Remembering Michael Jackson (sort of)

I'm guessing that everyone who wrote professionally about about pop music in the 1970s and 1980s has, like me, been swamped with calls from reporters the past 24 hours asking about their memories and impressions of Michael Jackson.

To be frank, I didn't have that many. I remember interviewing him once when I was the music writer for The Dallas Morning News but that interview is more of a blur than a vivid memory. What I remember most were the words spoken to me just before that interview began. I took great pride in the preparations I conducted for all my interviews. I always did extensive research on the subjects I was about to talk with. As a result, I developed a reputation as a music reporter artists wanted to be interviewed by. In this case I was conducting a telephone interview with Ronnie Isley, one of the founding members of the Isley Brothers (Shout, Twist and Shout, It's Your Thing, etc.) who was in a studio recording an album. I was about halfway through the interview with Ronnie when he said "Hold on a sec, I've got someone here who wants to talk to you." There was a pause before I heard that unmistakable voice on the line, "Hi, Pete, this is Michael Jackson." At the time, Michael was known to be interview-shy, but I stammered out some questions as best as I could. I learned he was in the same recording studio, working on the album that would become his signature recording, Thriller, and he wanted to let me know he was working with Eddie Van Halen. After I hung up, I made some other calls and confirmed that Van Halen and Michael Jackson were collaborating on a song called Beat It, and wrote the story for the paper. I was subsequently contacted by many other publications craving an interview with Michael Jackson who begged me to expand my story and sell it to them.

But, to be truthful, that's not my fondest memory of Michael Jackson. That happened a year or so later, after the Thriller album had been released. A dear friend and I were driving to Los Angeles where we planned to tour the some of the less reputable honky tonks of Pasadena and Venice (a favorite band of ours, The Shake Russell-Dana Cooper Band, had booked a couple of dates out there, as well). It was the first day of the drive west and we stopped in this truck stop in Sweetwater, Texas, for lunch. We walked into the joint, sat down and listened as the juke box blared out the standard West Texas country music fare. I went over to the juke, scanned the entries, dropped a coin in and made a selection. I casually strolled back to the table and told my companion "It might be interesting to see the expressions on the faces when the song I played comes up." A couple of minutes later it did. And as Michael Jackson's Beat It blared across the restaurant, all activity in the place stopped. ("You can't bring these damn sheep here, this is cattle country!") My companion tried mightily to keep from laughing and, in the process, almost choked on her chicken fried steak. I just smiled wickedly.

So what, overall, are my impressions of Michael Jackson? I know that he had his first hit, I Want You Back, with the Jackson 5 40 years ago. He was 1o years old at the time. His fame was instantaneous. It robbed him of his childhood and, when he realized that fact many years later, he spent the rest of his life trying to steal that childhood back.