Copyright
First published in 1991 by Birch Lane Press.
A revised, expanded, and updated hardcover edition published in 2003 by
Sidgwick & Jackson, an imprint of Pan Macmillan.
An updated paperback edition published in 2004 by Pan Books, an imprint
of Pan Macmillan Ltd.
Copyright © 1991, 2003, 2004, 2009 by J. Randy Taraborrelli
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of
1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or
transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval
system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Grand Central Publishing Edition
Grand Central Publishing
Hachette Book Group
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New York, NY 10017
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First eBook Edition: August 2009
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ISBN: 978-0-446-56568-4
This book is dedicated
to the memory of
Michael Joseph Jackson
1958–2009
Why not just tell people I’m an alien from Mars. Tell them I eat live
chickens and do a voodoo dance at midnight. They’ll believe anything you
say, because you’re a reporter. But if I, Michael Jackson, were to say, ‘I’m
an alien from Mars and I eat live chickens and do a voodoo dance at
midnight,’ people would say, ‘Oh, man, that Michael Jackson is nuts. He’s
cracked up. You can’t believe a damn word that comes out of his mouth.’
Michael Jackson to J. Randy Taraborrelli, September 1995
Contents
Copyright
Also by J. Randy Taraborrelli
Prologue
PART ONE
Introduction
Joseph and Katherine
Early Days
Joseph Hits Michael
Climbing Mountains
‘My poor, poor family’
Rebbie Marries
The First Record Deal
The Jacksons Sign with Motown
‘Hollywood Livin'’
Creating The Jackson 5's First Hit
Michael Moves in with Diana
Success!
PART TWO
‘ABC’ and ‘The Love You Save’
‘It just kept gettin' better…’
Joseph and Katherine Buy an Estate
Michael's First Solo Record
Growing Up in the Public Eye
Tito Marries
Groupies
‘Rockin' Robin’ and ‘Ben’
Katherine Files for Divorce
The Downslide
Jermaine Falls for the Boss's Daughter
PART THREE
Jermaine's and Hazel's Wedding
Las Vegas
Jackie Marries
Michael's Private Meeting with Berry
CBS Offers the Jacksons a ‘Sweet Deal’
Joseph to Jermaine: ‘Sign It!’
What's in a Name?
The Jacksons Leave Motown
Jackson Family Values
Losing to Motown
PART FOUR
Tatum
‘Why do people think I'm gay?’
Michael and Joseph Meet with CBS
The Wiz
A Rendezvous with Destiny
The Wiz is a Flop
Transition
Off the Wall
Michael Turns Twenty-one… and Gets His Own Lawyer
Joseph's Secret
Katherine is Pushed Too Far
Jane Fonda
PART FIVE
The First ‘Nose Job’… and Other Freedoms
An Indirect Conversation
Katherine Tells Joseph to ‘Get Out!’
Did Michael Get His Way?
Thriller is a… Thriller
Hayvenhurst
Michael Meets with Berry, Again
Yesterday, Today and Forever
The Man and the Moon
‘Billie Jean’ and ‘Beat It’ Videos
Managerial Trouble
Son vs. Father
Putting Pressure on Michael
Another Bombastic, Attention-getting Melodrama?
PART SIX
Michael Gets Burned by Pepsi-Cola
‘I never smile when I dance’
The Grammys
‘Believe me, trouble's ahead’
Another Nose Job, and Katherine's Party
Michael Meets the President
‘Their last shot’
The Misery of the Victory Tour
Jackson vs. Jackson on the Road
Janet Elopes
‘Michael is not gay’
PART SEVEN
Michael Buys the Beatles' Songs
‘We Are the World’
A Prank That Didn't Work
More Plastic Surgery
Duets Gone ‘Bad’
The Hyperbaric Chamber
The Elephant Man's Bones
Jackie, Jermaine and Janet
How ‘Bad’ Can It Get?
The White Man Won't Let Him…
Buying Neverland
PART EIGHT
Enter the Moonies
‘But what about Michael?’
‘Attack him – with love’
LaToya Gets Naked
A Million-dollar Bounty on Michael’s Head
Michael Fires Frank Dileo
Michael’s Mother Gets the Reward Money
LaToya’s Drama
‘I want more money than anyone else…’
David Geffen Influences Michael
The Still-Struggling Jacksons
Losing Count of the Plastic Surgeries
A Maddening Decade, An Uncertain Future
PART NINE
Michael Meets Jordie Chandler
Have You Seen His Childhood?
‘A place where boys have rights’
‘Never do that again, Jordie’
Either Jordie’s Mom Trusts Michael… or She Doesn’t
Michael Meets Jordie’s Father
Dirty Minds
The Secret Tape Recording
Michael Feels Betrayed
Jordie’s Confession
PART TEN
Michael Meets with his Accusers
Unsuccessful Negotiations
Jordie Sees a Psychiatrist
‘Jordie will never forgive me…’
The News is Out
Enter: Lisa Marie Presley
Elizabeth Taylor to the Rescue
Michael Proposes to Lisa Marie
‘You’ll all be fired’
Chaos and Rehab
Michael Stands Naked
LaToya in Madrid
Michael Pays Up
The Last Word on the Matter
PART ELEVEN
Michael and Lisa Marie Become Lovers
Michael and Lisa Marie: Happily Ever After?
Going Public
Lisa Marie Wants to Know Why Michael is ‘So Selfish’
Michael Goes on the Record
Enter: Debbie Rowe
Lisa Marie Confronts Michael in Hospital
Debbie is Pregnant
Michael’s New Family
Lisa Marie has a Change of Heart
Lost Love
The Martin Bashir Documentary
HIStory, Blood on the Dance Floor & Invincible
Justin and Britney
‘Everyone wants to be crazy’
Fathers and Sons
Michael’s World Caves In… Again
Explaining Away His Pain
The Way He Wants It
Michael’s Latest Accuser
Denials All Around
Booze, Naked Women… and Michael Jackson?
Family Dysfunction
Jesus Juice and Jesus Blood
The Time Line
‘Not Debbie too.’
Coda
THE FINAL YEARS
What If?
Memories of Santa Maria
‘I don’t recall seein’ any head lickin’’
Debbie Rowe’s Testimony
An Odd Defence
The Verdict
Aftermath
Turning Fifty
Prologue
I first met Michael Jackson when we were both children. The Jackson 5 had
just appeared at the Philadelphia Convention Center on Saturday evening, 2
May 1970, their first performance subsequent to signing with Motown
Records. It was a heady time for the boys; Michael was a very young
eleven-year-old trying to come to terms with it all. I remember him then
being happy, so full of life. Something happened along the way, though…
we both grew up, but in very different ways.
When I moved to Los Angeles at the age of eighteen to begin my career
as a writer, I regularly interviewed Michael for magazine features. I clearly
remember the day I wrote ‘Michael Jackson Turns 21.’ Then, there was
‘Michael Jackson Turns 25.’ ‘Michael Jackson Turns 30,’ and so many
other articles about him in celebration of milestones along the way, and
those of his talented family members. As he grew older, I watched with
mounting concern and confusion as Michael transformed himself from a
cute little black kid to… what he is, today. As a journalist and frequent
chronicler of Michael's life, I had somehow to make sense of what was
happening, putting the pieces of the puzzle together to see how they fit in
with the Michael I had known of yesteryear. Thanks to my many encounters
with him, I am able to quote at first hand his intimate reactions to so much
of what has taken place during his life and career.
In 1977, when I was at the Jackson home in Encino, California, to
interview the family, Michael wandered into the room with bandages on his
face; he was nineteen at the time. I remember being dismayed. I thought
then that rumours his father, Joseph, was beating him might be true, and
that bothered me for many years. Actually, as I later learned, he had just had
the second of many plastic surgeries.
In another interview, conducted after Michael had just returned from
making The Wiz in New York in 1978, he mentioned to me that he had
certain ‘secrets’ he didn't wish to reveal to me, adding that ‘everybody has
deep, dark secrets’. I never forgot his words, especially as the years went by
and he became stranger, his behaviour more opaque and incomprehensible
to many people.
Why are we still so fascinated by Michael Jackson after all of this time?
Is it because of his awe-inspiring talent? Of course, that's part of it. The
voice is instantly recognizable, and the dance moves are his and his alone.
Just as he had been influenced by trailblazers before him, such as Jackie
Wilson and James Brown, he has influenced a generation of entertainers.
When you watch Justin Timberlake perform, does he remind you of anyone
else?
Michael is also an important touchstone for many of us, personally. Since
he's been famous for more than thirty years, some of us can mark moments
in our lives by certain achievements in his. Many of us are old enough to
remember how impossibly adorable and prodigious he was as lead singer of
The Jackson 5, and we can remember where we were at when the brothers
first became famous. We may recall the first time we saw him glide across a
stage or screen doing the magical ‘Moonwalk’; we remember the day we
first saw the ‘We are the World’ video, in which he led an all-star cast in the
first charitable effort of its kind in the United States; we remember his
amazing concert appearances and groundbreaking videos.
To say that Michael has succeeded spectacularly in his career is to state
the obvious. However, as record-breaking and historical as his artistry has
been, it is his private life that has kept many of us on tenterhooks.
We probably also remember the first time we saw each of his new
physical ‘looks’, and wondered what on earth that boy was doing to his
face.
Did you ever wonder if he was straight? Or gay? Or asexual?
What did you think when you first heard that he had been accused of
being a paedophile?
Do you remember seeing the emotional speech from Neverland, during
which he spoke of the police having photographed ‘my body, including my
penis, my buttocks, my lower torso, thighs and any other areas they
wanted’?
And what of Lisa Marie Presley and Debbie Rowe, his mysterious ex-
wives? Have you ever speculated about the true nature of their relationships
with him?
Now, he has children and makes them wear masks in public.
‘How does it feel when you're alone, and you're cold inside?’ Michael
asked in his song ‘Stranger in Moscow’. Indeed, how in the world, we
wonder, did he turn out as he has?
Of course, fame twists everything. It's a strange phenomenon that no one
but the famous can truly understand. However, ask yourself: if your entire
life had been played out under heavy and unyielding scrutiny, made even
more torturous by an abusive father, what would you be like? What if you
were infantilized by an adoring public who celebrated you primarily as a
talented youngster? Do you think you might, over time, be compelled to
infantilize yourself? Out of frustration and desperation, might you revolt
and begin to do whatever you wished without considering the logic of your
decisions, the common sense of your choices, or the propriety of your
behaviour?
What if you also had an inordinate amount of wealth, giving you the
power to redress your deepest insecurities and desires by any means at your
disposal, no matter how extreme, and with no one around daring to
challenge you? Don't like the colour of your skin? Fade it away. Never had
a real childhood? Say hello to Neverland. Want to sleep in the same bed
with boys? No problem, there. Don't like how you look? Change your face.
Still don't like it? Change it to another face, and another and another.
Why can't he see what's happening to himself? we ask about Michael.
Why doesn't he understand? How does he see himself, anyway? As the
King of Pop, a trailblazing, misunderstood musical genius whose career
spans an entire lifetime? Or an insecure, basically unhappy adult with
enough money and power to do whatever he likes and get away with it?
Perhaps only one thing is certain: if you were an unfettered combination of
both, chances are you would be like… Michael Jackson.
Introduction
The bucolic town of Los Olivos in Santa Barbara County is a little more
than a hundred years old. If a visitor wants a sense of the local history,
Mattei's Tavern, built in 1886, is the place to go. One of many monuments
to a by-gone era, it was a stagecoach stop where guests stayed overnight
during their journeys, back when the only mode of transportation was
horse-drawn carriage. It also became a stop-off point for the Pacific Coast
Railway narrow gauge line, constructed in the 1880s when travel by land
along the coast ranged from difficult to impossible. At its zenith, it stretched
over seventy-five miles from what was once called Harford Wharf on San
Luis Bay, south to Los Olivos. Passengers spent the night at Mattei's before
taking the stagecoach to Santa Barbara, the next day. Today, the Carriage
Museum is on this site, providing a visual history of the region. The original
watering hole is now a charming eatery called Brothers Restaurant at
Mattei's Tavern.
One recent day, a strange-looking man came through the Museum with a
boy, a girl and an infant. He was accompanied by two women, senior
citizens who tended to the youngsters, maybe nursemaids, one cradling the
baby in a blanket. Also present was a male assistant who appeared to be in
his early twenties. His eyes darted about, as if he was on high alert,
vigilantly aware of his surroundings, of what others were doing in his
presence.
The older man, wearing a deep-purple, silk surgical mask, a fedora over
ink-jet black hair and over-sized sunglasses, stood before one of the
photographic displays. ‘Prince! Paris!’ he called out. ‘Come here. Look at
this.’ The tots ran to his side. He pointed to the picture with one chalky,
spindly finger – at the tip of which was wrapped a band-aid – and read the
accompanying description, his high-pitched voice sounding instructive. In
the middle of his reading, he admonished the boy to pay closer attention,
insisting that ‘this is important’. The group moved from one display to the
next, the masked man reading each narrative, beseeching the children to
listen, carefully.
After the day's lesson, the small group enjoyed a bite to eat in the
restaurant. While there, they laughed among themselves, sharing private
jokes, yet seeming closed off from their environment, never acknowledging
the existence of anyone outside their miniature world. The masked man fed
himself by lifting his disguise just a tad, rather than take it off. The locals
tried to ignore the odd contingent. However, it was difficult not to stare,
particularly since the children had been wearing masks, too – not surgical,
though… just Halloween. They took them off to eat, and then put them
back on, once again hiding their faces.
In the early 1900s, a major new rail line was built thirty miles closer to
the Pacific coast. Because Los Olivos had been bypassed by it, the
population of the once-thriving town dwindled. However, it has since been
rediscovered, thanks to an influx of tourists in the last twenty years. Now,
there is an Indian reservation and gambling casino, as well as a number of
spas and New Age healing centres. Small and locally owned art galleries,
antique stores, gift shops, boutiques and wineries flourish in restored
western-themed buildings.
One afternoon, the masked man visited one of the art galleries. ‘Now, this
one would be just perfect in the bedroom, wouldn't it?’ he said to his young
assistant. He held up a small oil painting of two angels floating ethereally
above a sleeping child. The assistant nodded. ‘Yoo-hoo,’ called out the
masked man. ‘How much for this one?’ He and the curator conferred,
privately. Then the man in the disguise walked over to his assistant and
whispered into his ear. ‘Okay, very good,’ he finally said to the store-owner.
‘I'll take it.’
The proprietor scribbled on a piece of paper and handed it to the younger
man, who then extracted a wad of bills from his wallet. He counted them off
to pay for the purchase.
‘No, wait! That's too much,’ said the masked man who had been
watching, carefully. ‘I thought you said it was a hundred dollars. Not a
hundred and six dollars, and change.’ There was a quick, urgent conference.
‘What? Tax? Really? On this?’ He made a show of thinking hard. ‘Well,
okay, then,’ he decided. ‘Thanks, anyway.’ He put the painting down.
More negotiation.
‘Really? Okay, good, then. A hundred dollars it is.’
The covered man regarded the painting, again. ‘My God, it's so beautiful,
isn't it?’ he remarked, picking it up. ‘The way those children are so…
protected. How sweet.’ As he and his assistant walked out of the gallery, he
turned and hollered back to the proprietor, ‘I just want you to know that I
think you're a wonderful person, and I wish you all the luck in the world
with your store! I'll be back soon.’
Los Olivos is the home of about five hundred horse ranch estates,
Victorian-style homes and about two dozen businesses. A thousand people,
maybe less, call this remote and slumbering place home (fewer than a dozen
of them, black), including one unlikely resident, the only man in town who
wears a mask: Michael Joseph Jackson.
Figueroa Mountain Road winds upward through the lush and rolling Santa
Ynez Valley of Los Olivos. A man sells apples under a leafy old shade tree
on the side of the road; he's been doing so for years. Every day, he sits with
nothing to do but sell his fruit, enjoy his day and bake in the sun. It's just
that kind of place.
A half mile back from the road, behind an imposing oak gate, is 5225
Figueroa Mountain Road, a massive Danish-style split-level farmhouse, its
brick and masonry walls crisscrossed with wooden beams. This is where
Michael Jackson lives.
This 2700-acre property, originally a ranch for farming dry oats and
running cattle, was once known as Sycamore Ranch. It came on the market
at $35 million; Michael purchased it for $17 million in May 1988. He then
changed the name to Neverland Valley Ranch -Neverland, for short – an
homage to Peter Pan's Never-Never Land. The first order of business for
Michael was to build his own amusement park own the acreage, including a
merry-go-round, giant sliding board, railway with its own train and even a
Ferris wheel. With his kind of money, he could pretty much do anything he
wanted to do… and he would do it all at Neverland.
Michael's corner of the world is verdantly green as far as the eye can see.
Old-fashioned windmills dot the landscape. There is an elegant softness to
the grandeur; thousands of trees gently shade superbly manicured grounds
which include a five-acre man-made, ice-blue lake with a soothing, never
pummelling, five-foot waterfall and a graceful, inviting stone bridge. It is
here, amidst the infinite silence of unfarmed, rolling and gentle countryside,
that Michael Jackson has created his own environment, a safe haven for him
from an ever-pressing, ever-difficult world.
Two thousand miles east, in the grimy industrial city of Gary, Indiana, there
is a small, two-bedroom, one-bath, brick-and-aluminum-sided home on a
corner lot. The property, at 2300 Jackson Street, is about a hundred feet
deep and fifty feet wide. There is no garage, no landscaping and no green
grass. Thick smoke plumes upward from nearby factories; it envelopes the
atmosphere in a way that makes a person breathing such air feel just a
little… sick. Joseph and Katherine Jackson, Michael's parents, purchased
the home in 1950 for $8,500, with a $500 down-payment.
This place, primarily a black neighbourhood, is where Michael Jackson
first lived as a child, with his parents and siblings Maureen, Jackie, Tito,
Jermaine, LaToya, Marlon, Janet and Randy.
Like most parents, Joseph and Katherine wanted their children to
succeed. In the early fifties the best they could do was two bedrooms and
one bath for eleven people; clothes and shoes bought in secondhand stores.
They hoped that when the youngsters graduated from high school, they
would find steady work, perhaps in the mills… unless they could do better
than that.
However, when the Jackson parents discovered that some of their kids
had musical talent, their dreams expanded: the boys with the surprising
musical and dance abilities would win contests, they decided, and be
‘discovered’.
After their sons cut their first records, the imaginings of the parents grew
more grandiose: a sprawling estate in California; servants at their beck and
call; expensive luxury cars for everyone; three-piece suits, diamond rings
and great power for Joseph; mink coats, jewels and a better social life for
Katherine. They fantasized about flipping on their television and seeing
their celebrated children perform their number-one hit songs for an
appreciative world. As a result of the boys' fame, they figured, the entire
family would be recognized, sought-after, asked to pose for pictures, sign
autographs. They would all be stars. What a great world it would be, for
each of them. No more worries; everything taken care of, handled by their
good fortune.
Was it too much to ask? It certainly seemed like a good idea, at the time.
However, as proverbial wisdom has it, be careful what you wish for. You
just might get it.
Joseph and Katherine
Joseph Walter Jackson was born on 26 July 1929, to Samuel and Chrystal
Jackson in Fountain Hill, Arkansas. He is the eldest of five children; a
sister, Verna, died when she was seven. Samuel, a high school teacher, was
a strict, unyielding man who raised his children with an iron fist. They were
not allowed to socialize with friends outside the home. ‘The Bible says that
bad associations spoil youthful habits,’ Chrystal explained to them.
‘Samuel Jackson loved his family, but he was distant and hard to reach,’
remembered a relative. ‘He rarely showed his family any affection, so he
was misunderstood. People thought he had no feelings, but he did. He was
sensitive but didn't know what to do with his sensitivities. Joseph would
take after his father in so many ways.’
Samuel and Chrystal divorced when Joseph was a teenager. Sam moved
to Oakland, taking Joseph with him, while Chrystal took Joseph's brother
and sisters to East Chicago. When Samuel married a third time, Joseph
decided to join his mother and siblings in Indiana. He dropped out of school
in the eleventh grade and became a boxer in the Golden Gloves. Shortly
thereafter, he met Katherine Esther Scruse at a neighbourhood party. She
was a pretty and petite woman, and Joseph was attracted to her affable
personality and warm smile.
Katherine was born on 4 May 1930, and christened Kattie B. Scruse,
after an aunt on her father's side. (She was called Kate or Katie as a child,
and those closest to her today still call her that.) Kattie was born to Prince
Albert Screws and Martha Upshaw in Barbour County, a few miles from
Russell County, Alabama, a rural farming area that had been home to her
family for generations. Her parents had been married for a year. They
would have another child, Hattie, in 1931.
Prince Scruse worked for the Seminole Railroad and also as a tenant
cotton farmer, as did Katherine's grandfather and great-grandfather, Kendall
Brown. Brown, who sang every Sunday in a Russell County church and
was renowned for his voice, had once been a slave for an Alabama family
named Scruse, whose name he eventually adopted as his own.
‘People told me that when the church windows were opened, you could
hear my great-grandfather's voice ringing out all over the valley,’ Katherine
would recall. ‘It would just ring out over everybody else's. And when I
heard this, I said to myself, “Well, maybe it is in the blood.”’
At the age of eighteen months, Katherine was stricken with polio, at the
time often called infantile paralysis because it struck so many children.
There was no vaccine in those days, and many children – like Joseph's sister
Verna – either died from it or were severely crippled.
In 1934, Prince Scruse moved his family to East Chicago, Indiana, in
search of a steady job. He was employed in the steel mills before finding
work as a Pullman porter with the Illinois Central Railroad. In less than a
year, Prince and Martha divorced; Martha remained in East Chicago with
her young daughters.
Because of her polio, Katherine became a shy, introverted child who was
often taunted by her schoolmates. She was always in and out of hospitals.
Unable to graduate from high school, she would take equivalency courses
as an adult and get her diploma in that way. Until she was sixteen, she wore
a brace, or used crutches. Today, she walks with a limp.
Her positive childhood memories have always been about music. She and
her sister, Hattie, grew up listening to country-western radio programmes
and admiring such stars as Hank Williams and Ernest Tubbs. They were
members of the high school orchestra, the church junior band and the
school choir. Katherine, who also sang in the local Baptist church, dreamed
of a career in show business, first as an actress and then as a vocalist.
When she met Joseph, Katherine fell for him, immediately. Though he
had married someone else, it lasted only about a year. After his divorce,
Katherine began dating Joseph, and the couple soon became engaged. She
was under his spell, gripped by his charisma, seduced by his charm, his
looks, his power. He was a commanding man who took control, and she
sensed she would always feel safe with him. She found herself enjoying his
stories, laughing at his jokes. His eyes were large, set wide apart and a
colour of hazel she had never before seen, almost emerald. Whenever she
looked into them, as she would tell it, she knew she was being swept away,
and it was what she wanted for herself. Or, as she put it, ‘I fell crazy in
love.’
They were opposites in many ways. She was soft. Joseph was hard. She
was reasonable. Joseph was explosive. She was romantic. Joseph was
pragmatic. However, the chemistry was there for them.
Both were musical: he was a bluesman who played guitar; she was a
country-western fan who played clarinet and piano. When they were
courting, the two would snuggle up together on cold winter nights and sing
Christmas carols. Sometimes they would harmonize, and the blend was a
good one, thanks to Katherine's beautiful soprano voice. Michael Jackson
feels he inherited his singing ability from his mother. He has recalled that in
his earliest memory of Katherine, she is holding him in her arms and
singing songs such as ‘You Are My Sunshine’ and ‘Cotton Fields’.
Joseph, twenty, and Katherine, nineteen, were married by a justice of the
peace on 5 November 1949, in Crown Point, Indiana, after a six-month
engagement.
Katherine has said that she was so affected by her parents' divorce, and
the fact that she was raised in a broken home, she promised herself once she
found a husband, she would stay married to him, no matter what
circumstances may come their way. It didn't seem that she had much to
worry about with Joseph, though. He treated her respectfully and showed
her every consideration. She enjoyed his company; he made her laugh like
no one ever had in the past. Importantly, there was a tremendous sexual
bonding between them. Joseph was a passionate man; Katherine, less so a
woman. However, they were in love; they were compatible and they made it
work.
The newlyweds settled in Gary, Indiana. Their first child, Maureen,
nicknamed Rebbie (pronounced Reebie), was born on 29 May 1950. The
rest of the brood followed in quick succession. On 4 May 1951, Katherine's
twenty-first birthday, she gave birth to Sigmund Esco, nicknamed Jackie.
Two years later, on 15 October 1953, Tariano Adaryl was born; he was
called Tito. Jermaine LaJuane followed on 11 December 1954; LaToya
Yvonne on 29 May 1956; Marlon David on 12 March 1957 (one of a set of
premature twins; the other, Brandon, died within twenty-four hours of
birth); Michael Joseph on 29 August 1958 (‘with a funny-looking head, big
brown eyes, and long hands,’ said his mother); Steven Randall on 29
October 1961, and then Janet Dameta on 16 May 1966.
Early Days
Talk about cramped quarters… once upon a God-forsaken time, all eleven
members of the Jackson family lived at 2300 Jackson Street. ‘You could
take five steps from the front door and you'd be out the back,’ Michael said
of the house. ‘It was really no bigger than a garage.’
Katherine and Joseph shared one bedroom with a double bed. The boys
slept in the only other bedroom in a triple bunk bed; Tito and Jermaine
sharing a bed on top, Marlon and Michael in the middle, and Jackie alone
on the bottom. The three girls slept on a convertible sofa in the living room;
when Randy, was born, he slept on a second couch. In the bitter-cold winter
months, the family would huddle together in the kitchen in front of the open
oven.
‘We all had chores,’ Jermaine remembered. ‘There was always
something to do – scrubbing the floors, washing the windows, doing
whatever gardening there was to do,’ he said with a smile. ‘Tito did the
dishes after dinner. I'd dry them. The four oldest did the ironing – Rebbie,
Jackie, Tito, and me – and we weren't allowed out of the house until we
finished. My parents believed in work values. We learned early the rewards
of feeling good about work.’
Joseph worked a four o'clock-to-midnight shift as a crane operator at
Inland Steel in East Chicago. In Michael's earliest memory of his father, he
is coming home from work with a big bag of glazed doughnuts for
everyone. ‘The work was hard but steady, and for that I couldn't complain,’
Joseph said. There was never enough money, though; Joseph seldom made
more than sixty-five dollars a week, even though he often put in extra hours
as a welder. The family learned to live with it. Katherine made the
children's clothes herself, or shopped at a Salvation Army store. They ate
simple foods: bacon and eggs for breakfast; egg-and-bologna sandwiches
and sometimes tomato soup for lunch; fish and rice for dinner. Katherine
enjoyed baking peach cobblers and apple pies for dessert.
There are few school pictures of the Jackson children today, because they
could not afford to purchase them after posing for them. For the first five
years that they lived on Jackson Street, the family had no telephone. When
Jermaine contracted nephritis, a kidney disease, at the age of four and had
to be hospitalized for three weeks, it hit Katherine and Joseph hard,
financially, as well as emotionally.
Whenever Joseph was laid off, he found work harvesting potatoes, and
during these periods the family would fill up on potatoes, boiled, fried or
baked.
‘I was dissatisfied,’ Joseph Jackson remembered. ‘Something inside of
me told me there was more to life than this. What I really wanted more than
anything was to find a way into the music business.’ He, his brother Luther
and three other men formed The Falcons, a rhythm and blues band that
provided extra income for all of their families by performing in small clubs
and bars. Joseph's three oldest sons – Jackie, Tito and Jermaine – were
fascinated with their father's music and would sit in on rehearsals at home.
(Michael has no recollection of The Falcons.)
In the end, The Falcons was not commercially successful; when they
disbanded, Joseph stashed his guitar in the bedroom closet. That string
instrument was his one vestige of a dream deferred, and he didn't want any
of the children to get their hands on it. Michael referred to the closet as ‘a
sacred place’. Occasionally Katherine would take the guitar down from the
shelf and play it for the children. They would all gather around in the living
room and sing together, country songs like ‘Wabash Cannonball’ and ‘The
Great Speckled Bird’.
With his group disbanded, Joseph didn't know what to do with himself.
Now working the swing shift at Inland Steel and the day shift at American
Foundries, all he knew was that he wanted much more for himself and his
family. It was the early sixties and ‘everybody we knew was in a singing
group’, Jackie recalled. ‘That was the thing to do, go join a group. There
were gangs, and there were singing groups. I wanted to be in a singing
group, but we weren't allowed to hang out with the other kids. So we started
singing together 'round the house. Our TV broke down and Mother started
having us sing together. And then what happened was that our father would
go to work, and we would sneak into his bedroom and get that guitar
down.’
‘And I would play it,’ Tito continued. ‘It would be me, Jackie and
Jermaine, and we'd sing, learn new songs, and I would play. Our mother
came in one day and we all froze, like “Uh-oh, we're busted,” but she didn't
say anything. She just let us play.’
‘I didn't want to stop it because I saw a lot of talent there,’ Katherine
would explain later.
This went on for a few months until one day Tito broke a string on the
guitar. ‘I knew I was in trouble,’ Tito recalled. ‘We were all in trouble. Our
father was strict and we were scared of him. So I put the guitar back in the
closet and hoped he wouldn't figure out what had happened. But he did, and
he whooped me. Even though my mother lied and said she had given me
permission to play the guitar, he tore me up.’ When Tito tells the story, his
words tumble out and he gets tongue-tied. So many years later, one can still
sense his anxiety about it. ‘She just didn't want to see me get whipped,’ he
said, sadly. ‘Not again.
‘Afterwards, when Joseph cooled off, he came into the room. I was still
crying on the bed. I said, “You know, I can play that thing. I really can.” He
looked at me and said, “Okay, lemme see what you can do, smart guy.” So I
played it. And Jermaine and Jackie sang a little. Joseph was amazed. He
had no idea, because this was the big secret we had been keeping from him
because we were so scared of him.’
Joseph later said that when his sons revealed their talent to him, he felt a
surge of excitement about it. ‘I decided I would leave the music to my
sons,’ he told me, many years later. ‘I had a dream for them,’ he said. ‘I
envisioned these kids making audiences happy by sharing their talent, talent
that they'd maybe inherited from me.’ He seemed touched by his own words
as he looked back on the past. ‘I just wanted them to make something of
themselves. That's all I wanted,’ he added.
Joseph went off to work the next day and, that night, returned home
holding something behind his back. He called out to Tito and handed him
the package. It was a red electric guitar. ‘Now, let's rehearse, boys,’ Joseph
said with a wide smile. He gathered his three sons together – Jackie, nine,
Tito, seven, and Jermaine, six – and they practised. ‘We'd never been so
close,’ Tito would recall. ‘It was as if we had finally found something in
common. Marlon and Mike, they would sit in the corner and watch. Our
mother would give us some tips. I noticed our mother and father were
happy. We were all happy. We had found something special.’
In the sixties, Gary was a tough, urban city, and the Jacksons'
neighbourhood was sometimes a dangerous place for youngsters. Katherine
and Joseph lived in constant fear that one of their children would be hurt in
the streets. ‘We were always protected by our parents,’ Jackie recalled. ‘We
were never really allowed to have fun in the streets like other kids. We had
a strict curfew. The only time we could actually play with people our own
age was in school. We liked the social aspect of school.’
Katherine Jackson, a strong force in the lives of her children, passed on
to them a deep and abiding respect for certain religious convictions. She
had been a Baptist and then a Lutheran but turned from both faiths for the
same reason: she discovered that the ministers were having extramarital
affairs. When Michael was five years old Katherine became a Jehovah's
Witness, converted by a door-to-door worker. She was baptized in 1963 in
the swimming pool at Roosevelt High in Gary. From then on, she asked that
the rest of the family get dressed in their best clothes every Sunday and
walk with her to Kingdom Hall, their place of worship. Joseph, who had
been raised a Lutheran, accompanied his wife a couple of times to placate
her, but stopped going when the children were still young because, as
Marlon put it, ‘it was so boring.’ As time went on, Michael, LaToya, and
Rebbie would become the most devout about their religion.
Had that religion been any but the Jehovah's Witnesses, Michael Jackson
would probably have evolved in a completely different way. So removed
are Jehovah's Witnesses from mainstream Protestantism, they were
sometimes considered a cult, especially in the fifties and sixties. No matter
where they live, no Jehovah's Witness will salute a flag (they believe it is
idolatrous to do so) or serve in any armed forces (each Witness is
considered an ordained minister and, therefore, exempt). They don't
celebrate Christmas or Easter or birthdays. They usually will not contribute
money to any group outside their own church because they consider
preaching the gospel the most worthwhile, charitable deed. Jehovah's
Witnesses periodically make news because they refuse to receive blood
transfusions for themselves or their children, no matter how gravely ill the
patient may be.
In the strictest sense of the teachings, Jehovah's Witnesses considered
themselves the sheep; everybody else is a goat. When the great battle of
Armageddon is fought – it was expected in 1972 and then in 1975 – all the
goats will be destroyed at once and the sheep will be spared. The sheep will
then be resurrected to a life on earth as subjects of the Kingdom of God.
They will be ruled by Christ and a select group of 144,000 Witnesses who
will reside in heaven by Christ's side. At the end of a thousand years, Satan
will come forth to tempt those on earth. Those who succumb to his wiles
will be immediately destroyed. The rest will live, idyllically. Of course, as
with those who adhere to religious beliefs, some Witnesses are more
adamant about those teachings than others.
Estimates are that 20 to 30 per cent of its members are black. Witnesses
are judged solely by their good deeds – their witnessing, or door-to-door
proselytizing – and not on new cars, large homes, expensive clothes and
other status symbols. Because of her devotion to the Jehovah's Witnesses,
Katherine was mostly satisfied with what she had in Gary, Indiana. She
enjoyed her life, and had little issue with it other than her concern that the
city didn't offer much promise for her children's future, other than work in
factories for the boys and domestic life for the girls. Would that be so bad?
Yes, Joseph would tell her, absolutely, yes. Sometimes, she agreed.
Sometimes, she wasn't so sure what to think about any of it.
Every day, for at least three hours, the boys would rehearse, whether they
wanted to do so or not, with Joseph's only thought being to get his family
out of Gary.
‘When I found out that my kids were interested in becoming entertainers,
I really went to work with them,’ Joseph Jackson would tell Time. ‘When
the other kids would be out on the street playing games, my boys were in
the house working, trying to learn how to be something in life, do
something with their lives.’
Though the Jacksons' music may have brought them closer together as a
family unit, it also served to further alienate them from everyone else in the
neighbourhood. ‘Already, people thought we were strange because of our
religion,’ Jackie would remember. ‘Now they were sure of it. They'd say,
“Yeah, look at those Jacksons. They think they're something special.”
Everyone else used to hang out on the corners and sing with their groups.
But we weren't allowed to. We had to practise at home. So the other kids
thought we thought we were too good to sing with on the corner.’
Rehearsals were still held twice a day, before school and after, even
though their peers in the neighbourhood thought the Jacksons were wasting
their time. As they practised, voices from outside would taunt them through
open windows, ‘You ain't nothing,' you Jacksons!’ Rocks would be hurled
into the living room. It didn't matter to the Jacksons; they ignored the taunts
and focused on their practice sessions.
By 1962, five-year-old Marlon had joined the group, playing bongos and
singing, mostly off-key. (Marlon couldn't sing or dance, but he was allowed
in the group anyway because Katherine would not have it any other way.)
One day when the boys were practising while Joseph was at work,
Katherine watched as Michael, who was four years old, began imitating
Jermaine as he sang a James Brown song. When Michael sang, his voice
was so strong and pure, Katherine was surprised. As soon as Joseph got
home, she met him at the door with some good news: ‘I think we have
another lead singer.’
Joseph Hits Michael
Today, Michael Jackson often speaks about the abuse he suffered at the
hands of his father. When he gave his controversial 2003 interview to
Martin Bashir, quick tears came to his eyes when he remembered the way
his dad treated him. ‘It was bad,’ he said of the beatings. ‘Real bad.’
Watching Michael as he took himself back to the days in Gary when his
father hit him was truly painful. Clearly, all these years later, he is still
traumatized by that part of his childhood.
Little Michael was a fascinating child. ‘Ever since Michael was very
young, he seemed different to me from the rest of the children,’ Katherine
said. ‘I don't believe in reincarnation, but you know how babies move so
uncoordinated? Michael never moved that way. When he danced, it was as
if he were an older person.’
Michael was always precocious. His mother has recalled that at the age
of a year and a half he would hold his bottle and dance to the rhythm of the
washing machine. His grandmother, Chrystal Johnson (her later married
name), has recalled that he began singing when he was about three. ‘And
what a beautiful voice he had,’ she enthused. ‘Even back then, he was a joy
to listen to.’
Michael was too sensitive a boy to be manhandled the way he was by his
father. He was also quick on his feet, and determined to avoid an altercation
with Joseph. Tito remembered that Michael was ‘so quick that if my mother
or father used to swing at him, he'd be out of their way. They'd be swinging
at air.’
Joseph believed in the value and impact of brute force as a disciplinary
tool. ‘Either you're a winner in this life, or a loser,’ he liked to say. ‘And
none of my kids are gonna be losers.’ To be sure of that, he would smack
his kids without giving it a second thought in order to keep them on the
right track to being ‘winners’. Shoving them into walls was not unusual
behaviour for him, especially the boys. Michael, however, was the one boy
in the family who would attempt to fight back when provoked by his father.
Once, when he was just three, Joseph spanked him for something he had
done. Crying, Michael then took off one of his shoes and hurled it at his
father. Joseph ducked; the shoe missed him.
‘Are you crazy?’ Joseph screamed at him. ‘Boy, you just signed your
own death warrant. Get over here.’
Infuriated, Joseph grabbed Michael and, according to Marlon, held him
upside down by one leg and pummelled him over and over again with his
hand, hitting him on his back and buttocks. Soon, Michael was crying and
screaming so loudly it seemed as if he was trying to summon the entire
neighbourhood to his aid.
‘Put him down, Joseph,’ Katherine hollered. ‘You're gonna kill him!
You're gonna kill him.’
When Joseph released the boy, he ran to his room, sobbing, ‘I hate you.’
Those were fighting words for Joseph. He followed Michael into the
bedroom, slammed the door and then let him have it.
‘Joseph once locked Michael in a closet for hours,’ said a friend of the
Jackson family's. ‘That was traumatizing, horrible for him.’
Katherine didn't know how to reconcile herself to her husband's treatment
of their children. How could a man so gentle at times that he would kiss her
fingertips in a romantic moment, turn around and beat her children? His
behaviour simply wasn't in the sphere of her understanding, as a God-
fearing woman. However, she didn't know what to do about it. As much as
she loved him, she feared him. She would speak up at times, but reluctantly.
In truth, Katherine had also been the target of Joseph's fury. When Rebbie
was a baby, Joseph was on edge because of sleep deprivation and a heavy
work schedule. One day, he returned home to a crying baby, only to find
Katherine outside talking to one of the neighbours. He ran out to get her.
‘The kid is screaming her head off,’ he shouted. Katherine immediately
returned to the baby's side. ‘I'm sorry, Joseph,’ she said, according to her
memory. ‘I didn't know she had awakened.’ Suddenly, Joseph turned around
and smacked his wife across the face. ‘My cheek went numb,’ Katherine
recalled. Her reaction was swift and immediate fury. She took a ceramic
bottle warmer and threw it at him with everything she had in her. It struck
him on his forearm and shattered, cutting him deeply. Blood gushed from
the wound as the two argued. ‘Don't you ever hit me again,’ Katherine
warned him, ‘or I'll leave you so fast your head will spin.’ Katherine says
that the violent episode marked the first and last time Joseph ever struck her
– but, apparently, he turned his violent temper on her children.
When Michael was five, he toddled into a room and had his breath taken
away when Joseph tripped him and he fell to the ground, bloodied. ‘That's
for whatcha' did yesterday,’ Joseph said. ‘And tomorrow, I'm gonna get you
for what you'll do today.’
Michael began to cry. ‘But I didn't even do nothin' yet,’ he said through
his tears.
‘Oh, you will, boy,’ Joseph said. ‘You will.’
From that point onward, whenever young Michael walked into a room he
looked left, then right, as if crossing the street. He was hoping to avoid his
father. How does a young boy deal with such fear? ‘I began to be so scared
of that man,’ Michael later recalled. ‘In fact, I guess it's safe to say that I
hated him.’
Michael recalled that his father ‘was always a mystery to me, and he
knows it. One of the things I regret most is never being able to have a real
closeness with him.’ In truth, none of the Jackson children ever developed
‘a real closeness’ with Joseph, who was not affectionate toward them.
Sometimes he took his boys camping and fishing on weekends or taught
them how to box to defend themselves, but he never paid much attention to
the girls. (As a toddler, Janet liked to crawl into bed with her mother and
father, but she had to wait until Joseph was asleep.)
Aspects of Joseph's parenting were unconventional, to say the least.
Whenever the boys left their bedroom window open at night, he would go
outside and climb into their room and then scream at them at the top of his
lungs… while wearing a fright mask. The youngsters would begin crying
and hyperventilating, frightened half to death. Why would a father cause his
children such trauma? Joseph explains that he was trying to demonstrate
why they should not leave the windows open at night. After all, what if a
burglar were to enter the house? Michael and Marlon would, for many years
afterwards, suffer from vivid nightmares of being kidnapped from the safety
of their bedrooms.
Suffice it to say that as he grew older Michael pulled about as far away
from Joseph as he could, clinging to his mother, whom he adored, as if his
very life depended on it (and maybe it did). ‘Even with nine children, she
treated each of us like an only child,’ he would remember to this writer in
1991. ‘Because of Katherine's gentleness, warmth and attention, I can't
imagine what it must be like to grow up without a mother's love. [What an
ironic statement, considering that both of his children are, today, being
raised without their mother, Debbie Rowe.] The lessons she taught us were
invaluable. Kindness, love and consideration for other people headed her
list.’
And, as for Joseph? ‘I used to throw up whenever I thought of him,’
Michael recalled, succinctly. In his 2003 Martin Bashir interview, he noted
that Joseph has blue eyes. Clearly, he hasn't looked into his father's eyes in
some time; they're hazel, almost green.
Climbing Mountains
In 1963, at the age of five, Michael Jackson began attending Garnett
Elementary School. Katherine has said that he was generous to a fault, so
much so that he used to take jewellery from her dresser and give it to his
teachers as tokens of his affection for them. A stubborn child, he continued
to do so even after his mother chastised him for giving away her
possessions.
One of Michael's first memories concerns performing at the age of five,
when he sang ‘Climb Ev'ry Mountain’ from The Sound of Music a cappella
for his class. The other children were impressed as much by his self-
confidence as by his talent; he received a standing ovation. The teacher
started to sob. Katherine attended the performance with Joseph's father,
Samuel, who was not a sentimental man, yet even he was moved to tears by
Michael's mellifluous performance. ‘I don't know where he got it from,’
Katherine said of Michael's prowess as a singer. ‘He was just so good, so
young. Some kids are special. Michael was special.’
Five-year-old Michael had so much energy and charisma that Jackie, who
was twelve at the time, decided his younger brother would become ‘the lead
guy’. That was perfectly fine with Michael; he enjoyed being the centre of
attention. However, Jermaine's feelings were hurt. He had been the lead
singer of the group, and now suddenly he wasn't good enough. Some family
members have theorized that one of the reasons he stuttered as a child was a
lack of confidence. Still, Jermaine would support the family's decision
because Michael was so obviously a natural entertainer. However, it must
be said that it always seemed that Jermaine competed with Michael,
especially as an adult, often trying to best him.
‘He became this great little imitator,’ Jermaine would remember of
Michael. ‘He'd see something – another kid dance, or maybe James Brown
on TV – and next thing you knew, Michael had it memorized and knew just
what to do with it. He loved to dance too. Marlon was a good dancer,
maybe better than Mike. But Mike loved it more. He was always dancin'
'round the house. You'd always catch him dancin' for himself in the mirror.
He'd go off alone and practise and then come back and show us this new
step. We'd incorporate it into the act. Michael began choreographing our
show.’
‘Finally it was time for us to enter a talent contest,’ Michael recalled.
‘This is something I remember like it was just yesterday.
‘Everyone on the block wanted to be in the talent show and win the
trophy. I was about six years old but I had figured out then that nobody
gives you nothin'. You got to win it. Or, like Smokey Robinson said in one
of his songs, “You got to earn it”. We did this talent contest at Roosevelt
High School in Gary. We sang The Temptations' “My Girl” and won first
prize.’
The boys also performed their rendition of the Robert Parker hit song,
‘Barefootin'’. During a musical break in the middle of the song, little
Michael kicked off his shoes and started doing the barefoot dance all over
the stage, much to the crowd's delight.
‘After that, we started winning every talent show we entered,’ Michael
said. ‘It was just going from one thing to another, up, up, up. The whole
house was full of trophies, and my father was so proud. Probably, the
happiest I ever saw my mother and father was back there in Gary when we
were winning those talent shows. That's when we were closest, I think, back
in the beginning when we didn't have anything but our talent.’
By 1965, Joseph was making only about eight thousand dollars a year
working full-time at the mill. Katherine worked part-time as a saleswoman
at Sears. When Joseph wanted to start spending more money on the group –
musical equipment, amplifiers, microphones – Katherine became
concerned.
‘I was afraid we were getting in over our heads,’ she would recall. She
and Joseph had vociferous disagreements about finances. ‘I saw this great
potential in my sons,’ Joseph once told me, in his defence. ‘So yes, I did go
overboard. I invested a lot of money in instruments, and this was money we
did not have. My wife and I would have heated arguments about this “waste
of money”, as she would call it. She'd yell at me that the money should have
been put into food, not into guitars and drums. But I was the head of the
household and what I said was the final word. I overran her opinion.
‘Black people were used to struggling and making ends meet. This was
nothing new for me or any of us. I came up struggling, so my kids knew
how to economize. They had no choice. We made a penny stretch by eating
foods like chitterlings and collard greens. I used to tell them we were eating
soul food in order to be able to play soul. We were trying to move upward,
trying to get ahead. I wasn't going to let anything stop us.’
In the end, he and Katherine always got past the fights. After the
shouting, Joseph would lean in and kiss her lightly on the lips. He could be
surprisingly gentle. She later said she would tremble whenever he took a
romantic approach; he could always reason with her in that way. ‘Joseph
convinced me that the boys were worth it,’ she recalled. ‘No one ever
believed in his sons more than my husband believed in those boys. He used
to tell me, “I'd spend my last dime on those boys if that's what it took”.’
Soon Joseph was driving his children to Chicago to compete in talent
contests there. Chicago was a city bustling with sensational sixties' soul
music and teeming with talent like Curtis Mayfield, The Impressions, Jerry
Butler and Major Lance. Joseph may not have been a showman, but he
certainly knew about performing. He taught his boys everything he knew –
by experience, observation and instinct – about how to handle and win over
an audience. ‘It's incredible how he could have been so right about things.
He was the best teacher we ever had,’ Michael would say.
‘He wouldn't make it fun, though,’ Michael said. ‘“You're doing it wrong;
you gotta do it like this,” he'd say. Then he would hit me. He made it hard
for me. He would say, “Do it like Michael,” and make me the example. I
hated that.
‘I didn't want to be the example, I didn't want to be singled out. My
brothers would look at me with resentment because they couldn't do it like
me. It was awful that Joseph did that to me. But he was brilliant, too. He
told me how to work the stage and work the mike and make gestures and
everything. I was always torn. On one hand he was this horrible man, then
on the other he was this amazing manager.’
When the group played its first paying performance at a Gary nightclub
called Mr Lucky's, they made roughly seven dollars for the engagement.
The boys then began playing in other clubs and the patrons would throw
coins and bills on to the stage. ‘My pockets would just be bustin' with
money,’ Michael once told me. ‘My pants couldn't even stay up. Then I
would go and buy candy, loads and loads of candy for me and for
everyone.’
Many neighbourhood boys would accompany the Jacksons as musicians
from time to time, and by 1966, Johnny Porter Jackson (no relation) was
added to the group as a permanent drummer. Johnny's family was friendly
with the Jacksons, who, in time, would consider Johnny a ‘cousin’. Ronny
Rancifer, a keyboardist, was also added to the band. The boys played clubs
in Gary and as far away as Chicago; Michael was eight years old and
singing lead. Tito was on guitar, Jermaine on bass guitar; Jackie played
shakers and Johnny Jackson was on drums. Marlon sang harmony and
danced, though he wasn't a very good dancer. (He worked at it, though, and
was so persistent at wanting to be good at it he, eventually, would rival
Michael!)
The Jacksons would pull up in their Volkswagen bus to 2300 Jackson
Street at five in the morning on Monday, after an exhausting weekend of
performing. Joseph would kiss Katherine on the nose upon their arrival,
giving her a boyish grin. ‘How ya' doing, Katie?’ he would ask. For
Katherine, there was nothing better than the expression on her husband's
face when everything had gone well for the boys on the road. It was one of
sheer joy. Each of her sons would embrace her. Then, they would all sleep
for a couple of hours while Katherine unpacked their bags, and cooked a
tremendous breakfast for them before Joseph went off to work, and the boys
and their siblings to school.
Though thrilled about her sons' growing success, Katherine was uneasy
about the family's shifting priorities. Suddenly, the emphasis was not only
on making music for fun, but also to make a living. It was as if earning
money made it all right to want more money. However, as a Jehovah's
Witness Katherine valued good works over money. Therefore, she was
concerned about how jubilant the boys were when they'd come home from a
concert date with their pockets full of change. ‘Remember, that's not the
important thing,’ she would tell them. But what kid would believe her,
especially when she herself was encouraging them to win more talent shows
– and, as a consequence, make more money?
It was in the inauspicious surroundings of a shopping mall in Gary,
Indiana, that The Jackson Five got their name. ‘I got to talking with a lady,
a model named Evelyn Leahy,’ Joseph once told me. ‘The boys were
performing in a department store, and she said to me after the show,
“Joseph, I think The Jackson Brothers sounds old-fashioned, like The Mills
Brothers. Why don't you just call them The Jackson Five?” Well, that
sounded like a good name to me, The Jackson Five. So that's what we
called them from then on. The Jackson Five.’
The group soon found themselves doing more club dates out of town on
weekends. Joseph put a luggage rack on top of the family's Volkswagen bus
for their equipment before hitting the so-called ‘chitlin’ (as in chitterling)
circuit: two-thousand-seat theatres in downtown, inner-city areas like
Cleveland, Ohio; Baltimore, Maryland and Washington, DC. There would
always be many other acts on the bill, all diligently vying for the audience's
favour. Sometimes these entertainers would be established artists – like The
Four Tops – but often they would be unknowns, like The Jackson Five. This
arrangement gave the upstarts an opportunity to learn from the experienced
players. After their act, Michael's brothers would go off on their own, but
Michael would stay behind and observe the other performers on the bill.
Whenever anyone wanted to find eight-year-old Michael, they always knew
where to look: he'd be in the wings, watching, studying and, as he
remembered, ‘really taking note of every step, every move, every twist,
every turn, every grind, every emotion. It was the best education for me.’
It wasn't long began Michael began to appropriate routines and shtick
from the best of the acts on the same bill with the brothers, like James
Brown, whom Michael would watch, repeatedly. (Diana Ross used to do the
same thing before The Supremes were famous. She stole from everyone on
the Motown Revue!)
‘James Brown taught me a few things he does on stage,’ Michael
remembered back in 1970. ‘It was a couple years ago. He taught me how to
drop the mike and then catch it before it hits the stage floor. It only took me
about thirty minutes to learn. It looks hard, but it's easy. All I want now is a
pair of patent leather shoes like James Brown's. But they don't make them
in kids' sizes.’
The Jackson Five won the amateur talent show at the Regal, a theatre in
Chicago, for three consecutive weeks, a major coup for the family. The
Jackson boys were becoming more experienced and polished, their lead
singer, Michael, more poised and professional. They played St Louis,
Kansas City, Boston, Milwaukee and Philadelphia. Not only did they open
for The Temptations, The Emotions, The O'Jays, Jackie Wilson, Sam and
Dave, and Bobby Taylor and the Vancouvers, but they formed friendships
with these artists and learned first-hand from many of them what to expect
of the entertainment world.
Before one talent show, one performer remarked to another that they'd
better watch out for The Jackson Five, ‘because they got this midget they're
using as a lead singer’. Jackie overheard and couldn't stop laughing.
When Michael heard about it, he was hurt. ‘I can't help it if I'm the
smallest,’ he said, crying.
Joseph pulled his young son aside. ‘Listen here, Michael,’ he said,
kneeling down to eye-to-eye level with him. ‘You need to be proud that
you're being talked about by the competition,’ he said, his tone gentle. ‘That
means you're on your way. This is a good thing.’
‘Well, I don't like it,’ Michael recalls saying. ‘They're talking bad about
me.’
Joseph kissed his son on the top of the head, a rare moment of gentleness
from him. ‘This is only the beginning, Mike,’ he said, smiling, ‘so, get used
to it.’
In August 1967, The Jackson Five performed at the famed Apollo Theater
in Harlem, as contestants in its world-renowned amateur show. Working at
the Apollo was the dream of most young black entertainers at the time. In
his book Showtime at the Apollo, writer Ted Fox observed, ‘[The Apollo
was] not just the greatest black theatre but a special place to come of age
emotionally, professionally, socially and politically.’ Joseph and Jack
Richardson, a close friend of his, drove the boys to New York in the
family's Volkswagen. At this time, Jackie was sixteen; Tito, thirteen;
Jermaine, twelve; Marlon, ten; and Michael had just turned nine. The
brothers entered the so-called Superdog Contest, the winning of which was
the most prestigious achievement in any of the categories.
Michael once told me, ‘The Apollo was the toughest place of all to play.
If they liked you there, they really liked you. And if they hated you, they'd
throw things at you, food and stuff. But, you know what? We weren't
scared. We knew we were good. We had so much self-confidence at that
time. At the other gigs we'd played, we had 'em in the palms of our hands.
I'd be on stage singing and I'd look over at Jermaine and we'd wink at one
another because we always knew we had it. I mean, you have to feel that
way just to get up on that stage and take the chance, you know? Plus,
Joseph would not have had it any other way. We wanted to please him. I
mean, that was as important as winning any contest.’
Backstage at the Apollo, The Jackson Five found a small log that had
been mounted on a pedestal, which supposedly came from the fabled Tree
of Hope.
According to legend, The Tree of Hope had stood in front of Connie's;
Inn, where Louis Armstrong performed in the famous Harlem version of
Fats Waller's Hot Chocolates. Over the years, hundreds of performers
would stand under that tree and touch it for good luck. It became tradition.
When Seventh Avenue was widened during New York City road
construction, the tree was uprooted. However, Bill ‘Bojangles’ Robinson
arranged for the Tree of Hope – he was the one who named it – to be moved
to a street island, at Seventh Avenue, south of 132nd Street. Eventually, the
tree was cut down; no one remembers the reason, and a plaque is all that
remains at its final location. However, a small log from the Tree of Hope
was mounted on a pedestal backstage at the Apollo. It then became tradition
that the first-timer who touched the tree before he went out on to the stage
would be destined for good luck: he would join the ranks of those black
performers who had struggled to make their dreams a reality, who had
fought for respect, who had paid their dues and eventually triumphed,
shaping American popular culture in the image of their race and heritage.
The pedestal was placed off to the side of the stage so that the crowd
could watch as the performers touched it. It was a Wednesday night and The
Jackson Five were on the bill with The Impressions, one of the most
popular vocal groups of the day. One of its founding members, Fred Cash,
once told me that he went to nine-year-old Michael before the brothers hit
the stage and told him the legend about the tree. ‘No kiddin'?’ Michael
asked Fred, his eyes wide as saucers. ‘Wow. That is so great. I love that. I'll
bet it works, too.’
‘Hey, guys, did you know 'bout this tree thing?’ Michael then asked his
brothers. ‘Touch this tree and we'll have good luck.’
‘Nah. I don't believe in luck,’ Tito deadpanned.
‘Well, I sure do,’ Michael countered. ‘Wish I could take that log home
with me. Then I'd always have good luck.’
‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ the announcer said as the boys pulled
themselves together backstage, ‘here they are, The Jackson Five.’
The lights went up. It was time for The Jackson Five to take their rightful
place in history. Joseph watched proudly as each of his sons touched the
plaque of the Tree of Hope: First, Jackie; then Tito; Jermaine; Marlon;
Michael; then, ‘cousin’ Johnny. The group ran out on to the stage as the
audience offered its applause. Michael, though, was the last one at the
footlights. He ran back to touch the Tree of Hope one more time… just to
be on the safe side. It must have worked; the boys won the contest, an
enthusiastic audience response sealing their victory.
‘My poor, poor family’
Ever since Michael Jackson was a teenager, the public has speculated about
his personal life. Straight, gay or even asexual, it is fascinating that the
sexual proclivity of a performer with as much on-stage sexual appeal as
Michael has always been such a mystery.
At an early age, Michael received mixed signals about sex. The message
from Katherine was loud and clear; with her strong faith as a Jehovah's
Witness, lust in thought or in deed was considered sinful. According to 1
Corinthians 6:9, none of the unrighteous – ‘neither fornicators, nor
idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate men, nor abusers of themselves
with mankind’ – would inherit the Kingdom of God. Therefore, physical
intimacy was reserved for marriage.
However, from Joseph, who shunned the religion Katherine had
embraced, the boys received a message that came more from his actions
than from his words. In the group's early days, Joseph booked the boys into
dives and strip joints. Ordinarily strict, he apparently gave his sons free rein
at those times, allowing nine-year-old Michael to stand in the wings and
watch as the male audience leered and whistled at voluptuous women who
stripped until naked on stage. Once, Michael watched in fascination as a
well-endowed stripper took off everything but her underwear. Then, at just
the ‘right’ moment, she pulled two large oranges from her bra and took off
a wig to reveal that ‘she’ was actually a he.
When the boys played the Peppermint Lounge in Chicago, there was a
peephole in their dressing room through which they had a clear view into
the ladies' bathroom. They would each take turns peering into it. ‘We
learned everything there was to know about ladies,’ Marlon recalled. (Some
years later, the group was performing in London when Michael, thirteen,
and Marlon, fourteen, discovered a peephole that looked directly into an
adjoining dressing room occupied by theatre star Carol Channing. ‘Look,
she's naked!’ Marlon said excitedly as he peered through the hole. ‘I can't
look,’ Michael protested. ‘But she's naked,’ Marlon enthused. ‘Carol
Channing is naked.’ Michael took a quick look. ‘Ugh,’ he groaned. ‘She is
naked.’)
It's safe to say that these kinds of experiences would impact on Michael
for the rest of his life. At nine, Michael was not psychologically equipped to
fully understand any sexual stimulation he may have received from what he
had witnessed, such as the strip teases. He must have been conflicted: he
had an overly rigid view of the world from his mother and an overly
promiscuous view of the world from his father.
One of The Jackson Five's early performance numbers was their
rendition of soul singer Joe Tex's raucous ‘Skinny Legs and All’. As part of
the act, Joseph encouraged young Michael to go into the audience, crawl
under tables, lift up women's skirts, and peek at their panties. No matter
how embarrassed Michael was by this gimmick, he embellished each
performance by rolling his eyes and smiling wickedly. He knew that the
audience members loved the bit enough to throw money on to the stage
afterwards. The boys would then scramble for the loose change. After a
show like this one, the boys would go home to their religious mother, who
would then tuck them into bed and remind them of the virtues of being a
good Jehovah's Witness. She truly never knew anything about the nightclub
act until many years later.
Of course, when the Jackson boys were on the road, Katherine remained
at home with the younger children. Her absence gave Joseph carte blanche
to date other women – mostly groupies. The boys were well aware that he
was exploiting their talent for the purposes of having sex. Marlon has
recalled his father coming into his sons' hotel rooms with shapely beauties
on both of his arms. ‘G'night, fellows,’ he would say. The boys, in bed in
their pyjamas, would watch silently as their father and his lady friends
closed the door behind them. They could then hear laughter and other
sounds from Joseph's room, next door. It was as if he wanted them to know
what he was doing behind Katherine's back. What was he thinking? Who
knew? He'd become an enigma, just as much a mystery then, in his thirties,
as his son, Michael, would be at the same age.
However, a few things about Joseph seemed clear: he was an insecure
man with crippled judgement. Also, he never felt fully appreciated by his
family. No matter how successful and popular Joseph would make his sons,
or how much he gave to his wife and daughters, he always felt a lack of
gratitude and respect from them. They rarely showed him affection. Tender
moments between any of them were uncommon. Perhaps it was because he
had stopped being a demonstrative person once his focus in life completely
shifted to the success of his sons (and he had never been that effusive,
anyway). His family did not know how to relate to him, and he couldn't
understand them either. Therefore, Joseph wandered outside the household
for appreciation, for validation.
‘He used to do the meanest things to us,’ Michael once told me of his
father. He said he was revolted by the thought of whatever was occurring in
Joseph's room with his girlfriends. (The lyrics to his song ‘Scream’, come
to mind: ‘Oh, father, please, have mercy 'cause I just can't take it/Stop
fucking with me!’.) At such a young age, Michael was forced to wonder
how Joseph could repeatedly betray Katherine and, apparently, not be the
least bit ashamed of his actions. Decades later, he is still conflicted by his
father's actions. ‘I loved Joseph,’ he said during a break from his 2003
interview with Martin Bashir. Unexpectedly, tears welled in his eyes. ‘At
the same time, I hated him for what he did to my mother.’ He swallowed
hard, trying to push back the emotion. ‘My poor mother,’ he said. ‘My poor
family,’ he added, sadly. ‘My poor, poor family.’
None of her sons would ever hurt Katherine by revealing to her what her
husband was doing while they were on the road, and they certainly didn't
dare betray Joseph in that way, either. Having to lie to their mother was an
additional burden. ‘Katherine, of course, has never had a lover. She's always
been faithful to Joseph,’ recalled Susie Jackson, who was married to Johnny
Jackson, the group's drummer. ‘This only made them love their mother even
more. The kids just had to learn to lie to heir mother, be hypocritical, and be
very good at it. She would ask, “Well, what does Joseph do while you guys
are out there working?” And they would say, “Nothing. He just lays
around.” It was true, but not by himself.’
Dr Carole Lieberman, a Los Angeles-based psychologist, who has not
treated Michael, speculated, ‘The father's infidelity would certainly have hit
the youngest child exposed to it the hardest. [In this case, that would have
been Michael, since he was the youngest member of the group privy to
Joseph's indiscretions. It would be years before his younger brother and
sister, Randy and Janet, would know about their father's philandering.] He
would have thought that by not telling the mother he had betrayed her the
most. Of course, this would have impacted him in many ways, and lying
about it at such an early age obviously just taught him, simply, that it was
okay to lie.’
‘I may be young,’ little Michael used to say while introducing the
Smokey Robinson song ‘Who's Lovin' You’ in the group's act, ‘but I do
know what the blues are all about.’ Though the line was just a part of the
group's stage patter, the truth of it was more accurate, and more painful,
than anyone in the audience ever could have guessed.
*
The Jackson family was ecstatic over the boys' tremendous success at the
Apollo Theater, and with good reason: this success marked a defining
moment for them in terms of their future. ‘I'm so damn happy, I could fly to
Gary without an airplane,’ Joseph said afterward, his grin wide. Elated at
their performance and proud of their determination to be the best, Joseph
was determined to continue doing whatever was necessary to ensure his
family's fortune in a tough, competitive business. To that end, he decided to
work only part-time at Inland Steel so that he could devote more time to his
sons' careers.
In 1968, Joseph would earn only fifty-one hundred dollars rather than his
usual eight to ten thousand. He would give up relative financial security in
order to gamble on his family's future. However, the gamble quickly paid
off; the boys started making six hundred dollars per engagement. With the
influx of money, Katherine and Joseph were able to redecorate their home
and buy their first colour television.
Now flushed with success, the Jacksons continued to work on their
performance in daily rehearsals that would often become emotional. Once,
when Joseph tried to convince Michael to execute a dance step a certain
way, Michael refused. According to Johnny Jackson, Joseph smacked
Michael across the face. Michael fell backwards.
‘Now, you do it the way I told you to, you hear me?’ Joseph hollered at
the nine-year-old.
Michael began to cry, his right cheek red and sore. ‘I ain't doin' it that
way,’ he said.
Joseph glared at him and took one step forward, his hand raised to strike
again.
Michael scrambled up off the floor. ‘Don't hit me,’ he warned his father.
‘'Cause if you ever hit me again, it'll be the last time I ever sing, and I mean
it.’ Father and son exchanged angry stares. However, Michael must have
said the magic words because Joseph turned and walked away, muttering
something about his ‘ungrateful’ son.
Michael has recalled that as Joseph got older, he became more violent. It
became a running theme in his young life: his father was a bully, and he
would have to live with it. ‘If you messed up during rehearsal, you got hit,’
Michael would remember, ‘sometimes with a belt, a switch. Once, he ripped
the wire cord off the refrigerator and whooped me with it, that's how mad
he was at me.’ It was a vicious cycle: the more his father beat him, the
angrier Michael became at him. The angrier he became, the more he
antagonized him…and the more he got beaten by his father. The beatings
were fierce, recurring and traumatizing. ‘I'd try to fight back,’ Michael
would recall, ‘just swinging my fists. That's why I got it more than all my
brothers combined. I would fight back and my father would kill me, just
tear me up.’
Once, Michael was late arriving at rehearsal, and when he walked in,
Joseph came up from behind and shoved him into a stack of musical
instruments. Michael fell into the drums and was badly bruised. ‘That'll
teach you to be late,’ Joseph said.
Rebbie Marries
At about this time, 1968, when Michael was almost ten, the Jacksons faced
a family crisis. Eighteen-year-old Maureen had fallen in love with
Nathaniel Brown, a devout Jehovah's Witness. She announced that she
wanted to marry him and move to Kentucky. Katherine, happy for her
daughter, encouraged her. In Katherine's view, there was no more important
role for any of her daughters to play than that of being a wife and mother.
However, Joseph was against the marriage. ‘It was all cooked up by
Maureen and her mother,’ he would later explain. ‘I wasn't happy about it at
all.’
Because Maureen – Rebbie, as she was known in the family – had a
powerful singing voice, her father had hoped she would consider a career in
show business. He felt that if she married and raised a family, she would
never be able to devote her attention to the entertainment field. However,
though Maureen had taken dance and piano lessons as a child, she was not
interested in a musical career. She preferred the comfort and security of a
happy home life to the instability of show business.
Also, of course, Rebbie wanted to get out of that house. There was
always so much drama occurring within the walls of that small home on
Jackson Street; from the exuberant high when the boys would win a talent
show, to the crashing low when they were chased and bullied by Joseph.
Rebbie wanted out. Who could blame her? As it would happen, her
defection from the ranks would be just the first of such crises in the family,
as several of the children chose to marry at an early age against their
father's wishes in order to get away from him.
The arguments went on for weeks until, finally, Joseph relented. Fine,
Rebbie could get married. However, he would have the final word: he
would not give her away.
The First Record Deal
After winning another talent contest, this one at Beckman Junior High in
Gary, the boys were brought to the attention of a man named Gordon Keith,
who owned a small local label called Steeltown Records. Keith immediately
signed the brothers to a limited record deal.
On a Saturday morning filled with great promise, Joseph took his brood
to Steeltown's recording studio. The boys were led into a small glass booth.
Michael was given a large set of metal headphones which came halfway
down his neck. His brothers plugged their instruments into amplifiers.
There were backup singers and a horn section. This was the record business
– at last! The Jackson youngsters were thrilled, as anyone could see by
looking at their young, bright faces. Of course, this was a big day for
Joseph, too. It took a few hours to record that first song. After that, they
would return every Saturday for the next few weeks for more recordings.
One song was an instrumental; Michael sang lead vocals on the other six. It
was obvious that he was to be the centrepiece of the group, he was so
obviously unique with such a true ‘sound’ and amazing self-assurance at an
early age.
Two singles were eventually released on Steeltown in 1968: ‘Big Boy’,
backed with ‘You've Changed’, and ‘We Don't Have to Be Over 21 (to Fall
in Love)’, backed with ‘Jam Session’. Both were mediocre numbers that
don't really hint at Michael Jackson's potential as a vocalist, but the boys
were thrilled with them just the same. After all, these were their first
records. From here, it seemed, anything might be possible. What a
memorable moment it must have been for them, then, when the family
gathered around the radio to hear the broadcast of that first recording.
Michael recalled that as it played, they sat in the living room, stunned.
‘Then, when it was over, we all laughed and hugged one another. We felt
we had arrived. This was an amazing time for us as a family. I can still feel
the excitement when I think back on it.’
Ben Brown, then a high-level executive at Steeltown, remembered the
day the Jackson boys posed for publicity photographs, in March 1968.
‘After the photographer positioned the boys, Michael left the lineup and
stood off to the side, pouting,’ Brown said. ‘“This isn't gonna look like a
publicity portrait,” Michael complained. “It's gonna look like a family
portrait.” “Well, fix it,” Joseph said. Then, Michael went and rearranged the
whole group, put himself in front on one knee, and said, “Go ahead, take
the picture now.” We took it, and you know what? That was a great shot.
How did he know how to do that, how to take a publicity photo? He was
such an old soul, as if he had been a superstar in another life.’
In May 1968, the group was invited back to the Apollo to perform and,
this time, be paid for their appearance. They were on a bill with Etta James,
Joseph Simon and another family group, The Five Stairsteps and Cubie – a
singer who was just two years old. ‘Michael was a hard worker,’ rhythm-
and-blues singer Joseph Simon said in an interview, adding in an echo of
the memories of practically everyone who ever worked on the same stage as
the young Jackson star, ‘there was a part of me that thought he was a
midget. His father was a slick businessman, I had heard. It would've been
just like him to pass a midget off as a child, I heard. I remember going up to
Michael and looking at him real close, thinking, Okay now, is this kid a
midget or not?
‘“Hey man, stop starin' at me, okay?” he told me.’
‘I remember him being talented, yes,’ Etta James said of Michael, ‘but
polite and very interested too. I was working my show, doing my thing on
stage, and as I'm singing “Tell Mama”, I see this little black kid watching
me from the wings. And I'm thinking, Who is this kid? He's distracting me.
So I go over to him in between songs, while the people are clapping, and I
whisper, “Scat, kid! Get lost. You're buggin' me. Go watch from the
audience.” I scared the hell out of him. He had these big ol’ brown eyes,
and he opened them real wide and ran away.
‘About ten minutes later, there's this kid again. Now he's standing in front
of the stage, off to the side. And he's watching me as I work.’
After the show, when Etta was in her dressing room taking off her
makeup, there was a knock on the door.
‘Who is it?’ she asked.
‘It's me.’
‘Who's me?’
‘Michael,’ the young voice said. ‘Michael Jackson.’
‘I don't know no Michael Jackson,’ Etta said.
‘Yes, you do. I'm that little kid you told to scat.’
Etta, a robust black woman with dyed blond hair and a big, booming
voice, cracked the door open and looked down to find a nine-year-old
gazing up at her with large, wondering eyes. ‘Whatchu want, boy?’ she
asked.
In a manner that wasn't the least bit timid, Michael said, ‘Miss James, my
father told me to come on back here and 'pologize to you. I'm sorry, ma'am,
but I was just watchin' you 'cause you're so good. You're just so good. How
do you do that? I never seen people clap like that.’
Etta, now flattered, smiled and patted the boy on the head. ‘Come on in
here and sit with me,’ she said. ‘I can teach you a few tricks.’
‘I don't remember what I told him,’ Etta recalled, ‘but I remember
thinking as he was leaving, Now, there's a boy who wants to learn from the
best, so one day he's gonna be the best.’
While Joseph was at the American Federation of Musicians' hall in New
York filling out certain forms for the Apollo engagement, he met a young,
white lawyer by the name of Richard Arons. After talking to him for just a
few moments, Joseph asked Arons to help him manage his sons. Joseph
relished the idea of having white assistance – a preference that would cause
problems for him in years to come. Arons, as a co-manager, began seeking
concert bookings for the group while Joseph tried to interest the record
industry in them. At one point, he tried to contact Berry Gordy, president of
Motown, by sending him an audiotape of some of the Jacksons' songs; there
was no reaction from Gordy, or from anyone else at Motown.
In 1968, when The Jackson Five played The Regal Theater in Chicago,
Motown recording artist Gladys Knight arranged for some of Motown's
executives – but not Berry – to attend the show. There was some interest in
the group at that time; word got back to Berry that the Jacksons were an up-
and-coming act, but still, there was no interest from him in terms of signing
them to the label.
In July 1968 – when Jackie was seventeen; Tito, fourteen; Jermaine,
thirteen; Marlon, ten; and Michael, nine – the group performed at Chicago's
High Chaparral Club as an opening act for a group called Bobby Taylor and
the Vancouvers. After he saw the Jackson boys in action, Taylor telephoned
Ralph Seltzer, head of Motown's creative department and also head of the
company's legal division, to suggest that the group be allowed to audition
for Motown.
‘I had some doubts,’ Ralph Seltzer would recall. ‘Creative considerations
aside, I had concerns about their age and the way they would change when
they grew older, in terms of their appearance and their voices. But there was
so much excitement about them from Bobby, I finally told him to bring
them onto Detroit.’
Though the Jacksons were scheduled to leave Chicago for a local
television programme in New York, Bobby Taylor convinced Joseph that he
should, instead, take the boys to Detroit for an audition. Taylor arranged to
film their performance. If the boys were impressive, he said, Ralph Seltzer
would then forward the film to Berry Gordy, who was in Los Angeles, for
his approval.
Later that day, Katherine called the High Chaparral Club to talk to her
husband. She was told that he and the boys had gone to the Motor City.
‘Detroit?’ she asked, puzzled. ‘You mean to tell me they gave up that
television show to go to Detroit? What in the world for?’
‘Motown,’ said the voice on the other end. ‘They've gone to Motown.’
The Jacksons Sign with Motown
It was quarter to ten in the morning on 23 July 1968 when the Jackson
family's Volkswagen minibus eased into a parking space in front of a cluster
of small white bungalows at 2648 West Grand Boulevard, Detroit. The sign
above one of the structures said it all: Hitsville U.S.A. This was Motown
Records, the place from which had sprung forth so many memorable, chart-
topping hit records. By 1968, Berry Gordy, Jr., had made an indelible
impression on the entertainment world with this company. Gordy was a
maverick in the record business in every way, a visionary who had plucked
young, black hopefuls from urban street corners to then transform them into
international superstars, with names such as The Supremes, The
Temptations, The Miracles, The Vandellas and The Marvelettes. His success
with those kinds of groups and solo artists, like Stevie Wonder, Marvin
Gaye and Tammi Terrell, was largely the result of his brilliance at
surrounding the singers with the most talented writers, producers and
arrangers Detroit had to offer: Smokey Robinson, Brian Holland, Lamont
Dozier and Eddie Holland, Norman Whitfield, and Barrett Strong, to name
just a few. Using the notion of team work as their foundation, they and the
artists formulated an original, contagious style of music that sold millions
of records. It was called the Motown Sound.
A muscular rhythm section, engaging hook lines and choruses, and witty
lyrics were all standard elements of songs like ‘Where Did Our Love Go?’
and ‘I Can't Help Myself’. ‘Dancing in the Streets’, ‘Please Mr Postman’,
‘Stop! In the Name of Love’, ‘The Tracks of My Tears’ and seemingly
countless others became not only anthems of an entire generation, but also
emblems of the period in American history in which they were recorded.
Berry Gordy was a tough taskmaster who encouraged intense
competition among his groups, writers and producers. The biggest criticism
levelled at Gordy – by outsiders at first and then, later, by the artists
themselves – had to do with the complete control he exercised over his
dominion. Practically none of the artists had a clue as to how much money
they generated for the company, and they were usually discouraged from
asking questions about it. They sang and performed, and that was all that
was expected of them. ‘I never saw a tax return until 1979,’ Diana Ross,
who signed with Gordy in 1960, once said. ‘Berry was such a mentor and
strong personality, you found yourself relying on that. You didn't grow.’
Joseph had heard some rumours about Motown – nonsense about it being
linked to the mob, for instance – and had also heard that some artists had
trouble being paid for their work. However, none of that was on his mind
when he took his boys there that day in 1968 for their audition.
Joseph and Jack Richardson, a close family friend who travelled with
them and acted as a road manager, were in the front seat of the van as they
drove up to Hitsville. Crammed in the back were the Jackson boys with a
plethora of instruments, amplifiers and microphones.
‘Get out and in line for inspection,’ Joseph ordered.
The youngsters clambered out on to the already-warm Detroit street,
where, as if a military troop, they lined up according to age: seventeen-year-
old Jackie; fourteen-year-old Tito; thirteen-year-old Jermaine; ten-year-old
Marlon, and nine-year-old Michael. Seventeen-year-old Johnny Jackson
joined the group. Though they were not related, Joseph treated him just like
he treated his own sons, and Johnny obeyed just as quickly. ‘All right,’
Joseph growled. ‘It's ten o'clock. Let's go. Remember everything I taught
you and, except when you're singing or being spoken to, keep your mouths
shut. And remember what I always say…’ He looked at Jermaine.
‘Either you're a winner in this life, or a loser,’ Jermaine said. ‘And none
of my kids are losers.’
‘Thata' boy,’ Joseph said, patting him on the back.
Inside the main building, the first person to greet the gang was a sharply
dressed, black man. When he asked how he could assist them, Joseph
explained that they were the Jackson family from Gary and that they had an
appointment for an audition. The man said that he'd been expecting them.
‘You must be Michael,’ he said, looking at the smallest. Then, pointing to
the boys in turn, he correctly called each one by his name. ‘And you, sir,
you must be Joseph,’ he announced as he and the family patriarch shook
hands. The boys looked at each other, amazed.
The family was then led into a small studio. As they walked in, they
noticed a person setting up a film camera on a tripod. There were ten
folding chairs in front of the small, elevated wooden platform which would
serve as a stage.
Suzanne dePasse, creative assistant to president Berry Gordy, entered the
studio wearing a blue miniskirt and a yellow blouse with ruffles. Her high
heels clicked as she approached the group to introduce herself. She was an
attractive, young black woman with shoulder-length, soft hair and a bright,
friendly smile. The boys liked her immediately.
Ralph Seltzer was the next to appear. A tall white man wearing a dark
suit and conservative tie, Seltzer seemed more intimidating than dePasse.
He shook the hand of each boy, and then Joseph's and Jack's.
‘We've heard a lot about your group,’ he said to Joseph. ‘Mr Gordy
couldn't be here, but – ’
‘You mean Mr Gordy's not here?’ Joseph asked, unable to hide his
disappointment.
When Seltzer explained that Gordy was in Los Angeles, Joseph said that
they should reschedule the audition when he was back in Detroit. He
wanted his sons to audition for the boss, not his flunkies. However, Seltzer
explained that they intended to film the audition, and then have it sent to
Gordy on the West Coast. ‘Mr Gordy will render a decision at that time,’ he
said.
‘He'll render a decision,’ Joseph repeated, more to himself than to
Seltzer.
‘Yes, he will,’ Seltzer said, nodding his head. ‘Mr Gordy will render a
decision at that time.’
‘Mr Gordy's gonna render a decision,’ Michael repeated to Marlon.
‘What's that mean?’ Marlon whispered.
Michael shrugged his shoulders.
After all of the boys' equipment was lugged in from the van and set up,
eight more staffers who did not introduce themselves filed into the studio,
each with a notepad. Michael was ready to speak into the microphone when
he heard someone in the corner snicker and say, ‘Yeah, the Jackson Jive.’
(‘The Jackson Jive’ is an old slang expression.) It sounded like an insult.
Ralph Seltzer cleared his throat and glared at the person who made the
remark.
‘First song we'd like to do is James Brown's “I Got the Feeling”,’
Michael announced. ‘Okay? Here we go.’ He counted off – ‘A-one, a-two,
a-three’ – and then Tito on guitar, Jermaine on bass, and Johnny Jackson on
drums began to play.
‘Baby, baby, baa-ba. Baby, baby, baa-ba. Baby, baby, baa-ba,’ Michael
sang. He grimaced and grunted, imitating James Brown. ‘I got the fe-e-e-
lin' now. Good Gawwd almighty!’ He skated sideways across the floor, like
Brown. ‘I feel goooood,’ he screamed into the microphone, a wicked
expression playing on his little face.
Suzanne dePasse and Ralph Seltzer smiled at each other and nodded their
heads. The other Motown executives kept time to the music. Joseph,
standing in a corner with his arms folded across his chest, looked on
approvingly.
After the boys finished, no one in the audience applauded. Instead,
everyone feverishly wrote on their notepads.
Confused, the youngsters looked at each other and then at their father for
a hint as to what they should do. Joseph motioned with his hand that they
should continue with the next number.
‘Thank you. Thank you very much,’ Michael said, as though
acknowledging an ovation. ‘We 'predate it.’
Michael then introduced the group, as he did in their live show, after
which they sang the bluesy ‘Tobacco Road’.
Again, no applause, just note-taking.
‘Next song we'd like to do is a Motown song,’ Michael announced. He
paused, waiting for smiles of acknowledgement that never materialized. ‘It's
Smokey Robinson's “Who's Loving You” Okay? Here we go. A-one, a-two,
a-three…’
They closed the song with a big finish and waited for a reaction from the
Motown staffers. Again, everyone was writing. ‘Jackson Jive, huh?’
someone in the room said. ‘These boys ain't jivin'. I think they're great.’
Michael beamed, his eyes dancing.
Ralph Seltzer cleared his throat and stood up. ‘I'd like to thank you boys
for coming,’ he said. His voice gave no hint of how he felt the audition had
gone. He shook each of their hands before walking over to Joseph and
explaining to him that the company would put them all up at a nearby hotel.
‘I'll be in touch with you,’ Seltzer concluded, ‘in two days…’
‘When Mr Gordy renders a decision,’ Joseph said, finishing Seltzer's
sentence. He didn't sound happy. The boys were also clearly disappointed.
As they filed out, no one said a word.
Two days later, Berry Gordy saw the sixteen-millimetre black-and-white
film. He made a quick decision. ‘Yes, absolutely, sign these kids up,’ he
told Ralph Seltzer. ‘They're amazing. Don't waste a second. Sign 'em!’
On 26 July 968, Ralph Seltzer summoned Joseph into his Motown office for
a meeting. During the two-hour conference – while the boys waited in the
lobby – he explained that Berry Gordy was interested in signing The
Jackson Five to the label, and then outlined the kind of relationship he
hoped the company would develop with the Jackson youngsters. He spoke
of ‘the genius of Berry Gordy’ and Gordy's hopes that The Jackson Five
would become major recording stars. ‘These kids are gonna be big, big,
big,’ Seltzer enthused, his manner much more cordial than it had been on
their first visit. ‘Believe me, if Mr Gordy says they're gonna be big, they're
gonna be big.’ Joseph must have felt like he was dreaming.
Then Seltzer presented Joseph with Motown's standard, nine-page
contract. It never occurred to Joseph that he should probably have shown up
with independent legal counsel for such an important discussion, and
Seltzer hadn't suggested it.
‘Berry did not want outside lawyers looking over any of our contracts,’
Ralph Seltzer would explain in an interview long after he and Gordy had
parted ways. ‘Quite simply, he did not want outsiders influencing the artists.
I thought it was more than fair for an artist to be able to take the contract
home and read it, think it over. Berry told me that if I ever allowed an artist
to take a contract home, that artist would not sign the contract. I tried once,
and he was right: the artist did not sign. It was best, Berry decided, that
potential contractees read over the agreement in my office and then just
sign. If they had a problem with that, they did not become Motown artists.
It was that simple.’
Seltzer began with clause number one, which stated that the agreement
was for a term of seven years.
‘Hold it right there,’ Joseph interrupted. ‘That's too long.’
Joseph felt that they should be committed for only one year. That brief
length of time was unheard of at Motown, where the minimum arrangement
was five years. Gordy felt it took that long to fully develop an artist, and
then see a return on the company's investment.
Ralph Seltzer picked up the telephone and called Berry Gordy in Los
Angeles. He explained the problem and handed the phone to Joseph, whom
Berry had never met. After a brief conversation, Joseph hung up.
‘He said he was gonna think about it,’ Joseph told Seltzer, who smiled
knowingly. Two minutes later, the phone rang again. It was Gordy wanting
to talk to Joseph. He explained to Joseph that, as far as he was concerned,
the real issue was a basic matter of trust. If Joseph really believed in Gordy
and Motown, he wouldn't mind having his children obligated to the
company for seven years. After all, Gordy was willing to pay for their
accommodation, recording sessions, rehearsal time, and so forth. However,
if Joseph insisted on changing the clause, then it would be changed,
‘because, after all, I just want what's best for the kids,’ Gordy explained.
Joseph smiled and gave Richardson the thumbs-up signal. He handed the
phone to Seltzer who got back on the line and spoke to Berry for a moment.
Then Seltzer put Gordy on hold and summoned an assistant into his office
who took some quick dictation from Gordy. About five minutes later, the
assistant returned with a new clause, which stated that the group was
obligated to Motown for only one year. Joseph beamed; he had won a
strategic battle against Berry Gordy.
Ralph Seltzer quickly explained the rest of the contract. Joseph nodded
his head, then called his boys into the office.
‘We got it, boys,’ he announced.
‘Oh, man, that's too much!’
‘We're on Motown!’
‘We got us a contract!’
They all began jumping up and down and hugging one another.
Ralph Seltzer gave each boy a contract. ‘Just sign right there on that line,
fellas.’
They looked at their father.
‘Go ahead. It's okay. Sign it.’
Though Joseph had not even read the contract – he just had it explained
to him – and neither had any of his sons, each boy signed.
‘And here's an agreement for you, Mr Jackson,’ Ralph Seltzer said,
handing Joseph a paper. ‘This is a parental approval agreement and it says,
quite simply, that you will make certain that the boys comply with the terms
of the contract they just signed.’ *
Joseph signed the agreement.
‘Well, congratulations,’ Ralph Seltzer said with a smile and a firm
handshake for Joseph. ‘And let me be the first to welcome you to Motown.’
In years to come, many would wonder why Joseph Jackson allowed his
sons to sign Motown contracts – and why he himself would sign an
accompanying agreement – without first reading the documents? In
litigation against Motown, years later, Joseph would explain, ‘I did not read
these agreements nor did my sons read these agreements because they were
presented to us on a take-it-or-leave-it basis. Since my sons were just
starting out in the entertainment field, we accepted these contracts based on
the representations of Ralph Seltzer that they were good contracts.’
Ralph Seltzer would disagree, and in a way that was a bit unsettling. ‘I
have no recollection of ever saying to Joseph Jackson or The Jackson 5 that
the agreement being offered by Motown was a good agreement.’
Later, after leaving Ralph Seltzer's office, Joseph telephoned Richard
Arons, the man he had hired as his lawyer and the group's unofficial co-
manager. Arons would recall, ‘Joseph called me up and said he had signed
with Motown. There wasn't much I could offer at that point.’
It's easy to understand why Joseph would just sign the deal. It was
Motown, after all. However, there were significant problems with the
contract, many of which would cause trouble for the family later on down
the road.
Clause Five, for instance, stated that The Jackson 5 would be unable to
record for any other label ‘at any time prior to the expiration of five years
from the expiration or termination of this agreement’. This was a standard
Motown clause that applied whether an act was signed for seven years, five
years, or, as in the case of The Jackson 5, one. So Berry Gordy's concession
to Joseph Jackson proved meaningless; The Jackson 5 were still tied up for
at least six years.
Furthermore, the third clause stated that Motown was under no obligation
to record the group or promote its music for five years, even though this
was purportedly a one-year contract! Some other contractual stipulations
that Joseph might have questioned had he read the agreement: Motown
would choose all of the songs that the group would record, and the group
would record each song until ‘they have been recorded to our [Motown's]
satisfaction’. However, Motown ‘shall not be obligated to release any
recording’, meaning that just because a song was recorded, it would not
necessarily be issued to the public. The group was paid $12.50 per ‘master’,
which is a completed recording of a song. But in order for the recording to
be considered a master, the song had to be released. Otherwise, they were
paid nothing. In other words, they could record dozens of songs and see
only one issued from that session, and that would be the one for which
they'd be paid. As for the rest, well, they would just be a waste of time.
It's been written that the Jacksons received a 2.7 per cent royalty rate,
based on wholesale price, a standard Motown royalty of the 1960s.
Actually, according to their contract, the boys would receive 6 per cent of
90 per cent of the wholesale price (less all taxes and packaging) of any
single or album released. It was the same rate as Marvin Gaye, and also The
Supremes, got. Marvin, as a solo artist, did not have to split his percentage,
though. The Supremes had to divide it three ways. And this amount had to
be split five ways among the Jackson brothers. In other words, Michael
would receive one-fifth of 6 per cent of 90 per cent of the wholesale price –
or a little under one-half of a penny for any single and $0.0216, about two
cents, per album released (based on an assumed wholesale price of $0,375 a
single and $2.00 an album).
Also, as per the terms of the contract, Motown was obligated to pay the
cost of arrangements, copying and accompaniment and all other costs
related to each recording session, whether the song was released or not –
but these expenses and others would have to be recouped by the company
from the royalties generated by sales of the records that were released. This
arrangement would lead to many complaints by Motown artists, and it
would be a big problem for The Jackson 5. But Joseph never imagined that
the group would record so many songs that would not be issued – and they
did, perhaps as many as a hundred! Later, it would be virtually impossible
for the group to make any money on the ones that were released, because
the boys would still have to pay for all the ones that weren't.
Also, if Michael or any of his brothers were to leave the group, he would
have no right ever to say that he was a member of The Jackson 5, ‘and shall
have no further right to use the group name for any purpose whatsoever’.
Joseph may not have realized it, but this could be a big problem. For
instance, when Florence Ballard was fired from The Supremes in 1967, she
was not able to promote herself as having been a member of the group. Her
press biography for ABC, when she signed to that label as a solo artist in
1968, could state only that she was ‘a member of a popular female singing
group’.
Also Motown could, at any time, replace any member of the group with
any person the company chose. In other words, if Tito acted up, for
instance, he could be bounced from the act and replaced by someone else
selected by Motown, and not by Joseph.
An even more limiting clause – number sixteen – stated that ‘Motown
owns all rights, title and interest in the names Jackson 5 and Jackson Five.’
In other words, they may have gone to the company as The Jackson Five,
but they sure weren't going to be leaving that way. When The Supremes
wanted to leave the label in 1972, they were welcome to go – but they'd
have to change the group's name to something else. They stayed.
The contract with Motown could have also stated that Joseph would be
obligated to hand Randy and Janet over to the company to raise as Gordy
saw fit, and he might have agreed to it. The important thing was that the
boys were with Motown, on any terms.
Thus, on 26 July 1968, in tiny, barely legible handwriting, Michael
signed the deal: ‘Michael Joseph Jackson’. *
‘Hollywood Livin'’
On 27 September 1968, Motown Records booked The Jackson 5 to appear
in a benefit concert at Gilroy Stadium in Gary, Indiana, the purpose of
which was to defray the costs of Richard Hatcher's mayoral campaign. On
the bill that day were Motown recording artists Gladys Knight and the Pips,
Shorty Long, and Bobby Taylor and the Vancouvers. The Jackson 5 opened
the show. In years to come, the official Motown story would be that this
was where Diana Ross saw the boys for the first time, ‘discovered’ them,
and brought them to Gordy's attention. In truth, The Jackson 5 were already
signed to the label. Moreover, Diana Ross was nowhere near Gary at the
time. She was in Los Angeles, rehearsing with The Supremes.
Around Christmastime, Berry Gordy hosted a party at the Detroit estate
he had purchased in 1967 for a million dollars. (Though he had moved to
the West Coast, he still maintained his Michigan residence.) The Jackson 5
were asked to perform at the party for the Motown artists and other friends
of Gordy's. This was a big deal.
Gordy's three-storey mansion boasted a ballroom with marble floors and
columns, an Olympic-sized swimming pool, a billiard room, a two-lane
bowling alley, a private theatre linked to the main house by a tunnel, and a
pub whose furnishings were imported from England. All of the rooms were
decorated with gold leaf, frescoed ceilings and elaborate crystal chandeliers.
Expensive oil portraits of Gordy's friends and family decorated the
entryway.
If the Jacksons had ever seen a home like this before, it was only in
movies where the occupants usually were royalty – white royalty. ‘Black
people actually live like this?’ Joseph recalled asking himself as he
wandered throughout the mansion, shaking his head. ‘I just can't believe
that this kind of thing is possible.’ When Gordy happened to overhear the
comment, he put his hand on Joseph's shoulder and whispered something in
his ear that made Joseph smile. The two men shook hands in agreement and
Gordy led Joseph into the living room.
‘So tell me, man, what do you think about this?’ Gordy asked, stopping
before an enormous painting of Gordy dressed as Napoleon Bonaparte. It
had been commissioned by his sister, Esther.
‘Jesus. What can I say?’ Joseph asked. ‘That's you? Man, it's too much to
believe.’
‘Well, do you like it?’ Gordy pressed.
‘I, uh…You, uh…’ All Joseph could do was stammer. Just at that
moment, his son Michael came running up to him. ‘Hey, who's that funny-
lookin' guy in the picture?’ he asked.
Joseph cringed and shot his son a look. Gordy smiled.
‘I'll never forget that night,’ Michael would say. ‘There were maids and
butlers, and everyone was real polite. There were Motown stars
everywhere. Smokey Robinson was there. That's when I met him for the
first time. The Temptations were there, and we were singing some of their
songs, so we were real nervous. And I looked out into the audience, and
there was Diana Ross. That's when I almost lost it.’
After the boys' performance, Berry introduced them to Diana for the first
time. Diana looked regal in a white, draped silk gown and her hair pulled
back in a chignon.
‘I just want to tell you how much I enjoyed you guys,’ she said as she
shook their hands. ‘Mr Gordy tells me that we're going to be working
together.’
‘We are?’ Michael asked.
‘Yes, we are,’ Diana said. Her smile was almost as overwhelming as the
diamonds she wore at her ears and around her neck. ‘Whatever I can do to
assist you,’ she said, ‘that's what I'm going to do.’
‘Well, Miss Ross, we really appreciate it,’ Joseph Jackson managed to
say. Usually a smooth talker, Joseph was not having an easy time that night.
Diana's smile was warm and sincere. She turned to Michael. ‘And you,
you're just so cute.’ When she pinched his cheek, Michael blushed.
Immediately after signing to the label, the Jacksons began to record at the
Motown studios under the direction of producer Bobby Taylor, the man
who had really discovered them in Chicago. For the next few months, they
would spend their weeks in Gary attending school and their weekends – and
many of their weeks as well – in Detroit, sleeping on the floor of Taylor's
apartment. They recorded fifteen songs, most of which would surface later
on their albums. Taylor would say later that he was not paid for those
sessions. ‘Sure, I would have liked the recognition for having discovered
The Jackson 5,’ he said. ‘But recognition don't pay the bills.’
(One day, Berry Gordy and Bobby Taylor were talking about the boys,
and Bobby was saying how thrilled he was to be in on the ground floor of
something as exciting as The Jackson 5. ‘Taylor, let me tell you something,’
Gordy said, according to Bobby's memory. ‘As soon as they get rich, they're
gonna forget who you are.’)
The next eight months would prove to be difficult. Berry did not feel The
Jackson 5 were ready to have a single release yet; he wasn't satisfied with
any of the songs they had thus far recorded. Everyone in the family was
becoming impatient, especially since conditions in Gary were getting worse
with street gangs terrorizing the neighbourhood. Joseph was mugged and,
later, a punk pulled a knife on Tito. Every day, the family would wait for
that call from someone – anyone – at Motown, telling them what the next
step in their lives would be.
On 11 March 1969, the Motown contract was finally fully executed. The
delay had been caused when Ralph Seltzer discovered The Jackson 5 were
still committed to Steeltown Records, despite Richard Aron's previous
efforts to extricate them from that deal. Motown had to make a settlement
with Steeltown, much to Gordy's chagrin. By this time, according to Ralph
Seltzer, Motown had spent in excess of thirty thousand dollars on The
Jackson 5, and this sum did not include any settlement made to Steeltown.
Gordy was anxious to begin recouping his investment.
In August 1969, more than a year since their audition, the call came from
Motown: Gordy wanted Joseph, his five sons and Johnny Jackson and
Ronny Rancifer to move to Los Angeles. They would attend school on the
West Coast while recording at Motown's new Hollywood facilities. Though
Gordy wasn't enthused by any of the Jacksons' songs, he was impressed
with young Michael. ‘Michael was a born star,’ he would later say in an
interview. ‘He was a classic example of understanding everything. I
recognized that he had a depth that was so vast, it was just incredible. The
first time I saw him, I saw this little kid as something real special.’
Joseph, Tito, Jack Richardson, drummer Johnny Jackson, and keyboardist
Ronny Rancifer drove to Los Angeles in the family's new Dodge Maxivan.
Motown paid for Jackie, Jermaine, Marlon and Michael to fly out a few
days later. It was Joseph's decision not to move the entire family from Gary
to Los Angeles until he was certain that their future there would be secure.
It was possible, after all, that Berry could be wrong, that the group would be
a failure, and that they would have to start all over again. So Janet, Randy
and LaToya stayed behind with Katherine in Gary.
Berry registered the family at one of the seediest motels in Hollywood,
the Tropicana, on Santa Monica Boulevard. Michael, Marlon and Jermaine
shared one room while Tito and Jackie were in another. Joseph was down
the hall. The family saw little of their rooms. Since it was still school
vacation, they spent most of their waking hours at Motown's Hollywood
studios rehearsing and recording.
Eventually, Gordy pulled the family out of the Tropicana and moved
them to the Hollywood Motel, across the street from Hollywood High and
closer to Motown headquarters. This was an even more dreadful residence
for young boys; prostitutes and pimps used it as a place to conduct business.
However, none of that mattered to the Jacksons. Why would it? They were
living in California. Even if they didn't see movie stars on every corner as
they had dreamed, Los Angeles was heaven compared to Gary.
To the Jacksons' young eyes, everything seemed new. Michael had never
seen a real palm tree before he got to California. ‘And here were whole
streets lined with them,’ he once recalled. There were expensive, luxury
automobiles everywhere they looked, and everyone driving them seemed to
wear sunglasses, even on those overcast mornings when the sun didn't
emerge until noon. In fact, as the young Jacksons would soon learn, many
people wore their sunglasses at night too. ‘Now that's Hollywood livin',’
Joseph said.
One afternoon, Berry called a meeting of the gang at Diana Ross's home.
This was the first time the boys had seen her since the show they gave at
Berry's home in Detroit the previous winter. Diana's house may not have
been spectacular by Hollywood standards – she was a single woman, at the
time, living in a three-bedroom temporary residence in Hollywood Hills
while in the process of purchasing a new, more opulent home in Beverly
Hills – but when the five Jackson boys and their father compared her digs to
their garage-sized house in Gary, it was hard for them to act cool.
Michael has recalled that Gordy sat the boys down in Diana's living room
and had a talk with them. ‘I'm gonna make you kids the biggest thing in the
world,’ he told them. ‘You're gonna have three number-one hits in a row.
They're gonna write about you kids in history books. So get ready, 'cause
it's coming.’
That was exactly what the Jacksons wanted to hear. Joseph had wanted
nothing more for his sons than to be successful, and it seemed a sure-thing,
now. He told them that they were to do whatever ‘Mr Gordy’ asked of
them, with no questions. Simply put, Joseph was in awe of Berry. However,
he was also intimidated by him. ‘Here's a black man who has made millions
of dollars in show business,’ Joseph had said. ‘If I can just learn a few
things from this guy, then I'll have it made too.’
As the meeting was about to conclude, Diana swept into the room
looking like… well, Diana Ross… in a black satin hot pants outfit, huge
natural hairstyle and gold hoop earrings. ‘She always looked like a
goddess,’ Jermaine recalled. ‘I remember that when she walked into the
living room that day, all of our mouths dropped open.’ Although the boys
had met her before, they were still awed. Joseph fell all over himself to
make an impression.
‘I just want to tell you boys once again that I'm here for you,’ she said. ‘If
there's anything I can do for you, I hope you'll let me know.’
She seemed sincere, Jermaine would remember. ‘It was hard to believe
that she was saying those words to us,’ he said. ‘I mean, what did we do to
deserve her assistance? Talk about luck.’
What Jermaine remembers most about the day is the telegram that Diana
showed them. ‘This is from me to lots and lots of people,’ she explained. It
read: ‘Please join me in welcoming a brilliant musical group, The Jackson
5, on Monday, 11 August 6:30 to 9:30 p.m. at the Daisy, North Rodeo
Drive, Beverly Hills. The Jackson 5, featuring sensational eight-year-old
Michael Jackson, will perform live at the party, [signed] Diana Ross.’
‘I think you made a mistake,’ Michael told her. ‘I'm not eight. I'm ten.’
‘Not any more you're not,’ Berry said with a grin.
Berry explained that the discrepancy was a matter of public relations.
What ensued was a brief discussion with Michael about the art of PR; he
was reminded that, as far as the media were concerned, Diana Ross was the
one who had brought him and his brothers to Motown. He should always
remember that because, as Diana explained to him, ‘It's all for your mage.’
‘Got it,’ Michael said. ‘I'm eight. And we were discovered by the great
Miss Diana Ross.’
‘You got it, all right,’ Diana said with a grin. She hugged him tightly.
‘You are just so cute,’ she said, again.
Michael would later recall, ‘I figured out at an early age that if someone
said something about me that wasn't true, it was a lie. But if someone said
something about my image that wasn't true, then it was okay. Because then
it wasn't a lie, it was public relations.’
On 11 August 1968, Diana Ross introduced her new protégés, The
Jackson 5, with the kind of pomp and pageantry usually accorded major
Hollywood debuts. Three hundred of Gordy's and Diana's ‘closest’ friends
and business associates crammed into the chic Beverly Hills private club,
the Daisy, all having been personally invited via Diana Ross's telegram.
They stood and cheered as Michael Jackson and The Jackson 5 – as they
were introduced by Diana – performed Motown songs such as Smokey
Robinson's ‘Who's Loving You’ and even Disney classics like ‘Zip-a-dee-
do-dah’. The boys wore identical lime green vest suits with gold shirts and
matching green boots. Every move had been carefully choreographed for
them, and rehearsed in the professional Motown tradition. They were a hit.
Afterwards, a Motown press release was distributed to everyone in
attendance, with two years shaved off the age of each boy.
Beaming with pride at their reception, Berry announced that The Jackson
5 would next appear in concert with Diana Ross and The Supremes at the
Forum five days later, and then later in October when Diana would play
hostess on The Hollywood Palace television show.
Each Jackson boy met the press in a receiving line, with Diana Ross
making the introductions: ‘This one's Michael. Isn't he cute? And that one's
Jermaine. Isn't he adorable? And over there's Jackie. Look how tall he is,’
and so forth.
Soul reporter Judy Spiegelman recalled, ‘I remember being impressed
with the courteous, outgoing attitude of the youngsters. After all, they were
just kids but yet not at all affected by the attention.’
Pauline Dunn, a reporter from the Sentinel, a Los Angeles black
newspaper, approached Michael.
‘How's it feel to be a star, Michael?’ she wanted to know.
‘Well, to tell you the truth, I had just about given up hope,’ Michael said
with a grin. He was wearing a black bowler hat over his Afro-style hair. ‘I
thought I was gonna be an old man before being discovered.’ Then, in a
hushed, dramatic tone he concluded, ‘But then along came Miss Diana Ross
to save my career. She discovered me.’
‘And just how old are you, Michael?’ she asked.
Michael looked up at Diana, who was standing proudly behind him, her
hand on his shoulder. Berry Gordy stood nearby.
‘Eight,’ Michael said.
‘But I thought you were older. Going on eleven, maybe,’ the suspicious
journalist pressed.
‘Well, I'm not,’ Michael insisted. ‘I'm eight.’
‘But I heard – ’
‘Look, the kid's eight, all right?’ Berry broke in. ‘Next question.’
‘Next question, please,’ Michael corrected him. He smiled and winked at
Pauline Dunn as if to say, This is how we play the game.
Creating The Jackson 5's First Hit
The early 1970s were the most significant transitional years Motown
Records had undergone since shoring itself up as a major musical force. By
that time, although the company was still producing superb pop and
rhythm-and-blues music, some of its biggest stars had begun grumbling
about Motown's conveyor-belt method of creating hit records.
The seventies was a period of change, both socially and politically, and
the production of pop music did not go unaffected. To keep pace with the
times, many labels eventually dismantled their songwriting/production
staffs and signed prolific singer-songwriters and self-contained bands who
wrote and performed their own music. Berry Gordy was not thrilled about
this trend. He had always discouraged his acts from writing and producing
their own material because, it was said, he did not wish for them to share in
the music's publishing, which was the inevitable next request. He preferred
having his own stable of writers and producers, all of whom were signed to
his own publishing company, Jobete. In the end, much of the money stayed
in Motown's coffers.
However, some of Motown's acts craved more artistic freedom. For
instance, Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye both felt that they'd outgrown
manufacturing music the Motown way – singing songs supplied to them by
staff writers and producers. They must have finally realized that staff
producers and writers like Smokey Robinson and Norman Whitfield were
earning large sums from songwriting royalties without having to sweat
through gruelling forty-city tours and public appearances. Wonder and Gaye
were now asking Berry for the opportunity to express themselves musically
through song-writing and, by extension, share in the publishing of their
songs.
The fact is that music wasn't at the forefront of founder Berry Gordy's
reasoning when he decided to relocate Motown from Detroit to Los
Angeles. Berry picked up and moved two decades' worth of Michigan roots
for the same reason optimistic high school graduates and pretty young
runaways swarm to the City of Angels every day from all over the world:
the Silver Screen. Berry wanted to get into films, and his protégée Diana
Ross was to be his ticket. In masterminding the westward move, Gordy was
his usual methodical self. He used the occasion to clean house: employees
and artists considered deadweight would be left behind in the Motor City,
while desired staffers could keep their jobs, but only if they were willing to
relocate to Los Angeles.
When Berry Gordy saw the film of The Jackson Five's Detroit audition,
he realized that these youngsters had arrived at a precipitous time. Not only
would this group usher in a new musical era for Motown, but they would do
so with a hit single supplied by Motown's own production staff. These kids
didn't want to write and produce their own songs, they just wanted to be
stars. For Berry, this must have been déjà vu. How he longed for a time not
so long ago when Stevie and Marvin cared only about singing and not about
publishing. Signing a group that would be exclusively reliant on Motown
for its material would validate the tried-and-true Motown process for at
least a few more years. (Even Gordy couldn't have predicted, though, how
much Jobete would prosper as a result of his signing of The Jackson 5.)
In 1969, Motown's West Coast Division was operated under the direction of
one of the company's top staff writer-producers. As an integral part of a
writing-producing team at Motown called the Clan, Deke Richards was
responsible for some terrific songs (such as The Supremes' ‘Love Child’).
He and Berry enjoyed a close relationship; Deke even had a phone line
exclusively for Berry's use, and Berry would call him at all hours of the
early morning, brimming with ideas.
Integral to Deke's job as Creative Director of Talent for Motown's West
Coast Division was an on-going search for promising new writers and
artists to bolster the company's roster. That year, he was introduced to two
talented young writers, Freddie Perren and Fonce Mizell. He thought both
had amazing ability and couldn't wait to bring them into the Motown
family.
For the next three months, Deke Richards, Freddie Perren and Fonce
Mizell collaborated on a song entitled ‘I Want to Be Free’, which was
intended for Gladys Knight and the Pips. The team went into the Motown
studios with a talented corps of musicians to cut the instrumental track for ‘I
Want to Be Free’, remembered fondly by Perren as ‘one of Motown's
greatest instrumental performances’.
Meanwhile, Berry invited Deke to the show The Jackson 5 gave at the
Daisy, presented by Diana Ross. Deke was impressed.
He had heard through the Motown grapevine that Bobby Taylor was
presently recording material with the brothers in Detroit. Though Taylor
was producing some good songs, everyone knew that there wasn't a hit
record to be found in the bunch. When Deke played the track of ‘I Want to
Be Free’ for Berry, he liked it so much he thought it might be ideal for the
Jackson boys. ‘Give the song a Frankie Lymon treatment,’ he told Deke,
‘and we'll see what happens.’
Deke recalled, ‘Berry lived with the track for a while and had a couple of
ideas which were good. He was starting to get excited. I wanted Berry to
get involved. This was starting to become a very exciting proposition for all
of us.’
Deke decided to call the team of Fonce Mizell, Freddie Perren, himself
and Gordy the Corporation, which would reinforce the democratic premise
that there would be no overblown egos involved in the work and that
everyone would be treated fairly. He remembered, ‘After the basic
instrumental track was finished, it was time to begin rehearsing the kids'
vocals to record over it. The boys came over to Berry's house, and that's
when we started talking about the song with them and developing a rapport.
For the next few weeks, those kids worked a tremendous number of hours
on this one song. It was hard work. Eventually, the song was retitled “I
Want You Back”.’
‘The biggest problem with The Jackson 5 was not the willingness to
work,’ said Deke. ‘The problem was that you not only had to be a producer,
you had to be a phonetics and English teacher. It was draining, teaching
them the pronunciation of words. We had to go over and over words one at
a time, which was tough.
‘If Michael had any problems other than phonetics, they had to do with
attacking and sustaining words and notes. Like any kid, he tended to throw
away words, he would slur a note rather than hold on to it. He'd be thinking
about dancing or whatever and not concentrate on getting the lyrics out. I'd
have to tell him, “I need those notes, Michael, every last one of them.”
‘As a singer, though, he was great. As far as tone and all, he was terrific.
We put a lot of pressure on him, because whenever you find a little kid who
can sing like that, the feeling is, “Yeah, he's so great I want him to be even
greater.” I felt that if he could be that good in the raw, imagine how
amazing he could be if you really polished him up.’
‘I remember that Deke Richards was one of my first teachers,’ Michael
Jackson said. ‘God, we spent so much time on “I Want You Back”. He was
really patient with me, all of us. I think I must have recorded that thing two
dozen times. I had no idea that recording could be such work. I remember
falling asleep at the mike. I wondered if it would ever be finished. Just
when I thought we were through, we'd have to go back and do it again.’
The final recording session for ‘I Want You Back’ lasted until two in the
morning. ‘This had to be the most expensive single in Motown history, up
to that point,’ Deke Richards added. ‘It cost about ten thousand dollars. At
that time the cost of a Motown single was about two thousand. We kept
adding and subtracting music until the very end. In fact, the original song
started off with just a guitar, but at the last minute I wanted a piano
glissando at the top. I had Freddie and Fonce go in there and run their
fingers down the piano to kick the song off.’
On 2 October 1969, after the final mixing of ‘I Want You Back’, Berry
asked Deke how he thought the group's name should appear on the record's
label. ‘Jackson Five’? ‘Jackson Five featuring Michael Jackson’? Deke said
he thought the group should be called simply The Jackson 5, with the
numeral 5. Berry agreed. Joseph Jackson wasn't even consulted. Imagine
what kind of tension might have resulted in the family if Deke had
suggested ‘Jackson Five featuring Michael Jackson’?
Michael Moves in with Diana
On 1 October 1969, as his father and brothers were being shuffled from one
hotel to another by the Motown brass, it was decided that Michael Jackson
would move in with Diana Ross in her Hollywood Hills home. ‘It was a
calculated thing. I wanted him to be around her,’ Berry Gordy explained.
‘People think it was an accident that he stayed there. It wasn't. I wanted
Diana to teach him whatever she could. Diana's a very influential person. I
knew that Michael would pick up something just by being around her.
Diana had said that he sort of reminded her of herself at age eleven.
Michael was anxious and interested, as well as talented, like Diana was
when I first met her. She was sixteen, then.
‘I asked her if she minded and she didn't. She wanted him around. It was
good for her to have someone else besides herself to think about. It was just
for four weeks, the month of October.’
As much as she may have wanted to help, Diana was so consumed by the
demands of her own career, she probably wasn't prepared for the role of
surrogate mother. Still, she gave it everything she had, treated Michael like
a son and became attached to him. However, Michael's lifestyle in the Ross
household must have seemed to be everything he had been brought up by
his mother to shun as wicked. Nothing else really mattered in these
surroundings, it seemed, but show business. ‘You are going to be a great,
great star,’ Diana would remind him over breakfast. ‘Now, eat your cereal.’
Though Diana remained at home during the month of October, she was
extremely busy. She was about to leave The Supremes and embark on a
solo career. Meanwhile, she and Berry were having a tumultuous romance.
Michael, no doubt, heard many arguments between the couple, and then
probably watched as they smiled and cooed at one another for the sake of
reporters. He was learning a lot about show business public relations, but
only time would tell how he would be affected by it.
Michael attended school during the day and recorded in the studio until
late at night, but had noted that during the time he lived with Diana Ross,
she found time to teach him about art. ‘We'd go out, just the two of us, and
buy pencils and paint,’ Michael wrote of his time with Diana in his
autobiography. ‘When we weren't drawing or painting, we'd go to
museums.’
Michael's fascination with Diana – some would later see it as an
obsession – would last for many years. As well as a mother figure when his
own was thousands of miles away, she was an accomplished performer; he
studied her constantly. ‘I remember I used to just sit in the corner and watch
the way she moved,’ he recalled of Diana. ‘She was art in motion. Have you
ever seen the way she works her hands? I was,’ he struggled for the right
word, ‘enthralled by her. All day long when I wasn't rehearsing my songs,
I'd be listening to hers. I watched her rehearse one day in the mirror. She
didn't know I was watching. I studied her, the way she moved, the way she
sang, just the way she was. Afterwards, I told her, “I want to be just like
you, Diana.” And she said, “You just be yourself and you'll be a great star.”’
Michael, at age eleven, did have some lonely moments living in the Ross
home while she was away at work; he missed his mother and talked to her
on the telephone constantly, running up Diana's phone bill.
Katherine was troubled by Michael's life during that time, according to
one family friend, a woman who asked for anonymity because she is
someone in whom Katherine still confides. ‘Katie truly was concerned
about Diana Ross's lifestyle and how it might influence her son,’ said the
friend. ‘She didn't want her son to be corrupted by Diana or her show-
business circle of friends. Also, she knew very little about Diana. She knew
her as a star with a reputation for being egotistical and self-involved. The
whole time Michael was away from her, Katie could only imagine what was
going on in the Ross household and how Michael was coping with it. Her
imagination ran wild. It was a time of great concern, wondering what kinds
of values Diana Ross was passing on to her son.’
Perhaps making matters more difficult for Katherine, Diana seemed
reluctant to talk to her directly. When Katherine would telephone to check
in on Michael, she would have to talk to one of the household staff if
Michael wasn't available. Diana would usually not come to the phone.
If Katherine was distressed about the possibilities of wild parties at the
Diana Ross residence, she need not have been. Diana was a serious person,
not a party girl. She would go to bed early in order to be up on time for her
many appointments. If anything, she passed on to Michael a work ethic that
would serve him well as a youngster. She wanted to be an example to him,
and she was sure to not allow him to see anything but her best side.
‘I got to know her well,’ Michael would say many years later, ‘and she
taught me so much by example. I remember she would be in the recording
studio until all hours of the morning, get home, have a costume fitting, a
rehearsal, lunch, a TV show, and then she would crash for maybe two
hours. Then back in the studio. I remember thinking, I don't have it bad at
all. Look at her. And she's Diana Ross!’
Success!
Stardom for The Jackson 5 was just around the corner, but with a detour or
two along the way. When ‘I Want You Back’ was released in October 1969,
it wasn't an immediate hit. The song entered Billboard's Top 100 at number
90. Motown's promotion and sales department had to continually encourage
disc jockeys to play it and record stores to stock it. Then, finally, ten weeks
later, on 31 January it shot to number one, displacing B. J. Thomas's
‘Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head’.
With ‘I Want You Back’, Berry Gordy, Deke Richards, Fonce Mizell and
Freddie Perren managed to launch Motown's latest find with a blast, and the
record label into a new and exciting decade. A precocious yet completely
adorable and endearing Michael led his older brothers into the hearts,
homes and stereos of middle-class white America. The rousing single also
found success on the black or rhythm-and-blues charts.
As with the successful Supremes' formula of the sixties, The Jackson 5
sound presented a wholesome, non-threatening soul music, easily digested
and readily accepted by all races of record buyers. Though the record was
only number one for a week in America, it went on to sell an amazing
2,060,711 copies in the United States, and another four million abroad. In
the UK, the song peaked at number two and remained on the chart for
thirteen weeks, selling 250,000 copies.
‘The pros have told us that no group has ever had a better start than we
did,’ Michael Jackson has remembered. ‘Ever.’
Once ‘I Want You Back’ was released, The Jackson 5 had an image
makeover. Motown's famous charm school – the artist development classes
held in Detroit to turn street kids like The Temptations into savvy show
people – was no longer in business now that the company had relocated to
Los Angeles. All of the image-changing work now had to be done by
whomever Gordy could coax into helping the cause. Suzanne dePasse –
now president of Motown Productions – became responsible for
repackaging the youngsters. Stylists with Colourform models worked with
them to come up with the best haircuts and stage outfits for each group
member. Suzanne and the boys went shopping for the most outrageous
outfits they could find – and some of them were truly atrocious, with wild
colours and designs. Yet, oddly, it all worked. It was the seventies, after all.
18 October 1969, marked another major milestone for The Jackson 5:
their first appearance on national television, on The Hollywood Palace,
hosted by Diana Ross. (The Supremes were there, too, though Mary Wilson
and Cindy Birdsong didn't get much air time that night.) Backstage, Joseph
kept peppering his boys with last-minute advice, the way he always did
before they performed. Michael once recalled that it was usually easy to
tune Joseph out; he'd said the same things a hundred times before. This
evening, Joseph was even more intense, according to Jack Lewis, a set
designer on the ABC programme.
‘Joe paced back and forth backstage like a lion,’ he remembered. ‘There's
no doubt in my mind he was more nervous than his kids. The boys were
excited about the break. Diana Ross kept going backstage and having
private conversations with Michael. She patted him on the head a lot, which
I noticed annoyed Joe.’
Diana wore a white midriff-baring halter and white slacks which
emphasized her reed-thin figure. Her hair was pulled into an elaborate
topknot; her shoulder-length silver earrings flew to and fro when she
danced with Michael backstage before the show. ‘Come on, get down!’ she
said, beckoning him. ‘You're the man! You're the man!’ Michael did a quick
James Brown spin and collapsed to the floor on his knees, then back up
again in a flash. ‘I'm the man,’ he said, laughing. ‘You got that right.’
Berry Gordy was backstage too. Right before they went on, Gordy pulled
all of them together in a huddle and had an impromptu conference. Then
when he finished, Joe – not to be outdone – did the same thing.
From behind the curtain, they heard Diana's introduction: ‘Tonight, I
have the pleasure of introducing a young star who has been in the business
all of his life. He's worked with his family, and when he sings and dances,
he lights up the stage.’
At that moment, Sammy Davis, Jr., came bounding out on to the stage for
a comic bit. He supposedly thought Diana was introducing him, but she
explained that she was actually referring to – and then she made the
introduction – ‘Michael Jackson and The Jackson 5.’
At that, the curtain opened and The Jackson 5 bounded out, singing the
Sly Stone composition, ‘Sing a Simple Song’. The fellows were dressed
alike in the costumes they had worn for their debut appearance at the Daisy:
pale, lime-green, double-breasted, wide-lapelled, sleeveless jackets with
matching bell-bottom slacks and suede boots in exactly the same shade.
Their shirts, with the full-gathered sleeves, were gold. (While many
observers assumed that these outfits were paid for by Motown, actually they
were purchased off the rack by Joseph and Katherine back in Gary.)
As they sang, according to set designer Jack Lewis, Joseph Jackson and
Berry Gordy became embroiled in a heated argument, backstage.
‘What's this “Michael Jackson and the Jackson 5” stuff?’ Joseph
demanded. ‘No one told me about that. No one cleared that with me.’
Berry shrugged his shoulders. ‘It wasn't written that way on the cue
card,’ he explained. ‘Diana just blurted it out. She's that way. She does what
she wants to do. Been trying to tell her what to do for years,’ he said with
an easy smile. ‘It ain't gonna happen.’
