NOTE: This post, written by the late Howie Pyro, was originally published in 2020, when For the Love of a Glove had just opened. It’s back! Go see it if you live in Los Angeles!
Julien Nitzberg. Shit-stirrer, rebel director, artist, punk rocker and genius are some titles bestowed on this forward-thinking, back-slapping smart-ass. You might know him from his earliest documentary on Hasil Adkins—lunatic rockabilly one man band-he thought the guy in the radio made the music that way. Hasil sang about beheading his girlfriend so she “can eat no more hot dogs.” At that time he met Adkins’ neighbors the White family, who were the focus of his next documentary, the VHS cult sensation The Dancing Outlaw, about Jesco White, hillbilly clog dancer and Elvis impersonator. If you added up all the views just on YouTube of the different clips of this film alone it adds up into the millions.
Fast forward to 2009, Johnny Knoxville and Nitzberg make the cult hit The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia. In between these Nitzberg did many other projects Like Mike Judge presents: Tales From the Tour Bus and the controversial The Beastly Bombing operetta, an equal opportunity love/hatefest about, well…the subtitle of the operetta is “A Terrible Tale of Terrorists Tamed by the Tangles of True Love,” if that helps. You can read about it here.
All I knew about For the Love of a Glove going in was Julien’s history and sense of humor and that it was about Michael Jackson. That alone is at least a Godzilla’s worth of possible satiric destruction in the hands of Nitzberg, and that’s putting it mildly! It seems all of MJ’s bad behavior is blamed on aliens that look like glittery gloves who come to take over humanity. Oh did I mention it’s also a musical? And a puppet show? With life-sized puppets? The main one being Donny Osmond, Michael’s mortal enemy? There’s even one of Corey Feldman! And Emmanuel Lewis!!
The show is a non-stop comedy clobbering of the senses, with a very small, very talented cast, great original music, cool effects, etc. Most of the actors play as many as four roles, and being that much of the cast is African American it was odd/funny and visibly uncomfortable (to some) when these actors donned white hoods for the big Ku Klux Klan musical show stopper! But if you know Julien…
In these days of modern mass paranoia and casual racism, over-sensitivity and dumbing down of all things, even I had a flash of looking behind me (as I saw others do) and wondering if this was cool to like, who was getting offended, who was laughing, and right then at that moment I realized I have been way more affected by all this modern bullshit than I thought. We need people like Julien Nitzberg to remind and instill in us that it is not only okay, but quite necessary to think, laugh (at ourselves AND at others) and learn.
I spoke to Julien Nitzberg and cast member Pip Lilly about all of this.
Howie Pyro: Okay so why now? When did the idea come to you & what brought MJ to the top of your creative lunacy?
Julien Nitzberg: The initial idea for this show came to me almost seventeen years ago. I was approached by a major cable TV network to write a Michael Jackson biopic. I’ve been a Michael Jackson fan since I was a little kid and watched the Jackson 5 cartoon on Saturday mornings. I tried to find an interesting way to tell Michael’s story, but the later years were just too bizarre and I couldn’t find a normal way to tell it. How could anyone explain Bubbles the chimp, trying to buy the Elephant Man’s bones or sleepovers with kids. It was all too bizarre. I decided that the only way to tell it was to find a surreal way into the story. I pitched them the idea that all the boys and things in Michael’s life weren’t his choices. Instead his glove was an evil alien trying to take over the world who forced Michael to do all the bizarre things in his life. The alien gave him his talent so Michael was forced into doing things that he was severely embarrassed by.
The execs laughed at this idea but then asked me to do the normal version. I knew it would turn out terribly, so I said no. Over the years my mind kept returning to Michael’s life and finally I decided to write my version of his life as a musical with all original music.
I spent a couple of years researching Michael’s life trying to find the most interesting obscure parts to talk about. I decided to have it focus on his religious upbringing as a Jehovah’s Witness. Jehovah’s Witnesses have a really fucked up attitude toward sexuality. They teach that masturbating can turn you gay because as a man you get used to a man’s hand on your penis and want other mens’ hands on your penis. I thought this was hilarious. How did MJ get raised in the religion and then his most famous dance move winds up being him grabbing his own crotch? I then realized he didn’t do the crotch grab, his alien glove forced him to do it!
I also found out more about his rivalry with Donny Osmond. The Osmonds were clearly patterned to be the white version of the Jackson 5. Five brothers singing, dressing similarly. It was creepy. The Osmonds first big hit was “One Bad Apple.” It sounded so much like the Jackson 5 that Michael’s mom thought it was the Jackson 5 when she heard it on the radio.
The Osmonds clearly ripped off the Jackson 5 and what was worse they were Mormons which at the time taught that all black people were cursed with the “Mark of Cain” and were not allowed in their temples. They even taught that if you were black and converted to Mormonism you could go to Heaven but would be a servant to white people in Heaven. It’s some of the most fucked up religious shit you can dream of. They also taught that at the end of days when Christ returns all black people will have the curse of the “Mark of Cain” removed and turn white. Of course, Michael did this in his life so that became a big part of the story. We even have a song that Donny sings to Michael called “What a Delight When You Turn White.”
I felt like now was a great time to do the show. Everyone is talking about how our country has been ruined by fucked up racist and homophobic religions. We deal with one of the clearest cases of cultural appropriation that ever existed - people who belonged to an openly racist church going out and trying to sound like the biggest black music act of the day. It all felt like things that are in our country’s cultural conversation right now.
Julien Nitzberg. Shit-stirrer, rebel director, artist, punk rocker and genius are some titles bestowed on this forward-thinking, back-slapping smart-ass. You might know him from his earliest documentary on Hasil Adkins—lunatic rockabilly one man band-he thought the guy in the radio made the music that way. Hasil sang about beheading his girlfriend so she “can eat no more hot dogs.” At that time he met Adkins’ neighbors the White family, who were the focus of his next documentary, the VHS cult sensation The Dancing Outlaw, about Jesco White, hillbilly clog dancer and Elvis impersonator. If you added up all the views just on YouTube of the different clips of this film alone it adds up into the millions.
Fast forward to 2009, Johnny Knoxville and Nitzberg make the cult hit The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia. In between these Nitzberg did many other projects Like Mike Judge presents: Tales From the Tour Bus and the controversial The Beastly Bombing operetta, an equal opportunity love/hatefest about, well…the subtitle of the operetta is “A Terrible Tale of Terrorists Tamed by the Tangles of True Love,” if that helps. You can read about it here.
