by Syl Mortilla
Michael viewed himself as a visionary: a sincere and plausible surmising borne as a consequence of his having been a uniquely positioned observer in the spiritual evolution of humanity. For a third-of-a-century, his career had entailed entertaining hundreds of millions of souls brought together as a result of love. There exists an interesting correlation between Michael’s unshackling himself of the craving for commercial success in favour of philanthropic achievements, and his acquiescence in allowing himself opportunities to succeed in romantic love. Though Michael effortlessly stirred millions of women into maniacal frenzies, the phenomenon of his fainting fanhood became by no means an exclusively female occurrence. As Michael said,
“But I am finding today, and it is so true, that guys today are really changing and I have watched it happen through my career. Guys scream with the same kind of adulation that girls do in a lot of countries. They are not ashamed.”
Michael had witnessed the change in behaviour of male fans over the decades he had been performing. He witnessed in real-time the increasing confidence of people celebrating the emancipated self. Michael had intuited society’s increasing intolerance of paternalistic orthodoxy. Archaic attitudes that he so sublimely subverted himself in his total reconstruction of the stereotypical family unit.
This was Michael’s power.
CHAPTER FIVE
By the power of truth, I, while living, have conquered the universe.
THEODOR REUSS
“I am Michael Jackson now.”
- The very words John Branca, Co-executor of the Estate of Michael Jackson, was purported to have uttered upon Michael’s death. Words so drenched in disdain that they could neither be more offensive nor telling in their outright dismissal of the feelings of Michael’s legion of adoring and loyal fans.
It is fortunate that Michael was so adept at spinning, considering the number of times this claim must have caused him to turn in his grave.
Michael’s relationship with Sony Music forged another unfortunate area in which he became embroiled in politics and conspiracy theory. Upon the release of 2001’s Invincible and its relatively substandard commercial success, Michael commenced a campaign to expose his belief in the duplicity of the chief of Sony Music at the time, Tommy Mottola - who Michael described as “the devil”. This discontent with Sony Music had been slow-burning, with Michael gradually perceiving that whenever he attempted to use his art to express his feeling of being victimised at the hands of the establishment, the project would suffer from poor promotion and distribution (such as in the short film Ghosts - co-written with horror-connoisseur Stephen King, directed by special effects supremo Stan Winston and premiered at the 1997 Cannes Film Festival). The conundrum of this anti-political-Michael tactic continued to be observed with the release of posthumous box sets and compilations - which would feature all of his albums, except for the polemic second disc of the HIStory album. In spite of the record’s status as the biggest-selling double album of all time.
Michael was no stranger to putting his hand in his pocket to fund his work - having self-financed much of the production of the timeless ‘Beat It’ and ‘Thriller’ promos - and hence felt unfairly treated by not being met half-way by a record company for whom he had made so many billions of dollars.
Indeed, in the short film for the initial single release from Invincible, ‘You Rock My World’ the first words uttered by Michael are, "I'm not payin' for it... You're the one who wanted to cover it - not me... You wanted to cover it."
Michael hadn’t wanted ‘You Rock My World’ as the first release from Invincible. This meant that the short film became an eleventh-hour panic production, manifesting as an amalgamation of themes from his music video canon. Albeit with added political references to Michael’s grievances with losing creative control to Tommy Motolla. In protest, Michael covered his face for the majority of the short film, and wore a Cripps-inspired bandana beneath his fedora, whilst symbolically dancing in front of a ‘No Checks Cashed’ sign and smashing a ‘No Fighting’ sign. One of the henchmen Michael is confronted by, insidiously snarls that he thinks that Michael “wants to die”. Another wields a Frank Dileo-esque cigar.
There is actual physical fighting, as opposed to earlier works in which dance-offs were Michael’s preferred medium to settle a score (bar his gun-toting turn in the ‘Smooth Criminal’ video. However, Michael had been bullied for long enough, and had endured it with saint-like dignity and patience. He had earned the right to lash out. Albeit, still in an artistic and studied fashion (Michael’s punch is disguised as a dance move). The choice to use unprovoked violence in an effort to demonstrate superiority merely undermines those that opt for it, due to it being an act of insecurity at its very essence. Bullies live in terror of their victims’ realisation that they are weak. Losing control of their prey is out of the question. Bullies need so much love. As Michael said, "You ain’t bad - you ain’t nuthin’!"
At the short film’s denouement, Michael and Marlon Brando – who else? – briefly exchange ambiguities, as the bar in which this has all been taking place is consumed by fire. Michael says to Brando, “I know who you are.” To which Brando replies, “Bing bang… Later.”
Michael considered the lack of financial support for Invincible, along with his having to cede artistic decisions to men in suits, as once again indicative of counterproductive tactics being undertaken by his record company. Sony had allegedly claimed Michael owed them $200 million in production costs, to which Michael replied, “For Sony to make a false claim that I owe them $200 million is outrageous and offensive.”