‘Well, I don't like it,’ Joseph fumed. ‘All the boys are equal. We're not
singling Michael out from the rest. It'll just cause problems.’
‘But, look, Joe, he's obviously the star.’ Berry said, not taking his eyes
off the performance. ‘Come on! Look at him. You gotta be kidding me?’
‘No, they're all stars,’ Joseph countered.
‘Well, it's too late now,’ Berry said, shrugging his shoulders, again. Then
the two of them watched the rest of the performance, Berry with a big smile
and Joseph with a sour frown.
When the brothers finished their next two songs – ‘Can You Remember?’
and ‘I Want You Back’ – the applause, led by Diana, was generous. They
made a solid impression, there was no doubt about it.
After the show, there was pandemonium backstage, with the boys
whooping and hollering, slapping one another on the back, jumping up and
down and hugging each other. Joseph was in the middle of it all, enjoying a
sweet moment of victory with his sons.
Diana walked into the backstage area and went right to Michael. ‘I am so
proud of you,’ she enthused. ‘You are the best! Just the greatest. You're
gonna be a big, big star.’ She took such pride in Michael's achievement; one
might have thought she was his actual mother, not just a figure-head in his
life. Then, she turned from her ‘son’.
‘Will someone please get me a towel?’ Diana asked no one in particular.
She raised her voice. ‘There should have been a towel back here waiting for
me. I want a towel. Now, where is it? Somebody?’
‘I'll get you one, Miss Ross’ Michael offered. He disappeared for a
moment and came back with a fluffy white towel.
Diana smiled and took it. ‘Thanks, Michael,’ she said, patting him on the
head.
He beamed and ran off.
Berry walked over to Diana and, as Jack Lewis listened, he asked, ‘What
was with that introduction, “Michael Jackson and The Jackson 5”?’
Towelling off her bare shoulders, Diana looked at Berry with a proud
expression. ‘Oh, I threw that in myself,’ she said. ‘Pretty good, huh?’
‘I figured. But the father was really pissed off about it,’ Berry said.
Diana looked at Berry as if he were daft for caring what ‘the father’
thought… ‘So what?’ she asked. ‘Here, take this,’ she said, handing him the
towel as if he was her assistant instead of the president of her record
company. ‘Michael! Oh, Michael,’ she called out as she walked away.
‘Now, where is that boy?’
Not since Sammy Davis, Jr., had the world seen a child performer with as
innate a command of himself on stage as Michael Jackson. Both as a singer
and dancer, young Michael exuded a presence that was simply uncanny.
After this youngster was heard recording Smokey Robinson's plaintive,
bluesy ‘Who's Loving You?’ the question among Motown's staffers was
‘Where did he learn that kind of emotion?’ The answer is that he didn't have
to learn it, it just seemed to be there for him.
Producers were always astonished at how Michael would, in between
recording sessions, play games that pre-teen children enjoy such as cards
and hide-and-seek, and then step behind a microphone and belt out a song
with the emotional agility and presence of an old soul who's seen his share
of heartache. Equally amazing was the fact that, aside from listening to
demonstration tapes of the songs sung by a session singer to give him
direction on the lead melody and Deke Richards' constant prodding to clean
up his diction, Michael was pretty much left to his own devices in the
studio. When he was told to sound like a rejected suitor, no one in the
studio actually expected him to do it, to understand the emotion involved in
heartbreak. How could they? After all, he was eleven.
‘I'll tell you the honest-to-God truth. I never knew what I was doing in
the early days,’ Michael confessed to me once. ‘I just did it. I never knew
how to sing, really. I didn't control it. It just formed itself. I don't know
where it came from… it just came. Half the time, I didn't even know what I
was singing about, but I still felt the emotion behind it.’
Producer Deke Richards used to have to sit Michael on top of a trash can
in order for him to sing into the boom mike above him. Jermaine and Jackie
would stand on either side of Michael – Marlon and Tito rarely recorded
backing vocals in the early days since neither had a knack for harmony –
and sheet music would be positioned in front of Michael's face on a music
stand. From the control booth, all Richards could see in the studio were
Jermaine and Jackie standing on either side of two sneakers dangling at the
sides of a trash can.
When Michael and his brothers became professional performers, there
were probably a million youngsters with as much raw dancing talent. What
set Michael apart from the schoolyard hoofers was his execution,
undoubtedly gleaned from years of observing headliners in the rhythm-and-
blues revues in which he and his brothers used to appear. The kid had an
eye for what worked.
From legendary soul singer Jackie Wilson, Michael mastered the
importance of onstage drama. He learned early on that dropping
dramatically to one knee, an old Wilson tactic, usually made an audience
whoop and holler. However, for the most part, watching young Michael at
work was like observing an honour student of ‘James Brown 101’. Michael
appropriated everything he could from the self-proclaimed ‘hardest-
working man in show business’. Not only did he employ Brown's splits and
the one-foot slides, he worked a microphone bold-soul style just like Brown
– passionately jerking the stand around like a drunk might handle his
girlfriend at the corner pool hall on a Saturday night.
Michael also pilfered James Brown's famous spin. However, back then,
the spin didn't go over nearly as well with a crowd as Michael's version of
another dance of the day that Brown popularized, the Camel Walk. When
Michael strode across the floor of American Bandstand during The Jackson
5's first appearance on that programme, even the audience of pretty white
teenagers got caught up in the frenzy of excitement.
From Diana Ross, Michael got not only a sense of style, but an
appreciation of power. Diana had a quiet authority, the power of presence.
He'd observed how people reacted to her when she walked into a room. She
was revered. She was given deferential treatment. She had a special power.
He liked that.
There was one other thing Michael got from Diana: his early ooohs.
Michael's early vocal ad-libs were almost always punctuated with an oooh
here or there; not a long-drawn-out oooh, but rather a stab, an exclamation
mark. Diana used this effect on many of The Supremes' recordings. Michael
delighted in it and put it in his grab bag of influences. Indeed, for little
Michael Jackson, every little oooh helped.
At the beginning of November 1969, Berry Gordy leased a house for the
Jackson family at 1601 Queens Road in Los Angeles. Michael moved out of
Diana Ross's home and in with his father and brothers. A month later,
Katherine, LaToya, Janet and Randy joined the rest of the family. Motown
paid for their flights, their first plane ride.
As they arrived at the house, the boys were waiting on the front lawn.
Michael was the first to throw himself into his mother's arms. ‘But you got
so big,’ she exclaimed. Tears streamed down her face as she hugged each of
her boys in turn. Jackie, ever the tease, lifted Marlon up and tossed him in
the air. ‘Me next, me next,’ three-year-old Janet squealed.
Katherine would recall that, once inside the house, she took a long look
around the living room. It was so large – twice the size of the entire house
in Gary – that she was dumbstruck. ‘It ain't Gary, that's for sure,’ Joseph
told her with a proud smile. Then Joseph had Katherine close her eyes. He
led his wife out to the backyard patio. ‘Okay, you can open them now,’ he
told her.
A panorama of dusk-time Los Angeles lay stretched below the hillside
home, thousands of lights twinkling like earthbound stars. A dark-blue sky
above, clear and cloudless, was full of stars. ‘This must be what heaven
looks like,’ Katherine said, when she could speak. ‘I've never seen anything
so beautiful.’
‘Well, it's here for you every night,’ Joseph told her. He was happy to see
her, his wife and partner. Sometimes, Katherine's sadness was so acute, it
bordered on depression. Joseph knew he was responsible; he tried not to
think about what he was doing to her, focusing instead on what he was
doing for her – such as being able to present her with such a new and
exciting lifestyle. Though Joseph had his dalliances, he had always insisted
that Katherine Jackson was the only woman he had ever truly loved and the
rest were… diversions. Joseph could be cruel and unconscionable, at times.
He could be selfish. Over the years, he would watch as Katherine's love for
him foundered on the rocks of his blatant infidelity and dogged ambition.
However, when he was alone with her, what they shared in those quiet
moments was real and powerful, and it lasts to this day. They have been
married for fifty-three years.
Katherine recalled that she asked to be left alone for a moment in the
outdoors of her new home. There she stood, among the orange trees and
flower beds, all illuminated in a spectacular way. Joseph had turned on the
outdoor sound-system so that romantic music could be heard playing softly
in the background. The air smelled of jasmine. It was magical.
‘Lovely, isn't it?’
Katherine whirled around at the sound of the woman's unfamiliar voice,
but before either of them could say anything, Michael was at Katherine's
side. ‘Momma, this is her. This is Diana Ross,’ he said, excited. #8216;Isn't
she beautiful? Isn't she just beautiful?’
Later, telling a friend about the incident, Katherine would remember that
Diana was as slim, young and attractive as she appeared on the television
screen. Katherine, who was short and rounded, became painfully aware of
how plain she herself may have looked to the glamorous singer. She walked
towards her with a limp. Diana glided, as if on air. She was warm and
friendly. Her large, dark eyes dancing, she took Katherine's hand. ‘Mrs
Jackson, I am so happy to meet you,’ she said. ‘Your kids have talked about
you so much. They are just the best.’
As pleased as she was to hear her children praised, Katherine could not
help wondering why Diana was at the house, and when she had arrived.
Diana must have sensed her unspoken questions. ‘Oh, I was just visiting,’
she said by way of explanation. She hugged Katherine warmly and kissed
her on the cheek.
Katherine told Diana that she was grateful for all she had done for her
boys, especially Michael, and that she was happy to be able now to raise
him herself. ‘He needs his mother,’ she said, firmly. ‘I have been gone too
long,’ she added pointedly. At that, Diana seemed to become
uncomfortable; her attitude changed. ‘I'm happy for you,’ she said, softly.
She seemed crestfallen by the subtle reminder that she might no longer be
as influential in young Michael's life. She loved being his ‘mother’, even
for just such a short time. She would miss it. Her life had been lonely, one
devoted to career pursuits since she was about fifteen. However, it wouldn't
be long before she would have children of her own – three girls and then
later two boys – and devote as much of herself to them as she would to her
career. ‘I'd love to chat,’ she told Katherine, ‘but I can't because I'm very
busy.’
‘Can't you at least stay for a cup of coffee?’ Katherine offered.
‘No, not really. I must run now. I'm sure you understand.’
‘Oh… sure,’ Katherine said.
Without another word, Diana turned and walked into the night.
‘Bye,’ Michael called out after her, but Diana didn't answer.
Katherine hugged Michael. Then, without a backward glance at the
breathtaking view, mother and son walked hand in hand into the house to
begin their new life.
‘ABC’ and ‘The Love You Save’
By the end of 1969, Michael Jackson, now eleven years old and reunited
with his mother, was a bubbly, energetic and happy youngster. ‘All I want
now is to see how far we can go as a family,’ he told Soul magazine reporter
Judy Spiegelman. ‘I like show business, Hollywood, and all that stuff, the
things people like Berry Gordy do to make you look good. I'm real excited
about things.’
In December, Motown Records released the brothers' first album, Diana
Ross Presents The Jackson 5. It would go on to sell 629,363 copies, an
amazing number for a debut album. In Britain, it peaked at number sixteen
and remained in the Top 100 for four weeks. ‘Honesty has always been a
very special word for me – a special idea,’ Diana Ross wrote in the liner
notes. ‘But when I think of my own personal idea of honesty, I think of
something being straight out, all there, on the table – the way it is… That's
how I feel about The Jackson 5 – five brothers by the name of Jackson
whom I discovered in Gary, Indiana. They've got great talent,’ Diana Ross
concluded. ‘And above all, they're honest.’
Michael read an advance proof of the album jacket in one of the Motown
offices as his brothers and a promotion man looked on.
‘Wouldn't even let us play our own instruments on the album,’ Tito
grumbled. ‘But here we are in the picture holdin' 'em like we played 'em.
Don't seem right to me.’ In truth, Tito and Jermaine were not permitted to
play their bass and guitar in the Motown sessions because Berry didn't think
they were ready for studio work. All of the instrumental music was
recorded by Motown's top team of musicians before the Jacksons even got
to the studio. The boys would then have to learn to duplicate the sound as
best they could for live performances.
‘I think we should be playin' on this record album, here,’ Tito decided.
Michael rolled his eyes. ‘So?’ he asked.
‘So, it's not true,’ Tito said. ‘It's not honest, like Miss Ross said on the
jacket.’
‘And what about this part?’ Jermaine asked, still looking over Michael's
shoulder. He pointed to Diana's line about discovering the group. ‘That ain't
honest, either. Bobby Taylor was the one.’
Michael shrugged his shoulders. ‘It's called public relations,’ he said,
matter-of-factly. ‘C'mon, guys. Get with it.’
‘He was really into this image thing at a pretty early age,’ said Stan
Sherman, the independent promotion man who witnessed the exchange.
‘The other boys were sort of befuddled about all the lies, but not Michael.
Once you explained it to him, he not only agreed with it but, I think, he
even started to believe it. To me, that was frightening. He seemed willing
and even eager to adjust to the fantasy of it all.’
Later in the month, on 14 December 1969, The Jackson 5 appeared on
The Ed Sullivan Show. Although they had already made one national
television appearance on The Hollywood Palace, in October, being asked to
perform on The Ed Sullivan Show was an important milestone in their
career.
The programme couldn't credit its success to its host. Stiff and usually
unsmiling, Sullivan, a columnist for the New York Daily News, did little
more than introduce his guests, whose names he routinely mispronounced
or forgot. Once, when Smokey Robinson and the Miracles appeared, he
introduced them as ‘Smokey and his little Smokeys’. The lure of the show
was its roster of guests, though. Newcomers knew they had the brass ring in
their reach when they were asked to perform; those already established
were assured they were still on top. Ed Sullivan never bothered with has-
beens or wanna-be's.
As soon as Sullivan introduced this ‘sensational group’, Marlon, Jackie
and Michael, flanked by Tito and Jermaine on guitar, started their set with
their rendition of the Sly Stone song ‘Stand’. They were dressed in a variety
of mod clothes purchased off the rack in Greenwich Village by Suzanne
dePasse.
Michael, again, was the star. When he sang, his eyes sparkled. He looked
adorable in his magenta cowboy hat. Anyone who saw the performance
would remember how impossibly cute this little kid was while on that stage.
No diamond in the rough, he already seemed a polished, seasoned
performer. When he sang ‘Can You Remember?’ his voice had a purity and
range of tone that belied his years. By the time The Jackson 5 finished the
set with a rousing ‘I Want You Back’, the audience had been completely
won over. Just to appear with Ed Sullivan was an accomplishment, but to
receive such rousing applause seemed a clear prophecy for success.
As was his tradition, Sullivan engaged in some minimal banter with his
guests, but he soon turned his attention to a member of the audience: ‘The
person who discovered The Jackson 5, Diana Ross.’ Diana, clad in what can
only be described as a grown-up version of a little girl's pink organdy party
dress, stood and modestly took a bow.
The difficult task at hand for Motown was to follow The Jackson 5's first
number-one record with another chart-topper. Since it was his policy to
allow the writers and producers of a hit song the opportunity to come up
with another one just as successful, Berry Gordy gave the chore to Deke
Richards and the Corporation. ‘One night I was at Fonce's [Mizell] and
Freddie's [Perren] apartment and we were fooling around on their electric
piano,’ recalled Deke Richards, ‘and I started thinking about Holland,
Dozier and Holland and how they often did the same types of records over
and over again, using the same progressions. Theirs was a proven hit
formula. So I took a section of “I Want You Back” – the part where the
group sings the chorus – and decided to make those exact same chords the
foundation of their next single.
‘I was sitting at the piano, playing chords and I came up with the lyric,
“A, B, C”. Fonce and Freddie looked at me like I was crazy.
‘“So, now what?” I asked myself. “I know, how about, one, two, three.”
By now the guys thought I was nuts. And then I came up with the next line,
“Do, re, mi.” And I finished with a big bang: “You and me.”’
‘That's it,’ Deke told his partners, laughing. ‘That's a hit.’
In a short time, the three men were in the studio recording the song
‘ABC’, with Michael and his brothers.
‘I loved “ABC” from the first moment I heard it,’ Michael said. ‘I had
more enthusiasm for that than I did for “I Want You Back”. It was just such
a hot song, such a great idea with a hot track. I couldn't wait to record it. I
remember when Deke and the other guys were coming up with the middle
of the song right there on the spot. “Siddown girl, I think I love you.” Then
it was “Shake it, shake it, baby”, you know, like The Contours and old
groups like that. I didn't know you could do that in the studio, just come up
with parts like that at the last minute.’
In February 1970, Motown released ‘ABC’ as the second Jackson 5
single. It went straight to the top of the Billboard charts in just six weeks,
supplanting ‘Let It Be’ by The Beatles. The song, which sold 2,214,790
copies – even more copies than ‘I Want You Back’ – seemed to poke fun at,
and also make acceptable, a new and growing trend in popular music, the
predominantly white ‘bubble gum’ style. In the UK, the song peaked at
number eight and remained on the charts for almost three months. With
‘ABC’'s buzzing bass, sprightly keyboard and charming chorus, The
Jackson 5 were on a roll.
Freddie Perren recalled, ‘After those two hits, Berry kept asking, “What
about the follow-up? What about the follow-up?” He really wanted to bring
that third one home. We were cutting the track for that third song at the
Sound Factory in Hollywood. Berry never came to tracking sessions, but he
came to this one. He listened for about fifteen minutes and said, “I'm not
worried. You guys got another hit.” And he left. That's when we knew we
had the third hit.’
The song was ‘The Love You Save’, which was released in May 1970,
another terrific teenybopper song with a breathless lead by Michael. For
‘The Love You Save’, a cute verse and a pleading chorus was the bait, the
infectious combination of guitars and percussion the hook. Just as Deke
Richards predicted, the Corporation had developed a successful hit formula
for The Jackson 5 in much the same way that Holland-Dozier-Holland had
done for The Supremes. Diana and the girls' first three number one hits,
‘Where Did Our Love Go?’ ‘Baby Love’ and ‘Come See about Me’, were
basically the same song with the chord structures cleverly changed in the
right spots. Deke and company applied the same magical twist to ‘I Want
You Back’, ‘ABC’ and ‘The Love You Save’ – songs that sound so much
alike, it's easy for the uninitiated to confuse them. Berry had wanted three
number-one songs for The Jackson 5, and, as usual, he got what he wanted.
At 1,948,761 copies sold, ‘The Love You Save’ came up a bit short in
comparison to the sales of the preceding two singles but was still
considered a huge hit. In England, it reached number seven and was in the
charts for almost two months. The song also gave The Jackson 5 the
distinction of being the first group of the rock and roll era to have their first
three songs go to the top of the charts. Again, they knocked The Beatles
(‘The Long and Winding Road’) out of the number-one spot.
‘It just kept gettin' better…’
The Jackson 5 made their first concert appearance as a Motown attraction at
the Philadelphia Convention Center on Saturday evening, 2 May 1970.
Despite their terrific record sales, no one could have guessed how popular
they had become in barely five months. More than thirty-five hundred
screaming fans mobbed Philadelphia International Airport hoping to catch a
glimpse of the young brothers. Only a huge force of Philadelphia's finest
and airport security officers protected the Jacksons from being completely
overwhelmed.
The scene was repeated the following evening at the concert, with one
hundred police officers forcing the audience back from the stage time and
time again. Three motorcycle-escorted limousines managed to get The
Jackson 5 back to their hotel after the concert. Once Michael got into his
room, he broke down and started crying.
‘Michael [who was eleven years old] was scared to death,’ Jermaine said.
‘The rest of us were more amazed than scared, but Mike was genuinely
frightened. “I don't know if I can do this forever,” he said. “Maybe for a
little while, but not forever.”’
The pandemonium served as a warning to Motown that the next time the
brothers made a concert appearance, the company should be better
prepared.
That same month, The Jackson 5's second album, ABC, was released. It
would go on to be even more successful than the debut album, selling
867,756 copies. After the second album was shipped, Berry arranged for the
family to move from the home on Queens Road to a bigger one on
Bowmont Drive above Trousdale Estates. Liberace lived nearby, as did
Davy Jones of The Monkees. ‘They [the Jacksons] were kicked out of
several houses,’ Berry Gordy explained to Michael Goldberg in an
interview in Rolling Stone. ‘You see, they would make too much noise.
They had their band, and we would put them in a house, and then they
would get kicked out. We'd lease another place, and they would make too
much noise, and they would get kicked out.’
In July 1970, The Jackson 5 broke attendance records at the Los Angeles
Forum, raking up 18,675 paid admissions. The concert grossed $105,000.
‘I was at that concert at the Forum with Berry and Diana,’ said the
group's producer Deke Richards. ‘We almost got trampled to death. Before
they started ‘The Love You Save’, Michael said something like, “Here it is,
the tune that knocked The Beatles out of number one”, and that caused
sheer pandemonium. We were in the third row, and in the middle of the
concert we heard this tumultuous sound and the rows were folding one at a
time, people falling over themselves. Someone ran on to the stage and got
the kids off. They didn't even finish the song. Berry, Diana and I got out of
our row just in time before it was toppled over by kids trying to get to the
stage.’
A month later, the company issued The Jackson 5's first ballad, ‘I'll Be
There’. Switching gears to a ballad seemed to Gordy to be the obvious next
step, yet it would have to be the right song in order to be accepted by fans
accustomed to an upbeat sound. ‘I'll Be There’ was a tender blend of soulful
pleading and sweetly delivered inspiration. To the strains of harpsichords
and keyboards, Michael's performance was flawless. The song is considered
to be the one record that solidified The Jackson 5's success as versatile
recording stars. It was number one for five weeks in America, selling more
than two and half million copies worldwide (250,000 of these in the UK
alone). Its top positioning in the UK was number four, and it remained on
the British charts for more than four months!
‘I'll Be There’ pushed Neil Diamond's ‘Cracklin' Rosé’ out of the
number-one position on Billboard's pop charts and became Motown's
biggest-selling record; the company claimed that over four million copies
were eventually sold, but actually the figure totalled some 800,000 copies
less than that, at 3,178,523 copies. In the end, The Jackson 5 became the
first act in pop music history whose first four singles each became number-
one hits on the Billboard chart. Or, as Michael put it, ‘It just kept gettin'
better and better.’
In October 1970, the group took their act on the road again for additional
dates on the East Coast. Three dates in Texas were placed in jeopardy,
though, when the concerts were opposed by members of the Southern
Christian Leadership Council's Operation Breadbasket, an organization
dedicated to improving economic conditions in the black community. Dick
Clark was promoting the tour and Breadbasket representatives felt that
someone black should have been hired by Motown. ‘That's absolutely
ridiculous,’ Berry Gordy said. ‘Black, white. What the hell's the difference
as long as we all make money?’
Still, the protestors had leaflets printed up and were preparing to picket at
the concert sites. The press was waiting for a scandal. ‘Just what we need,’
Berry told a Motown promoter working with Dick Clark. ‘Cancel. Tell
Clark to cancel the whole goddamn state. They'll see The Jackson 5 when
they get some sense.’ The dates were cancelled.
‘The Jackson 5 are bigger than any race issue,’ Berry Gordy said later.
‘No one can tell me how to run these boys' careers. Black or white, I make
the decisions. This is my group.’
No doubt, Berry's declaration would have been news to Joseph.
By January 1971, twelve-year-old Michael Jackson understood that
entertainment was a difficult business. He had witnessed as much for the
last couple of years, but still managed to take in his stride the pressures of
recording, touring and making television appearances. His success was still
too new to be anything but a constant thrill. ‘This is the best thing that ever
happened to us,’ Michael said of his family's accomplishments. ‘Miss Ross
has told me that people in show business can get hurt. I don't see how.’
At this time, Motown issued The Jackson 5's fifth single, ‘Mama's Pearl’.
On a stylistic par with their previous upbeat singles, this one featured
Michael in the lead again, of course, surrounded by his brothers offering an
occasional lead line through the verses. There were buzzing guitars on the
choruses, and the Corporation's swirling production throughout.
From the beginning, there had been some hesitation about ‘Mama's
Pearl’. Deke Richards had decided to have Fonce Mizell and Freddie Perren
work on it without him to see what they would create. Deke walked into the
studio to find Michael singing the lyric, ‘He said what's mine is his and his
is all mine…’ What they had come up with for Michael was a song called
‘Guess Who's Making Whoopie (With Your Girlfriend)’, which was about
girl swapping, certainly not the right image for the youngster. Deke had
Fonce and Freddie rework the lyrics – not the track – and, in a short time,
they came up with ‘Mama's Pearl’.
Even though the record ‘only’ went to the number two on Billboard's
chart, it was number one on Cash Box's, so Berry was satisfied. In the UK
though, it only peaked at number 25.
The year had been off to a sentimental start when, on 31 January, The
Jackson 5 returned to Gary, Indiana, their hometown. At this time, Jackie
was nineteen; Tito, seventeen; Jermaine, sixteen; Marlon, thirteen; and
Michael, twelve. On behalf of Mayor Richard Gordon Hatcher's re-election
campaign, the group was asked to perform two concerts at Westside High
School. The distance between Gary and Los Angeles can be measured in
miles, but the distance between Gary and stardom can only be measured in
light years. Going home as stars, the Jackson brothers arrived in grand style,
in a helicopter that landed in Westside High's parking lot where two
thousand students had gathered in subzero weather to greet them.
Both concerts were sell-outs. Fifteen thousand lucky ticket holders came
to pay homage to five homeboys. Two years ago, many of these same
neighbourhood kids had thrown stones at the Jackson house to taunt the
group as they rehearsed; now they were sharing in their success, proud to
know that they'd all come from the same streets. As the spotlights revealed
the Jacksons in their rainbow-hued regalia, the group's fans could not be
contained. The gym was packed to the rafters with what was probably the
noisiest audience the boys had so far encountered. There were so many
flashbulbs popping at once, it looked as though flocks of fireflies had come
to swarm.
After the first concert, Mayor Hatcher escorted the Jackson family back
to their former residence on Jackson Street, which had, for the day, been
renamed Jackson 5 Boulevard in their honour. A sign was placed on the
lawn in front of the old homestead at 2300 Jackson Street: WELCOME HOME JACKSON FIVE.
KEEPERS OF THE DREAM. Afterwards, as the limo pulled away, fans hurled themselves at
its tightly closed windows. Inside, the boys smiled and waved, amazed at
the frenzy. Their next stop was city hall, where the group was presented
with individual keys to the city. The boys had returned home as heroes,
symbols of hope. In his speech that day, Mayor Hatcher said he was
honoured that ‘The Jackson 5 has carried the name of Gary throughout the
country and the world, and made it a name to be proud of.’ Joseph could not
have been more proud of his boys. He stood at the podium and said, ‘One
thing I have always told my boys is that you're either a winner in this life or
a loser, and none of my kids were ever gonna be losers. I'm proud to say
that they proved me right.’
The Jackson 5's next single, ‘Never Can Say Goodbye’, would be
released in March 1971, and peak at number two a month later, selling
almost two million copies. It only managed a number thirty-three
positioning in the UK though, so Gordy was becoming a little concerned
about the group's international appeal. Still, it was a memorable record. The
song's writer, actor Clifton Davis, recalled, ‘This was an emotional song
that meant a lot to me when I wrote it. I was worried that Michael might not
understand the lyrics of pain and heartbreak. I recall him asking about one
of the lines. “What's this word mean? Anguish” he asked me. I explained it.
He shrugged his shoulders and just sang the line. “There's that anguish,
there's that doubt,” he sang. And I believed him.’
Joseph and Katherine Buy an Estate
On 5 May 1971, after the boys returned from another national tour, the
Jacksons moved into their large estate at 4641 Hayvenhurst in Encino,
California, the one in which Joseph, Katherine and miscellaneous other
Jacksons (who aren't Michael and Janet) still live today.
Joseph and Katherine purchased the property for $250,000; they moved
in a day after Katherine's forty-first birthday. Katherine had asked Joseph
not to sell the two-bedroom home in Gary, ‘just in case the family fortunes
took a turn for the worse and they all had to move back to Indiana.’
Although Joseph didn't think that such a reversal of fortunes was likely, he
decided to rent, rather than sell, the house, at 2300 Jackson Street. (Today,
the property is worth roughly $100,000, and still owned by the family.)
Joseph and Katherine had never made as large a purchase as the Encino
estate and were naive as to how to go about it. Joseph wanted to pay cash
for the estate (‘At least, then we own it and no one can kick us out.’), but he
didn't have that much capital. Anyway, Berry Gordy convinced him that the
family needed as much of a tax writeoff on the property as possible, since
their income was increasing monthly, and that the interest on a loan could
be written off their taxes. Although Joseph decided to put down as little as
possible on the Encino property, because his credit profile was not a good
one he had to raise nearly 40 per cent in order to qualify for a mortgage.
That was a lot of money for a down-payment: $100,000. Berry offered to
lend Joseph and Katherine the funds, but Joseph declined. ‘If we're going to
live in that house, it's gotta be ours,’ he told Berry. Motown already had too
much control over his kids; Joseph didn't want Berry also to have a vested
interest in the family home.
In the end, Joseph did manage to get the $100,000, but he had to secure a
large advance on his sons' future earnings. Of course, that advance came
from Motown… which was, Berry.
Encino, which is a thirty-five-minute drive from downtown Los Angeles,
is one of the wealthiest communities in Southern California and home to
many celebrities. The two-acre Jackson estate, resplendent with eighteen
citrus trees and countless exotic plants, was guarded by an electronic gate
and flanked by a guest house, playhouse and servants' quarters.
Johnny Jackson and Ronny Rancifer, The Jackson 5's drummer and
organist, moved into the household with the rest of the family. This
arrangement occurred because Joseph and Katherine were concerned about
the influence both boys – but particularly Johnny – were having on their
sons. Both youngsters liked to spend what little money they were given,
rather than save it. They were also smoking cigarettes and drinking liquor.
Joseph had considered letting them both go, but decided that it wouldn't be
fair since the boys had been a part of the band since the early days in Gary.
‘The house had five bathrooms and six bedrooms,’ recalled Susie
Jackson, Johnny's former wife. ‘Jackie and Ronny shared a room. Tito was
with Johnny, Jermaine with Marlon, Michael with Randy, and LaToya with
Janet. And then there was one left for Joseph and Katherine, so there were a
lot of people living there’.
The family room had a recessed floor surrounded by a wraparound
couch. The walls were lined with numerous plaques, gold and platinum
records signifying million-selling singles and albums. One reporter noted
that the room resembled ‘a cross between a motel lobby and the foyer of a
Sunset Boulevard record company.’
The grounds contained an Olympic-size swimming pool, a basketball
half-court, a badminton court and an archery range. The tranquil
surroundings promised limitless peace for such a famous family. Hopefully,
here they could be soothed and refreshed in their time away from the
invasive eye of the public.
Plans were made to add a hundred-thousand-dollar recording studio and a
twenty-five-thousand-dollar darkroom.
Jackie Jackson's Datsun 240 Z was usually parked in the driveway, along
with Katherine's new Audi, Joseph's gold Mercedes 300 SE convertible, and
the family's huge van.
‘We had fun up the Big House,’ said Susie Jackson. (In time, many of the
family's relatives referred to the Jackson estate as the Big House because
they felt it had become as much a prison to the Jackson sons and daughters
as it had been a home.) ‘It wasn't all drama and backstabbing. There were
parties and, in the beginning, we had a special closeness. I remember a lot
of fun times when they first moved in. Every time you were in that house,
they were roasting peanuts.’
Though Katherine enjoyed the opulent estate and other aspects of her
new life, she missed Gary. Simply put, she was not as happy as she thought
she might be in Los Angeles. She missed her old friends and relatives.
If Southern California had to be her new home, Katherine would not
allow the glamorous surroundings to influence her or her family to act in a
pretentious manner. She was determined to maintain a sense of normality
around the household.
Also, the Jackson family did not hesitate to show their appreciation to
people who had helped them in their careers. Instead of small, intimate
gatherings, they preferred large, ostentatious affairs where quantity was the
most important consideration. Katherine looked at these parties as come-on-
overs. Only instead of root beer and pretzels on the back porch, she put out
a lavish spread at the family estate. Always a gracious hostess, she made
everyone feel welcome. Joseph's pride in the house was obvious. He would
give tours to anyone who seemed interested. In August 1972, after The
Jackson 5 finished their engagement at the Forum in Los Angeles,
Katherine and Joseph held just such a party at the family home for about
fifty press and show-business friends.
Katherine and Joseph did not disappoint their guests. The twelve-foot-
long buffet offered hamburgers, roast beef, chilli, shish kebabs, fresh chilled
fruit and seafood. Pastries were heaped on a cart decorated with red and
yellow roses. In the middle of the family's oval swimming pool, Joseph
floated a huge J-5 logo made of roses and tinted carnations. For
entertainment, The Jackson 5 challenged The Temptations to a basketball
game. The Jacksons won.
(This writer was a guest at many of the Jackson family's ‘come-on-overs’
between the years 1976 and 1981 at the Jacksons' estate in Encino.)
The Jacksons' phone number would be routinely changed by the phone
company every month to guard against outsiders having it. Nevertheless,
the number always got out. Once, a girl from Newark called to talk to
Michael at two in the morning – just one day after the new number was
assigned.
As always, Joseph limited phone calls to five minutes and would not
hesitate to use a strap on any junior family member who broke that rule,
pop star or no pop star. To say the least, the children were well disciplined.
In fact, the boys were known in Hollywood circles as the best-behaved
youngsters in show business. ‘You sometimes thought they were too nice,’
said one reporter. ‘It was as if something was wrong somewhere. They were
sort of spooky.’
Jermaine has recalled that when the family moved into the Encino home
their familial closeness began to dissipate, simply because there was so
much space. ‘We were real close when we had the other homes, before
Encino,’ he remembered. ‘In Gary, we had two bedrooms, one for our
parents and one for all of us. You had to be close. You felt that closeness as
a family. But in Encino, the place was so big we had to make plans in
advance to see each other. I think that Michael, in particular, was unhappy
there. He felt, as I did, that we were all losing touch with each other.’
In June 1971, The Jackson 5 released another single for Motown, ‘Maybe
Tomorrow’, which went on to sell 830,794 copies, not as many as previous
efforts but still respectable. A month later, the group taped its first
television special, Goin' Back to Indiana, for ABC-TV. (It would air in
September.) Later, they would even have their own cartoon series, that's
how popular they'd become in such a short time. (The Jacksons' actual
voices were heard in musical numbers, but their dialogue was provided by
young black actors.) That summer, The Jackson 5 performed fifty shows on
tour, the longest series of one-night performances ever attempted by the
boys. ‘I wish for once we could finish a show and not have to leave before
the end because of the crowds rushing the stage,’ Michael complained. ‘We
have a real good ending, but we never get the chance to do it.’
At Madison Square Garden in August of that year, the show had to be
stopped after only two minutes when the audience stormed the stage.
‘Return to your seats, please,’ a frightened Michael begged. Ultimately,
though, the group had to be extracted from the crowd and rushed away from
the premises. The show resumed after the audience calmed down. Sixty
minutes later, when the concert was over, the Jacksons sprinted to waiting
limousines, without finishing their last number, in order to get away as
quickly as possible. The audience went berserk. Once the fans realized that
the group was gone, they surged on to the stage like an angry mob,
sweeping away police and security men, and swarming the dressing room
looking for their idols.
This was a heady time for the boys from Gary, and they were never again
to be as close as they were during these early days – nor would they have as
much fun. Insulated from outsiders by the Motown representatives and their
father, they had only each other for company. To occupy their free time,
they enjoyed dropping water balloons and paper bags filled with water from
hotel-room windows, having pillow fights with one another, and playing
Scrabble, Monopoly and card games. (They gave Jermaine the nickname
‘Las Vegas’ because he became such a skilled card shark.) Michael has fond
memories of tag-team wrestling matches and shaving-cream wars with his
brothers while they were cooped up in hotels, ‘or fast-walk races down
hotel hallways once our chaperone was asleep,’ he said. Michael, who was
twelve at this time, was quite a prankster. He liked to phone room service,
order huge meals, and then have them sent to the rooms of strangers in the
hotel; and he especially enjoyed setting up a bucket of water as a booby trap
above the doorway to his and Jermaine's room (they always shared
quarters), drenching whoever happened to walk into the room.
‘Mike always blamed me,’ Jermaine recalled with a grin. ‘He loved
practical jokes, locking us out of our rooms in our underwear, squirting us
with water pistols. They were almost always his idea. We had so much fun.
It was all fun, all the time.’
Indeed, success was sweet and innocent for The Jackson 5. ‘We don't
have no gold records,’ Michael once told me during this time, a sad
expression on his face. Then, after a beat, he explained, ‘They're all
platinum! Ha-ha!’
Occasionally one of the Jackson brothers would show some interest in
the opposite sex. Backstage at the Hollywood Bowl, when the group
performed there, Berry Gordy's sixteen-year-old daughter Hazel had her
arm around Jermaine, also sixteen, and seemed to be nibbling on his ear.
Joseph watched with great interest and pulled Jermaine aside.
‘What's the deal with her?’ he demanded to know.
‘I don't know,’ Jermaine said, shrugging his shoulders. ‘She likes me, I
guess.’
At first, Joseph was annoyed. Then, he became thoughtful and nodded
his approval. ‘Berry's kid,’ he muttered to himself. ‘Hmmm. Not bad. Not
bad at all.’
During the concert, Jermaine decided to dedicate his solo of ‘Bridge
Over Troubled Water’ to ‘Hazel, for her birthday’. The audience's reaction
was lukewarm. Whereas he usually got a standing ovation for the number,
this evening it seemed that the female fans in the crowd did not appreciate
Jermaine's honesty about his friendship with Hazel.
Jermaine recalled, ‘My father pulled me aside, I remember, and he said,
“You'd better not do that again.” And I said, “You know, you're right. I'd
better not.” And I didn't.’
Michael's First Solo Record
Joseph Jackson always had his eye on the competition, namely the Osmond
Brothers, a family group from Salt Lake City, Utah. In June 1971, MGM
Records released ‘Sweet and Innocent’ by the youngest member of the
group, Donny Osmond, as a solo act. That record's success all but
guaranteed him teen-star status in the predominantly white teenybopper
magazines. Because of their colour, The Jackson 5 could never be perceived
as teen idols in those magazines, despite all of their success and good looks.
Though the Jacksons would make occasional appearances in magazines like
16 and Fave, the Osmonds and other white stars like them dominated the
pages of such publications. This practice chagrined Joseph, who viewed it
as racism.
After Donny Osmond's hit, Joseph decided that Michael should also
record a song on his own. He and Berry Gordy decided to release a song
called ‘Got to Be There’, as Michael's first solo, instead of as a group effort
as originally planned. Michael would still be a part of the group, just as
Donny was a part of The Osmonds, but he would now also be a solo
Motown artist. ‘Then we can all make more money,’ Joseph reasoned.
Joseph never dreamed that he had just put into motion a plan that would one
day separate Michael not only from his brothers, but from him as well.
‘Got to Be There’ was issued in October. Although it would not reach the
top of the charts, it was a reality check of sorts for the Jackson brothers
when they saw that Michael could crack the Top Five on his own. In
England it was a number five hit, and stayed in the Top 50 for almost three
months. Globally, ‘Got to be There’ sold 1,583,850 copies.
This lushly produced and orchestrated, mid-tempo love song was the
perfect vehicle for launching Michael's solo career; it's surely one of the
most beautiful songs in Motown's publishing catalogue. At the time, it was
the envy of many artists whose flagging careers could have been salvaged
by such a versatile, well-tailored number. Instead, it served to bolster the
enormously popular lead singer of The Jackson 5.
Immediately after Christmas in 1971, The Jackson 5 embarked on a
concert tour of the South. In Dallas, a reporter arranged an interview in their
hotel room. It wasn't long before fans had congregated outside the door,
chanting, ‘Michael! Michael! Michael!’ Tito went out in the hallway hoping
to quieten them down. When he opened the door, a group of girls burst into
the room and began kissing and hugging Michael, totally ignoring the
others. The brothers did not appear to be jealous and, rather, treated the
incident as a chance to tease Michael. ‘Just wait till I get my solo song
released,’ Jermaine said. ‘Then I'll be the ladies' man 'round here.’
‘Well, right now Michael's the real ladies' man,’ Jackie said after the girls
were escorted out of the room by security guards.
‘Aw, c'mon, you guys,’ Michael said, bashfully.
‘You are, Mike,’ Jermaine agreed. ‘But not for long…’
Then all four brothers jumped on Michael, tickling him good naturedly
and wrestling him to the ground. One could hear their laughter echo through
the halls.
Growing Up in the Public Eye
It's always tempting, when dissecting a person's life, to go back in time and
assign blame for the way things turned out, but it's not always fair.
Certainly, Joseph and Katherine had the best intentions when they were
raising their family, and didn't intend to harm their children. It's the rare
parent, one would hope, who purposely sets out to completely screw up his
kids' lives. If Joseph had told his brood to forget about show business, and
focus on lives out of the public eye, such a demand would not have gone
over well, at all. Try as they might have, the value system the Jackson
parents passed on to their children was, at best, warped. Whatever it takes
to get to the top, that's what they were told they had to do – that was their
value system. Katherine tried to fight it and hoped to instill other ideals
along the way – especially having to do with her religion – but none of
them really seemed to matter when applied to the world in which her
children were being raised, the world of show business. They were all
caught up in the powerful illusion that if they became rich and famous, their
lives would be better. Fate and circumstance, along with an obvious
inadequacy in parental skills, set into motion a chain of events that would
do irreparable harm to all of the Jackson children, and especially, to
Michael. At least the older brothers had had a few years to act like children.
Michael never did; he was barely five years old when thrust into show
business.
Of course, the boys loved to perform and even wanted to perform. They
excelled in that arena. The look of satisfaction on Michael's face when he
was onstage made it clear that he was doing what he wanted to do, and that
if someone had given him the choice between playing basketball with his
friends and entertaining them on a stage, he would have chosen the later.
However, a fine line exists between what children may want, and what may
be in their best interests. It's not likely that Joseph understood as much, or
was able to gauge the difference between what might be in the best interest
of his children, and what his own agenda was for them.
It is not only the vast sums of money child stars earn which set them
apart. Most child performers are shortchanged on their education, as well.
Few have ever attended public school regularly. In the film industry, they
are often tutored on the set. MGM even had a school for the youngsters who
worked in their movies. Although the children were supposed to study a
certain number of hours each day, filming often took precedence over
education. They gleaned from their studies what they were able to, and then
went back to their work in front of the cameras.
What's more, child performers are often cheated out of learning social
skills – the all-important art of getting along with people. The other boys
and girls with whom they associate are usually working children like
themselves. Some of Judy Garland's happiest memories were of the short
time during her teens when her career seemed to be going nowhere. She left
the studio school, enrolled in Hollywood High – hiding her background
from her fellow students – and enjoyed herself, immensely. (That happy
period came to an abrupt end when a vice-principal told her she shouldn't be
enrolled in school with ‘normal people’.)
The couple of years that the younger Jackson boys spent in public
schools are romanticized by Michael and Marlon as highlights of their lives
but, in truth, they weren't very happy. Michael attended sixth grade at
Gardner Street Elementary in Los Angeles, though not consistently because
of his work schedule. In truth, he was just a guest there, making cameo
appearances in the classroom as he might on a television variety show. His
sixth grade teacher, Laura Gerson, remembered, ‘Once I was teaching the
kids a song with a three-part harmony, and I hit a flat note that made my
hair stand on end. Michael's eyes popped wide open. Nobody but him
noticed. He never talked about himself. Occasionally, he would disappear
and turn up on television…’ *
In the seventh grade, Michael joined Marlon at Emerson Junior High. But
by this time, The Jackson 5's accomplishments at Motown had robbed them
of their privacy. They only had two weeks at Emerson, obviously no time to
integrate into the population or get to know anyone, before they were forced
to leave. There had been a death threat against them, and that was the end of
that: Joseph pulled them out of public school. His decision was fine with
the boys; they wanted to leave, anyway. ‘There were mobs of people
standing in the hallways just looking into the classrooms,’ Marlon recalled.
‘It was embarrassing, and frightening.’ From that time onward, the two
were either enrolled in private schools or tutored at home.
California law requires that minors have a minimum of three hours of
schooling a day when they are working. Mrs Rose Fine, accredited by the
state as a ‘children's welfare supervisor’, became the tutor for all of the
younger Jacksons. Much of their travelling time was spent studying for tests
that they would take as soon as they checked into their hotel rooms.
Between their studies, rehearsals, sound checks and concerts, and the usual
goofing off, the Jacksons were kept busy.
When in private school, which occurred from time to time in between
touring, Michael was bored by his studies, refused to do his homework, and
was a terrible student. During class, he would draw pictures of animals and
monsters when he should have been paying attention to his lessons. When
called upon for an answer, Michael didn't have a clue as to what was going
on, and he didn't care.
Jackie and Tito have unpleasant memories of their time at Fairfax High
School, a public school in Los Angeles. The demands of their careers made
normal routines almost impossible; they couldn't join any of the sports
teams – a crushing disappointment for Jackie, who loved baseball – because
they were the focus of attention. When they were singled out by classmates
who had previously ignored them, the two brothers became suspicious of
everyone. Who was legitimate in their intentions, and who had ulterior
motives in wanting to know them?
Jackie and Tito would graduate from Fairfax when they were eighteen.
At least they can reflect on a small period of time when they were exposed
to people who weren't in show business, even if they did not enjoy that
time. Michael, Marlon and Jermaine can not do as much; they were granted
high school equivalency diplomas by Rose Fine, who was empowered to
award them. Though technically graduated, the three younger Jacksons
certainly did not obtain a good grounding in basic subjects, no slight to
Rose Fine who probably did the best she could with them. To this day, each
has problems with penmanship, grammar and (Michael in particular)
spelling. They also lack a sense of history, except that which they managed
to pick up during their travels.
As early as 1972, when Michael was about fourteen, he began exhibiting
behaviour unlike that of his brothers. While they took the pressures of
success in their stride, Michael seemed more affected by it. ‘He's just more
sensitive than the others,’ Katherine would explain. If anyone in show-
business history could ever be said to be lacking in ‘people skills’, it would
be Michael Jackson. To this day, he doesn't really understand people, or
even try to understand them, because when he was a youngster he was
surrounded, for the most part, by either showbiz kids or wealthy students
who, like himself, were never exposed to the ‘normal’ masses.
By the time Michael was fourteen, Bill Bray (The Jackson 5's security
man, who still works for Michael) would arrange for him to have access to
freight elevators in hotels, rather than take public lifts along with ‘normal
people’, as Michael called them.
A year earlier Michael had told Judy Spiegelman of Soul magazine, ‘I'm
just like other kids.’ However, he soon realized he was not like them at all.
The other group members didn't seem to mind ‘normal people’ – as long as
they weren't in the form of a pack of rioting fans – even if they had nothing
to do with them. Michael, though, was always the one who attracted the
most attention. If he entered a room with any of his other brothers, he was
the one to whom the fans would flock. Being singled out, being made to
feel different, knowing all eyes were on him, had a deep impact on Michael.
He began to show signs of a deep insecurity, and even inadequacy. It was as
if he knew he didn't fit in. If he could spend his life on stage, he felt he
would be happy. Unfortunately, the world was not his stage. He had to deal
with the public, and he wasn't able to do so in a way that made him feel
comfortable in his own skin.
‘He became a loner,’ Katherine Jackson would remember. ‘I was worried
about him, but I hoped he would grow out of it, that it was a phase. He
didn't get along with other people his age. He was better with adults. I don't
know that he had friends his own age. I think, probably not. As always, his
brothers were his friends. As long as we all had each other, I figured we
would be okay. I prayed we would be okay.’
Tito Marries
Along with their incredible success in the music industry came, for the
Jacksons, the inevitable lure of available women. Women of all shapes,
sizes and colours began to proposition them, appearing backstage after
concerts and offering to do all sorts of ‘favours’ for them. Though Michael
and Marlon were too young, Jermaine and Jackie saw no reason not to take
advantage of their young fans' overworked libidos. Tito wasn't really
interested in groupies, though. He just wanted to settle down – and also get
out of the household and put some distance between him and Joseph.
In 1972, Tito announced that he wanted to marry seventeen-year-old
Delores (Dee Dee) Martes, whom he had met at Fairfax High School a few
months before the group became famous. Joseph and Katherine were
extremely upset, concerned that Dee Dee might be a gold-digger and Tito
too inexperienced to see it. The least he could do, they argued, was insist
that his fiancée sign a pre-nuptial agreement. He did, and she agreed.
Michael felt strongly that Tito was letting their fans down by marrying,
and attempted to convince him to change his mind. ‘Think about all of
those girls out there who love us,’ he said, trying to reason with his brother
one day in the Motown offices.
‘They don't even know us, Mike,’ Tito said. ‘We can't live our lives for
perfect strangers.’
‘But they do know us,’ Michael argued, according to a witness, ‘and we
owe them, Tito. We owe them.’
‘So what are we supposed to do?’ Tito wanted to know. ‘Put up with
Joseph for the rest of our lives? If that's the case, I don't even want to be in
the group, then.’
Michael stopped arguing with Tito at that point, perhaps fearing Tito's
next step might be to just quit the act.
Joseph and Katherine had hoped that Berry Gordy would insist that Tito,
as a Motown recording artist, remain single. When Joseph presented the
situation to Berry, however, he wanted no part of it. ‘Keep me out of it,’ he
said. ‘As long as Michael isn't getting married, I'm cool.’
Joseph's face darkened. ‘Michael ain't the only one in the group, Berry,’
he said, according to his recollection. ‘Thanks for nothing.’
The wedding took place in June 1972 in a small, unpretentious chapel in
Inglewood, California. Joseph spent most of the evening glaring at Dee Dee
and her family. Katherine was nicer, though one suspected she was just
trying to get through the day. (Their first baby, a son named after Tito, was
born about a year later. Tito was on tour, so LaToya acted as Dee Dee's
Lamaze labour coach.)
Groupies
Young Tito Jackson may have been off the open market, but Jackie and
Jermaine were young, single and ready to explore whatever fame might
bring their way in terms of female companionship. Joseph had been a
terrible example to them in the past, and he didn't improve with time. In
fact, when the boys became famous, he starting having liaisons with their
fans! With him as their guide, was there any reason to think the brothers
would act in a responsible manner? By 1972, the older Jacksons had left a
long trail of broken hearts as they toured the country, city by city. Then,
they rented an apartment near their house in Encino, where they could hang
out with their female conquests away from Katherine's scrutiny.
Rhonda Phillips was one of ‘those’ girls. Today, she is a forty-nine-year-
old divorcée who lives with her three children in Long Beach, California.
Back in August 1972, she was eighteen when she met her idol, Jackie, who
was twenty-one. She had been selected from the audience by one of the
group's road managers when the brothers were on stage at the Forum in
Inglewood, California. Backstage, Jackie gave Rhonda a slip of paper with
an address on it and told her to meet him at that location in an hour. As she
mulled over his offer, she sensed someone behind her, and turned around. It
was Michael. ‘He was just a cute little guy,’ she said. ‘He had big teeth, a
flat, wide nose, a perfectly combed natural; he looked like any pretty
fourteen-year-old black boy you'd find in the neighbourhood. He noticed
the slip of paper in my hand.’
‘Did Jermaine give you that?’ he asked.
‘No, Jackie.’
‘He wants you to meet him, doesn't he?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ Rhonda said. ‘I don't know if I should – ’
Michael cut her off. ‘Don't,’ he said. ‘I don't think you should meet him.’
Rhonda asked Michael why she shouldn't go. She remembered his
answer: ‘My brothers don't treat girls too good. They can be mean. Please,
don't go.’
Rhonda remembered thinking that Michael was only fourteen; what
could he know? She changed the subject and asked him for his autograph.
She thrust forward the piece of paper Jackie had given her, he scribbled on
it and handed it back to her.
The group's representative had arranged the cab fare for Rhonda to meet
Jackie. She was taken to the Jacksons' apartment in Encino. As the car
pulled up to the curb, she happened to turn over the slip of paper in her
hand and realized that Michael had written more than just his name on the
back of it. There was a message: ‘I hope you don't go.’ It was signed
‘Michael Jackson’.
She went inside the apartment complex, found the Jacksons' and had sex
with Jackie. ‘I won't be able to see you after this,’ he told her when they
were finished. She began to cry.
‘Suddenly, I was ashamed,’ she recalled many years later. ‘He held me
for a little while and then told me that someone from Motown would be
waiting outside to take me home. He kissed me, and I left. The whole thing
took less than half an hour.’
As Rhonda was walking down to the street, a white Rolls-Royce pulled
up. Michael and Marlon were sitting in the back seat. The car pulled up to
the curb. The boys got out and Marlon ran past Rhonda up to the apartment.
Michael came over to her.
‘What are you doing here?’ he asked, his tone accusatory. ‘Were you up
there with Jackie?’
‘Yeah, I was,’ she answered.
‘Did you have sex?’ Michael wanted to know.
Rhonda began to cry.
Michael shook his head sadly. ‘I'm sorry,’ he said. ‘Did he make you do
it?’
‘No, of course not. I wanted to.’
‘You wanted to?’ Michael asked, seeming astonished. ‘But why would
you want to?’
Rhonda got into the car. She rolled down the window. Michael was still
standing at the curb. ‘Are you gonna be all right?’ he asked.
‘Yeah, I will be,’ she answered.
‘By now, I was sobbing,’ Rhonda recalled. ‘I rolled up the window and
the car pulled off. I looked out the back window and the last thing I saw
was Michael Jackson standing there waving goodbye to me.’
During these salad days, Michael, fourteen, often shared a room with his
brother, Marlon, fifteen and Jermaine, seventeen. Jermaine would wait for
their security man, Bill Bray, to go to sleep before sneaking down to the
lobby to pick up girls. Often, he would bring them back to the room and
then instruct Michael and Marlon to, as Marlon recalled it, ‘play sleep’.
Yolanda Lewis is, today, forty-six, married, and living in St Louis. In an
interview, she recalled an experience she had with Jermaine Jackson in
1972 when she was sixteen. ‘I was a real groupie,’ she remembered, ‘and
the boys did a concert in Cleveland, where I was living at the time.
Afterwards, a group of us girls went to the hotel where we knew they were
staying. We had our J-5 buttons and posters, just wanting autographs,
hoping to see the guys, maybe get a picture with them. Jermaine came down
and struck up a conversation with a few of us. He was sweet, shy. He pulled
me off to the side and asked me if I would like to come up to his room. Of
course, I said yes. He was so handsome, with his big natural and white
teeth.
‘We got up to the room, and I walked in behind Jermaine. It was pitch-
black, with just a night light on in a corner.
‘ “Michael and Marlon are sleeping,” he whispered to me. “So we have
to be quiet. Take off your clothes. Quick.” He wasn't exactly romantic. I
jumped into bed with him and he climbed on top of me. As he climaxed, he
shuddered so loudly I was afraid he would wake up Michael and Marlon,
who were sleeping three feet away in the next bed. Or at least I thought they
were sleeping. As I was slipping out of the room, I heard Michael say to
Jermaine, “Nice job. Now, can we please get some sleep?”’
It would be a couple of years before Marlon began playing around with
groupies. However, Michael was never a player; he simply wasn't
interested, and thought his brothers' behaviour towards their female fans
was deplorable. After years of traumatizing overexposure, it was as if the
very idea of sex had become abhorrent to him.
A person who has known Michael since 1974, once told me, ‘I was
having a conversation with Rebbie when she said, “Michael doesn't have
time for girls.” I asked, “What kind of guy doesn't have time for girls?” She
said that there were special circumstances with Michael. When I asked her
what she was talking about, she told me a horrible story.
‘She said that when Michael was fifteen years old, a certain member of
his family, someone he trusted – I won't say who, even though Rebbie did –
decided he was old enough to have sex, and that he had to have it. This
person then arranged the services of two hookers for Michael. He told them
to work him over, and then locked Michael up in a room with them. Rebbie
said that this incident absolutely traumatized her brother. I don't know
whether or not Michael actually had sex with the hookers. Rebbie didn't
say.’
Certainly, if this story is true, such a scenario must have had a deep
psychological impact on Michael, as it would on any youngster going
through puberty. After that happened, it's been said, Michael turned to
prostitutes, not for sex – but for conversation. It was as if Michael had
retaliated against his brothers' actions with groupies by trying to reassure
himself that women were good for more than just fun times in bed. James
McField, the group's former pianist and band director, recalled, ‘Sometimes
– maybe once, maybe twice – Michael just needed to have someone to talk
to and – maybe once, maybe twice – a woman would be introduced to him
as someone very nice that he could be with, to have the company of a
female. But he wouldn't have sex with her, to my knowledge. As far as I
know, nothing intimate would ever happen. He liked nice girls, pure girls
who appeared to have no street background.’
One such ‘date’ remembered meeting Michael after a concert in New
York. ‘I was hanging around backstage, working Madison Square Garden's
dressing area,’ said Lillias Harris, ‘when someone who introduced himself
as an employee of the Jacksons came over to me and asked me if I wanted
to spend an evening with Michael. “Hell, yeah,” I said. He asked me how
much, and I told him I would do it for free. I wanted to have sex with
Michael Jackson. Who wouldn't?
‘He brought me back to the dressing room. Michael was there, alone. I
walked in, and he told me to close the door. The first thing out of his mouth
was, “Why are you a prostitute?” I answered, “Because I need the money.”
He said to me, “Would you like to have sex with me?” and I said, “Yes, of
course I would.” He asked me how much it would cost. I told him, “No
charge.” He seemed interested. So, I undid my blouse and showed him my
breasts. He then turned his head, repulsed. “Stop. I can't have sex with
you,” he said. “Please put them back,” he added, referring to my breasts.
‘When I asked him why, he told me, “Because I just can't.” I thought he
meant he couldn't get an erection, he looked so sad. Then, he said, “Can we
talk about you and your life?” I didn't want to talk, that's not why I went
there. So I gave him my telephone number.
‘ “Anytime you want to get off, you call me,” I said. Michael looked at
me and asked, “What does that mean, get off?” He was totally sincere. “It
means screw, Michael,” I told him. “Anytime you want to screw, call me.
Get it?”
‘He said, “Oh, okay. Maybe I'll call you someday. I doubt it, though.”
And then I left.
‘He struck me as lonely and naive,’ Lillias Harris concluded. ‘He was a
nice, mixed-up, good-looking guy who wanted female companionship. No
way was he about to have sex that night, though. He was scared to death. I
wondered if he would ever call me. He never did.’
‘Rockin' Robin’ and ‘Ben’
By winter of 1972, Motown had released two more solo singles by Michael
Jackson, the first being ‘Rockin' Robin’. While Michael twitters his way
through the song, the session player bangs out the easy ditty on the piano to
create a song that was irresistible. ‘Rockin’ Robin' became an even bigger
success than ‘Got to Be There’. The song peaked in the same position for
Michael as the original did for the late Bobby Day, at number two.
One early record of Michael's that still brings snickers today is ‘Ben.’
The words of the song extol friendship, though there is no clue in the lyrics
that the song is actually about a rodent. (In the film, Ben, a young boy
befriends a rat named… Ben. A little-known fact is that Bing Crosby was
one of the movie's producers.) Michael's voice complements the delicately
orchestrated piece, with its solo guitar accompaniment; the recording is
layered at all the emotional peaks with a precise string arrangement. The
song obviously stood on its own, independent from the film. It became
Michael's first number-one solo record, selling an amazing 1,701,475
copies. It was also nominated for an Oscar.
Michael saw the movie Ben many times, sitting in the back of the theatre
just waiting to hear his song and then see his credit on the screen. As a
child, Michael loved rats. At one point, Katherine was horrified to find that
Michael had thirty rats in a cage in his bedroom. He was passionate about
the rodents until the day he discovered that they were eating each other – as
rats will do. Sickened by the sight, Michael put the rat cage outdoors.
In addition to his solo records, Michael started recording the group's
songs separately from his brothers, putting the lead vocal on tape alone in
the studio. Later, the brothers would come in and record their background
vocals. Often, additional – anonymous – singers would be added to the mix.
This was a decision made by Motown to make the recording process more
expedient. All it did for Michael, though, was make him feel more singled
out, and not a part of the group. He didn't like it.
In November 1972, The Jackson 5 embarked on a twelve-day European
tour, which would begin with a royal command performance before Queen
Elizabeth. There was actually some concern at Motown that the tour would
not be a success, based on the group's flagging record sales in Europe.
Unlike the situation in America, sales were down for The Jackson 5 in
Europe, and especially in Britain. The group's Maybe Tomorrow album, for
instance, didn't even make the UK Top 50. Their single ‘Sugar Daddy’ also
flopped in the UK. However, as a solo recording artist Michael was faring
well. ‘Got to Be There’ and ‘Rockin' Robin’ sailed to the British number
five and three positions, respectively. Later in the month, ‘Ben’ would peak
at number seven and sell more than a quarter of a million copies, just in the
UK. So even if the group was falling short in record sales with a British
audience, it was hoped that thanks to Michael's popularity the tour would
draw audiences. It did, and in a big way. As British teenagers swarmed
London's Heathrow Airport to welcome the group, the ensuing mob scene
was reminiscent of Beatlemania.
‘Large plugs of hair were jerked from the scalp underneath Jermaine's
giant Afro by souvenir hunters,’ reads Motown's 22 November press
release. ‘Noise so intense that it drowned out the whine of jet engines drove
tears to Michael's and Marlon's eyes. Tito was bruised and shaken by the
stampede of the thundering herd. Randy nearly panicked when frenzied
females devoured him with bear hugs and wet kisses. Jackie was cool but
more than a little bit worried. It was sheer pandemonium. It was near chaos.
It was frightening. It was JACKSONMANIA.’
Besides losing a shoe, Michael was almost choked to death. ‘He was
really frightened,’ recalled Jermaine. ‘They were pulling on both ends of his
scarf, actually choking him. He had to put his hand up under his scarf and
start screaming so that it wouldn't tighten up on his neck.’
Michael loathed such mob scenes. He recalls having to run through
crowds of screaming girls with eyes covered by his hands for fear that their
nails would scratch him. He remembers hiding in broom closets, hoping the
throng would rush by and miss him. ‘They grab your hair and pull hard and
it hurts like fire,’ he recalled. ‘You feel as if you're going to suffocate or be
dismembered.’
Fans barricaded the entrance to the Churchill Hotel where the group
stayed in London, preventing them from leaving the scene after their royal
variety performance. Joseph called the police, who arrived with water
hoses, which they unleashed on the fans. The next day, a nine-year-old girl
threatened to use a knife on a hotel doorman unless he allowed her access to
Michael's room. She was detained by the police. A Rolls-Royce limousine
carrying the group sustained twelve thousand dollars' worth of damage
when it was dented and scratched by young girls clawing to get to their
idols. Later, as the Jacksons performed at the Talk of the Town nightclub,
souvenir hunters stripped their limousine of its cushions, radio, lights,
tyres…
It was this way wherever the brothers travelled on the rest of their tour,
whether in Amsterdam, Brussels, Munich, Frankfurt or Paris.
Katherine Files for Divorce
Katherine Jackson had tolerated many years of unfaithfulness from Joseph.
She knew he was cheating on her. Everyone knew. Joseph had been on the
road with the boys for years and having brief encounters with their
groupies. Not only had her friends told her, several of Joseph's more
audacious girlfriends had telephoned the house over the years to brag about
their encounters with him. ‘I don't want those women calling the house,’
she would scream at Joseph, sometimes in front of the children. ‘I'm sick of
it, Joseph. Enough is enough.’ The reasons for Joseph's actions didn't matter
to Katherine. She wasn't even sure she wanted him to stop his philandering,
as she told one friend. She simply wanted him to be more discreet. ‘Do you
have to play me for a fool?’ she would ask him, tearfully. A terrible rage
began to fulminate in her. ‘Don't you dare treat me like I'm stupid,’ she
screamed at him. ‘There's nothing worse than being made to feel this way.’
In truth, Joseph treated Katherine just as she had allowed him to treat her
for as long as they'd been husband and wife. There was little reason for him
to stop, as far as he was concerned. In his view, he worked hard for the
Jacksons, he supported his family, he gave them a good life, so what he did
on his free time was none of their concern, as long as he was present when
they needed him.
In January 1973, Katherine learned that one of Joseph's girlfriends had
become pregnant and had a miscarriage. At first, she couldn't believe it; it
was more than she could bear. However, when she confirmed that it was
true, she decided that she had no choice but to end the marriage. ‘It's over,’
she announced. ‘My marriage is over.’
Immediately, the children sided with her; oldest daughter Rebbie, who
was twenty-three, couldn't bear to be in the same room with her father. ‘I
don't know how my mother hung in there all those years,’ she later said.
‘She didn't need that heartache with everything she had to deal with, being a
mother, supporting the children's performance, getting involved in the
business end of things. It was too much. I encouraged her to leave him. I
knew that he was damaging her spirit, that she couldn't possibly have peace
of mind.’
The Jackson offspring had seen Joseph mistreat Katherine for so many
years, they were happy to see her finally take a stand against him. ‘I hate
Joseph,’ Michael said to one of the Motown staffers. ‘I hate him so much
for what he has done to my mother. I hate him more than I can even say.’
‘But, Michael,’ the Motown employee said, ‘you shouldn't feel that way.
After all, he's your father.’
‘I wish he wasn't my father, sometimes,’ said fourteen-year-old Michael.
‘I wish it with all of my heart. He's the loser here,’ Michael said. ‘His whole
thing is always about winners and losers and who wins and who loses. With
this thing, he loses. Big time.’
Katherine filed for divorce in Los Angeles on 9 March 1973.
Joseph was stunned. He had been controlling and manipulating Katherine
for so many years, he couldn't fathom her righting back in this manner. He
also knew that he could not live without her. Plus, they had a family,
growing children. He had to change her mind. Who was going to raise all of
those kids?
Katherine was faced with a dilemma when she and her attorneys began
filling out the required forms. She didn't have a clue as to the value or
extent of her community property with Joseph. She had no idea how much
her husband – or her children – earned annually, or what the extent was of
their now vast business enterprises. She didn't even know Joseph's social
security number. Therefore, she had to leave two pages of questions
regarding this personal information unanswered. Her lawyer, Neil C.
Newson, typed on the form, ‘The information required in this declaration is
currently being compiled. A separate amended financial declaration will be
filed.’ Katherine paid her attorney $150 and then went back to the house on
Hayvenhurst. She did not move out of the house, and neither did Joseph.
They just didn't speak to each other.
‘When Motown heard that Katherine had filed for divorce, all hell broke
loose,’ remembered one family friend. ‘This could have ruined everything
in terms of their family image. All of those stories about how close they
were, what a loving family they were… It had the potential to be a public
relations disaster. It was decided by Gordy that no one was to know that
Katherine and Joseph were splitting up. It would be a closely guarded secret
by the press department. Today, you couldn't keep something like that out
of the press, especially with a court filing. In the early seventies, the press
wasn't as intrusive as they are today. The news was never leaked. However,
Katherine was badgered constantly by company officials who tried to
convince her to reconcile with Joseph for the sake of her family's image.’
‘I'm finished with Joseph,’ Katherine told one Motown official at a
meeting to discuss the possible consequences of her decision. She looked
bone-tired, recalled the lawyer. She wore a simple yet elegant black dress,
pearls at her neck, a fine, diamond pin on her shoulder. Her hair was a jet
black coif around her head. ‘It should have nothing to do with the boys'
career,’ she said, firmly. They can still make records and be famous, and
their parents can be divorced, and that will just have to be the end of it, I'm
afraid.’
Though the Motown adviser was not convinced, her son, Michael, had
made up his mind about his parents' marriage. ‘As far as I'm concerned, it's
over,’ he told Diana Ross, according to a later recollection. ‘My father has
hurt my mother, and that's all I need to know. That, to me, is the end of it.’
‘But people are so complicated,’ Diana told Michael, hinting at the
complexity of Joseph's problems. ‘Who knows why they do the things they
do.’
‘I know why,’ Michael insisted. ‘It's because Joseph is a bad man, that's
why. My brothers are going down the same road,’ he concluded. ‘I can see
it, already.’
After a couple of months, Katherine withdrew her divorce papers. Joseph
promised her that he would try to change, and that she should not break up
the family over his past behaviour. Much to the dismay of her children,
Katherine and Joseph were reconciled.
The Downslide
Despite The Jackson 5's world-wide popularity with concert-goers, trouble
was brewing where their record sales were concerned. In Europe, sales had
always been uneven. However, record store performance in America had
always been strong. By April 1972 though, whether from overexposure or
lack of promotion, the group was losing steam. The April release of ‘Little
Bitty Pretty One’, was a huge disappointment. Except for a seasonal release
of ‘Santa Claus is Coming to Town’, it became the poorest-selling Jackson
5 single to date, netting only 590,629 copies, globally. Its follow-up,
‘Lookin' Through the Windows’, fared even worse: 581,426 copies. This
was a terrible showing. (It is interesting, though, that this song marked a
sudden sales resurgence in Britain – a Top 10 hit that was no doubt a
consequence of their recent tour.) When ‘Corner of the Sky’, from the
Broadway musical Pippin (which Gordy had financed), sold only a
disappointing 381,426 copies worldwide, Joseph became irate.
‘What the hell is going on?’ he fumed. He began showing up at Motown,
harassing the sales staff and badgering the promotion executives. The
problem was that Berry Gordy was no longer personally involved in what
was going on with the record company. Instead, he put in charge a man
named Ewart Abner, a seasoned executive in the recording industry by the
time he got to Motown. For his part, Berry now devoted most of his time to
Diana Ross's film career, and to establishing Motown Productions in the
movie business. Although still Motown's chairman of the board, he was
interested only in filmmaking, not in record production. A star vehicle for
Diana Ross called Mahogany was in the works, a venture that would
monopolize most of Berry's time.
At the time, Motown was capitalizing on a more socially conscious
sound with Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder. Perhaps The Jackson 5's
audience had become hungry for a hipper sound than what they got with the
group's next release, ‘Hallelujah Day’. It sold less than a quarter of a
million discs; too bad, it was a terrific little record with leads shared by
Michael, Marlon and Jackie.
In truth, Ewart Abner didn't care about The Jackson 5. He wasn't
involved in signing them to the company, and he felt their best days were
behind them. ‘They already had their own cartoon, for Christ's sake,’ he
argued. ‘Why spend any more money on them?’ If sales figures were low
and the group was losing its audience, it was the group's fault, not
Motown's, he decided. With that point of view, it wasn't surprising that
Joseph disliked Ewart Abner, and in an intense, passionate way.
When an album, Skywriter, was released in March and sold only 115,045
copies, it became the group's poorest-selling album. (It didn't even reach the
Top 50 in Britain.) Joseph believed that all of the records which had been
failures could have been more successful if Motown had simply promoted
them properly.
There was a reprieve in the downward slide when producer Hal Davis put
together a terrific track for the Jackson boys called ‘Get It Together’. The
production was tight; the music, background vocals and Michael's maturing
lead all blended nicely on this performance, a departure from the sweeter,
pop music styles previously associated with the group. Released in August
1973, it sold over 700,000 copies. Though not a million-seller, it
encouraged Joseph in his belief that his sons still had an audience. To his
way of thinking, The Jackson 5 was not finished. If anything, he was
finished… with Motown.
Jermaine Falls for the Boss's Daughter
In early 1973, while Katherine and Joseph were distracted by the discord in
their marriage, their son Jermaine was falling in love… with Berry Gordy's
daughter. He had been dating Hazel Gordy for several months and, at just
eighteen, seemed about to follow Rebbie's and Tito's lead by using
matrimony to extricate himself from the Jackson homestead.
It was clear to the brothers that Hazel had become an important and
influential presence in his life. For example, at a rehearsal in March, the
group had been attempting to solve a problem in choreography with
Suzanne dePasse. After a decision had been made about how best to handle
the situation, the brothers were in agreement. However Hazel, who had
begun attending all practice sessions, pulled Jermaine aside and whispered
something in his ear. Jermaine listened, nodded absently, and walked back
to his brothers. ‘I think we oughta change this step,’ he announced,
dutifully.
‘But why?’ Michael protested, according to a witness's memory. ‘It's
perfect as it is.’
‘Because Hazel has a better idea. Look, Mike, you stand here,’ he said
positioning his brother. ‘And Tito here, Marlon there, and Jackie over
there.’ Jermaine then demonstrated Hazel's ‘great idea’ which, upon
execution, made Jermaine more prominent in the presentation. When
Suzanne realized what had happened, she shot Hazel a look. Hazel smiled
innocently. Since Hazel was Berry's daughter, Suzanne had no choice but to
agree with her suggestion. ‘Looks fine, guys,’ she said. ‘Let's keep it.’
‘Well, I hate it,’ Michael announced, looking at Jermaine. ‘C'mon,
Jermaine,’ he said, ‘I thought we agreed.’
Jermaine looked away.
The other brothers tried to ignore what had happened. ‘It ain't that
important,’ Tito decided.
‘Well, I think it is important,’ Michael concluded. ‘But you guys can do
whatever you want.’ He then looked over to Jermaine, who now was in
another conference with Hazel, shook his head and rolled his eyes.
Jermaine had been attracted to Hazel when they first met in 1969, but not
in the same way in which she fancied him. After a short time, Hazel told
Jermaine she was in love with him; he made it clear that he was not sure he
could return her affection. He was a teenage idol, a star, and could have his
pick of dozens of willing young women. This kind of idolatry was heady
stuff for a young man like Jermaine. It made the idea of settling down with
one woman seem confining, no matter who she might be.
‘Jermaine likes girls too much to get married,’ Michael had said. ‘I think
he'll be in his thirties before he does anything like that.’
However, Hazel was a young, idealistic girl who wanted more than
anything to marry and have a family. Not only had her father been divorced
three times, she had witnessed his tumultuous, heart-wrenching affair with
Diana Ross. Though young, Hazel believed that true love was elusive, she
remained a romantic. ‘I can truthfully say that since I fell in love with
Jermaine I have never even thought about any other man,’ she said.
Delores Robertson, who was a friend of Hazel's at the time, recalled,
‘Berry Gordy had been lavishing Hazel, his only daughter, with gifts for as
long as she could remember. She told him that she was in love with one of
The Jackson 5 and she wanted him for her own. Her feelings for Jermaine
were so strong, she was afraid to let him slip through her fingers for fear
that no one like him would ever come along again. She was jealous when
she would see Jermaine with female fans. “Michael can have fans, but you
can't,” she used to tell him. Berry made sure she usually got what she
wanted. Now she wanted Jermaine. Berry got to know Jermaine and, even
though he felt there might be a problem with Joseph, believed that Jermaine
was right for Hazel. When Jermaine asked Berry for her hand, he said, yes.’
Though Berry thought Joseph might be a stumbling block to any union
between his daughter and Jermaine, that wasn't the case, at least not at first.
Hazel actually found an unexpected ally in Joseph, who might not have
insisted on a pre-nuptial agreement anyway (as he had with Tito's wife). He
was certain that marriage between his son and the boss's daughter would
ensure job security for the Jackson clan at Motown, especially since he was
having a difficult time of late in even getting Berry on the telephone. He did
all he could to help the youngsters, even referring to her as ‘my Hazel’ and
saying that he loved her.
Had Joseph given the matter more thought, he might have been more
concerned about the recent turn of events. When Berry's sister, Anna, was
married to Motown singer Marvin Gaye, the alliance never gave Marvin
special privileges at the company. In fact, according to Marvin, it only
served to complicate his life and career because Anna acted as a spy for her
brother during times of conflict. Marvin was rarely able to make a move
that Berry didn't know about in advance. Also, Marvin said that he always
felt a strong conflict of interest whenever he and Berry battled, which was
often.
Many other Motown artists felt as Marvin did, that Jermaine was about to
be groomed by Berry to become a major star just as Diana Ross had been
lifted from The Supremes to superstar status; that Jermaine's two solo
releases for the company, ‘That's How Love Goes’ and ‘Daddy's Home’,
had been successful, and he did have the potential to be one of the
company's biggest stars. Actually, some critics cited strong similarities
between Jermaine's vocal style and Marvin Gaye's. The truth is that
Jermaine had his own sound, and it was a good one, too, full-bodied and
always an interesting contrast to Michael's high-pitch on the many songs the
two shared at Motown. (Actually, the reason Jermaine started singing leads
at the company was that the group's producer, Deke Richards, was
hospitalized with a slipped disk. He didn't want Fonce Mizell and Freddie
Perren, to work with Michael without him, so he told them to write
something for Jermaine. That song was ‘I Found That Girl’, the flip side of
‘The Love You Save’.)
Jermaine's and Hazel's Wedding
In November 1973, Katherine and Joseph had another serious argument;
distraught, she left town, leaving her family in a state of confusion and
bewilderment. ‘The children were devastated, Michael in particular,’
recalled Joyce Jillson, a friend of Katherine's at the time. ‘He wanted to go
with her. “If you're leaving, so am I,” he told her. “I'm not going to let you
go without me.” Michael didn't want to find himself in that house with his
brothers and sisters and father, unless Katherine was present as a buffer. To
Michael, she was his only link to sanity. But now even she had become
unpredictable. It was unlike her to disrupt the family, but she just couldn't
take it another second. She told Michael to stay behind and assured him that
she would return. He cried. “Why can't Joseph go?” he kept asking. “He's
the one who should be going.”’
When Katherine heard through friends that the press had become aware
of problems in her marriage, she became concerned. She wanted Jermaine's
upcoming wedding, not her separation from Joseph, to be the focus of
media attention. Therefore, she returned home just days before the wedding.
Sensing in Joseph injured pride rather than true contrition, she wasn't sure
how long she would stay with him now, but she knew she'd have to be at his
side at Jermaine's wedding. She felt an obligation to her son, to her family.
Jermaine's wedding to Hazel Gordy on 15 December 1973 was an
expensive, ostentatious affair. ‘If my kid is going to get married,’ Berry had
said, ‘she's going to marry in style. Sky's the limit,’ he insisted. The
wedding would cost him about a quarter of a million dollars, a lot for the
times. Berry's money would create a winter wonderland at the exclusive
Beverly Hills Hotel for the festivities. Artificial snow-covered pine trees,
175 white doves in white cages, and thousands of white camellias,
chrysanthemums and carnations decorated the rooms in which the wedding,
reception and luncheon took place. One hundred guests were invited to the
ceremony; five hundred-plus to the after-gatherings.
Ebony called it ‘the wedding of the century’. Guests were overheard
comparing it to the royal wedding in London when Princess Anne had
married Captain Mark Phillips a little more than a month earlier. Abe
Lastfogel, a William Morris founder, called it ‘the most lavish merger I've
ever seen’. To ensure that the media would report the details correctly,
Motown handed out publicity releases to the invited reporters.
Sixteen-year-old Marlon was the best man. Fifteen-year-old Michael,
along with brothers Jackie (twenty-two), Tito (twenty), and Randy (eleven),
were ushers. Michael's duties that day were not complicated: escort the
guests to their seats before the ceremony, and escort one of the bridesmaids
out of the chapel after it. However, people close to the Jackson family have
indicated that Michael felt preoccupied on this day. Jermaine, who had
always been his favourite big brother, was getting married and, in his view,
it was going to make a difference in the way things were run.
‘At first Michael had thought it wouldn't matter,’ said one close family
friend. ‘Tito was married and The Jackson 5 had continued as before. His
wife never had anything to do with group business or politics. But Jermaine
was marrying Hazel, the boss's daughter, a lady who had strong opinions
and got her own way. As the wedding day got closer and closer, Michael
noticed that Jermaine was looking at things differently – through Hazel's
eyes. He was becoming less Michael's best friend and more Hazel's man.
Michael would feel the loss keenly. He and Jermaine were so close, he felt
he was losing his best friend.’
In truth, Joseph had also become disenchanted with Hazel when he
realized how much influence she had on Jermaine. He felt that she could be
manipulative and, therefore, might interfere with group dynamics. Also, she
had her dad's ear. There was no telling how things would work out, and
Joseph couldn't help but be concerned.
At the reception, in the hotel's Lanai Room, show-business luminaries
such as Smokey Robinson, Diana Ross, Lola Falana, Diahann Carroll and
Billy Dee Williams mingled with other notables such as Coretta Scott King,
widow of Martin Luther. Katherine forced herself to act as if nothing was
wrong, even though she was so unhappy. No matter how hard she tried to
conceal it, her sadness was apparent. As soon as the photographers finished
taking pictures of her and Joseph, she would pull away from him. At one
point a concerned Michael asked her if she would like a glass of punch.
Katherine shook her head absentmindedly as she gazed over her son's head
at Joseph. ‘I don't feel like dancing, honey,’ she said. Michael watched, his
eyes full of warmth for her, as Katherine turned away and walked into the
crowd. To even the most casual observer, she seemed very alone.
It wasn't long before Diana Ross became the centre of attention, posing
and preening for photographers as only she can. ‘I brought him to Mr
Gordy's attention,’ she said, pulling Michael into the frame, ‘and now look
where he is today. Everybody wants to have their picture taken with this
cutie,’ she said. ‘It's amazing.’ Diana squeezed Michael tightly, as if he
were a trophy. A mixture of love and pride illuminated her face. ‘And just
look at his little suit,’ she said, tugging at Michael's lapel. A flicker of
annoyance crossed his face.
‘You're awfully grateful to Miss Ross, aren't you, kid,’ a reporter asked
Michael, ‘for discovering you?’
‘Uh… yeah,’ Michael said. He must have wondered how long he was
going to have to live with the fabrication that Diana Ross had ‘discovered’
him.
‘Oh, isn't he sweet?’ Diana cooed. ‘You see, how it happened was, I was
in Gary, Indiana, and I saw this group perform, and I said to myself…’
Las Vegas
Joseph Jackson was always competitive. However, he seemed even more so
after Jermaine's wedding, as if his son's new alliance with Berry Gordy had
caused Joseph to consider himself a ‘David’ determined to slug it out with
Motown's ‘Goliath’. To make more of an impression on the entertainment
industry, Joseph formed his own record company, Ivory Tower International
Records, and signed a female quartet from Ashtabula, Ohio, called
M.D.L.T. Willis. The company and the group would not go far, which only
served to reaffirm Berry's feeling that Joseph was well-meaning, but inept.
However, one goal Joseph had that seemed to not occur to Berry, or to his
right-hand man at Motown, Ewart Abner, was to break his sons out of the
teen-idol mould and into a more secure niche. He realized that the careers
of most teen idols last about two years before newer stars come along to
replace them. Joseph wanted to change The Jackson 5's public image before
it was too late.
Joseph and Berry disagreed about the state of The Jackson 5's career.
Joseph thought it was in trouble, citing the recent string of poorly selling
records. However, Berry felt that the group was still popular, and he cited
their latest record ‘Dancing Machine’, a rhythmic production by Hal Davis.
As the onslaught of disco began to homogenize the pop-R&B scene, The
Jackson 5 managed, with ‘Dancing Machine’, to maintain their originality
while capitalizing on the new trend. A high-spirited Michael bantered the
lyrics above his brothers' strong choral chants, all to an infectious beat. In
the pop-music world, the Jackson brothers were clearly holding their own
alongside the likes of The Temptations, The Spinners and The Four Tops,
who were no longer idols, but peers. The Jackson 5 were many years ahead
of their time and on to the electric sound of the eighties – the style of
‘Dancing Machine’ is similar to a sound that, a dozen years later, would be
known as ‘techno-pop’.
As puberty set in, Michael's voice changed. Gone was the pubescent
shrill popularized on ‘I Want You Back’, ‘ABC’, and ‘The Love You Save’.
It was replaced by a clearer, more refined tone, as heard on ‘Dancing
Machine’.
‘Dancing Machine’ would eventually hit number two on the Billboard
charts and sell 2,170,327 copies, the most single sales for the group since
‘Never Can Say Goodbye’. Therefore, as far as Berry was concerned, all
was well in the Jackson 5's world. Most of those sales, though, were in
America. In Europe, the song was not as successful, and in Britain it didn't
even make the Top 50! (Future single and album releases in the UK would
have such poor sales that they're not even worth mentioning further.) But
Joseph didn't like such spotty sales; it was becoming impossible to predict
when Motown would get behind the group and when it would not be
supportive of the act. Joseph wasn't happy about any of it.
In the winter of 1974 during a family meeting, Joseph made the
announcement, ‘Boys, we're gonna play Las Vegas.’
‘But Vegas is the thing you do when you don't have hits,’ Jackie said,
‘when you don't have a choice.’
‘The brothers thought hangin' out in the hotels with white people would
be no fun,’ Michael recalled later. ‘But I wanted to play Las Vegas. To me,
Las Vegas was part of show-business tradition. At that meeting, our father
told us two things: first, he said he was trying to show the world that we
were every bit as good as The Osmonds; then he told us about Sammy
Davis and what he went through so that guys like us could play Las Vegas.’
Joseph explained to his sons that in 1945 when Sammy Davis, Jr., his
father, Sammy, and his uncle, Will Mastin, were booked into the El Rancho
Vegas hotel in Las Vegas for five hundred dollars a week. At the time, Las
Vegas was the new show-business Mecca. However, even though the Davis
act was invited to appear in the El Rancho showroom, they were not
permitted to stay at that hotel because they were black. Rather, they had to
check into a boarding house with the black porters and dishwashers who
worked at the hotels. This was not unusual. Even a major star like Billy
Eckstine, who was also working in Las Vegas at the same time, could not
stay at the hotel at which he appeared. The showrooms and casinos were
also off-limits to black patrons; blacks could entertain but not gamble or
socialize with whites.
In years to come, Sammy Davis, Jr., would break through these barriers
by virtue of his talent and persistence – and, also, a little help from Frank
Sinatra, who used his influence to open certain doors for his pal, Sammy.
Sammy went from being a member of the Will Mastin Trio to being a solo
star, paid over $175,000 a week in Las Vegas. By using his celebrity power
and refusing to take no for an answer, ‘Mr Show Business’ was
instrumental in de-segregating the town so that blacks could not only appear
but also vacation and have fun there. By attending city hotel board meetings
and working within the political system instead of against it, Davis also
made it possible in the late fifties for more blacks to be hired at the Sands,
where he performed. When Sammy died in May 1990, the Las Vegas strip
went dark for ten minutes in his memory.
‘I wanted more than anything to be a part of that great tradition,’ Michael
said years later when recalling his first Las Vegas engagement. He had been
a Sammy Davis admirer since the age of ten. ‘To me, it was important. It
was a giant step.’
When it was finally confirmed that the Jackson 5 would open in Las
Vegas in April at the MGM Grand, the newest and most prestigious hotel in
the city, the Motown brass was unimpressed. ‘If you decide to do this thing,
you'll be doing it on your own,’ Ewart Abner told Joseph. ‘Motown won't
be involved. These kids aren't ready for Las Vegas.’ Later, Berry telephoned
Joseph, personally, ‘You're makin' the biggest mistake of their career,’ he
said.
‘Butt out!’ was Joseph's response. ‘These are my goddamn kids. Las
Vegas has a good tradition, and I want them to know about it. It's time for
them to grow.’
‘Hey, man, that's my son-in-law's career, too. I'm worried about him,
about all of them.’
Joseph hung up on him.
Certainly, Berry understood the value and prestige of a successful
engagement in Las Vegas for any performer. After all, he was the one who
had championed the Las Vegas breakthrough of The Supremes in 1966.
However, that engagement occurred only after years of carefully honing the
trio's act to sophistication. Berry wanted his Motown performers to appeal
to adults, especially to white adults, but he was certain that the Jacksons
would fail miserably because of their lack of experience with the kind of
material necessary to please a middle-of-the-road, predominantly white
audience.
‘Fine, then, let 'em go into Las Vegas if they want,’ Berry reasoned to one
of his aides. He was still stung by Joseph's reaction to him; few people ever
hung up on him. ‘I'm afraid that they'll fail there,’ he added, ‘but maybe it'll
teach Joseph a lesson. Too bad the boys have to suffer on his account,
especially Jermaine.’
Joseph was anxious to teach Berry a lesson of his own. At his urging, the
entire family rallied together to prove Berry mistaken. ‘We knew that
Motown didn't believe in what we were doing,’ Jermaine recalled. ‘My
father was out to prove them wrong, and the brothers were behind him one
hundred per cent. I was torn. I had a suspicion that Berry was right.’
To make his family's show unique for Las Vegas, Joseph followed an
example set by The Osmonds. That group had brought in younger brother,
Jimmy, and sister, Marie, for their Caesars' engagement, and to great
acclaim. Not to be outdone, Joseph recruited LaToya, seventeen, as well as
Randy, twelve, and Janet, seven. (Rebbie was also expected to perform.
However, when she sprained her ankle, her debut with the act was
postponed a few months, until June.)
None of the new additions to The Jackson 5 show was overwhelmingly
talented, but their marginal ability did help gloss up the overall show. It was
Katherine's idea to have Randy and Janet do impressions of Sonny and
Cher, rhythm-and-blues stars Mickey and Sylvia, and even Jeanette
MacDonald and Nelson Eddy. Janet also did a cute Mae West in a backless,
pink satin gown and feather boa, which Variety would call ‘hilarious’.
LaToya joined the tap dancing routine to ‘Forty-second Street’. There
was a bit of a problem with LaToya, though. She wanted to sing a solo in
the act, but had limited vocal talent. ‘She wanted the spotlight’ remembered
a friend of hers. ‘She would rant and rave, cry and throw fits. Joseph told
her that all she would be allowed to do was mouth the words of songs on
stage in group numbers, acting as if she were singing but not really singing
at all. She didn't like that, but she had no choice.’
On stage, the MGM Grand orchestra loomed large behind the Jackson
family on opening night, 7 April 1974. It was the kind of oversized
orchestra that could never fit on most stages. A small group of musicians –
Motown's rhythm section – was added to the mix to help re-create the sound
of the familiar Jackson 5 hit records. Bright and colourful firework patterns
burst across a pale blue backdrop as the Jacksons appeared on stage, much
to the excitement of their audience.
Although The Jackson 5 had, for the most part, built their reputation on
rhythmic music, for their Las Vegas show they showcased a variety of song
styles, as typified by a centre-piece medley which they introduced on
opening night. The presentation was different, for them. Instead of dancing,
the brothers sat on tall stools side by side, with mikes in front of them.
Their outfits could best be described as ‘mariachi-band mod’. The waist-
length jackets worn over ruffled, white, open-neck shirts were reminiscent
of those that draped strolling Mexican musicians, but the resemblance
ended there. These costumes had sequin-scrolled lapels and were in
untraditional colours: olive, green, pumpkin, pink, purple and gold. The
bell-bottom trousers were light olive green, pale orange, maroon, lavender
and brown. White patent shoes had clunky two-inch heels.
The medley began with Tito strumming on guitar, he played his solo
instead of singing it, followed by Michael with a fluid rendition of Roberta
Flack's ‘Killing Me Softly’. On the last line, Michael turned to Jermaine,
who sang a gentle version of Glen Campbell's ‘By the Time I Get to
Phoenix’. Midway through that number, Michael and Jermaine harmonized
the chorus. It seemed so effortless, their voices blending together to create a
sound so natural, so right. They turned to Jackie. The music then segued
into the classic, ‘Danny Boy’, an excellent choice for Jackie's falsetto voice.
As Marlon joined in, the two sang as one. Though there was none of the
vocal interplay shared by Michael and Jermaine a moment earlier; still, the
two voices – sounding like one – created a full-bodied, clear-as-a-bell tone.
The set ended with the three-song selections being interwoven – a line here,
a line there, each one joining the other. It was obvious the brothers had
devoted themselves to perfecting such an intricate, beautiful arrangement,
one that did not just feature Michael. The audience could feel the closeness
between them as brothers, much more than just fellow performers. The
standing ovation was loud and long.
When Michael had his turn in the spotlight, though, it was clear that he
was the star. Spinning like a human top in his sparkling suit and flanked by
his siblings, Michael churned effortlessly through each number – ‘I Want
You Back’, ‘ABC,’ ‘The Love you Save’ and all the rest – changing pace
again and again but always maintaining the mesmerizing grip on his
audience so essential for a performer. ‘When we started out, I used to be
little, cute, and charming,’ Michael said in the act. ‘Now I'm big, cute and
charming.’ After each song, he would walk to the footlights and accept the
plaudits of his fans.
For their Las Vegas debut, the Jackson family had pulled out all the stops,
coming together as a family for a stellar performance. As all of them joined
hands and raised their arms triumphantly, the audience erupted into a
standing ovation. Katherine was front and centre, leading the applause.
In the wings, stage right, Joseph rocked back and forth on his heels,
hands jammed in his tux pockets, a grin spread across his face. With the
exception of the absent Rebbie, this night was the realization of his greatest
dream: all of his children on stage, performing together. ‘They did it,’ he
said to no one in particular. ‘They did it.’
When Berry learned that The Jacksons had enjoyed a successful opening
night in Las Vegas, he sent a contingent of Motown executives to the city in
order to present an image of corporate solidarity behind the family. ‘We
were always certain that the boys had what it took,’ he then noted in a
prepared statement sent to the press. ‘This is just the tip of the iceberg
where The Jacksons' talent is concerned…’
Backstage, after the fourth night's performance, Joseph read the press
release article to his family. The family felt betrayed, except for Jermaine
who had no comment to make about it. The triumph in Las Vegas was
Joseph's to claim, not Berry's. After he finished reading the article, Joseph
crumpled the newspaper in his hands and flung it into a trash can.
In August 1974, the Jackson family was again booked into the MGM Grand
in Las Vegas, but behind the scenes things were no less tense. Album
releases were becoming less frequent. Whereas they used to have at least
three a year, in 1974 there was only one, the Dancing Machine album. Two
singles that were released at the end of the year, ‘Whatever You Got I Want’
and ‘I Am Love’, were not successful. Motown then cancelled the release
of a Michael Jackson single called ‘Doggin' Around’. A string of
unsuccessful records usually put a disgruntled artist in his place when he
was going up against a major label like Motown, and the Jackson family
was having quite a losing streak on the charts.
As if all of the business problems were not enough of a distraction for the
young performers, their mother discovered that Joseph had been having an
affair with a Jackson 5 fan from Kansas. She was a twenty-six-year-old
black woman who had, at first, been attracted to Jackie. When he expressed
no interest, she turned to his father.
It was rumoured that the woman was pregnant. The issue was not
discussed openly; the boys whispered about it among themselves. The
question was obvious: was Joseph the father of her child? The thought that
Joseph was having a child with another woman was so upsetting to
Michael, he could barely perform. It was, as far as he was concerned, the
ultimate betrayal of his mother.
After one of the shows in Las Vegas, Joseph called a group meeting to
discuss glitches he saw in the boys' performances. As far as he was
concerned, the show had to go on, despite any personal problems the family
might be experiencing. However, Michael decided to boycott the meeting.
Later, Joseph caught up with Michael as he was wandering through the
casino of the MGM Grand. He tapped Michael on the shoulder. Michael
glanced back, saw who it was, and continued walking. Joseph roared, ‘What
the hell?’ He shouldered aside patrons in an effort to reach his son.
‘I remember it like it was yesterday,’ recalled Steven Huck, a Jackson 5
fan who had gone to Las Vegas to see the show. ‘Michael was dodging his
father all over the casino, hopping around like a jackrabbit, trying to outrun
Joseph. “You listen to me,” Joseph demanded. Then he grabbed Michael by
the arm. I had no idea what was happening, what the problem was, but I
couldn't help but watch.’
Huck recalled that Joseph spoke softly, rapidly into Michael's ear.
Michael listened, his face a blank. Then, in mid-sentence, it seemed, he
shook himself free of Joseph and pushed him away. “Don't you ever touch
me again. Do you hear me?” Michael's voice could be heard above the din
of the slot machines. People in the vicinity turned to stare and, upon
recognizing him, began to whisper among themselves. No one came
forward.
‘I never dreamed that Michael Jackson could raise his voice to his father,
or to anyone else,’ Huck said. ‘I was shocked. He sounded hurt. When he
shouted, it was an odd sound, like a wounded animal.’
Joseph seemed shaken. Father and son glared at each other for a moment
before Joseph raised his right hand as if he were about to strike. It wouldn't
have been the first time, but the expression on Michael's face indicated that
it would have been the last. Joseph's jaw sagged; he backed up two steps.
Michael then ran off into the bustling casino.
It would be years before he would learn the truth about his father's affair
– and about his half-sister, Joseph's secret daughter.
Jackie Marries
In the winter of 1974, Michael Jackson's twenty-three-year-old brother,
Jackie, made newspaper headlines when he suddenly married Enid Spann.
Jackie had met her at a birthday party for Hazel Gordy five years earlier.
Enid attended Beverly Hills High (as did Hazel) and was just fifteen when
she and Jackie, three years her senior, became attracted to each other.
She got the news about a pre-nuptial agreement early on. She and Jackie
had barely started dating, but the Jackson attorney, Richard Arons, heard
through the family grapevine that she was interested. He decided to take
preventive measures and meet with her, telling her that if she married
Jackie, she would have to sign a pre-nuptial agreement.
‘Let me tell you something,’ the teenager said to the lawyer. ‘When I
marry Jackie Jackson – which I now think will never happen – if signing
that marriage licence isn't good enough for him, then I don't need him and I
don't want him.’
Arons was surprised by her audacity.
‘And another thing,’ she added, ‘I wouldn't talk, if I were you, because
you're the one who's living off of their gravy.’
Enid recalled that she was then ‘totally turned off’ the Jackson family.
‘And when I told my mother what had happened, she was upset. It was a
mean thing to do to a fifteen-year-old. After that, me and Jackie didn't hit it
off. I thought he had something to do with my conversation with Richard.
However, when I finally told him what Richard and I discussed, he got
angry and told him, “How dare you say that to her!”’
Jackie and twenty-year-old Enid were married in a small private
ceremony in Jackie's room at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas during another
of the family's engagements there. Joseph suspected that Enid had ulterior
motives for marrying his son, especially since, unlike Tito's wife Dee Dee,
she would not sign a pre-nuptial agreement. He also felt that Enid was too
outspoken and independent, and would be a problem. That Joseph forbade
Jackie to marry Enid Spann only served to motivate his eldest son towards
the altar. For Jackie, the fact that he was uniting himself with a woman with
whom he presumably would spend the rest of his life seemed less important
than the fact that he was defying his father.
As a manager, Joseph did his best. As a parent he was making a mistake
with his children by holding on so tightly, and it was one he would pay
dearly for in the future. In a way, it's the same mistake Berry Gordy had
made with many of his Motown performers, but Joseph was a parent as well
as a manager, and he was unable to distinguish between where one role
began and the other ended. He treated his children the same way he did his
business associates: he negotiated by pounding his fist on the table and
yelling louder than anyone else in the room. His behaviour was frightening
to his wife and daughters, and emasculating to his sons. ‘Michael said that
they used to run down the hall and slam their bedroom doors closed when
they heard that Joseph was coming home,’ Jane Fonda recalls.
Michael's Private Meeting with Berry
In January 1975, Motown released Michael Jackson's fourth solo album,
Forever Michael. It was not a success, peaking at only 101 on the charts,
eight notches lower than Michael's poorly selling Music and Me album.
Neither album would even make the Top 50 in the UK, and the rest of
Europe also showed dismal sales. ‘That's it!’ Joseph decided. ‘He's not
recording any more solo albums for Gordy. That man's gonna ruin
Michael!’
Joseph had become increasingly agitated by Motown's lack of promotion
and Berry's contention that the group had no potential to write or produce
their own music. Joseph realized that his sons would never make big money
unless they owned the publishing rights to their own songs. If an artist
writes his own material, he makes not only an artist's royalty, but an
additional royalty, since songwriters are paid a royalty on every record that
is sold. At this time, the rate was an additional two cents per copy sold, split
fifty-fifty with the song's publisher. Therefore, the B-side of a million-
selling song, the side that rarely if ever gets radio airplay, could be worth up
to twenty thousand dollars. At least, Joseph reasoned, the boys should be
able to write their own B-sides. Was that too much to ask?
Most of Berry's songwriters were signed to Jobete, his publishing
company. Therefore, they had to split their two cents with Berry. Joseph
wanted his boys to establish their own publishing company so that they
could keep the money in the family. The more he pressed the idea forward,
the more Berry resisted it.
In the past, Berry had always been reluctant to share the money generated
from publishing rights to Motown songs. At this same time, Smokey
Robinson, Berry's closest friend, was negotiating with Berry to allow him to
publish his own songs, as well. Jobete owned all of Smokey's songs, too,
and Smokey, like Joseph Jackson, wanted a bigger piece of the pie.
Eventually, Berry did allow Smokey to share that money, so he could be
swayed. However, persistence was always the key when it came to getting
Berry Gordy to do something about which he was reluctant. Smokey and
Berry were friends, yet Smokey had to endure a fair amount of tough
negotiation. What could Joseph – certainly no friend – expect from Berry?
It seemed that he and his sons would have little chance of controlling
publishing rights to their material as long he and Berry had such a
contentious relationship. Ewart Abner was now practically running the
record division of Motown, anyway… someone else Joseph disliked.
Joseph's mind was made up: The Jackson 5 would have to leave Motown.
Was it even possible? If not for Berry and Motown, where would The
Jackson 5 be? Perhaps, still in Gary, Indiana, was the answer. Still, if the
circumstances didn't soon change at Motown, it was clear that the group's
commercial future would be in jeopardy.
Though the group hadn't yet voted on the decision – and it's likely that
Joseph's vote would sway his sons – Michael said later that he knew the
brothers would agree with his father. Michael was as unhappy as the rest of
the family about what was going on at Motown, yet he still felt a loyalty to
Berry. After all, it was largely due to Berry's confidence in The Jackson 5
that the family now found itself in a position to be able to pick and choose
among other record companies. This was a major decision for young
Michael, and he didn't want his father, a man he didn't trust, or even like,
making it for him.
The other Jacksons thought of Michael as being bashful and reserved,
which was certainly true in most cases. However, there was another
dimension to Michael, a side he did not often show but which was there just
the same: his resolve. Where his future at Motown was concerned, sixteen-
year-old Michael Jackson was prepared to take matters into his own hands.
He picked up the phone in his bedroom and dialled. ‘Mr Gordy,’ he said,
‘you and I need to talk.’
None of the Jackson brothers had ever had a private meeting with Berry
Gordy. Until now, there had never been a reason for one. It's unlikely that
Berry would have consented to meet with Jackie, Marlon, Randy or Tito.
None of them possessed Michael's commercial voice or magical
showmanship. And Berry felt he owed it to the teenager to hear him out.
Though he liked Michael, he considered him shy and meek, hardly the
person to be blunt and forthright. Therefore, he was probably intrigued by
the notion of a private conference with him.
Michael didn't care how his father felt about his decision to meet with
Berry. In fact, he didn't discuss it with him. Still angry at Joseph for all he
had done to Katherine, not to mention the abuse he had heaped upon his
sons, Michael made up his own mind. Also, Michael would say later that
his intuition told him the difficult situation with Motown could have been
resolved sooner if only Joseph hadn't been so ill-tempered and possessive.
Others at the label agreed. Smokey Robinson said, in retrospect, ‘Joe
never got used to Berry being the one to tell his kids what to do. He
believed that since he was their father, he was their boss, and that was the
end of that. But Joe wasn't a businessman. He kept screwing things up and
pissing people off. No one wanted to do business with him, and that was a
poor reflection not only on the Jacksons but also on Berry and Motown.
Without Joe's involvement, Berry would have worked things out with the
Jacksons the way he did with me, Stevie Wonder, and anyone else who was
unhappy at Motown, but ultimately stayed on.’
Nor did Michael tell his brothers of his plan to meet with Berry, since he
felt certain that they would try to talk him out of it. The Jacksons prided
themselves on one vote each, even though Joseph's vote usually trumped
everyone else's. Most certainly, Michael's siblings would have felt that by
meeting with Berry he was seizing more power than he was entitled to have
as part of the group.
Michael and Berry arranged to meet at the Gordy estate in Bel Air on 14
May 1975. ‘It was one of the most difficult things I've ever done,’ Michael
would recall. Mustering up his courage, he laid his cards on the table.
‘We're all unhappy, Mr Gordy,’ he said, according to his memory. ‘Do
you really want us to leave Motown?’
‘Well, Michael, someone as smart as you,’ Berry began, ‘should know
that without Motown, The Jackson 5 would still be in Gary, Indiana, today.’
Michael wasn't cowed by the fact that Berry had apparently decided to
play the guilt card. ‘That doesn't answer my question,’ he told him.
Michael would later recall that he complained to Berry about the fact that
Motown would not allow the brothers to write or produce their own music
or control publishing rights. He was unhappy because he hadn't been
allowed to contribute to The Jackson 5's most recent album, Dancing
Machine, despite the fact that he thought he had some strong songs he could
have added to the package. If he could have had just one song on the album,
Michael said, it would have shown that Gordy had confidence in him as a
songwriter.
Berry remained calm. ‘I've been hearing this from my artists for years,’
he said. ‘However, we can work it out, Michael. Look, I worked it out with
Stevie [Wonder], and Marvin [Gaye], didn't I?’ He was clear. He said he did
not want the group to leave Motown. However, he added, ‘If you think you
can get a better deal somewhere else, then you have to go somewhere else, I
guess. But it just won't be right… or fair.’
In Michael's eyes, Berry Gordy was a hero. He respected him and
admired the tenacity with which he had transformed The Jackson 5 of Gary,
Indiana, from local homeboys to international superstars. He thought of
Berry as one of the smartest men he had ever known, and was amazed by
the way he had made Motown such an international success story. Berry
was an inspiration to Michael. To hear him now say that the Jackson family
was being unfair to him – after he had brought the group to Los Angeles,
made arrangements for their living conditions, paid for their educations, and
made them stars – was difficult for Michael.
‘What makes you think you can write or produce your own hit?’ Berry
asked Michael.
‘I just know it,’ was Michael's quick answer.
Berry looked at him sceptically. ‘I don't know that that's good enough.’
‘Well, what made you think you could build Motown into what it is
today?’
Berry didn't answer.
‘You just knew it, right?’ Michael challenged.
Berry flashed a tolerant grin. ‘He nodded at me as if to say, “You're going
places, kid,”’ Michael recalled. It ended with Berry emphasizing that he
thought of himself as a father-figure to Michael, yet also stressing that it
was important for the teenager to honour his natural father. ‘He said he
believed I would do what was best,’ Michael told me later, when
remembering the meeting. Michael added that he ‘felt a little sick about the
whole thing’, especially when Berry hugged him as he was leaving because,
in his gut, he knew that no matter what he expressed to Joseph and the
brothers about it, the cards were stacked against the Jacksons staying with
Motown.
‘I can promise you this,’ Berry concluded, ‘I won't do anything to hurt
you or your family.’
Michael's meeting with Berry Gordy showed surprising initiative, as well
as no small measure of courage for a teenager. It was the first hint to many
at the time that he was more than just a child prodigy. He had moxie. He
seemed to understand what his father didn't: that there are times when it
makes sense to sit down with your opponent and try to reason with him. In
his own uncomplicated way, Michael was able to cut through some of the
rhetoric that had lately been so prevalent in the communication between
Berry and the Jackson family. He was able to extract from Berry a promise
that he would not do anything to hurt the family, which was quite a
statement for him to make, and seemed genuine.
Joseph had heard from an associate at Motown that Michael had seen
Berry in private. Imagine his fury. When Michael got back to Encino, he
was pacing in the living room like a caged animal waiting for dinner.
Michael would not discuss with me the details of the argument that ensued
between him and his father, but it isn't difficult to imagine that Joseph made
it clear that, in his view, Michael was out of his league in trying to negotiate
with someone like Berry Gordy. Once he calmed down, he had to admire
his son's nerve, though. At least, one would hope so. The brothers, however,
were annoyed.
‘Michael had no right to meet with Berry Gordy,’ Jackie said, years later.
‘It was unfair of him to go behind our backs. We were all mad at him. And
really, what did he accomplish?’
Perhaps Michael didn't accomplish much in terms of The Jackson 5's
future at Motown, but his meeting with Berry was an important personal
milestone. He had obtained Berry's attention, which was something even his
father, as well as his brothers (with the exception of Jermaine), had not been
able to do. However, it did set him apart from the brothers and, from this
time onward, none of the brothers would be warm to any suggestion that
Michael be further individualized from the group. ‘Michael always had his
own idea of how things should be done,’ Marlon Jackson once said. ‘But
The Jackson 5 was a group, not his special project, and his was just one
vote.’ In other words, Marlon saw the writing on the wall.
The night after Michael's meeting with Berry, Joseph called a group
meeting in the living room of their Encino home. All of the brothers were
expected to appear, except for Randy and Jermaine. Young Randy had no
say in any group matters, at this time. Jermaine was on holiday with Hazel,
but he probably would have been excluded, anyway, since the family felt he
had lost his objectivity about Motown. Jermaine later said, ‘Because of me
being married to Hazel, they thought they couldn't trust me so they kept me
in the dark.’
Jackie, Tito, Marlon, Michael and Joseph voted unanimously to leave
Motown. Michael was ambivalent, but he knew it wasn't smart to be the one
dissenting vote. What good would it do him, anyway?
‘I just want it to be done fairly, and something about this doesn't seem
fair to me,’ Michael said. ‘Berry made us stars. Don't forget that.’
‘Look, Berry's fine, but it's over,’ one of the brothers said. ‘It's time for
us to be making the big bucks.’
‘I agree,’ said another one. ‘It's time to go. We're dying at Motown.’
‘He said he wouldn't hurt us,’ Michael said, trying to stick up for Berry.
‘Yeah, right,’ Joseph said, sarcastically. ‘Look, it's settled,’ he concluded.
‘But what about Jermaine?’ Michael wanted to know.
‘I'll take care of Jermaine,’ Joseph said. ‘What do I always tell you kids?’
‘There are winners in this life, and losers,’ Michael said, parroting his
father's credo. ‘And none of my kids are ever gonna be losers.’
Joseph smiled. ‘If we stay at Motown,’ he concluded, ‘we lose. And
we're not losing.’
CBS Offers the Jacksons a ‘Sweet Deal’
After the die was cast, Joseph Jackson and his attorney, Richard Arons,
quietly began scouting for a new record deal, meeting first with Atlantic
Records, which had a long experience with rhythm-and-blues music.
Surprisingly, Atlantic's chairman, Ahmet Ertegun, was unenthusiastic about
The Jackson 5, he said, because of their inconsistent record sales at Motown
in recent years. Joseph was not interested in trying to convince anyone of
his sons' popularity. He'd had enough of that at Motown. If anything
Ahmet's view helped to underscore Joseph's opinion that Motown truly had
damaged his sons' reputation in the music industry.
Joseph was more interested in the CBS Records Group anyway, at which
most of the black acts were contracted to the Epic subsidiary. CBS was
renowned for its excellent record distribution and promotion network.
‘They make Motown look sick,’ is how Joseph put it.
Ron Alexenberg, president of Epic, and, ironically enough, a former
protégé of Motown's Ewart Abner, was interested in signing The Jackson 5.
Joseph respected Alexenberg – under his guidance, Epic had increased its
annual billing from less than $10 million to over $100 million. A
competitive leader with his finger on the pulse of the record industry, he
suspected that Berry Gordy had tapped only a small percentage of the
Jacksons' fullest potential. He wanted to find out what else was there.
Joseph was also attracted by the company's profitable relationship with
Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff, producers of the so-called Philly Sound that
had generated millions with hit records by black groups like The O'Jays and
Three Degrees. Gamble and Huff had their own label at CBS, which they
called Philadelphia International. Though Joseph felt that Philadelphia
International was too small a subsidiary for The Jackson 5, he admired
CBS's commitment to black music. Perhaps the company would one day
award him his own label, as well, he thought. He saw a future at CBS, not
just for his sons but for himself.
Ron Alexenburg told Walter Yetnikoff, president of CBS Records, that he
wanted to sign The Jackson 5 immediately. Walter was sceptical. ‘They
haven't been hot in a long time,’ he said. ‘And now look at them. They're
into this kitschy, Vegas thing.’
‘Trust me,’ Ron told him, according to his memory. ‘This group isn't
finished. It hasn't even begun yet.’
After quick and easy negotiations, an agreement was struck, one that
Joseph called ‘a sweet deal’. The Jackson 5 would receive an advance –
known in the record industry as a ‘signing bonus’ – of $750,000. They
would also receive an additional $500,000 from a ‘recording fund’ – money
meant specifically to produce the group's albums. They were guaranteed to
be paid $350,000 per album, far more than they had ever received at
Motown (but many millions less than Michael Jackson would be paid for
his services a scant five years down the road).
All of the advance money from CBS was to be recouped from royalties,
but the royalty rate the new label offered was 27 per cent of the wholesale
price for records released in the United States. At Motown The Jackson 5
had been paid 2.7 per cent, and before they saw that they knew they would
have to pay back the costs of expenses – including studio time, over which
they had little to no control – from royalties.
At this time, 1975, an album retailed for approximately $6.98, $3.50
wholesale. So at Epic the Jacksons would make approximately 94.5 cents
per album sold in the United States, and 84 cents abroad. At Motown, they
made roughly 11 cents per album sold in the United States, with no
difference in the European rate.
As outlined in the Epic deal, after each Jackson 5 album topped $500,000
in sales, the group's royalty rate would jump to 30 per cent, about $1.05 a
disc. In terms of income, this new deal was worth about five hundred times
more than the one the group had at Motown.
A snag in negotiations occurred when Walter Yetnikoff refused to allow
the Jacksons to write and produce, or even choose, all of their own material.
He simply did not have confidence in their abilities as writers or producers
since none of them had any experience in that arena. Ron Alexenberg
assured Walter that ‘demos’ – roughly recorded samples – of songs penned
and produced by the Jacksons, which Joseph had submitted, showed great
promise. Still, Walter was not swayed. Therefore, the best Joseph could
negotiate was that his sons would be able to choose at least three songs on
each album, written by them or someone else. Also, there was an
understanding that if the group came up with three good songs of their own,
those tunes would receive fair consideration for use on an album. This, too,
was more than they had ever gotten at Motown. However, the concession
was not to be in the contract. It was verbal, and anyone knows that in the
world of business a verbal agreement is tough to enforce. Still, at least there
was some dialogue about the notion of the group having artistic freedom.
Joseph was confident that his boys would only have to prove themselves
one time… and after that they'd never look back.
Michael was amazed by the contract CBS had offered the family. He had
no idea that the group was worth so much and that this was the kind of
contract other superstar acts were accustomed to in the record business. He
had to admire his father's tenacity. After all, had it not been for Joseph, The
Jackson 5 might have slid into obscurity at Motown. ‘I had to admit it,’
Michael later noted, ‘this was one incredible record deal. My father did an
amazing job for us.’
Still, Michael was torn between the notion of loyalty to Berry and that of
good business sense. He decided to discuss the matter with Diana Ross. Her
reaction was predictable. She said that she had no influence over Berry
where business matters were concerned – and she wasn't lying, she didn't –
but that Michael should listen to him because, as always, he knew what was
best for all of his artists. ‘I just believed that the boys should stay at
Motown,’ she recalled in a 1981 interview. ‘I was loyal to Berry at that
time, and I felt that they should be as well. I told Michael that loyalty is the
most important thing, not money.’
In six years Diana Ross would change her mind about being loyal to
Berry Gordy and Motown. When she was having her own disagreements
with him and decided to check on her value at other companies, RCA
offered her $20 million, much more than what Berry could offer her. She
turned to Smokey Robinson for advice. Smokey gave her the same advice
she had given Michael about loyalty to Berry. However, she felt she had no
choice. It didn't make sense to turn down that much money: she signed with
RCA.
Joseph to Jermaine: ‘Sign It!’
The CBS contracts were drawn up in a couple of days. Each of the four
brothers eagerly signed them.
The problem then became how to break the news to Jermaine, and
convince him to sign the deal. Jermaine's father-in-law, Berry Gordy, was
now considered to be the enemy, but Joseph realized that Berry had a
powerful influence over his son. Berry had recently promised Jermaine an
exciting and lucrative future at Motown; he suspected that the group would
try to leave and he wanted to assure Jermaine of his future at the company.
He had trusted him enough to give him his only daughter in marriage. It
would be Joseph's challenge to convince his son that his wishes should
prevail over Berry's. He waited three days before summoning Jermaine,
trying to determine a strategy. He soon realized there was no easy way to
coax Jermaine away from Berry. It shouldn't be that difficult a decision for
Jermaine, anyway, he decided. After all, he was Jermaine's father, not Berry.
He was certain that Jermaine would make the ‘right’ decision. ‘After all,’
he said, ‘Jermaine's not stupid. I hope.’
‘Come to the house tonight,’ he told Jermaine on the telephone. ‘Come
alone. Don't bring that wife of yours.’
‘That's when I knew something was wrong,’ Jermaine recalled, years
later. ‘Hazel is a very strong person and asks a lot of questions. I'm sure my
father thought he could get me to do anything if Hazel wasn't there. I was
afraid to go, afraid of what I'd find.’
When Jermaine arrived at the Encino estate, Joseph escorted him into the
bedroom and closed the door. The contracts were spread out on a bureau,
signatures on four of them. A fifth contract was unsigned. Joseph picked up
Jermaine's contract and handed it to him. ‘Sign it,’ he ordered. He didn't
attempt to reason with him, or even explain anything to him… he just told
him to ‘sign it’. How Joseph could be so obtuse remains a mystery. He may
have been able to get Jermaine's signature if only he had used a modicum of
common sense in his approach. Of course, Jermaine refused.
‘I said, sign it.’
‘No, Joseph,’ Jermaine said. ‘I'm not signing.’
‘You sign this damned contract, Jermaine.’
‘I ain't signin'’
‘Think about the money,’ Joseph shouted at him. ‘Real money. You think
Motown's gonna come close to this deal? Look at this money.’ He flipped
through the pages, trying to find the clause that outlined terms.
‘I don't care,’ Jermaine said. ‘It's not about money for me.’
‘You don't care? You're crazy. That's what you are,’ Joseph said, angrily.
By now he was shaking his fist at his son. ‘You sign this goddamn contract,
Jermaine, or you'll be sorry. CBS says The Jackson 5 will be the next
Beatles, and you know that's what we've been working for.’
‘Hell no. I don't want to be no Beatle,’ Jermaine said. ‘I'm not signing it,
Joseph. Forget it.’
With that, as Jermaine recalled it to me in an interview years later, he ran
from the bedroom and out of the house. He told me that he knew he had to
tell Berry what had happened – and that the Jacksons were actually leaving
Motown – and the news couldn't wait until he got home. He pulled over to a
pay telephone and called his father-in-law.
‘The brothers, they signed with CBS, Berry,’ he blurted out as soon as
Berry picked up. ‘I can't believe it. But they did it. They left Motown.’
Jermaine recalled that there was silence on the other end of the
connection. Finally, in a soft and calm voice, Berry spoke. ‘Are you
absolutely sure, Jermaine?’
‘They already signed the contracts,’ Jermaine answered, his tone frantic.
‘I saw them with my own eyes.’
‘Well, what about you? Did you sign?’ Berry asked.
‘The brothers are leaving because there are problems at Motown,’
Jermaine said, ‘but I want to stay, Berry. I want to help work out the
problems.’
Jermaine later recalled, ‘I told him I didn't sign and that I wasn't going to.
He told me to come by his house, which I did. We talked it out. That night,
he became like a second father to me, a sensible father. “You're on your way
to the top,” he told me. “You could be running Motown one day.” That's
what I wanted. I wanted to be the president of Motown. I knew I could do
it. I knew I had it in me, even if Joseph never believed I did. Berry gave me
the confidence to know that I could go places if I stayed with him and with
Motown. I believed him. I didn't believe anything my father had to say
about anything. I believed in Berry Gordy, not in Joseph Jackson.’
Despite the fact that there was such turmoil in the family, the group still had
work to do on the road. When Jermaine came back to the house a few days
later to rehearse for the show, he and Katherine had a loud discussion about
his decision not to sign the CBS contract. Katherine was angry with him,
and she let him know it. Jermaine reminded her that Berry Gordy had been
the one ‘who put steaks on our table and teeth in our mouths’. Katherine
couldn't believe her ears. ‘We were already eating steaks in Gary,’ she told
her son heatedly. ‘And as for the teeth he put in Jackie's and Tito's mouths,
he's recouped that money hundreds of times over, you can be sure of that.’