All I knew about For the Love of a Glove going in was Julien’s history and sense of humor and that it was about Michael Jackson. That alone is at least a Godzilla’s worth of possible satiric destruction in the hands of Nitzberg, and that’s putting it mildly! It seems all of MJ’s bad behavior is blamed on aliens that look like glittery gloves who come to take over humanity. Oh did I mention it’s also a musical? And a puppet show? With life-sized puppets? The main one being Donny Osmond, Michael’s mortal enemy? There’s even one of Corey Feldman! And Emmanuel Lewis!!
The show is a non-stop comedy clobbering of the senses, with a very small, very talented cast, great original music, cool effects, etc. Most of the actors play as many as four roles, and being that much of the cast is African American it was odd/funny and visibly uncomfortable (to some) when these actors donned white hoods for the big Ku Klux Klan musical show stopper! But if you know Julien…
In these days of modern mass paranoia and casual racism, over-sensitivity and dumbing down of all things, even I had a flash of looking behind me (as I saw others do) and wondering if this was cool to like, who was getting offended, who was laughing, and right then at that moment I realized I have been way more affected by all this modern bullshit than I thought. We need people like Julien Nitzberg to remind and instill in us that it is not only okay, but quite necessary to think, laugh (at ourselves AND at others) and learn.
I spoke to Julien Nitzberg and cast member Pip Lilly about all of this.
Howie Pyro: Okay so why now? When did the idea come to you & what brought MJ to the top of your creative lunacy?
Julien Nitzberg: The initial idea for this show came to me almost seventeen years ago. I was approached by a major cable TV network to write a Michael Jackson biopic. I’ve been a Michael Jackson fan since I was a little kid and watched the Jackson 5 cartoon on Saturday mornings. I tried to find an interesting way to tell Michael’s story, but the later years were just too bizarre and I couldn’t find a normal way to tell it. How could anyone explain Bubbles the chimp, trying to buy the Elephant Man’s bones or sleepovers with kids. It was all too bizarre. I decided that the only way to tell it was to find a surreal way into the story. I pitched them the idea that all the boys and things in Michael’s life weren’t his choices. Instead his glove was an evil alien trying to take over the world who forced Michael to do all the bizarre things in his life. The alien gave him his talent so Michael was forced into doing things that he was severely embarrassed by.
The execs laughed at this idea but then asked me to do the normal version. I knew it would turn out terribly, so I said no. Over the years my mind kept returning to Michael’s life and finally I decided to write my version of his life as a musical with all original music.
I spent a couple of years researching Michael’s life trying to find the most interesting obscure parts to talk about. I decided to have it focus on his religious upbringing as a Jehovah’s Witness. Jehovah’s Witnesses have a really fucked up attitude toward sexuality. They teach that masturbating can turn you gay because as a man you get used to a man’s hand on your penis and want other mens’ hands on your penis. I thought this was hilarious. How did MJ get raised in the religion and then his most famous dance move winds up being him grabbing his own crotch? I then realized he didn’t do the crotch grab, his alien glove forced him to do it!
I also found out more about his rivalry with Donny Osmond. The Osmonds were clearly patterned to be the white version of the Jackson 5. Five brothers singing, dressing similarly. It was creepy. The Osmonds first big hit was “One Bad Apple.” It sounded so much like the Jackson 5 that Michael’s mom thought it was the Jackson 5 when she heard it on the radio.
The Osmonds clearly ripped off the Jackson 5 and what was worse they were Mormons which at the time taught that all black people were cursed with the “Mark of Cain” and were not allowed in their temples. They even taught that if you were black and converted to Mormonism you could go to Heaven but would be a servant to white people in Heaven. It’s some of the most fucked up religious shit you can dream of. They also taught that at the end of days when Christ returns all black people will have the curse of the “Mark of Cain” removed and turn white. Of course, Michael did this in his life so that became a big part of the story. We even have a song that Donny sings to Michael called “What a Delight When You Turn White.”
I felt like now was a great time to do the show. Everyone is talking about how our country has been ruined by fucked up racist and homophobic religions. We deal with one of the clearest cases of cultural appropriation that ever existed - people who belonged to an openly racist church going out and trying to sound like the biggest black music act of the day. It all felt like things that are in our country’s cultural conversation right now.
For those who don’t know you or your sense of humor…there’s quite a few things that many different types of people would/could find offensive…do you think this is a help or a hindrance to the success of the play?
Julien Nitzberg: I have no idea. I love super offensive humor. I was raised on John Waters, Mel Brooks, the Ramones, Dead Kennedys, Tom Lehrer and Monty Python and think those influences pervade For the Love of a Glove. I hope our culture has matured enough that people can enjoy my fucked-up punk rock humor. And who wants to see a non-offensive Michael Jackson musical?
In the play most of the cast is African American and all the cast members play multiple roles. The Ku Klux Klan musical number was hysterical (and obviously not pro KKK) but was it odd to ask the African American actors to don KKK hoods?
Pip Lilly: I think donning the hoods is hysterical. I never felt weird about it. I’m an actor and it’s a costume. Plus, I have the power here. Just wearing it is a radical act that would have gotten me killed 70 years ago. Also, real talk, the Klan deserves to be besmirched and clowned over and over again. Julien does a great job of setting up the racial issues that were the foundation of 1960s black folks.
Julien Nitzberg: Since the Jackson 5 were from Gary, Indiana, I did a lot of research into the history of Indiana. I discovered that in the 1920’s, one third of the white citizens of Indiana belonged to the KKK. The KKK in Indiana had 250,000 fucking members! How crazy is that? 250,000 KKK members just in Indiana! I decided we needed a song about that called “What Is It About Indiana?” Most people think of Indiana being part of the North so that shows how fucking racist, anti-Semitic, anti-immigrant and crazy our country’s always been. I wondered how that would have affected people growing up there so I thought we needed a song about that, contextualizing the fucked up state where the Jackson 5 grew up. It’s a very Mel Brooks number with dancing KKK members. I feel like if you laugh at horrible people you make them into a joke and take away their power. The show only has ten actors. Eight are black and two are white so we ended up needing some of the black actors to play KKK members. I asked the actors if they were comfortable with it and they all laughed. They thought it was hilarious. It was a lot like when Mel Brooks plays a Nazi. You feel a certain power over the oppressors putting their clothes on and mocking them. We had the actors strolling in laughing saying “I finally joined the KKK.” Cris Judd, our choreographer, gave the KKK members in the song all these Bob Fosse-style dance moves so it’s extra ridiculous. They are always rubbing their robes sensually, like it’s a big turn on.
