by Syl Mortilla
Xscape – a paltry one-and-a-half-million copies sold - was promoted using a ‘hologram’ gimmick of a Michael lookalike. (Not a hologram of Michael. A hologram of a lookalike.) A homogenised digital puppet programmed to perform at the 2014 Billboard Awards. This baffling decision evokes the famous words of Sam Phillips - the owner of Elvis’ first record label, Sun Records - “If I could find a white boy who could sing like a black man I'd make a million dollars.”
It also brings to mind Michael’s own words,
“Record companies steal, they cheat, you have to audit them and it’s time for artists to take a stand against them because they totally take advantage of them. They forget that it’s the artists who make the company, not the company who makes the artists. Without the talent, the company would be nothing but just hardware. It takes real good talent. That’s what the public wants to see.”
The reason Sony Music gave for the relative commercial failure of the Invincible album, was that Michael had lost his appeal. Michael’s response was to organise protests, during which he held aloft signs that read, “Sony Kills Music”, “Sony Sucks” and “Sony Is Phony” atop an open double decker bus.
Once Michael was dead, however, it appears that Sony Music had a change of heart, and decided there was actually quite a lot of money yet to be mulched out of his name. And thus commenced a massive advertising assault in order to garner it. Who could have guessed that the zombie reanimation of Michael in the ‘Thriller’ video would prove to be so prophetic?
The tag-lines that accompanied the Xscape album’s promotion were: “The Best You’ve Never Heard” - which could only have been a sarcastic allusion to the fact that seventy-five percent of the track-listing consisted of lovingly bastardised versions of demo tracks that had been online for up to eleven years; and, “Hearing Is Believing” - which could only have been a sarcastic allusion to the ‘Cascio’ fiasco. In the song ‘Xscape’, Michael is heard taunting his pursuers with the words, “You want me? Come and get me!” And get him, they did.
As part of the Xscape project, the Estate signed a deal with Sony Music to promote their smartphone, the Xperia (also starts with an ‘X’ – get it?), in which the album would be exclusively included as part of the package, upon purchase of the phone. The Estate also signed a deal with car manufacture Jeep, who then employed the ‘contemporised’ version of ‘Love Never Felt So Good’ in an advertisement. Further, they then had one of their cars prominently featured in the video for the single ‘A Place With No Name’ (never mind that a lyric in the song concerns a Jeep breaking down). This ‘contemporised’ version of ‘A Place With No Name’ shamelessly incorporates the chords from Michael’s privacy-plea song – you couldn’t make this up – ‘Leave Me Alone’.
A minor victory resulting from the fan furore at the censoring of the lyrics to the Michael track ‘Hollywood Tonight’ (in which the removal of the words “Because she’s only fifteen” simultaneously sanitised the song of all context) was Sony Music’s subsequent decision for the Xscape release to include the controversial aspects of the song ‘Do You Know Where Your Children Are’ - in which Michael emotes from the perspective of a prostituted twelve-year-old girl, with the words, “Save me from this living hell… ‘cos I’m terrified.”
The Xscape track ‘Blue Gangster’ is heavy with poignancy, with its lyric, “Look what you done to me? / I can no longer smile”, and the inherent despair comprising the “Aaah aaah aah” of the bridge being tangible.
***
It should go without saying that Michael would have been less than happy with the posthumous tinkering of his art. As he said in 1980,
“I do believe deeply in perfection. I’m never satisfied… If you’re just satisfied with anything, you’re just going to stay at one level and the world will move ahead.”
For many, however, it was not even the principle of Sony Music releasing songs that Michael was unsatisfied with and had deemed unready to add to his historically unique canon of work. It was more the very idea of Sony Music accumulating wealth off Michael’s back, when he had strived and suffered for so long to be rid of their shackles. As Michael mused,
“I could never just make records for people to buy and just get rich from. That’s no good for me. There has to be more than that… I try to write, put it in song. Put it in dance. Put it in my art to teach the world. If politicians can’t do it, I want to do it. We have to do it. Artists, put it in paintings. Poets, put it in poems, novels. That’s what we have to do. And I think it’s so important to save the world.”
Michael cried upon discovering how much longer he had to endure on his contract with Sony Music; and he whooped with joy when it finally drew to a close. On notes he made just prior to his death, Michael wrote about contacting Universal or Warner Bros. for a future record deal. He had spent an entire decade of his life trying to emancipate himself from Sony Music’s chains, only for him then to have an image of his head photoshopped posthumously - for the Xscape album artwork - into what is reminiscent of the collars used to restrain flea-ridden dogs. The inspiration for this artwork apparently being drawn from a photo-shoot that Michael did with Arno Bani, in which he is portrayed as a Pharaoh. Though Michael was so unhappy with the resulting pictures, he requested that they be burned.
In 2003, upon discovering that John Branca was representing both him and Sony Music at the same time, Michael instructed his then-lawyer David LeGrand to terminate John Branca’s employment contract. Such a conflict of interest would be undesirable in the best of scenarios - never mind one in which Michael was concurrently campaigning against Sony Music. It is therefore an understandable bugbear of the fan community, that upon the untimely death of Michael, Mr. Branca was announced as executor of his Estate. Branca thus became the executor of a will within which Michael’s name is incorrect; his children’s names are incorrect; and Michael’s handwritten, time-stamped signature was ostensibly scribed in Los Angeles, albeit at a time and date that freely available video evidence proves Michael was three thousand miles away, at the other end of the United States. In New York. Protesting against Sony Music.
