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"Popster" Magazine Interview

Publication date confirmed on Music Mags Blog (archived) (“5 December 1972”)

"Popster" Magazine (December 5, 1972) (archived)

By the time Michael Jackson was twelve, he was a national figure--a super-star of American pop. At thirteen, he was an international big name. He was fourteen on August 29, 1972... and not only growing upwards and outwards physically, but his reputation is also, incredibly, still growing.

He's a Virgo man. And when you meet him, it's no surprise to find that Virgo characters should be modest, industrious, energetic.

He says: "I don’t feel like a star. I feel like a youngster who has a lot to learn--'bout living, 'bout my business".

But the show-biz experts say there's nothing the kid can't do as he gets older... like being another Sinatra, or another Sammy Davis.

Michael would like to be a Sidney Poitier one day. "That guy is just a great, great actor", he says.

"I've seen all his movies. He gets intensity through to his audiences audiences... we try to do that with our music".

This superstar Jackson never stays still for long. One minute he'll be drawing cartoons, listening to records at the same time... Ray Charles "Georgia" can be guaranteed to bring tears of admiration to his eyes.

He digs Three Dog Night, too. He loves the ballad voice of Johnny Mathis; the excitement of James Brown... and can imitate both of them to perfection!

And he's a terrific practical joker. When he and brother Marlon get together with a touch of wickedness in their eyes... well, anything can and does happen!

He was the first Jackson to make a solo record, so maybe it was only natural that people thought he might be going solo for good.

"Nope", he says, and he's real serious now. “it's just that we have different sides to our nature, our personality--and so we do our own things, then we're only too glad to get back together again as a group".

Michael has been singing since he was four. He remembers some of the first records he heard and his own efforts to sing along with them--like Drifters on “Under the Boardwalk“, and that Isley Brothers' oldie “Twist and Shout", which was later to become a vital part of the Beatles' act.

And as he got up to his 'teens, people were amazed at how he could sing songs of love, romantic things, and make it sound like he was baring his soul...

"I do talk a little on stage about how I come to feel the blues", he says. "I get a song, work it over in my mind a little, and it comes out... I don‘t force it. It just comes out. But I listened a lot, too. I became a blues singer by ear, I guess. Just played it by ear."

And he adds: “We work to get our sound, and then do it on stage and it's drowned by all the screaming. That doesn't worry us. It's that audience reaction that helps us work. Those fans are part of the act, too, you know."

When the family lived in Indiana, Michael liked to go up into the hills and just sort of soak up the quiet. He'd catch lizards, then let them go. He's mad on animals of all shapes and sizes.

Now he's by no means a loner. "When I'm not working. I like to have people round me. But that's no problem--everybody in our family is my best friend, so I'm never lonely."

Michael and the others live in a super twelve-room house just an hour's fast drive from Hollywood and they have their own swimming-pool, basketball arena, plus volleyball, pin-table machines, recording studio, menagerie (that's for Michael!).

So they don't go out to find a good time; and anyway it's not so easy for pop superstars just to stroll round town, window- shopping or visiting the local drugstore.

Says Michael: “When I do go out, I generally have a security man with me. or my own chauffeur or whatever."

"But don't make it sound like I'm some kind of prisoner. I've had a lot of lucky breaks so far, and it's no hardship that I'm sometimes not as free as if i was unknown..."

Since childhood, Michael has got his education where he can--on tour, at home with special tutors, anywhere. But you only have to talk with him for a few minutes to realise that he's a clever and shrewd boy.

He's seen a lot of the world already. He can remember when the family had no money--and that helps you live with big money when it arrives.

"I'm lucky", he says simply. And he says it like he sings - with soul, and from the heart.