It’s really funny yet disturbing. But it lets the audience know early on this show is going to dive deep into American racism but by laughing at the horribleness of our history we are stealing their power.
My mom was a Holocaust survivor. I lived as a kid in Austria where I went to 5th and 6th grade and got called “a dirty Jew” by one kid there. There was swastika graffiti everywhere in Vienna. For me as a kid discovering Mel Brooks and seeing The Producers was life changing. Instead of being scared of Nazis, it was much more fun to laugh at them. This comic attitude is what I tried to bring to this show with the KKK. I don’t think there is anything that would piss off KKK members more than knowing we have black people wearing their robes, dancing like they are in a Fosse musical.
Any other major influences?
Julien Nitzberg: Another big influence was the Rutles. When I was looking for clever musical parodies to inspire the project there was only one that really stood the test of time and that was Eric Idle’s genius Beatles parody All You Need is Cash starring the Rutles. My two favorite bands as a kid were the Beatles and the Jackson 5. I saw the Rutles movie when it debuted on TV and immediately went and bought the record. In the years since, I almost never listen to the Beatles. But oddly, I still listen to the Rutles record all the time and love them more than the Beatles. When my composing team—Nicole Morier, Drew Erickson and Max Townsley—started working together, we spent a ton of time listening to the Rutles. The Rutles’ songs were as good as the Beatles. They are great pop songs. I wanted our show to do the same thing. I didn’t want the songs to sound like musical theater songs. Nicole said she wanted the songs to sound like they were lost R&B/soul music classics that never got discovered at that time. The composers worked really hard to get that right feel of the times and I think they did it majestically.
Weirdly, a good friend of mine Rita D’Albert (who created Lucha Vavoom) is friends with Eric Idle and I met him at her birthday party. He’d heard of the musical from Rita. He came up to me and said he had a new title idea for the show. I asked him what it was. He dryly said “Rhapsody in a Minor.” I looked at him totally confused and then suddenly I got the joke. It was embarrassing how long it took me. What a genius!
So you’re at this point—and this could be more than enough for what you were going for—and then you introduce a mirror image villain!! So now MJ has aliens and uptight white nerds grinding away at him! What brought the Osmonds up and were you worried Donny might upstage Michael?
Julien Nitzberg: As a kid, I was a giant Jackson 5 fan and every time I heard “One Bad Apple” I was always confused thinking “This sounds too much like a Jackson 5 song.” If you google it, you’ll even see that many people thought it was a Jackson 5 song. So when I started writing the show, I decided to research this. I soon discovered that the Osmonds were consciously created as the white equivalent to the Jackson 5. They were five brothers like the Jackson 5. They’d been a barber shop quartet who sang minstrel songs and then later were the blandest band ever to appear on the Andy Williams show. Suddenly they start sounding like the Jackson 5 and doing Motown songs. They start dancing like the Jackson 5. It’s extra fucked because they belong to a church that teaches the most racist ideology and won’t let black people into their temples. Then I discovered that their transition to being Jackson 5 imitators happened just after they toured opening for Pat Boone! Fuck, that showed me what exactly was happening. In the show we call the process of a white artist ripping off a black artist “Pat Booning” and that’s what they did.
For the more conspiracy-minded, people should note that Mike Curb was involved in the Osmonds’ career producing records by Donny. Mike Curb was a producer who was super right wing and got elected Lieutenant Governor of California with the support of his mentor Ronald Reagan. He’d dated Karen Carpenter. At one point, he was head of MGM records and kicked the Velvet Underground off the label because he considered them too pro-drugs. It would make sense that a right winger would push back against any great black artist by helping create a pale white imitation.
Let’s discuss the second act.
Julien Nitzberg: The second act has Michael as a grown-up. Then he discovers that Berry Gordy has signed Pat Boone. Then Michael and his glove have sex for the first time. Then he gets inspired by that to write “Beat It” and record Thriller. The glove suggests that Michael should be a reverse Pat Boone and play with Toto and Eddie Van Halen.
Then he can’t take feeding the gloves anymore. He invites kids over for a sleepover party. He doesn’t like it and it ends up going on a date with Brooke Shields. His glove gets jealous and starts grabbing his crotch on TV. They have a fight. The gloves decide to kill Michael. The plan is thwarted. The glove gets burnt trying to kill himself so Michael has to masturbate with the audience to save his life. The glove and Michael realize they are in love.
The second act has demented fantasy, but also a ton of history. People don’t realize that Michael only became as big as he did because CBS Records blackmailed MTV into showing Michael’s videos. MTV did not show “Urban Music.” That of course was just a euphemism for any music by black artists. They didn’t want to show “Beat It.” CBS told MTV they wouldn’t let them show any videos by Bruce Springsteen, Billy Joel or the Rolling Stones if they didn’t show Michael’s videos. It’s a really shocking take on how American racism was still awful in the 1980’s.
And so how’s the reaction been (In a literal sense)? Not live, but reviews. Misunderstandings from simple minded types that can’t get past the sight of seeing a hood stuck on a black person by a white guy etc…
Pip Lilly: My friends like the show. They seem to love the music, the comedy, and the spectacle. People are genuinely entertained, which can only help people appreciate the satire.
Julien Nitzberg: All our write ups have been great. The reaction has been great. We’ve had nights where it was all UCLA students who had not grown up with Michael Jackson. They were gasping and laughing the whole time. Despite the rumors about millennials being easily offended, the people who seemed most offended were in their 30s and 40s. But it’s been 95% positive and 5% super disgusted which I think is a great ratio.
Great news! For the Love of a Glove has now been extended until the end of March! Get tickets and info here.
We learned a lot from the insaneQuincy Jones interview from a couple weeks back. To recap, and this is all according to an unfiltered 84-year-old Quincy Jones, the Beatles were notoriously bad musicians, Marlon Brando and Richard Pryor were lovers, Chicago mobster Sam Giancana killed JFK, and… Jones once dated a twenty-four-year old Ivanka Trump. Probably the greatest reveal of them all, however, was about Michael Jackson, whom Jones worked with as the pop star’s producer.