With regards Invincible, Michael had the last laugh. The album debuted at number one in thirteen countries, before selling over thirteen million copies as it intermittently re-entered worldwide music charts throughout the noughties. At the end of which, it was hailed as Album of the Decade in a 2010 Billboard poll.
***
John Branca’s ongoing stewardship of the Estate has overseen many controversial choices.
The vast majority of fan consensus these days accepts that three tracks on Michael - the first posthumous album of ‘new’ material released after the Estate’s $250 million deal with Sony Music (the only company Michael ever overtly campaigned against) - are performed by an imposter. Said tracks are ‘Breaking News’, ‘Keep Your Head Up’ and ‘Monster’.
Every member of Michael’s family who has publicly commented on these tracks has also made the same claim as most of Michael’s fans - that they believe the tracks are fake. Even Michael’s grieving daughter took to Twitter to confirm her belief that all of the Cascio songs were bogus.
One day - the story goes - Michael decided to visit his friends’ house and record these three remarkably subpar songs in the style of a sound-alike. Not only that, Michael chose to then further experiment by singing said songs through a piece of pipe. Whilst he stood in the shower.
This remains the official explanation for the reason that the now-notorious ‘Cascio’ tracks do not sound like Michael.
Three decades ago, Paul McCartney released his Pipes Of Peace album, upon which resides the songs ‘Say Say Say’ and ‘The Man’ - two irrefutably majestic vocal duets between McCartney and Michael. The song was one of three written by the two artists during a fertile period of collaboration, with the other being ‘The Girl Is Mine’, which featured on Michael’s Thriller album – the song being a sing-off further demonstrating the unparalleled prowess of the two vocalists. In spite of the title of the Pipes Of Peace album, I’m not aware of any rumours suggesting either Michael or Paul sang through pipes on the track. I’m not sure when Michael decided to start singing through pipes, but I certainly consider the adoption of this technique to have been a mistake. Because - on the ‘Cascio’ tracks - it makes Michael sound much less like he had one of the richest, unique and most soulful singing voices in all history - one nurtured and nuanced by determined industry since early childhood - and much more like he’s engaging in spontaneous, drunken, self-
parodying, rage karaoke.
Over the past thirty years, ever since the Pipes Of Peace album was published, I have listened to Michael’s voice every single day. As a working estimate - although it’s certainly more - I have listened to Michael singing around 100,000 times. I have heard his voice mature; I have heard his style change. Say what you like about my plainly evident morbidly-obsessive, borderline-autistic behaviour, but you have to admit, I’m probably a bit of an expert on what his voice sounds like. I could tell you with 100% accuracy which hiccup, yelp or “hee hee” comes from which song.
In 2006, Access Hollywood conducted Michael’s last televised interview. It was undertaken in Ireland during his nomadic period. During the interview, Michael demonstrates his notoriously fastidious attention to detail regarding his music – explaining how he puts each sound “under the microscope.”
This trait for aspiring to perfection was yet further evidenced in a picture recently made public that shows a note Michael left for producer Jimmy Jam saying, “…the part I'm hearing for our chorus is the same sound you used on the bridge to the ‘Knowledge’. The wind kind sound. Talk to me about this when I return to the studio.”
There is also a point further on in the Access Hollywood footage, in which the interviewer infers that Justin Timberlake - later employed by Sony Music to perform on a posthumous duet with Michael - is the contemporaneous popular musical artist most responsible for continuing Michael’s legacy. Michael quickly retorts that we shouldn’t neglect to include the black artist, Usher, on the list.
There is a YouTube montage that demonstrates Michael’s remarkable capacity for beatboxing, how he could effortlessly synthesise breath and pulse into a sublime musical experience. Michael’s use of harmonies, where he painstakingly took it upon himself to provide both immaculate lead, as well as layer upon layer of backing vox, represent examples of the art form at its most sublime. It’s hard to find a musical or emotional adjective which Michael hadn’t mastered to a superlative standard. He used his voice as effectively as a drum as he did a harp, to convey everything from anger to whimsy. Take some time to appreciate the verses of the Dangerous track, ‘Can’t Let Her Get Away’. Hear how the chord progression reflects his angst.
Michael was a bona fide genius. His desire for immortality was pedantically worked into his craft. As he said himself, “To escape death I attempt to bind my soul to my work because I just want it to live forever.”
Hence, the wince-inducing lyrical drivel the Cascio brothers managed to muster in an attempt to pass off work worthy of Michael, is insulting to say the least. Their lyric, “Mama say mama got you in a zig zag” appears to be some egregious effort to reference the chant “mamase mamasa makossa” from ‘Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’’. Never mind that this coda, used to such iconic effect by Michael, was actually a thought-out inclusion to the track, with the chant being part of the traditional Cameroonian ritual performed by women before losing their virginity to their husbands-to-be. (Though, admittedly, it’s difficult to discern where Michael’s lyric “You’re a vegetable” from the same song fits into it all.)
