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It is morning in a Manhattan disco, and Michael Jackson — who owns perhaps the most scrutinized face in America — is smiling warily for a roomful of strangers. Jackson has come to New York for two weeks of near–continuous hubbub, which will include three sold–out concerts at Madison Square Garden and highly anticipated appearances on the thirtieth annual Grammy Awards program (his first television performance since the 1983 Motown 25 show) and at a benefit dinner for the United Negro College Fund. This morning, though, he is performing the one chore that he reportedly dreads most — he is standing still for the close attention of the media.
The occasion is a large–scale press conference, convened by Jackson's current tour sponsor, Pepsi, to commemorate a $600,000 contribution from the singer to the United Negro College Fund. But the philanthropy of the event is somewhat overshadowed by Pepsi's other purpose: namely, to première Jackson's flashy new four–episode commercial for the soda company, which will make its TV debut the following night, during the broadcast of the Grammy Awards at Radio City Music Hall.
All in all, it is an odd excuse for a press gathering, and Jackson looks rather uncomfortable with the stagy formality of the situation. Not surprisingly, there is little he is willing to say about the occasion, and he does not take any questions from the nearly 500 journalists who have gathered here. In short, like most Michael Jackson press conferences, this event is little more than a grandiose photo opportunity — and yet it has all the drawing power of a significant political function. In a sense, it is easy to see why. It is as close to Michael Jackson as most members of the press are likely to get, and though there may be some reporters here who are put off by the singer, they still find him fascinating and are quite happy to ogle at his transfixing, part–beautiful, part–grotesque countenance.
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But just why Jackson finds it necessary to endure an experience like this is another question. According to one associate, who like most people around Jackson prefers not to be quoted for attribution, high–profile media–directed galas like this — or tomorrow night's Grammy program — have a special significance for the singer.
"You have to keep in mind," the associate says, "what happened to Michael during the 1980 Grammy Awards. His album Off the Wall had sold over 6 million copies. In effect, Michael was the biggest black artist America had ever produced. He fully expected to be nominated for the Album of the Year and Record of the Year awards, and he deserved to. But instead he won only one award — best male R&B vocal.
"That experience hurt Michael, and it also taught him a lesson. You could be the biggest black entertainer in history, and yet to much of the music industry and media, you were an invisible man. That's why he aimed to make Thriller the biggest record of all time, and that's why he has aligned himself with Pepsi. Pepsi gave him the biggest commercial–endorsement contract that anybody has ever received, and to Michael, the more accomplishments you have to your name, the more people have to recognize you. That's what an event like this is all about. Michael still wants the world to acknowledge him."
"As far as I'm concerned, we need to win album of the year," says Frank Dileo, Michael Jackson's manager. "That's the big one."
It is the morning of the Grammy Awards telecast, and Dileo is sitting in his hotel suite, chewing on one of his ever–present cigars. He is a short, rotund, ponytailed man with a well–earned reputation for talking tough, and yet despite his demeanor — and his wariness of reporters — Dileo can prove both personable and candid when the spirit moves him. Mainly, though, he seems to possess a genuine affection for the controversial man–child who is his client.
"Sure," Dileo says, in a whisper–soft, sandpapery voice, "I think it's important that Michael be recognized by his peers."
On the surface, Dileo's hope doesn't seem that farfetched. After all, only five years ago, Michael Jackson established himself as the biggest pop star the world had witnessed since Elvis Presley. Indeed, more than any other figure of the modern era, Jackson helped break down some of the racial barriers that had beset the pop world for a decade or more, and such videos as "Billie Jean" and "Beat It" helped define the emotional and thematic range of that new art form. As a result, Jackson did more than merely assure his own successes; he assisted in the rejuvenation of the long–ailing music industry, and for this achievement — as well as for his trans–fixing power as an entertainer — the music industry awarded him with nearly every prize it had to offer, including an unprecedented eight Grammy Awards in 1984.
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This year, however, things don't bode as well. In part, that's because Jackson is facing significantly stiffer competition. Artists like U2 and Prince have fashioned some of the most ambitious and visionary music of their careers — music that reflects the state of pop and the world in complex and enlivening ways. By contrast, Jackson's latest LP, Bad, is foremost a celebration of the mystique and celebrity of the artist himself.
More important, though, there is a suspicion among many critics and observers that Jackson's season as pop's favorite son may have passed. Indeed, when Jackson arrived in New York this week, he picked up some bitter hints of this possibility. In the 1987 Rolling Stone Readers and Critics Poll (RS 521), Jackson placed first in six of the readers' "worst of the year" categories (including "worst male singer" and "worst album"); in addition, the 1987 Village Voice critics poll failed to mention Jackson's Bad in its selection of 1987's forty best LPs. This is a startling turnaround from a few years ago, when Jackson and his work topped the same polls in both publications.
