Death of a showman

Death of a showman
戏子之死

Jun 26th 2009
From Economist.com

Michael Jackson made great pop records, lurid headlines and lots of money
迈克•杰克逊灌了很棒的唱片，爆了很劲的头条，还赚了很多的钱。



FOR a life so extraordinary the manner of Michael Jackson’s passing on Thursday June 25th was utterly banal: a middle-aged man succumbing to an apparent heart-attack. (There was speculation that an alleged dependency on prescription painkillers may have been a contributing factor.) During his progress from child prodigy to the self-styled “King of Pop” and, more recently, an eccentric semi-recluse, no part of Mr Jackson’s private life had given any other hint of normality. But behind the mask that plastic surgeons had made of his face was a keen brain for wringing cash out of pop music—and for spending it.
生命璀璨绚丽如迈克•杰克逊者，在6月25日星期四的过世竟如此苍白平淡：一中年男人心脏病突发去世。（也有人猜测，据传迈克依赖止痛处方药，由此加剧病情。）从音乐神童到自成一格的“流行乐之王”，到最近迹近隐居的怪胎，杰克逊先生的私生活没有一处是正常的。而在他历经整形的面具后，是颗敏锐的脑子，懂得从流行乐中如何捞钱——如何花钱。

Mr Jackson first performed on stage at the age of six, accompanying his four older brothers. The Jackson Five, under the strict stewardship of their manager and father, signed to Motown Records in the late 1960s and began producing a string of hit records—a sequence of success that Mr Jackson continued in a 30-year solo recording career. It is reckoned that his final tally of album sales is around 750m—the most that any artist has sold. And one of those, “Thriller”, released in 1982, became the most successful yet seen, shifting 65m units. This record may well remain unchallenged: sales of albums have suffered as pop fans these days prefer downloading individual tracks from the internet.
杰克逊先生六岁那年首次登台演出，一并还有他的四个哥哥。杰克逊五兄弟在经纪人兼父亲的严格管教下，在二十世纪六十年代初跟摩城唱片签约，录制了一连串的热门唱片——他三十年的单飞生涯延续了辉煌。据说他总共卖了约7亿5000万张唱片，冠绝同行。其中1982年发行的《颤栗》是迄今为止最畅销的唱片，陆续卖出6500万张。这项记录很可能后无来者：如今流行乐迷偏爱上网下载单曲，唱片销售业因此受挫。

The length of Mr Jackson’s career ensured that he experienced, popularised and even pioneered many of the techniques that help artists to profit from their musical talents. At the beginning of his career, touring was a vital component of performers' incomes, though a shift to earning money from selling records was well under way. By its peak, in the 1980s, touring had come to be seen by the music industry as a loss-making promotional tool to shift albums.
杰克逊先生漫长的职业生涯使他得以经历、发扬甚至引领许多技术，襄助歌手从音乐才能中获利。他入行初期，巡回演唱是歌手收入的重要部分，虽然那时利润正逐渐转移到唱片销售上。在其巅峰时刻，二十世纪八十年代，音乐行业视巡回演唱为促销唱片的砸钱手段。

Mr Jackson did not invent the pop promotional video, as he is sometimes credited with doing. But he took this art form to new heights with the lavishly expensive video he made in 1983 for the title track of the “Thriller” album. He brought in one of Hollywood's top directors, John Landis (best known for “The Blues Brothers”), and spent an unprecedented $500,000 on the 14-minute miniature epic. But it was money well spent: the launch of MTV, two years earlier, whose format was being copied by other broadcasters, meant that videos had rapidly become one of the most valuable tools for marketing recorded music, and more cost-effective than concert tours. The “Thriller” video was broadcast incessantly all around the world, pumping up the album's sales.
杰克逊先生没有发明流行乐促销录影，虽然时或有人认为是他干的。不过杰克逊先生1983年耗巨资给《颤栗》主打歌制作的录影把这种艺术形式提升到了新的高度。他请来好莱坞顶级导演约翰•兰迪斯（因《福禄双霸天》闻名），破天荒投入五十万美元拍了一段十四分钟的短片。不过这钱也是花得其所：两年前出现的MTV音乐电视网说明录影正迅速成为销售录制音乐的上佳手段，较演唱会性价比更高。《颤栗》录影在全世界不间断播出，唱片销售也节节攀升。