How could Michael be simultaneously signing charge of his posthumous assets over to John Branca in both New York and Los Angeles, at the very same minute, at the very same hour, on July 7, 2002?
Fan conversation often refers to Michael as having superhero qualities. We had been hitherto unaware that teleportation was one of them.
Other indiscrepancies, beyond the practicalities behind the signing of the will, and questions concerning the employment of an imposter in the attempt to pull the wool over fans’ ears for improper profit, also need resolving.
The reason given by the Estate for not adhering to the 20% charitable donation stipulation of the will, is that the Estate’s first responsibility was to take Michael out of debt. Yet, biggest-selling posthumous artist - with the largest-ever-grossing concert film and Cirque du Soleil world tour - later, the donations remain to be borne out. Although an unpaid three-quarter-of-a-billion dollar tax bill – a result of the Estate valuing Michael’s half of the ATV Catalogue at $0 (I wonder what Sony Music value their half to be?) – has been.
Katherine Jackson’s request for an audit was dismissed out of hand.
For what it’s worth, Estate attorney Howard Weitzman did respond to the will-signing anomaly. He explained that the signatories must have simply forgotten where they were.
***
Apostles of Capitalism adopt the poignant messages of our heroes, then twist them into throwaway slogans with which to sell their wares. With CGI, it is all-too easy to insert a long-dead icon into an advert. It’s a technique that is becoming increasingly ubiquitous. How long before we see a commercial for plastic surgery featuring a computer-generated Michael telling us to, “Make that change”?!
The attempted caricaturisation of Michael continues apace. The memory of the human being known as a record-breaking philanthropist and catalytic culture converter is being systematicall
y reduced to pyrite falsities, through schemes that lure us into lining the pockets of already filthy-rich men, as if we are all whorish, turncoat magpies. Michael is their golden calf; but to us, he is the rotating ox: he is our homecoming and food. It is materialism versus spiritual nourishment. It is soul versus sequins. We are the curators of Michael’s legacy, and deceitful songs in his discography is a fundamentally unacceptable situation. And it will take the stamina and stoicism of warriors to remain focussed in our fight. The importance of curating Michael’s legacy to an exemplary standard is revealed when considering that a legacy ferments. It ferments in myth and truth.
As Michael continued, in The Jacksons track, ‘Strength of One Man’,
“Now we can’t blame our problems/ On just that chosen few / Cause if we wanna solve them / It’s up to me and it’s up to you.”
It’s perhaps ironic that I haven’t listened to or seen anything of the posthumous ‘Immortal’ campaign. But therein that irony lies the crux of the matter. Michael’s immortality lies in his artistry, not in how he is marketed. Michael fiercely guarded the integrity of the artists in the ATV catalogue, be they The Beatles or Little Richard. What right does big corporation have to not now afford him the same level of respect? Michael is being turned into a cartoon character; becoming even more of a commodity than he was when alive.
There are innumerable unsung black artists who wrote songs merely to feed the success and wealth of racist record companies, that preferred a white face to sell their records and make them money. This is the very same racism that resonates in the hypocrisy manifest in the mockery of Michael’s efforts to coalesce the world into harmony through music; a mockery that is in stark contrast to the vaunted statuses of the output of white counterparts, such as John Lennon (and, incidentally, in their vicious recriminations of Michael’s bare-faced cheek in buying the rights to The Beatles catalogue).
Michael got up on stage in 2002 and called the contemporaneous head of Sony Music, Tommy Motolla, a racist. Sony Music responded to this, not by chastising their so-called washed-up artist, Michael Jackson, but by firing Motolla, their CEO. It makes one wonder what Michael might have had over them to nudge them into that decision. It’s certainly difficult to believe that - upon the departure of Tommy Motolla - everything was suddenly resolved between Michael and Sony Music.
In 2002, as a black member on the board of Sony Music, Michael blew the whistle and told the world what was happening at the company. Fast forward thirteen years to the present day, and we are amidst the hacked email scandal exposing some Sony executives as harbouring racist views. These events vindicate Michael’s accusations entirely.
Not for the last time will Michael’s mantra, “Lies run sprints, but the truth runs marathons” become realised.
***
There is a divinity in devotion. And by devotion, I don’t mean blind loyalty. On the contrary, to fully appreciate and love someone is to do so unconditionally, in spite of their recognised flaws. Michael was human. He was not perfect. But he believed that nothing was beyond hope if it could be bombarded with love; and it was his insistence on these idealistic beliefs – and in the use of his great power to promote these beliefs - that was surely divinely inspired.
As fans, it is vital to remember that we should not let our devotion be taken advantage of, and be capitalised upon. It is a testament to Michael’s invincibility that his posthumous albums are promoted with all the hype as if he were still alive – which other artist gets that treatment? – but it is our devotion to his wishes as a humanitarian, and the preservation of the iconic art that he signed off himself that keeps Michael alive, not the success of a marketing campaign focussed solely on turning a profit for the people mismanaging his accounts.