Immediately into the interview, Quincy declares Jackson to have been “as Machiavellian as they come,” alleging that he would steal material from other artists for his own personal gain. More specifically, Michael Jackson supposedly stole the riff from Donna Summer’s “The State of Independence” for his smash hit “Billie Jean.” Vangelis and Jon Anderson from Yes originally wrote “The State of Independence,” which was covered and popularized by Summer the following year. Quincy Jones arranged an all-star cast of guest vocalists for the newly revamped track, Michael Jackson being one of them.
Bizarrely enough, “Billie Jean” wasn’t the only song with supposedly “borrowed” material intended for Jackson’s 1982 best-selling album, Thriller. In the early eighties, Quincy Jones discovered a song that he felt could work well for Michael Jackson’s upcoming record. That track was “Behind the Mask” by Japanese electronic synthpop pioneers, the Yellow Magic Orchestra. The song was originally a synth instrumental written for a 1978 Seiko quartz wristwatch commercial. YMO later re-recorded the track, with lyrics written by British poet Chris Mosdell and vocals performed by songwriter Ryuichi Sakamoto using a vocoder. The song appeared on Yellow Magic Orchestra’s highly influential 1979 record Solid State Survivor in Japan, and their ×∞Multiplies album in the US and Europe.
The first version of ‘Behind the Mask,’ recorded for a Seiko wristwatch commercial
The classic, album version of ‘Behind the Mask’ by Yellow Magic Orchestra
Jackson liked the “Behind the Mask” and agreed to record his own version of it during the Thriller sessions. With Sakamoto’s permission, additional lyrics and an extra melody line were added to Jackson’s version. The new lyrical content turned the focus to Jackson’s girlfriend, who he felt would often hide her emotions behind a symbolic “mask.” Conceptually, this was much to the contrary of the original YMO version, which contained a discordant thematic approach to “the mask.” Lyricist Chris Mosdell had this to say about the adjusted context:
“When Michael Jackson took it, he made it into a love song about a woman. It was a completely different premise to me, I was talking about a very impersonal, socially controlled society, a future technological era, and the mask represented that immobile, unemotional state. But hey, I let him have that one.”
Michael Jackson’s “Behind the Mask” was an anticipated smash hit and made the final cut for Thriller. A royalties dispute involving YMO’s management and Sakamoto, Mosdell, and Jackson ended up preventing the track from getting released. It wasn’t for another 28 years that a reworked version of “Behind the Mask” would be released…
35 years after its release Thriller remains the best-selling album of the millennium. After a lifetime of repeated listening, the record’s sixth single “P.Y.T. (Pretty Young Thing)” (produced by Quincy Jones and co-written with James Ingram) has definitely emerged as my favorite track. It’s unclear why Jackson never performed the song live, but it remains a fan favorite from its immediately catchy funk/pop synthesized bassline to the fun “call-and-response” vocals between Michael and his sisters. Janet and LaToya who sing back-up on the “repeat after me and sing na na na” breakdown make it nearly impossible not to sing along every time you hear it on the radio. However, my favorite part of the song has always been the high-pitched “chipmunk vocals” that only arrive during the song’s outro. After all, who didn’t get a kick out of playing 33rpm records at 45rpm as a kid? But even when Kanye West sampled the outro, slowed it down, and looped it as the basis of his 2007 single “Good Life,” I was still left wondering after all these years, what the hell are those chipmunk vocals singing exactly?
A few years ago, Los Angeles-based music copyright specialist Drew Seventeen used a program called Audacity to pitch-shift the “P.Y.T.” vocals using “stems” (isolated pieces of a multitrack recording) that are intermittently available on the internet. Drew explained his project via e-mail:
“‘Good Life’ by Kanye West featuring T-Pain (heavily sampling that section) is actually my iPhone morning alarm song. So after hearing the voice hundreds of times in the dream-wakefulness transition, I became obsessed with knowing what the actual lyric was. I assumed the ‘tee’ and ‘see’ were chopped off in the final mix due to timing limits on early sampling technology, but the exposed stem also makes it clear that he just hits a lower note there which becomes unclear in the master recording.”
The results of Drew’s efforts can be heard here:
“I wanna love, you P.Y.T.
I wanna give, you T.L.C.”
Not only are the hidden lyrics of “P.Y.T.” revealed for the first time (clearly sung by Michael himself), but as an added bonus we can hear these lyrics are divided up by a “kiss” which gets buried in the actual studio mix of the track.
Titled “Michael,” this oil painting by David Nordahl depicts Jackson as Michelangelo’s David surrounded by cherubs.
In April 2009, just two months before Michael Jackson’s sudden and unexpected death, Julien’s Auctions hosted a four-day public exhibition of 1,390 personal items from Neverland Ranch at the abandoned Robinsons-May department store in Beverly Hills. The exhibit was a fascinating look into the King of Pop’s personal treasures: from his iconic white-jeweled glove to a wonderland of 19th-century antiques and sculptures. One couldn’t help but notice the high volume of utterly bizarre works Michael Jackson had commissioned just for him: A life-sized statue of himself as Batman, a custom hand-painted Beverage-Air cooler, and a custom golf cart featuring an image of himself as Peter Pan painted onto the hood. However, what stood more than anything else was the exotic menagerie of oil paintings and murals of the pop star. Over many years Jackson paid dozens of artists to immortalize himself and his fairy-tale worldviews on canvas in scenes that depicted him as a figure of modern-day royalty in mythical tableaux. Where did Michael Jackson find the artists to help him amass such an insane collection of vanity? Why did somebody who was never satisfied with his looks spend millions of dollars to have his portrait painted?
Céline Lavail’s 1998 “Peter Pan” Neverland Ranch golf cart painting (from Julien’s Auctions Michael Jackson Exhibition catalogue).
Summer 2003, Leon Jones, a self-taught artist from Buena Park was airbrushing portraits of celebrities such as Lucille Ball, Jennifer Lopez, and Tupac Shakur on the sidewalk outside Café Tu Tu Tango at Universal Citywalk. A strange gentleman approached and asked if he was available to do some work for “his boss.” Jones was skeptical but agreed to meet the man at a gas station in Santa Barbara two days later after being persuaded by $500 in cash. Leon Jones and his nephew then followed the man through Los Olivos, CA, and were amazed when their final destination was revealed: Michael Jackson’s extremely secluded Neverland Ranch. Jones was then commissioned by Jackson to paint two, 15-feet-high murals at the Neverland train depot which took him several months to complete. One of the murals depicted Jackson in knight’s armor donning angel wings and the other showed Jackson surrounded by winged children pointing toward the heavens. “It was unreal, like you were on a different planet,” Jones said of his experience.