(However, it doesn't seem likely that the Jacksons were ‘eating steaks in
Gary’.)
The next stop for the group was the Westbury Music Fair on New York's
Long Island. On the way, Michael attempted to act as referee between
Jermaine and Jackie, who argued loudly about the question of Motown
versus CBS. In the end, the brothers, with the exception of Michael, had
completely turned on Jermaine. ‘They couldn't understand how they could
go one way and I the other,’ Jermaine remembered. ‘It was tense. It was
bad.’
Michael adopted a more even-handed position than his brothers. ‘I
thought he would see things our way, eventually,’ he later recalled. ‘I never
had a doubt things would work out.’
In some ways, the familial pressure manifested itself in predictable ways.
Hazel, who almost always travelled with the group, had become protective
of her husband, not allowing him out of her sight. One of the group's road
managers recalled, ‘After we checked into the hotel in Long Island, we
were all down in the lobby having fun, the other brothers and their friends. I
went up to Hazel and Jermaine's suite to see where Jermaine was, but Hazel
said that Jermaine couldn't “come out and play”. I thought that odd, and
pushed her on it. She got upset, “I said, he needs his rest. Now, please go.
Leave him alone.” Jermaine didn't have a performance until the next
evening, with the group. Why did he suddenly need more rest than the
others? Hazel continued, “I said he can't come out, so he can't come out.
And that's final.” It seemed that her whole thing at that time was to separate
Jermaine from his family.’
Jermaine has said that, prior to the group's leaving for New York, Berry
Gordy sat down with him and Hazel ‘and told us that the first loyalty of a
husband and wife must be to themselves, not to anyone else, not to anything
else in the world.’ According to Jermaine, Berry said, ‘Whether it's me and
Motown or the Jackson family and CBS, everything comes second to
yourselves as man and wife, because you are the two people who are going
to have to live with each other and with whatever decisions you make.’
Berry's diplomacy aside, he most certainly recognized the truth: Jermaine
would not be able to leave Motown, not if he wanted to stay married to the
boss's daughter.
After The Jackson 5's first performance at the Westbury Music Fair, the
telephone rang in the dressing room. It was Berry calling for Jermaine.
As his family watched Jermaine's face for a hint as to what the
conversation was about, Jermaine clutched the telephone tightly. He didn't
say much, other than goodbye. He exhaled deeply, and he hung up.
‘Okay, I guess I gotta go,’ Jermaine announced.
‘Now? We go on in thirty minutes!’
‘How're we gonna work around you?’ Jackie gasped, incredulously.
‘I can't believe you're doing this to us,’ Tito added.
Everybody was talking at once, Joseph's voice being loudest of the din.
‘Are you crazy?’ he stormed. ‘We're your family. Not the Gordys. What's
wrong with you, Jermaine? You ain't going nowhere, boy.’
Berry had demanded that twenty-year-old Jermaine make the most
important decision in his life, and make it right then, right there: Motown or
CBS? The Jacksons or the Gordys. His birth family or his family by
marriage?
Whether Jermaine acted on impulse or understood the ramifications of
what he was about to do, he rushed out of the dressing quarters with tears in
his eyes. ‘I'm outta' here,’ he said. He took a car to his hotel room, where he
packed his suitcase in about five minutes. ‘What's goin' on? What's goin'
on?’ Hazel wanted to know. Jermaine could not speak through his racking
sobs. ‘We're leaving,’ was all he could say. A black Motown stretch
limousine waited to whisk the couple to the airport, and then back to Los
Angeles.
‘We were surprised, really in shock, absolutely stunned,’ Marlon later
remembered. ‘It was like a dream, Jermaine getting that call and then
walking out on us like that. We were about an hour from show time. The
place was already packed. We had a show to do. We couldn't dwell on any
of it. Michael was crying, and I said, “Not now, Mike. We have fans out
there. We have to buck up.” Wiping his eyes, he said, “I can do it, Marlon.
But, later, we gotta deal with this. We gotta get Jermaine back.”’
That night, The Jackson 5 exploded on to the stage of the Westbury
Music Fair with such elation, no one in the audience would ever have
guessed the backstage drama that had just unfolded. Michael's first
responsibility was to his audience. He was just sixteen, but he knew what he
had to do. During ‘Dancing Machine’, he whip-lashed the mike stand into a
wobble, did a motorized shuffle across the stage as if he were a robot, and
then executed a split at the precise moment the stand crashed down upon his
shoulder. He then looked at the instrument with a disdain that implied
mortal insult. The crowd roared its approval.
This journalist – a teenager at the time – was present for this show, a
Jacksons' performance still recalled with vivid clarity. Though Jermaine
was missed – Michael announced that he had the flu – it was still a dizzying
performance.
During an ironic tribute to the Motown Sound, Michael prowled the stage
like a fierce, balletic wolf – ‘I Want You Back’, ‘ABC’, ‘The Love You
Save’, ‘Never Can Say Goodbye’, all the Motown hits and more were
performed with graceful and often demanding choreography. Whatever it
took to please his fans, that's what Michael did, transforming, as always,
personal frustrations into sheer energy. While accepting his audience's
approval, he seemed purged of all anxiety. Once again, he was with the only
people he knew he could completely trust: his fans.
The plaintive riff from The Jackson 5 hit ‘I'll Be There’ rang even more
bittersweet as Michael performed it during this evening's show. Without any
rehearsal, Marlon stepped in and took Jermaine's ironic lines. ‘I'll be your
strength,’ he sang, ‘I'll keep holding on.’ Marlon had always been
underrated as a singer, never having had a chance to truly shine in his
brothers' shadow. Tonight, he held his own, and against great odds. Still,
Jermaine belonged on that stage, in his rightful place next to Michael. It just
wasn't right.
By the time the youngsters were finished, members of the audience were
bouncing out of their seats; there were three encores. But afterwards,
backstage, there was no music, no partying, no laughing as usual after a
stellar performance. Everyone returned to his own dark mood. ‘Why does
the show have to end?’ Michael asked his brother Jackie. He seemed
disheartened. Though he tried and tried to hide his feelings, they always
seemed to show. ‘I wish it could just go on for ever.’
I walked over to Michael. ‘Hey, man, what happened to Jermaine?’ I
asked. ‘But, what a great show, anyway,’ I added. ‘Wow, man. Wow.’ If it
was possible for a teenage admirer to be too fawning, I wasn't aware of it at
the time. ‘What a great show that was,’ I went on. ‘My God. The whole
thing was just so… cool.’
Michael accepted my compliments with a soft, sad smile. ‘Thanks.
Jermaine will be back,’ he said. ‘He's… sick.’
Joseph sat in a corner silently. It appeared that the act – his family – was
breaking up, and that there was nothing he could do about it. Anyone
looking at him would have been heartbroken by his forlorn expression. He
seemed uncharacteristically vulnerable as he sat slumped in a chair, shaking
his head as if to say, I just don't understand it. How in the world could this
have happened?
Michael went over to his father and studied him. He put his hand on
Joseph's shoulder. There was a moment between them, a genuine…
moment.
Suddenly, Joseph stood up. In a matter of seconds, he went from sadness
to fury. ‘It's my blood that flows through Jermaine's veins,’ Joseph
bellowed. ‘Not Berry Gordy's. Not Berry Gordy's.’ Then, he stormed out of
the dressing room and slammed the door behind him.
What's in a Name?
It seemed, at first, that leaving Motown would be easier than Joseph
thought it would be. Berry Gordy had done nothing to prevent their
departure; he was preoccupied with Motown's film business, anyway, and
didn't seem too dismayed by the fact that The Jackson 5 was leaving the
company. As long as he had Jermaine in his corner, and had won that
particular battle, Berry seemed satisfied. Because he did not want to deal
with Joseph anyway, Ewart Abner was the one handling most matters
concerning The Jackson 5, during their final days at Motown.
But few acts have ever left Motown without at least a little melodrama.
Unbeknownst to Joseph, Berry Gordy had one more surprise in store for
him.
In the last week in June 1975, Berry Gordy's vice-chairman of Motown
telephoned Joseph Jackson with a bombshell: Motown owned the name The
Jackson 5. The group could leave Motown, Joseph was told, but they would
have to leave the name. ‘Jackson 5’ would stay behind with the company.
‘What are you talking about?’ Joseph demanded, according to his
memory. ‘We came to Motown as The Jackson 5. That's my family name.’
‘I don't know if you came here as The Jackson 5, or not,’ Michael
Roshkind told him, ‘but you're sure not leaving as The Jackson 5, I can tell
you that much.’
‘What the hell do you mean?’ Joseph asked.
‘The fact is that there are probably forty thousand people named Jackson
running around this world,’ Roshkind said. ‘We made five of them stars. We
can find five more if we have to, and we can make them stars, too,’
Roshkind said.
‘Why, you son of a bitch,’ Joseph exclaimed. He slammed the phone
down.
As it happened, clause sixteen of the Motown recording contract, which
Joseph had never read but had signed in 1968, stated, ‘It is agreed that we
[Motown] own all rights, title and interest to the name “The Jackson 5”.’
Furthermore, to insure the company's ownership of the name, on 30
March 1972, after The Jackson 5's first string of hit records, Motown
applied to the United States Patent Office to register the logo ‘Jackson 5’.
The name ‘Jackson Five’ and ‘Jackson 5’ were also exclusively owned by
the Motown Record Corporation.
Of course, Joseph could have registered the names ‘Jackson Five’,
‘Jackson 5’, and any other name he wanted to hold on to – had he only
thought to do it. It simply had not crossed his mind. However, it had been
common practice for Motown to register the name of its acts, whenever
possible. The company had done so with The Supremes, the Temptations…
and with many of its acts over the years.
With this latest salvo, the group's departure from Motown had become
bigger than the record business, it was now a battle between two families:
the Jacksons and the Gordys. It seemed to some observers that anything
Berry could do to demonstrate his power to an ever-scrutinizing record
industry and press, he would do, even if that meant preventing the boys
from using their name. ‘That was hardball, of course,’ Michael told me,
later.
Michael was actually intrigued by Berry's tactic regarding the group's
name. ‘I never even thought of that,’ he said. It was as if he was as much a
student of Berry's as he was an adversary. While the other brothers watched,
waited and fumed, Michael learned. ‘I want to know how he did it,’
Michael said of Berry's having registered the name. ‘I'll have to remember
all of this,’ he added, as if stockpiling information for future use.
There was another family meeting. What do we do now?
‘If Berry owns the name, he owns the name,’ Michael said, according to
his memory. ‘We don't have to be The Jackson 5, do we? I mean, can't we
just be The Jackson Family? Or The Jacksons?’
‘We might not have a choice,’ Joseph said. ‘It makes me sick to lose that
name. All the work we put into it.’
‘And you know damn well that they ain't gonna use it,’ grumbled Tito.
‘It'll just be wasted.’
Tito was correct. Once Motown claimed the name, there wasn't much
they could do with it, other than to market old products by the group.
The Jacksons Leave Motown
On Monday 30 June 1975, Joseph Jackson arranged a press conference to
announce the family's new affiliation with CBS. With over eight months
still to run on the Motown contracts, Joseph seemed more eager than ever to
leave Motown. Even though he was extremely busy at this time dealing
with Diana Ross and post-production on her film Mahogany, Berry fought
back. On the morning of Joseph's announcement, Michael Roshkind told
the press that if CBS expected to get all of the members of The Jackson 5,
they would be disappointed – meaning that Jermaine would never leave
Berry's side. Furthermore, Roshkind said, ‘There is no way the group will
ever sing under that name for anyone else. They'll never get all five
members of the group, and they won't be getting The Jackson 5.’
Earlier that morning, Berry had one of his lawyers send a telegram to
Arthur Taylor, president of CBS Records, warning him that his company
had better not host a press conference relating to The Jackson 5 since Gordy
had exclusive rights to ‘issue authorized publicity’. When Berry learned
that Taylor planned to ignore the warning, he sent him another telegram
warning him that he'd better not refer to the group as The Jackson 5 at the
media summit since Motown owned exclusive rights to that name.
The press conference took place at the Rainbow Grill atop the
Rockefeller Center in Manhattan. As a room full of reporters and
photographers recorded the event, eleven members of the Jackson family
were solemnly ushered into the room single-file by a CBS publicist. There
were no smiles. Each Jackson took his seat on the dais, where ten high-
backed black chairs were arranged behind a long, narrow table. All of the
family members, with Jermaine conspicuously absent, put forth a united
front to announce the group's signing with CBS, effective 10 March 1976,
the day their Motown contracts expired. Katherine, Maureen (Rebbie),
LaToya, Janet and Randy had been told by Joseph to be present in order to
demonstrate family solidarity.
The atmosphere was sombre, such as one might find at a meeting at the
United Nations. Joseph – stage right, at the end of the dais – in a dark pin-
striped suit, announced that the Jacksons had signed with CBS Records; he
then turned the floor over to members of the family.
Jackie explained that the group – referred to that afternoon as ‘The
Jackson Family’ – was signing with Columbia, ‘because Columbia is an
album-selling company, and albums is what really makes you known.’
When asked if the group had tried to renegotiate with Motown, he
answered, ‘Yes, but the figures, they was just Mickey Mouse.’
Michael, in a black velvet jacket and matching vest, didn't have much to
say. ‘I think the promotion will probably be stronger,’ he observed, meekly.
He seemed awkward and uncomfortable, especially when contrasted with
his confident brothers. It was painfully obvious that Michael wished he
were somewhere else. ‘I think Motown did a great job for us,’ he said,
tentatively. Joseph shot him a hot look. Michael caught the current and
quickly added, ‘But, now, things will be even better.’
‘How will all of this affect your relationship with Berry Gordy?’ asked
one writer.
Everyone on the dais looked to Joseph for an answer. He shrugged his
shoulders and forced a thin smile. ‘You take it as it comes,’ he said. ‘Next
question.’
‘Will Jermaine be joining the group?’
Again, Joseph answered. ‘Yes. But it'll take a while. Next question.’
‘Why isn't Jermaine here?’
‘Next question.’
After the press conference, Berry Gordy filed a lawsuit against Joseph
Jackson, The Jackson 5 and CBS, seeking five million dollars in damages
for signing with CBS before the Motown contract had expired. Joseph
countersued, claiming Motown owed the family royalties, unpaid advances,
and expenses. Joseph thought Motown owed them money. Wrong. He owed
Motown money. For by the terms of their contract, The Jackson 5 were
liable for the costs of all of the songs they recorded for Motown, including
the ones that were not released.
To say that Motown had kept the boys busy would be an understatement.
Michael Jackson and The Jackson 5 recorded 469 songs for Motown in the
six years from 1969 to 1975. That's about seventy-five songs a year, which
is astonishing considering that this isn't all the boys did for a living. Besides
having to learn those songs before they could record them, they also
rehearsed their ever-changing stage show, toured the world with their act,
appeared on many television programmes – including their own specials –
sat through countless interviews, posed for innumerable photos (there are
thousands of photos of the boys the public has never seen), and also tried to
have the semblance of a personal life outside of show business.
Of those 469 songs recorded by The Jackson 5, only 174 were actually
released, or 37 per cent. The other 295, it was decided by company
producers and Berry Gordy, were not up to Motown's standards. Therefore,
much to the group's chagrin, the Jacksons owed Motown over $500,000 for
songs that the public had never even heard. ‘That sucked,’ Joseph later said.
‘They really got us good.’
Michael Jackson, who was about to turn seventeen in August 1975, was
sceptical. He had begun to have serious doubts about Joseph's ability as an
entertainment manager. To his way of thinking, his father had made some
major mistakes: he gave away Jermaine, he gave away their group name,
and now he had to give away a lot of money, paying for songs that had
never been released. ‘Maybe we shoulda’ read that contract,’ Michael said,
bitterly.
However, taking the boys away from Motown and to Epic would not
later be catalogued as one of Joseph's mistakes. If not for Joseph's decision,
Michael would probably have ended up an obscure showbiz act, relegated
to Las Vegas lounges – and not major showrooms, either. There is little
doubt in the minds of most music historians that, after Moving Violation,
The Jackson 5 would have stagnated at Motown in much the same way
other groups who had stayed after their heyday did, such as The Supremes
after Diana Ross left for happier trails.
If Joseph hadn't had his way when he did, Michael would probably be
performing on ‘oldies-but-goodies’ revues today with one authentic
Temptation, a couple of Four Tops, and Mary Wilson of the original
Supremes. He would have aged into his forties singing ‘I Want You Back’
and ‘ABC’, to make a buck, much like the great Martha Reeves, still out
there singing ‘Love is like a Heatwave’, maybe not so much because she
wants to as much as because she must. It's a tough life for Motown
survivors like Martha, and not one for the faint of heart. It would have been
Michael's life, too, had he never had the freedom to write and produce his
own songs. No matter what some may think of Joseph Jackson as a personal
manager, in the final analysis, that man saved Michael Jackson's career.
Jackson Family Values
It would be eight months before the Jacksons would be able to record for
CBS. They had signed with the new label before their Motown agreement
expired and would have to wait until the contract ran out before they could
go into the studio. To fill the lag-time, Joseph signed them to CBS-TV for a
summer variety series to begin airing in June 1976.
At this time, Michael was often asked about Jermaine in interviews, and
he tried to stress that ‘business is business and family is family. He still
comes over.’ He went on to say, ‘We talk to one another. We go different
places together. That's very important, because that's the basis of our whole
organization: good friendship and a strong family. The show-business part
is important, but even more important is that the family stick together at all
times.’
All of it was wishful thinking on Michael's part. The family members
were drifting apart, even though Michael may have wished it was not the
case. Jermaine did visit now and then, but only when Joseph was not
around. ‘I just couldn't stand to be around him any more,’ Jermaine
explained. ‘He had hurt me so deeply. Even my mother was asking me what
was wrong with me and how could I betray the family as I did. It was
tearing me apart.’
The other brothers still harboured resentment against Jermaine for his
decision. ‘They were hanging up on me. One of them told me I was no
longer a brother. How could they hurt me like that? No matter what, I
thought we were family. After all, that's what we were always preaching.
But when it came time to act on it, I didn't see that happening. I was an
outsider.’
Jermaine may have at least found some shelter in the arms of his wife,
but other members of the Jackson family seemed to be growing more
antisocial, shunning exposure to people outside the gated Jackson estate (by
Joseph's orders) and burying themselves in their Jehovah's Witness faith (by
Katherine's). None of the siblings who were still living at home – LaToya,
Marlon, Michael, Janet and Randy – seemed to have any strong
relationships outside of their own family.
‘I don't date,’ LaToya told me at this time. ‘I don't trust people. To be
honest with you, I have no friends. It doesn't bother me. When I get lonely, I
read the Bible.’ I thought to myself, what a shame she has to be so leery of
others. She also said that she rarely went out in public unless she was with
other family members. She expressed no interest in marriage or raising a
family of her own. ‘I would never bring a child into a society like this one.’
It was as if the Jackson siblings were being raised to mistrust all
outsiders. When Jackie started having marital problems, Joseph was able to
point to such discord as evidence that outsiders can't be trusted. Enid
Jackson filed for divorce in September 1975, nine months after she and
Jackie married. ‘You see that?’ Joseph told his sons. ‘After just nine
months, look at the problem Jackie's got on his hands.’ (The couple
reconciled and would remain married for eleven more years.)
Then Marlon dropped a bomb in January 1976: he had secretly run off
and married someone – four months earlier! While the group appeared in
Las Vegas, Marlon married an eighteen-year-old fan from New Orleans,
Carol Parker. The ceremony took place on 16 August 1975. He hadn't
trusted any of his brothers with the news because he was sure they would
tell Joseph. He didn't want to go through what Rebbie, Tito and Jackie had
gone through with parental opposition to marriages, and he also didn't want
Joseph and Katherine to know that Carol did not sign a pre-nuptial
agreement.
Michael was hurt by Marlon's secret union; he thought he and his brother
were closer than that. ‘We share all the bad times, but never the good ones,’
he complained. ‘I don't understand my family at all, and I don't like some of
the things my brothers do to their wives. I'm never going to marry,’ Michael
added. ‘Marriage is awful. I don't trust anyone enough to do it.’
At a time when he should have had enthusiasm for his life and career,
Michael Jackson was on the verge of hopelessness and despair. ‘People hurt
each other over and over and over again,’ he said bleakly. ‘I spend a lot of
time being sad. I feel like I'm in a well,’ he concluded. ‘And no one can
reach me.’
Losing to Motown
Michael Jackson's vote was just one of six when it came to group decisions:
the five brothers, plus Joseph. (When Jermaine left the group, young Randy
took his place in the line-up, though he would rarely sing leads. Marlon
took most of Jermaine's parts in the songs, and Jermaine's solo hits were, of
course, never performed by the group.)
Though it was obvious that Michael was probably the most important
member of the group, the family did not want to allow him any special
consideration. It was feared that if he was bolstered too much, Michael
might one day have the confidence to separate himself from the group –
which was the last thing they wanted to happen. Michael recognized their
fear. ‘They don't listen to me because they're afraid to,’ he said to one
associate. ‘I guess I can understand it. They don't want to lose me. They
don't want me to have too much power. But it makes me mad.’
When Joseph signed the boys to CBS-TV to do a television series in
1976, Michael made it clear that he did not want to participate. However, he
was outvoted. The Jacksons was a thirty-minute programme that ran for
four weeks featuring the family, with celebrity guest-stars. The first
episode, aired 16 June 1976. As in the family's Las Vegas act, LaToya, Janet
and Rebbie participated in the series, too.
It was the first time a black family had ever starred in a television series,
and if the show received decent ratings, there was a chance CBS might pick
it up in January as a mid-season replacement. Michael was miserable.
Because of a gruelling production schedule, there was no time for him to
polish any of the routines and he loathed going on stage feeling unprepared.
He hoped that the show would not be renewed. Unfortunately for him, the
ratings were solid enough for CBS to order more episodes, to begin airing
in January 1977. Michael cringed… and then he signed on the dotted line.
Today, he refers to the venture as ‘that stupid TV series. It was a dumb
move to agree to do it,’ he says, ‘and I hated every minute of it.’
In the end, Michael's instincts about the programme were inadvertently
on target; The Jacksons proved to be more trouble than it was worth.
Apparently, someone at CBS-TV, probably a hapless assistant in the art
department, accidentally used a picture of the old Jackson 5 with Jermaine
in a TV Guide advertisement for The Jacksons series. As soon as Joseph
alerted CBS to the mistake, the network pulled the ad and sent a letter to
Motown apologizing for it and promising that it would never happen again.
Too late. Motown used the goof as an opportunity to amend its original
lawsuit against the group, raising the damages sought from five million to
twenty million dollars. Michael Roshkind said the mistake ‘had a severely
damaging effect on our credibility’ and ‘caused us real dollar damage’. The
allegation was extreme. The ad was one-half of a page, its artwork so blurry
no one could even recognize Jermaine in the picture. It was obvious that
Joseph was not the only one holding a grudge.
Joseph tried to prove that he had been treated unfairly by Motown, even
going so far as to forsake his pride. He admitted in his deposition that on
that fateful day in Detroit (26 July 1968) when he sat with Berry's attorney,
Ralph Seltzer, and was presented with the contract, he didn't read it before
allowing his children to sign it. Ralph even backed Joseph up, admitting in
his deposition: ‘I do not recall that any of them [The Jackson 5 or Joseph
Jackson] read it through in its entirety prior to signing it.’
Why not? Joseph explained, ‘Because the extent of my formal education
is through the eleventh year of high school. The 1968 contract with Motown
was the first recording contract that I was ever presented with or ever
looked at.’ (Joseph's statement didn't seem likely since his sons were signed
to Steeltown Records before they were signed to Motown… unless he
hadn't read that contract, either.)
Joseph had to admit that he also didn't read the ‘Parental Agreement’
before he signed it – which said that he would make certain his sons abided
by the provisions of the Motown recording contract. In truth, Joseph hadn't
read anything. He'd just signed the contract where instructed to sign it. He
wanted his kids to make it. He would have done anything for them. Of
course, he signed a contract.
In the end, Berry would be awarded $600,000 in damages, including un-
repaid advances and some compensation for the group having signed with
CBS before the Motown contract had officially expired. He was also paid
compensation for ‘damages’ suffered when Joseph would not allow the
boys to record new songs for Motown (this, after he figured out that the
group owed $500,000 for all the other ones they'd recorded that hadn't been
released). In all, the Jacksons paid Gordy and company about two million to
leave Motown.
More importantly, and maybe surprisingly to some, the Jacksons agreed
to surrender royalties due them on recordings they made before 1 December
1979 and on future releases of recordings made before 11 March 1976 – in
other words, on all of their hits. In exchange, Motown agreed to accurately
account for, and pay, royalties on any ‘new product’, which included pre-
1976 recordings that had been recorded but not yet released and on any
‘best of’ albums they may put out in the future.
It actually wasn't unusual for a Motown act to abandon their royalties in
order to settle things with Motown. However, in retrospect, it often proved
to be a bad decision for them – which may be one of the reasons there are
so many former Supremes, Marvellettes, Vandellas, Temptations and
Miracles who, today, find themselves in dire financial straits.
When the judge ruled in Motown's favour, Motown's vice-president
Michael Roshkind said, ‘This is a gratifying day, not because of our
winning but because it was a matter of principle.’
It was enough to make some observers sick to their stomachs.
The first Jacksons album for CBS, The Jacksons, was released in the spring
of 1977, on the Epic label. The album had a lot going for it. ‘Blues Away’,
one of the first songs Michael had ever written, and ‘Style of Life’, written
by the brothers, were both included. Those two songs were co-produced by
The Jacksons, so they were actually doing that for which they had left
Motown. For the rest of the album, executive producers Gamble and Huff
recruited their staff producers (Dexter Wansel, Gene McFadden and John
Whitehead) to assist them in compiling a strong, if not innovative,
collection. Michael says he learned a great deal from working with Gamble,
Huff and company, in terms of structuring a melody and what he calls ‘the
anatomy of a song’.
The Jachsons spawned one major hit for the group, ‘Enjoy Yourself’,
their first single for Epic. A rollicking dance number, it went on to become
their most successful record since ‘Dancing Machine’, three years earlier.
The single went to number six on the pop charts, but because it was the
only hit from the album, The Jacksons peaked at only number thirty-six on
the American charts. Not great. In the UK, ‘Enjoy Yourself’ didn't even
chart, when first released. Then it was reissued, but still didn't crack the Top
400. The international record-buying public seemed confused, maybe
because Motown issued its own Jacksons album, Joyful Jukebox Music
(compiled from some of those previously unreleased songs for which the
group had been charged), in what seemed like a crass attempt to cash in on
CBS's promotion of the group. The Motown album was the first Jackson 5
album not to enter the Top 200 in America, and did even worse in the UK.
It also served to dilute the impact of the new CBS product. As Michael
would put it, ‘Berry Gordy was playing hardball, of course.’
The Jacksons' showing on the pop charts proved disappointing, but not as
upsetting as the showing of Jermaine's record. After all the public and
private angst about whether he should go with his father and brothers, or
stay with Gordy, My Name Is Jermaine, peaked at just 164 on the Top 200.
The single ‘Let's Be Young Tonight’ only went to number fifty-five. In the
UK, Jermaine didn't matter at all to record-buying audiences. This was a
terrible shame; Jermaine deserved better from Motown in terms of
promotion. One now had to wonder what Motown's intentions were where
Jermaine's career was concerned. (As it would turn out, he only had a few
hits at the company, never really fulfilling his potential, there. He should
have been a much bigger star for Motown; he had everything going for
him.)
The Jacksons continued to tour without Jermaine. It was business as
usual. They performed in Memphis, Tennessee, in May 1977. During that
engagement, Michael had to escape to the roof of a Woolco department
store when ten thousand people caused a near riot as they waited in line for
hours hoping to jam into the store's record department, where Michael had
promised to autograph copies of The Jacksons.
That same night, backstage before the show, John Seaver, who worked
for the firm that promoted the Memphis engagement, later recalled, ‘I
showed a Billboard article to Michael that said Jermaine's Motown album
was a big bomb. It made unfair comparisons to The Jacksons' album, saying
that that one was a smash. Michael didn't say anything at first. Then he
commented, ‘Oh, he'll bounce back. I know it. Jermaine won't let this get to
him.’ He seemed genuinely sorry for his brother.
‘The article was passed along to the other brothers, who scanned it.
Marlon said something about “too bad”. Tito said that the album wasn't any
good, but that Jermaine would probably come up with something stronger
next time out. “No matter what, he's our brother,” Tito said, “and I don't like
seeing him do anything that's not a success. Just proves, I think, that Berry
doesn't know what he's doing.” They all agreed with Tito.’
Then Joseph came into the dressing room.
‘What are you boys reading?’
Jackie handed him the article. ‘Read this, about Jermaine,’ he said.
Joseph read the feature quickly. ‘Well, you know, I think it serves
Jermaine right,’ he said as he smacked the magazine on a table. He then
walked away. The brothers looked at each other with raised eyebrows.
There was silence. It must have been difficult for them to recognize
Joseph's pain, the betrayal he felt – not to mention the way he felt taken
advantage of by the Motown machinery. Of course, Joseph never revealed
himself to his family in a way that might bring about any kind of
understanding for him. Therefore, he never got it. As he walked out the
door, Michael gave him a cool, appraising glance. ‘Some father,’ he
muttered.
Tatum
By the time Michael Jackson turned nineteen in August 1977, he was one of
the best-known entertainers of recent years, the idol of many young women.
While his brothers often availed themselves of the sexual opportunities
presented to them on the road, Michael never followed suit. Though much
of Michael's music has had a sensual edge over the years, and his dancing
has often been suggestive, he was not sexually adventurous as a young man.
‘I think it's fun that girls think I'm sexy,’ Michael told me in 1977. ‘But I
don't think that about myself. It's all just fantasy, really. I like to make my
fans happy so I might pose or dance in a way that makes them think I'm
romantic. But really I guess I'm not that way.’
Most people who were close to Michael when he was a teenager agree
that he never had a serious romantic life at that time. Michael did not trust
anyone enough to allow them to penetrate the shell he had built around
himself. Perhaps he felt he had been betrayed too often by people he had
loved or admired – his father, his brothers, maybe even Berry Gordy – to
permit himself to be vulnerable to a relationship. Still, Michael understood
the value of public relations and show-business hype. Therefore, he did
parade a few ‘relationships’ for public consumption.
As recently as the Martin Bashir interview in 2003, Michael said that
actress Tatum O'Neal, who was thirteen in the summer of 1977, was his first
girlfriend. Michael and Tatum first met two years before at a party hosted
by Paul McCartney aboard the Queen Mary in Long Beach, California.
They had no contact with each other again until the spring of 1977, when
Michael spotted Tatum with her father, Ryan O'Neal, at a club in Los
Angeles. Michael was socializing with two publicists from Epic, Susan
Blond and Steve Manning when, as he recalled it, ‘all of a sudden I felt this
soft hand reach over and grab mine. It was Tatum.’ The fact that Tatum had
deigned to hold Michael's hand was, for him, a colossal event. ‘It was
serious stuff to me. She touched me,’ he said.
The next day, Tatum invited Michael to a dinner party at Playboy
publisher Hugh Hefner's rambling Holmby Hills estate. There they watched
Roots, the highly rated Alex Haley television mini-series, on videotape.
When Tatum became bored, she asked Michael to get into the hot tub with
her. ‘But I don't have a bathing suit,’ he said.
‘Who needs bathing suits?’ Tatum responded.
When Michael began to blush, Tatum asked one of Hefner's assistants for
two swimsuits, then handed one to Michael.
Tatum's hair was soft, blond and flowed just below her shoulders. Her
skin was baby pink and her figure quite ample for a girl who wouldn't turn
fourteen until close to the end of the year. She was almost plump. ‘She's
like a sacred doll,’ Michael observed of her to a friend. He said that while
soaking in the water and watching for shooting stars, the two shared secrets
with one another.
Years later, rumour would have it that they were nude together in the hot
tub. ‘Oh, we weren't naked,’ Michael firmly pointed out to me in an
interview. ‘We had on bathing suits. Why do people have to always find
something dirty in everything?’
Tatum O'Neal had won an Oscar at the age of nine for her role as the
chain-smoking, swearing companion to a Bible-belt swindler (played by her
father) in the film Paper Moon. Her own childhood was difficult.
Born to actress Joanna Moore and Ryan O'Neal, Tatum saw her parents
split up when she was three. For a while, she lived on a ramshackle ranch
with a dying horse, some dead chickens, and a mother who was addicted to
drugs. At seven, Tatum grew flowers in a wrecked car in the yard and
cooked breakfast and lunch for herself and her younger brother, Griffin. Her
father was permitted to visit on weekends.
‘When she was living with her mother, I could always tell what shape
Tatum was in by the look of her hair,’ Ryan said. ‘I knew if it was healthy,
she was at peace with herself. If things were bad, there were clumps
missing from her hair. She'd sometimes take a scissors to herself.’
Joanna, anguished and on the verge of defeat by 1972, decided to seek
help from her ex-husband, who had been giving her thirty thousand dollars
a year in alimony. Ryan paid for her rehabilitation and she, in turn,
surrendered eight-year-old Tatum to him. Tatum hated Joanna. When the
little girl went to visit her in the hospital, Tatum became so disgusted with
her mother that she spat in her face. When she told Michael about her life,
he said he had never heard a story so tragic.
‘My mother is a saint,’ Michael said in 1977. ‘When I hear about Tatum's
mother and what she went through with her, it makes me thank God for
Katherine. People think I have had a hard life. But look at Tatum's. That's
why I like her, because she's a survivor.’
Unlike Michael, whose goal it was to be an entertainer, Tatum became an
actress by accident. Ryan helped her get her first solo mostly as a way to
keep an eye on her while he worked on Paper Moon. When Tatum became
a working actress, Ryan O'Neal took over her career much the same way
Joseph Jackson had commandeered Michael's. ‘I chose International Velvet
for her,’ Ryan said. ‘She didn't even read the script. I just said, “This is the
one you're doing,” because I knew it was good.’
When Tatum complained about the way her father ruled her life, Michael
empathized with her. ‘I know exactly what you're talking about,’ he told
her.
However, Tatum did make some of her own decisions. She once told
Michael the story of how she turned down the role of the young hooker in
Taxi Driver, a part that eventually went to Jodie Foster. At the audition,
Tatum said she wanted to play the part of the taxi driver; she was twelve.
The producer ignored Tatum's suggestion and kept talking up the role of the
hooker. Finally Tatum said, ‘Frankly, I think the part's too small. I did win
an Academy Award, you know.’
‘I can't believe you said that. I don't think I would ever have the nerve,’
Michael told her when he heard that story. ‘I want to be like that. I want
people to think of me as having a lot of nerve.’
In his autobiography Michael wrote that Tatum was his first love ‘after
Diana’. Tatum has indicated, however, that her relationship with Michael
was strictly platonic.
It's telling of the fantasy Michael has created around his childhood and
teen years that the women he claims to have had romances with – including
Diana Ross and Brooke Shields (‘We were romantically serious for a
while,’ he wrote of Shields in his book) – have all denied ever having been
intimate with him. After Michael talked about Tatum on his 2003 Martin
Bashir interview, saying she came on to him, she issued a statement saying
he had ‘a vivid imagination’. Says actress Sarah Jackson (no relation to
Michael), who was a friend of Tatum's at this time, ‘Tatum told me that
Michael was a nice guy, but so shy. “How can any girl have a relationship
with him? When we're together, he hardly says two words. I know he's a
virgin. Someone needs to have a talk with him about it. I wonder if he's
afraid to have sex. He doesn't seem very interested.”’
‘Why do people think I'm gay?’
Michael Jackson's sexuality has been the subject of speculation since he
was a teenager. Perhaps it was his high-pitched speaking voice; or maybe it
was his bashfulness, or the fact that he tended to avoid eye contact and
seemed so uncomfortable in his own skin that caused some to think that he
was either concealing something about himself or had not yet come to terms
with it.
Michael has been dealing with the tabloid press for many years and feels
he is misunderstood because of unfair and dishonest media coverage of his
life. However, it was when he was nineteen that he first became upset about
a story that was not true. Like a lot of untruths, it was silly: supposedly, he
was going to have a sex-change operation and marry a handsome actor
named Clifton Davis, writer of ‘Never Can Say Goodbye’. The story spread
quickly across the country; numerous music publications rushed to the
presses with it.
Michael once told me that he was in the music department of a store in
the South when he first heard about the rumour. He said, ‘This girl came up
to me and said, “Please tell me it isn't true! Please tell me!” She was crying.
I asked, “What? What isn't true?” She said, “Tell me you're not going to
become a girl. Tell me.”’
‘Where in the world did you read that?’ Michael asked. ‘Jet magazine,’
she responded. ‘It was in Jet that you were going to have a sex change.’
‘I felt I didn't know who I was at that moment,’ Michael recalled. ‘I told
her to tell all her friends that it was just a stupid rumour.’
‘Stupid’ as it was, it seemed to Michael that everywhere he went, he
heard the story. At the time, nothing could be worse for him than the notion
that there were people who thought he might be homosexual. Michael was
raised in a family where homosexuality was sinful.
After the rumour had been circulating for months, Michael was at
Caesars Palace to see Diana Ross perform when he ran into Clifton Davis.
Clifton was backstage with performer, Leslie Uggams. ‘I was with Diana,
holding her hand,’ Michael remembered. ‘Clifton was standing next to me,
and he was holding Leslie's hand. As I was standing there posing for the
photographers, I thought to myself, Oh no, this is a perfect setup for some
magazine to doctor up a picture so that it looks like Clifton and I are
holding hands. That's how paranoid I was getting about that story,’ Michael
confessed.
After the photographers departed, Clifton went over to Michael and
joked, ‘Hey, look at you. You're not a girl after all, are you?’ Michael didn't
think Clifton's question was very funny. He would never get used to the
stories that he leads a secret gay life, and is still upset when confronted with
questions about his sexuality.
‘Just for the record, are you or are you not gay?’ I asked him during an
interview in 1979.
‘No, I am not gay,’ Michael snapped. ‘I am not a homo. People make up
stories about me being gay because they have nothing else to do. I'm not
going to let it get to me,’ he continued. ‘I'm not going to have a nervous
breakdown because people think I like having sex with men. I don't and
that's that,’ he said, his sentences pouring out. ‘If I let this get to me, it will
only show how cheap I am. I'm sure I must have a lot of fans who are gay,
and I don't mind that,’ he continued, speaking faster. ‘That's their life and
this is mine. You can print that,’ he said, thrusting his index finger at me.
‘What is it about me that makes people think I'm gay? Why do people think
I'm gay?’
I didn't think I should answer his question. He was already upset.
‘Is it my voice?’ he continued. ‘Is it because I have this soft voice? All of
us in the family have soft voices. Or is it because I don't have a lot of
girlfriends? I just don't understand it.’
The truth is that Michael would never have allowed himself to have
homosexual relationships, even if he did have feelings for other men. He
was too puritanical as a result of his religious background. The Jehovah's
Witnesses firmly believe that world destruction is imminent and that only a
few of God's servants will survive the horrible holocaust. One question had
hung over Michael's head for his entire youth; would he win salvation or
burn in hellfire? If he wanted to be saved – if he wanted to be with his
mother through all eternity – he would have to live up to all of the church's
rigid teachings, which sure meant he couldn't be gay. Indulgence is not part
of the Jehovah's Witnesses' creed. Any congregant who does not adhere to
the rules and dogma is shunned or ‘disfellowshipped’. By the time Michael
was a teenager, he had been trained to live his life a certain way. He would
not be able to break that conformity.
Also, if Michael had any homosexual leanings he would have been too
fearful to act on them. He knew that with any relationship he ever had – be
it with a man or a woman – he ran the risk of the other person reporting the
details to a newspaper or magazine, one that would pay astronomical sums
for the story, especially if it were a sensational one. Although some public
figures who are homosexual have come out of the closet in recent years –
not many, though – back in the 1970s it just didn't happen at all.
Still today, many entertainers hide their true sexual identities from their
fans and peers because they fear rejection, and the loss of income. Ever
practical where his work is concerned, Michael is aware that being gay
would damage not only his career, but his relationships with his family, as
well. How would Katherine and Joseph handle it if he were to announce
that he is, as he put it so many years ago, ‘a homo’? ‘When I first heard the
rumours that he was gay, I thought I'd go crazy,’ Katherine once said. ‘He's
my son and I know the truth. He knows the truth too. We both talked about
it and cried about it. Michael was very hurt by the rumours. He is not gay.
It's against our religion.’ They cried about it; tears shed over the fact that
people they didn't even know had whispered such things.
How would his brothers react if Michael said he was gay? Back in the
seventies, they would have been upset because it might have projected a
controversial image for the group. Today? Publicly, they might offer their
support. However, privately, they would probably be thrown. Like their
mother, they are not progressive-minded. Indeed, if Michael were a gay
man today – and no one is saying he is – and suddenly made the decision to
bolt from the closet after all of these years, the only Jackson who would
probably be able to come to terms with it would be Janet, a woman who has
been around enough and seen enough to know that there are gay people in
all walks of life.
Besides dealing with upsetting questions about his sexuality, Michael had
other problems in the late seventies. Of course, most people have a difficult
time with certain stages of adolescence, but Michael was much more
sensitive than most people his age about the common challenges of puberty,
perhaps because he was the subject of such intense public scrutiny. For
instance, his face had broken out severely with acne in the mid-seventies;
he was so ashamed of the way he looked that it was extremely difficult for
him to go out into public. ‘I seemed to have a pimple for every oil gland,’
he recalled. Onstage, his condition was difficult to notice because of
carefully applied makeup and the benefit of lighting. However, offstage it
was obvious that Michael had complexion problems. Reporters would
comment to each other about his skin. Fans would be shocked by his
appearance. Michael could barely stand the humiliation.
‘I became subconsciously scarred by this,’ he has confessed. ‘I got very
shy and became embarrassed to meet people. The effect on me was so bad
that it messed up my whole personality.’
Michael couldn't look at people when he talked to them. Rather, he would
look down or away. He wouldn't even look at his mother when he spoke to
her. ‘He didn't want to leave the house,’ Katherine would recall. ‘When he
did, he kept his head down.’ He would never really recover from the
psychological effects of the acne. ‘The changes that it wrought in him
became permanent,’ Katherine said. ‘He was no longer a carefree, outgoing,
devilish boy. He was quieter, more serious and more of a loner.’
Complicating matters was Michael's belief that, acne aside, he was not
good-looking. His skin was too dark, he decided, and his nose too wide.
Even though his family was aware of Michael's sensitivities, Joseph and the
brothers did not afford him any special treatment. They were a rowdy,
boisterous bunch offstage and teased each other, playfully. Either a brother
took it well, or he didn't.
At nineteen, Michael was nothing if not a study in contrasts. He was a
young man who could muster enough courage to meet with the president of
Motown, yet was afraid of the kinds of propositions most teenagers found
exciting, such as the opportunity to drive an automobile. Whereas many
youngsters are eager to get behind the wheel of a car by the age of sixteen,
Michael was still petrified of the notion three years later. ‘I just don't want
to,’ he said, when pushed. ‘I just don't have the desire. Whenever you do
something, you have to want to do it. And even though there are some
things you just have to do, I don't have to drive. And I simply don't want to.
There's nothing special about it for me.’ Michael would usually have a
limousine take him wherever he wanted to go, though often one of his
brothers would drive him.
Besides the fact that he was frightened of driving, Michael also didn't
want to go to the Department of Motor Vehicles to take the driver's test. He
was afraid he'd be recognized and then be humiliated because he still didn't
have a licence at his age. The thought of this kind of embarrassment was
stressful for him. At one point, when he thought he might at least try to
drive, he tried to obtain special consideration so that he wouldn't have to go
to the Department of Motor Vehicles for the testing. However, the Encino
division of the D.M.V. is accustomed to dealing with celebrities; officials
there don't consider any of them special. It was all just too much to bear for
Michael. He couldn't do it. ‘But suppose you're someplace and your
chauffeur gets sick,’ Katherine argued with him. ‘You need to be able to
drive.’ Michael would be twenty-three before he'd finally obtain his driver's
licence, and only at Katherine's insistence.
Michael and Joseph Meet with CBS
Michael Jackson's teenage melancholy intensified when The Jacksons'
second album for CBS, Goin' Places, released in the winter of 1977, was a
major disappointment. Despite the fact that the first album for the new label
had received mixed reviews and had only gone gold when everyone was
hoping for platinum sales, CBS sent the group back to Philadelphia to work
once again with Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff. The title track of Goin'
Places only went to number 52 on Billboard's top 100; the album peaked at
63 on the Top 200. In the UK, it peaked at number forty-five and only
stayed on the charts for a week! However, despite such sporadic sales, The
Jacksons at Epic were still faring better than Jermaine Jackson was at
Motown. His Feel the Fire album, released at the same time, peaked at
number 174 in America and did even worse in the UK and the rest of
Europe. Most industry observers now believed that Motown was
mysteriously intent on wasting Jermaine's career even if he was married to
the boss's daughter.
On Goin' Places, Michael wrote a rhythm number called ‘Different Kind
of Lady’, which became a successful club hit but was seldom played on the
radio. It was not issued as a single. Another song penned by the group, ‘Do
What You Wanna’, also went unreleased as a single. By this time, The
Jacksons hadn't had a number-one record since ‘Mama's Pearl’ in 1971.
Joseph was concerned. It was painfully clear that the new relationship with
CBS wasn't working out as he had hoped it would for his sons.
Joseph decided to meet with Ron Alexenberg, the man who had
originally signed The Jacksons to Epic, to try to convince him once and for
all that the group should be able to write and produce its own material.
Perhaps Joseph remembered the way Michael used his own initiative to
meet with Berry Gordy when the chips were down, because he asked his
son to accompany him.
Michael was astonished that his father would ask for his assistance and
couldn't help but be suspicious of his motives. Still, he agreed to go along.
Michael considered the group's future so important, he was willing to
overcome – at least temporarily – his aversion to his father and cooperate
with him on this matter. Just as Joseph put on his public facade as father,
Michael would put on his public facade as son.
‘He was still the soft, tender Michael Jackson everyone thought he was,
but something was definitely different about him by this time,’ said James
Situp, the Jacksons' pianist and band director. ‘Everyone who dealt with
him closely, family included, began to tread softly when dealing with
Michael. The quiet power he was gaining was amazing to me. I'd never seen
anyone have that much influence over people without having a stern
attitude. I noticed that when he spoke, people were starting to listen. He was
still outvoted on things, but now it was a bit more reluctantly. Joseph and
the brothers were beginning to give him space. I began to notice that if they
saw one iota of displeasure in his face, they began to get worried. For sure,
things were changing as Michael was growing up.’
Still, it is not difficult to imagine that his brothers resented Michael's
power. Even if it did benefit them, it didn't feel good to them that Michael
was the one who always ended up meeting with their record company
bosses.
During the meeting with Ron Alexenberg, Michael and Joseph explained
that they were unhappy with the way the Jacksons' careers had thus far
evolved at CBS, and that the time had come for the company to finally
allow them control over an album. ‘If you can't do it,’ Michael said, ‘then
we need to move on. Why waste more of your money on records that aren't
going to sell? Let us work on our own record. Then, you'll have a hit.
Otherwise, you won't.’
Ironically, and unbeknownst to Michael and Joseph, the new CBS
Records president Walter Yetnikoff had already decided to drop The
Jacksons from the label. In his view, The Jacksons were no longer
commercially viable. With that thinking, he was on the same page as Ewart
Abner at Motown!
The two CBS albums were not successful enough to warrant a third, said
Walter Yetnikoff. Bobby Colomby, then head of Epic's West Coast artist
relations, recalled, ‘The people I was working with at CBS really wanted
me to get them out of the deal with The Jacksons. They wanted me to try to
buy them [The Jacksons] out. But I felt so bad for these guys. I liked them. I
said to myself, “My God, if I give these people a hundred thousand dollars
to go away, they're going to take it, pay their bills and then be out of the
music business for ever.”’
Imagine the humiliation Joseph and his sons would have suffered if, after
all they had gone through to sever their ties with Berry Gordy, the new
label's president were to them drop them from his roster. Bobby Colomby
was right; the setback probably would have finished The Jacksons for good,
and Joseph would have been blamed for the act's demise.
Luckily for all concerned, Bobby Colomby managed to convince his
bosses to give The Jacksons one more chance at Epic. This time, the
brothers would have more involvement in their work. If they failed, they
would have no one to blame but themselves. So, when Michael put forth
just that proposition at the meeting, Ron Alexenberg agreed to it. It was a
done deal, anyway, before Joseph and Michael even got to the meeting.
However, father and son apparently needed to show the label executives
that they had the incentive and drive to take on a project of their own before
they would be guaranteed the company's full support.
‘That went pretty well, didn't it, son?’ Joseph said in the elevator after the
meeting. He emphasized the word ‘son’. They were descending in a car full
of CBS executives and employees during lunch hour. Michael was observed
smiling bitterly at his father. He later recalled that the subsequent ride back
to the hotel was ‘a silent one’. When they got back to the hotel, as Michael
recalled it, Joseph put his arm around Michael's shoulder as they walked
through the lobby. ‘You're a winner, Michael,’ he told him. ‘All my boys
are winners. Every single one of 'em. You got that?’
‘I got it, Joseph,’ Michael said. ‘I got it.’
The Wiz
By 1977, nineteen-year-old Michael Jackson happened to find himself on
the same career path as his mentor, Diana Ross. He wanted to begin making
decisions regarding his own future, just as Diana, who had been dominated
by Berry Gordy for seventeen years, was beginning to break his hold on her.
Determined to be a film actress, she was anxious to find a property in which
to star, and one she could claim responsibility for finding – unlike her
previous two opuses, Lady Sings the Blues and Mahogany, both Motown
discoveries.
At the same time, through a production deal with Universal, Berry
Gordy's Motown Productions had acquired The Wiz, a musical based on L.
Frank Baum's classic, The Wonderful World of Oz. The Wiz, an all-black
production, had opened on Broadway in January 1975 and gone on to win
seven Tony awards.
By 1977, Rob Cohen, a twenty-four-year-old white wunderkind who
headed Motown Productions, had been trying to launch The Wiz for some
time. He recalled that the project was intended to be a low-budget film
featuring Stephanie Mills, who had starred in the Broadway play. Stephanie
had also been a Motown artist, though her experience at the company was
less than satisfying for her; her one album for the label, For the First Time
(produced by Burt Bacharach and Hal Davis), was a commercial disaster
when issued in 1975, despite the fact that it was an excellent recording.
Appearing in the motion picture version of The Wiz would have been a coup
for her. However, when Diana Ross decided that she wanted to play
Dorothy, it was all over for Stephanie Mills. ‘I absolutely believed in
Dorothy and in her search to find who she is,’ recalled Diana. ‘It seemed so
very parallel to who I am.’
To Diana, this film presented an opportunity to demonstrate to Berry that
she had not only talent but creative vision, as well. Berry disagreed. He
thought casting her in The Wiz was a dreadful idea which only encouraged
Diana to want the role even more. A tug-of-war ensued between Svengali
and protégé. Eventually Diana prevailed.
Practically everybody at Motown agreed that, at thirty-three, Diana was
too old to, as Berry put it, ‘play anybody's damn Dorothy’. Still, Berry and
Rob Cohen secured a million-dollar contract with Universal for her. ‘I
wanted to do this project, and I honestly didn't care what I was going to be
paid,’ Diana said at the time. ‘I was very happy, though, to be paid what, at
this point in my life, I should be getting paid.’
After the Ross casting, Berry decided to give full responsibility for The
Wiz to Rob Cohen. Rob then recruited director Sidney Lumet, whose film
credits included Serpico, and Dog Day Afternoon and Equus. He'd never
before directed a musical.
Sidney Lumet's concept was to make the film a modern-day Manhattan
fantasy using actual New York locations. Diana would play a twenty-four-
year-old school teacher – Dorothy – who is whisked into Oz by a blizzard.
The late Ted Ross and Nipsey Russell were hired to play the Lion and Tin
Man, respectively. Richard Pry or and Lena Home were also featured
players. It was also Sidney's idea to cast comic Jimmie Walker, best
remembered for his overblown portrayal of the loud-mouthed J.J. on
television's black sitcom Good Times, as the Scarecrow. However, Rob
Cohen wanted Michael Jackson for the role.
‘I was always impressed by Michael,’ Rob recalled. ‘He struck me as
being so polished, yet still pure. Plus, he could sing – which Jimmie could
not do – and this was a musical.’
When Rob suggested to Diana that Michael might be right for the part,
she agreed, whole-heartedly. It was she, then, who suggested it to Michael.
Though he'd seen the Broadway play a half-dozen times and, obviously,
loved it, Michael was reluctant. He felt that Berry Gordy might use his
influence to have him rejected because of the bad blood that still existed
between Motown and the Jackson family. Diana reassured him that he
would be given a fair chance. A few days after Michael auditioned, Sidney
Lumet telephoned him at the Encino estate to tell him that he had the job.
Joseph did not want Michael to have the kind of solo attention a major
movie would generate for him. Since family prosperity through unity had
always been Joseph's goal, he was never one to encourage individuality
within the group. When Michael recorded solo albums at Motown, it was
with the understanding that Jermaine and Jackie have the same opportunity.
(Tito and Marlon also worked on solo album projects for Motown, though
the records were never released.)
Of course, Joseph knew that without Michael's voice, personality and
charisma, The Jacksons would be a completely different kind of act, and
maybe not a good one, either – especially now that Jermaine was gone.
Working with his brothers had never been a problem for Michael in the
past; he was always group-minded. However, now that he was older, he was
beginning to feel constricted by the group's democratic mentality. And, the
fact that they were all so unsupportive of his solo dreams made him feel
that, at the core, they were just being selfish.
Though Joseph had been trying for years to find a property that would
star all of The Jacksons, the brothers didn't really care about making movies
as much as Michael. ‘I watch movies constantly and envision how it would
have been if I could have been the star,’ he recalled. ‘I wanted nothing more
than to be a movie star.’ As much as he wanted the role of the Scarecrow,
accepting it was not easy for him. In order to do so, Michael had to defy
Joseph and risk the disapproval of his entire family. Also, he was going to
have to perform in a strange medium. A weekly TV variety show that he
loathed doing was insufficient preparation for a major movie role. Michael,
always the perfectionist, wondered if he would be up to the challenge.
Though he agonized over what to do, in the end he decided to follow his
heart. ‘I'm doing the movie,’ he told Joseph. ‘I hope you'll support me.’
‘Well, if I can't talk you out of it, then go ahead and do it,’ Joseph said.
‘But don't say I didn't warn you. It's a big mistake.’
Michael became upset. ‘You're the one always telling us about winners
and losers,’ he said, according to his later recollection. ‘Now you're telling
me not to do this thing when I know I can be a winner at it.’
Joseph had to think about that comment for a moment. ‘It's a gamble,
Michael.’
‘Sure,’ Michael said. ‘Just like all the gambles you took, Joseph. Just like
the one when you brought us out here.’
‘You're right,’ Joseph said with a smile. ‘Do the movie, Michael. Take a
shot. You're the man. But always remember one thing?’
‘Winners and losers?’ Michael asked, referring to his father's credo.
‘No,’ Joseph said. ‘Remember that you are a member of this family, and
a part of a singing group with your brothers, no matter what you do. Family,
Michael, that's everything.’
The two men smiled at each other. If things had been different between
them, perhaps they would have embraced but that wasn't how their
relationship worked. Michael gave his father a thumbs-up and dashed off.
The brothers did not share Joseph's benevolence where Michael and The
Wiz was concerned.
‘To tell you the truth, we thought he was biting off more than he could
chew,’ recalled Jackie. ‘We didn't think it was right for him, or good for the
group. So, yeah, we kinda wished he wouldn't have done it.’
However, Michael refused to deny his dream simply because his brothers
did not share it. He's a born gambler, though few thought of him in that way
at the time. Exhilarated by his imagination, he wanted to take chances. ‘“I
have to make this film for personal reasons,” he told me,’ Rob Cohen
recalled. ‘“There are things I have to prove to myself, and to a few others.”’
The Wiz offered Michael a temporary avenue of escape from the
negativity of his male siblings and father. When he moved to New York in
July 1977 to begin the film, he asked LaToya to accompany him. The two
resided in an exclusive two-thousand-dollars-per-month, thirty-seventh-
floor apartment located in Manhattan's expensive Sutton Place. These few
months would be the first time the two Jacksons had ever been away from
the rest of the family. Katherine was nervous about her children being off
on their own, but she decided that it would be best if someone could be with
Michael, ‘and LaToya's being there was as close to me being there as
possible. She and I were so much alike back then.’
Because LaToya was anxious about her time away, she turned to
chocolate for comfort. ‘She ate chocolate the whole time she was in New
York,’ Susie Jackson said. ‘She became addicted. She told me that it got so
bad, she had such chocolate fits, that she would take Hershey's cocoa and
just mix water with it and drink it, that's how addicted she was to it. By the
time she came back, she had gained twenty pounds.’
Though LaToya was apprehensive about being away from home, Michael
basked in his new independence. ‘He was nothing like the odd Michael
Jackson you hear about nowadays,’ Rob Cohen remembered. ‘Back then, he
was great fun; we had the best time. He, LaToya, me and some of the others
involved with the project would go to clubs every night to dance. He was
not fearful of going out in public, then. He was excited, like a little kid in a
playground. The only thing on his mind was work during the day – and I've
seldom seen anyone work as hard other than, perhaps, Diana Ross – and
play at night.’
Filming the $24-million movie – at the time one of the most expensive
films ever produced – took place from 3 October through 30 December
1977, at Astoria Studios. It was hard work, six days a week. Michael would
awake at four in the morning in order to leave for the studio by 5:30.
Following her mother's instructions, LaToya would prepare an early
breakfast for her brother, usually consisting of orange juice, bacon, buttered
toast, herb tea and oatmeal. Michael's makeup for his role as Scarecrow
took cosmetologist Stan Wilson five hours to apply.
‘I loved it,’ Michael told me after the film was done. ‘I was the
Scarecrow from the time the makeup was put on until the time it came off,
which I hated.’ Sometimes, he said, he would even go home at night
wearing the makeup. It was a welcome cover for his acne, he said. Once it
was applied, and his phony nose and fright wig of steel-wool pads were in
place, Michael could walk around and not be recognized – though, of
course, he drew more attention in that get-up than he would have without it.
‘Manhattan was full of excitement for Michael,’ Rob Cohen recalled. ‘He
met Jacqueline Onassis at the Rainbow Grill. He talked about her for days
afterwards, how glamorous and sophisticated she was, how he hoped one
day to know her better. He met Caroline and John Kennedy at the Robert
Kennedy Tennis Tournament. He did more socializing then than he does
today, sometimes with Diana.’
There was actually a bit of tension between Michael and Diana during
production. In July, the cast began rehearsing their musical numbers at the
St George Hotel in Brooklyn. Michael was an accomplished dancer;
however, Diana had to work at it. Whereas, Michael could remember the
choreographer's direction immediately and execute the step with precision,
Diana would have to rehearse for hours and would still have some trouble
with it. During one particularly trying session, she pulled Michael aside.
‘You're embarrassing me,’ she said, urgently.
‘What do you mean?’ Michael asked. His surprise was genuine.
‘You're learning the dances too quickly.’
‘I was sort of shocked,’ Michael told me. ‘I didn't mean to embarrass her,
that's for sure. So I tried to act like I didn't always know what I was doing,
so I could make her feel better.’
Michael had only happy memories to share with the press where Diana
and The Wiz are concerned. ‘She would come into my dressing room every
day and ask what she could do to make things more comfortable,’ he said.
‘She was like a mother to me. I love her very much.’
At this time, a nineteen-year-old friend of Michael's, Theresa Gonsalves
(whom he first met in November 1974 when she went to Las Vegas to see
the group for her sixteenth birthday), telephoned him to say she was going
to New York for a visit. They made plans to see each other in New York.
‘When I got to the apartment building, he told the doorman to send me
up,’ Theresa recalled. ‘'Toya answered the door. She was irritated. “Michael
didn't tell me that the two of you made plans,” she said. It was as if he was
supposed to check with her before he made plans, and he hadn't.
‘So I asked 'Toya where he was, and she said that he was in the kitchen
baking chocolate chip cookies. After Michael and I talked and ate the
cookies, I took a look around. The suite had a balcony. Michael used to like
to hang over it like he was going to jump. He loved acting like a fool to
upset his sister. 'Toya had the most wonderful room, a real showplace with a
huge bed and a mirror above it, a penthouse bedroom befitting a star.
Michael had a small, simple bedroom with a twin-sized bed in it and a desk.
I asked myself, Why does she have such a great room and he's stuck with
this?’
One day, Michael returned from the studio very excited about a new
structure that had been built for his character at the studio. ‘Follow me,’ he
told Theresa. She followed him into his modest bedroom. As the two of
them stood at his desk, he started showing her a scrapbook of photographs
of the movie set.
‘So what do you think? Great, huh?’ Michael asked.
‘Yes, you're so lucky,’ Theresa enthused.
Michael closed the book and looked into Theresa's eyes, thoughtfully. He
tilted his head and leaned over to her, awkwardly. At that moment, LaToya
walked into the room. ‘What's going on in here?’ she wanted to know.
Michael pulled back nervously.
‘So anyway, I uh…’ he stammered.
Years later, Theresa would recall, ‘I wanted him to kiss me so badly. And
I know he would have if 'Toya hadn't surprised us.’
A Rendezvous with Destiny
After The Wiz was filmed and before the movie was released, it was back to
business as usual for The Jacksons. However, Michael now felt differently
about his family and his career. Satisfied with his work in New York, and
having been praised by people whose opinions mattered to him, he was
filled with a new confidence in himself as an individual artist. He wanted to
begin work on the solo album he had been promised by Epic as soon as
possible, even though the rest of the family wanted to concentrate on the
third Jacksons group album for the label. The family won again.
The group went into the studio to record Destiny, the first Jacksons album
said to be written and produced by the group itself. Although the Jacksons
did, indeed, write all but one of the songs, executive producer Bobby
Colomby and Mike Atkinson did most of the production work. When there
was some disagreement as to what credit they should receive, Michael was
the only one of the brothers who felt that Colomby and Atkinson should be
credited as executive producers.
Destiny was, by far, the most exciting Jacksons album to date, including
all of those recorded at Motown. For the first time, the group put together a
cohesively structured album. There were no filler songs; all eight songs
were noteworthy.
What's more Michael had never sounded better than he did on this album.
His performance on the dreamy ballad ‘Push Me Away’, with its orchestral
sweep and rapturous melody, is carefree and effortless. Yet upon closer
inspection, it becomes obvious that Michael's delivery is tightly measured
and precise. He knows exactly how to settle his mind on the heart and story
of a song in order to create the proper mood. As a result of years in the
studio and in front of audiences, and a genuine love for singing, he had
become an intuitively brilliant stylist.
Though off to a bad start with the high-flash pop of ‘Blame It on the
Boogie’ (a single that didn't even make the Top 40 in the US, but sailed into
the Top 10 in Britain), Destiny would fare much better than Goin' Places.
The real showcase was the mesmerizing ‘Shake Your Body (Down to the
Ground)’, written by Michael and Randy. Released in February 1979, it was
the biggest hit of the album, peaking at number seven on the pop charts and
selling two million copies globally. ‘Shake Your Body’ personified the
contemporary disco trend with its crackling lead vocal by Michael, whip-
snapping chorus from the brothers and insistent, persistent backbeat. It is
still regarded by many music critics as the perfect dance record and one of
The Jacksons' strongest efforts.
The Jacksons did many interviews with the press to discuss their new
album, often emphasizing that they had been writing songs for years, but
Destiny marked the first time they'd been able to dominate an album with
their own compositions. They had left Motown to do just this and had good
reason to feel triumphant. They certainly could not be criticized in terms of
their ability to write songs; they proved themselves with Destiny. However,
what was striking about the brothers at this time is how they were still
unable to discuss their music with authority. Rather, the brothers – Jackie,
twenty-seven; Tito, twenty-five; Marlon, twenty-one; Michael, twenty, and
Randy, sixteen – were ambiguous in their comments, merely serving up
heaps of platitudes about how ‘wonderful’ it was to write and produce their
own music. Because of their early training at Motown to say only what they
were told to say, now that The Jacksons could express themselves freely to
the press, they didn't know how to do it.
I was one of the reporters the Jacksons spoke to when they were
promoting Destiny. Since I had interviewed them so many times in the past,
I knew to stay clear of in-depth musical discussions. Still, my time with
them that August day in 1978 was memorable, not so much as for what they
said about their work as for what I observed about their relationships with
one another.
When I pulled up to the Jacksons' Encino estate with my photographer,
the ominous, black wrought-iron gate was open so we were able to drive
right through, into the circular driveway, upon which was parked a cache of
Cadillacs, Rolls-Royces and Mercedes-Benzes. Three sentry dogs, penned
up at the end of the drive, hurled themselves against the chain-link fence,
their ferocious barks in stark contrast to the high-pitched cries of three large
peacocks also caged, nearby.
Looking around, I noticed the custom-made street sign, JACKSON 5 BOULEVARD, on
a nearby tree trunk. I remembered the barbecue I had attended a year earlier
during which Michael and Jermaine proudly nailed the sign, made for them
as part of ‘Jackson 5 Day’ in Gary, to the tree. To my left was the court
where I and a few other weakling reporters stood on the sidelines with
Michael, Janet and LaToya while the brothers and members of the
Temptations played ball. When I glanced up at the two-storey house, I
noticed four people looking down at me: Michael, LaToya, Randy and
Katherine had their solemn faces pressed against the glass panes, almost as
if prisoners in a compound.
Twenty-two-year-old LaToya, looking fresh and young in a white tennis
outfit, answered the front door to us. When Michael approached seconds
later, she excused herself, dashed out into the driveway, got into a sporty
red Mercedes convertible, and sped off, the brakes screeching.
‘Glad you could make it,’ Michael said as we shook hands. ‘Good to see
you, again.’ He was wearing a yellow Jaws T-shirt, black jeans and a safari
hat, around which his Afro billowed. His feet were bare. He spoke in an odd
falsetto whisper, which seemed even softer than it had the last time we
talked. In exactly a week, he would turn twenty.
Michael led us through the house towards the living room. A huge yellow
and green parrot sat perched on a ledge outside the window, shucking
peanuts. A red, blue and yellow cockatoo-eyed us warily through another
window. It let out an ear-piercing screech as we sat down.
‘How come you're not getting your guests lemonade?’ Katherine asked
Michael when she came into the room. Though she had a limp, she walked
into the room with total self-assurance and a bearing that could only be
described as regal. She was forty-nine.
‘Oh, sorry,’ Michael murmured. He dashed off to the kitchen, giving me
an opportunity to catch up with Katherine while the photographer set up his
equipment.
The living room's decor was a mixture of pale yellows, soft greens and
stark white splashed with pink. It was a bit on the garish side. Katherine
told me that she had designed the motif herself, an assignment for a home-
decorating class. She was getting ready to redecorate their kitchen, she said.
She then mentioned that Michael's favourite foods at that time were hot
apple turnovers and sweet-potato pies. ‘Lately, I can't get him to eat
anything. I try and try,’ she said, dismayed. ‘I keep thinking he'll eat when
he gets hungry, but the boy never gets hungry. Have you noticed how
skinny he is? It worries me.’
I looked around. ‘These last few years have sure been good ones,’ I
observed. ‘Maybe the best of your life?’
‘Not really,’ she answered. ‘The best years were back in Gary,’ she said,
her eyes now reflective. ‘We had one bedroom for the boys and they all
slept together in triple bunk beds. Before going to sleep, I'd sing folk songs
to them. I'd always wanted to be a country star,’ she said, ‘but who'd ever
heard of a black country star, back then?’
Katherine rose and walked to a small, antique writing desk in a corner.
She opened a drawer and pulled out a photograph. ‘We were so happy,
then,’ she said, showing me the dog-eared picture. It was of the entire
family in Gary, posing in front of the house on Jackson Street. ‘I'd give up
all that we have now for just one of those days back in Gary when it
simpler. When we first came to California, I don't know how many times I
said, “I wish things were the way they used to be in Gary.” But things have
never been the same,’ she added, fingering the picture. ‘It's all changed
now.’
Michael came back into the room with two glasses of lemonade. After
handing one to me and the other to the photographer, he sat in a chair in a
lotus position. Katherine excused herself.
During our two-hour interview, Michael shared his thoughts on a wide
range of subjects. ‘I don't know much about politics,’ he admitted at one
point. ‘Someone told me recently that Gerald Ford was President.’ He
chuckled; he was in good spirits, not at all the shy, reclusive superstar he
would become in a few years. I laughed with him, thinking we were sharing
a joke, but we weren't. He was serious. ‘I remember when he was Vice-
President,’ Michael continued thoughtfully. ‘That I remember. But,
President?’ He shrugged his shoulders helplessly. ‘That I missed.’
Surprised by his uninformed nature, I asked, ‘How do you keep up with
current events? Do you read newspapers? Watch TV?’
‘I watch cartoons,’ he told me, his eyes lighting up. ‘I love cartoons. I
love Disney. The Magic Kingdom. Disneyland. It's such a magical place.
Walt Disney was a dreamer, like me. And he made his dreams come true,
like me. I hope.’
‘What about current events?’
Michael looked at me blankly. ‘Current events?’
‘Do you read the newspaper?’ I asked.
He shook his head. ‘See, I like show business. I listen to music all the
time. I watch old movies. Fred Astaire movies. Gene Kelly, I love. And
Sammy [Davis]. I can watch these guys all day, twenty-four hours a day.
That's what I love the most.’
We talked about old movies for a while, and about his involvement in
The Wiz. I then asked what he saw as his biggest professional challenge.
‘To live up to what Joseph expects of me.’
‘Living up to what your father expects of you is a professional
challenge?’ I asked.
Michael mulled over my question. ‘Yes,’ he decided. ‘A professional
challenge.’
‘What about the personal challenges?’
‘My professional challenges and personal challenges are the same thing,’
he said uneasily. ‘I just want to entertain. See, when I was in the second
grade, the teacher asked me what I wished for. I asked for a mansion, peace
in the world, and to be able to entertain… Can we talk about something
else?’
‘Do you have any friends that you can really confide in?’
Michael squirmed. ‘No, not really. I'm pretty lonely.’
‘How about Tatum?’ I wondered.
Michael considered the question. ‘She's nice,’ he said. ‘She was happy
for me when I got the part in The Wiz. She and Ryan were on my side,
helping me with my lines. Tatum understands me. She's gonna teach me to
drive a car. She introduces me to people, famous, famous people.’
‘Any other friends?’
‘Well, I do have one friend,’ he said. ‘A very dear, close friend that I can
tell my deepest, darkest secrets to because I know she won't tell anyone
else. Her name is…’ He paused for dramatic effect. ‘Miss Diana Ross.’
‘You have deep, dark secrets, Michael?’
He laughed. ‘Everybody has deep, dark secrets.’
At this point, Michael was joined by Jackie, Tito, Marlon and Randy. We
talked about the group's success at Motown and about the fanatical hysteria
generated by their fame.
‘Once at a record store in San Francisco, over a thousand kids showed
up,’ Michael said in a hushed tone. ‘They pushed forward and broke a
window. A big piece of glass fell on top of this girl. And the girl's throat
was slit.’ Michael swiftly ran his index finger across his neck.
‘Michael, don't do that. That's gross,’ Randy, said.
Michael ignored his youngest brother and continued with his story. ‘She
just got slit. And I remember there was blood everywhere. Oh God, so
much blood. And she grabbed her throat and was bleeding and everyone
just ignored her. Why? Because I was there and they wanted to grab at me
and get my autograph.’ Michael sighed. ‘I wonder whatever happened to
that girl.’
‘Probably dead,’ Tito muttered, deadpan.
Fans were as much a curse as a blessing. ‘We got these three guard dogs.
One is named Heavy, one is Black Girl, and the other one don't got no
name,’ Michael said. ‘We have to have them,’ he insisted. ‘Once, a lady
jumped over the gate and into the house and sat down in the den. We came
home, and she looked at us and what did she say?’ He turned to Marlon for
help. ‘What'd that lady say?’
‘She said, “I'm here 'cause God sent me,”’ Marlon recalled.
‘God sent her,’ Michael repeated.
Jackie laughed. ‘Yeah, God sent her to sit in The Jackson 5's den and wait
for them to get home so she can get their autograph, and maybe her picture
with them, too. She was on a divine mission.’
‘And then once, a whole family managed to get into the estate somehow,
and they toured the house,’ Michael continued. ‘Lookin' at all our stuff.
Findin' all our most private things. And Janet was here all by herself. It was
scary. And sometimes, fans ask weird questions. They don't think you're
real. Once a fan asked me the most embarrassing question and in front of
everyone. She said, “Do you go to the bathroom?” I was so embarrassed.’
In the middle of the interview, good-natured ribbing among the brothers
turned nasty when someone brought up the subject of nicknames.
‘Mike has a nickname,’ Jackie mentioned, his eyes teasing. ‘It's a good
one.’
Michael's smiling face turned serious. ‘Don't, Jackie,’ he warned. He
looked away.
‘We call him – ’
‘Please, you guys!’ Michael pleaded.
‘Big Nose,’ Jackie finished.
The brothers laughed among themselves. Michael shifted in his chair.
‘Yeah, Big Nose,’ Marlon repeated, grinning. He reached over and
punched Michael on his arm, playfully. ‘What's happenin', Big Nose?’
Michael threw Marlon a scathing look. His mouth parted, but no words
came out. He would say little more as long as his brothers were present.
After the interview, we walked outside to take photographs in the warm
California sunlight. Joseph, a hulking six-footer with a mole on his face, a
pencil-thin moustache, and a diamond pinky ring the size of a marble,
approached me. ‘You see, I have a philosophy about raising children,’ he
said, engaging me. ‘My father was strict. He was a schoolteacher, and he
treated me like I was one of his students, not like I was his son. I never got
any special treatment. I'm glad that happened. I got a strict raising when I
was young, and I've been able to accomplish a lot because of that. And my
kids have gotten a strict raising, and look at what they've accomplished. I
think children should fear their parents. It's good when they fear you. It's
good for them, and it's good for the parents too. I did my best with those
boys,’ he said, pointing to them as they posed for pictures.
‘Have they ever disappointed you?’ I asked.
A sober expression crossed his face. ‘Lots of times,’ he answered.
‘Jermaine's with Berry at Motown, instead of with us. He chose Berry over
me. Do you know how that makes me feel? It hurts right here.’ Joseph
thumped the left side of his chest with his fist. ‘I've been disappointed other
times too,’ he continued. ‘But I don't think I have ever once let my boys
down. If I did, too bad for them. You do the best you can do, raising kids,’
he said, smiling. ‘It helped that they had something to look forward to.
They always had entertainment, and me to rehearse them. And they also
play character-building sports like football and baseball.
‘Jackie could have been a baseball player if he wanted to, in the majors
with the Chicago White Sox. They're all good at sports, except for Michael
who never picked up a bat in his whole life.’ Joseph smiled. It was an
unexpected moment of gentleness from him. ‘Wouldn't know what to do
with a baseball bat, I think. We tease him about it, but he doesn't like it.
Michael has always been sensitive,’ he observed.
‘One thing about Michael, though,’ Joseph added, ‘is that ever since he
was four, he wanted to be an entertainer. And he always wanted to be
number one. That's why sports upset him, because his brothers can whip
him and outdo him at sports and he can't be number one at it. But in music,
Michael knows he's number one.
‘And speakin' of Michael, Marlon told me about what happened. You're
not gonna write that part about Michael's nickname, are you?’ he asked.
‘That boy is so sensitive about his nose,’ Joseph added. ‘Do you see
anything wrong with his nose? That's all he ever talks about, his damn nose.
He threatened to have it fixed, but what can he do with it? I told him I'd
break his face if he ever had it fixed.’ Joseph's green eyes twinkled. He
threw back his head and roared with laughter. ‘You don't fix something that
isn't broken,’ he added. ‘He's got a great nose. It looks like mine.’
Afterwards, Michael returned to the living room for some final thoughts
about his life and career. As the photographer and I watched, he crossed his
left leg over his right knee and began absent-mindedly picking at his
toenails. ‘When I'm not onstage, I'm not the same. I'm different,’ he
observed. ‘I'm addicted to the stage. When I can't get on to a stage for a
long time, I have fits and get crazy. I start crying, and I act weird and
freaked out. No kiddin', I do. I start dancin' 'round the house.’
He began to talk rapidly. ‘It's like a part of me is missin' and I gotta get it
back, 'cause if I don't, I won't be complete. So I gotta dance and I gotta sing,
you know? I have this craving. Onstage is the only place I'm comfortable.
I'm not comfortable around…’ he paused, searching for the right word,
‘normal people. But when I get out onstage, I open up and I have no
problems.’ He seemed flustered, unnerved. ‘Whatever is happening in my
life doesn't matter. I'm up there and cuttin' loose and I say to myself, ‘This
is it. This is home. This is exactly where I'm supposed to be, where God
meant for me to be.’ I am unlimited when I'm onstage. I'm number one. But
when I'm off the stage,’ he shrugged his shoulders, ‘I'm not really…’ Again,
he paused, trying to find the right word. ‘Happy.’
Earlier in the day, I had conducted an interview with Sidney Lumet,
director of The Wiz. ‘Michael Jackson is the most gifted entertainer to come
down the pike since James Dean,’ Lumet told me. ‘He's a brilliant actor and
dancer, probably one of the rarest entertainers I have ever worked with.’
I shared Sidney's observation with Michael. He seemed embarrassed for a
moment. Then, he asked, ‘Who's James Dean?’
Later, he began talking about his role as the Scarecrow in The Wiz. ‘What
I like about my character,’ he observed, ‘is his confusion. He knows that he
has problems, I guess you could call them. But he doesn't know why he has
them or how he got that way. And he understands that he sees things
differently from the way everyone else does, but he can't put his finger on
why. He's not like other people. No one understands him. So he goes
through his whole life with this, uh…’ he paused, ‘confusion.’
Michael looked off into the distance, now seeming lost in his thought
process. ‘Everybody thinks he's very special, but, really, he's very sad. He's
so, so sad. Do you understand?’ He fixed his thoughtful gaze on me and
asked, again. ‘Do you understand his sadness?’
The Wiz is a Flop
When The Wiz was released in October 1978, it became a critical failure
and a box-office disappointment. The finished film was an overblown
spectacle, one that most people who were involved with would just as soon
take off their résumés. Even the commercial release of ‘Ease On Down the
Road’, teaming Michael with Diana Ross – a coupling that seemed destined
for the Top Ten, in theory – didn't even crack the Top Forty. Berry Gordy,
who had nothing to do with the actual production of the film and didn't
believe Diana should have been cast in it, has never discussed The Wiz,
publicly.
‘It was a big dream that got away,’ said producer Rob Cohen, in
retrospect. ‘A brilliant idea gone wrong. The knowledge that two years of
my life, twenty-three million dollars of Universal's money, thousands of
man hours of labour, and all of the hopes and dreams of everyone involved
went into a movie that didn't stand a chance makes me sick.’
Despite its failure, the making of The Wiz marked a personal victory for
Michael Jackson. Identifying himself with the role of the Scarecrow gave
him the opportunity to look within and discover a new sense of strength and
self-confidence. ‘Working in the movie showed me what makes kings of the
world and what makes giants,’ he said. ‘It showed me how I can believe in
myself in a way I never could before.’ He also expanded his professional
horizons and, in the process, won the respect of fellow workers, and even
some critics who had panned the movie.
Still, Michael could not ignore the fact that The Wiz was a failure at the
box office. He was shattered by it; he had never suffered such a high-profile
failure. ‘Did I make a mistake?’ he asked Rob Cohen a few weeks after the
movie was released. ‘Maybe I shouldn't have done the film? Maybe I
should have listened to my family. What will it mean to my career?’
‘Look, you followed your instincts,’ Rob told him. ‘We all did. Don't
second-guess yourself now. We have nothing to be ashamed of. We did the
best job we could.’
‘But – ’
‘But nothing,’ Rob said. ‘Go on with your life and career. Be a star.
You've only just begun.’
Joseph also supported Michael during this disappointing time. When one
of the brothers said something disparaging about the movie, Joseph gave
him a sharp punch on the shoulder. ‘Ouch! Joseph,’ said the brother. ‘That
hurt.’
‘Ouch, my ass,’ Joseph countered. ‘You don't criticize your brother. At
least he tried. How many movies have you made, big shot?’
Transition
At the end of 1978, Joseph Jackson severed his ties with Richard Arons. In
Richard's wake, Joseph recruited Ron Weisner and Freddy DeMann as
managers. Both were experienced in the entertainment field, Weisner as a
business manager and DeMann as a promoter. Joseph felt that he needed the
assistance of these men, both white, in order to insure that CBS would
promote The Jacksons as the company did its white artists. He believed that
the company considered his sons a ‘black act’ and was, therefore, restricting
the way it promoted and marketed them. Joseph's concern is a common, and
often justified, complaint of black acts signed to record companies, like
CBS, which are manned predominantly by white executives. Like Joseph,
many black managers maintain that white executives don't know how to
market black entertainment ‘across the board’, meaning to white record
buyers, as well as to black. Of course, Richard Arons is also white, so it was
clear that Joseph felt the new managers were more experienced as well, and
had more clout in the music business.
Joseph's strategy worked in America. Destiny sold over a million copies
and reached number eleven on Billboard's album chart, not bad for a group
that hadn't had a major record in some time.
Destiny didn't do as well in the UK, however. It took six months for it to
be released there, and the highest it hit was number thirty-three. But it was
now accepted that the Jacksons had sporadic sales in the UK; there was
little anyone could do about it. They simply weren't as hot in England as in
the States. That was fine with Joseph; the focus at this time was on US sales
anyway, not European.
However, Michael was still unhappy. Despite what his brothers tried to
promote, he knew in his heart that he and they were not fully responsible
for the success of Destiny. CBS had whipped up quite a publicity frenzy
about how terrific the brothers were as producers, yet it was not true. They
hadn't actually produced that album on their own; Michael hated living the
lie. He was too old for such nonsense, he felt. Gone were the days when it
was acceptable to promote such untruths.
Michael had never been dismayed about his life and career as he was
when he finished the 1979 Destiny tour. While on the road, he had lost his
voice making it necessary for Marlon to sing his higher-register parts while
Michael just moved his mouth. He found the process humiliating.
Eventually, two weeks of performances had to just be cancelled because of
Michael's throat problems.
Throughout the tour, Michael was tired and discouraged and couldn't
seem to find the unlimited supply of energy he had always relied upon in
the past. As enthusiastic as the audiences were to the show, Michael felt that
something was missing from it. Barely twenty-one, he felt he'd stopped
growing professionally; he was frustrated by being in a group. ‘It was the
same thing over and over,’ he told me in an interview after the tour. ‘It was
all for one and one for all, but I was starting to think that maybe I should be
doing some things on my own. I was getting antsy.’
To make matters worse, Michael loathed having to answer to Joseph and
was getting to the point where he didn't even want to be around him.
Though many industry observers believed that, based on the success of
Destiny, Joseph Jackson had become a brilliant entertainment manager,
Michael was not one of them. In Michael's view, his father used a shotgun
approach to his work: ‘If you shoot enough bullets, one will hit the target,
eventually,’ Michael explained. ‘But you can also waste a lot of
ammunition and maybe hit some targets you would rather not,’ Michael
explained. ‘Look at the way Joseph alienated Berry and everyone else at
Motown.’ Some people, Michael argued, determine their target, stalk it as
long as necessary, and then get it cleanly with one shot. ‘That's the way to
go,’ Michael reasoned.
In truth, Joseph would never be able to win with Michael, no matter how
many bull's-eyes he scored. Getting the group away from Motown was the
best thing he'd ever done, but Michael could not see it that way. His
perception of Joseph was understandably clouded by his personal views
about him, and his judgement of his father as a child abuser and philanderer.
There was no way Michael would be able to credit Joseph Jackson… with
anything… ever.
Michael didn't feel that the group had made an impact after leaving
Motown and signing with CBS, even though they had a hit with ‘Shake
Your Body’. It wasn't enough. He was tired of The Jackson 5 image. He
knew what he wanted to do: record another solo album, one for CBS that
would fulfil his ambition, expand his artistry and ease the restlessness that
had plagued him since the Destiny tour ended. Day after day, Michael
stayed alone in his bedroom pondering, as Marlon would later say, ‘who
knows what, he's very secretive.’
His brothers soon realized that something was different about Michael,
and it scared them. ‘Mike was acting strangely,’ Tito would remember. ‘It
was as if something had snapped in him. He stopped showing up at family
meetings, and when we discussed our future plans, he had nothing to offer.
Maybe he was plotting to go out on his own, I don't know. He never did say
much. You never really knew what he was thinking.’
‘I just didn't think it was fair that I had stopped recording solo albums,’
Michael would say years later when looking back on this time. ‘Part of our
contract with CBS was that I would get to record on my own. When that
wasn't happening because we hadn't been able to find the time, I started
getting nervous and upset.’
When Michael told his father that he wanted to record a solo album,
Joseph's reaction was predictable – supportive but with qualification. ‘Why
not?’ he remarked. ‘You know how I feel about it, Michael. Do what you
want as long as it doesn't interfere with group business.’
‘What does that mean?’ Michael wanted to know.
‘You know what it means,’ his father warned him. ‘Family is the most
important thing.’
Perhaps Joseph wasn't overly concerned about Michael doing a solo
album because, in truth, his albums never amounted to much: his first two
for Motown, Got to Be There and Ben (1971 and 1972 respectively), each
sold a little over 350,000 copies, which wasn't bad. However, his third
album, Music and Me (1973), sold only 80,286 copies, a dismal showing.
His last solo album for the company, Forever Michael (1975), did a little
better (99,311 copies). Albums featuring all of the Jacksons always sold
better than solo albums; let's not even get into the statistics for sales of
Jackie's solo album which, incidentally, was terrific. Joseph always felt it
was in everybody's best interest to keep the act together.
Therefore, if Michael felt the need to record a solo album in order to ‘get
it out of his system’, it was fine with Joseph – as long as the Boy Wonder
remembered that his first allegiance was to his family and to the group, not
to himself.
Off the Wall
When Michael Jackson set out to make his new solo album, he didn't know
what he wanted to be the final result. However, he knew what he didn't
want, and that was to make a record that sounded like a Jacksons' album.
From the start of his professional career, someone had decided the sound of
Michael's music. First, it had been Motown's crack production staff and
then the artist and repertoire executives at CBS/Epic. Though the family
was given the freedom to write and ‘produce’ the Destiny album, Epic
insisted that they record a song they didn't write, ‘Blame It on the Boogie’.
Other concessions and compromises were made along the way with the
three albums for that label, and Michael never felt totally responsible for the
results. While Destiny's hit single, ‘Shake Your Body’, re-established The
Jacksons in the marketplace, many observers in the music business felt as
Michael did, that the brothers had left their magic at Motown.
Now, Michael wanted more creative freedom. He wanted to do his next
album totally outside the family, even though the brothers tried desperately
to make his solo album a group production as soon as they heard about it.
They were hurt that Michael wanted to exclude them from the project, but
he stood firm. ‘I'm doing this on my own,’ he said. ‘They're just going to
have to understand. For once.’
Uncertain as to how to proceed, Michael called Quincy Jones, who had
offered a helping hand during production of The Wiz. The two had their first
exchange one day on the set as Michael rehearsed a scene in which, as the
Scarecrow, he pulled a slip of paper from his stuffing and read a quote by
Socrates. He attributed the statement to Soh-crates, as if it rhymed with ‘no
rates’. ‘That's the way I had always assumed it was pronounced,’ Michael
said later. When he heard the crew giggling, he knew he had it wrong.
‘Sock-ra-tease,’ someone whispered in his ear. ‘It's Sock-ra-tease?’
He turned and saw Quincy, the film's musical director. *
The older man extended his hand. ‘I'm Quincy Jones,’ he said with a
warm smile. ‘Anything I can do to help…’
Michael would remember the offer. A little more than a year later, he
called Quincy and asked him to suggest possible producers for his solo
endeavour. Quincy suggested himself.
Quincy seemed an unlikely choice of producer for Michael. He had
found success in the pop-R'B arena with his own albums, which were
virtual music workshops of musicians, writers and arrangers with Jones
overseeing the entire programme. Quincy had also found mainstream
success with the Brothers Johnson, a sibling duo out of Los Angeles, whose
platinum albums he produced. Still, most industry observers privately felt
that Quincy was too musically rigid to make a great pop record; many of
these people believed that his records with the Brothers Johnson, for
instance, though successful, sounded too homogenized.
However, Quincy had a long and varied show-business career, starting as
a fifteen-year-old trumpet player and arranger for Lionel Hampton. Over
the years, he immersed himself in studio work, arranging, composing, and
producing for Dinah Washington, Duke Ellington, Big Maybelle, Tommy
Dorsey and Count Basie. In the early sixties, he was a vice-president of
Mercury Records, the first black Executive at a major label. In 1963, he
began a second career in Hollywood, where he became the first black to
reach the top rank of film composers, with thirty-eight pictures to his credit,
including The Wiz.
‘I didn't even want to do The Wiz’ Quincy has said. ‘I thought, There's no
way the public is going to accept a black version of The Wizard of Oz. I
kept telling Sidney Lumet I didn't want to do it, but because he's a great
director and because he hired me to do my first movie soundtrack [The
Pawnbroker, 1965], I did it. Out of that mess came my association with
Michael Jackson.’
When Quincy and Michael came together in a recording studio in Los
Angeles to start laying rhythm tracks together in 1979, the artist and
producer turned out to be a perfect match. Quincy's in-studio work method
was to surround the artist with superior songs and fine musicians and then
let that artist have free reign. Michael had been so accustomed to being on a
short creative leash, he was ecstatic when Quincy began taking his ideas
seriously. Quincy recalled that, at first, he found Michael ‘very, very
introverted, shy, and non-assertive. He wasn't at all sure that he could make
a name for himself on his own. Neither was I.’
Quincy, on the other hand, hadn't worked with unharnessed brilliance like
Michael's since his days with some of the jazz greats. In Michael, he'd
finally found what he'd been looking for in a talent. As he would tell me,
‘Michael is the essence of what a performer and an artist are all about. He's
got all you need emotionally, and he backs it up with discipline and pacing.
He'll never burn himself out. Now I'm a pretty strong drill sergeant when it
comes to steering a project, but in Michael's case it's hardly necessary.’
Quincy was also amazed at Michael's versatility. ‘He can come to a
session and put down two lead vocals and three background parts in one
day,’ he said at the time. ‘He does his homework, rehearses and works hard
at home. Most singers want to do everything in the studio – write words and
music, figure out harmonies, try different approaches to a song. That makes
me crazy. All I can see is dollar signs going up. Studio time is expensive,
and that's why someone like Michael is a producer's dream artist. He walks
in, prepared. We accomplish so much in a single session, it stuns me. In my
opinion, Michael Jackson is going to be the star of the eighties and
nineties.’
The two developed a close rapport outside the studio as well, and over
the years, Michael would think of Quincy as a hip father figure. Michael
would confide in Quincy and take direction from him in a way that
reminded many observers of the kind of relationship the public thought
Michael had with Joseph. However, Quincy was the antithesis of the natural
father who used to hit Michael to get him to perform up to expectations.
‘When I'm in the studio, I don't believe in creating an atmosphere of
tension or hostility,’ Quincy once told Oprah Winfrey in an interview. ‘That
serves no purpose. I believe in creating an atmosphere of love.’
Finally, after listening to hundreds of songs, Michael and Quincy decided
on a batch to record. Among them were three Michael Jackson
compositions: the funky ‘Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough’, the dance-floor
scorcher ‘Working Day and Night’, and the prowling, urgent ‘Get on the
Floor’ (co-written with Louis Johnson, bassist of the Brothers Johnson).
Quincy sought to balance the mixture of songs with melodic pop ballads
like the emotional and symphonic ‘She's Out of My Life’, contributed by
songwriter-arranger Tom Bahler; the bright, melancholy ‘It's the Falling in
Love’, written by David Foster and Carole Bayer Sager; the cute, sugary
Paul McCartney song ‘Girlfriend’ and most significantly, the romantic,
mid-tempoed ‘Rock with You’, the driving ‘Burn This Disco Out’, and the
mighty ‘Off the Wall’, (which would end up as the title of the album), all
written by Rod Temper-ton, chief songwriter and keyboardist for the
Britain-based pop-R'B band, Heatwave.
With the songs selected, Quincy Jones then summoned a handful of crack
session players – keyboardists Greg Phillinganes, George Duke and
Michael Boddicker; guitarists David Williams and Larry Carlton; bassist
Louis Johnson; percussionist Paulinho DaCosta; and the Seawind Horns,
led by Jerry Hey – and they all went to work.
During ‘Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough’ (which would become Off the
Wall's first single), Michael unveiled a playful, sexy falsetto no one had
ever heard from him before. All of the right elements were in place on this
song: an unstoppable beat, a meticulous, well-balanced delivery of lyrics
and melody and a driving energy. Michael explained that he couldn't shake
the song's melody when it came to him one day. He walked throughout the
house humming and singing it to himself. Finally, he went into the family's
twenty-four-track studio and had Randy put the melody down on the piano
(Michael can't play). When he played it for Quincy, it was a done deal: it
had to be on the album.
‘Don't Stop’ was released on 28 July 1979. In less than three months, it
was top of the charts, Michael's first solo number-one record in seven years.
It soared to number three in the UK, a huge hit for him. It was also the
subject of his first solo video. When compared to the kind of musical videos
Michael would do in just a few years, ‘Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough’
comes across as primitive. In the only attempt at innovation, Michael
appears briefly dancing in triplicate. Still, it's fun and memorable because,
after all, it's the first one.
The album that resulted from all of Michael's work with Quincy, Off the
Wall, was released in August 1979. Almost as much attention had been
lavished on the album jacket as on the record itself. The cover photograph
showed Michael smiling broadly and wearing a natty tuxedo – and
glittering white socks. ‘The tuxedo was the overall game plan for the Off
the Wall album and package,’ said Michael's manager at the time, Ron
Weisner. ‘Michael had an image before that as a young kid, and all of a
sudden, here was a hot album and somebody very clean-looking. The
tuxedo was our idea as managers,’ Ron concluded. ‘The socks were
Michael's.’
Fans and industry peers alike were left with their mouths agape when Off
the Wall was issued to the public. Engineer Bruce Swedien had made sure
Quincy Jones's tracks and Michael Jackson's voice showed to their best
advantage. Michael's fans proclaimed that they hadn't heard him sing with
such joy and abandon since the early Jackson 5 days. The album showcased
an adult Michael Jackson, for the first time a real artist, not just someone's
vocal stylist.
Michael Jackson had officially arrived. The performances revealed sides
of him never before heard by record buyers. For instance, no one knew
Michael could be as smooth and sophisticated as he was on the album's
outstanding track, Stevie Wonder's ‘I Can't Help It’. The song was
important to the project because its luscious chord changes were the closest
Michael had ever come to singing jazz on record.
Even more revealing was an emotional Michael crying real tears on the
tail end of ‘She's Out of My Life’. (Jones would later comment that Michael
cried every time they cut the vocals. After several attempts with the same
results, the decision was made to leave the tears on the track.) The
understated arrangement of this song, also a crowd-pleaser with its sparse
keyboard accompaniment, allowed Michael to soulfully plead his regret of
lost love in a touching, sometimes searing, delivery.
When ‘Rock with You’ also made number one, and then ‘Off the Wall’
and ‘She's Out of My Life’ both went to number ten, Michael became the
first solo artist to have four Top Ten singles from one album in America. In
Britain, Off the Wall also made recording history with five hits released
from a single album. Although it would sell six million copies worldwide, it
never went beyond number three in the US and number five in the UK.
Michael was excited but cautious. ‘It's a start,’ he said.
Joseph was a bit concerned. ‘This thing with Michael, it's good,’ he said
to one of the family's attorneys. ‘I'm proud of the kid, but I'm worried.’
‘About what?’ asked the lawyer.
‘Too much independence,’ Joseph said. ‘It's not good.’
‘You know, throughout history, stars have left groups,’ said the attorney.
‘Sammy Davis left his family. Diana left The Supremes. Smokey left The
Miracles. It happens. You can't keep a good star down.’
Joseph shook his head. ‘Not in this family, it doesn't happen,’ he said.
‘Michael knows. He knows,’
When Off the Wall won only one Grammy (in an R'B category), Michael
was crushed. ‘It bothered me,’ he said. ‘I cried a lot. My family thought I
was going crazy, because I was weeping so much about it.’
‘He was so disappointed,’ Janet concurred. ‘I felt bad for him. But he
finally said, “You watch. The next album I do, you just… I'll show them.”’
For his part, though, Joseph wasn't so disappointed. ‘I think it's good to
keep things in perspective,’ he said, privately. ‘The boy doesn't need more
success, he needs to get into the studio with his brothers. That's what he
needs.’
Michael Turns Twenty-one…
and Gets His Own Lawyer
On 29 August 1979, Michael Jackson turned twenty-one. Even though he,
as a Jehovah's Witness, did not celebrate his birthdays, we in the media did,
especially the important ones. I had interviewed Michael for magazine
articles to mark important age milestones – ‘Michael Turns 16’, ‘Michael
Turns 18’ and even ‘Michael Turns 20’ – so I was happy to meet with him
once again for, yes, ‘Michael Turns 21’. It was a turning point in his life,
and he felt it in a keen way. He had come of age, was about to take his life
and career into his own hands. ‘I really feel that being a man is doing
exactly what you want to do in this life and to do it successfully and to
conquer a goal,’ he told me. ‘Age is just a number, I know. I'm no more a
man now than I was yesterday. But, still, it means something to me to be
twenty-one. I've seen a lot, done a lot. However, now I think things will be
different for me, better.
‘To me, Walt Disney is a real man,’ he observed. ‘Charlie Chaplin, a real
man. Fred Astaire, a real man. Bill Robinson, a real man. Not only did they
achieve goals, but look at how much joy they gave other people. People
looked up to them. I want people to look up to me, too. They made paths. I
want to make one, too. That's what being a man means to me.’
Just days after I interviewed Michael, he and Joseph had an argument,
one more bitter than any in recent memory. Michael decided that the time
had come to make it clear to his father that he wanted more control over his
career. Joseph didn't like being criticized by Michael, but he asked for it.
When he inquired as to the problems Michael had with the way things had
gone in the past, Michael gave him a list of grievances. In part, he didn't
like the way the situation with Jermaine had been handled, wasn't satisfied
with the way the group had left Motown, and was also unhappy with the
recent CBS product, with the exception of Off the Wall. Wisely, Michael
kept it all about business; he left out personal complaints and certainly
didn't address the subject of Joseph's blatant unfaithfulness to Katherine.
‘I let you make that movie, didn't I?’ Joseph shot back at him. ‘This is
how you repay me?’
‘You didn't let me make that movie,’ Michael answered, his eyes blazing.
‘I'm a grown-up now, Joseph. I'm Michael Jackson. I make my own
decisions.’
‘Why, you little…’ Joseph lifted his hand and was about to smack his
son, just like old times. However, he changed his mind. Michael gave him a
defiant look and walked away.
Joseph was as hurt as he was angry. He thought Michael was being far
too critical of him as a manager, and couldn't imagine how he had ended up
with a son who was such an ingrate. When Michael said he was going to
meet with an attorney to investigate his ‘options’, Joseph was crushed. Prior
to this time, Michael and his siblings only used Joseph's attorneys and
accountants. Now that Michael wanted his own representation, Joseph felt
as if his son didn't trust him. Of course, Michael didn't trust him. Michael
had more than a million dollars in his own bank account now, as a result of
Off the Wall, and he wanted to hang on to it. He realized that money was
power, and if he wished to break away from the family it was his bank
account that would best support that effort – not Joseph, and not his
brothers. All of this information was a rude awakening for Joseph. ‘All
right, fine. If that's what you want,’ he said, defeated. Wisely, he didn't want
to further antagonize his son. He hoped that Michael would not follow
through with the idea, that this particular storm would blow over. He was
wrong.
Michael's accountant, Michael Mesnick – who also represented the
Beach Boys – arranged for Michael to meet with three entertainment
lawyers and choose the one he liked best. First on the list was John Branca,
a thirty-one-year-old native New Yorker with a background in corporate tax
law and music industry negotiations for performers such as the Beach Boys,
Neil Diamond and Bob Dylan. Bright, young, aggressive and determined,
John was eager to make a name for himself in the entertainment industry.
Because he was more a rock and roll fan, John was only vaguely familiar
with Michael's music and career. However, when he checked with his
colleagues he was told that Michael was perceived by the music industry as
someone with the potential to be a superstar. John was intrigued. He
thought that Michael might be an artist he could take to the next level. At
the same time, he felt that an association with Michael could establish his
own career as an attorney.
John recalled that his meeting with Michael was a bit unusual. Michael
took his sunglasses off only once, at the beginning when he eyed John and
asked if the two had previously met. When they established that they hadn't,
Michael smiled and put his sunglasses back on. Michael Mesnick asked
John a list of questions, and Michael listened to the answers. At first, he
seemed shy and uncomfortable. Finally, when he began to relax, he told
John that the reason he needed representation was that he wanted
independence from his family, ‘once and for all,’ and especially from his
father. At that time, The Jacksons had a group contract with Epic; Michael
said he wanted one for himself as a solo artist, as well as a member of The
Jacksons. Also, he wanted all of his business affairs reviewed, including his
publishing deal and his record sales.
John was enthusiastic, full of valuable information and eager to assist in
any way possible. He was also, as far as Michael was concerned, the right
man for the job. After the meeting, Michael cancelled the other two
interviews, and hired John Branca. John was impressed with Michael's total
belief in himself, he said, later. It was infectious; John could not wait to get
started working for him.
Early in their relationship Michael confided in John his two principal
goals: first of all, he said, he wanted to be ‘the biggest star in show
business’. Secondly, he wanted to be ‘the wealthiest’. He told John that he
was angry that Off the Wall had only garnered one Grammy nomination. ‘I
sold five million in the US, six million foreign. That's a big record,’ he told
him. ‘It was totally unfair that it didn't get Record of the Year, and it can
never happen again.’
Michael was frustrated by what he saw as a lack of respect from the
entertainment industry. For instance, he felt he deserved to be on the cover
of Rolling Stone and asked his publicist, Norman Winter, to try to arrange it.
‘We would very much like to do a major piece on Michael Jackson but feel
it is not a cover story,’ was publisher Jann Wenner's response in a letter to
Winter (dated 27 November 1979).
When Michael saw that letter, he became exasperated. ‘I've been told
over and over again that black people on the covers of magazines don't sell
copies,’ he complained. ‘Just wait. Someday those magazines are going to
be begging me for an interview. Maybe I'll give them one. And maybe I
won't.’
For the next twenty-odd years, John Branca would, unarguably, be the
single most important figure in Michael Jackson's career. He would
negotiate every business deal for him, become a trusted friend and adviser,
and see to it that this talented kid from Gary realized both of his goals.
John's first course of action was to renegotiate Michael's CBS contract
with the company's president, Walter Yetnikoff. John managed to secure for
Michael the highest royalty rate in the business at that time: thirty-seven per
cent of a hundred per cent of wholesale, which was the same rate given to
Neil Diamond and Bob Dylan. He also made a deal with Walter and with
The Jacksons' legal representation, John Mason, that Michael could leave
The Jacksons at any time in the future. John Branca worked it out that if
Michael did leave the group, CBS would still be obligated to record The
Jacksons without him. It was a nice gesture and one that placated Joseph.
He fully believed that without Michael the group could continue because, as
he had been putting it for years, ‘It's not all about Michael.’ Of course,
Joseph must have known better, but his focus was always on family.
From this point on, legally and thanks to John Branca, Michael Jackson
would never have to record another song with his brothers, unless he truly
wanted to do it. Obviously, the Jackson brothers weren't happy with
Michael's new independence, but the full ramifications of the deal would
not hit them for a while. They were accustomed to Michael doing solo
albums, and still felt secure that he would remain with the group. (Of
course, in structuring Michael's freedom, he and John Branca had not
considered the ‘Katherine factor’, soon to come into play: if the brothers
would want Michael to do something he didn't want to do, they would learn
to ask their mother to intervene.)
Michael's new deal was impressive, so much so that his brother, Randy,
who suddenly had solo aspirations, decided that he wanted to hire John
Branca. During a lunch meeting with him, John asked Michael what he
thought of the idea. ‘I think it stinks,’ Michael told him, according to the
attorney's memory. ‘I can't believe it. I do this one thing for myself, hiring
you, and now they're all gonna try to weasel in on it. You wait, first Randy.
Next, you'll be hearing from Jackie. Probably Tito wants to do a record,
too.’
‘Are you saying you don't want me to represent Randy?’ John asked with
a smile. He couldn't help but be bemused by Michael's adamant reaction
(not to mention the notion of Tito Jackson making a record).
‘What I'm saying,’ Michael told him, his voice crisp and cool, ‘is that I
don't want you representing Randy, Jackie, Tito or anyone else with the last
name Jackson, ever. If you do, then we'll be finished, you and I.’
‘You got it,’ John agreed.
‘Oh, and another thing,’ Michael added. ‘I don't want Randy to know that
this is my decision,’ Michael added. ‘I want you to make it look like it's
yours.’
‘Cool,’ John said. The two shook hands. They were developing trust in
one another, and nothing could come of such faith but the very best that the
record business had to offer – for both of them.
Joseph's Secret
Many people today think of Michael Jackson as an enigma. It's ironic that,
twenty-some years ago, his father, Joseph, was thought of in exactly the
same way – if not by the public, most certainly by his family and friends.
‘Sometimes, I think he leads a double life,’ Michael said of his father back
then. ‘He is a very mysterious person.’ Of course, Joseph's other life
involved the women with whom he had assignations outside of his
marriage. But was there more? In 1980, office employees at Joseph Jackson
Productions began to suspect that their boss was trying to hide more than
just infidelity.
By early 1980, a nineteen-year-old employee named Gina Sprague had
become particularly close to Joseph. Gina is of Mexican-English-Irish
descent. At five feet five, one hundred pounds, with shoulder-length brown
hair, she was vivacious, intelligent and gorgeous. Joseph was taken by her.
However, she insists that she and Joseph were not having an affair, though
many Jackson intimates do not believe her. They were, she says, just close
friends. ‘He needed a friend,’ she said. ‘He was so estranged from his
family. Sometimes, he would need to talk. I was there for him. I knew he
had a reputation of being a womanizer, but that is not what our relationship
was about.
‘If he believed in you, he gave you enough strength and courage to try
and attain your goal, even if you didn't think you could do it. Once I knew
him, I could understand why the family had become superstars. I had to
remind Joseph that he should be proud. I used to tell him, “Sure, Michael
and the rest get all of the attention, but look at where they came from.”
‘“The kid hates my guts,” he said of Michael. I said, “Joseph, that's not
true.” He said, “You haven't seen the way he looks at me.” There were tears
in his eyes. “The kid hates me, Gina. Hates my guts. They all do.”
‘One thing that struck me very strange is that Michael and his brothers
and sisters called him Joseph,’ she recalled. ‘The first time Janet came into
my office she was about thirteen. She walked in and, in a very flip manner,
said, “Hello. Where's Joseph?” Or Michael would call. “Hello, Gina, this is
Michael. Is Joseph there?” And I would say, “Your father is in a meeting at
the moment.”’
One day Gina, concerned about Joseph's recent mercurial behaviour and
mysterious disappearances, asked him what was going on in his life. ‘I'm
not gonna tell you,’ he said with some hesitation. ‘Instead, I'll show you.’
Joseph then drove Gina to a building in a suburban Los Angeles
neighbourhood where he introduced Gina to Cheryl Terrell. Then, a small
African-American child of about six years of age came bounding into the
living room. ‘Daddy! Daddy!’ she exclaimed.
‘There she is,’ Joseph said with a big smile. ‘My little girl.’ He scooped
the child up in his arms and hugged her tightly.
As he later explained it, Joe and Cheryl Terrell had an affair in 1973. The
result of that relationship was a daughter, Joh'Vonnie, born in Los Angeles
on 30 August 1974, the day after Michael's sixteenth birthday. Joseph
Walter Jackson's name appears on the birth certificate. His occupation is
listed as ‘entertainment manager’. His age was recorded as forty-six at the
time of the baby's birth; the mother's age, twenty-six.
Joseph kept the secret for many years but by 1980 he had decided to tell
his family about his daughter. He wanted to become more involved in her
upbringing and wanted her to be recognized as a member of the family.
After breaking the ice with Gina, Joseph gathered his sons together in a
dressing room after a performance to tell them that they had a half-sister.
One can only wonder what he thought their reaction to such news might be
– and why he decided to tell them the news before telling Katherine? Of
course, they were all upset. The sons then told the daughters, who were also
hurt and angry. The children then wrestled with the question of how to tell
Katherine, or, if they even should tell her. What a burden it was for them to
have this information. In the end, according to LaToya, one of the brothers
– it's not known which one – told Katherine. Of course, she was overcome
with understandable emotions.
After she and Joseph had it out, there was nothing to do but deal with the
situation as it existed. As a practical woman committed to family values,
Katherine put her feelings aside and agreed that Joseph had a responsibility
to Joh'Vonnie and to her mother. As a way of providing for them, she and
Joseph purchased a three-bedroom home in Van Nuys, a suburb of Los
Angeles, for $169,000. As a trustee of his daughter's estate, Joseph then
signed the property over to Joh'Vonnie. She and her mother then moved into
the home. Katherine could do no more than that. Her nephew, Tim
Whitehead (Tim's mother was Katherine's sister, Hattie, and his father is
Joseph's stepbrother, Vernon), said, ‘Joseph wanted the child to be accepted
into the family, but there was no way that was going to happen, I'm afraid.
It was too painful for my aunt, and for the children. This was difficult,
heartbreaking.’
According to Jerome Howard, Joseph's and Katherine's former finances
manager, ‘Katherine told me she went into the grocery store one day and
saw Joseph's girlfriend and the daughter. She said she just stood there,
frozen. “Jerome, the girl looks exactly like Joseph,” she said.’
Though Katherine seemed to be acting in a logical and sensible manner,
she was not as unfazed by the news of Joh'Vonnie's existence as she may
have wanted people to believe. Michael would indicate later that it was at
this time that he sensed an emotional transformation in his mother. She
rarely smiled during these days. Her temper would flare over unimportant
matters. She ever swore from time to time, which was unusual, and had
called Joh'Vonnie a ‘bastard’. When Michael protested, she suggested that if
he looked up the word in the dictionary, he would find that she was using it
properly. Apparently, Joseph's indiscretions had worn her down, chipped
away at her self-esteem, her pride. She now sometimes seemed bitter and
angry.
Even though Katherine was going through an ordeal, and the family was
being torn apart by the recent turn of events, the Jacksons had no choice but
to continue to express a strong sense of unity to the media. Public relations
was an important consideration. The family had been turning away from
reality and toward image-making ever since they arrived in Los Angeles
from Gary. However, for Michael, nothing would ever be the same. Joseph's
actions had resulted in the ultimate betrayal of his mother, indeed his entire
family, and Michael would have a difficult time dealing with his father on
any level, for many years. Despite what people may have thought, Michael
somehow expected more from his father.
Though Katherine was clearly angry, and had good reason to be, she was
a religious woman who desperately wanted to be a forgiving Jehovah's
Witness. She would not confide in anyone about her fury, would not discuss
her hurt over what had happened with Cheryl Terrell and Joh'Vonnie. It was
just a matter of time before her suppressed rage would erupt, especially
when she heard rumours in the summer of 1980 that Joseph was having an
affair with Gina Sprague, the woman in whom he had first confided about
Joh'Vonnie. Some of her friends felt that Katherine Jackson was much like a
time bomb, ticking, ticking, ticking… about to explode.
Katherine is Pushed Too Far
As time passed, Gina Sprague began to ‘cover’ for Joseph Jackson
whenever he wanted to visit his daughter. ‘Even though the family knew
about her, he didn't want to flaunt her,’ says Gina. ‘Sometimes, they would
call and ask for him and, even though I knew he was with Joh'Vonnie and
maybe even Cheryl, I would lie and say he was in a meeting, or otherwise
unavailable. This went on for months.’
Because Joseph and Gina seemed to share so many secrets, the word was
out in his production company that they were having an affair. According to
Gina, someone in the office began feeding misinformation to Katherine,
who was already suspicious of all of Joseph's female friends and still
reeling from the shock of Cheryl and Joh'Vonnie.
One day, the phone rang. Gina picked it up. ‘Good afternoon, Joseph
Jackson Productions.’
‘I want you to quit your job,’ said a female voice. ‘Do you hear me?
Quit, or we're coming to get you.’
‘What? Who is this?’ Gina asked, panicked.
The caller hung up.
Gina was upset. She went straight to Joseph and told him about the
mysterious call.
‘Oh, that's just nonsense,’ Joseph told her, barely glancing up from his
paperwork. ‘No one is coming after you, Gina,’ said. ‘I promise you. You'll
be fine.’
The next day, 16 October 1980, at three o'clock in the afternoon, Gina
was behind her desk in the reception area of Joseph Jackson Productions,
6255 Sunset Boulevard, Suite 1001 (the same building in which Motown
Records was housed), when Randy Jackson, then eighteen, entered. He
asked two other employees to leave the office so that he and Gina could be
alone. The two employees did as they were told. Randy then also left for a
moment, and returned with Janet, fourteen, and with Katherine. A bitter
argument about Gina's relationship with Joseph ensued.
Then, according to what Gina told police, matters got out of control and
Katherine, Randy and Janet pulled her into a stairwell and assaulted her.
When Jim Krieg, an office security guard, heard screams, he ran to
investigate and later said he observed Randy holding Gina against the wall
while Katherine pummelled her with her purse. Upon seeing the guard,
Janet hissed at him, ‘Leave, mister. This is a family affair.’ He left, as
instructed by the fourteen-year-old. Katherine grabbed a gold medallion
from Gina's neck. ‘This belongs to me,’ she said. ‘Not you.’ When one of
Diana Ross's brothers happened by, he asked ‘Mother, what are you doing?’
[Many of her friends called Katherine ‘Mother’.] ‘Go about your business,
this is a family matter,’ she told him, according to what he later recalled. He
ran off, stunned. The rest of the police report is graphic in its account of the
violence Gina says took place that afternoon.
Joseph was in a meeting with his door closed. When Gina came
stumbling back into the office suite, she was crying. He ran out of his
private office. ‘My God, what happened to you?’ he asked her.
Too upset to speak, Gina collapsed on to the floor. Police officers and an
ambulance, summoned by Jim Krieg, arrived on the scene. When medics
lifted Gina to put her on a stretcher, she let out a piercing scream. Joseph
leaned over and whispered urgently in Gina's ear, ‘Tell me, who did this to
you? Was it some crazy fan?’
‘It was Katherine,’ Gina said through her tears, her voice lowered so as
not to be heard by anyone by Joseph.
Joseph's eyes widened. ‘But that can't be true,’ he whispered.
‘It is true, Joseph,’ Gina insisted.
Gina Sprague was taken to Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center, where
she was treated for multiple cuts, bruises, and a minor head injury. Joseph
did not visit her there. She was released the next day. Exhausted, she went
to bed as soon as she got home. Just as she was about to doze off, she heard
loud voices, as her friend refused to allow Joseph into the house. Gina got
up and went to the door. ‘You can let him in,’ she said.
Joseph looked worn out from lack of sleep, sapped of his usual vitality.
With some hesitation, Gina's friend left them alone.
‘Why, Joseph?’ Gina asked him, according to her memory.
‘I just can't believe she would do that,’ Joseph said, putting his head in
his hands. Gina had never seen him this way before; it was a shock. Still,
she was furious with him.
‘You called the cops, didn't you? Now what's gonna happen?’ Joseph
asked. ‘And you, of all people in my life, know how much I love my family.
They're everything to me.’
Gina shook her head in astonishment. ‘I was trying to cover up for you so
you could visit Joh'Vonnie, and this is what happened to me because of it,’
she said, angrily. ‘Don't you even care about that?’
‘What I care about is my family,’ Joseph repeated. He wiped his eyes
with the back of his hand. ‘I have worked so hard,’ he said, reaching into
the breast pocket of his jacket. Then, with a shaking hand, he pulled out an
envelope and handed it to Gina. Inside, as Gina recalled it, there was a
cheque for a large sum of money.
‘Take it,’ Joseph instructed. ‘It's yours.’
She gave him an incredulous look. ‘I don't want your money, Joseph,’ she
said. She crumpled the cheque and threw it at him. ‘Leave my house,’ she
demanded. ‘How dare you?’
Floundering, Joseph walked out of the room, his head drooping. Gina
slammed the door behind him.
Michael was stunned by the way his mother, sister and brother had
supposedly attacked Gina. He could not reconcile such a violent act with
the image of his beloved and gentle mother. He refused to believe it, and
insists to this day that it never happened. Most of the family, though, knows
that Katherine had reached her limit. ‘Basically, Joseph was in love with
that girl Gina,’ recalled Tim Whitehead. ‘And my aunt didn't like it and
wanted it to stop. She became extremely upset, and went to the office to see
Gina. After so many years, Kate had just reached her breaking point. You
can only push a person so far.’
Gina decided not to press charges against the Jacksons. She says that her
attorney told her not to bother, ‘because those rich people will never be
going to jail, and you'll be wasting your time trying to put them there.’
Instead, she filed a twenty-one-million-dollar civil lawsuit against
Katherine, Janet and Randy.
Katherine, Randy and Janet denied that the incident ever happened. They
claimed in their answer to the suit that Gina would never have been injured
if she had exercised ‘ordinary care on her behalf’, which seemed… odd.
In the end, Gina and Joseph negotiated an out-of-court settlement, the
details of which she is not at liberty to disclose. ‘I felt sorry for them,’ she
concludes. ‘I loved that family. I know that I was the proverbial straw that
broke the camel's back, but like I told Katherine in court, next time, kick his
ass. Not mine.’
Jane Fonda
At this time, the autumn of 1980, Michael supervised a music video of the
Jacksons' song ‘Can You Feel It?’. Ironically, considering what was going
on at home with Gina Sprague, the song, written by Michael and Randy, is
an anthem to loving human relations. In the video, the brothers appear as
superhuman behemoths hoisting a colourful rainbow to light the heavens.
They sprinkle Stardust upon the earth, which causes small children of all
races and colours to beam at them with appreciation. Bathed in rainbow
hues, the youngsters gaze up in wonder at Michael and his brothers. In
return, the Jacksons smile down upon the children benevolently; Michael
with the biggest smile of all.
‘It's a nice place Michael comes from,’ Steven Spielberg has observed. ‘I
wish we could all spend some time in his world.’
Michael also became close to actress Jane Fonda, at this time forty-two,
about twenty years Michael's senior, who would try to encourage him to see
his mother in a more human light. He and Jane met in 1980 at a press
function in Los Angeles. The two discussed their lives, both having come
from show-business families, and quickly became close. Some people in
Michael's world have speculated that the reason he gravitated towards
powerful women who seem self-sufficient, such as Diana Ross and, later,
Elizabeth Taylor, was because he had felt so helpless while watching his
mother being abused by Joseph. He viewed Katherine as weak and
victimized, therefore he searched for a substitute mother, a strong woman
he could emulate and respect. It's as good a theory as any other; who
knows? Maybe he just likes to hang out with divas.
Jane's Fonda's father, legendary actor Henry Fonda, had been an
emotionally distant, difficult man, much like Michael's father, Joseph. She
understood Michael's anger at the way Joseph treated his wife, Katherine,
had similarly heated emotions about her own parents, and had worked for
years to resolve them. She invited Michael to stay with her in her cabin on a
New England lake as she and her father, along with veteran actress,
Katharine Hepburn, filmed On Golden Pond. ‘In some ways,’ Jane Fonda
recalled, ‘Michael reminded me of the walking wounded, an extremely
fragile person.’
As Michael sat with Katharine Hepburn with a tape-recorder, she shared
anecdotes about her life. ‘Every one included some kind of message for
Michael,’ said Jane, ‘about the way he might want to handle fame, about
the way he might want to deal with his life. They became good friends. He
just thought she was fascinating.’
