Essential Moments & Tributes

[badtourgirl]

So I have been reading a really great book, simply called: "Michael" put out by the editors of Rollingstone Magazine - it touches on all the good and not so good moments of Michaels' life. I admit there are a few areas that are not always comfortable to read, however I have to say it has been one of the most pleasurable tribute books I have picked up... with lots of great pictures and stories.

In this book - there are two sections I want to share with everyone. One is called The Essential Moments and the other is called Tributes - some are really wonderful and when I am feeling down I try to read from these sections... so I thought every couple days I could share them here with everyone that may have not heard or read them - I hope you enjoy them as much as I do.

Essential Moments

" I Want You Back" 1969

THOSE SUPERFLY DANCE MOVES! THOSE DRUMS! Michael's purple pimp hat! At a turning point for the Motown empire, Berry Gordy puts all of Hitsville U.S.A's resources (including the then-unthinkable sessions budget of $10,000.00) into devising the perfect pop song. Michael's pleading vocal brings it home. Literally nobody has ever walked out of a room while this song is playing."

[badtourgirl]

Tributes

Stevie Wonder - One of Michaels' mentors since the early days of Motown

I first heard about Michael when he and his brothers were coming to Motown - and then I heard that voice. You couldn't help but be instantly moved by the way Michael sang a song like "I Want Your Back" or "I'll Be There" or, later "The Way You Make Me Feel," which is one of my favorites. One time, Michael and I were riding in an elevator together, and I was singing "The Way You Make Me Feel" to him, and we stated going back and forth trading lines, and I told him how much I loved that part where he sang, "Go on, girl," and Michael told me that he took if from my song "Go Home," which made me feel pretty good.

I remember we were on a kind of safari together once in a truck with bars to protect you from the lions. I could hear Michael telling the driver, "Can we get a little closer?" Then I heard a big roar and suddenly Michael got real quiet.

[badtourgirl]

Essential Moments/2

"I'll Be There" 1970

With this ballad, The Jackson 5 became the first act ever to hit Number One with their first four major-label singles. They could no longer be dismissed an any kind of kiddie novelty - all the brothers float their voices back and forth, pleading a fantasy of eternal devotion. This song has been covered countless times (Mariah Carey took it back to Number One) but nobody has ever topped the way Michael threw himself into the line "Let me fill your heart with joy and laugher."

"Got to Be There" 1971

His first solo single, and a first taste of the mature, introspective Michael to come, it sold more than a million and half copies after coming out in the fall of 1971. The song itself is hardly childhood stuff ("Got to be there in the morning?") with bittersweet minor-key harmonies that should have been beyond the reach of a young thing. Yet Michael coasts over the jazzy chords and lush orchestration, handling each key change like a born soulman. He'd just turned 13."

[badtourgirl]

Tributes / 2

Smokey Robinson - The Motown Legend wrote “Who’s Lovin’ You” for the Jackson 5

I spend a great deal of time with Michael when he was 10 or 11. A Motown artist named Bobby Taylor and I would take Michael to the golf course just to ride around on the cart while we played. If I hit a bad shot, he’d just laugh and tell me how I should’ve hit it. He never caddied or took a single swing in his life - he just came along and critiqued.

L.A. Reid – Jackson invited Reid, now chairman of Island Def Jam, to write songs for 1991’s Dangerous

Michael was very sweet, but he was a huge competitor. He invited me and my partner, Babyface, to the Neverland Ranch in 1991. He was working on Dangerous and asked us to write for the album. We took a helicopter to his house, and it was a very bumpy ride. I must have had a look of terror on my face, and Michael started laughing at me and told me I was soft.

[MySerenity5]

Wow... Thank you for sharing...

I had problems in the past with how the Rolling Stones treated Michael, I'm glad that they have put out a somewhat decent tribute...

[badtourgirl]

Wow... Thank you for sharing...

I had problems in the past with how the Rolling Stones treated Michael, I'm glad that they have put out a somewhat decent tribute...

Oh good.. I am glad you are enjoying them - I hope others are too.

I am just finishing up formatting to post some more... the Tributes coming are not the easiest to read... but I think they help to see and understand what a beautiful man and treasure we lost.

[badtourgirl]

Essential Moments / 3

The Jackson 5ive 1971 - 73

For countless seventies kids, this Saturday-morning cartoon (with "ABC" as the theme song) was the first experience of the J5's timeless soundtrack of playground funk, like a mix of Sly and the Family Stone with Fat Albert's Junkyard Band. It was more psychedelic than Scooby-Doo, with a better beat than Hong Kong Phooey, so good that ABC resurrected it for Saturday mornings in 1984, after Thriller hit big. Michael admitted later he watched is all the time, saying to himself, "I'm a cartoon!"

"Dancing Machine " 1974

The brothers were getting too old for teeny-bopper appeal, chafing at the artistic limitations of the Motown machine, where not even Michael was allowed to contribute to the songwriting or production. But their last major Motown hit (and early disco experiment) was a taste of beats to come. While MJ was quietly watching the pros work the studio, he was soaking up the tricks ("like a hawk," he admitted) he'd use to conquer the world.

Tributes / 3

Donny Osmond - Childhood rivals in the early 1970s, he and Michael remained friends for decades to come

The Osmonds and the Jackson 5 had hit records at the same time. We were once playing a big show in Canada. The ironic thing is we were both teen idols, and all we wanted to do was go back to the hotel, and - while Joe and Katherine were talking to my father and mother - we went to the other room and played with toys.