47-year-old American painter David Nordahl randomly received a phone call from Michael Jackson at his home in Santa Fe late one evening in early 1988. He thought it was a prank at first, but Jackson convinced the artist it was really him after describing a painting of Nordahl’s he had just seen in Steven Spielberg’s office earlier that day. After their initial hour-long conversation, Jackson invited him to the Denver stop of the Bad tour in March 1988 and soon after a partnership was formed: Nordahl left the commercial art world to become Jackson’s personal portraitist. Over the next seventeen years this creative collaboration resulted in thousands of drawings and roughly a dozen large-scale commissions. Jackson spent millions of dollars paying artists like Nordahl to transform his surreal and mythological ideas into fantasy art.
“The Storyteller” Nordahl shows Jackson as a Peter Pan-like figure surrounded by children including his sister Janet who is depicted as a fairy.
In Nordahl’s “Field of Dreams” Michael leads children of all nationalities (including sister Janet, AIDS activist Ryan White, actor Macaulay Culkin, and Pippi Longstocking).
Jackson paid up to $150,000 for the larger pieces and began referring to David Nordahl as his “favorite living artist” (Michelangelo being his favorite artist historically). Nordahl became a close friend, trusted adviser, and confidant who helped design Neverland Ranch carnival rides and joined Jackson for family trips to Disneyland. In 2004, Jackson and his children paid Nordahl a surprise visit on memorial day weekend, dropping by his Santa Fe home on their plush private bus. Jackson suggested a movie outing. “I thought we were going to a screening room,” Nordahl says. “His driver pulled into DeVargas Mall. He was friends with Roland Emmerich (the director of The Day After Tomorrow), and it was opening weekend. The mall was jammed, and there was no place to park. I took the kids, got the tickets and popcorn, and we went in. Michael came in after the lights went down. The lights came up, and nobody noticed him. He had on a baseball cap and these Chinese silk pajamas.”
Portsmouth-based portrait artist Ralph Wolfe Cowan painted Michael Jackson four times around 1993. The pop star bought the first portrait and then commissioned and paid for three more shortly after that. Cowan’s first abstract portrait depicted Jackson wearing a suit of armor, holding a sword with a parrot perched on top of it. Bubbles, Jackson’s pet monkey, was portrayed sitting loyally at his feet. After the first image of the portrait was sent to Jackson’s staff Cowan received back a strange, long-relayed message. “When I painted it, I had these dogs down in the bottom somewhere. German shepherds. Michael Jackson called up his curator, who called the guy at the gallery, who called my business manager Steve (Mohler), and Steve told me Michael didn’t want the dogs in there,” Cowan recounted. Extremely confused, Cowan insisted he hears from Jackson himself. Soon after, Cowan got a call. “Hello, this is Michael. I don’t like dogs,” he said in a soft, gentle voice. “I like monkeys.” Jackson paid about $30,000 for the 8-foot-tall painting, sans the dogs, which he hung in a living room beside his piano and can be seen in the background of Jackson’s well-known 1993 televised living room interview with Oprah Winfrey. Eventually, their working relationship deteriorated. Cowan explained how painting for Michael Jackson was really like working for a king. “He lived in a fantasy world and if he didn’t like something, you felt as if he could behead you. But the way he does it is by not calling you again. And somewhere along the line he stopped calling me and I thought I had been beheaded.”
Johnny Hudgins is not the first name to come to mind when considering influential 20th century comic performers—but perhaps he should be.
I had never heard of Johnny Hudgins until about a week ago when his name popped up in a conversation about long forgotten vaudeville stars. An old archivist friend was telling me how there were once many African-American blackface performers—among them Johnny Hudgins who became an international star in the 1920s. Hudgins was more than a star—he was hailed as “the colored Charlie Chaplin.” Famed for his trademark dance and comedy routines, Hudgins literally spawned a host of imitators I was informed—most notably Josephine Baker who copied his act and took it to France where she became a star.
I noted my friend’s information—it was one of those useful kernels to be tucked away for later use.
Then last night while catching-up on TV, I watched a documentary called Trailblazers of Dance—one part of the excellent Trailblazers of… series narrated by Slade’s Noddy Holder no less. From what I’ve seen of this series, it’s certainly one I’d recommend. Anyhow—in this documentary Hudgins again popped up—this time being credited as the originator of the “moonwalk”—the impossible-seeming dance step Michael Jackson made famous in his video for “Billie Jean.”
Johnny Hudgins with the Blackbirds.
This spot of serendipity led me to do a little research on Johnny Hudgins.
For someone whose career apparently influenced the iconic Josephine Baker and Michael Jackson, who had Duke Ellington serenade him at supper, whose portrait was painted by Kees van Dongen, who was even filmed by Jean Renoir and who was so famous he had a kid’s doll made after him in France—there really isn’t a heck of a lot of stuff out there on dear old Mr. Hudgins—well, other than passing mentions in academic texts like this from Choreographing Copyright: Race, Gender, and Intellectual Property Rights in American Dance:
Virtually forgotten in the early twenty-first century, Johnny Hudgins was a celebrity in his day. Born in Baltimore in 1896, Hudgins began performing as a song-and-dance man on the burlesque circuit before joining Noble Sissle and Eubie Blake’s all-black revue The Chocolate Dandies in 1924. A successor to the song-writing team Sissle and Blake’s earlier hit, Shuffle Along (1921), The Chocolate Dandies was more ambitious—it featured extravagant stage settings, including live horses running on a treadmill during a horse race scene—but ultimately less profitable, closing on Broadway after ninety-six performances.
During his run in the musical, Hudgins developed a series of comic pantomime acts that won him acclaim nationally and internationally. The most famous of these was his “Mwa, Mwa” routine, in which he opened and closed his mouth in silent mimicry of the “wah wah” sounds of an accompanying trumpet or cornet.
Branded both the successor of the celebrated blackface vaudevillian Bert Williams and “the colored Charles Chaplin,” Hudgins spawned a host of imitators, among them Josephine Baker, who appeared with him in The Chocolate Dandies.
