“MJ: The Genius of Michael Jackson”, by Steve Knopper

 

Scribner, 448 pages, ISBN-13: 978-1476730387

I owe Michael Jackson an apology. I thought that he was guilty of molesting all of those boys way back when but, after having read Steve Knopper’s MJ: The Genius of Michael Jackson, I have flip-flopped and decided that those boys (or, more likely, the parents of those boys) saw an opportunity to make a shit-ton of money off of a flawed and vulnerable boy-man and ran with it. This is not to say that Jackson was blameless in his own persecution – inviting a score of underage boys over for “sleepovers” is not a regular activity for a well-adjusted and normal man – but he was not the twisted pedophile that opposition lawyers and the hostile press made him out to be. So, then…ahem…Sorry, Mike.

Despite Jackson’s tremendous worldwide success, his final years were painful and, ultimately it seems, lonely. As Knopper reveals, the singer never fully recovered from a 1984 accident that burned his scalp while he was filming a Pepsi commercial, and the constant skin bleaching and reconstructive surgeries turned his charismatic physical features ghostly. While much of Jackson’s life will always be a mystery – Just how could his voice sound almost adult just before puberty? What drove his self-destructive compulsions? What was it with all of those boys anyway? – Knopper’s book, perhaps, comes as close to some possible answers as we are likely to get, short of an undiscovered autobiography from the man.

Beginning in Jackson’s hometown of Gary, Indiana, in the tiny house he shared with his parents and eight siblings, Knopper adds a broader view of this distressed city. Gambling, prostitution and political opportunism coexisted along with the numerous blues clubs and lounges where a determined Joe Jackson brought his young sons to sing. Bigger stages and initial recording dates in Chicago followed, and while it’s widely known that Joe Jackson’s resolve degenerated into abuse, Knopper emphasizes a few images that say more than overloaded details (whenever the boys became “too wiggly”, the producers would point to a sign in the studio that read “Call Papa Joe”; they never even had to pick up the phone).

MJ stands above a crowded field. In 2010, a year after Jackson’s death, the “Journal of Pan African Studies” published a list of academic articles about him; musicologists, sociologists and law professors all drew on his life and work for their own discourses. But Knopper, who also writes for the Chicago Tribune, distills hundreds of original interviews to illuminate Jackson’s complexities. He also offers new understandings of his diligent creative process. Digging into Jackson’s hugely influential records, kinetic stage persona and occasionally brilliant investments, Knopper ties all of these elements together for this lively and definitive biography of a cultural phenomenon who was, at heart, nothing more than a lonely little boy.