My American Dream Sounds Like the Jackson 5

There was a great piece on NPR this morning about the song "I Want You Back." In it Harvard History and Literature professor Jack Hamilton says:
 "I consider "I Want You Back" to be the best pop record ever made, by such a wide margin that I can barely entertain a conversation. It's three minutes of shimmering and sustained explosion. I can't remember where and when I first heard it but I've wanted to listen to it forever ever since."

What a treat to hear him say these things as I was getting ready for work this morning. You can hear the whole thing on the NPR website.

I Want You Back Live on American Bandstand

There are many things I like about the J5's first appearance on American Bandstand but I especially love the performance of "I Want You Back."  Their dance moves look well-practiced and close to perfect but the song was still relatively new, and they hadn't yet toured so they hadn't already performed it hundreds of times. A year later, they'd be rushing through the first verse and the chorus as part of a medley they would go on to perform in every concert -- and Michael would continue to perform the snippet in concert for the rest of his career. Complete live versions of "I Want You Back" are rare.

Here Michael sings the lead vocals live over his brothers' prerecorded vocals and instrumentation.  He can barely stand still enough in front of the microphone to get all the words out -- he so obviously wants to break into dancing (and those of us watching him would like him to, too).  He makes two rare mistakes. The first occurs at the :50 mark -- he sings "Those pretty faces always treat you" instead of  "Those pretty faces always made you."  No big deal, really, and a few seconds later he even appears to be laughing at himself.

The second mistake is more obvious and it occurs at the end of the song. It looks like Michael forgot that they had prerecorded an extended ending, and that he thought the song would end like it did when they first performed it a few months earlier on The Ed Sullivan Show. At 2:55, he looks momentarily startled that the music didn't end on his "I want you back!" but then he picks up and just keeps singing, giving us the most soulful conclusion ever to the song.

Around the World with "I Want You Back"

Over the years, I've collected copies of "I Want You Back" from all over the world, many of which were issued with picture sleeves. Most countries used the same two early pictures of the Jackson 5 for their picture sleeve. The most common photo was used by Denmark:


And Germany:


And Israel:


And the Netherlands:

And Sweden:


Spain used the same photo, too, but they also added the baby pictures of each of the five brothers. This is my all-time favorite sleeve:


France used another common photo from 1969:


And Turkey gave the same photo their own artistic spin, making it one of the oddest picture sleeves out there:



Italy used a variation on the Jackson 5's first LP sleeve:


As did Japan:


And Yugoslavia:


Portugal and Norway both used the same outtake from the Diana Ross Presents the Jackson 5 photo shoot.




South Africa issued the record without a picture sleeve, but considering that it came out during Apartheid, it's amazing that the record was issued at all.

Happy Birthday, I Want You Back!

Forty-one years ago today, kids across America awoke to the opening piano glissando of a brand new song that had just been released by a hot new group called The Jackson 5. We were hooked from the get-go, and many of us ran out to buy the 45 as soon as school was out.


We played the song, and its fabulous flip side, over and over again. At that time, most of us didn't even know what the Jackson 5 looked like. They wouldn't make their first big TV appearance until a few weeks later. But, for us, the music alone was enough. It's hard to imagine in this YouTube era of instant gratification, but back then, all we had was a shiny black disk and the sounds it made when we placed it on a turntable. We would listen again and again, then flip the record and listen some more, and then flip back and listen again. We listened alone and with friends, at home and at parties. We'd wait for those opening strains to show up on our favorite radio stations, finding comfort in the fact that other people were hearing it, too.

Whenever you come across used copies of "I Want You Back," you'll find that most of them are scratched up and battered, showing clear signs of how often it was set down on the turntable, how many times it was flipped from the A-side to B-side and back again, and how many times someone picked up the needle at the end to place it back at the beginning of the song to start it all over again.

Over the past forty-one years, I have probably listened to "I Want You Back" a few thousand times, and every time I hear that opening piano glissando, it's like hearing it for the first time.

Because One Volume Just Wasn't Enough...

Nineteen more remixes of "I Want You Back" from the British bootlegger. Volume 1 had eighteen. You could spend the whole day listening to different versions of "I Want You Back" -- and you still wouldn't find one as good as the original.

I Want You Back Acetate

To record collectors, acetates are like gold. They are never easy to come by, and J5 acetates seem to be especially scarce. They are prized by collectors because they sometimes offer unreleased songs, or unreleased versions of familiar songs.

I took a chance on an eBay find several years ago -- an acetate of "I Want You Back." I had read that the Jackson 5 had been used as singers on the demo versions as the members of the Corporation were working out the tune and lyrics, meaning that the song was recorded in multiple alternate versions. I had hoped that this would be one of them but alas! it was not. It's still a nice little piece of music history.

Don't get me wrong -- I think the finished version of "I Want You Back" is about as close as one can get to a perfect song. I don't particularly want a different version as a replacement of the original. I'd just like to hear how they got there.