There Goes Gravity: A Life in Rock and Roll

by Robinson, Lisa

  • • •

  On June 18, 2009, I met Mr. Gordy for lunch at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in New York. We agreed that Michael wouldn’t make those fifty shows at London’s O2 Arena—the ones he announced (shades of the 1984 “Victory” tour) as “The Last Hurrah” and “The Final Curtain.” We didn’t spell it out, we didn’t have to. And we didn’t specify how, but we concurred that somehow, some way, he wouldn’t be able to fulfill that obligation. There had been rumors rampant in the press and online for months that Michael, even while rehearsing for those shows, was frail, over-medicated, and in a weakened state. Seven days later, Michael was dead. (And later, he was reportedly interred in Berry Gordy’s family mausoleum at L.A.’s Forest Lawn cemetery.) To prepare for the tour, Michael had brought some real music business people back into his life, including AEG promoter Randy Phillips (who, when asked at the Dr. Conrad Murray manslaughter trial how long he’d been in the music business, replied, “Too long”) and Michael’s former manager Frank DiLeo. But Michael, undoubtedly, was still surrounded by leeches and yes men. And reportedly too far gone to perform ten concerts, much less fifty. But even after all the over-the-top hoopla surrounding his death—the attempts by his brothers (Jermaine in particular) to cash in on his death with TV reality shows and lame tribute concerts, his father’s inappropriate appearances, the tabloid photos of his bedroom, the coverage of the Conrad Murray trial—after all that, there is the music. And when I hear the swirling, opening bars of “Don’t Stop Til You Get Enough,” I want to dance.

  • • •

  Michael Jackson’s life, and death, was bound to wind up in a courtroom. Inevitable too, was the secrecy that surrounded it, as were the lies. After all, Michael’s entire life in show business had started out with a lie: he was ten, not eight, when he signed with Motown. The trial of the “concierge” doctor, Conrad Murray, was just another sad chapter in a life that went very wrong. The scene outside that courtroom featured fans holding placards that proclaimed “Justice for Michael” and “Jesus Loves Michael.” There were a few bedraggled bystanders who held signs “supporting” Dr. Murray, and some who even testified in court that he was a kind, compassionate man who helped the poor in his hometown of Las Vegas. The trial was less sensational than Michael’s child molestation trial; Michael wasn’t there to dance on top of a car. But as usual with any Jackson family gathering, it was a sorry lot: his beloved mother Katherine, who, according to some who know the family well, was an enabler who, by her silence, let her husband Joseph get away with whatever he could get away with. And that father, Joseph Jackson, got away with plenty. There were longtime rumors of physical abuse to his children and marital infidelity to his wife. The night after Michael died, Joseph showed up on the red carpet at the BET Awards with a young woman he introduced as his “new act.” Someone close to the family told me that he once made a deal with a soda company for a Jacksons soft drink, but turned it into “Joe Cola.” He thought he could be Berry Gordy. He couldn’t. On hand at the trial too, were some of Michael’s deadbeat siblings, to whom he was, and still is, the perennial meal ticket. Naturally Jermaine was there, hawking a new book he had written about Michael.

  Michael was in that courtroom too: heard on the slurred tape recordings surreptitiously and suspiciously made by Dr. Murray. On display were photos of Michael’s messy bedroom in his rented “mansion” at 100 North Carolwood Drive in L.A. Photos of his slovenly bathroom. A baby doll on the bed. Cannisters of oxygen. And on his bedside table, vials of Lidocaine, lorazepam, diazepam, midazolam—there were enough medications on that bedside table alone to keep even the most doped-up rock band on tour in the 1970s. There was testimony about 250 vials of propofol having been ordered, and there was enough Benoquin cream in that bedroom to bleach a whale. Michael would have died all over again at this invasion of his privacy—no, of the secrecy—which had become his way of life.

