of Mama Martha, but Mother quickly quashed that one. In the light of history, ‘Ronald’ doesn’t have the same ring to it.
Michael was the seventh child with seven letters in his first name and ‘7’ was his favourite number. So, numerically, his name is ‘777’. That’s the Jackpot there. The Lucky 7s. A number that appears only once in the Bible. There’s a lot that can be read into a name. That’s the power of its sound and interpretation; the story it can tell, and the memories it can evoke. But ‘7’ was central to his identity. He wore jackets with ‘7’ sewn into the arm. When he doodled on paper, ‘7’ was tagged all over. And what the world never saw were his pencil sketches in later life for a furniture range he had in his head. He drew throne-like upholstered chairs with ‘7’ carved into the centre of the oak frame beneath the seat, set within an intricate, floral design.
I think about all the names we considered across the years: song titles, album titles and names for our own children, all in search of the one name that sounds right. That is one reason why biographers should always have known that ‘The Ripples and the Waves’ was not a name we would have chosen as a group. To our amusement, the rumour went around, and made it into print, that this was our first name. It started, no doubt, because a song titled ‘Let Me Carry Your Schoolbooks’ was released by the Ripples and the Waves + Michael on the Steeltown Records label – which would become our first label. I suspect the use of the name ‘Michael’ was a deliberate marketing ploy aimed at catching our coat-tails. But this Michael was a Michael Rogers, and the Ripples and the Waves was another group.
Our first name could actually have been a lot worse. One lady suggested we needed something fancy like the El Dorados. We were in danger of being made to sound like some damn Cadillac. Luckily, that idea was sunk when we discovered there was another band from Chicago of the same name. Joseph wanted ‘Jackson’ in the name, but it had to be catchy. Our parents talked about ‘The Jackson Brothers 5’ and that was the lead contender until Mother had a conversation with a local lady named Evelyn Lahaie, who said, ‘It’s too much of a mouthful. Why don’t you just call them the Jackson 5?’ Mrs Lahaie ran ‘Evelyn’s School of Charm’ for local girls in Gary and seemed to know a thing or two about image, so that was how the Jackson 5 was born. On paper, at least.
JOHNNY RAY NELSON, THE KID WHO lived next door, was always good value for entertainment because his brother Roy would chase him out the front door with a crow-bar, Johnny running and giggling, Roy vowing to get him; playfighting, Gary style. When Johnny had stopped running and peace had returned, he’d overhear us singing through the open windows. He said he was always amazed by how we could harmonise so young.
Once, Michael was out front in the sunshine when Johnny said, ‘Sing us a song and I’ll get you some cookies.’ On cue, Michael stood there and sang. Sure enough, we all caught on to this neighbourhood perk and before anyone knew it, five brothers were lined up at the fence, giving Johnny Ray Nelson a private performance for a plate of his cookies.
BETWEEN 1962 AND THE SUMMER OF 1965, Joseph kept honing our performance until he felt we were ready. He fixed us a rehearsal timetable: Monday, Wednesday and Friday evenings, starting at 4.30 after school, and running, non-stop, until seven or sometimes nine o’clock.
By the early sixties, the Temptations had broken through to become our newest role models. In Joseph’s eyes, Dave Ruffin’s mellow but raspy vocals, with his stage presence, set the bar for what he wanted us to achieve. But he didn’t expect us to match him, he expected us to better him. The Temptations, for all their greatness, represented basement level in our father’s standards. There were groups all over America trying to be the next Temptations, he said. ‘You aren’t going to be the next, you’re going to be better!’
He illustrated his point with one hand in the air to show where we needed to aim. ‘We don’t want you here,’ he said, jabbing a flat hand at waist level. ‘We want you here’ – top of the head – ‘and when you’re here, we want you here!’ Two feet above his head. ‘Reach higher … always go for more …’ He didn’t want the audience reaction to be ‘Hey, they were good for a bunch of kids.’ He wanted ‘Wow – who are they?’ We would achieve this by creating a performance that pulled on the audience’s emotions, he said. ‘When they watch you, you’re controlling them and bringing them into your world. Sell the lyric. Make ’em stand and make ’em scream.’
Five boys, none of us yet teenagers, wondered privately how we would ever make people scream.
When she was doing the dishes, Mama Martha could squeeze every last drop of water out of a wet tea-towel. If it didn’t think it had one more tear left in it, she would prove it wrong. Joseph was the same with us. And as we saw our performance coming together, we understood better – and then we embellished it some more, especially Michael. When he told us to slide a certain way, or fall to our knees, or show a certain expression, we added more. We watched and learned from Dave Ruffin’s anguished performances and James Brown’s pained soul.
When the Jackson 5 went live, many people said the body language and emotion Michael demonstrated belied his years. There was talk – then and now – that he was an old soul tapping into feelings he couldn’t know, let alone understand, as a child. People even suggested that this showed how quickly he had been forced to grow up. The truth is simpler: it was nothing more than another child imitating adults. Michael was a master of imitation, as coached by Joseph – our drama teacher. Each time a song required heartache or pain, he told us, ‘Show it in your face, let me feel it …’ Michael dropped to his knees, pulled at his heart and looked … pained. ‘No. NO!’ said our harshest critic. ‘It doesn’t look real. I’m not feeling it.’
Michael studied human emotions on the faces of others in the same microscopic way he studied song and dance. Ask him then what he was doing and he would have parroted our father: ‘I’m just selling the lyric …’ His practice began to focus more on the required showmanship, so he played James Brown records, this time breaking down the music into steps and dance moves. Or he’d watch a Fred Astaire movie, lying on the living-room carpet in front of the television, chin on hands. He didn’t make notes: he just watched awestruck and soaked it up like a sponge. If ever he was in bed, and Joseph was at work, and James Brown or Fred Astaire came on television, Mother would come into our bedroom. ‘Michael,’ she’d whisper, ‘James Brown is on TV!’
Michael’s world stopped for either James Brown or Fred Astaire. He idolised the very ground they danced on.
We had a black-and-white Zenith TV and its reception depended on a metal coat hanger. We tried to make the picture ‘colour’ by adding one of those transparent plastic sheets that could be fixed to the screen back in the day. It had a blue hue at the top for the sky, a yellow-bronze as the middle layer for people’s skin, and green at the bottom for grass. We even had to use our imaginations when it came to watching television.
It became Michael’s tool for memorising everything. If he saw someone doing a move, he channelled it, as if his brain sent an instant signal to his body. He watched James Brown and became James Brown junior. He moved with a finesse that was fluid from the start. From the very beginning, he was a man dancing in a kid’s body. It was innate. He always knew his part, and never asked where he was supposed to be.
His confidence gave us confidence. Joseph restrung his old guitar and put me on bass. Like Tito, I had never read a sheet of music in my life but I listened, played and picked it up. None of us understood notes or chords, or anything like that. I still wouldn’t know my way around a sheet of music if you put one in front of me. Notes on paper – a written instruction – do not carry feeling. A musical ear comes from the heart. Take Stevie Wonder – his blindness proves that it’s all about playing from the heart.
Michael and I often shared lead vocals by alternating verses, but he was very much the group’s
