lesson to be learned here other than realizing how dangerous it is to rely on prescription medications is the notion that money doesn’t buy happiness.
My feelings about Michael Jackson are the same as my feelings for Elvis Presley. Sure, I liked some of their music, but I was never a fan of either one. Yet, I own “Elv1s 30 #1 Hits” on compact disc and have several of the King of Rock and Roll’s songs on my iPod.
I suppose listening to that CD is how I prefer to remember Presley. Not as that bloated, overweight, over worked, sweaty picture I saw of him in author Albert Goldman’s 1981 unflattering biography of the singer called “Elvis,” or watching him in a scene from the '81 documentary, “This Is Elvis,” in which he can’t remember the lyrics to “Are You Lonesome Tonight?”
I don’t know if I will ever download and listen to any of Jackson’s early number one hits again.
I will say that for a brief moment on June 25, I preferred to remember the Michael Jackson of the early 1980s over the Michael Jackson we had seen in recent years whose scandalous private life became the subject of jokes for late night talk show hosts and endless fodder for the tabloids, and who now, rest assured even in death, is not going to get a moment’s peace.
©6/27/09
No comments:
Post a Comment