14. It just kept gettin' better…
 
The Jackson 5 made their first concert appearance as a Motown
attraction at the Philadelphia Convention Center on Saturday
evening, 2 May 1970. Despite their terrific record sales, no one
could have guessed how popular they had become in barely five
months. More than thirty-five hundred screaming fans mobbed
Philadelphia International Airport hoping to catch a glimpse of the
young brothers. Only a huge force of Philadelphia's finest and
airport security officers protected the Jacksons from being
completely overwhelmed.

The scene was repeated the following evening at the concert,
with one hundred police officers forcing the audience back from
the stage time and time again. Three motorcycle-escorted
limousines managed to get The Jackson 5 back to their hotel after
the concert. Once Michael got into his room, he broke down and
started crying.

‘Michael [who was eleven years old] was scared to death,’
Jermaine said. ‘The rest of us were more amazed than scared, but
Mike was genuinely frightened. "I don't know if I can do this forever," he said.
 "Maybe for a little while, but not forever.”’

The pandemonium served as a warning to Motown that the
next time the brothers made a concert appearance, the company
should be better prepared.

That same month, The Jackson 5's second album, ABC,  was
released. It would go on to be even more successful than the debut
album, selling 867,756 copies. After the second album was
shipped, Berry arranged for the family to move from the home on
Queens Road to a bigger one on Bowmont Drive above Trousdale
Estates. Liberace lived nearby, as did Davy Jones of The Monkees.
‘They [the Jacksons] were kicked out of several houses,’ Berry
Gordy explained to Michael Goldberg in an interview in Rolling
Stone. ‘You see, they would make too much noise. They had their
band, and we would put them in a house, and then they would get
kicked out. We'd lease another place, and they would make too
much noise, and they would get kicked out.’

In July 1970, The Jackson 5 broke attendance records at the
Los Angeles Forum, raking up 18,675 paid admissions. The
concert grossed $105,000.

‘I was at that concert at the Forum with Berry and Diana,’ said
the group's producer Deke Richards. ‘We almost got trampled to
death. Before they started ‘The Love You Save’, Michael said
something like, "Here it is, the tune that knocked The Beatles out of number one",
and that caused sheer pandemonium.

We were in the third row, and in the middle of the concert we heard this
tumultuous sound and the rows were folding one at a time, people
falling over themselves. Someone ran on to the stage and got the
kids off. They didn't even finish the song. Berry, Diana and I got
out of our row just in time before it was toppled over by kids
trying to get to the stage.’

A month later, the company issued The Jackson 5's first ballad,
‘I'll Be There’. Switching gears to a ballad seemed to Gordy to be
the obvious next step, yet it would have to be the right song in
order to be accepted by fans accustomed to an upbeat sound. ‘I'll
Be There’ was a tender blend of soulful pleading and sweetly
delivered inspiration.

To the strains of harpsichords and keyboards,
Michael's performance was flawless. The song is considered to be
the one record that solidified The Jackson 5's success as versatile
recording stars. It was number one for five weeks in America,
selling more than two and half million copies worldwide (250,000
of these in the UK alone). Its top positioning in the UK was
number four, and it remained on the British charts for more than
four months!

‘I'll Be There’ pushed Neil Diamond's ‘Cracklin' Rose’ out of
the number-one position on Billboard's  pop charts and became
Motown's biggest-selling record; the company claimed that
over four million copies were eventually sold, but actually the figure
totalled some 800,000 copies less than that, at 3,178,523 copies. In
the end, The Jackson 5 became the first act in pop music history
whose first four singles each became number-one hits on the
Billboard chart. Or, as Michael put it, ‘It just kept gettin' better and
better.’

In October 1970, the group took their act on the road again for
additional dates on the East Coast. Three dates in Texas were
placed in jeopardy, though, when the concerts were opposed by
members of the Southern Christian Leadership Council's
Operation Breadbasket, an organization dedicated to improving
economic conditions in the black community. Dick Clark was
promoting the tour and Breadbasket representatives felt that
someone black should have been hired by Motown. ‘That's
absolutely ridiculous,’ Berry Gordy said. ‘Black, white. What the
hell's the difference as long as we all make money?’

Still, the protestors had leaflets printed up and were preparing
to picket at the concert sites. The press was waiting for a scandal.
‘Just what we need,’ Berry told a Motown promoter working with
Dick Clark. ‘Cancel. Tell Clark to cancel the whole goddamn state.
They'll see The Jackson 5 when they get some sense.’ The dates
were cancelled.

