Stevie Wonder is one of the most beloved names in American music. He signed with Motown as a boy back in the early 1960s, and over the years he gave the world songs like “Superstition” and “I Just Called to Say I Love You.” He has also been blind since he was a tiny baby. Doctors say he lost his sight not long after he was born. So Stevie knows the people he loves not by their faces but by their voices and the sounds around them.
One of those people was Michael Jackson, the singer the world came to call the King of Pop.
The two of them go way back. Stevie still remembers first hearing that a family of brothers from Indiana was headed to Motown, and then one small voice rose up out of the group. That voice belonged to a very young Michael. The friendship held for years, and the two even sang together on record more than once.
A while later, Stevie told Rolling Stone about one day with Michael that he could never shake loose. Because he couldn’t watch it happen, he holds onto the whole thing by what reached his ears.
The way he tells it, the two friends were out on a kind of safari one day. Michael loved animals his whole life, so a trip like that was a dream for him. They rode in a truck that had bars built around it to keep the lions back. For most people that would feel close enough. Not for Michael.
He could hear Michael lean toward the driver and ask if they could pull in a little closer to the animals. The driver did just that.
Then it happened.
A giant roar went up right beside them, the kind of sound that rattles your chest. And the curious, fearless Michael who had just begged to get nearer went completely quiet. For the man who was usually up for anything, that silence was really something, and Stevie has chuckled about it for years.
Sound tied the two of them together another time too. Riding in an elevator with Michael one day, Stevie started softly singing Michael’s own 1987 hit “The Way You Make Me Feel” right back to him. He mentioned that he loved one line in the song. Michael grinned and owned up to something. He had borrowed that little bit from one of Stevie’s own records, a song called “Go Home.” Stevie says the confession made him feel pretty good.
Two old friends, one who had never seen a thing and one the whole world could not stop watching, swapping songs in an elevator.
You can picture them best in the real photos of the two side by side, from Motown’s Hitsville studio in Detroit to the Grammy stage in 1986, back when they were young and the music still felt brand new.