Relive the magic of Michael Jackson through concert, new book

By Quentin Young

Every day when Joe Jackson, Michael Jackson’s father, went to work in a steel mill outside Gary, Ind., he put on a jacket that had an L-shaped rip in the back that persisted despite efforts by his wife, Katherine, to stitch it.

This is one of the many telling details deployed in the just-released “MJ: The Genius of Michael Jackson,” by Denver author Steve Knopper. It’s the kind of detail that fiction writers use to convey a whole swath of personality or narrative within the span of a sentence, and it reveals the lengths to which Knopper went to fulfill his goal of offering a complete story of Michael Jackson.

So much has been written about Jackson, the King of Pop, the superstar singer and dancer who, toward the end of his life, was known as much for his eccentricities as he was for his music, that the challenge for any biographer is finding something new to say. Much of the writing has inevitably focused on the scandals the aged Jackson so often faced, but Knopper, a contributing editor for Rolling Stone magazine, set out to give a full account of the artist’s creative achievements.

“I think my book is the first narrative book, in a storyteller vein, that really delves into the music, dance and performance,” Knopper said during a recent interview.

He doesn’t avoid the controversies. Jackson’s profligacy, his freakish appearance in the years before he died, the accusations that he molested children (Knopper, as did a Santa Maria jury in 2005, concludes Jackson was innocent) — these all receive thorough treatment in “MJ.” But so does the genesis of the moonwalk, Jackson’s signature dance move, which, as Knopper makes clear, Jackson derived from previous sources, such as the backslide of tap-dancer Bill Bailey in the 1950s.

Knopper, who spent most of his childhood in Boulder and attended Boulder High School (he was also the Daily Camera’s pop music writer from 1991 to ’94), will visit Boulder on Thursday, Nov. 5, for a book-signing event at the Boulder Book Store. He’s also scheduled to appear on Wednesday, Oct. 28, at the Tattered Cover on E. Colfax Avenue in Denver.

Jackson fans in Boulder won’t have to wait until the book signings to enjoy the pop star’s work, however. The SFJAZZ Collective will play “The Music of Michael Jackson” at 7:30 p.m. Friday, Oct. 9, at Macky Auditorium on the University of Colorado campus.

Knopper spent three years working on the book and talked with more that 450 sources, including friends and colleagues from the earliest days of The Jackson 5, the all-brother group that launched Jackson’s career, but not immediate family members, despite efforts to do so, Knopper said. The book takes a straightforward, beginning-to-end approach, starting from Jackson’s great-great-grandfather, July “Jack” Gale, “a Native American medicine man” whose son became the original “Jackson” of the family line, to Jackson’s death, precipitated by an overdose of propofol administered by his doctor on June 25, 2009.

In the course of 448 pages, Knopper rewards readers with surprising, apt, and copious details. “No Jackson ever played a note on any Motown recording,” except a single instance of tambourine, and they had to learn their own music when they went on tour at the time, Knopper tells us. Immediately after his watershed performance during Motown’s 25th anniversary show in 1983, where he famously debuted the moonwalk, Jackson was eerily vacant backstage, recalls a witness, as if “he had an out-of-body experience.” When Jackson was transported from his home to the hospital the day he died, news of his condition traveled so quickly that “paparazzi were snaking through LA following the emergency vehicles and the official Michael Jackson security tails,” Knopper writes.

Knopper handles his prodigious subject with a reporter’s imperative of impartiality but a music fan’s spirit of appreciation. The overall picture that emerges is one of a troubled, damaged, maladjusted, preyed-upon, gentle person who was stupendously gifted — a creative genius. Asked what the world might make of Jackson a hundred years from now, Knopper said, “I just think he’s going to be remembered as one of the classics.”

One measure of Jackson’s genius is the degree to which it has inspired musicians in so many genres, from R&B to rock to hip-hop to jazz. Some of the world’s top jazz composers work together as part of the SFJAZZ Collective, which recently set itself the task of interpreting Jackson’s songs.

The group plans to debut its new Jackson material tonight when it performs “The Music of Michael Jackson,” part of the CU Presents series, at Macky Auditorium in Boulder.

The Collective, founded in 2004 as a composer’s workshop at the SFJAZZ Center in San Francisco, took on Stevie Wonder’s music several years ago, and the Michael Jackson project was undertaken in a similar fashion, said Collective spokesman Marshall Lamm.

“They really rearrange the songs into new songs,” he said.

Lamm also noted that Collective artists don’t necessarily target the hits. Sometimes they mine “the deep cuts.”

The artists comprising the eight-person Collective are all accomplished musicians who are invited to join the group by other Collective members. They’re an international group representing a mix of styles.

“They all share a common goal, which is to write new music,” Lamm said. Tonight’s program, besides the Jackson material, also features original compositions by Collective members.

The current members are Miguel Zenón on alto saxophone, David Sánchez on tenor saxophone, Sean Jones on trumpet, Robin Eubanks on trombone, Warren Wolf on vibraphone, Edward Simon on piano, Matt Penman on bass and Obed Calvaire on drums.

“Each one of these guys has a following among the student jazz population,” Lamm said.

The Collective released a recording of their Stevie Wonder music, Wonder: The Songs of Stevie Wonder, which won Outstanding Jazz Album honors at the 45th Annual NAACP Image Awards. The group also is scheduled to record its Michael Jackson material later this month and plans to release it by the end of the year.

The Collective’s Wonder recording brought welcome exposure to the Collective, and they expect its homage to the King of Pop to do the same, Lamm said.

“It’s something that could reach a wider audience,” he said.

Quentin Young: quentin@dailycamera.com or @qpyoungnews