While in New England, Michael also befriended Henry Fonda.
He and Jane, though, were the closest. As he told me, ‘We would go out
on the water together in a row boat and just talk, talk and talk… you name
it: politics, philosophers, racism, Vietnam, acting, all kinds of things.’
Once, Michael and Jane were taking a drive – Jane was behind the wheel
– and they were discussing possible film projects for him. ‘God, Michael, I
wish I could find a movie I could produce for you,’ she said, wistfully.
Suddenly, an idea occurred to her. ‘I know what you've got to do,’ she said.
‘Peter Pan! That's it!’
Tears began to well in Michael's eyes. He wanted to know why she
would suggest that character. She told him that, in her mind's eye, he really
was Peter Pan, the symbol of youth, joy and freedom.
Michael began to weep. ‘You know all over the walls of my room are
pictures of Peter Pan. I totally identify with Peter Pan,’ he said, wiping his
eyes, ‘the lost boy of Never-Never Land.’
When the subject of Katherine came up between them during one
conversation, Michael confided in Jane about the Gina Sprague incident.
According to Bernice Littman, who was a Beverly Hills friend of Jane
Fonda's and worked for her as a personal assistant at this time, ‘Jane
thought the whole [Katherine vs. Gina.] thing was tragic, and that Michael
was too fragile to handle it. She also felt badly for Michael's mother and
wondered just how far a woman has to be pushed before she reacts in such a
way. She spent a lot of time trying connect with him, really worked at it,
took it on as a true concern in her life. “I feel a responsibility to him,” she
told me, “just from one human being to another. He so needs love.” “You
have to stop trying to find strength in other people,” she told him one day
during one of their talks. He was at her home in the library with her; I was
in the outer office. “Your mother has flaws, Michael, just as we all do. But
you're an adult, now,” she said. “Why not let your mother be who she is,
and find your own strength, within?” I don't think Michael could understand
what she was saying. “Can you help me?” he asked her. “I'm so miserable.
I'm having a terrible life.” They embraced. “You're having a wonderful life,
Michael,” she said. “These are just hard years, but it'll get better. I
promise.”
‘Michael sobbed like a baby,’ said Bernice. ‘So did I. I stood outside of
the library and just cried. It was so sad. He was so sad. It was as if he was
an alien, just visiting, from another world.’
Meanwhile, in the real world, a CBS Records executive telephoned
Michael to ask him how he should handle the press, who had begun asking
questions about his mother.
‘What do you mean? Michael wondered.
‘The Gina Sprague incident.’
‘Who's she?’ Michael asked, snappishly.
‘The woman who got into the disagreement with your mother, Randy and
Janet.’
‘That never happened,’ Michael said, quickly.
‘But – ’
‘I'm sorry,’ Michael concluded, ‘but I have to go, now.’
With that, he hung up the phone. Michael was withdrawing deeper into
his fantasy world, a place where such things as his mother possibly
assaulting his father's girlfriend would never occur. He was becoming more
distant, harder to reach. How long would it be before no one, not even
someone like Jane Fonda, would be able to connect with him? It would
simply be too painful for him to allow anyone to get that close.
The First ‘Nose Job’… and Other Freedoms
Despite the inroads he had made towards independence from his family, by
1981, Michael Jackson still felt that his life was spinning out of control.
When he was onstage, performing, he could transform himself into the
desirable person of his dreams: a sexy, outgoing, confident person who
exerted total control over himself and his audience. But offstage was
another story. When he looked in the mirror, he saw a person he didn't like
very much, a person who still allowed himself to be controlled by other
people, whose talent was respected but whose opinions didn't matter. He'd
begun to work on some of that with John Branca, but what could he do
about the physical appearance of the man in the mirror? He'd never felt
handsome, that's for certain, and by 1981 he had a litany of personal
complaints, all adding to his deep insecurity.
Michael considered rhinoplasty surgery, popularly known as ‘a nose job’,
as a possibility to thin out his wide nose. Since about the age of thirteen,
he'd always been fixated on the size of his nose, and his brothers had only
made matters worse with their nickname for him: Big Nose. Wide, flat
noses were a Jackson family trait, inherited from Joseph. Michael had been
threatening to have the surgery for years, but he was too afraid actually to
go through with it. However, in the spring of 1979, he tripped during a
complicated dance routine, fell onstage… and broke his nose. Fate had
intervened; he had no choice. He flew back to Los Angeles and had his first
rhinoplasty.
Gina Sprague recalled, ‘Joseph told me he doubted that Michael would
ever have had the nose job if he didn't have to do it. That was the first. No
one ever dreamed what it would lead to in the future. After the bandages
came off, Michael liked what he saw.’
The result of that first surgery is the nose seen on the cover of Michael's
Off the Wall album, one just a bit smaller than the one with which he was
born. Indeed, Michael's face had been surgically transformed, confirming
the notion for him that his appearance was one thing over which he could
absolutely exert control if he wanted to do so. However, afterwards Michael
complained of some breathing problems, and trouble singing. He was then
referred to Dr Steven Hoefflin, who would suggest a second surgery.
Hoefflin would perform that surgery, and others that Michael would
eventually have on his face.
His friend, Jane Fonda was sufficiently distressed enough about
Michael's new plastic surgery to approach him about it. She was perceptive
enough to speculate that the real reason for the operations on his nose was
not so that he could look like Diana Ross – as rumoured – but, so that he
would not end up looking like his father, Joseph. She was a different kind of
friend for Michael, a person with more on her mind than just show business.
Thoughtful and direct, she was the only person in his life who actually
confronted Michael about his surgeries. ‘I want you to stop now,’ she told
Michael, according to a later recollection. ‘No more. Promise me you won't
go too far with this thing. Love yourself the way you are, for who you are.’
‘I'll try,’ Michael promised.
‘And stand up straight,’ she told him, as if his school teacher. ‘You must
look like you are somebody important, and that you understand what you're
doing and why you are here. If you at least look self-confident, maybe you
won't be so shy.’
‘Yes, Jane.’
But Michael obviously was not self-confident. By 1980, he had his new
nose, but he was still desperately unhappy. ‘Even at home, I'm lonely,’ he
said. ‘I sit in my room sometimes and cry. It's so hard to make friends, and
there are some things you can't talk to your parents or family about. I
sometimes walk around the neighbourhood at night, just hoping to find
someone to talk to. But I just end up coming home.’ The notion of Michael
Jackson – a world-renowned superstar – walking around his Encino
neighbourhood in search of someone to talk to is startling. Imagine the
depth of his despair, his loneliness.
The fact that his face was still broken out with acne did not help matters.
Michael had read that the types of greasy foods he enjoyed contributed to
the problem. Jermaine, who also had acne, became a vegetarian in order to
solve the problem. It worked. Michael decided that he would do the same.
One unexpected consequence of the diet was that he lost weight. Michael
was certainly not fat, obviously, but he still had ‘baby fat’ around his waist,
and his face was full. He longed to be slimmer, to have what he called ‘a
dancer's body’. In time, his figure would become more streamlined and the
roundness in his face would disappear. His acne would also clear up. Many
people would think that Michael had ‘cheek implant’ surgery in 1980, but
the new, clearly defined lines of his face were actually brought about by the
gradual weight loss he had experienced after becoming a vegetarian, and
also by the natural aging process.
It was John Branca's suggestion that, if Michael wanted to forge some
independence he might want to consider purchasing his own real estate. He
was twenty-two. Why did he have to live at home? The idea of moving
away from Joseph was exhilarating for Michael, even though he didn't want
to leave Katherine. Still, he thought he might try it. Therefore, in February
of 1981, Michael bought a three-bedroom, three-bathroom condominium at
5420 Lindley Avenue in Encino for $210,000. He paid $175,000 in cash.
The balance – .$35,000 – came from Katherine. In exchange, Michael gave
her equity in the condominium as sole and separate property, meaning she
did not have to share it with Joseph as community property. It was his way
of giving her a bit of freedom, as well. Certainly, Michael didn't need her to
contribute $35,000. No doubt, she wanted to pay for the possibility of
having her own freedom, just like her son. ‘Now, if you can't stand him for
another second,’ Michael said, speaking of Joseph, ‘you can move here. It
will be great. We could live here together, imagine that! And without him.’
In the end, Michael could not go through with it; he couldn't move out,
especially since Katherine didn't want to go, either. ‘I just don't feel it's time
for me to move away from home yet,’ he said. ‘If I moved out now, I'd die
of loneliness. Most people who move out go to discos every night. They
party every night. They invite friends over, and I don't do any of those
things.’ (In a couple of years, Michael would move into the condominium
temporarily, along with other family members, when the Encino home was
remodelled. He still owns the condominium today; it has been used as a
haven for his brothers when they have had marital difficulties.)
In the spring of 1981, plans were being finalized for The Jacksons to
embark on a thirty-nine-city concert tour of the United States to support
their new album, called Triumph. Michael didn't want to go. One problem
he had with touring concerned the enormous amount of preparation and
work involved. Then when it was over, it was over – unlike a movie or a
video, which is timeless and lasting. ‘What's so sad about the whole thing is
that you don't capture the moment,’ he told me of live performances. ‘Look
at how many great actors or entertainers have been lost to the world because
they did a performance one night and that was it. With film, you capture it,
it's shown all over the world, and it's there for ever. Spencer Tracy will
always be young in Captains Courageous, and I can learn and be stimulated
by his performance.
‘So much is lost in live theatre. Or vaudeville. Do you know how much I
could have learned by watching all of those entertainers? When I perform, I
feel like I'm giving a whole lot but for nothing. I like to capture things and
hold them and share them with the world.’
He really had no choice, however. His family wanted him to go on the
road with them – the tour was projected to gross millions of dollars for
them – the record label had also insisted upon a tour… so there would be a
tour. Michael just hoped that it would, in some way, unite the family after
such difficult times at home. He was frustrated and upset, but he would
force himself along. Still, some would notice a cold implacability on his
face when with the family at rehearsals. He seemed removed from the
proceedings, not involved, not interested.
Before embarking on the Triumph tour, Michael underwent the second
rhinoplasty surgery recommended by Dr Steven Hoefflin. ‘He didn't tell his
family he was doing it,’ said Marcus Phillips. ‘He just did it. He came home
all black and blue and bandaged, and Katherine said, “Michael, what in the
world happened to you?” She must have thought he'd been beaten up. “Did
you break your nose again?” she asked. He told her he hadn't, that his
doctor recommended a second operation. Then, he went to his bedroom and
stayed there for a week, coming down to the kitchen every now and then for
some vegetables.
‘One thing I know to be true is that Michael was elated about the fact that
with the second nose job he looked less like his father,’ Marcus Phillips
said. ‘That appealed to him very much. If he couldn't erase Joseph from his
life, at least he could erase him from the reflection in the mirror. Already, he
was talking about having a third nose job.’
Even though Michael never discussed his surgery with anyone, he was
crying out for help, becoming obsessed by the appearance of the man in the
mirror, and a dangerous pattern was beginning to emerge.
In June 1981, Michael and Quincy Jones began work on a storytelling
record book of Steven Spielberg's film, E. T. Michael would also be
featured as vocalist on one song, ‘Someone in the Dark’, written by Alan
and Marilyn Bergman. Michael was so enchanted by the story of E. T. that
he couldn't wait to meet the animated extraterrestrial ‘actor’ when a
publicity photo session was arranged. ‘He grabbed me, he put his arms
around me,’ Michael said of the animatronic robot, his face filled with
child-like wonder. ‘He was so real that I was talking to him. I kissed him
before I left. The next day, I missed him.’
Later in the month, Michael went into the studio with Diana Ross to
produce a song for her called ‘Muscles’ – named after his pet snake.
Michael was ecstatic about the opportunity to produce a record for his idol.
Some claimed that the reason Michael had his plastic surgery was in order
to look more like Miss Ross. However, as one Jackson confidant put it, ‘If
Michael Jackson wanted to look like Diana Ross, believe me, he had the
millions to look exactly like Diana Ross. That was never his intention.
However, that's not to say that he wasn't tickled that people thought he
resembled her. “Do you really think I do?” he would ask, tilting his head in
a pose. “Because if I do, wow! How amazing would that be.”’
At this time, Diana had left Motown and was recording her second album
for RCA, Silk Electric. The album was shaping up to be a disaster and she
needed something outstanding on the collection, which is why she
contacted Michael. ‘I was coming back from England, working on Paul
McCartney's album, zooming along on the Concorde, and this song popped
into my head,’ Michael recalled. ‘I said, “Hey, that's perfect for Diana.” I
didn't have a tape recorder or anything, so I had to suffer for like three
hours. Soon as I got home, I whipped that baby on tape.’
Diana has said that Michael seemed intimidated by her while the two of
them worked together in the studio. He couldn't bring himself to direct her.
‘You're the man,’ Diana insisted, an admiring look in her eyes. ‘You're
the boss on this one.’ Diana wanted Michael to take control of the recording
session, but it was difficult for him. ‘In the end, the song just sort of
produced itself,’ said a friend of Diana's. The kinky lyrics of ‘Muscles’
extol the joys of a man's muscles ‘all over your body’. ‘I don't know
whether it's supposed to be Michael's fantasy or mine,’ Diana said when it
was finally released.
Either way, it was a Top Ten record for Diana Ross.
The Triumph tour began in Memphis, Tennessee, on 9 July 1981, and ended
with a record-breaking, sell-out, four-night engagement at the Los Angeles
Forum. The biggest numbers of the show were always Michael's solo songs
from the Off the Wall album. There were also special effects arranged by
magician Doug Henning: Michael seemed to disappear into a puff of smoke
after performing ‘Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough’. Offstage, Michael also
seemed to want to disappear, rarely socializing with his brothers or the rest
of the entourage. ‘This is my last tour,’ he promised anyone who asked. ‘I
will never do this again. Ever.’
Being on the road with him made the Jackson brothers realize how far
Michael had distanced himself from them. He started talking to the press
about the possibility of a solo career. ‘I think that will happen gracefully in
the future,’ he told Paul Grein of Billboard. ‘I think the public will ask for
it. That's definitely going to happen.’
It was not what his brothers wanted to hear. It didn't help them feel any
more secure when Michael began involving himself more in the business
end of the show. For instance, one day he was scheduled to rehearse with
the group when someone handed him a copy of the contract for the trucks
that were to carry equipment for the tour. Michael glanced at it and said,
‘Wait, I need to check something with my lawyer.’
‘That can wait, Michael,’ Jackie said, bristling with anger. ‘This rehearsal
is important.’
Michael ignored his older brother's remark, left the stage area and found
a telephone. He called John Branca. ‘He wanted me to explain a paragraph
that dealt with what happened if the truck broke down, if it had a flat tyre,
or the road washed out,’ John recalled. ‘I explained the paragraph. He asked
a couple of questions and said, “Okay, I understand.” He was all about
details, always with the details, wanting to know everything. He used to
say, “It's important that I know.”’
Michael then returned to the stage, signed the contract, and went back to
work.
Around this time Michael finally learned to drive so he could leave the
estate when it became too difficult for him there. Singer Mickey Free
(formerly of the group Shalamar) remembered his first meeting with
Michael in the fall of 1981. ‘I was signed to Diana Ross's management
company at that time. She was staying at the Beverly Hills Hotel and asked
me if I wanted to come down to her bungalow and meet Michael. Well, who
wouldn't?’ he recalled. ‘So I had dinner with Michael, Diana and Gene
[Simmons of Kiss, Diana's boyfriend at the time]. I was freaking out
because I always wanted to meet Michael, and he was so nice. So it came
time for me to go home. Diana's car had brought me there, and she said,
Okay, I'll call the driver to come and get you.’ Michael very softly said,
“Oh, that's okay, I'll take Mickey home.”’
Diana and Gene were astonished. ‘Are you sure you want to do this,
Michael?’ Diana asked him. ‘Are you sure you can handle it?’
‘Yeah, I can do it, Diana,’ Michael said, confidently.
Mickey got into Michael's Silver Shadow Rolls-Royce, and the two sped
off down the driveway in front of the Beverly Hills Hotel. ‘Be careful,’
Diana hollered after them. ‘Don't drive too fast, Michael.’
When they got to Mickey's apartment building about fifteen minutes
later, Michael drove around the block a few times before sheepishly
confessing, ‘You know what? I can drive this thing, but I don't know how to
parallel park it. Can you park for me?’ Michael stopped the car in the
middle of the road and the two traded seats.
‘I rode around the block ten times to find a parking place so people could
see me driving Michael Jackson around in his fabulous car,’ Mickey
recalled.
An Indirect Conversation
By the fall of 1981, despite CBS Records' best efforts to keep the Jackson
family's domestic turmoil a secret, most industry insiders were aware of
what had happened between Katherine and Gina because of the public
filings of the lawsuit litigation. Michael had made it clear that he did not
want to have to face any reporters, because he was afraid that he might be
asked to comment on the matter. However, the press grind to promote
Triumph would continue, Michael's wishes notwithstanding.
Michael Jackson, who had just turned twenty-three, was a contradictory
figure. He was decisive and determined, as he had proved a few times along
the way, but he was also vulnerable and confused. Though he was
beginning to seize control of his career, he was still reluctant to sever ties
with his family. ‘I'd die if I were alone,’ he told me in a telephone interview
on his birthday. He was unable to leave the womb, to move out of the
house. ‘No way,’ he said. ‘I could never leave here.’
Instead of growing up, Michael actually seemed to be regressing –
buying toys, playing childlike games and, for the first time, actually
surrounding himself with children. Young fans who gathered at the gates of
the estate to catch a glimpse of a Jackson coming or going were now being
invited to spend time in the inner-sanctum with Michael. It was odd
behaviour. Jackie now called him a ‘Man-Child’, explaining, ‘He's a man,
but still a kid, a wonderful combination.’ When asked about the possibility
of having his own children, Michael shook his head, no. He'd like to raise a
child, he said, but it would be one whom he would adopt, ‘in the far future’.
He would not procreate, he said. ‘I don't have to bring my own into the
world,’ he said uneasily. ‘It's not necessary for me to do that.’
He continued, ‘One of my favourite pastimes is being with children –
talking to them, playing with them in the grass. They're one of the main
reasons I do what I do. They know everything that people are trying to find
out, they know so many secrets, but it's hard for them to get it out. I can
recognize that and learn from it. They say things that astound you. They go
through a brilliant, genius stage. But then, when they become a certain
age…’ Michael paused. ‘When they get to a certain age, they lose it.’
I was scheduled to interview this extraordinary ‘Man-Child’ on 3
October 1981, an encounter that was arranged by a publicist at Epic. In
advance, I was warned not to mention Gina Sprague or ask questions about
‘the incident’ or the state of Michael's parents' marriage.
I was at my desk compiling a list of questions when the telephone rang. It
was Michael. He got to the point, quickly. ‘There's a certain way I want to
do this interview,’ he told me.
‘Sure thing, Michael. Whatever you like.’
‘Well,’ he began slowly. ‘I'd like for Janet to help.’
‘Help?’
‘Yes. See, Janet is going to sit in on our interview,’ he told me. ‘You'll
ask her the questions, and then she'll ask me. Then, see, I'll give her the
answers, and then she'll give them to you. How does that sound?’
‘It sounds strange, Michael. I don't even think I understand it. Could you
explain that to me, again?’
He repeated the scenario and said that it was the only way he would
consent to the interview. ‘So, I hope you understand,’ he said, briskly.
‘Okay, bye.’
‘Wait,’ I said. ‘I don't get it, Michael. You're giving me an interview, but
you're not talking to me? What kind of madness is that?’
‘It might seem like madness to you,’ he said. ‘But there are reasons for
the things I do. You just have to try to understand. If you're willing to do it
my way, I'll see you tomorrow. Okay? Bye, now.’
I wondered if I could conduct an interview in that manner. Did it make
any sense? Of course, I had to try. How could I turn down the opportunity
to engage in, no doubt, the strangest interview I'd ever had with Michael, or
with anyone else, for that matter.
The next day, I arrived at the Encino home in time for the interview.
‘Sure glad you could make it,’ Michael said as we shook hands. He was
wearing a black T-shirt and matching jeans. His feet were bare. I noticed
that his nose was thinner and more defined than it had been the last time I
saw him, which was about six months earlier backstage at a Patti Labelle
concert in Hollywood. His falsetto whisper of a voice seemed even softer
than it had been at that time.
After Michael and I exchanged pleasantries in the living room, Janet, age
fifteen, walked in wearing a red leather miniskirt, black boots, and a plaid
sweater. She did not greet me. Rather, she sat at Michael's side in a robotic
fashion, not even acknowledging his presence.
Michael introduced me to her, as if we had never met. (Of course, we
had.) We shook hands, but she never made eye contact with me. I sat
opposite them.
‘Now, you'll do the interview the way you promised, won't you?’ he
asked.
When I said that I hadn't ‘promised’ anything, he rose from his chair.
‘Well, then, we can't do the interview,’ he said, his words clipped.
‘Wait,’ I told him, motioning for him to be seated. ‘Let's try it. Let's start
with the new album, Triumph. How do you feel about it?’
Michael pinned me with his dark eyes and nodded toward his sister. I
redirected my question. ‘Janet, would you please ask him how he feels
about the album.’
Janet turned to Michael. ‘He wants to know how you feel about the
album,’ she said.
‘Tell him I'm very happy with it,’ Michael said, his tone relaxed.
‘Working with my brothers again was an incredible experience for me. It
was,’ he stopped, searching for the word, ‘magical,’ he concluded.
Janet nodded her head and turned to me. ‘He told me to tell you that he's
very happy with the album,’ she repeated. ‘And that working with his
brothers was an incredible experience for him.’
There was a pause.
‘You forgot the part about it being magical,’ Michael said to her, seeming
peeved at her for not doing her job properly.
‘Oh, yes.’ Janet looked at me with apologetic, brown eyes. ‘He said it
was magical.’
‘Magical?’ I asked.
‘Yes. Magical.’
As I tried to think of another question for Janet to ask him, I scrutinized
Michael carefully for the first time that day. It suddenly struck me that he
was wearing makeup; his brows and lashes were darkened with mascara,
his eyelids coated with soft pink shadow. Rouge emphasized his
cheekbones and… was that lipstick? Yes, I decided, scarlet lipstick. Today,
the notion of Michael Jackson wearing makeup in day-to-day living (as
opposed to onstage or on camera, where practically all men in show
business wear it) is certainly not novel. Back in 1981, though, it would
never have occurred to anyone that Michael would wear makeup in his
home for an interview. It was applied subtly and with great care. He looked
exotic.
The ‘interview’ went on for about thirty more awkward minutes.
Occasionally, Janet would inject a comment of her own, in an effort, it
seemed to me, to keep the conversation alive. ‘Michael, remember when
that girl got upset because she had heard you had a sex change?’ she said to
him. ‘Do you remember what happened to her? She got so upset, she
jumped right out a window. I think she died,’ Janet said. ‘Poor thing.’
Michael looked into space, blankly.
Finally I decided that I'd had enough of the odd exchange and said I'd
rather not continue with the interview. ‘But why not?’ Michael wanted to
know. ‘Wait. Janet will tell you what happened when I visited Katharine
Hepburn last month,’ he offered. ‘It's a good story.’
‘I'd rather you tell me, Michael,’ I pressed.
‘Well, I can't…’
There was a small silence between us.
‘Then, look, just forget it,’ I said. ‘Let's just forget the whole thing.
Michael.’
‘Okay, cool,’ he said. Smiling somewhat ruefully, he rose. ‘Nice to see
you again,’ he remarked, not connecting with my frustration. ‘Let's do this
again, sometime.’ Then, he left the room. Janet threw me a look and
extended her hands at me, palms up, as if to exclaim, Now, look what
you've done.
Once alone in the Jacksons' living room, I tried to figure out what had
just occurred. As I was putting my tape recorder and notes in my brief case,
Katherine walked in. She looked disheartened. ‘Did you just interview
Michael,’ she asked. ‘Please be nice to him. The press is so mean these
days.’ She shook her head, at a loss. ‘I don't know what to tell you,’ she
said. She slumped into the chair opposite me, practically speechless with
fatigue. It was disconcerting. In the past, she always had such dignity and
poise.
‘I'm worried about him,’ she said, finally looking at me. Her eyes were
full of warmth and concern. ‘There's so much pressure, things are so…
difficult.’ When she realized she was, perhaps, saying too much, she
stopped herself. ‘Would you let yourself out?’ she asked me, abruptly.
I had a sinking feeling in my stomach as I walked out the front door.
What is going on in this household? I wondered. While walking down the
driveway, I looked up at the mansion and saw a face peering out from one
of the upstairs windows. It was Michael. When he realized that I had
spotted him, he ducked out of sight.
The next morning, I received a telephone call from Joseph. Just before I had
pulled out of the Jackson estate's gates, I had seen him in the driveway. I
stopped to tell him what had happened. His cocoa-coloured, weather-beaten
face broke into a wide grin. He shrugged his shoulders, ‘Well, that's my
boy,’ he said. Now, on the telephone, he could not have been more
apologetic. ‘I'm sorry about that, man,’ he told me. ‘I was thinking about it,
and I wanted to explain.’
According to Joseph, Michael had told his record company that he no
longer sought direct contact with the media for fear of questions about ‘that
girl, you know, the one we got that problem with.’ I knew he was referring
to Gina Sprague. ‘Plus some other stuff that's going on,’ Joseph continued.
‘But when he said he didn't want to do no interviews, the label [Epic
executives] forced him to. Me, too. I told him he needs to talk to you and
the other guys in the press. It's the right thing to do,’ Joseph said. ‘So, what
can I say? He did it his way. Sorry. Guess he wanted some control in his
life, huh?’
‘Guess so, Mr Jackson,’ I said. We spoke for about fifteen minutes. He
seemed fine, as if nothing unusual was going on in his life. ‘Come on by
sometime and do a story on LaToya,’ he told me. ‘We got some plans for
her. Just wait till you see what we're going to do. Girl's gonna be a big star.
Huge, I'm tellin' ya. Huge.’
When I hung up, I thought about Joseph's explanation. Michael's tactic
might have been ludicrous, I thought, but it's true that desperate people take
desperate measures to make a point… especially when nobody will listen. I
felt a grudging admiration for the way Michael had gotten what he wanted.
He had manipulated the situation in order to make a mockery of the
promised interview. I never wrote about the episode. Instead, I cancelled the
feature. Michael got what he wanted: no story.
Katherine Tells Joseph to ‘Get Out!’
By the summer of 1982, Katherine Jackson simply couldn't take any more
of Joseph's unkind behaviour. Whatever had happened with Gina Sprague,
it had certainly been a nasty bit of business. Joseph wouldn't learn,
however; either his appetite for women was insatiable or he simply couldn't
fill whatever emptiness he felt in his heart. Looking back on it now, it
seems he may have been inflicting his own pain on Katherine to make her
identify with him, so lonely and marginalized did he feel in the family.
Whatever his hidden motivation – and maybe even he didn't understand it –
Katherine suspected he was having another affair.
One day, after a series of ‘hang-ups’ – when she answered the phone
there would be no one on the other end – Katherine walked into the kitchen
to tell Joseph that she was leaving the estate to go shopping. He kissed her
goodbye, on the top of the head. As she walked down the driveway, the
telephone rang again, just as she suspected it might. She calmly walked into
the guest house and, once there, took a deep breath and picked up the
extension. She listened in as Joseph spoke to the woman with whom he was
apparently having a romantic relationship. He sounded sweet, happy.
Katherine later recalled her heart tightening in her chest. She felt unsteady
and breathless, as if she'd been punched in the stomach.
Once the conversation was over, Katherine's steps carried her down the
driveway and back into the front door of her home. She found Joseph in the
living room, his feet up on the couch, as if he hadn't a care in the world.
Holding him with her eyes for a moment, she couldn't believe, as she would
later tell it, that he would do this to her… again. She cleared her throat,
loudly.
‘Oh. Hi, Kate. I thought you were gone,’ he said, springing to his feet.
‘I'll just bet you did,’ she responded. ‘I heard your conversation with
your little girlfriend,’ she remarked, spitting out the words. ‘You bastard,
you.’
Then, she let him have it. She pummelled him with her fists. She pulled
his hair. She threw a vase at him. When he ducked, she lunged for him,
again. There was no stopping her. ‘I don't want you any more, Joseph,’ she
screamed at him. ‘I don't need you, any more. I want you out of this house.
You're nothing to me, now.’
Joseph was floored, at least for a moment. ‘Okay, okay,’ he said, his
hands up in defence. ‘Not even going to give me a chance to explain, huh?’
he asked. Now, his tone was even, well-controlled. It seemed as if he was
trying to act unconcerned. How upsetting, Katherine would later say, for
him to act as if he didn't have enough invested in the moment to even be
troubled by it.
‘Doesn't anything ever get to you?’ she asked, angrily.
‘Of course,’ he said, sadly. ‘You did, Katie. When I first fell in love with
you.’
‘Get out!’
As he turned to walk out of the room, a shaking Katherine Jackson
grabbed a silver-framed photograph of the two of them from a table and
hurled it to the floor with everything she had in her. She was filled with
such contempt for Joseph, she didn't even know what she was doing. The
glass smashed to smithereens, a fitting metaphor for her life.
The next day, 19 August 1982, Katherine quietly filed for divorce. Her
action got practically no press coverage. She was discreet, not wanting to
jeopardize the family's image with a public and volatile divorce. In her
petition, she said:
‘Approximately one year ago, Joseph told me that we were running short
of money. I asked him questions about the business and he told me to “stay
out of the business”. I am informed and believe that within the last year,
Joseph has spent in excess of $50,000 on a young woman and has
purchased for her parcels of real property from our community funds. I am
fearful that unless restrained by an order of this court, Joseph will continue
to dissipate community funds and transfer community funds in jeopardy of
my community property rights.’
Though Katherine had only a vague idea of exactly how much
community property existed, she wanted to keep Joseph from transferring
or otherwise disposing of any of it. The property she was aware of included
her interest in the Encino home, furniture, furnishings, and other personal
property, her interest in Joseph Jackson Productions and in various bank
accounts. She made a list of the rest of the community assets: a 1979
Mercedes-Benz (colour not indicated in legal documents), a 1971 blue-grey
Mercedes-Benz, a 1971 white Rolls-Royce, a 1978 brown Mercedes-Benz,
a 1971 blue Rolls-Royce, a 1974 G.M.C. motor home, a 1981 Toyota truck,
a 1980 white Cadillac limousine, a 1978 Ford van, two boats (day cruisers)
with trailers, and a Keogh financial plan.
There was only one snag in Katherine's declaration of independence.
Jerome Howard, who would become her business manager in 1988,
recalled, ‘She told me that after she filed for divorce, she naturally expected
Joseph to move out of the house. However, he refused to leave. So what
could she do?’
‘This is my house, too,’ Joseph told Katherine, defiantly. ‘You're my
wife, I love you, and it's going to stay that way.’
Michael could not remain neutral and uninvolved. ‘You have to kick him
out,’ he told his mother. ‘Or call the police. Or get a restraining order. But
he can't stay here just because he wants to.’
Katherine would not discuss the matter with Michael, or any of her
children. This was her cross to bear, not theirs.
‘This is killing me,’ Michael told his oldest sister, Rebbie, according to
her memory. ‘I will never get married. I will never trust a person in that
way. I couldn't bear to go through this again.’
‘But, Michael, this is their life, not yours,’ she said in her most
compassionate voice. ‘You will live your life differently. Trust me.’
‘But how do you know that?’ Michael asked, his eyes red from crying.
‘Mother never planned any of this for herself, did she?’
‘No, I'm sure she didn't,’ Rebbie said, embracing him. ‘I'm sure she
didn't.’
Did Michael Get His Way?
In August 1982, Michael began work with Quincy Jones on a new album at
Westlake Studios in Los Angeles. The album would be entitled Thriller
with a budget of about $750,000 to produce, and nine songs carefully
selected by Michael and Quincy from about three hundred. The sessions
went well; Michael was satisfied with the work. However, once they played
back the album – the ‘master pressing’, as the final mix was called – it
didn't sound as good as Michael thought it should. In fact, to his ears, it
sounded terrible. He was crushed. Never one to shy away from a good old-
fashioned ‘scene’, Michael ran from the studio, sobbing.
To solve the problem, each song had to be remixed, bringing up the level
of some orchestration and voices and toning down others. It was time-
consuming, tedious work at the rate of two songs a week, but in the end it
proved to be worth the effort. Quincy Jones along with one of Michael's
managers, Ron Weisner, and his attorney, John Branca, sat with Michael in
the Westlake Studio as he listened to a playback of the album. To Michael
the music now sounded terrific. He was optimistic, bobbing his head to the
rhythm and smiling broadly as each cut played.
‘Mike, you know, the record market is off right now,’ Ron Weisner told
him as the title track, ‘Thriller’, blared from the speakers. He had to almost
shout to be heard above it.
‘Yeah, Mike,’ Quincy agreed. ‘You can't expect to do with this one what
you did with Off the Wall.’
‘These days, two million is a hot album,’ Ron added.
‘Yeah, it's a tough market. Nobody's having hits,’ Quincy said.
‘Turn it down,’ Michael shouted out at the engineer. ‘I said, turn it
down.’ His smile was now gone. ‘What's the matter with you guys?’ he
wanted to know. ‘How can you say that to me? You're wrong. You are dead
wrong.’
‘But, Michael – ’ Quincy began.
‘Look, don't even talk to me,’ Michael said, turning away from Quincy.
‘I've had it with you, Quincy. Don't ever tell me anything like that again,’
he added, angrily. ‘What kind of attitude is that to have?’
John Branca sat in a corner and watched the scene. A wry smile touched
his mouth; he'd been around Michael enough to know how this scene would
climax.
‘Goodbye,’ Michael announced as he stormed out of the studio.
By the next day, Michael had worked himself into a fully fledged fury.
He telephoned John Branca and told him how angry he had been at Ron and
Quincy for predicting that Thriller would ‘only’ sell two million copies.
‘I know,’ John recalls saying. ‘Don't listen to those guys, Mike. You're
the one who knows. They don't know.’
‘But Quincy should know,’ Michael said.
‘Well, maybe not this time,’ John told him. ‘You're the man. Call Walter
[Yetnikoff] and he'll tell you the same thing.’
‘No, you call him,’ Michael said. ‘And tell him this. Tell him the record
is cancelled, John. It's over. I ain't even submitting it to CBS.’
‘But Mike – ’
‘No, John. If Quincy and Ron don't have faith in it, then forget it,’
Michael said. ‘I'm not even going to let the album come out. Thriller is
gonna be shelved for ever,’ he said. ‘I'd rather it go unheard than see it not
get the attention it deserves.’
‘But, Mike – ’
‘Let me tell you something,’ Michael said, cutting him off. ‘There are
winners in this life, Branca, and there are losers.’ Before John had a chance
to respond, Michael hung up.
Ten minutes later, John telephoned Michael to tell him that he had passed
on the message to Walter Yetnikoff and – no big surprise – Walter wanted to
talk to Michael. He wanted Michael to call him. ‘What? No way,’ Michael
said. ‘Tell him to call me.’
‘But, Mike – ’
‘Tell him to call me.’ Michael hung up.
Whereas most of the CBS artists were intimidated by Walter Yetnikoff,
Michael was not at all cowed by him. After all, he'd dealt with Berry Gordy,
one on one. Walter called, as instructed.
According to Walter's memory, when Michael told him what had
occurred at the studio, he tried to calm him down. ‘What the hell do they
know?’ he said of Quincy and Ron. ‘You're the superstar, not them. Jesus,
Michael. We trust you. Not Quincy, all due respect to the guy. And certainly
not one of your managers. You're the superstar.’
‘You think?’ Michael asked, coyly,
‘Absolutely.’
‘So you agree?’
‘Of course.’
‘Okay,’ Michael decided. ‘Then it can come out.’
Michael Jackson had created a melodrama surrounding the completion of
Thriller, there was little doubt of that. Would he really have cancelled the
release of the album simply because Quincy had predicted it would only
sell two million copies? Perhaps. However, the more likely scenario is that
Michael was just trying to, as they might have said in the Jackson family,
‘get his way’. The manner in which he handled the situation couldn't
exactly be described as ‘artful’ or ‘strategic’. It was more like the dynamics
of a family flare-up – one party has a tantrum, just as people in big families
often do with one another… then pushes and pushes and pushes until he
gets his way, and until he feels validated. Such tactics would work for
Michael many times in the future. Obviously, there is no road map to
success. Few entertainers ever reach a goal of stardom at all, and if one
finds a way to go about it, he has to be given credit. It would seem that
Michael Jackson had certainly found a way that worked for him.
Thriller is a… Thriller
On 1 December 1982, Thriller was released to a market of seasonal
shoppers. It seems ironic, considering the impact Thriller would have on the
record industry, that when CBS released the album's first single (in October,
a little over a month before the issuance of the album) many observers
thought Thriller would be a disappointment. The auspicious pairing of
Michael Jackson and Paul McCartney for the mid-tempo ‘The Girl is Mine’
(which the singers co-wrote while watching cartoons) appeared to be of
greater interest than the song itself which, while cute, was lacking in
substance. Many in both the black and white music communities felt that
Michael and Quincy Jones had gone too far in consciously tailoring a
record for a white, pop audience. If this first single was an indication of
what else would be found on Thriller, Michael seemed to be in big trouble.
And then came ‘Billie Jean’.
Dark and sparse by Quincy Jones production standards, ‘Billie Jean’
prowled in rhythm like a predatory animal. It's a disturbing song Michael
wrote about a girl accusing him of fathering her child. Joseph Jackson's
extramarital affairs and his daughter, Joh'Vonnie, must have come to mind
when Michael wrote the lyrics. However, there was another experience
Michael had, which was the catalyst for ‘Billie Jean’.
In 1981 a female fan wrote Michael a letter to inform him that he was the
father of her baby. She enclosed photographs of herself- a young, attractive,
black woman in her late teens whom he had never met – and of the infant.
Michael, who often received letters of this nature, ignored it as he does the
others. This teenager, however, was more persistent than the rest. She loved
Michael, she claimed, and longed to be with him. She wrote that she could
not stop thinking about him, and about how happy they would be as they
raised their child, together. She was obviously disturbed.
In months to come, Michael would receive dozens more letters from this
woman. In one, she claimed that the baby and Michael had similar eyes and
wondered how he could ignore his flesh and blood. It wasn't long before
Michael began having nightmares about the situation. He fixated on her,
wondering where she was, when she would show up at his front gate, and
what he would do then. It seemed to some in the family that he had become
as obsessed with her as she was with him.
One day, Michael received a package from her. When he opened it, he
discovered another photograph: her high school graduation picture. In it,
she smiled with girlish innocence. Also in the box was a gun. In a note, the
fan asked that Michael kill himself on a certain day, at a certain time. She
wrote that she would do the same – right after she killed the baby. She had
decided, she wrote, that if the three of them could not be together in this
life, perhaps they could in the next. Michael was horrified. He took the
photograph, had it framed, and displayed it in the dining room on a coffee
table, much to Katherine's dismay. ‘God, what if she shows up?’ he fretted.
‘What will I do? I have to remember this face. Just in case. I must never
forget this face.’
She never showed up at Michael's gate. In fact, he later learned that the
poor young woman ended up in an insane asylum.
After ‘Billie Jean’ came out, Michael said that he wrote the song with his
obsessed fan in mind. Ironically, Quincy Jones did not want to include it on
the Thriller album; he did not think it was a strong enough song to be a part
of the collection. Michael so believed in the song, he and Quincy had strong
disagreements about its merit. When Michael came up with the title of the
song, he asked LaToya, ‘You don't think people will believe I'm talking
about that tennis player, do you?’ He was referring to Billie Jean King;
LaToya didn't think so. Quincy Jones did, however, and wanted to change
the title of the song to ‘Not My Lover’. Of course, Michael vetoed that.
In truth, the relationship between Michael and Quincy rapidly
deteriorated during the recording of Thriller, especially when Quincy would
not give Michael a co-producing credit on ‘Billie Jean’ and ‘Beat It’. The
demonstration tapes Michael had recorded of both songs – before Quincy
worked on them – sounded almost exactly like the final product. Michael
felt it was only fair that he be given co-producing credit, and additional
royalties as well. Quincy disagreed, much to Michael's chagrin.
Closer inspection of Thriller as a whole revealed an ambitiously crafted
work that moved in a number of directions. The suburban, middle-of-the-
road calm of ‘The Girl is Mine’ was the antithesis of the rambunctious
‘Beat It’, another highly charged Jackson composition in which Michael
augmented his crossover rhythm-and-blues style by employing a harder-
edged rock-and-roll sound. Some reviewers felt ‘Beat It’ was a shameless
quest to attract hard-rock fans; the track featured Eddie Van Halen, whose
band Van Halen was a preeminent rock group, on searing guitar bridges.
While the tune was more of a marketing concoction – in the past, Michael
had never shown any particular fondness for straight-out rock and roll –
‘Beat It’ would still find acceptance among rock fans.
On the other hand, if the funky ‘Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'’ sounds like
a distant relative of Off the Wall's songs ‘Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough’
and ‘Working Day and Night’, the similarity occurred because Michael
wrote them all during the same period. In ‘Startin' Somethin'’, Michael
pointedly revealed his feelings on gossips and unwanted babies, and all to a
bulleting bass and shuffling percussion. The tune's centrepiece, a climaxing
Swahili-like chant, gave the song an international flavour. It was difficult to
listen to Michael as he spat out angry lyrics about hate and feeling like a
vegetable and not wonder about his state of mind at the time.
There were other stand-outs: the moody and introspective ‘Human
Nature’, written by Steve Porcarro and John Bettis, was an expansive pop
ballad whose sheer musicality kept it from being mushy. The funky ‘PYT’
(standing for ‘Pretty Young Thing’), credited to James Ingram and Quincy
Jones, and the sultry ballad ‘Lady in My Life’, by Rod Temperton, were
both efforts to beef up Thriller's R&B direction. ‘Lady in My Life’ was, by
the same token, as close as Michael had come to crooning a sexy, soulful
ballad since his Motown years. Perhaps that was why it required so many
takes before the lead vocal was to Quincy Jones's liking.
The title track, ‘Thriller’, was its own animal. The song said much about
Michael's fascination with the supernatural and the lurid. ‘Thriller’ is a
typical Rod Temperton song – melodic, with a fluid bass line and big, mind-
imprinting hook. The lyrics had excitement and intrigue, and the song
concluded with a stately rap by the master of the macabre, Vincent Price.
‘Thriller’ would have been even more compelling as the title track of a
concept album, but Thriller, the album, had no actual focus. It was just a
bunch of great songs. Even the album's cover art, a photograph of a casually
posed Michael uncharacteristically dressed in white jacket and pants,
seemed incongruous. However, it's the picture many people refer to when
discussing his plastic surgery, saying, ‘If he had just stopped there, he
would have been fine!’
With Thriller, Michael and Quincy had successfully engineered glossy,
authentic versions of pop, soul and funk that appealed to just about
everyone. However, no one in the music business expected the public to
take that appeal so literally. At some point, Thriller stopped selling like a
leisure item – like a magazine, a toy, tickets to a hit movie – and started
selling like a household staple. At its sales peak, CBS would report that the
album was selling an astounding 500,000 copies a week.
To the press, Quincy acted as if he knew Thriller was going to be huge. ‘I
knew from the first time I heard it in the studio, because the hair stood
straight up on my arms,’ he said. ‘That's a sure sign, and it's never once
been wrong. All the brilliance that had been building inside Michael for
twenty-four years just erupted. I was electrified, and so was everyone else
involved in the project. That energy was contagious, and we had it cranked
so high one night that the speakers in the studio actually overloaded and
burst into flames. First time I ever saw anything like that in forty years in
the business.’ What in the world was he talking about, speakers bursting
into flames? Quincy is nothing if not a good showman. In truth, of course,
he had predicted two million in sales, a moderate hit, for Michael, and
much to Michael's dismay.
‘What did I tell you?’ Michael crowed to John Branca when it was clear
that Thriller had taken off in an astronomical way. ‘I knew it. I just knew it.’
John could only smile.
By the end of 1983, Thriller would sell a staggering thirteen million
copies in the United States and nearly twenty-two million worldwide. At
the time, the all-time best-selling album was the original soundtrack to
Saturday Night Fever, with worldwide sales of twenty-five million since its
1977 release. It wouldn't be long before Michael toppled that record; he had
already achieved one milestone: until now, no other solo album had sold
more than twelve million copies.
In addition to his personal achievements, Michael had single-handedly
revived a moribund recording industry. When people flocked to the record
stores to buy Thriller, they purchased other records too. As a result, the
business had its best year since 1978. As Gil Friesen, then-president of
A&M Records said at the time, ‘The whole industry has a stake in Thriller's
success.’ Michael's success also generated new interest in black music in
general.
Ultimately, Thriller would go on to sell more than fifty million copies
wordwide; it would spend thirty-seven weeks at number one on the
Billboard charts, which was amazing. In the UK, it also hit number one and
stayed on the charts there for an incredible 168 weeks! (The release of
Thriller marked the first time an album was number one in the USA and the
UK at the same time.) Also, prior to Thriller, no other album had ever
spawned seven Top Ten singles: ‘Billie Jean’, ‘Beat It’, ‘The Girl is Mine’,
‘Human Nature’, ‘Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'’, ‘PYT’ and ‘Thriller’. All
of the songs sold hugely, right around the world.
CBS made at least sixty million dollars just on Thriller. Michael fared
well too. According to, John Branca, Michael had ‘the highest royalty rate
in the record business’. That rate escalated along with the sales, but
averaged 42 per cent in the wholesale price of each record sold, or about
$2.10 for every album sold in the United States – thirty-two million dollars
on Thriller's domestic sales alone. Roughly fifteen million dollars more was
made in foreign sales. Those figures, of course, did not include the royalties
for the four songs he penned on the album.
Michael Jackson was, at twenty-five, a very wealthy young man. He had
certainly come a long way from that 0.2 per cent royalty rate Motown once
offered him.
The more Thriller was heard – and it was possibly the most played record
of all time, both privately and on the radio – the better it sounded. Michael
and Quincy had achieved their goal: to many listeners – whites, blacks,
highbrows, heavy metal fans, teeny-boppers, parents – Thriller was the
perfect album, every song an exercise in pop music production, every
arrangement, every note in perfect place. This achievement made Michael
more than a hero; the music industry promoted him to higher ground,
almost sainthood. Of course, in entertainment circles these days, even the
most untalented artist who sells huge amounts of product becomes a
‘visionary’. However, Michael's phenomenal sales, along with his
astounding talent, established a precedent of excellence with Thriller – and
one that he would secretly attempt to surpass for the rest of his career.
Hayvenhurst
Joseph Jackson is known among his friends and associates as a man given
to overextending himself by investing in unsteady business ventures outside
of the careers of his children. Of course, some of the investments have been
profitable. For instance, a limousine company he owned did manage to turn
a profit. More often, though, Joseph would lose his investment and then
some. For instance, he once started his own record company, which cost
him a small fortune. He had also invested a great deal of money in
producing and managing singing groups, perhaps to prove that he could do
for others what he had done for his sons. However, none of his acts ever
amounted to much, if anything. And who in his circle would ever forget
‘Joe-Cola’, his own soft drink – which also failed in the marketplace? One
had to give him credit for trying, though. He was never afraid to take a
chance, invest in what he thought might be a good idea and take it all the
way to fruition. After all, that's how he got The Jackson 5 to Los Angeles,
and to Motown, wasn't it?
By the beginning of 1981, however, Joseph was having financial
problems serious enough to warrant his wanting to sell the Encino estate.
It's a tribute to him that he never attempted to siphon money from his
children's income to solve his own financial problems. ‘I'd say we were
among a fortunate few artists who walked away from a childhood in the
business with anything substantial – money, real estate, other investments,’
Michael would say. ‘My father set all these up for us. To this day I'm
thankful he didn't try to take all our money for himself, the way so many
parents of child stars have. Imagine stealing from your own children. My
father never did anything like that.’
Joseph may have been a lot of things, but he wasn't was a thief. He took
care of his children's investments, and if they lost money – and all of them
did, except for Michael and Janet – it may be because they have inherited
Joseph's penchant for bad investments. It wasn't because they didn't receive
money that was owed to them.
Joseph found the perfect buyer for his Encino estate: his own son,
Michael.
One might wonder if Joseph first examined the ramifications of his offer
to Michael before he made it. No doubt, once he changed roles from owner
to tenant, his relationship with Michael would change as well. Barring
unusual circumstances, in most familial situations, the heads of the family
provides the lodgings; when the children become adults, they move on to
their own homes. Changing roles in a basic way can often contribute to
family dysfunction. Joseph had always held fast to the theory that a father
should be able to control his children – no matter what their ages, their
desires, their expertise. Being so determined to be in charge, it's surprising
that Joseph never realized how threatened he would eventually feel by
having to live in his son's house – especially when it had once been his
own. Of course, Joseph was dealing with Michael, and he knew and
understood Michael's gentleness towards Katherine, if not towards him. He
knew that Michael wouldn't kick them out of the house. In the end, Michael
paid about $500,000 for his equity in the estate. Katherine and Joseph
owned the other half. Eventually, Joseph would sell his quarter to Michael,
leaving 25 per cent to Katherine. One might also wonder if he had
considered that the next time Katherine wanted to evict him, it might be a
lot more likely that he would have to leave since she and Michael owned
the estate, not him.
Once he took over part-ownership, Michael decided to completely
demolish and rebuilt the house. The address may have remained the same,
but the new estate – Michael's estate, which took two years to finish –
became palatial in scope. What sweet and poetic justice it was that Michael
was able to destroy the house in which he had so many bad memories and,
from its ashes, raise a new one, perhaps fresh with possibilities for the
future. While on tour in England a few years earlier, he had become
enchanted by the Tudor-style mansions he saw in the countryside. When
finished, the estate was – and still is, today – indeed, special.
The brick-laid drive opened to an ornate three-tiered white fountain in
front of a Tudor-style home. All of the windows of the house were made of
leaded stained glass with bevelled panes. When Michael was in residence,
the Rolls-Royce that Tatum O'Neal helped him select sat parked in front of
the four-car Tudor-style garage opposite the home. (Michael was still
uneasy about driving; he would much rather take an hour-long detour than
have to drive on the freeway in Los Angeles. ‘I can't get on them,’ he
complained, ‘and I can't get off them, either.’)
A large ‘Welcome’ sign appeared above the garage doors. In the centre of
the garage structure stood an oversized clock with Roman numerals.
Upstairs, on the second floor of the garage, a visitor entered a three-room
picture gallery with hundreds of photographs of the Jackson family on the
walls and even the ceilings.
Outside, graceful black and white swans could be found languishing in
backyard ponds. A pair of peacocks; two llamas; two deer, a giraffe and a
ram were also in residence. The animals, kept in stables at night, were
allowed to roam freely during the day. Muscles, the eight-foot boa
constrictor, was, he told me, ‘trained to eat interviewers’. Once, Katherine
was straightening out the living room when she discovered Muscles under
one of the couch cushions. She let out a scream that might have been heard
all over Encino.
Next to the garage, Michael constructed a mini-version of Disneyland's
Main Street U.S.A., including the candy store. There was a replica of a
robotic Abraham Lincoln, which spoke, just as the Lincoln attraction did at
Disneyland. Whenever Michael went to Disneyland, his ‘favourite place on
earth’, there would be total chaos because of his fame. Therefore, he
preferred the Disney employees to lead him through the back doors and
tunnels of the attractions. In Encino, he built his own little world of Disney,
a precursor to the expansive amusement park he would one day build at
Neverland. Other puppet characters were added to the private amusement
park. ‘These are just like real people,’ Michael explained to the writer who
looked at them askance. ‘Except they don't grab at you or ask you for
favours. I feel comfortable with these figures. They are my personal
friends.’
Winding brick paths decorated with exotic flowers and neatly cut shrubs
led to secluded corners of the large estate where Michael would often
wander alone to meditate. The swimming pool was huge and inviting.
Water spouted from four fountainheads carved like bearded Neptunes on a
retaining wall. A waterfall spilt in front of two lovebirds, the ceramic
fashioned in elaborate, colourful tile work. Cool-looking water cascaded
down into the main pool, and then flowed into a bubbling Jacuzzi.
On the ground floor of the main house was a thirty-two-seat theatre with
plush red velvet seats and equipped with 16-millimetre and 35-millimetre
projectors. The walls and the curtain in front of the screen were teal blue.
Michael spent countless hours in the theatre; there were always Fred Astaire
movies ready to be screened, as well as Three Stooges films. ‘I put all this
stuff in here,’ he observed, ‘so I will never have to go out there,’ he said,
indicating to the outside world.
There was also a wood-panelled trophy room where many of Michael's
trophies were displayed in mahogany cases. All of the Jacksons' gold and
platinum albums cover the walls. The family joked that if LaToya ever
managed to get a gold album, there will be no place to hang it. (So far, that
has not been a problem.)
Amid the magazine covers and other memorabilia, there was a six-foot-
long diorama of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. ‘One day I got a call
from Mike,’ recalled Steve Howell, who was employed by Michael as a
video historian. ‘“Come by with the video equipment, you'll never guess
who's comin' over.” “Who?” I asked. “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs!”
He'd hired Disney's costumed actors. I said, “Oh, okay, cool.” Nothing was
unusual when you worked for Michael.’
Steve's video of that day shows a childlike Michael, twenty-six years old
at the time, playing with the dwarfs in the trophy room and being serenaded
by Snow White. From the expression on his face, one might think it was
one of the happiest days of his life.
A circular white marble staircase with a green carpeted runner led to the
upstairs quarters: a gym, and four bedroom suites, each with its own
bathroom. Michael's bedroom was large and cluttered. ‘I just want room to
dance and have my books,’ he said. He had no bed; he slept next to the
fireplace on the floor, which was covered with a plush green rug. Some of
the walls were covered with fabric. Pictures of Peter Pan hung on others.
There were wooden shutters over the windows, which he usually kept
closed. The room was always a mess, not slobbish, just messy – books and
records were everywhere, videotapes and music tapes piled high. Fan mail
was stacked in the corners.
Also in the bedroom were five female mannequins of different ethnic
groups – Caucasian, Oriental, Indian and two blacks. They were posed,
looking with blank eyes at visitors. Well dressed and life-sized, they looked
like high-fashion models, wearing expensive clothing. Michael said that he
originally planned to have one room in the house specifically for the
mannequins, but he changed his mind and decided to keep his plastic
friends in his room. Katherine must have been relieved.
‘I guess I want to bring them to life,’ Michael explained. ‘I like to
imagine talking to them. You know what I think it is? Yeah, I think I'll say
it. I think I'm accompanying myself with friends I never had. I probably
have two friends. And I just got them. Being an entertainer, you just can't
tell who is your friend. So, I surround myself with people I want to be my
friends. And I can do that with mannequins. I'll talk to them.’
Dr Paul Gabriel, a professor of clinical psychiatry at New York
University Medical Center, has a theory about Michael's penchant for
mannequins – which he still has today, as seen on Martin Bashir's 2003
documentary about him: ‘That's a special eccentricity, in the category of
narcissism. We like to think we're beautiful. We make images of ourselves.
Children are very narcissistic. They see themselves in their dolls, and that's
what this is about for Michael Jackson. After age five or six, they begin to
give some of that up, but he apparently never did that.’
Later, there would be a crib in the corner of the bedroom, which was
where Michael's chimpanzee, Bubbles – who became a celebrity himself –
slept.
Michael's bathroom was impressive, all black marble and gold. The sinks
had brass swans for faucets.
A winding stairway led from the bedroom up to a private balcony on
which Michael had an outdoor Jacuzzi for his own use.
LaToya's bedroom was down the hall from Michael's. ‘He makes so
much noise,’ she once complained. ‘You hear music in his room when he's
trying to create. Or you hear the Three Stooges on TV, and he's up all night,
laughing. The light is always on; Michael is forever reading books. You
can't get in his room for the books and junk. I feel sorry for the
housekeeper.’ Ever the practical jokester, Michael enjoyed hiding bugs and
spiders under LaToya's sheets so that she would scream upon finding them.
Also, said LaToya, Michael wouldn't think twice about going into
anybody's bedroom, opening drawers, and looking inside. He would
frequently exasperate his family members by poking his nose into their
personal businesses, but he would become extremely upset if anyone ever
did such a thing to him.
Hayvenhurst – unofficially named after the Encino street on which it was
located – was the perfect retreat for Michael Jackson. It was certainly a far
cry from the modest home in which he had been raised as a small child, and
even from the traditional home that had previously been on the property.
From the roof of the house, Michael would watch the sunset and the glow
of the twinkly white lights that decorated all of the property's trees and
outlined the framework of the house.
Michael Meets with Berry, Again
On 12 March 1983, the co-management contract Michael Jackson and his
brothers had with their father, Joseph Jackson, and with the team of Ron
Weisner and Freddy DeMann expired. It was expected that Michael would
renegotiate and sign a new deal. However, he was not eager to do it. ‘Let's
just wait and see what happens,’ he kept saying when the subject was
broached. Michael, now twenty-four years old, had experienced great solo
success with Thriller and, as a result, was more confident in his decision-
making processes. He had just been presented with a double-platinum
award for Thriller at a press conference held at CBS's West Coast offices;
he knew how powerful he had become in the record industry. He no longer
felt compelled to follow the lead of his brothers, who had said they wanted
to continue with Joseph. From this point on, Ron Weisner, Freddy and
Joseph would work without a contract while Michael made up his mind
how to handle them.
Certainly, if Joseph wanted to continue managing Michael's career, he
was not scoring any points by mistreating Katherine. Michael had witnessed
a great deal of domestic heartbreak in recent years and found it impossible
to separate the man he held responsible for it from the one who managed
him. He was beginning to contemplate his options. ‘Why does Joseph have
to be in the picture at all?’ he wondered. ‘Is it because he's my father? Well,
that's not good enough.’
Michael was also still troubled by a letter Joseph had written to Ron and
Freddy back in 1980. In it, he assailed the managers for spending too much
time on Michael's career and not enough on that of his other sons. Joseph
probably did not expect the letter to get into Michael's hands. If it was up to
Joseph, Michael wouldn't even have a successful solo career. Of course,
Michael's success with Thriller could actually bode well for the brothers, in
terms of work opportunities – as long as Michael remained a part of the
group, which was beginning to seem an unlikely proposition, especially
after his next television appearance.
In March – the same month Michael had a number-one hit with ‘Billie
Jean’ – Suzanne dePasse was in the final stages of mounting an NBC
special 25 called Motown 25: Yesterday, Today and Forever to celebrate
Motown's twenty-fifth anniversary. Suzanne, president of Motown
Productions at this time and Berry Gordy's respected right-hand woman,
expected all of the former Motown stars, some of whom had left the
company acrimoniously, to reunite for this one evening to pay tribute to
fifty-four-year-old Berry, and acknowledge his impact on their lives and
careers.
Suzanne did not find it easy obtaining commitments from the artists. For
instance, it had been her idea to reunite Diana Ross and The Supremes,
thirteen years after that group disbanded. But Diana, now an RCA recording
artist, hadn't seen Berry since she left Motown, wasn't sure how she felt
about him, and decided not to cooperate. Her decision put a proposed
Supremes reunion segment in jeopardy. It was decided that there would,
instead, be a reunion of Michael Jackson and The Jackson 5, including
brother Jermaine, who had not performed with the group since 1975. All of
the brothers agreed that it would be an excellent idea to have a reunion for
Motown 25 – all, that is, except for Michael.
First of all, Michael did not want to appear on a television programme.
The reason he so enjoyed making music videos was because, in that format,
he could have complete control over the final product. Every aspect of his
performance could be perfected – either by multiple takes or by careful
editing. Performing ‘live’ for a studio audience on a programme that would
be taped for later television broadcast was a risky proposition. He would not
have as much control as he felt he needed in order to duplicate the quality
of his video work. No matter how he did it on television, there was no way
it would be as… magical.
Also playing a large part in Michael's lack of interest in Motown 25 was
that working with his brothers again, even if for a national, prime-time
audience, wasn't as appealing to him as it was to the rest of the family. For
years he had depended on the Jacksons for love, support and even
professional status. However, recently he had begun to break away – first,
emotionally by distancing himself from them and then, professionally, by
out-scaling their success with his own. He never actually made an
announcement that he was leaving the group, but Michael definitely no
longer wanted to be perceived as one of The Jacksons.
Beyond that, Michael had ambivalent feelings about Berry. He hadn't
forgotten the meeting they had had in 1975. Berry had promised that he
would do nothing to hurt the Jackson family. However, he then seemed to
encourage Michael's favourite brother, Jermaine, to leave the group. It was
a bit more complicated, but that's the way Michael chose to remember it. He
also felt that Motown had, as he put it, played ‘hard ball’ by preventing him
and his brothers from using the name ‘Jackson 5’ at CBS. In a sense,
Michael had unfinished business with Berry and, like Diana Ross, was
unsure about participating in a tribute to him.
It was no surprise that Joseph thought the idea of a reunion was a good
one. For him, it wasn't that he cared to pay tribute to Berry Gordy (not
likely!) but that he saw an opportunity to present the family singing group
in the way he always believed they should be presented: as a united front,
brothers till the end. Joseph also saw an opportunity to parlay the group's
reunion into a major, money-making tour. The idea was sure to make
Michael shudder, however Joseph was considering it, just the same. ‘He'll
do what I tell him to do,’ Joseph said, confidentially. As usual, though, he
had underestimated his son. Disregarding Joseph's wishes, Michael
discussed the matter with his other managers, Ron Weisner and Freddy
DeMann and, also, his attorney, John Branca. He then decided that he
wasn't going to appear on the programme.
Berry was fairly blasé about the reluctance of some former Motown stars to
pay homage to him. Even Marvin Gaye, his former brother-in-law, had said
he would not appear. ‘It's gonna be a great special anyway,’ Berry said. ‘Oh
yeah?’ Suzanne dePasse argued. ‘Without Diana Ross and Michael Jackson,
what kind of special do we have? We got DeBarge. We got High Inergy.
[Both were minor Motown acts.] You have got to talk to these people.’
Berry telephoned Diana; after their discussion, she agreed that she would
appear on the programme. Marvin Gaye eventually made the same
commitment. However, Michael was still a hold-out.
One night, while Michael was editing a special mix of ‘Billie Jean’ in a
Motown recording studio (which he had leased for the session), Berry
decided to show up at the session, unannounced. At first, Michael was
flabbergasted to see Berry, but he quickly regained his composure. Berry
meant a lot to Michael, despite whatever had happened in the past. At one
point, he actually wished that Berry was his father instead of Joseph. The
truth is, business complications aside, Berry was always personally kind to
Michael, which couldn't always be said about Joseph. Berry also had great
respect for Michael, which, again, couldn't always be said about Joseph.
Seeing Berry once again felt good to Michael, his smiling face a reminder
of some good times at the beginning, at Motown.
Sitting next to him at the control board, Berry asked Michael why he
would not appear on the Motown 25 broadcast. Michael explained why he
disliked performing on television, but he did not offer his reservations
regarding his brothers, or even Motown. Finally, the two began discussing
old times at the company, and it was clear that Michael still felt a kinship to
his past there. Still, he really didn't want to perform – unless he could get
something out of it for himself. Why not? Everyone else was getting
something out of it: Berry was getting a tribute; the brothers, a reunion;
Joseph, his way; the network, big ratings… why not something for
Michael? ‘Listen, if I do this thing, I want to have a solo spot,’ Michael told
Berry.
‘Hey, man, that's cool,’ Berry said eagerly. ‘I want you to have that, too.’
Berry assumed that Michael was talking about singing one of his
Motown solo recordings, such as ‘Got to be There’ or ‘Ben’. Berry began
rattling off a list of the solo songs. He even mentioned ‘Never Can Say
Goodbye’, which, of course, was not a solo recording. However, to Berry,
who was never much for the details of Motown history, they were all the
same: hits.
Michael shook his head. ‘No, Berry,’ he said, firmly, ‘I want to do “Billie
Jean”.’
Berry started chewing on his tongue, as he always does when he's deep in
thought. He explained that the special was a celebration of Motown and
since ‘Billie Jean’ had been recorded for CBS, it made no sense to have him
perform it on the programme.
Michael told Berry that if he couldn't do ‘Billie Jean’, he would simply
not appear on the show. He wanted to prove that, as good as the classic
Motown hits were, he had been able to come up with a song that was,
arguably, even better. Though he'd never been sure it was a good career
move for the Jacksons to leave the company that had made them world-
famous, it turned out that it was the best thing that could have happened to
him and to his brothers. Now, he wanted the public to see his growth. He
also wanted to promote ‘Billie Jean’, which was in the Top Ten and didn't
really need it, but why not? Of course, he also wanted ‘his way’.
‘I don't know about “Billie Jean”,’ Berry said, stalling. ‘It doesn't seem
right to me.’
‘Well, then, Berry, I'm sorry…’
There was a moment of silence.
‘Okay,’ Berry agreed with a grin. ‘It's “Billie Jean”. Hey, what the hell, I
love that song.’
‘Oh, and I want to have final edit on the videotape of the song before it's
broadcast,’ Michael added.
No other artist had made this particular request; most would not have
bothered since it was so highly unusual; Berry wasn't sure what to think
about it. Motown always liked to have control over final product; it's just
the way it had always been. However, things had to change if he wanted
Michael aboard.
‘Okay,’ Berry concluded with a firm handshake. ‘And you'll do The
Jackson 5 reunion, right? 'Cause Jermaine's lookin' forward to it.’
Michael rolled his eyes and sighed. ‘Yeah, sure. Why not?’
The two smiled at one another as they rose from their chairs. Michael
embraced Berry and whispered something in his ear. Berry left the studio
beaming.
Yesterday, Today and Forever
It had been years since his last television performance and on 25 March
1983, at the taping of Motown 25: Yesterday, Today and Forever, Michael
Jackson looked different: slimmer, almost fragile. His nose was now
streamlined and sculpted, a tribute to a twentieth-century Michelangelo –
his plastic surgeon. The new face had been skilfully enhanced: almond-
shaped eyes outlined in black and lightly shadowed, high cheekbones
emphasized by the merest hint of rouge, lips glossed to a subtle sheen. His
former Afro hairstyle had been replaced by soft curls which framed his
face; two wisps adorned his brow.
The Jackson 5 reunion went well. By the time they took the stage at the
Pasadena Civic Center, the audience had already seen Marvin Gaye,
Smokey Robinson and Mary Wells perform. They erupted in applause at the
sight of the reunited brothers. For ‘I Want You Back’, Jermaine was back,
smiling broadly and standing right next to Michael, in his old position. By
the time the Jacksons swung into ‘The Love You Save’, and Randy trotted
on stage to join them, the crowd – men in tuxedos, women in evening
gowns – were standing and applauding. During ‘I'll Be There’, when
Michael and Jermaine shared the spotlight and microphone, the two seemed
choked up. Jermaine's eyes welled with tears. Michael draped an arm over
his brother's shoulder and the two looked at one another with great warmth.
It was an emotion-packed, memorable moment.
After hugs all around, the other Jacksons left the stage.
Then, the spotlight found him. It caught the glint of his black sequined
jacket with cuffs that matched the silver sequined shirt, the white glitter
socks that peeped from beneath the just-above-the-ankle black trousers, the
shiny black penny loafers. And of course, there was the single left-handed
white glove with its hand-sewn rhinestones.
Michael thanked the audience. He hesitated, speaking haltingly. ‘I have
to say those were the good old days. I love those songs,’ he said of the
medley. ‘Those were magic moments with all my brothers – including
Jermaine.’ Michael began pacing the stage, his hand in his pocket, talking
as though he were just voicing some thoughts that happened to pop into his
head, as though he were alone, as though the audience was not there.
Actually, he was walking to the side of the stage to sneak the fedora into his
hand. ‘But, uh, you know,’ he continued, ‘those were the good songs. I like
those songs a lot. But especially, I like’ – he was centre stage by this time,
facing the audience – ‘the new songs,’ The audience knew what was
coming. They began calling out for ‘Billie Jean’.
As the funk-infused guitar riff of ‘Billie Jean’ began, Michael went into
his routine. He was going to be lip-synching – that was obvious from the
first note – but no one watching cared. As the music pulsated, he jammed a
black fedora over his eyes and struck a pose – his right hand on his hat, his
left leg bent and poised for action. The stance may have been a tribute to
Bob Fosse or Sammy Davis, Jr., but Michael imprinted it with his own
magic. While most entertainers perform for their audiences, Michael
seemed to be performing for himself, tonight. Maybe it was catharsis, his
way of dealing with his personal pain, exorcising the demons in his life,
coming to terms with the disappointments of the past just as others around
him had celebrated it.
He threw the hat aside with a graceful flourish, the audience went wild.
He moved constantly. Even when he was standing still, he seemed to be
moving.
Michael's brothers stood in the wings, their mouths open. His parents and
sisters sat in the audience, spellbound. ‘He just stole the show,’ Joseph
exclaimed to Katherine. ‘That boy just stole the show.’ Berry was also seen
standing and applauding, one of the biggest fans in the house.
‘Billie Jean is not my lover,’ Michael sang, a pained expression playing
on his face. It was a deeply personal song about fathers and sons, about
denial, entrapment, and hypocrisy, about coming close to the outer edges of
madness.
The whole of Michael's performance was spellbinding, but during a brief
instrumental interlude, he executed a combination of moves that would seal
his reputation as a dance legend. He commenced with a series of split-
second locking moves and poses before gliding across the stage via his
now-famous sleek and graceful moonwalk – a reversed syncopated glide,
heading forwards and sliding backwards at the same time. The moonwalk
gave way to that equally renowned spin – now refined, after years of
practice, to tornado speed – and then, immediately, he was up on his toes.
Nobody but Michael Jackson could dance like that, and the audience went
wild.
Michael hadn't invented any of these moves; the poses were modified
versions of ‘locking’, a street dance from the 1970s. The moonwalk was a
move TV's Soul Train dancers had discarded almost three years earlier.
Sammy Davis, Jr., James Brown and Jackie Wilson all used to execute that
same spin, and going up on the toes is a touch Michael saw Fred Astaire use
in his classic films of the 1930s. To combine all those moves, from all of
those eras – to take different styles and make them his own – that's Michael
Jackson's genius as a dancer and creator.
Since he was a child and lead singer of The Jackson 5, Michael had
possessed a magical ability to move an audience with his singing and
dancing. However, somehow tonight, something was different. Tonight, his
audience was just as exhilarated by the force of his personality as they were
by his voice and footwork. Videotapes of Michael's performance do not
begin to capture the pandemonium his act generated that evening. The few
minutes Michael spent onstage alone at the Pasadena Civic Center would
add up to the performance of his career. After this evening, his life – both
personally and professionally – would never again be the same.
When it was over, Michael appeared surprised; he took one more step
before he realized that the music had stopped – or, perhaps, it was just his
own momentum carrying him. A standing ovation rocked the hall. Michael
bowed, then straightened and raised his arm. His doe eyes looked straight
ahead, his body motionless. He didn't smile or acknowledge the moment
which, of course, was part of the act.
He would later remember that he was disappointed in the performance.
He had planned to execute a spin and stop on his toes, suspended. The spin
worked, but he didn't stay on his toes as long as he had planned to when he
rehearsed in the privacy of his kitchen. Always the perfectionist, he wished
he could do it over again. And if this had been a video – not television – he
could have. It wasn't such a hot performance, he would remember thinking
to himself, despite the crowd's approval.
Backstage, his brothers awaited him. All five – Jackie, Tito, Jermaine,
Marlon and Randy – embraced him as he exited the stage.
‘What a job, Mike,’ Jackie exclaimed.
‘I've never seen anything like it,’ Jermaine added.
They were all talking at once. They had had no idea what Michael was
going to do during his solo spot; he had decided not to tell them.
Jermaine kissed him on the cheek. Then Jackie, then the others. It was an
unusual display; the brothers, following Joseph's example, were usually not
affectionate or effusive with one another. However, Michael had shown
them what he was capable of, they respected him for it and couldn't contain
themselves. Maybe it really was a good performance, after all.
However, it wasn't long before the moment was shattered. The brothers
were soon talking about what Michael's glory might mean for them – the
possibility of taking the group back out on the road and making more
money than ever before. ‘The Jackson 5 are back,’ Jackie kept repeating,
and the others agreed, enthusiastically. ‘This is gonna be great.’
Michael didn't want any part of that idea. He turned and began walking
away from them. ‘Hey, man, we're family,’ one of his brothers reminded
him. Michael, an inscrutable expression on his face, just shook his head and
kept walking.
As Michael continued down the hall, a young boy in a tuxedo followed
him. ‘Hey, Michael,’ the youngster called out. ‘Wait up.’
Michael stopped.
‘Man, who ever taught you to dance like that?’ The kid looked up at his
idol with adoring eyes.
‘Practice, I guess,’ Michael said.
‘You were amazing,’ the fan told him.
‘Thanks, I needed that,’ Michael responded.
The youngster turned and walked away.
Michael nodded to himself, and as he walked down the hall alone, he
began to smile. Now, he felt good.
The Man and the Moon
The atmosphere at the Jacksons' house on Hayvenhurst was holiday-like,
with people telephoning from across the country to rave about Michael. The
house swarmed with people – relatives, CBS and Motown executives,
neighbours and even fans – as members of the family repeatedly ran the
videotape of Michael's exciting performance. ‘You gotta see this one more
time,’ Joseph, the proud father, told everyone who came by. ‘I've never seen
anything like it. Just look at this kid.’
Joseph may not have realized it, but video players all over the country
were in overdrive, as well. With his appearance on Motown 25, Michael
accomplished two things: he reconfirmed for lifelong fans that, yes, he is
the amazing talent they had always revered. Also, through the might of
television, he reached millions of viewers who had never experienced him
as a performer. Only on two other occasions – the first national television
appearances of Elvis Presley and The Beatles, both on The Ed Sullivan
Show – has television so handily delivered pop music superstardom.
However, Michael Jackson's was quite possibly the single most captivating
pop music performance in television history – the singing and the dancing.
‘Beat It’ had just hit number one two weeks earlier; it was Michael
Jackson's world, and all of the other Jacksons were just living in it.
Even the dance greats, such as Fred Astaire, were impressed by Michael's
prowess. The day after the special aired, Fred telephoned Hermes Pan, the
legendary choreographer and Oscar winner who taught Fred and Ginger
Rogers their most memorable dance steps (and who was his neighbour in
Beverly Hills). He told him to come by as soon as possible.
When Hermes arrived, Fred put in a videotape of the performance. ‘Just
wait till you see this.’ Then the two old pros watched in awe as the new kid
on the block wowed America. Fred, never one to give light praise to other
male dancers, was knocked out by Michael.
‘We agreed that we must call Michael, immediately,’ Hermes Pan told
me. ‘Somehow, Fred tracked him down. He told him that he was one hell of
a dancer. “A great mover.” He said, “You really put them on their asses last
night. You're an angry dancer. I'm the same way.” I got on the line to say
hello, and this whisper of a voice answered me. I was surprised, actually,
that a person who dances with such anger would have such a soft voice. I
told him how much I enjoyed his work, and he was very gracious, very
excited to hear from us. For a moment, I believed he thought it was a
practical joke. I liked him right away because he seemed so unaffected by
show business, and also star struck. He really could not believe that Fred
Astaire had called him.’
Michael would say later that Fred's compliment meant more to him than
any he had ever received. Michael's voice teacher, Seth Riggs, recalled that,
‘Michael was eating breakfast when Astaire called, and he became so
excited he actually got sick and couldn't finish his meal.’ Later, Fred invited
Michael to his home so that he could teach him and Hermes how to
moonwalk.
Soon after that, Gene Kelly visited Michael in Encino to talk shop. ‘He
knows when to stop and then flash out like a bolt of lightning,’ Gene would
say of Michael, who had, it seemed, joined a new brotherhood of dance.
‘He's clean, neat, fast, with a sensuality that comes through,’ Bob Fosse
would say of Michael after Motown 25 was broadcast. ‘It's never the steps
that are important. It's the style.’
The moonwalk dance movement was taught to Michael by one of the
former dancers on the popular American television programme called Soul
Train. The steps had been around for about three years. When he saw the
routine for the first time while watching the show, Michael simply had to
learn it. Ron Weisner put him in touch with sixteen-year-old Geron
Candidate, who went by the stage name of ‘Casper’, the kid who actually
invented the move.
‘I saw something you guys did on Soul Train,’ Michael told Casper,
‘where it looks like you're going backward and forward at the same time.’
‘It's called the backslide,’ Casper exclaimed.
‘That's amazing!’ Michael exclaimed. ‘Can you teach me to do that?’
Casper was so stunned, he could barely answer yes. The next day Casper
and his dance partner, Cooley Jackson, met Michael at a rehearsal studio in
Los Angeles. To the music of ‘The Pop-Along Kid’, by the group Shalamar,
Cooley proceeded to demonstrate a version of the backslide which was
more like pushing in place rather than walking backwards. It wasn't what
Michael wanted. Then, Casper demonstrated the slide where it appears the
dancer is walking backwards and forwards at the same time. Michael leaped
into the air. ‘Yes! That's it. That's the one I want to learn.’
When Casper sat down, Michael grabbed at his shoes to examine their
soles. ‘What do you have on the bottom of your shoes?’ Michael wanted to
know. ‘You got wheels under there, don't you? That's how you do that step,
isn't it?’
Casper explained that there were no special shoes or wheels involved; it
was just a cleverly executed dance step. With the help of a chair, Casper
began to teach it to Michael. For this practice session, Michael grabbed on
to the chair back and executed the step in place repeatedly, in an effort to
become accustomed to the foot movement. ‘He learned the basic concept in
about an hour,’ Casper remembered. ‘He wasn't comfortable with it, but he
had it down.’
A couple of days later, Casper had another session with Michael. ‘He still
wasn't at ease with it,’ Casper recalled. ‘Whereas I made it look so natural,
like I was walking on air, he was stiff. It bugged him. “I can't do this in
front of people unless I can do it right,” he kept saying.’
After those rehearsals, Michael went on tour with his brothers. ‘I went to
see the show in Los Angeles, and he didn't do the step,’ Casper said. ‘I was
surprised. When I went backstage and asked him about it, he said he just
didn't feel ready yet. He didn't feel he knew it.’
Casper was home watching Motown 25, like millions of others, when he
saw Michael do the step for the first time in front of an audience. ‘I couldn't
believe it,’ he remembered. ‘My heart started pounding. I flew right out of
my chair and screamed out, “Yeah! He did it. He finally did it. And I'm the
guy who taught it to him.” It's not the moonwalk though,’ he explained. ‘It's
the backslide. The moonwalk is when you do the step in a complete circle.
But, somehow, the step Michael did on TV became known as the
moonwalk, instead of the backslide.’
Indeed, the moonwalk – or backslide – soon became Michael's signature
dance step. His Motown 25 performance was nominated for an Emmy (and
the programme itself won one). For teaching it to him, Casper was paid just
a thousand dollars. ‘That's how much I asked for,’ he said, laughing. ‘I was
sixteen. To me, that was good money. I would have done it for free, to tell
you the truth. How was I supposed to know it would become Michael
Jackson's trademark?’
‘Billie Jean’ and ‘Beat It’ Videos
In March 1983, Michael hit number one again with ‘Billie Jean’. It would
stay atop the charts for seven weeks, primarily because of the impact of the
Motown 25 appearance, but also as a result of the video Michael made for
the song. ‘When his people approached us about doing the video for “Billie
Jean”, they didn't have any ideas at all,’ recalled Simon Fields, who
produced the ‘Billie Jean’ video. Fields said that the concept came from its
director, Steve Barron. ‘Basically, Michael was just following our
direction,’ he said. ‘But the guy is a genius, so you can count on him to do
wonderful things.’
‘Billie Jean,’ the first video from the Thriller album – and Michael's first
major music clip – is ultimately too artsy for its own good. In a series of
abstract shots, Michael plays high-tech hide-and-seek with a stalking,
probing photographer – the only other major character – clearly suggesting
Michael's paranoia about the press. However ‘Billie Jean’ the song – about
a girl who haunts Michael, insisting that he is the father of her son – boasts
too strong and visual a storyline to have been so overlooked in its video. In
the end, the video is largely a series of odd scenes strung together.
Michael Jackson's biggest advance with this video was in showing
viewers a new side of himself. Here Michael was cool, mysterious and
evasive. The most compelling moment in ‘Billie Jean’ comes, as usual with
Jackson, when he dances. With each step he takes, the sidewalk underneath
his feet lights up as if infused by, as Michael would say, ‘magic’.
Michael demonstrated more of his deft dancing abilities in his excellent
‘Beat It’ video. While he had begun with only a vague concept for the
‘Billie Jean’ clip, he knew precisely what he wanted for ‘Beat It’. Veteran
commercial director Bob Giraldi and Broadway choreographer Michael
Peters collaborated with Michael on what would be one of the most
dynamic, and expensive, videos to date. The choreographed ensemble-
dancing in ‘Beat It’ would be often imitated in years to come, and is still a
staple in the videos of many pop artists.
Perhaps of all the numbers Michael had presented his fans during his
career, the ‘Beat It’ video marked the biggest departure. As a song, the track
was unadulterated rock and roll, something Michael's core fans, especially
the majority of his black ones, initially rejected. Beyond that, the video
depicted a Jackson never before seen: Michael as urban dweller, a kid living
on the wrong side of the tracks – a human Michael.
Some of Michael's public, particularly those living in urban
neighbourhoods, found the storyline patronizing. In ‘Beat It’, which
Michael has said was written with youngsters in mind, he is the good guy
who ultimately stops two powerful gangs from warring with each other.
Those viewers unable to separate Michael Jackson the musical enigma from
Michael Jackson the actor missed the point when they asked angrily, ‘What
does he know about gangs?’ and ‘Does he really think dancing through the
problems we're having down here – muggings, killings, drug addiction – is
the answer to our woes?’
‘The point is no one has to be the tough guy,’ Michael would explain.
‘You can walk away from a fight and still be a man. You don't have to die to
prove you're a man.’
Visually, Michael's video was convincing enough. Shot on location on
the mean streets of Los Angeles, it looked dark and grimy. In a quest for
authenticity, one hundred members of two real-life, rival Los Angeles street
gangs were hired as extras and atmosphere people. (They were each fed and
paid one hundred dollars for two nights' work.)
‘The gangs were sort of on the periphery of the location,’ choreographer
Michael Peters once said, ‘so Michael really didn't have to deal with them.
But he was a little nervous, as we all were at the beginning. However, he
was wonderful with them. I think the turning point was when the gangs saw
us dance. They had, I think, a different respect after that. Michael signed
autographs and took pictures with them.’
Acting was easy for Michael: he'd done a form of it onstage, singing, all
his life. However, with ensemble-dancing, he found himself on uncharted
terrain. Fans had never seen Michael in a Broadway-style setting, and some
of them probably wondered why a hoofer like Michael needed someone to
teach him steps, but choreographer Michael Peters succeeded in creating a
dazzling, funked-up, Chorus Line-like dance effect. It all looked so easy, it
seemed that anyone could do it. But, just try. ‘Looks can be deceiving,
especially when it comes to dance,’ Michael would explain with a grin.
Overall, the clip is rock theatre at its best. Its style and artistry actually
succeeded in making the music more interesting, which has always been the
ultimate goal of music videos.
What's really interesting about Michael's Thriller videos, however, is
how they boosted the popularity of the then-fledgling MTV network. MTV,
the twenty-four-hour-a-day cable station that plays only music videos,
became a phenomenon when it began airing in 1981, yet by 1983 it rarely
played the videos of black artists. The station's format was ‘strictly rock and
roll’, said Bob Pittman, the executive vice-president and chief operating
officer of Warner American Express Satellite Entertainment Company and
the driving force behind MTV. Pittman's definition of rock and roll
excluded most black artists from the station's play lists. In fact, of the over
750 videos shown on MTV during the channel's first eighteen months,
fewer than two dozen featured black artists. It was acceptable to have Phil
Collins sing The Supremes' ‘You Can't Hurry Love’ and Hall and Oates
singing other black-sounding material, yet the real thing was completely
unacceptable on MTV at that time. When videos of black artists were
submitted, they were quickly rejected as not being ‘rock and roll’.
MTV's research and marketing departments had somehow decided that
white kids in the suburbs did not like black music and maybe were
intimidated by black people. There was nothing wrong with that, Bob
Pittman reasoned; after all, ‘Bloomingdale's wouldn't work if it carried
every kind of clothing ever made.’
Bob Giraldi, director of Michael's ‘Beat It’ video, best summed up many
black critics' opinions of MTV when he said that the station was run by
‘racist bastards’. Motown recording artist Rick James, whose videos had
been rejected by the station, also charged that the network was racist and
had set black people back four hundred years. Bob Pittman was probably
not a racist, but he and MTV certainly catered to white suburban racism.
When CBS submitted Michael Jackson's ‘Billie Jean’ to MTV, the cable
station quickly rejected it. CBS then threatened to pull all of its other videos
from MTV unless they ran ‘Beat It’. Michael Jackson had become so
popular, Bob Pittman – and suburban white America – simply could not
ignore him. Finally, in early March 1983, the ‘Billie Jean’ video was played
on MTV, and in so-called ‘heavy rotation’, meaning often during the day.
‘Beat It’ followed. After that, MTV began to play a few more videos by
black artists, and though the network still leans heavily towards white rock
and roll, at least some black artists – though not many – receive airtime,
mostly as a result of the Michael Jackson breakthrough so many years ago.
Managerial Trouble
By June 1983, Michael and his brothers had still not renegotiated their
contract with their father, nor had they decided to re-sign with co-managers,
Ron Weisner and Freddy DeMann. Though the brothers were ambivalent
about re-signing, they were willing. They really didn't have any options,
anyway. Of course, Michael was the holdout. He was disenchanted with his
father and, now, also with Ron Weisner and Freddy DeMann. Because
Michael was taking his time in making a decision about the matter,
everyone involved was concerned. His decision meant a great deal to a lot
of people, in terms of money and power. If he signed, everyone else in the
family would follow suit. If he didn't, it was possible that there could be
other defections.
Joseph hadn't been doing much for Michael lately, especially since John
Branca came into his life. Michael trusted John implicitly and tried to make
certain he – not Joseph – was involved in every decision. No surprise, then,
that Joseph wasn't one of John's biggest fans (and vice versa) and only
spoke, begrudgingly, to him if he couldn't speak to Michael, directly. Ron
and Freddy handled whatever John chose not to, so in a sense, though not
technically or officially (or, even legally, for that matter), John Branca was
as much a manager to Michael as he was an attorney.
Michael had complained to John during the last two years that Ron
Weisner and Freddy DeMann were not creative individuals. ‘I don't even
know why they're here,’ he said. ‘They don't know what they're doing, do
they?’ But whenever John would discuss Michael's feelings with Ron and
Freddy, they wouldn't know what he was talking about. They both felt that
Michael was pleased with their work, since he had never told them
otherwise. Michael picked up a lot of Joseph's business traits, but the art of
confrontation was not one of them. He'd do it, if he had to… but he'd rather
not have to do it.
‘You remember their idea for the “Beat It” video,’ Michael reminded
John. ‘They wanted me to have bows and arrows,’ Michael complained.
‘Now, come on, Branca. That's stupid.’ It was true that Ron and Freddy had
a concept for the ‘Beat It’ video that would have seen Michael dressed as a
Robin Hood character in England. However, why not? It's all in the
implementation, isn't it? If one was to describe the ‘Beat It’ video as it
actually exists – Michael inspires two rival gangs to understand that
dancing will bring about a peaceful solution of their disagreements – that
might sound silly, too.
Because Joseph was nervous about his tenuous position with Michael, he
reacted impulsively and hoped to force Michael's hand where Weisner and
DeMann were concerned – thereby leaving him the only sure thing in his
son's career, just as it had been in the past. ‘It's over,’ Joseph told Billboard
magazine of Ron and Freddy. ‘My boys are not re-signing with them. There
are a lot of leeches trying to break up the group,’ he observed, possibly
referring to Ron and Freddy's continued emphasis on Michael's solo career.
‘A lot of people are whispering in Michael's ear, but we know who they are.
They're only in it for the money.’ Then, as if to put pressure on Michael, he
added, ‘I was there before it started, and I'll be there when it ends.’
The brothers were not happy with Weisner and DeMann, anyway,
because of all the attention the two had lavished upon Michael in recent
months. For that matter, they wanted to leave Joseph, too. However, they
were waiting for Michael – not Joseph – to make an announcement. They
knew that there would be trouble now.
They were right. Michael was angry with Joseph for taking matters into
his own hands, and even more outraged that his father would talk to a
reporter about their private business affairs. It was as if Joseph wanted the
world to know what was happening so that Michael would then be reluctant
to move against his own father. However, the more Joseph talked, the worse
things got for him. ‘There was a time when I felt I needed white help in
dealing with the corporate structure at CBS,’ Joseph explained. ‘And I
thought Weisner-DeMann would be able to help. But they never gave me
the respect you expect from a business partner.’
For their part, Weisner and DeMann said to the press that, yes, they did
have problems with Joseph, ‘but we have no problems with Michael or The
Jacksons,’ and that Joseph had not been involved in any major business
decisions in recent years. ‘We don't have a good relationship with him,’
Freddy admitted, ‘but I don't think he enjoys a good relationship with
anyone whose skin is not black.’
‘People have called me a racist. I am not a racist,’ Joseph countered. ‘If I
were a racist, I would not have hired a lot of white people to work for me.
I'm not a racist. I'm an American. I gave my children one hundred per cent
of my know-how, knowledge and time trying to develop them to be what
they are today, and it has paid off and is still paying off.’
Finally, Michael realized that too much was being said to the press,
especially about race. He decided to cut to the chase and fire Weisner and
DeMann; he was going to do it, anyway, so his father didn't really need to
do anything but seal the deal. ‘They said Thriller would only go two million
and it's way over that,’ Michael reasoned to John Branca. ‘So who needs
them? They told me not to do Motown 25. And look what kind of bad
advice that was.’
John reminded Michael that he had not wanted to do the Motown special,
anyway. Michael argued, ‘That's not the point. Ron and Freddy agreed with
me when they should have tried to convince him otherwise. Do it,’ he told
Branca. ‘They're finished.’
Ron Weisner and Freddy DeMann got their walking papers from Michael
on 22 June. Oddly, Ron had talked to Michael earlier that morning and,
during their conversation, Michael acted as though no problem existed
between them. When he then received the letter of dismissal from John
Branca, Ron was astonished. Obviously, it wasn't the bravest way to handle
the problem, having someone else do his dirty work, but for Michael it
proved the easiest and, besides, John Branca made a lot of money doing the
things Michael would rather not have to do himself. Though Michael may
not have been influenced by Joseph's contentious nature, he was definitely
his father's son when it came to dealing with those he felt crossed him, and
he remains the same today: once someone falls from Michael's grace, that
person disappears from his thoughts – as though he or she never existed.
As for Joseph, Michael made a public statement to distance himself from
his sentiments. ‘I don't know what would make him say something like
that,’ Michael told a reporter, referring to Joseph's comments about ‘white
help’.
‘To hear him talk like that turns my stomach. I don't know where he gets
that from. I happen to be colour-blind. I don't hire colour. I hire
competence. The individual can be of any race or creed as long as I get the
best [representation]. Racism is not my motto.’
With Ron and Freddy gone, and Joseph not re-signed, it looked like the
number-one artist in the world, Michael Jackson, now had no manager. His
team now consisted of his attorney and chief adviser, John Branca; his
security man, Bill Bray; his accountant, Marshall Gelfand; and a secretary.
When ‘Beat It’ and ‘Billie Jean’ were both in the Top Ten, Quincy Jones
asked for a three-way-conference telephone call among himself, Michael
and John Branca.
‘It's unbelievable what's happening here, Michael,’ Quincy said. ‘You
need a manager, man. How could you fire Weisner and DeMann? What are
you going to do now?’
‘Branca can handle it, Quincy,’ Michael said, according to Quincy's
memory. ‘He's brilliant. I'm not nervous, why are you?’ Before Quincy
could fully respond, Michael cut the conversation short and hung up.
Later, Quincy telephoned John Branca.
‘John, I'm worried, man. This thing, Michael's career, it's like a plane
with no pilot,’ he said. ‘This kid's career is in trouble.’
John couldn't believe his ears. ‘What? He's got two records in the Top
Ten and his career is in trouble?’ he asked with a laugh. ‘Hey man, don't
worry about it. It's going to be fine.’
Quincy was perplexed; he didn't understand how Michael was going to
have a flourishing career without managerial guidance. If the sales of
Thriller slowed down because there was no manager calling the shots, it
would affect everybody's bank account, including Quincy's. However, at
this time Michael was the Golden Child; the public was pulling for him, and
the music spoke for itself.
‘Mike knows what he's doing,’ John told Quincy. ‘This kid is a genius.
And we got CBS and Walter [Yetnikoff] covering the bases. All we have to
do is follow Michael's instructions.’
‘But – ’ Quincy began again.
John cut him off. ‘This is our chance, man, and I'm just gonna go on out
there and kick ass for this kid because he's got it, Quincy. I love this kid and
I just want to do his bidding.’
Son vs. Father
As angry as Michael was with Joseph, taking that next step – severing his
professional relationship with him – was still difficult for him to do.
Just as he had felt it important to give Berry Gordy a chance to redeem
himself before the group took their first steps away from Motown, Michael
now hoped his father would do something to ingratiate himself. However,
Joseph simply couldn't rise to the challenge… mostly because he didn't
even know he was being tested. Joseph never tried to impress his children.
In his view, getting them to Los Angeles and making them stars had been
impressive enough. He had proved himself, he felt, and that was the end of
that.
‘He's finished,’ Michael decided of Joseph. Katherine may not have been
able to get rid of him as a husband, but Michael was sure able to unload him
as a manager. Once Michael Jackson made up his mind to fire someone, he
stuck to the decision, no matter who the person was – even his own father.
‘Joseph knew it was coming,’ said Joseph's friend of fifteen years, Larry
Anderson. ‘He knew his time was up.’
Michael had John Branca draw up the official documents informing
Joseph that his managerial services would no longer be required. Michael
then left the house the day he knew they would be delivered by messenger.
He stayed away from home until Joseph had time to get used to the idea.
‘It's not easy firing your father,’ he would later explain, in what was quite
an understatement.
In a rare show of unity, the brothers acted as one on this decision. They
wanted Joseph out too and if Michael was prepared to take the first step
they would follow suite. None of them renewed his contract with Joseph.
Joseph was angry at first, but soon he was crushed. ‘I can't believe they're
leaving me,’ he told Katherine. And his despair caused great conflict in
Katherine. Of course she was livid with him about his treatment of her; the
divorce was still pending. However, her heart went out to him over the
matter of their sons. ‘I knew how much he had done for them,’ she would
later say, ‘and this… well, this was just plain suffering. I didn't want to see
him suffer.’
According to one of Michael's advisers, Michael had a meeting with
Joseph in the living room of the Encino house to discuss the matter. Michel
asked his adviser to be present because he didn't want to meet with Joseph
alone.
‘The fact that you can't even talk to me unless you have this guy here,’
Joseph said, motioning to the adviser, ‘it hurts me, Michael. Do you know
how it makes me feel?’ He had tears in his eyes; he looked broken. ‘You
know how I feel about you. Why do I always have to say it?’
Michael averted his eyes; he didn't even want to look at his father. ‘You
never said it, Joseph,’ he said, venomously. ‘Don't act like you ever said it,
even once, because you never said it.’
‘After all I've done for you and your brothers?’ Joseph asked. ‘Think
about it. It's always been about you and your brothers. That's how I say it.’
Michael shot him a look of disdain. ‘Oh yeah?’ he responded, bitterly.
‘And what about all you've done to Kate? What's that been about, Joseph?’
Michael's comment set Joseph off, according to the witness's memory.
‘That ain't got nothin' to do with nothin',’ he said, raising his voice to a level
that made Michael recoil. Joseph rose so that he was standing above his
son, who was still seated. ‘My marriage has nothing to do with you,
Michael,’ he shouted at him. ‘You know I love your mother. It's between
her and me.’
Michael stood up to face his father, his dark eyes were blazing. ‘It's
between all of us, Joseph,’ he exclaimed. ‘If you can't see that, then I don't
know what to tell you.’ He stormed out of the room.
Joseph then turned on the adviser. ‘It's because of you,’ he said in a
hurting but still furious voice. ‘You put this bullshit in my son's head and
you're ruining our family. It's because of you.’ He then crumpled into a
chair. Joseph appeared to be reeling as if, for him, all logic, fairness and
common sense had suddenly been suspended and now… this. He put his
face in his hands and sat in his chair, shaking his head in disbelief.
In the summer of 1983, those Jacksons living at the Hayvenhurst estate –
Michael, Janet, LaToya, and Joseph and Katherine – existed in a state of
emotional siege. Imagine it: Michael had fired Joseph as his manager, yet
they were still living in the same house together. Katherine had filed to
divorce Joseph, yet he was sleeping down the hall. Of course, the sensible
thing would have been for him to move out. However, Joseph wasn't going
anywhere. The fact that he didn't even own the house any longer was
irrelevant.
‘My father's very stern, very strict,’ LaToya complained to freelance
writer Todd Gold at this time. ‘Deep down inside, he's a wonderful guy, but
you have to know him. If you don't, you can get the wrong impression.
You'd think that he's mean and whatever he says goes, which it does.
Sometimes, though, if you really fight it out, you can have your way.’ She
let out an exasperated sigh. ‘But it's just not worth it.’
As soon as Joseph would leave the estate for a day of work elsewhere, a
sense of relief washed over the premises. On Saturdays, for instance, when
he went to visit Joh'Vonnie, the Hayvenhurst household came alive. LaToya
told Todd Gold, ‘We invite lots of kids over and play some movies in the
theatre, and the popcorn machine's going, the animals are all out, and
everyone's dancing to music.’
Throughout the week, Michael tried to make certain that he never crossed
paths with Joseph. Should the two accidentally meet, a loud argument
would be the inevitable result. Michael would end up in his room, sobbing,
Katherine trailing him there. Joseph would follow. There would be
shouting, then more crying. Doors would slam all around. The tension
affected everyone; Janet and LaToya spent a lot of time in their bedrooms
with their music turned up.
Of course, the Jacksons may have been having tough personal times, but
they were still the Jacksons and therefore lived with a sense of entitlement
that was, sometimes, astounding. They all expected devotion from their
staff; employees had no lives of their own. Steve Howell, Michael's
videographer at the time, remembered what happened when he took a
vacation to Lake Tahoe. ‘I was there with my girl and made the mistake of
calling the house to see if everything was okay. “You have to get back here
right away,” Bill Bray, Michael's security man, told me hysterically.
“There's no television reception and Michael needs to watch TV! Get back
here right away. So I cancelled the rest of my trip, flew back to Los
Angeles, bee-lined it to the house, only to discover that the cable wire was
unplugged. I plugged it into the wall and the TV went on, and Michael sat
down to watch TV. “Thanks,” he said.’
Good help was hard to find, even in Encino. At one point, money was
stolen from one of the bedrooms. The Jacksons suspected a maid. They then
began leaving money out in view, and would then sneak about and peer
around corners to see who would take it. Ah-ha! It was the maid. Michael
was the one who busted her; twenty bucks! After that, the family employees
were often tested. Katherine would leave the alarm on the closet unarmed,
the one in which she kept her minks, chinchillas, and other expensive furs.
She would leave the door slightly ajar so anyone walking by could see what
was inside. She would then stand very still at a nearby vantage point to see
who expressed the most interest in the furs. That person would be
scrutinized very carefully from then onward. ‘Keep your eye on that one,’
she would tell Michael. ‘I don't trust her as far as I can throw her.’ Perhaps
this kind of surveillance kept their minds off their troubles with Joseph.
During this time, outsiders were not welcome at Hayvenhurst, especially
the press who might sniff out any trouble on the home front. Of course,
persistent fans were always a problem. ‘I love my fans, but I'm afraid of
them,’ Michael told photo journalist Dave Nussbaum. ‘Some of them will
do anything to get to you. They don't realize that what they are doing might
hurt you,’ Michael talked of a fan who had managed to get beyond the gate.
‘We woke up and found her sitting by the pool. She had jumped the gate.
Luckily our dogs were caged at the time. They're usually out, and they
would have destroyed her. We brought her inside. She demanded not to
leave, in a very rude way, so we held her there until we had somebody come
and take her out.’
On his way out, the reporter asked Michael if he would like to join him
for a bite to eat.
‘Oh, no,’ Michael said, shaking his head. ‘I can't go out there.’ He
motioned beyond the electronic gate. ‘They'll get me for sure. They're
around the corner, and they want to get their hands on me.’ The terror in his
eyes seemed genuine. ‘I just don't want to go out there.’
As Michael talked to the reporter, his security man, Bill Bray – a former
police officer – stood nearby watching.
Bray, who worked with Michael until his recent retirement, was
formidable in his day. Once, when a Jackson employee left the estate, a fan
slipped in as the gate opened.
Steve Howell recalled, ‘I was talking to Mike in the front yard. It was
about three in the afternoon. I remember the time of day because at three –
when the kids got out of school – two guards went on duty, instead of one.
Mike and I were talking, and the next thing I knew this girl walked up to us
and said hello. Then, she gave him a big bear hug. With her back to me,
Mike motioned to me with his arms helplessly as if to say, Who is this
person? I was about to say something when, suddenly, I felt the air break.
Something moved like – whoosh! – the speed of light. It was Bill Bray.
‘He grabbed that chick, smacked her to the ground, handcuffed her and
dragged her out of there. The cops came, took her away. She was crying
hysterically, probably scared to death. Michael took it all in, turned to me
and without missing a beat, said, “So, anyway…” And we went back to
talking like nothing had happened.
‘We had a lot of fifty-one fiftys around there, so that was nothing new.’ A
51–50, Steve Howell explained, was police terminology for a mentally
unbalanced person.
*
How long could the siege continue? Joseph had a good deal of resolve and,
as he may have put it at the time, ‘It will continue for as damn well long as I
want it to continue.’
Finally, Katherine had enough of the divorce drama – which was
dragging on throughout this parallel family crisis. Years later, she explained
her predicament. ‘I was stuck between a rock and a hard place,’ she
recalled. ‘Even though I wanted Joe out, I didn't want to go public by
having him forcibly removed. I knew that the press would jump on the
story, and I couldn't bear the publicity. It was the strangest of times for me.
Some days, just the sight of him would fill me with anger. Other times, I
found myself talking to him as if nothing had ever happened between us.’
After ten months, Katherine decided to withdraw the divorce papers.
Without Joseph, she decided she would only lead an empty and shallow
existence, anyway. She loved him still, she told herself, though she said she
didn't know why she felt that way.
‘A part of me believes that a person hurts herself more than the person
she's feuding with by holding a grudge. Also,’ she explained, ‘I subscribe to
Christ's teaching on forgiveness. How many times, He said, do you forgive
a person? Seventy times seven… as many as it takes.
‘But I'm not going to pretend that suddenly everything was the way it
used to be between Joe and me,’ she concluded, perhaps somewhat
romanticizing her tumultuous history with him. ‘Because it wasn't.’
Putting Pressure on Michael
Michael Jackson suspected that, with his parents now reconciled, Joseph
might expect to be welcomed back into the fold not only as Katherine's
husband, but also as the boys' manager. ‘And that's not gonna happen,’ he
told Janet, according to her memory. ‘Mother may want him back, but I
don't, and I don't think my brothers do, either. There's no way they'll let him
back in.’
Joseph was a bit craftier, however, than Michael may have thought
because he did have a plan to get ‘back in’ and it was one he knew that
Michael's brothers would find irresistible: a reunion tour.
Many of the artists who participated in the Motown anniversary
television special felt a new sense of brotherhood and camaraderie with the
label. After the programme, Berry Gordy re-signed The Four Tops to the
company and teamed them with The Temptations on vinyl, just as they had
been united on stage that evening in Pasadena. Other artists began to
negotiate with Berry, as well. Holland-Dozier-Holland were back, and even
Diana Ross was socializing with Berry again. It was as if they were all
trying to recapture the feeling they had had during the glory days of
Motown – everyone, that is, except Jermaine Jackson.
After the show was taped, Jermaine began meeting with his brothers and
Joseph about the possibility of his leaving Motown, reuniting with the
group, and going out on the road again, together. Michael knew nothing
about these meetings. ‘Michael's success can only help us,’ Tito said. ‘He's
way up there above us, and maybe he can throw down a rope and let us
climb it.’ A tour would also relieve Marlon of certain financial pressures.
He and his wife, Carol, had separated but were now reconciled. They were
determined to make their marriage work, despite their financial challenges.
They needed some assistance, however.
At this time, the brothers also prepared a new Jacksons album for CBS
called Victory. Michael did not want to be involved in the project. He would
write and sing only two tracks and participate in the writing of a third, and
even that much participation was too much for him. However, as they
recorded the album, the brothers became excited at the prospect of touring
to promote it once it was released.
No one wanted to consider Michael's reaction to the possibility of a tour,
probably because they knew in their hearts that he might present a problem.
‘The thing is, we've always worked really hard,’ Marlon observed at this
time. ‘As far back as I can remember, since the time Michael and I were six
and seven, we were going to school, doing homework, attending rehearsals,
and then on weekends we'd play nightclubs, stayin' up till four in the
morning, then get up and go to school come Monday. It was real, real hard
for us. And I don't think you can outgrow your brothers and sisters, and
Michael feels the same way. We're blood. You just don't sever those ties.’
By the summer of 1983, Jermaine had become excited enough about the
prospects of a tour with his brothers that he asked Berry for a release from
Motown. He wanted to look at his options, he said. Arista had offered him a
deal (which he would take) and he also wanted to be free to tour with The
Jacksons.
Sadly, Jermaine's solo career had never taken hold at Motown. All of that
family angst – and for what? One Top Ten record: ‘Let's Get Serious’,
which sold 722,737 copies, and not until 1981, some six years after the
night at the Westbury Music Fair when he had to choose between his family
and the Gordy family. However, in the company's defence, some felt that
Jermaine wasn't motivated; he didn't hunger for stardom, like Michael.
Many of his fans felt he should have stayed with the group, stayed married
to Berry's daughter… and hoped for the best.
‘Sometimes I have this dream that I'm onstage with my brothers,’ he told
me in an interview in 1983. ‘And I'm countin' off the songs like I always
used to do when we performed together. We're all onstage and the crowd is
goin' crazy. All of a sudden I wake up. What a let-down. We all started here
at Motown,’ he said, ‘and if anybody left anybody, I feel they left me at
Motown. If we were to perform together again, there'd be no end to the
things we could do, the excitement we'd create.’
Berry gave Jermaine his release, sealing an anticlimactic ending to his
days at Motown.
Finally, Joseph called a meeting of all of the brothers in the family's
living room. He announced that it was time for them to go back out and
tour, the original Jackson 5, plus Randy. Michael's response was swift and
to the point: ‘Count me out.’
Joseph tried to reason with Michael. A major tour could solve many of
his brothers' financial problems, and they all had them. No one had been
making money lately, but Michael. Of course, Michael realized that none of
his brothers had become as wealthy as he had become since Thriller.
However, he also knew that if they curbed their extravagant tastes, they
would be in good shape. ‘Michael's money didn't matter to nobody but
Michael,’ Joseph maintained. ‘And he was always very secretive about that.
More important, the brothers needed to enhance their own situation. Like
any other group, they needed to tour.’
Next, Joseph tried guilt, accusing Michael of turning his back on his
brothers now that he was a superstar. If Michael, never selfish in regard to
his family, had sensed need, not greed, he might have responded. However,
he knew when he was being used. He also realized that even if he agreed to
the tour, his superstar status would be ignored. He would be just one vote in
six – the odd man out, as usual. ‘No,’ he said, ‘I'm not going.’ The brothers
stormed out of the meeting. ‘See that,’ Joseph said, pointing a finger at him.
‘Now, they're mad atcha'.’
‘So?’ Michael said. ‘Big deal.’
About a week later, the brothers and Joseph had another meeting with
Michael and, this time, tried humour on him. They brought along a life-
sized stand-up poster of Michael. ‘If you don't come with us, we're gonna
put this onstage in your place,’ Jermaine told Michael, a grin playing on his
face. It was always hard to resist Jermaine's smile; he and Michael had
always been close. The brothers laughed, and Michael said he would think
it over.
A few days later, when Michael still had not made up his mind, Joseph
tore into him. ‘Look, we don't need you anyway,’ he shouted at him. ‘In
fact, I think it would be better if you weren't on this tour. Jermaine can sing
some songs, and Jackie and Marlon and Randy can all have songs. Tito, too.
So, the hell with you, Michael. The hell with you.’
Joseph's reverse psychology worked like a charm; Michael was upset by
his father's comments. He told John Branca: ‘Branca, what's he talking
about? The brothers can't sing. Only I can be the lead singer.’
Just as Michael was on the brink of making up his mind in favour of the
tour, lest they go without him and maybe – though not likely – show that he
was dispensable, Joseph pulled out the big gun: Katherine, who was made
co-promoter of the tour. Her chief responsibility would be to turn the new
family dream into reality by, once and for all, convincing Michael to be
involved in the tour. ‘When Mother speaks, we listen,’ Jermaine once said.
It could have been successfully argued that Michael had done more for
Katherine over the years, financially as well as emotionally, than any of his
brothers. It seemed unfair, then, that she would now be coaxing him to do
something that he clearly didn't want to do, just so that she could appease
his brothers and make more money for the family. However, Katherine
loved all of her children, not just Michael. She knew that they were in
financial straits, and that only a tour with Michael would help them
straighten out their lives. In her view, it was the least Michael could do.
After all, they were family.
Katherine met with Michael privately and asked him to consider the
possibility of a tour – for her sake. How could he resist such a request? For
Katherine he would agreed to continue being held down as part of a family
act rather than do what was natural at this time in his life and career: soar
on his own. It didn't particularly matter to Joseph or the brothers that
Michael's heart would not be in the upcoming tour, as long as his body was
on that stage.
In any case, Michael had his mind on other things at this time. In October
1983, he and Jackie Kennedy Onassis met at the Encino home to discuss the
possibility of his writing an autobiography to be published by Doubleday,
the company for which she worked as an editor.
Five years earlier, in 1978, Michael had befriended John Kennedy, Jr.,
and Caroline after meeting the two while he was in New York to film The
Wiz. So determined was he to meet their mother he decided to try to date
Caroline (then twenty) thinking, perhaps, that she might introduce him to
the former First Lady. ‘I remember that Michael began to call Caroline
constantly, even hoping that maybe Jackie would answer,’ recalled, LaToya,
who was staying with Michael in New York at the time. ‘Finally, she agreed
to go out on a date with him. They went to an ice-skating rink and then to
dinner. Caroline ordered veal osso buco, which Michael said he had never
heard of before. After dinner, Michael said he tried to kiss her, and she said,
“If my mother finds out I kissed a black boy, she will absolutely kill me.”
Michael came home crying, but it didn't stop him from wanting to meet
Jackie.’ (Many years later, when Michael asked Jackie about Caroline's
comment, Jackie was angry. She insisted that Caroline made up the excuse
just to avoid kissing him.)
LaToya says that she discovered a naked photograph of Jackie in
Michael's room in New York, hidden in his sock drawer. Apparently, an
embarrassed Michael explained that he had recently visited a New York
Daily News reporter at his home for dinner. While the two rummaged
through the writer's showbiz memorabilia, they came across the picture of
Jackie. Michael was perplexed as to why she would pose for such a
photographer, while unclothed. The reporter explained that the picture was
taken by a paparazzo, obviously without her permission. Then, the scribe
gave him the photo as a souvenir. ‘I just can't stop looking at it,’ he told
LaToya. ‘I must meet her.’
‘What will you do when you meet her,’ LaToya asked.
‘I don't know,’ Michael answered. ‘Faint, I guess.’
By the fall of 1983, Michael was a world-famous superstar and Jackie a
Doubleday editor who wanted to edit his memoirs. Finally, Michael would
have his chance to meet her when Jackie asked to have lunch with him in
Los Angeles. However, on the day of the scheduled luncheon, Michael
suffered a panic attack. ‘She's the most famous woman in the world,’ he
explained to one family member. ‘And I'm, well, I'm just me.’
Michael spent the afternoon at Hayvenhurst vomiting and
hyperventilating while Jackie and a couple of assistants waited for him in a
Beverly Hills restaurant. The next day, Michael invited Jackie to his home
in Encino.
‘On the day she was set to come by the house, everyone was excited,’
Steve Howell remembered. ‘Naturally, we all wanted to meet her but would
have settled for just a glimpse of her going from the limo to the house. The
buzz around the house was ‘Jackie O's coming, Jackie O's coming.’ Her
driver called from the car to alert Michael that they were about thirty
minutes away. ‘Okay, everybody out,’ Mike said. ‘You can all go home.
Out, out, out!’ Though nobody wanted to leave, everyone had to go.
Michael wanted the entire staff to vacate the premises so that he would be
able to be alone with Jackie. “But I want to meet, Jackie O, too,” Katherine
said. “Nope,” Michael told her. “Not this time, Kate. Maybe next time.”’
Another friend of Michael's remembered, ‘Jackie wanted to talk book
business, but Michael had other things on his mind. He wanted to know
how she felt about always being photographed everywhere she went. He
wanted to know how she handled her celebrity. He asked her for tips on
how to avoid paparazzi. He admired her and was hoping to figure out what
makes her tick.’
Michael was twenty-five years old and felt uneasy about writing his
memoirs. ‘I'm still trying to sort it all out myself,’ he told Steve Howell.
Indeed, some of his life did deserve close examination, but most people
who knew Michael at this time agreed that he was not the most impartial
person for the job. Michael was much too concerned about his public
image, and that of his family, to write the real story. He certainly had many
personal problems, most of which Jackie was not aware of, but he would do
anything to protect the family's dignity. ‘I don't want to let my fans down by
having them know the whole truth,’ he said. ‘They'll be crushed.’
Michael knew that baring his soul in a book at this time was not
something he could do, so he asked Jackie to consider a scrapbook concept,
a book illustrated by such novelty items as his first report card, early
pictures and poetry. Jackie tried to act interested, but she really wasn't
enthralled by the notion. She wanted his whole life on paper, but she agreed
to the scrapbook idea, at least for a while.
The next day Michael took Jackie to Disneyland. Jackie wore a sleek
leather jacket with belt fastened around her impossibly thin waist, along
with playfully striped pants. Michael was in the requisite military-styled,
sequined jacket adorned with silver zippers and buckles. They both wore
sunglasses.
‘Afterward, he told me he thought she was strong and intelligent, and the
fact that she survived JFK's death made him feel that she was someone he
should have in his life as a mother figure,’ said LaToya. ‘I told him, “But,
Michael, we already have a mother,” and he said, “Yes, but we have to take
care of Kate because of all she's going through with Joseph. Who is there to
take care of us?” I didn't know the answer to that,’ concluded LaToya, ‘but I
felt sure it would not be Jackie O.’
Meanwhile, Michael struck up the first of many friendships with young
boys, this one being the twelve-year-old actor Emmanuel Lewis. Emmanuel
was three feet, four inches tall at that time; Michael enjoyed carrying him in
his arms as if he were a toddler. Emmanuel had come to Hollywood to star
in the sitcom Webster; Michael had seen him on television commercials and
had always wanted to meet him. He telephoned the boy's mother and invited
him to visit Hayvenhurst. When he did, the two became fast friends. In
truth, Michael nearly became obsessed with Emmanuel Lewis. They would
play with Michael's pets, run around the estate like little kids playing
‘Cowboys and Indians’, roll around on the lawn together, laughing. It
appeared to observers that Michael was trying to live the childhood he feels
he missed. Today, of course, this is ‘normal’ behaviour for Michael.
Everyone is used to seeing him rolling around with kids. However, in 1983,
this was considered unusual, even for him.
One visitor at the Encino estate recalled watching as Michael read the
story of Peter Pan to Emmanuel. Afterwards the two of them imagined
themselves as characters in the story. According to the eyewitness, twenty-
five-year-old Michael and twelve-year-old Emmanuel sat on the floor with
their eyes closed and fantasized that they were flying over Never-Never
Land. ‘Believe it and it'll be true,’ Michael whispered. ‘Now, are you
ready? Do you believe? Do you?’
‘Yes, I believe,’ Emmanuel said, his eyes closed tightly. ‘I do believe.’
They then began to recite dialogue from the story. After a while, the two
broke up laughing and began to wrestle on the floor like puppies.
Emmanuel Lewis's family reportedly became concerned about the
friendship after Michael and Emmanuel checked into the Four Seasons
hotel in Los Angeles – as father and son. It's not known what fantasy they
were acting out at that time. However, shortly afterwards they stopped
seeing as much of each other.
Once Michael had agreed to a reunion tour with his brothers, Joseph and
Katherine asked Don King to assist in promoting the venture. Don is a
flamboyant, outrageous and controversial black man considered by many at
the time to be the leading boxing promoter in the world. Raised in a
Cleveland ghetto, he went to prison in 1966 for second-degree murder after
killing a man in a street fight. He served four years and then began
promoting prizefights.
King was best known for his huge boxing promotions of Muhammad
Ali's ‘Thrilla in Manila’ and Sugar Ray Leonard/Roberto Duran rights.
When the Jackson sons met with him, though, they were not impressed.
During the meeting, King wore a white fur coat, diamond rings and a gold
necklace on which hung a charm: a crown with the name DON on top of it. His
grey hair stuck straight up, as if he'd just been electrocuted. The brothers
decided that he was too ostentatious, not the type of man they wanted
representing them in the public arena. However, their negative judgement
about Don King shifted when he came up with three million dollars to give
them as a show of good faith, against concert earnings – $500,000 to each
member of the group. The brothers were ecstatic, Joseph was happy, and
Katherine content. Michael was not impressed.
‘I think he's creepy,’ Michael told one friend. ‘I don't trust the guy. He
just wants a piece of the action, that's all.’ It wouldn't be a small ‘piece’,
that much was certain. Forty shows were planned, with a projected gross
revenue of thirty million dollars. Deducting six million dollars for expenses
would leave twenty-four million dollars net profit – 85 per cent of which
would go to the group, 7.5 per cent to Don King, and 7.5 per cent to Joseph
and Katherine. That amounted to $3.4 million for each Jackson member –
enough to get the brothers back on their feet, for a while anyway – as well
as $900,000 each for Joseph and Katherine, and a $1.8-million pay-day for
Don King.
Once aboard, Don King contacted Jay Coleman, an enterprising promoter
who specialized in obtaining tour sponsorships from major corporations.
Don told Jay about the Jacksons' tour and their need for a big-money
sponsor. ‘And you, my man, are just the white boy who can walk into a
corporation and tap them for the change,’ he said. He was right about that:
Jay recruited the Pepsi-Cola Company to pony up another five million
dollars to sponsor the tour.
Jackie, Tito, Randy, Marlon and Jermaine all voted to work with Don
King as promoter. After all, an extra five million dollars was impressive.
However, for Michael, five million dollars was, as they used to say back in
Gary, ‘chump change’, especially after it was split six ways and 15 per cent
was taken off the top for Don, Joseph, and Katherine – leaving Michael
with $700,000 and not much incentive. Michael reluctantly agreed to allow
Don King to promote the tour, but he wanted Pepsi out of the picture.
‘Forget it,’ Michael said. ‘I don't drink Pepsi. I don't believe in Pepsi.’
The family then worked on Michael to accept the Pepsi endorsement;
there was too much money involved to let it go, and it was a viable and
impressive sponsorship whether Michael drank the soft drink or not. The
Rolling Stones had only received a half million for their endorsement. In
fact, up until that time, the biggest deal in Madison Avenue history had
been actor Alan Alda's for Atari, and that was only a million. The brothers
thought Michael was crazy. ‘I just don't want to do it,’ Michael insisted. ‘I
have a bad feeling about it.’
Finally, after a weekend of intense pressure, Michael signed the contract
at four o'clock one Monday morning. A rider made it clear that he would
not have to hold a can of Pepsi, or drink from one, in any commercial or
publicity photo.
‘You know something? I don't know what that boy has against making
money,’ Joseph said later, in regard to Michael's reluctance about the Pepsi
endorsement. ‘You can always have more money. You never get to a point, I
don't care how much money you have, where you don't need more money.
And at that time everybody in the family, except Michael, I guess, needed
it.’
On 30 November 1983, a press conference was organized at the Tavern on
the Green restaurant in New York City to announce the Jacksons' reunion
tour, and the fact that Don King would be promoting it. By this time,
Michael had had two more major hit singles, ‘Human Nature’ and ‘PYT’,
so it was expected that the site would be mobbed with fans, which it was;
there were over a hundred police officers guarding the Tavern.
The press conference began on an odd note…and went downhill from
there. In his introductory remarks, Don King spoke of God, then love and
‘enrapturement’, and the fact that ‘Michael has soared the heights to the
unknown’. Then, said the master promoter, ‘It is so fortunate for all of us
and so symbolic that we have such a beautiful family to use for all the
world to see. They are humble. They are warm. They exude charming
magnetism. The love that emits from these guys is so contagious,’ he
enthused. ‘It's so captivating and infectious and it got me into this
whirlwind of a musical spell that I can't seem to get out of…’ On and on he
went, for almost a half-hour. Then, he showed a fifteen-minute
documentary – about himself. Katherine, Joseph, LaToya and Janet watched
with confused looks on their faces as Don King then paraphrased Malvolio's
speech from Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, ‘Be not afraid of greatness,’ he
said, his chest puffed with pride. ‘Some men are born great. Some achieve
greatness. And others have greatness thrust upon them.’
Joseph leaned over to Katherine and was overheard asking, ‘Is he talking
about us or himself?’ She shrugged.
‘Does anything he's saying make any sense at all?’ she asked,
bewildered.
Don King then spoke of the upcoming forty-city tour, a concert film and
a live satellite broadcast. He also announced that Pepsi-Cola had ponied up
five million dollars for the privilege of sponsoring the event. The Jacksons
would star in two commercials for Pepsi as part of the deal. ‘It is going to
be fabulous. The highest-grossing tour, the most amazing tour ever in
history by these extraordinary men…’
Finally, Michael, Marlon, Tito, Jermaine, Randy and Jackie walked out to
great applause from the press corps; they sat on the dais with glum faces,
their eyes hidden behind sunglasses. None of them looked amused by the
manner Don King continued to grandstand for the media. Finally, Don
urged Michael to speak. ‘I really don't have anything to say,’ Michael
began. ‘I guess I would like to introduce the rest of my family. First my
mother, Katherine – ’
‘Yes, that's the mother, Katherine,’ Don King butted in. ‘The backbone,
the strength, the heart and soul – ’
‘And this is my father, Joseph.’
‘Hmm-hmm, that's him. Joseph Jackson. I love that man. That man has
truly mesmerized me.’
‘And that's LaToya and Janet,’ Michael said, now frowning at Don.
‘Yes, aren't they truly lovely? The Jackson sisters, LaToya and…’ Don's
voice trailed off when he noticed Michael's expression.
‘And my brothers' beautiful wives are here,’ Michael continued. ‘Hazel,
Carol, Enid and Dee Dee. My sister Maureen is not here because she is
doing an album for CBS. Thank you very much.’
Michael then refused to answer questions.
‘Thank you, Michael, the golden voice of song,’ Don said, quickly.
‘So, what's this tour going to be called?’ a reporter asked.
‘They haven't named it yet,’ King answered.
‘Excuse me, but yes, we have,’ Marlon cut in. ‘We're calling it the
Victory tour.’
‘So there you have it, ladies and gentleman,’ Don proclaimed. ‘That is
the name of the tour. The Victory tour. And what a heck of a name that is,
too.’
‘And what's the point of this tour?’ someone else asked.
‘The tour will mean that the brothers are getting together once again,’
Jermaine said, ‘to unite and work close with each other, to show the world
that we can make everybody happy. And everybody in the whole world will
unite as one, because we want to bring this together in peace for everyone,’
he concluded, making about as much sense as Don King.
‘Why can't Michael say more?’ asked another reporter.
‘Uh, well…’ Don shot a look at Michael. Michael shook his head
emphatically, no. ‘He, uh, his voice is a problem because he has been
working so hard singing those songs and makin' all those hit records,’ said
Don. ‘He will not be able to continue talking now. Isn't that right, Michael?’
Michael seemed to glare at the promoter behind his shades.
Later, Washington reporters Maxwell Glen and Cody Shearer would dub
the event ‘one of media history's most abominable press conferences, ever.’
Another observer called The Jacksons' tour ‘The Nitro Tour’, explaining
that ‘at any minute the whole thing is gonna blow sky-high.’
Michael had arranged to have the press conference video-taped. A few
hours after it was mercifully over, he, John Branca and a few other trusted
associates watched the tape in Michael's suite at the Helmsley Palace. ‘It's a
mess, isn't it?’ was Michael's verdict.
John observed that Don King was actually the star of the show, and that
The Jacksons had been ‘some kind of sideshow’.
‘Well, that really stinks, doesn't it?’ Michael said, angrily. ‘We gotta
show this tape to the brothers.’
Michael then called a meeting in his room. Jackie, Tito, Jermaine,
Marlon and Randy showed up within minutes. After the press conference,
even they had their doubts about Don King. ‘Look at this terrible thing,’
Michael said, putting in the video tape.
‘What's wrong with you guys?’ Michael wanted to know after the tape
finished. ‘Can't you see that this man is using us? This is the Don King
show, and The Jacksons are an opening act. Can't you see how bad this
looks?’
‘You're right, Michael,’ Jackie said, shaking his head in despair. ‘The guy
is a complete jerk.’
‘Unbelievable,’ Jermaine agreed. ‘Mike is right. I've never been so
embarrassed. That was bad, real bad.’
The rest of the brothers agreed. Participating in the press conference had
been a bleak enough proposition, but seeing how it looked from the other
side of the dais was more than the brothers' pride could bear. ‘Well, look,
you guys chose this creep,’ Michael said. ‘Now, Branca and I are going to
choose someone else, a tour coordinator who's going to really handle the
business, someone like Bill Graham or Irvin Azoff, someone big in the
business,’ Michael said, referring to two giants in the concert promotion
world. ‘Do we agree?’ he asked, taking charge. ‘Is it time to take back some
power?’
The brothers nodded their heads in agreement.
Another Bombastic, Attention-getting
Melodrama?
By 1984, despite his tremendous fame and great fortune, Michael Jackson
still continued door-to-door proselytizing for the Jehovah's Witness faith,
‘twice a week, maybe for an hour or two,’ according to Katherine. He also
attended meetings at Kingdom Hall with his mother four times a week,
when he was in town.
An example of a typical day of spreading The Word: wearing a disguise –
a moustache, hat and glasses – and a tie and sweater, and holding a copy of
Watchtower, Michael stood at the door of an apartment in suburban
Thousand Oaks, California, one morning in early 1984. ‘I'm here to talk to
you about God's word,’ he told the young girl who answered the bell.
She slammed the door in his face.
He went to the next apartment.
‘Today, I'm here to talk to you about God's word,’ he said when the door
opened. He was invited into the apartment, and the door closed behind him.
Louise Gilmore recalled the day Michael came to visit: ‘It was very odd. At
first I thought it was some kind of a trick-or-treat gag. A young black man
came to my door wearing what was obviously a phony moustache and
beard, and a big hat. His face was too smooth for all that facial hair. He
looked like a little boy playing grown-up. He had this soft little voice and
looked harmless enough. ‘Can I talk to you for just a moment?’ he said
politely. I decided to let him in.
‘He sat down and pulled out all of these books and pamphlets from a bag.
“You should read these,” he said. He gave me a little speech about the
Jehovah's Witnesses, which I paid no attention to, so I can't tell you what he
said. He then had a glass of water, thanked me, and went on his way. I didn't
think anything of it, except, My, what a polite little boy.
‘The next day my neighbour said to me, “Did Michael Jackson come to
your house too?” I said, “What are you talking about?” When I put two and
two together, I almost fainted. I've kept the material he gave me as
souvenirs. No, I didn't join the religion.’
More than ever before, Michael considered himself a strict Jehovah's
Witness. He didn't believe in blood transfusions, Easter and Christmas
(which he viewed as ‘pagan holidays’), or the celebration of his own
birthday. He also did not believe in pledging allegiance to the flag. (In April
1984 he would attend the T. J. Martell Foundation's dinner honouring
Walter Yetnikoff, president of CBS Records. Michael refused to be seated at
the dais until after Monsignor Vincent Puma delivered the invocation and
the crowd pledged allegiance to the flag and then sang the national anthem.)
Despite the fact that Michael was devout – and no doubt had donated
quite a bit of money to the religion – the church's elders were upset with
him in 1984, mostly because of the ‘Thriller’ video.
Michael had been so impressed with the horror-fantasy film An American
Werewolf in London that he employed the services of John Landis to repeat
his directorial duties and then he hired Rick Baker to create special effects
on the ‘Thriller’ video. The fourteen-minute video was budgeted at
$600,000. At this time, an artist could make a decent video for about
$25,000. John Branca felt that Michael was overextending himself and
advised him that they should find another way to pay for the ‘Thriller’
video.
John and Michael came up with the idea of a video entitled The Making
of Thriller. At the same time that the video was being taped, extra footage
of how it was done, including interviews with some of the key figures and
even Michael himself, would be shot. John then approached Vestron Video,
a video distribution company, and had them pay approximately $500,000
for the right to distribute the product.
Afterwards, John went to MTV and told executives there that Michael
was doing a sixty-minute documentary and that if they wanted to show it,
they'd have to pay for it. At that time, MTV didn't even pay record
companies for the right to air videos because it was considered terrific
promotion to have an artist's video aired on the cable-music station. While
today there is much negotiating of money between MTV and an artist's
managers, attorneys and record label executives, that was certainly not the
case in 1984. However, because Michael was so popular, MTV quickly
agreed to finance part of The Making of Thriller – if Michael would license
it to the station for an official debut. The video would end up costing a little
over a million dollars. The Showtime cable network also paid for second
rights to the video. In all, MTV and Showtime put up nearly the whole
second half of the million dollars.
The ‘Thriller’ video combined illusion and reality, skilfully weaving one
into the other. The story opens with Michael pulling his white Chevy
convertible over to the side of a wooded road. In a line that has been around
since ten minutes after the first Model T rolled off the assembly line,
Michael turns to date Ola Ray (a former Playboy centrefold) and says, ‘I'm
afraid we're out of gas.’ However, instead of staying put and romancing,
they start to walk.
He asks her to be his girl. She accepts. ‘I'm not like other guys,’ he then
tells her in a soft and whispery voice.
‘Of course not,’ she says, brushing off one of the great understatements
of all time. ‘That's why I love you.’
‘No,’ Michael insists. ‘I mean I'm different.’
As the moon comes out from behind a cloud, Ola discovers how different
Michael really is: how many other guys sprout fangs, claws and whiskers
and bray at the moon as they turn into werewolves? He chases her through
the woods. She trips. She is flat on her back. He hovers over her, clearly up
to no good.
Just as the monster is about to attack, the camera focuses on Michael and
Ola as part of a movie theatre audience, dressed in a more modern fashion
than their 1950-style counterparts on the screen. She is cringing in horror
while he is clearly enjoying the scene. ‘I can't watch,’ she says, getting up
to leave.
Reluctantly putting aside his popcorn, Michael follows her out of the
theatre, playfully taunting her about her fears. He begins singing ‘Thriller’
as they walk along the deserted streets. When they pass a graveyard, an
assemblage of ghouls emerge from their graves and crypts to surround the
couple. With skin the colour of mushrooms, blood dripping from the
corners of their mouths, and eyeballs bulging halfway out of their heads,
they look as though they have been moldering for a long time.
Ola escapes to find shelter in a deserted house. Meanwhile, Michael leads
the grotesque company in dance, his features contorted and menacing, his
blood-red clothing contributing to his sinister appearance. He leads the
other ghouls to Ola and, as she trembles in fear, Michael and his gruesome
company break through the walls, the windows, the floor. Ola huddles on
the sofa, screaming as Michael reaches out for her.
Suddenly, they are in Michael's home. ‘Hey, what's the problem?’ a
smiling Michael asks. Ola looks up at him with confused eyes. Was it all a
dream? Michael puts his arm protectively around her shoulder. But, then, as
he turns to face the camera his eyes are bestial, his smile ominous.
There's little doubt that Michael never intended the video to advocate
Satanism or the occult. He was so engrossed with fantasy, ‘Thriller’ was no
scarier to him than Halloween. After all, when he finished a hard day's work
on the set, he went home to a bunch of dead-eyed mannequins in his
bedroom. Before he had even finished work on it, though, the video brought
to a head an ongoing conflict between Michael and the church elders of the
Encino Kingdom Hall. After the elders heard about the concept, they
summoned Michael for a meeting, during which the state of his soul was
discussed. He was not receptive. He didn't want to be told what to do, not
by his father and not by his church, either. He refused to make any kind of
statement repudiating his work, as the church insisted he should. ‘I know
I'm an imperfect person,’ Michael said. ‘I'm not making myself out to be an
angel.’
Finally, when the elders threatened to banish him from the religion,
Michael became worried. He telephoned John Branca's office. When John's
secretary picked up the phone, there seemed to be no one on the line. All
she heard was the sound of desperate breathing, as if someone was trying to
catch his breath in between sobs. ‘I don't know who it is,’ she told John. ‘It
might be Michael.’
When John got on the line and heard nothing but panting, he became
concerned. However, before he could figure out what was going on, the line
went dead. John telephoned Michael, but there was no answer.
The next day, Michael called back and whispered that he had ‘a big
problem’. Then he abruptly hung up again. Could he be any more dramatic?
These kinds of maddeningly cryptic telephone calls went on for several
days until John was extremely worried about Michael.
Finally, Michael got a hold of himself, apparently, and called John to ask
if he had the tapes to the ‘Thriller’ video. When the attorney said that he
didn't have them, that they were in the processing lab, Michael instructed
him to retrieve them. ‘Then, I want you to destroy them,’ Michael said. He
sounded desperate. ‘No one must ever see the video.’
Before John had a chance to respond, Michael hung up.
Michael called back the next day, wanting to know if his attorney had
gotten the tapes. By this time, John was tired of playing games. He wanted
to know what was going on, especially since Michael had already spent a
million dollars of MTV's, Showtime's and Vestron's money on ‘Thriller’.
How could they now destroy the tapes?
When Michael explained that his church had threatened to expel him if
the ‘Thriller’ tape was released to the public, John was astounded. He tried
to convince Michael that he should not allow the church elders to dictate his
artistry, but Michael wasn't interested in his opinion at that point.
Michael called back the next day. ‘Do you have the tapes?’ he asked
John. John did. When Michael asked, ‘Did you destroy them?’ John said
that he had done just that; actually, though, they were sitting on his desk.
‘Okay, then fine,’ Michael said. He hung up.
Coincidentally, at this same time John had been reading a book about
Bela Lugosi. After thinking about Lugosi and his Dracula character, John
called Michael back and engaged him in a conversation about the horror
star, explaining to Michael that Lugosi had been a religious man but that, as
an actor, he played the demonic Dracula and actually built a career for
himself by doing so. Michael listened intently as John then told him that
Lugosi's religious beliefs had no bearing on his art, and that the fact that he
portrayed a vampire in movies didn't make him any less religious in real
life. He suggested that Michael might want to reconsider issuing the
‘Thriller’ video with a disclaimer at the beginning stating that the work was
not reflective of Michael's personal or religious convictions. Michael
thought John's suggestion was brilliant. He wasn't even angry when John
confessed that he'd not destroyed the tapes, after all.
The next day, John telephoned the video's director, John Landis, to tell
him that there would have to be a disclaimer. ‘Bullshit,’ Landis said. ‘No
way.’
‘Look, man, if there's no disclaimer then there'll be no video,’ John told
him. He then explained the entire story to Landis. ‘Jesus Christ,’ Landis
said, ‘this kid's in bad shape, isn't he?’
John Branca couldn't really disagree, though out of respect for his client
he didn't comment. Michael had handled the entire matter in a manner that
was so odd, it was actually eerie. What kind of madness was this behaviour,
calling and hanging up, panting and sobbing? In a sense, the scenario was
reminiscent of his dramatic declaration that the Thriller album be cancelled.
It's difficult to know if Michael was really upset (and if he was, one would
think that there might have been a better way to handle it) or, again,
orchestrating a bombastic, attention-getting melodrama around a new and
upcoming project.
In the end, the ‘Thriller’ video was released with the following
disclaimer at its beginning: Due to my strong personal convictions, I wish to
stress that this film in no way endorses a belief in the occult – Michael
Jackson.
As part of the Michael Jackson merchandising bonanza, The Making of
Thriller video cassette was eventually released – one video showing how
the other video was made. According to the Record Industry Association of
America, Jackson's first release for the home-video market was the first
music video cassette to apply for immediate gold and platinum certification.
It was, by far, the best-selling music video to date. Michael would make
millions from it.
The week before the ‘Thriller’ video was released in late December
1983, Thriller's sales had slowed down to 200,000 copies a week, more
than respectable for an album that had been out for a year. According to
Time, the week after the video was issued and televised on MTV for only
five days, the album sold another 600,000 copies and shot back up to
number one on the Billboard charts.
Michael Gets Burned by Pepsi-Cola
The first order of business for 1984 was the filming of the two Pepsi-Cola
commercials. Michael was still unhappy about the endorsement, especially
when the Quaker Oats Company offered to support the Jackson's tour with a
sum that was 40 per cent more than offered by Pepsi-Cola. Though the
contract was already signed with Pepsi, John Branca did try to get Michael
out of the agreement. However, Katherine was asked by Don to ‘talk some
sense into Michael’. The Pepsi deal was back on.
From the beginning, it was understood by everyone involved that
Michael would have complete quality control over the commercials. His
brothers could have no say about the footage, which was fine with them.
They were being paid a hefty sum to do the commercials, and were
satisfied.
After a few meetings with Michael, the Pepsi-Cola executives were
worried. As it happened, Michael's friends Paul McCartney and Jane Fonda
had told him he had made a mistake in agreeing to the commercials because
the result would be overexposure for him. Michael decided that one way to
rectify the problem was to make sure his face should only be on camera for
one close-up, and only for a maximum of four seconds. In other words, he
wanted to make a cameo appearance in his own commercial – and for that,
Pepsi would have to pay five million dollars.
‘There are other ways to shoot me rather than push a camera in my face,’
Michael insisted to three exasperated Pepsi-Cola executives in a meeting at
his home. ‘Use my symbols. Shoot my shoes, my spats, my glove, my look
– and then, at the end, reveal me.’ He offered to allow the Pepsi executives
use of ‘Billie Jean’, for which he would write new Pepsi jingle lyrics.
Michael wasn't trying to get out of the deal, he just wanted the commercials
to be special. If he was going to do them, he'd decided, they may as well be
worthwhile. When Michael met with Roger Enrico, president and chief
executive officer of the Pepsi-Cola Company, he told him, ‘Roger, I'm
going to make Coke wish they were Pepsi.’
Though trying to be a team-player, Michael still had reservations. ‘I still
don't have a good feeling about it,’ he said about the Pepsi endorsement. ‘In
my heart, I feel it's wrong to endorse something you don't believe in. I think
it's a bad omen.’ He shrugged his shoulders and added, ‘But I guess I just
gotta make the best of it.’
On Friday 27 January 1984, the time had come to film the commercial.
Three thousand people were seated in the Shrine Auditorium in Los
Angeles, in order to simulate a live concert audience. The Jacksons were to
perform ‘You're a Whole New Generation’, which were special lyrics to the
music of ‘Billie Jean’.
Prior to one of the takes, the brothers were preparing themselves for the
shooting – adjusting their outfits, putting on their makeup – when Michael
had to go to the bathroom. ‘Go ahead, use mine,’ director Bob Giraldi
suggested. ‘Don't worry, I'll just be a minute,’ Michael said. He went in and
closed the door.
Thirty seconds later, a bloodcurdling shriek came out of the bathroom.
‘Jesus! What happened?’ Bob Giraldi started banging on the door in
alarm. ‘Michael, Michael. Are you okay?’
When Michael slowly opened the door, Bob and a bunch of others rushed
into the bathroom. ‘I dropped my glove,’ Michael said, embarrassed.
‘Where?’ asked Bob.
‘In there,’ Michael said, meekly. He pointed down to the toilet bowl.
Floating in the water was a lone, white, rhinestoned glove.
‘Oh, okay,’ Bob said, trying not to burst out laughing. ‘Somebody get a
hanger or something. We'll just have to fish it out of there.’
Everyone scattered about in search of a hanger. Finally Michael said,
‘Oh, forget it.’ He reached into the toilet and pulled out the soaking-wet
glove. ‘Anyone have a hair dryer?’
*
It had been a long day. All of the brothers except Michael had arrived at
nine in the morning. Tito acted as his brother's stand-in, taking Michael's
place for the purpose of camera angles and other technical positioning.
Michael, the star of the show, would not arrive for hours.
By about six p.m., the group performed their number for the sixth time
that day – this time so that Bob Giraldi could make technical adjustments.
Finally, tape began rolling at 6:30. As he had done during each rehearsal,
Michael began to descend from a podium by going down a staircase amid
brilliant illumination. His brothers were lined up on the stage, playing. A
smoke bomb and pyrotechnics exploded, as planned, momentarily blocking
Michael from view.
First a pose; that unmistakable silhouette.
Then, a magnesium flash bomb, which went off with a loud bang two
feet from Michael's head.
As Michael headed down the stairs, the smoke became thick. Something
wasn't right. He began to dance. He did a turn. And another, and another.
After spinning three times, he popped up on his toes. He was hot – literally.
When he turned, their was an audible gasp from the audience. The
explosion had set his hair ablaze. He would later remember feeling the heat,
but said he thought it was generated by hot stage lights. He continued to
perform, but not for long.
When he felt the burning pain, Michael pulled his jacket over his head
and fell to the stage floor. ‘Tito! Tito!’ he yelled.
Bob Giraldi would recall, ‘The film would later show that while his hair
was burning, he was trying to get his jacket off. Maybe he thought it too
was on fire. He did two quick spins, though, and put out the fire by his own
force.’
The first to respond was Miko Brando, Marlon's twenty-two-year-old son
and one of Michael's security staff. ‘I ran out, hugged him, tackled him, and
ran my hands through his hair,’ reported Brando, who burned his fingers in
the process.
For a few disturbing moments, no one seemed to know what had
occurred, or how to respond to it. There was chaos and pandemonium.
Jermaine would later say he thought Michael had been shot. The crew
rushed on to the stage, threw him down, and covered his head with a
blanket to put out the fire. After a handful of ice was applied and a T-shirt
borrowed to make a cold compress, Michael was taken off the stage.
When Michael was taken away, and did not return to the stage, it was
difficult for the authorities to keep the crowd calm and orderly. Screams
filled the auditorium. Since no one in charge could give an accurate report,
audience members began to develop their own theories. Most believed that
it had been an assassination attempt on Michael.
In order to avoid fans and news media, the authorities hoped to transport
Michael through an exit from the back of the theatre. However, Michael
insisted on exiting where the crowds and photographers could see him. He
said that he wanted to be able to to show the assembled crowd that he was
all right. In truth, though, he also knew a moment when he saw one coming;
no one could ask for better public relations. ‘No, leave the glove on,’ he
told the ambulance attendants as he was being prepared for the stretcher.
‘The media is here.’ No matter the pain, shock, or hysteria, the showman
prevailed.
The videotape of Michael being loaded into the ambulance became the
lead story on all news broadcasts that evening. There he was, strapped in a
stretcher, covered up to his nose, his bandaged and taped head resting on a
pillow, one sequined-gloved hand protruding weakly from blankets.
Michael lifted his hand with what appeared to be his very last bit of
strength… and waved to the cameras. ‘If E.T. hadn't come to Elliot, he
would have come to Michael's house,’ Steven Spielberg had earlier said of
Michael. Now, Michael was E.T., an odd little creature, hurt by grown-ups
who had been playing with fire, being carted away to who-knows-where, by
who-knows-whom, and for who-knows-what purpose.
As he was being wheeled out, as he would later tell it, he noticed several
Pepsi executives huddled together with anxious expressions. They must
have realized that the accident could become the catalyst for one of the
biggest lawsuits in show-business history: Michael Jackson could own
Pepsi by the time the smoke cleared.
The next day, photos of Michael as E.T. were on the front pages of
newspapers all over the world. Michael would call it ‘that famous shot of
me’.
Michael was taken to the emergency room at Cedars-Sinai Medical
Center, where he was treated with an antiseptic cream and bandages. He
was offered a painkiller, but because of his disdain for narcotics, he turned
it down. Soon, though, he realized he needed it and accepted one. Then,
accompanied by Joseph and Katherine, Bill Bray, his brother, Randy, and
his doctor, Steve Hoefflin, Michael was transported to Brotman Memorial
Hospital in Culver City.
I attempted to get an interview with Katherine and Joseph as they rushed
into the hospital, arm in arm. ‘How do you feel about this?’ he asked.
Katherine kept walking, but Joseph stopped. He glared at me. ‘That's my
son in there,’ he said, clearly upset. ‘How do you think I feel? How does
any father feel when his son is hurt?’
‘You and Michael have had your differences, though,’ I observed.
Joseph studied me for a moment. ‘Hey, man, do you have any kids?’
I shook my head no.
‘Then you can't understand how I feel. Whatever happens, a father will
always be a father. His son will always be his son. All right?’
Michael spent Friday evening in room 3307, resting. In a short time,
though, he was bored and asked for a videotape player. Because no one on
the staff had the key to the cabinet where the hospital's video equipment
was kept, someone broke the padlock to get Michael a machine and an
assortment of tapes. He chose the science-fiction film Close Encounters of
the Third Kind – directed by his friend, Steven Spielberg – and watched it
until he fell asleep at one a.m. after taking a sleeping pill.
Outside his room, Katherine, Joseph and Bill Bray prepared to go home.
They looked relieved. It had been a tense, exhausting experience. Joseph
noticed a group of Pepsi executives standing together, still looking upset.
As he walked by them he asked, ‘Why the long faces? Jeez. The burn's only
the size of a half-dollar.’
Michael had been fortunate; his face and body escaped injury in the
accident. He suffered a palm-sized patch of second- and third-degree burns
on the back of his head. Only a small spot – smaller than a half-dollar,
actually, more like a quarter – received a third-degree burn. Doctors said
most of his hair would grow back. Ironically, Michael had visited burns
patients at the same hospital on New Year's Day. He had been particularly
affected by one patient, twenty-three-year-old mechanic Keith Perry, who
had suffered third-degree burns on 95 per cent of his body. Michael had had
photos taken of himself holding the patient's hand, with his sequined glove
on. When asked why he was wearing the glove, Michael responded, ‘This
way, I am never offstage.’ The photos were quickly distributed to the
media.
By Saturday, according to nursing supervisor Patricia Lavales, ‘Michael
was singing in the shower.’ He spent the morning watching American
Bandstand and Soul Train on television when he wasn't talking on the
telephone. Diana Ross called, as did Liza Minnelli. Michael was released
later that day. According to Lavales, before he left the hospital, Michael,
wearing turquoise hospital scrubs over his street clothes and a black fedora
covering his wound, went from room to room saying goodbye, taking
photographs and signing autographs for the other burns patients.
After being released from the hospital, Michael checked into the
Sheraton Universal for a night in order to be away from his family. John
Branca met him there.
‘Mike, I think God is trying to tell you something about this
commercial,’ John told him. ‘We should never have done it.’
‘I know, Branca.’
‘You know what? You've got Don King to thank for this,’ John added.
‘Look, don't remind me,’ Michael said. He was clearly disgusted.
That evening, Michael, Steve Hoefflin – who had performed Michael's
rhinoplasty surgery and is chief of plastic surgery at Brotman – and others
in the Jackson entourage, including John Branca, watched a videotape of
the accident to determine just what had happened. (As soon as the accident
occurred, John's partner, Gary Stiffelman, seized the tapes from the
cameramen. Pepsi didn't have any footage, at all. Michael had it.)
After Michael saw the tape, he became enraged. ‘I could have been
killed,’ he said. ‘Did you see what they did to me? Did you see that? Man, I
can't believe it.’
Though the others tried to calm him down, it was useless.
‘Show it again,’ Michael ordered.
Someone popped the tape back into the VCR, and everyone watched
again.
‘That's it,’ Michael said. ‘I want the tape released to the public. I want the
public to see it. I'm gonna ruin Pepsi. After my fans see this tape, Pepsi will
be history.’
‘But, Mike – ’ one of his associates began.
‘No. I'm serious,’ Michael said, cutting him off. ‘Release the tape. I want
it on the news right away. I want everyone to see what happened to me, and
I want it released on Monday. Pepsi's gonna be sorry.’
‘You can't do it, Mike.’
‘You wanna bet? I sure can,’ Michael insisted. ‘And I'm going to.’
By Sunday, word of Michael's decision got back to Roger Enrico,
president of Pepsi-Cola. John Branca showed him the tape. ‘Did the press
reports say his hair was on fire?’ Roger later recalled. ‘To me, it looked like
his whole head. Like a human torch. No way can anyone see this footage.
It's grotesque.’
Roger knew he had to change Michael's mind or no Michael Jackson fan
on the planet would ever again drink Pepsi after they saw ‘what Pepsi did to
him’.
‘With more anxiety than I've ever felt in my life,’ Enrico telephoned
Joseph Jackson to ask what should be done about this problem.
‘What problem?’ Jackson asked.
‘Michael wants to release the film with his hair on fire.’
‘Why would he want to do a thing like that?’ Joseph asked, perplexed.
Roger didn't know the answer to that question. He could only assume that
Michael wanted revenge. He told Joseph that if Michael allowed the film to
be released, people would always associate him with the burn accident, the
way, he said, the public equates the Zapruder assassination tape with
President John F. Kennedy.
Joseph didn't know what to say. ‘Try telling Michael what to do these
days,’ he said. ‘There's no way. He does what he wants to do. All I can say
to you,’ he concluded, ‘is lotsa' luck.’
The tape would be released early the next week, Michael finally decided.
He was bent on revenge. It would have been distributed sooner, except that
his associates were unable to locate a lab that could process the film on a
Sunday at such short notice.
First, to whet everyone's appetite, a blurred photograph of Michael
descending the stairs with his hair on fire – it looked in the photo as if he
had a halo – was distributed by the Associated Press. It made the front
pages of practically every daily newspaper.
After that photo was released, John Branca felt that Michael had had
ample time to cool off, and he tried to talk Michael out of releasing the tape.
‘It's morbid, Mike,’ John told him in a meeting with associates. ‘Don't do
this to your fans. And besides that, I think we should just settle with Pepsi
and get on with our lives. Why infuriate everybody, Mike?’
‘Why not?’ Michael wanted to know.
‘C'mon, Mike. You're bigger than this,’ John said.
Michael cracked a smile. ‘I'm being dumb, huh?’ he asked, sheepishly.
He'd recognized his own petulant behaviour. ‘You're right,’ he told his
lawyer. ‘Let's just end this thing, but I want them to pay, Branca. I mean it.
They should pay big time for this.’
Though Michael was only paid $700,000 to do the Pepsi commercial, the
publicity he would receive because of the accident would prove invaluable.
It triggered an outpouring of public sympathy from around the world. The
hospital where he was first taken for treatment was even forced to add six
volunteers to answer telephone calls from fans and well-wishers. At
Brotman, thousands of calls, letters, and cards were received.
Even Ronald Reagan got in on the act with a fan letter to Michael dated 1
February 1984: ‘I was pleased to learn that you were not seriously hurt in
your recent accident. I know from experience that these things can happen
on the set – no matter how much caution is exercised…’
‘What really pissed Mike off,’ recalled Steve Howell, ‘was when
attorneys for Bob Giraldi [producer of the video] tried to put the blame for
the burn on the hair grease Mike used. They said that this product was
responsible for his hair catching fire. He thought Giraldi was his friend and
wondered why he would do such a thing. The stuff he uses on his hair is, he
told me, like everything else he uses on his body, one hundred per cent
natural, no chemicals.’
When Michael got home to the Encino compound, one of the first things
he did was call Steve Howell: ‘Can you come up here and set up the video
equipment in my room so I can watch the Three Stooges?’
That afternoon, Michael took a spin around the property in his electric
car, a close copy of the vehicle from Mr Toad's Wild Ride at Disneyland.
From the street, outside the gate, his fans – who were always there – could
see him whizzing up and down the driveway like a little boy so happy that
his mother had finally let him out to play. After he put away his expensive
toy, Michael playfully tossed the gown he wore in the hospital over the gate
to the fans.
To this day, Michael experiences some pain in his scalp where he was
burned. ‘They knew I could have sued them,’ Michael wrote of Pepsi in his
book Moonwalk, though most people felt that it was probably the
production company, not Pepsi, that was responsible. ‘But I was real nice
about it.’
Well, he wasn't that nice. At Michael's request, John Branca pressured
Pepsi-Cola into a monetary settlement. He wanted $1.5 million. The
company argued that the sum was way too high. They would pay, but the
accident wasn't even their fault; they blamed the production company. ‘How
about a half mil?’ one of the soft drink's lawyers suggested. Finally, under
threat of a lawsuit, Pepsi-Cola paid Michael $1.5 million.
Michael Jackson accepted the money, then donated it to the Michael
Jackson Burn Center, which had been established in his honour at Brotman
after the accident.
‘I never smile when I dance’
By February 1984, Michael Jackson's accident had been the subject of news
reports for weeks. The publicity had only served to heighten the suspense
about the forthcoming Pepsi commercials, which were to be aired for the
first time during the upcoming Grammy Awards programme. Some people
began talking about their ‘debut’, as if they were among the most
newsworthy events of the century. Before the Grammys, the commercials
would be ‘unveiled’ at a black-tie event for one thousand bottlers at New
York's Lincoln Center; the commercials would also be screened for the
press in New York, have their world premiere on MTV at no cost to the
sponsor, and then, finally, appear as consecrated commercials during the
Grammy telecast.
Down to the very last minute, though, Michael gave the Pepsi-Cola
Company a difficult time. When he saw the finished product (actually two
commercials: the concert scene and a ‘street’ scene featuring Michael with
dancer, Alfonso Riberio), Michael adamantly insisted that they were not
good enough; Michael hated them. There was too much of his face in the
concert spot, he said. The bigger problem was that Michael wouldn't talk
directly to the Pepsi executives about his concerns. Either he was acting
spoiled or he was shy. No one was sure.
Roger Enrico then telephoned Joseph to complain that they couldn't make
the commercials ‘better’ if Michael refused to talk about them. No matter
what people may have thought about Joseph personally, they respected the
fact that he was usually willing at least to listen to them. If he thought an
idea had merit, he would do his best to convince Michael to consider the
proposal favourably.
‘Look, it's not easy for Michael,’ Joseph Jackson told one Pepsi
executive. ‘He's got great ideas, but he can't always express them. Let me
help. I can act as a go-between and make it easier on everybody. I know the
kid. I know how he thinks.’
A few hours later, Joseph called Roger. ‘I have Michael here,’ he said,
‘and I'm sure you guys can work things out.’
There was a pause.
‘Go ahead. Talk to the man?’ Joseph urgently whispered. ‘Get on the
phone, Michael.’
Michael got on the line. He then complained to Roger that he was made
to take off his sunglasses during the taping, and that he really hadn't wanted
to do that. He had been promised, he said, that there would be only one
close-up without the shades, ‘and now I see lots of close-ups of me with my
glasses off.’ Moreover, he fretted that there was too much of him in the
commercials, ‘way over four seconds of my face.’ The film was too dark.
He spins twice during the routine. ‘And I only agreed to one spin,’ Michael
reminded Roger. Also, in the commercial with Alfonso Riberio, which he
liked and said was ‘magic, just magic’, he wanted bells to sound when
Alfonso bumped into him as they danced, ‘like the sound of a wind chime.’
‘Bells?’ Enrico asked, dazed.
‘Yes, bells.’
Both commercials were quickly re-edited with Michael's changes in
place. Michael then took a look at the new product and telephoned Roger
Enrico with the verdict. ‘Hello, Mr Enrico. This is Michael Jackson,’ he
said. ‘You know, the person you spoke to the other day about the
commercials.’
Roger remembered.
The commercial with Alfonso Riberio was fine, he said. However, there
was still too much of him in the concert endorsement. He was seen for a
total of five seconds. There should only be four seconds of his image, he
said. Also, he was seen smiling in one dance moment.
‘So?’
‘So, I never smile when I dance,’ Michael explained.
‘Oh.’
On 7 February Michael was inducted into the Guinness Book of Records
during a ceremony at the American Museum of Natural History in New
York City, in recognition of Thriller having broken all records for album
sales at twenty-five million copies. CBS Records held a black-tie party for
fifteen hundred guests at the Museum of Natural History. Michael was
accompanied to the event by actress Brooke Shields. Her ‘people’ had
gotten in touch with his ‘people’ and suggested that she would be the
perfect date. ‘Why not?’ Michael decided.
When Michael got back to Los Angeles, he met with Joseph, Katherine,
his brothers and Don King to tell them what he had decided about the tour.
‘I want to rename it,’ he said. ‘I don't like “Victory Tour” I want to call it
“The Final Curtain”.’
Michael wanted to make it clear that the upcoming tour would be the end
of the road for him and his brothers. Once they finished, he would not work
with the Jacksons again, thus ‘The Final Curtain’.
‘None of the brothers liked that name at all,’ Marlon recalled. ‘Our
parents didn't like it either. Michael was making it sound like a funeral, like
someone had died. But we weren't dying.’
Michael wasn't happy with the name ‘Victory tour’ because of the
obvious implication that the tour was, somehow, a victorious occasion.
Actually, he felt that he'd been defeated by being coaxed by his mother into
participating in the event. As far as the new name was concerned, however,
he was, not surprisingly, outvoted.
‘How many Grammys do you think I'll win?’ Michael asked Quincy Jones.
Quincy shrugged. Smart man. He knew better, after the Thriller outburst,
than to make any predictions.
‘Well, all I can say is I hope I win a lot of 'em,’ Michael said with a
smile.
A review of the history of the Grammys – the awards programme that the
National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences established in the late
1950s as a pop music equivalent of the Oscars – reveals that Grammy
winners are not always the true pre-eminent artists and recordings of their
time. For example, Elvis Presley never won a Grammy for any of his major
pop vocal performances, even though he was the most influential pop artist
of the last forty years. Chuck Berry was also routinely omitted. The Beatles
only received four Grammys, which is amazing considering their impact on
popular music and our culture. Bob Dylan's ground-breaking Highway 61
Revisited album won no Grammys in 1965. David Bowie's important Ziggy
Stardust collection didn't even win a nomination in 1972. James Brown,
The Rolling Stones, Sly Stone and Diana Ross have never received
Grammy Awards. Quite simply, the six thousand notoriously conservative
people who vote for those awards are not apt to quickly recognize the
importance and significance of new artists.
There are also other, political considerations. It has long been rumoured
that both the nominating process and the final electoral process of the
Grammy Awards are dominated by major record companies that have
turned the award into a self-congratulatory sham. By 1983, this contest had
come down to a struggle between two large superpowers – the Warner
Brothers/Elektra-Asylum/ Atlantic-Atco faction (WEA) and the
Columbia/Epic faction (CBS). As a result, it was very difficult for non-
WEA and non-CBS recording artists to win Grammys. Motown artists, with
the exception of Stevie Wonder, were usually not even in the running. In
fact, in 1982, CBS won twenty-one of a possible sixty-two awards,
including all the major citations.
Michael wasn't interested in the politics of the Grammy Awards. ‘Who
cares?’ he once told a friend. ‘All I want is as many of 'em as I can get.’
He needn't have worried. Michael Jackson was, quite simply, too popular
for the Academy to ignore. He was so popular, in fact, that everyone agreed
on his importance; he had become rock music's most commonly celebrated
hero, and he was a CBS artist, to boot. When the Grammy nominations
were announced, he received an unprecedented twelve nominations – the
highest number of mentions for any single performer in Grammy history –
including Record of the Year (‘Beat It’), Album of the Year (Thriller), and
Song of the Year (‘Beat It’ and ‘Billie Jean’); a nomination for Best
Children's Recording for his narration of E.T.; nominations for the
engineers who remixed the instrumental track of ‘Billie Jean’ for the B-side
of a single, and for the songwriters who wrote ‘PYT’ for his album;
nominations for his producer, Quincy Jones; and an additional Best
Producer nomination jointly shared by Michael and Quincy. In fact,
Jackson's closest competitor was his producer and occasional arranger,
Quincy Jones, who received six nominations.
Along with Thriller, the Police's Synchronicity and the Flashdance
soundtrack also received nominations for Album of the Year, as did Billy
Joel's An Innocent Man and David Bowie's Let's Dance.
The Grammys
On Tuesday, 28 February 1984, Grammy night, the scene at the Shrine
Auditorium in Los Angeles was one of pure pandemonium. Giant klieg
lights cut dramatic white patterns in the dark sky above. Fans in their roped-
off areas were ready to scream and call out the names of anyone they might
recognize. When twenty-five-year-old Michael Jackson arrived for his
coronation as king of the pop music world, he wore a spangled uniform
with epaulets and the rhinestoned glove on his right hand. With him was
Brooke Shields.
Actually, Michael didn't want to go to the awards show with Brooke.
Shortly before the ceremony, she came by the Encino house unexpectedly
to ask him if he would consider taking her to the show. Although they had
been friends for two years, it's unclear whether Brooke, eighteen years old
at this time, actually felt attracted to Michael, or whether she knew that
going with him to the Grammys would generate enormous publicity for her.
She had already accompanied him to the American Music Awards in
January when Michael swept the night (winning eight trophies) and to the
Guinness Awards in February. Her picture, with Michael's, had been in
every newspaper across the country.
Brooke Shields was instantly recognizable back in 1984, but not really a
major star. Her career had not been critically acclaimed; her later films
usually flopped. Her famous jeans commercials were no longer airing, and a
movie called Sahara had temporarily been shelved. Smart and well-spoken,
she was attending Princeton University in New Jersey at the time. Brooke
and Michael enjoyed each other's company and related to one another in
that both understood the pressure of being a child star with demanding
parents. Brooke's mother-manager, Teri, was delighted by her daughter's
association with Michael.
LaToya and Janet were in the kitchen when Michael rushed in to tell
them of Brooke's request. ‘I don't want to take her,’ he said, according to
LaToya's memory. ‘I really, really don't.’
‘Well then tell her, Michael,’ LaToya said. ‘Tell her no if you don't want
to take her.’
‘But I can't.’
‘Why not?’ Janet asked.
‘Because I don't want to hurt her feelings,’ Michael explained. Visibly
cringing, he then went back into the living room.
A few moments later he rejoined his sisters, wearing a sheepish grin.
‘Well?’ LaToya asked.
‘I'm taking her,’ Michael said, sounding defeated. How ironic that the
pop star who had not been intimidated by record business honchos Berry
Gordy and Walter Yetnikoff had been hectored by Brooke Shields into
doing what he did not want to do.
Months later, Michael and his employee Steve Howell were reviewing
photographs from the awards show. One was of him with Brooke Shields.
‘What's she like?’ Howell asked.
‘Oh, she's okay,’ Michael said, nonchalantly. ‘But I only took her to help
her out,’ he added. ‘There was no romance. All of this was strictly for her,
for the sake of publicity.’
Indeed, when Michael and Brooke arrived in a white Rolls-Royce just
moments before the ceremony began, there was such hysteria from the fans
one might have thought they were visiting royals. Poor Tatum O'Neal was
at the entrance door with four friends, watching the madness. Michael,
Brooke and a coterie of security guards rushed right by her. ‘Michael. Hey,
Michael!’ Tatum shouted. Too late. He was gone. She turned to her friends.
‘I'll introduce you to him later. I promise/
Michael, wearing heavy pancake makeup and loads of eyeliner, sat in the
theatre's front row with Brooke and Emmanuel Lewis, who had met them
there. Brooke seemed uncomfortable about having to share her date with a
twelve-year-old. Earlier, when photographers descended upon them,
Michael held Emmanuel with one arm and hugged Brooke with his free
hand. It was as if he was trying to remind Brooke – and maybe the public –
that the presence of a child on their date meant that he really wasn't serious
about her. ‘Let's get out of here,’ Brooke was heard saying to Michael.
‘People are making fun of us.’
During the ceremony, cheers rose from fans in the balcony and from
industry colleagues who filled the orchestra seats every time Michael's face
flashed on the studio monitors or his name was even mentioned. When the
two Pepsi commercials ‘premiered’, the audience reacted with a tidal wave
of applause and whistles. It was obvious that he was the man of the
moment, and before he had even won a single award. Comedienne Joan
Rivers noted in an explanation of how the votes were tabulated, ‘The reason
we're reading the rules is so that all the losers will know why they lost to
Michael Jackson.’
That night, Michael made Grammy history when he won eight awards
out of a possible ten wins on twelve nominations (three of his nominations
were in one category).
Not since the brilliant maturation of Motown's Stevie Wonder in the mid-
seventies (he won five Grammys in 1973 and 1974) had the public, press,
and industry – three factions that seldom see eye-to-eye on anything –
agreed so wholeheartedly on an entertainer's importance to our pop culture.
In a sense, the unanimous recognition of Michael Jackson at the Shrine
Auditorium meant that fans, critics and voters had agreed on a new pop
music king.
Accepting the Best Album award for Thriller (which, by this time, had
sold twenty-seven million records, was the biggest-selling album in history
and still number one on the Billboard charts), a nervous and shy Michael
said, ‘This is a great honour. I'm very happy.’
When he later picked up the seventh and record-breaking Grammy, he
took off his dark glasses in a victory salute – ‘for the girls in the balcony’.
Katharine Hepburn (‘my dear friend’) had scolded Michael for wearing the
shades at the American Music Awards and told him he was ‘cheating’ his
fans by not allowing them to see his eyes.
Michael accepted one award with the comment, ‘I have something very
important to say… really,’ and proceeded to pay touching tribute to
legendary rhythm-and-blues star Jackie Wilson, who had recently died.
Jackie was one of Michael's show-business idols. After suffering a heart
attack onstage in New Jersey in 1975, Jackie lay in a helpless, practically
vegetative condition in a nursing home. All of the Jackson children went to
visit him one day in 1977. His primary caretaker was Joyce McCrae, who
would go on to work for Joseph Jackson Productions. She was Gina
Sprague's nemesis in the work place. Jackie couldn't speak; he could only
blink once for no and twice for yes. All of the Jackson siblings were
gathered around his bedside, trying not to cry, as Joyce introduced them,
one by one. When she got to Michael, Jackie smiled and blinked twice.
McCrae recalled, ‘There was a happiness on his face that was just so
precious, so deep, and so moving. He was so glad they were there. It was a
special moment.’
Michael also won Best Record (‘Beat It’) and Best Vocalist in three
areas: pop (‘Beat It’), rock (‘Thriller’) and rhythm and blues (‘Billie Jean’).
He also won Best Children's Album (E.T.), Best Rhythm-and-Blues Song
(‘Billie Jean’) and Best Record Producer, an award he shared with Quincy
Jones. Jackson's two losses were to The Police, who copped three Grammys
in all for the Synchronicity album and the single ‘Every Breath You Take’.
All told, his eight wins topped Paul Simon's previous record of seven in a
year, earned in a 1970 sweep for Bridge over Troubled Water.
In one acceptance, he called CBS head Walter Yetnikoff to the stage with
him. Later, he invited LaToya, Janet and Rebbie to join him.
Backstage, after the awards, Michael didn't have much to say to the press.
It had already been made clear to the media that he would not be available
for interviews – he would allow photos only. The assembled media, having
been deprived of the opportunity to ask Michael questions about his
winnings, had no choice but to ask all of the other winners how they felt
about Michael's achievement. ‘I've seen four phenomena in my lifetime:
Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, The Beatles and Michael Jackson,’ Quincy
Jones noted.
‘What's your favourite song?’ someone shouted out to Michael as he
walked away.
‘ “My Favourite Things” by Julie Andrews,’ Michael responded.
‘You're kidding, right?’ the reporter asked.
‘Nope.’ Michael started singing the song, ‘Raindrops on roses and
whiskers on kittens…’ while he skipped down the hall, accompanied by
four security men. As he left the auditorium with Brooke and Emmanuel,
fifty people were elbowed out of his way by his guards – including Tatum
O'Neal and her four friends. ‘I'll introduce you to him later,’ she promised
them, again. As Michael's Rolls-Royce sped away from the auditorium, he
rolled down the window and leaned out, both arms raised in triumph,
clutching and waving a Grammy in one hand. ‘All right!’ he yelled out. ‘All
right!’
Michael Jackson had become one of the most sought-after celebrities in
Hollywood, always invited to a multitude of A-list parties. Often he needed
an escort and, uncomfortable in his new role as a social butterfly, he sought
someone safe – and older. Liza Minnelli was one of his favourites, partly
because Michael had always been fascinated by the mystique of her mother,
Judy Garland, but also because Liza had grown up in Hollywood, knew her
way around, and was able to keep Michael comfortable and relaxed.
Besides, in 1984 it was Liza, not Michael, who received the coveted
invitation to the 10 April party hosted by famed literary agent, Irving
‘Swifty’ Lazar. Held every year right after the Academy Awards, the event
had once been so prestigious that even big-name stars considered it an
honour to be invited. Celebrities often instructed their publicists to hound
‘Swifty’ for months in advance for an invitation. In 1984, the party was
held at the Bistro in Beverly Hills. Guests included Orson Welles, Cary
Grant, Jacqueline Bisset and Linda Evans.
It was obvious that no matter how famous Michael had become, in his
heart he was just another star-struck fan. Judging from the expression on his
face, his success didn't diminish his awe, but it did allow him to observe his
idols up close. In return, the celebs fell all over themselves for a chance to
meet Michael, a guy who had made only one movie (and that one a flop!).
Michael never strayed from Liza's side. Wearing one of his blue glitter
military outfits, dark aviator shades, and the requisite rhinestoned glove,
Michael looked around the room and probably couldn't help noticing that
everyone was gawking at him. For her part, Liza strolled about proudly
with Michael on her arm, as if to say, Yes, I'm with Michael Jackson. What
do you think of that?
‘Let me have a scotch and Coca-Cola,’ Liza instructed the waiter. ‘And
Mr Jackson will have the same.’
‘Oh, no,’ Michael protested. ‘I'll have a…’ He hesitated. ‘I'll have an
orange juice, please.’
‘Oh, of course he will,’ Liza said. ‘And so will I. With scotch.’ She
laughed merrily.
The waiter walked away. ‘Yoo-hoo,’ Michael meekly called out after
him. ‘No scotch in mine.’
Joan Collins sauntered over to the couple. ‘Michael, my dear boy, how
truly wonderful to see you.’ She embraced him warmly and winked at Liza,
as if sharing a joke with her. Michael looked confused.
‘Quick, stand right next to him; let's get a picture.’ A woman shoved her
husband next to Michael. ‘This is for our daughter, Natasha,’ the man
sheepishly explained. Michael, who has no doubt heard a similar line a
thousand times before, nodded patiently.
‘Oh, by the way, my name is Michael Caine,’ said the actor after the
photo was taken. The two shook hands as Caine's wife, Shakira, snapped
another picture of them.
Joan Collins turned to a friend. ‘You know, I must get the name of his
plastic surgeon,’ she said. ‘I simply adore his nose, don't you?’
Johnny Carson, seated with his girlfriend Alexis Mass, took in the scene
and walked over to Michael just as his orange juice was being served to
him.
‘Nice to see you, Michael,’ Carson said with a firm handshake.
Michael seemed dazed. ‘I… uh, gee, nice to see you again too, Mr
Carson.’
‘Call me John.’
‘Oh, okay. Call me Mike.’
Liza Minnelli grabbed Michael's hand. ‘Now look, Johnny, he's my date,’
she told Carson with a big smile.
‘Wow! What a nice guy that Johnny Carson is,’ Michael was overheard
saying as Liza dragged him away.
‘Oh, yes, he's a dear,’ she agreed. ‘Now we're going to call my father.’
‘We are?’
Liza then led Michael off to a payphone.
After Liza dialled the number, she began doing a soft-shoe dance routine
and started singing, ‘Forget your troubles, c'mon get happy,’ she sang. She
was feeling…good.
Michael laughed. ‘I love being around you, you know that?’ he told her.
‘Shhh,’ Liza said. Her father answered the phone. ‘Daddy, listen, I want
you to meet Michael Jackson.’
‘Who?’ was apparently the question back to her.
‘Why, he's a wonderful singer and one of my best friends,’ she explained.
‘Now just say hello.’ A pause. ‘Oh, Daddy, just say hello. Now, c'mon’
She handed the phone to Michael. ‘No, I can't,’ Michael protested, his
hand over the mouthpiece.
‘Oh, but you must’ Liza insisted.
‘But he's my idol.’ Michael had always enjoyed director Vincente
Minnelli's films.
‘Well, then say hello.’ Liza punched him on the arm playfully. ‘He
doesn't bite.’
Michael took his hand off the mouthpiece. ‘Hello, Mr Minnelli,’ he
whispered. He listened for five seconds, his eyes darting left and right. With
a giggle, he handed the phone back to Liza. ‘God, he's so nice,’ Michael
gushed.
Liza got back on the phone. ‘Now listen, Daddy. Put on your velvet
jacket. We'll be over in twenty minutes.’
Pause.
‘Yes, I'm bringing him over there.’
A pause.
‘Never mind what he's wearing.’
Another pause.
‘Okay, he's wearing one sequined glove, all right? Now, are you
satisfied?’
Michael doubled over, laughing.
‘Okay, then fine. Goodbye.’
As Liza and Michael pushed through the crowd and out the door to the
waiting limousine, Jimmy Stewart was overheard saying, ‘Well, there they
go, Dorothy's little girl… and the Wiz.’
Almost twenty years later, ‘the Wiz’ would be part of the star-studded
wedding party when ‘Dorothy's little girl’ married for a fourth time, in New
York. Michael was best man and Elizabeth Taylor the matron of honour
when, in March 2002, Liza wed David Gest in a well-publicized, star-
studded extravaganza. Unfortunately, the union would end after sixteen
tumultuous months.
‘Believe me, trouble's ahead’
The upcoming Victory tour promised forty concert dates and, at least as far
as Michael was concerned, forty million opportunities for something to go
wrong as long as Don King was in the picture. Michael felt that he needed
someone to protect his interests. John Branca was an excellent attorney, but
now he needed a hands-on manager since Weisner and DeMann were gone
and Joseph was no longer managing him.
As it happened, Motown had just released a collection of songs by
Michael that he had recorded in the early seventies. The album was called
Farewell My Summer Love 1984, a misleading title since the songs were
recorded more than ten years earlier. The record only sold about a hundred
thousand copies, a minuscule number considering the thirty-three million
copies of Thriller that had by then been moved in record stores. Michael
believed that Motown was trying to cash in on his fame, and he didn't like
it. ‘It's not fair,’ he said. ‘I had no control over that music. I don't even like
some of those songs. I need someone to stop things like that from
happening in the future.’
Michael took meetings with a number of managers, including Colonel
Tom Parker, Elvis Presley's Svengali, hoping to find the most qualified
person. When it came to choosing a manager, Michael was extremely
cautious. He questioned everyone he knew about certain people, trying to
determine their worth in the entertainment industry. He would talk to his
brothers to see what gossip they had heard; he would check with record
company executives. In the end, his choice would surprise many observers.
Seven months earlier, in August 1983, Michael had asked Epic Records
head of promotion, Frank Dileo, if he would be interested in managing him.
The two were having a meeting about Thriller in a bungalow at the Beverly
Hills Hotel. Michael firmly believed that Frank was largely responsible for
Thriller's success, and also for the huge sales of all of its single releases.
After his search, he again went back to Frank Dileo, even though the man
had virtually no experience as a manager. Many industry observers
wondered, why Frank? (‘I asked Michael the same question: why me?’
Dileo said.) Michael felt that the aggressive way Frank worked in the record
industry could prove an asset to him. In Frank Dileo, Michael knew he was
hiring a terrific record promoter, who may or may not turn out to be a good
manager – but he was willing to take a chance.
At the time, Frank Dileo, whose nickname is ‘Tookie’ (Michael used to
call him Uncle Tookie), was thirty-six, born and raised in Pittsburgh. He
had got his start in the record industry as an assistant to a record promoter
in the Midwest, and in the early seventies when he was twenty-one, landed
a job with RCA Records in New York as national director of promotions.
While at RCA, he turned that label's promotion department into the record
industry's finest. In 1979, Frank was named Epic's vice-president of
promotion. There, he developed a reputation at the label as being a
confident man in complete charge of everything around him – even matters
that didn't concern him. A flashy character, he would wear a sweat suit to
the office, along with an eight-thousand-dollar Rolex watch given to him by
the Epic recording group REO Speedwagon. He was largely responsible for
successes by Meat Loaf, Culture Club and Cyndi Lauper.
A few years after joining Epic, Frank was invited to the recording studio
to watch as Michael recorded Thriller. It was then that he and Michael
developed a rapport, though opposites in almost every way: Michael was
shy and retiring, Frank was loud and boisterous; Michael was a health-food
junkie, Frank liked a good hoagie and a Budweiser with which to wash it
down; Michael never smoked, Frank loved cigars, the smellier the better;
Michael weighed about 120 pounds; Frank weighed twice that. Still,
Michael admired the way Frank set goals for himself and then achieved
them. ‘I'd like to be like Frank Dileo,’ he said. ‘He gets the job done.’
Also, Frank was a close friend and confidant of Walter Yetnikoff,
president of CBS Records, and socialized with attorney Nat Weiss, one of
Yetnikoff's trusted friends. Michael understood how politically valuable
those relationships could be to him. However, Michael told Frank that if he
took the job as his manager, he would not be allowed to manage anyone
else. He had to be exclusive to Michael. Frank agreed.
By March, the Victory tour battle lines were drawn. Though the point of the
tour was that the family presented a united front to the public, the business
behind the scenes was so fragmented, it was almost impossible to find any
commonality among the participants.
If Michael had to do the tour, he wanted more control of it. Not only was
he exerting his independence at this time, he knew that if the show flopped
it could hurt his career. Whereas his brothers only wanted to make a decent
living, that was the least of Michael's concerns; he already had plenty of
money. Still, since Michael now had his own manager, the brothers felt they
had to have one, too. Therefore, they hired Jack Nance, who had been the
group's road manager during the early days at Motown. So, now he had his
manager, and they had theirs.
Making matters worse, Michael wanted nothing to do with Don King,
especially when Frank filled Michael in on Don's reputation. Frank told
Michael that Don had been criticized for his handling of the defunct US
Boxing Championships on ABC Television. He also heard of charges,
which King has denied, that he skimmed money from closed-circuit fights
and sold five-hundred-dollar tickets to boxing matches but did not report
the sales. If Michael had to do this tour, he decided, he would do everything
in his power to distance himself from Don King. ‘I can tell you one thing,’
he told John Branca. ‘I don't want that guy telling me what to do, and I don't
want him to touch one single penny of my money.’ Or, as Don King would
later say, ‘With Michael, you're always on trial.’
Through John, Michael dispatched a series of instructions to Don stating:
1. King may not communicate with anyone on Michael's behalf
without prior permission.
2. All monies will be collected by Michael's representatives and not by
King.
3. King may not approach any promoters, sponsors or other people on
Michael's behalf.
4. King may not hire any personnel or local promoters, book halls, or,
for that matter, do anything at all without Michael's prior approval.
Don appeared perplexed by Michael's demands but he had no choice but
to abide by them. Still, Don felt that Michael was too easily swayed by the
opinions of his white manager, Frank Dileo, and white lawyer, John Branca.
‘I see that Michael has nobody black around him,’ Don said to a reporter.
‘Nobody.’ That might have been true, but it was a mistake for Don to say it
to the press. ‘Fire him,’ Michael said, angrily. ‘Who does that guy think he
is?’
But Don had a contract, and he wasn't going anywhere.
John and Don then had dinner at the Beverly Hills Hotel to try to work
matters out. ‘Look, Johnny, there's no reason why you and me gotta be on
bad terms,’ King told Branca. ‘I like Michael. I like you. Let's work with
one another.’
They agreed that they should try to work things out. However, by this
time, the brothers were also ambivalent about Don King, especially after
that press conference.
At this time Chuck Sullivan, head of Stadium Management Corporation,
of Foxboro, Massachusetts, and former owner of the New England Patriots
football team, was brought in to watch over Don King. He would be
organizing the concerts. Michael was also able to convince the brothers to
allow Irving Azoff, head of MCA, to come aboard as a tour consultant.
Meanwhile, in the background, there was still Joseph Jackson, who did
everything he could to stay involved and not allow Don to overshadow him.
Then, there was Katherine, watching and waiting until the next time she
would have to speak to Michael in order to get him to do something he
didn't want to do.
‘I said the Pepsi accident was a bad omen,’ Michael told Frank Dileo one
day as they sorted out all of the characters. ‘But I didn't know what it
meant. Now I know. Believe me when I say that trouble's ahead.’
Another Nose Job, and Katherine's Party
In the spring of 1984, Michael arranged for Dr Steven Hoefflin, his plastic
surgeon, to give him another rhinoplasty – a third nose job. ‘He was
determined that the last two weren't good enough,’ said a source who once
worked in Hoefflin's office. ‘“It has to be thinner,” he insisted. “Did you see
the way it looked on the American Music Awards when I was standing next
to Diana?” he asked. “Hers was so thin and mine looked so fat. I hated it.”
He didn't come out and say he wanted Diana Ross's nose, but it was pretty
obvious it was the shape he was after.’
‘I saw him after that third operation,’ Steve Howell recalled. ‘I was at the
house dropping off some film and Mike was home. He didn't know I was
there and our paths crossed. He shrieked, “Oh no!” and ran off. It was like
seeing a woman you don't know in her underwear and without her makeup
on, that was his reaction. His face was black and blue. There was a gauzy
bandage over his nose. He looked like a guy who'd been in a boxing match
and forgot to put his hands up.
‘A couple of weeks later, we were talking and I was standing very close
to him. I noticed what I thought were blemishes around his nose. I thought,
All those natural creams and other cosmetics he uses, and he still has
blemishes? However, studying the area on the other side of his nostril I
realized those weren't blackheads, they were six small stitches around his
nose. There was more work in weeks to come: his skin looked like it was
being stretched, or peeled, or something. The reason I'm vague is that it was
not something people around the house discussed.’
In May 1984, Michael hosted a birthday gathering with his brothers and
sisters in honour of their mother, Katherine, at the Bistro Garden restaurant
in Beverly Hills. No matter what was going on in their lives, the Jacksons
loved their mother. Among her gifts, Katherine received a diamond ring and
a rose-coloured, beige-topped Rolls-Royce. ‘The press later reported that
the Rolls was from Michael,’ said his sister-in-law, the late Enid Jackson.
‘Actually, we all chipped in on it. How do you think that made the brothers
feel, the fact that the world thought the gift was from Michael? But that's
the kind of thing they had to get used to over the years. Little things like
this can be very hurtful. If, God forbid, they all got into an airplane crash, it
would all be about Michael dying in a crash… and the brothers were also
there.’
Much of the extended Jackson family attended Katherine's party. Her
children flew Katherine's father in from Indiana as a special surprise. As a
Jehovah's Witness, some of her friends thought it strange that she would
agree to a birthday celebration.
Michael hired Steve Howell to videotape the proceedings. Not to be
outdone, Jermaine had his videographer do the same thing.
Steve's video of the gathering is revealing. On it, the family did not
appear to be close, though everyone seemed cordial enough as they
exchanged pleasantries in the formal setting. When Janet walked in with her
date, a singer named James DeBarge, everyone scattered. It was obvious
that no one liked him.
The most emotional moment of the evening was between Michael and
Katherine. Michael, wearing an expensive-looking, sparkly silver suit and
tie, walked up on to the stage and said to his mother, ‘This is one of your
favourite songs. I'd like to do it for you.’ He seemed nervous, even
embarrassed. He can sing before thousands of people with no problem, but
intimate gatherings truly rattle him.
Michael was accompanied by country star Floyd Cramer, playing a
Fender Rhodes piano. (Cramer had been flown in for the party because
Katherine is such a big fan of his.) As Cramer played, along with a three-
piece band, Michael sang the Kris Kristofferson country song ‘For the Good
Times’ to Katherine, reading the lyrics from cue cards.
When Michael sang the first line – ‘Don't look so sad, I know it's over’ –
Katherine's eyes immediately began to well up with tears. Any observer
might have thought that she was thinking of her marriage to Joseph, who
was not even sitting with her but, rather, elsewhere in the room. As Michael
sang the song – his voice pure, his delivery eloquent – Katherine rocked
back and forth in her chair, looking as if her son's performance had
completely swept her away. No mother had ever gazed upon her son in a
more loving manner, and Michael's expression was equally moving.
Michael Meets the President
Around this time, John Branca received a telephone call from
Transportation Secretary Elizabeth Dole asking if Michael would donate
‘Beat It’ as background music for a thirty-second television commercial and
sixty-second radio spot on drunk driving. When John presented the idea to
Michael, his reaction was swift. ‘That's tacky,’ he said. ‘I can't do that.’
John told Michael he would call Elizabeth Dole and tell her that they
were not interested. However, Michael then got an idea. ‘You know what?’
he mused. ‘If I can get some kind of an award from the White House, then
I'll give them the song. How about that?’ he said, now excited. ‘See what
you can negotiate with them, Branca.’
‘What do you want?’ asked John, bemused.
‘Well,’ Michael said, like a kid coming up with a Wish List. ‘I want to go
to the White House. I want to be on a stage with the President [Ronald
Reagan], and get an award from him. And I sure want to meet Nancy [First
Lady, Nancy Reagan]. The whole works. Why not? You think you can do
that, Branca. Can you get me an award from the President?’
John laughed. ‘Well, I can sure try.’ The next day, John Branca went to
work on the idea. He telephoned Elizabeth Dole and told her that she could
have the song for her drunk-driving campaign if she dreamed up some kind
of humanitarian award that the President could present to Michael. She
agreed. The President agreed, as did the First Lady.
The presentation was set for 14 May 1984. It had started out as an
exciting day. In fact, it was said that there hadn't been that much excitement
at the White House since the day the hostages came home from Iran. For
the occasion, the President wore a navy blue suit, navy blue and grey
striped tie and white shirt. Nancy was chic in a white Adolfo suit trimmed
with gold buttons and gold braid. It hardly mattered what she wore, though,
for anyone standing next to Michael Jackson that day would pale in
comparison. Michael appeared resplendent in an electric-blue sequined
jacket adorned with sequined braid, a sequined gold sash, and sequined gold
epaulets. He also wore his trademark single white, rhinestoned glove.
Hundreds of White House officials and secretaries, many of them
clutching cameras, gathered on the sun-speckled lawn to catch a glimpse of
Michael. More than a hundred yards back from the stage, the White House
fence was lined solidly with fans, many wearing a single white glove like
the one Michael sported.
Two thousand people cheered as Ronald Reagan stepped on to a stage on
the White House South Lawn with Nancy and Michael. ‘Well, isn't this a
thriller,’ he said. ‘We haven't seen this many people since we left China.
And just think you all came to see me.’
As Michael, the President and the First Lady walked to the Oval Office,
one middle-aged White House office worker standing across from the Rose
Garden shrieked, ‘I saw his foot. I saw his foot!’
A special metal detector was constructed in the Jacqueline Kennedy
Garden to screen Michael and his entourage of eight security men; Frank
Dileo, John Branca and publicist Norman Winter. There was also a young
man with Michael, a person no one seemed to know, except for Michael. He
was dark, in his early twenties, and good looking. Dileo, Branca and Winter
were perplexed as to who this person was, and when Michael was asked
how the man should be identified to the press, he said, ‘He's a close friend
of mine. I don't care what you tell people. It's no one's business.’ Norman
Winter must have known that the presence of this mystery friend would
raise some eyebrows. In order to protect Michael from controversy, he
identified the man as a Secret Service agent.
Once at the podium, the President noted that Michael was ‘proof of what
a person can accomplish through a lifestyle free of alcohol or drug abuse.
People young and old respect that. And if Americans follow his example,
then we can face up to the problem of drinking and driving, and we can, in
Michael's words, beat it.’ After the President handed him a plaque, the only
words Michael nervously spoke – or whispered, rather – were, ‘I'm very,
very honoured. Thank you very much, Mr President.’ A pause. ‘Oh, and
Mrs Reagan, too,’ he added as an afterthought. Then, he giggled as if it
suddenly occurred to him that yes, he really was standing there with the
President of the United States.
Six news photographers covering the event wore white gloves on one
hand as they shot pictures of the Reagans and Jackson. The whole event
took about nine minutes. Afterwards, nine police motorcycles and several
vans and mounted police escorted Michael from the White House.
But before they left, the entourage was given a special tour of the White
House; Michael was particularly fascinated by a portrait of Andrew Jackson
in a military jacket very much like the blue-sequinned one he wore that day.
After the tour, the group was scheduled to spend time with the President
and the First Lady.
Things took a turn for the worse, though, when Michael arrived at the
Diplomatic Reception Room where he was to meet privately with the
Reagans. He had been told that only a few children of staff members would
be present. Instead, there were about seventy-five adults. Michael put one
foot into the Reception Room, took a quick look around, and then ran out,
down the hall and into the bathroom off the Presidential Library. Frank
Dileo and the rest of the entourage followed him. However, before they
could reach him, Michael closed the door and locked it.
‘Hey, Mike, come on out,’ Frank said.
‘No. They said there would be kids. But those aren't kids,’ Michael
shouted back.
‘But there will be children. We'll go get the children,’ a White House aide
promised. Then he turned to an assistant. ‘Listen, if the First Lady gets a
load of this, she's going to be mad as hell. Now you go get some kids in
here, damn it. Get James Baker's kid. She's cute. [Chief of Staff James
Baker had brought his six-year-old daughter, Mary Bonner.] I don't care
who you get, just get some kids in here.’
Frank then addressed the closed bathroom door, again. ‘It's okay,
Michael. We're going to get the kids.’ His voice had a patient tone, as
though he were soothing a disturbed child. John Branca stood near by,
watching with a bemused expression on his face.
‘Well, you'll have to also clear all of those adults out of there before I
come out,’ Michael warned.
‘Done.’
Someone ran into the Reception Room. ‘Okay, out!’ he said. ‘Everybody
out. Out, out, out!’
Senior staff and cabinet members cleared that room so quickly, an
observer might have thought there had been a bomb threat.
‘What's happening?’
‘Where's Michael Jackson?’
‘Has he left?’
Everyone spoke at once as they were ushered from the room.
The aide then ran back to the bathroom door, where a cluster of men with
worried looks had congregated. He conferred with one of Michael's people.
‘Okay. You can come out now, Michael,’ Norman Winter said, finally.
‘Everything is okay.’
‘Are you sure?’ came back the soft voice.
Frank Dileo knocked on the door with his fist, one loud thud. ‘Okay,
Mike, outta there. I mean it.’
The bathroom door opened slowly. Michael appeared. He looked around,
slightly embarrassed. Frank put his arm around him. ‘I'm sorry,’ Michael
told him, ‘but I was told there wouldn't be so many people.’
Michael was then ushered back into the Reception Room, where awaiting
him were just a few officials and their children. Elizabeth Dole was the first
to approach Michael. She handed him a copy of Thriller and asked him to
sign the record jacket.
Then Ronald and Nancy Reagan arrived and led Michael into the
Roosevelt Room to meet some other aides and their families.
Nancy Reagan whispered to one of Michael's staff. ‘I've heard that he
wants to look like that singer Diana Ross, but really, looking at him up
close, he's so much prettier than she is. Don't you agree? I mean, I just don't
think she's that attractive, but he certainly is.’
The First Lady waited for a response. There was none.
‘I just wish he would take off his sunglasses,’ she said. ‘Tell me, has he
had any surgery on his eyes?’
The aide shrugged. He knew better than to discuss Michael's private life,
even with the President's wife.
She studied Michael closely as he spoke to her husband on the other side
of the room. ‘Certainly his nose has been done,’ she observed, her tone
hushed. ‘More than once, I'd say. I wonder about his cheekbones, though. Is
that makeup, or has he had them done too?’
By this time, the First Lady didn't act as if she actually expected an
answer, but the aide shrugged again anyway.
‘It's all so peculiar, really,’ Nancy observed as Ronald Reagan shook
Michael's hand. ‘A boy who looks just like a girl, who whispers when he
speaks, wears a glove on one hand and sunglasses all the time. I just don't
know what to make of it.’ She shook her head in dismay, as if at a loss for
words.
Finally, the Jackson employee broke his silence. ‘Listen, you don't know
the half of it,’ he said, rolling his eyes. He looked at her with a
conspiratorial smile, expecting her to laugh. She didn't. Instead, she stared
at him for a cold moment. ‘Well, he is talented,’ she said as she walked
away, ‘and I would think that's all that you should be concerned about.’
‘Their last shot’
Michael may have been treated like an American hero in May 1984, but the
tide would turn in June when the plan for distribution of tickets for the
Victory tour – now scheduled to begin in Kansas City on 6 July – was
announced. Joseph Jackson, Don King and Chuck Sullivan came up with a
unique concept: tickets would be thirty dollars each and sold in lots of four
only. Ordering tickets did not guarantee getting them. The names of those
who ordered would be selected at random by a computer drawing coupons
that had to be cut out of advertisements published in local newspapers.
Therefore, the Jacksons fan had to send a $120 postal money order * – plus a
two-dollar service charge for each ticket – and the coupon, all in ‘a standard
Number Ten envelope’, to the ticket address printed in the advertisement.
Promoters predicted that as many as twelve million fans would mail in
$1.5 billion in money orders for the twelve-city, forty-two-concert Victory
tour, but only about one in ten applicants would actually receive tickets. In
order even to be considered, the money orders were to be postmarked at
least two weeks before the concert. With the delay in returning money to
the unlucky ones – four to six weeks – the promoters and the Jacksons
would have use of it for six to eight weeks. Assuming the tour sold $144
million in tickets, as the promoters estimated, $1.4 billion in excess
payments would have to be returned. In a common money-market deposit
account in a bank, which paid about 7 per cent interest, that money would
earn eight million dollars a month for the promoters and Jackson family.
The Jacksons' spokesman, Howard Bloom, said that whatever interest that
would accrue on each $120 order would go toward costs of handling and
postage for unfilled orders.
If you were a lucky winner and allowed to see the Victory show, you
wouldn't know if you were going to go – or which show you would attend –
until two days before the concert. If the mail was delayed, the tickets could
easily arrive after the concert.
The tickets were obviously priced too high for even white middle-class
kids if they had to buy them in lots of four. It's almost impossible to
imagine that many of Michael's most loyal followers, kids from the ghetto,
would be able to afford the luxury of seeing the concert.
Making matters more distasteful, The Jacksons and their promoters said
that they would like to not have to pay for the advertisements from which
the coupons were to be clipped, saying that those ads should be run free of
cost as ‘public service advertisements’. Of course, most newspapers didn't
see it that way. ‘It's just a way to make more millions for the Jacksons,’ said
Bob Haring, executive editor of the Tulsa World.
Before the outrageous plan was announced, Michael and John Branca
met with the brothers to try to talk them out of it.
‘We got to get as much as possible for the tickets,’ one of the brothers
said. ‘The sky's the limit.’
‘No,’ Michael argued. ‘That's not the way to do it. There's going to be a
backlash. The tickets shouldn't be more than twenty bucks each. And the
mail order idea is terrible.’ In fact, the tickets for concerts by the Rolling
Stones and Bruce Springsteen at this time were sixteen dollars each.
Michael had wanted a simple twenty dollar ticket price, no lots of four, no
money orders, no coupons.
The brothers voted against Michael, five to one.
‘Okay, that's it,’ Michael decided later in a meeting with John Branca and
Frank Dileo. ‘This is going to be my last tour with the guys. I'm very
serious. So I don't want you to try to run anything. Let them do it all their
way. I'm just one vote out of six. Let them do their thing. This is their last
shot. I'm out of it.’
‘But why, Mike?’ Frank wanted to know. ‘They're gonna fuck it up.’
‘Because if anything goes wrong I don't want to hear about it,’ Michael
explained. ‘I don't want to hear about it from my mother, my father or my
brothers. Let them do it their way and I'm out of it. Maybe the money they
make from this will set them up comfortably. Then, I'm out of it.’
When the plan was made public, fans from coast to coast were outraged.
The Los Angeles Herald Examiner ran a telephone poll with the question:
Are Michael Jackson's fans being taken advantage of? Of the 2,795 people
who responded, 90 per cent said yes.
The newspaper published an editorial chastising the Jacksons: ‘It's hard
not to conclude that the Jacksons' promoters, if not the young stars
themselves, are taking advantage of their fans. It's been said that all the
Jackson brothers, including Michael, helped plan the tour. If so, they should
have shown a little more consideration for the fans who have made them so
rich and famous.’
Other newspapers across the country followed suit, lambasting the
Jacksons and, because he was the most famous one, Michael, in particular.
‘The Jackson tour has not been about music. It's been about greed and
arrogance,’ wrote the Washington columnists Maxwell Glen and Cody
Shearer. ‘What good does a drug-free, liquor-free, I-brake-for-animals
image do when the overriding message is “Give Me Your Piggy Bank.”’
As a youthful role model, the press was terrible publicity for Michael. ‘I
didn't even want to do this tour,’ he complained, exasperated. ‘Now look
what's happened.’
Despite the furor, when the first coupons were printed in the Kansas City
Times, scores of fans waited in the dark for the early morning papers to hit
the streets. The Times published an extra 20,000 copies to meet the demand.
Postal employees were ready with 140,000 money order forms for the
expected avalanche. The tickets sold out rapidly.
Still, it looked bad for Michael. Frank Dileo advised him that if he didn't
take a position against the brothers' and the promoters' apparent greediness,
his reputation could be damaged. ‘They don't care about your future,’ Frank
told him. ‘Their only concern is their present, to make as much as they can,
while they can. You have a career that's gonna be longer than this tour. They
probably don't.’
Michael wasn't sure how to handle the matter. ‘What I really want is for
all of it to just go away,’ he said, which wasn't much of a problem-solving
strategy. Finally, an open letter appeared in the Dallas Morning News that
impacted Michael. Eleven-year-old Ladonna Jones wrote that she'd been
saving her pennies to see The Jacksons but that she couldn't possibly save
enough to buy four tickets. She very pointedly asked Michael, ‘How could
you, of all people, be so selfish?’
When an aide showed Michael the letter, he was upset by it. Greed and
selfishness really had been at the heart of the tour plans; he knew it. But
hadn't his family already made more money than most people would ever
make in their lifetimes? Of course they had. It took a child's sadness,
however, to force him into action.
Though he hadn't wanted to make any major decisions about the tour in
order to be distanced from the drama of it, he now realized he had to take
action. He called a meeting with Joseph, Don King and Chuck Sullivan.
‘Change the ticket policy,’ he told them. ‘It's a rip-off. You know it. I know
it. Now, change it. Or I won't tour.’
‘But, Mike,’
Michael wouldn't discuss the matter. If the situation wasn't changed, he
said, the brothers would have to tour without him.
The next day, plans were made to change the system.
The Misery of the Victory Tour
Michael, who had dropped to 105 pounds from his normal weight of 125
pounds – the skinniest he had ever been – looked as if he was under a great
deal of stress when he and his brothers arrived at the Hyatt Hotel in
Birmingham, Alabama, on 26 June for a week of meetings about the tour.
As Michael checked in, he had become so dizzy he had to lean on one of his
bodyguards for support. When a hotel cook approached to say hello to him,
the guard released his grip and the star nearly crumpled to the floor. It
seemed to some observers that Michael barely had the strength to walk.
How was he going to perform?
Perhaps the problem with fatigue had to do with Michael's eating habits.
At Michael's orders, his Sikh cook, Mani Singh Khalsa, fed him a diet of
cashews, pecans, seeds, herbs and spices. ‘He's a health nut,’ said his cousin
Tim Whitehead, a roadie on the tour. ‘People don't know that the reason he's
a vegetarian is not so much because of what meat does to a person, but
because he can't stand the idea of having an animal killed so he can have
dinner. I've often wondered how he gets by on the little food he does eat.’
‘If I didn't have to eat to live, I'd never eat at all,’ Michael once told his
mother.
Later that day, a difficult meeting with the brothers, attorneys and
managers on telephone conference calls took place. By the time it was over,
Michael was fed up. When he got into the freight elevator (he always
travels in freight elevators rather than public ones), he leaned back against
the wall and just slowly slipped down until he was sitting on the floor.
Someone tried to help him to his feet, but he was too exhausted to stand.
‘Just leave me alone. Let me rest here for a second,’ he said as he went up
to the sixteenth floor. Witnesses to these kinds of scenes began whispering
that Michael was suffering from anorexia nervosa, which wasn't true but
certainly seemed plausible from the way he looked and acted.
It was time to announce the new ticket-buying arrangement. Michael held
a midday press conference on 5 July, the day before the first concert was to
take place. He wore a white sequined jacket and a red-and-white striped
sash. Marlon, Randy and Tito accompanied him. To counteract the charge
that he was greedy and doing the show only for profit, Michael announced
that he intended to donate all of the money he made from this controversial
tour to a favourite charity. Moreover, close to two thousand tickets in each
city would be donated to disadvantaged youths who would not otherwise be
able to attend the concerts.
Michael added, ‘We've worked a long time to make this show the best it
can be. But we know a lot of kids are having trouble getting tickets. The
other day I got a letter from a girl in Texas named Ladonna Jones. She'd
been saving her money from odd jobs to buy a ticket, but with the current
tour system she'd have to buy four tickets and she couldn't afford that. So
I've asked our promoter to work out a new way of distributing tickets – a
way that no longer requests a one-hundred-twenty-dollar money order.
There has been a lot of talk about the promoter holding money for tickets
that didn't sell. I've asked our promoter to end the mail-order ticket system
as soon as possible so that no one will pay money unless they get a ticket.’
Michael said that details of the new over-the-counter system for buying
tickets would be announced shortly. (It was implemented by the tour's third
stop in Jacksonville.)
Michael took no questions. Suddenly he and his brothers were
surrounded by security men. And then they were gone.
‘Why did he decide to donate all his money to charity?’ one reporter
asked Frank Dileo, who stayed behind.
‘Because he's a nice guy,’ Frank said.
Michael's estimated worth at the time came to seventy-five million
dollars, so donating to charity the approximately three to five million
dollars he would make on the tour would be a generous gesture but not one
that would cause him to change his lifestyle. His brothers, however, couldn't
possibly have afforded such a gift. Also, Michael did not – perhaps could
not – address any of the other problem issues. According to Cliff Wallace,
who managed the Louisiana Superdome, Joseph and Katherine Jackson,
Don King, Chuck Sullivan and The Jacksons had asked for free stadium
rent; a waiver of city, state, and federal taxes; a share in the profits of the
food, beverage and parking concessions; and free advertising to boot.
Meeting their demands would have cost city taxpayers $300,000. And gross
five million dollars for the Jacksons.
Michael arranged for Ladonna Jones to receive a set of four
complimentary tickets to the show, to which she would be chauffeured by
limousine. Michael met with her after the show. ‘He asked me if I had good
seats,’ she recalled. ‘They didn't turn out to be very good, but it was fun
anyway.’
At this time, CBS released the Victory album. Not counting 1981's live
album, it was the first Jacksons album in four years, so it was widely
anticipated. The album featured Michael's duet with Mick Jagger on ‘State
of Shock’, which wasn't so much a song as it was a glorified Rolling Stones
riff. The best cut on the album was written by Jackie and entitled ‘Torture’,
a high-tech rocker of a song on which Michael wails up a storm. The album
featured songs written by all of the brothers – and leads were split among
them as well – so it was the kind of group effort that was the perfect vinyl
kick-off for the tour.
The long-anticipated and controversial Victory tour finally began on
Friday 6 July 1984, in Kansas City, Missouri. ‘Anybody who sees this show
will be a better person for years to come,’ Don King told the press that day.
‘Michael Jackson has transcended all earthly bounds. Every race, colour,
and creed is waiting for this tour. The way he shall lift the despairing and
the despondent enthralls me. Only in America could this happen, only in
America. Oh, I am so thankful to be an American…’
‘Can't someone shut that man up?’ Michael asked one of his associates.
‘Isn't there enough pressure?’ To complicate matters, Jackie injured his leg
and would not be able to join his brothers until a later date; Jermaine,
Marlon, Randy, Tito and Michael would have to appear without him.
Jackson vs. Jackson on the Road
On the day of the first show, fans began to assemble outside Arrowhead
Stadium hours before sunrise. Inside the auditorium, a five-hundred person
security force and one thousand other stage workers geared up for the mass
event. Two giant tapestries of a forest scene bordered each side of the stage,
and a wooden barrier was erected fifteen feet in front of it to keep fans from
rushing the Jackson brothers.
‘Arise, all the world, and behold the kingdom,’ a voice boomed as the
show began for the 43,000 fans. Elaborate George Lucas-style
computerized stage and lighting systems were the hallmark of the concert,
including a hidden hydraulic stage that presented the group – Michael in
zebra-print, vertical-striped pants; spangled shirt; white socks; 1950s-type
penny loafers; and the white glove – as if they were appearing from under
the earth on a waffle grid of two hundred blinding lights. Seen in silhouette,
the brothers marched slowly down a staircase, approached the microphones,
removed their sunglasses, and broke into the first song, Michael's ‘Wanna
Be Startin' Somethin'’. There were red and green lasers, crimson strobe
lights and purple smoke bombs – magic, illusion and fireworks. Eighteen
songs boomed from a hundred outdoor speakers. Everything from ‘I Want
You Back’ to ‘Shake Your Body (Down to the Ground)’. (Oddly, the
brothers performed no numbers from their new Victory album. It was later
explained by Marlon that Michael refused to rehearse them or perform them
before a live audience.)
Jermaine performed three of his own songs. Michael's solo hits ‘Billie
Jean’ and ‘Beat It’ were saved for the end of the concert. He was in
excellent voice, more of a real singer now than ever before. By the time the
group finished their performance, the audience had been whipped into a
frenzy even though most of the audience members had to settle for the
distorted images of the brothers that appeared on huge overhanging
television screens throughout the gargantuan football stadium. It was clear,
though, they had paid the high ticket prices to see only one person, Michael
Jackson.
Thanks to his music – not to mention the advent of the video age –
Michael's stardom had reached such mythic proportions by this time, no one
could share a stage with him. As Jim Miller wrote for Newsweek, ‘He
dances with the breathtaking verve of his predecessor James Brown, the
beguiling wispiness of Diana Ross, the ungainly pathos of Charlie Chaplin,
the edgy joy of a man startled to be alive. The crowd gasps and screams…’
After the first of three shows in Kansas City, the truth was painfully
clear: Michael should never have agreed to do the tour, but for more reasons
than the problems with ticket prices and promotion. He was a front man for
an act he no longer felt a part of, and the brothers weren't comfortable in
their roles as his supporting players, either. Or as one critic put it, ‘Marlon,
Jermaine, Randy and Tito seemed mostly ill-at-ease extras at their own
celebration.’
Jermaine's odd comments to reporter Simon Kinnersley at this time
brought to light the dissension and fraternal jealousy running rampant
within the group. He said, ‘Even though Michael is very talented, a lot of
his success has been due to timing and a little bit of luck. It could have been
him, or it could just as easily have been me. But now I'm doing a lot of
things. I'm the hottest brother. It'll be the same when my brothers do their
thing.’
To Michael's audience, though, none of the controversy they kept hearing
and reading about mattered when he, the undisputed star, appeared on stage.
All that mattered was his talent, his passion for his work, his charisma, his
voice – and the way he could execute one of those impossible, backward
glides across the stage. The audience roared its appreciation for him with
every song. Not only had he outgrown any family pageantry, one sensed
that he was constrained by a fear of upstaging his brothers.
Also, there was a feeling – imaginary or not – that Michael couldn't wait
for the show to end. At the same time, the brothers, who entertained with
great hunger and eagerness, looked as if they knew that their performance
represented the chance of a lifetime for them… and maybe their last chance.
However, never for a moment did they appear to share any common values
or goals of showmanship with their star performer. And never did it appear
that Michael wanted anything more to do with them than necessary. By
trying to prove his loyalty to his family, he had distanced himself even
further from them. Moreover, maybe he had lost a little of his soul in the
process. Certainly he must have felt as if he'd lost something when James
Brown – one of his idols – refused his invitation to perform onstage with
him at Madison Square Garden in New York.
James, always a big fan of Michael's, felt that the steep ticket prices
would preclude the attendance of many of the group's black fans. That
decision had to hurt Michael, and make him think about whether the tour
was worth it to him.
The agony of Victory would continue through 9 December 1984 – same
show and dialogue each and every performance. Michael is not a
spontaneous performer. In concert, he has a set routine, and he rarely veers
from it. Bruce Springsteen went to see the show in Philadelphia and
afterwards he and Michael had a conversation backstage.
‘Do you talk to people during your concerts?’ Michael asked him. ‘I
heard that you do.’
‘Yeah. I tell stories,’ Bruce said. ‘People like that, I've learned. They like
to hear your voice do something besides singing. They go wild when you
just talk.’
Michael shuddered. ‘Oh, I could never do that. To me, it feels like people
are learning something about you they shouldn't know.’
The closer the time came for the tour to be over, the more anxious
Michael was to see it end. ‘The way we planned it, this was going to be the
greatest tour of all time,’ Joseph Jackson would say in retrospect. ‘But
outsiders interfered. Soon the brothers were at each other's throats.’
Without a doubt, the most annoying thing about the Jacksons' behaviour
over the years has been their frustrating inability to take responsibility for
their own actions. Over the years, all of them have pointed fingers to
external sources for their internal problems. Either it's managers, promoters,
the public or, their favourite foe, ‘the media’, that is held responsible for
their problems – never themselves. Of course, the truth is that they almost
always create their own internal dysfunction.
Touring can be a stressful, lonely business for an entertainer, even under
the best of circumstances. However, to feel isolated from the people with
whom you are performing, let alone if they happen to be your family
members, is devastating – especially to someone as sensitive as Michael.
The family had already begun to fall apart; the Victory tour seemed to be
hastening its complete destruction. At one point in the tour, Michael was so
upset with his brothers, he suffered from exhaustion and dehydration and
had to be put under a doctor's care.
As a result of such pressure, Michael became increasingly difficult. Some
of his demands were unreasonable. At one point, he threatened not to
perform unless a certain publicist working on the tour was fired. The
publicist had apparently allowed something to be printed that Michael did
not appreciate. The brothers ignored the threat. Then, at the last possible
minute, right before the show was to start, Frank Dileo announced that
Michael would not appear unless the publicist was dismissed on the spot.
Of course, then the publicist was fired.
In the beginning of the tour, it was agreed that only the performing
members of the family would travel in the Jacksons' van. However, when
Michael started showing up with Emmanuel Lewis, nothing could have
been more annoying to the brothers. Before the tour was even half over, the
brothers began travelling in separate vans and limousines – Jackie (who
joined the tour midway on crutches, but did not perform), Marlon, Randy
and Tito in one vehicle, Jermaine in another by himself, and Michael in still
another, alone. When they had to travel by air, the brothers used a
commercial airline; Michael travelled by private jet. (A couple of times, Pia
Zadora's multimillionaire husband, Meshulam Riklis, who was friendly
with the Jacksons, took mercy on the brothers and allowed them to use his
private aircraft.) In New York, when the group had to fly by helicopter to
Giants Stadium, they agreed that no outsiders would be in the helicopter.
Michael then showed up with Julian Lennon, John's son. The brothers
glared at both of them during the brief flight.
At one point, the Jacksons received an offer from a producer who wanted
to pay them millions of dollars to film the show and release it to the home-
video market when the tour was over. They took a vote. Everyone was for
the idea, except for Michael. He threatened that he would not perform if
they struck such a deal. Furthermore, no one was to videotape the show.
Without any recourse, the brothers bitterly turned down the deal, and all of
that money.
Then, three nights later, the group was onstage with cameras all about
them. Michael, himself, had arranged for the show to be videotaped. ‘I'll
give you copies, don't worry,’ he promised his brothers when they
confronted him after the performance, but they never saw a copy. (When
Michael tried to get them to agree to let him release the video to the
marketplace, they blocked him from doing it.)
The brothers stayed on separate floors of hotels in each city; they refused
to talk to each other on their way to the stadiums. Every time there was a
meeting about anything, there would also be side meetings among the
different factions in the group, including the pair of lawyers who
represented Michael, the one who worked for Jermaine, and the two who
spoke for the rest of the brothers. ‘It was devastating,’ said long-time family
friend Joyce McCrae. ‘It amounted to the worst experiences Michael had
ever had with his brothers. His success had affected every member of the
family. Some were jealous, there was denial, the whole gamut of human
emotions.’
During the final week of the tour, Joseph and Don King began making
plans to take the Victory tour to Europe. When Michael heard about the
possibility of European dates, he couldn't believe his ears. He sent a
succinct message to Joseph and Don through Frank Dileo: ‘I will absolutely
not be going to Europe with the Victory tour. Good luck to you. Michael.’
On 9 December 1984, after the last song of the evening, Michael hollered
out from the Los Angeles stage, ‘This is our last and final show. It's been a
long twenty years, and we love you all.’ The brothers looked at Michael
with surprised expressions, as if his declaration was news to them. ‘What a
little prick,’ one of the brothers said of Michael afterward. ‘How dare he?
The little creep.’
‘There's no way Michael Jackson should be as big as he is and treat his
family the way he does,’ Don King fumed after the final show, when it was
clear to him that he would not be taking the show abroad. ‘He feels that his
father did him wrong? His father may have done some wrong, but he also
had to do a whole lot right.’
He went on, ‘What Michael's got to realize is that Michael's a nigger. It
doesn't matter how great he can sing and dance. I don't care that he can
prance. He's one of the megastars of the world, but he's still going to be a
nigger megastar. He must accept that. Not only must he understand that,
he's got to accept it and demonstrate that he wants to be a nigger. Why? To
show that a nigger can do it.’
If it was possible for Michael to blow sky high when he read those
comments, he would have done it. ‘Sue his ass,’ he told John Branca. ‘That
guy has been pushing my last nerve since Day One.’ John knew better than
to drag the Don King experience into a new year with fresh litigation. He
calmed Michael down, as he always managed to do, and convinced him to
let it go.
As if to rid himself of the bad taste in his mouth left by the Victory tour,
Michael donated all of his proceeds from it – nearly five million dollars – to
the T. J. Martell Foundation for Cancer Research, the United Negro College
Fund and the Ronald McDonald Camp for Good Times.
When Michael wrote of the Victory tour in his autobiography, Moonwalk,
he didn't mention Don King, Joseph and Katherine Jackson, Chuck
Sullivan, or any of the other principal players behind the scenes. Of his
brothers, he took the high ground, as he always does, ‘It was a nice feeling,
playing with my brothers again,’ he wrote, graciously. ‘We were all together
again… I enjoyed the tour.’ Whether or not he wanted to admit it publicly,
the real victory for Michael Jackson was that he and his brothers were
finally finished as a performing group.
Their future as a family didn't look very promising either.
Janet Elopes
While Michael Jackson and his brothers were preoccupied with the Victory
tour, trouble was brewing at home too. Much to everyone's dismay, Janet
(who turned eighteen on 16 May 1984), had become involved with a young
singer named James DeBarge. James is from a large singing family from
Grand Rapids, Michigan (the same DeBarge that had been the Jackson's
stable-mates at Motown), and he and Janet seemed to have common
ground, at least superficially, since both were from show-business families.
Joseph and Katherine disapproved of the relationship, saying that James
was combative and unpredictable. Plus, in their view, Janet was young and
inexperienced. James would later insist, though, that he and Janet were first
intimate when she was just fifteen, and, he added somewhat indelicately,
‘that was some real lovemaking.’
When the Jackson parents finally figured out that James was abusing
drugs, it was the end of their daughter's little romance, as far as they were
concerned. However, Janet told them that she was in love with him and
determined to marry him, despite – or perhaps even because of – their
disapproval. She was aware that he had a drug problem, she said, but she
thought she could handle it, and maybe even be of assistance. ‘You always
think you can change people,’ she said in retrospect. ‘And I knew that he so
badly wanted to change. He was trying, but he wasn't trying hard enough.’
They eloped on 7 September 1984, in Grand Rapids, DeBarge's
hometown. Their wedding night was a disaster, as James recalled it: ‘I
spoiled it completely. Janet had been shaking in her shoes at the wedding
ceremony, and I thought the least I could do was to give her a night to
remember. I booked the top suite of the Amway Plaza Hotel, which cost me
a small fortune. But then I went out and got rotten drunk with some friends.
I finally got back to the hotel at three a.m. and Janet was waiting for me,
crying.’
The next day, Janet telephoned LaToya to tell her the news of her
marriage. LaToya was then charged with breaking the startling news to
Joseph and Katherine who, predictably, did not take it well. She also
telephoned each brother, except Michael. They were all upset and angry,
Jermaine in particular. ‘I know that he would have killed her if he could've
gotten his hands on Janet,’ LaToya would remember.
The question, then, was how to tell Michael. Actually, no member of the
family wanted to be the one to do it. It was as if they felt they would
somehow be forever tainted in his eyes by being the person most
remembered for having passed on such awful news. Michael had always
felt protective of Janet; he used to say that she was his best friend in the
family, ‘like a twin’. The news was sure to be upsetting, and the Victory
tour was difficult enough for him without having to deal with such domestic
turmoil. So, no one wanted to be ‘the one’. Finally, Quincy Jones's
daughter, a friend of the family's, called Michael to tell him; she didn't have
anything to lose. As expected, he was filled with anxiety by the news. ‘It
killed me to see her go off and get married,’ Michael would say later. ‘I
didn't know how to handle it.’
For a month, Janet and James lived at Hayvenhurst with Janet's family,
much to James's dismay. ‘He wanted them to have their own place,’
explained his mother, Etterlene. ‘He felt that they needed to be alone to give
themselves a chance to grow in their marriage. However, Janet didn't want
to leave that house. She was still like a little girl, who never wanted to leave
her bedroom.’
‘James DeBarge would come to the house completely out of his mind on
drugs,’ Steve Howell remembered. ‘He would be so high on coke and
alcohol that, on two occasions, the guards tried to stop him from going
inside Hayvenhurst. “If you do, Mr Jackson will kill you,” they'd warn him,
speaking of Joseph. However, he was belligerent and didn't care. The funny
thing was that when he wasn't high, James was the nicest guy in the world.
He was like Dr Jekyll and Mr DeBarge.’
‘You leave my husband alone!’ Janet was heard screaming at Joseph on
several occasions.
‘He's not good for you, Janet,’ Joseph shot back. ‘And if you think you're
going to ruin this family by staying married to this guy, you can forget it.’
Katherine tried to find a reasonable solution to the problem: she offered
to enroll James in a rehabilitation programme. He refused to go.
In an interview, James DeBarge remembered the Encino estate as ‘The
House of Fears’ and painted an eerie picture of Michael, who was at home
for a short time in the middle of the tour schedule. ‘It was while I lived
there that I came to realize what a sad, lonely figure he is,’ James said. ‘He
was like a ghost, wandering around the place looking for friendship. He
would come to our room late at night, tap softly on the door, and say, “Is it
all right if I come in?” One time, Janet and I were making love, and he
came right on in! He got into bed with us and poured his heart out. He said,
“I envy you two, because you have each other and love each other. But, I
haven't got anyone.” There was never a sign of a woman in his life, ever.’
‘He really was a very lonely man-child,’ James DeBarge recalled of his
brother-in-law, Michael. ‘The only time he had any fun was when he had
friends over to play in his two-million-dollar amusement arcade, but they
had to let Michael win most of the time. If they didn't, they wouldn't be
asked to come back.’
James has a litany of amazing memories about his life in the ‘House of
Fears’. He recalls the day it rained and Michael danced naked around the
pool. ‘His mother screamed from the house, “Put your clothes on, Michael.
Your father will be home soon.” Fear of Joseph was what controlled them
all,’ James said. (Of course, James was on drugs, so who knows how
reliable his memory is of that time.)
After a few months, James and Janet moved into their own condominium
at 12546 The Vista, in Brentwood. ‘They moved out of the house because
Joseph was gonna kill James,’ recalled Steve Howell. ‘I'm serious.’
‘James had it out with Joseph a number of times,’ confirmed his mother,
Etterlene. ‘They were enemies. They detested each other.’
Janet wanted nothing to do with her family as long as they could not
accept her husband. Actually, Janet had begun distancing herself a couple of
years earlier when she began working as an actress on the TV show Fame.
‘My parents were very strict while I was growing up,’ she once told me. ‘It
was really our music and our work. We missed out on our childhood,
getting to know what really goes on out there. It was bad, because once you
step out there for the first time, it stuns you. I saw a lot of things I'd never
seen before.’
In a short time, Janet was miserable in her new marriage. She had wanted
her independence, and she got it, but at what cost? Now, she found herself
staying up nights worrying about James, who was rarely at home.
According to Jerome Howard, Joseph and Katherine's former business
manager, ‘Janet would get phone calls in the middle of the night from
James's friends telling her where he was, which was usually out in the
ghetto, about twenty-five miles from Encino, buying or doing drugs. Janet,
who'd never been there in her lifetime, would get up and drive out to the
ghetto to find him. In time, she got to know the ghetto better than any other
Jackson. She loved him and would do anything for him.’
With the entire Jackson family opposed to the marriage, each member
took turns trying to persuade Janet to end it with James. The problems the
newlyweds were having in their marriage, especially the drugs, went
against everything Michael stood for personally and spiritually. Besides, he
could see what the marriage had done to his sister emotionally. At one point
she collapsed and had to be rushed to a hospital. She was exhausted,
physically and emotionally. Michael was the only person to whom she
would now listen. He begged her to leave James, crying on the phone with
her from different stops along the Victory tour. Janet was finally convinced.
‘God, I felt like my whole life was falling down, and I could see him
[James] going down, but there was nothing I could do,’ Janet said. ‘And he
said to me, “Well, you haven't tried to help me,” but I thought, What about
helping yourself? I thought, Well, I can either go down with him and that's
the end of my life, or I can let go and continue on, alone.’
Janet left James on 7 January 1985, and immediately filed for a petition
to nullify her marriage and restore her former name, Janet Dameta Jackson.
On the petition, she listed her total gross monthly income as just $3000 – a
minuscule amount considering the millions she would earn later. She said
the amount of her husband's income was ‘unknown’ to her. When she got
home from the courthouse, she called her friend René Elizondo and said,
‘God, I can't believe what I've just done.’
(The annulment was finally granted on 18 November 1985. By then,
Janet was back at Hayvenhurst.)
James claims that Janet terminated a pregnancy while he was married to
her. ‘I don't think she told many family members,’ he said, ‘but, her mother
knew. I wouldn't have minded a child, but it had to be Janet's decision. I
think her career, her plans, her family had a lot to do with it. We went to a
clinic in Los Angeles but we had to go in and out the back door because we
were so well known. It was real scary. Afterward, I took her home and held
her in my arms and told her everything would be okay.’
For years, Janet has dealt with the rumour that she actually did have the
baby she was carrying at the time, and that this child is secretly being raised
in Europe. Janet denies it. Of course, she spent almost ten years denying
that she was married to René Elizondo when, the entire time, she actually
was. It was only when he filed for divorce that the truth came out… would
it surprise anyone, then, if Janet Jackson one day reveals that she and James
de Barge had a child so many years ago, and that rather than having an
abortion she thought it better if he or she was raised away from the
limelight?
‘Michael is not gay’
It was difficult to imagine Michael Jackson viewing romantic relationships
in a positive light when he was surrounded by such poor examples. His
parents' marriage had rarely been happy. Marlon's marriage to Carol had
been troubled, though they had reconciled. It was difficult to know what
was going on with Jermaine's relationship, but Hazel seemed domineering
to most observers. Jackie's marriage was also in trouble at this time,
because he had cheated on Enid. The two would end up divorcing, and the
final decree would not occur until August 1987, after they had put each
other through as much misery – and litigation – as possible. Luckily, Tito
seemed to be faring well with Dee Dee. Still, Michael had learned early on
to be cautious before committing himself to any relationship that could
become serious. Therefore, he stayed alone – except for the occasional
youth, such as Emmanuel Lewis and, in 1984, a ten-year-old kid named
Jonathan Spence who had become a constant companion. The two were
seen nuzzling and hugging throughout the fall of 1984.
Along with Michael's huge success came a resurgence of rumours about
his sexuality. Michael had always been extremely sensitive about the issues
of sexuality, and nothing annoyed him more than the fact that it kept
coming up every few years. Yet, by September 1984, the question
remained: was Michael gay?
However, being a twenty-six-year-old virgin teen idol devoted to a
sexually repressive religion is not easy, especially when show business
dictates that a male celebrity be ‘romantically involved’ – to use Michael
Jackson's words – with a woman, thus the existence of Tatum O'Neal and
Brooke Shields in his life. But the public could see through those charades,
and tongues continued to wag.
One rumour had it that, when Michael was younger, Joseph had ordered
him to be injected with female hormones to ensure that his voice would not
change with maturity. He wanted it to remain high-pitched and, thus,
commercial. ‘Not true,’ said Michael's vocal coach, Seth Riggs. ‘He started
out with a high voice, and I've taken it even higher. It's ridiculous. I don't
even know if it's possible to do that.’
During one break in a vocal lesson, according to Seth, he said to Michael,
‘You know, everybody thinks you're gay.’
Michael nodded his head and told Riggs this story: a tall good-looking
blond approached him one day and said, ‘Michael, I think you're wonderful.
I sure would like to go to bed with you.’
Michael glared at him. ‘When's the last time you read the Bible?’ he
asked.
The blond said nothing.
‘You know, you really should read it, because there is some real
information in there about homosexuality.’
‘Sure, I guess if I was a girl, it would be different story,’ said the fellow.
‘Then you'd have sex with me.’
‘No, I wouldn't,’ Michael told him. ‘There are some very direct words on
that in the Bible too.’
Still, there were some odd reports about Michael. For instance, reporter
Denise Worrell was writing a story about him for Time and had tried to
arrange an interview with him, but to no avail. Instead, she interviewed his
parents. Unbeknownst to Michael, Joseph decided to give the reporter a tour
of the house. He knocked on Michael's bedroom door. There was no answer.
‘Michael I have someone I want you to meet,’ Joseph said. He opened the
door. ‘Can I bring her into your room?’
Denise reported that Michael was inside with a male friend, about twenty
years old, watching television. The glow from the set was the only light in
the room. She noticed the outline of Michael's mannequins against a wall.
Michael was startled by the presence of his father and his guest. He
nervously introduced Joseph to his friend, using just a first name. Michael
then shook hands with the journalist who reported that his handshake ‘felt
like a cloud’. He ‘barely said hello’. Michael's friend then nervously
extended his hand; she reported that it was ‘damp’. Michael stared at the
writer for a moment and then began watching television, again.
As Joseph and Denise backed out of the room, Joseph had the look of a
man who'd just opened Pandora's box. ‘Michael has a friend over,’ Joseph
explained. ‘He isn't about to give any interviews. You got pretty close,
though,’ he added, with a nervous chuckle.
After Denise left the house, a security guard came running after her.
Joseph and Katherine wanted to speak to her again. Joseph must have told
his wife what had occurred in the bedroom.
‘We were hoping you'd set the record straight and put a stop to the
rumours,’ Katherine said as soon as she saw Denise. ‘They say Michael is
gay. Michael is not gay. It's against his religion. It's against God. The Bible
speaks against it.’
‘Michael is not gay,’ repeated Joseph, emphatically.
Perhaps Michael is not gay, but he was curious about the lifestyle just the
same. One friend remembered the day he and Michael went into a gay bar
on Santa Monica Boulevard in West Hollywood. ‘Michael was recording at
Larrabe studios, which is across the street from a bar in a predominantly
gay section of Hollywood,’ the friend recalled. ‘I said to him, “Hey, man,
let's go get a drink at that bar.” He told me he didn't drink, but perhaps he
could get an orange juice. “You know, it's a gay bar,” I warned him.
“Really? I've never been to a gay bar,” he said. “What goes on there?” he
asked. I told him he should go and see for himself. He hesitated. “Well, I've
always wanted to. Okay, let's do it.” So, in we went.
‘“Why is it so dark in here?” Michael wanted to know. I had the
impression he had never been in any bar, let alone a gay one. There were a
few guys in there, but it was early, so there weren't many. Michael took a
deep breath and went up to the bartender and ordered an orange juice. The
bartender said, “Hey, aren't you Michael Jackson?” He said, “Nope. But I'm
told I look like him.” He turned to me and winked.
‘He and I sat in a corner and watched all the guys. He was recognized by
a few, but they left him alone. Not one person came up to him.
‘“Is this all they do here?” Michael asked me. “They just drink and talk
and watch videos?” I wondered what he thought people did in bars. As we
were sitting there, two men walked in and immediately began kissing each
other. When Michael saw them making out, I could feel him tense up.
Finally he said, “Okay, I've seen enough. Let's leave.” So we got up and
walked out. On the way out, Michael said, “I can't believe those two guys
kissed one another. How can they do that?”
‘“Maybe they liked each other,” I told him.
‘“Well, if that's what they do in gay bars, then I don't think I'll be going to
any more,” Michael decided.’
This same friend remembered the day he and Michael went into Drakes,
a novelty store on Melrose Avenue in Hollywood that specializes in sex
toys and pornography. In the back of the shop, behind a gated area, a
browser could find gay reading material and photo magazines.
‘Hey, what's back there?’ Michael wanted to know as soon as he walked
in.
‘You don't want to know,’ said his friend.
‘Yeah, I do want to know,’ Michael insisted. He then proceeded to go
boldly where probably no Jackson had ever gone before.
Thirty seconds later, he came running back. He looked shaken, as if he
had just seen a ghost. ‘We gotta go, now,’ he said nervously.
‘Why?’
‘You don't want to know,’ Michael answered.
The more enigmatic Michael remained, the more people would talk, and
even joke, about him. His videographer, Steve Howell, once asked him
about a comedy sketch Eddie Murphy had performed on Saturday Night
Live in which he played an effeminate and affected Michael as a guest on a
fictional talk show, Guy Talk, along with an equally fey Liberace played by
another actor. The two bragged about their sexual exploits with women; it
was ludicrous and extremely funny.
Michael had smiled. ‘I don't mind it,’ he said softly. ‘The more they
make fun of me, the more people are going to wonder what I really am. I
don't care when people call me a fag. No one knows the truth. No one
knows who, or what I am.’
‘You don't care what people say about you?’
‘They can say what they want to say, because the bottom line is they
don't know and everyone is going to continue searching to find out whether
I'm gay, straight or whatever,’ Michael explained. ‘It doesn't bother me, and
the longer it takes them to discover this, the more famous I will be.’
Perhaps that's how Michael sometimes felt, but he was also a man who
told Rolling Stone writer Gerri Hirshey that he lives his life with obsessive
caution, ‘just like a haemophiliac who can't afford to be scratched in any
way.’
In August 1984, a tabloid alleged that Michael was having an affair with
British pop star Boy George, an allegation which was not true. Michael was
livid. His publicist, Norman Winter, recalled, ‘Michael was angry that there
were these stories about him being gay, that little kids who could barely
read were hearing about these rumours, maybe from their mothers who buy
the tabloids and talk to others about them. Who knows? The point is that he
felt that he was getting a reputation he didn't want. He told me that he
wanted to organize a press conference to refute the stories. I told him I
thought it might not be a good idea. ‘Why give them any credibility?
Maybe they'll just blow over,’ he said. ‘No, they just keep getting worse. I
have to do something now.’
‘Frank [Dileo] was against the idea, but Michael is a very strong-minded
person. He told me what he wanted to say, I wrote the text of the statement,
he approved it, and we went from there.’
The problem was that Michael decided that he did not want to appear at
the press conference; he was too shy to face the press and discuss such a
personal matter.
On 5 September 1984, a major news conference was arranged in a West
Hollywood sound studio. Frank Dileo – in dark sunglasses and with a cigar
in his mouth – stepped in front of a podium to announce that he was about
to read a two-page statement from Michael, ‘who, as you all know, has
risen to the pinnacle of success in his field.’
In a gruff, tough-guy voice, the burly manager read: ‘For some time now,
I have been searching my conscience as to whether or not I should publicly
react to the many falsehoods that have been spread about me. I have
decided to make this statement based on the injustice of these allegations
and the far-reaching trauma those who feel close to me are suffering.
‘I feel very fortunate to have been blessed with recognition for my
efforts. This recognition also brings with it a responsibility to one's
admirers throughout the world. Performers should always serve as role
models who set an example for young people. It saddens me that many may
actually believe the present flurry of false accusations. To this end, and I do
mean END: NO! I've never taken hormones to maintain my high voice; NO!
I've never had my cheekbones altered in any way; NO! I've never had
cosmetic surgery on my eyes. YES! One day in the future I plan to get
married and have a family. Any statements to the contrary are simply
untrue.
‘Henceforth, as new fantasies are printed, I have advised my attorneys of
my willingness to institute legal action and subsequently prosecute all
guilty to the fullest extent of the law.
‘As noted earlier, I love children. We all know that kids are very
impressionable and therefore susceptible to such stories. I'm certain that
some have already been hurt by this terrible slander. In addition to their
admiration, I would like to keep their respect.’
After reading the statement, Frank refused to answer questions from the
assemblage of reporters, and left the podium.
No celebrity had ever gone to such lengths to proclaim his or her
heterosexuality. The fact that Michael didn't appear in person dampened his
declaration. Also, his statement was full of half-truths. Perhaps he hadn't
had surgery on his eyes, as he claimed, but he certainly had surgery on his
nose, and three times. How could he repudiate one story relating to plastic
surgery without admitting the whole truth about work done on his nose?
Because of this obvious omission, one was forced to wonder what else
Michael was not revealing. In the end, the press conference backfired; if
anything, it raised more questions than it answered.
Michael Buys the Beatles' Songs
While Michael Jackson was on the road with the Victory tour, he made
further headlines – this time on the business pages – by purchasing the ATV
Music Publishing Company for an astounding $47.5 million. The purchase,
believed to be the biggest publishing acquisition of its kind ever by an
individual, was actually the culmination of ten intense months of
negotiation. The seed of this venture had been planted a few years earlier
when Michael was in London to record the number one hit ‘ Say, Say, Say’
with Paul McCartney at Abbey Road Studios. Michael had become friendly
with Paul and Linda McCartney during his stay; he ate most of his meals at
their home outside of London. One evening after dinner, Paul displayed a
thick booklet of song titles to which he owned the rights, including most of
Buddy Holly's material, and standards such as ‘Autumn Leaves’,
‘Sentimental Journey’ and ‘Stormy Weather’.
‘This is the way to make big money,’ Paul said. ‘Every time someone
records one of these songs, I get paid. Every time someone plays these
songs on the radio, or in live performances, I get paid.’
‘You're kidding me, right?’ Michael said.
‘Do I look like I'm kidding you?’ Paul answered, seriously. In truth, Paul
reportedly earns more than forty million dollars a year from record and
song royalties not of his own personal composition.
Michael was intrigued. He owned the publishing rights to his own songs
– obtaining that right was one of the reasons he and his family had left
Motown and Berry Gordy's Jobete publishing house – but he always
thought of publishing as a tedious business primarily concerned with
collecting royalties and licensing material for other media. Paul explained
that the world of publishing can prove lucrative, especially thanks to the CD
explosion and the increased use of popular songs in advertisements, movies
and televisions. Songwriters often lose their copyrights for one reason or
another: sometimes they sell them for profit – a shortsighted thing to do,
especially nowadays when so much money is generated in the music
industry – and often they lose them out of ignorance, as in the case of The
Beatles, who simply signed away their rights when they were naive and
didn't know any better.
As it happened, Paul McCartney and John Lennon had sold their
copyrights to a publisher named Dick James when they were young. James
ended up making a fortune on The Beatles' songs. Then, in the late sixties,
while McCarney and Lennon were each on their respective honeymoons
James sold Northern Songs – the company that continued to hold the rights
to the Beatles' compositions – to Sir Lew Grade's ATV Music Limited.
ATV's assets were later purchased by Australian businessman Robert
Holmes à Court's Bell Group. McCartney and Lennon's estate split with
ATV the songwriting revenue generated by 251 of their songs written
between 1964 and 1971 – including ‘Yesterday’, ‘Michelle’, ‘Help’, ‘A
Hard Day's Night’, ‘The Long and Winding Road’, ‘Hey Jude’, ‘Let It Be’,
and many others. ATV also held the publishing rights to thousands of other
compositions, including songs by The Pointer Sisters, Pat Benatar and Little
Richard (including ‘Tutti Frutti’, ‘Long Tall Sally’, ‘Rip It Up’ and
‘Lucille’).
When Michael told Paul, ‘Maybe someday I'll buy your songs,’ Paul
laughed.
‘Great,’ he said. ‘Good joke.’
Michael wasn't joking. Paul would one day regret their conversation.
‘I gave him a lot of free advice,’ he would later say. ‘And you know
what? A fish gets caught by opening his mouth.
‘Michael's the kind of guy who picks brains. When we worked together, I
don't even think he'd had the cosmetic surgery. [He actually did have
surgery by that time.] I've got photos of me and him at our house, and he
looks quite different. He's had a lot of facial surgery since then. He actually
told me he was going to a religious retreat, and I believed him. But he came
out of that religious retreat with a new nose. The power of prayer, I guess.’
Michael and Paul remained somewhat friendly, but Michael also kept his
distance. He didn't want Paul to perceive him as being anything more than
an acquaintance, perhaps because he had a plan.
When Michael returned to the United States, he mentioned Paul's book of
titles to John Branca and said that he wanted to buy some copyrights
himself, ‘like Paul’. John did his research and presented Michael with a list
of songs that were for sale. Michael's first purchase was the Sly Stone
catalogue, including all of Sly's pop classics of the 1970s, such as
‘Everyday People’, ‘Hot Fun in the Summertime’, and ‘Stand!’ (‘Stand!’
was the song The Jackson 5 performed the first time they appeared on The
Ed Sullivan Show. Now, Michael owned it.) For less than a million dollars,
Michael also secured a few other titles, including two of Dion's hits, ‘The
Wanderer’ and ‘Runaround Sue’, Len Barry's ‘1-2-3’ and the Soul
Survivors' ‘Expressway to Your Heart’.
For the next couple of months, Michael was too preoccupied with the
Victory tour to concentrate on any publishing deals. But then in September
1984, when John Branca flew to Philadelphia to meet with Frank Dileo and
Michael about the Victory tour's problems, John casually mentioned the
availability of the ATV catalogue. Michael wasn't sure what kind of music
ATV represented.
‘Well, it happens to include a few things you might be interested in,’
John teased.
‘Like?’ Michael asked.
‘Northern Songs.’
Michael became excited. ‘You don't mean the Northern Songs, do you?’
‘Yeah, Mike,’ John said. He couldn't contain his enthusiasm. ‘We're
talking The Beatles, man. The Beatles.’
In fact, Paul McCartney had tried to buy ATV in 1981. He asked Yoko
Ono to purchase the publishing house with him for twenty million dollars,
ten million each, but she thought that was too much money and declined.
Because Paul didn't want to spend the twenty million dollars himself, the
deal fell through.
As Michael skipped about the room, whooping and hollering, John
warned him that there would be stiff competition in a bidding war for such
popular songs. ‘I don't care,’ Michael declared. ‘I want those songs. Get me
those songs, Branca.’
John said he would see what he could do. He then telephoned John
Eastman, Paul McCartney's attorney and brother-in-law, and asked if Paul
was planning to bid on the catalogue. ‘No,’ Eastman said. ‘It's too pricey.’
A few days later, Yoko Ono telephoned John and said that she had heard
a rumour that Michael was interested in purchasing ATV. Then, she spent
forty-five minutes trying to make John believe that buying the catalogue
was a terrible idea. John discussed the conversation with Michael. ‘Man,
she obviously just wants it for herself,’ Michael said, ‘but doesn't want to
spend the bucks. She's hoping the price will go down if I don't buy it. So,
buy it, Branca.’
The next few months were filled with intensive and frustrating
negotiations. Bidding against Michael were Charles Koppelman and Marty
Bandier's Entertainment Company; Virgin Records; real estate tycoon
Samual J. Lefrak; and financier Charles Knapp. At one point, John Branca
called off the negotiations, completely.
During those eight tense months, Paul McCartney again tried to convince
Yoko Ono to join him in a bid. When Yoko repeated that she was not
interested, Paul decided not to bid.
Meanwhile, Michael telephoned John Branca once a week for news.
When Koppelman and Bandier had beaten Michael's offer of $47.5
million with one of $50 million, Michael was crushed. ‘Branca, we can't
lose this, now,’ he said. ‘You gotta do something. I know we agreed that we
wouldn't spend more than $41 million, but I'm willing to do it.’
The Koppelman and Bandier offer was being financed by the MCA
company, so John made a telephone call to the head of the company, Irving
Azoff. ‘Man, you can't give these guys money to buy this catalogue,’ John
told Irving. ‘Did you know that they're competing against Michael for it?
Remember, you were a consultant for the Victory tour?’
‘Johnny, don't worry about it,’ Irving Azoff said. ‘I'll take care of it.’
Azoff then pulled the rug out from under Koppelman and Bandier by
refusing to finance their offer. John Branca had put Michael back in the
driver's seat.
Soon, Robert Holmes à Court was telephoning John Branca and
practically begging him to go to London and close the deal. John played
hardball and acted as if Michael wasn't interested. Holmes à Court offered
to pay for John's plane fare, but John could afford his own ticket, and didn't
want any favours at this stage of the game. John agreed to go to Europe, and
Holmes à Court even said that if the deal wasn't closed on that trip, he
would reimburse all of John's travel and accommodation expenses.
After Michael gave John power of attorney, he went to England and
closed the deal in twenty-four hours. Michael Jackson never signed the
important, history-making contracts; John Branca did. John then telephoned
Michael long-distance to give him the news, bad and good. The bad news:
he was out $47.5 million. The good news: he owned ATV.
Michael couldn't believe his good fortune. The same could be said for
Paul McCartney, who said, ‘Someone rang me up one day and said,
“Michael's bought your songs.” I said, “What??!!” I think it's dodgy to do
things like that,’ Paul complained. ‘To be someone's friend and then to buy
the rug they're standing on.’
After the deal was struck, Michael did attempt to telephone Paul to
discuss the matter. Knowing his personality, that probably wasn't an easy
thing for Michael to do, still he at least tried. However, when he called, Paul
hung up on him. Finally, Michael concluded, ‘Paul's got a real problem, and
I'm finished trying to be a nice guy. Too bad for him. I got the songs and
that's the end of it.’
Robert Hilburn, in an analysis of the ATV acquisition for the Los Angeles
Times, explained Michael's purchase in dollars and cents: ‘If, for instance,
“Yesterday” earns $100,000 a year in royalties from record sales, airplay
and live performances, the Lennon estate and McCartney – as co-writers –
divide about 50 per cent of that income, about $25,000 each. The publisher
– now Michael Jackson – collects the other 50 per cent. The publisher also
controls the use of the song in terms of films, commercials and stage
productions.’ Yesterday in particular probably earns considerably more.
As soon as Michael made the purchase, he and his representatives
investigated tactics to make it pay off for him. He hired a staff to develop an
anthology series and four films using The Beatles' music, including
Strawberry Fields, an animated feature; Back in the USSR, a movie based
on Russian rockers; and films based on ‘Eleanor Rigby’ and ‘The Fool on
the Hill’. Michael also planned musical greeting cards and music boxes.
When he licensed ‘Revolution’ to Nike for a sneaker advertisement, he
obtained Yoko Ono's consent, but not Paul McCartney's. In fact, Paul, like
many Beatles fans, felt Michael was cheapening the music.
In the end, though, Paul had to accept Michael's decision. Every time
Paul performed one of the songs he wrote between 1964 and 1971, he had
to pay Michael.
When Michael sold ‘All You Need is Love’ to Panasonic for $240,000,
Paul finally called him and told him he was going too far. Michael didn't
even hang up on him. He explained that he felt using The Beatles' songs in
commercials enabled the music to reach an entirely new generation of fans
who would then buy Beatles' records. ‘I just don't like the idea that Michael
Jackson is the only guy in the world who gets to sit in judgement as to
which Beatles songs can be used in commercials,’ Paul later said. ‘He's
drawn up a list! I don't see how he should have that power.’
Paul said he had hoped that ‘All You Need is Love’ would remain an
anthem of the sixties, not become a jingle for ‘a friggin' loudspeaker
system. And I also don't want “Good Day Sunshine” to become an Oreo
cookie,’ he complained, ‘which I understand he's done. I think that's real
cheesy. I don't think Michael needs the money.’
On the other hand, Paul owns the Buddy Holly catalogue and had
exploited Holly's songs commercially many times over, because, as he's
reasoned, ‘Buddy himself did commercials, and his widow actively wants
us to earn money via commercials. It's her call.’
Yoko seemed satisfied with what Michael did with The Beatles' catalogue
and called his ownership ‘a blessing’. She said in November 1990,
‘Businessmen who aren't artists themselves wouldn't have the consideration
Michael has. He loves the songs. He's very caring. There could be a lot of
arguments and stalemates if Paul and I owned it together. Neither Paul nor I
needed that. If Paul got the songs, people would have said, “Paul finally got
John.” And if I got them, they'd say, “Oh, the dragon lady strikes again.”’
In 1990, Paul and Michael met to discuss what Paul called ‘this problem
of publishing’. Paul recalled, ‘I put it to him this way: “When we signed our
deal, John and I didn't even know what publishing was. We thought songs
were in the sky and everyone owned them. These days, even kids know
better than that. Last year, “Yesterday” passed the five-million-plays mark
in America, which no other song has ever done. Not even “White
Christmas”. But no one has ever come up to me and said, “Hey man, I
really think you need a bonus. You've done great for this company.” So
what the fuck is going on? You mean I've got to be content for the rest of
my life to be on this deal I signed when I was a fresh-faced twenty-year-
old? I've done a lot for this company.’
Michael acted as though he didn't understand what in the world Paul was
telling him. Therefore, Paul spelled it out for him. ‘I wanted him to
recognize in the deal that I'm a big writer for this company that he now
owns,’ McCartney recalled.
Michael told Paul that he didn't ‘want to hurt anyone’, and Paul said he
was happy to hear that. ‘He's a genuine bloke, Mike is,’ a placated Paul
would then say of him. Michael promised that he'd try to work something
out.
The next day, John Eastman, Paul's attorney, telephoned John Branca and
told him that Paul and Michael had agreed to renegotiate a higher writer's
royalty for his songs. John checked it with Michael. ‘Heck, no, I didn't tell
Paul that,’ Michael said, annoyed. ‘In fact, he's not getting a higher royalty
unless I get something back from him, in return.’
John passed Michael's comment on to Paul's attorney.
‘Okay, then fine. We'll sue,’ Eastman threatened.
‘Hey, be my guest,’ Branca told him.
When John told Michael that Paul might sue him, Michael laughed out
loud. ‘Cool. Let him sue,’ he said. ‘Meanwhile, go license some more
songs, Branca. Let's make some money. Let's run this thing like a business.’
An associate of Michael's said, ‘Privately, Michael's feeling was: Paul
had two chances to buy the company. Both times, he was too cheap to
spend the money. Mind you, Paul is said to be the richest entertainer in the
world, worth about $560 million. His royalties in one year come to $41
million. As Mike told me, “If he didn't want to invest £47.5 million in his
own songs, then he shouldn't come crying to me now.” He's a hard-hearted
son-of-a-gun, Michael Jackson is, just like his father. And when it comes to
Paul, Michael doesn't want to know anything. “I got those songs fair and
square,” he's said. “They're mine, and no one can tell me what to do with
them. Not even Paul McCartney. So, he'd better learn to deal with it.”’
By acquiring ATV, Michael Jackson proved himself a perceptive,
hardheaded businessman, exactly the kind of entrepreneur his father,
Joseph, would like to have been, but wasn't. Where Joseph bullied, Michael
ingratiated. Where Joseph shouted, Michael usually listened – but he, too,
could be unreasonable. Where Joseph rushed in unprepared, Michael
usually studied every angle before reaching a decision – or, at least, he had
someone else do it for him, namely John Branca. Indeed, Michael had the
wisdom to surround himself with brilliant people, and then allow them to do
their jobs without interference; Joseph never did. He always felt that he had
to have final-say over everything. It's almost as though Michael had studied
Joseph's technique and then tried to do exactly the opposite. However, what
father and son did share back then – and still do today – is that they trust no
one and can be ruthless to those they have vanquished. Rarely do they allow
anyone a second chance.
‘We Are the World’
By January 1985, the Victory tour was history. Though it hadn't been an
easy experience, Michael did find a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow:
Chuck Sullivan gave him eighteen million dollars, cash, to develop a
clothing line. Michael barely got a few fashions into the stores – which
didn't sell – when Chuck went bankrupt. Michael got to keep the eighteen
million.
The Jacksons made a lot of money on the Victory tour, even if the
promoters didn't; each brother made about $7 million, one-sixth of the share
after all expenses, net. Michael donated his take to charity; his brothers
spent theirs on a lavish lifestyle and, before very many years, would need to
work again.
Michael has never again gone on the road with his brothers – though they
have repeatedly tried to convince him to do ‘just one more tour’.
Once he got home to Encino, one of the first things Michael did was get
into LaToya's black Mercedes-Benz 450 SEL and speed off without any
security. He simply wanted some freedom – as if he could ever have it! As
always, there were about two dozen fans waiting at the front gate for
someone – anyone – who looked like a Jackson. They never dreamed they
might actually catch a glimpse of the Jackson. When they saw him pull out
of the gate, they jumped into their cars and followed in hot pursuit. Michael
tried to lose them, but to no avail. He was almost to Quincy Jones's house,
miles away, when the vehicle car ran out of gas. Michael jumped out of the
car, leaving it in the middle of the street, and then ran for blocks, with his
stalkers following him, until he reached Quincy's home, where he found
refuge.
After the Victory tour, Michael became involved in ‘We Are the World’,
the historic effort to feed the hungry of Ethiopia. For some time, Harry
Belafonte had been making plans to draw together some of the biggest
artists in the entertainment business to record a song, the proceeds of which
would go to a new nonprofit foundation, USA for Africa, to feed the
starving masses. In addition to providing emergency food, medical relief,
and self-help programmes to stricken areas of Africa, the undertaking was
also to set aside funds for hunger relief in the United States. Harry
contacted Ken Kragen, an entertainment manager with a history of fund-
raising, to ask if he could enlist his clients, Kenny Rogers and Lionel
Richie, in the endeavour. Kenny and Lionel, in turn, obtained the
cooperation of Stevie Wonder to add more name value to the project. Lionel
then telephoned Michael to ask if he would perform on the recording. He
not only wanted to sing on the song, Michael said, he also wanted to help
Lionel write it.
Michael has always been empathetic to the plight of the hungry,
homeless and sick, especially children. In the past, Frank Dileo has told
many heartbreaking stories of Michael's influence on dying children. It is as
though an unexplainable part within Michael is able to reach children close
to death; his touch seems to act as some kind of soothing balm for kids
facing a frightening time. It's an important, positive side of Michael, and
one he thinks is the best thing about himself.
For instance, a small child suffering from a brain tumour and spinal
cancer was brought to Michael on a stretcher one night after a show. When
the boy reached up to Michael, Michael grabbed his hand and held tight.
The child smiled. Frank Dileo turned away and broke into tears. ‘He's not
afraid to look into the worst suffering and find the smallest part that's
positive and beautiful,’ Frank concluded.
Seth Riggs, his voice teacher who has travelled with Michael on tours,
recalled, ‘Every night the kids would come in on stretchers, so sick they
could hardly hold their heads up. Michael would kneel down at the
stretchers and put his face right down beside theirs so that he could have his
picture taken with them, and then give them a copy to remember the
moment. I couldn't handle it. I'd be in the bathroom crying. The kids would
perk right up in his presence. If it gave them a couple days' more energy, to
Michael it was worth it.’
While working on ‘We Are the World’, Lionel Richie went to
Hayvenhurst every night for a week where he and Michael sequestered
themselves in Michael's room to labour on lyrics and melodies. They knew
that what they wanted was some sort of anthem, a song both easy to sing
and memorable. Though Michael and Lionel have never said as much
publicly, LaToya – who watched the pair work – claims that Lionel only
wrote a couple of lines of the song. She contends that 99 per cent of the
lyrics were written by Michael, ‘but he's never felt it necessary to say that.’
The lyrics and the melody were finished on 21 January 1985, just one night
before the recording session.
While Michael and Lionel were composing, Ken Kragen went about the
business of lining up the all-star cast: Bruce Springsteen, Tina Turner, Bette
Midler, Billy Joel, Ray Charles, Diana Ross, Dionne Warwick, The Pointer
Sisters, Stevie Wonder, Cyndi Lauper, Willie Nelson, Smokey Robinson,
Bob Dylan and many others, forty-five in all. Another fifty artists had to be
turned down to keep the project from becoming too unwieldy. Michael
asked LaToya to show up, and she did. (She got to stand next to Bette
Midler in the line-up.) Marlon, Jackie, Tito and Randy were also there.
Quincy Jones took time away from producing the film The Colour Purple
to produce and arrange (with Tom Bahler) the Jackson – Richie
collaboration at A&M Studios in Hollywood. Because the American Music
Awards had been held that same night, many of the artists came directly
from those festivities. When the performers showed up, the first thing they
saw was a sign outside Studio A: ‘Please check your egos at the door.’ It
was astonishing that so many artists of diverse backgrounds and individual
renown were able to do just that: there were no ego problems, at all. Diana
Ross could not conceal her excitement and asked the other stars for
autographs. The Pointer Sisters took pictures of Michael. ‘I've never before
felt that strong sense of community,’ Kenny Loggins observed.
At around ten p.m., the proceedings turned solemn. Ken Kragen
addressed the group to assure them that money generated from the
recording would, indeed, ‘go to the right places’. Bob Geldof, the leader of
the Boomtown Rats and organizer of the British Band Aid musical charity
effort, which produced the single, ‘Do They Know It's Christmas?’ told of
his visits to Ethiopia. Two Ethiopian women, whose presence had been
arranged by Stevie Wonder, reported on the horrible suffering there.
Finally, Michael addressed the assemblage of stars. Very quietly and
somewhat awkwardly, he explained his and Lionel's composition as ‘A love
song to inspire concern about a faraway place close to home.’
The musical tracks had been recorded earlier in the day, so it was just a
matter of fine-tuning the lyrics – ‘Should it be “brighter day” or “better
day”?’ – and adding the voices. Michael taught the artists the melody and
lyrics – most had already been sent taped demos of the song with Michael
performing – and worked with them on vocal arrangements.
As integral as Michael Jackson had become to the process, he was also
very much separated from it. Whereas everyone else present was filmed (by
six cameras) as they performed for the ‘We Are the World’ video, Michael's
solo was taped later, privately, and spliced into the final version. He never
took off his shades. Some people speculate that he chose not to record with
the rest because he was so awestruck by his fellow celebrities. The ultimate
perfectionist, he would feel that he could not perform to the best of his
abilities in front of them. Others offer a more cynical explanation: Michael
likes to feel he is different from everybody and emphasizes this difference
by erecting barriers between him and his fans, his peers and his family.
Indeed, in the video of ‘We Are the World’, the shot of Michael begins at
his Bass Weejun shoes and trademark sequined socks, and then pans
upward to his carefully made-up face, all at Michael's direction. ‘People
will know it's me as soon as they see the socks,’ he said, proudly, and he
was right about that. ‘Try taking footage of Bruce Springsteen's socks and
see if anyone knows who they belong to,’ he added with a grin.
The recording and taping session took all night. Who would sing what
and with whom had been decided a couple of days earlier by Lionel Richie,
producer Quincy Jones, and arranger Tom Bahler. Some of the interesting
vocal pairings included Tina Turner with Billy Joel, Dionne Warwick with
Willie Nelson, and, of course, Diana Ross with Michael Jackson. The only
hint of things not going as planned involved the pairing of Michael and
Prince. Michael didn't like Prince, but for charity he would sing with him.
However, Prince didn't even show up. At six the next morning, he called the
studio to ask if he might come in and lay down a guitar part. Quincy told
him it was too late.
By seven-thirty in the morning, the job was done and the artists began to
leave. ‘Michael was as exhausted as anyone,’ Jeffrey Osborne reported. ‘He
didn't say much, maybe something about being very happy, but I could tell
that he was delighted.’
‘I did expect to see more ego,’ Paul Simon reported. ‘You know, “The
Gloved One” meets “The Boss” and things like that, but it just didn't
happen.’
‘I just don't want this night to end,’ Diana Ross said as she hugged Tina
Turner.
It would seem that everyone who participated in the ‘We Are the World’
recording session shared Diana's sentiments. The gentle, uplifting spirit of
the song also touched the public's emotions when it was finally released on
7 March 1985. The initial shipment of 800,000 records sold out within three
days of its release. The song was number one in America for a month, and
also spent a couple of weeks at the top spot in Britain, as well as in other
countries. The ‘We Are the World’ video lent itself well to the benevolent
spirit of the celebration and helped to sell four million records in all,
earning about eight million dollars for the USA for Africa fund.
A Prank That Didn't Work
The 1986 Grammys set the stage for one of Michael's more bizarre pranks –
but one that didn't pan out as he had expected.
Frank Dileo, John Branca, Norman Winter and Michael Jackson had
often discussed the careers of show-business icons like Frank Sinatra and
The Beatles, and how their representatives were known to sometimes hire
teenagers to scream and weep at the sight of them at public appearances.
Hysteria does photograph well. Michael always believed that hiring
youngsters to holler, faint and sob was a masterful public relations stroke.
One evening Michael and Frank telephoned Norman to tell him of an
idea. Michael wanted to cause a commotion during the televised Grammy
Awards presentation in February. It had been decided that Quincy and
Michael would accept the award if ‘We Are the World’ won for Record of
the Year, accompanied by some of the other participants on the record. It's
not known whether it was his intention to do so, but it would seem that
Michael wanted to steal a little of Quincy's thunder during the acceptance.
He and Quincy always had a strange relationship, symbiotic but also
competitive.
Michael's plan was to have a female teenager run out on to the stage from
the wings and jump him as he stood next to Quincy. Bill Bray's security
staff would be ready and waiting to pull the girl off Michael, who would
then act surprised and frazzled. Since the Grammys are televised
internationally, the whole world would witness this mad scene. The next
day, Michael's popularity, and the hysteria it had caused at the Grammys,
would be the subject of worldwide news. The scene caused by Jackson's
‘overwrought fan’ would probably even overshadow the fact that ‘We Are
the World’ had won the coveted Grammy for Record of the Year. Certainly,
Quincy's acceptance speech would be overlooked in favour of Michael's
manic adoration.
Frank and Norman were against Michael's idea. If word ever got out to
the press that the girl who had attacked Michael had actually been hired by
him to do so, it would be embarrassing to everyone involved. ‘But it'll never
get out,’ Michael said, enthused. ‘So, who do we get? Who can we hire to
do this thing?’
Frank and Norman didn't have a clue. Finally, a female publicist who
worked in Norman's office found a teenager who she felt was savvy enough
to pull off the hoax. She was hired for the job.
The night of the awards, those involved in the trickery held their breath
as ‘We Are the World’ was announced by presenters Sting and Phil Collins
as Record of the Year. Michael, who was wearing a black military jacket,
red shirt and red brooch, rose from his seat. Frank, seated behind Michael,
smiled broadly, a cigar hanging from his mouth. Michael then walked up on
to the stage with Lionel Richie.
Before long, Quincy Jones, Dionne Warwick, Kenny Rogers and Stevie
Wonder were also on stage. As Quincy gave his speech, Michael nervously
rocked from side to side. He kept looking off into the wings, as if he was
wondering when the girl was going to make her move.
Unbeknownst to Michael, the teenager, who had full backstage
credentials, was having a difficult time trying to break through the crowd of
people – technicians, production people, members of the press – who had
gathered in the wings to gawk at the celebrities on stage. Before the hapless
‘attacker’ knew what was happening, the speeches were over and she had
missed her moment. The scheme didn't work.
‘What happened? What happened?’ Michael wanted to know later. ‘I'm
standing there waiting and waiting, and nothing?’
When Frank Dileo explained, Michael cracked up into laughter. ‘The
joke's on me, I guess,’ he said. ‘I couldn't even concentrate on what was
going on because I'm waiting for this girl to come out and jump me… and
she never did it. Quincy said I was squirming so much, he thought I had to
go to the bathroom! Next time, we'll have to plan it better,’ Michael
concluded, with a wink.
More Plastic Surgery
In June 1986, Michael Jackson underwent another operation to have his
nose made slimmer, his fourth rhinoplasty. He also wanted Steven Hoefflin
to create a cleft in his chin. Years later, he would tell one associate that the
‘greatest joy I ever had was in knowing I had a choice about my face.’ This
same associate asked Michael for advice about rhinoplasty surgery, and
Michael recommended that Steven Hoefflin operate on him. ‘There's
nothing to it, man,’ Michael said. ‘After the first one, it doesn't even hurt
that much. Once you have it done, you'll never stop looking in the mirror.
That's how great you'll feel about yourself. Do it. You'll love it.’
When Michael told Katherine he was going to have a cleft put into his
chin, she thought he was going, as she put it, ‘overboard’.
‘Why?’ she wanted to know. ‘I just don't understand.’
As Katherine told a friend of hers, Michael explained, ‘I can afford it, I
want it, so I'm going to have it.’ It was as if he were buying a new car
instead of undergoing painful, appearance-changing plastic surgery.
Whereas most people can only fantasize – ‘Wouldn't a new nose be nice,
and maybe a new chin too?’ – Michael could afford to make those whims a
reality. ‘And I think if more people could afford it, they would do it too,’ his
sister Janet has reasoned. ‘I see nothing wrong with it.’
One psychologist has speculated that it was Michael's narcissistic side
that dictated he have a cleft carved into his chin. ‘Michael Jackson was
obviously becoming more and more enchanted by his own image,’ Dr
Raymond Johnson said. ‘He is apparently continuing his quest for the
perfect face.’
‘I do want to be perfect,’ Michael confirmed. ‘I look in the mirror, and I
just want to change, and be better. I always want to be better, so maybe
that's why I wanted the cleft. I don't know how else to explain it.’
Of course, one of the public's favourite theories about him is that Michael
was trying to transform Himself into the image of Diana Ross – as if Diana
has a cleft in her chin! Mostly this theory is the result of the popular
connection between the two stars over the years, and some family members'
recollections of Michael making statements to Janet and LaToya such as,
‘You're not pretty until you start looking like Diana.’ After surgery and with
the help of carefully applied makeup, Michael sometimes did resemble
Diana, with tweezed, arched eyebrows, high cheekbones, and a tapered
nose (actually much more tapered than Diana's). Still, the resemblance was
in the eye of the beholder. When an associate told Diana that Michael was
trying to look like her, Diana was dismayed by the notion. She sized
Michael up and snapped, ‘I look like that?’
In fact, Michael does not want to look like Diana, even if he was
enraptured by her image, allure, glamour and, also, her power. He did try to
recreate her from time to time, though, by playing out certain ‘Miss Ross’
fantasies in front of witnesses. Beverly Hills limousine chauffeur, Ralph
Caricosa, recalls having driven Michael to a destination. He looked into the
rear view mirror and asked, ‘Where to now, Mr Jackson.’ Michael said,
‘Call me Miss Ross, won't you?’ Then, there was the night Diana caught
him putting on her makeup backstage at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas.
Former Supremes star Cindy Birdsong reported that when Diana scolded
him (‘How many times have I told you to stay out of my makeup!’),
Michael responded by saying, ‘But, Diana, it's magic.’
Once, when Michael checked into the swank Helmsley Palace in
Manhattan, he telephoned the front desk from a house phone in the lobby
and, in front of amused witnesses, used his best imitation of Diana's
speaking voice to hoodwink the operator. ‘My suite is not good enough,’ he
said, acting like a disgruntled diva. ‘How dare you put me in that suite?
There are no flowers, and I think I saw a mouse, and I'm, well, I'm just
really upset. I can't even go back up there.’
‘Who is this?’ the surprised operator apparently asked.
‘Why, it's Miss Ross,’ Michael answered, trying to suppress a giggle.
‘Miss Diana Ross. Who do you think it is? How dare you even ask?’
By the time the operator put him on hold, Michael was grinning from ear
to ear. ‘She believes me,’ he whispered, excitedly. ‘She thinks I'm Diana
Ross!’
The operator came back on the line. ‘Diana Ross isn't staying here.’
‘Oh, she's not?’ Michael responded. ‘Sorry.’
Then he quickly hung up, laughing so hysterically he could barely catch
his breath.
Most people who know Michael agree that there are two reasons why he
has had so much plastic surgery. First of all, he strove for some ideal of
physical perfection, or his version of it, anyway. He spent most of his life
studying pictures of himself, not to mention the hours dancing in front of
mirrors, looking at videos, deciding which are his best features and which
are not. ‘I just want to look the best I can look,’ he told Frank Dileo.
‘But when do you stop?’ Frank asked.
Michael shrugged. ‘I'm a work in progress,’ he said with a gentle smile.
Publicly, Frank never had much patience for questions about Michael's
plastic surgery, mostly because he could not explain it. ‘Okay, so he had his
nose fixed, and the cleft – big deal. I got news for you,’ he said, ‘my nose
has been broken five times. It's been fixed twice. Who gives a shit? Who
cares? Elvis had his nose done. Marilyn Monroe had her nose done, had her
breasts done. Everybody's had it done.’
As well as improving his appearance, Michael also had another reason
for the operations. All of the Jackson boys grew up to resemble their father,
Joseph. Michael could not have imagined a worse fate for himself, and he
did everything he could do to destroy the resemblance. Certainly, he has
many of his father's characteristics, whether or not he recognizes them:
Joseph's determination to the point of ruthlessness, his coldhearted business
sense, and on the plus side, his love of family. Emotionally, Michael may be
a lot like Joseph – though he would never emulate Joseph's coldhearted
unfaithfulness in love – and, he has said, it frightens him. Outside, though,
he isn't like Joseph at all.
‘He told me so himself,’ said a former girlfriend of Berry Gordy's who
has known Michael for years. ‘He would do anything not to look like
Joseph. Believe me, the last thing he wants to see when he looks at the man
in the mirror is his father. With each operation, he distances himself not
only from his father but from the whole family. I'm afraid that's the sad
point of all the surgery.’
‘The tragedy is,’ concluded Joyce McCrae, a longtime intimate who
worked in Joseph's office, ‘no matter how much Michael tries to scrub
Joseph off his face, he's still there.’
Or as Joseph Jackson so aptly put it, ‘It takes a father to make a son.’
It was after Michael's operation to have a cleft in his chin that he first
began being seen wearing a surgical mask with a black fedora and
sunglasses. The press speculated that he was obsessed with catching germs,
reminiscent of Howard Hughes' fixation with health issues. Michael said
nothing publicly. ‘If you knew Michael well enough, you knew what was
going on,’ Joyce McCrae said. ‘As soon as I saw him wearing the surgical
mask, I said, “Oh, he's had the cleft done.” People told me, “What? That's
ridiculous.” Well, sure enough, that's what was going on.’
At this time, Michael appeared at a movie memorabilia showcase at the
Continental Hyatt Hotel in Hollywood wearing a blue surgical mask and a
black fedora. To say he looked conspicuous would be an understatement.
When the vendors saw him coming their way, they would triple the prices
of all of their goods just because they knew Michael represented a windfall
for them. He was shopping for Disney memorabilia with a young boy and
Bill Bray, his security man. Whenever he saw something he liked, he
mumbled through his surgical mask for Bray to purchase the item. Bray
would then pull out a wad of hundred-dollar bills, pay the vendor, and move
on to the next display. The fact that the prices were raised especially for him
did not escape Michael. ‘They see me coming, and they feel like I have a lot
of money, so they take advantage of me,’ he told me. ‘That's not really fair,
is it?’
‘No, it's not, Michael. But what's with the surgical mask?’ I asked.
‘I had my wisdom teeth taken out,’ he told me. ‘Oh, man, the misery. You
can't believe what I have been going through.’
‘Sounds awful,’ I said.
Michael shook his head, sadly. ‘It is awful.’
When Michael did not cover his face with a surgical mask, he would
venture forth in public wearing a hairy gorilla head mask with fur and
beady eyes. ‘I love it when people stop and are scared,’ he said. ‘And I love
it when they don't know that it's me inside the mask. I just love that.’ It's a
great paradox about Michael that he is as much a public show-off as he is a
recluse. Sometimes, though, his exploits can prove embarrassing. Once,
while walking through an airport wearing the gorilla mask, he tripped over
a sand-filled ashtray and fell to the floor in a heap in front of a host of
paparazzi, all because his vision was obscured.
When the bandages came off after the cleft operation, Michael
concentrated more than ever on his appearance. The new cleft seemed
oddly out of place on the bottom of his soft, ingénue-like face. After all of
the procedures, Michael's nose was slimmer than ever. It also pointed
upward, an odd touch. Tweezing his eyebrows gave him a softer, even more
feminine look. His skin seemed to be getting lighter with each passing day.
He had begun using an over-the-counter skin-bleaching cream called
Porcelana to achieve that look. LaToya used it as well. They had crates of
this cream stored at Hayvenhurst, hording it as the most valuable beauty
product ever produced.
Also, Michael existed on a strict macrobiotic diet that had left him quite
thin and made his face look even more sculpted. ‘If I ate like him, I'd be
dead,’ Frank DiLeo said succinctly.
In truth, Michael Jackson had begun looking more than a little unusual. It
was difficult to be in the same room with him and not stare in disbelief,
especially if you had known him since he was a child. Comedian Eddie
Murphy probably put it best when he said, ‘I love Michael, but the brother
is strange.’
Duets Gone ‘Bad’
At twenty-seven years of age, Michael Jackson faced the challenge of
recording an album that would top the tremendous success of Thriller.
Could he do it? Could anyone? In the summer of 1986, when he began
working on the follow-up album, which would be called Bad, Michael put
himself under enormous pressure. Extremely competitive, even against
himself and his own achievements, he felt that if he did not top Thriller's
record sales of nearly 38.5 million, he would be perceived as a failure.
Moreover, he needed to have success with the single releases. Once, he
discussed the phenomenon of the four hit singles from the Off the Wall
album, which had preceded Thriller in 1979. He told writer Gerri Hirshey,
‘Nobody broke my record yet, thank God. Hall and Oates tried, but they
didn't.’ Eventually he matched his own record with the Thriller album, the
final US tally being: ‘This Girl is Mine', number two; ‘Billie Jean’, number
one; ‘Beat It’, number one; ‘Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'’, number five;
‘Human Nature’, number seven; ‘PYT (Pretty Young Thing)’, number ten,
and ‘Thriller’, number four. He needed to do better than that with Bad.
When he began working on the album, he taped a piece of paper that said
‘100 million’ to his bathroom mirror. He wanted Bad to be, as he put it, ‘as
perfect as is humanly possible’. Before they started to record the album in
August 1986, Michael and Quincy Jones chose from sixty-two songs
Michael had written. ‘Fifty per cent of the battle is trying to figure out
which songs to record,’ Quincy said. ‘It's total instinct. You have to go with
the songs that touch you, that get the goose bumps going.’ In the end, eight
of the ten songs on Bad would be written by Michael. Interestingly, Michael
cannot read music. He writes his songs in his head, sings them on to a tape,
and then hires musicians to put them down on paper. He is an incredibly
musical person, however. The notes he imagines, and the way he hears them
composed in song, often astound the most trained of musicians.
One song planned for the album was a rhythm-and-blues-tinged number
intended as a duet, ‘I Just Can't Stop Loving You’. Michael had wanted
Barbra Streisand to record the song with him, but she turned him down. ‘I
can't believe she would turn me down,’ he said. ‘Doesn't she know that this
is going to be the biggest album in history?’ Michael suggested that ‘my
people’ get back in touch with ‘her people’ and ‘tell her she's about to make
a big mistake’. Barbra explained she wasn't interested because she was
worried that the age difference between them would make the lyrics seem
unbelievable, plus she didn't like the song. Frank Dileo was unfazed. ‘I
knew the song was a hit – with or without Barbra Streisand,’ he said.
‘Forget her,’ Michael reasoned. ‘Let's get Whitney Houston.’ However,
Whitney wasn't interested either. ‘Believe me, I didn't lose any sleep over
it,’ Frank Dileo said of Houston's decision. Someone suggested Diana Ross.
‘No way. Bad idea,’ Michael responded, straightaway.
Michael didn't explain that Diana was angry with him for a recent
misunderstanding. He had made plans to go to dinner with her at a
Hollywood restaurant called Le Dome. However, Elizabeth Taylor
telephoned and invited him to a meal that same evening. Wanting the best
of both worlds, Michael asked her if she would like to join him and Diana.
Elizabeth, who must be the centre of attention, accepted his offer, as long as
Diana met them at the restaurant. In other words, Elizabeth did not want to
join Diana's party. She wanted a party of her own. Michael didn't
understand the ego game involved in her decision; he just thought she was
being friendly. Anyway, the only thing on his mind was how ‘magical’ it
would be to have Diana Ross and Elizabeth Taylor sitting at the same table
with him.
Once he and Elizabeth arrived at Le Dome, Michael telephoned Diana to
ask her to join them there. Diana was not pleased. She had been under the
impression that she was supposed to be his date that evening. ‘This is not
the way to do things, Michael,’ she scolded. She told him that the two of
them would have to dine some other time, and not with Elizabeth Taylor.
She was angry, and Michael knew it; she wouldn't return his calls. It wasn't
the right time to ask Diana to record a duet with him. Instead, Quincy
recruited singer Siedah Garrett to do the song with Michael, and it would
end up the first single release from Bad.
(A few years later, in 1990, Michael did the same thing to Elizabeth
Taylor that he had done to Diana Ross. He was scheduled to have dinner
with Elizabeth at the Hotel Bel Air restaurant in Bel Air, California.
However, he left her waiting for more than an hour. She ate Sevruga caviar,
drank Cristal champagne, waited and became increasingly infuriated. When
Michael finally showed up, he explained that he had been in the parking lot
in his Rolls, talking on his cellular telephone to Jackie Kennedy Onassis.
According to the maître d' who had escorted Michael to her table and was
still standing beside him, Elizabeth said, ‘I will not play second fiddle to
any woman, not even that woman. How dare you do this to me, Michael?’
Michael protested. ‘But, Elizabeth, I have a gift,’ he offered in his own
defence. From his vest pocket, he pulled out a pair of earrings that appeared
to be two ovals of turquoise embellished with diamonds. They weren't even
in a box. Without a word, Elizabeth grabbed the earrings. She then donned
her fur wrap and sunglasses (at night!) and flounced out of the restaurant,
leaving Michael standing there with the maître d'. He couldn't help but
break out into laughter; it had been one of the best exits he'd ever seen. ‘Oh
my God! I can't believe she just did that,’ Michael exclaimed, his face lit
with delight. ‘Did you see that? Wow.’)
*
For some reason, Michael had his heart set on recording duets for the Bad
album, but the plans never seemed to work out for him. While writing the
album's title track, he decided he wanted Prince to join him on the recording
of it.
A couple of years earlier, Warner Bros, had sponsored an afternoon
screening of the Prince movie Purple Rain for company personnel and film
critics. The word in Hollywood was that the film, a drama with music, was
so riveting, it would make Prince a major movie star. Michael was deeply
disappointed that he had not been able to make a strong impression in films.
Being so competitive, he had to see Purple Rain before it was distributed to
the public; he arranged to attend the Warner Bros, screening.
When the house lights dimmed, Michael slipped into the small theatre on
the Warner Bros. Burbank lot, wearing a sequined jacket and sunglasses. He
looked as if he were about to go on stage to accept an award. He sat in the
last row and watched the film, never once taking off his shades. About ten
minutes before the movie was to end, he rose and walked out. Later, a
member of his entourage asked Michael what he thought of the film. ‘The
music's okay, I guess,’ Michael asked. ‘But I don't like Prince. He looks
mean, and I don't like the way he treats women. He reminds me of my
relatives. And not only that,’ Michael concluded, ‘that guy can't act. He's
not good.’ Then, Michael let out a sigh of relief.
Though he didn't seem to appreciate Prince's talent, Michael realized that
singing a duet with him could generate interest not only in the title track,
‘Bad’, but in the entire album. His concept for himself and Prince was
actually ingenious.
The plan was that a month before the single release of ‘Bad’ was to be
issued, Frank Dileo would plant stories in the tabloid press suggesting that
Michael and Prince were bitter rivals. Michael's representatives would
criticize Prince, and then Prince's friends, a few of whom would be let in on
the hoax, would condemn Michael. To then confound the public, Frank
would then tell a Rolling Stone reporter that the rivalry did not exist and
that his client was disgusted with the rumours since he and Prince were
great friends, ‘and who believes the tabloids, anyway?’
In a month, rumours about him and Prince would be flying – are they
friends or aren't they? – with the general consensus, hopefully, being that
they were not. At the height of such controversy, the ‘Bad’ single and video
would be released. In the video, as Michael planned it, he and Prince would
square off against one another, taking turns vocalizing and dancing, in order
to determine, once and for all, who was ‘bad’.
Quincy arranged for Michael to meet him, feeling that the two were
creative geniuses and should know one another, whether they ever sang
together or not. According to writer Quincy Troupe, ‘It was a strange
summit. They're so competitive with each other that neither would give
anything up. They kind of sat there, checking each other out, but saying
very little. It was a fascinating stalemate between two very powerful dudes.’
However, when Michael telephoned Prince and told him about his idea,
Prince was not enthusiastic. He said he wanted to hear a tape of the song.
Michael sent him one. After hearing it, Prince decided that he didn't like the
tune and wanted nothing to do with the hoax. That was the end of it. When
word got back from Prince's representatives that he was not going to
cooperate, Michael was disappointed, but not really angry. ‘What do you
think about this guy turning you down?’ Frank Dileo asked him.
‘Figures,’ was all Michael would say, shaking his head in disgust.
The Hyperbaric Chamber
In September 1986, Michael Jackson's Captain EO was set to premiere both
at Epcot Center in Orlando, Florida, and at Disneyland in Anaheim,
California. It was probably the most expensive and most ballyhooed short
subject (seventeen minutes) in film history, and it took over a year to
complete it. Captain EO was directed by Francis Coppola. The executive
producer was George Lucas. Estimates of the 3-D film's budget ran as high
as twenty million dollars. Both parks had to build special theatres for the
film with floors that tilted to coincide with the space-age action on the
screen. It was also a light-and-sound show, with smoke emanating from the
screen. Michael played a space commander with a crew of robots and fuzzy
creatures battling a hideous queen (Anjelica Houston). Through song and
dance, a planet's inhabitants are transformed into peace-loving creatures.
Michael performed two songs, ‘We Are Here to Change the World’ and
‘Another Part of Me’.
Michael felt that he needed some kind of dazzling gimmick to promote
the film. The publicity designed to create a buzz about Michael and his
Captain EO is an excellent example of how he could manipulate the press
to do his bidding.
Earlier, in 1984, when Michael was burned while filming the Pepsi
commercial, he saw an oxygen chamber at Brotman Memorial Hospital
called a hyperbaric chamber, used to help heal burn victims. The machine is
about the size and shape of a casket with a clear, plastic top. It encloses the
patient in an atmosphere of one hundred per cent oxygen under increased
barometric pressure up to several times the pressure at sea level, thereby
flooding body tissue with oxygen. When administered by trained medical
personnel, hyperbaric therapy is safe. However, in the hands of the
untrained user, risks include oxygen toxicity, seizures and danger of an
oxygen-fed fire. When Steven Hoefflin told him that he had a theory that
sleeping in this machine could prolong life, Michael became fascinated by
it and, immediately, wanted one for himself. The cost was about $200,000.
Though Michael could well afford it, Frank Dileo talked him out of
wasting his money on such a contraption. ‘Well, I'd at least like to have my
picture taken in it,’ Michael decided. When Frank arranged for Michael to
be photographed in the chamber, at the hospital, word began to spread that
he was interested in the chamber and, eventually, the story found its way to
the tabloid, National Enquirer. ‘ I had a phone-in from a source in Los
Angeles who said that Michael was seen going to a hospital and taking
pictures in this chamber,’ said reporter Charles Montgomery who worked
for the Enquirer at the time. ‘It sounded like a sensational story. I wanted to
be the one to break it.’
Charles met with Frank Dileo and asked for details. ‘He didn't want to
discuss it, told me to get lost,’ Charles said. ‘I got some information on the
phone from Steven Hoefflin, but not much. Without cooperation, the story
had to be put on hold.’
Not for long, though…
When Michael heard that the Enquirer was asking questions about him,
his wheels started turning. Earlier in the year he had given Frank Dileo and
John Branca a copy of a book about P. T. Barnum, his theories and
philosophies. ‘This is going to be my Bible and I want it to be yours,’ he
told them. ‘I want my whole career to be the greatest show on earth.’
Michael's idea was to promote the story that he was sleeping in the
hyperbaric chamber in order to prolong his life to the age of 150. He would
add that he planned to take the machine on the road with him on his next
tour. He wasn't certain that the public would believe such a fantastic story –
at this time, such wacky stories were not as associated to Michael as they
are today – but he was eager to see how much of a buzz he could start. John
Branca thought the idea was odd, but it seemed harmless enough as far as
publicity stunts go.
It fell upon Frank Dileo to find a way to disseminate the fabricated story.
He called Charles Montgomery and gave him the information he had sought
earlier and, to make the story even more irresistible, he promised a
photograph of Michael actually in the chamber – as long as Charles could
guarantee the weekly's cover. He also made Charles promise not to reveal
his source for the information.
‘I honestly didn't know if the story was true or not,’ Charles Montgomery
said. ‘But Michael Jackson said it was true, his manager said it was true,
and his doctor verified it. How many more sources do you need? Then,
there was a picture. It turned out to be a great shot, the guy laying there in
the chamber. We knew what they were after in giving it to us, though. They
said they wanted us to use words like ‘wacky’ and ‘bizarre'. We knew the
Captain EO thing was coming up, and figured he was probably trying to
promote some kind of sci-fi image. Still, it was a good story.’
With the Enquirer in place, Frank wanted to strategize a way to distribute
the story to the mainstream press, but without anyone knowing he was
involved with it. Planting it in the Enquirer did not risk his credibility since
he could easily deny having had anything to do with it. Certainly, no one
would take a National Enquirer reporter's word over Frank Dileo's.
However, other more legitimate press might be tougher to crack. Since the
media knew that veteran publicist Norman Winter worked for Michael
Jackson, Norman could not be the one to promote the bizarre story to the
press. Frank would have to hire an outside publicist for the job.
As it happened, Frank's Sunset Strip office was next door to that of
leading show-business publicist Michael Levine. Frank invited Michael to
his home in Encino and told him about his idea, but with a few
embellishments. Frank took Michael's idea a step further. He wanted the
press to believe not only that Michael was sleeping in the chamber, but also
that he and Michael were locked in a strong disagreement about its safety,
and that Frank did not want him to take the machine on the road with him
during his next tour. Michael Levine was told that if he wanted to represent
the story to the media, he would have to do so without having any contact
with Michael Jackson – and without informing the media that he (Levine)
was involved in any way. In other words, Michael Levine's task was to
publicize one of the most ridiculous stories ever concocted without anyone
knowing he was doing it.
The next day an envelope was delivered to Michael Levine's office. The
messenger had strict instructions that only Levine be privy to its contents.
He opened the envelope to find a single colour transparency of Michael
Jackson lying in the hyperbaric chamber in his street clothes, but without
shoes. There was no covering letter or return address.
It was time for Michael Levine to go to work. He brought a well-known
Hollywood photographer to Brotman to take pictures of the empty
hyperbaric chamber for any publication that might need additional photos.
One reporter recalled, ‘Levine telephoned me and said, “Look, I don't
represent Michael Jackson. I don't even know Michael Jackson. But I was
up at Frank Dileo's house, and I overheard that there's this wild feud going
on.’ Then he told me this story about Michael sleeping in an oxygen
chamber and the fact that he and Dileo were feuding about it. In about three
days, I was hearing this damn story all over town.’
About a week later, the pieces of the puzzle came together. The picture of
Michael lying in the chamber made the front page of the National Enquirer
on 16 September 1986, as planned. Most people had never heard of a
hyperbaric chamber, so it was difficult to know if the picture was a set-up.
In truth, patients and medical personnel who enter such a chamber must
wear fire-retardant clothes due to the high concentration of oxygen, not
street clothes as Michael had on in the photograph. And why take off his
shoes?
With Michael Levine's assistance, word of Michael Jackson's exploit
quickly spread around the globe, a perfectly orchestrated public relations
coup. If his goal was to appear ‘wacky’… he certainly achieved it. The
hyperbaric chamber story was carried by the Associated Press and the
United Press International. It appeared in Time, Newsweek and practically
every major newspaper in the country. Television and radio news covered it.
Suddenly, the words ‘hyperbaric chamber’ were on the lips of many people
as they gossiped about crazy Michael's plan to live to 150 and how he and
his manager were fighting about it.
When contacted by the Associated Press, Frank Dileo confirmed the
report. ‘I told Michael, “That damn machine is too dangerous. What if
something goes wrong with the oxygen?” But Michael won't listen. He and
I are in disagreement about this. He really believes this chamber purifies his
body – and that it will help him accomplish his goal of living to be a
hundred and fifty.’
And to Rolling Stone: ‘ Michael knows if I tell him something, it's the
truth. I don't have to agree with things if I don't want to. In other words,
because I know this is eventually going to come up in this interview
anyway, the hyperbaric chamber. I'm one hundred per cent against that. I
don't want it around. I've spoken about it publicly. Some managers couldn't
have that conversation with their artist. They'd be too afraid. He respects
my opinion. He doesn't always listen.’
He added to Time, ‘ I can't figure him out sometimes.’
Even Michael's plastic surgeon, Steven Hoefflin, got in on the act and
said he tried to talk Michael out of ‘this wacky idea'. However, Michael
ignored everyone's fears and made room for the chamber in his bedroom.
When Joseph Jackson heard the story on the TV news, he ran up to
Michael's bedroom to see if Michael had a hyperbaric chamber in there.
‘But I didn't find anything,’ he recalled. ‘So I figured, well, either the story
is untrue… or the chamber is on its way.’
‘I don't think I allowed Michael to have that thing in the house,’
Katherine added.
Michael's family was obviously not let in on the joke. ‘Joseph always
stood behind Michael when it came to these kinds of rumours,’ said his
friend of twenty-five years, Jack Richardson. ‘He'd say, “Michael's not
sleeping in no chamber. Don't believe what you hear about my son.”’
‘I never asked him about that chamber thing,’ Janet said. ‘I have no idea
what that was about. It's not in the house, or I would know it. But knowing
Michael, if he is doing something like that, it probably has to do with his
voice.’
‘I realized then that Michael Jackson liked to see himself portrayed in an
absurd, bizarre way,’ Charles Montgomery said. ‘In the years to come, I
would do the biggest number of stories on Michael in the Enquirer. Before I
ran anything, I would always check its accuracy with people close to
Michael. I almost always had full cooperation from his camp. Michael is
one of the smartest entertainers in the business. He knows how to get his
name out there. He knows about PR. He knows how to control his career. I
think he's brilliant.’
Michael was astonished by the way his fiction made headlines. Many
untrue stories had been written about him in the past, and he had been angry
about them. Now, he was exacting his revenge against the media. ‘I can't
believe that people bought it,’ he said of the hyperbaric chamber idea. ‘It's
like I can tell the press anything about me and they'll buy it,’ he added, as if
recognizing the full potential of his communications power. ‘We can
actually control the press,’ he concluded. ‘I think this is an important
breakthrough for us.’
Once, Frank Dileo was asked about the wisdom of doing whatever he
could do to make Michael seem as incredible as possible or, as he put it, ‘to
keep him as popular and in demand as anyone can be.’ ‘Might all this
hoopla damage the singer's already fragile psyche?’ asked reporters Michael
Goldberg and David Handleman for Rolling Stone.
‘It's too late anyway,’ Dileo responded. ‘He won't have a normal life even
if I stop.’
The Elephant Man's Bones
Another publicity gimmick sprang forth from Michael Jackson's
imagination in May 1987, one that was just as fantastic and – as it would
happen – as damaging to his image as the hyperbaric chamber scam.
For years, Michael had been fascinated by the 1980 film about John
Merrick, The Elephant Man, starring John Hurt. When he screened it in his
private theatre, he sobbed his way through the entire film, he was that
moved by it. John Merrick, the hideously deformed, Victorian sideshow-
freak, was an outsider in a seemingly endless search for love and
acceptance – just like, in his own view, Michael. In researching Merrick's
life, Michael heard that his remains were kept in a glass case at the London
Hospital Medical College. He wanted to see the ninety-seven-year-old
skeleton, of course, and during a trip to England he obtained special
permission to inspect the exhibit. (Because it attracted droves of tourists to
the hospital, it had been removed from public view after the movie was
released.) Michael was awe-struck by the exhibit and, as he examined the
skeleton, said to Frank Dileo, ‘I sure would like to have these bones at
Hayvenhurst house. Wouldn't it be cool to own them?’
‘Yeah, well forget it,’ Frank said.
‘But… hmmmm.’ Michael looked as if he had an idea.
‘Uh-oh,’ Frank said.
Remembering the hyperbaric chamber hoax, Michael came up with the
idea that he should make an offer to the hospital to buy the John Merrick
exhibit just to see what kind of press it would generate. ‘Man, that is crazy,’
Frank told him.
‘I know,’ Michael said, excited. ‘That's why we have to do it.’
In truth, Frank was all for it; he liked a good show as much as anyone
else, and certainly as much as Michael. Therefore, claiming that Michael's
absorbing interest in the remains of John Merrick was based on his
awareness of ‘the ethical, medical and historical significance of the
Elephant Man’, Frank told members of the press that he had offered a half-
million dollars to the hospital for the bones. The offer was not publicized in
the complex, cloak-and-dagger manner by which the hyperbaric chamber
hoax made news. Rather, Frank called a couple of writers himself and gave
them the scoop; the rules for such madness had, it seemed, become
somewhat more flexible.
‘What's he gonna do with the skeleton, Frank?’ a reporter wanted to
know.
‘I don't know,’ Dileo said, ‘except that he'll probably put it in the room
while I'm trying to have a meeting with him.’
As expected, the media was interested in the story. The pop star who
sleeps in a hyperbaric chamber wanted to buy the Elephant Man's bones.
How could that not cause a stir? The wire services – Associated Press and
United Press International – both picked up the story. By June, much of the
public interested in such things was talking about Michael's latest
eccentricity. The British media began referring to him as Wacko-Jacko.
Michael and Frank failed to realize, however, that the media might check
with the London Hospital Medical College to verify that an offer had been
received by them. In fact, when contacted by the press, officials at the
College said they had received no such offer, that they had only heard about
Michael's interest in Merrick's remains by reading about it in one of the
British tabloids. Even if they did get an offer, the spokesman said, ‘We
would not sell the Elephant Man. It's as simple as that.’
‘Oh, man, why didn't we think to cover our bases,’ Michael said to Frank.
‘Now we gotta make a real offer. And, anyway,’ he added, ‘of course they'll
sell it if the money is right. Every man has his price.’
‘You serious now,’ Dileo asked. ‘You really want them, now?’
‘Yeah, I do,’ Michael said. ‘Let's get 'em.’
Now, Michael actually wanted the skeleton, but not because of any
devotion to John Merrick but rather because he was told he couldn't have
them.
Frank telephoned the hospital and made an offer of a million dollars for
the Elephant Man's bones. The hospital officials said they were insulted. A
spokeswoman told the press, ‘Indeed, he offered to buy it, but it would be
for publicity and I find it very unlikely that the medical college would be
willing to sell it for cheap publicity reasons.’
Back in America, Katherine Jackson figured out that the story was bogus.
However, she thought it had been Frank's idea; she never dreamed that it
was Michael's. She called Frank and said that she was upset; ‘you're making
Michael look like an idiot.’ Frank told her that all he was doing was trying
to make Michael appear to be more interesting. Katherine didn't like his
explanation, though, and made her feelings clear. However, when Frank
asked Michael what he thought about his mother's concern, Michael said,
‘Kate doesn't understand show business. So, don't worry about it.’
At this same time, the Jehovah's Witnesses' elders in Woodland Hills,
California, began pressuring Michael again. They felt strongly that the
recent publicity was doing him great damage, and that it reflected poorly on
the Witnesses, because Michael was so representative of the faith. Michael
was becoming disenchanted with the church's elders by this time, mostly
because he didn't want to be told what to do. What's more he couldn't
reconcile his lifestyle and career to the religion's strict tenets. In truth, it's
almost impossible to be a Jehovah's Witness and be an entertainer.
Therefore, in the spring of 1987, Michael withdrew from the Jehovah's
Witnesses. A letter from the Jehovah's Witnesses headquarters in Brooklyn,
New York, sent out as a press release, stated that the organization ‘no longer
considers Michael Jackson to be one of Jehovah's Witnesses.’ Gary Botting,
coauthor of The Orwellian World of Jehovah's Witnesses and a Witness
himself, said that leaving the religion ‘is worse than being disfellow-
shipped, or kicked out.’ He observed, ‘If you wilfully reject God's only
organization on earth, that's the unforgivable sin… the sin against the Holy
Spirit.’
Michael's decision to leave the church puzzled his mother, Katherine, and
caused her great despair. Katherine wasn't sure she knew her own son any
longer. However, there was no discussing the spiritual matter with him –
literally. As it is strictly prohibited for a Witness to discuss matters of faith
with ex-members, even if they are family, Katherine says that she has never
asked Michael what happened, and she says that she never intends to ask
such questions. ‘I was not required to “shun” my son,’ she claimed,
referring to rumours of that nature. ‘But we can't talk about matters of faith
any longer, which is a shame.’
Katherine maintained that her relationship with Michael continued to be
warm. ‘Michael still asks my advice,’ she said. ‘And he helps me choose
my clothes. He tells me to put on lipstick when company's coming. He has
encouraged me to lose weight. He said, “Elizabeth [Taylor] lost all that
weight. If she has, you can. And if you don't like it, you can always have
plastic surgery.” But I wouldn't do that,’ Katherine hastened to add.
Michael soon lost interest in the Elephant Man's bones. As expected. It had
certainly generated a great deal of press for Michael, though none of it
favourable. Playboy magazine facetiously reported, ‘Rumour has it that the
descendants of the Elephant Man have offered $10,000 for the remains of
Michael Jackson's nose.’ In time, the controversy blew over. Gone, but not
forgotten. Ever.
Michael's phony quest for John Merrick's bones created a domino effect
in the tabloids, one from which his image would never truly recover. After
the Elephant Man's Bones story, unscrupulous journalists began creating
their own fictions about Michael, and they did so with a vengeance. After
all, if Michael wanted the kind of publicity he had been diligently courting,
why not accommodate him? Crazy-Michael stories sold millions of
magazines.
In a short time, according to the tabloid press, Michael had asked
Elizabeth Taylor to marry him and said, ‘I could be more special than Mike
Todd. I could be more attentive and generous than Richard Burton, but she
turned me down.’ He also apparently tried to convince Elizabeth to sleep in
his hyperbaric chamber; was convinced that the world would end in 1998;
refused to bathe in anything but Evian water; and had seen John Lennon's
ghost (who convinced him to use The Beatles song ‘Revolution’ in a Nike
ad). And the stories about Bubbles the Chimp seemed to never end. None of
the stories was true, though, and Michael went on to complain bitterly about
them, never admitting (and maybe not even understanding) that he was the
one who had thrown the first punch. Since Michael refused to do any
interviews in an effort to maintain his inscrutability, the stories just spread
without contradiction or explanation.
CBS Records executive Bobby Colomby recalled, ‘Michael kept asking
why so many bad things were being said about him. He didn't understand it.
He said it really hurt to read all that stuff. I tried to tell him that the problem
was his. I explained to him that he'd never seen Bruce Springsteen on the
cover of the National Enquirer in a hyperbaric chamber. Even if that picture
came in, they wouldn't believe. I said, “But you, Michael, spend so much
time working on your mystique, on being reclusive and unusual, that people
will buy anything with your name on it.” He said he understood… kind of.’
To this day, the stories continue. Some true, some false, all mad.
Since the time of the hyperbaric chamber and Elephant Man's bones,
Michael has never stopped complaining about the press, and has even
written songs about his victimization at the hands of the media; for instance,
‘Leave Me Alone’. In 1993, Oprah Winfrey asked him about the hyperbaric
chamber during her televised interview with him. ‘I cannot find an oxygen
chamber anywhere in this house,’ she said in mock exasperation. ‘That
story is so crazy,’ Michael remarked, annoyed. ‘I mean, it's one of those
tabloid things. It's completely made up.’ He explained that what happened
was that he saw the chamber at the The Brotman Burn Center and decided
to ‘just go inside it and hammer around, and somebody takes the picture.
When they process the picture, the person who processes the picture says,
“Oh, Michael Jackson!” He made a copy and these pictures just went all
over the world with this lie attached to it. It's a complete lie. Why do people
buy these papers?’
In May 2003, when he was about to release the tamed Michael Jackson's
Private Home Movies documentary to combat the sensational one by Martin
Bashir, he told People, ‘ I want people to see the real me. I don't have sex
with little kids. I don't sleep in hyperbaric chambers, and don't have
elephant bones in my body. So many things are said about me, and I have
no idea where they came from.’
In the end, the hard truth probably hurts more than any wacky fiction:
Michael Jackson is responsible for his own image. He's given the media
plenty to work with over the years and, in turn, the media has assisted him
in achieving what he once stated was his ultimate goal, that of making his
life ‘the greatest show on earth’.
Jackie, Jermaine and Janet
By August 1987, after many years of acrimonious litigation, Jackie
Jackson's marriage had officially ended, mostly due to his unfaithfulness to
Enid. Two months later, Jermaine's marriage ended after almost fourteen
years. Again, his relationships with other women was key to the marriage
breakdown. He even had a child with another woman, a baby Hazel had
considered adopting rather than end her marriage over it. Then, she became
pregnant at the same time. It was an emotional rollercoaster for everyone
involved. To some family members, the scenario eerily resembled that of
Joseph, Katherine and Joh'Vonnie.
One had to wonder who could be blamed for such emotional bankruptcy.
Had Joseph's influence been so damaging to his sons that they just didn't
know how to conduct themselves in a relationship? Had Katherine's
acceptance of Joseph's philandering warped their view of fidelity? Or was
show-business excess responsible for their behaviour? Were, they so
accustomed to entitlement brought about by fame, they knew no
boundaries? Today, the brothers look back on the 1980s and regret many of
their personal decisions. ‘It's not easy growing up,’ Jermaine has said. ‘We
made mistakes. We all make mistakes.’
While Hazel and Jermaine litigated their divorce, Hazel continued living
at the couple's Benedict Canyon home in Beverly Hills with their children.
Meanwhile, Jermaine, his girlfriend Margaret and their new baby moved in
with… Joseph and Katherine!
Katherine was opposed to having her son, his new romantic interest and
their baby Jiving at Hayvenhurst since he was not yet divorced from his
wife. To her, the living arrangements did not seem, as she put it, ‘moral’.
However, when Joseph insisted that Jermaine and his new family moved
into the estate (which Michael owned), the debate was over.
For Michael's part, he didn't approve of anything that had occurred in the
marriages of Jackie and Jermaine. Even Tito was having trouble with Dee
Dee. However, he seemed to sense that the brothers were doing the best
they could, under the circumstances of the way they were raised. ‘We have
had to learn a lot of stuff on our own about how to treat people,’ he told
LaToya. ‘That's what's so hard, isn't it? I mean, no one taught us anything.’
‘Except for Mother,’ LaToya added.
‘Except for Mother,’ Michael agreed. Then, after a beat. ‘Still, look at
how hard she has had it. What are we supposed to learn from that?’
By June 1987, Michael Jackson still did not want the Bad album to be
released. He didn't think it was ready for commercial consumption and was
nervous about the public's reaction to it. He was also understandably
concerned about comparisons to Thriller. ‘ He's afraid to finish the record,’
said Frank Dileo. ‘The closer he gets to completing it, the more terrified he
becomes of that confrontation with the public’
While Michael was sweating out Bad, his sister Janet was finally having
her first major recording success with the A&M album Control. At this
time, Janet was in the thick of a power struggle with her father over just that
– control: of her music career and of her life.
Janet had recently aligned herself with thirty-one-year-old A&M Records
executive John McClain. It had actually been Joseph's idea that John – a
brilliant songwriter and session guitarist turned manager – take Janet under
his wing. John had been a friend of the family's for years; Tito taught him to
play his first licks.
After Janet had two commercially unsuccessful A&M albums, Joseph
insisted that if she stayed with him and worked hard, she'd be ‘as big as
Michael’. However, Janet had her doubts. ‘She's no dummy,’ Joyce McCrae
said. ‘She knew there was a reason why Michael and her brothers left
Joseph, and she didn't trust her father's management. She started listening to
outsiders.’
Joseph hoped that John McClain would work with Janet to polish her
image and enhance her career. To that end, John encouraged Janet to diet
and exercise, and sent her to Canyon Ranch in Arizona for ten days to get
her in physical shape. More importantly, he teamed her up with the writing-
producing team of Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis for what would go on to
become the Control album. He sent her to a vocal coach, teamed her with
choreographer Paula Abdul for her videos, and, in short, made her a major
star, almost overnight. In doing so, of course, he also made an enemy out of
Joseph; Janet now trusted John, not her father. He had lost the boys, and
now he was losing his daughter, too. All he would have left was LaToya…
and, bless her soul, no matter what she did she wasn't going to be ‘as big as
Michael’.
‘We're the dog with the bone that all the other dogs are trying to get,’
Joseph said at the time. ‘And the pressure is always on you to hold on to
what you've got. As for Janet, I was putting her on stage in Vegas back
when she was still a little girl. The wheels had already been set in motion
for Janet Jackson ‘and anyone who jumps on now will be getting a free ride.
I don't intend to let that happen.’
Joseph didn't want Janet to work with Jam and Lewis; when he first heard
the Control album, he didn't like it – especially the title track and ‘What
Have You Done for Me Lately?’ (which went on to become a huge hit). It
was little wonder that Joseph didn't appreciate the concept. The album
represented a personal declaration of Janet's freedom from her father and
her family; in the title track, she claims that she will now have control over
all her own affairs. She sings as if still stung by her family's meddling in her
marriage to James DeBarge.
Control was one of the ten best-selling albums of 1986, so Janet had
reason to question Joseph's judgement. John McClain said that he would
have been ‘scared’ if Joseph had championed the record because, as he put
it, ‘I wasn't trying to get a fifty-year-old audience. I was trying to get these
kids out here. And because I'm a lot younger than Joseph, I have a clear
vibe on how to do it.’
When Janet's album sold six million copies worldwide, Michael was
ambivalent about its success. One of the reasons he had such difficulty
conceptualizing the follow-up to Thriller was that he was so rattled by
Janet's Control and the public's overwhelming reaction to it. ‘Michael is
used to being the star of that family,’ a family friend said. ‘He was not used
to seeing anyone get as much attention as Janet got. It got to the point
where he didn't want to dance around her because he was afraid she'd steal
his steps. That's how bad it got. Janet is also competitive but has always
been afraid to admit it. She didn't want to admit to herself that what she
really wanted out of her life was to be as big, as famous, as Michael
Jackson.’
‘God, you make me sick,’ Janet Jackson told her brother Michael one
day. ‘I wish Thriller was my album.’ They laughed, but Janet wasn't
kidding.
‘Well, Michael may not want her to be as big,’ John McClain observed at
the time, ‘but it's no sin for her to want it.’
How ‘Bad’ Can It Get?
Finally, in July 1987, Michael Jackson's Bad was released to the public. If
every artist on the planet envied the record-breaking success of Thriller,
surely none of them wanted to be in Michael Jackson's Bass Weejuns when
he tried to follow it up with a new record. Bad was a pleasing offering and
probably would have been considered first-rate if it didn't have the dubious
distinction of having to follow up not only Thriller, but also the masterful
Off the Wall. Ironically, in trying to lead themselves out of the woods,
Michael and Quincy Jones followed the Thriller formula too closely. Songs
like ‘The Way You Make Me Feel’ and ‘Another Part of Me’ were dance-
floor marvels, but the pseudo-romance of ‘Liberian Girl’, the album's
answer to Thriller's ‘Lady in My Life’, didn't work as well. Nor could
‘Dirty Diana’, the production's appointed rock song – featuring Steve
Stevens, former Billy Idol guitarist – hold a candle to the more convincing
‘Beat It’.
The problem with Bad, critics argued, was that unlike Off the Wall and
Thriller, it offered few truly memorable songs. Michael wrote most of Bad
himself, perhaps propelled by his newfound interest in music publishing
and the millions in songwriting royalties he garnered from songs he wrote
for the last two albums. Rod Temperton, whose talents helped make Off the
Wall and Thriller such outstanding albums, was not represented. The
album's most intriguing moment is the reflective ‘Man in the Mirror’,
written not by Michael but by Siedah Garrett and Glen Ballard. Having
gospel stars Andrae Crouch and the Winans sing on the track seemed a
weak attempt to musically endear Michael to a black audience.
However, it was the album's title track that came under the most fire from
the black music community because it seemed that it should have been the
easiest thing for Michael to pull off. Michael was black, his critics
reasoned. He began with Motown. He's a funky dancer. Vocally, his roots
are steeped, at least to some extent, in gospel. Is ‘Bad’ the funkiest – the
blackest – he could get? At best, noted most critics, ‘Bad’ was a lightweight
attempt at a serious, black music.
The ‘Bad’ video was directed by Martin Scorsese, at Quincy Jones's
suggestion. Michael was unfamiliar with Scorsese's work, having seen only
one film he directed, New York, New York. He had wanted George Lucas or
Steven Spielberg to direct the video. However, at this time, Frank Dileo was
trying to toughen Michael's Peter Pan image and felt that another Spielberg-
style fantasy would be counter-productive. Street music – particularly the
rap and hip-hop genres – had begun to dictate pop music and fashion. As a
result, Frank thought it would be beneficial for Michael to get back to
‘basics’. He believed the image of a street-tough cat would serve his client
well.
From the start, there were problems on the set, especially when Michael
tried to tell Scorsese how to direct the video. According to a friend of
Scorsese's, the filming of ‘Bad’ was ‘a nightmare’. Scorsese has said that
the cost of the production went ‘two or three times over budget’, reaching
about two million dollars. However, Scorsese has made no negative
comments about Michael and says he found him to be ‘sympathetic, sweet,
and open’.
The ‘Bad’ script, written by novelist Richard Price, was inspired by the
story of Edmund Perry, a Harlem youth who was educated at a prep school
and was shot to death by a New York plain-clothes policeman who claimed
he had tried to mug him. What began as a good idea – an attempt to
recapture the rebellious spirit of ‘Beat It’, probably Jackson's most
important video – ended up an ill-conceived, albeit entertaining, parody.
‘Michael loves West Side Story,’ said dancer Casper, who danced in the
‘Bad’ video. ‘He had us watch the film one night. He sat on the bed and we
dancers – me, Jeffrey, Daniel, Greg Burge and some others – were sprawled
all about in a hotel room. He'd have us watch some scenes, and when he
saw something he liked, he'd let out a yelp. “Oooh, did you see that? Did
you feel that?” he'd say. That was the attitude he said he wanted in the
video, West Side Story.’
The video's storyline is about a lonely, sheltered school kid, constantly
badgered by peer pressure and neighbourhood street toughs. The youngster
transforms himself into a bold, avenging hell-raiser. It all goes awry for the
viewer, however, because of Michael's ridiculous-looking outfit. Clad in
black – boots with silver heels and buckles; a leather jacket with zippers,
zippers and more zippers; a metal-studded wristband and a wide belt with
silver studs and chains – Michael was slightly overdressed for the ghetto.
The video's debut produced a cynical reaction. Radio stations and
newspapers held contests to see who could correctly guess how many
buckles were on the costume. The Los Angeles Times, for instance, was
deluged with responses from readers:
‘There's one buckle no one will ever detect, and it's located at the back of
his head, to pull the flesh snugly over his ever-increasing new features.’
‘The buckles are part of the continuing treatment he is undergoing to alter
his appearance to that of Liz Taylor as she looked in National Velvet.’
‘Sixty-six buckles – left over from his oxygen gizmo…’
More than the buckles, Michael's concept of what really is bad – as in
‘tough’ and ‘streetwise’ – seemed distorted and caricatured. He shouted; he
stamped his feet; he flicked his fingers and shook his groin. He tugged at
his crotch repeatedly. Is this what Michael sees from the tinted window of
his limousine?
Michael may have been a little overdressed for an urban subway rider,
but the surrounding players and dancers certainly looked the part. However,
it was difficult to imagine their being so quick to follow anyone – black or
white – who looked as effeminate as Michael did in this video. There was
something disconcerting about Michael – wearing more pancake makeup
than Joan Crawford ever did and flaunting Kirk Douglas's chin cleft –
shrieking at a group of tough, black gang members, ‘You ain't nothing'.’
The viewer couldn't help but think, This boy is going to get hurt. As one
observer noted, ‘In Michael Jackson's loathsome conception of the black
experience, you're either a criminal stereotype or one of the Beautiful
People.’
The original photograph intended for the cover of the Bad album was a
close-up of Michael's heavily made-up face superimposed with black floral
lace. Walter Yetnikoff, president of CBS Records, purportedly phoned
Frank Dileo and said of the feminine-looking picture, ‘Look, this cover
sucks.’ The photo eventually used – Michael in a tough-guy-with-fists-
clenched-at-his-side pose, wearing his leather outfit from the ‘Bad’ video –
was taken as an afterthought during a fifteen-minute break while shooting
the video.
Michael's first single from Bad, ‘I Just Can't Stop Loving You’, was
released worldwide on 27 July 1987, and went straight to number one in
America, and to the same position in the UK after just two weeks.
Then, Michael's Bad album debuted at number one on the Billboard
charts, an amazing feat proving that even when Michael does wrong, he can
do no wrong. The album received generally lukewarm reviews, but that
didn't matter either. ‘We win,’ Frank Dileo said. ‘We're into winning.’
The second single, ‘Bad’, also went to number one in America, Britain
and countries around the world. (In the UK the album was even number one
for five weeks, and remained on the charts for an amazing 109 weeks. It
sold 350,000 copies in five days, the first time that had ever happened in
Britain for any artist.)
Michael had a hit on his hands with the Bad album, but certainly nothing
as big as Thriller, However, could it ever have attained Thriller status? Isn't
it enough that Michael managed such a feat once in his amazing lifetime?
In September 1987, the month his Bad tour kicked off in Tokyo, People
published a cover story on Michael with the headline, ‘Michael Jackson:
He's Black. He's Bad. Is This Guy Weird, Or What?’
Apparently, such coverage was what the Elephant Man had wrought…
Cutler Durkee, the writer of the feature, explained that the public's
perception of Michael Jackson had shifted from ‘Here's a really interesting
guy’ to ‘Here's a guy I don't understand any more’. Durkee hastened to add,
however, that that's precisely why people continued writing about him.
Of course, Michael had good reason to be unhappy with the story. ‘They
made me sound like a freak,’ he said. ‘None of that stuff is true.’
Because of such adverse publicity, Michael's tour had a shaky start.
Michael thought the act still needed work, but he had no choice but to begin
the schedule. The dates were set. Therefore, in September 1987, he
reluctantly began what would end up being an exhausting, eighteen-month-
long world tour. ‘Whatever we play,’ Michael and his crew members would
yell while clapping their hands and stomping their feet just before hitting
the stage, ‘it's got to be funky!’
After a successful kick-off in Japan, where he was dubbed ‘Typhoon
Michael’ (and grossed twenty million dollars), Michael had problems in
Australia. Ticket sales proved low. Foreign newspapers had latched on to
that ‘Wacko-Jacko’ moniker and the Aussies thought he was a head case.
‘He's giving the world a gift, his talent,’ complained his former sister-in-law
Enid Jackson, ‘and, in return, the world tries to crucify him.’
While Michael was on tour, he wrote a letter to People and asked that it
be published. He wanted to make known his feelings about the adverse
publicity he'd received of late. In an odd writing style – no margins, no
indentation, and childlike penmanship – Michael wrote:
‘Like the old Indian proverb says, do not judge a man until you've
walked 2 moons in his moccosins [sic]. Most people don't know me, that is
why they write such things in wich [sic] most is not true. I cry very often
because it hurts and I worry about the children. All my children all over the
world, I live for them. If a man could say nothing against a character but
what he can prove, his story could not be written. Animals strike not from
malice, but because they want to live, it is the same with those who
criticize, they desire our blood, not our pain. But still I must achieve. I must
seek truth in all things. I must endure for the power I was sent forth, for the
world, for the children. But have mercy for I've been bleeding a long time
now. MJ.’
‘I'm not sure I even understand this letter,’ Frank Dileo said to an
associate after it was published in the magazine as a cover story. ‘If you
read it carefully, it doesn't make sense. “They desire our blood, not our
pain.” What the fuck does that mean?’
The associate studied the letter again. ‘You know, it's not really about the
letter,’ he told Frank. ‘It's what it says about Michael. He's losing it… the
man is losing it. Can't you see that?’
Frank began to shake his head in despair. ‘Jesus Christ,’ he exclaimed.
‘What have we done? What's going on with this kid? What the fuck is going
on with this kid?’
The White Man Won't Let Him…
In January 1988, Michael was well on his way to his thirtieth birthday.
Despite his best-selling records, his celebrity and his great fortune, he had
recently begun to lament that he felt undervalued not only by the music
industry, but by the public, as well. ‘They call Elvis the king,’ he
complained to Frank Dileo. ‘Why don't they call me that?’
One would think that, given all he had achieved, Michael would have
been satisfied. He wasn't. Indeed, ever since he was a child, he had been
taught that being number one was the most important thing he could do
with his life. Because it was a goal he had worked toward for years,
reaching it before his thirtieth birthday seemed anti-climactic. After all,
what was left for a recording artist to do after selling more records than any
person ever in the history of popular music?
Michael never strategized his career in terms of artistic development. He
couldn't imagine recording an album for any purpose other than for it to be
the biggest and best, ever. He needed to have his work acknowledged in a
huge way, or he simply was not going to be satisfied. Perhaps such
determination can be traced back to his days as a youngster when The
Jackson 5 competed on talent shows, when the only goal was to be the
winner. That forum was Michael's original training ground.
Maybe one of the reasons Michael was not respected by the public and
music industry is because the masses sensed in him the lack of two essential
qualities possessed by artists such as Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, John
Lennon, Elvis Presley: humour and humanity. It had become increasingly
difficult in recent years to relate to Michael as he stood onstage in his
military outfit, accepting his many awards, whispering his thanks in an odd,
highly pitched tone, and then taking off his sunglasses for a quick moment
because his friend Katharine Hepburn told him to do so. It was as if he was
from some other planet, not earth.
While there was still something about Michael's humility that was
engaging, especially considering his many gifts, there was still a nagging
problem with his image. Certainly, his fans admired his prowess as a
vocalist and his stylized genius as a dancer: he was – arguably, still is – the
quintessential entertainer. While the public could identify with many other
rock stars whose humanity and accessibility supersede their stardom, it was
unable to identify with Michael. After all, who knows anyone like Michael
Jackson?
After, Thriller, Michael saw himself as bigger than The Beatles and more
important than Elvis. ‘They call Bruce [Springsteen] the boss and he's really
overrated,’ Michael complained. ‘He can't sing and he can't dance. And if
Elvis is supposed to be the king, what about me?’
The fact that Michael is black complicated matters. Promoter Don King
had preyed on his insecurities in 1984 during the Victory tour by telling
him, ‘You're the biggest star ever, but the white man will never let you be
bigger than Elvis. Never. So, you can forget that.’ Michael was stung by
Don's observation, so much so that he telephoned his attorney, John Branca,
in the middle of the night and, without explanation, blurted out, ‘They'll
never let me be bigger than Elvis.’
When John asked what he was talking about, Michael answered, ‘The
white man – because I'm black.’
John reminded Michael that he had already outsold Elvis in record sales.
He said that he believed Don had filled Michael's head with racist notions.
However, for the next couple of days, Michael continued to complain
about being victimized by his race until, finally, John became so upset he
refused to speak to him. When Michael began leaving desperate messages
on John's answering machine, begging him to return his call, John finally
wrote him a letter. In it, he expressed how much he loved and admired him,
and why he felt Michael should rise above the kind of racist thinking Don
King propagated with his harebrained theory about Elvis and the white
man. If Michael didn't get over Don's remarks, John wrote, he wasn't certain
he would be able to continue representing him, that's how much such
thinking hurt him. When Michael read the letter, he was moved. Though he
promised to try to forget Don King's words, he never really did that.
(Wisely, he also never mentioned the subject to John Branca, again.)
By 1988, Michael seemed to have found a variation on the theme: he
began complaining about feeling undervalued by white America, griping
that he had an ‘image problem’. By this time, though, no one in Michael's
camp had a clue how to solve such a problem; it was a little late now to start
worrying about his nutty image. Even if Norman Winter or Michael Levine,
the two publicists who'd worked with Michael to help create the ‘problem’,
could fathom a way to promote him as an accessible human artist with goals
that were artistic instead of just commercial, it would never work. No one
would believe it; Michael simply wasn't that way and didn't even know how
to act that way.
Michael has always been myopic in his thinking about the music
business: how many records are being bought by his fans? How long does it
take to get to number one? How many tickets are sold? For Michael,
commercialism is key, and he doesn't understand any artist who doesn't
understand that. After all, Joseph dedicated himself to getting his kids out
of Gary so that they could have a better life, not so they could make
important contributions to the music industry. In his mind, Michael was still
there with Joseph, trying to out-do the other acts at the Apollo. Any artist he
perceived as being a threat to his dominance on the pop charts, was viewed
with scepticism.
For instance, Michael has never been a fan of Madonna, a woman who
has managed to combine commerciality with artistic vision because, from
the start, she has had something she wants to communicate with her music
and, usually, a clear-eyed vision as to how to go about it. She gives
interviews; she has a point of view. Other than lamenting about his lost
childhood and his victimization at the hands of the media, Michael has
never had much of a public viewpoint about anything. He's not what one
would call articulate, not by any stretch of the imagination. He's a genius on
stage, but in the public eye he's stilted. He is constrained by his insecurity,
his bashfulness and his deep fear that he will be revealed as being less than
what he would like to be for his public. It's understandable, considering his
life, considering the way he was raised by Joseph to think so little of
himself.
‘She just isn't that good,’ Michael told one associate of Madonna. ‘Let's
face it. She can't sing. She's just an okay dancer. What does she do best?
She knows how to market herself. That's about it.’
In 1989, Madonna was named ‘Artist of the Decade’ by many newspaper
and magazine polls. Warner Bros., her record label, even paid for an
advertisement in one of the industry trade publications pronouncing
Madonna ‘Artist of the Decade’. It was the kind of empty compliment
record labels often give their artists in paid promotions, but Michael was
incensed by it just the same. He telephoned John Branca and Frank Dileo
and complained that Madonna didn't deserve such an award. ‘It makes me
look bad. I'm the artist of the decade. Aren't I? Did she outsell Thriller?’
Michael asked, his vast insecurity coming forth. ‘No, she did not,’ he said.
John who, lately, was in the business of problem-solving for Michael,
suggested that he could approach MTV with the idea of a fictional award.
Off the top of his head, John came up with something he called ‘The Video
Vanguard Artist of the Decade’ award. That title sure sounded impressive to
Michael; he was happy, again. ‘That'll teach the heifer,’ he said, speaking of
Madonna.
And so it came to pass that at the MTV Awards in 1989, Michael was
presented with the ‘Video Vanguard Artist of the Decade’ trophy. Peter
Gabriel handed over the honour, certainly not the most meaningless award
ever offered at such a festivity, but sad in that it was given to a fellow who
really wanted people to know he deserved it. (To this day, the Michael
Jackson Video Vanguard award is presented to artists who excel in that
medium, a testament not so much to Michael's amazing videos, but to John
Branca's amazing ability to placate his client.)
It's ironic, considering Michael's obsession with Elvis Presley, that John
Branca represented the Presley estate. John once mentioned to Frank Dileo
that Elvis used to give his trusted employees Cadillacs. He suggested to
Frank that it was time for Michael to start taking care of his trusted
associates in that same fashion, especially considering all of the bullets
John had dodged on Michael's behalf over the years. John was only half-
joking. Who wouldn't want a new car?
‘Hey, Johnny, that's a damn good idea,’ Frank said, seriously.
Later, Frank had a talk with Michael. ‘Hey, Mike, listen up. You think
you're as good as Elvis?’
‘Yeah, I do. Of course I do,’ Michael answered.
‘Well, you know what? Elvis used to give his people Cadillacs,’ Frank
said. ‘You're a little cheap sometimes, Mike,’ Frank added with a grin. He
nudged him, good-naturedly.
‘What do you mean cheap?’ Michael asked, defensively.
‘Well, hey, Mike, you got sort of a reputation. No big deal. Let's change
the subject.’
Frank had planted the seed.
A few months later, when Michael and John Branca were in London
negotiating the ATV acquisition, Michael said to him, ‘Branca, if you get
me The Beatles catalogue, I'll buy you any car you want, just like Elvis
would have done.’
‘Including a Rolls-Royce?’
‘You got it,’ Michael said.
Of course, John Branca later brilliantly closed the deal… and Michael
bought him that Rolls. The only problem was that he didn't buy one for
Frank Dileo. Frank was on the phone to John as soon as Michael told him
he had bought him a car.
‘He got you a fucking Rolls-Royce?’ Dileo asked, bewildered. ‘I can't
believe this. It was my fucking idea, and you ended up with the Rolls!’ The
two had a good laugh. Finally, Frank got a Rolls from Michael as well. Both
guys had played Michael, no doubt about that. John deserved a vehicle, that
much was clear, if only for clearing the way for Thriller to be released, both
the album and the video. One has to wonder about Frank Dileo though,
considering the undeniable damage he had done to Michael's image.
However, in truth, he was doing exactly what Michael had asked him to
do… so, yes… he probably deserved a Rolls-Royce, too.
On 23 February 1988, Michael Jackson brought the Bad tour to the United
States for the first time at the Kemper Arena in Kansas City, Missouri. By
this time, the three single releases from Bad – ‘I Just Can't Stop Loving
You’, ‘Bad’ and ‘The Way You Make Me Feel’ – had all gone to number
one. Michael was in good spirits, especially since Frank Dileo predicted
that there would probably be two more number-one hits.
Before the show, the Jackson crew unloaded eight truckloads of
equipment, including seven hundred lights, one hundred speakers, a
massive stage, two huge video screens, and eighty-five costumes. On the
night of the concert, banks of floodlights rose from the stage bathing the
audience in blinding white light before he appeared, frozen still onstage in a
line of dancers. Dressed in a black toreador's outfit with buckles down the
trouser seams, Michael exploded as a supernova of energy in motion to the
strains of the opening number. ‘Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'’.
There were startling and grandiose effects: bullet-like, multi-coloured
laser beams, smoke bombs and explosions, all of which were effective and
loud. There was also plenty of shtick: Michael disappearing from one side
of the stage and reappearing on the other in a puff of smoke; Michael
swinging out over the audience on a boom crane during ‘Beat It’. In terms
of pure stagecraft and showmanship, it was impossible to fault Michael and
his huge supporting cast, including four male dancers who took the place of
Michael's brothers.
In this show, Michael also became much more sexually suggestive. He
grabbed his crotch at least five times during the opening number. His
ungloved hand hovered around his groin during most of ‘Heartbreak Hotel’,
‘Bad’ and ‘Beat It’. It was an odd gesture coming from someone like
Michael, but the seventeen thousand mostly middle-class white fans seemed
to love it; the audience was on its feet for the entire slick, demanding, two-
hour performance. Every time Michael moonwalked across the stage the
audience would cheer and Michael's face would light up. It was clear that
he still enjoyed performing.
‘The word “superstar” became meaningless compared with the power
and grace pouring from the stage,’ wrote Gregory Sandow, who reviewed
the concert for the Los Angeles Herald Examiner.
Vocally, Michael was in terrific shape; his voice teacher, Seth Riggs,
travelled with him for much of the tour. ‘He's a high tenor with a three-and-
a-half octave range,’ Riggs said. ‘He goes from basso low E up to G and A-
flat above high C. A lot of people think it's a falsetto, but it's not. It's all
connected, which is remarkable. During his vocal exercises he would put
his arms up in the air and start spinning while holding a note. I asked him
why he was doing that, and he said, “I may have to do it onstage, so I want
to make sure it's possible.” I'd never seen anything like that before. I
thought maybe I should stop him so he can concentrate on his voice now,
and dance later. But I figured if he can do it, let him do it.’
A good third of the show consisted of material Michael and his brothers
had used in Kansas City four years earlier when the Victory tour opened,
right down to some of the dialogue. This time, though, Michael performed
‘Thriller’ in his act – complete with werewolf mask and the kind of high
school jacket he wore in the video – now that he no longer considered
himself a Jehovah's Witness.
When Katherine and Joseph saw the show, they were disturbed by it. ‘He
should have his brothers with him,’ Joseph said, not letting go of that idea.
‘What the hell's the point in not having them? I don't get it. He's got a good
show, but with his brothers it's a better show.’
Katherine told Frank she thought Michael was better when he performed
with his brothers. Frank laughed in her face. ‘You are crazy,’ he told her.
Imagine, telling Michael's mother that she was crazy! Of course, she was
offended. ‘I am not crazy,’ she shot back. ‘The show would have been
better with the brothers, and that's that.’
‘Yeah, well…’ Frank said before walking off.
Just prior to going onstage in Kansas City, Michael was handed a copy of
the Star, a tabloid, with the cover headline, ‘Michael Jackson Goes Ape.
Now He's Talking with His Pet Chimp – In Monkey Language’. The story
claimed that Michael was now obsessed with learning how to communicate
with his pet monkey by making chimp sounds. ‘Did Frank plant this?’
Michael wanted to know. ‘Where'd they get these pictures of me and
Bubbles?’
Michael's aide shrugged his shoulders.
‘Well, I don't like it,’ Michael said. ‘I don't want to see this. Don't show
me this kind of stuff before I go onstage. What the hell's the matter with
you?’
Like many stories published about Michael, the tale of his fixation with
Bubbles – a three-and-a-half-year-old chimp who had been released to
Michael from a cancer lab in 1985 – was false. Michael enjoyed his ape, the
way he enjoys all of his animals, but even though master and ape
sometimes ate together at the dinner table – good enough material for a
story in and of itself, one would think – he wasn't speaking chimp language
to his pet, not that anyone knew, anyway. (Incidentally, contrary to some
reports, there has only been one Bubbles – not a series of monkeys named
Bubbles. Just the one.)
Katherine had been after Frank for months to stop promoting her son as
‘Wacko-Jacko’. She later said, ‘I spoke to him about it on numerous
occasions. I knew it was not a good idea, it was backfiring. But, there was
nothing I could do about it.’
Partly as a result of the bizarre image Michael had cultivated, it seemed
that some of his public had begun turning against him. Rolling Stone's
readers voted him the worst artist in nearly every category in its yearly poll.
Still, he hoped for some redemption at the Grammy Awards on 2 March.
He decided to perform on the telecast, the first time in five years he had
entertained on television. ‘Michael wanted to erase all the negative
publicity that had been trailing him and replace it with a positive image of
him doing what he does best,’ said Bob Jones, vice president of
communications for MJJ Productions. He wanted to prove to the world that
he is serious about entertaining, that the very essence of him is a performer,
not an eccentric. He did it, too. Anyone who saw his riveting performance
that night would have to agree. He is an intensely competitive person; he
wanted to leave an unforgettable impression of himself with the academy
and with his audience.
However, after truly inspiring, absorbing performances of ‘The Way You
Make Me Feel’ and ‘Man in the Mirror’, Michael then had to sit in the first
row of Radio City Music Hall, in full televised view of millions, and suffer
one humiliating defeat after another. Out of four nominations – Album of
the Year, Best Male Pop Vocal, Best Male R&B Vocal Performance and
Producer of the Year – he had no wins. The last time Michael appeared at
the Grammys, with Thriller, he had received more awards (eight of them)
than anyone else in the history of the event. This time, he got nothing. Most
of all, he had craved the Grammy for Best Album for Bad. However, much
to his dismay, U2 won it for The Joshua Tree.
‘He couldn't have looked any more heartbroken if someone had walked
away with his pet chimp,’ wrote Robert Hilburn, the Los Angeles Times pop
music critic.
‘He went back to the Helmsley Palace, where he was staying, and cried,’
one friend said. ‘He and Frank had made a vow that they would at least win
Album of the Year and, of course, they didn't. He thought the whole thing
was unfair. It wasn't about the music. It was about the image. Would the
Academy give Record of the Year to a guy who sleeps in an oxygen
chamber? Not likely.’
There was little time for Michael to feel sorry for himself, though. The
next day he was due to give a conceit at Madison Square Garden. After the
show, he and a representative from the Pepsi-Cola Company (which had
sponsored the Bad tour) presented a $600,000 cheque, the proceeds from
the concert, to the United Negro College Fund. Four years earlier, Michael
had endowed a scholarship programme at the UNCF with a portion of his
earnings from the ill-fated Victory tour. By 1988, seventy students at UNCF
member schools had received Michael Jackson scholarships. (At some of
the country's smaller black colleges, that could be an entire graduating
class.) Michael maintained a low profile when it came to such donations.
Perhaps if his generosity were better known, he would not have been so
roundly criticized by many African-Americans for not having a so-called
‘black consciousness’. In truth, he has given many millions of dollars to
black charities over the years.
Most people who accompanied Michael on his Bad tour also recall how
generous he was to children who wanted to see him perform. At every
concert stop on his Bad tour, he set aside a portion of tickets for
underprivileged youngsters who otherwise would have been unable to
attend his shows. All of the royalties from his number-one single ‘Man in
the Mirror’ were donated to Camp Good Times, a charity for terminally ill
patients in Los Angeles.
Though his good deeds were going unnoticed, his eccentricities were still
getting the once-over by the media. While on stage at Madison Square
Garden, Michael shared a kiss with model Tatiana Thumbtzen, who
appeared in his video ‘The Way You Make Me Feel’. A week later, the
photo showed up in the National Enquirer with the headline, ‘Michael
Jackson and Model Fall Head-Over-Heels in Love’. The story said that
Michael and Tatiana were having an affair (which was not true) now that
Michael's romance with makeup artist Karen Faye was over (the two were
never romantically involved).
Later, the National Enquirer would run with the story that Michael saw
Jesus Christ materialize from a cloud of smoke while he performed onstage.
That same week, Star would print that Michael had fallen in love with
Princess Diana and wanted her to star in his next video. When Michael
demanded to know where these stories came from, all fingers pointed at
Frank Dileo. By this time, though, Frank wasn't doing anything to promote
such stories. The media was acting on its own, providing Michael with the
image it felt he wanted.
A favourite story among those in Michael's inner circle also appeared in
the Enquirer. It claimed that Prince had used ESP to drive Bubbles the
chimp crazy. ‘Prince has gone too far this time,’ a furious Michael was
quoted as saying in the article. ‘What kind of sicko would mess with a
monkey? This is the final straw. Poor, poor Bubbles.’
Actually, Michael liked that one. John Branca and Frank Dileo had never
seen him laugh so much.
Buying Neverland
In March 1988, while he was still on the road, Michael Jackson finalized
the purchase of his new home, a twenty-seven-hundred-acre estate in the
Santa Ynez Valley then called Sycamore Ranch. He had become enchanted
by the ranch when he stayed there during the time he and Paul McCartney
filmed the ‘Say, Say, Say’ video in Santa Ynez; Paul had leased the home
for the duration of his and his wife Linda's stay.
At Sycamore Ranch, there would be plenty of room for Michael's
menagerie, an important consideration, and the location was far enough
from Encino to guarantee space between Michael and his pesky family
members. The property was owned by developer William Bone, who had
spent many years and a fortune building it to his specifications; the main
house is thirteen thousand square feet. The asking price was $35 million
furnished, or $32.5 million unfurnished. Michael toured the estate by horse-
drawn carriage provided by Bone.
John Branca had advised Michael that, from a business standpoint, the
ranch was not a good investment. Michael intended offering 50% of the
asking price, but even so the re-sale opportunities would be limited: there
are not many buyers for a twenty-seven- hundred-acre ranch that costs
seventeen million dollars. John wrote Michael a letter and told him that if
he really wanted to buy the ranch, he shouldn't do so with any ‘future profit
motive’. He felt it would be a more sensible idea to purchase the property
that was once used as the estate on The Beverly Hillbillies television show.
He also suggested that Michael buy the surrounding property, demolish the
houses that were there, and then he could have five acres of property to do
with what he pleased.
Michael couldn't understand why he should settle for only five acres
when he could have almost three thousand. When he used to visit Paul
McCartney, he was always impressed with Paul's sumptuous acres and acres
of verdant property. ‘My guests expect something grand,’ Michael told
John. ‘It's gotta look like I've made it big, because I have.’
A difficult and lengthy negotiation with William Bone ensued because
John was determined to secure the best possible deal possible for Michael.
However, Michael was impatient; he called John three times a day,
prodding him on. Finally, Michael decided that John really did not want
him to have the property, that his stalling could lose the deal altogether. He
became angry. He wanted that estate, and that's all he wanted. He went right
off the deep end over it, and reportedly asked another of the attorneys at
John's law firm to break into John's office and steal the file on Sycamore
Ranch… and then get to work on closing the deal. Of course, the lawyer
didn't do it and, in fact, informed John, who was astonished. He telephoned
Michael and asked how he could think to do something so terrible.
‘Because I think you don't want me to spend too much money,’ Michael
said in his own defence. ‘You don't want me to have the ranch.’
John told him he was right, he didn't think Michael should make the
purchase. However, he intended to follow Michael's wishes, anyway. He
hoped that Michael would never again pull a stunt like that one. John was
genuinely hurt by it, but it also showed him how irrational Michael can be
at times – not that he needed further proof of this fact.
At the last minute, William Bone began having second thoughts about
selling the ranch to Michael. He said that he didn't want to lose his
emotional connection to the property; he treasured it that much. More than
likely, he realized that he was losing a lot of money and was getting ‘cold
feet’ about it. John submitted an offer of fifteen million dollars, which was
not accepted. After a series of counteroffers, Michael's final offer of
seventeen million dollars was accepted, certainly a let-down for Bone,
considering his thirty-five-million-dollar asking price. Why William Bone
took such a loss is still an open question, except that he may have just
wanted out of Sycamore Ranch. Michael also got all of the furnishings and
eighteenth- and nineteenth-century antiques as part of the purchase. A fully
stocked wine cellar went along with the deal. Because Bone started causing
a fuss – and John knew that if he lost this deal, Michael would become a
real liability in his life – he came up with a clause in the sales agreement
that allowed Bone to spend one week out of every year at the ranch for the
next three years, subject to Michael's schedule. Therefore, Bone wouldn't
feel that he was losing the property entirely. The sale was concluded,
successfully. The press reported that Michael paid twenty-eight million
dollars for the estate, which was fine with Michael, for obvious reasons.
The first thing Michael did was change the name of the ranch to
‘Neverland Valley’, though it is usually called, simply, Neverland. When
Michael had to conduct business in Los Angeles, he would stay in a
condominium he leased in Westwood, which he called his ‘hide-out’.
Otherwise, he would stay at Neverland, and never again at Hayvenhurst.
Leaving his parents' home was obviously a big deal for Michael. He was
sad to leave his mother, but eager to view Joseph as someone to whom he
no longer had any responsibility. Still, he couldn't actually face them with
the news. In fact, he didn't tell them anything about his negotiation for
Neverland Valley, nor did he tell them when it was purchased. Katherine
and Joseph found out that Michael was leaving Hayvenhurst while
watching the American television programme Entertainment Tonight.
Panicked, Katherine telephoned Marlon to ask him if he knew anything
about it. Marlon then called Michael. Michael said it wasn't true.
Apparently, Michael didn't want anyone to know what he was up to, lest
they all gang up on him to talk him out of it – which they definitely would
have done. The next day, Michael instructed certain employees of his to go
to the Encino home and take from it the possessions he now wanted at
Neverland. ‘I was waiting for Michael to come to us and say something,’
Joseph said, sadly. ‘But he never did.’
A few weeks later, Michael hosted a housewarming party for his
relatives, but he did not invite Joseph or Katherine. ‘That hurt us both,’
Joseph recalled. ‘We'd seen a lot from that boy, but this was really
something we couldn't figure out. I don't know why he would be so hurtful
to us, and especially to Kate. I couldn't understand it,’ he said.
As it happened, Michael's name was not on the original purchase
agreement for the estate. Rather, the agreement was signed by his lawyer,
John Branca, and his accountant, Marshall Gelfand, all at Michael's
instruction. He had told them that he didn't want anyone to be able to check
public records of property ownership and figure out where he lived.
Marshall suggested that a trust be set up with himself and John as trustees.
Michael owned the trust and could fire both men at any time. The two could
do nothing with the property without his permission. To Michael, it was a
good idea… but only for a couple of days. He's too insecure, and maybe too
paranoid, to allow such a situation to exist very long. It was Bill Bray who
had a talk with Michael about the property, stoking the fires. ‘Man, you
don't own this place, they do,’ said Bill, being completely unreasonable and
naive. ‘You need to check this out, Michael. What's gonna happen if they
decide to kick your ass out. What'chu gonna do then, Michael? Huh?’
The next day, Michael called Marshall and demanded to know why he
didn't own his own property.
‘But you do own it,’ Marshall explained. ‘It's set up as a trust, Michael.
It's what you asked for.’
‘Well, I don't like it,’ Michael said, curtly. ‘I think it sounds fishy.
Change it. I didn't spend all of this time working on this negotiation to now
not own the place. It's my house.’
‘Fine, we'll terminate the trust,’ Gelfand responded. ‘It's done.
Terminated.’
On 11 April 1988, John Branca and Marshall Gelfand signed individual
grant deeds turning over the property to Michael Jackson, thereby
dissolving the trust.
Michael hoped for a serene lifestyle in his new, palatial estate. He said he
needed space, a place to think, time off after the Bad tour. However, his
family now felt that he'd distanced himself from them geographically, as
well as emotionally. As much as they missed him, they were also worried
about their futures without him. What could the Jacksons do without
Michael? Not much. Joseph, Katherine and the brothers were thinking
about another reunion tour, and it would only be a matter of time before
they approached Michael with the idea. As it would happen, the Victory
tour fiasco of 1984 would pale in comparison to what they now had in
mind. However, this time Michael would not be quite as accommodating.
Enter the Moonies
In the spring of 1988, Jerome Howard, the thirty-five-year-old president of
business affairs for Joseph and Katherine Jackson's many entertainment
corporations, received a telephone call from someone named Kenneth Choi,
a Korean businessman who desperately wanted to arrange a meeting with
Joseph. Kenneth, who had already been booted out of Michael Jackson's
office – as well as the offices of his accountant, Marshall Gelfand, and
attorney, John Branca – told Jerome that he was from a wealthy family
interested in spending millions to organize and promote a Jackson family
concert tour in Korea. Realizing, of course, that just such a reunion was
always on Joseph's and Katherine's minds, Jerome arranged a meeting
between Kenneth and Joseph.
‘Millions of dollars were offered at that meeting,’ Jerome remembered.
‘The guy was talking ten to fifteen million. Whatever it would take to get
the Jackson brothers to come together for these concerts, that's what he and
his family wanted to spend. Joseph was excited. Choi invited us to go to
Korea to check things out. We didn't know what was happening; all we
knew was that the guy had a lot of money – and he wanted to give it to us.’
Joseph, Katherine, Jerome and Kenneth took a four-day trip to Korea,
paid for by Kenneth. They were wined and dined and introduced to several
wealthy and influential business people, celebrities and politicians. They
also met a gentleman who could not speak English, named ‘Mr Lee', who
was introduced as Choi's brother. They were told that Lee, who owned a
shipping company, would be the primary backer of the proposed Jacksons
concerts, along with the Segye Times, a Korean newspaper. Through his
interpreter-secretary, Mr Lee said that if the concerts were successfully
organized, he would also invest two million dollars in a record company for
Joseph. Of course, Joseph was intrigued and eager to move forward with
the deal.
‘These people knew the strengths and weaknesses of the Jackson family,’
Jerome Howard recalled. ‘They knew that Joseph was interested in getting
money for his company, and for himself. They understood that Katherine's
interest was for her family. She wanted to make money for her children.
They seemed to know everything about the Jacksons, and they knew how to
play all the angles.’
In the course of meetings, Jerome soon discovered that the Segye Times is
owned by the Reverend Sun Myung Moon and the Unification Church. The
so-called Moonies, as it turned out, were actually to be the ones primarily
backing the tour.
Although many people have joked over the years about being hassled for
small change by young Moonies in airports, Moon's followers have actually
raised a lot of money, which Moon has invested in a number of diversified
enterprises, including banks, restaurants, fisheries and the media. However,
the Unification Church has been a lightning rod for controversy: Christian
fundamentalist groups have charged that the Church is not Christian; liberal
groups have accused them of being too right-wing; parents have hired
deprogrammers to kidnap their children who are living in Moonie
compounds. Although membership has rapidly declined, the Unification
Church is still wealthy.
What Moon craved most for his church was respectability. If he could
align himself with Michael Jackson (the biggest-selling and most clean-cut
pop artist of all time) and the Jackson family (still perceived by many as
being one of the most wholesome families in the United States), Moon
would benefit, greatly. The price would be high, but the prestige would be
well worth the cost.
When Jerome told Joseph and Katherine that the Reverend Sun Myung
Moon was involved in the proposed Jackson deal, Joseph was fascinated; he
had heard that Moon was wealthy. However, Katherine was upset. ‘I don't
want to have anything to do with anything religious,’ she said. ‘Business is
business, but I don't even want to know anything about the religious ties.’
Katherine did not tell Jerome to stop the negotiations. She just didn't want
to know the details.
From the beginning, Jerome was suspicious of the people working on
Moon's behalf. ‘They always spoke Korean behind your back,’ he said.
‘They'd say something in English and then turn to someone and say
something in Korean, and who knows what they were saying? I worried that
we were missing out on important information. It would be my job to
protect the Jacksons as best I could in these sorts of circumstances.’
It was a job Jerome often performed admirably. At about this time,
Katherine and Joseph purchased a six-bedroom house in Las Vegas,
Nevada, where they eventually plan to retire. The house was being offered
for $570,000. The Jacksons brought Jerome Howard to Las Vegas with
them to negotiate a deal. Before they went to meet the sellers, Jerome told
Katherine and Joseph to strip off all their jewellery – probably a quarter of a
million dollars' worth – and put it in the glove compartment of the car.
Then, Jerome brought them into the home to meet the owners. Katherine
and Joseph acted like ‘everyday folks’, never mentioned their famous
history, and must have done a fairly convincing job of acting because, in the
end, they bought the house for only $292,000.
Of the cost of the home, $200,000 came from money that Michael had
given Katherine. She then mortgaged the balance.
A month after their first visit to Korea, Joseph, Katherine, Rebbie and
Jerome returned for more meetings. They attended a meeting with a
Reverend Dr Chung Hwan Kwak, president of the Segye Times. A large,
framed picture of the Reverend Sun Myung Moon hung in his office;
Katherine tried to ignore it. Kwak told Jerome to put together a proposal,
‘“and whatever my son wants to do, we'll do it.” He kept saying “my son”
throughout the whole meeting, and we were under the impression that Choi
was his son [he wasn't],’ Howard recalled. Kwak may of course have meant
the reference in a spiritual, rather than strictly familial, way.
Katherine and Joseph then met privately with Reverend Kwak in their
suite. They had a sumptuous breakfast and exchanged gifts; Katherine gave
him autographed pictures of her family members. After that meeting,
Katherine and Joseph went shopping in Etaewon with a tour guide, all to
keep them busy while Jerome started talking ‘real business’.
Working with Kwak's special assistant David Hose, Jerome Howard
began structuring a deal at the Ambassador Hotel. Joseph, Katherine and
Jerome agreed that the way to structure it was to make the Moonies the
sponsors of the show and Katherine and Joseph the promoters. Katherine
and Joseph would establish a company for this purpose, which they would
call Jackson Family Concerts International. Reverend Kwak's
representatives then took what Jerome had outlined, left the hotel, and
brought the papers to their lawyers. They returned three and a half hours
later.
‘They came back with a contract that was so wild I couldn't believe it,’
Jerome said. ‘They wanted Michael to begin the show by singing the
Korean national anthem and then perform three Korean numbers in Korean
costumes. I looked at that contract and thought, Oh, man, this is ridiculous.
Michael is not going to learn any Korean songs, and he is certainly not
about to wear any Korean wardrobe onstage! When I showed the deal to
Joseph and Katherine, they busted up laughing and were almost rolling on
the floor. “I want to see Michael sing in Korean,” Joseph said. “Now, that is
too much! It's gonna be hard enough to convince him to go along with this,
but wait'll we tell him he has to learn Korean.”’
Jerome negotiated an outstanding deal. The Jacksons would perform for
four nights, one two-hour show each night, at the Olympic Stadium in
Seoul, for which they would be paid $7.5 million. There would also be a
$1.5 million production budget; whatever was not spent of that budget
would go to the Jacksons. One hundred per cent of the profits from
broadcasting rights outside of Korea and 50 per cent of the merchandising
profits would also belong to the family. However, the Moonies would hold
broadcasting and video rights in Korea, as well as 100 per cent of the ticket
sales. The clauses about the Korean songs and costumes were deleted from
the contract. There was further talk that the Moonies hoped to send Michael
and his brothers to Russia and China, and would offer them up to thirty
million dollars in advance for those tours. Joseph, Jerome and Kwak signed
the contract. Katherine didn't sign; she doesn't sign anything, which is why
she is the one with good credit, and not Joseph.
‘The Jackson – Moonie Project,’ which is what it became known as
among the family members, had become a major, multimillion-dollar
proposition for the family. As it happened, most of them needed the money.
Janet and LaToya were not approached because the Koreans only wanted
the brothers, plus Janet was immersed in the recording of a new album for
A&M and would never have toured with the family at this stage of her life.
Jackie, Tito, Jermaine, Marlon and Randy would not be a problem, or at
least that's what Joseph and Katherine speculated. Rebbie had consented to
appear but, again, this tour was only for the brothers. Of course, the entire
deal was contingent upon getting Michael, who was in Europe on the Bad
tour at the time, to agree to it.
‘How will we get Michael to do this?’ Jerome asked Joseph.
Joseph turned to Katherine with a smile. ‘The question,’ he said, ‘is how
will she get Michael to do this?’
‘But what about Michael?’
In September 1988, Michael telephoned Katherine and Joseph from
Liverpool. He was lonely, and missed his family. His tone was weary. ‘I
need a break. I've been thinking about all of us. The family is falling apart,
do you know that?’
Katherine told Michael she agreed with him. ‘What can I do, Michael?’
she asked.
Michael let out a long sigh. ‘I'll talk to you and Joseph when I get back,’
he offered.
He asked to speak to Joseph. Michael then apologized to his father for
some of the material written in his autobiography, Moonwalk, which had
eventually been published by Doubleday. He explained that he hadn't
written the book himself, and that the critical portions were written by
‘someone else’. Whenever Michael is publicly critical of Joseph, he feels
badly.
Joseph wanted to know if Michael was planning to rejoin his brothers
after the Bad tour. Why, one might wonder, would he try to push that
sensitive issue when Michael was clearly reaching out to him? Michael was
firm about it; he told him he didn't want to rejoin the brothers, ‘and please
don't push me about it.’ Joseph then told Michael that anything he had ever
heard about him wanting to exploit him or profit from his success was
simply not true. ‘I don't want to be involved in your business, Michael,’
Joseph said, according to Katherine's memory. ‘I have money problems,
yeah. But all I want is for us to be a family again. Don't you want that?’
‘I do want that,’ Michael said. ‘I really do, Joseph.’
The conversation ended on a hopeful note. Katherine and Joseph felt
optimistic that they would soon have their son back. For Joseph, the timing
couldn't have been better. He was in serious financial trouble after having
lost $700,000 in bad oil well investments, and over $250,000 in his JoCola
beverage company. Plus, a judgement had been entered against him. Three
years earlier he had entered into an agreement with real estate developer
and entrepreneur Gary Berwin to purchase the Berwin Entertainment Center
complex in Hollywood for $7.1 million. ‘Joseph indicated that money was
not a problem,’ said Gary. ‘I had no reason to doubt him. Michael had just
bought The Beatles' catalogue for forty-seven million dollars, so I believed
that the family had access to money. In fact, Joseph laughed when I brought
up the question of finances. “With the kind of family I've got, money's no
object,” he said.’
Gary and Joseph entered into a deal by which Gary would own 15 per
cent of the real estate, Joseph the other 85 per cent. The two would be equal
partners in a recording studio, nightclub and private club in the building.
Joseph shamelessly bandied about the notion that Michael would somehow
be involved. ‘He told me that Michael would come and visit the club often,
and that his presence alone would make the place a success,’ Gary said. ‘He
said that Michael could come in through the guard gates, take the private
elevator, and no one would know when he was coming or going, which
Michael would like. He said that access to the recording studio would be
secretive, which was also good for Michael.’
‘What makes you so sure that Michael is going to want to be involved in
this?’ Gary asked.
‘Look, if I'm involved, then it's a known fact Michael Jackson will be
involved,’ Joe answered, confidentially. ‘You can bank on it. If I'm here and
Katherine's here, Michael's here.’
Joseph decided to pay for the building in cash, rather than attempt to
secure a mortgage with his poor credit. He wrote a cheque for the full $7.1
million and gave it to Gary, telling him not to deposit it ‘until Friday’. On
Friday, he called and told him to ‘wait until Monday’. On Monday, he
called and said ‘wait until Friday’. This went on for a few weeks until,
finally, Gary deposited the cheque – which was promptly returned for lack
of funds.
A year later, the matter was resolved in court; it was ruled that Joseph
had to either buy the property or be responsible for damages incurred by his
having stalled the sale to another buyer. He could not afford to buy it. Gary
said, ‘We finally got Michael served to find out if and how he had led his
father into thinking he would help out. He was in a limousine at the time,
and somebody walked up to him and handed him a paper. He went to sign
it, thinking the person wanted an autograph. It was a summons.’ One can
only imagine Michael's annoyance, to be served a summons in a bad
business deal involving his father. It certainly wasn't the first time, nor was
it the last. He ignored the demand to appear for a deposition.
In October 1988, damages to Gary Berwin had been assessed at three
million dollars. Since Joseph did not have the money, Gary obtained a
judgement against him. To this day, he has not collected on it. ‘It was a
debacle,’ he said, ‘and all because I got myself into this Jackson family
mess. It was the sorriest thing I'd ever done in my life.
‘I couldn't imagine that Michael Jackson, who earns all of these millions,
could not give his father the money. I couldn't believe that he would let his
father go down like that. This building would have put Joseph on his feet
once and for all, and independently of the family. He would never have had
to deal with the kids any more, professionally. I tried to appeal not only to
Michael but also to the other kids, all of whom are isolated by hard-nosed
lawyers. Not one of them cared about Joseph's security. As much as I grew
to dislike Joseph, I also felt sorry for him.’
In fact, Michael never misled his father into thinking he would assist him
in the investment. Joseph had telephoned Michael before he attempted to
buy the complex to ask for assistance. Michael made it clear to him that he
wanted nothing to do with it and warned Joseph not to get involved in it.
Still, Joseph wrote the cheque out… and then hoped to find a way to cover
it. When he couldn't, he called Michael, again. ‘It's only a few million
bucks,’ Joseph said. ‘Help me out, Michael.’
Michael said no, absolutely not. He was not going to bail his father out,
and he could not be convinced to do so, even by Katherine. ‘He has to
learn,’ Michael told one of his associates. ‘If I give him the money, he'll be
back for more, and more, and more. Damn it, I'm just not going to do it. I'm
not doing it.’
Joseph also asked some of his other children for help, including Janet, all
of whom told him they could not, or would not, assist him. Perhaps they
didn't think the investment was a good one, considering Joseph's track
record. Larry Anderson, a friend of Joseph's for fifteen years, explained,
‘Joseph loves his kids. He hoped they would help out. It seems like a lot of
money, but really it isn't when you think of all that was made in that
family.’
By December 1988, the proposed Jackson reunion shows in Korea had to
come to pass, or Joseph Jackson would forever have the large Berwin
judgement hanging over his head. ‘I met with Jerome Howard,’ Gary
Berwin said. ‘We started comparing notes on how this wacky family was
being run. In the final analysis, it didn't look good for either one of us.’
At this time, Michael was in Japan on his Bad tour. Joseph thought if he
could obtain his brothers' cooperation, he may have some leverage with
which to obtain Michael's. Therefore, a Jackson family meeting was set up
at Hayvenhurst, in the family's movie theatre.
First, Joseph and Katherine spoke to Jackie, Tito, Marlon, Randy,
Jermaine and Jermaine's fiancée, Margaret Maldonado. (Jermaine and
Hazel divorced in July 1988. He and Margaret would eventually have a
second child.) The brothers had to be approached carefully, on the chance
they might not agree to go to Korea. For Joseph, it was as if he was going
into the lion's den, that's how suspicious the brothers were of him and of
anyone who would have anything to do with him – like Jerome Howard.
After about two hours, a relieved Joseph came out of the theatre. He was
sweating, as if he'd just run a triathlon.
‘So, now, look,’ he told Jerome, who had been waiting for him in the
living room. ‘You go in there and do what you can. But don't talk to them
about nothing but contracts. Don't mention the Moonies and all that stuff,
'cause then they're not gonna want to do it. Just talk to them about all the
money they're gonna make. That's it.’
When Jerome went into the thirty-two-seat theatre, he found Jackson
family members scattered all about it. ‘I thought, Damn! These people don't
eyen want to sit near each other,’ Jerome recalled.
Jerome stood in front of the screen and delivered a speech about the
proposed concerts. He talked about the millions that could be made, and
how much publicity could be generated. He didn't mention the Moonies, or
much about the financial backing other than Kenneth Choi's involvement.
Immediately afterwards, Marlon rose from his chair. ‘No way,’ he said.
‘Forget it. No more family tours for me. I don't care how many millions are
involved, I learned my lesson the last time. Count me out.’
Marlon was finished with The Jacksons, and he had ambivalent feelings
about Michael. The brothers had hoped to go with Michael on the Bad tour,
if not in a full-reunion capacity, maybe just as part of the act, singing a
medley of old hits. Michael was elusive about the possibility, and never
actually said that he wouldn't be using them on the show. He's the one who
had mentioned it to them but, given the family dynamic, who knows – or
remembers – why. In the end, though, he decided against the idea. ‘I'd hear
from friends what was going on,’ Marlon complained later, in an interview.
‘If he didn't want to tell me the truth, he shouldn't have said anything. But
instead, he lies. The last time I got a straight answer from Michael was back
in 1984.’ No doubt, Marlon was still stung from the most recent fib Michael
had told him, which was that he was not moving out of Hayvenhurst and
into Neverland.
Still, Marlon had a warm spot in his heart for his brother. When he had
trouble extricating himself from his mediocre CBS recording contract,
Michael called the company's president Walter Yetnikoff and secured his
brother's release. ‘I just don't want anything to further ruin the way I feel
about Mike,’ he said. ‘I don't think we should work together. It's better
when we don't.’
‘Well, too bad for you,’ Jackie said to Marlon. ‘Because I'm in.’
‘Me too,’ said Randy.
Jermaine conferred with Margaret; the two whispered back and forth to
each other, urgently. ‘Okay,’ he said, finally. ‘I'm in, too.’
‘Count me in too,’ Tito piped up.
‘But what about Michael?’ Randy wanted to know. ‘What are we gonna
do about Michael?’
‘We don't need him,’ Jackie said. ‘We can do it ourselves, without him.’
Katherine agreed. ‘Oh, let's not bring Michael into this,’ she said.
‘Please. Isn't there some way to do this without him?’
Jerome shook his head. He had to be careful how he put it, but the fact
was that the Olympic Stadium in Seoul seats sixty thousand people, and the
brothers would not be able to fill it on their own. They'd never performed
without Michael, and this was no time to start. Besides, the Koreans wanted
Michael Jackson a lot more than they wanted the rest of them. ‘I think it
would be best if we approached Michael,’ Jerome said cautiously. ‘We
should at least give him the opportunity we have to make this much
money.’
‘Look, just leave him to Mother and me,’ Jermaine offered, impatiently.
‘We'll talk him into it.’
‘How?’ Randy wanted to know.
Jermaine turned to Katherine. She took a deep breath and sighed wearily.
‘I'll see what I can do,’ she said. ‘I'm just afraid that if we push too hard,
we'll lose Michael forever. And then, what will we do?’
‘Attack him – with love’
The final date of Michael Jackson's Bad tour was at the end of January in
1989 at the Sports Arena in Los Angeles. Diana Ross, Elizabeth Taylor,
Dionne Warwick, and many other celebrities attended the concerts, as well
as Katherine and Janet Jackson. Michael dedicated his Motown hits medley
to Berry Gordy, who was sitting with Diahann Carroll and Suzanne
dePasse. 4.5 million people had paid to see Michael perform since the tour
began in September 1987. Over the last year and a half, he had performed
123 concerts in fifteen countries on four continents. The show's weekly
expenses were between $500,000 and $650,000. The tour grossed over
$125 million at the box office.
It hadn’t been all work, however. ‘He would always take time to see the
sights,’ recalled Seth Riggs. ‘When we were rehearsing in Liverpool, he
stopped the practice session so that we could look at some beautiful clouds
that had wafted in. That’s Michael. They closed down the Louvre in Paris
for a whole day while Michael and the rest of us went through. In Rome,
Franco Zeffirelli gave him a big party. All of the crème de la crème were
there, and suddenly Zeffirelli couldn’t find Michael. He looked all over and
found Michael in a room with a bunch of little kids in their pyjamas,
playing. He’s the most natural, loving person I’ve ever known, a very good
person, as corny as that sounds,’ continued Riggs, who still works with
Michael on a regular basis.
‘He’ll see a picture of a baby, and if it’s a cute kid, he will go gaga over
the picture. During the tour, on his nights off, he would go into a toy store
and buy ten of this and ten of that and then stay up all night long putting
batteries into toys, making certain each one worked so that he could have
them ready to give to kids backstage the next day. As if he didn’t have
enough to worry about.’
On one leg of the tour, Michael brought along his ten-year-old friend,
Jimmy Safechuck. Michael had a copy of one of his stage uniforms made
for Jimmy so that they could dress alike. Most people found the relationship
strange, especially when Michael would take him on shopping sprees. He
spent thousands of dollars on toys for Jimmy in London. At one point,
Michael had to cancel two shows because he caught a cold from the kid.
Another young friend of Michael’s, Jonathan Spence, said, ‘When we
hang out. He’s just like any other guy. He never talks about himself, only
about what is going on with others. We never talk about show business.
Sometimes he’ll put on a disguise when we’re in public. When we go to
Disneyland, we’ll go through the back and take all the alleys and back ways
and get in front of the lines. He can’t wait in the line, no way. He would
cause a riot. We move fast through Disneyland; if people get a good look at
him, that’ll be it for that outing.
‘He’s one of the nicest people I’ve ever known. He’s smart. He knows a
lot about everything. He’s a kid. He never really had a childhood, and he’s
having it now. The stuff I read in the papers about him, I know it’s all a
bunch of B.S. I just ignore it. A couple of times I’ve asked him about
girlfriends and stuff, but we never really get into that. We don’t talk about
the plastic surgery either, because it’s none of my business. He never brings
it up. It’s not like he says, “Well, how do you like my new chin?” It’s hard
to get in touch with him, though. I usually have to call his secretary, and
then a couple of days later, he’ll call me.’
After Michael gave Jimmy Safechuck’s parents a hundred-thousand-
dollar Rolls-Royce, Frank Dileo became concerned about the way it looked.