After touring Europe for several years in the mid-1920s, Hudgins returned to the United States to star in Lew Leslie’s Blackbirds of 1928. By 1930 he was reported to be the “highest paid night club entertainer of his Race.” He continued to tour Europe, South America, Canada and the United States through the 1940s. Due in no small part to his use of blackface, Hudgins fell out of favor with a later generation of performers and critics. He died in 1990.
Michael Jackson fans living in France can experience Le train Fantôme Thriller, a traveling ghost train ride that pays homage to the King of Pop’s multi-platinum selling album and iconic music video. Totally not authorized by the Jackson family estate, this three-story attraction is chock-full of hungry zombies that are ready to devour you alongside a very familiar soundtrack from 1982.
The ride was created by Stéphane Camors, the descendant of a family of funfair attraction developers dating back a century and a half. Stéphane had previously created two popular ghost train attractions: “Fantom Manor” and “King Kong.” While searching for an idea of a more contemporary and innovative ride, inspiration struck when he came across his children watching the John Landis-directed “Thriller” music video on the internet. Stéphane immediately began consulting with manufacturers, set decorators, and visual artists. After fourteen months and 18,000 hours of construction, his dream became a reality.
You can track the location of Le train Fantôme Thriller via its official Facebook page. Alternatively, you can rent it during the off-season and assemble it yourself in your own backyard (mounting the ride takes just three days, only two days to disassemble).
See Le train Fantôme Thriller in action after the jump…
In 1986 the Beastie Boys released Licensed to Ill, and the world of whiteboy rap was changed irrevocably. Licensed to Ill was the first rap album to hit #1 on the Billboard charts, and for two years you could hardly go anywhere without hearing the double-parenthetical “(You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (To Party!)” and “No Sleep Till Brooklyn” and “Girls.” But mainly “(You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (To Party!)”
But the album that sold in CD shops everywhere was quite different from the album that almost came out. Two tracks, “Scenario” and a cover of the Beatles’ 1965 track “I’m Down,” were cut at the last minute.
For years Beastie Boys diehards have circulated an alternate sequencing of Licensed to Ill called Original Ill in which “I’m Down” and its deleted partner “Scenario” are part of the tracklist. (In case you’re wondering, “I’m Down” occupies the 4th slot on side 1, after “She’s Crafty” and before ”Posse In Effect,” whereas “Scenario” is the last track on the album.) The phrase that is invariably used to describe those two songs is “deleted at last minute,” which definitely suggests a possible legal problem or some similar final-hour issue. In the case of “I’m Down” it does seem as if Def Jam or someone in a position to get sued might have been worried about Michael Jackson’s attorneys, whereas for “Scenario” the red flag was quite different—the mere mention of the popular smokable cocaine variant known as crack. (Michael Jackson had recently purchased the entire Beatles catalog; for his part Greil Marcus—see below—apparently understood worries about Michael Jackson to be the central problem at the time.)
On the crack tip, here’s the (oft-repeated) lyric from “Scenario”:
Well chillin’ on the corner this one time (time)
Coolin’ at the fuckin’ party and runnin’ that line (line)
Smokin’ my crack sayin’ them rhymes (rhymes)
Countin’ my bank just to pass the time
It almost seems as if the Beastie’s mentioning Crack was a bad thing because not only was Scenario completely removed from the album, which mentions crack all through out the song, but the original version of Rhymin’ & Stealin’ was edited to take out just two small phrases, “Most crackin-est B-Boy!!” “I Smoke My Crack!” The phrase is left intact on this release though so you can hear how it originally sounded. I do find it weird that they can mention dust, and being dusted out, over and over, but when they mention crack, songs and phrases get deleted.
It’s interesting that the line “And I’m never dusting out cause I torch that crack” still lingers on in “Hold It Now—Hit It,” however.
Here’s a Halloween treat for our readers. Or maybe a trick?
It all depends on your tolerance for inept dance moves and tacky ‘80s public access production values.
Stairway to Stardom was a New York City public access variety show that aired from 1979 to the early 1990s. Many of the guests had questionable talent and clips from the show were circulating even pre-Internet among VHS tape-traders looking for the next weirdest thing. The appeal of many of the show’s “stars” had more to do with the effects of schadenfreude rather than distinguishable talent. The show’s producers were gloriously non-discerning.
The advent of YouTube has brought a lot of gems from Stairway to Stardom to light. Personally I’ll always recommend Lucille Cataldo’s “Hairdresser” and Precious Taft’s dramatic monologue, but today we’re going to take a look at Lola Perazzo who does an unbelievably stiff, awkward, herky-jerky interpretive dance to Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” in a tragically ill-fitting body-suit—capped off with a classic “is it over yet?” finale.
For the video game design competition Duplicade, which I mentioned in yesterday’s post about Fire Dance with Me, an enjoyable video game about Twin Peaks, Aaron Meyers came up with an infectious game called Michael E Michael, in which Michael Jackson has a Tekken-style dance-off against Michael Jackson. As I noted yesterday, the game “must tread dangerously into the intellectual property of an existing game or game franchise, but be cleverly altered and culturally mangled enough to not be worth the effort to sue,” which Michael E Michael clearly does.
The rules of Duplicade require games to be head-to-head games in which the WASD and arrow keys control movement for Player A and Player B, and also that the game declare a winner within the first 30 seconds. In the game, the two players control identical versions of The Gloved One from the video “Smooth Criminal” while that selfsame infectious song pulsates away.
Using various moves you can kick your opponent, execute a spin (which spawns a bunch of tiny Michaels to scatter away from the main avatar), and so forth until the loser is identified and the winning Jackson (of course) transforms into an awesome jet and flies away.
The original “Smooth Criminal” video after the jump…
I recently stumbled upon the fascinating Stand & Deliver: The Documentary on You Tube and found myself enthralled as the extremely well-read Adam Ant revealed influences and historical roots behind his music, wardrobe, and various stage and video set pieces. Some fascinating stories are divulged, many of which I, as a more-than-casual-but-less-than-rabid Adam Ant fan, had never heard before. The most intriguing of these stories was the tale of how he got called out by Native Americans for cultural appropriation… and then got a free pass.
In the film, Ant discusses his use of feathers and Native American war paint as part of his early costuming. According to Ant, “I always wore a few feathers to project an Apache image on stage,” and “the Apache war line [painted across his face]... was a declaration of war on the music business.” Apparently this appropriation did not sit well with some Native American groups, who reputedly wrote in to Ant’s record label to express dismay.
