On the Record

By: Caryn Tamber

After Michael Jackson died last week, I wondered if there might be a Maryland legal angle anywhere here. (Yes, I wonder that same thing about pretty much every major news story.)

So I called Guy Flynn, DLA Piper real estate and finance lawyer and master of the turntable to ask him about his memories of Jackson. Flynn, whom I interviewed last summer for a story on his DJ skills and 40,000-record collection, only collects records made from the late 1960s to the mid 1980s, which of course was MJ’s heyday. When I visited Flynn with a photographer and multimedia reporter last year, he played us some tunes, including the Jackson 5 classic “ABC.”

Flynn said he has been playing a lot of Michael Jackson music since the King of Pop died. He has also been flipping through the record jackets, letting him chart Jackson’s evolution over the years. He said Jackson’s work fits in three distinct musical genres. In his early career with his brothers, Jackson was funky. During the 70s, he provided a soundtrack for the disco years. When he teamed up with Quincy Jones, he went pop and “Hollywood,” producing Flynn’s favorite Jackson album, 1979’s Off the Wall.

“If you want to add just a weirdness factor in the later years, that would be a fourth phase,” Flynn said.

Jackson was unique both for his talent and for his ability “to unify the diverse music audience in a way no one else has ever done,” he added. Jackson had black audiences from the beginning but managed to cross over to appeal to white Americans and eventually to music lovers worldwide.

“We’re going to miss him a great deal,” Flynn said. “I think all of us will miss him, the whole world.”