Dilan
Proud Member
- Joined
- Nov 18, 2012
- Messages
- 826
- Points
- 43
LN: I love your performance of "Who's Loving You" that Smokey Robinson wrote, but became popular because of Michael Jackson. Did you ever meet Michael? How do you see him as artist, and his place in music history?
TTD/SM: As much as any other cause or excuse, Master Michael used his tremendous influence and control of the Beatles' catalog to ensure that my way was compromised. I can honestly stand before God at Judgment and testify that the great Master Jackson was a bona fide, life changing 'pain in my ass', the 800 pound Gorilla in the room never mentioned but always felt, if not seen. I have always found the grand irony in the fact that the Beatles, whose songs opened and changed my life, would be the same group used in the hands of my great nemesis, to, in effect, kill the same life that those songs had first given life to. Isn't Irony a rather witty and cold hearted bitch?
He hated me. And yet, circumstances being as we find them, none of that made him any less a Hero to me for all that he had already done to inspire my youth, and coming together as a servant of the music. In many respects, it can be said that he helped to steal my life. And yet, because he did, he may have also helped to prolong it, preserve it and place me onto another plane of perspective wherein I might dwell and succeed, in this wonderful new life, that he may well be a viable part of having to help establish. I always felt, and still, that had he not used his power to crush my scene and its influence, and had other powerful forces not concurred, my competition might have made him, at that stage of his life, an even greater artist than the genius that he already was.
I would have challenged him, kept my foot in his ass, and dared and invited him to challenge me, all in the interest of the best that we could have been and the benefit it might have been to the industry and its fans and employees. History will show that despite his spectacular status well earned and deserved, avoiding and helping to nullify the fact of my existence did neither of us any great favors. Bear in mind that Sony was scared shitless of myself and Master Jackson being close. Then again, so was the F.B.I. & the C.I.A. Particularly African American talent is watched and scrutinized carefully that they not put their minds together towards anything not on the system's agenda, lest they inspire greater discussion and participation in the body politic among those regarded as their "People".
Being a fatal nemesis aside, his place in the music Pantheon is unquestioned. He was truly, though a part of a tradition, one of a kind, and never to be seen again. And neither do we deserve to see his kind again. We are by and large a bunch of bastards, and use our geniuses as forms of pagan sacrifice. Especially once they become worth more dead than alive. In the final analysis, who was I to have expected better treatment from him? Heroes at war is the history of heaven.
TTD/SM: As much as any other cause or excuse, Master Michael used his tremendous influence and control of the Beatles' catalog to ensure that my way was compromised. I can honestly stand before God at Judgment and testify that the great Master Jackson was a bona fide, life changing 'pain in my ass', the 800 pound Gorilla in the room never mentioned but always felt, if not seen. I have always found the grand irony in the fact that the Beatles, whose songs opened and changed my life, would be the same group used in the hands of my great nemesis, to, in effect, kill the same life that those songs had first given life to. Isn't Irony a rather witty and cold hearted bitch?
He hated me. And yet, circumstances being as we find them, none of that made him any less a Hero to me for all that he had already done to inspire my youth, and coming together as a servant of the music. In many respects, it can be said that he helped to steal my life. And yet, because he did, he may have also helped to prolong it, preserve it and place me onto another plane of perspective wherein I might dwell and succeed, in this wonderful new life, that he may well be a viable part of having to help establish. I always felt, and still, that had he not used his power to crush my scene and its influence, and had other powerful forces not concurred, my competition might have made him, at that stage of his life, an even greater artist than the genius that he already was.
I would have challenged him, kept my foot in his ass, and dared and invited him to challenge me, all in the interest of the best that we could have been and the benefit it might have been to the industry and its fans and employees. History will show that despite his spectacular status well earned and deserved, avoiding and helping to nullify the fact of my existence did neither of us any great favors. Bear in mind that Sony was scared shitless of myself and Master Jackson being close. Then again, so was the F.B.I. & the C.I.A. Particularly African American talent is watched and scrutinized carefully that they not put their minds together towards anything not on the system's agenda, lest they inspire greater discussion and participation in the body politic among those regarded as their "People".
Being a fatal nemesis aside, his place in the music Pantheon is unquestioned. He was truly, though a part of a tradition, one of a kind, and never to be seen again. And neither do we deserve to see his kind again. We are by and large a bunch of bastards, and use our geniuses as forms of pagan sacrifice. Especially once they become worth more dead than alive. In the final analysis, who was I to have expected better treatment from him? Heroes at war is the history of heaven.