Long before he served as an A&R executive for Columbia, Sire/Warner Bros, Verve, and Concord Music, Joe McEwen was a music journalist with a special focus on R&B and soul. He wrote the 1977 book Sam Cooke: The Man Who Invented Soul, and profiled everyone from Aretha Franklin and George Clinton to Pops and Mavis Staples, Don Covay, and Allen Toussaint for newspapers and magazines, including Rolling Stone. His new book, Tastykakes, Soul Songs & Shining Stars: Affections and Reflections 1973–2025, is a collection of his greatest works. You can pre-order it here.
One of the many highlights is a profile of Michael Jackson that McEwen wrote for The Boston Phoenix in October 1977. It’s a fascinating glimpse of Jackson just a couple of years before Off the Wall turned him into a global superstar, and he became extremely reluctant to grant interviews. Here’s an exclusive excerpt.
LaToya Jackson answers my questions in a polite but perfunctory monotone. Yes, she misses Los Angeles. No, she hasn’t seen much of New York. Though I’m still not sure how 21-year-old LaToya spends her time, the reason for her being in New York is simple enough—she’s here to provide family presence for her younger brother Michael. Michael, of course, is Michael Jackson. The Michael Jackson, who is in New York for six months to film The Wiz.
The two Jacksons live in a snug, $2,000-a-month Sutton Place high-rise. A mirror lines one short wall of the living room; several pieces of plump pea-green furniture sit on thick carpet. The initials of the interior decorator are emblazoned next to the mirror. Though Michael and LaToya have been living in New York for over a month, the living room shows little evidence of occupation. If it weren’t for a few issues of Right On and Rock and Soul stacked unobtrusively on a table near the window, the room could pass for the living room of the building’s model apartment.
At five o’clock Michael returns from a day of rehearsal, flanked by a personal bodyguard and his CBS Records chaperone and appointment-maker, Steve Manning. There’s a small huddle between Steve and Michael. Apparently, Michael wants to eat dinner at a friend’s house, and he doesn’t want the company of a guard. A few minutes later, Steve passes Michael a note. Michael begins shaking his head. “No,” he says in a voice as soft as one of the cushions in the living room, “unh-unh, please, no.” The note tells Michael that one of his guards, an off-duty New York City detective, will be here in a half-hour or so. Michael’s face clouds. “This is hard, I’m invited to dinner by some friends of mine and the guards have to be with me. Everything you say to a person, they have to hear it.” In the gentlest of voices he adds, “There’s nothing private.” Then he bursts out, excited by the thought, “That’s why I can’t walk to the corner drugstore alone.” At 19, Michael Jackson isn’t allowed to walk to the corner drugstore alone. “There’s threats against my life,” he adds, subdued again. “But sometimes this gets really terrible.”
* * * * * * *
One swelltering summer, I worked in a Sears warehouse unloading refrigerators. It was grim work and its only saving grace was the companionship of the people I worked with. Toward the end of the summer, one of them came back from a weekend, excited by a group he’d seen at the Uptown, a combination movie-house and soul showcase in North Philadelphia. It seemed word had spread through his neighborhood about a group of youngsters from Indiana who, though last on the bill, were stealing the show from more hardened headliners. “It was the damnedest thing,” he kept repeating—and damned if it wasn’t. Four months later, their first Motown single was released and word of the Jackson 5 was spreading through more than just neighborhoods.
The Jackson 5 proved to be the last great Motown act—the final thing for Berry Gordy’s assembly line. As the latest in a line of black, child singing stars (Little Esther, Frankie Lymon, Little Stevie Wonder) and family groups (Staple Singers, 5 Stairsteps), the J5 fulfilled the idealized model for each category. For the Jacksons, just as for the Staples, it was a matter of image, and the image in this case was rambunctious but polite; funky but clean-cut. Their appeal cut across racial boundaries. White and black adolescents bought their records in staggering numbers. For a time the group even hosted a Saturday morning TV show. Like O.J. Simpson and Rodney Allen Rippy, the Jackson 5 embodied the new black middle class.
