With a Child’s Heart…
07 Jul 2009 1 Comment
in A Tribute to Michael Jackson
…Nothing can ever get you down.
With a child’s heart, you’ve got no reason to frown.
Love is as welcome
- Goodbye People of the World
As a sunny, sunny day.
No grown up thoughts
To lead our hearts astray.
The ripples from the heart rending news of Michael Jackson’s death on 25th of June, 2009 outshone any seismic misadventure of man or nature. The world imploded into grief and a torrent of mourn swept around the globe.
News channels had a field day with one of the biggest stories they’ll ever get to cover in their lives. Celebrities from all over the world, who earlier kept their reservations on speaking about the “controversial” superstar, dumped all those hesitations and came to the fore with their myriad stories of how they grew up to his music, how much and in how many ways he inspired them, how he touched millions of lives with his philanthropy and how a lot of them probably wouldn’t have been where they are had Michael Jackson not been there as their childhood idol. These were not just western pop starts but people from all spheres of life including presidents, sportspersons and Indian folk singers. Frankly, it was pretty surprising to me.
Personally I have no idea where to begin with or what to say. Like million of other people, MJ was my personal hero too. I am pretty passionate about a lot of things but I don’t think there is any other thing or person about which or whom I read more than Michael Jackson. His life was as rivetingly fascinating as it was unusual. His life was the stuff that legends are made of.
Born as the seventh child in a family of nine brothers and sisters in 1958, Michael was soon recognized as a prodigious singer. His father, Joe Jackson, a crane operator in a steel mill, used to do live gigs in local nightclubs to complement his meager salary. His mother used to sing at the church. Gifted with the right genes, his father recognized the gifts of his four elder sons and they formed a band. At the tender age of five, Michael moved an audience at his school function to tears with his rendition of a song. Brought to Joe’s notice by his wife, little Michael was promptly added to his brothers’ band as their front man. Hardly anyone had an inkling of the indelible mark this little black boy was destined to leave on the world history and culture.
Virtually overnight, the Jackson family’s stars changed. The band called The Jackson 5 became popular in local nightclubs and talent shows. Soon they were popular across the state. The band’s big break came when they landed a contract with exclusively black record company called Motown records. Their 1969 debut album, Diana Ross presents Jackson 5, broke a record held previously by The Beatles of most US no.1 hits from a single album. Four singles from the album, including the now immortalized tunes like I’ll be there, I want you back and ABC shot straight to no.1, a record to be broken later only by Michael himself.
The Jackson brothers didn’t look back. Hit after hit, they accumulated piles of awards, fame and money. They even had a cartoon show themed on them. At the center of all this circus was a reticent little boy who, while on stage, was an absolute charmer with his mellifluous voice, his supercharged dance moves and his witty sense of humor.
But off-stage his life was starkly different. With a stoically disciplinarian father, who had got used to skinning him with a belt at his every whim for the minutest of his errors while performing, and contractual obligations to be met, concert commitments to be chased, Michael’s real life was ghastly and ruthless for a kid of his age.
I recall Michael lamenting in several interviews, especially the one given to Oprah Winfrey in 1993, the tragic loss of his childhood. He told that his life as a kid in his early days was school–recording studio–home late night—school the next day. He reminisced how badly he wished he could just go to the park, something so trivially mundane, something that most of us take so much for granted. Later in his teens it was worse as they were always on tour. So instead of school a tutor would accompany him on tours and thus he got further isolated and was hardly getting to interact with anyone of his age. His brothers were his only friends.
With his every move photographed and fed to public curiosity to be judged and measured, Michael kept turning inwards upon himself becoming ever conscious of his looks, his changing voice as he hit puberty, and every step that he took out in the public. People were in awe of this little prodigy who had turned the tables over the biggest names in music of his time, and his rags to riches story. People looked at him in amazement and thought, aah, what a life he has. Little did they know he was like a mirror image looking back at them and saying exactly the same thing.
Came 1979 and Michael’s solo career skyrocketed. Michael had moved from Motown records to Sony. He teamed up with music producer Quincy Jones to come up with the album Off the Wall which had sold more than 10 million copies till around that time and earned him his first Grammy for the song Don’t Stop till You Get Enough. Praised for its unforgettable melodies like Rock with you, She’s out of my life; Off the Wall was only a warm up for the world to embrace its new God.
In 1982, Michael created the album Thriller which shattered every record, outsold every other album, and changed every convention. Thriller is an album that will probably stand in perpetuity as the biggest selling album of all time, with a massive 110 million copies sold till date. With groundbreaking videos, breathtaking music that leapt across genres, lush vocals and a signature vocal style, Michael was proving himself as a relentless experimentator, an innovator and a risk taker. Thriller swept 8 Grammies, produced 7 top ten hits and stood at no.1 for 37 weeks.
