It’s become a cliché to say it, but Thriller was the first album I ever bought. It also happened to be the first album I ever loved. I remember talking about Michael Jackson with my best friend at the time, and in the spur of the moment, we went into town and purchased copies. They were £5 in a sale. It was 2003, and Thriller had been out for over twenty years. Why a fourteen-year-old kid would suddenly have an urge to buy an album from 1982 is beyond me, but I did, and I became obsessed – it was my life. I only ever listened to Thriller, refusing anything else, and learnt the tracks off by heart. I loved every moment of that 42 minute CD. Each song was a new experience on my untrained ears.
I didn’t even know it was the best selling album of all time. I didn’t know how loved it was. I find it amusing to think that it wasn’t part of my own era (I wasn’t even born when it came out), but it has had more of an effect on me than any album I love from the 90s. Somehow I'd ended up with the album that so many regard as their first and favourite. Now, I notice just how many people can be heard stating, "Yeah, Michael Jackson was my first album," when the topic comes up. Importantly, they state it with a nostalgic fondness.
So what does it mean? Well, it’s obvious – for a lot of people, Michael Jackson seems to have served as a starting point as they begun the incredible and life changing journey that is music. And it’s easy to see why. Thriller is an album that transcends everything. It’s so accessible, and not for reasons of simplicity. Just look at that track listing. Wanna Be Startin’ Something, Billie Jean, Beat It, Thriller, Human Nature, P.Y.T. (Pretty Young Thing). Look at the genres. Is it pop, rock, funk, dance, R&B, soul? It speaks to everyone. The music is phenomenal. There’s nothing else like it. In writing this, I’ve suddenly realised something – I can’t even put it into words. Not words that will do it justice, anyway. Its power is unrivalled, and not since has there been an album so influential and funky and exciting and brilliant and treasured. It’s untouchable. It made me like music.
In the wake of Michael Jackson’s death, I decided to re-watch Living With Michael Jackson, the Martin Bashir documentary that aired in 2003 and was described afterwards “as a P.R.’s nightmare” because of the way Jackson came across. Essentially, it was credited with destroying the King of Pop. He was devastated at the way he was portrayed, and Bashir was picked up on his potential use of “yellow journalism.” The documentary was supposed to show the world the real Jackson. His own friend (celebrity psychic Uri Geller) suggested he do it with Bashir, passing on an offer from documentary maker Louis Theroux. This call of judgement ended their friendship.
Hearing the news of Jackson’s death, I was suddenly struck and frozen. Pah. It can’t be true. Michael Jackson can’t die. I didn’t know how to react. I’d always declared him one of my favourite artists, but he had become a joke over the years with increasing negative publicity, and the public’s opinion on him had shifted: they either thought of him as a child molester or they didn’t care. I decided to essentially have no opinion on it. I loved his music. I thought it was possible to separate the music from the man. My recent viewing of Living With Michael Jackson ended my period of indecisiveness and made me realise that the music and the man aren’t really all that separable after all.
What I see in the documentary, now I’m old enough to actually understand, is a fragile, lonely man who lost his childhood and could never find a way to get that part of his life back. Michael Jackson started his life on the stage – he was always famous, in the 70s, in the 80s, in the 90s, and up until his death. “I like to climb trees,” Jackson says in the first minutes of the documentary. This simple childhood pleasure is taken for granted by children (and us) every single day. They do it and nobody says a thing. It's normal. Most children get it out of their system. Michael didn’t. He wasn’t allowed that experience, so he tried to make up for lost time in his later years. He had work cut out for him when he was seven years old. So much was expected. He lived in fear of his father. He lived in fear of failing.
Whether or not the allegations that Michael faced were true or not, I want to look at the bigger picture. He wasn’t normal. He did odd things, and he acted strange. Do I think that was his fault? No, not at all. When you listen to him speak, he is a child. He’s never had time to grow up. At one particularly revealing point in Living With Michael Jackson, he tells Bashir about an encounter he had with his first girlfriend. He explains how she invited him to her home in Beverly Hills and asked him to make love to her. It would have been his first time. When she initiated the act, Michael froze. “I covered my eyes with my hands,” he says. “Like this.” He imitates his actions for Bashir. There’s so much innocence and naivety, and it remains, in a man in his forties.
So how do I feel? Finally, I know. I feel sad. He was an icon, and he changed the world. Nobody can argue that. There’s no doubt in my mind that he will live forever through his music, and will remain firmly tied to our popular culture for as far as I can think ahead. This pleases me. But more than feeling sad, I feel at unease. Not for me, but for Michael. His death was sudden and untimely. There’s always going to be unfinished business. I listen to “One Day In Your Life” and the mood is suddenly poignant. I think of Jackson at the time of the recording, with the world at his fingertips, not knowing what was to come, and not knowing what he had already missed. Yes, it is sadness I feel. I feel sad for Michael, who never had a chance to make peace with the world he gave so much to.
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