At the height of his success Mr Jackson and his team of managers made the shrewd calculation that the value of pop music was wrapped up in the publishing rights to songs just as much as in record sales. In 1985 he paid $47.5m for ATV Music, which owned the copyrights to most of the Beatles' songs. Ten years later he sold half his interest for $150m to Sony. The value of his stake was probably around $500m when he died. This was roughly equal to the upper estimates of the debts he was struggling to refinance, which he had amassed funding his increasingly bizarre style of living.
杰克逊事业鼎盛时他的经纪人团队精打细算，认为流行歌曲版权的收益不亚于销售唱片所得。1985年他花了4750万美元从亚洲音乐买来披头士大部分歌曲的版权。十年后他向索尼音乐出售一半版权，入账1500万美元。杰克逊先生生前所有股票约值5亿美元，大致相当他竭力再融资欲偿还的债务。这笔债务来自他日益怪诞的生活。

Despite his vast earnings Mr Jackson was forced to borrow huge sums against his stake in ATV and his future earnings (recently reckoned to be about $19m a year) to pay for his huge shopping sprees and the upkeep of “Neverland”, his ranch in California. Last year he announced plans for a long series of concerts in London to boost his income and pay off his creditors. Playing live has re-emerged as the way to make money from pop as falling sales, rampant piracy and digital distribution have slashed revenues from recorded music.
尽管收入不菲，杰克逊先生还是要从亚洲电视的股票h和将来收益中借来巨款（据最近估算约每年1900万美元）来满足购物狂欲和维持他在加州的农场——“梦幻庄园”。去年他宣布计划在伦敦举办多场演唱会来开源偿债。唱片销售低迷，盗版猖獗，数字发行削弱灌制唱片利润之际，现场演出重新成为流行乐赚钱王道。

Despite having built himself an extravagant fun palace, with its own zoo, fairground and elaborate topiary, Mr Jackson cut an increasingly lost and lonely figure in his later years. Though twice married and with three children, his closest relationships appeared to be with a chimpanzee and a succession of young boys. The questions raised by these unusual friendships continued to hang in the air until his death. He was acquitted in a Californian court in 2005 on charges of molesting one 13-year-old boy but reportedly paid $20m out of court in 1994 to head off other allegations of child abuse.
尽管杰克逊先生已给自己建了个奢华的游乐宫殿，内有动物园、露天游乐场、精心修剪的林木，他还是在近年削减了大笔开支，那里也不复他寂寞的身影。虽然他有两次婚姻，三个小孩，和他最亲密的却似乎是只猩猩和接连不断的小男孩。他去世那刻，因这种不同寻常的友谊而起的疑惑仍然不见消停。2005年杰克逊在被控猥亵13岁男童的审判中由一家加州法庭被判无罪，不过据传1994年他庭外支付了2000万美元来摆脱其他猥亵幼童的指控。

His status as a pop genius may well always be tainted by the strangeness of the life he chose to lead. Elvis Presley, still the unchallenged King of Rock’n’Roll, is increasingly remembered for his music, as memories fade of his own unusual private life. Mr Jackson would doubtless have craved to be held in the same public awe and affection (his dynastic ambitions even stretched to a brief marriage with Lisa Marie, Presley’s only child). But, sadly, for now he will be remembered by many as “Wacko Jacko” rather than the King of Pop.
他流行乐天才的地位总是被他选择的古怪生活玷污。虽然猫王埃尔维斯•普雷斯利不平凡的私生活渐去渐远，他依旧是不可撼动的摇滚乐天王，凭其音乐牢记世人心中。杰克逊先生无疑也渴望享受同等威望爱戴（这雄心成就了与猫王独苗丽莎•玛丽的一段匆匆姻缘）。然而，很不幸，如今留在世人记忆中的将是“怪人杰克”，而非流行乐天王。