  *

  Watching This Is It, the hastily thrown together film of the rehearsals for the tour Michael never did—even with all of the obvious flaws and trickeration—you still see a glimpse of the entertainer that was Michael Jackson. He knew if a note was a millisecond off. His head movements, his rhythm, his directions to the band—“You’ve got to let it simmer”—here was a man who still had this . . . thing inside. “I want it the way I wrote it,” he instructed the keyboard player. “It’s talent,” he once told me. And no matter how hard Chris Brown or Usher or Britney Spears or Madonna or any of them tried—they don’t have that talent. Don’t even come close. He just couldn’t help it. He was a natural. There are certain people you can never imagine getting really old: John F. Kennedy Jr. will live forever in our minds as the three-year-old boy saluting his father’s coffin. Michael was almost fifty-one when he died, but still retained the aura of that kid on the Ed Sullivan show who sang “ABC” and “I Want You Back.” The young man who did the hysteria-inducing performance of “Billie Jean” on the Motown 25 TV special. Some people, far more religious than I, felt that Michael was an angel sent to earth who, like Marvin Gaye, was vulnerable, couldn’t last, did what he was supposed to do and left. Quincy Jones told me that he thought Michael had “been here before.” Those close to the family have told me that Michael was the most misunderstood person on earth.

  *

  Epilogue: On November 7, 2011, Dr. Conrad Murray was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter in the death of Michael Jackson. That night, I was in Kanye West’s dressing room at Madison Square Garden for the first of two sold-out “Watch the Throne” shows he would perform with Jay Z. Jay came into the room to go over the set list with Kanye. Over the past six years, I’ve known both of them fairly well. Kanye, who at first I thought was obnoxious, won me over when I saw him one night in 2005 at the Largo in L.A. He had come to see Jon Brion’s unique one-man show; he had hired Jon, a friend of mine and perhaps the most talented musician on the planet, to produce his amazing album Late Registration. At a listening party for that album in 2005, Kanye played “We Major,” one of the album’s longest and greatest tracks. It was sonically akin to a Phil Spector production, with the lyrical urgency that marked the best of hip hop. Jay Z was in the crowd, and I watched him listening, moving his mouth, making up his own words as he listened to Kanye’s lyrics. After we heard the entire album, there was a question and answer period. I raised my hand. How many tracks were on “We Major,” I asked. Kanye didn’t know the answer. Jay laughed and called me “the stumper.” Later, I called Jon Brion, who told me that it was a loop some guy had made in his garage. But that album, that song, and the fact that on the Hurricane Katrina telethon Kanye said George Bush didn’t care about black people, put Kanye in my heart for life. When he stormed the stage and grabbed the microphone out of Taylor Swift’s hands during the 2009 MTV Awards I emailed him to say it was very punk rock. But no one else shared my appreciation. He was vilified; the President called him a jackass. He left the country for a year. But after all of the hatred and the lunacy that came at Kanye, his own tirades and unpredictable antics, he once again made magnificent work.

  *

  That night at the Garden, as he and Jay went over the set list in Kanye’s dressing room, I heard snippets of the Jackson Five’s “I Want You Back”—which Jay sampled on his 2001 song “Izzo (H.O.V.A.)”—and an Otis Redding sample they used on “Otis,” the first single from their collaborative Watch the Throne album. I told Jay and Kanye that I probably was the only person in that room who had seen Otis Redding—at a concert in Central Park in the 1960s (to this day one of the best live shows I’ve ever seen)—the Jackson Five, and these two guys about to go onstage.

  Eric Clapton and Keith Richards have always talked about the blues, and how they were just “passing it on.” They passed on to new generations the things they learned listening to Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf. That night, sitting in that Madison Square Garden dressing room, I thought, here it was again. Full circle. Michael was dead. But his t
welve-year-old voice would be heard by 20,000 hip hop fans in Madison Square Garden. And whether they even knew who it was or why or how it all came about, or what the song was or any of it—Michael Jackson was in the building.

