Intelligent Life On Planet Rock
Is death just the start for the Michael Jackson industry?
A few hours after the death of Elvis Presley in 1977, as his family were sitting around Graceland shocked and weeping, Colonel Tom Parker turned up. He hadn't been closely involved in Presley's affairs at that time, preferring to spend his time gambling. It was Parker who galvanised the shattered family with the words "this changes nothing".
Even he can't have known how right he was. When Presley died there was no etiquette for handling the death of a rock superstar. The media weren't sure if they were dealing with a washed-up has-been or a figure who was still relevant. I don't think Downing Street felt the need to make a statement. "People" magazine, America's foremost title about entertainment and celebrity, could have put his face on the cover but didn't, reasoning that he no longer meant that much to the average American. I happened to be in Memphis that year and visited Graceland to look at the grave. You could just walk into the grounds. There were no conducted tours and very few souvenir shops. The massive resurgence of interest in Elvis took some time to gather. The Elvis impersonators in their white suits took a while to get their act together. Dead Elvis was eventually more popular and more profitable than Live Elvis but it wasn't immediate.
When John Lennon was shot three years later the news organisations were primed by the Presley experience. The wall-to-wall coverage of his death was encouraged by the fact that he was both British and American, therefore both nations claimed some kind of ownership of him, politicians and public moralists could persuade themselves he was a key thinker for our times, his murder threw up all kinds of questions about random violence and the levers of the media were being pulled by people who had grown up adoring the Beatles and everything they stood for. At the end of December 8th 1980, after having gone through a day of hacking out tributes, a remark of Annie Nightingale's on the TV set me bawling. I wasn't crying for John Lennon, of course. I was crying for myself. Lost youth, good times, perspective, all that kind of thing. These things trigger something in us that needs to come out eventually. The Princess of Wales was not a rock star but the reaction to her death was on the scale of Lennon's but this time with a previously unfamiliar hysteria thrown in. Even the people who were flinging roses at her hearse in the Finchley Road on that mad day probably think better of it now. But at that time there was a pent-up desire for an extravagant, apparently un-British show of emotion. It was the kind of thing that used to be sublimated via religion or dancing round the maypole. In the TV age it was delivered via the box.
Judging by the way that Google almost broke yesterday under the strain I think it's fair to say that Michael Jackson's was the first death of a massive star in the internet age. TV and radio suddenly look and sound very quaint, huffing and puffing in the wake of the story, trying to assemble talking heads to say anything meaningful; even as they are talking people are coming up with new angles and implications. What happens to the kids? Where does this leave the London shows? Are his mother and father speaking to each other? Do you think these shows will actually happen in some strange animatronic form? How long will Sony leave it before the TV ads start? Bet they're glad they didn't auction the personal effects a month or two back. Does McCartney get the ATV catalogue back? I hear the funeral is going to be Muslim. What religion was he? Will Neverland be reopened to the public? How many people are working on one-shots right now? And so on.
Is there anything wrong with that? Well, it doesn't represent us at our most worthy but it does represent us at our most human. In the wake of any death in any family human beings have a huge desire to just sit down and talk about it. They may be talking about the deceased. They may be grasping the opportunity to talk about something they rarely talk about, which is life. They may just want to gossip. Thanks to the internet you can now take a seat in the world's largest living room with millions of souls who are similarly fascinated and listen to discussions you might not wish to instigate yourself. Because a lot's changed since Colonel Parker's pronouncement in 1977. Parker was essentially a small-time thinker. Thirty years later, with the technology at the disposal of the entertainment industry, death can be just the beginning. I'm sure there are people working on it right now.
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one minor thing about MJ
How tall was he?
over the last day I've heard that he was 6'2" and yet other people have said he short and slight. I think it's odd that we don't know basic things like this.
No, what's really and truly odd
is that anyone would want to know or even care about how tall he was.
How High?
It seemed to be the most memorable thing Paul Gambacinni could think about him on Friday night.
If the stories about his debts are true
then the ironic thing might be that his death ends up being the way he pays them off. That's a strange and slightly worrying concept: it's like us mortals having a mortgage where your final payment is predicated on your life assurance payout.
