When he comes back half an hour later, it's to Michael whispering, "Thank you for my talent." The coach, Seth Riggs, decides to leave him alone. His voice coach tells the story of Michael one day raising his hands in the air during practice and starting to mutter. He claims to drop to his knees and thank Jehovah after he snatches one. He sings and beatbos the little things he hears, the parts.
Sweet, slightly cryptic lyrics that contain an early notion of melancholy as final, inviolable retreat: I'd like to be yours tomorrow / So I'm giving you some time to get over today / But you can't take my blues away.īy 1978, the year of "Shake Your Body (Down to the Ground)"-co-written by Michael and little Randy-Michael's methods have gelled. A nice left-handed piano riff with strings and a breathy chorus-Burt Bacharach doing Stevie doing early disco, and some other factor that was Michael's own, that dwelt in his introverted-sounding vocal rhythms. The first thing Michael does is write "Blues Away," an unfairly forgotten song, fated to become one of the least dated-sounding tracks the Jacksons do together. Most of the Jackson siblings are leaving Motown at this moment, for another label, where they've leveraged a bit more creative sway. Never asks him to play a shaker or anything. No doubt he is for long stretches unaware of Michael's presence. Somehow Stevie's blindness becomes moving in this context. There's Michael, self-consciously shy and deferential, flattening himself mothlike against the Motown studio wall. When he's 17, he asks Stevie Wonder to let him spy while Songs in the Key of Life gets made. What's inside its structure that makes it move? Michael wants access to the "anatomy" of the music. The brothers are brought in to sing and add accents. The way Motown deals with the Jackson 5, finished songs are delivered to the group, from songwriting teams in various cities. Michael has always made melodies in his head, little riffs and beats, but that isn't the same. Whereas Tchaikovsky and people like that, they didn't handle slack material.
The albums he and his brothers make have a few nice tunes, to sell records, then a lot of consciously second-rate numbers, to satisfy the format. He thinks about things and sometimes talks them over with his friends Marvin Gaye and Diana Ross when they are hanging out. This is in California, so poor, brown Gary, with its poisonous air you could smell from leagues away-a decade's exposure to which may already have damaged his immune system in fateful ways-is the past. His uncle looks back at him and thinks he seems sad for his age. He also likes the old southern stuff his uncle Luther sings.
Alone, he puts on classical records, because he finds they soothe his mind.
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