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(Clicka qua per la versione Italiana)
Summary.
Before becoming the most successful bluffs of all time,
Michael Jackson had been one of the Jackson Five, a group that had fused
the harmonizing of black vocal groups, the melodic enthusiasm of
Tamla's party soul and the syncopated rhythm of funk music.
Michael, who became independent in 1979 under the tutelage of rhythm'n'blues
and veteran jazz producer Quincy Jones, went on to release the greatest album
of all time (if sales define greatness), Thriller (1981).
This trivial collage of pop-soul cliches and dance beats, stylishy and
masterly orchestrated by Jones employing state-of-the-art technology,
was complemented by the deliberate construction of a surreal persona,
a sort of fairy-tale figure, half child and half man,
tenderly insecure and slightly hysterical,
sex-neutral, race-neutral and age-neutral,
readily identified by his mask, his costumes and his moves.
His ascent paralleled the ascent of music videos as a major marketing vehicle.
Thriller alone went on to sell over 100 million copies.
Overall he had sold 750 million records by the time of his death.
Full bio.
(Translated from my old Italian text by Damian Jugdeo)
The Jackson family has sold over 100 million records
altogether.
The five brothers from Indiana were introduced to music as
children by their father Joe Jackson, a former guitarist and now a seasoned
manager. The Jackson Five, hired by Motown in 1969, quickly became the hard
wing of the label, the funkier one, but their child-voices made it an act for
young and old. The first single,
I Want You Back (1970),
a syncopated dance
hit, sold two million copies, and began a series of uninterrupted chart hits,
continued by
ABC (1970), The Love You Save (1970),
and by
Barry Gordy's
romantic gospel
I'll Be There (1970),
all three shooting to the top of the charts and all of them selling more
than one million copies (the third even more than three).
These songs and those that
came in the next two years were mostly written by the Perren-Mizell-Richards-Gordy quartet. With Dancing Machine (1974)
they adapted to the funky fashion. Loved by both the crowds and the moral
organizations, they went through a bad time when they resigned from Motown.
Reborn as the Jacksons for the label Gamble and Huff, in 1976 they also
began to write their own material, now less childish and even more danceable:
Destiny (1978)
was in fact their best album. The growing technical prestige
pushed Michael (who had been only 12 years old at the time of their first hit) to pursue a solo
career with
Got to Be There (1971) and Ben (1972).
(Original text by Piero Scaruffi)
His first adult solo album, Off The Wall (Epic, 1979), produced by Quincy Jones, gave him 4 top-ten hits, including Don't Stop
Till You Get Enough and Rock With You (composed by Rod Temperton),
and sold five million copies,
despite the unoriginality of
the music.
His second solo, Thriller (Epic, 1982), again under the
supervision of Jones, gave him six hits, including the title track (composed by
Rod Temperton), Billie Jean and Beat It,
and became the best-selling album in the history of music (51 million
copies sold in 20 years, 37 weeks at the top of the Billboard charts).
The most revolutionary element of Thriller was
the 15-minute video directed by John Landis and choreographed by Michael Peters
(released in december 1983).
Jackson's signature
dance, the "moonwalk", was invented sometime in the 1950s, and for a
long time was identified with French mime Marcel Marceau because it featured in
all his skits. Jackson learned it from David Bowie, who had learned it from
British mime Lindsay Kemp, the one who had taught it to Marcel Marceau.
In 1982 Jackson also provided the narrator for a Christmas
album dedicated to the popular alien puppet ET, a task he fulfilled with a
kind of sensitivity, candor and innocence that conquered both grandparents,
mothers and
children.
He also wrote We Are The World (1986), a sentimental anthem of rock
humanism performed by a cast of rock celebrities.
Jackson's success was also due on the fluid and expansive,
"white" qualities of his vocals but mainly to
Quincy Jones's
disco-oriented beats and arrangements.
The media and the fans also went crazy for his
child-like personality (the way of dancing on stage, the way of wearing
plastic visor, the white socks, the white shirt, lyrics littered with
harmless ghosts). Sex-neutral, race-neutral and age-neutral, Jackson perhaps
reflected the need of teenagers to worship a new kind of clown.
When he returned to recording, with Bad (1987), he was in the international spotlight, and he met the expectations with a string of
elegant hits (again manufactured by Quincy Jones), which repeated the mood
and style Thriller, just a bit more aggressive,
and with a video directed by Martin Scorsese.
The dramatic performances of Man In The
Mirror, Dirty
Diana and Bad, however, highlight well-balanced and more mature vocal skills compared with the adolescent hysteria of Thriller.
The other hits from the album were
I Just Can't Stop Loving You and The
Way You Make Me Feel.
Jackson was looking for artistic continuity in the
transition from adolescence to maturity.
The end of Jackson's partnership with Quincy Jones also ended his golden age.
The synthesizer-heavy
Dangerous (1991), mostly produced by Teddy Riley, with Black or White,
History (1995), with Scream and You Are Not Alone,
and Invincible (2001), produced by Rodney Jerkins,
were catapulted to the top only by his fundamentalist fanatics, in a ritual
similar to the one that had propelled every Presley's and Beatles' album to
the top, no matter what.
His private life was much more interesting than his music.
In 1985, he acquired the Beatles' catalog.
In 1988, Jackson bought his "Neverland" ranch in California and began turning it
into a private amusement park, including a zoo.
In 1993, Jackson was accused of molesting a child.
In 1994, he married Elvis Presley's daughter.
In 1996, Jackson married again, and, again, the marriage lasted only
a few years, but this time two children were born.
In 2003, Jackson was arrested for child molestation, and tried (amid much
fanfare and theatrics) in 2005. Acquitted, he left Neverland for good and
moved to a mansion in Bahrain.
Jackson died in 2009 at the age of 50.
Quincy Jones died in 2024.
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