It was the summer of 1985. Ever since school had let out I’d been driving my parents nuts with my taped radio recordings of anything MJ. Thriller had been out for a few years already but I’d never even owned a record, more or less a Michael Jackson record before. Plus, my father’s turntable was OFF LIMITS. So it was me, my GPX radio and whatever blank tapes I could find.
Maybe it was the bedroom wall plastered with any and every clipping of Michael I could find, or the three or four buttons I rocked on my French Toast jacket (we didn’t have Members Only money) but somehow my Dad got the hint.
So on my 10th birthday I got the gift of my first album ever-Thriller. He must have just bought it because the price tag was still on it (of course I didn’t care). I peeled off the plastic and slid the record from the sleeve. I took a second to read the lyrics that came inside and this crazy monster illustration next the the “Thriller” text. I snapped out of it just long enough to remember there was music to be played! The first time I was allowed to put the needle on a record was to fill our Brooklyn apartment with the classic and funky “You Wanna Be Startin Somethin”…
And MJ definitely started something that day…R.I.P.