I think what we will also see with the commercialisation of his death is a wave of litigation as anyone and everyone with a case, major or trivial, genuine or chancer, piles in with a writ against the estate.
Not to be too hideous about this but...
.. anyone who has taken out a mortgage, remortgaged at some point, has a couple of life assurance policies running and isn't too deep in a hole on the car loan or credit cards probably is worth more dead than alive ... (maybe not in terms of potential future earnings over a period of ten or twenty years but if someone was going to draw the red line under our 'personal accounts' in the here and now, including mortgage etc etc, then death is an economically beneficial move)
I think he flogged..
..his ATV shares a while ago.
I, personally am dreading the next few months.
He had to mortgage them...
....but he still co-owns it with Sony.
There are rumours...
...Jackson bequeathed his share of ATV/Sony to Paul McCartney - if true, could this pave the way for Macca buying his songs back?
Wherever there is a Will....
there are relations, as the old saying goes. The litigation fest will no doubt rumble on in Dickensian fashion, until the vultures have had their fill.
I am sure this has been said before, so please don't take offence but 'Suicide (Not suggesting this in MJ's case)/Death can be a great career move'!
Sadly, some artists are worth more dead than alive.
Parallels with Elvis
I'm not saying that there are parallels to set off a flaming battle between the Elvis fans (including me) and the Michael Jackson fans.
I just finished reading Allana Nash's excellent book, "The Colonel : The Extraordinary Story of Colonel Tom Parker & Elvis Presley".
Demerol was a big part of Elvis' later years, too. But it's not just that : I could see the O2 Concerts going ahead in the same way that the Elvis tour with the TCB band did - the King on video screens. And this could be presented as the promoters "allowing the true fans to pay their respects to The King Of Pop and show their undying love for one of the greatest entertainers".
And while I don't disagree that the Colonel was a small-time thinker, he was the one with the vision to see that, for Elvis at least, death is not The End.
Diana's death
was definitely the prototype media positive feedback loop. I remember being in London at the time and, walking down the Mall on the evening before her funeral, I realized that the crowd mass hysteria was reaching the same emotional state that the nazis exploited. Since then, in a much more minor way, hype machines like Big Brother and X factor have learnt to exploit this same echo chamber effect very effectively. Trouble is a good echo requires a whole lot of emptiness.
David, you are quite right about Jackson being the first flash bulb death of the you tube age. I'd be interested to see how big a surge in internet traffic there has been since Thursday night.
We saw the same spooky obsessive
public involvement with her death here too.
There was a conceptual sense of public ownership of Diana, and for many people the chance to belong to the mourning crowd was irresistible. Highgrove is just up the road from here, and I used to drive past the back gates on my way to and from my clients at the time. Driving through Doughton, past police cars, crowds of people and the enormous piles of cut flowers, where there is normally empty pavement and a blank estate wall, was eerily strange.
We don't have the same connection to Michael Jackson, at least not one that's tied to a location, so the internet becomes the only common ground for hysterical grief.
Why anybody would care
what I think about it, I dont know, but everybody else is having a go.
His music made virtually no impression on me. That's just a matter of personal taste. I've got a similar blind spot for Presley. And, may God forgive me, for Richard Thompson. For those that loved him, good for you. Good for him that he gave enjoyment to millions. Simply because he was so hugely popular, he was very influential, QED. You can't make a case against that.
But personally, when I hear the name Michael Jackson, I can't get away from the fact that this was a grown man - in age anyway - who thought it was ok to take children into his bed, and admitted to that. Whether anything untoward happened, we'll never know I guess, and the avalanche of books that are going to come from those now grown children probably won't shed any real light either. But whatever did or did not happen, surely it can't have been good for those kids?
The point made elsewhere about John Martyn's tendency to violence and our willingness to forgive in our eulogising on this site is a good one. I loved JM's music, didn't much care for MJ's. I freely admit the hypocrisy, that it's easier to turn a blind eye to Martyn's failings because I plug into his songs in a way I never have with Jackson's. And also because, insofar as I'm aware, any abuses did not extend to children. Should we separate the art from the artist? Can we?