Add all this to the abject disrespect shown for the very real road to perdition that Michael was forced to travail at the hands of the media, with the theme being so condescendingly taken advantage of in the clichéd lyrics to ‘Breaking News’ - and the flagrant endeavour to undermine Michael’s legacy for a swift and cynical profit feels complete.
It’s open to speculation as to why Sony Music decided to press ahead with the steadfast promulgation of tracks deemed bogus. But a prominent theory is that after having done a deal to release seven albums over ten years, they discovered that - for whatever reason - there simply aren’t enough songs in the vault, and hence need to flesh the albums out using music featuring an imposter. Another theory is that the treatment of Michael’s legacy is a systematic attempt to manipulate a situation in which the Estate has no remaining financial option but to sell its half of Michael’s precious music catalogue to the owners of the other half, Sony Music. Whatever the reason, what is evident is that Sony Music aren’t so much milking everything possible out of their most profitable cash cow, as they are maniacally bludgeoning its bones into unrecognisable bits. They are not so much flogging a dead horse as, well… you get the picture.
“I am the Edison phonograph… I can sing you tender songs of love. I can give you merry tales and joyous laughter. I can transport you to the realms of music. I can cause you to join in the rhythmic dance. I can lull the babe to sweet repose, or waken in the aged heart soft memories of youthful days.”
Michael sampled part of this quote for his song, ‘HIStory’. It is from the world’s first ever record: a revolution that gave the world not only the miracle of recorded music, but with it, the accompanying, less-virtuous aspect of recorded advertisement, with its associated capitalist traits of hoodwinking and greed. The Edison phonograph was an invention of awe and wonder at the time - though the sound quality wasn’t like it is these days.
Even so, it’s a safe bet that Michael’s fans would have still been able to distinguish the sound of his voice from that of an imposter. As Michael prophetically expressed through the rap borrowed from the Notorious B.I.G. for ‘Unbreakable’, “How can players stand there and say I sound like them, HELLO?!”
Amongst the other historically significant soundbites that Michael incorporated into the outro for the track, ‘HIStory’, is one of himself as a child, in which he states, “I don’t sing it if I don’t mean it”.
The ruthless duplicity exhibited by the producers of the Cascio tracks is shown in how it seems they merely aimed for an imposter to sound just enough like Michael to the layperson, in order to make any legal challenge difficult.
In ‘Strength Of One Man’, a song that features on the eponymous The Jacksons album, the brothers sing,
“We have picked people that say they’re on our side / And after they did everything they want / They start to tell us lie, just lie after lie.”
The tenderness with which these lyrics are sung demonstrate clearly for just how long Michael and his family have had problems with being able to trust people.
Trust is a trait with double edges. A misguided trust in the goodness of all people brought Michael both unbridled love from his fans, as well as acts of malevolence from those jealous of his successes or covetous of his catalogue. Not that this malevolence was always overt, far from it. As Michael said, after his rude awakening, “There are people out there who don’t actively hold you back as much as they work quietly on your insecurities so that you hold yourself back.”
Indeed, there exists some candid footage of Michael being secretly filmed by a ‘friend’. The person behind the camera asks Michael what the greatest lesson he’s learned is. To which he replies, “Not to trust everybody.”
The Michael debacle has by no means been the sum of the Estate’s perceived ineptitude. Fans believe there is a veritable litany of examples of their being unfit for purpose.
***
Remember the hypocrisy demonstrated by the Estate’s pursuit of damages from a Japanese man, who had been using Michael’s image and likeness on items such as lighters and keyrings? The Estate released a statement regarding the case,
“Michael loved his millions of Japanese fans, all of whom deserve the opportunity to purchase legitimate and authentic Michael Jackson goods.”
Even if we bring ourselves to temporarily disregard their previous endorsement of an apparent imposter in the music, this seemingly incongruent commercial cogency is further exposed by the Estate failing to act, in anyway whatsoever, in putting a stop to costume-designer Michael Bush’s penchant for allegedly forging a Michael signature on hundreds of items marked for auction. Even on items that were produced after Michael’s death.
Furthermore, one can only assume that the Estate sued the Japanese counterfeiter for a mere $2,150 – perhaps a few bootlegged tea-towels and fridge magnets worth – as this is what they themselv
es valued Michael’s image at in their tax return. In comparison - to put this massive undervaluation into context - the image and likeness of Bob Marley is valued at two billion dollars. John Branca is a highly adept and experienced lawyer. It seems unusual, to say the least, that he has managed to preside over the Estate accruing a three-quarter-of-a-billion dollar tax deficit bill.
Then there was Xscape.
The humiliation and degradation of Michael continued in the production of an album that followed up one bearing just his first name, with one that eradicated his name entirely. None of the three albums released posthumously by Sony Music and the Estate bear an actual image of Michael – even the silhouette that adorns This Is It is posed by an impersonator – yet Michael was the most photographed person that has ever existed. (And people still ponder why he had issues with his self-image).