Every parent has a story like this. Your small child says something so honest and so funny that you’re still telling it years later.
Michael Jackson had one too. And the person who told it was his mother.
Tomorrow, Friday, Nov 13, marks 25 years since CBS aired “Michael Jackson: 30th Anniversary Celebration,” a two-hour special that Nielsen estimated about 45 million people watched in all or in part. The shows behind it were filmed at Madison Square Garden in New York on Sept 7 and 10, 2001. They marked 30 years since Michael’s first solo record came out in 1971.
Up on that stage, he was the King of Pop.
Out in the audience sat two very small people who didn’t care much about titles. Prince, Michael’s oldest, was 4. His daughter Paris was 3. Their little brother Bigi, who was called Blanket back then, wasn’t born until February 2002, so he missed the whole thing.
To get a feel for the kind of night those two kids were part of, start with the full show from the Garden.
The full Madison Square Garden anniversary concert from 2001
Katherine Jackson is Michael’s mother. She was born May 4, 1930, which makes her 96 now.
In June 2010 she gave an interview to Britain’s Mail on Sunday, published on Sunday, June 20. She was 80 at the time and raising Michael’s children. Partway through, she shared a story Michael had once told her about those anniversary shows.
Here it is in her own words.
“Michael told me a story. He said the two little ones were in the audience. When he got backstage they said, ‘So you’re a big star, huh? When I grow up I want to be just like you!’ And Michael said he got the biggest chuckle out of that.”
So you’re a big star, huh?
That’s a 3-year-old and a 4-year-old sizing up their father after watching a huge New York crowd cheer for him. You can almost hear the little voices. It sounds like they’d just worked out something brand new about him, and they wanted to check.
Katherine said that was close to the truth. According to her, it was only “some time after” Michael took them to that anniversary concert that Prince and Paris began to understand how famous their dad really was.
Until then, he was just Daddy.
You can see what had their little heads spinning in Michael’s own part of the Sept 10 show, where he takes over the stage on his own.
Michael’s full solo set from the second night, Sept 10, 2001
If you only have a few minutes, skip ahead to one song. This is “Billie Jean” from the first night, as the Garden crowd saw it.
Michael performs “Billie Jean” on the first night, Sept 7, 2001
Thousands of fans that week went home talking about the hits. Michael went home with a line from his own kids, and it was the part he wanted his mother to hear.
She kept it, and nearly a decade later she shared it with the rest of us.