‘The Jackson 5 are bigger than any race issue,’ Berry Gordy
said later. ‘No one can tell me how to run these boys' careers.
Black or white, I make the decisions. This is my group.’
No doubt, Berry's declaration would have been news to
Joseph.

By January 1971, twelve-year-old Michael Jackson understood
that entertainment was a difficult business. He had witnessed as
much for the last couple of years, but still managed to take in his
stride the pressures of recording, touring and making television
appearances. His success was still too new to be anything but a
constant thrill.

‘This is the best thing that ever happened to us,’
Michael said of his family's accomplishments.

‘Miss Ross has told me that people in show business can get hurt.
I don't see how.’

At this time, Motown issued The Jackson 5's fifth single,
‘Mama's Pearl’. On a stylistic par with their previous upbeat
singles, this one featured Michael in the lead again, of course,
surrounded by his brothers offering an occasional lead line through the verses.
There were buzzing guitars on the choruses, and the
Corporation's swirling production throughout.

From the beginning, there had been some hesitation about
‘Mama's Pearl’. Deke Richards had decided to have Fonce Mizell
and Freddie Perren work on it without him to see what they would
create. Deke walked into the studio to find Michael singing the
lyric, ‘He said what's mine is his and his is all mine…’ What they
had come up with for Michael was a song called ‘Guess Who's
Making Whoopie (With Your Girlfriend)’, which was about girl
swapping, certainly not the right image for the youngster. Deke
had Fonce and Freddie rework the lyrics – not the track – and, in a
short time, they came up with ‘Mama's Pearl’.

Even though the record ‘only’ went to the number two on
Billboard's chart, it was number one on Cash Box's, so Berry was
satisfied. In the UK though, it only peaked at number 25.

The year had been off to a sentimental start when, on 31
January, The Jackson 5 returned to Gary, Indiana, their hometown.
At this time, Jackie was nineteen; Tito, seventeen; Jermaine,
sixteen; Marlon, thirteen; and Michael, twelve. On behalf of
Mayor Richard Gordon Hatcher's re-election campaign, the group
was asked to perform two concerts at Westside High School.

The distance between Gary and Los Angeles can be measured in miles,
but the distance between Gary and stardom can only be measured
in light years. Going home as stars, the Jackson brothers arrived in
grand style, in a helicopter that landed in Westside High's parking
lot where two thousand students had gathered in subzero weather
to greet them.

Both concerts were sell-outs. Fifteen thousand lucky ticket
holders came to pay homage to five homeboys. Two years ago,
many of these same neighbourhood kids had thrown stones at the
Jackson house to taunt the group as they rehearsed; now they were
sharing in their success, proud to know that they'd all come from
the same streets.

As the spotlights revealed the Jacksons in their
rainbow-hued regalia, the group's fans could not be contained. The
gym was packed to the rafters with what was probably the noisiest
audience the boys had so far encountered. There were so many
flashbulbs popping at once, it looked as though flocks of fireflies
had come to swarm.

After the first concert, Mayor Hatcher escorted the Jackson
family back to their former residence on Jackson Street, which
had, for the day, been renamed Jackson 5 Boulevard in their
honour. A sign was placed on the lawn in front of the old
homestead at 2300 Jackson Street: WELCOME HOME
JACKSON FIVE. KEEPERS OF THE DREAM. Afterwards, as
the limo pulled away, fans hurled themselves at its tightly closed
windows. Inside, the boys smiled and waved, amazed at the frenzy.
Their next stop was city hall, where the group was presented with
individual keys to the city. The boys had returned home as heroes,
symbols of hope.

In his speech that day, Mayor Hatcher said he was honoured that
‘The Jackson 5 has carried the name of Gary
throughout the country and the world, and made it a name to be
proud of.’ Joseph could not have been more proud of his boys. He
stood at the podium and said, ‘One thing I have always told my
boys is that you're either a winner in this life or a loser, and none
of my kids were ever gonna be losers. I'm proud to say that they
proved me right.’

The Jackson 5's next single, ‘Never Can Say Goodbye’, would
be released in March 1971, and peak at number two a month later,
selling almost two million copies. It only managed a number
thirty-three positioning in the UK though, so Gordy was becoming
a little concerned about the group's international appeal. Still, it
was a memorable record. The song's writer, actor Clifton Davis,
recalled, ‘

This was an emotional song that meant a lot to me when
I wrote it. I was worried that Michael might not understand the
lyrics of pain and heartbreak. I recall him asking about one of the lines.

"What's this word mean? Anguish" he asked me. I explained it.

He shrugged his shoulders and just sang the line.

"There's that anguish, there's that doubt," he sang. And I believed him.’