For all the glamor and scandal and just plain weirdness surrounding Michael Jackson and his strange surgical Neverland life, the man's musical output in the post Jackson 5 years was spotty - a sea of weeds surrounding one massive, startling oak, the 1982 megahit Thriller. That album remains the greatest seller in pop music history and perhaps deserves the honor; by far the best song on the record is the funky R&B hit, Billie Jean.
In a way, it's a shame Billie Jean became the tune Jackson did the moonwalk to - because in the end, though a brilliant entertainer, Jackson was no Fred Astaire or even Gene Kelly as a hoofer and Billie Jean will always be remembered in a moonwalk context. Yet it was the best of his solo tunes, which tended to suffer from massive over-production and the worst of music video overselling. Billie Jean had that infectious core groove - ably plumbed by Quincy Jones, though at first the producer hated the track - that tapped an addictive funk bass line and Jackson's strange but effective vocals, not to mention jazzman Tom Scott's sax.
But the tune was so emblematic of the madness around the budding icon, even in the early 80s; Jackson wrote the tune about a woman who claimed he fathered her children - a woman who is also a siren, luring the pop star into another world. Billie Jean may be the one, "but the kid is not my son."
Jackson's was a strange, sad life and the times had so clearly passed him by, even as he became the human Transformer under the knives of surgeons looking for a buck. Yet the Jackson 5 canon will stand up over time; Michael was always best with Jackie, Tito, Jermaine, and Marlon and their "bubblegum soul" hits produced by The Corporation still sound great.
Their last big hit as the 5 was Dancing Machine, a pre-disco era number with a killer hook - watcha get down, watcha get down - that still brought the funk before the repetitive thump-thump-thump killed off much of the dance music genre. By that time, the feathered winged hair of the mid-70s female disco queen was in full blow-dried flight, thanks to a comely lass from Corpus Christi, Texas - a natural beauty who really didn't need any of the new hair products to shine.
And Farrah Fawcett, who Nancy Nall eulogized as a woman of the same generation, recalling one of the Farrah posters that sold like mad during the run of Charlie's Angels: "She looks great, of course, the essence of the American blonde beauty but warm, not Grace Kelly cool, fresh and clean and scrubbed. Don’t hate her because she’s beautiful. She was just one of the lucky ones."
Hollywood deals some strange hands in death, but this week may be its version of the inside straight, a virtual Carson show lineup from the late 70s or early 80s - chortling pitchman Ed McMahon, the vivacious and naturally appealing blonde Farrah Fawcett, and the the strange and self-tortured Michael Jackson. We knew you so well, but we hardly knew ye at all.
