ASPEN JACKSON

Michael Jackson’s Aspen Visit Showed a Troubled Man

By David Frey, 6-27-09

Add this to the list of Michael Jackson memories, and to the ongoing struggle to understand the enigmatic man behind the sequins and dark glasses.

You can’t claim celebrity status without ending up in Aspen sometime. I think it’s written in the celebrity union rules somewhere. The King of Pop was no different.

Aspen should have been a good place for Jackson. Locals have a famously low-key approach to the A-listers who haunt the slopes and the shops. Paparazzi have become a phenomenon, but they’re still rare.

For the famously reclusive Jackson, this should have been the perfect Neverland to get away from Neverland Ranch. But Jackson not only managed to get himself noticed. He nearly got himself arrested.

Why he thought it would be a good idea to go shopping in the Glenwood Springs Wal-Mart wearing a ski mask is a mystery. But there are many mysteries behind Michael Jackson.

It was February 2004. Jackson reportedly had holed up with family at Meanwhile Ranch, a luxurious 15-bedroom castle up Snowmass Creek with hefty timber trusses and a massive great room reminiscent of a national park lodge. (This piece of Michael Jackson history could be yours; it’s on the market for $27.5 million.)

Jackson could have just hibernated at the 12,000-square-foot compound, but he didn’t. He hit the town. He was spotted walking the streets and checking out the wares at The Sharper Image wearing a ski mask, an orange hat, a blue jumpsuit and silver moon boots. A similarly-dressed boy – reportedly his nephew but dubbed the “mystery boy” by the paparazzi – was at his side. His burly Nation of Islam coterie of bodyguards was close at hand.

It’s as if he couldn’t decide whether he wanted to be noticed or unnoticed. It’s as if he didn’t realize that trying to disguise his identity with this bizarre garb would only draw more attention. It’s as if he became so isolated from the rest of the world that he didn’t know how to walk around in it, unless he was moonwalking around in it.

He lived for fans and hid from fans. He became a stranger from the planet, and, it seems, from himself.

He showed up with the ski mask and bodyguards at Ritz Camera in Aspen, too.

‘When he first came in, I thought we were being robbed,” an employee told the Aspen Daily News at the time.

The masked man showed up again at the Wal-Mart in Glenwood Springs. Workers were still shaken by a recent unsolved murder that happened inside the store. They were none too keen to see a guy in a ski mask walking around with a bunch of burly gentlemen escorting him.

Jackson left, but not before employees got a description of his vehicle. When Glenwood police chased him down, they found the King of Pop in the car. He wore the ski mask, he told police, to stay incognito.

But …

But …

But if you want to hide from the public, why go to Wal-Mart? If you want to avoid calling attention to yourself, why go shopping in a ski mask with a bunch of bodyguards?

The answers seem to lie in the troubled mind of a man whose superstardom chased him to his grave. His life on stage seemed to leave him blinded by the stage lights. He couldn’t see the world beyond. He couldn’t seem to understand the man in the mirror.

Jackson’s odd behavior has left the public scratching their heads since “Thriller,” at least. His indulgent Neverland Ranch, his purchase of the Elephant Man’s remains, his chimpanzee, his fixation with children. Criminal allegations of child molestation were never proven, but outside the courthouse where the trial was taking place, he danced on the rooftop of his SUV for fans, like they had caught him at a private party instead of a criminal proceeding.

Why?

Over the years, his face lightened. His hair straightened. His nose narrowed. His chin dimpled.

Why?

And what killed him?

It’s fitting that this mystery man died in a mystery. The boy star, with a Peter Pan complex, grew up, but he never got old.

Maybe the autopsy reports will tell us if drugs did him in, but regardless of the autopsy, it seems clear that one way or another, stardom killed him.

Even more than Elvis, Michael Jackson became utterly lost on the earth. He didn’t fit among Aspen celebrities, and he couldn’t go shopping at Wal-Mart, either.

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