Michael Jackson
Death of a showman
Jun 26th 2009
From Economist.com

Michael Jackson made great pop records, lurid headlines and lots of money

AP

FOR a life so extraordinary the manner of Michael Jackson’s passing on Thursday June 25th was utterly banal: a middle-aged man succumbing to an apparent heart-attack. (There was speculation that an alleged dependency on prescription painkillers may have been a contributing factor.) During his progress from child prodigy to the self-styled “King of Pop” and, more recently, an eccentric semi-recluse, no part of Mr Jackson’s private life had given any other hint of normality. But behind the mask that plastic surgeons had made of his face was a keen brain for wringing cash out of pop music—and for spending it.

Mr Jackson first performed on stage at the age of six, accompanying his four older brothers. The Jackson Five, under the strict stewardship of their manager and father, signed to Motown Records in the late 1960s and began producing a string of hit records—a sequence of success that Mr Jackson continued in a 30-year solo recording career. It is reckoned that his final tally of album sales is around 750m—the most that any artist has sold. And one of those, “Thriller”, released in 1982, became the most successful yet seen, shifting 65m units. This record may well remain unchallenged: sales of albums have suffered as pop fans these days prefer downloading individual tracks from the internet.


The length of Mr Jackson’s career ensured that he experienced, popularised and even pioneered many of the techniques that help artists to profit from their musical talents. At the beginning of his career, touring was a vital component of performers' incomes, though a shift to earning money from selling records was well under way. By its peak, in the 1980s, touring had come to be seen by the music industry as a loss-making promotional tool to shift albums.

Mr Jackson did not invent the pop promotional video, as he is sometimes credited with doing. But he took this art form to new heights with the lavishly expensive video he made in 1983 for the title track of the “Thriller” album. He brought in one of Hollywood's top directors, John Landis (best known for “The Blues Brothers”), and spent an unprecedented $500,000 on the 14-minute miniature epic. But it was money well spent: the launch of MTV, two years earlier, whose format was being copied by other broadcasters, meant that videos had rapidly become one of the most valuable tools for marketing recorded music, and more cost-effective than concert tours. The “Thriller” video was broadcast incessantly all around the world, pumping up the album's sales.

At the height of his success Mr Jackson and his team of managers made the shrewd calculation that the value of pop music was wrapped up in the publishing rights to songs just as much as in record sales. In 1985 he paid $47.5m for ATV Music, which owned the copyrights to most of the Beatles' songs. Ten years later he sold half his interest for $150m to Sony. The value of his stake was probably around $500m when he died. This was roughly equal to the upper estimates of the debts he was struggling to refinance, which he had amassed funding his increasingly bizarre style of living.

Despite his vast earnings Mr Jackson was forced to borrow huge sums against his stake in ATV and his future earnings (recently reckoned to be about $19m a year) to pay for his huge shopping sprees and the upkeep of “Neverland”, his ranch in California. Last year he announced plans for a long series of concerts in London to boost his income and pay off his creditors. Playing live has re-emerged as the way to make money from pop as falling sales, rampant piracy and digital distribution have slashed revenues from recorded music.

Despite having built himself an extravagant fun palace, with its own zoo, fairground and elaborate topiary, Mr Jackson cut an increasingly lost and lonely figure in his later years. Though twice married and with three children, his closest relationships appeared to be with a chimpanzee and a succession of young boys. The questions raised by these unusual friendships continued to hang in the air until his death. He was acquitted in a Californian court in 2005 on charges of molesting one 13-year-old boy but reportedly paid $20m out of court in 1994 to head off other allegations of child abuse.

His status as a pop genius may well always be tainted by the strangeness of the life he chose to lead. Elvis Presley, still the unchallenged King of Rock’n’Roll, is increasingly remembered for his music, as memories fade of his own unusual private life. Mr Jackson would doubtless have craved to be held in the same public awe and affection (his dynastic ambitions even stretched to a brief marriage with Lisa Marie, Presley’s only child). But, sadly, for now he will be remembered by many as “Wacko Jacko” rather than the King of Pop.

(Our sister website, More Intelligent Life, also considers the life of the King of Pop.)

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KING OF POP? ONLY BRIEFLY

The careers of pop-culture icons tend to fit into certain moulds. There’s the meteor who burns bright and dies young (Marilyn, JFK, Diana). There’s the bright young thing with stamina who never goes away (Dylan, Madonna). There’s the cult figure who plays the tortoise, sneaking up on the snoozing hares (Leonard Cohen). And there are the hares who tire early in the race (Brooke Shields, George Michael).

Michael Jackson was none of these. He was a child starwho stayed big: he was famous for 39 of his 50 years, which is nearly twice as long as Elvis. Tragedy usually goes with brevity, but Jackson’s tragedy was played out in slow motion. He peaked with Thriller (1982), which really did thrill people, in vast numbers. Its excellence masked the fact that for the second half of his life, he was largely famous for being famous.

The British papers, which had to move fast last night, all sang the same refrain: the king of pop is dead. That was Jackson’s own estimation of himself, and it was only true for a short time. With Off The Wall, he shook off his child-star past and showed glimmers of adult brilliance; with Thriller, he fulfilled that potential and ruled the pop world; and with Bad, Dangerous, HIStory and Invincible, he made music that was progressively feebler and more of a waste of his talent.

On stage, he was electrifying on his world tour of 1988, but vacuous and pompous by the time he appeared at the Brits in 1996 (Jarvis Cocker was right about that). By the end he was barely a musician at all. The thing he was best at--singing--he hardly ever did.

Richard Williams, in an otherwise masterly piece in today’s Guardian, calls Jackson was the greatest entertainer of his generation, heir to Sinatra and Presley. But his oeuvre was puny next to theirs, and even so it found room for plenty of mediocrity. The only good songs on Invincible (2001) were a couple of gospel-tinged ballads, tucked away on side two. His eye had long since gone off the ball.

If there is such a thing as a throne of pop, Jackson grabbed it in 1983. You could argue about when he was toppled, and by whom. I would say 1987 and Prince, on the strength of Sign O’ The Times--a powerfully contemporary album of a kind that was beyond Jackson. But it may have been by Madonna even before then. She has all the charisma of the other two, more iconography, more social impact, and far more hits, albeit no album as good as Thriller.

After about 1990 Jackson’s celebrity was self-fulfilling. Whenever the balloon showed signs of shrivelling, it was blown up again by scandal. And while every sympathy goes to his nearest and dearest, his loss is unlikely to have deprived us of much music. Artistically, he ended up on a par not with Elvis and Sinatra, but with the Bee Gees: one great album, a few other great songs, and some inspired, influential genre-blending. In terms of fame, of course, he was and is in another league.

For all of Jackson’s attempts to inject Broadway and Hollywood into pop’s DNA, the show didn’t go on. His talent faded as starkly as his skin. The plan to play 50 nights at the O2 in London was another example of hollow excess, and the way they were marketed was revealing. “KING OF POP,” the posters declared. “THIS IS IT.” And so, alas, it was.

~ TIM DE LISLE



Picture credit: stylsepion (via Flickr)
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