Michael Jackson was 13 years old and sitting on the “American Bandstand” set with Dick Clark. Kids from the studio audience sat right behind him. Clark had letters from viewers, and he read the questions out one at a time while Michael answered.
The episode aired on Saturday, July 1, 1972, according to the fan-run MJ Ultimate Archive, which lists Michael singing “Rockin’ Robin,” “Ben” and “I Wanna Be Where You Are” that day. His brothers joined him later in the show for “Lookin’ Through the Windows.”
“Ben” was the big one. It came out as a single on July 12, 1972, and it went on to spend a week at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. It was Michael’s first solo No. 1 in America. The song was written for the 1972 film of the same name, and it later won a Golden Globe and picked up an Oscar nomination.
School with jugglers
One letter was simple: “what school do you go to.” Michael was a working kid by then, recording and touring with the Jackson 5, and his answer wasn’t what most viewers would have pictured.
“I go to private school in the Valley,” he said. Another fan wanted to know if the kids stared at him “because you’re so rich and famous.” Michael said it was “not because of it.” The other students were “already in the business,” he explained, “like there are other singers, dancers and aerialists and jugglers and tumblers and so on.” That was his classroom in 1972.
Then came “who is your favorite singer.” “I like the Temptations, Three Dog Night and Staple Singers,” he said.
The Osmonds question
Then Clark got to the Osmonds. “We picked this one because this was the most frequently asked question,” he said. The Jacksons and the Osmonds were two families of singing brothers, and fans wanted to know: “do you know the Osmond Brothers and are you friends with them or do you fight like fiends, you hate each other, tell the truth now.”
So what did Michael say?
Michael was about eight weeks away from his 14th birthday, and his answer was simple. “We met in Canada and we had a good time together,” he said. They’d come to the hotel “and we talked a while.” Then he added the part that settled it: “and we have a basketball game coming up.”
“I would love to see that,” Clark said. He added that he knew both groups and they were “equally talented.” He called them “about the greatest folks I’ve met.”
Michael Jackson answers fan letters with Dick Clark on “American Bandstand” (1972)
This is a fan upload (channel MJJFan4) of the 1972 interview, and it runs about three and a half minutes. The school letter comes at about 1:44, the “rich and famous” question at 1:52 and his favorite singers at 2:09. Clark reads the Osmonds question at about 2:25, Michael answers at 2:33, and Clark responds at 2:41.
The clip comes from an old TV recording, so the picture is soft. If you only have a minute, start at 1:44 and let it run to about 2:50. That covers the school answer and the Osmonds letter back to back.
What came next
Michael’s “Ben” single reached stores 11 days after the broadcast. The film was a spin-off of “Willard,” a 1971 movie about rats. When the Academy Awards came around in 1973, “Ben” was up for Best Original Song. It lost to “The Morning After” by Maureen McGovern.
The Bandstand letters had nothing to do with any of that. They were about a 13-year-old’s school, his favorite singers and a basketball game with the Osmonds that was still to be played.