I almost don’t want to write about this because I’m sure everyone else is, but I suppose it deserves some thoughts.
Poor Farrah Fawcett. Living out that exquisite death scene only to be completely ignored when Michael Jackson died the same day.
This is why we need topless news because if they could have thrown a couple of Farrah’s nude shots from Playboy in there maybe it would have been different.
My favorite Farrah moment of all time was an appearance on Late Night with Conan O’Brien. First Conan asked her to sit on a motorcycle with him and then he begged her for a Charlie’s Angels reunion.
Farrah: … but, what would we do?
Conan (infinitely disappointed): You’d fight crime!
And of course the only person alive that the media loves to deploy all their forces to cover more than Michael Jackson is maybe O.J. Simpson or Charles Manson if they’d lift that interview ban on him.
The coverage was just a huge orgasmic blowout. As in, drink up boys we’ll never see anything wilder than this again.
Fifteen channels of “Freak or Genius” debates is perhaps too much. Especially when the answer is clearly “Freak and Genius.”
Sadly, Michael’s been dead to me for years. People were comparing him to Elvis, but Michael’s decline makes Elvis look like Jimmy Stewart.
All I can say is “what a beautiful amazing kid he was and boy did they fuck him up.”
The key period in Michael’s life was when his voice changed. He didn’t know whether he had a future in the business and a bad bout of acne made him obsessively worried about his looks. His father Joe Jackson (a good candidate for worst person alive) of course intensified those fears by teasing Michael about it incessantly. Joe Jackson makes Ike Turner seem like Jimmy Stewart.
I also blame Madonna. Back in the mid 80s Madonna had a new look for every single album. Michael clearly wanted to follow her and after a few hair experiments quickly found that there wasn’t all that much a young black man could do to look terribly different for every single album. This, I suppose leads you to experiment with gender, skin color, and hair that couldn’t possibly have really been his. Damn you Madonna!
The most interesting thing the adult Michael Jackson ever did was screw over Paul McCartney. It at least showed that there was something going on up there.
The Jackson 5 were the first band I was ever into. I sent away for a poster of the band from a box of Super Sugar Crisp (which for politically correct reasons is of course now called Golden Crisp). I was proud of myself because I knew that the Jackson’s rocked, while the white bread Osmonds turned my stomach.
The first concert I ever attended was when I skipped out of camp for a night to see the Jacksons. It was probably somewhere around 1973, which in a lot of ways was my first real year of consciousness. Janet was there and did her Mae West impersonation.
I’ve read Dave Marsh describe the early Jackson sides as good children’s music and a paving for the real magic of Michael’s adult career, but that’s never how I’ve seen it.
That early Michael Jackson was something special. An angelic gift from God, who instantaneously absorbed the musical world around him. James Brown, Smokey Robinson, Stevie Wonder – they were speaking a language that he could understand better than anyone else alive.
I know the joke phase is coming so for just one week or so try and do your best not to see the damage that came from a youth with Joe Jackson. Take in the purity of Michael’s Motown audition and say a prayer for that young angel and the hell that lay in his future.