There are numerous — and sometimes opposing — ways to view this development. According to his detractors, Jackson has created his own difficulties. His oversize ambitions and his much–vaunted "weirdness" have combined to help fuel a massive backlash that has made the pop star if not distasteful to the public, at least far less compelling.
Yet there are also those who claim that Jackson's troubles are the work of an overcritical press — that, in fact, he would not be seen to have lost so much of his public standing if the American media did not portray it that way. This may seem like a defensive posture, and yet it is not without some validity. Certainly, Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley and the Beatles were often reviled — and sometimes damaged — by the coverage they received from an uncomprehending media.
In Jackson's case, though, the media's response has often seemed extraordinary — and excessive. "Your own magazine sometimes hurts us a lot," says Dileo who — like virtually everybody around Jackson — is incensed by the results of the Rolling Stone poll.
What does Dileo think he or Jackson can do to counter the backlash?
"We don't try to counter it," Dileo says, "because we just don't care. We just hope it goes away. I mean, it seems there's nothing you can do to counter it. It's like this: Michael just gave $600,000 to the UNCF. He didn't do that to counter press. We already had a scholarship fund set up; we already gave away ninety–seven scholarships in four years — it's just that nobody cared to find out. And did you know that Michael supports a camp for children with cancer or that he has a wing at Mount Sinai Hospital for leukemia patients? Nobody has reported that, and if we release that news, it just looks like we're trying to create an image. When Michael sees something in the press that makes him uncomfortable, I say, 'Mike, we're big boys. We'll take our lumps. We got a great album. Sooner or later people will discover that album, 'cause it ain't gonna go away.'"
Dileo rests his cigar in an ashtray, then leans forward. "Consider all the early reports about Bad and how it wasn't selling like Thriller. Well, with: Thriller we sold 40 million records, but it only took us: two years to sell the first 35 million. But Bad was out for only two weeks, and already; there were articles comparing the sales between the two albums, as if the new record were a stiff. But as of now, this album has sold over 13 million copies worldwide, and we are ready to have our fourth Number One single from it Maybe we'll do five in a row. Why aren't they talking about that? You know, where is the justice?"
Dileo retrieves his cigar and leans back, smiling. "Let me ask yoou this," he says. "What happens if Bad doesn't match Thriller but ends up still selling 25 million and becomes the second largest album of all time? What are the people going to say to that? That we're losers?"
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As the grammy show progresses, things go better and worse than expected. The good news is that Jackson turns in an inspired performance that also serves as a timely reminder of an almost forgotten truth about him: namely, that whatever his eccentricities, Jackson acquired his fame primarily because of his remarkably intuitive talents as a singer and dancer — talents that are genuine and matchless and not the constructions of mere ambition or hype. Moreover, it is also plausible that in certain ways, Jackson's phenomenal talent may not be completely separable from his eccentricity. That is, me same private obsessions and fears and reveries that fuel his prowess as a dancer and songwriter and singer may also prompt his quirkiness, and perhaps without all that peculiarity he would be far less compelling to watch.
In a sense, Jackson's opening moments on the Grammy telecast — in which he delivers a slow–paced, Frank Sinatra–inspired reworking of "The Way You Make Me Feel" — are exemplary of his famed quirkiness. He seems self–conscious and strained pulling off the song's cartoonish notion of streetwise sexuality, and his overstated hip thrusts and crotch snatching come off as more forced than felt. And yet when the music revs up, all the artifice is instantly dispelled. Jackson seems suddenly confident and executes startling, robotic hip–and–torso thrusts alongside slow–motion, sliding mime moves that leave the audience gasping.
But it is in his next song, the social–minded, gospel–inflected "Man in the Mirror," that Jackson defines for himself some surprising new strengths. It is a deceptively straightforward delivery, and yet its simplicity prompts Jackson to an increasingly emotional performance. By the song's middle, he isn't so much singing or interpreting as he is simply surrendering to the song. At one point — spurred on by the majestic vocal support of Andrae Crouch and the New Hope Baptist Church Choir — Jackson breaks into a complex, skip–walking dance step that carries him across the stage and back. He then crashes hard to his knees in a posture of glorious, testifying abandon, sobbing fervently as Crouch comes forward and dabs the sweat from his forehead, then helps him back to his feet.
It is a moment that reminds some viewers of James Brown's famous stage routine, but in truth, Jackson has taken the move from the same sources that Brown appropriated his from: archetypal gospel shouters like Claude Jeter and James Cleveland.
But a few minutes later, as Jackson takes his seat in the front row between Frank Dileo and producer Quincy Jones, his triumph comes to a fast, sobering end. As many observers expected, U2's album The Joshua Tree takes the Album of the Year Award, and before the evening is out, Jackson will also lose all the remaining awards that he is nominated for.