Though often dismissed as bubblegum soul, the early Jackson 5 hits were intricate and infectious. A song like “I Want You Back” (1969) emitted a combination of grade-school brashness and pre-teen innocence, delivered with the thorough professionalism of seasoned entertainers. But gradually the sound softened. The schoolyard simplicity and fever of “ABC” (1970) was replaced by the more mature “Never Can Say Goodbye” (1971) and the pubescent Michael Jackson’s own “Got to Be There” (1971). One of the biggest-selling hits associated with the group was Michael’s “Ben,” a soft, furry love song about a you-know-what. Moving from the alphabet to rodents was hardly an evolution, but the Jacksons reached a point where they could sing about anything and still sell records.
* * * * * * *
Jackie, Tito, Jermaine and Marlon all had their fans, too, who cut the pinups out of Right On and pasted them on bedroom walls, but it was Michael who separated the Jackson 5 from their host of imitators. Not only did he spin and dip like a miniature James Brown and move with Las Vegas assurance, he also had the ability to make even the most improbable moments sound believable. Few would deny that the bridge on “ABC,” when an 11-year-old Michael suddenly blurts, “Sit down, girl, I think I love you. No, stand up and show me what you can do,” is a moment of pop music transcendence.
Even though the Sylvers have stolen some of the Jacksons’ (they are no longer the Jackson 5) adolescent thunder, the group has maintained a steady record of hits since their early barrage. While it’s true that it took months for the not-so-exceptional single “Enjoy Yourself” to earn its mark as a gold record, the group is still big. Besides, the Jacksons have grown up and it’s more than a little unsettling to think that Michael is 19. At the moment his career is straddling middle ground. Too old to carry “ABC” successfully, Michael is still too young and too innocent to project a credible mature romanticism. Though an Epic publicist bubbles that Michael will be a big, big star someday (and I don’t doubt it), 19 is an age of transition. A movie like The Wiz seems a good way of helping him bridge the gap.
While child stars come and go, washed out at 15 and forgotten at 20, Michael has withstood intense exposure for eight years—a remarkable feat for any performer. He’s been in training for his career since he was 5 years old. It’s a life that is as foreign to me as mine would be to him.
* * * * * * *
Fiddling with a tiny gold ornament on the table in front of him, Michael sits in his bedroom in front of rows of video cassettes, ranging from Star Wars to tapes of TV shows. A television flickers soundlessly to the side. When he talks, his voice barely seems to rise above a whisper, but it’s a whisper that floats like a balloon and is just as vulnerable—it’s still easy to forget that he is 19.
“My father always had a good time laying around and playing guitar. My brother Tito would sneak in and play it while my father was at the steel mill working. One day my father came home and found a string broken. He found out it was Tito and got real mad. This is the honest truth, he said, ‘Let me see what you can play. It better be good.’ Tito played and my father was amazed. He started saving up money for equipment, amps and instruments. We would come home from school every day and rehearse. There was a big baseball park behind our house. While the other kids would be out playing and having a good time, we would be rehearsing. In fact, when I was five, which is as far back as I can go, all I can remember is singing and more singing.
“I would sit on stage at shows and watch James Brown and Jackie Wilson perform. I would watch and really feel it, particularly the crowd and the way they reacted. That’s what I wanted to do. I felt it so much that it seemed like I could just run up there and do what they did. I sat there every day and watched. I remember the snow in Gary and I remember being sleepy all the time in school. We would be singing in clubs from midnight until dawn and then going to school in the morning. I remember always keeping a pocketful of money. We would only make ten dollars a night but the money people threw on the floor would sometimes come to three hundred. A lot of kids were friendly just because of the money, but back then I was too young to care.”
Late in 1975, the Jacksons ended their association with Motown and switched to Epic. Though many of the company’s old stars had already left, it seemed that the Jacksons, like Diana Ross, would be permanent Motown fixtures. One Jackson chose to stay—Jermaine, who married Berry Gordy’s daughter and was given the chance to be a solo artist.
“Being at a record company is like being at school. If you’re not happy with the principal or the school, you go to another. At Motown we wanted to do our own writing, but that wasn’t in our contract and they wouldn’t give it to us. We didn’t have publishing rights either and we had trouble getting a proper accounting of our money. Now we have our own publishing company and we can record anybody we want.”
* * * * * * *
“Jermaine wanted to be a solo artist and that’s what makes him happy. We were changing companies and he didn’t think it was a good idea. He wanted to stay at Motown. Jermaine hasn’t had a chance to really put himself on record. His music now is just what other people write for him but it’s not really Jermaine. It’s the same for us. There’s a lot of music inside of me that I haven’t brought out. We put our hearts into other people’s songs but they’re not ours, they’re not really us. I like to write about more than ‘I need you baby, come and hold me.’ I like writing songs about a chair or a tree or a lonely man. Odd things, like the Beatles song ‘The Fool on the Hill.’ Those are the type of songs I really like.”