All I *know* about Jackson comes from the media. I know that people were only to keen to exploit him, I know the rough childhood etc. I know the accusations *might* only have come about from people looking to get huge sums off him. I also know he was acquitted in court, but then so was OJ Simpson, who later wrote a book saying how he would have done the murder *if* he ad committed it. I also know he paid off one accuser - to the tune of $20million I think - to avoid court. And I also know it's possible he might have been innocent of it all and actually been the innocent some see him as.
But I go back to what I said earlier. He thought it was ok to have children in his bed, and if any of us adults on here were to say the same thing, it would be pretty freaky. You might acuse me of having bad taste by not liking his music, and that's fair enough. But the rush to remember his back catalogue, to talk about the musical icon while relegating that other part of his life to a footnote seems pretty tasteless to me.
But then, airbrushing that bit out makes it easier to sell, sell, sell in the future doesn't it?
freaky logic
Yes, his obvious link with OJ Simpson clinches it.
The boy was commodified and hermetically sealed in unreality from the age of 6 or 7; weirdness was sure to follow.
The further he got from childhood [at least chronologically] the less i liked the music. But his life did embody his/my generation's fitful lurch into excessive, self-obsessive cultural oblivion, or that's what they said on telly..
The only link
I'm making is that a not guilty verdict isn't always proof of innocence, just like a guilty one isn't always proof of having done it. But paying somebody off rather than going to court isn't necessarily a great move either if you want people to believe you have nothing to hide.
I agree with your point that "weirdness was sure to follow". But that doesn't make it any better for anybody that *might* have suffered at his hands does it?
My point, in the context of what David Hepworth wrote above, is that part of the Jackson story is already being shoved under the carpet.
Like Hitler
It's a bit like forgetting all the questionable stuff because he "invented" the autobahn (motorway).
we have our winner
Michael Jackson to Hitler in 24 hrs hurrah!
Cheers!
What do I win?
not sure but here's Jonathon Edwards
recreating your rhetorical style at the Olympic games :-)
The Godwin Award, natch :-)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law
excellent
One good thing should come out of this
death of a global celebrity musician and it is our awareness of those groups/artists we follow/collect/cherish are also fragile human beings. Forget and forgive their faults and concentrate on the good music and memories they have given us, and may still be about to deliver. Especially important is the role of the media in all this and their often appalling behaviour towards so-called "celebrities".
Human nature being what it is this feeling of goodwill will probably last a cople of days or weeks. Then it will be cynicism as usual and higher prices on eBay for anything related to Wacko Jacko.
Genuine MJ codpiece anyone?
Gary Glitter?
Great article if a little too
forgiving of the utter guff I heard on TV last night by 'opinion makers' or whatever they are. His musical career was a real disappointment from the highs of The Jackson 5 to the amazing-but-hard-to-identify-with Billie Jean there were six or seven great singles. That's it. Nothing more but horrible schmaltzly ballads or angry, silly dance songs.
Elvis - whether through exploitation or not - left a legacy of loads of great albums. Loads of them. Maybe it's not yet the time to discuss MJ's musical legacy, but it long ago took a back seat to his marketing one.
I have been walking round the shops in Birmingham
And Michael Jackson songs are coming from almost every store. I loved some of his classic pop records but we (the public and particularly the media) have really gone over the top on this one. Early evening specials last night on all of the major channels. And a souvenir supplement in today's Guardian, for goodness sake.
My wife, who works in Child Protection, made an interesting statement. She said that the death of Michael Jackson was the best thing that could have happened to his kids. I wonder, with the public interest in them, whether that is the case?
I have been walking round the shops in Birmingham
Sorry, I hit the post button twice
Internet effect
I've been surprised how little mourning and hysteria I've seen from real people on the internet. All the over the top coverage and respectful "mourning" has come from the official agencies. Most comments from real people (which we'd never have heard from in the past) have been along the lines of "made some classic records when he was young, not much cop as a human being, shame he died so young but you could see it coming" plus many tasteless jokes. It reminds me of the Queen Mother's death when the media were desperate for a Diana moment, didn't get one, and in the end had to engineer one.
