People try put us to death; just because we get around; …things they do look awful cold…; I hope I die before I get old; why don’t we all fade away... So sang four angry young men from London. In 1965, the Who, led by Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend belted out what became the youth anthem for the ages: capturing in four lines, the entire zeitgeist of the ‘60s; the angst of a ‘lost’ generation. As they say, ‘if you can remember the sixties, you weren’t really there’…and for those who do remember, the ‘60s was the decade of drugs; death and disillusion. ‘Loss’ was the defining concept of a decade that arguably packed in it more upheaval (three terrible wars: Biafra, Congo and Vietnam; endless coup d’etat in Third World countries; and assassinations: the Kennedys, Martin Luther) than any other in recorded history. Yet out of the carnage and cynicism, the beginnings of a revolution in popular culture were unfolding. When Joe and Katherine Jackson’s seventh child joined his older brothers to perform in the summer of 1968, music and the world would never be the same again. The Jackson 5 typified family in its purest form. Jackie, Tito, Jermaine; Marlon, and Michael (Randy too) – the names too were straight out of Central Casting’s manual on showbiz monikers - what an ensemble; what a collection of heartthrobs. Girls died for them and boys wanted to be like them. These kids embodied talent, work ethic; joint effort and best of all – they were black! Remember those ‘fros? Since then there have been several pretenders to the throne, the Partridge family; the Osmonds all the way down to the Jonas brothers, but none have endured or attained the mystique of the Jackson 5, a family that has also gone on to produce three genuine top notch solo artists (Michael; Jermaine and of course everyone’ heartthrob of the late ‘80s, the ‘snake-dancing’ Janet). And then of course, Michael had to go on and become that rarity – the child prodigy that became adult star. Before Michael Jordan, there was one ‘Mike’ that everyone wanted to be like. Fast forward then; a mere 40 years after the world’s greatest artist was launched, the music finally died. Perhaps not in a blaze of glory – but even if it were a whimper, it is one heard around the world. If it is writ, that only the good die young; it is also fact that the death of a star is the only way to go supernova. It may have become cliché, but since Abel dropped under his brother’s bludgeon, death at a young age has become the one sure-fire way to earn instant legend. From Sam Cooke; Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison; Jimmy Hendrix; Otis Redding; Elvis Presley (Michael’s true precursor; whose only daughter Michael married) Bob Marley; Peter Tosh; Freddie Mercury; Kurt Cobain; Aaliyah; Tupac Shakur to even Movie superstars James Dean; Marilyn Monroe and Bruce & Brandon Lee: die young and your career moves into the stratosphere. Somewhat perversely, we seem to prefer that our stars not grow old like us; that they not become wrinkled, bent and unattractive (much like the Rolling Stones today) but that they remain forever young (a Neil Young classic), vital and vibrant as we like to remember ourselves. Every time Frank Sinatra lurched to another concert to struggle through a song he would have aced not so long ago, the legend lost just a bit more lustre; whereas Jim Reeves, a lesser star remains forever revered; locked in the mystique of what might have been and wasn’t. That is why this loss is so poignant – so like a death in the family – everyone’s family. Michael Jackson grew up before our very eyes and his music defined and marked every rite of passage in our own lives. In the early days, the music was sweet and unaffected: ‘ABC’; I want you back; I’ll be there’ – and then it became tougher: can one forget walking into my first disco ‘jump’ into the pulsating throb of ‘Don’t stop till you get enough’ until it acquired the edge of his seminal ‘Thriller’. It seemed that as my generation was coming of age, Michael’s music was keeping step, tapping out the drumbeats that we marched to; through puberty, past adolescence and into adulthood and independence. There are words that never translate well into English; one of these is ‘fin de ciercle’ – roughly, the end of an age. Michael Jackson’s demise at the age of fifty means for most of us the end of innocence and stark reminder that perhaps the music is over; the dance is stopped and we are entered middle age. The metaphysics of star worship is something that every writer and armchair sociologist has tried to rationalize and failed – the strange, overpowering alchemy that turns adults into children watching fireworks. What is it that makes grownup, ordinarily poised girls weep; drool and swoon in the presence of an artiste is something that can never be explained away. But anyone who wonders why the whole world is permanently starstruck with Michael should go play the vocals on ‘I’ll be there’. The opening lines still have a purity and clarity that may never be surpassed in modern pop: ‘You and I must make a pact; we must bring salvation back, where there is love, I’ll be there’ If you still need convincing, then play ‘Man in the mirror’ or even ‘Speechless.’ Even the lesser known songs were the stuff of pure genius. In his autobiography ‘Moonwalk’ edited by the late Jackie Onassis (herself an iconic figure) Michael wrote: “The price of fame can be heavy one. Is the price you pay worth it? Consider that you really have no privacy. You can’t really do anything unless special arrangements are made. The media prints whatever you say… All this is the price of fame.” Whatever the price for global superstardom, Michael paid it in full. The predominantly white media press even dubbed him ‘Wacko Jacko’. This to a sensitive man who did more to advance the humanitarian agenda than all the politicians in Washington (can anyone forget ‘We are the world’ –the USA for Africa project that Time dubbed the greatest collective effort by artists for any cause since the Vietnam war). Even the admittedly bizarre behaviour - sleeping in a sealed chamber and with a pet chimpanzee (Bubbles, surely the most famous primate in the planet at the time); dangling his baby from a balcony window; and even the quite tasteless sharing of beds with little children – was over-reported. All of these so called wacko behaviour pale in comparison to the antics of some so-called white stars, Keith Richards mixing the ashes of his dead father and snorting it with cocaine; Charlie Chaplin marrying one underage child after another (all his wives were in their teens) and so on. He was not the first star to have a nose-job; but Michael Jackson’s own had to be a sign of mental illness. Years before the Paparazzi chased Diana and her boyfriend into a wall in Paris, they had driven Michael into seclusion in Neverland, which in their ‘unbiased’ view made him even weirder. But when Howard Hughes lives in a darkened room for four months and in seclusion for 30 years, he’s simply labelled eccentric and reclusive. But all that will be forgotten know, surely as everyone falls over themselves to pay fitting tribute to the gloved one; even as they struggle to define his legacy. I leave that unenviable task to the legion of music historians present and unborn; for me I just glad that I lived in Michael Jackson’s era; that I grew up with him and that he gave us insight to primordial beginnings, when music was the only way communed with his gods. Thank you, Michael. You were already legend before you choose to die ‘young’. But perhaps, after all, the respect you always sought; the privacy you so desperately craved; will now come. Indeed, you have died before getting old- but you will never fade away.