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Had enough of the fallout and grotesque revelations after MJ's death? Then go back to the beginning of his career with writer Simon Warner, who reminds us how great the pint-sized Motown dynamo of "I Want You Back" really was.--Barney Hoskyns, Editorial Director, Rock's Backpages

Over a lifetime, there are a number of those stop-you-in-your-tracks musical moments that seem to tattoo your soul. And, in a sense, those ear-turning songs that catch our attention and leave an indelible mark, tell our own individual stories: they mark out our childhood, schooldays, adolescence, first romance, leaving home, our years at college and so on. In potent, three-minute portions we are able to re-create our pasts--our joys, for sure; our hopes, too; our regrets, indeed--through a distinct chain of personal pop memories.

We all have different choices--our age, our sex, our backgrounds, our friends, will influence, considerably, what we hear and when--and some of the songs that affect us and infect us will become anthems of the age with which everyone is familiar. But others will be almost unique to the individual--songs that have specific resonance for us but have fallen between the gaps in terms of wider public recognition. For me, Fleetwood Mac's "Green Manilishi," Ace's "How Long" and ABC's "Poison Arrow" are just three tunes that come to mind, all of which have the power to re-kindle particular autobiographical episodes.

I guess, though, that one of the songs that has remained, for me, an enduring favorite--maybe, even, an all-time favorite--is a piece that is charged with an extra special poignancy this week. The debut single by the Jackson Five--a US number one, just like their next three 45s, a unique feat in itself--featured the exuberant, nerveless falsetto of a boy who was, bizarrely, to remain a boy for the next 40 years. The voice may have deepened a little, the furrows in his ever-changing brow may have deepened too, and the eyes may gradually lost their smile, as the years subsequently rolled by.

Yet--and this is the infinite pleasure of the great pop song--"I Want You Back," in that awesome 1969 edition, remains forever young. No matter what would befall the brothers Jackson--the split from Motown, the revelations about family bullying, the psychological and judicial catastrophes that would tangle Michael for the final two decades of his increasingly desperate life--the 2′ 58″ of jet black Motown vinyl remains a timeless document, a permanent record we might say.

Penned by The Corporation--Berry Gordy, Freddie Perren, Deke Richards, and Alphonzo Mizell--the team were responsible for the writing, production, and arranging of a track that would signal the arrival of not just Michael but a gaggle of siblings--Jermaine, Tito, Jackie and Marlon and Randy, all of whom featured in the eponymous brothers singing act, and also a trio of sisters Rebbie, La Toya and Janet, who each recorded their own solo work.

So why does 'I Want You Back' strike a chord for me? At the time of release, I was a pre-teenager but already a committed follower of the Top 40 and beyond. Nonetheless, I was also something of an outsider in terms of my musical affiliations. At my pretty well all-white, certainly all-male, middle class, state grammar school of the time (it was the same institution that journalist and broadcaster John Harris would attend a few years after), those who were interested in the current sounds--and there were many--tended to stick solidly to the non-chart album music of the day--Deep Purple, Free, Yes, prog and hard rock, for instance.

I had much less interest in those sounds. In fact, I had, probably, a greater predilection for black music of the time and Tamla Motown, at least in the commercial mainstream, represented the apex of soul style. Motown Chartbusters Volume 3, a greatest hits compilation with an eye-bending, op art, silver cover, was regarded as the perfect embodiment of the label's late 1960s UK output, with Marvin Gaye's brooding "I Heard It Through The Grapevine," Jr Walker & the All Stars' frenetic "Roadrunner" and Smokey Robinson & the Miracles' mournful "Tracks Of My Tears" the pick of a stellar bunch.

There were class tensions at play here: the white rock of the period had a cerebral charge on the face of it, linked to a countercultural cocktail of street protest, sexual liberation and narcotic relation while black music was regarded as chart-targeted form, superficial and ephemeral, a music for dancing to not thinking to.

The subcultural formations reflected this white/black divide--the grammar school long-hairs rejected the unbridled exuberance of soul; the closer-cropped secondary modern boys, skinheads or suedeheads with a mod-ish touch, favored songs they could move to and eschewed the politics of post-Beatles rock 'n' roll. On occasions, of course, these different tribal emphases led to trouble or, more often, threats of trouble as those youth factions patrolled the edges of their territories.

My place then in this adolescent hierarchy was rather uncertain and it was only my skills as a footballer that allowed me to rise above these binary oppositions and largely get along with those on both side of the socio-cultural divide.

Yet the clear memory remains--black music was the subject of derision for much of my high school experience. My tastes did, for sure, cross the racial boundary--I liked the Steve Miller Band as much as I liked Sly and the Family Stone, I enjoyed Crosby, Stills & Nash alongside Aretha Franklin, listened to Todd Rundgren and the Ohio Players--but the same could not be said of most of my peers who remained broadly stuck in their white rock stockade.

In a curious way, Michael Jackson was faced by similar dilemmas, about place and race, even after he'd become the most successful artist on the planet. Once his Quincy Jones-produced records had propelled him into the multi-platinum stratosphere, he seemed to increasingly display doubts about his own ethnic heritage and his own creative milieu, as his coloring paled, his Negroid features were re-shaped as Caucasian, and his recordings increasingly added the key trope of white rock--the metal guitar lick.

I didn't dislike Off The Wall--probably his best long player, although Triumph runs its close--or Thriller, to be fair, but I still go back to those early, vivid slices of vigor and economy that characterized the opening string of Jackson Five classics. To hear "I Want You Back," an incredible 40 years on, resurrects the youthful excitement--and some of the isolation--of digging a song that, even today, has lost not an iota of its original, sensational appeal.

Read more Michael Jackson and Jackson 5 interviews and reviews at www.rocksbackpages.com. Over 14,000 articles by the greatest writers from the finest rock publications of the last 40 years.