In the past at moments like this you only had the option of shouting at the telly if you felt they were getting the mood so wrong. Now everyone gets their say, even if it is drowned out by the BBC's insistence that we be sad.
I think
there were a fair few "real" people in Trafalgar Square, the West End, LA, NY and Gary Indiana - or were they all told to assemble at these places? And the internet is where all the freaks live, didn't you know?
The Dead Pop Star Industry
I don’t have any problem whatsoever with the dead pop star industry.
We don’t lock great paintings away in a vault once the artist has handed in his dinner pail; we don’t ignore Shakespeare or Dickens or whoever because they’re long gone.
Why should pop music be any different? Michael Jackson singing I’ll Be There will always be a great work of art no matter how long ago he did it or whether he’s still alive or not.
Why is it a bad thing that millions of people will be buying Micheal Jackson records next week?
Puzzling
It isn't a bad thing, I just can't understand why they haven't bought them already if they are a fan.
As I have said before on the forum, he hasn't made a decent record in 20 years - surely that is long enough for someone to recognise they like his music?
It seems that people have suddenly become big fans overnight and weren't bothered about shelling out for MJ albums when he was alive.
Baffling!
Have you seen the current iTunes chart?
MJ currently has 9 of the top 10 albums in the UK iTunes album chart, with many more albums sat below. As for their singles chart, albums half of the top 100 are MJ, Jackson 5 or Jacksons recordings.
It's 24 hour news
No news channel dare leave the subject for more than a few minutes as they're terrified viewers or listeners will hop to another station.
Just remember the Jade Goody extraveganza. They built up a hysteria that developed a life of it's own. But then of course it was the manner both Lennon and Jackson met their end. violence with Lennon, Jackson through industrial quantities of prescription drugs. Elvis died on the throne and no matter how you dressed it up it wasn't very "rock and roll".
I too was in London for Diana's funeral and saw first hand the wailing and rendering of garments. It was a day we were never supposed to forget according to the media but how many of us can name either the date of her death or funeral?
Very few I suspect without looking it up.
Now we are all supposed to remeber where we were when we heard the news! Well I was in front of the TV eating a late chicken curry when Jackson snuffed it. Hardly momentous, I can't remember if it was a madras or jalfrazi.
Am I now a bad person for not knowing, or worse caring?
Just Wondering
Did you have a 'King of Popadom' with that?
garlic and corriander nann
lovely it was too!
Mike
I had dinner today in MOJOS Music Cafe Shop in Scarborough. They were playing Michael Jackson's Greatest Hits and most people (including myself) were reading todays papers about him. Obviously, his life and death is going to run for months and months and years and years, even more so than Diana's death. After polishing off some tomato and basil soup,I popped into HMV and it was mobbed. Already, the shelf nearest the door was stacked high with Jackson's back catalogue. I bought Blur's new compilation, but will no doubt listen to some of Jackson's music on Spotify tonight, before heading out tonight where we will hear his music playing in all the pubs.I don't own any of his albums, but I guess his death has stirred some interest in his music for myself.
As Richard Thompson once said...
...well, sang. His rendition of 'Now that I am dead' seems appropriate (1.50 in). Which also brings Captain Beefheart into this thread too.
I'm willing to eat my words
I can see the parallels with Elvis's death but I don't think there'll be as big an industry built up around MJ. In 1977 I was 18, into punk and Elvis hadn't brought out a decent record since I'd started listening to music. As a result I wasn't a fan and had little or no incentive to investigate his back catalogue. The fact that Way Down subsequently went to No1 after having been justifiably ignored while he was alive didn't encourage me either. Since then I've become more open minded and I like a lot of his stuff, I'm not a big fan but I've visited Gracelands and we have a lot of his singles (not albums though) his legend is built on a lot of classic singles. I don't think that there is enough depth to MJs catalogue to open him up to a new generation of listeners. I don't doubt that the fans he already has will continue to listen and be interested in him but is that enough? The Jackson family will no doubt close ranks (with good reason) to stop the otherwise inevitable biopic so the snowball won't get rolling quickly enough.
The vultures are gathering.....
Worthy of comment on the podcast n'est pas?
http://www.dumpert.nl/mediabase/553521/df56c872/rouwverwerking_met_joe_j...