Perhaps Jackson's most telling response comes during an uproarious incident when Little Richard, presenting the Best New Artist Award, playfully castigates the academy for neglecting him throughout his career, stating, "You all ain't never gave me no Grammys, and I been singing for years. I am the architect of rock & roll." Jackson is among the first spectators to his feet, bouncing up and down and clapping hard.
Maybe it's only the hilarious spirit of the moment, but maybe it's something more. In a way, Jackson is Little Richard's vengeance. He is the brilliant, freakish black prodigy who would not tolerate being snubbed, and so he figured a way to win pop music's attention and acclaim. But as the late James Baldwin once wrote, "[Michael Jackson] will not swiftly be forgiven for having turned so many tables, for he damn sure grabbed the brass ring, and the man who broke the bank at Monte Carlo has nothing on Michael." Tonight, Jackson may have learned the hard lesson behind Baldwin's words: What can be won big can also be taken away — and losing it is sometimes harder than never having had it in the first place.
The next few days are an uncertain Time around the Jackson camp. Nobody is anxious to go on record discussing Jackson's disappointing losses, but according to some sources, it is clear that it was a rough occasion. The across–the–board Grammy shutout is an inarguable sign that at least some of Jackson's once formidable popularity has eroded.
Still, Frank Dileo puts the best face possible on the downturn. "Michael reminded everybody in the world," he says, "what a great performer he is. In effect, he told them to forget about all the trash they read about him. As far as I'm concerned, his performance hushed up a lot of critics. And as for a few of those academy voters, well, I hope they watched it too."
And how did Michael feel?
"I'm sure he felt the same way. I know he did. But he went to bed and woke up the next day and said, 'Hey, what's the agenda? Let's do a show.' "
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Indeed, Jackson's loss serves to raise expectations for his Madison Square Garden shows, which get under way the night following the Grammys with a benefit performance for the United Negro College Fund. Some of his supporters speculate that Jackson intends to use the concerts to redeem his reputation by putting on the most impressive and assertive shows of his career — and that is precisely what he does. In contrast to the tour's opening shows a week earlier in Kansas City, Missouri — where he had often seemed overwhelmed by glitzy and relentless staging — Jackson seems not merely involved and animated but often flat–out magnificent in his New York shows.
But it is during the two songs toward the show's end, "Billie Jean" and "Man in the Mirror," that Michael Jackson's greatest strengths — as well as his greatest problems — as a live performer are displayed. "Billie Jean," in fact, conveys both at once. When Jackson first performed the song in public — during his startling appearance on the 1983 Motown 25 TV special — he was still close to its meanings, to the fear and anger that inspired the song. In addition he was performing it as the first public declaration of his adult independence — as if not only his reputation depended on it but also his future. Now, though, with all its letter–perfect maneuvering and moonwalking, "Billie Jean" seems less like a dance of passion than a physical litany of learned steps; less like an act of personal urgency than a crowd pleasing gesture. Even so, "Billie Jean" is still a marvelous and bewitching thing to behold.
But as Jackson demonstrated the night before at the Grammys, his live version of "Man in the Mirror" is an act of living passion. In fact, it now seems a more personal and heartfelt song for Jackson than "Billie Jean." Back in 1983 the latter song seemed like his way of negotiating with the world — a way of attracting the world's curiosity in the same motion that he announced that he was afraid of being misinterpreted or used up by that world. But with "Man in the Mirror," a song about accepting social and political responsibility, Jackson may be trying to integrate his way back into the world, or at least to embrace his place in it a bit more. It is hardly an easy peace that Jackson seeks. After all, at the end of the song he retreats back into his real world, a very private and isolated place. What's more, it may be that the world no longer loves or wants him as much as it once did. But after watching Jackson on nights like this, when his power and passion are so undeniable, the idea of his audience rejecting him amounts to a sad loss on everybody's part.
A few nights later, Michael Jackson sits on a dais between Liza Minnelli and Elizabeth Taylor at the United Negro College Fund's annual benefit dinner. The dinner is being held to honor Jackson for the major contributions he has made to the Uncf in recent years, and consequently it is a full–fledged gala, attended by a legion of black educators and business people, as well as numerous celebrities, such as Whitney Houston, Spike Lee and Christie Brinkley.
Like much of the rigmarole that surrounds Jackson, this event tends to cast the singer in superhuman terms. In speech after speech, adulators lionize Jackson embarrassingly, and even Ronald Reagan — who will later make history as the first president in a century to veto major civil–rights legislation — turns in an appearance, via video, apotheosizing the star's talents and humanitarianism and his merits as a model for the black race.