With Thriller Michael not only provided a new life line to the flagging music industry but also broke racial, social and geographical barriers. Billie Jean was the first video by a black artist to be played on MTV which owes a lot of its later success to Michael Jackson. Michael was the first true global superstar. He was also always way ahead of his times with a canny, intuitive ability to spot and fertilize latent business, technological and cultural opportunities which later allowed him to become such a huge trendsetter in almost every aspect related to his craft.
What followed Thriller cannot be described in words. His later albums Bad, Dangerous and HIStory became some of the world’s best selling albums of all time. Michael scaled unprecedented heights of fame and fortune. He became a demi god, a cultural icon and America’s most valuable export to the rest of the world. In the remotest corners of the most secluded lands, if people knew just one person from the outside world then it was Michael Jackson.
A lot of his critics consider his lost-childhood story as a weepy excuse for his purported “eccentric” behavior, a yarn he spun to cover up his alleged misdeeds with children. They claim he always had the silver spoon and that there are other child stars who’ve had traumatic childhood but they came out of it smiling so why he couldn’t. Well first of all, hardly anybody was as big a child star as Michael. Because to be Michael Jackson you have to have a father like Joe Jackson who would stamp discipline all over your body with his belt, virtually every other day. Secondly there has hardly been anyone who was pretty famous as a child star and grew up to be an even bigger star. The gravity of the wanton excesses of tinsel world sucked them in before they turned 20. To escape that pull, one had to be as austerely disciplined and determined as he was, but being that was not free of cost!
Most importantly, other child stars might’ve gotten out of their childhoods unscathed but Michael was different. He was amazingly sensitive and amazingly ‘up there’. This is a concoction of qualities where understanding of human nature stands at the brink of our knowledge. In his autobiography Moonwalk, he writes that at the height of his fame when the world wanted to see him, feel him, emulate him and consume him, love him to death, he felt he was the loneliest person on Earth. As sensitive to other’s pain as to his own, Michael had decided early on that he would use his extraordinary power and prowess to make the world a better place.
Throughout ’80s and ’90s Michael toured the world extensively. Leaving fans awestruck by his electrifying performances and the most technologically advanced stage productions; he was also visiting various children’s hospitals and orphanages with loads of gifts and tremendously increasing his knowledge of various countries, cultures and their problems. At many places he would donate his entire concert fees to local charitable organizations as he did in India.
Before the scandals broke out MJ was known only for his music & philanthropy. He received numerous Humanitarian Awards including a Guinness world record for an entertainer supporting most number of charities. It is estimated that he has denoted and raised over $300 million for charitable causes through his music, including the star studded anthem We are the world, and through personal donations. To know more about Michael’s philanthropic efforts click here.
But post scandal, a lot changed. He earned a title for himself. From superstar, he had become a “controversial” superstar. He earned a nickname too: Wacko Jacko. He became embroiled in lawsuits, allegations, and a press that was devouring him into pieces every single day on their front pages.
Michael’s public trials began in the late ’80s when plentiful rumors about him started appearing in the papers. The press knew a simple truth. It’s a vicious cycle of love and hate. Too much love and suddenly the needle on your lovemeter crosses the 12o’clock boundary and you enter the area of hatred. Just like we need somebody to love, we have an equipotent desire to have somebody to hate. And Michael was an easy victim. He was at such dizzying heights of mega stardom that being there was a Herculean task of maintaining a precarious balance, and pushing him off was easy.
The rumor mill started with his changing appearance, and lightning skin colour. It was alleged that he had “bleached” his skin white (I have no clue what that means), that he hated his race and the colour of skin that it endows. Later the rumors kept getting wilder and more exotic. There were stories of him sleeping in a hyperbaric oxygen chamber to immortalize himself, of having acquired the bones of the mysterious creature called as the “Elephant-Man”, that Michael Jackson had died and his sister Janet sometimes shows up as Michael! In 2000 Vanity Fair magazine exploded through the ceiling into the outer space of ridiculousness. It alleged that Michael wears a prosthetic nose, bleaches his skin as he doesn’t like being black, that he attended a voodoo ceremony in Switzerland to kill Steven Spielberg among others (Spielberg and Michael were always on very good terms after they met and worked together for the movie E.T. in 1983) and sacrificed 42 cows and bathed with their blood. You’d really have to be a goofball to believe that!
While discussing these rumors with one of his biographers once he exclaimed:
“Why not just tell people I’m an alien from Mars. Tell them I eat live chickens and do a voodoo dance at midnight. They’ll believe anything you say, because you’re a reporter. But if I, Michael Jackson, were to say, “I’m an alien from Mars and I eat live chickens and do a voodoo dance at midnight,” people would say, “Oh, man, that Michael Jackson is nuts. He’s cracked up. You can’t believe a damn word that comes out of his mouth.”
