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Music
CulTuRe Clash
Michael Jackson could be our last global megastar
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By Ron Rollins,
Staff Writer
2:21 AM Saturday, June 27, 2009
When I heard the news about Michael Jackson, I was sitting in a bar in Gettysburg, Pa., having a quiet beer after a long fun day of tromping around the battlefield with my dad.
I know that doesn’t mean that much to you, but it means a great deal to me — because I realized as soon as I heard the news that I would always, always remember where I was and what I was doing when I heard that Michael Jackson died.
Which put him immediately into a small company of entertainers whose deaths had imprinted themselves permanently upon my mind: John Belushi, Kurt Cobain, John Lennon, Keith Moon, Elvis Presley, George Harrison. I know where I was when I heard of their passing because they were bigger than their art, and part of my consciousness.
Michael Jackson forced himself into that category, like it or not. We are nearly the same age, and he has been around my entire life — either contributing hugely to popular culture, or, as in the mid-1980s, driving it in a singlehanded way that few performers ever get to do, in any era.
Do you remember those days? Can you remember them through the foul fog of the caricature of a real human that Jackson became? When “Thriller” came out, the whole world danced. When Jackson moonwalked, the planet caught its breath. My wife and I, and our friends, made appointments to watch the 20-minute video on MTV. The man was so large that it’s a bit incomprehensible today — one wonders if he may turn out to be the last global megastar we will see, of the brightness he achieved. Jackson was a force that floated endlessly in our atmosphere, a thing that was always there.
Which made it even more weird and horrible when he went awry. More sad, when he became so unbelievably strange and even dangerous. You could come up with reasons — a rotten, non-existent childhood; the pressures of fame — but none of that made it feel any better. We all realized: This person we had adored was now someone we either loathed or pitied.
When the criminal charges came, we simply wrote him off. We found it odd the he could still fill the occasional Brazilian stadium, and wondered if he might ever come back in a way we cared about. But for the most part, we felt mystified and betrayed, and we put his music away. It didn’t feel good any more, regardless of how it once sounded.
So now he’s dead (ignoring for the moment that the tabloids will never let him rest, a la Elvis). Let the orchestra of reconsideration and recrimination begin. Use this time, with this particular life and squandered talent, to ask: What lasts? What, after all the mess, really matters?
Flash back to that bar in Gettysburg: At the very moment at which somebody told me about Jackson, the song playing in the place was the Beatles’ “Magical Mystery Tour,” whose playing once put money into Jackson’s bank account, and whose title might remind one of his own twisted, miraculous life.
The Beatles went through some weird stuff, too — granted, nothing like Jackson — but also tested fans’ loyalty during their strange breaking-up-hating-each-other-going-solo years. They aren’t the only pop stars who’ve put their fans at arm’s length, only to later hope for them back.
Michael Jackson’s greatest gift, his best music, had been lost to us for years, buried beneath his psychotic horror-show antics. If there is anything good to be said of his untimely passing, it may be this: Now we can consider putting some of that stuff behind us, and begin to allow the rehabilitation of his career to begin.
The man was gifted; the man was awful. The man was everything to us for a time; and then suddenly nothing more than a punchline. Now that he’s dead, maybe he can actually be welcomed back into our lives in a way that didn’t seem possible before. We’ll see.
Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2165 or 
rrollins@DaytonDailyNews.com.
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