  Six

  In 1976, the New York rock and punk scene was made up of the CBGB’s bands and the few music writers who loved them. In total, this may have consisted of about sixty people. Today, dozens of books have been written about all this, many by people who never set foot in CBGB’s. But this needs to be said: the 1970s in New York City was not necessarily the glowing musical renaissance that it has come to represent. It is true that a lot of the music that came from this scene was better than what came later. More to the point: a lot of us were young, there was a lot happening, and the city was a lot more fun. Eventually, there were many bands. Ten were good. Three were great. This small scene did have great influence, but, like any scene, it just sort of happened. A bunch of people formed bands and had nowhere to play. They found a stage. Another bunch of people heard about those bands and went to see them play. Every night. It was similar to when Max’s Kansas City had its moment: if you skipped one night, you might have missed something. At CBGB’s, there was no velvet rope at the entrance. There was no big deal about “getting in.” There was no “list.” The same people who went all the time, went all the time. Since we edited Rock Scene—which became a kind of house fanzine for CBGB’s—Richard, Lenny Kaye and I were among those who just went all the time. I didn’t have to call a publicist or get a laminated all-access pass or a wristband to go “backstage.” We didn’t have to wait for the lead singer to towel off after the performance and receive people. At CBGB’s, there was no towelling off—there were no towels. To get backstage, all you had to do was walk a few feet past the stage to the back hallway, to one of the crummy rooms on the right where Patti Smith or Joey Ramone would be sitting on the lumpy sofa. We’d all sit around with a few bottles of beer and just hang out. It was easy then to just hang out. It still was possible to discover something—either hearing about it from your friends, or stumbling across it yourself. It wasn’t already written about in New York magazine before it had a chance to breathe.

  Fueled by what was happening in New York, a similar scene started in London. Malcolm McLaren—with his partner Vivienne Westwood—had a fashionable punk and bondage clothing shop in London at the far end of the King’s Road. In 1975, Malcolm came to New York City, saw the Dolls, gave them a spiel that may have involved Communism, and wound up managing them for a brief time. “During one of our particularly uncreative periods, Malcolm came over,” David Johansen recalled in 1980. “He had clothes. He hung around us. We had no manager and we needed someone to go around with us and collect money from the promoters. So, he did that for three or four months. We wrote a song called ‘Red Patent Leather’ about a physical relationship where people wound up with marks all over them. A real rocker. So Malcolm made all these beautiful red vinyl clothes, but they looked like red patent leather. We decided to have a Red Guard flag as a backdrop onstage because it went beautifully with the motif. It was not a conscious overture to Chinese Communism; it was supposed to be funny. It was misunderstood, as most everything we did was. But Malcolm wasn’t really our manager. He was our haberdasher. Then he took off with half our equipment, the bum.”

  *

  Years later, Malcolm would tell me that he came from art school and never really cared about rock and roll. He started the Sex Pistols because he honestly thought it would help him sell a lot more trousers. “It was a seasonal thing for me,” he said. But of course, he was plotting all along to form a British band that would sound like the Dolls. On July 4, 1976, the day of the American Bicentennial, the newly formed Sex Pistols and the Clash snuck in a back door at the Roundhouse in London to see the Ramones’ show. According to Ramones manager Danny Fields, Clash bassist Paul Simonon had told Johnny Ramone, “We don’t think we’re good enough to go and play yet.” To which Johnny replied, “Wait until you see us. We stink.” The consensus was that the Clash stole from the Ramones and the Pistols ripped off the Dolls. In this very small circle, Malcolm got a bad rap for ripping off the Dolls when “he” “formed” the Pistols. He talked about how inspired he was by Richard Hell’s song “Blank Generation.” He extolled the virtues of Richard Hell’s “Please Kill Me” ripped t-shirt. Malcolm claimed it inspired a movement. The truth is that the truth is never that simple. For a start, no one remembers any of this the same way. Some say Sex Pistols guitarist Steve Jones had a life-changing moment when he saw Iggy perform in London in 1972. Others say it was Johnny Rotten who was there. British music writer Nick Kent proclaimed that Steve Jones—not singer Johnny Rotten—was the real leader of the Pistols, and the band had nothing whatsoever to do with Malcolm McLaren’s “crackpot art college concepts.” Nick Kent took credit for turning the Sex Pistols on to the Stooges. What really happened was that there was an emerging music scene in London with bands that knew and loved “underground” American bands like the Dolls, the Flamin’ Groovies, the Patti Smith Group, the Stooges and the MC5. Richard Robinson had produced the Flamin’ Groovies. Lenny Kaye was the guitarist for the Patti Smith Group. I wrote constantly in the New Musical Express about the Dolls, Iggy and Patti. So when the “punk” scene started in London, which let’s face it, is a small town compared to New York City, it was not exactly a hard world to crack.

