A friend recently asked me, “Michael Jackson was closer to your generation than mine. Are you grieving the way I grieved for John Lennon? And what of Cobain? Has his music survived?”
The following is my response:
Any one who grew up in the era of Thriller, red nylon jackets, and remembers Michael Jackson once being black is looking on Michael Jackson’s death with mixed emotions.
On the one hand our generation has lost one of the greatest entertainers of all time. A man so prolific that his face made it on to lunch pails carried to school by my classmates in the 80’s, and whose music was at its pinnacle during our formative years.
On the other hand you have Michael post all the controversy, trials, plastic surgery, and slipping further and further into his own celebrity fueled craziness.
For those of us who still feel a kinship toward the "Man in the Mirror", we are a bit relieved that he can’t sink any lower. In truth, no one can really glory in the death of such a talented man. His is a bitter sweet release, that came neither too early or too late. People will be weighing the scales of his celebrity against his talent for quite a long time to come.
Kurt Cobain was a drugged fueled, grunge rock, suicide tragedy. Talented for certain, but I don’t think he had nearly the universal appeal of Michael Jackson. He is certainly remembered through his music, but I don’t think either of these two men will be remembered with the same reverence as John Lennon.
Kurt Cobain’s passing was tragic, but I am less inclined to be sympathetic of someone who took their own life while at the apex of their career. I must admit that I have a personal distaste for suicide, but that doesn’t change the fact that such a death leaves a hollowness that can’t be filled with any amount of good music. Suicide always leaves a vacuum in the place that was once occupied by the deceased. Kurt Cobain’s departure created a hole that, as time passed, was simply filled in by his contemporaries.
Unlike Cobain, Michael Jackson has developed such an enormous persona that I don’t believe that he can ever truly be replaced. In that way he is very similar to John Lennon. But the nature of each man’s death also shapes our cultural memory. It’s hard to separate Michael Jackson’s death from his personal eccentricity. One might argue that this character flaw has been guiding him down a path towards death at the hands of a medical practitioner for a good long while. Can we really be surprised by the fact that his fascination with physical perfection ultimately lead him to another kind of completeness–one found in death.
After I heard of Jackson’s death I went back to my CD collection and listened to Michael’s anthology, released in 2001. On the second disk in the “Greatest Hits: HIStory” the song “Childhood Theme” caught my attention with lyrics that spoke to the topic of his colorful life:
Have you seen my Childhood?
I’m searching for the world that I come from
‘Cause I’ve been looking around
In the lost and found of my heart…
No one understands me
They view it as such strange eccentricities…
‘Cause I keep kidding around
Like a child, but pardon me…People say I’m not okay
‘Cause I love such elementary things…
It’s been my fate to compensate,
for the Childhood
I’ve never known…Have you seen my Childhood?
I’m searching for that wonder in my youth
Like pirates in adventurous dreams,
Of conquest and kings on the throne…Before you judge me, try hard to love me,
Look within your heart then ask,
Have you seen my Childhood?People say I’m strange that way
‘Cause I love such elementary things,
It’s been my fate to compensate,
for the Childhood (Childhood) I’ve never known…Have you seen my Childhood?
I’m searching for that wonder in my youth
Like fantastical stories to share
But the dreams I would dare, watch me fly…Before you judge me, try hard to love me.
The painful youth I’ve hadHave you seen my Childhood….
~ Michael Jackson, “Childhood Theme”
Listening to this song, I couldn’t help but think of a young Michael Jackson prior to all the celebrity and thirty years of medical mishaps. I may choose to remember Michael Jackson as that talented young boy with a lot of potential. Perhaps that’s what Michael always wanted… to reclaim a youth that was colored by a success that the rest of us could never truly understand. I would rather remember the boy, than the shattered and socially disturbed man he later became.
I don’t know that one could compare Michael Jackson to John Lennon, but his death will certainly resonate with people of my generation.