Note: If viewing Michael Jackson Ultimate Archive on archive.org (Wayback Machine), please view the latest snapshot of this page for the most up-to-date information and media.
"Voice" Newspaper Interview
The Jackson Five (“and Family”) came to New York to put their “Special Las Vegas Show” into Radio City Music Hall for a week and I met them in a hotel room the day before it started [February 6, 1975] to find out what that meant. Jackie, who has a disconcertingly high, thin voice, and, at 23, is the oldest of the brothers, told me: “A Vegas show is a show that you play in front of an audience of people who have different ages–from the fifties on down–you know, all ages. So you have to satisfy all those people: you do a little of everything to get ’em on their feet.”
… They’re proud of their Vegas show, not just because of its slick, television-special professionalism, but because it means they’ve achieved a certain kind of show biz security: “Like Frank Sinatra,” according to Jackie. “He don’t have to put out a hit record, he can still go to Las Vegas and pack ’em in.” These five little rich boys are already thinking about the day the screaming stops; and when they’re too old for the color centerfolds and “Right On!” magazine, they can always fall back on the bouffant-wig and sharkskin-suit crowd in Vegas and Lake Tahoe.
…But no matter how much I love the others, it is Michael who is the group’s aesthetic focus. His stylized show-biz posing (the bends and turns arm out-stretched and sweeping the air in front of him; little self-hugs with his head thrown back) is becoming a little disturbing, at moments even grotesque for a boy who’s still a very skinny sixteen. But when he isn’t being Engelbert Huperdinck, he’s supreme and so controlled it’s almost frightening. In his hotel room, when he tells you he’s in eleventh grade, it might seem strange but it’s believable; seeing him on stage, dancing and striding confidently out to the edge (where a girl in a leopard-print cost springs up and gives him a note), you just know he had to be lying. I want to be Michael Jackson when I grow up.