  *

  In December of 1976, the Sex Pistols said “fuck” numerous times on a live talk show on British TV. This created a scandal. The Fleet Street tabloids proclaimed outrage with such headlines as “The Filth and the Fury!” The Pistols’ single “Anarchy in the U.K.” was banned from the radio. Stores refused to stock it. Women in factories wouldn’t put labels on the records. The band’s “Anarchy in the U.K.” tour was reduced to ruins when local town councils in Newcastle, Liverpool, Bristol, Glasgow, Cardiff, Bournemouth, Guilford, Derby and Sheffield cancelled the band’s shows. In the towns where the concerts were allowed to go on, the venues were moved from civic halls to colleges.

  On December 8, 1976, I went to London on a press junket to see a band called Steve Harley’s Cockney Rebel. I had no interest whatsoever in Steve Harley’s Cockney Rebel. I wanted to see the Sex Pistols. And I wanted to see the opening acts on the “Anarchy” tour: the Buzzcocks, Johnny Thunders’ Heartbreakers, and the Clash—whose bass player, Paul Simonon, was “dating” Patti Smith. New York bands—like former Dolls guitarist Johnny Thunders’ Heartbreakers—and the British bands like the Pistols and the Clash, were all connected. The music writers in New York and London who wrote about these bands all knew each other. There were only about ten to twenty of us at the time—along with the other six or so serious critics who may or may not have been too principled to take free trips. No one took rock journalism seriously. Except for the six people who took it seriously. But even some who are now considered legends, who took it seriously, were, at the time, the first in line at the bar for the free drinks.

  On December 9th, the “Anarchy” tour was set to go on as planned at Manchester’s Electric Circus—a large, ballroom type venue that years later would be prominently featured in the movie 24 Hour Party People. The British press descended on the place en masse. None of them were allowed inside. But because of my relationships with former New York Dolls guitarist Johnny Thunders, Leee Black Childers—the Heartbreakers’ manager—and Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren, I had complete access to the show, the bands, the backstage. I fled the Steve Harley junket and got on a train from London to Manchester. That afternoon, in the cold, damp, Electric Circus, I hung out with the bands. I watched what passed for a sound check. The musicians in the Buzzcocks, Clash, Sex Pistols, and Heartbreakers were a scruffy, even slightly menacing bunch. If you saw them all walking towards you, you probably would have crossed the street. They were dressed in various stages of meticulously arranged disarray. The goal was to look like they were not “performers” getting ready for a “show.”
Except, of course, they were performers getting ready for a show. The image had been carefully worked out: leather motorcycle jackets, ripped jeans or bondage trousers, heavy boots and short, spikey hair. Compared to the glamrock of the day, these bands looked fresh, different, new. The punk bands had attitude. They all looked like members of the same gang.

  At the Electric Circus that afternoon, Malcolm McLaren told me that the EMI Records shareholders had held a special meeting that week to decide whether or not to drop the Sex Pistols. I told Johnny Rotten that the headline in that day’s paper was “Rotten insults Queen!” What, he asked, “The group? Or her Royal Majesty?” We talked for awhile and he said, “I don’t have any rock and roll heroes; they’re all useless. The Stones and the Who don’t mean anything anymore—they’re established. The Stones are more of a business than a band. I don’t need a Rolls-Royce. I don’t need a house in the country. I don’t want to have to live in France. The people who come to see us are bored out of their brains. They’re bored with hippies. Hippies are complacent.” Later, reading back my notes, I thought, hippies? In 1976? And I remember thinking that Johnny Rotten could well afford to be “working class” and “rebellious” because his then-girlfriend, who would later be his wife, was the German publishing heiress Nora Forster. During one of the “rehearsals,” a fifteen-year-old kid with a safety pin stuck through his hand and a paper clip pierced in his earlobe stood near the stage. “My girlfriend hates the Pistols,” he told me. “She hates me for this. She likes the Ramones.”