The Record Factory, a Bay Area chain of about 13 record stores throughout the Bay Area, flashed across the music business like a bright comet, lighting up the landscape of the 1970’s with youthful energy, entrepreneurial know-how, lighthearted and frequently annoying arrogance and exuberance. My roommate worked at the central office in San Francisco, had a crush on the handsome young owner, and hauled me to various company events, partner to her illicit motive of an affair with the boss. There were plenty of free tickets and backstage passes; lots of free records and good discounts on others; great point-of-sale materials like pins and buttons for every new band of the day, posters of Brian Ferry, a lifesize stand up of Shaun Cassidy which one of my preadolescent daughters thrilled to on her birthday.
The music business didn’t seem as blankly corporate as it does now, and I enjoyed the benefits of my proximity with offhanded pleasure and abandon. I turned down more tickets than I accepted, and regret the shows I missed more than I cherish the ones I saw. I chatted with the lead singer of DEVO, uncostumed and holding the plastic flower pot that just an hour or so earlier sat on his head on stage. I was kissed by a young Billy Idol (he kissed everyone backstage), and participated in countless other strange musical interludes most of which are long fogotten. An urn filled with various buttons and ticket stubs, early Roxy Music albums stamped “promotional copy”, a few posters rolled and stuffed on a high shelf, these are the mementos that remain of that heady time when I could cop a ticket to a sold-out show with a simple phone call.
Finally, my roommate elbowed me and whispered, “Shut up, it is the Jackson 5.”
Perhaps what should have been my most memorable encounter slips from my mind for years at a stretch, so uneventful was it at the time, so strange and surreal does it seem in memory. In 1976 or so the company threw a staff Christmas party at San Francisco’s Great American Music Hall. There was a sit-down dinner and I take note that I remember absolutely nothing of what we ate. There was an open bar, and I remember drinking something hot and sweet, Irish coffees perhaps or hot buttered rum. After dinner, the banquet tables were removed and the first level of the hall transformed into a huge dance floor. Sammy Hagar provided the music of the evening, and although I was not particularly enamored of him, I had a great time. I remember clearly that I was dancing to Hagar’s song “Boozin’ and Cruisin’ ” when I looked towards the corner of the room and said to my partner and my nearby roommate, “Who do those guys think they are, The Jackson 5?” In my holiday exuberance, I repeated my question a couple of times, fairly loudly. Finally, my roommate elbowed me and whispered, “Shut up, it is the Jackson 5.”
A group of five young men, identically dressed in black and white herringbone suits with matching Afros surrounding their heads like huge black halos, stood in the corner, looking out of place and uncomfortable.
“Sure,” I said cynically, abandoning my partner and striding towards the group.
As I drew closer, the young men emerged as if out of a fog and I saw that it was indeed the famous five, alone and out of place. They looked awkward and I remember feeling a brief flash of pity for them. This was several years after their early hits “ABC” and “I Want You Back”, and the future looked uncertain. They were not flanked by an entourage of handlers, protectors, journalists, attorneys, or anyone at all that I could see, except for a record company rep who hovered nearby. This was San Francisco in 1976 and no one cared. We all shook hands, I spoke with them briefly, and finally grabbed a cocktail napkin off the bar, which I asked the young, round-faced Michael who had not yet reached his adult height to sign. He wrote his name in a bright red slash across the white napkin; I said “Merry Christmas” and was gone.
The encounter made such an impact on me that about an hour later I said to whomever I was dancing with at the time, “Hey, who do those guys think they are, The Jackson 5?” Ahh, youthful intoxication. “We’ve been through this,” my roommate warned, but there was no stopping me. I headed back to the boys, cocktail napkin in hand, and got Michael Jackson’s autograph a second time. This time, I noticed a smaller group of older, identically clad men nearby and boldly inquired as to whom they were.
“The Miracles,” I said, astonished, “really?” I proceeded to entertain–or perhaps annoy–them with tales of my adolescent dedication to their music, a story of jukeboxes and young unrequited love, and left with their autographs tucked neatly into the pocket of my brown velvet dress, folded with the two from Jackson. Several years later, after Jackson had achieved his fame, I looked for the autographs but stopped early in my search. I didn’t want to know for certain that I’d lost them, though I probably had.
When I think of the encounter, it is with an uncomfortable compassion for that young boy who never got to grow into a man, not into anyone, really, for he longer exists. I remember clearly Michael Jackson’s young, friendly full-moon sort of face, round and wide and innocent with its strong, sturdy nose and framed by his curly dark cloud of hair. I wonder what it was like to have destroyed that face, think of the boy sent into exile when all the altering cosmetic surgery was performed, when the rich brown skin was bleached.
The Neverland of Michael Jackson seems to me less the fairytale world he’s built around himself and populated with exotic rides and rare animals, and more that young boy standing on the threshold of his life. Where is he now? I believe we all long for some sense of continuity, for a deep inner feeling of growth and evolution and connection to our past that is manifest in part by the way time and all of its forces etches itself upon our faces. It is one of the ways we judge who we are, measure what we’ve become and how we got here. It is one of the ways we know ourselves. Perhaps, in his compulsion for twelve- and thirteen-year-old boys, Michael Jackson is searching for a clue, a looking glass, trying to find a way back to a place he can never go, to himself.