Michael’s very soul went into his artistic response to being labelled a child molester. Yet, the Estate are bewilderingly inefficient when it comes to defending Michael from more recent accusations: strangely refusing to engage with the hero Mr. Thomas Mesereau, Michael’s esteemed attorney from the 2005 trial.
The 2014 resurfacing of slanderous stories involving Michael and children offered the slavering tabloid junkies nothing new: merely being rehashed, tired tactics that smacked so recognisably of newspapers in 1993; plucked from the ether and attributed to ‘a source’. Reading their descriptions was akin to listening to someone detail the character of a mutual friend, a person you have known for decades, but who they have only recently become acquainted with. You know this old friend inside-out: their flaws; their tribulations; their virtues – and are therefore dumbfounded by the inaccuracy of this other person’s depiction of them.
Sony Music have invested too much in their sanitised reinterpretation of Michael for them to allow it to be ‘inconvenienced’. For better or worse, they understand that Michael is an industry unto himself – one that provides an opportunity for decades of profit-procurement – and the likelihood is that Sony Music will encourage the Estate to settle the 2014 claims out of court. Sony Music are extremely powerful, and have form – they misadvised Michael back in 1993, when they recommended he settle then.
And Sony Music may well have invested their money in Michael; but we have invested our hearts. We followed him devoutly as he vindicated himself in 2005, and we will not allow our decades of stoic support to be undermined by extortionists. Michael gladly assumed his responsibility as a gatekeeper for innocence. But, noticing that one has responsibilities is the easy part. Engaging with them is an altogether separate matter. It is our responsibility to engage in the defence of our voiceless hero against the ongoing systematic attempts at his vilification.
It is us that will decide if they are doing justice to our devotion.
The battle for Michael’s historical integrity has many fronts. With the defence of the unparalleled capacity for his art to be used as a tool in making the world a better place being as ferocious an argument as any. As loyal fans, we must always bear in mind, that the title ‘artist’ is first and foremost the appellation Michael spent decades trying to earn; not ‘commodity’. Let us not be distracted by the substandard dollar-generating shiny things the Estate dangle before us. We must never forget that it is us who are responsible, through our support of the Estate or lack thereof, for the quality control of Michael’s legacy and his humanitarian reputation.
What do we want Michael’s fame to become? What is our duty as fans? As human beings? Is it to mindlessly promote the current Estate’s trend of him as a money-making vacuity? Or is it to enrich his reputation and memory through the promulgation of him as a politically-conscious, peace-loving leader? One whose mission was prematurely terminated by the very same nefarious ideals motivating the people now making millions off his name? Do we want to see him immortalised as a caricature of twentieth century pop culture and capitalism? Or as a talisman for peace, hope and mutual appreciation? In short: do we want him cartoonified or beatified?
As much as the Estate continue to insist on this cartoonification of Michael, the fans’ reaction must be to further exalt him - that with their every insistence on insulting, they merely fortify his martyrdom. We must counteract with equal might. Michael was a totem; a conduit for the divine. He understood sacrifice as aspirational. He willingly sacrificed himself. Not only did he tour the planet a sick man, rescuing his reputation from slanderous smears whilst simultaneously promoting his message of peace; not only did he later die attempting to do the same thing; but throughout his adult life he used his abyss of self, a tragic side-effect of a pillaged childhood, to construct a mirror for humanity. He gave us the opportunity to reflect upon him.
He was the mirror in the man.
John Branca’s time at the helm is bound to ephemerality. It is us, the fans, who are the true gatekeepers of Michael’s legacy. It is us who are the heroes.
It is us, Mr. Branca; it is us that are Michael Jackson now.
***
I’ll be honest. I still don’t think I’ve properly grieved for Michael. The initial
heartbreak reverberated into a militant need to defend him against the soul-parasites leeching off his legacy, which is precisely at the point I remain.
Michael’s death broke my heart for two reasons: firstly, with the acknowledgment of the positive qualitative impact that the man indubitably had on my life; and secondly, at the recollection of his life as one that contained such unquenchable sadness – one in which a five year old boy was whipped into shape for our listening pleasure. Why could Michael convey the pain of heartbreak at such a young age? Ask the man stood behind him holding the switch. It was a veritable tragedy of Shakespearean proportions. Michael carried the hopes of his family. He would grow up to take on that mantle for the world; a world that started in the palm of his hand, before eventually becoming the weight on his shoulders.
The June of 2013 was an especially intense one for us fans: a strange song of nostalgia and defiance, with only the heartening bridge of the 13th providing us with brief respite before the emotive crescendo that is the 25th. We followed a similar trajectory in the preparation for the This Is It concerts; journeying as we did from the press conference, to the excitement of hearing reports from fans listening to rehearsals, to watching him starve with stress in front of our eyes; fans telling Michael it wasn’t worth it; to stop putting himself under all that pressure. As had become the pattern, we accompanied the man on his rise to an angelic apex, before descending alongside him in his fall from grace.