Jacko

My Thoughts On Michael Jackson

They say you will always remember where you were at the time you heard the news someone famous died, it will not be hard for me in Michael Jackson’s case, as it was the 5.30am news on in my car as I got to the gate to the yard where Toolfix is.

What I did not understand this morning was why the news did not seem to hit me very hard, did not have the emotional impact such news normally does on me, that was to change many hours later when I watched a programme at 8pm on the TV.

The funny thing is I do remember the very first time I heard the Jackson’s sing and so much about that very day in 1968. I did not get to listen to a lot of music in those days, but anyway at the age of nine the Beatles were charting with their very first hits and I was only interested in listening to them.

I’ll never forget the day my mum came home from Newton market with four postcard size framed pictures of the Beatles in black and while, they were to take pride and place on my bedroom wall. I had never bought a record, well I had nothing to play one on, there was the record player in the front room, I say record player but they were know as sterograms and ours was very posh, made in solid wood and on legs and must have been nearly five foot long.

There was no way my mother would let me use it, but at the age of 14 years old someone gave me a record player that was in a case, very small and if you wanted to play an LP you had to take the lid off to do so. All I needed was a record to play on it and so I walked into town from Buckland.

There was a second hand shop on the same side of the fish and chip shop merse has talked about in Union Street, soon I was going through a box of second hand records. The thing was I did not know any of the titles, but settled on one that said it was written by Lennon and McCartney, performed by a group called the Fourmost, the title was Hello Little Girl.

I raced home to play my new record and was 5d worse off, but I was hoping I would like the record, got home only to find I had a problem. I had not noticed the record had a big hole in the middle; it must have come out of a jukebox. My mother was in the kitchen and so I sneaked into the front room and pulled out one of her records.

I broke out the middle and was soon back up in my room trying to fix the middle from my mother’s record with sellotape to the middle of my record. It sort of worked and the record had a real early 60’s Beatle sound to it and I soon learnt all the words.

Only later that night I was soon to forget Hello Little Girl, you see my brother who I shared a room with had a radio and got it tuned into radio Luxemburg, a pirate station I believe, but they played all the top hits on it. Then I heard for the first time a Jackson record ABC and knew that was the sound I really liked.

Mind you a month later I found myself locked in the under stairs cupboard for three hours as my mother discovered the middle missing from her Moon River record, its no wonder I’m claustrophobic.

So back to today, well I’ll be 100 % honest and say as the day wore on with the constant news all day long on Michael Jackson I grew a bit tired of hearing it. I did listen to the J.Vine show, but he went on more about the abuse Jackson got as a child from his father and then went on about the Peter Pan side of Jackson and claimed it was the reasons he made friends with children better than adults.

It was good to hear so many of his records, I did enjoy that part of the day, but when I watched the TV programme, it came back just how great he was at his very best. What a superstar, what a singer, dancer and performer, I don’t think anyone has or will ever come close to Jackson at his very best.

I do think for me he somehow lost just some of the magic, maybe it was the Waco Jako years that did it, I do feel its such a shame for him he went through that period of his life, I wish he could have just stayed the Michael Jackson who did that moonwalk for the first time.

The thing about all stars is we never know them, we only know what we see on the stage or TV, we may think we know the person because of something we read in a newspaper, but the truth is unless we spent time with that person we will simply never know who they really are or how they think or how happy or sad they are.

It must be hard when you got to the very top and produced the very best stage shows ever, to know you may never get there again, for some the fact they got there in the first place would be good enough, but Jackson I believe always wanted to go one bigger and better if he could.

I think my sadness I now feel is because of the way his life has ended, much like Elvis died before he should have and not maybe the way I would have liked to rememberd him, I think I’ll just keep the Jackson I knew and loved around the time he did the Thriller Album.

Maybe tomorrow it will sink home more and I’ll have the tears I expected to have this morning, the ones that flowed so easily the day Princess Diana died,I sure will never forget that day and where I was when I found out. I was doing a show in a large hotel, only the three coach loads had only arrived that day.

Due to a wedding over running the hungry and tired guests after their long journey to Devon, found out they could not have their evening meal until 8pm, nearly two hours late. I had been asked if I could now start later and play on much later, well yes I would but only at a price.

By the time they came into the main bar after their very late meal, they were all very bad tempered and it sure was a hard night’s work for me. I did something that was always a part of my act, but that night turned out to be the very last night I ever did, it was dropped the very next day at the hotel I was at that night.

Part way through the first half of the show I would look for a blonde haired lady, so many at that time had their hair done the way Diana had hers done, so it was never to hard to find a look alike. I would walk up to the one I had picked and would pretend she was Diana and then would ask if I could sing her a song.

As I walked back to my keyboards I would turn and say that she must not listen to the first lines of the song as I had not written the song or the words. The song was Diana by Paul Anker and the first lines were “I’m so young and you’re so old”, it always got a big laugh.

Due to the late start the show finished very late and Carol and I got home in the early hours of the morning, we got all the gear put away and Carol went and made a bedtime drink, while I put the TV on.

He had our drink but both fell asleep on the front room floor with the TV still on, then for some reason I woke up as the very first report came in about the crash, it had not long happened and it was unfolding before my eyes.

A night to remember at that hotel sure made me never forget where and how I found about Diana’s death, but I’m sure I also will never forget today and how I have felt for most of it. Because it is very sad and we have lost a real talented genius and they only come once in your lifetime.