Sally James, presenter for the British program, Tiswas:
Someone had written to him that he had upset the Native American Indian community because they had felt that the line across his face [was problematic]... Instead of ignoring it, he went to their headquarters to see them. He said ‘please come and see my act,’ and they all went along and then they wrote to the record company: ‘this guy is fantastic, we won’t have a word said against him.
Writer Karen Krizanovich adds:
He met up with ten leaders of the Native American nations and he said ‘the dancing that I’m doing on stage, the way I’m looking with feathers and the paint… if you find that disrespectful to your people I will stop it immediately.’ Actually, he cared enough to see if he was offending anyone with what he was doing.
According to the story revealed in Stand & Deliver: The Documentary, Ant’s invitation to the tribal leaders led to his being given the “A-OK” vis-à-vis the war paint and feathers. Ant seems to corroborate the story in an interview with louderthanwar.com:
I already had the Native American Indians on my back about the look but when I met them I said I’m a Romany and that’s a tribal culture and I’m very serious about this and I’ve studied it and we have also had lots of our people knocked off as well.
The genocide in America of the Native Americans affected me, and the songs that touched on that like “Kings Of The Wild Frontier,” “Human Beings,” and even “Catholic Days” singing about Kennedy had been banned. Now I know I was right singing about that stuff.
Anyway, at the time, this good looking six foot plus Indian comes in to see me and says that they were suspicious that some white boy was singing about them, so I went there and spoke to the people at their centre. They showed me their system and their history and I basically said to to them come to the show and if you don’t like what I’m doing or if you think that I’m taking the piss I will fucking take the stripe off and not wear it again.
Fortunately they liked the gig but I had to go to them to speak to them. It’s their country and you have to go to them. I was very passionate about it, and I still am. I don’t do politics, but this is beyond politics. It’s about justice, but nobody is innocent. I mean look at our empire. I’m a musician not a politician, but there was stuff that I was singing about like I was suffering years of taming and the kids like me were inspired about this wildness, and they got it and when they came down to the gig they got it.
Now, the ‘80s were a much less, shall we say, culturally sensitive time, and a what got a “pass” then might not fly today—and giving concert tickets to a handful of tribal leaders—who may or may not speak for the Native population at large—doesn’t necessarily make Ant’s costuming choices less “problematic” by today’s standards; however, the fact that Ant met with these leaders and offered to drop his iconic look, upon their say-so, speaks to his integrity, respect for Native culture, and his desire to do the right thing.
Ant has more recently been accused of cultural appropriation by Cap’n Crunch.
There are other incredible stories in Stand & Deliver: The Documentary. One reveals a late-night phone call from Michael Jackson asking Ant where he got his military jacket (note - Jackson soon showed up in public wearing a very similar outfit), and how he got his drum sounds. Jackson subsequently got Adam Ant a gig on the infamous Motown 25 TV special, by actually refusing to appear himself unless Ant was allowed to go on after him!
Ant recounts this same story in his autobiography Stand and Deliver :
The ringing of a telephone cut sharply through my sleep. I fumbled for the receiver.
‘Hello?’ A soft, highpitched voice echoed down the line to me.
‘Hello,’ it repeated. ‘Is that Adam Ant?’
The voice had an American accent and sounded vaguely familiar, but my fuzzy brain reacted angrily.
‘Terry,’ I said, thinking it was one of the Ants’ drummers playing a prank. ‘Stop pissing about. It’s 4am and I’m trying to sleep.’
‘No, it’s not Terry,’ said the voice. ‘It’s Michael. Is that Adam Ant?’ ‘Very funny, Terry, now fuck off.’ I slammed the phone down, rolled over and tried to get back to sleep.
The phone went again. ‘Hello,’ I barked into the receiver. ‘Hi, no, really, it is me, Michael Jackson,’ said the funny voice, ‘and I just want to ask you…’ ‘Terry, if you don’t stop this I’m going to come over there and fucking thump you.’ Bang. Again the phone went down.
Again I rolled over. Again the phone rang. I grabbed the receiver and shouted: ‘Terry! That’s IT!’ ‘Er, hi, is that Adam Ant?’ This time the voice was deep, sonorous, American and calm. It didn’t sound anything like Terry. ‘Oh, oh,’ I stammered.
‘Yes, this is Adam. Who are you?’ ‘I’m Quincy Jones, calling from LA. Sorry, we probably woke you, but I’m here with Michael Jackson and he’d like to speak with you. Is that OK?’ A pause, and then that same soft voice. ‘Hi, Adam, it’s Michael. Sorry if we woke you.’
‘Oh, no, sorry to have been so rude,’ I apologized. He said he had just seen the video for our song “Kings Of The Wild Frontier.” ‘It’s great,’ he said. ‘How did you get the tom-tom sound?’ ‘Oh, thanks. Well, we use two drum kits and then add loads of other percussion on top…’
‘That’s great, Adam,’ Michael interrupted. ‘I really like your jacket. Where’d you get it?’
‘Huh? My jacket?’ I tried to think. ‘Berman’s and Nathan’s in London’s Covent Garden. They supply costumes for movies.’
‘Wow. That’s great,’ he replied. ‘How do you spell that? Bowman’s and who?’ ‘No, B-E-R-M-A-N-apostrophe-S and N-A-T-H-A-N-apostrophe-S.’
‘Great, thanks. Let’s meet up next time you’re in America, huh? Bye.’
The line went dead.
I got invited over to LA and I went to his family home, because he was still living with his mum and dad. All his brothers and sisters were there and I just spent the day walking round the house with all the snakes and llamas. I actually followed him onstage right after he did the moonwalk for the first time.
Those of us who lived through the seventies won’t soon forget the various ABC celebrity sports extravaganzas, especially the Battle of the Network Stars of various years. I didn’t remember, however, the Rock-N-Roll Sports Classic from 1978. Aside from a few genuine immortals (Michael Jackson, Janet Jackson, Rod Stewart, Joan Jett), the panoply of athletes is mostly reminiscent of a Columbia Records Club advertisement or the $1 bin at your local LP store (Boston, Leif Garrett, Anne Murray, Seals & Crofts, Tanya Tucker, Kenny Loggins, etc.).
