The Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up

I remember the day quite well. I was home in my summer break and switched on the TV at lunch time. And the big news flashing everywhere was that Michael Jackson had died. I had been following updates from his impending O2 tour and this was a shock like nothing else.

I remember shedding a tear and not understanding why. I was too little to be going to concerts when MJ toured Mumbai in 1996. It was not like I was planning to be at the O2 concert or would have had the resources wherewithal to be at any of his concerts even a decade from then. But there was something sinking about the feeling that the man would never perform in flesh and blood again.

As a kid, I had an audio cassette of Jackson’s album Dangerous. And man, what an epic album it was — Black or White, Remember the time, Jam featuring Michael Jordan and ofcourse the eponymous Dangerous. Everything about the album was so rad — the music, the beats, the videos.

McCaulay Culkin became the coolest kid in Black or White. We found it delightful that MJ’s video featured an Odissi dancer grooving with him in the middle of the street. Before you know, MJ is an audacious toga-wearing dancer in Remember the time and hitting on the wife of an Egyptian king played by none other than Eddie Murphy. For a 90s Indian kid like me, Jackson had come to define Cool.

Then there was the moonwalk. Some said it was an optical illusion. Some said Jackson had special shoes or that the stage floor was equipped to support this slide. In the pre-Youtube days, I had no answers but it blew my mind. And it’s silly to recall all the hours I spent trying to mimic it. In vain.

A couple of years later, we got Cable TV. And I was introduced to Jackson’s earlier works — most notably the songs from the record smashing Thriller. The video of the title track still gives me goosebumps. The dance routine has, of course, now been immortalised as a flash mob meme. Beat it, and later Bad, depicted the gang wars in that day and age in the US. Believe me. This had a large impact on my understanding of the American culture for quite some time.

Sometime in the late 90s, the Jackson hysteria began to die down. The world got its Ricky Martins and Britney Spears, and as for Jackson, his personal life began to overshadow the bits and pieces of music he was dishing out. As a fan, it was painful to see him embroiled in legal tussles, inexplicably turning into a ghost of himself as far as facial appearance and physique was concerned, and hear very little of the music that made him who he was. All this till the announcement of the This is it tour and the fateful day when he decided to exit the mortal world.

His passing away ushered me into a re-discovery of Jackson’s music. I had been used to seeing him belt dance numbers. Now I listened to ballads that were Human Nature, Who’s lovin’ you, The man in the mirror and the cheeky undertone of Blame it on the boogie and The way you make me feel. I saw his dance for more than just the moonwalking highlight.

Every single move he made on the stage, one could see the entire musical arrangement flowing through his being. When you would first see his routine (start at 1:00 in the above video), you would actually feel Jackson was perhaps not in sync with the beat at times. But gradually it dawns on you how Jackson isn’t just following every damn 1/2, 1/4th beat but at times almost leading it. Like his feet are not dancing to the music but it’s the music dancing to his feet.

We might have a thousand Jackson impression artists, but none can match the sincerity and genius of the real Jackson on song. There was something childlike in his stage performances, a freedom and a dash of caprice that is hard to find in any other performer of this age. Not that it is surprising. Jackson’s entire life was a constant attempt at escaping adulthood. Be it his volatile relationship history, his pet chimp bubbles, his eccentric habits of stashing mineral water bottles or just simply naming his estate Neverland ranch. Some say it was the manifestation of a childhood he never had having become a pop sensation at a tender age and being pushed into the glitzy life of a celebrity.

Today, it’s been eight years since he took off in his spaceship, leaving behind a legacy that spawned innumerable other musicians and dancers, a bucketful of timeless songs and performances, and millions of fans for whom MJ would remain an inextricable part of their childhood weaving a magic that will be impossible to reproduce. Ever.