Jacko wasn't always wacko

By CHARLES SHAAR MURRAY


It's that photo, the official police mugshot taken when Michael Jackson finally turned himself in to answer charges of child molestation, which looks so scary.

It looks like a disguise Martians would design to enable themselves to mingle with humans undetected, or possibly a character created by highly paid computer-animation geeks for Andy Serkis to play in a sci-fi movie.

It's not so much that Michael Jackson doesn't look black any more: it's that he barely looks human. Considering that he ended the 70s as one of the most handsome young African-American men in the world, the question inevitably arises: why would he do that to himself?

All the big questions about Michael Jackson start the same way. Why does he have so much difficulty understanding that, for most people, the idea of a 45-year-old man sharing his bed with other people's children seems at best bizarre and at worst actively sinister?

Why did he give both of his sons the same name?

Why did he dangle one of them over that balcony?

And why do his records get worse and worse while taking longer and longer to make and costing more and more money?

Michael Jackson, 20 years ago, was possibly the coolest man in the world. In fact, there was one specific night when he definitely was: May 23, 1983, when 50 million TV viewers watched Motown 25: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow, the silver-jubilee celebration of the Detroit record label, on which Jackson, teamed with his brothers in the Jackson 5, first became world-famous.

After completing the nostalgia portion of the show with his brothers, Jackson performed Billie Jean, a song from his second solo album on his new label, Epic. And the performance was epic.

He sang the taut, tense masterpiece of sexual paranoia while unveiling state-of-the-art dance moves with spectacular skill. And then he did the "moonwalk" - moving backwards while seeming to move forwards. The audience erupted.

Jackson's previous solo album, 1979's Off The Wall, had done well, but the new one, Thriller, which included Billie Jean and Beat It, went through the roof. During one month in 1984 it was selling a million copies a week.

Jackson was not a stranger to success. As the centrepiece of the Jackson 5 he'd become white America's first black pre-teen sex symbol.

Indeed, young Michael was such an adept young singer and dancer that when, in their earliest pre-Motown training period, they worked the clubs and bars around their hometown of Gary, Indiana, disgruntled fellow performers whom they routinely thrashed in the talent contests would be convinced Michael wasn't really a kid but a gifted and highly experienced midget.

As a pre-teen he played in some of the raunchiest clubs in America, watching strippers from the wings while waiting to go on. Once the Jackson 5 became seriously successful he shared hotel rooms with older brothers who'd be having enthusiastic sex with young female admirers.

At the same time, he'd endured his ex-musician father's hardnosed version of stage school, which involved frequent beatings when a song or dance set was messed up in rehearsal.

It is not surprising that, as soon as he was able, Jackson cut himself loose from his father's management and struck out on his own.

Neither is it surprising that, like many child stars whose childhoods are composed almost entirely of experiences unknown to most children, he grew up slightly strange.

"Love" was something abstract received from audiences; it didn't seem to be anything young Michael experienced at first hand.

The Jackson 5's success was eclipsed by its former child star, who catapulted to mega-stardom after Thriller's release. Jackson ascended to an Elvis or Beatle level, becoming one of the best-known faces and voices on the planet. It seemed, for one melting pop-cultural moment, that Michael Jackson could do no wrong.

But then the questions started to bubble. What, people asked, was the deal with his face which was already beginning to change both shape and hue? Was he trying to look like one of the Jacksons' early mentors, Diana Ross, herself no stranger to the surgeon's knife?

No, others said, he doesn't want to grow up to look like his father.

Yet stories circulated that he'd demanded that his chauffeur address him as "Miss Ross", that Ross had found him in her Las Vegas dressing room trying out her make-up.

Then there was the fixation with his menagerie of pets, the llamas at his Neverland ranch, Muscles the snake and, most famously, Bubbles the chimp.

And the penchant for masks and that steadily mutating countenance.

Bad, the follow-up album to Thriller, not only failed to match its predecessor's sales, but the ludicrous outfit he wore on the cover and in the title-track's video suggested that his street sense was seriously deserting him.

His projects grew more grandiose. He demanded to be addressed as the "King Of Pop".

Now his Greatest Hits package, Number Ones - hello Beatles, hello Elvis - surfaces, only eight years since his previous greatest hits album, History. There hasn't been a glut of megahits since then.

History was packaged with gushing tributes from Elizabeth Taylor, Steven Spielberg, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and even Ronald Reagan, and its release was marked by the erection of huge statues of Jackson in various world capitals.

Jackson not only wanted to save the world and, specifically, its children, but he seemed convinced that he already had. When Jarvis Cocker mooned him at the Brit Awards, millions cheered.

An extraordinary talent, extraordinary success, an extraordinary life; and it all seems to have gone extraordinarily wrong.

The pop-soul superkid with the flashing feet, the thrilling voice, the cute features, the studio smarts and the megaplatinum songwriting chops is now the grotesque recluse, pursued by courts and the media while the lawsuits pile up, the enviable business empire judders under the weight of increasing expenditure and flagging record sales, and his convoluted existence becomes a matter of mockery and speculation.

Villain, joke or tragic figure? Even those not in the habit of feeling compassion for megalomaniac multi-millionaires should pause before condemning him too rapidly. Jackson is a damaged soul, and his freakish exterior reflects a freakish inner world, the result of his upbringing and fame.

I wish he'd make a decent record once in a while - something to which listeners his own age can resonate, a record which makes sense of his inner world. But first, I guess, he'd have to make his inner world make sense to himself, and none of his public pronouncements suggest that is likely to be the case any time soon.

Poor Michael. All he ever wanted was to be loved.

On CD & DVD

* Who: Michael Jackson

* What: Number Ones, hits compilation

* When: Out now


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