Events include cycling, basketball, swimming, track and field. The main takeaway is that the Runaways kick ass, with both Joan Jett and Sandy West winning events. Michael Jackson appears in the 60-yard dash, but his brother Jackie wins that event. In soccer, Rod Stewart defeats ELO bassist Richard Tandy in a penalty-kick competition.
The roster of announcers is nearly as long and impressive as the list of performer-athletes: Ed McMahon, Sandy Duncan, Phyllis Diller, Kristy McNichol, Barbi Benton, and Alex Karras. Fred Travalena is also on hand to do a few timely impressions, such as Richard Nixon, who had resigned as president four years earlier.
At the 22:00 mark there’s a weird moment involving Alex Karras. Karras, who died in 2012, was a remarkable fellow by any definition, being an All-Pro defensive tackle for the Lions, Blazing Saddles bit player, and the adult lead for the ABC sitcom Webster for many years. But he was also one of a bare handful of athletes ever to suffer a league sanction for gambling, being forced by the NFL to sit out the 1963 season because of his involvement in gambling activities. So it’s especially weird when, after introducing Marlon Jackson before a race, he adopts the mock desperation of a gambling addict: “Marlon, you gotta win this one, I don’t care about you guys making money, but I need it!”
Indeed, the very existence of the Rock-N-Roll Sports Classic brings to mind the recent issue of drug testing in pro sports—one wonders what results the drug tests for this event would have yielded. Some of the events are actually edited out of this video, but most of them are there, but a judicious assessment of the video’s contents would still conclude that it mainly consists of introductions: “In Lane number two, William King of the Commodores!” It’s still a prime example of the dread nexus of music and television that only the seventies can supply, and well worth watching for connoisseurs of televised weirdness.
Michael Jackson’s “ghost” was snapped by 14-year-old Reeva Saava at a theater in Bromley, Enland, last week.
Saava was attending the “Michael Jackson Live” tribute show at the Churchill Theater, where he photographed the spectral singer photobombing an autograph-signing session. But it was not until two days after the show that Reece noticed the ghostly singer in the picture, as Reece told News Shopper:
“I was looking through the photos with my friends that I saw it. My friend was like: ‘what is that in the corner, were there balloons?’ When I looked at it I was genuinely quite shocked, it was very distinct, not like other photos of you see of that sort of thing. I cannot say I believe in ghosts but it is very spooky.”
Reece’s mother Angela, who accompanied her son to the show, added:
“It is certainly very spooky to say the least. The image is so clear. Sometimes you can see these things in photos, it is an image of something but you are almost willing it to be something else. But you look at that and it is clearly a face and it does look like Michael Jackson. And the fact it was a Michael Jackson event and there he was makes it all the more eerie.”
Or more easily explained?
Michael Jackson’s ghost seems to be making quite a career for himself, as there have been several alleged sightings of his spectral figure since reportedly “appearing” in the background during an episode of Larry King Live! in July 2009. This turned out to be the shadow of a crew member passing in front of a light, however, this has not stopped the singer’s “ghost” appearing at his own memorial service; on a the hood of a car; on a tree stump; and even giving testimony in court.
These seemingly eerie events could all be a case of the afterlife copying art, as back in 1996, the singer starred in a short film co-written with Stephen King and directed by Stan Winston called Michael Jackson’s Ghosts, which is also a timely reminder that Jackson has a new single out.
They Sold Their Souls for Rock N Roll is a mildly notorious 2004 Christian indoctrination video series meant to scare kids away from Satanic rock music, and even apparently some easy listening and country and western as well. (Young people have eclectic iTunes playlists and the devil’s minions know this.)
With an awful lot of screen time to fill, the producers of They Sold Their Souls for Rock N Roll didn’t just go for the more obvious targets—KISS (aka “Kids in Satan’s Service”). Led Zeppelin, Ozzy, Judas Priest, etc—they dug deeper into the Satanic morass, managing to pull Garth Brooks, Billy Joel and even Liberace into their rambling and logically spurious “thesis” which is spread out over either four or ten volumes (there are two versions):
Is it true that Satan is the master musician working behind the popular music scene and influencing our youth?
Fasten your seat belts as you go on an eye-popping ride upon the roller coaster of Rock, and find out how Rock’s most popular artists have Sold Their Souls for Rock and Roll. In this mind-blowing exposé Pastor Joe Schimmel reveals just how Satan has been effectively using popular music to undermine God’s plan for the family and ultimately heralding the coming of the Antichrist and his kingdom on earth.
This full-length video series contains 10 hours of eye-popping, rare, and some never before seen footage that will leave you picking your jaw up off the ground, as you see hundreds of artists (most of whom are not covered in the abbreviated 3-hour version) being used by Satan to destroy many lives. Come behind the scenes with us as we expose the deceptive agendas of many of yesterday and today’s secular artists, such as: Elvis, The Doors, Led Zeppelin, U2, Creed, Madonna, Britney Spears, DMX, Tupac, Tori Amos, and many more.
It’s time to remove the blinders - guard yourself and those you love from one of Satan’s most powerful tools!
Ooh, talk about earnest. Naturally Marilyn Manson gets blamed for a lot of this devilish devilry and figures prominently, but ascribing all that infernal power to a dude who spends two hours doing his make-up before he leaves the house never seems to strike the producers as even the teensiest bit silly…
Pastor Joseph Schimmel is not actually the host of the series, as stated on the box cover—it’s actor Grant Goodeve who you might recall from The Love Boat, Eight is Enough or Northern Exposure. But if that is Schimmel breathlessly reciting the voice over—you can hear his saliva hitting the mic throughout the entire thing, as he repeatedly trips over his words—he should have paid Goodeve the extra bucks to narrate as well as host. It sounds like he’s amped up on crank and drooling the entire time. Say it, don’t spray it, Reverend…
Here’s one particularly good short sample of the, er… charms, I guess, of They Sold Their Souls for Rock N Roll that explains how Michael Jackson used an Aleister Crowley-style ritual to contact the spirit of Liberace! Crowley gets blamed for everything here, don’t you know? Scroll in to about 2:20 to start.
Part one of They Sold Their Souls for Rock N Roll. Should you wish to torture yourself with more, it’s easy enough to find the rest. I recommend the Amazon reviews.
Totally tweaked! Once you take away the music from Michael Jackson’s “The Way You Make Me Feel” video you realize how utterly batshit it actually is. He looks like an unhinged serial stalker on methamphetamines.