I remember a few years ago, I went to Steve Wonder to play a cover I had recorded of his song "I Wish." And Stevie said, "Please, please get close to Mike, because he really needs a friend right now." So right after that, I went off to Mike's house, and I played the track for him. This is right before everything hit the fan with all the trials. And I said, "We have always been linked in a parallel universe, with us and out families, but we've never actually done anything together." And I played him "I Wish." And he loved the track with these two kids who are now adults talking about "I wish those days would come back once more." And he said, 'I love it, let's do it." We were going to do a duet, and then he called me up as soon as the trial hit and said, I've got to pull out."

Lionel Richie - A friend since the 1970s, he wrote "We Are The World" with Michael

The first single on Thriller was "The Girl Is Mine," with Paul McCartney; I was a huge fan of Paul McCartney. And Michael knew this. I was working in the same studio where they were recording the song at one or two in the morning, and he called and said, 'Lionel, come on over." I thought he wanted me to hear a track, and I go into the studio, and Paul McCartney was there. Needless to say, I ended my session for the night. I think Quincy went home that night because we were talking so much. Paul and Michael had so much in common in terms of fame, and Michael was such a sponge. He asked every question. I think Paul had a blacked-out Suburban, and by the time Paul left, Michael had one too.

The irony of it is that Paul McCartney, Quincy Jones and myself had friend before we were 21. We all had to fight on the playground before we were 21. We all had a girl leave us before we were 21. We went through regular-guy growing-up experiences. But when it came to Michael, you couldn't get to "regular." From seven or eight years old, this brother was singing. I remember him coming right home from tutoring and going right to the studio. They wouldn't have playground time. Jackie and Jermaine had a little bit more of a real experience because they were older. But that door closed early for Michael.

With his whole being, he only wanted to the biggest and the best there was. But in the later years, it wasn't the playground singing "***** *****" - it was the whole world saying it. How do you get over that? It tears you down. And the result is, we saw a major artist crumble right in front of our very eyes.

[badtourgirl]

Essential Moments / 4

”Rock With You” 1979

Believe it or not there was a time when using the word “rock” in a disco tune was scandalous. That’s why you can’t call Off The Wall crossover – Michael was disco and proud, but Michael’s mirror-ball glimmer was so seductive that the whole music world just crossed over to him. Nobody could resist the finale, where he stretched the word “girl” into a six-syllable psalm. His androgyny was irresistible: He was the girliest boy in the word, yet the most lavished with girl love, and he wasn’t the least bit embarrassed about it.

"Shake Your Body (Down to the Ground " 1979

Dancing his way out of the constrictions of Motown, seizing his first shot at creative control, MJ leads his brothers to the promised land. The lyrics introduce his spiritual yearning (I need to do just something to get closer to your soul), while the grove really does shake your body down to the ground. Goodbye, yellow-brick road; hello future of pop.

[badtourgirl]

Tributes / 4

Akon - The singer spent time at Jackson’s house, working on material for a planned comeback album

Mike and I met a couple years ago, through a friend. We recorded at his home studio, and his kids were always there. He was always monitoring them – making sure they were doing their homework, eating right. He would personally cook for them, always healthy stuff. They were the main focus of his life – we could be in the middle of recording and he’d drop everything to make sure they were good.

Sheryl Crow - She launched her career as a backup singer on Jackson’s 1987 ‘Bad’ world tour

I met Michael at the rehearsals for the Bad tour in 1987, when I was hired as a backup singer. I was surprised by how shy he was. We were rehearsing the duet “I Just Can’t Stop Loving You,” and we had a funny joke between us – we were doing a love song and pretending to be shy about it, and we’d giggle when we touched each other. To see that youthfulness out of somebody who’s the most important entertainer in the world was surprising.

Our first three weeks on the road, we played, Tokyo in front of 75,000 people. Michael broke into “Human Nature,” and he did the sideways moonwalk. I remember standing by the side of the stage thinking, “I’ll never see this kind of talent again in my life.” I don’t care what kind of music you’re into – there’s something special in him that isn’t of this world.

[badtourgirl]

Essential Moments / 5

"Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough" 1979

Make a list of the top 10 "ooooh!" screams in history, and this hit has at least six of them. MJ introduces the world to his grown bad self, rocking harder than anything on rock radio, yet sleek and debonair enough to make the rest of the Top 40 to sound like hot air. Who else could get away with that murmured spoken-word introduction? Who else could wear white socks with a white tux and still look cool?

"Heartbreak Hotel" 1980

An R&B smash for The Jacksons, this was too dark for the radio - it peaked at Number 22 on the pop charts - but huge in the clubs. Michael swore it wasn't an intentional Elvis reference, though the record company got nervous and gave it the moronic new title "This Place Hotel." (That's one of the few moments in his career for which nobody had ever claimed the credit.) But Elvis would have appreciated how it mixes up the old-time religion a taste of sex and a lot of fear.

"Billie Jean" 1983

Six minutes of cosmic funk dementia, an instant number one despite being one of the strangest and most disturbing personal songs ever to grace the radio. Quincy Jones tried to talk Jackson out of putting it on the album, but party people still quake to the base line of Louis "Thunder Thumbs" Johnson. The song ended up putting a sticking point between Michael and Quincy - Michael felt he deserved a co-producing credit, since the demo version he presented to Jones sounded exactly like the version on Thriller. Quincy disagreed.