MICHAEL JACKSON’S HUBRIS
Michael Jackson blew it when he realised that even being the world’s most
popular entertainer couldn’t get him what he wanted. Today he’s renting a
house in Las Vegas, ruined by scandal, his millions squandered on a lavish
lifestyle despite increasingly poor album sales. After being found innocent
of charges of child molestation in 2005, he spent nearly two years wandering
the globe: some of the more outlandish stories include him selling his
autograph in Japan for thousands of dollars, and allegedly being seen in a
women’s public lavatory in Dubai in full purdah.
His downfall began in 1992 when he befriended the 12-year-old Jordy Chandler.
He moved into the Chandler home so he could be near his young friend. After
allegations of impropriety went global in 1993, there was a $22 million (£11
million) settlement, which, if anything, increased Jackson’s feeling of
invincibility. His hubris reached a peak when a giant statue of himself
sailed down the Thames to promote the album HIStory in 1995.
His career was further damaged when his obsession with his detractors took
over his life: in 1997 he made a disturbing short feature film, Ghosts, in
which he assumed the role of the overweight, white, fiftysomething District
Attorney intent on prosecuting him for being a paedophile. The media scrum
that was the 2005 court case also took its toll. As one onlooker put it: “He
smelt of mothballs, of death.”
He might be poised to make a comeback in Vegas, but Jackson will never resume
his position as the King of Pop, not even with the forthcoming 25th
anniversary reissue of the 47-million-selling Thriller, with its four
unreleased tracks and Kanye West and Will.I.Am. remixes.
DAVID BOWIE SALUTES HIS FANS
In the Seventies David Bowie could do no wrong, even as he used cocaine more
and more, dabbled with the occult and developed an obsession with an
imminent alien invasion as well as his family’s history of mental illness.
He apparently even stored his urine in the fridge so that wizards couldn’t
use his bodily fluids to enchant him. But none of this had a negative effect
on his public persona, not just because it was happening behind the scenes,
but also because the records he was making were so great: the influential
“plastic soul” of Young Americans, the pioneering motorik
Krautrock of Station to Station.
But there was a moment when even the critically adored star looked as though
he was going to experience career meltdown. On May 2, 1976, Bowie arrived at
Victoria station in an open-topped limo that had apparently belonged to an
assassinated South American dictator. He stood and waved at the screaming
fans, then appeared to raise his hand and then, arm outstretched, do
something that looked vaguely like a Nazi salute. A photograph of the
incident appeared in the NME under the headline “Heil and Farewell”.
However, the incident was soon forgotten; in a way it was seen as a
provocative act by a major performance artist. In fact, there was greater
media outrage when he made those Tin Machine albums.
BOB DYLAN SEES THE LIGHT
After participating, in early 1979, in Bible study classes at the Vineyard
School of Discipleship in Reseda, Southern California, the Jewish Dylan
released two albums of what could loosely be termed Christian gospel music:
Slow Train Coming (1979) and Saved (1980). They were not well received.
John Lennon – no stranger to career-threatening moments himself – called him
“a traitor to his own Jewish people” and recorded the niggling Serve
Yourself in response to Dylan’s Gotta Serve Somebody.
Meanwhile, audiences would hurl food at the singer onstage as he refused to
perform songs from his older, “secular” albums.
Still, not long after announcing his conversion to Christianity after
experiencing “a vision and feeling” and “a presence in the room that
couldn’t have been anybody but Jesus”, Dylan changed his mind again. By 1983
he was able to say: “Whoever said I was Christian? Like Gandhi, I’m
Christian, I’m Jewish, I’m a Moslem, I’m a Hindu. I am a humanist.” Talk
about hedging your bets.
RON WOOD, MARRIED TO THE MOB
If ever there was a band that proves that excessive drug consumption can be
positively career-enhancing, it’s the Rolling Stones. And if you thought
Keith Richards was the nonpareil caner, think again. Ron Wood has had
experiences in the narcotics underworld that would turn Keef’s hair greyer
than it already is.
A certain holiday in Miami in 1981 with what Wood affectionately terms in Ronnie,
his forthcoming autobiography, “substance entrepreneurs” would bear this
out. One day, recalls the guitarist, a limousine pulled up outside the
imposing Florida home of their host, a gentleman called Ruze, and some men,
oozing Sopranos menace, got out. Tony, bald, fiftysomething and clearly in
charge, approached the Rolling Stone and asked: “What's the biggest amount
of cocaine you’ve freebased in 24 hours?”
