Thursday, July 2

SAYING GOODBYE TO AN ICON

It's taken me a few days to get around to sharing my feelings about the passing of MJ. Understandably the world is in a tailspin and unless I'm some sort of intergalactic orphan who hasn't discovered my shocking secret yet, I'm part of that world. Honestly, the more I ponder it, the more it saddens me. I was only 14 when 'Thriller" was released and it was my entire world, well, aside from my other love of course. Let's face it, at 14 you soon tire of trying to master the moonwalk and eventually find yourself returning to refining your Star Wars laser sound effects and mock asthma speeches about coming over to the dark side of the force. My family were fortunate enough to have a VHS video player in 1983, the classy type that included a remote control connected to the player via a really, really long cable. I shit you not, it was fucken high tech. Anyway, when they released the entire Thriller short film on video, I can still remember how excited I was about going to the biggest video shop in our neighbourhood to purchase it. I can also remember my excitement at having it in my hands and the desperate need to go home "right now Dad" so I could put it on and watch it.

Back in the early 80's Michael had an amazing effect on me, I'd grown up with a soundtrack of my parents choosing, which ranged from Boney M to Lionel Richie but also included liberal sprinklings of ABBA, Billy Joel and Roberta Flack...I know, it's a wonder I even have the courage to type that huh? Anyway, there clearly was no contest, especially compared to what I was already being delivered, Michael was the coolest man on the planet. Mastering MJ's signature dance move was the be all, and end all, and anyone who could actually do it became the focus of whatever dinner party or BBQ our parents had dragged us along to. If the party was at our place, everyone would gather around our TV, parents and their adult friends included, and I would proudly put the Thriller video into the player and then shush everyone (little wanker that I was) so we could get the full impact of it's brilliance. The minute Michael fell into formation out the front of his Tony Bartuccio dancers from beyond the grave, all the kids in the room would jump up and try and match the routine we saw on the screen. To think about it now, it seems a world away and having spent 20 years in commercial radio, I can't think of anyone who has the ability to draw people to a television like MJ could. Every new music video was an event, we anticipated it, we waited for it, we knew it was going to be amazing and he never let us down. By the mid 80's things slowly started to spiral out of control, there was the oxygen chamber revelation, the bones of the elephant man story and his surgery obsession really started to take control.

As the years progressed I fell in love with Pearl Jam, The Smashing Pumpkins, Nirvana and all things flannel and grunge and Michael just didn't seem relevant to me anymore. I think it really hit home for me how strange he'd truly become in 2006. I was sourcing questions online for a pop quiz we were running on a breakfast show I was anchoring. I stumbled on a site of pop culture facts and one of them really stood out because initially, it confused the hell out of me. I can't remember exactly how it was worded, but the basic gist of the fact was that pop singer Michael Jackson used to have dark skin and was an African American. When I first read it my instant reaction was a big fat "well duh" but then it dawned on me. There was an entire generation of people who hadn't known Michael in the 70's or 80's, they'd only witnessed him as the centre of various molestation claims, court cases and balcony dangling baby incidents. They truly didn't know that he used to be the little kid you see above these words. In searching for that image, it actually upset me how many nasty photoshop pictures exist of him. Google his name and click through a few pages and see for yourself. You'll find doctored shots of him without his nose, looking like a half dead zombie and making fun of what he'd done to himself. When you look at this picture however, you can see how cute he was, and even in the early 80's, whilst he was skinny and nowhere near my type, he was still a handsome man. Yet for reasons we will never truly know, he chose to erase a perfectly good face and remodel it into his idea of perfection.

I think the saddest thing is that at the time of his death, he was in rehearsals to perform 50 concerts in London. It was being billed as his final concert tour (not like John Farnham's) and no doubt his hopes and dreams were that he could return himself to the status he used to enjoy. Stories are coming out now about how his addiction to pain killers may have fuelled his constant use of plastic surgery as an easy way to facilitate his drug supply. No doubt even more horrifying revelations are still to come. When I look at that little kid, strutting his bad self in that way too funky brown corduroy jacket, I can't help but wish it could have been different for him. If only we could push rewind and find out what it was that set him on the path, that left him an oddity for universal ridicule and quite possibly the loneliest man on the planet. I can only hope that he really did find happiness with his children and that they got to see him for who he really was, not who we thought he was. Tears have just welled in my eyes writing that and at the sadness of his loss. I really do hope that there is a place, where he can look down and see the joy he gave so many and witness the pain so many now feel from having to say goodbye, before we ever really got a chance to say...

THANK-YOU

R.I.P. MICHAEL

I will never forget you

No comments: