HISTORY AND HUBRIS

By CHRISTOPHER JOHN FARLEY

You know your party's a bust when the biggest celebrity in attendance is the lawyer who helped you beat a child-molestation rap. Michael Jackson held parties on both coasts, in Los Angeles and New York City, to celebrate the June 20 release of HIStory, Past, Present & Future-Book I, his new, epic, hubristic double CD. Both affairs were surprisingly luminary free; even Jackson skipped them. However, Johnnie Cochran, the savvy superlawyer who helped get the child-sex-abuse charges against Jackson settled out of court and who is now defending O.J. Simpson, did show up at the L.A. function, along with fellow attorney Carl Douglas. The pair circulated fabulously and posed for photos with partygoers, who were mostly record-industry types and members of the press. "When those guys walked in," said an attendee, "they were treated like our biggest rock-'n'-roll stars."

Of course, practically everybody is a kind of rock star these days, from genuinely heroic pilots in Bosnia to spaced-out houseguests of celebrities charged with murder. And guess who's angriest about the Hard Copy turn the world has taken? That's right-Jackson, the man who brought show-biz hype into the mtv age; the megastar who, along with his wife Lisa Marie Presley-Jackson, will grant an audience to Diane Sawyer on this week's PrimeTime Live; the guy whose shameless promotional short for his new CD features him leading goose-stepping Soviet-bloc-style soldiers in a Leni Riefenstahl-like tribute to his own power and glory.

Yes, the main message of Jackson's new CD is, to quote from the first single, Scream, "The whole system sucks." Will any of his millions of fans notice the irony? "His whole self-aggrandizing stance seems inappropriate, considering what's gone down," says a record-industry insider, whose company is part of the album's multimillion-dollar promotional crusade. "But people have short memories; if the music's there, people will probably respond."

So is HIStory any good? In a way, the Iron Curtain motif of Jackson's ad campaign is on target. HIStory is a lot like communism-out of vogue but still capable of getting large masses of people excited. HIStory's first CD contains digitally remastered versions of some of Jackson's greatest hits, including such classics as Rock with You and Beat It. The second CD has 15 new songs, featuring plenty of guest performers (basketball star Shaquille O'Neal has a rap cameo on the song 2Bad, and sister Janet duets with Michael on Scream) and guest producers (including R. Kelly, Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis). The result is that HIStory is full of musical ideas but feels too bureaucratic and lacks a strong, sure vision.

Still, individual songs shine. The hip-hopping Money features sly, smart vocals by Jackson and an aggressive, gnarled beat, aptly capturing the sensation of being strangled by consumerism. And although the media-bashing Tabloid Junkie might strike some as self-serving, the song is still cutting and catchy. Also, Shaq's mini-rap flows well. "Any time you get the chance to work with a legend," says O'Neal, who actually worked with an engineer, not with Jackson, "you don't pass on it."

Commercially, HIStory can't miss, though its hefty cost -- a list price of $32.98, which may be discounted by as much as $10 in some stores -- could be an impediment to megasales. Russ Solomon, head of Tower Records, asks, "What ordinary high school kid is going to shell out 25 bucks unless they want it awfully bad?" Still, early indications are good. Scream hit No. 5 on the Billboard singles chart in its first week-the highest debut for a single ever. Says Mike Shallet of SoundScan, which tracks music sales: "Naysayers are going to be surprised. There's an immense difference between consumer reaction to Michael Jackson and the press reaction."

There is also the endless fascination with Jackson -- a man turned inside out, his inner child on the outside, his adult self buried deep within. While recording part of the CD in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Jackson sneaked out for visits, in disguise, to the giant Mall of America. "He likes to see people," says producer Jam. "He would go to the mall at the busiest time, and I would ask him why, and he said, 'I want to go when it's jumping.'"

Yet Jackson is all grown up now -- married, with legal problems, moaning and groaning about the world like any bloke with a hard hat and a lunch bucket. During the recording sessions for HIStory, gospel singer Andrae Crouch, who appears with his choir on several tracks of the CD, took time out to pray for Jackson. Says Crouch: "My singers and I gathered around him and prayed that everything would settle and all the sparks would stop." The hype surrounding HIStory is more like a four-alarm fire, a marketing campaign that will blaze through Christmas 1996. Crouch should say a prayer for us all.

--Reported by Patrick E. Cole and Jeffrey Ressner/Los Angeles and Deborah Mitchell/Orlando

With reporting by PATRICK E. COLE AND JEFFREY RESSNER/LOS ANGELES AND DEBORAH MITCHELL/ORLANDO