Years ago it was rumored that both Marvin Gaye and James Brown were going to Sweden for sex-change operations. Things haven’t changed. Not only is Michael supposed to marry the actor Clifton Davis, but a recent issue of Jet retails a rumor that Michael and Tatum O’Neal took a sauna together in the nude. It would all seem laughable, but one wonders about the effect on somebody as sheltered as Michael.
“Those things are signs of success. I had a talk with Diana Ross about that and she said people used to say similar things about her, that she was starving to death and that’s why she was so skinny. That type of envy and jealousy is a real mark of success. Some people get a nervous breakdown over things like that but I don’t let it bother me. I just be myself. I don’t worry that if I stand a certain way they’ll think I’m one. It does bother me when little kids come up and ask me about it. Even things that are true, people exaggerate. Like Tatum O’Neal and I did take a sauna but we weren’t naked.”
* * * * * * *
It’s hard to miss Nipsey Russell’s voice. Not only is it loud, but it cackles and caws. It’s lunchtime at the Wiz rehearsal and Russell is dominating a table that includes the director, Sidney Lumet, Diana Ross and Michael with a monologue about black artists having to go to Europe to get recognition. The arguments are familiar, but Russell seems particularly vehement, though the immediate reasons aren’t clear. Occasionally Ross interjects and at one point she mentions Donna Summer. Russell scoffs at Summer’s name and in exasperation Ross counters, “Well, shit, Nipsey.” It’s a moment of rare humanness for Diana Ross, who, without wig or makeup, suddenly seems, well, real. Michael, who has been staring at the door, looks up and whispers in Lumet’s ear. Both look over at me and then Lumet mumbles something and the conversation abruptly ends.
“I seem to get along best with people in show business,” Michael is saying. “But I don’t have many friends that I want to be friends with that are my own age. Diana Ross is very close. She’s like a second mother. When we first came to Los Angeles, we lived with her for a whole year. She helped raise us and teach us things. She’s always been there and she always looks out for me. Sometimes, though, I look at kids playing in a playground and l wonder what that really feels like. I never did run in the streets or any of that stuff. I never was really free.”
Our conversation ends. It’s time for Michael to leave for dinner. He sticks a video cassette of one of the group’s early Ed Sullivan appearances into the machine. Suddenly the television screen is filled with a familiar sight. A tiny button-nosed kid skitters and bobs around stage, microphone in hand. Behind him, his four older brothers smile and play instruments that aren’t plugged in. A din of incessant screaming provides a backdrop for the songs. On screen, Michael grins and sings, “Sit down, girl, l think l love you. No, stand up and show me what you can do.” Michael stares at his image without showing much interest. Dressed and ready to go, he says goodbye and leaves for his friend’s house, bodyguard in tow.
2024 postscript
“Who cares about Michael Jackson?” was the immediate response from my editor when I first broached this opportunity to spend time with Michael. This was understandable in 1977 when the Jackson family brand had lost considerable luster and star shine since their meteoric success during much of the group’s tenure at Motown. Significant hits were getting scarce and the Jacksons seemed to be at a point where they were too old to be teen stars and too young and unproven to forge a path forward.
President Ron Alexenburg of Epic Records signed the Jacksons to a substantial advance. Inside CBS Records the signing was privately mocked as “Ronnie’s folly.” To make matters worse, Motown had the copyright to the Jackson 5 name. As a group they now were just the Jacksons.
As I write this in 2024, Sony Music and the Michael Jackson estate have agreed to a deal that would give Sony 50 percent ownership of Jackson’s recorded masters and vast publishing catalogue.
The deal has been valued at $1.2 billion.
For a nuanced and insightful overview of Michel Jackson’s life and career I encourage the reader to pick up the thoughtful culture writer Margo Jefferson’s book On Michael Jackson (Vintage Books, 2007).
Michael Jackson (August 29, 1958–June 25, 2009)
Excerpted from the book Tastykakes, Soul Songs & Shining Stars: Affections and Reflections 1973–2025. Published by ZE Books. All rights reserved. Copyright © 2026 by Joseph McEwen.