This is all fine, but in a way it has nothing to do with what is genuinely great about Michael Jackson: namely, that he is at heart an absolutely terrific rock & roller, an astonishing singer whose vocalizing is both a consummation of R&B history as well as a fresh new start, and a matchless mover, who embodies the whole spectrum of black dance style from Cab Calloway to James Brown and then some. What's more, on his best nights, Jackson can combine these gifts in an electrifying, stunning way that can outdistance even the finest work of Bruce Springsteen or Prince — a way, in fact, that has only been equaled in rock history by Elvis Presley. Like Presley, Jackson is at his best when he reacts on troubled–yet–joyous impulses and makes a liberating, riveting public performance of them. And again like Presley, Jackson is a half–mad and extraordinary talent in a nation that both sanctifies him and hates him for his prowess — and either response spells a difficult artistic future.
Just how much pressure Jackson constantly faces as a result of his fame becomes plain in an incident at the UNCF benefit, during the lull when the dinner is served. No sooner have the speakers stopped speaking than literally hundreds of people — most of them sophisticated, intelligent people — begin streaming toward the table where Jackson is seated, hoping for an autograph, a photograph, maybe even a chance to talk. Immediately, a half dozen or so bodyguards and publicists line up in front of the singer, attempting, first politely and then adamandy, to turn people back to their tables. Finally, it is a stalemate. The people cannot get any closer to Jackson, but they will not turn away from him. They just stand facing him, staring, craning to get a view of his remarkable, enchanting and disturbing face — a face that, at this moment, looks terribly frightened but is holding its place.
Jackson's face, of course, is probably his most famous and controversial aspect, and while some critics suspect he has reconstructed it to seem forever childlike, others charge that he has had cosmetic surgery so that he would appear "less black."
In his new book, Moonwalk, published by Doubleday, Jackson explains:
You must remember that I had been a child star and when you grow up under that kind of scrutiny people don't want you to change, to get older and look different. When I first became well known, I had a lot of baby fat and a very round, chubby face. That roundness stayed with me until several years ago when I changed my diet and stopped eating beef, chicken, pork and fish, as well as certain fattening foods. I just wanted to look better, live better and be healthier. Gradually, as I lost weight, my face took on its present shape and the press started accusing me of surgically altering my appearance.
I'd like to set the record straight right now. I have never had my cheeks altered or my eyes altered. I have not had my lips thinned, nor have I had dermabrasion or a skin peel. All of these charges are ridiculous. If they were true, I would say so, but they aren't. I have had my nose altered twice and I recently added a cleft to my chin, but that is it. Period. I don't care what anyone else says its my face and I know.
In any event, it's a visage that disturbs many people, and earlier in the week one person who has been observing Jackson offered an explanation: "I think people find it upsetting, because they know they're looking at racism made flesh. They're looking at a tacit admission that to make it in a white world, you have to be white. It's an indictment. It's a face that says, 'You made me this way. I can't be really black if I want to be really famous.' And people don't want to look at that face, because they don't want to look at their own racism."
This may well be true, but if so, is that really what is on the minds of the people standing here staring at Jackson, most of whom are black? Are they staring at somebody who represents dark truths, or somebody who embodies a complex history of hopes and dreams made good or simply at somebody who is the biggest star of all stars? Maybe they are looking at all these things. At one point in the evening, the dinner's host, Ossie Davis, stares at Jackson for a long moment and then utters a line as illuminating and resonant as scripture. "God bless the child," he says, "that's got his own."
One last tale remains to be told.
It is in the hectic moments after the Grammy Awards show is over, and the blocks around Radio City Music Hall are jammed with celebrity watchers. On the street behind the hall, a crowd of a couple hundred mostly black fans stand on the other side of a police barricade, hoping for a glimpse of a departing star or two. A huddled, cloaked figure darts out the backstage door and into a long white limousine, and the car begins to inch its way down Fifty–first Street. A small group of onlookers keep pace with the car, trying to peer into its darkened windows. "Hey," says somebody, "I think that's Michael Jackson in that car." Immediately, people in the crowd begin to call out to the car, "Hey, Mikey.... Mikey, is that you? Come out and talk to us, Mikey!"
After a few moments, the top of the limousine rolls back, and up pops Michael Jackson. The people in the crowd break into a wild cheer and start to surge forward, holding out their hands toward the star, but some policemen rush in and keep them away from the car. On the limousine's other side, a lone fan calls to Jackson and begins moving toward him. Jackson turns and smiles at the fan and holds out his hand. The fan, who is only a few feet away, reaches out to Jackson, but before the two can touch, the car speeds up. Jackson stands for a moment, looking at the face of the disappointed fan, then smiles a strangely forlorn smile, waves and drops back into the limousine.
In moments, the white car turns the corner and is gone, and Michael Jackson is carried back to the inviolable world in which he lives.
[From Issue 526 — May, 19,1988]