Brit Music Scene

Jarvis Cocker Talks Michael Jackson, Brits Stage Invasion

Posted: 06 Jul 2009 01:43 PM PDT

Michael Jackson’s life and death has now been discussed ad nauseam by both the people who knew him and the people who didn’t. I must admit to being a little bit bored of the whole thing now. Michael Jackson was a great singer, songwriter, dancer, and performer. But he was not the second coming. It’s very sad that he has died at the tender age of 50, but since his death on June 25, thousands of other people have died around the world, many of them younger than Jacko, and all of them having had less of a privileged life.

However, there is one man’s opinion I still wanted to hear regarding the life and death of Michael Jackson. That man is Jarvis Cocker, who had a brief but very famous connection to the King of Pop. Cocker, formally a member of the Britpop band Pulp, appeared on the British television show Question Time last week and was asked for his opinion on the passing away of the once-great music artist.

He said:

“If there’s a tragedy about the whole thing, I would say that if he’d kept making records like he did in the mid-’80s up to now, that would have been great. But for the past 20 years he didn’t do that - for me, that’s the tragic part of it.”

The host, David Dimbleby, then asked him about that fateful day back in 1996 when Michael Jackson appeared at the Brit Awards to sing Earth Song. Pulp front man Jarvis was sitting at his table getting increasingly annoyed at Michael Jackson’s over-the-top, pretentious performance where he literally acted as if he were Jesus, able to heal children, old people, hell, the whole world. And Jarvis decided to act. He said:

“He was pretending to be Jesus. I’m not religious but I think, as a performer myself, the idea of someone pretending to have the power of healing is just not right. Rock stars have big enough egos without pretending to be Jesus - that was what got my goat, that one particular thing.”

The video of what Jarvis Cocker did to protest against Michael Jackson’s 1996 Brits performance is embedded below. At the time I was as shocked as anyone else at what I was seeing happen, but pleased that someone in the audience had the balls to actually get up out of their seat and ruin what was a ludicrous display of pomposity and ego.

I’m sure there are Jacko fans out there who hate Jarvis Cocker for what he did in the video above. But regardless of how much you adored Jackson, you have to admit that performance, and the song in general, was an egotistical display of cringe that even goes beyond what Bono and Chris Martin can manage. Together. On a good day.

[Photo Source: Newscom]

Post from: Brit Music Scene