Black music has always been physical and its performers have always prided themselves on their choreography, but Jackson brings that tradition to his own peak of perfection. Even his singing almost demands a physical response.
So attuned and alert to the body, Jackson's music is hardly sexless but it has a joy in the physical perfection that is unprecedented. Jackson's delighted and uncanny sense of timing could only come from a dancer in peak condition. Jackson's music exults in itself. It has acted and will act as a preliminary for sex but it doesn't have to. For Michael Jackson, getting down is an end in itself.
Comment on the dance may seem superfluous but so many musicians, even the more famous, are scared to dance. Every Sunday, Michael Jackson has his own private three-hour session of dance therapy. Those Sunday rituals make him different .
Lyrically he had hardly ventured beyond love and dance platitudes but "Thriller" brought determined if unsteady advance. Written by Rod Termperton, the title track played up his puckish humour while his own lyrics became more specific, if a touch paranoid. "Billie Jean" received her marching orders and she also featured as a gossip in "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'".
That song also had the oddest sequence. "Still they hate you", he sings "you're a vegetable/You're just a buffet, you're a vegetable/They eat off/you're a vegetable." Michael Jackson shares nothing in carnivorous common with Ted Nugent. He is a vegetarian.
Well boys will have their jokes. As Rob Termperton wrote for him on "Off The Wall", "Gotta hide your inhibitions/Gotta let that fool loose deep inside your soul". Perhaps that same sense of conviction saves his ballads from schlock.
Still my favourite joke comes from "Off The Wall". On "Get On The Floor", the track breaks into a remorseless disco passage as his own vocals become more harshly commanding. Then suddenly he returns to the verse and you catch his laugh. With mischievous glee, the Pied Piper has owned up to his tricks.
Michael Jackson isn't the first child star reared in the Motown stable. (Little) Stevie Wonder preceded him and as are such maverick characters because their closest encounters with everyday reality are on stage and in bed.
Certainly Jackson has confessed that the stage is the home he prefers - though he is no indulgent rock excessive. A Jehovah's Witness, he guards his talents from temptation with a single-minded devotion. The concern that underpins his fear is touching but des he lose contact with his own? Dies he even remember the ghetto in Gary?
Certainly, as Wonder matured, he showed a consistent social concern in songs like "Living For The City" and in his support of Jackson, he seems a rare jewel, refined in the furnace of the music business, He was bred to cross over.
A man who's surprised once can surprise again: Michael Jackson's record proves he should never be under-estimated. But his own combination of showbiz ambitions, however honourable, and an essentially protective fantasy cocoon may limit his cultural range and power.
Still there are innumerable European idealists who under-rate Michael Jackson. Fiddling him with synthesizer, dealing in monotone rhythms, they hardly note that the title track of "Thriller", save for guitar and horn seasoning, is totally synthesized.
This has been a selective rather than a blow-by-blow account. Between the group and his solo work, there were innumerable Motown albums, about to be smelted down to a new compilation. Also after "Destiny", the Jacksons produced the "Triumph" album and a sometimes invigorating double-live set.
But the real story, the real rama-llama is Michael Jackson and the dance, a man often thwarted but finally triumphant in his ambitions. On "Thriller", Rod Temperton defined Jackson's opponents: "Whosoevershall be found without the soul for getting down".
Hear it on "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'" as it closes with a furious African chant. Michael Jackson's music attests to both the primacy and continuity in the black tradition."
Page 6/6 <prev 1 2 3 4 5 6 next>
Bill Graham 
