Namely Marly

My daughter and I watched This Is It recently and as a result I became a little MJ obsessed this week. I hear it’s a common condition after watching the movie so be prepared. I’ve been listening to his music, working on my moonwalk, and even watching a couple of interviews with the King of Pop.

And I’ve been more than a little dumbfounded at the inane questions most of these interviewers asked. For example, Martin Bashirs in his documentary, Living with Michael Jackson, asked myopic questions that focused on the same kinds of issues the tabloids were promoting; making his interview nothing more than a high-brow, in-person tabloid.

It seems to me that interviewers focused on the high-profile idiosyncratic features of MJ’s personal life and had nothing to do with who he really was, his music or creative genius.

I decided to develop my own list of questions I would have liked to have asked if I were given the privilege to talk with Michael Jackson. Some of these are typical of my name interviews and others are based on things I would have liked to have known about him.

1. I noticed that very few people called you Mike. Was that at your request? You prefer Michael?
2. I’ve heard some people call you MJ. Do people often confuse you with Michael Jordon? Others call you Applehead. Where did that come from? Do you have any other nicknames?
3. I’ve read that you’re a strict vegetarian. Does that mean you’re vegan? If so, what made you decide to be a vegan?
4. You said recently that you write nearly a 100 songs for each album and that, obviously, most of these songs don’t make the cut (that would make for an awfully long CD). Smooth Criminal was one of the songs that almost ended up on the cutting room floor. Do you think there might be other songs in that discarded pile you should look through?
5. If you were asked to give advice to parents of an extremely talented 9 year old boy that was getting ready to sign a recording contract, what would you say to them?
6. I heard that you knew all the tempos, keys, and intricate riffs of your songs. Is that because you’ve performed them so many times? Or do you have a type of musical photographic memory?
7. Is there some performing skill that you wish you were better at? For example, were there some notes that were consistently difficult for you or some dance move you just couldn’t get?
8. What songs/artists are playing on your ipod today?
9. You seem to wear a lot of red. Is there some significance of that color for you?
10. On the cover of Music and Me, it shows you playing a guitar. Do you play?
11. Your fame has resulted in a lot of prosperity and I know you’ve helped a lot of people. I like to imagine what I would do if I had all the money I wanted. High on my list would be buying my mom a perfect house and taking her on a cruise. What is one of your favorite things that your financial stability has allowed you to do.
12. Oprah asked you in 1993 what was the one thing you knew for sure. You answered that you’re on a journey and still learning. I’d like to ask you that question again now. What is the one thing you know for sure?
13. I know a lot of people have said a lot of very mean things about you. Are you able to take comfort in the love and praise you get from the millions of other people who adore you? Does the good outweigh the bad?
14. Your life is like an extremely exaggerated version of what we all go through. We all experience public humiliation at some time or another. We all are subjects of oftentimes painful gossip. We all are subjected to the domestication of the human spirit. Based on your experience in dealing with all of this in such an extreme manner, what advice would you have for people in dealing with professional setbacks or personal attacks in their own lives?
15. How do you write a song? Do you write the lyrics first? Or does the music and the words come to you all at once?
16. I’ve noticed that a few of your songs have personal names in them: Ben, Billie Jean and Annie. What made you use these names?
17. Do you think your name has impacted your life in any way?
18. Do you like your name?
19. How interesting is it that you grew up on Jackson street. Did you think that was kind of cool when you were a kid?
20. A lot of parents talk about the difficult process of selecting the right name for their child. What’s the process you used to name your children?
21. Of the songs you wrote and performed, which is your favorite and why?
22. Can you describe for me what it feels like to be standing on a stage with thousands upon thousands of people chanting your name.
23. If you could have a clone living in an alternate universe, what name would you give him?

And I would end the interview by telling him what I know he’s heard so many times before, that his music has touched so many people in so many ways. But I would also tell him that I’m sorry for the sadness in his life and that I truly hope we could all learn to be a little kinder to each other. It seems like that was a message he tried to send out in his music.

So that’s my list of questions. What’s on your list of questions you would have liked to have asked Michael Jackson?

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Tags: Interviews with Michael Jackson, Living with Michael Jackson, Martin Bashir, Michael Jackson, This Is It

This entry was posted on Monday, July 5th, 2010 at 12:43 pm and is filed under Namely Entertainment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.