Michael Jackson (40 page)

‘Thanks, I needed that,’ Michael responded.

The youngster turned and walked away.

Michael nodded to himself, and as he walked down the hall alone, he began to smile.
Now,
he felt good.

The atmosphere at the Jacksons' house on Hayvenhurst was holiday-like, with people telephoning from across the country to
rave about Michael. The house swarmed with people – relatives, CBS and Motown executives, neighbours and even fans – as members
of the family repeatedly ran the videotape of Michael's exciting performance. ‘You gotta see this one more time,’ Joseph,
the proud father, told everyone who came by. ‘I've never seen anything like it. Just look at this kid.’

Joseph may not have realized it, but video players all over the country were in overdrive, as well. With his appearance on
Motown 25,
Michael accomplished two things: he reconfirmed for lifelong fans that, yes, he is the amazing talent they had always revered.
Also, through the might of television, he reached millions of viewers who had never experienced him as a performer. Only on
two other occasions – the first national television appearances of Elvis Presley and The Beatles, both on
The Ed Sullivan Show
– has television so handily delivered pop music superstardom. However, Michael Jackson's was quite possibly
the
single most captivating pop music performance in television history – the singing
and
the dancing. ‘Beat It’ had just hit number one two weeks earlier; it was Michael Jackson's world, and all of the other Jacksons
were just living in it.

Even the dance greats, such as Fred Astaire, were impressed by Michael's prowess. The day after the special aired, Fred telephoned
Hermes Pan, the legendary choreographer and Oscar winner who taught Fred and Ginger Rogers their most memorable dance steps
(and who was his neighbour in Beverly Hills). He told him to come by as soon as possible.

When Hermes arrived, Fred put in a videotape of the performance. ‘Just wait till you see this.’ Then the two old pros watched
in awe as the new kid on the block wowed America. Fred, never one to give light praise to other male dancers, was knocked
out by Michael.

‘We agreed that we must call Michael, immediately,’ Hermes Pan told me. ‘Somehow, Fred tracked him down. He told him that
he was one hell of a dancer. “A great mover.” He said, “You really put them on their asses last night. You're an angry dancer.
I'm the same way.” I got on the line to say hello, and this whisper of a voice answered me. I was surprised, actually, that
a person who dances with such anger would have such a soft voice. I told him how much I enjoyed his work, and he was very
gracious, very excited to hear from us. For a moment, I believed he thought it was a practical joke. I liked him right away
because he seemed so unaffected by show business, and also star struck. He really could not believe that Fred Astaire had
called him.’

Michael would say later that Fred's compliment meant more to him than any he had ever received. Michael's voice teacher, Seth
Riggs, recalled that, ‘Michael was eating breakfast when Astaire called, and he became so excited he actually got sick and
couldn't finish his meal.’ Later, Fred invited Michael to his home so that he could teach him and Hermes how to moonwalk.

Soon after that, Gene Kelly visited Michael in Encino to talk shop. ‘He knows when to stop and then flash out like a bolt
of lightning,’ Gene would say of Michael, who had, it seemed, joined a new brotherhood of dance. ‘He's clean, neat, fast,
with a sensuality that comes through,’ Bob Fosse would say of Michael after
Motown 25
was broadcast. ‘It's never the steps that are important. It's the style.’

The moonwalk dance movement was taught to Michael by one of the former dancers on the popular American television programme
called
Soul Train.
The steps had been around for about three years. When he saw the routine for the first time while watching the show, Michael
simply had to learn it. Ron Weisner put him in touch with sixteen-year-old Geron Candidate, who went by the stage name of
‘Casper’, the kid who actually invented the move.

‘I saw something you guys did on
Soul Train,
’ Michael told Casper, ‘where it looks like you're going backward and forward at the same time.’

‘It's called the backslide,’ Casper exclaimed.

‘That's amazing!’ Michael exclaimed. ‘Can you teach me to do that?’

Casper was so stunned, he could barely answer yes. The next day Casper and his dance partner, Cooley Jackson, met Michael
at a rehearsal studio in Los Angeles. To the music of ‘The Pop-Along Kid’, by the group Shalamar, Cooley proceeded to demonstrate
a version of the backslide which was more like pushing in place rather than walking backwards. It wasn't what Michael wanted.
Then, Casper demonstrated the slide where it appears the dancer is walking backwards and forwards at the same time. Michael
leaped into the air. ‘Yes!
That's
it. That's the one I want to learn.’

When Casper sat down, Michael grabbed at his shoes to examine their soles. ‘What do you have on the bottom of your shoes?’
Michael wanted to know. ‘You got wheels under there, don't you? That's how you do that step, isn't it?’

Casper explained that there were no special shoes or wheels involved; it was just a cleverly executed dance step. With the
help of a chair, Casper began to teach it to Michael. For this practice session, Michael grabbed on to the chair back and
executed the step in place repeatedly, in an effort to become accustomed to the foot movement. ‘He learned the basic concept
in about an hour,’ Casper remembered. ‘He wasn't comfortable with it, but he had it down.’

A couple of days later, Casper had another session with Michael. ‘He still wasn't at ease with it,’ Casper recalled. ‘Whereas
I made it look so natural, like I was walking on air, he was stiff. It bugged him. “I can't do this in front of people unless
I can do it right,” he kept saying.’

