The problem was that Joseph didn’t take losing very well, so none of us knew how to behave in defeat. We knew there was nothing to gloat about, but there didn’t seem any great reason to be disappointed either. It was Marlon who broke the ice as we packed our stuff and headed out. ‘Least we won a colour TV!’ he said, speaking for everyone as we sensed the end of watching programmes through the coloured hues of a plastic sheet.
But Joseph didn’t see any consolation in the prize. ‘There is only one winner, and winning is about being number one, not number two!’ he said, sharing his stare equally among us. We didn’t collect our colour TV that day: Joseph said we didn’t deserve it. There is no reward for second place.
I WISH I HAD ARCHIVED THOSE precious times and kept a diary or maintained a scrapbook, especially now that Michael has gone. A deep loss makes you grasp at nostalgia, wanting to recall every last detail of every experience you once took for granted. Things happened and moved so fast that performances and years have merged into one. In my mind, those early years of the Jackson 5 are a bit like a high-speed rail journey: the places en route whizzed by, and it’s only the departure, the destination, and certain memorable stations that remain vivid. Between 1966 and 1968, most weekends were spent on the road building our reputation. We played before a mix of audiences: the friendly, the enthusiastic, the drunken and the indifferent. Usually, just the sight of five kids walking on stage got people’s attention and the ‘cute’ factor was on our side, especially with Michael and Marlon up front. It was the best feeling when our performances animated a reserved crowd.
Mr Lucky’s, the main tavern in Gary, was where we spent many week-nights and where we earned our first performance fee: $11, split between us. Michael spent his on candy, which he shared with other kids in the neighbourhood. ‘He earns his first wage and spends it on candy to give to other kids?’ said Joseph, bemused. But when it came to ‘share and share alike’, Michael wore the shiniest halo; we were always encouraged by Mother to think of others and do the good deed.
Meanwhile, our parents backed our progress by investing in a ‘wardrobe’. Our customary uniform was either a white shirt, black bell-bottomed pants and red cummerbund, or a forest-green shiny suit with crisp white shirt. Mother had made all the alterations to our suits on her sewing-machine and a lady named Mrs Roach sewed ‘J5’ into the jacket breast pockets. I remember that detail because she sewed them on crooked and something felt imperfect but, for once, uncorrectable.
If we weren’t performing at Mr Lucky’s, we were at the supper club Guys and Gals, or the High Chaparral on the south side of Chicago. Often, we didn’t go on stage until 11.30pm on school nights and didn’t arrive home until 2am with school the next day: five brothers always asleep as we pulled into the driveway of 2300 Jackson Street.
One show night, we arrived outside some hotel in Gary and soon understood our city’s reputation as a rough place, infamous for crime. Folklore had it that if you dug deep enough you’d find the roots of the OGs – the original gangsters – before gang culture spread east to New York. I don’t know about that. All I know is that we discovered being ‘local’ offered no immunity from violence. It was dusk and we were carrying our equipment inside via the back entrance when Joseph was stopped by five thuggish 20-something men. ‘Do you want some help with that?’ asked one, grabbing a mic stand.
Joseph thought he was being robbed so he refused to let go of the stand and pushed away the man. The next two or three minutes happened quickly as all of them turned on him and he hit the ground under a windmill of punches. Michael and Marlon screamed, ‘JOSEPH! JOSEPH! No! No! No!’ The gang started using our drumsticks and mic stands as weapons. Joseph curled into a ball, covered his face with his forearms and took the beating.
Meanwhile, Michael had sprinted to the nearest phone booth at the bottom of the street and called the police. ‘I couldn’t reach, so I had to jump up to drop the coin into the slot!’ he said afterwards. By the time he ran back, the gang had fled and Joseph was being helped to his feet by hotel management. He got hurt real bad: his face was mashed up and had already started to swell. Someone ran inside to grab some ice and he used it to wrap the hand he had fractured. He had also suffered a broken jaw. Sitting on the bumper at the back of the van, he steadied himself. Then, through one-and-a-half eyes, he looked at us: ‘I’m okay.’ He told Michael and Marlon to wipe their tears. ‘You can’t perform in that state,’ he said.
‘You want us to go on?’ asked Jackie, incredulous.
‘People are here to see you – people are expecting to see you,’ he said, gingerly getting to his feet. ‘I’ll go to the doctor in the morning.’ That night, we had to pull ourselves together and focus on our performance. Joseph was ever-present, nursing his hand, with Band Aids on his face. He had taught us another hard, if unintentional lesson: whatever happens, the show must go on.
I DON’T REMEMBER DOING HOMEWORK ON school nights. We ate dinner and got ready to perform. Homework assignments were something we crammed in at weekends or scribbled in bed in the mornings. That was when our childhood started to become eclipsed by adult duties. There was always a new show to prepare for, a new routine to rehearse, or a new town to conquer.
Aged nine, Michael had to grow up fast. As we all did. We now had a profession where other kids had nothing to do but play all the time. But had it been any other way, we might never have broken through as the Jackson 5, and the world would never have known Michael’s music. Things were as they were meant to be. We found real joy on stage: we looked forward to it in the same way that other kids looked forward to whatever pastime brought them enjoyment.
With Mr Lucky’s and Guys and Gals offering us regular work, Joseph quit his canned-food-factory job and reduced his hours at The Mill to part-time day shifts. Our fees can’t have been all that good, but he maintained his gamble on the great future he banked on. Mother fretted, obviously, but Joseph reassured her that the momentum was building. She nodded silently in agreement and then, knowing Mother, she probably worried herself to sleep and said countless prayers to Jehovah.
What she didn’t immediately know was that some of the late-night acts that followed us included strippers. That was the variety of bar acts back then and we often came offstage to find half-naked ladies in fishnets and suspenders waiting in the wings. If Christmas and birthdays were a sin in the eyes of Jehovah, then sharing a venue with erotic strippers was tantamount to hanging with the Devil, so you can’t blame Joseph for not detailing our exact itinerary to Mother. But the game was up one night when a stray lacy accessory found its way into one of our bags. Mother marched out of our bedroom holding an elaborate nipple tassel between her fingers. ‘WHERE did THIS come from?’ For once in his life, Joseph was speechless. ‘You have our children up all night when they have school in the morning and you have them peeking at NAKED women? WHAT kind of people do you have our sons mixing with? This is QUITE the life you are showing them, Joseph!’
We brothers viewed such incidents differently. In my mind, a woman’s body is hypnotic and beautiful, but Michael saw these women as degrading themselves to tease men, and men treating them like sex objects. Yes, he gawped and giggled like the rest of us, but his lasting impression formed differently. He always remembered one regular stripper – her name was Rosie – tossing her panties into the crowd and jiggling her bits as men tried to touch her. Michael always hid his eyes. ‘Awww, man! That’s awful. Why she do that?’
Mother has said that she didn’t realise there were strippers until she read Michael’s autobiography. I think that’s the ‘official’ line for the sake of the Kingdom Hall. Not that her objections had anything to do with being a Jehovah’s Witness. As she says, what mother of any faith would want her young sons mixing in such an environment so late at night? I think that was where the crucial difference lay between Mother and Joseph. She viewed us as her sons and often worried about the impact of