Night Beat by Mikal Gilmore

Author:Mikal Gilmore
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9780385500296
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2009-05-10T16:00:00+00:00

JACKSON’S GRAMMY LOSS serves to raise expectations for his Madison Square Garden shows, which get under way the night following the Grammys with a benefit performance for the United Negro College Fund. Some of his supporters speculate that Jackson intends to use the concerts to redeem his reputation by putting on the most impressive and assertive shows of his career—and that is precisely what he does. In contrast to the tour’s opening shows a week earlier in Kansas City, Missouri—where he had often seemed overwhelmed by glitzy and relentless staging—Jackson seems not merely involved and animated but often flat-out magnificent in his New York shows.

But it is during the two songs toward the show’s end, “Billie Jean” and “Man in the Mirror,” that Michael Jackson’s greatest strengths—as well as his greatest problems—as a live performer are displayed. “Billie Jean,” in fact, conveys both at once. When Jackson first performed the song in public—during his startling appearance on the 1983 “Motown 25” TV special—he was still close to its meanings, to the fear and anger that inspired the song. In addition, he was performing it as the first public declaration of his adult independence—as if not only his reputation depended on it but also his future. Now, though, with all its letter-perfect maneuvering and moonwalking, “Billie Jean” seems less like a dance of passion than a physical litany of learned steps; less like an act of personal urgency than a crowd-pleasing gesture. Even so, “Billie Jean” is still a marvelous and bewitching thing to behold.

But as Jackson demonstrated the night before at the Grammys, his live version of “Man in the Mirror” is an act of living passion. In fact, it now seems a more personal and heartfelt song for Jackson than “Billie Jean.” Back in 1983 the latter song seemed like his way of negotiating with the world—a way of attracting the world’s curiosity in the same motion that he announced that he was afraid of being misinterpreted or used up by that world. But with “Man in the Mirror,” a song about accepting social and political responsibility, Jackson may be trying to integrate his way back into the world, or at least to embrace his place in it a bit more. It is hardly an easy peace that Jackson seeks. After all, at the end of the song he retreats back into his real world, a very private and isolated place. What’s more, it may be that the world no longer loves or wants him as much as it once did. But after watching Jackson on nights like this, when his power and passion are so undeniable, the idea of his audience rejecting him amounts to a sad loss on everybody’s part.

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