Michael Jackson was as much the master of macabre as he was the sorcerer of song and dance
Michael Jackson was as much the master of macabre as he was the sorcerer of song and dance
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It had been a few years since Thriller hit the stores, but made it to Esquire Musicals, a corner store that I frequented in Chennai, much later. But it was the VHS compilation of hits by several artists, including Jackson, that blew my happy little universe to bits and flung it right out of orbit. I would rent it out for about 10 days, not want to return the damn thing, pay a late fee, invariably go back three days later and rent it out again.
And wear a scowl for the rest of the week if someone else had rented it. This went on until a kind aunt decided to buy it for me. The number of VCR hours that I'd monopolise for the next few years was a threat she woke up to slowly.u00a0
There was Jackson all over school as well and looking back, it was the only other music that we sang besides the Christmas carols and hymns. But the staunch Protestant Anglo Indian school would have none of the hell-raising Jackson numbers. So we'd have to settle for the King of sop with 'Heal The World,'u00a0 'We Are The World' (even if it had Springsteen sounding sexier than anything I'd heard at that time and looking even better) and 'Will You Be There' because we were at a respectable girls' school in Chennai.
It's strange how some Jackson memories will always live with us. We were mostly accompanied on a grand piano by an extremely gifted pianist, a die-hard Jackson fan and an anaesthetist by profession named Dr Subramanyam. The piano was a relic passed on from pre-Independence days and some of its keys went 'plink' breaking the choir up into giggles that echoed through the high-ceiling room. The practice hours were also the only time we could skip classes to fool around and witness Ms D'Monte, the dragon lady and second-in-command at school surrender to MJ and even allow a smile or two to pass. Sometimes Subramanyam would hit the silly keys on purpose to ease the tension in the room if we were stuck at a tricky part. D'Monte cracked the whip at practice whenever she could. The killer bit was putting down the lyrics. This was the pre-internet, pre-Google chaos when we punched the pause-rewind-play buttons on a wonky tape deck for hours till our fingers turned blue to get the lyrics right. And although Jackson numbers in spite of the unpredictable highs and lows in his vocals were easy enough, we once spent almost an hour cracking this line: "See the nations turn their swords into plowshares" off 'Heal The World'.
Of course, we always improvised. Jackson tracks, especially the peace-love anthems, were known for their harmonies and we'd get our kicks from figuring out a cunning soprano or alto line that we could fit into our performance.
Never mind that the boys were sniggering in the wings of the stage on annual day or falling off their chairs (literally) because they could dance on stage to the cooler stuff, including 'Thriller' which was the real heartburner. I for one, wanted to line my eyes with kohl, get out of the braids and watch the rule nazi headmistress go up in smoke to a ballistic 'Beat It,' and then probably hold my hands out for a knuckle-cracking exercise without letting out a whimper.
But some girls got their revenge, as cheesy as it was. I used to know this bunch of boys and girls who lived to dress up for Sunday school. One of the girls who had an uncanny resemblance to Tatiana Thumbtzen (the model who featured in 'The Way You Make Me Feel' video) and dressed just like her in snug fitting dresses and heels made many moony-eyed boys sing 'The Way You Make Me Feel' before she agreed to go out on a date.u00a0
By the time Bad came out, people had begun mocking Jackson. Choreographers and dancers might have tripped out on the pelvic thrusts and groin clutching (Telugu sensation Chiranjeevi had even done the trashiest tribute to 'Thriller' that I'd ever set my eyes on. You'll find it on YouTube if you look for Indian Thriller). But the traditional Carnatic filter coffee community wanted to an unspoken ban on MJ. "What is this vulgar nonsense?" was a question I was asked often and had no answer to, even though the word didn't fit the disco superstar who was slowly drawing all the stares and frowns.
It didn't help that my "doctor" mom noticed that MJ had been under the knife and that I should steer clear of this cosmetic freak. I promptly put up a poster with 'Bad' scrawled over it in red. And because that didn't go down so badly, I decided to go back to playing my tapes loudly on the Philips double deck home theatre system that I shared with some cousins. And every kid I knew wanted to be Macaulay Culkin in 'Black Or White' telling their parents to 'Eat This' and turn up the volume so loud that the windows shattered (and maybe even had their dads flying out of the roof in some cases). That's the kind of pop rebellion that MJ instilled in you.
Much later, when I read up on his childhood, it shocked me to know what a monster he had for a dad. On one occasion, Joseph Jackson, MJ's father, is said to have climbed into the room where his sons slept wearing a fright mask and yelling his head off in the middle of the night. This was meant to have taught the boys a lesson to not leave their window open at night. What kind of a freak does that sort of a thing? The more I heard about MJ's strange antics, the more I was sure that his dad really screwed it all up. It was easier to just look into this strange, fictional world that MJ had built around himself a 2,700 acre property called Neverland where he would play out his dream role of Peter Pan and know that the man was just not there.
Jackson has mentioned in an interview how the track 'Childhood' was one of the most autobiographical ones he'd written. The video of the track, used in the soundtrack of Free Willy: 2, shows Jackson looking painfully vulnerable and seated in a rain forest as children flew above in the sky in boats. Not a great video and definitely not a great track, but the lyrics reflected some of his anguish: "No one understands me/ They view it as such strange eccentricities/ 'Cause I keep kidding around/ Like a child but pardon me...It's been my fate to compensate/ For the childhood that I've never known."
By the time History: Past, Present and Future Book I released, I felt I was done with Jackson. Sure, there was the spectacular, haunting 'Earth Song' where Jackson sings with feeling and 'Scream' where he raged against the system with sister Janet, but I didn't find the album compelling enough for even a second spin.
He'd also become a guy I didn't recognise with the multiple child sexual abuse allegations, nose jobs and freak antics. Someone mentioned that he'd bought himself an oxygen chamber, and I believed it to be true until I read his biography by Randy Taraborrelli which said that it was a trick used by MJ to generate media hype.
Some said he went deathly white because he was ashamed of being black but that was too absurd an argument considering the anti-racist numbers that the man has done. Finally it was reported that MJ was diagnosed with vitiligo, a skin disease that changes the pigmentation. While the world bloated out on a Jackson information overload, the composer and singer seemed to be dying out as an artist, in his effort to explain himself to the world.
And then he brought out the ghouls again in a video for 'Ghosts', a single that found a connection with Stephen King, another childhood hero of mine. 'Ghosts' had been released with Thinner, a horror flick based on King's novel. MJ seemed to lash out at the world again for calling him a weirdo and created a character called Maestro who lived in an eerie mansion all by himself, shunned by the town where he lived. Maestro is visited by the town mayor, also played by Jackson, who wants to throw him out. The two engage in a dialogue of dance and horror that only went onto prove that Jackson still had the bite. He could still bend the forms of dance and music to produce a video that was nothing short of spectacular, and that would come back to haunt you when the lights were out.
Stephen King is out of my system, but MJ built the system, track by inventive track.
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