After those rehearsals, Michael went on tour with his brothers. ‘I went to see the show in Los Angeles, and he didn't do the
step,’ Casper said. ‘I was surprised. When I went backstage and asked him about it, he said he just didn't feel ready yet.
He didn't feel he knew it.’

Casper was home watching
Motown 25,
like millions of others, when he saw Michael do the step for the first time in front of an audience. ‘I couldn't believe
it,’ he remembered. ‘My heart started pounding. I flew right out of my chair and screamed out, “Yeah! He did it. He finally
did it. And I'm the guy who taught it to him.” It's not the moonwalk though,’ he explained. ‘It's the backslide. The moonwalk
is when you do the step in a complete circle. But, somehow, the step Michael did on TV became known as the moonwalk, instead
of the backslide.’

Indeed, the moonwalk – or backslide – soon became Michael's signature dance step. His
Motown 25
performance was nominated for an Emmy (and the programme itself won one). For teaching it to him, Casper was paid just a
thousand dollars. ‘That's how much I asked for,’ he said, laughing. ‘I was sixteen. To me, that was good money. I would have
done it for free, to tell you the truth. How was I supposed to know it would become Michael Jackson's trademark?’

In March 1983, Michael hit number one again with ‘Billie Jean’. It would stay atop the charts for seven weeks, primarily because
of the impact of the
Motown 25
appearance, but also as a result of the video Michael made for the song. ‘When his people approached us about doing the video
for “Billie Jean”, they didn't have any ideas at all,’ recalled Simon Fields, who produced the ‘Billie Jean’ video. Fields
said that the concept came from its director, Steve Barron. ‘Basically, Michael was just following our direction,’ he said.
‘But the guy is a genius, so you can count on him to do wonderful things.’

‘Billie Jean,’ the first video from the
Thriller
album – and Michael's first major music clip – is ultimately too artsy for its own good. In a series of abstract shots, Michael
plays high-tech hide-and-seek with a stalking, probing photographer – the only other major character – clearly suggesting Michael's
paranoia about the press. However ‘Billie Jean’ the song – about a girl who haunts Michael, insisting that he is the father
of her son – boasts too strong and visual a storyline to have been so overlooked in its video. In the end, the video is largely
a series of odd scenes strung together.

Michael Jackson's biggest advance with this video was in showing viewers a new side of himself. Here Michael was cool, mysterious
and evasive. The most compelling moment in ‘Billie Jean’ comes, as usual with Jackson, when he dances. With each step he takes,
the sidewalk underneath his feet lights up as if infused by, as Michael would say, ‘magic’.

Michael demonstrated more of his deft dancing abilities in his excellent ‘Beat It’ video. While he had begun with only a vague
concept for the ‘Billie Jean’ clip, he knew precisely what he wanted for ‘Beat It’. Veteran commercial director Bob Giraldi
and Broadway choreographer Michael Peters collaborated with Michael on what would be one of the most dynamic, and expensive,
videos to date. The choreographed ensemble-dancing in ‘Beat It’ would be often imitated in years to come, and is still a staple
in the videos of many pop artists.

Perhaps of all the numbers Michael had presented his fans during his career, the ‘Beat It’ video marked the biggest departure.
As a song, the track was unadulterated rock and roll, something Michael's core fans, especially the majority of his black
ones, initially rejected. Beyond that, the video depicted a Jackson never before seen: Michael as urban dweller, a kid living
on the wrong side of the tracks – a
human
Michael.

Some of Michael's public, particularly those living in urban neighbourhoods, found the storyline patronizing. In ‘Beat It’,
which Michael has said was written with youngsters in mind, he is the good guy who ultimately stops two powerful gangs from
warring with each other. Those viewers unable to separate Michael Jackson the musical enigma from Michael Jackson the actor
missed the point when they asked angrily, ‘What does
he
know about gangs?’ and ‘Does he really think dancing through the problems we're having down here – muggings, killings, drug
addiction – is the answer to our woes?’

‘The point is no one has to be the tough guy,’ Michael would explain. ‘You can walk away from a fight and still be a man.
You don't have to die to prove you're a man.’

Visually, Michael's video was convincing enough. Shot on location on the mean streets of Los Angeles, it looked dark and grimy.
In a quest for authenticity, one hundred members of two real-life, rival Los Angeles street gangs were hired as extras and
atmosphere people. (They were each fed and paid one hundred dollars for two nights' work.)

‘The gangs were sort of on the periphery of the location,’ choreographer Michael Peters once said, ‘so Michael really didn't
have to deal with them. But he was a little nervous, as we all were at the beginning. However, he was wonderful with them.
I think the turning point was when the gangs saw us dance. They had, I think, a different respect after that. Michael signed
autographs and took pictures with them.’

Acting was easy for Michael: he'd done a form of it onstage, singing, all his life. However, with ensemble-dancing, he found
himself on uncharted terrain. Fans had never seen Michael in a Broadway-style setting, and some of them probably wondered
why a hoofer like Michael needed someone to teach
him
steps, but choreographer Michael Peters succeeded in creating a dazzling, funked-up,
Chorus Line
-like dance effect. It all looked so easy, it seemed that anyone could do it. But, just try. ‘Looks can be deceiving, especially
when it comes to dance,’ Michael would explain with a grin. Overall, the clip is rock theatre at its best. Its style and artistry
actually succeeded in making the music more interesting, which has always been the ultimate goal of music videos.