b. Michael Joseph Jackson, 29 August 1958, Gary, Indiana, USA. d. 25 June 2009. Jackson has spent almost his entire life as a public performer. He was a founder member of the Jackson Five at the age of four, soon becoming their lead vocalist and frontman. Onstage, he modelled his dance moves and vocal styling on James Brown, and portrayed an absolute self-confidence on stage that belied his shy, private personality. The Jackson Five signed to Motown Records at the end of 1968; their early releases, including US chart-toppers ‘I Want You Back’, ‘ABC’, ‘The Love You Save’, and ‘I’ll Be There’, illustrated his remarkable maturity. Although Michael was too young to have experienced the romantic situations that were the subject of his songs, he performed with total sincerity, showing all the hallmarks of a great soul artist. Ironically, his pre-adolescent vocal work carried a conviction that he often failed to recapture later in his career.
When MGM Records launched the Osmonds as rivals to the Jackson Five in 1970, and singled out their lead singer, 13-year-old Donny Osmond, for a solo career, Motown felt duty bound to reply in kind. Michael Jackson’s first release as a solo performer was the aching ballad ‘Got To Be There’, a major transatlantic hit. A revival of Bobby Day’s rock ‘n’ roll novelty ‘Rockin’ Robin’ reached number 2 on the US chart in 1972, while the sentimental film theme ‘Ben’ topped the chart later in the year. Motown capitalized on Jackson’s popularity with a series of hurried albums, which mixed unremarkable material angled towards the teenage market with a selection of the label’s standards. They also stockpiled scores of unissued tracks, which were released in the 80s to cash in on the success of his Epic recordings.
As the Jackson Five’s sales slipped in the mid-70s, Michael’s solo career was put on hold, and he continued to reserve his talents for the group after they were reborn as the Jacksons in 1976 after leaving Motown and signing with Epic Records. He re-entered the public eye with a starring role in the film musical The Wiz, collaborating on the soundtrack album with Quincy Jones. Their partnership was renewed in 1979 when Jones produced Off The Wall, a startlingly successful collection of contemporary soul material that introduced the world to the adult Michael Jackson. In his new incarnation, Jackson retained the vocal flexibility of old, but added a new element of sophistication and maturity. The album topped the charts in the USA and UK, and contained two US number 1 singles, ‘Don’t Stop ’Til You Get Enough’ (for which Jackson won a Grammy Award) and ‘Rock With You’. Other major songs were ‘She’s Out Of My Life’ and the title track. Meanwhile, Motown capitalized on his commercial status by reissuing a recording from the mid-70s, ‘One Day In Your Life’, which duly topped the UK charts in summer 1981.
Jackson continued to tour and record with the Jacksons after this solo success, while media speculation grew about his private life. He was increasingly portrayed as a figure trapped in an eternal childhood, surrounded by toys and pet animals, and insulated from the traumas of the real world at his idyllic 2700-acre Neverland ranch in California’s Santa Ynez Valley. This image was consolidated when he was chosen to narrate an album based on the 1982 fantasy movie ET - The Extra Terrestrial. The record was quickly withdrawn because of legal complications, but still won Jackson another Grammy Award.
In 1982, Thriller, Jackson’s second album with Quincy Jones, was released, and went on to become one of the most commercially successful albums of all time. It also produced a run of successful hit singles, each accompanied by a promotional video that widened the scope of the genre. ‘The Girl Is Mine’, a duet with Paul McCartney, began the sequence in relatively subdued style, setting the scene for ‘Billie Jean’, an effortless mix of disco and pop that was a huge transatlantic chart-topper and spawned a series of answer records from other artists. The accompanying video was equally spectacular, portraying Jackson as a master of dance, a magician who could transform lives, and a shadowy figure who lived outside the everyday world. It was the first black music video to receive rotation airplay on the MTV video station. Its successor, ‘Beat It’, also topped the US chart and helped establish another precedent, with its determinedly rock-flavoured guitar solo by Eddie Van Halen. Its promotional film involved Jackson at the centre of a choreographed street battle, a conscious throwback to the set pieces of West Side Story. However, even this was a modest effort compared to ‘Thriller’, a rather mannered piece of disco-funk accompanied by a stunning long-form video that placed Jackson in a parade of Halloween horrors. This promo clip spawned a follow-up, The Making Of ‘Thriller’, which in turn sold more copies than any other home video to date.