Michael Jackson—The Androgynous Black Elvis

Don McLean sang how the music died the day Buddy Holly's plane crashed into a cornfield in Iowa. But the Texas Bopper admitted he owed it all to Elvis Presley---the “White Negro” --a likeable, swivel-hipped hillbilly through whom America was formally introduced to the sex and violence of the subterranean soul of America—no longer hidden beneath the cerebral riffs of jazz.

It was called Rock and Roll.

But more than a musical idiom, the beat was a sanitized expression of the American existential crisis of the second half of the last century—the era of what Norman Mailer called the hipster—later to be reduced, in a somewhat different form, to “hippie”—reaching its most pure early expression in psychopathic bohemian philosophers, like Jack Kerouac, who were pushed (and ran) to the fringes of society—all the time superficially fusing aspects of the African-American experience.

The White Negro from Memphis became the undisputed King of Rock and Roll. English lads scoured the cotton fields of Mississippi in search of the blues—and the kids jived, puffed reefers, and thumbed their noses at the establishment.

But Elvis went Vegas and Hollywood, and then, as worn out Vinyl Heads will point out, on August 1, 1981 the music died again—MTV began broadcasting and became a cult sensation in white suburban teenage wasteland. The VJ's didn't feature any African-American entertainers—because by this point—rock and roll was an angst-driven pimply white thing.

On March 2, 1983 the MTV producers were persuaded to play the “Billie Jean” video—followed by “Beat it”--and the Androgynous Black Elvis virally reformed popular rock and roll by dipping back into its African-American roots and moonwalking across the TV screens of America.

Hipness was back.

Without MJ there never could have been a Ludacris or Jay-Z—but it is more universal than that. Without the King of Pop there still might have been a Timberlake or Britney Spears—but they certainly would not have been the same.

Michael Jackson's existential meaning was symbolically tied to the House of Elvis when he married Lisa Maria. And he also knew that a similar fate, as had befallen the King of Rock and Roll, was destined for the King of Pop.

Today on her MySpace page Lisa Marie, recounted a conversation she had with Jackson years ago.

"He stared at me very intensely and he stated with an almost calm certainty, 'I am afraid that I am going to end up like [Elvis], the way he did”

The similarities between Elvis and MJ are quite obvious— the enablers, prescription drugs, the self-imposed isolation, the wackiness , the handlers, and perhaps most striking-- their lifetime endeavors to experience the joys of childhood.

For many of us the death of Michael Jackson is kind of the end of childhood.

It's so sad that he had to sacrifice his for ours.