It seemed inappropriate. He suggested that Michael break off his friendship
with Jimmy. Michael was hurt, then angry. ‘No way,’ he told Frank. ‘Forget
it.’
‘But I don’t like it, Michael,’ Frank insisted. ‘It looks bad, you and all
these kids.’
‘Mind your own business then,’ Michael snapped back, ‘and maybe it
won’t look so bad. How’s that sound?’
With the tour finished, Michael and Jimmy holed up at Neverland,
recharging their batteries, so to speak. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to
Michael, someone named Kenneth Choi wanted his signature on the
contract for the Jackson – Moonies Project. ‘I was getting faxes left and
right,’ Jerome Howard recalled. ‘The heat was on. We had to get Michael.
But the timing was wrong. It was a bad time to approach him.’
‘We’re giving Michael his space now,’ Jermaine said at the time. ‘But
after he finishes his tour, we’re all going to attack him – with love.’
Michael might have responded by saying, ‘Please, don’t do me any
favours.’
None of the Jacksons was even able to contact Michael. It was sad that he
didn’t feel comfortable contacting his family members, but he sensed that
whenever he opened himself up to them they ended up wanting something
from him, and he had nothing else to give. ‘Dirty Diana’ realized Frank
Dileo’s prophecy of five number-one hits from the Bad album, the first
album in pop history to generate five number-one singles. Yet, despite all of
the touring, his last two singles, ‘Another Part of Me’ and ‘Smooth
Criminal’ did not make number one. Michael wants every record to go to
number one. The sales of the Bad album stalled at seventeen million,
amazing but still a far cry from Thriller‘s sales of almost forty million. It
was obvious that Michael would not break his own sales record, which
depressed him.
‘They think he’s shy and he’s evasive and all of this,’ observed his
guitarist David Williams. ‘No. He’s just fucking scared and tired of people
bugging him.’
Whenever Michael went out, it was in disguise. For instance, he visited a
pharmacy in Westwood disguised with a large Afro wig and dark glasses.
Still, he was picked out by the store’s manager. ‘I recognized him the
minute I saw his nose and chin,’ he said. When asked what Michael had
purchased, he answered, ‘A hand-held power vibrator.’
One does have to wonder about the true reasons for Michael’s outrageous
disguises. It seems that when he truly wants attention, he wears a costume
so ridiculous he gets the desired result. Occasionally, though, matters get
out of hand. For instance, Michael once went into a jewellery store in Simi
Valley, California, wearing a wig under a baseball cap, a phony-looking
moustache, and fake buck teeth. He was accompanied by a young boy.
Nervously, he continually adjusted his moustache while looking into a
mirror. When employees feared the suspicious character was ‘casing the
joint’, a security guard asked him to step outside and demanded an
explanation. ‘I have to wear a costume,’ Michael said. ‘I’m Michael
Jackson.’ Michael then removed the disguise. By that time, however, three
squad cars had arrived, as had a huge crowd. Michael’s presence, along
with the police, had caused such hysteria, everyone present had to have his
autograph. He happily signed for all. Perhaps the get-up did serve a
purpose, but not the one most people thought it was supposed to serve; he
clearly wanted the attention. He loves his fans, and he also loves knowing
they still love him.
Another time, though, things didn’t work out as well. When Michael was
driving his Rolls while wearing a disguise, he was stopped by a police
officer who thought the automobile ‘looks like a stolen car’. (Of course,
there is a prevailing racism among some police officers in America who
routinely stop blacks who are driving expensive cars.) Michael didn’t have
his licence with him. Worse, he had an outstanding ticket. The officer didn’t
believe he was the Michael Jackson, even when he removed the disguise.
The next thing he knew, he was in the Van Nuys jail. Bill Bray bailed him
out. Afterward, Michael said, ‘It was the coolest thing, ever. I never thought
I’d get to go to jail. I loved every second of it.’
LaToya Gets Naked
Michael was only able to avoid his relatives for about a month before, at the
end of January, his sister LaToya created enough familial chaos to make it
necessary that he re-surface. Michael was now thirty. He had spent the last
twenty years concerned with the public’s perception of him and his family.
Ever since the day in 1969 when Berry Gordy and Diana Ross taught him to
lie about his age, Michael had understood the importance of public
relations. He had always helped to present an image of solidarity where the
Jackson family was concerned, even embarking on the Victory tour with his
brothers when he really did not want to do so. Now, LaToya threatened to
shatter the family’s carefully constructed image of wholesomeness by
stripping naked for Playboy.
The Playboy lay-out was the culmination of a chain of events that had all
but destroyed LaToya’s relationship with her family. She had been unhappy
because the albums she had thus far recorded were all poor sellers. ‘I want
platinum albums,’ she complained. However, Joseph realized that LaToya
had limited vocal ability and stage presence; there wasn’t much he could do
with her. He had tried to convince her to model, but she was ambivalent
about it even though she was a beautiful young woman. She, like Michael,
has had her nose operated on more than once, though she denies ever
having rhinoplasty, and other work, as well. ‘I don’t know who she’s trying
to fool,’ Marlon laughed.
When LaToya decided that she no longer wanted Joseph to manage her,
she followed the example set by Michael, her brothers and Janet: she fired
him by having her attorney send letters of dismissal to him at home, even
though she still lived there with him. Of course, Joseph ignored the letters.
Finally, she decided to confront him. ‘I will sit on you for five years before
I ever let you go,’ he then told her, angrily. After all, she was the only
Jackson he had left. There had to be something he could do with her, he
decided. Later, he thought that he might be able to get her involved in the
Jackson – Moonies Project.
‘But they don’t want her, Joseph,’ Katherine told him. ‘They just want
the boys.’
‘They’ll take her if I tell them they have to take her, or they don’t get
Michael,’ Joseph said.
Katherine wasn’t so sure about Joseph’s logic, especially since she didn’t
know how they were even going to convince Michael to do the tour.
If Joseph couldn’t represent LaToya, then he wanted to be sure no one
else could, either. ‘In other words, he was saying I’d never get anywhere on
my own,’ LaToya recalled, ‘and he’d make certain of that.’ When LaToya
asked Katherine for assistance, Katherine said, ‘I don’t want to get in the
middle of it. It’s between you and your father.’
Hoping to placate their daughter into remaining with Joseph, he and
Katherine hired an outsider, Jack Gordon, to manage LaToya, under
Joseph’s direction. Her parents hoped that she would no longer feel as
trapped. Jack, who was in his mid-forties – had served time in prison for
trying to bribe the Nevada State Gaming Commission. He has also been
linked to underworld dealings and allegedly ran a brothel in Nevada for
four years. In a short time, Jack became more than LaToya’s business
associate. Before anyone in the family knew what was happening, he and
LaToya were plotting a way to extricate her from Joseph and Katherine’s
hold.
‘When I questioned him about some major expenses he and LaToya were
running up on Joseph’s account, Jack threatened my life,’ Jerome Howard
recalled. ‘The man was dangerous, but LaToya felt that Joseph was
dangerous, too. “Do you know my father?” she asked me once. “No, you
don’t,” she answered for me. “You don’t know what he’s like, Jerome. You
don’t know what I’ve been through.”’
In March 1988 – just three days after Michael moved out of the Encino
home – LaToya took off with Jack Gordon. She took just two suitcases, left
her Mercedes in the driveway, and didn’t look back. The family blamed
Jack. They all hated him, and he returned the animus. ‘I love Joseph like
poison,’ Jack said.
In order to boost LaToya’s career, Jack made the deal with Hugh Hefner
that she would strip for a photo lay-out. He reported that she would receive
a million dollars for disrobing. She probably was paid half as much. LaToya
explained her decision, to Hollywood columnist Frank Swertlow: ‘It was a
matter of my letting my family know I am an individual and I want my
independence. That’s very difficult when you come from a large family and
you’ve been controlled all of your life.’
When Katherine heard about the photo essay, she couldn’t believe her
ears. Neither could anyone else who had known LaToya. ‘LaToya was
always the puritanical one,’ said longtime friend Joyce McCrae.
‘I used to always cover my body from head to toe,’ LaToya told Playboy.
‘I guess my shyness came from growing up the way I did, being so
sheltered and having a strict father.’
Katherine telephoned LaToya and asked if it was true. ‘Are you posing
for a Playboy centrefold? Please, ‘Toya, tell me it’s not true.’ One wonders
why Katherine even bothered. Did her famous children ever tell her the
truth about their activities?
‘Oh, Mother,’ LaToya said, ‘where do you hear these things? Of course
it’s not true.’ She then did what Michael always did – she blamed the media
for lying about her. ‘Don’t believe what you hear, Mother,’ she said. ‘You
should know better.’
Later LaToya would explain why she lied to Katherine. ‘Mother did ask
me if I had posed for Playboy. She asked very specifically, “Did you pose
for the Playboy centrefold?” I told her no, and that was the truth. I did pose
for Playboy – but not for the centrefold. It was for elsewhere in the
magazine.’
After speaking to LaToya, Katherine telephoned Michael and, with a sigh
of relief, told him that everything the family had heard about her and
Playboy was a lie manufactured by the media. However, Michael had
already begun his own investigation into the matter and realized that there
was more to the story. He decided to take matters into his own hands.
After making a few more telephone calls, Michael learned that a meeting
at Hugh Hefner’s mansion had been scheduled for the next day, regarding
LaToya’s pictorial. That day, he drove to the mansion and, under the guise
of wanting to visit Hugh’s menagerie of animals, snooped around the estate
with one of his young friends. When he walked into one of the parlours, he
found a group of men sitting around a table, nervously stuffing colour
photographs into their briefcases. ‘What’s goin’ on in here?’ Michael asked
with a ‘caught ya’ grin. Hugh walked over to Michael and shook his head.
The two then had a discussion about LaToya, during which Hugh promised
to send Michael the pictures by messenger later in the week, ‘after they’ve
been touched up.’
A week later, Michael received the photographs. ‘I can’t believe this is
my sister,’ he told a person who still works for Michael today. ‘This ruins
the family image. That’s it. There’s nothing left.’
Michael’s employee said, ‘All he cared about after seeing the pictures
was his mother and her blood pressure. “I’m afraid that when Kate sees
these pictures, she’ll have a heart attack,” he told me. “I’m not even going
to tell her I have them. Hopefully, they’ll touch up ’Toya’s, uh, her, uh,
nipples, at least. I mean, do we have to see her nipples?”’ Michael hoped
that the photographs he received did not represent the actual lay-out.
Perhaps all of them had not been utilized in it. Perhaps LaToya’s nipples
had been camouflaged in some way. He telephoned LaToya.
She says he told her he thought the photos were lovely, which doesn’t
seem likely. When he asked if she had an advance of the final lay-out, she
confessed that she did have it. Would she send it to him? No, she said.
A month later, the lay-out was published. Michael’s worst fears about the
spread of eleven photos were realized. Could that really be LaToya, posing
nude with a sixty-pound boa constrictor slithering between her legs? ‘Boas
aren’t dangerous unless they’re hungry,’ she observed in the accompanying
text.
After the initial shock, there was shame and embarrassment. Katherine
and Rebbie were both humiliated; not only had Latoya disrobed, but she
had clearly had some work done on her breasts. Whereas they had once
been small, they were now… bountiful.
For Joseph, seeing his daughter sprawled out in Playboy with a snake
was an agonizing experience. One of his friends claimed that he and
Katherine sequestered themselves at Hayvenhurst for a month, not because
they were afraid to be confronted but rather because they were heartsick
over what LaToya had done to them. They also blamed Jack Gordon for
convincing her that posing for Playboy would be a good career move.
Michael, too, was irate with his sister, but not only for her career choice
and the fact that she had further damaged the family’s image. He certainly
did not find artistic merit in the photographs and told one friend that, as far
as he was concerned, they represented pornography. However, Michael was
more angry with LaToya because she publicly claimed that he had approved
of the pictures, and was glad she had taken them. ‘When he started hearing
LaToya say on television that he was the only one in the family who
approved, he went nuts,’ said Steven Harris, a former associate. ‘He called
his mother, and they had a long, painful conversation about it. “How can I
talk to her about anything if she twists what I say for her own purposes?” he
asked. Katherine and Michael decided it was best if Michael never spoke to
LaToya. He changed his number and didn’t give it to her. Of course, she
couldn’t get it from anyone else in the family. No one would dare give it to
her once Michael made it known that he didn’t want her to have it. It was a
shame. They had been so close.’
‘You know what?’ he told his attorney, John Branca. ‘I can’t control her,
just as they [presumably his family] can’t control me. So, good for her, I
guess. She did what she had to do and she didn’t care about any of us, did
she? When I do that kind of thing, they all come down on me, hard. So,
good for her if she can take it. Good for her.’ Michael then instructed the
rest of his staff never to bring up the subject of LaToya’s Playboy lay-out in
his presence. ‘I don’t want to hear one more word about my sister’s big
breasts,’ he concluded. ‘I just want to forget the whole thing ever
happened.’
A Million-dollar Bounty on Michael’s Head
‘We need Michael Jackson.’
‘We must have Michael Jackson.’
‘How do we get Michael Jackson?”
In February 1989, faxed communications from Kenneth Choi flooded
into Jerome Howard’s office regarding the ‘Jackson – Moonie Project’.
Still, no one wanted to approach Michael just yet; they were afraid he
would give them an instant ‘no,’ and that would be the end of it. ‘Finally, in
desperation, the Koreans came up with an idea,’ Jerome recalled, ‘a reward.
A bounty was placed on Michael’s head. The price: one million dollars.
Anyone – family member or business associate – who could get Michael’s
signature on the contract would get a million dollars, money which would
come straight from the Moonies. Now, everyone wanted to approach
Michael,’ Jerome concluded with a chuckle, ‘and right away.’
Katherine decided to take the proverbial bull by the horns and telephone
Michael at Neverland to give it her best shot. As she gently tried to explain
the proposed tour, feeding him information about it as gingerly as possible,
Joseph stood nearby, pacing. Finally, he was about to burst. He snatched the
phone from her hand. ‘Michael, now you listen here,’ he declared. ‘You
said you wanted us to be a family again,’ he said, referring to their last
telephone conversation from Japan. ‘Now, look. I got these rich Koreans
and they got this big deal and I want you to do this thing, Michael, ’cause
we’re gonna make a lot of money and we need this money and you know
we do and – ’
‘Joseph, put Mother back on the phone.’
Michael then told Katherine to forget about it. He wouldn’t even consider
another family venture, especially if Joseph was involved in it. He reminded
Katherine of the time (in 1985) when Joseph aligned with a Hollywood
producer to develop a film based on ‘Beat It’ which was to star Michael –
and Michael didn’t know anything about it. He later had to disavow the
project which, he said, was embarrassing. ‘He’s always doing things to get
me involved in projects with him, and I’m not going along with it,’ Michael
said. He didn’t want to tour with the brothers again, either. ‘That’s over,’ he
told his mother. ‘I mean it,’ he concluded. ‘Forget it, Kat. [Michael often
calls his mother ‘Kat’.] I won’t do it and I want you to please just drop it.
Do you understand?’
The good ol’ days when Katherine was able to convince Michael to do
anything she asked of him were clearly in the past.
By February 1989, financial matters had gotten so desperate for Joseph
and Katherine that they could no longer afford to pay Jerome Howard his
salary; he had settled for $3,000 a month, even though they had originally
agreed to pay him $10,000, and now he wasn’t getting anything. Therefore,
he became even more interested in concluding the Jackson – Moonie
Project not only to generate revenue for the family, but for himself, as well.
He decided to go directly to Frank Dileo for assistance. Unfortunately, no
one in the family knew how to get to Frank. The brothers barely knew him,
and Katherine and Joseph never liked meeting with him about anything
because, they claimed, he would then go back to Michael and misrepresent
what they had said. Katherine, in particular, didn’t like Frank – especially
after he said she was ‘crazy’ for thinking Michael could do a better show
with his brothers.
Jerome finally had to pay an associate of Frank’s $2,000 for an
introduction to Frank, who, as it turned out, was at a weight-reduction
centre run by Duke University in North Carolina. Jerome called Frank and
arranged a meeting for them with Kenneth Choi. It took place in a North
Carolina hotel room at the end of February 1989. Frank told Kenneth that if
Katherine was involved in the deal, he would talk to Michael about it. ‘He
loves his mother,’ said Frank. ‘I don’t know. I ain’t promisin’ nothin’. But,
maybe…’ At that point, Kenneth opened his briefcase and took out two
cashier’s cheques made out for $500,000.
‘These are for you,’ he declared. ‘A million dollars.’
Frank laughed in his face. ‘I can’t take a million bucks from you. What,
are you crazy?’ he said. ‘I can’t guarantee Michael Jackson will do anything
for you. Michael is a smart man. He makes up his own mind. No one tells
him to do anything. Do you understand that?’
As promised, Frank then discussed the situation with Michael. Michael
said he didn’t want to be involved. Frank told him to think it over, ‘and
maybe you’ll change your mind, maybe you won’t. It’s your decision.’
‘It was business as usual,’ Frank recalled. ‘Everything was hunky-dory.’
Michael and Frank were inseparable. He was prominently featured on the
Bad record jacket, a picture of him and Michael which was captioned
‘another great team’. Michael also devoted a full page to photos of him and
Frank in his lavish concert tour booklet. In fact, Frank had often said that he
thought of Michael as a son, ‘and he referred to me as a second dad.’
‘I was with the kid every day,’ he recalled. ‘Some days you could have a
decent conversation with him. Some days he was on another planet. But I
got closer to him than anybody else in his life,’ Frank had even advised
Michael about the taboo subject of plastic surgery, telling him that when he
was a youngster he, too, had wanted a cleft in his chin like Kirk Douglas.
‘But that’s enough,’ he told Michael. ‘No more surgery.’
After five years of working for him, Frank Dileo may have thought he
was in good standing with Michael Jackson, that their relationship was, as
he put it, ‘hunky-dory’. He would have been wrong.
Michael Fires Frank Dileo
Three days after the brief telephone conversation about the Jackson –
Moonie Project, Frank Dileo was fired. Michael’s publicist, Lee Solters,
issued a terse statement: ‘Michael Jackson and Frank Dileo have announced
an amicable parting. Jackson said, “I thank Frank for his contribution on my
behalf during the past several years.”’
Perhaps Michael felt he had valid reasons for firing Frank, but he did it in
a cowardly way: he had John Branca do it.
‘Look, man, I hate to have to be the one to tell you this,’ John said, ‘but
Michael doesn’t want to work with you any more.’
‘What? No shit? You’re kiddin’ me, right?’
‘Sorry, Frank,’ John told him. ‘It’s no joke.’
After some more discussion about the matter, Frank said, ‘Okay, fine
with me, then. I just want to get paid whatever is owed me, and then I’ll be
on my way.’
‘Are you pissed off, Frank?’ John asked. He felt badly about it. He liked
Frank and knew that Frank truly cared about Michael.
‘Hell no,’ Frank said, trying to be the tough guy. ‘Look, Johnny, if the kid
doesn’t want me, I don’t want to be around. See you later.’ With that, Frank
hung up. He then left the weight-reduction centre, ‘because I had to get to
work,’ he recalled. ‘I was out of a job.’
The next day, Frank telephoned Kenneth Choi, who was in San
Francisco. ‘I just wanted to tell you that Michael and I broke up,’ he said.
‘What? What’s that mean, “broke up”?’ Kenneth asked. ‘I don’t
understand.’
‘The kid fired me, I’m tellin’ ya. I’m finished. Ka-put.’
‘Oh,’ Kenneth said. ‘That I understand.’
Immediately, word circulated within Michael Jackson’s camp that Frank
had taken the million-dollar reward money, that Michael found out about it,
that this was why he fired him. Of course, this was not true. Kenneth Choi
later recalled, ‘That impressed me a great deal. Frank said that if Michael
did end up going to Korea, then he might take some money as a bonus, but
not before.’
‘Frank could have had one million bucks that day, but he didn’t take it,’
Jerome Howard confirmed. ‘He could have accepted the money, never
gotten Michael’s signature, and it would have taken a lifetime in court
before he’d ever have to return it, if ever. But he’s an honourable man.
Later, Frank told me that he very gently talked to Michael about the Korea
plan. He said, “You can’t just ask Michael straight out to do something, like
Joseph did on the phone. Michael has to be stroked. His ego has to be
massaged thoroughly before he will agree to do anything.” I wondered if he
had massaged it maybe one time too many…’
Actually, Michael was upset with Frank for a number of reasons.
First of all, Michael felt that Frank had taken too much credit for his
success. He was tired of other people taking credit for what he felt was his
own destiny. Because Michael refused to be interviewed, Frank had
developed a high media profile as his spokesman. Many celebrities – and
Michael is one of them – do not like it when their representatives also
become celebrities. Michael’s ego is fragile. Frank was becoming too well
known for Michael’s taste, giving interviews to the press touting his
accomplishments for Michael. Every time he did so, Michael cringed.
‘Frank isn’t even creative,’ Michael told an associate. ‘Let’s face it. I
come up with all of the ideas.’
Michael felt that Frank had also become too dictatorial. For instance,
when the Bad tour played Pittsburgh, Frank’s hometown, he arranged a
gathering so that he could introduce Michael to his close friends and
relatives. ‘Michael, I expect you to be there at eight sharp,’ he said. ‘Do you
understand?’ He knew Michael well enough to know that he might show
up, or he might not. He hoped not to be embarrassed in front of people who
mattered to him. ‘So I will expect you there, right?’
Michael didn’t say anything. Later, he complained, ‘Who is he to tell me
what to do? Screw that, I tell him what to do.’
Michael showed up, but an hour late, no doubt on purpose. Afterwards,
Frank let him have it. ‘You embarrassed me,’ he screamed at him. ‘What’s
wrong with you? How could you do that to me?’
Michael seethed as Frank laid into him. Finally, Bill Bray began shouting
at Frank to leave Michael alone. ‘Fuck you, man,’ Bill said. ‘He don’t work
for you. You work for him. You better check yourself.’ It was an unpleasant
scene.
Another matter had to do with a deal that some thought Frank had
bungled on Michael’s behalf: a multimillion-dollar contract for domestic
theatrical release of Michael’s ninety-minute video Moonwalker (which is
part clip compilation and part musical autobiography).
The film features Michael’s innovative video of ‘Leave Me Alone’, in
which he spoofed his image by showing a shrine to Elizabeth Taylor, a
newspaper headline that read ‘Michael Confides in Chimp’ and a
discomforting segment in which he dances with the Elephant Man’s
skeleton. In the video, Michael moves through a surreal world of floating
chairs, huge chomping teeth and amusement park rides. It took twenty-five
people six months to make the four-minute-and-forty-five-second video.
The project cost Michael Jackson about twenty-seven million dollars.
Moonwalker was released theatrically in Japan, but not in the United States
because of numerous disagreements. It had been reported that Frank was
behind the decision not to release Moonwalker domestically, angering
international distributors who had bought the film for theatrical releases.
When the announcement was made that there would be no domestic deal,
many overseas theatres pulled the film, or scaled down its promotion and
publicity. This decision cost Michael many millions of dollars in lost box
office revenue.
Frank eventually did come up with a multimillion-dollar offer to
distribute the film domestically, but someone else in Michael’s organization
talked him out of it. Therefore, while Michael may have been angry at the
way distribution of Moonwalker was handled, he didn’t blame Frank for it –
not entirely, anyway.
Most of Michael’s associates felt that Michael should have been angry at
Frank, however, for allowing him to spend twenty-seven million on
Moonwalker, a video project whose budget should not have exceeded five
million dollars. In the end, the video made approximately thirty million
dollars in over-the-counter sales and other deals, another tribute to John
Branca’s negotiating savvy and Walter Yetnikoff’s persistence (CBS Music
Video Enterprises distributed the tape). No home music video had ever
come close to generating that much money for its artist. Still, after
Moonwalker, Michael would say that he felt ‘poor’ and didn’t want to
spend any more money on major projects ‘for a long, long time’.
Another problem with Frank was that Michael had become disgusted
with the tabloid image of himself that he believed Frank was continuing to
propagate. But the hyperbaric chamber and Elephant Man’s bones stories
were Michael’s ideas – not Frank’s.
One story that appeared in the Star (on 2 August 1988), was particularly
disturbing to Michael: MICHAEL JACKSON BANS 4 PALS FROM TOUR AFTER THEY FLUNK AIDS
TEST. The article said that Michael fired four employees because they had
tested positive for HIV. ‘I’m really afraid of AIDS,’ Michael was quoted as
having said. ‘I think about having lunch with these guys and shaking hands
and spending so much time together.’ The article also said that Michael was
spending a fortune having his own frozen blood moved around with him
wherever he goes. ‘You never know when you may need blood, and the
only blood I can be sure of is my own,’ Michael supposedly said.
Apparently, Michael was paying the price for the idea he had had years
ago to have a Plexiglas shield constructed between him and his audiences to
protect him from germs during the 1984 Victory tour. He realized at the
time that the plan was absurd, and dropped it. Someone on his team
remembered it, though, and after embellishing it with an HIV twist, then
sold it to the tabloid.
The peculiar idea came to Michael during the time, after his burn
accident, when he had become fascinated with medicine. He’d become a
ravenous reader of medical books and enjoyed reading and hearing about
dreadful diseases. For a while, he also became obsessed with learning about
different surgeries, going so far as to witness operations at UCLA Medical
Center.
‘Michael’s curious about surgery,’ said one former associate. ‘He gets off
on it. He can watch for hours. He especially likes to watch plastic surgeries
– tummy tucks, liposuctions, he’s into all of that. He has even witnessed
brain surgeries.’
While he was interested in medicine, he was not obsessed with catching
AIDS and had only empathetic feelings about the disease. ‘When Michael
read that report, he became upset,’ said Michael Tucker, a friend of the
Jackson family (not the actor). ‘Of all diseases, AIDS is one that Michael is
most sensitive about. “Why would they write this about me?” he said. “That
isn’t me at all. What if people believe this of me? What are they going to
think of me?”
‘He became furious and wanted to know where the report originated. “If I
find out that anyone in my organization planted these hurtful stories, that
person will be fired. I mean it,” he said.’
It’s not known if Michael fired Frank Dileo because he wanted to end his
wacky image in the tabloids. After Frank was gone, though, the stories
continued. It wasn’t necessary for anyone on Michael’s staff to plant them;
writers just made them up as they went along…
The primary reason Michael dismissed Frank was because he was
disappointed that Bad was not as successful as Thriller. It had ‘only’ sold
about twenty million copies worldwide, roughly one-fifth of what Michael
had hoped for it. Thriller sold twenty-four million in the United States; Bad
sold six million.
‘Michael was pissed off,’ said one friend of Frank Dileo’s. ‘He had his
heart set on another huge album. When he didn’t get what he wanted, he
acted like a spoiled, little kid. He threw temper tantrums. He cried. He can
be very dramatic. Frank had his hands full. He had a lot to deal with.’
‘But we did the best we could,’ Frank said of Bad. ‘We made the best
album and the best videos we could. We don’t have anything to be ashamed
of.’ While that may be true, some were whispering in Michael’s ear that
Frank should have done a better job. Doubt began to creep into Michael’s
mind. He had to blame someone for what he thought was a weak showing
for Bad. Therefore, he blamed Frank Dileo.
About a year later, Frank would say there was ‘No warning. Did it anger
me? Yes. The way it was done was an insult. He took away my faith in
people. For a long time, I’ve not been as trusting.’
Frank felt that the least Michael could have done was fire him personally.
However, Michael is not a sentimental person, and never has been one. To
Michael, Frank was not ‘a second father’. Rather, he was a capable
businessman who had, in Michael’s view, exhausted his usefulness.
Michael’s Mother Gets the Reward Money
After Frank Dileo’s firing, Katherine Jackson’s campaign to get Michael
Jackson to go to Korea with his brothers continued, but Michael could not
be swayed.
Now that Frank was out of the picture, Jerome Howard telephoned
Michael’s accountant, Marshall Gelfand, to ask for help in getting Michael
to commit to the Korean venture. ‘By all means,’ Marshall told Jerome.
‘We’re always looking for ways to make extra money for Michael. Call
John Branca, tell him I told you to call, and he’ll convince Michael.
Michael loves to work, so sure, he’ll go.’
‘At this time, the Koreans said, “But what if he won’t go?” They were
panicking,’ Jerome recalled. ‘“Fine, then offer him ten million to come,”
they said. That’s ten million above the seven point five million the brothers
would get and split among themselves. And they said they were going to
give him an airplane from Korean Airlines to travel in, and another plane
for the brothers. This way, Michael wouldn’t have to even see his brothers,
except onstage. I faxed all of this to John Branca, who got back to me right
away and said, “No, Michael doesn’t want to go.” So, then the Koreans sent
a gold bust statue of Michael over to him to try to convince him. Still,
Michael wouldn’t budge. He didn’t want to go, but no one was listening to
the guy.
‘Then the Koreans offered me a gift, a car, because they thought I might
have some influence on Michael, which I did not have,’ Jerome continued.
‘I already had three cars; I didn’t need another. But they wanted to buy me a
seventy-thousand-dollar Mercedes. I told Katherine and Joseph, and Joseph
said, “They’re not gonna buy you no car.” Well, the Jacksons weren’t
paying me any more, so I accepted the Mercedes. When I drove that
Mercedes on to the Jacksons’ property, Katherine was happy for me. I told
her I was going to sell the car and use the money to cover my expenses until
she and Joseph could pay me again. She said, “No, you need that car for
business. They gave you that car. You keep it and don’t you ever sell it.”
But Joseph was pissed off, because they gave me a car but didn’t give him
one. “Those are our kids, Katherine. Why should Jerome get a car, but we
get no car?” he wanted to know. From that time on, Joseph’s attitude about
me began to change. I began to feel I was about to get cut out of the deal.’
The Koreans still felt that if anyone could talk Michael into going on this
tour, Katherine could. Therefore, they upped the ante and actually gave her
the million-dollar bounty – on condition that she get her son’s signature on
the contract within fourteen days. Jerome Howard handed Katherine the
two $500,000 cashier’s cheques.
‘I don’t want that money, Jerome,’ Katherine insisted. ‘Don’t give it to
me.’
‘If I don’t give it to you, then I have to give it to Joseph,’ Jerome warned
her. Katherine took the money.
‘Do you think you can convince Michael?’ he asked.
‘Well, I can only try,’ Katherine said. ‘Michael has a mind of his own,
you know.’ She shook her head in disbelief. ‘A million dollars, I guess we
have come a long way.’
Joseph never imagined that Katherine had a million dollars stashed away
somewhere in Hayvenhurst. Jerome Howard feared that if Joseph knew
about it, he would have cashed the cheques immediately, signature or no
signature from his son. Katherine apparently agreed, because she did not
tell him she was in possession of the reward money. If she got Michael’s
signature on the contract, she said, she fully intended to give Joseph half of
the reward.
In the last year, Michael had made over sixty-five million dollars.
According to Forbes magazine, he had been one the highest-paid
entertainers in the world in 1988. He could be generous when he wanted to
be, but when it came to his family, he had reservations. However, his family
needed his help and believed that Michael should come to their rescue.
It’s true that the brothers did feel that Michael owed them. ‘Michael is
very popular right now,’ Jermaine said at the time, ‘and I feel I’ve
contributed a major part to it. Not just me, but my brothers too. What’s
happened to Michael has a lot to do with what we all did as The Jackson 5.’
In March 1989, Jerome Howard and Kenneth Choi were at the Jacksons’
estate in Encino with Katherine, Joseph and Jermaine, discussing the
problem at hand. ‘I think the best thing would be for him to get closer to his
family,’ Jermaine said. ‘Once you make so much money, it’s just another
dollar. At some point, you have to start looking at the important things, like
love, family and health.’
As they were talking, the phone rang. Katherine took the call upstairs.
Joseph followed.
A few minutes later, Katherine came running down the stairs, huffing and
puffing and saying, ‘Michael’s on the phone. Michael’s on the phone!
Joseph’s talking to him right now.’ Jerome Howard recalled, ‘She was very
worked up about it.’
Jermaine ran to the staircase where Katherine was standing and, in a very
excited tone, said to her, ‘Mother, let Kenneth talk to Michael. Let Kenneth
try to convince him. After all, he convinced you and Joseph in the first
place. He should talk to Michael.’
Katherine was sceptical. ‘I don’t know if that’s a good idea,’ she said as
she ran back up the stairs. It was all so… frantic. ‘But pick up the phone
and try,’ she hollered back at them. ‘It can’t hurt.’
According to Jerome, Jermaine ran back over to Kenneth. ‘Look, man,
you gotta persuade Michael.’
‘But… how?’ Kenneth asked, helplessly. ‘How do I do this?’ He looked
bewildered.
‘Man, I don’t know,’ Jermaine answered. His brow was furrowed; it
looked like he was trying to think of something, quickly. ‘But you gotta do
it. Cry on the phone to him if you have to,’ he said, facetiously. ‘Whatever.
Just do it, man. Do it.’
Kenneth Choi picked up the telephone.
‘Michael, please, my country wants you to come and perform,’ he said in
broken English.
There was a pause. Apparently, Michael was explaining why he didn’t
want to do the tour.
‘But, please, Michael, I beg of you…’
Another pause.
Suddenly, Kenneth began to weep. ‘But, Michael, if you don’t come to
my country to perform, I have no choice but to kill myself,’ he said, his tone
theatrical. ‘I mean it. I’ll do it.’ In moments, Kenneth was sobbing,
uncontrollably.
Jermaine took one look at him and fell to his knees, laughing. He had to
hold his hand over his mouth to stifle the sound. Then, Jerome fell to the
floor, as well, laughing hysterically.
Kenneth ignored them both. ‘You see, this is my mission,’ he continued
on the phone, tears cascading down his cheeks. ‘My mission is to bring you,
the great Michael Jackson, to Korea to perform for all of the people there. I
must see you. Please, I beg of you. Michael, please. Please.’
Finally, Michael agreed to meet with Kenneth Choi. He never could resist
a crying man.
According to Jerome, when Kenneth got off the phone, his demeanour
immediately changed and he began dancing around the room, merrily. ‘My
God, I can’t believe it,’ he whooped. ‘I talked to Michael Jackson on the
phone. Oh my God!’
Meanwhile, since the two weeks Katherine had to convince Michael to
sign the contract had passed, she had no choice but to return the million-
dollar reward money. Joseph was upset with her when he found out she had
the money, and even angrier when he heard she had given it back. ‘We
coulda’ used that money, Katie,’ he said, angrily. ‘Oh my God. The world is
going crazy when my own wife has a million dollars and doesn’t tell me
about it.’
Soon after that, Jerome Howard quit working for Katherine and Joseph
Jackson. ‘I discovered that Kenneth Choi was meeting with Joseph and
Katherine behind my back, cutting a side deal. When I saw this happening,
I quit.’
It had been twenty years since the Jacksons moved from Gary to Los
Angeles in search of fame and wealth. All of them had come to enjoy a
privileged lifestyle. However, somewhere in the process, they seemed to
lose all perspective on reality. It seemed that none of them knew when to
stop; they wanted more, always more. When the Koreans figured out how
to appeal to this acquisitive streak, a new, Moonie-induced decadence
spread like a cancer throughout the family.
The Moonies gave Joseph a Rolls-Royce Corniche; later he would get
more than fifty thousand dollars because, after all, he was Michael
Jackson’s father and, it was thought, he must have some influence on him.
Then, Katherine got thirty-five thousand dollars, because she was
Michael’s mother.
Then, Jermaine got a Range Rover, because he was the brother who, it
was felt, had the most power over Michael. (He gave the automobile to
Hazel, as part of their divorce settlement.)
Then, Michael got sixty thousand dollars and expensive artwork, because
he was, after all, the man of the hour. That wasn’t enough, however, so the
Koreans sent over a white Rolls-Royce Corniche, which Michael happily
accepted. Why not? If they were dumb enough to give it to him, he figured,
he was smart enough to take it. He wasn’t even sure where it came from, he
said. ‘Who are these people, and why are they giving me a car?’ he asked
John Branca.
Other people were getting many thousands of dollars just because they
knew Michael and, it was hoped, had some sway over him. Jerome Howard
said. ‘To the Moonies, this was just so-called seed money, funds they had to
spend in order to get close to Michael.’ Even Michael’s bodyguard, Bill
Bray, got half a million and, today, no one even remembers why or how he
got it.
Everyone was greedy enough to accept what they could before the
Koreans finally realized that the chance of Michael Jackson ever doing
those concerts was nil. The nadir of the debacle was reached when one of
Bill Bray’s girlfriends went to Kenneth Choi and said, ‘Listen up, you. My
boyfriend controls Michael Jackson, and I control my boyfriend. So, if you
want this concert to take place in Korea, then you’d better give me
something.’
‘Well, what do you want?’ Kenneth asked, hopefully. Maybe she could
do the job no one else was able to do. She mulled it over. ‘How about that
560 SEL Mercedes-Benz you have parked in your driveway?’
‘It’s yours,’ Choi said. He handed her the keys.
Finally, Kenneth Choi got the meeting with Michael Jackson he had so
desired. Katherine brought him along with her to the Soul Train Awards
where Michael was an honouree. When Katherine introduced him to her
son, he dropped to his knees and kissed Michael’s hand. ‘My people need
you,’ he told Michael. ‘You must perform in Korea. After all, Japan
attacked our country two times, and you performed in Japan two times. You
even held a Japanese baby in your arms.’
‘Huh?’ Michael asked. He looked perplexed. ‘Who the heck are you?
Mother, who is this person?’
‘Why, Michael, this is the nice man I told you about,’ Katherine said,
eagerly. ‘Kenneth. You know, the man who is putting together the concerts
in Korea?’
From the look on his face, Michael didn’t have the vaguest idea who his
mother was talking about, or why the man in front of him was on his knees.
‘My people need to see you,’ Kenneth continued. ‘You are a hero, a saint
of men.’ He then pulled out a video camera and began taping Michael. ‘No,
wait!’ Michael said, putting his hands in front of his face. ‘Stop! Is this that
reunion thing? Is that what this is?’
‘Yes, Michael,’ Katherine said. ‘Yes! This is him. Kenneth Choi.’ She
was brimming with excitement.
‘But I don’t do business with my family,’ Michael said, turning to
Kenneth. ‘And stop taping me. Stop it, I said.’
By June 1989, after almost six months of feeling pressured by everyone
around him, Michael finally signed a contract to appear in Korea for four
shows that would take place in August. ‘I can’t take another second of it,’
he said in explanation of his decision. ‘These people are going to drive me
crazy until they get what they want. So, let’s just do the shows and get it
over with.’
He would perform only four songs, however, as well as a medley with his
brothers. The rest of the show would be done by the brothers, without
Michael.
‘I’m doing it for Katherine,’ he said of the Korean deal.
The family was elated. Finally, Michael had committed to the Jackson –
Moonie Project. No one received the reward money, however, because
Michael had made up his own mind. ‘He should have gotten the million
dollars,’ said John Branca, ‘for turning himself over to the Koreans.’ (Until
the first edition of this book was published in 1991, Michael didn’t even
know that there had been a reward offered to any family members who
could secure his services.)
Amazingly, considering all that had occurred in the recent six months,
when the deal was signed and it was time to pass the promised millions on
to Michael, the Reverend Moon, who was to fund the venture, decided that
the agreed-upon amount was too high a price. According to Jerome
Howard, Moon wanted Michael’s payment lowered: first to $8 million, then
to 7, then 5, then 4.5, and finally to $2.5 million. Finally, the deal fell apart,
completely.
As a result, Michael Jackson ended up being sued by Segye Times, Inc. –
which is financed by Reverend Moon. Moon wanted his money and all of
the gifts to be returned. Also named in the suit were Joseph, Katherine,
Jerome Howard, Jermaine Jackson and Bill Bray.
Michael, in turn, sued Segye Times, Inc. for eight million dollars saying
that he was not giving back any of his gifts, and not demanding that anyone
else give back theirs, either.
There is disagreement among the participants of the Jackson – Moonie
Project about who is responsible for what had occurred, but most associates
of Michael’s agree that none of it would ever have happened if Frank Dileo
had still been Michael’s manager. After all, in the past, Frank had
intercepted many deals having to do with the family before they even
reached Michael.
Even John Branca could not have protected Michael from the debacle
because by the time Michael went to him for advice, he had made up his
mind to sign the deal. Also, it seemed to some observers that Michael, now
seeming more paranoid than ever, was beginning to lose confidence in John
as well.
‘I don’t even know how this whole thing happened, or how I got involved
in it,’ Michael said at the time. ‘All I know is that I kept saying no, no, no,
no. But my family would not take no for an answer. Look what happened as
a result. The whole thing made me sick. Just sick.’
LaToya’s Drama
In the summer of 1989, after the Jackson – Moonie Project was no longer
an issue for them, the Jackson family braced themselves for more distress
from LaToya, who was thirty-three years old. They had heard that she was
now writing a book of her own, one that would be nothing like the one
penned by Michael. Hers, LaToya threatened, would tell the ‘whole truth
about my dysfunctional family’. (One would think the family wouldn’t be
so worried, though, since in April of 1988, LaToya told a reporter, ‘To my
knowledge, Michael has only had one nose job.’)
According to Marjorie Walker, a friend of the family’s at the time,
‘Katherine telephoned LaToya to ask if it was true that a book was being
planned. LaToya said it wasn’t true. Meanwhile, she had been negotiating
with G. P. Putnam’s Sons publishing house. When Katherine found out she
had a deal, she was hurt. Once upon a time, LaToya never lied. If you knew
LaToya, you’d understand how out of character her behaviour had been
since she’d met Jack [Gordon]. She is a girl who was scared to death to go
out of the house, who felt her family could do no wrong. Now, she was
planning to write a book about just how wrong they all were.’
LaToya signed a deal with Putnam, which advanced her more money for
her autobiography than Michael had received for his from Doubleday.
Michael’s was reportedly a $300,000 deal; LaToya’s $500,000.
‘It won’t be so bad,’ Katherine reasoned. ‘What can she write about
anyway?’
For starters, LaToya was going to claim that Michael had been sexually
molested as a child. When word of this allegation got back to Michael, he
was incensed by it. ‘She can do what she wants, if she wants to get back at
Joseph and Katherine for whatever,’ he stormed, ‘but don’t drag my ass into
it. I never did one damn thing to hurt that girl. So, stop her, Branca,’ he told
his attorney, John.
John Branca arranged a meeting with Jack Gordon to discuss the matter.
During it, he told Jack that Michael did not want his sister writing that he’d
been molested.
‘Why not?’ Jack demanded to know. ‘It’s the truth.’
‘Look, man, I don’t know if it’s true or not,’ John told him. ‘But I do
know that if she writes it, Michael will sue her. That, I fucking know is
true.’
Rumours that Michael was sexually molested as a child had been
circulating for years within the entertainment industry. Michael denies it.
With that denial in place, there’s not much more anyone else can say about
it. It certainly seems that if such a thing were true, it would be known by
now considering how exposed Michael’s life has been in recent years.
In subsequent letters to LaToya and Jack, John Branca reiterated his
position at the meeting: Michael would litigate against his sister if she made
any claim about him being sexually abused. He also indicated that Michael
would make himself available to read whatever it was she eventually wrote
in order that he be able to review it for ‘accuracy’.
After he received that particular letter, Jack Gordon telephoned
Katherine’s ex-business manager, Jerome Howard, to inquire as to whether
he still had the power to arrange a meeting with Katherine. According to
Jerome, Jack wanted to offer Katherine a deal: if she and Joseph paid
LaToya five million dollars, LaToya would cancel her memoirs. ‘It’s the
least they can do for her,’ Jack reasoned, ‘considering all they have done to
her.’ Moreover, if Jerome was the one who could convince the Jackson
parents to pay LaToya the money, he would be paid ten per cent of the total:
$500,000.
‘Man, that’s blackmail,’ Jerome said, according to his memory.
‘No, it’s not,’ Jack responded. ‘It’s business. Plain, simple business.’
‘Well, I don’t want anything to do with it,’ Jerome told him. ‘I’ll present
the deal to Katherine and have her get in touch with you about it.’
‘What? You don’t want $500,000?’ Jack asked, incredulously.
Jerome said no. ‘I telephoned Katherine and then met with her,’ Jerome
recalled. ‘I told her what was going on. If she wanted to stop her daughter’s
book, it was going to cost her five million bucks. She wasn’t pleased. I also
told her I didn’t want to get involved, that Jack had offered me a percentage
but that I didn’t think it was fair money. I suggested she should have her
lawyer deal with it. I suppose she did.’
After that, someone in LaToya’s camp apparently fed a story to the media
that Michael had offered her twelve million dollars to kill the project. It was
not true. However, in an apparent attempt to maintain heightened interest in
her project, LaToya charged that ‘Michael’s offer is awful, a sign of bribery.
Nothing is going to stop me,’ she said, as if a war cry, ‘no matter how much
I’m offered.’
Jack Gordon then made the ludicrous allegation that Michael had offered
to purchase G. P. Putnam’s Sons, for eighty-four million dollars just so that
he could prevent the book from appearing.
According to an associate of Michael’s, ‘What really happened is that
someone representing LaToya – and I’m not saying it was Jack and I’m not
saying it wasn’t, because, frankly, I don’t know – got in touch with
Michael’s people and said that Mike had better come up with millions if he
didn’t want that book to be published. Mike was hurt. He had never done
anything to LaToya to cause her to be so unkind to him, and he felt that
Jack was orchestrating all of it. Still, it was LaToya who was responsible for
the final outcome of it. “She doesn’t get a free ride just by saying Jack is the
one doing the dirty work,” he said. “She has to take responsibility, just like I
do.” I was in the room when Michael made his final decision. “I’m not
going to let my own sister, a person I loved, a person who has known me all
my life, blackmail me. This is as low as you can go,” he observed. “Tell
LaToya I said she can go jump in a lake. She’s not getting one fucking dime
from me.”’
For LaToya, family loyalty was clearly a notion now relegated to her
recent past. In fact, to keep the pot stirred, Jack claimed that LaToya’s years
at Hayvenhurst had made her so angry and bitter that she would include yet
another allegation in her book: that Joseph had sexually molested her.
Katherine was stunned when she first heard the charge from Jack. ‘Why,
it’s just not true,’ she insisted.
‘Oh, yes, it is,’ Jack said.
‘But who told you this?’ Katherine demanded. ‘Did LaToya tell you?’
Jack said that it had been Rebbie who told him.
By the time Katherine confronted Rebbie, she was seething. However,
Rebbie denied ever having told Jack that LaToya was sexually abused by
Joseph.
Michael then telephoned LaToya and, as she later recalled it to me, ‘We
fought about many things, but the main thing was the book.’ When Michael
wanted to know if there was anything critical of him in it, she refused to get
into details. The true issue was not her book, she told me, but the fact that
Michael ‘is jealous of all the great exposure I’m getting. He wants to hog
the limelight.’
‘Look, I’ve been doing this since I was five years old,’ Michael told her,
according to her memory. ‘And here you come out of nowhere. What
justifies your fame? You’re not entitled to it yet, LaToya. You haven’t done
anything, yet.’
‘Why, how dare you?’ LaToya exclaimed. ‘After all I’ve been through
with this family, how can you say that to me?’ She had apparently confused
familial dysfunction with artistic achievement. At any rate, she said that she
never wanted to speak to Michael again, and then slammed down the
phone.
On 5 September 1989, LaToya, now thirty-three, and Jack Gordon, fifty,
were married in Reno, Nevada. Two days earlier, LaToya telephoned
Katherine and said, ‘I don’t have a family any more. I don’t have a mother,
father, or brothers or sisters. I’ve disowned you all.’ The Jacksons firmly
believed that LaToya didn’t love Jack, that she only married him in order to
disassociate herself from the family. Jack said that they had six security
guards with them at all times to prevent her from being kidnapped by the
Jacksons. ‘Jack used to tell me all the time how Joseph was trying to kidnap
LaToya, and that LaToya was scared to death. From what I understand,
Joseph used to beat her when she was a child,’ recalled Gary Berwin, whose
business dealings with Joseph went sour in 1985.
‘LaToya was not a very happy person. She’d had a hard life, and she
found someone to love and rely on – Jack Gordon,’ Gary continued.
‘Finally she had escaped from that family. I asked Jack specifically why he
married LaToya. I asked him, “Did you marry LaToya because you really
love her, or did you marry her as a convenience for you and herself?” He
said, “No, man, I really love her.” I said, “C’mon, man, be honest with me.”
He replied, “I’m telling you, I love her very much.”’
‘I want more money than anyone else…’
In August 1989, Michael Jackson turned thirty-one years old. Recent years
had not been easy for him. Family pressures and demands, as well as career
concerns, seemed to keep him in a continuous state of anxiety. Though he
had left home, he never really left the womb. As much as he tried to shun
his family, except for Katherine, he just could not seem to do it – mostly
because they wouldn’t cooperate in that regard. They just get coming back
for more. Somehow, their problems always ended up his.
Despite the fact that he was now in his thirties, many people in his circle
felt that Michael had never grown up, that he was still an adolescent at
heart, playing with his teenage male friends and entertaining handicapped
youngsters at his palatial estate. He liked wearing his many disguises and
was agitated when people pointed him out, not so much because he didn’t
want to be identified as because he had left home thinking he had such a
swell costume, no one should ever have been able to recognize him.
Visiting Disneyland, Disney World and Universal Studios was still his
favourite leisure-time activity; fantasy was a major part of his life.
On the career front, there had been much discussion as to how to follow
Bad. Just as when he was attempting to conceptualize a successor to
Thriller, Michael was concerned about competing with himself. Bad had
not sold as many copies as Thriller and Michael was disappointed. Still,
rather than try to compete with the previous two albums by issuing another
one of new material, John Branca convinced Michael that he should release
a Greatest Hits collection, entitled Decade, which would also include a few
new songs. It was a good idea. It would take some pressure off Michael at a
time when he did need a break in his life.
Michael intended to deliver Decade to the Sony Corporation, CBS
Records’ parent company, in August of 1989. It was scheduled to be
released in November in time for the Christmas sales rush.
‘I want more money than anyone else has ever gotten,’ Michael told John
when the attorney began negotiating with CBS Records for the new album.
John did not let him down. He arranged an eighteen million dollar advance,
which was, indeed, ‘more money than anyone else has ever gotten’. The
deal included a fifteen million dollar straight advance – which CBS would
recoup from Jackson’s royalties before he would make a profit on the album
– and a non-recoupable three million dollars which was a gift for Michael
from his label. (On each of the three album deals John Branca negotiated
for Michael Jackson at CBS he succeeded in getting for Michael three
million as a bonus.)
Prior to the latest Michael Jackson deal, the Rolling Stones, who were
also represented by John Branca, held the record for the most lucrative
contract, with five-million-dollars-plus per album. According to the
Hollywood Reporter, Billy Joel had $1.7 million as an advance at the time,
Bruce Springsteen $2.5 million, and Madonna $1 million before bonuses,
which could make it several times that.
Michael Jackson’s album royalty was forty-one points. What that means
in terms of percentage of retail sale varies with each formula, from CD to
tape to disc; however, the album came to approximately 25 per cent of the
retail price of each record. Michael’s 25 per cent translated to $2.50 per
album sold. However, when the three-million-dollar non-recoupable gift
was added to Michael’s royalty rate, it actually jumped to about 29 per cent
of retail.
To put Jackson’s royalty into perspective, Madonna made 18 per cent at
the time. Most other acts of superstar status made 12 per cent.
In its entirety, Michael’s new deal with CBS would be worth as much as
fifty million dollars because, in addition to the advance and non-recoupable
gift, John Branca had negotiated a joint business venture with the company.
According to that arrangement, CBS would finance a custom label for
Michael Jackson – a subsidiary of CBS Records which would be Jackson
Records (shades of Joseph!) – which Michael would oversee. CBS would
provide 100 per cent of the funding for the new label, and then split the
profit equally with Michael. He would also own half the stock and thereby
be entitled to half the assets if the label was ever sold. This was a coup for
Michael and still yet another tribute to John Branca’s masterly negotiating
skills.
Since Janet Jackson had constantly called upon her brother for advice and
guidance, John felt that she would be the most logical choice as first artist
to sign to the label. Michael was elated at the possibility. (It didn’t happen,
though. Instead, Janet signed a contract with Virgin Records for an
estimated thirty-two million dollars. When finalized, in March 1991, it was
said to be the largest recording contract in history, but these deals are
always said to be just that. There’s always a way to calculate ambiguous
figures and money not yet earned but projected in such a way to make any
decent, big-money record deal ‘the largest in history’.)
In the final coup de grâce for Michael, as far as Decade was concerned,
John Branca negotiated a five-million-dollar advance from Warner-
Tamerlane Publishing Corporation, the Warner Bros. publishing arm that
administers the copyrights on Jackson’s songs. (Michael owns all of his
copyrights. Warner-Tamerlane has no ownership, but, for a small fee, the
company does collect money generated by publishing deals around the
world involving his compositions.) For an artist, five million dollars is a
huge advance from a music publishing company; most superstars get about
one million.
All of the pieces of the puzzle were in place for a tremendous Decade
kick-off. However, by January 1990, it was obvious that Michael would fail
to deliver Decade. He was ambivalent about the format, there was some
confusion as to which songs to include on it. The original plan was for the
package to consist of four cuts from Off the Wall, seven from Thriller, six
from Bad, three to five new songs, ‘State of Shock’ (the hit duet with Mick
Jagger); ‘Heartbreak Hotel’, ‘Someone in the Dark’ (from Michael’s E.T.
narration album), ‘Come Together’ and two vintage Motown songs that
Michael was re-mastering. However, Michael kept vacillating about the
plan, and, in the end, his close friend, entertainment mogul David Geffen,
finally talked him out of putting out the album, altogether. Rather, Michael
would produce an album of new material. (The deal John Branca negotiated
for him at CBS and with Warner-Tamerlane applied to any product Michael
chooses to issue.) Here we go, again, John Branca must have thought.
David Geffen Influences Michael
Though Michael is the sole director of all of his companies, he has an
investment committee that meets informally about once a year to discuss his
many investments. In 1990, that committee consisted of John Branca and
his partner, Kenneth Ziffren; Jackson’s accountant, Marshall Gelfand; John
Johnson of Johnson Publishing Company (which publishes Ebony and Jet);
and David Geffen. The committee had no real power; Michael could veto
any decision five minutes after it has been made.
None of the members pocketed any money from investments made on
Michael’s behalf. Mostly, the committee was formed by Michael so that
these powerful men would be well acquainted with one another and be able
to follow one another’s activities throughout the year. Michael believes in
having his associates watching over one another to see who may be taking
advantage of him. Because his investments are so fascinating – and because
it seems an honour for these gentlemen to be involved, even if it does not
mean a personal profit for them – Michael has no difficulty in organizing
such an investment committee.
In recent months, David Geffen, who had been a member of the
investment committee for about ten years, had begun to exert great
influence over Michael. At one point, Michael had signed a development
deal with David’s production company to do a film. David’s task was to
procure a script that would meet with Michael’s approval. However, the two
couldn’t agree on one. (Michael still wants to do a movie that would be a
fantastic, big-budget combination of Star Wars and Busby Berkeley.)
It’s easy to see why Michael – a man who is most impressed by wealth
and power – would be enamoured of David Geffen. In its 24 December
1990, issue, Forbes dubbed David, ‘the richest man in Hollywood’ and,
indeed, he probably was then, and still is, today with an estimated worth of
over $100 million.
David has a reputation as being shrewd and savvy, an intuitive show-
business genius who knows when to buy and, just as important, when to
sell. He is intelligent and witty. He can also be temperamental, and is
considered by some associates to be conceited and arrogant. Over the years,
David earned a respectable reputation in the music world (with his Geffen
Records) and film world, producing movies that were distributed by Warner
Bros., including Risky Business and Beetlejuice. In addition, he made
money in the theatre, co-producing the Broadway hit Dreamgirls with
Michael Bennett and helping to finance Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cats.
Michael admired David’s business savvy and vision. ‘Michael told me he
thinks David is the most amazing man he has ever met,’ said a Jackson
associate. ‘He felt that if he listened to David’s advice, he, too, could
become a mogul, like David. He hung on to his every word the way he used
to hang on to John Branca’s. Unlike Branca, though, Geffen really kissed up
to Mike, flattered him constantly. He and David became extremely close in
many ways. Not only did they have a professional relationship, they also
had a close personal relationship. David was the one who told him that
Decade was a mediocre idea and that Michael shouldn’t waste his time on
it. He convinced Mike to do an album of new material, and Michael agreed.
So, obviously, John Branca is not a fan of David Geffen’s.’
There was some talk that Michael would hire Quincy Jones for the new
project. However, Michael no longer wanted to work with Quincy because
he felt that the producer had become too possessive of him and his work,
and had taken too much credit for it. Michael was still miffed that Quincy
gave him a tough time about ‘Smooth Criminal’ – Quincy didn’t want it on
the Bad album. For Quincy’s part, he felt that Michael had become too
demanding and inflexible. With emotions running so high, the partnership
that had once sold millions and millions of albums had soured. Still, Quincy
figured he would work with Michael, again. He was never informed
otherwise. Michael just began work without him; he hasn’t worked with
Quincy since Bad.
David Geffen had obtained all of Michael’s financial information – it is
quite possible that Michael gave him the documents – and started
discussing with him his relationship with CBS Records. He pointed out to
Michael that he had spent about forty million dollars making music videos
for Bad (including the cost of Moonwalker), an exorbitant amount to spend
on video production. David was right about that. However, John Branca had
made back an enormous amount of money for Michael on these videos as a
result of distribution and other sales deals, and Michael’s net loss was
‘only’ ten million dollars. Practically no one in the record industry makes
thirty million dollars from music videos. But, still, Michael began to believe
that CBS Records was making more money on him and his videos than he
was making for himself. Soon, he was riled up enough to want to leave
CBS altogether.
Prior to this time, Walter Yetnikoff and Michael Jackson had had an
outstanding relationship. Michael brought him up on to the stage during the
1984 Grammys. Walter was appreciative and felt that Michael’s public
show of gratitude helped him earn millions of dollars for himself and his
label. ‘You don’t bring record executives up at the Grammys, ’cause no
one’s interested,’ Yetnikoff told Rolling Stone in 1988. ‘I went back to CBS
and I said, “Give me another two million dollars for that.”’
Walter Yetnikoff had been one of the most powerful men in the record
business for many years. By 1990 his line-up of superstar recording artists
included Michael, Bruce Springsteen, The Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan.
But his power had slipped during the year due to a deteriorating relationship
with CBS Records’ new parent company, Sony, and, in part, to his
estrangement from Bruce Springsteen and Springsteen’s attorney, John
Landau. Now, without Michael Jackson in his corner, Yetnikoff’s future
looked cloudy.
The Still-Struggling Jacksons
By 1990, Janet Jackson had come into her own with the biggest success of
her career, the A&M album Janet Jackson’s Rhythm Nation 1814, a string
of hit records – ‘Miss You Much’, ‘Escapade’, ‘Rhythm Nation’, among
others – and her first national tour. Charming and timid, talented and driven,
Janet has turned out to be one of the better-adjusted Jackson siblings. With
the exception of a relationship she maintains with her mother, she keeps her
distance from the rest of the family. Though she is no longer managed by
Joseph – the break was predictably volatile – he does profit from Rhythm
Nation.
‘I’ve studied the best – Michael Jackson,’ Janet said in April 1990. ‘I’m
not saying that just because he’s my brother. I really feel he’s the best. I saw
how hard he works, his ambition. It’s so strange to read things about him,
because people just don’t understand Michael much.’
Janet also noted, ‘Michael has said that, out of everyone in the family,
we’re the two that think the most alike.’ Janet is the only family member
who makes it a point to show up at the taping of Michael’s videos, just so
that she can sit and watch him work. Still, she has to admit that a rivalry
does exist between them. ‘He’s very competitive,’ she said in November
1990. ‘And so am I.’
Surprisingly, Michael is not as competitive with Janet as people might
think. Mostly, he supports her efforts and offers advice whenever she asks
for it. He thought Rhythm Nation was the work of a genius, and his biggest
concern was not that it had sold so many copies, but that it hadn’t sold
enough. ‘Why did it only sell five or six million copies?’ he asked a former
associate. ‘And what does this mean for me and my next album?’
Like Michael, Janet has not been resistant to the plastic surgeon’s knife.
She has had at least two nose jobs, and some have speculated that she has
had surgery on her breasts. But she knows how to make plastic surgery
work to her advantage. She looks stunning, especially after shedding, on a
nine-hundred-calorie-a-day diet, the weight she’d been trying to lose for
years.
The rest of the Jacksons have not fared as well in their recordings without
Michael. Solo albums by Jackie, Jermaine, Marlon and Randy all had
disappointing sales. So too did an excellent group album (recorded by
Jackie, Jermaine, Tito and Randy) called 2300 Jackson Street, after the
street on which the family lived in Gary.
Michael was bothered that 2300 Jackson Street had not been a
commercial success, especially since he had telephoned Walter Yetnikoff
and specifically asked him to take a special interest in the album. But CBS
Records could not successfully promote the Jacksons without Michael. It’s
not that the brothers have no talent; they do. After decades of experience,
most of the Jacksons are first-rate vocalists, and they are all champion
entertainers. However, trying to pursue their own careers while Michael
Jackson’s shadow looms is not easy. The public doesn’t seem to want
Michael’s brothers; it just wants Michael.
CBS did not renew its relationship with the Jacksons after 2300 Jackson
Street. There was no fanfare, as when the Jacksons left Motown for CBS.
Rather, the label just did not pick up the brothers’ contracts. The Jacksons
simply fizzled out.
Without Michael in the lead, his brothers have not been able to secure a
new record deal.
Rebbie, by far the most resourceful singer of the three daughters, no
longer records.
LaToya’s memoirs, ‘LaToya – Growing Up in the Jackson Family,’ was
published in September 1991. In it, she was extremely critical of her family,
but generous to Michael (and did not suggest that he had been molested).
While she did not claim to have been molested by Joseph in the book – the
publisher did not want to risk legal liability on such a volatile issue – she
did so in her promotional tour. On talk show after talk show, she spoke of
Joseph having forced her into sexual relations with him, and Katherine
having told him, ‘Not tonight, Joseph. She’s had enough.’
Again, who can truly know, considering the personalities involved in
such madness, if the awful charges LaToya made against her father were
true, or not?
Losing Count of the Plastic Surgeries
There has always been a great deal of speculation about Michael’s nose; it’s
the first of his features referenced when discussing, or even joking about,
the extent of his plastic surgery. By the end of 1990, most people had lost
count of how many surgeries Michael had undergone on his nose, but some
in his camp have figured that it had to be at least ten. For years, plastic
surgeons not related to his case have speculated as to whether the nose –
which has an elfin quality to it – is made of bone, cartilage or latex. It’s part
of the public discourse when speaking of Michael: what is the truth about
his nose?
The truth is that the structure of Michael’s nose collapsed years ago, a
consequence of extensive trauma from previous surgeries on it. One
subsequent operation was to add cartilage into the tip, to support and
reshape it. However, that procedure was not completely successful.
Therefore, when appearing in public, and often in private, Michael wears a
latex appliance, a prosthetic nose-tip, which he camouflages with stage
makeup.
Interestingly, when Michael is seen wearing the surgical mask that is so
much a part of his image, it’s not always because he is attempting to hide
his identity or even avoid germs. Sometimes, it’s simply because he was not
inclined to wear the prosthesis. Putting on the appliance is an annoying and
frustrating process. It’s his cross to bear on a daily basis, and there are days
when he simply can’t bear it… thus, the mask.
In March 2003, Vanity Fair reported that, without the prosthesis,
Michaels ‘resembles a mummy with two nostril holes.’ This is not true.
Without the device, his nose appears flatter, more blunt – not pointed – and
he doesn’t really look like… Michael Jackson. Self-conscious about his
face, he refuses to be seen without it. If nothing else, the prosthesis must be
a painful and daily reminder to Michael of his past choices where plastic
surgery is concerned, and the impact they have had on his life.
It has been suggested that Michael is somehow addicted to plastic
surgery. ‘People can easily get addicted to plastic surgery, as they can to
alcohol, drugs, or food,’ according to Dr Alfred Coodley, associate clinical
professor of psychiatry at UCLA.
‘Actually, it’s more of an obsession than an addiction,’ Dr Robert Kotler,
a Beverly Hills plastic surgeon who has not treated Michael, observed. ‘I
think you have to know when to quit. That’s the greatest message a
cosmetic surgeon can bring to his patient. A conscientious surgeon will say
to a patient, “Enough is enough.”’
There are several reasons for Michael’s extremely pale skin, especially
on his face. First, he used to bleach his skin with different chemicals. Is it
possible for a black person to make his skin lighter? ‘Yes,’ said Robert
Kotler. ‘You can’t make it white, but you can make it lighter. There are
classic bleaching compounds that are commonly found in over-the-counter
bleaching creams like Porcelana. Also, there are known bleaching agents, a
class of compounds called Hydroquinones, that will make a black person’s
skin lighter.’
One employee of Michael’s recalled, ‘He used to rub a cream on his face
and neck in the morning and, again, at night. He had all of these little tubes
in his makeup kit. I asked him what it was, thinking it was some kind of
skin nutrient. He told me it was ‘medicine’. I left it at that. I then noticed
that whenever Michael would go out into the sun, he would cover his face
with his hand or wear a big hat. He seemed petrified of sunlight, as if he
was afraid he would burn.’
According to The Handbook of Nonprescription Drugs, ‘As the sun’s
ability to darken skin is much greater than that of Hydroquinone to lighten
it, strict avoidance of sunlight is imperative. Although sunscreens may help,
even visible light will cause some darkening. The preferable packaging of
Hydroquinone is in small squeeze tubes. The dosage is a thin application of
2 per cent concentration rubbed into affected areas twice daily. Once the
desired benefit is achieved, Hydroquinone can be applied as often as needed
to maintain de-pigmentation.’ Some have noted that Michael’s fingernails
seemed brown and discolored on Martin Bashir’s 2003 documentary about
him. One possible reason for this is that Hydroquinone stimulates pigment-
producing cells in the nail plate, making them darker rather than lighter.
In the 1980s, he was diagnosed with the skin disease Vitiligo. (Some
doctors have speculated that the Vitiligo is not as much hereditary as it is
the consequence of damage done by bleaching chemicals over the years.
Vitiligo makes the sufferer sensitive to sunlight.)
In the late 1980s, Michael’s dermatologist, Dr Arnold Klein, diagnosed
him as having discoid lupus – an auto-immune disease that causes
darkening or lightening of the skin – on his scalp.
There are two variations of lupus: discoid, which is skin deep, and
systemic, which can be deadly. As a part of the treatment for discoid,
Michael’s doctor prescribed the skin lightening creams, Solaquin, Retin A
and Benoquin. As a result, Michael was told that, more than ever, he had to
avoid all sun exposure – which is one of the reasons he is often seen
shielding himself with an umbrellas on sunny days. Also, Michael had to
endure the direct injections into his scalp of hydroxy chloroquin – a steroid
– in painful, recurring treatments.
Presently, his lupus condition is in remission.
Michael also uses plenty of pancake makeup to even out his skin, which
makes him appear even lighter.
In terms of specific plastic surgeries, he will admit to only two nose jobs
and the cleft in his chin, but it does not take a cosmetic surgery expert to see
that cheek and chin implants and all sorts of other work, including on his
eyes and lips, are not beyond the bounds of possibility. Trying to actually
detail the work Michael had had done is simply not possible; only he and
his surgeons can fully document the extent of it – and it also seems, at least
to people who know him well, that he truly doesn’t remember it all.
Some professionals have gone on the record saying they believe Michael
suffers from body dysmorphic disorder, a psychological condition of people
who are obsessed with their appearance, work on it constantly and have no
concept of how they are perceived by others.
Certainly, Michael has not had it easy. In 1995, when he released his
composition ‘Childhood’, on HIStory – Past, Present and Future, Book I,
many people were bored to tears by the notion of him still going on and on
about his missing boyhood. However, the song is about more than just his
lost youth; it’s a plea for compassion and understanding. If one truly
contemplates and reviews the challenges he has faced with his appearance,
the fact that Michael Jackson is ever able to muster the self-confidence to
make well-scrutinized, public appearances seems almost a miracle.
A Maddening Decade, An Uncertain Future
By 1990, both family and career pressures continued to take their toll on
thirty-two-year-old Michael Jackson.
In June of that year, Michael was in negotiations with Disney Studios to
lend his name to a new robotic attraction at their theme parks. At the same
time, David Geffen, who was affiliated with MCA (a division of Universal),
wanted Michael to appear at the opening of the Universal Theme Park in
Florida, as did Steven Spielberg. However, Michael Eisner, head of Disney,
told Michael that if he had anything to do with MCA-Universal, he would
never be able to be associated with Disney again. This was pressure.
Michael desperately wanted Disney, and Michael Eisner, in his corner,
but he also wished to maintain his friendship with David Geffen and Steven
Spielberg. He anguished over this matter for weeks until, in his mind, the
dilemma became overwhelming.
On 3 June 1990, Michael was admitted to St John’s Hospital and Health
Center in Santa Monica. Accompanied by Steven Hoefflin, he was gripping
his chest and looked dizzy, pale and weak. It was later reported that he had
suffered chest pains while doing his Sunday dance exercises.
The hospital immediately ran a battery of diagnostic tests, including an
HIV test. Michael’s blood work came back from the lab negative, as
expected. However, it was determined that he suffered from an enzyme
deficiency and was anaemic, probably due to his strict vegetarian diet.
Michael’s hospitalization made headlines for days. President Bush, Liza
Minnelli and Elton John all telephoned to wish him well. Katherine and
other family members visited. LaToya sent a dozen black roses, an odd
gesture, but, said LaToya, ‘I think they’re beautiful.’ Fans held all-night
vigils outside of the hospital.
It was reported that Michael was diagnosed as having a condition called
costochondritis, a cartilage inflammation in the front part of the ribs, an
ailment most commonly found in young athletes who exercise sporadically.
The condition is caused by overexertion and stress.
‘What bullshit,’ one of Michael’s former close associates noted. ‘The kid
had an anxiety attack.’
Indeed, Michael had exhibited the symptoms of sweating, shaking and
panting often associated with a classic ‘panic attack’, a psychological
problem sometimes suffered by people under great stress and anxiety.
Michael had suffered such attacks when he was a teenager; he still has
them from time to time, today. After his hospital stay generated such
worldwide publicity, he was apparently embarrassed to say that he’d had a
panic attack, had his representatives come up with a disease no one on the
planet had ever heard of, and the public had to accept it.
Michael’s spokesman, Bob Jones, did admit that Michael had been
‘under some stress, lately.’ He said that Michael was particularly saddened
by the AIDS-related death of his friend, eighteen-year-old Ryan White, who
won a long court battle to attend public school and overcame prejudice
against himself and other AIDS victims. Bob also said Michael was still
upset over the deaths of his maternal grandmother, Martha Bridges, who
died in May, and Sammy Davis, Jr., who also died that month. Moreover,
Michael was agitated because work on his album was not progressing
quickly. He didn’t mention the real problem: whether Michael should be
loyal to Universal or to Disney – not to mention what he’d been through
recently with his family members and business associates.
After Michael was released from the hospital, he went about the business
of reorganizing his affairs. He had said privately that when he returned from
the Bad tour, he would fire everyone on his staff. ‘I don’t trust anybody,’ he
said to one associate. ‘Except Katherine.’
Frank Dileo had been dismissed after the tour was over, and Michael
apparently felt no regret over the decision. He still communicated with
Frank, but only through middlemen, and only when he was agitated about
something. For instance, when Michael heard that someone was again
spreading rumours that he was a homosexual, he had an associate telephone
Frank demanding to know if it had been he who was the source of the story.
Frank was hurt. He later said he wondered how a person he once considered
to be a son could be so mistrusting of him. However, he’d always known
Michael was a suspicious person. Two months before Michael fired Frank,
he purchased from a New York-based security firm a briefcase featuring a
hidden tape recorder for himself and six Voice Safe telephone scramblers
for his home. The briefcase could be used to tape meetings secretly, and the
scramblers made it impossible to tape the user’s conversation off a
telephone line.
After the Bad tour, Marshall Gelfand, Michael’s accountant of seven
years, was given his walking papers by John Branca. Michael felt he was
too conservative in his investment strategies and had John hire a new
accountant, Richard Sherman, who also worked for David Geffen.
By the summer of 1990, Michael had also begun to have doubts about
John Branca. In recent months, despite John’s many professional strengths,
Michael allowed his insecurities – and it was said by his associates, David
Geffen’s personal feelings about John – colour his perception of the high-
powered attorney. For instance, Michael suddenly became overly concerned
about the identities of John’s other clients. Frank Dileo was not permitted
by Michael to even have other clients, but John was an attorney who had
been practising law before that day in early 1980 when Michael came into
his office. By 1990, he had twenty-five clients in addition to Michael.
Earlier, in 1988, John Branca had represented The Rolling Stones’ Steel
Wheels international tour. When Michael telephoned him one day about a
business matter, John mentioned that he would be in Barbados for a week.
Michael wanted to know the reason for the trip. When John told him it was
for business purposes, Michael became suspicious. He wanted to know
what kind of business John had in Barbados. Rather than lie, he told him
that he was meeting with Mick. ‘Mick? You mean Mick Jagger?‘ Michael
wanted to know. He was upset.
John finally admitted that he was representing The Rolling Stones tour.
‘Well, is it a big tour?’ Michael asked. ‘It’s not going to be as big as mine,
is it? It’s not going to be bigger than mine, is it?’
There was probably no way to calm Michael down at that point. Next, he
wanted to know where the Stones would be playing. When John reluctantly
told him they were thinking about the Los Angeles Coliseum, Michael
became even more anxious. ‘The Coliseum!’ he exclaimed. ‘The Coliseum!
Why, that’s bigger than the [Los Angeles] Sports Arena, where I played.
How many dates? They’re not playing as many dates as me and my brothers
played at Dodger Stadium, are they?’ He was frantic. The only way to end
it with him was for John to beg off the line, saying he had another call.
When John Branca took on Terrence Trent D’Arby as a client, Michael
was again upset. He considered D’Arby competition, just as he did Prince.
Michael asked John to drop D’Arby. John said he would do it if Michael
absolutely insisted upon it. However, Michael then telephoned D’Arby,
with whom he had never spoken, to let him know that he (Michael) had no
control over John Branca, and that if the attorney should ever drop him as a
client, it would be entirely his decision because, as Michael told D’Arby, ‘I
have no problem with Branca representing you.’ Actually, Michael was
trying to maintain friendly relations with D’Arby in case the two should
ever decide to record a duet sometime in the future.
When John Branca found out what Michael had done (Terrence Trent
D’Arby’s manager telephoned John immediately after D’Arby had hung up
with Michael), he was as disappointed in Michael as he was angry. In the
end, John decided not to drop D’Arby as a client; Michael just had to live
with it.
Most observers felt that representing Michael had become more taxing
and demanding than ever for John Branca. In the spring of 1990, John and
Michael had a meeting during which John said he felt the time had come for
him to share in the equity in Jackson’s publishing company. He explained
that he wanted to devote as much time to developing Michael’s publishing
holdings as possible, and in return he wanted five per cent of those profits.
John must have known that it would be risky to make such a proposition
because Michael is known to be thrifty when it comes to compensating his
repre-sentation. He feels that the occasional Rolls-Royce or expensive
watch is a fair demonstration of his appreciation to his advisers; he doesn’t
favour giving them extra percentages. Up until this time, John had worked
for Michael on a monthly retainer. On certain extraordinary deals, a
percentage would be worked into the deal for him. For instance, he did
receive five per cent of the profit on the Victory and Bad tours. (In contrast,
though, Mickey Rudin, Frank Sinatra’s attorney for years, received ten per
cent of Sinatra’s tours.) At this time, Michael was feeling psychologically
poor as a result of the Moonwalker debacle. He told John he would consider
his proposal. Then, he decided to talk the matter over with David Geffen.
At this same time, David Geffen was trying to convince Michael that he
should break his CBS Records deal by utilizing a contract loophole.
Michael’s contract with CBS had been signed in 1983, and then amended
after Thriller in 1985. David felt that the seven years that had lapsed since
the original agreement gave Michael an edge in renegotiating the entire deal
because California state law forbids personal service contracts of a longer
duration. Industry observers felt that David was trying to lure Michael away
from CBS so that he could sign him to his own label.
Though Michael’s contract with CBS had expired, he still owed four
more albums to the label. Yes, after the seven-year duration, Michael could
probably have left CBS Records. The company could not enjoin him from
recording for another label. However, it could sue him for damages, the
amount of which would be based on the estimated loss of profits from the
albums he did not deliver. This dollar amount would be derived from the
combined sales figures of Off the Wall, Thriller and Bad. CBS Records
could have mounted a huge lawsuit against Michael. David was willing to
overlook the possible litigation (‘It’ll all work itself out,’ he said), however
John Branca was not willing to do so, and he was the one representing
Michael, not David.
When John and David engaged in a heated argument over the logic of
trying to extricate Michael from his recording contract with CBS Records,
John told him to mind his own business. David hung up on him.
David then telephoned Michael and, apparently, tried to sour him on John
Branca by saying that John had been uncooperative, and that the reason
Michael didn’t have ‘a good deal at CBS’ was because of John’s close
relationship with the company president, Walter Yetnikoff. Michael allowed
himself to be swayed by David, never stopping to consider that he truly did
have the best deal in the record industry and that John Branca was the man
who had secured it for him.
John Branca’s work with Michael Jackson can only be compared to
Colonel Tom Parker’s representation of Elvis Presley. Even though John
was not Michael’s manager, he certainly had the kind of impact on his
career that Colonel Tom had on Elvis’s. In 1980, when John began
representing him, Michael’s net worth was barely a million dollars. Ten
years later, in great part due to John’s negotiating skills, the net worth was
close to $300 million, including the publishing holdings, which were valued
at close to $200 million. That leap in holdings was a tribute to Michael’s
artistry, no doubt; but it also spoke well of John’s negotiating skills. Despite
all they had been through together, Michael now doubted John.
A couple of days after John’s difficult conversation with David Geffen,
John met with Michael. Something had changed in Michael, and it became
clear as the two of them spoke; Michael barely listened to what John said
and he seemed hostile towards him. The two engaged in a heated discussion
about CBS and whether or not Michael was obligated to record for them.
The meeting did not go well.
When it ended, John went back to his office in Century City. The next
day, he received a letter by special messenger from Michael’s new
accountant, Richard Sherman, whom John had recently hired: John’s
‘services were no longer required by Michael Jackson.’
Michael was sorry to lose John Branca, but he didn’t get sentimental about
the loss. The way he looked at it, John made a fortune doing what he loved
to do, representing Michael in major show-business deals. When it was
over, it was over. Michael swiftly replaced him with three seasoned law
veterans: Bertram Fields (for litigation), Alan Grubman (for negotiations
with CBS), and Lee Phillips (for music publishing) – all closely associated
with David Geffen.
In March 1991, Michael Jackson finally came to terms with CBS
Records, now known as Sony Corp. The deal was structured on groundwork
laid by John Branca – including a 25 per cent royalty rate and Jackson’s
own label (then called Nation Records). Michael’s spokespeople claimed
that the contract guaranteed a return of hundreds of millions. Press reports
implied that Sony actually handed over a billion dollars to Michael. In fact,
Michael could receive $120 million per album for the next six if sales
matched the forty-million-plus level of Thriller. If they didn’t, he wouldn’t.
With advances and financial perks, the deal was worth about fifty million
dollars to Michael, nicely eclipsing Janet Jackson’s thirty-two-million-
dollar contract at Virgin Records.
Where Michael Jackson’s career was concerned, the future seemed to rest
on the commercial success or failure of his next album. That was the case in
1991, and remains so, to this day.
Michael Meets Jordie Chandler
May 1992. Imagine Michael Jackson standing on the side of Wilshire
Boulevard in Beverly Hills, his jeep steaming at the side of the road while
other cars whisk by in two busy lanes in both directions. With so little
knowledge about automobiles, Michael had always wondered what he
would do if he was ever alone when his car broke down. He reached for his
mobile phone and called 911. He was told that a disabled automobile did
not qualify as an emergency situation, and that he should call Directory
Assistance to locate a tow-shop. ‘But I’m Michael Jackson,’ he protested.
‘Can’t you help me?’ The answer was, ‘No.’
As he stood next to the car fretting about his next step, Michael was
spotted by the wife of Mel Green, an employee of a nearby car-rental
business, called Rent-A-Wreck. She telephoned her husband and said, ‘You
will not believe who I just spotted on Wilshire Boulevard kicking the tyre
of his broken-down car. Michael Jackson! You should go there and see
what’s up.’
Mel Green raced to the scene and, sure enough, there he was: Michael
Jackson wringing his hands, pacing back and forth and kicking the tyres of
his vehicle. ‘I got him,’ Mel said, calling Dave Schwartz, owner of Rent-A-
Wreck.
‘What? You gotta be kidding me?’ said Dave. ‘Is it really Michael
Jackson? Are you sure? Maybe he’s one of those wacky impersonators. It
can’t be the Michael Jackson.’
‘It sure is,’ Mel said. ‘I’m bringing him in, now.’
‘Then I gotta call June,’ Dave said, now excited. Dave and his wife, June,
had been having marital difficulties and, more often than not, he was not
staying at their home, although they were still on friendly terms. He called
June and told her to bring her son Jordie to ‘the shop’ for ‘a big surprise’.
June and Jordie arrived on the scene before Michael. When Michael
finally showed, he presented quite a sight wearing a black turban with a veil
over his face and dark, over-sized sunglasses. He also wore a long-sleeve
black silk shirt, jeans and tennis shoes. The only parts of his body visible
were his hands, which seemed pale.
Whenever June Chandler-Schwartz walked into a room, heads turned. A
striking woman of Asian extraction, she wore her dark hair to her shoulders
with bangs cut straight above her eye line. Her smile incandescent, her
manner outgoing, she moved with elegance and grace. Michael was quickly
taken by her as she excitedly introduced herself and then Jordie.
Actually, Jordie had seen Michael on several occasions over the years,
the first time being at a restaurant in Los Angeles when he was about four.
The young boy didn’t approach Michael, of course, but instead gawked at
him while the entertainer ate his food.
That same year, 1984, was the year Michael was burned filming the Pepsi
commercial. Like thousands of fans, Jordie – still just four – sent a letter
and picture of himself to the Brotman Memorial Hospital where Michael
was recovering. He included his telephone number in the note. Two days
later, much to his parents’ excitement, Michael called Jordie to thank him
for the note, and to also tell him that he thought he was ‘a beautiful young
boy’.
In 1989, when Jordie was nine, Michael’s manager Frank Dileo contacted
Jordie’s mother to ask if she and her family would like four tickets to see
Michael in concert in Los Angeles. Of course, she accepted. They enjoyed
the show but, though they attempted to do so, did not meet with Michael
backstage after the concert. As the years went on, Jordie continued with his
adolescent fan-worship of Michael Jackson.
In the spring of 1992, Jordie got the idea for a spoof of Kevin Costner’s
film, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, which he called Robin Hood: Men in
Tights. For a twelve-year-old, he was amazingly creative. Jordie and his
father, Evan, wrote the script (along with Evan’s friend, J. D. Shapiro) and
with the help of some of Evan’s show-business friends, father and son
actually got their script produced into a major movie. Though the movie,
produced by Mel Brooks, was not a commercial success, the youngster had
two more ideas in mind and was working with his father on them. To young
Jordie Chandler, it seemed as if almost anything was possible. Now, he was
face to face with his idol, the so-called ‘King of Pop’.
Jordie was dark-haired with big, luminescent eyes. He was on the verge
of manhood, but certainly not there yet. His face was lean and angular, its
raw-boned sharpness softened by its olive complexion. Anyone looking at
him would say, ‘That kid is going to be stunning in about ten years.’
However, standing before Michael, he was just a boy with a big smile on
his face.
June wrote down a telephone number and handed it to Michael. ‘You
should call Jordie sometime,’ she suggested, as if the notion of a twelve-
year-old being ‘friends’ with a thirty-three-year-old pop star was the most
natural thing in the world.
‘Mom!’ Jordie protested, embarrassed.
‘No, Jordie,’ she said, according to a later recollection from, Jordie. ‘You
guys can be friends.’
‘For sure,’ Dave Schwartz said as he walked into the room. ‘Give him a
call, Michael. He’s your biggest fan.’
‘Yeah, okay,’ Michael said as he signed the final paperwork for the rental
car. He took the paper from June and stuffed it in his pocket. Michael then
looked over his glasses and took in the twelve-year-old. ‘So, look, I’ll call
you, Jordie,’ he said. ‘Okay?’
‘Sure,’ the youngster answered. He flashed a dazzling smile at the singer.
‘Oh, boy!’
‘Yeah,’ Michael exclaimed, seemed tickled by the youngster’s
enthusiasm. ‘Oh, boy!’ he repeated.
Have You Seen His Childhood?
Of course, Michael Jackson had long associated himself with children,
regularly visiting with ill children on his concert tours and inviting
underprivileged youths to tour his ranch. His philanthropic activities,
including those executed by his Heal the World Foundation, were well
known. In the past, Michael had often been seen in the company of young
celebrities, such as Emmanuel Lewis and McCauley Culkin, as well as with
many youngsters who are not famous, which was why Jordie’s mother and
stepfather saw nothing unusual about encouraging a friendship between the
pop star and their son.
‘One of my favourite pastimes is being with children,’ Michael had
explained in an interview, ‘talking to them and playing with them. Children
know a lot of secrets and it is difficult to get them to tell. Children are
incredible. They go through a brilliant phase, but then when they reach a
certain age, they lose it. My most creative moments have almost always
come when I am with children. When I am with them, the music comes to
me as easily as breathing. When I’m tired or bored, children revive me. Two
brown eyes look at me so profoundly, so innocently, and I murmur, This
child is a song.’
In the early nineties Michael Jackson’s interest in children was viewed by
most quarters where it was known about as odd, but not necessarily
inappropriate.
Michael was thought of as not only a virgin, but asexual. He was viewed
as ‘damaged goods’, a brilliant entertainer who gave his all to his work
because he had no personal life in which to find satisfaction. No one
believed he actually had romances with girls like Tatum O’Neal or Brooke
Shields, no matter how much he insisted that such affairs of the heart had
taken place in his life. Mostly, where Michael’s personal life was
concerned, one felt a sense of sadness about it. He was an oddity, a brilliant
performer and legendary recording artist whose image was perplexing and
eccentric, but not sexual. Even when he grabbed his crotch during his
performances, the action didn’t have a sexual connotation to it as much as it
did the imprint of another clever bit of choreography. Then, of course, there
was all of that business about his ‘lost childhood’…
‘He’s a man who has never had a childhood,’ Bert Fields, one of
Michael’s attorneys, explained to me – as if I wasn’t aware of Michael’s
background. ‘So he’s having his childhood now, you see? His friends are
little kids. They have pillow fights. It’s all innocent.’
I had a discussion with Michael along those same lines in 1991, after the
original publication of my biography of him. I saw him and LaToya at a
Record Collectors’ Convention in the parking lot of Capitol Records in
Hollywood. He was wearing a bright red shirt, black satin pants… and a
black surgical mask. When LaToya went off in search of records by The
Partridge Family, Michael and I began talking about the music of our youth
and, somehow, we began talking about his childhood. ‘I missed my
childhood,’ he said, sadly.
Having personally witnessed just a bit of Michael’s childhood in Encino,
I offered the opinion that perhaps his childhood wasn’t as bad as he
remembered it. The biggest misconception about him is that he has lived his
life sheltered from ‘the real world’, and that this is why he has practically
withdrawn from society. In fact, Michael has had more life encounters than
most people. An immensely gifted performer, he has travelled the world
many times over, entertaining people of all colours, races and religions. He
is intimate with the exhilaration of a thunderous ovation, of a standing-
room-only crowd. He knows what it is to be ‘special’, to be able to make
demands and expect them to be met because of who he is. He knows what
it’s like to have great wealth, to be able to give his mother a million dollars
so she won’t have to work. He has experienced the pleasure of giving, of
being charitable, of seeing the faces of deathly ill children light up just
because he is who he is.
‘A lot of kids starve, Michael,’ I reminded him. ‘A lot of kids are poor,
they become addicted to drugs. A lot of kids don’t live in mansions with
servants. A lot of kids have it a lot worse that you did. In fact,’ I said,
maybe feeling a little too self-confident, ‘I think you had a pretty good
childhood. You travelled. You had friends. You did what you wanted to do,
didn’t you? You performed. You entertained. It was fun. I think you miss
your childhood, yes. But I don’t think you missed out on it.’
Michael stared at me, angrily. ‘No, it was horrible,’ he countered. ‘I had a
terrible childhood. All of that performing. All that recording. The fans took
over my life,’ he said, pointing at me. ‘I never got to play,’ he complained.
‘It was awful.’
‘See you ‘round,’ he said, turning his back on me. ‘I’m going to find
‘Toya.’
The memory of that brief exchange has stayed with me over the years,
especially when the common explanation to Michael’s increasingly unusual
behaviour became that he had ‘missed out’ on his youth.
‘A place where boys have rights’
A week after meeting him, Michael Jackson telephoned Jordie Chandler. As
the two discussed their lives and hobbies, Jordie expressed an interest in
playing video games. Michael then invited the boy to his ‘hide-out’, an
apartment he maintained in Century City, California, which most of
Michael’s family and staff members had only heard about, but had never
actually seen. Michael explained that he had an arcade at the apartment and
felt sure that Jordie would have fun there. Of course, Jordie wanted to go.
However when he asked his mother for permission, she denied it citing
upcoming school tests for which the youngster needed to study. But in the
weeks to come, Michael continued telephoning Jordie; the two became fast
friends.
On 27 June 1992, Michael embarked on his Dangerous concert
extravaganza, the first of thirty-nine performances on the first leg of the
tour taking place in Munich, Germany, at the Olympic Stadium. It was a
complex production with the expected bombastic special effects and
lighting, dancers, musicians and others involved in the fantastic
multimillion-dollar presentation. In all, Michael would perform eighteen
numbers – including hits such as ‘Wanna Be Startin’ Something’, ‘Thriller’,
‘Billie Jean’ and ‘Beat it’ – and four from the current Dangerous album. At
the end of the show, in front of nearly 75,000 people, Michael appeared to
strap on a jet and rocket right out of the stadium. (Actually, a stunt double
did the trick, which was orchestrated by illusionist, David Copperfield.)
Even without John Branca at the helm, Michael was making winning
decisions; he sold the rights of his Dangerous tour to HBO for twenty
million dollars, the highest sum ever paid for a live concert. When the
network broadcast the final show of the first leg of Michael’s tour, HBO
gained its highest rating up until that time.
Because Michael was involved in every aspect of the show, from sound
to lighting to costumes all the way down to ticket sales, it demanded all of
his focus. How he managed to even give Jordie Chandler a second thought
during this time is remarkable, yet he did just that. For the next nine months
while on the road, Michael telephoned his new friend on a weekly basis.
For Michael, it was as if Jordie had become his lifeline to the real world, to
his home, as he performed in front of hundreds of thousands of adoring
strangers. In fact, Michael also had eleven-year-old Brett Barnes with him
from Australia, as well as nine-year-old Prince Albert von Thurn und Taxis,
son of Gloria von Thurn und Taxis of Bavaria and already one of the richest
kids in the world. His staff was used to having to accommodate children
while on the road with Michael, no one ever questioned it. However, even
though he had other youngsters with him, Michael’s thoughts were of
Jordie. According to what Jordie later recalled of his late-night, long-
distance conversations with him, Michael told him about Neverland. ‘It’s a
place where boys have rights,’ Michael said, promising to take Jordie there
as soon as the Dangerous tour was completed.
Michael also told Jordie about his charity work, how he had raised funds
for needy children’s organizations round the world with his Heal the World
Foundation, and his plans for a World Congress of Children to bring
together youngsters from one hundred nations. ‘Children,’ Michael
explained, ‘are the hope of the world.’ Sometimes, Michael said, he sent his
staff members to a toy store in one of his pick-up trucks. The employees fill
the truck with toys until ‘there’s not a single inch left’ in the pick-up bed,
and bring them to Neverland. Then, ‘as they gather all around me, smiling
and laughing,’ Michael distributed the toys to all the needy children. He
promised to introduce Jordie to Elizabeth Taylor one day, telling him, ‘she’s
really old, but she’s still cool. She’s won, like, fifteen Oscars!’ (Taylor has
actually won two.)
When Michael returned home from the final stop on the tour’s first leg,
Japan, on 31 December, he found that Elizabeth Taylor had decked out
Neverland for the Christmas holidays, with hundreds of thousands of
dollars’ worth of elaborate decorations. Though Michael, raised a Jehovah’s
Witness, never celebrated Christmas, he was still overwhelmed by
Elizabeth’s kind gesture. He called Jordie to tell him about it. ‘You should
see it,’ he said, the youngster later recalled. ‘It’s like a Winter Wonderland.
The only thing that would make it better would be having you here. Then, it
would be absolutely perfect.’
Michael was too busy in January, however, to entertain any guests at
Neverland. On his agenda was the NAACP [National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People] Image Awards on 16 January, President
Clinton’s Inaugural Ball on the 19th and then the American Music Awards
on the 25th – each performance requiring days of rehearsal time. Then, he
had the Superbowl on the 31st, where he performed with a 750-member
choir and a 98,000-person flashcard stunt to promote the Heal the World
Foundation. At the end of the show, 3,500 children joined Michael on stage
for ‘Heal the World’. 120 million people watched Michael’s performance.
On 10 February 1993, Michael gave an internationally televised
interview to Oprah Winfrey. During it, Michael and Oprah gave the world a
nighttime tour of Neverland and Michael then revealed, for the first time, he
suffers from Vitiligo. He also spoke of his ‘girlfriend’ Brooke Shields.
When Oprah pushed to learn if Michael was still a virgin, he clarified that
he was ‘a gentleman. You can call me old-fashioned, if you want.’ When
asked about plastic surgery, he said he had ‘very little. You can count it on
two fingers.’ Elizabeth Taylor made a surprise appearance, as if just passing
through, to declare that Michael ‘is the least weird man I have ever known.’
(Michael later presented her with a $250,000 diamond necklace to thank her
for the compliment.) It was a terrific, ratings-winning broadcast, drawing an
audience of more than ninety million; the fourth most-watched
entertainment show in US TV history.
The next day, Michael called June Chandler to invite her, Jordie and his
half-sister Lily, to his estate for the weekend. With Michael so much in the
headlines as a result of the interview with Oprah, it must have seemed
surreal to June that he had invited her and her family to the same place she
had just seen displayed on television, even offering to put them up for the
night. June accepted Michael’s invitation.
June and the children arrived at Neverland Ranch early on Friday
afternoon. The servant who greeted them suggested that they be seated in
the parlour and wait for ‘Mr Jackson’ as he scurried off to fetch soft drinks.
June, Jordie and Lily sat side by side on one of the couches and looked at
their surroundings, their mouths agape. Simply put, they could not believe
their eyes. Was it possible that they knew a person who lived here?
Though the twenty-five-room, mock-Tudor mansion’s living room was
large-scale and packed with opulent furnishings, there was also a sense of
warmth and elegance about it, with pine-panelled walls, fine Italian
antiques (a little over-done but, of course, for Michael excess is never
enough), and big, over-stuffed furniture, the kind into which one would sink
six inches upon being seated. Here and there, were eccentric treasures: life-
size mannequins of senior citizens and youngsters having tea; giant oil
paintings of Elizabeth Taylor hanging in elaborate, carved and gilded
frames; the white, bugle-beaded gown Diana Ross wore in the final scene of
Lady Sings the Blues encased in a large glass box – with pink lights glowing
around it. There were pictures of children, everywhere, both boys and girls.
The house was perfectly still; nothing stirred. It was quiet as a tomb, no
music, not a sound.
Outside, as far as the eye could see, were more than 2,000 verdant acres
of bucolic landscape, reminiscent of the English countryside. It was
impossible to imagine that anyone owned this place, it was so expansive,
with its deep blue four-acre lake way off in the distance. Statues paid
homage to Scottish author J. M. Barrie and his creation Peter Pan. From
more than a hundred speakers, disguised as rocks in the flowerbeds,
emanated Disney music (never Michael’s own music, to which he rarely
listens). There was a zoo with a menagerie of alligators, giraffes, lions, a
twelve-foot albino python and a seventy-thousand-pound elephant named
Gypsy (a present from Elizabeth Taylor). There was also ‘Cricket’, the
thirty-four-inch-tall stallion and Petunia, the potbellied pig, and Linus, the
two-foot-tall sheep. Of course, Bubbles the chimpanzee also lived on the
property, often sitting in the cinema with Michael, eating free candy from
the sweets counter. ‘Sometimes he takes off his diaper and goes on the
floor, but mostly he’s very clean,’ Michael had told Jordie. Then, of course,
there were the many rides: the Ferris wheel, bumper cars, steam trains…
and, for the little ones, a carousel, fire trucks and frog hoppers. Some might
have found it disturbing that hundreds of security cameras were positioned
all over the estate, hidden inside little bird-houses. However, Michael
viewed it as a necessary precaution. If any one of the thirty full-time
gardeners or ten ranch hands didn’t smile enough, or seemed otherwise
unhappy, he would be dismissed – another necessity. After all, this was
supposed to be a happy place.
‘So, how do you like my home?’ It was Michael, walking into the room,
flashing a smile of genuine pride and satisfaction, and holding a tray with
four soft-drink bottles. ‘I was going to put them in glasses,’ he said of the
refreshments. ‘But I couldn’t find any in the kitchen,’ he joked. ‘I’ve been
gone so long, I was lucky to even find the kitchen.’ He was funny, June
later recalled, funnier than she imagined he would be.
For the rest of the day, June, Jordie and Lily played games, swam, zipped
about in the master’s $7,000 black-and-lavender golf cart, and then watched
first-run films (loaned to Michael by major Hollywood studios) late into the
evening in his private screening room. The next day, Michael took them all
to a toy store an hour away, which had been closed by the managers for a
few hours to allow the Jackson party private shopping time. ‘You can have
anything you want,’ Michael told Jordie and Lily. As June watched, the two
children ran through the store, pulling more than ten thousand dollars’
worth of toys from the shelves and piling them into three shopping carts.
Saturday night was spent enjoying Michael’s amusement park under a
full and magical moon, first on the rollercoaster and then the Ferris wheel.
When the cart carrying Michael, Jordie, June and Lily got to the top of the
Ferris wheel, the operator stopped the rotation, just as Michael had earlier
instructed. The four of them then sat high above the ground – June, Michael
and Jordie shoulder-to-shoulder, and Lily on her mother’s lap – surveying
all that was Michael’s pride-and-joy. A slight breeze rustled the leaves of
old trees. There seemed to be twinkling lights as far as the eye could see. ‘I
don’t know where there are more lights,’ June said, breathlessly, ‘in the sky
or on the ground.’ All four were lost in their own thoughts as they sat in
silence, the moon bathing them with silvery radiance. However, Michael
looked glum in the dim light.
‘Do you know how much time I spend up here alone,’ Michael said,
softly, ‘just sitting up here by myself? I have all of this,’ he declared,
motioning to the acres below, ‘yet I have… nothing. The things I really
want in my life are the things I don’t have.’
‘You have us, now,’ Jordie said, putting his arm around Michael’s
shoulder.
Michael smiled. ‘My new little family,’ he concluded. ‘The only thing
that matters in life is having someone who understands you, who trusts you
and who will be with you when you grow old, no matter what.’
On Sunday morning, June, Jordie and Lily departed for Los Angeles after
their unforgettable weekend. Another visit was planned.
The following Saturday night, Michael showed up at June’s home in a
limousine ready to whisk them back to Neverland. However, when June,
Jordie and Lily got into the stretch automobile and greeted Michael, they
discovered another boy sitting on the singer’s lap, eleven-year-old Brett
Barnes, who Michael introduced as his ‘cousin’. (They’re not related even
though the youngster did introduce himself as ‘Brett Jackson’.) Apparently,
Jordie would not be the sole focus of Michael’s attention during the
weekend ahead.
As June tried to keep the conversation going, Brett and Michael appeared
to be in their own world with an easy rapport between them, one that made
what Michael had with Jordie seem, perhaps, not so unique. It was a tense
drive to Santa Barbara.
When Michael and his guests finally arrived at Neverland, they were
immediately surrounded by uniformed guards, maids, butlers and other
functionaries, all gathering and grinning to one another excitedly. Michael
nodded and smiled and shook hands. He then instructed two of the guards
to take June’s suitcases to one of the guest cottages. ‘Oh, and Brett’s
belongings go in my room,’ he added nonchalantly as Brett ran off with one
of the maids. Michael then embraced and kissed his remaining guests. ‘You
have Neverland at your disposal,’ he told June, ‘so have a ball. I love you
all,’ he said with genuine warmth. ‘And just wait,’ he added, ‘tomorrow
will be another great day.’
‘Never do that again, Jordie’
Like many celebrated people, at his core, Michael Jackson was conscious of
a certain emptiness. He admitted it, and often; it didn’t take much prodding
for him to describe himself as ‘the loneliest person on the planet’. Over the
years, especially as he got older, bleakness crept into his soul. When he was
on stage, he came to life and was without peer; offstage, he felt… joyless.
However, when he met Jordie Chandler, all of that seemed to change.
‘Michael is a sad person,’ confirmed someone who has been associated
with him for twenty years. ‘He has had a difficult life, always been a loner,
a misfit. If he hadn’t become a star, he would be the guy living in Gary,
Indiana, alone in a one-bedroom apartment with no friends and a job
developing film at a photolab. What really attracted Michael to Jordie, was
the youngster’s humour. Whenever a person can make him laugh, that’s
someone he will want in his life. Jordie made him laugh. He would make
fun of Michael, of the way he dressed, of his clumsiness, his driving.
Michael was amused by Jordie’s irreverent manner. He felt he could be
himself around him.
‘They used to dance together, Michael showing Jordie choreography
steps and Jordie catching on remarkably fast. Jordie was intelligent;
Michael loves smart kids and Jordie was tremendously creative. Michael
said that Jordie could one day be an amazing film director. “He has a
vision,” he told me. “I think he could do wonderful things.”’
They probably would have been a perfect couple of buddies – if not for
the fact that Jordie was thirteen and Michael was thirty-four.
‘I truly don’t think there’s a devious bone in his body,’ June said of
Michael. If she thought anything was unusual about Michael and Brett at
Neverland, she didn’t indicate as much after she and her family returned to
Los Angeles.
It wasn’t long before Michael invited them all to his ‘hide-out’ on
Wilshire Boulevard in Westwood, about ten minutes from June and Dave
Schwartz’s home. ‘Do you have an amusement park there, too?’ Jordie
asked him. Michael laughed, ‘No, silly. It’s just my place to go where no
one can find me.’ Then, lowering his voice as if to share an important
confidence, he added, ‘As soon as someone finds out about it – whoosh! – I
move to another hide-out. Once,’ he continued, ‘a person knocked on my
door that I didn’t know and – whoosh! – I moved to another hide-out, the
next day.’
Why?’
‘Because if one stranger knows where I live,’ Michael answered, ‘then
millions more will follow.’
‘So how many hide-outs have you had?’ Jordie asked.
‘Hundreds,’ Michael said, grinning. ‘Hundreds and hundreds and
hundreds.’
Jordie, Lily and June had fun at Michael’s hide-out, as expected, and, as
the days passed, became privy to more of his secrets. For instance, on 9
March, Michael was honoured with a Soul Train award for Best Album
(Dangerous) and Best Song (‘Remember the Time’). At the show, he sat in
a wheelchair on the stage and performed ‘Remember the Time’ while
surrounded by a host of dancers. He explained that he had hurt himself
during rehearsals.
However, the next day at Neverland, he threw the crutches aside. ‘It’s a
miracle! I can walk! I can walk!’ Michael exclaimed, the jokester in him
coming forth. Michael had never been injured; it appeared he had used the
wheelchair and crutches as a publicity gimmick.
A couple of days later, Michael took Jordie, Lily and their mother to Las
Vegas where they all stayed at Jackson’s private, $3,000-a-night suite in the
Mirage Hotel. Michael and Jordie stayed in separate rooms, while June and
Lily shared another suite.
The night after their arrival, June and Lily turned in early, exhausted by
their fun time in Las Vegas. Meanwhile, Michael and Jordie watched The
Exorcist. Jordie was so frightened by the film, he asked – or Michael
suggested, depending on which of them tells the story – that he be allowed
to stay with Michael in his room. In whatever manner the circumstances
evolved, the two ended up sleeping together, Michael in silk pyjamas,
Jordie in a T-shirt and sweat pants.
The next morning, when June went to Jordie’s bedroom she found that he
had not slept in his bed. As she stood in the doorway trying to figure out
what had happened, she caught Jordie slipping out of Michael’s room.
‘What is going on?’ she asked. ‘Where were you?’
‘Oh, I slept with Michael,’ answered the boy, casually, according to a
later recollection.
‘What?’ June exclaimed. ‘What are you talking about? You don’t do
that,’ she said, now scolding him. ‘Never do that again, Jordie.’
‘Why?’
‘Because it’s not right,’ June said, upset. ‘Promise me you will never do
that again, ever, Jordie.’
‘But, Mom – ’
‘But, nothing,’ she cut him off. ‘Promise me!’
‘I promise,’ said Jordie, sounding defeated.
The next day, Jordie told Michael about June’s concern. Now, Michael
was the one who was upset. He didn’t understand why June would so object
to his sleeping with her son. Did she not trust him? With Dave Schwartz not
around the house, it seemed right that Jordie have a male influence, Michael
reasoned. He decided to take up the matter with June. According to what
June later recalled, Michael pulled her aside and, fixing her with an earnest
look, said, ‘Jordie and I share a special and innocent friendship. Why did
you tell him he can’t sleep with me?’
‘Because it’s completely inappropriate, Michael,’ June said, holding her
ground. ‘And I don’t want Jordie to be hurt.’
‘But I’m not like that,’ Michael said. ‘How could you think I would hurt
Jordie?’ he asked. ‘We have a friendly, honest, true and loving relationship.’
Michael then told June his theory about ‘conditioning’. That children are
innocent until conditioned by the world to be otherwise, at which point they
become cynical, judgemental adults who lie, cheat, gossip and treat each
other poorly. It would be his desire, he said, that Jordie remain pure and
untouched by the adult world, unconditioned. Michael began to cry.
June didn’t know how to respond to Michael’s heart-felt monologue. His
theory, while idealistic and naive, was probably harmless. However, there
was still something disconcerting about the proposition that Jordie never be
permitted to grow into a well-adjusted adult. After all, it couldn’t always be
moonbeams and lollipops for her son. Did she really want him to end up
like the thirty-four-year-old man standing before her, sobbing? Or, was she
now just being ‘cynical and judgemental’, thereby proving Michael’s point?
At a loss, she apologized to Michael for hurting his feelings. The two
embraced. ‘You must trust me,’ Michael said.
‘I do,’ June assured him. ‘I do trust you.’
The next day, Michael gave June a $12,000 ruby-and-diamond bracelet
from Carrier’s. June stared at him as he presented the gift, dumbfounded.
‘A token,’ Michael told her. ‘It’s nothing. I just love you.’
Afterwards, Michael continued telephoning and visiting Jordie, with
June’s approval and much to the astonishment of many in the Chandler and
Schwartz families. Why would a wealthy, world-famous and busy superstar
work so diligently to forge a deep and meaningful bond with one of his
teenage fans? No one seemed to have the answer to that question. However,
the scenario wasn’t quite as odd to those witnessing it from Michael’s
camp. Many of them had seen young friends of Michael’s come and go over
the years and had long ago learned not to question their employer about it.
Though clearly obsessed with certain boys along the way, no one ever saw
him do anything inappropriate with them, no one ever accused him of
anything improper… and, so, that was the end of it. The explanation always
had something to do with Michael’s ‘lost childhood’ and his having young
friends because they were innocent and trusting… a bit of a tiresome
excuse. Therapy might have been a better way to go but, as one of his long-
time associates put it, ‘Don’t even go there with Michael.’
On Friday, 2 April Jordie Chandler and his mother and sister again went
to Neverland to visit Michael. While there, they noticed that a pair of
mannequins, both dressed as fierce-looking Sikh Indian guards, had been
positioned in front of the heavy, mahogany double-doors leading to
Michael’s bedroom. Michael said he had them placed there in order to keep
ghosts away from the room.
Inside his bedroom, Michael had a giant, gold throne placed directly in
front of the fireplace. It was very strange.
That night, June and Lily stayed in the guest quarters. Jordie stayed with
Michael in a room fit for a king.
Either Jordie’s Mom Trusts Michael… or She
Doesn’t
June Chandler spent much of the next five days at Neverland walking alone
and mulling over the odd goings-on. On one hand, she trusted Michael and
didn’t believe that anything inappropriate was going on between him and
Jordie. But the fact that Michael and Jordie were now sleeping in the same
bed was troubling. However, it was Michael Jackson with whom Jodie was
sharing a bed. Michael Jackson. June and her children were staying at
Neverland, receiving expensive presents and being treated like royalty. She
was swept away by it. Today, a parent might conclude that precisely
because it is Michael Jackson with whom he or she is dealing, she might
have had good reason to err on the side of caution if only because of his
controversial reputation with children – deserved or undeserved. However,
ten years ago, June simply did not know what to make of the situation.
Therefore, she allowed it to continue, especially since her husband was not
living with her and the children and, she reasoned, a strong male influence
on Jordie might not be a bad thing.
Michael accompanied June, Jordie and Lily in the limousine back to Los
Angeles. However, he did not then return to Santa Barbara, deciding instead
to retreat to his Westwood hideaway. He had a medical problem, and
needed to be close to his dermatologist.
In fact, a week or so earlier, Michael had decided to bleach his scrotum
with Benoquin, a bleaching cream prescribed to him many times over the
years by his dermatologist, Dr Arnie Klein. Michael had been using the
cream for years to bleach his skin. However apparently, he had never tried it
on his scrotum. As it happened, the cream burned and stung, causing a great
deal of discomfort. Debbie Rowe, the assistant to Michael’s dermatologist
attended to him. To show his gratitude, Michael gave Debbie a white GMC
truck.
No sooner was Michael settled in at his home that he began to long for
Jordie. He had to speak to him; he called him.
June didn’t like the way the conversation unfolded as she listened to her
son’s end of it. He responded to questions with what sounded like a code of
simple answers, ‘yes,’ ‘no’ and ‘maybe’. When he hung up, June asked him
what he and Michael had discussed. He was evasive.
Five minutes later, Michael’s telephone rang. It was June calling to tell
him that, again, she was concerned about his relationship with Jordie.
Michael was bewildered. Hadn’t they already covered this territory? Either
she trusted him, or she didn’t… however, she had to make a choice, as
Michael told her.
Michael suggested that she come to his hide-out so that they could
discuss the matter personally. When June arrived, she found Michael in his
pyjamas. Once again he pleaded with June to give him a chance.
He had often been misunderstood in the past, he told her, and he truly did
care about her and her children. Hadn’t he proved as much? It seemed
unfair, Michael pointed out, that after all he had done for her and her family
she would now doubt his motives. He had only been kind and generous to
them, he reminded her. June had to agree.
Michael then told June that he was lonely at his hide-out and asked if she
would take him back to her home. She complied. Without changing from
his pyjamas, Michael got into the car with her. It’s no wonder, as she later
told it, that she felt as if she was dealing not with an adult, but with a child.
Once at the Schwartz home, June suggested that Michael retire to one of
the guest rooms. However, perhaps testing her to see if she really did trust
him, Michael asked that he be allowed to sleep in Jordie’s bed… with
Jordie.
The next weekend, June, Jordie and Lily were again guests of Michael’s
at Neverland. The weekend after that one, Michael had to leave Los
Angeles on a business trip. He didn’t want to go, telling his associates that
he had become so attached to Jordie and his family that he couldn’t bear to
leave them. At the Burbank airport Michael sobbed as he hugged Jordie,
telling him that he would ‘do anything’ to not have to go to Philadelphia.
‘I’m going to miss you so much,’ he told the youngster, as June and Lily
looked on.
‘But you’ll be back soon,’ the little girl offered.
‘I know,’ Michael said, still hugging Jordie tightly and crying. ‘But it’s
just that I love you guys so much. You’re my true, true family.’ He sighed
as he buried his face in Jordie’s hair. Then, he embraced Lily. Then, June.
‘I’ll be back,’ he told them, ‘and we’ll have more fun. I promise.’ He then
turned to Jordie and said, ‘Don’t forget the wishes. Always say the wishes.’
He winked at him, conspiratorially.
‘I won’t forget,’ Jordie promised. He winked back.
By the time Michael left Burbank, Jordie, June and Lily were so
emotional they couldn’t stop crying. It was as if they had all been swept
away by some surreal melodrama. After all, Michael would only be gone
for a little more than a week. They really didn’t know Michael that well,
and he didn’t know them, either – not really. Yet, the relationship had
become so intense, June couldn’t help but feel a little uncomfortable about
it. ‘What wishes?’ she wanted to know when she and Jordie were alone.
‘Nothin’ he said. ‘It’s between me and Michael.’
‘I don’t like that, Jordie,’ June said. ‘You know I don’t like you keeping
secrets.’
Jordie didn’t respond.
In truth, the ‘wishes’ were six rules that Michael and Jordie had come up
with, mostly as a joke between them. However, the wishes seemed to have
real significance to Michael, and he often reminded Jordie of them. He said
that if they repeated these wishes three times a day, perhaps they would
actually come true for them:
1. No wenches, bitches, heifers or ho’s (whores).
2. Never give up your bliss.
3. Live with me in Neverland forever.
4. No conditioning.
5. Never grow up.
6. Be better than best friends.
Michael Meets Jordie’s Father
One person was not as taken by Michael Jackson’s relationship with Jordie
as everyone else: Jordie’s father, Evan Chandler.
The odd situation between Jordie and Michael Jackson evolved so
quickly, Evan couldn’t seem to keep track of it. When June would telephone
him to tell him about their Neverland visits, he found it difficult to believe
that a world-famous entertainer would have that much time to spend with
his ex-wife and their child. Also, June and Evan had been arguing about
Evan’s involvement in Jordie’s life; June didn’t feel that Evan was spending
enough time with his son. Evan disagreed. However, he couldn’t help but
feel that he might be losing his place in Jordie’s life to Michael. He didn’t
believe that Michael was doing anything wrong with Jordie. Rather, he
simply felt the presence of another man, an influential male figure, in his
son’s life – and he didn’t like it. It didn’t help matters that June would often
make reference to the fact that Jordie saw Michael more than he did his
own father. ‘Michael is completely influential on your son,’ she told Evan
during once conversation, ‘and he’s taking over where you have left off.’
When he learned that Michael was sleeping with Jordie, Evan became
upset. ‘It’s preposterous,’ he told his ex-wife, according to what he later
recalled. ‘It isn’t right.’
‘Well, that’s what I thought, at first,’ June explained to him. ‘But you
have to be there. You have to see how kind and gentle Michael is with
Jordie.’
‘Bullshit,’ Evan said, angrily, according to his memory. ‘It’s not right and
I want it to stop.’
‘Well, it’s not going to,’ June told him. ‘I’ve already been through this
with Michael, and I know it’s fine. I’m Jordie’s mother,’ she said, ‘and I
know what’s best for him.’ How dare Evan try to tell June how to raise their
son? She was doing the best job she could do, she felt, and had given the
matter regarding Jordie and Michael serious consideration. She did not want
Evan to second-guess her.
When Evan polled his friends, they agreed that there was something
inappropriate about Jordie sleeping in the same bed with Michael Jackson.
One of his patients – Evan was a dentist – suggested that, ‘just to be on the
safe side’, he should insist that such behaviour stop. She was familiar with
Michael’s dermatologist, Arnold Klein, and, at Evan’s request, called the
doctor to inquire about Michael. Klein told her that Michael was ‘absolutely
heterosexual’ and, according to him, there was no reason to be concerned
about him and Jordie. ‘He’s the sweetest guy in the world,’ Arnold said,
‘and, I swear to God, you would be making a mistake separating him and
Jordie. He’s completely innocent, like a kid himself.’ Still, despite Klein’s
reassurance, Evan Chandler’s patient said that, at least in her opinion, an
adult should not be sleeping in the same bed with a youngster, unless he is
the child’s parent – and even then such sleeping arrangements should be
closely monitored. Another of Evan’s friends, Dr Mark Torbiner, had to
agree: something was wrong with the arrangement as it existed between
Jordie and Michael, and it should be stopped, he insisted. ‘It’s not normal,’
said Torbiner. ‘C’mon! Be realistic. In the real world, this is crazy.’
On Sunday 18 April, Michael returned from his business trip to the East
Coast. As soon as he got to Neverland, he picked up the telephone to call
Jordie and invite him and his mother and sister to the ranch for a five-day
‘vacation’. Now Evan was closely monitoring the frequency of Jordie’s
visits with Michael, and becoming unreservedly uncomfortable about them.
On 22 April, much to Evan’s chagrin, Michael took June, Jordie and Lily
to Disneyworld in Florida for three days, utilizing Sony’s company jet.
When they returned to Los Angeles Michael asked if he could stay at the
house with June and her children. Again, Michael slept in the same bed
with Jordie. About a week later, Michael bought Jordie a computer. The
youngster was thrilled with the present; Evan was not happy about it. He
had planned to buy his son the exact same computer and Michael had
beaten him to it.
It was decided by Michael and Jordie that the computer would be set up
at Michael’s hide-out so that when Jordie spent time there he would have
access to the Internet. Jordie now felt that the more time he spent at the
hide-out, the better off he was – and June agreed, since she trusted Michael
with her son – and maybe to spite Evan, or maybe not – she allowed the
visits, most of them overnight, to continue.
In early May, Michael offered to take June, Jordie and Lily to Monaco
for the World Music Awards where Michael was being honoured with three
trophies including ‘World’s Best-selling Record Artist of the Era’. The
Jackson entourage would be travelling first class, and would stay in the
$2,000-a-night Winston Churchill suite at the Hotel de Paris, the finest such
establishment in the principality. It promised to be an exciting vacation for
June and her family. For his part, having his friends with him on this
overseas trip meant that Michael did not have to leave them behind; he
couldn’t bear the idea of that.
On the day they were to leave, Evan Chandler came by the Schwartz
house to say goodbye to his son. Though he still had not met Michael
Jackson, he had no choice but to trust that June knew what she was doing
when she agreed to the trip. Disturbingly, though, Evan noticed that Jordie
now seemed oddly cold towards him. Evan would later remember feeling
that his son had changed, that he no longer seemed to care about his father.
As Jordie climbed into the limousine with June and Lily, Evan stood at the
curb and watched them chatter among themselves and, as he recalled it, felt
left out of the proceedings. Later, he would say, ‘I felt then that maybe June
should just divorce Dave, since they were having problems, and maybe
hook with up Michael. After all, they were having a good time, even if I
had some reservations about it. Maybe I was wrong, I reasoned. Maybe I
was wrong.’
In Monaco, Michael was often photographed with June, Jordie and Lily.
In several pictures, he is seen holding Lily in his arms while walking next to
June. Jordie, in a red shirt and large, oversized hat that clearly belonged to
Michael, walked ahead of them. During the show, Michael sat next to
Prince Albert, with Jordie in his lap.
On Sunday 16 May Michael and his guests returned from Europe. While
browsing in the airport’s gift shop, they found a feature story in the
National Enquirer tabloid about ‘Michael’s new, adopted family’. Along
with the article were photographs of Michael with Jordie at Disneyworld.
‘Oh, no, don’t believe that stuff,’ Michael told his friends, even though the
article was obviously true. ‘The stuff they wrote about me is all lies.’
Unbeknownst to Michael, Evan Chandler had also seen the article. He
worried that such publicity might set Jordie up as a target for kidnappers
and, in his opinion, the situation between his son and a man he had never
met – Michael Jackson – was out of control. Evan had a tense telephone
conversation with June about the situation; he also telephoned Dave
Schwartz to tell him how he felt about the article, which resulted in a loud
argument between the two men.
