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Wow, what a day. And not in a good way. Like much of the world, I’m mourning the deaths of Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson, the former, sadly, expected, the latter — one of those “what-the-fuck” moments, similar to what I felt when I heard John Ritter or Aaliyah had died.
I was fans of both Farrah and Michael, though I never thought I’d be mentioning them in the same sentence. Their photos are both included in a crazy quilt pop culture collage I have above my desk — more than once, in fact. I have a shot of the famous “Charlie’s Angels” silhouette (which Josh Lynsen hates seeing because then he can’t get the theme out of his head for the rest of the day), another of Farrah with Kate and Jaclyn. There’s a shot of Michael from an Ebony photo shoot he did just two years ago, another shot of him with Janet and LaToya all wearing white the day he was found “not guilty” of child molestation, and, for sheer camp value, a shot of him with David Gest, Liza and Elizabeth Taylor at Liza’s last wedding. Who’d have thought Liz (or his parents!) would outlive Michael? Crazy.
And, oddly, just last weekend I played “Dangerous,” my favorite of Michael’s albums, for the first time in years. I think I only ever had it on cassette before, but found it for $12 at Best Buy and thought, “What the hell?” I uploaded it into my iPod and realized I’d forgotten what a masterpiece it is.
As a child of the ’80s, I remember well the era when Michael was ubiquitous. But I didn’t really get into his music personally until “Dangerous” came out in ’91. I remember the fever pitch excitement when the “Black or White,” “Remember the Time” and “In the Closet” videos came out. And even though I never bought into the supposed chemistry between Michael and Naomi Campbell for the "Closet" video, I found the dancing, thrusting camera zooms, arid desert cinematography and slamming, thumping beat pulsatingly erotic.
And while “Off the Wall,” “Thriller” and “Bad” are all amazing, “Dangerous” resonates most with me — probably because I was old enough then to follow what was going on in music. Its gospel moments had me jamming out hardest last weekend — it’s a shame that “Will You Be There” is remembered for nothing but the saccharine “Free Willy” movie because it’s actually a thrilling neo-spiritual that builds to dizzying heights of pop euphoria via several cascading key changes. And I’ve never heard a climax sustained as long on a pop song as the one on “Keep the Faith” — listen again to Michael ad lib (or at least give the illusion that he is) when the music drops out and he and the choir trade lines in a hardcore gospel a cappella/percussion smackdown. It’s thrilling.
If there’s a downside to the dancing and the videos — all impressive, for sure — it’s that nobody talks about Michael as a singer. His regular singing voice — the one he uses, say, on “Gone Too Soon,” is OK, but nothing to write home about. It’s when he throws himself into abandon, that you realize he can be a soul shouter with the best of them. It pops up in places you forgot, too. Just tonight on the treadmill I was blown away by his vocal on “Remember the Time.” There’s real pain in the nostalgia ("Do you ... do you ... do you .... remember girl?" — that's catharsis!).
I was more curious, than anything, with the snarling, angry “History." I imagine it will be regarded more highly (like Hitchcock’s “Marnie”) as the years go by. It has some great moments (“They Don’t Care About Us,” “Earth Song,” “D.S.,” his cover of “Come Together”). And "Scream," the only duet he and Janet ever recorded, is brilliant. "As jacked as it sounds/the whole system sucks" — who hasn't felt that way a time or two? “Blood on the Dancefloor,” a remix album, is pretty much a steaming pile of crap (The "Oh God, he's taking Demerol" line is one of the oddest things I've ever heard in a pop song), but the old magic was back with 2001’s “Invincible,” or at least snippets of it. “You Rock My World” rocked my world, “2000 Watts” is just silly fun but, wow, what a punishing bassline, and, though probably way too smarmy for many, I found “Speechless” breathtaking and poignant.
Ultimately I think I identified with Michael because he was so obviously different. There was some unspoken message his career seemed to be saying — you can still be wildly popular and be yourself. That became less true as the years wore on, but during the hit-making years, it was something I picked up on.
It also became increasingly obvious how unlike Jackie, Jermaine, Tito and Marlon he was (and probably youngest brother, Randy, too). It’s unfair, of course, for me to try to give him a label, but I always had a strong feeling that Michael was gay, or perhaps even somewhere between the gay and transgender continuum, though, of course, these were words he never used or would have felt comfortable with. I think we in the gay community have distanced ourselves from him — we don’t want to go anywhere near someone so closely associated with child molestation. Gays, and rightly so, want to make it clear we’re not sexual predators, as Michael may or may not have been.
But I will go out on a limb and say this — I think Michael, like many Catholic priests, could be an example of someone who suppressed his sexuality to the point that it ultimately manifested itself in unsavory ways. My theory (and it’s only a theory) is that the Catholic priests who molested altar boys weren’t all — gosh, I’m choosing my words carefully here — sickos. I think it was an example of why the closet is so damaging — if you don’t give yourself a healthy outlet for your sexuality, it’s gonna pop up in unsavory ways. I think Larry Craig is another example of this. I doubt he’d have been cruising for sex in the airport men’s room if he had a healthy outlet for his sexuality elsewhere.
Who knows what Michael’s true sexuality was. I never bought his marriages (to Lisa Marie Presley or Debbie Rowe) for a second. It seemed obvious to me this was not a heterosexual man. Remember the way he bristled at Oprah's question of his sexuality and said he was dating Brooke Shields? Yeah, right. It just rang false. He never became one of my all-time favorite singers — I was ultimately too turned off by his mega-ego and unwillingness to live in the real world. I also think he got lazy in the last several years. Either that or his muse got trampled down by too many years of media overexposure and sky-high expectations. I would have loved to have seen him return with some low key project — like Eric Clapton did with his “Unplugged” project — and recapture the zeitgeist in an unexpected, and humble, way. But Michael seemed highly unwilling to rein in his excesses, musical or otherwise. He never did anything small or low key.<
 Posted by Joey DiGuglielmo,
Washington Blade Features Editor | Jun. 25 at
9:06 PM | JDiGuglielmo@washblade.com
Permalink: http://www.washblade.com/blog/blog.cfm?blog_id=25918
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