One of the goodfellas went into the kitchen, put a giant jug on the stove and
started cooking up huge mounds of cocaine. “I’m talking about more coke than
most people have ever seen,” Wood gasps.
But he soon sobered up when Tony pulled him aside later that week and, ever so
politely, made him an offer he couldn’t refuse: that he should steal the
master tapes and the album artwork of the next Stones album so that Tony and
his cronies could bootleg them. Wood and his wife, Jo, decided it was time
to leave Miami. Tony had other plans. “You’re not going anywhere until we
settle our little business,” he said. So they pretended to acquiesce – and
then fled the country.
GEORGE MICHAEL’S ILL-JUDGED COMFORT BREAK
With his recent European stadium tour and appearance on Desert Island Discs,
George Michael’s commercial clout and reputation as the thinking Middle
Englander’s soul boy of choice hasn’t been diminished by any of his
extracurricular antics – whether it’s being caught cruising on Hampstead
Heath, being arrested after falling asleep at the wheel at traffic lights,
or bumping into parked cars while in possession of cannabis.
But there was a time when it looked as though it was curtains for the former
Wham! star. That time was April 7, 1998, and the place was the public
lavatories in the Will Rogers Memorial Park in Los Angeles, where Michael
saw a stranger apparently pleasuring himself in a cubicle and began to do
the same. The stranger was an undercover policeman; Michael was arrested and
charged with lewd behaviour.
Incredibly, though, despite having to endure such tabloid headlines as “Zip Me
Up Before You Go Go”, the singer survived this spectacular public outing and
the ensuing media onslaught, and remains a national treasure.
WHITNEY HOUSTON HAS A PROBLEM
No one is quite sure when it happened, or why, but it did: the God-fearing
daughter of Cissy Houston and singer of I Will Always Love You (1992), the
biggest-selling single by a female artist, became a haggard addict living in
junkie squalor, pictured in the world’s press surrounded by the detritus of
drug abuse – crack pipe, rolling papers, cocaine-caked spoons.
Many blame R&B bad boy and husband Bobby Brown for her descent into drug
hell. Others imply that her addiction was one of the music industry’s
best-kept secrets, and that even at the height of her clean-cut fame she was
vacuuming up half of Colombia. Throughout she has denied any dependency. “I
make too much money to ever smoke crack,” she has said. “Crack is wack.”
Recent reports suggest a breakthrough and an imminent return to form. “I'm not
the strongest every day,” she told a reporter, “but I'm not the weakest. And
I won't break.”
PAUL MCCARTNEY’S DITTY PROTEST
He may be an ex-Beatle, but there have been several signs over the years that
Macca is mortal, among them We All Stand Together (featuring the Frog
Chorus), trying to instigate a name-switch for that fairly well-known
songwriting partnership to McCartney-Lennon, and marrying Heather Mills. But
the first indication that he was capable of Getting It Wrong was probably Give
Ireland Back to the Irish, the debut single by his new band Wings and an
apparent attempt by McCartney to grab a piece of the prole-anthem action
then being enjoyed by Lennon on songs such as Power to the People.
Written in response to the events of Bloody Sunday in Northern Ireland, the
song was released in February 1972 and was immediately banned by the BBC.
Really, though, the most inflammatory thing about it were the shockingly
simplistic lyrics: “Give Ireland back to the Irish/ Don’t make them have to
take it away/ Great Britain you are tremendous/And nobody knows like me/ But
really what are you doin’/ In the land across the sea?”
Partly in reaction to the ban, Wings released a children’s song, Mary
Had a Little Lamb, as their next single. It was better.
MADONNA BARES ALL
If anyone is skilled in the fine art of career resuscitation, it’s Madge. No
matter how many bad moves she makes, how many ill-judged forays into cinema
or publishing, she somehow reemerges with something halfway decent to regain
public favour.
There was a time, though, when she could do no wrong, and that was between the
release of Like a Virgin and Like a Prayer. But then she decided that
what the world needed was a book of her assuming various soft-porn poses,
and thus was born 1992’s Sex, featuring the future lady of the manor
simulating everything from sado-masochism and anilingus to rape.
In spite or because of the controversy and negative publicity, however, Sex
sold out all 1.5 million copies of the first edition in three days, making
it the most successful coffee-table book so far.