But the truth is that this world is full of goofballs.
Michael soon began to be seen as a weirdo. No doubt he was a little eccentric, and it was something totally expectable from a person who had never seen any normalcy in life. But in the pre-scandal days he was seen as an innocuous eccentric. Post scandal, an eerie eccentric!
In 1988 Michael purchased a 2800 acre property and turned it into a fantasyland. He named it as ‘Neverland Valley Ranch’. Neverland is a fictional place where children never grow up. Michael was a person of iron will. He believed in the power of dreams and he chased his dreams and one by one turned them into reality. Neverland was the finest and grandest physical manifestation of his soul. Inside, there was an amusement park with all its roller coaster rides, a water park, a theater, a zoo, a museum of arts, a go-carting track, a toy train (with a real steam engine), and of course his palatial mansion. Neverland was also something that put a drastic twist to his life.
Michael was famous for his reclusive lifestyle. Yet nothing was further from truth. Michael opened Neverland’s gates to all the children of the world and their parents. Every three weeks he used to invite terminally ill children to his ranch to have the time of their lives before they forever fade off into darkness. Michael had an amazing connection with kids. In the acceptance speech for his Grammy Legend award in 1993, Michael said:
” I realize that many of our world’s problems today – from the inner city crime, to large scale wars and terrorism, and our overcrowded prisons – are a result of the fact that children have had their childhood stolen from them. The magic, the wonder, the mystery, and the innocence of a child’s heart, are the seeds of creativity that will heal the world. I really believe that.
What we need to learn from children isn’t childish. Being with them connects us to the deeper wisdom of life which is ever present, and only asks to be lived. They know the solutions that lie waiting to be recognized within our own hearts. Today, I would like to thank all the children of the world, including the sick and deprived . . . I am so sensitive to your pain.”
The world saw the first glimpse of Neverland in 1993 when talk show host Oprah Winfrey interviewed Michael. He also clarified a lot of rumors. He looked white because he had a debilitating skin pigmentation disorder called Vitiligo which killed his melanin producing cells. He used make-up to cover the dark patches. Since melanin is a protective pigment which wasn’t being produced in his body anymore, he had to wear facial masks and wide brimmed fedora hats to protect himself from the Sun, which had later become his fashion statement. He also revealed the mystery behind the hyperbaric chamber. He suffered second degree burns on his scalp in a pyrotechnics accident while shooting a commercial for Pepsi. Pepsi paid him a million dollars to not sue them. He used the money to build a burn center and was taking a feel of the hyperbaric chamber which doctors use to hasten the healing process when some jerk took a photograph and it was plastered all over the next day.
It is till date the most watched interview ever. It’s a crying shame the media continues to deliberately ignore or show deliberately misconstrued conclusions of what are logical and truthful explanations from the man himself, to his perceived bizarre behaviors. Then they say he was reclusive, he didn’t give interviews. Why would he, when whatever he said in those interviews hardly went past the interviewer. He was made controversial by the media because controversy sells like nothing else.
The biggest knock of indignity that completely shook his world and changed the entire course of his life, and perhaps even took his life was the pedophile tag the world hung on his name. Had the child abuse allegations not been there he’d probably have been alive today.
In 1993 Michael was accused by a 13 year old boy, Jordan Chandler, of sexual molestation and pedophilia. Michael strongly denied the allegations and said he would slit his wrist before harming a child. Michael’s family and friends stood solid by him but his image had taken a severe battering. It was the perfect opportunity for his adversaries to bring him down. Fired employees, disgruntled managers, his business arch-rivals all had their moment of glory and claim to fame. Michael, on suggestion from his lawyers, settled the matter out of the court. The boy’s father pocketed $13 million and agreed to leave him alone. What kind of dad would do that if MJ really had molested his child?
The next time, it was Gavin Arvizo in 2003. He had appeared earlier on the infamous 2001 documentary Living with Michael Jackson conducted by Pakistani-British journalist Martin Bashir. Michael caused a furor back then when he admitted he lets children (not just boys!) sleep in his bed. He said: “What’s wrong with sharing your bed? The most loving thing to do is to share your bed with someone”. The boy was then all praise for him and even said Michael was like a father to him. But Michael also said he never literally shared his bed. His bedroom is a duplex. So if kids sleep in his bed, he sleeps on the floor. He also said he has never personally invited anyone in his bed or in his room. The children loved him and wanted to stay with him ever longer till it was time to sleep. The once cancer stricken boy admitted he himself wanted to stay with him in his bedroom, while his mom and siblings stayed in the guest house, and it was nothing sexual.
The scandals fed the media for years as it did the late night comedians who took cheap shots at him to earn their bread. Since objective reporting by the media had long been dead, the allegations further fueled ludicrous stories by spin doctors making Michael look even weirder. Media completely ignored the other side of the story, focusing only on Michael’s antics.