Greetings from Belgium!
It's re-assuring to know
that Jackson's legacy - not to mention his children's futures - are in the capable hands of such wise and noble individuals like Joe Jackson and the Reverend Al Sharpton
Oh no - I can my feel my inner Littlejohn stirring again...
Joe Jackson?
The day Lennon died
The day Lennon died I remember going to work and desperately willing myself to be morose and distressed. I had just lost the big brother I never had. In fact I had two big brothers who who provided enough irritation without adopting a sarcastic scouser. As it happened no-one at work was particularly upset and as it turned out, neither was I. It was simply teenage posturing.
Before the endless hype provided by the media it took some effort to work yourself up into disconsolate grief. Today it's an industry.
Just look at Kurt Cobain, Jade Goody, Diana etc etc. It's an opportunity to shift more product whether Newspapers, Magazines, CD's or flowers.
Somewhere along the way, the public have bought the hype, hence Michael Jackson blaring out of every sound system in every cafe, barbers, whatever. It reminds me of the hysteria surrounding Robbie leaving Take That - tears, wailing, gnashing of teeth - until our attention wanders off to something else.
Looking forward to the Jackson lookalike conferences in Vegas tho'.
Well, um, yeah and up to a point Lord Copper
i tend to see it more as Lennon popping his clogs at the back end of the '70s (okay, technically Dec 1980) when the gathering pace and alienation of the modern era had yet to kick in ... mere years before his murder, mass media meant three TV channels - as it did in 1980 - tens of millions of folk watching Morecambe & Wise at Christmas and massive sales for the Sun, the Mirror and the NoW ... in general we had a shared cultural experience that had not yet fragmented off into multi-channel TV, computer games, the internet etc
or the point i'm trying to make was that when Lennon died there was a shared cultural experience and no desire to create one ... but nearly 17 years later when Diana died, the UK had changed ... and that change has only become more marked in the dozen years since Di's death ... we basically don't have a shared cultural experience ... instead we ghost through each other's lives uncomprehending (how many people even understood what a Jacko flashmob moonwalk outside Liverpool St was, let alone thought about popping down?) ... in this Word space, people talk fondly of John Martyn and Richard Thompson whereas i encounter people day to day who won't have heard of either ... my dad can barely work his second generation iMac (2002-ish) and is resistant to getting a new one despite the fact that his poor old machine can't really deal with more contemporary software and the demands of the internet in 2009 ... "Why should I?" he asks and and the answer is "Because things move faster now and you either keep up or give up..."
This can be characterised as a means of shifting more product but that would imply a coordination across media, industry sectors like computers or music and culture that i simply refuse to believe anyone can pull off ... (Occam's Razor) ... it's just that we're accelerating away from the cosiness that was part of British life when Lennon was shot towards something far, far different ... not there yet ... media reaction to "iconic" deaths in a period with no real icons is just part of the journey...
oops
sorry about this one, was pissed when i wrote it
Here in the US , SF to be exact...
...a town which tends to have a complex about " not being LA "...Well , the night of Michael's death I did see some bicyclists rusing around , dragging a box radio playing a Jacksons song , 'twas at Eighth and Market , about...
Yeah , that's true about People magazine , they tell this on themselves , I guess it was , also , that Elvis' death happened fairly early in the week in relation to their press time and they figured it would be " all over " by then .
Also , Elvis' fan base , certainly be his later years , did tend to be rather the looked down-upon " poor white/white trash "/Southerners , so...
John was liked by the more well-off and went to better colleges set , and he made himself an " active " political figure in a way that Elvis never claimed to be and maybe even the three years' difference in the timing of their deaths meant that more " Baby Boomers "/" our " generation were in positions of power in the US news media...
The then-" Big 3 " US TV networks did not put Elvis' death as first story on their evening newscasts that night .
Oh , they covered it relatively prominently , that was just news-business symbolism of " whether it was the first story or not " , but...
Some US editorials I've...
...seen ( A NY Times Week In Review piece and an editorial in the I-try-to-avoid-buying-it San Francisco Chronicle ) have argued that Michael was the " last pop star " , the " last of the monoculture " celebrities .