I wasn't planning to contribute anything to the already overwhelming volume of online responses to the death Michael Jackson last Thursday. To be honest, like most of us, it's a long time since I've thought of him as anything other than the world's most famous victim of Sleb Culture. But as someone pretty good at writing about these things once said, you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone -and I got to thinking. Ok, it's been a while since he's been on top of his game recording-wise but so what? When Sir Paul eventually goes to meet his maker, my bet is that Macca tributes will be waxing poetic about The Beatles, not Wings...who were actually together for longer.

My own first MJ-moment came as a child when I heard the guitar-chiming/stop-start-bass intro to I want You back on the radio. It still makes me, mentally at least, stop what I'm doing when I hear it now. It also occurred to me; how many of us ever buy records, that have lasting value decades after being released, by someone whose voice hasn't yet broken? The Jackson 5 were fronted by just such a performer, but as a listener you never question the 10 year-old pre-pubescent vocal chords. You don't need to, because of the sheer Greatness thereof. Not many 13 year-olds get to record ballads about waking up in the morning next to the love of their life, but his is up there with the best of 'em.

Of course there's the plethora of non-musical reasons for which he had the world's attention: The plastic surgery, the confused sexuality, the (alleged) abusive childhood, the Messiah complex, the children, Neverland, his marriages, his own closely-guarded brood, and so it goes. I always thought that some aspects of his public image throughout the years were bad attempts to look wierd and therefore press-worthy (Bubbles the chimp springs to mind) but there was enough genuine intrigue around him as an individual to warrant attention most of the time, without any invention. One thing's for sure - there'll be some interesting books on their way to the highstreet as I type this.
I'm currently re-evaluating MJ's place on Popular Culture's scale of importance, and I'm placing him a fair bit higher than I might have this time last week.
For now though, just click on the above clip of the J5 performing the awesome Looking Thru the Windows on TV. MJ's great vocal, the orchestration, the airborne backing-vocals, the cavernous chunks of Theme From Shaft-informed guitar alongside it's fuzzed-out punctuations, the moves. It was all there, even then.