Jordan Chandler’s father was a screwy dentist, who was often sued by his patients, and a failed Hollywood writer. The lawyer that the father hired had an even tainted history. The whole story of the frame up was published in 1994 in a GQ magazine’s article ‘Was Michael Jackson framed’. If you Google about Jordan Chandler now you’d find numerous articles on him admitting that he lied for his father and that he was drugged by his father before his confession was taken. I would also like to point out that no charges were pressed against him by the state as police could not find even an iota of evidence against him.
The 2003 accuser’s family was much, much less credible and Michael decided that this time he’ll fight for his good name. A public trial commenced. There are numerous interviews of the jury members who presided over his trial and they say they never once believed the prosecuter’s side of the story which seemed utterly made up. Jurors also claimed that the mother of the accuser was extremely ill-behaved. A number of other celebrities including Jay Leno, who loves to make jokes on Michael Jackson, testified that the woman was a con artist and had tried to cheat them. The woman was later convicted in separate cases for cheating to gain welfare monies and charged heavy penalties and community service. The boy, Gavin Arvizo, was caught stealing from J.C.Penny’s store, and ransacked a dentist’s office among other such offenses. Stricken with cancer, Michael saw this boy come back to life. It was his fault he was so giving of himself that he completely ignored the warning signs. Michael was finally honorably exonerated on all 10 counts of sexual offense and 4 minor counts.
Michael grew deeply frustrated with all the accusations, lies and the hate campaign which the media had put into gear against him. His albums grew angrier, the music grew darker and lyrics reeked of profound frustration and hurt. A majority of the songs on his later albums are mostly on social issues and personal tribultions. His album HIStory contained only one love song! (which opened to a new world record anyway). He chose to speak only through his music and if you take a look at lyrics of his songs like Scream, Stranger in Moscow, They don’t care about us, Childhood, Tabloid Junkie, Money, Privacy, Jam, Leave me alone, you’ll know what I’m talking about.
Experienced with media’s deceitful ways, Michael placed personal cameras while shooting for the Martin Bashir documentary and when the documentary was aired what happened was what Michael suspected. Cunningly edited, it showed Michael in a negative light as a person & a father. Michael released his own version of the documentary, The Michael Jackson Interview: The footage you were never meant to see, as a rebuttal and proved his point how media can twist the facts and give them any color it wants. And not just it can, it does!
The 2003 allegations left him deeply emotionally scarred, and he spiraled into depression and got addicted to antidepressants and painkillers. He lost a huge amount of weight too. To the outside world though, he was still the invincible king of pop.
Michael Jackson was a man of steel. It is an absolute wonder, given his mercurial, horrendously complicated life, he lived long enough to celebrate his fiftieth birthday. No matter how much you harden from outside, the core of your soul remains as sensitive. He fought till the end and took it as long as he could. But death is the biggest and the only absolute reality of life and it finally caught up with him.
He touched hundreds of millions of lives like nobody else ever did. He was the most famous man on the planet. He inspired a whole generation to be whatever it wanted to be and to be the best at what it chose to be. Look at all the young music stars today, they swear by him. It’s a very sad fact – and history is witness of this- that whenever there’s been a godsend epitome of excellence, of genius, and of salvation, we have pushed him to death. Persecuted and martyred on the altars of envy, greed and hatred.
In innumerable ways he made himself the exemplar of many things. Just as much as he inspired the world, it also learned from his mistakes. Everyone makes mistakes, but he was the first one at whatever he did no matter whether it turned out to be good for him or vice versa. But the sad part of his life was that people forgot that, after all, he was just a human being.
During his final days he was preparing for the biggest comeback in the world; 50 sold out shows in London’s O2 arena. With a humongous fortune amounting to billions of dollars, but little liquidity to pay back his massive debts, his finances were in a real mess. A greedy coteris sucking up to him had mismanaged his estate for years. The concerts was expected to provide some fresh ‘O2′ to his flagging financial situation as well as his career. But nature had better plans for him!
I know there’ll always be ignoramuses who will go on believing bullshit about Michael and there is nothing in this world, no amount of evidence, no measure of convincing power that’ll stop them from believing what they believe. I feel sorry for them that they choose to spend their lives hating someone. Michael went away with no hate in his heart. He reconciled with his father long back and never spoke disparagingly of any of the children involved in the accusations. During his guest lecture at Oford University in 2001, he said:
“If you enter this world knowing you are loved and you leave this world knowing the same, then everything that happens in between can he dealt with.”
I hope history will be kinder to him in death than it was in life. RIP Michael Jackson. You were a man of honor and sensitivity. You were not only the king of music but a billion hearts, mine included. You were a loving father, a true humanitarian and the greatest entertainer to ever walk the earth. A thousand years from now, all this scandal crap will be forgotten, but your music will resonate forever.
