Michael Jackson: Musings on Being 50

July 2, 2009 at 11:48 am (Nostalgia)

Michael was 50 years old when he passed away last week. When I first heard the news, I sat stunned, but I also tried to compose myself because afterall, I did not know him personally. This was my intellect protecting me from my emotions. However, my attempts to maintain an impersonal response to his death did not last long as my mind travelled back to seeing him and his brothers — The Jackson 5 — in concert at Chicago’s famed Regal Theater.

I could not help but to think back to when my mother took me and my brother to see this new group. I, like Michael, was 9 years old, and my excitement to see a “kid” group performing on a stage where the likes of The Temptations, Supremes, Sarah Vaughn, and Duke Ellington performed, can not be compared to anything else. Everyone, who performed at the Regal, were artists of my parents’ generation, and although I enjoyed these greats and the history that accompanied them, nothing compared to seeing five young boys singing “bubble gum” songs.

Michael, being the smallest in stature, was the group member that I related to most, and I remember declaring to my mother that I was going to marry Michael. At that time, they were still a little known group from Gary, Indiana, which intensified my love for Michael and his brothers because Gary is so close to Chicago. They had not produced any hit records, yet, and all of the songs that they sang were songs that belonged to more famous people like James Brown. They had not created their own body of music. Michael even did the “James Brown Slide” across the Regal’s stage, and the audience went crazy. I did, too. Just think — he took Mr. Brown’s move to a new level.

By their second appearance at the Regal, the Jackson 5 had recorded their first song on Steel Town Records entitled, “I’m a Big Boy, Now.” It was a most catchy tune, and the lyrics (which I can still recite) made you think that even at 9 years old, Michael was indeed a big boy who was now ready to marry me. Imagine that!

As the group began to make a name for itself through television appearances and photo shoots in all the popular teen magazines like “Right On” magazine, I could dream even bigger. Their fame was magnified for me because even though they had hit the big time and had moved to California, their being from Gary translated into them personally belonging to me.

Two hours after reporters announced that Michael died, I finally cried, and it dawned on me that what died was not just Michael, but what he represented to me and life itself. I had the priviledge of being exposed to all of his music from “I’m a Big Boy, Now” to “Man in the Mirror.” Michael is the first musical artist of my generation that I can say this about — no one else has been with me since age nine.

His death made me recollect what life was like at the time he hit the scene. We were poor, but happy. We didn’t get to take vacations, but did so vicariously through the Jackson 5’s trips abroad. We didn’t know any famous people (at the time), but because of Michael’s affiliation with Diana Ross and Stevie Wonder, we felt like we did — afterall, Michael and his brothers were home boys from neighboring Gary.

Michael Jackson’s death made me recollect on the simplicity of life while growing up, and the lyrics and melodies of the Jackson 5’s music supported that — “ABC,” “Maybe Tomorrow.” Stop the Love You Save,” and “Mama’s Pearl” — can’t get any simplier than these.

Once I recognized what I was really mourning, I could celebrate Michael’s life. He was an instrument for bringing joy through music, and he was a mirror of a facet of ourselves, although Lip syncing his music will be the closet I will get to musical fame.

At age 50, I can now say like my elders often do, music is not like it used to be, nor is life. However, what would life been like without Michael,The Jackson 5 and their music. I am grateful. As George Benson sings, “everything must change.”

“When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me.” (I Corinthians 13:11)