What Is And What Never Should Be

July 14, 2009. London, UK. Some alternate universe.

Last night’s hotly anticipated comeback concert, the first of 50 such concerts scheduled, left the sold-out audience in London's 02 stadium shocked, amazed, and stunned. Jackson, who had largely remained out of the public eye since his acquittal on child sexual abuse charges in 2005, revealed a blistering new stage show that included many of hits, several notable covers of his contemporaries and influences alike, and an angry obscenity-laced finale that will surely be remembered as one of the most electrically-charged and gripping performances of the singer’s career.

Amber stage lights illuminated a spare stage in the stadium's center, revealing a trio of guitar, bass, and a small drum kit, with Jackson emerging into the light to perform a rendition of Elvis Presley’s “That’s Alright, Mama.” Jackson wore a red leather suit clearly meant to remind viewers of a certain age of the black leather version worn by Presley in his 1968 comeback television special. Throughout this first song, Jackson stirred an already near-hysteric crowd with some slight Presleyan dance moves – a shaking leg, a jutting hip –built with the song’s momentum to include the full retinue of Jackson’s trademark moves. Joined by this time by a much fuller (and fully-electric) band, backup singers and dancers, “That’s Alright, Mama” slid slickly into Jackson’s own “Smooth Criminal,” complete with moon-walking, his tiptoed full-stops, and so on.

A bit of a greatest hits review followed –the Thriller album was well-represented, as were hits from the ‘70s like “Rock With You” and “I’ll Be There.” Jackson seemed to nod to President Obama by performing a kind of mash-up of James Brown’s “Funky President,” Parliament-Funkadelic’s “Chocolate City,” and elements of the Special AKA’s “Free Nelson Mandela” and the late Brenda Fassie’s “Black President,” a song composed Mandela by the South African pop singer. This song led into a stirring “Man in the Mirror,” followed by an up-tempo investigation of Elvis Costello’s 1977 song, “(The Angels Want To Wear My) Red Shoes.”

The funk icon (and similarly reclusive) Sly Stone joined Jackson on keyboards and backing vocals for three Sly & The Family Stone hits – “Sing A Simple Song” and “Stand,” versions of which Jackson had recorded along with the Jackson 5, followed by a triumphant and clearly heartfelt “Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)." Stone, looking frail but funky in a paisley suit, waved to the crowd midway through this last number, leaving Jackson to complete the song alone.

In the second of three encores, Jackson dedicated a medley of songs to his father, Joe Jackson, who died just this past June 25th of cardiac arrest. Unexpectedly, the songs were in no way sentimental about the troubled relationship between father and son. Beginning with the relatively staid Gladys Knight song, “Daddy Could Swear,” Jackson later segued into material that displayed a great deal of unresolved anger and hurt with “Bloody Mother F*cking Assh*le,” as written by Martha Wainwright, then Superchunk’s punk anthem “Slack Motherf*cker.” The audience, in turn stunned and riled up with Jackson’s raw and vivid energy, hardly seemed to know what to do, except to ask for more.

In his last appearance on the stage, Jackson returned from the wings alone, holding an acoustic guitar, which he went on to play with serviceable aplomb. His final two songs, probably the closest to a confessional act as we’ll ever get from the King of Pop, was a fraught adaptation of Nick Lowe’s song “The Beast In Me,” perhaps better known from Johnny Cash’s American Recordings, followed by a strangely sad and mournful acoustic reworking of “Ben.” Jackson’s 1972 song about friendship with a fictional and telepathic killer rat seemed, in this context, to be an act of attrition towards his own thirteen-year old self, some 37 years gone.

With forty-nine concerts left to perform in this stadium over the next year, and possible retirement beyond, one hopes that Mr. Jackson can continue to put on shows of this magnitude and spectacle – with a vitality not seen since the late 1980’s -- for a good long while to come.

Of the opening act, a tuxedoed man in a grey fedora who solemly read the lyrics to "Billie Jean" over a karoke track, the less said the better.