Though Dave had been on his estranged wife’s side, his position changed
after the article came out, and his friends began calling to express sympathy
that he had lost his family to Michael Jackson. He demanded that June
break off her friendship with Michael. She refused, saying that Michael had
been kind to her and the children and that for him to try to interfere at this
point was ‘just plain selfish’.
Afterwards June told Michael Jackson about the many emotional and
argumentative conversations relating to him and Jordie which had taken
place in just a few hours. Concerned, Michael felt that what had transpired
was typical of the behaviour of adults. ‘See, grown-ups don’t trust each
other, and that’s the real problem here,’ he told June. ‘It’s such a shame that
this kind of thing happens, isn’t it?’
*
During the first weekend of June 1993, Jordie Chandler was entertaining
Michael Jackson at his home when his father, Evan, stopped by for a
surprise visit. Michael and Jordie were playing in Jordie’s bedroom when
Evan entered the room. Shy about meeting Evan, as he is about meeting
most people for the first time, Michael ducked into a corner.
Evan walked around the room with his mouth agape, unaware that
Michael was in the shadows. ‘My God, look at all this stuff, Jordie,’ Evan
said, astonished by the sight of so many thousands of dollars’ worth of
compact discs, videos, Nintendo cartridges and toys, many of them still in
boxes. ‘Where’d you get all of this stuff from?’ he asked.
Just as Evan asked the question he caught a glimpse of movement in the
corner. It was Michael. Evan’s first impression of Michael was that he was
an odd person. Michael had on full makeup, including red lipstick and black
eye-liner. He had on his black hat; a band-aid on his nose. He was chewing
gum. ‘Hello, Mr Chandler,’ he said, his voice a delicate whisper. Michael
extended his hand. When Evan shook it, as he later remembered, it was a
weak, limp handshake.
At that moment, Evan’s five-year-old son, Nikki, from his second
marriage, ran into the room. ‘Wow. Michael Jackson,’ exclaimed the
youngster. Within moments, Nikki was on the floor with Michael playing
with action figures and wrestling with him, as Evan and Jordie looked on.
Later, all four went into the backyard to play with slingshots. Maddeningly,
Michael kept touching his nose, every few minutes. No one knew why; no
one asked. By the time he left the house, Evan was completely taken with
Michael. He had been kind and considerate to the children, funny and
‘completely normal acting’, as Evan later recalled it.
A few days later, Michael felt comfortable enough with Evan to invite
him to the hide-out. He suggested that Evan bring Nikki. When father and
son arrived, they found Jordie and Michael waiting for them. Michael then
presented Nikki with an assortment of toys, and Evan with a Carrier time-
piece. Later, as the boys played, Michael told Evan that he hoped to be able
to take Jordie with him on the second leg of his Dangerous tour, which
would begin on 24 August 1993 at the National Stadium in Thailand,
Bangkok. He felt that Jordie might obtain a unique education on the road
with him in countries such as Taiwan, Japan, Russia, Israel and Turkey and
Mexico. Michael hoped that Evan would think of his offer as a rare
opportunity for Jordie, and perhaps discuss the matter with June.
Evan would later recall again feeling uneasy about Michael. He had to
ask the question: ‘Michael, what exactly is the nature of your relationship
with Jordie?’
‘Well, I don’t know what to say,’ Michael responded, ‘except that it’s…
it’s…’ He seemed to search for the right word. ‘It’s cosmic,’ he finally said.
Evan got to the point. ‘Look, are you having sex with my son?’ he asked.
One would think such a question would be asked by Evan while his hands
were wrapped around Michael’s throat, but Evan recalled his demeanour as
having been calm and collected.
Michael was shocked. He couldn’t believe Evan would ask him such a
question, and in such a straightforward a way. ‘My God, I can’t believe you
would ask me that,’ he said.
The two men stared at each other for a few moments, apparently not
knowing what to say. Evan decided not to push the issue. Instead, he asked,
‘What if you don’t want to be friends with my son in the future? He’ll be so
hurt.’
‘Not want to be friends with Jordie?’ Michael asked ‘But that’ll never
happen. No one is more loyal than me. I will always be Jordie’s friend.’
An awkward silence hung between the two men. Finally, Evan suggested
that he and Michael join the youngsters in Michael’s arcade.
At this point, as Evan Chandler later recalled it, he truly did not know
whether to approve of Michael or not. He vacillated between feeling
exhilaration and uneasiness. After all, Michael didn’t really deny that
anything inappropriate was going on, nor did he admit it.
In a few days’ time, Evan was again awe-struck by Michael’s presence in
Jordie’s life, enough to suggest that Michael even spend more time with
him. The suggestion came when Michael showed up at Nikki’s birthday
party on 22 May 1993, astonishing all of the guests who couldn’t fathom
that the Michael Jackson was playing with their children at a friend’s
birthday party. ‘Who wouldn’t want his kid to be Michael Jackson’s pal,’
Evan said at the time. He even suggested that Michael build a new wing on
to the home so that he wouldn’t have to make the trek from Santa Barbara
to Los Angeles just to visit Jordie. ‘You can just stay here,’ he offered, ‘but
you’d be more comfortable building an addition to the house, I think.’
Michael took the offer seriously enough to have his representatives check
with the zoning division of the county in which Evan lived to determine if it
would be possible to build such an addition to the house.
That night, Michael stayed at Evan’s home, sleeping in the same room
with Jordie and Nikki. After the two boys watched a video of Peter Pan
with Michael, Evan bid them good night and closed the bedroom door. The
last thing he saw was Michael Jackson tucked into a roll-out bed, and his
two sons in bunk beds – Jordie in the bottom bed and Nikki in the top.
Those would remain the sleeping arrangements at Evan’s home for the next
two nights.
What a strange scene: Michael Jackson, arguably the wealthiest and most
accomplished entertainer in show business curled up in an uncomfortable,
roll-out bed while sleeping in a room with two youngsters.
Didn’t he have any responsibilities? It was as if the person in Jordie’s
room had no plans for the future, certainly no recording dates or concert
commitments.
Wasn’t he known to rub shoulders with movies stars, magnates and
members of royal families such as Diana, Princess of Wales? Why did he
never mention them? Where was his family? Why did he never speak about
them? He never once mentioned his brothers, or the names of any of his
siblings.
And wasn’t he supposed to be wealthy? According to Forbes, he had
earned fifty-five million dollars the year before. Why then did he dress only
in old jeans and T-shirts? Why did he wear the same black loafers every
day? When, on occasion, he did refer to his wealth, it seemed incongruous.
For instance, Evan once watched Michael and Jordie shoot water pistols at
tomatoes lined up on a ledge. Michael told the youngster, ‘I’m thinking
about buying my own private jet.’ Jordie shrugged. Then, Michael said,
‘You know what? I’ll bet if I stand back three more feet I can still hit that
tomato right over there.’
If anyone had told Evan that the person sleeping in his son’s bedroom
was actually a Michael Jackson impersonator, he would have believed it –
that’s how little the life of the man on the roll-out bed seemed to have with
the genuine-article King of Pop.
Over the next couple of days, Evan and Michael forged ahead with their
own friendship. They discussed family matters as well as Jordie and Nikki’s
education. Michael mentioned that Jordie had often described Evan as a
terrific father, and Michael noted his own admiration of Evan’s dedication
to his children. They also discussed Dave Schwartz, and his displeasure
over the National Enquirer’s assertion that Michael had ‘stolen’ his family.
Evan said he had to agree with Dave that the story was ‘in bad form’.
Michael explained that he had learned to live with sensational articles about
himself and his friends, and he hoped Evan would not hold this one against
him. Evan said he liked Michael very much and would happily allow him to
continue to be friendly with Jordie and Nikki.
The two men shook hands and agreed to keep open the lines of
communication between them.
In days to come, however, Evan had more time to think about Michael’s
analysis of his relationship with Jordie as being ‘cosmic’ and the fact that
he had been so curiously reticent to characterize their relationship in
specific terms. Michael hadn’t been responsive to the direct, albeit
disconcerting, question of whether or not he was having sex with Jordie.
Rather, Michael just seemed embarrassed by it. Evan, as he would later tell
it, began to experience a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. Small
incidents over the next few days made a bigger impact on him.
For instance, there was the evening the family was together watching
television with Michael when Michael seemed unable to take his eyes off
Jordie. When Evan asked Michael if something was wrong, Michael said,
‘No, I’m just looking at things.’ However, when Jordie rose to go into the
kitchen to fetch a snack, Michael followed. When Jordie went outside to
speak to a visiting friend, Michael followed. Finally, when Jordie got up to
go to the bathroom and Michael also rose, Jordie said, ‘Michael, I’m just
going to the bathroom. You can stay here.’ Embarrassed, Michael laughed
and said, ‘Oh, okay. That’s fine.’
Evan understood that teenagers have all manner of relationships with
non-family members and that those with peers can sometimes have a
greater influence on their values and behaviour. However, was Michael a
peer? Not really. Also, his influence on Jordie was troubling because there
were so many unanswered questions about it. Why did Michael and Jordie
have so many inside jokes between them, as if sharing their own language?
Why were they always whispering to one another? Why would they speak
softly to one another and then, as soon as they would hear one of Jordie’s
parents enter the room, clam up? Why was Jordie beginning to dress like
Michael, with black hats and mirrored sunglasses? Most importantly, why
were they sleeping in the same room?
Over the next few weeks, Evan continued to press Michael about the
nature of his relationship with Jordie, so much so that Michael began to
distance himself from Evan rather than have to undergo any further
interrogation. Michael seemed to not understand why Evan was confused
about what was going on between him and Jordie. Hadn’t he already
explained that he was Jordie’s true, loyal friend? Didn’t they have an
agreement to forge ahead with Michael as an accepted part of the family?
Again, as Michael had earlier told June, Evan either trusted him or he
didn’t. The problem was that Michael was unprepared for what might occur
if Evan did not trust him. Would he abandon his friendship with Jordie
because the boy’s father did not trust him? No.
When Michael was unhappy with a person, that person was usually
ousted from his world. Many important people had shown up in his life and
then been banished from it over the years. Some of them, like John Branca,
had considered themselves long-time friends of Michael’s, but such status
did not save them from being terminated. If Michael could let go of John
after more than ten years, where then did Evan Chandler stand after just a
few weeks? Michael stopped returning Evan’s telephone calls when Evan
became a problem in his life. If he could have fired him, or had someone
else do the job, he would have done it.
However, Michael had seriously underestimated Evan. He wasn’t an
employee who could be easily dismissed. Rather, he was the father of the
boy upon whom Michael had fixated, for whatever reason. He wasn’t about
to allow Michael to cut him out of his life, and out of his friendship with
Jordie, especially since he wasn’t sure he even trusted him. There was
something not right about Michael’s friendship with Jordie, he decided, and
he was going to set it straight if, for no other reason, than to prove to
Michael Jackson that he couldn’t get away with it.
Dirty Minds
In June 1993, Jordie Chandler was scheduled to graduate from junior high
school’s seventh grade. For months, he had anticipated the students’ party
that would commemorate the milestone for them. Though Jordie had always
been a popular student and had many friends, lately he seemed not to be in
communication with many of them. He had become so antisocial since
meeting Michael Jackson, his parents were concerned. However, the fact
that he was still enthusiastic about going to the end-of-the-year dance did
suggest to Evan and June that their son was still a normal teenager.
However, when Jordie walked into his mother’s bedroom to announce
that he had decided not to attend the school function and wanted, instead, to
spend the evening with Michael Jackson, she was worried. He had more fun
with Michael than he did with his school chums, he told June, and if he
could have it his way he would just as soon be with Michael. June,
according to her later recollection, tried to convince Jordie that he should
not abandon friends his own age for Michael. It was possible, she told him,
to cultivate relationships with his school friends as well as with Michael.
‘You don’t have to choose one over the other,’ she said. However, Jordie
didn’t see it that way; as far as he was concerned, his fellow students didn’t
understand him the way Michael did and, worse, he said, they were unkind
to others because they had been ‘conditioned’ to hate, just like adults. June
was at a loss. Hearing her son parrot Michael’s philosophy was
disconcerting. ‘You’d better talk to your dad about it,’ she suggested.
Evan Chandler’s position about Jordie’s decision was absolute. ‘Over my
dead body,’ he told him, angrily. ‘You can not spend all of your time with
Michael Jackson. I won’t allow it. Enough is enough.’
‘Well, you can’t stop me,’ Jordie said, defiantly. ‘I’ll do what I want to
do.’
Evan, as he would later recall it, had begun to think that Michael was gay
and that perhaps Jordie might be, as well. There was no other explanation,
he thought, to such obsession. Whatever was going on, though, he felt that
he needed to reconnect with his son. If the two could better communicate,
he might then be able to figure out the problem. ‘I’m sick about all of this,’
he told Jordie. ‘We love you so much. Why have you turned your back on
us? You can have Michael in your life,’ he concluded, ‘but you can also
have us, and everyone else.’
When Evan went to embrace his son, Jordie was stiff and unaffectionate.
Jordie didn’t want to hear what Evan had to say and didn’t want to engage
with him on any level. Evan would later say that he felt then that he was
losing his son to another man, and that he became more determined than
ever to stop that from happening. He had no recourse but to lay down the
law: ‘You’re going to that damn dance, Jordie. You are not spending the
night with Michael Jackson.’
‘No, I’m not,’ said the youngster. ‘You never liked Michael,’ he said, as
he stormed off. ‘You acted like you did. Michael told me that’s what was
going on, and he was right.’
In the end, Jordie did not attend the school dance. He spent the night with
Michael.
Though Michael Jackson may not have intended to do so, his presence in
Jordie’s life had caused a terrible turmoil for the youngster, as well as for
his parents, Evan and June, and even his stepfather, Dave Schwartz. The
emergence of Michael into their lives had thrown everything into wild
disarray, pitting the three adults against one another, and then Jordie against
all of them, resulting in distrust and frustration for all. Without effective
communication, it was inevitable that there would continue to be serious
problems at home for Jordie.
Was Michael aware of his part in what was happening to Jordie’s family?
One of his advisers recalls a conversation with him about Jordie, which
took place while the two were sitting in a golf cart on the Neverland
acreage, star-gazing. ‘You know, maybe you should just leave Jordie alone,’
suggested Michael’s adviser.
‘Nope,’ Michael said succinctly, recalled his adviser.
‘Why?’
‘What can I say?’ Michael asked. His expression was serene as he stared
into the infinite space.
‘But look at all of the chaos your friendship with him is causing Jordie,’
observed the adviser. ‘Don’t you think you should back off?’ the adviser
asked, still pushing.
Michael became angry; he could go from calm to fury in seconds. ‘Look,
I’m not the one causing problems,’ he said. ‘It’s Jordie’s parents. They can’t
accept that my relationship with him is innocent. They have dirty minds.
There is nothing sexual going on. Why can’t people just get that?’
‘But, Mike…’
Michael rose and walked away before the conversation could be finished.
If what those who know him best say is true, that Michael is a child at
heart, there’s definitely a flip side to such immaturity: he acts like a spoiled
little kid when he can’t have his way. He is often unable to see any point of
view other than his own.
On 7 July 1993 Evan Chandler struck a damaging blow to Michael’s
friendship with Jordie and also, as it would happen, to his own relationship
with his ex-wife, June, when he filed for a modification of her custody
agreement. The documents petitioned the courts to forbid Jordie from going
anywhere near Michael, and from visiting him at any of his homes, or
anywhere else. Evan requested that Jordie receive psychiatric help to
determine the full extent of Michael’s influence on him. He also accused
June of ‘nurturing’ the relationship between Jordie and Michael, which he
viewed as unhealthy, ‘because, according to what I know, she [June]
receives expensive gifts, cash and vacations from Jackson’.
In the affidavit, Evan declared that he had discovered that Michael
‘routinely spent the night with my son and they slept in the same bed. I then
asked him directly if he was having sex with my son. Jackson refused to
give me a straight answer. He rather told me that he would continue
sleeping with my son and that he thought it was “cosmic” and that he and
Jordie were made to be together.’
Michael was hurt and, of course, angry. He was also still unwilling to
consider the option of sacrificing his own wants and needs in order to allow
Jordie some space to reconnect with his parents. Rather, he viewed the
adults in Jordie’s life as validation of his personal philosophy that grown-
ups cannot be trusted, are certain to act in irrational ways and can be
counted on to sink to the lowest, most base behaviour. If Evan had Jordie’s
best interest at heart, Michael reasoned, surely he would allow such a
loving friendship to continue without questioning it and assuming the worst
about it. Plus, the heart wants what it wants – and Michael Jackson wanted
to be with Jordie Chandler.
The Secret Tape Recording
Now that Evan Chandler had filed such damaging court papers against
June, there was no way she could trust him. June’s estranged husband,
Dave, agreed with her that Evan was a threat. Would he take his claims
against June further by claiming that she had been an unfit parent by
allowing Jordie’s relationship with Michael to continue? Would he try to
obtain complete custody of Jordie?
On 2 July 1993, Evan and Dave met at Rent-A-Wreck to discuss what
was going on in the family. During the meeting, Evan made it clear that he
wanted Michael’s reign over Jordie’s life to come to an end, and that he was
about to start taking action to see to it that it happened. He asked for Dave’s
assistance. However, Dave made it clear that he did not agree with Evan
and did not wish to interfere with Jordie’s relationship with Michael. June
had been monitoring the situation, he said, and he wasn’t going to second-
guess her. If he did so, he argued, he would risk a deeper wedge in his
marriage to her, and he would probably alienate Jordie, as well.
Over the next week, Evan continued to be a problem. Michael, June and
Jordie did not trust him and wanted as little to do with him as possible.
They had not returned his telephone calls; it had been almost a month since
Evan spoke to Jordie. Now, Evan was pushing for a meeting with the three
of them. He knew that June and Jordie intended to accompany Michael on
his upcoming tour, and that they would be gone for five months. He didn’t
want them to go, felt it was unsafe for Jordie. He called June and left a
message on her answering machine during which he insisted that she, Jordie
and Michael meet with him on 9 July.
Dave called Evan to ask him what it was he hoped to accomplish by
demanding such a meeting. ‘You’re not going to get anywhere that way,’ he
told him.
‘Listen, you dumb ass,’ Evan told him. ‘I’m worried about my kid. I want
him with me, now. I don’t know what’s going on with you people and
Michael Jackson, but I don’t like it.’
The two men then argued for about an hour, hurling insults at one
another.
Perhaps in order to learn what Evan had in mind, Dave decided to
secretly tape-record a telephone conversation with him. An hour after their
argument, he called Evan, again.
During that 8 July conversation, transcripts of which were later filed with
the Los Angeles County Court House, Evan said that he was angry because
Michael had stopped telephoning him and no longer wanted a friendly
relationship with him. ‘There was no reason why he had to stop calling me,’
Evan told Dave. He added that he’d recently had a long conversation with
Michael and told him ‘exactly what I want out of the relationship with him.’
(He didn’t say during the conversation with Dave, however, what it was he
wanted from Michael.) He also maintained that, in his view, Michael was
spending too much time with Jordie, and that something was ‘not right
about it’. He was furious with June, he said, who had told him to ‘fuck’
himself, when he tried to discuss Michael with her. When pressed, Evan
said that he believed Michael Jackson had ‘broken up the family’ and that
Jordie had been ‘seduced by this guy’s money and power’. He didn’t say,
during the conversation, that he suspected Michael might also be having sex
with Jordie. However, he did allow that he had hired an attorney to start
looking into the matter, his friend, Barry Rothman.
As it happened, Barry had been in Evan’s dental chair one day for work
when Evan began to confide in him about certain changes in Jordie’s
personality. He became so emotional when recounting recent events, he
began to cry. There was a wall between him and his son, he told the
attorney, and he simply didn’t know how to scale it, or tear it down. He was
losing Jordie, he said. As the two discussed the matter, Barry recalls Evan
saying that he had begun to believe that Michael and Jordie’s relationship
may have become sexual. If that was the case, Barry Rothman suggested,
perhaps Evan might need an attorney. They agreed to trade services, dental
for legal.
‘I picked the nastiest son of a bitch I could find,’ Evan told Dave,
speaking of Barry Rothman who had, in the past represented Little Richard,
the Who, the Rolling Stones and Ozzy Osbourne. ‘All he wants to do is get
this out in the public as fast as he can, as big as he can, and humiliate as
many people as he can,’ Evan continued. ‘He’s nasty, he’s mean, he’s smart,
and he’s hungry for publicity. Everything’s going according to a certain
plan that isn’t just mine. Once I make that phone call, this guy [Barry
Rothman] is going to destroy everybody in sight in any devious, nasty, cruel
way that he can do it. I’ve given him full authority to do that.
‘Jackson is an evil guy,’ Evan continued, sounding fired up. ‘He is worse
than that, and I have the evidence to prove it. If I go through with this, I win
big-time. There’s no way I lose. I will get everything I want, and they will
be destroyed forever. June will lose [custody of the son] and Michael’s
career will be over.’
Evan and Dave then discussed June’s plans to take Jordie on Michael’s
Dangerous tour in the fall. ‘Well, they may think so,’ Evan said, ‘but
they’re not going anywhere.’
Clearly baiting him for more information, Dave asked Evan how his plan
might help Jordie. Evan’s response was disconcerting. ‘That’s irrelevant to
me,’ he said. ‘The bottom line is, yes, his mother is harming him, and
Michael is harming him. I can prove that, and I will prove that. It cost me
tens of thousands of dollars to get the information I got, and you know I
don’t have that kind of money. I’m willing to go down financially. It will be
a massacre if I don’t get what I want. It’s going to be bigger than all of us
put together.
‘I believe Jordie is already irreparably harmed,’ Evan continued. ‘The
whole thing is going to crash down on everybody and destroy everybody in
sight. This man is going to be humiliated beyond belief,’ Evan concluded.
‘You will not believe what’s going to happen to him. Beyond his worst
nightmares. He will not sell one more record. The facts are so
overwhelming, everyone will be destroyed in the process.’
Did Evan Chandler know he was being tape-recorded? Did he also
suspect the recording might one day be played for Michael Jackson? Was he
being melodramatic and intimidating just for the sake of scaring Michael
off? Or, did he really plan to ruin him? Only he knows what was in his head
at this time… and he hasn’t said.
The day after Evan Chandler’s inflammatory comments about Michael
Jackson were tape-recorded by Dave Schwartz, Evan hoped to have the
family conference he had long sought to discuss Jordie. However, no one
showed up at the meeting. Now, he was more infuriated than ever. Finally,
he got June on the telephone. According to June’s former attorney, Michael
Freeman, Evan reiterated his concerns that something improper might be
going on between Jordie and Michael. June said that Evan was ‘full of
baloney’. Moreover, she told him that she and Jordie still intended to go on
tour with Michael, and that Evan would ‘just have to get used to the idea’.
Michael Freeman recalled, ‘Evan then said that he was going to go to the
media. Right away, we thought, Why would he do that? If he really
believed Jordie was being abused, why would he not go to the police
instead of the press?’
That same day, June and Dave decided to meet with Michael to tell him
there might be trouble ahead where Evan was concerned. However, Michael
didn’t take them seriously. ‘Oh, this kind of stuff happens to me all the
time,’ he told them. ‘People are always trying to get money out of me. I’ll
have my people work it out. Don’t worry about it.’ However, when they
played Michael the tape Dave had made of his conversation with Evan,
Michael became anxious. ‘He sounded so angry,’ Michael told me of Evan
Chandler in an interview months later. ‘I knew then and there that it was
extortion. He said it right on the tape. So what I did then,’ Michael told me,
‘was turn it over to Bert [Fields] and [private investigator] Anthony
[Pellicano] and I decided to try to forget about it.’
‘Were you angry?’ I asked Michael.
‘No,’ Michael told me. ‘I knew I didn’t do anything wrong, so why
would I be angry?’
‘Because you believed you hadn’t done anything wrong, yet you were
being accused of a horrible crime?’ I offered.
‘I don’t think like that,’ Michael said, bluntly. ‘I don’t live in fear.’ In
retrospect, it seems that Michael may have been feigning nonchalance with
me, perhaps because I was in my reporter’s role and he was saying what he
felt was appropriate for an interview. Later, one of his closest advisers told
me that he truly was angry when he heard the tape of Evan. ‘He said, “After
I’ve been good to him and his family, he says these terrible things about
me? After I took his family around the world, after I bought them presents,
after I let them into my life, allowed them into my home? Tell him Michael
Jackson said he can go to hell.”’ That was his reaction.
‘I asked him if it was true, or not. Was something going on with him and
Jordie? “Of course not,” he said. “It’s absolutely ludicrous, and it’s not even
the point. Tell Evan that Michael Jackson said go to hell. That’s the point.”’
On 9 July 1993, June and Dave Schwartz met with Michael Jackson’s
investigator, Anthony Pellicano, in his Sunset Boulevard office to play for
them the tape Dave had made of his conversation with Evan Chandler.
A tough, no-nonsense kind of personality, Anthony could be
intimidating, always getting his way and representing his clients fiercely.
Interestingly, he got his start in 1977 by finding the bones of Elizabeth
Taylor’s third husband, Mike Todd, under a pile of leaves. Todd’s corpse
had been stolen from an Illinois cemetery by mobsters looking for a ten-
carat diamond ring, a gift from Elizabeth which they thought had been
buried with the deceased.
Today, Anthony’s career is in tatters. In November 2002, he was arrested
following a probe into allegations that he had hired a man to threaten a Los
Angeles Times reporter researching a story about a Mafia extortion plot
targeting actor Steven Seagal.
Michael’s attorney, Bertram (Bert) Fields, was also present. Fields is,
today, still one of the most daunting and influential attorneys in show
business with a client list that has included some of the biggest names in
show business from The Beatles to Tom Cruise to John Travolta. He’s never
lost a trial in which he was lead attorney. He was determined to represent
Michael in as aggressive a manner as possible, especially after he heard the
audio tape June and Dave brought with them. ‘I was concerned,’ Bert
recalled. ‘It sounded bad. It sounded like extortion.’
The next day, Anthony Pellicano arranged a meeting with Jordie
Chandler at Michael’s hide-out in Los Angeles. He asked Michael, June and
Dave to leave the room so that he and Jordie could be alone. His intention
was to interrogate the youngster about his relationship with the pop star. ‘I
decided to be straight with the kid,’ Anthony would later recall. ‘This was
serious business. There was no time to be delicate. I asked him, have you
ever seen Michael Jackson naked? Has he ever seen you naked? Have you
ever done anything sexual with him? The kid looked me straight in the eye
and said, “No. No. No.” I believed him.’ Anthony spoke to Jordie for more
than an hour and, he says, was convinced that nothing inappropriate had
ever occurred between him and Michael.
After that meeting, Bert Fields (working on behalf of June Chandler as
well as Michael) and Barry Rothman (Evan’s attorney) negotiated an
agreement whereby Evan would have custody of Jordie for a week.
Reluctantly, June agreed to the terms, not wanting to keep the boy from his
father. Anthony Pellicano and Bert Fields gave personal guarantees that
Jordie would be delivered as promised. Barry Rothman then gave his word
that Evan would return the boy on schedule.
At the appointed time and place, Evan waited for his son to show up, but
he never did. Instead, June decided to take Jordie and his sister, Lily, to
Neverland to celebrate Lily’s birthday with Michael Jackson.
While in the limousine on the way from Los Angeles to Santa Barbara,
Michael and company stopped at the beach house of financier Michael
Milken, the so-called junk bond king who had just been released from
prison after serving a couple of years for securities fraud. He was a friend of
Michael’s and the two had been in discussions to set up an educational
cable TV network for children.
While at Michael Milken’s, Michael Jackson telephoned Anthony
Pellicano to tell him of the change in plans: they had decided not to allow
Evan to have Jordie for the week. This decision put both Anthony and Bert
Fields in difficult positions; they had given their word, and now they
appeared to be liars. Anthony was furious; he let Michael have it. ‘You’re
being ridiculous,’ he recalled telling him, ‘Now you get that kid back here,
and you do it right now, Michael. You and Jordie apparently share a brain.
So, use it. Do you hear what I’m saying?’
‘Listen, you don’t tell me what to do,’ Michael shot back. ‘I tell you what
to do, Anthony. Not the other way around. Do you hear what I’m saying?’
As Michael’s side of the telephone conversation became more heated,
June became uncomfortable.
Michael continued. ‘Evan gets to see Jordie when I…’ He corrected
himself. ‘Evan gets to see Jordie when we say so, not when he says so. And
we don’t say so. So that’s the end of that. Got it?’ Michael slammed down
the telephone. He clenched his fists and made an angry face, so furious he
seemed as if he was about to explode. ‘Why does he treat me like I’m an
idiot?’ he asked no one in particular. ‘I’m not an idiot. I’m Michael
Jackson, I’m Michael Jackson.’ He kicked a wall. ‘It’s offensive and
insulting, damn it!’
June, Jordie and Lily looked at one another with surprised expressions.
‘Gosh, Mommy, Michael’s so mad,’ Lily said, surprised.
After witnessing Michael’s unexpected tantrum, June no longer wanted
to go to Neverland with him, saying she wasn’t in the mood. ‘Whatever,’
Michael told her, annoyed. ‘Do what you want to do.’
June, Jordie and Lily called a cab and went back to Los Angeles.
Meanwhile, Michael proceeded to Santa Barbara alone. When he finally
got to the ranch, he was greeted by his housekeeper, Adrian McManus.
‘Where are the guests of honour?’ she asked. ‘Is there still going to be a
party?’
‘There’s not going to be a party,’ Michael said. ‘So, forget it. Throw the
food away. Just throw it all away,’ he said. ‘And tear down those
decorations, too,’ he added, motioning to colourful streamers hanging from
the doorway.
Michael then stormed off to his bedroom and slammed the door.
Michael Feels Betrayed
On the way back to Los Angeles, June Schwartz had time to think about the
way matters had evolved with her son and Michael Jackson. When she got
home, she called Evan. She’d had a change of heart, she said. Perhaps when
she saw Michael lose it the way he had, she realized that someone needed to
put things into perspective. Though Jordie didn’t want to go, she now felt it
important that he visit with his father for the week.
In young Jordie’s world these days, no one ever seemed to do anything
he didn’t want to do. Therefore, he was sullen and disagreeable when he
finally got to Evan’s house. He said he missed Michael.
Evan had heard enough about Michael Jackson in recent months. As soon
as he had his son in his custody, he instructed his attorney to draw up papers
that stipulated that June would not be permitted to take Jordie out of Los
Angeles county, meaning she would not be able to see Michael at
Neverland (in Santa Barbara county), and most certainly not on tour.
Surprisingly, when she got the news the next day, June wasn’t angry. She
didn’t even fight the stipulation, mostly because she no longer knew what to
think about Michael. She needed time to figure it all out, especially after
she and her attorney had a meeting with two LAPD officers who claimed
that they’d recently discovered a youngster who’d been molested by
Michael (even though they refused to identify him). Recalled June’s lawyer,
Michael Freeman, ‘With serious expressions on their faces, they said,
“We’re convinced Michael Jackson molested this boy because he fits the
classic profile of a paedophile, perfectly.” June started getting scared. She
was scared for her son.’
June decided to telephone Michael. Perhaps they could meet and discuss
the matter; after all, they had been friends. When she saw him face to face,
she would be able to look into his eyes, she believed, and then know the
truth. She finally got Michael on the phone.
‘I’m sorry, June,’ he said, ‘but things are so out of hand now that my
lawyer has told me that I can’t speak to you, or even see you.’
‘But, Michael…’
‘Evan is the one who started this mess, not me,’ Michael said, his tone
surprisingly cold and deliberate. ‘Evan ruined our beautiful friendship, not
me. I’ll have Bert call you and answer any further questions. Goodbye,
June. I’m sorry.’
June couldn’t believe the way Michael had talked to her. Now, she didn’t
know what to think of him. Because she still leaned towards his innocence,
perhaps he would have been better advised to have been less dismissive, if
only to keep her as an ally. However, he was so cold to her, he left her with
no choice. She decided she had to agree with her ex-husband that Jordie not
be permitted to visit Michael, at least for the time being, and not accompany
him on his tour, either. She even agreed to allow Evan to keep custody of
Jordie ‘for a while’.
Michael learned of June’s about-face from one of his staff members
during a meeting in his bedroom at Neverland. Having just finished with a
costume-fitting, he hadn’t changed out of what he called his ‘uniform’: a
glittery, red military outfit trimmed across the shoulders with jet-bead
embroidery. He was seated on his bed.
‘There had been a sadness about Michael in recent days, but after he
learned of June’s decision, it was more acute than usual,’ recalled the
employee. ‘After all, she was handing Jordie over to Evan, which would not
bode well for Michael’s friendship with him.’
After discussing the matter with his adviser for a few minutes, Michael
fell back onto the bed heavily and began to cry. ‘Why do people hurt the
ones they say they love?’ he asked.
‘It’s going to be okay,’ said the staff member, now seated on the bed next
to him. ‘Don’t cry, Mike.’
Then, typical of his mood swings, especially lately, Michael went from
zero to ten in anger within seconds. ‘She betrayed me,’ he said, bolting
upright, his eyes ablaze. ‘I can’t believe June buckled like that, after all I
did for her and her kids. Now I’ll never get to see Jordie. I didn’t even do
anything wrong,’ he insisted. Then, ashenfaced and his dark eyes raging,
Michael repeated: ‘I didn’t do anything wrong. I didn’t.’
The next day, Anthony Pellicano received a telephone call from Evan
Chandler. He wanted to meet with Michael, ‘man to man’, he said.
Anthony passed the message on to Michael. ‘No way,’ Michael said,
according to Anthony’s memory. ‘I’m not meeting with the guy and giving
him more ammunition to use against me. His heart is filled with hatred,
Anthony, and you know it’s the truth. Tell him I said no way.’
‘But it might be a good idea,’ Anthony suggested. ‘Maybe we can work
this thing out.’
Michael was adamant that he would not meet with Evan. He said that he
had been thinking it over, and the truth had hit him as if an epiphany.
‘Evan’s pissed off at me because I have the kind of relationship he wishes
he had with Jordie,’ Michael said. ‘That’s what’s really going on here. He’s
completely jealous of me.’
Anthony couldn’t disagree; to him, Michael’s analysis of the situation
sounded plausible.
Jordie’s Confession
On 2 August, Evan Chandler extracted a troublesome tooth from his son,
Jordie, in his Beverly Hills clinic. During the procedure, he decided to
intravenously administer the drug sodium Amytal. Mark Torbiner, a dental
anaesthesiologist (who had been the one to introduce Evan to his attorney,
Barry Rothman in 1991 when Rothman needed dental work), was present
during the surgery. Evan has since confirmed that his son was given the
drug, but only as a part of the dental procedure. While under the influence
of sodium Amytal, says Evan, Jordie finally began to speak openly about
sexual activity he claimed had occurred between him and Michael Jackson.
Sodium Amytal has erroneously been called a ‘truth serum’. Actually, most
doctors agree that patients are extremely susceptible to suggestion while
under the influence of the drug. ‘You can’t trust it,’ said Dr Lewis Strong, a
Los Angeles psychiatrist (who does not know Evan or Jordie Chandler). ‘I
never use it in my practice. I have found it to be unreliable. It’s certainly not
a truth serum. Sometimes it is used for the treatment of amnesia, but it often
provides false memories.’
Why did Evan Chandler use sodium Amytal on his son in order to
perform dental work on him?
‘It’s absolutely a psychiatric drug,’ observed Dr Kenneth Gottlieb, a San
Francisco psychiatrist who has administered sodium Amytal to amnesia
patients. ‘I would never want to use a drug that tampers with a person’s
unconscious unless there was no other drug available,’ he added, ‘and I
would not use it without resuscitating equipment, in case of allergic
reaction, and only with an MD anaesthesiologist present.’ (Mark Torbiner is
a dental anaesthesiologist.)
Dr John Yagiela, the coordinator of the Anaesthesia and Pain Control
department of UCLA’s school of dentistry, confirmed, ‘It’s unusual for it to
be used for pulling a tooth. It makes no sense when better, safer alternatives
are available. It would not be my choice.’
Perhaps Evan felt that he had no choice but to administer the drug to his
son in order to get him to finally open up about the true nature of his
relationship with Michael Jackson. ‘Did Michael ever touch your penis?’
Evan asked Jordie. Groggily, Jordie said in a soft voice that, yes, Michael
had done it. Evan then grabbed his son and hugged him tightly, as if never
wanting to let him go. ‘I’m sorry, Jordie,’ he said, according to a later
recollection. ‘I’m so sorry.’
In his heart, Evan would later say, he always knew what was going on
between his child and the pop star. He said that he only needed
confirmation from Jordie before he could, in good conscience, go up against
Michael in such an explosive and life-ruining campaign. It wasn’t much to
go on, though if, in fact, it was even true that Michael had touched Jordie’s
penis. However Evan believed there was more to it. He didn’t need all of
the details, anyway, he said. In the end, he had what he wanted: Michael
Jackson’s neck in a noose. But the question remained: how much of what
Jordie had confessed while under the influence of a psychiatric drug was
the truth?
Michael Meets with his Accusers
After obtaining what he believed to be the truth from Jordie, Evan Chandler
demanded another meeting with Michael Jackson. Anthony Pellicano
managed to arrange it. The show-down between the teenager’s protective
father and the man he believed had molested his son would take place on 4
August 1993 at the Westwood Marquis Hotel. ‘No good can come of it,’
Michael predicted, ‘but I have to see Jordie, somehow, so let’s do it.’
At the appointed hour, Evan walked into the room, trailed by his anxious-
looking son. As soon as Jordie saw Michael, he ran to him and embraced
him. They kissed each other on the cheeks. ‘Oh my God, how I’ve missed
you,’ Michael said, visibly choked up. He stroked Jordie’s hair. ‘How are
you? Are you okay? Tell me you’re okay.’
‘I’ve missed you, too,’ Jordie said. ‘I can’t believe what’s going on,
Michael. Yes, I’m okay,’ he said, ‘but you should know that…’ The
teenager’s voice trailed off.
‘What?’ Michael asked. ‘I should know what? Never mind,’ he decided,
his tone now reassuring. ‘We’ll work it out, I promise.’
Evan then walked over to Michael and embraced him. ‘Nice to see you,
Michael,’ Evan said. Michael stared at Evan with cold, dark eyes. Under the
circumstances, it was an odd greeting by Evan. Later, Anthony Pellicano
would say, ‘If I believed somebody molested my kid and I got that close to
him, I’d be on death row right now.’
They were seated, Anthony next to Michael on one settee, Jordie next to
his father on another.
Evan got to the point quickly. ‘I believe that Michael has acted
inappropriately toward Jordie,’ he said. ‘In fact, I’m sure of it.’
‘What’s he talking about, Jordie?’ Michael asked, turning to the
youngster.
Jordie made eye contact with Michael and nodded his head slightly, as if
trying to pass a secret message. Michael looked at him, quizzically.
Evan then reached into his vest pocket, pulled out an envelope and took a
document from it. He explained that it was a psychiatric evaluation of
Jordie’s relationship with Michael. He read from it; the last paragraph
encapsulated the analysis: ‘The minor is in danger whether the relationship
continues or ends. The impact that would be caused in other family
members of the minor should also be considered. These circumstances
create the possibility that there exists negligence toward the child, even as
far as prostitution.’
‘What does that mean, exactly?’ Michael wanted to know.
‘It means that this doctor thinks you had sex with my kid,’ Evan said, his
temper rising. Michael remained calm, which seemed to infuriate Evan all
the more. ‘You and Jordie are having sex, aren’t you?’ he shouted at him.
‘Just fucking admit it, Michael. Be a man. Admit it.’ By this time, Evan had
tears in his eyes. ‘How could you do it, Michael?’ he asked. ‘My God. How
could you do it? How could you do this to Jordie?’
‘I already told you that I didn’t do it,’ Michael said, remaining composed.
‘That’s preposterous. It never happened. I don’t even know that doctor.’ He
turned to Anthony. ‘Do we even know that doctor?’
Anthony, now an irate contrast to Michael’s demeanour, said, ‘Hell no,
we don’t know that doctor. This meeting is over,’ he told Evan. ‘Get out of
here. Now.’
‘Wait,’ Evan said. He then read from another document written by the
same psychiatrist: ‘“A thirty-four-year-old man constantly sleeping with a
thirteen-year-old boy when other beds are available constitutes,” Evan
raised his voice, “perverse and lewd conduct.” Perverse and lewd conduct,
Michael. Do you hear what I’m saying?’
Michael seemed stunned. He looked at Jordie for help, but now the
youngster wouldn’t make eye contact with him.
‘I said, that’s it,’ Anthony again insisted. ‘This is war, now,’ he added,
using a favourite phrase. ‘Who do you think you are, coming in here and
accusing Michael Jackson of a crime? Are you crazy? Get the fuck out of
here!’
‘Wait,’ Evan said, again. ‘Look, if he’s willing to take a lie detector test,
then fine,’ he added, pointing at Michael. ‘If it comes back that he didn’t do
it, fine. I’ll be out of your lives for ever. He can take Jordie on tour with
him and I won’t have a thing to say about it.’
‘That’s fucking preposterous,’ Anthony shot back. ‘Michael will never
take a lie detector test. And besides,’ he added, ‘I was in army intelligence.
Do you think I couldn’t teach him to pass a lie detector?’
It seemed an odd statement for one of Michael’s advisers to make during
such an important discussion. For a second, Evan didn’t know how to react
to it. ‘Great,’ he finally said. ‘And maybe you can also teach Jordie to lie,
too.’
Anthony stood up. ‘Hear me, and hear me good,’ he said, pointing
aggressively at Evan. ‘Michael Jackson did not have sex with your son, and
he will not take a lie detector test.’
‘I hear you,’ Evan said. ‘But I don’t understand you. Why not?’
‘Because it’s an insult, that’s why,’ Anthony said loudly.
All eyes fell on Michael who was now looking straight ahead as if in a
trance.
‘Then, there’s nothing more to say,’ Evan concluded. ‘This meeting is
over.’ Evan didn’t mention that Jordie had said that he and Michael had
been intimate. Perhaps he didn’t want to play that hand, yet. ‘I’ll see you in
court, Michael,’ he said. Maddeningly, there was still no reaction from
Michael.
Jordie stood up and followed his father out of the room. As he walked
through the door, according to Anthony Pellicano, the youngster turned to
face Michael with a sad expression. Michael stared at Jordie, probably
never dreaming that it would be the last time he would ever lay eyes on
him.
‘Oh, and one more thing,’ Evan said, pointing to the singer. ‘I’m going to
ruin you,’ he said. ‘You’re going down, Michael. You are going down.’
Finally, Michael and Anthony were alone. ‘Oh, my God,’ Michael said
after a few moments. He now looked drained and pale, as if in shock. He
rose from his chair and gazed out the window. ‘Oh, my God,’ he said,
again, tears now streaming down his face. ‘Oh, my God.’
Unsuccessful Negotiations
The ‘smoking gun’ letter by Beverly Hills psychiatrist Dr Mathis Abrams,
which Evan Chandler had produced at the meeting with Michael Jackson,
was solicited by Evan’s attorney, Barry Rothman. As it happened, Rothman
had sought an expert’s opinion in order to establish what may have
transpired between Michael and his client’s son Jordie. During a telephone
conversation with Dr Abrams, Rothman explained the evidence he thought
he had against Michael, presenting the scenario as a purely hypothetical
situation. Though Abrams didn’t even meet with Evan, Jordie or Michael,
his opinion of what had transpired would be devastating. After the
telephone conversation with Barry Rothman Dr Abrams wrote the letter
(dated 15 July 1993) in which he observed that, at least based on what the
lawyer had described, it sounded as if something sexual had transpired
between the parties. He also noted that if the incidents had occurred as
explained by the lawyer, he would have no choice but to report the matter to
the Los Angeles County Department of Children’s Services.
After his father’s show-down with Michael, Jordie was more depressed
than ever before in his young life. The thought that he might now have to
testify against Michael was more than he could bear. Before he went to bed,
he drew what looked like suicide art: a stick figure jumping off the roof of a
five-storey building, and then landing in a bloody heap on the ground.
The next morning, when Evan went into Jordie’s room to say goodbye to
him before going to work, he found the chilling drawing on the floor. Jordie
was still asleep. Evan wrote on the top of the paper: Don’t Let This Happen,
underlining each word. He then put the drawing back where he found it.
Turning to leave he changed his mind and decided to take the drawing. It
would become evidence of Jordie’s state of mind.
The next evening Evan and Barry Rothman met with Anthony Pellicano.
‘They put their cards on the table,’ recalled Anthony. ‘Twenty million.
That’s what they wanted.’
In fact, Evan wanted the total sum of twenty million dollars to be
deposited in an interest-bearing account. Five million would then be paid
out to Jordie in four instalments over a four-year period. ‘Maybe that
amount of money will teach Michael Jackson not to abuse any more
children,’ Evan explained to Anthony. It’ll pay for Jordie’s education, for
psychiatric evaluation. Some will be donated for child abuse foundations.
I’ll be able to retire and spend more time with my son and help him through
this time. If not, then fine. We’ll have a trial and see how that goes.’
Though Anthony felt sure Michael wouldn’t consider paying a single
dime to the Chandlers, he was duty bound to pass the offer on to his client.
Evan had already hand-written a letter to his attorney, Barry Rothman
(dated 5 August), outlining his intention if Michael decided not to pay the
twenty million. In the missive, he explained that one of the reasons he had
hoped to avoid a trial was because he realized the devastating impact it
would have on Michael’s career. ‘I believed that Michael was a kind,
sensitive, compassionate person who made a mistake in judgement born out
of an honest love for Jordie,’ he wrote. ‘I now know I was wrong.’
Evan then recounted his version of the events that took place at the
meeting with Jordie, Michael and Anthony Pellicano. He wrote that Jordie
had acknowledged that he [Evan] had evidence that Michael had sexually
assaulted him. (Anthony Pellicano, however, says that Jordie never said
anything at that meeting about Michael having molested him.) ‘Michael
responded with a cold, mocking smile that you often see on the face of
criminals who proclaim their innocence even in the face of irrefutable proof
of their guilt,’ Evan wrote. ‘It was a chilling sight. He showed no sign of
remorse for his actions and he was completely indifferent to Jordie’s
suffering.’
Evan then opined that if Michael were to see a psychiatrist, it would
surely be determined that he is a paedophile. Therefore, Evan wrote, he had
no sympathy for Michael whatsoever, and no interest in protecting him
from prosecution. In fact, he wrote, he now believed that Michael should be
jailed to prevent him from sexually assaulting other minors. He added that
he believed that Michael’s incarceration would be the inevitable result of
any investigation by the District Attorney, and that if Jordie would need to
be called as a witness, he would eagerly testify against Michael. Jordie
would only have to tell the truth, Evan wrote, perhaps not taking into
consideration the emotional ordeal such gut-wrenching testimony might
exact on his son.
‘I would like you to continue to negotiate with Mr Pellicano,’ Evan
concluded, ‘but if those negotiations are not successful then as your client I
am instructing you to file a complaint against Michael Jackson for the
sexual assault against my son.’ In a postscript, he wrote of the drawing he
had found in Jordie’s bedroom. ‘I thought you should see it,’ he wrote. ‘I’m
very frightened. One way or the other, please get this over with as quickly
as possible.’ He enclosed a copy of Jordie’s drawing.
When Anthony presented Evan’s offer to Michael, the reply was swift:
‘No way,’ he said. ‘We have a love that’s pure and eternally innocent. I’m
not gonna ruin it by paying that man money. No way in hell.’
On 13 August, Anthony offered Evan a counter-offer, with Michael’s
approval: three film scripts over a three-year-period, each valued at
$350,000, in a million-dollar-plus deal that would have attached to it the
promise that a major studio would review any script Evan and Jordie may
write as a follow up to their Mel Brooks movie. Not only did it sound
speculative to Evan and Barry Rothman, it was also a small amount of
money considering their original multimillion-dollar demand. ‘You guys
aren’t even in the ball park,’ Evan told Anthony. ‘Pass.’ Then, oddly, Evan
asked Anthony if Jordie could take possession of the computer Michael had
purchased for him, and which he had set up at his Los Angeles hide-out.
Anthony couldn’t believe Evan’s gall. Michael had never bought that
computer for Jordie, he answered quickly (though it seems doubtful
Anthony even knew what Evan was talking about) and Jordie. would never
see it again, ‘so forget about it.’ Evan stormed out of the office.
The next day, Barry Rothman proposed a counter-offer to Anthony
Pellicano: a deal for three screenplays that would amount to about fifteen
million dollars. Through Anthony, Michael declined the counter-offer.
Then, inexplicably, Anthony came back with another offer so low he didn’t
even expect Evan to take it: $350,000 for one film deal, to be paid directly
out of Michael’s pocket. He had gone from an offer of three movies down
to one… not the best of negotiating tactics, one might argue. Of course,
Evan turned it down. He now felt that the discussions were being conducted
in bad faith, and that there was little point in continuing them.
With all battles now seemingly lost, the war was about to begin.
Jordie Sees a Psychiatrist
On 16 August 1993, after negotiations broke down between Evan Chandler
and Anthony Pellicano, Michael Freeman (June’s attorney) alerted everyone
that he was going to petition the court to demand that Evan return Jordie to
his mother. June didn’t know what to make of the discussions between Evan
and Anthony Pellicano. If Evan was certain Michael Jackson had molested
Jordie, why was he trying to extract twenty million dollars from him instead
of reporting him to the proper authorities? She began to question Evan’s
motives; she wanted her son back. A court date was then set to determine
who would have custody of Jordie.
However, Evan did not want to return Jordie to June, no matter how a
judge might rule. He felt sure that she would simply hand him right over to
Michael Jackson. They would live happily ever after at Neverland, he
feared, and he would never see his son again.
Not knowing what course of action to take, and feeling pressured to do
something, Evan made an appointment for Jordie with Dr Mathis Abrams,
the psychiatrist who provided the letter in which he speculated that, based
on the hypothetical case proposed by the attorney, sexual abuse had
occurred. He told the doctor that the case wasn’t imaginary, after all, and
that it actually involved his own son and Michael Jackson. Evan realized
that once Abrams met with Jordie, the real drama would most certainly
begin. After all, the doctor would be required to file a report with the
authorities, which would be the end of any confidentiality where the matter
of Jordie and Michael was concerned. However, as he later would tell it,
Evan felt pressured to protect his son, and if it meant sacrificing Michael
Jackson then that was a small price to pay, especially since negotiations
with him had ended so badly.
At the hearing, on 17 August 1993, Evan’s attorney agreed that Jordie
would be returned to June by seven o’clock that night. In fact he was
stalling for time – he had no intention of returning Jordie to his ex-wife. At
the very hour of the hearing, Jordie was meeting with the psychiatrist.
During a gruelling, three-hour session with the doctor, Jordie told of
many incidents of masturbation and oral sex with Michael Jackson. In fact,
he claimed, he and Michael had been having sex for months.
Just as expected, the psychiatrist reported everything Jordie said direcdy
to the Department of Children’s Services. Within hours, the youngster was
interviewed by a caseworker with the Los Angeles County Department of
Children’s Services and an officer with the Los Angeles Police Department.
The caseworker’s eleven-page, hand-written report began with a
description of how Evan and Michael met, when Michael’s car broke down.
Jordie said that he and Michael became friends and that Michael would
telephone him almost every day for ‘long conversations about video
games’. The conversations continued, he said, even when Michael was on
tour. In February (1993) and in succeeding weeks, Michael began seeing
more of him and his mother, June. He bought toys for Jordie and took him,
June and his half-sister, Lily, to Las Vegas. There, Jordie recalled, they
watched The Exorcist. The film frightened Jordie, he said, and that night he
slept in the same bed as Michael – a pattern, he said, that was repeated
several times, including during visits to Neverland. During those initial
encounters, however, sexual abuse was not alleged. According to the report,
at first Michael would merely ‘cuddle and kiss him [Jordie] on the cheek’.
However, on one occasion at the ranch while June slept in guest quarters
and Michael and Jordie shared the same bed, the pop singer began to ‘rub
up against me’.
‘Over time,’ claimed Jordie in the report, ‘Michael graduated to kissing
me on the mouth. One time, he was kissing me and he put his tongue in my
mouth. I said, “Don’t do that”. He started crying. I guess he tried to make
me feel guilty.’ The report then alleged that Michael told the boy their
relationship was ‘meant to be’ and was ‘in the cosmos’.
According to the report, Michael’s relationship with Jordie became
sexual when he took the family to Monaco, and then continued to be sexual
from that time, onward. The details Jordie provided were graphic.
Jordie also claimed that Michael had threatened that if he ever told
anyone what had transpired between them, they would both be in trouble
and he [Jordan] would be sent to Juvenile Hall, a young offenders’
institution. ‘Minor also said Mr Jackson told him about other boys he had
done this with,’ wrote the investigator, ‘but did not go as far with them.
Minor said Mr Jackson tried to make him hate his mother and father, so that
he could only go with Mr Jackson.’ The report ended with Jordie’s wish to
remain in his father’s custody, and his belief that his mother liked the ‘glitzy
life’ that surrounded Michael.
Later, when Jordie was interviewed by the police department, he relayed
the same anecdotes of sexual encounters and also gave officers what he said
was a detailed description of Michael’s genitalia.
With such stunning disclosures of a sexual nature involving a star as
world-famous, as controversial and as seemingly androgynous as Michael
Jackson, there was no way the story would not emerge with some of the
most sensational headlines in show-business history… It was just a matter
of time.
‘Jordie will never forgive me…’
The next day, 18 August 1993, Bert Fields and Anthony Pellicano gave
Michael Jackson the stomach-churning news that the Los Angeles Police
Department’s Sexually Exploited Child Unit had begun a criminal
investigation of him. ‘Oh, my God,’ Michael asked, ‘is my life over?’
‘No,’ Bert answered. ‘We’ll defend it, Michael. And the odds are that
we’ll win.’
‘And you know how it goes with you and the odds,’ Anthony added,
optimistically.
‘That’s what I’m afraid of,’ said Michael, miserably.
Anthony embraced Michael. ‘Man, you never lose,’ he said, according to
his later recollection. ‘Look at your life, Michael. Look at who you are.
You’re not gonna start losing now.’
Michael began to sob. ‘I have worked so hard,’ he said. ‘All of my life,
I’ve been working so hard. I can’t lose it all now, Anthony. I just can’t lose
it all.’
‘You won’t,’ Bert injected. ‘I swear to you, you won’t.’
That same day, June and Dave Schwartz were interviewed by the police.
They weren’t so sure, they maintained, that Michael was guilty of abusing
Jordie. They both felt that the youngster was so controlled by Evan, they
didn’t know what to believe, they said. ‘I think I believe, maybe, half of it,’
she said, reluctantly. Now, June would lose custody of Jordie, at least for
the time being. She was heartbroken by this decision made by Child
Protection Services, even if it was said to be temporary, however there was
nothing she could do about it. Anyway, Jordie had told the authorities he
wanted to be with his father, which was persuasive.
Later that day, Michael met with another one of his associates, a publicist
who had to determine a course of action to take if the allegations were made
it into the press. ‘I met him at the Los Angeles hide-out,’ recalled the
representative. ‘He looked absolutely terrible, as if he hadn’t slept in days.
He wasn’t wearing his makeup, so his face seemed broken out, splotchy. He
looked thin and sickly. He had on his pyjamas. “What am I going to do
now?” he asked. “I can’t believe this is happening to me, Michael Jackson.
Do you think the police will ask me questions about me and Jordie?”’
The publicist told Michael that there was little doubt he would be
questioned by the authorities, and soon. Michael began to cry. ‘But I can’t
answer questions,’ he said through his tears. ‘I can’t talk about Jordie.
Don’t you get it? He’s my soul mate. I won’t know what to say.’
‘Just tell the truth, Mike,’ suggested the publicist as he patted Michael on
the shoulder.
‘But no one will believe me,’ Michael said, sounding defeated. ‘It’s my
word against Evan’s. Poor Jordie,’ Michael added, wiping his eyes with the
backs of his hands. ‘I can’t believe his father would do this. We were so
close. Evan is so jealous of me, so, so jealous of me.’
The publicist then asked how Michael wanted to handle the media when
the allegations became news. ‘Oh, screw the media,’ Michael said, going
from sadness to fury in a nanosecond. ‘I don’t care what they say about me.
They’re gonna make stuff up, anyway. Screw them. Screw them all. It’s
because of them that I’m in this trouble, anyway.’
The publicist recalled being confused by Michael statement. ‘How is the
media responsible?’ he asked.
Michael began jabbing his finger at his associate as he spoke. ‘It’s
because ofyou allowing the media to write these things about me that
people think I would do this thing,’ he said, furiously. ‘It’s your fault. No.
It’s their fault.’ Michael collapsed in a chair, looking bereft. ‘I have been
trying to stop the rumours and for years and years and they’ve just been
going on and on and on,’ he said. ‘The oxygen chamber. The Elephant Man.
The plastic surgery. Now, this.’
On 20 August 1993, Michael left for Bangkok on the second leg of his
Dangerous tour. How ironic for him to start again in a city known as the sex
capital of the world.
Michael was swamped with feelings about leaving Los Angeles. He
could not fathom that Jordie would not be with him on the road. He had
planned an exciting time for the two of them on continents all over the
world, and the only reason to even go, in his view, would have been to be
with his ‘soul mate’. Now, he would be going alone. Of course, he would be
with about 250 people, all integral to the massive, multimillion-dollar
production, from musicians and stage hands and dancers to bodyguards,
secretaries and assistants. However, as far as Michael was concerned, he
was alone if he was to be without Jordie.
Also, he didn’t want to leave home because he simply wasn’t sure what
would occur in America during his absence. Yet, he also couldn’t wait to
go, just to get out of town and not have to deal with whatever terrible thing
was about to happen. He felt he needed to escape from his life, if at all
possible. As it would happen, Michael Jackson left town just in time
because, the next day, all hell would break lose.
The News is Out
On Saturday 21 August 1993 a search warrant was issued for the police to
gain access to Michael Jackson’s Neverland Ranch at 5225 Figueroa
Mountain Road in Los Olivos, Santa Barbara. The authorities hired a
locksmith in order to gain access to all of the many rooms on the estate,
including Michael’s private quarters. Moreover, the search warrant
permitted the authorities to search Michael’s ‘hideout’ at 1101 Galaxy Way,
#2247 in Century City, California, for evidence. Of course, anyone who
thought the authorities would find anything incriminating during such
searches would have been naive. Obviously, because of the chain of events
that had led up to the day, Michael’s camp expected that a search warrant
would be issued.
Adrian McManus, Michael’s personal maid and the only employee with
access to his Neverland bedroom, recalled, ‘People were running all about
the place, employees taking things off the property in boxes and crates, as if
they couldn’t get the stuff out fast enough. They took sheets, pillows,
bedspreads, towels and wash clothes. They took boxes of makeup and
eyeliner and lipstick and creams and gels. They took stacks of magazines.
They took pictures. I remember that one person who worked for Michael
held up a photograph and everyone else gathered around to ask, “Who is
that? Who is that?” “Is that Macaulay Culkin in his underwear? It is!” Then,
they would take the picture and put it in a box with a lot of other pictures of
children in their underwear. I heard them mumbling things like, “This guy
is nuts, isn’t he?” as they went through his things. “How many pictures of
Elizabeth Taylor does one person need?” I felt badly about the whole thing.
‘My job was to hide all of Michael’s women’s perfumes, of which he had
many bottles. He only used female fragrances, no male, and I guess they
thought that might look bad.
‘The next day, when the police came they looked around and one of them
said, “Hmmm. Slim pickings, I see.” They knew. Of course, they knew.’
When the authorities found a large, walk-in, black safe the size of a
closet, they could not contain themselves. Imagine what might be found in
such a thing owned by the enigmatic, secretive Michael Jackson. The
officers ordered the locksmith to figure out the combination. For hours, he
worked on the safe. Finally, voilà. It was opened. It was also empty, except
for one small black briefcase. ‘Open it. Open it,’ the officers exclaimed.
Inside was a single slip of paper. On it was written the combination to the
safe. Someone in the Jackson camp had quite a sense of humour.
Despite the earlier clean-sweep, the police did manage to seize books,
videos, pictures, scrapbooks and anything else they could find that they
thought might be evidentiary. A year later when I conducted a telephone
interview with Michael, he told me of the search: ‘Imagine having someone
going through all of your stuff while you’re a million miles away. They
took all kinds of things, stupid things like videotapes of me at Disneyland,
pictures of my friends, boxes and boxes of personal things. And diaries!
Imagine having some stranger reading your most private thoughts, his filthy
hands turning all of those private pages, thoughts about [my] Mother and
the way I feel about God. It was vicious. And we still haven’t gotten back a
lot of that stuff. It makes me cry when I think about it. But in all of my
private stuff, there wasn’t one piece of evidence to prove I had done
anything wrong.’
The authorities took photographs of the rooms at Neverland in order to
be able to compare them to Jordie’s descriptions, as evidence that he had
complete access. They seized Michael’s telephone and address journals and
would use them to later question more than thirty children and their
families. (Those interviewed included Emmanuel Lewis, Jimmy Safechuck
and Jonathan Spence; all three insisted that Michael had never acted in any
improper way toward them.)
On 23 August, a Los Angeles television station reported the startling
news that a police raid had occurred at Neverland. Michael Jackson was
suspected of committing a crime, the police confirmed. However, the
officers would not be more specific. Even with the lack of details, the story
became the focus of more than seventy news broadcasts and Special
Bulletins in the Los Angeles area alone over the course of the next day.
Within hours, the investigation was the subject of international headlines.
The New York Post ran with a dreadful photo of Michael looking his worst,
and the blazing headline: ‘Peter Pan or Pervert?’ One thing was clear:
nothing would ever be the same for Michael Jackson.
Though the television reports about Michael did not mention the subject of
child molestation, rumours about it were strong enough for the Jackson
camp to decide to just come out and deny them. It fell upon Anthony
Pellicano to make the statement that, indeed, Michael was being accused of
sexually abusing a minor, that he was innocent of any wrong-doing.
Anthony’s comments were the first the public had to confirm that it was,
indeed, a matter of molestation about which Michael was being
investigated. The police department then held a press conference to reveal
more details. They had reason to believe, they said, that Michael had
molested a thirteen-year-old boy. This was a shock. The pop star who was
regularly seen in the company of youngsters, and who was known for his
interest in children and in charities devoted to them, might actually be a
paedophile? In a matter of hours, Los Angeles was descended upon by
reporters from foreign countries doing their own independent investigations
into what Michael had done, and to whom. He had always been so
secretive, so strange. Now, it was assumed, the questions about him had
been answered. Anyone who knew Michael feared that his career, and
maybe even his life, was now ruined. ‘I thought he would kill himself,’ said
one of his staff members at the time.
The next day, Anthony Pellicano explained to the media that Michael had
been the ‘victim of an extortion attempt gone awry’, and one which his
camp had been investigating for the last four months. ‘A demand for twenty
million dollars was made,’ he told the Associated Press. ‘It was flatly and
consistently refused. The refusals have, in our opinion, caused what has
transpired in the last few days.’ He didn’t mention the fact that the Jackson
camp had entered into negotiations that involved proposals and counter-
proposals.
Michael’s camp hired high-powered criminal defence attorney Howard
Weitzman to represent him; he read a statement prepared by his client: ‘I
am confident the department will conduct a fair and thorough investigation
and that its results will demonstrate that there was no wrong-doing on my
part. I intend to continue with my world tour.’
On 25 August, in an effort to do more so-called ‘damage control’, the day
after Michael performed his first show in Bangkok, Anthony Pellicano
arranged that the media have access to two young friends of Michael’s,
Brett Barnes and Wade Robson. In front of lights, cameras and microphones
from news outlets around the world, Brett admitted that he and Michael had
slept together on many occasions, but with no sexual overtones. ‘He kisses
you like you kiss your mother,’ said the eleven-year-old. ‘It’s not unusual
for him to hug, kiss and nuzzle up to you, and stuff.’
Wade, who was ten, also said he had slept in the same bed as Michael,
but ‘just as a friend’. He said, ‘Michael is a very, very kind person, really
nice and sweet. Sure, I slept with him on dozens of occasions but the bed
was huge.’
Anthony Pellicano’s offering of Wade and Brett to the press did little to
help Michael’s case: in fact, it was thought by many observers to have made
things worse. Michael was actually unhappy about Anthony’s decision to
put the boys forth when he heard about it in Thailand. ‘That’s not good,’ he
said according to an adviser of his at the time. ‘That makes me look even
worse, I think. It’s not good.’
Rarely had a show-business story taken flight like the Michael Jackson
molestation scandal, with the world’s press running blazing headlines that
strongly implied that Michael was guilty, even if not yet charged. When the
confidential and sexually charged statements Jordie Chandler gave to the
authorities about his sleepovers with Michael were released, all objectivity
about how the story should be reported seemed to go right out the window.
The press had a story allegedly rife with sexual content and illegal activity
between the biggest pop star in the world and a thirteen-year-old. It seemed
impossible for much of the media to remain objective about it. Michael
certainly appeared to be guilty, at least if Jordie’s statements were to be
believed.
On 26 August 1993, I appeared on CNN stating my view that we in the
press might use some restraint in reporting the story. To my surprise, after
the worldwide broadcast of my appearance, Michael telephoned me from
Bangkok.
A day earlier, Michael had performed for an audience of 70,000. He
ended his show accompanied by a stageful of young children while singing
his personal anthem, ‘Heal the World’, to the appreciative crowd. He had
seen the CNN report while backstage, he said, and called to thank me for
my remarks. ‘How are you feeling?’ I asked him.
‘Bad,’ he said. He sounded weak, his voice a whisper.
‘Is there anything I can do?’ I asked.
‘No,’ he answered. ‘I’m just very, very… sad. It’s such a terrible world,
isn’t it? No love in the world at all.’
He promised to send a gift from Neverland to show his appreciation for
my report. ‘Maybe a llama,’ he said, his spirits seeming lifted by the
thought. ‘Do you have room for a llama? I’ll send you a nice, big llama!’
He chuckled, softly.
‘Tell me, how you are able to perform with all of this business going on?’
I asked.
‘Last night’s first show was good,’ he said. ‘But after every song I had to
run backstage and get oxygen. It was so hot and humid, I thought I would
die. Now, I’m sick. I think I’m dehydrated. I can hardly take a deep breath. I
don’t know how I will ever be able to sing tonight.’
‘Have you talked to any of your family?’ I asked. ‘Did you know they are
planning a press conference in support of you.’
‘Oh, great,’ Michael said, sounding unenthused about the notion. ‘That’s
just… great.’
That same evening, Michael was scheduled to give his second concert in
Bangkok. However, the show was cancelled, the first to be cancelled over
the next few months with excuses that would range from dehydration to
migraine headaches to dental work.
Shortly thereafter, the Jackson family held their press conference to ‘take
this opportunity, when our family has come together in unity and harmony,
to convey our love and unfailing support for Michael.’ In front of camera
crews from around the world, the family members said that it was their
‘unequivocal belief that Michael has been made a victim of a cruel and
obvious attempt to take advantage of his fame and success. We know, as
does the whole world, that he has dedicated his life to providing happiness
for young people everywhere. We are confident that his dignity and
humanity will prevail.’
Also at the press conference, the family confirmed that they would soon
leave the country to be at Michael’s side.
In truth, Joseph could not have been more bereft about what was going
on with his son. They had their differences, obviously. However, it was
almost more than he could bear to see the televised news broadcasts relating
to the scandal. In his view, Michael’s success reflected upon him in a good
and positive way. He felt that all Michael had achieved as a superstar was
inextricably tied to what he had been in his son’s life. He was proud of
Michael. The last thing he wanted to do was see Michael’s world laid to
waste, yet there was nothing he could do about it, other than to be
supportive. The problem, of course, was that Michael didn’t want Joseph’s
support. Their history had been so volatile for so long, Michael had a
strong, negative reaction to Joseph.
As for Katherine, Michael didn’t want her involved in his life at this
difficult time, either. He felt that she could be manipulated by the family to
convince him to do the one thing he didn’t want to do: another reunion
show with the brothers.
Michael had always been the son Katherine was the proudest of, her
favourite from the time he was a little tyke. However, lately she had been
disapproving of him because she couldn’t condone his private life. She
simply didn’t understand it, and with good reason: he wouldn’t explain it.
All she knew was that he was… different. Unlike his siblings, he had never
been in a serious, romantic relationship. She was worried about him. She
would also support him, regardless of his quirks and eccentricities, and be
the first to speak in his defence. In truth, though, she didn’t really know
Michael. She only knew the parts of himself he felt free to reveal to her,
certainly not unusual in many complex, mother-son relationships.
Before the scandal broke, the family told him of plans they had for an
upcoming Jackson Family television special revolving around an
achievement award that would be given to certain celebrities. Again, it was
Jermaine’s concept. Michael was clear; he wanted no misunderstanding
about it: he wanted just limited participation in the special; the best they
could expect of him was that he might give out an award and sit in the
audience. In a manner so typical of Jackson family business, there was a
great deal of back-and-forth about Michael’s participation and, at one point,
he wanted to back out, altogether. Now, with the family coming forth with
their support at this difficult time in his life, he felt as if he was being
backed into a corner where the programme was concerned. How could he
disappoint them after they’d been so publicly loyal?
Enter: Lisa Marie Presley
Lisa Marie Presley, daughter of rock and roll trailblazer Elvis Presley, had
known Michael Jackson since 1974; the two met in Las Vegas during one of
the Jackson family’s engagements at the MGM Grand. Lisa was six,
Michael, sixteen. Elvis brought her to see the show because she was a big
fan of the group’s. ‘I always liked him,’ Lisa Marie, who prefers to be
called Lisa, recalled. ‘Michael fascinated me with his talent. I loved
watching him dance. He wanted to know me better, but I always thought he
was sort of freakish. I didn’t really want to know him any better than I
already did.’
Born on 1 February 1968 to Elvis and Priscilla Presley, Lisa Marie was
destined for controversy just by virtue of her illustrious lineage. She had a
privileged childhood. Her father lavished her with gifts, including jewels
and a fur coat – for a five-year-old! Or, as her mother once put it, ‘She had
everything a child shouldn’t have and couldn’t appreciate.’ She was spoiled
or, as she bluntly recalled it, ‘When I was a kid, forget it! I was a fucking
little tyrant.’
She would also say of her childhood, ‘There is not one bad memory
about any of it, I have to admit. There was always a lot of energy around
him [Elvis] and all over the house [at Graceland] when he was around. He
was very mischievous.’
She would sit outside his bedroom at Graceland for hours, just waiting
for him to awaken. Then, she would cuddle in his lap and, for no apparent
reason, say things like: ‘Daddy, please don’t die.’ She sensed that his time
on earth would be brief. ‘I was aware of the drug use,’ she would later
admit. ‘I sensed it, knew it. His temper was bad at times. He didn’t seem
happy. I saw him taking pills, like cocktails of pills. But I think he tried to
hide it from me as best he could. Still, I knew. I felt sort of helpless. It hurt.
It still hurts. He was such a good man, so decent.’
Lisa was nine when her father died in 1977. Horribly, she was present
when his body was found on a bathroom floor, and watched as people
attempted to revive him. ‘What’s wrong with my daddy?’ she tearfully
demanded to know. At the funeral, she seemed in complete shock as she
walked about Graceland in a daze, saying to relatives, ‘You know, I just
can’t believe that Elvis Presley is dead.’
In October 1988, Lisa married musician Danny Keough, already pregnant
with their first child. Danielle Riley was born the following year, and
Benjamin Storm in 1993. The relationship would last six years.
In February of 1993, Lisa and Michael were brought together again at a
private dinner in the Los Angeles home of artist Brett Livingston-Stone, a
mutual friend. At this time, Lisa had recorded four songs produced by her
husband. She felt she had a lot to say about her unusual life as daughter of
an icon, and was looking for a way to say it through her lyrics and music. ‘I
had a voice,’ she once told me, in retrospect, ‘but I didn’t have the
experience. Things always got too wild when people found out that Elvis’s
daughter wanted to sing. It became a matter of deals and money, money,
money: I lost my fire for it. I lost the urge to create. I was scared, I guess, so
I pulled back.’
‘She had no confidence in herself as a vocalist,’ said Brett Livingston-
Stone. ‘She was afraid of being compared to Elvis, afraid of rejection.
When I suggested that Michael could help her, she said, ‘He’s a superstar.
Do you really think he’d help me?’ After dinner at my house, Lisa played
tapes of some of her music, and Michael was blown away. He told her,
“You have real talent… a fine voice. You could be a star. Let me see what I
can do for you.”’
As she sat with him and listened to stories about his life in the business,
she found herself falling under his spell. According to Brett Livingston-
Stone, when Michael was about to leave, he offered Lisa a penetrating look
and, in a conspiratorial voice, said, ‘You and me, we could get into a lot of
trouble. Think about that, girl.’
In days to come, Michael and Lisa forged a surprising friendship,
speaking on the telephone nearly every day. They realized that they shared
the same kinds of backgrounds, both had been sheltered and protected from
the real world, both felt they had missed out on their childhoods, both were
mistrustful of outsiders after having spent most of their lives feeling
exploited by outsiders. They had problems with the media. She was raised
in Graceland. He lived in Neverland. On some strange level that only they
understood, as Lisa recalled it, they seemed to be soul mates. ‘The
difference between them was that Lisa was working on herself, trying to
come to terms with her celebrity,’ said Brett Livingston-Stone. ‘She didn’t
see herself as a victim. Michael did. I think she wanted to help him view
himself in a different way.’
He truly was misunderstood, he told her. ‘I know you think I’m gay,’ he
said. ‘But I’m not. I get tired of people thinking I am gay. But, oh well, fuck
them. I know you have heard a lot of things about me, in fact,’ he
continued, ‘but most of it isn’t true. And the stuff that is true, you shouldn’t
hold against me.’ He winked at her.
‘Hey, I’m a married woman,’ Lisa said. ‘And you’re coming on to me.’
‘Yes, but are you happy?’ Michael asked.
‘No.’
‘See?’ Michael remarked. ‘I knew that. You look like a woman who
needs to let go and have some fun. You look like a woman who needs to
hook up with me.’
Lisa was unable to disguise her surprise at his candour and his…
normality. She recalled staring at him thinking, Who is this man? She was
right to be perplexed; he sure wasn’t acting like the Michael Jackson others
had known over the years. It was as if he had taken macho lessons from
Joseph! Unbeknownst to Lisa, many people along the way had tried to put
together the puzzle pieces of Michael’s mercurial psychology, often
flattering themselves into thinking they and they alone understood him
better than others. It usually ended badly for them; they would learn that
Michael is truly the only one who understands Michael.
Lisa recalled, ‘I thought to myself, Wow, this is a real guy. He swears.
He’s funny. I told him, “Dude, if people knew who the hell you really are,
they would be so surprised. People wouldn’t think I was so crazy for being
into you if they saw who you really are; that you sit around and you drink
and you curse and you’re fucking funny, and you have a bad mouth and you
don’t have that high voice all the time.”’
‘He said, “Well just don’t tell them.” I thought he was normal and that
everything you saw of him publicly was just a mask.’
Lisa recalled, ‘As time went on, Michael and I talked more, I thought,
I’m getting to know the real man here. He puts on an act for outsiders, this
sort of victim thing, I thought, but I’m the one seeing the real deal, the real
person. I started thinking I was special, that he was opening up to me as he
never had to anyone else. He made me feel that way. He can be very
seductive when he’s pulling you in.’
In truth, as a potential mate, Michael did seem to have it all: intellect,
drive, brains, energy, vision, success… money. As for his appearance, well
that, admittedly, was a bit off-putting, with the plastic surgery and pale skin
colouring. And his sexuality still seemed ambiguous. However, he was
kissing her fairly passionately and, from many accounts, in public places.
He seemed to enjoy doing it, too. Either he was playing some kind of manly
role, perhaps an emotional consequence of the damaging allegations, or he
was really interested in her. Lisa was definitely into him. ‘I’m not a woman
who goes for the norm, anyway,’ Lisa said in explaining her attraction to
him. ‘I like strange guys, the ones on the edge, the ones with an edge, the
ones with fire in their bellies. That was Michael, to me.’
Lisa was Elvis’s kid; she’d been around ‘strange’. When she was seven,
she and her daddy were eating breakfast in front of the TV when singer
Robert Goulet happened to appear on the screen. For some reason, Elvis
hated Robert Goulet. When he saw his image before him, he pulled out a
.22 shot gun and blew the TV away, blasting it to smithereens. Then, he
calmly went back to his ham and eggs. Lisa just sat in her chair, stunned. At
least Michael was afraid of guns…
As far as Lisa was concerned, she and Michael were dating, and her
motive was to see where it could take her, romantically. Most people in his
circle, though, were not as certain as to his motives for being with Lisa,
though he did seem to like her. There was talk that he was after her money,
which was ludicrous – as if he didn’t have enough of his own.
As Elvis’s sole beneficiary, Lisa would come into a fortune of about $300
million, but not until she turned thirty. Most of Lisa’s money would be the
result of the savvy Priscilla Beaulieu Presley’s business acumen. While
Elvis had earned roughly $250 million in his life, by the time he died his
estate was valued at $5.4 million. It was his ex-wife, Priscilla, who turned
Elvis’s failing Presley Enterprises around to make a profit. Turning Elvis’s
fourteen-acre estate, Graceland (purchased by him in 1957) into a tourist
attraction, in 1982 was one stroke of genius on her part. It brought in $20
million a year.
Throughout 1993, during the time Michael seemed obsessed with Jordie
Chandler, he was dating Lisa, intermittently. When the molestation
allegations surfaced in his life, however, Michael’s relationship with Lisa
became a more urgent matter to him. Ironically, if not for Jordie’s
accusations and the ensuing scandal, he and Lisa may never have become
anything more than just friends, a coupling similar to the innocuous, non-
sexual ‘romances’ he had with Brooke Shields and Tatum O’Neal.
However, after Michael began the second leg of his Dangerous tour and the
investigation intensified, he began to depend on Lisa for emotional support,
telephoning her from overseas, seeming desperate and alone. During such
anguished calls, Lisa would attempt to counter his sadness with humour,
cheerfulness and good advice. As he grew to depend upon her, their
relationship strengthened.
‘I was in on the beginning of the molestation stuff, and I was getting the
phone calls, and he was telling me that it was extortion,’ she recalled. ‘I
believed him at the time. I mean, I was convinced. He was freaking out. I
believed that he didn’t do anything wrong, and that he was being wrongly
accused and, yes, I started falling for him. I wanted to save him. I felt that I
could do it.’
Elizabeth Taylor to the Rescue
In the midst of all of the turmoil, there was some good news for Michael
Jackson when he heard that Elizabeth Taylor and her husband, Larry
Fortensky, would be joining him in Singapore, his next tour stop, to lend
their emotional support and celebrate his thirty-fifth birthday with him.
Many people have wondered about Michael’s relationship with Elizabeth,
thinking it an unlikely friendship. However, they actually have a great deal
in common – and much more than just having been child stars. Like
Elizabeth, Michael has known loneliness, he has lived in fear of not being
able to fully love… and of not having love returned.
Michael once explained to me that he and Elizabeth first met in the early
1980s. Out of the blue, he had sent her a dozen tickets to one of his Los
Angeles concerts at Dodger’s Stadium. ‘I didn’t know it, but it was her
birthday – February 27,’ Michael recalled. ‘I thought I was giving her great
seats because they were in the VIP box. But when Elizabeth got there, she
became very angry because the seats were so far away from the stage. And
she left, upset! The whole time I was performing, I was thinking, Oh my
God, Elizabeth Taylor is watching me. Elizabeth Taylor is watching me!
But, she wasn’t even there. When I got offstage, they told me she had gone
home, mad. The next day, I called her, and I cried because I felt so awful.’
According to Michael’s memory, Elizabeth was cordial, but direct.
‘Michael,’ she said, ‘a major star such as myself never sits in the cheap
seats.’
‘After that, we talked on the phone every day, on every stop of my tour,’
Michael said. ‘And I thought, Wow. Doesn’t she have other things to do?
After all, she’s Elizabeth Taylor! At the end of the tour, I asked her if I
could come by for tea. She said, “Yes.” I brought Bubbles along. She didn’t
mind…’
When asked, Michael will always say that no one is a better, more
understanding friend than Elizabeth Taylor. She can deal with any problem;
nothing shocks her and she is always available with a warm hug and an
understanding ear. Because she is also extraordinarily charismatic, it’s easy
to become swept away by Elizabeth – just as it is easy to be swept away by
Michael. The two became so fascinated with one another so quickly that, in
1989, Elizabeth toyed with the idea of moving Michael into her home so
that they could spend all of their waking hours together. At the time,
Michael was about to move out of his family home in Encino, and was
considering buying Neverland.
‘But why do you need all of that space when you and I can live together
in my home,’ Elizabeth suggested, according to what Michael told me.
‘Imagine the fun we’ll have. Maybe we’ll even get married.’ She was
probably being facetious; she, no doubt, realized that the ever-so-secretive
Michael was troubled and in need of love and acceptance. Maybe she also
sensed that he was ashamed of his inability at that time to truly connect
with and be intimate with anyone, male or female. ‘But will we have to
have sex?’ an alarmed Michael wanted to know. ‘Oh, of course not, you
silly boy,’ Elizabeth told him, cackling in her inimitable way. ‘Why, I don’t
know any married couples who have sex!’ Michael considered her
proposition. ‘In the end,’ he said, ‘I thought that might be taking things too
far.’ Instead Michael bought Neverland, but he and Elizabeth remained
close friends. In fact, Elizabeth married her seventh husband, Larry
Fortensky, under a gazebo at Neverland in 1991 – amidst swans, doves and
at least one giraffe – in a million-dollar ceremony.
It speaks well of Elizabeth that she was so vociferous in her defence of
Michael, especially since it wasn’t a popular stance; such public support
was certainly not forthcoming in the same degree from his other high-
profile friends, such as Diana Ross, Jackie Onassis or Liza Minnelli. *
‘Michael is one of my best friends in the world,’ Elizabeth Taylor told a
reporter on the plane to Singapore; she and Larry Fortensky took the trip
surrounded by a coterie of press people. ‘I can’t think of anything worse a
human being could go through than what he’s going through now,’ she
observed. ‘He’s a very sensitive, vulnerable, shy person. I believe that he
will be vindicated.’ When asked about the reason for such allegations,
Elizabeth became irate. ‘Ext-oooooortion,’ she exclaimed in a shrill voice.
‘I think that’s clear. Well, isn’t it?‘ she demanded, wanting the writer to
agree with her.
On arrival, Elizabeth and Larry checked into the same hotel in which
Michael was staying, the exquisite Raffles. As soon as she checked in, she
rushed to her friend’s room. When Michael answered the door, he collapsed
into her arms in a heap. ‘Oh, there, there, you poor thing,’ she said, patting
him on the back. ‘I’m here, now. Elizabeth is here.’
Michael did manage a show that night, 29 August, his birthday. At the
end, forty thousand people sang ‘Happy Birthday’ to him. Later, Elizabeth
hosted a small party for him in his suite.
The next stop was Taiwan, which is where Joe, Katherine and some of
the Jackson boys had decided to join Michael. ‘Just what I need,’ he told
Elizabeth, according to a witness. ‘Why do they have to come?’
‘They are your family, Michael,’ she said. ‘You must put up with them.’
‘My father,’ Michael said, burying his face in his hands. ‘I can’t even
stand to be in the same room with that man.’
‘Neither can I, dear,’ Elizabeth said, massaging his back, sympathetically.
When he finally got to Taiwan, Michael simply refused to see his visiting
family members. Bob Jones, his long-time publicist, was even assigned the
task of keeping them from him. Katherine was hurt. ‘Why does Elizabeth
Taylor get to see him any time she wants,’ she complained, ‘but I have to
make an appointment to see him for five minutes?’
Dealing with the allegations against Michael was hard on Katherine. It
affected her blood pressure, and the family was worried about her. It was
even tougher on her when she realized that she couldn’t see him, couldn’t
comfort him. She and the family members felt isolated in the hotel,
wondering when they would ever have a private audience with the King of
Pop. Later, Jermaine would complain bitterly about it on The Larry King
Show. ‘Michael’s handlers don’t want us to get to him,’ he said.
As his family waited to see him, Michael had lunch with Elizabeth
Taylor. Holding a messy slice of carrot cake with frosting in her hand, she
urged him to eat it. He had lost six pounds since the second-leg of the tour
began, just a short while ago in Bangkok. ‘Take this,’ she insisted. Michael
sneered at the cake, seeming repulsed by the sight of it. ‘No, take it away,’
he said, begging her.
‘Michael, if you don’t eat this cake, I swear to God, I will call your
family in here and let them have a go at you,’ she warned. ‘And you know
I’ll do it, too.’
Michael laughed. ‘Give me that goddamn cake,’ he said, scooping it out
of her hands. He wolfed it down.
‘Good boy,’ she exclaimed with delight. ‘Good boy!’
The next day, Michael gave in and hosted a luncheon for Katherine,
Joseph and the rest of his visiting family. Mostly, he sat in a corner quietly.
Before the luncheon was over, though, Jermaine approached him about
participating in the upcoming Jackson Family television programme. No
longer in a position to avoid the question, he agreed.
By the fall of 1993, as the legal manoeuvrings continued, Michael was in
worse shape than ever, physically and emotionally. He was devastated by an
interview with Evan and Jordie – although neither was identified by name.
‘I imagine Michael Jackson is pretty scared right now, really scared,’ the
kid was quoted as having said. ‘And he should be, because what he did to
me is a really bad thing. Michael hasn’t called me or anything…’
June and Dave Schwartz decided to align with Evan against Michael. It
was said by her friends that June feared reprisals from Evan if she
continued to oppose him. She thought it possible that if Michael was found
guilty, Evan might then accuse her of neglect. Meanwhile, her lawyer,
Michael Freeman, quit saying that he was ‘uncomfortable’ with her
decision and had a bad feeling about Evan, whom he later described as ‘not
a genuine person’.
Then surprisingly, Evan’s lawyer Barry Rothman resigned from the case
too and was replaced by civil attorney, Larry Feldman. So it was on 14
September 1993, Evan Chandler filed a civil suit against Michael for the
sexual molestation of his son. It was effectively an insurance policy should
the criminal system not work for him. Plus, it was a sure way to see that
Michael paid in financial terms for what Evan said he had done to Jordie.
Jordie would be represented in the legal action by attorney Feldman, who
said at the time, ‘Michael was in love with the boy. It was a gentle, soft,
caring, warm, sweet relationship.’ Larry also believed his client when told
that the relationship was sexual, thus the lawsuit.
Though the lawsuit seemed to double the trouble for Michael, some of
his advisers hoped it might actually provide a catalyst to end the matter. If
the lawsuit could be settled with money, they reasoned, the police
investigation might go away, as well. Though a trial for the civil case was
set for 21 March 1994, there was still hope that a deal could be brokered
before that time. There was a sense that Evan Chandler would accept
money from Michael, and with good reason. They had already tried to
negotiate a deal with him, albeit unsuccessfully, when he originally asked
for twenty million dollars, before he went to the authorities. The problem,
though, was that it was well-known within Michael’s camp that he would
never pay Evan a dime. Michael still maintained his innocence in the matter
and was certain that any cash settlement would suggest otherwise; he
wasn’t going to do it, not without a fight. However, it was decided, as one
adviser put it, ‘to cross that bridge when we come to it.’
Though some secretly felt the matter might actually be settled given a
little time and a lot of cash, others in the: Jackson camp weren’t as
optimistic. According to a person familiar with the case, Elizabeth
telephoned Michael to tell him that ‘things do not look good back here.’
She said, ‘You’ve got to take action.’ Michael asked for details, telling her
not to ‘hold anything back’. She said, ‘All hell is breaking loose.’
Recalled one of Michael’s representatives, ‘Miss Taylor and I were on
speaker phone with Michael. Michael was crying, asking, “What should I
do? What can I do?” She became impatient. “Michael, you mustn’t
substitute my judgement for your own,” she said. “You need to stop
freaking out. You need to take charge of your life.”’
In August 1994, Michael would tell me, ‘I swear to you, I didn’t know
how bad things were. If I had known, maybe things would have been
handled differently.’ It does seem, in retrospect, that he knew more than he
said he did, and was actually just in a state of denial about it.
Elizabeth told him that, in her view, no one was handling matters for him
in the States in a way that would benefit him. ‘I think they need to be
kicking ass, and they’re not,’ she said. ‘Thenyou be the one kicking ass,
Elizabeth,’ Michael said. At that, I cringed,’ recounted the adviser. ‘All we
needed to make things worse was Elizabeth Taylor handling the defence.
Much to my chagrin, and that of others on Michael’s team, Miss Taylor
offered to hold strategy meetings at her home two or three times a week,
and then report back to Michael what had been said, and by whom.’
In the next few weeks, Elizabeth Taylor hosted many conferences at her
house with about ten of Michael’s team and was often critical of those
handling Michael’s public relations, though not so much his legal defence.
Some on Michael’s team did not want to attend the Elizabeth Taylor
summits, protesting that for a movie star to have such control over his
career was ridiculous. They dubbed her ‘Queen of the Defence’. In truth,
she wasn’t spearheading any legal tactics, as much as providing a forum for
attorneys, publicists and other strategists to brainstorm so she could then
keep Michael apprised of their view points. Of course, some of Michael’s
staff did not wish to attend Elizabeth’s meetings for fear of a negative report
being sent back to the boss.
During one meeting, Elizabeth said, ‘I’m afraid he will never sell another
record again if we can’t get this goddamned ridiculousness straightened out.
I think we have to make sure there’s something left for Michael after this is
resolved.’
‘He just might be in jail after this goddamned ridiculousness is resolved,’
muttered one of Michael’s advisers.
Elizabeth looked down and scribbled on her legal pad. She then looked
back at the adviser. ‘I just made a note to remember to tell Michael you said
that,’ she told him.
He lowered his head, duly chastised.
Anthony Pellicano simply refused to attend the Taylor meetings. ‘What
are you, kidding me?’ he asked when asked why he wasn’t present. ‘I’m
fucking busy. I’m out here working for Michael. I don’t have time for tea
with movie stars.’
Elizabeth was unhappy with Anthony, anyway. ‘He’s not a team player,’
she said. ‘We can’t keep track of him. He does his own thing in his own
way, and we don’t know what he’s thinking. I don’t like it. He makes me
nervous.’
During another of her home meetings, Elizabeth, Sandy Gallin
(Michael’s manager at the time) and Howard Weitzman telephoned Michael
overseas to discuss the matter of Anthony. According to a witness, all three
were on ‘speaker phone’, talking to Michael.
‘Look, Mike, maybe he has to go,’ Howard said of Pellicano. ‘I like the
guy, but I’m not sure about him, any more…’
‘I think so, too,’ Elizabeth concurred. ‘Absolutely.’
‘Well, I’ve had my run-ins with him, too,’ Michael admitted. He sounded
lethargic, drugged. He said that while he admired Anthony, he still felt that
his idea to present Wade Robson and Brett Barnes to the public wasn’t a
good one. He felt that the investigator should have checked with him first
before exploiting the youngsters. ‘And it really pisses me off that guy tries
to tell me what to do,’ Michael said, ‘like I work for him instead of the
other way around. And, also,’ he concluded, ‘I think he scares the public,
he’s that intimidating. John Branca, now he’s a good spokesman.’ Indeed,
after having let him go so unceremoniously, Michael had recently asked
John to return to the fold. He knew he could always count on him and, of
course, he was right: Branca was back and loyal as ever.
After that conversation, Michael wrote a detailed memo to Howard
Weitzman explaining why he believed he and John should take over as his
spokesmen. He told him that he trusted them, they were believable, and had
the respect of the legal profession – unlike Anthony Pellicano who he now
felt was perceived as being a man on the edge, a rebel. ‘If Anthony worked
for Motown,’ Michael observed, ‘he’d be someone Berry would keep
behind the scenes. Having him out there speaking for me now is almost like
having Joseph out there. He’s intimidating. Right now, we don’t need that.’
Michael Proposes to Lisa Marie
It was difficult to imagine how things could get much worse for Michael
Jackson in the fall of 1993. In just a matter of months he had, without a
doubt, experienced the ‘swift and sudden fall from grace’, he would later
write about in his self-revealing song, ‘Stranger in Moscow’.
Certainly, no one had counted on Michael becoming addicted to drugs,
thereby raising the stakes in terms of the precarious nature of his future and
well-being. Yet, anxious, unable to sleep and, he said, in pain because of
dental work and a recent surgery to his scalp (a consequence of the burn he
suffered during that Pepsi commercial), Michael began taking more of the
painkillers, Percodan, Demerol and codeine, as well as tranquillizers
Valium, Xanax and Ativan. Such dependence was uncharted terrain for him.
In the past, he had made an effort to not over-medicate during recovery
from plastic surgeries, explaining to doctors that he wanted to remain
‘sharp’ for the purpose of making sound business and career decisions.
However, with all that was going on in his life at this time, Michael no
longer cared to be quite so focused. In fact, he wanted to forget, escape. It
didn’t take long before he was completely dependent on the drugs. It
happened so quickly that his team in the United States didn’t even realize
what was going on with Michael, until it was too late to do anything about
it.
Everyone was stunned to learn that Michael had a problem with drugs.
Of course, Elizabeth Taylor understood and had empathy for his plight.
She’d been there, with her own, well-publicized battles. Lisa Marie Presley
was also sympathetic; she, too, was a recovering addict.
‘When I was a teenager, I was completely out of control,’ she told me. ‘I
started doing drugs when I was fourteen. I had been spinning for quite some
time, years, when I finally hit bottom. That was when I found myself on a
seventy-two-hour bender of cocaine, sedatives, pot and drinking, all at the
same time. I woke up and there were all of these people, friends of mine,
passed out on the floor. My coke dealer was in the room trying to sell me
more stuff. I just said, ‘That’s it. Everybody get the fuck out.’ I don’t know
why I got addicted, I just know that I was going to die if I didn’t get help.
Finally, my mother and I decided I would go to the Scientology Center in
Hollywood for detoxification. It saved my life.’
When Michael telephoned Lisa from overseas in September 1993, he was
high, incoherent and delusional. Alarmed, Lisa attempted to convince
Michael to do as she had once done, enter a rehabilitation centre. For Lisa,
the quest to pull a drug-addled superstar back from the edge had great
significance. She had shared with friends earlier the guilt she had suffered
as a child, seeing her father falling into his own bottomless pit of addiction.
She was still married to Danny Keough, but unhappily. She was restless and
felt that she had no real purpose; she wanted more than motherhood, she
said. Michael’s dilemma seemed to provide an outlet for her. ‘Absolutely, I
felt that I had a responsibility to save him,’ she said. ‘I don’t know the
psychology of it and what it had to do with my father. I only know what I
felt.’
There was one major obstacle that lay before Lisa if she was going to
help quiet the demons haunting Michael: access. It was well known that
Jackson had done a very thorough job of insulating himself from the outside
world. Often, he would start casual relationships with people, many of
whom were certain that their relationship would grow, only to find that
Michael had left them behind. Calls would go unanswered, sometimes
letters would be returned, unread. Lisa had heard of Michael’s reputation
for tossing aside new-found ‘soul mates’, and saw this pattern as a liability
if she was going to complete her task of rebuilding his crumbling life. She
would have to proceed with caution.
In her frequent telephone calls to him, Lisa maintained that Michael
could not go on much longer with his personal life and career in such
disarray. He was immobilized by uncertainty and a sense of hopelessness,
which had contributed to his addiction. She suggested to him the idea others
in his camp had begun to secretly discuss: that Michael end his misery with
a cash settlement to Evan Chandler. Michael was, predictably, against the
idea. A man who’d been building an image for himself since the time most
children were building tree houses, Michael cared deeply about what people
thought of him. Even if the image he had fostered over the years was,
arguably, not the best one for him, it was the result of a great deal of
strategizing on his part, and on that of his handlers. ‘He felt that this thing
of him being wacky and weird and crazy worked for him,’ Lisa recalled,
‘and maybe for a time, it did. I don’t know. I was always against it. I always
thought he was bigger, better, than the image. I always thought the image
did him an injustice.’
One thing was certain: by 1993 Michael was lonelier than he’d ever
before been, and that was really saying something. He had to face the fact
that his career, his most enduring passion, was in jeopardy, a possible
fatality either of an unlawful, immoral love affair with a minor or of poor
judgement in having aligned himself so stubbornly with the wrong people
and at the wrong time. If he wouldn’t settle with money, Lisa suggested
rehab at the very least. She cared deeply about him, she told him, and she
wanted to be sure he knew it.
One night, while abroad, Michael found himself, as he often would,
feeling trapped in a plush hotel suite, alone with the constant drone of a
chanting crowd below his room. After a string of phone calls from lawyers
and publicists, Michael decided to calm himself by calling the one person
who could somehow help him forget that his career hung in the balance:
Lisa.
She had certainly been persistent in her pursuit of him. She left telephone
numbers for a house she was renting in Canoga Park, California.
She also left the number of the new three-acre estate which she had just
purchased and was getting ready to occupy on Long Valley Road in Hidden
Hills (an exclusive gate-guarded equestrian community in Calabasas,
California, where she still lives, today).
Then, just to be sure, she left the number where she could be reached in
Clearwater, Florida, where she was planning to spend time at the
Scientology retreat. She even sent him party balloons with messages
attached. Somehow, she could always put a smile on his face, even if it was
just her raspy voice proclaiming, ‘Oh, fuck them!’ He found her in Canoga
Park.
Michael valued Lisa’s settling effect on him, so much so that during his
phone conversation, he posed a question that surprised both of them. ‘If I
asked you to marry me, would you do it?’ Was this a joke? A hypothetical?
Or was it a dare for Lisa to take him seriously? If it was a dare, Lisa was
just the woman to take it – even though she was still married to Danny
Keough. Without missing a beat, she replied, ‘I would do it.’ Michael didn’t
say a word, at first. He then said, ‘Hold on, I have to use the bathroom.’
When he finally did speak into the phone again, he was speaking to his
new fiancée. ‘My love for you is real,’ Michael told Lisa. ‘Please believe
me.’ Michael didn’t realize, however, that whether or not Michael loved her
wasn’t the real issue for Lisa. His proposal served a greater purpose. It
would give her access, she hoped, to enter his secret world. Then, from the
inside, she would begin to put the pieces of this broken man together, and
this time she would not fail.
‘You’ll all be fired’
By the time Michael Jackson’s tour took him to Mexico City, on 24 October
1993, there was talk of a pending warrant for a police strip search of his
body. This seemed odd, almost unthinkable. Making matters worse, the Los
Angeles Police Department had seized medical records from the offices of
two of Jackson’s physicians, Beverly Hills dermatologist, Arnie Kleins and
Santa Monica plastic surgeon, Stephen Hoefflin. ‘What do they want my
medical records for?’ a bewildered Michael asked one of his team members
in a longdistance telephone call. ‘They can’t do that, can they?’
‘Hell, yeah, man, they can do that,’ confirmed the associate. ‘They think
they can do anything they want to do. When the rest of the troops get down
there, you’d better whip them into shape. Things are bad here, Mike.’
The records were needed to verify aspects of Jordie’s testimony. Did the
authorities really think such documents would still be in place? All of
Michael’s medical records from both doctors were long gone by the time
the police arrived to take them. * Still, one can only imagine the stress for a
person as pathologically private as Michael Jackson, to know that the police
were trying to locate his confidential medical records.
The heat was on. The investigation would not let up, that much was clear.
At this same time, the police raided Michael’s Hayvenhurst estate in
Encino. When the Jacksons went to Phoenix for the funeral of Joseph’s
father, the police used the opportunity to inspect the estate and look for
evidence there. A locksmith helped them gain entrance.
The officers seized books, magazines, photos, tapes and anything else
they thought might be interesting – including Katherine’s high blood
pressure pills. They also found a videotape called Chicks, which promised
to be valuable evidence since the slang word ‘chicks’ is sometimes used by
paedophiles when referring to young boys. When the cops got back to the
police station, the first thing they did was review the tape. Much to their
frustration, what they saw was a video about… chicks, as in birds.
The ‘troops’ to which Michael’s adviser had referred were those Jackson
team members on their way to Mexico City: attorneys John Branca,
Howard Weitzman, Bert Fields, as well as Dr Arnold Klein (to deal with a
skin condition brought on by Jackson’s anxiety) and Elizabeth Taylor. They
hoped to convince Michael to return to the States. The longer he stayed
away the guiltier he looked to his fans. Lisa Marie Presley also hoped to go
on the trip.
For the last few years, Elizabeth had been trying to convince Michael to
open himself up to a romantic relationship. However, when it began to
happen with Lisa, she suddenly felt left out. ‘She has a deep insecurity
about other women, especially younger women,’ says a friend of Michael’s.
‘I spent a great deal of time in her company and saw for myself the
competitive way she dealt with Lisa.’
One of Jackson’s associates was with Elizabeth and Lisa during a
meeting. Both were sitting in the adviser’s office, discussing their concern
about Michael. Elizabeth looked grand in a black, turtleneck sweater and
matching skirt, her hair in a bouffant style. Her eyes, the world’s most
famous violet pair, were concealed by large sunglasses, which she even
wore indoors. By contrast, Lisa looked like a punk rocker in torn denim
slacks, a white T-shirt and a black leather jacket. (‘I can understand if she
doesn’t want to be a star like her father,’ Elizabeth said of Lisa, later.
‘However, one would think she would at least want to dress like one.’)
‘I think we should get him into rehab,’ Lisa said, speaking of the
beleaguered Michael. ‘Fly to be at his side. Do whatever it takes.’
Liz gave Lisa an icy stare. ‘It’s taken care of, dear,’ she said. ‘I’ve been
rescuing Michael for years.’
‘Well, maybe that’s the problem,’ Lisa countered. ‘Maybe he needs to
grow up, do things on his own – ’
Elizabeth cut her off. ‘Or maybe not, dear,’ she said. With her tone
sickeningly sweet, she made her point: Lisa was an interloper. Perhaps she
realized she’d acted rudely, because Elizabeth then apologized and blamed
her attitude on the stress of the times.
Still, Lisa was chagrined and felt that Elizabeth had treated her as if she
was one of Michael’s groupies, rather than a trusted friend. She decided not
to go to Mexico City because, as she later explained, she didn’t want to
make things worse for Michael. However, from that point onward, Lisa
considered Elizabeth to be, as she put it, ‘opposing counsel’.
Shortly after the arrival of the Jackson contingent, a shouting match
erupted between Bert Fields and Michael’s loyal head of security, Bill Bray
(who had known and worked for Michael since the star was about twelve
years old). The protective Bray accused Fields of mishandling the case. In
front of witnesses, he screamed at the attorney, ‘You’re blowing the whole
damn thing! Mike is gonna end up in jail. What is going on?’
One witness said, ‘Elizabeth agreed with Bill that the attorneys weren’t
being aggressive enough. It was as if they were waiting for time to pass to
see what would happen next. ‘You need to get out there and start deposing
these people,’ she said. ‘There are liars all over the place, and they need to
be revealed for who they are… all these housekeepers and maids and
butlers. I know good help is hard to find, Michael,’ she said turning to him,
‘but where did you find these people? Look at how they turned on you.’
Michael sat staring at her with his mouth open. ‘My maid turned on me?’ he
said. ‘Not my sweet Blanca?’ he asked, sounding pretty dumb. [He was
referring to his maid, Blanca Francia.]
‘Where she once felt that Michael was capable of taking charge, she
could see that he was now in bad shape. He was so drugged out, he couldn’t
handle anything. “I think now that he can’t make important decisions,” she
said. “Look at him! What do you expect of him? I’ve been there,” she said,
referring to her own drug use, “and I know he can’t make any decisions
right now. We have to help this boy. Enough is enough.”
‘She was angry at just about everyone in Michael’s camp. Michael was
so affected by Elizabeth’s outburst, he collapsed into racking sobs. “What
am I going do?” he asked. “If you people can’t figure this goddamn thing
out, how can I?” Elizabeth went over and embraced him. “We’re fighting,
Michael, but it’s because we love you,” she said, almost as if she was
talking to a child whose parents were divorcing. It was touching. “And I’ll
be goddamned if you have to suffer another second over this bullshit. We
will work it out. I promise you.’”
Michael pulled away from Elizabeth. ‘I want you people to fix this thing,
now,’ he said, addressing everyone in the room. ‘I’m serious,’ he added.
‘My life will not end this way. You’ll all be out – fired before that happens.’
‘Hear, hear,’ said Elizabeth, clapping her hands. ‘That’s telling ’em,
Michael. Right out on their asses!’ Then, after a beat, she added, ‘Just to be
clear, you don’t mean me too, now do you, dear?’
He couldn’t help himself; Michael burst into laughter, as did everyone on
his team.
After that day’s discussions, it was decided that attorney Johnnie
Cochran, well respected in Los Angeles’ black and legal communities,
would be added to the legal team. Elizabeth had said that she wanted her
own attorney, Neal Papiano, to join the team. However, she eventually
agreed with Branca and Weitzman that Cochran (who would later
successfully defend O. J. Simpson of charges that he had murdered his wife
and a friend of hers) was the man for the job. Johnnie would have one job
and only one job: to settle ‘this goddamn thing’ with money. There would
be no trial, it was agreed. Michael would not, could not survive it. He was
now too emotionally devastated to present a strong image for himself on the
witness stand. Whatever it would cost, it was decided, he would have to pay
it. If the public construed any financial settlement as an indication of guilt,
it was decided, there was nothing anyone could do about it. ‘He will just
have to say he didn’t do it, as he has been saying, and that’s going to have
to be the denial that lasts through the ages,’ said one of the attorneys. ‘The
thing for us to do now is to save the man’s life, not worry about the
superstar’s image.’
Chaos and Rehab
On 12 November 1993, looking thin, tired and haggard, Michael Jackson
performed what would turn out to be the final show of his Dangerous tour
at El Estadio del Azteca in Mexico City. The rest of the engagements were
cancelled.
Apparently, Michael’s mental state had truly disintegrated while in
Mexico City; the damage to his $12,000-a-week, five-room suite on the
forty-second floor of the Hotel Presidente was evidence of his serious abuse
of drugs. After he checked out, the hotel staff was stunned to discover that
the carpets in the living room and in Michael’s bedrooms were stained with
vomit. There were deep dents and cracks in the plaster of the living-room
wall, as if someone had either banged his head, or his fists, against it. There
was enough rubbish in the room to fill two large, trash bags. There were
scribblings on the walls (‘I love you. I love you.’), and even on the fabric of
some of the furniture. Chewing gum was squashed into the carpet,
everywhere.
After the final show, Michael, Elizabeth and Larry boarded an MGM
Grand 727 jet, chartered for the occasion by Elizabeth, to London. When
they arrived at Heathrow Airport, bodyguard Steve Tarling met them at the
tarmac. All three had on dark glasses and long coats with hoods covering
their heads, as if on some kind of espionage mission. Michael seemed
drugged as he walked to the waiting van, held up on one side by a cloaked
Elizabeth and on the other by her husband. ‘He looked like a transvestite
who’d had the same makeup on for a couple of weeks,’ recalled Tarling.
‘What shocked me most was the tip of his nose, which was like an open cut
when it congeals into a scab. It looked awfully painful.’
The strategy had been to drive Michael directly to Charter Nightingale
Clinic. However, that plan had to be changed when it was learned that
reporters had begun to stake out the hospital because word had leaked that
Michael might be showing up there. Instead, Michael was whisked off to
the home of Elton John’s manager, John Reid.
He didn’t even make it inside the house. As he stepped from the van, he
crumpled on to the ground. ‘That’s it,’ Elizabeth decided. ‘The press be
damned. He has to go straight to the clinic. Now.’
In a matter of hours, Michael was at the Charter, taken in through the
laundry entrance in what turned out to be a successful effort to avoid the
paparazzi awaiting his arrival in front. He was immediately searched for
drugs and, sure enough, eighteen vials of medicine were found in one of his
suitcases. Of course, they were confiscated. After a quick induction
meeting, Michael was officially enrolled in the centre – albeit in a way
befitting the King of Pop: he took over the entire fourth floor of the
hospital, at fifty thousand dollars a week, and was expected to remain there
for about a month and a half. Michael was immediately put on Valium IV,
part of the process of weaning him from painkillers.
The next day, 13 November, Michael announced in a press statement that
he was cancelling the remainder of the tour because he was now an addict.
He explained that he had begun using painkillers seven months earlier after
having undergone reconstructive surgery for a scalp burn suffered during
the filming of the Pepsi commercial in 1984. ‘The medications were used
sparingly at first,’ Michael said, but increased as the molestation allegations
consumed him.
‘As I left on this tour, I had been the target of an extortion attempt and
shortly thereafter was accused of horrifying and outrageous conduct. I was
humiliated, embarrassed, hurt and suffering great pain in my heart,’ he said
in the statement. ‘The pressure resulting from these false allegations
coupled with the incredible energy necessary for me to perform caused me
so much distress that it left me physically and emotionally exhausted. I
became dependent on the painkillers to get through the days of the tour.’ Of
Elizabeth Taylor, he said that she’d been ‘a source of strength and counsel
as this crisis came about. I shall never forget her unconditional love and
encouragement in helping me through this period.’
Many observers felt that the drug addiction was a perfectly timed hoax
designed solely to keep Michael away from the United States and, thus,
allow him to evade prosecution. Bert Fields addressed the cynicism directly,
saying, ‘The last thing in the world he would want would be the humiliation
of admitting that he has become an addict. He’s a man who has hated drugs
all his life. If we wanted a smoke screen,’ allowed Bert, ‘we would have
stayed on tour. That was the perfect one.’ Bert also told reporters that
Michael was ‘barely able to function adequately on an intellectual level.’
Others in Jackson’s camp thought it a mistake to portray Michael as
being out of control. John Branca would later send a news clipping to
Michael quoting Bert as having made such a statement. Michael was angry
about it, even if it was true. ‘That pisses me off,’ he told John. ‘Bert’s not
thinking about my fans. How does that look to them? And my mother? How
must she feel?’ In his own defence, Bert explained, ‘I felt that honesty was
important. Larry [Feldman] was trying to make a case that Michael wanted
to evade prosecution. I wanted to dispel that notion.’
It was true that Larry Feldman had encouraged the critical press to be
sceptical of Michael’s motives in cancelling the tour, particularly because it
happened just prior to its Puerto Rico date. It was suspicious. Puerto Rico is
a United States territory. Michael could have been arrested there under
United States law. All of this was occurring against a backdrop of persistent
news reports that Jordie Chandler had described Michael’s genitals in detail,
and the authorities were serious about having Michael stripped and
photographed so that they could inspect hidden evidence. ‘You’ve got to be
kidding,’ exclaimed Howard Weitzman when asked about it at a press
conference.
Meanwhile, Michael got his first taste of much-needed counselling.
Rehabilitation is never easy, but it’s even more challenging for people
who have lived privileged lives. During his first night there, he roamed the
halls asking other patients if they knew ‘a secret way to get out of here’. He
didn’t want to listen to the authorities. No one told him what to do in his
private world, and he expected that it would be the same at Charter. It
wasn’t. Soon, he found himself mopping floors, which he hadn’t done since
he lived in Gary.
In the days to come, group therapy also proved to be difficult. Michael
had never been in any type of therapy programme. How could he now be
expected to sit in a room full of strangers and be candid about his personal
life?
Led by well-known therapist Beechy Colclough, Michael’s private
sessions were more intense and productive than the group ones, during
which he hardly spoke for fear that someone there might go to the tabloids.
It was during private sessions, according to someone still close to Michael,
that he began to finally deal with the root of so many of his problems: his
anger at Joseph. It was a fine line, though, between blaming his father for
everything that had ever happened in his life and taking responsibility for
some of it, himself. In the past, Michael had never been one to own up to
his actions, always intent on blaming family members, the press and even
his fans for actions that have caused him unhappiness.
‘In therapy, he began to see that he was his own worst enemy,’ said his
associate. ‘It was slow-going, though. He was not eager to accept that he
could change his life if he would just change his mind about it. Old habits
die hard. He was determined to dwell on his lost childhood, on how mean
Joseph had been to him, how cruel Evan had been to him. He practically
equated them as one and the same.’
After many hours of therapy at Charter, it seemed as if Michael had a
sudden rush of clarity. ‘It’s me,’ he told his associate. ‘It’s not Joseph. It’s
me. Not Evan. I’m the one who blew it, and I need to start over again. I
want another chance.’
‘You can have it, Michael,’ said his associate.
‘I deserve it,’ Michael said, crying. ‘Do you still believe I am innocent?’
‘I do.’
Michael didn’t say anything for a few moments. Then, finally: ‘When I
get out of here, I’m starting over. Let’s end this thing with Evan. I want my
life back.’ He always referred to the molestation business as a matter having
to do with Evan Chandler because, in his mind, Jordie could never have
truly been behind what he viewed as a nefarious plot against him.
*
Back in the States on 23 November, Bert Fields made what some thought
was another serious blunder when, while standing in front of a judge and
arguing the motion to have Michael’s civil case delayed to the year 2000 –
the year the criminal statute of limitations would expire – he indicated that a
Grand Jury was about to convene in Santa Barbara, and that a criminal
indictment against Michael was imminent. Though Bert claimed that he got
his information from Howard Weitzman, it was news to everyone in
Jackson’s camp that an indictment was ‘imminent’. Bert’s reason for
making the statement, as he later explained, was that he felt the civil suit
should be delayed so that any impending criminal case could be tried first.
He wanted to prevent information obtained for the criminal case from being
used against Jackson in the civil suit. He was being a good lawyer.
However, the strategy did serve to make Michael look as if he was trying to
evade responsibility, at least in the eyes of the suspicious public and cynical
media.
Immediately afterwards, Howard Weitzman attempted to deflect Bert
Fields’ comments. With a chagrined-looking Bert standing next to him,
Howard said that Bert had ‘misspoke himself’. No Grand Jury was
convening at that moment; no indictment was ‘imminent’. Who knows what
kind of behind-the-scenes battles the two attorneys were having, but there
was obviously a communication problem between them, one that served to
make Michael look like he was trying to weasel out of the civil trial.
‘I don’t want to start more trouble,’ John Branca told Michael, according
to his memory. ‘But you know that people here think you’re trying to delay
the trial for six years?’
‘Six years? What are you talking about, Branca?’ Michael wanted to
know. ‘I don’t want to delay the trial, not even a day.’
John explained to Michael what happened in Los Angeles between the
other two attorneys. ‘No way, Branca,’ Michael said of Bert’s strategy.
‘That’s not what I want. I’m not guilty. I want this over with.’ He was
angry. ‘What’s Bert doing? No wonder everyone thinks I’m running
scared.’
Later that same day, Michael came up with a pretty good line when
talking to another associate on the telephone: ‘I got a ship of fools
representing me, and we’re all going down.’
The issue of postponing Jackson’s trial, as it happened, would be a moot
one. The judge denied Bert Fields’ petition, setting a trial date for 21
March.
Then, in a few weeks, a Santa Barbara Grand Jury did begin hearing
witnesses, so Bert Fields hadn’t been completely wrong. Furious with
Howard Weitzman for making him look foolish, Bert resigned from the
case, later calling the change of events ‘an outrage. It was a nightmare and I
wanted to get the hell out of it as soon as possible.’
At the same time, Anthony Pellicano, who had tired of the flak he had
received for his aggressive tactics, resigned.
When Michael heard about all of the upheaval on his team, he telephoned
Elizabeth Taylor to tell her that he was ‘surrounded by people who don’t
know what the hell they’re doing.’ He had lost all hope, he said, according
to what Elizabeth later recalled to one of Jackson’s attorneys. ‘He’s
threatening to kill himself,’ she said, dramatically. ‘And if he does, his
blood will be on all of our hands.’
‘Well, we’re doing all we can do,’ said one of Michael’s advisers. ‘What
else can we do?’
‘We can pray,’ answered Elizabeth Taylor. ‘At this point, I think that’s
about it.’
It was soon suggested that Michael Jackson wasn’t being treated like the
other patients at Charter when, after just a few days, he was granted
permission to move his rehabilitation to the bucolic home of Elton John’s
manager, John Reid. Shortly thereafter, he was seen at Manor Farm, the
estate of seventy-year-old British banking mogul Jack Dellal, a friend of
Beechy Colclough. Hopefully, he was still getting his fifty thousand dollars
a week’s worth of mental health assistance. To a lot of people, including
Elizabeth Taylor – who has had hardcore rehabilitation in her lifetime – it
appeared that Michael was having some kind of ‘quick fix’. Surely, it would
take more than a few days, even a few months, for Michael to deal with so
many years of dysfunction. All his friends could do was hope that he was
on his way to being able to at least partially understand himself and his
choices.
However, the fact that Michael was still doing business during this time
was disconcerting. In fact, a big deal was struck while he was supposed to
be in rehabilitation. He consulted with John Branca on the biggest music
publishing agreement in history: one hundred and fifty million dollars with
EMI to administer his ATV catalogue. John faxed the agreement to him at
John Reid’s. Upon signing it, seventy million dollars was deposited into
Michael’s bank account. ‘The deal was already negotiated,’ John later
explained. ‘A couple of phone calls to Michael for some fine-tuning. It
wasn’t much of a distraction, believe me, or I wouldn’t have even called
him. He was okay with it. It was good for him to know that things were
going forward, that his life was far from over.’
Indeed, despite the turmoil in his life, Michael was still making money,
and a great deal of it. Dangerous had thus far sold twenty million copies
worldwide. In the UK, the record had debuted at the number one position.
Propelled by a hit single, ‘Black and White’, and an accompanying
controversial video (where Michael takes out his anger on an automobile,
seems to pleasure himself with his own gyrating dancing, and then
transforms into a panther), it was the fastest-selling number one album of
all time in the UK, and remained on the charts for ninety-six weeks, a
performance only exceeded in America. ‘His past royalties were huge,
especially for Thriller, and his residuals from The Beatles’ catalogue, his
stocks and other investments,’ noted one advisor. ‘The kid had plenty of
money, millions.’ One point was clear, however: he was determined not to
give any of his money to Evan Chandler, despite whatever strategy his legal
team had been considering with Johnnie Cochran, and despite his own
determination that the matter be settled. An associate who was with him at
Dellal’s home recalled having asked him about a possible settlement the
morning after the ATV deal was final. ‘I said, “Mike, you can give up
twenty million dollars of the new ATV money,”’ he remembered. ‘“It’s
found money, anyway. For twenty million dollars, the whole Chandler thing
can go away.”
‘“No way,” he told me. “I want it settled, yeah, but with apologies all
around, some kind of press release, whatever. I don’t care. All I know is I’m
not giving anyone a single dollar. I’m not pissing away my money on this
lie. Forget it.”
‘His eyes were blazing. He insisted that he didn’t do anything wrong, and
he wasn’t going to pay money to settle it. “I never touched that kid,” he told
me, “and that’s the end of it. Believe what you want. See if I care.”
‘I said, “Mike, I believe you, of course.” He looked at me angrily and
said, “Yeah, right. Sure you do.”’
Michael Stands Naked
On 10 December 1993, Michael Jackson returned to the United States after
having been discharged from Charter clinic. Of course, he didn’t simply
hop on a commercial airline to cross the ocean. Rather, he flew back to the
States in a private 727 owned by the Sultan of Brunei, said to be the
wealthiest man in the world and an admirer of Michael’s.
When Michael disembarked in Santa Barbara, he looked healthier than he
had in recent months while wearing a red hat and matching silk shirt, black
slacks and… surgical mask. He also had two youngsters with him, Eddie
and Frank Cascio, from New Jersey, who had been travelling with him on
his tour. Eddie was about ten; Frank fourteen.
Michael had befriended the Cascios about ten years earlier; their father,
Dominic was the manager of New York’s Helmsley Palace Hotel. Michael
asked to meet the boys after seeing a picture of them on the wall of
Dominic’s office; they were just babies at the time.
Dominic accompanied his children on their 1993 travels with Michael;
Michael was not alone with them. However, such chaperoning was not the
impression given the media since Dominic was nowhere in sight when
Michael made well-publicized appearances with the boys. They had even
gone to Elizabeth Taylor’s Swiss chalet in Gstaad (in September) and been
photographed all over the small village, looking for toy stores, all three
wearing large sunglasses, Michael in a big hat with surgical mask.
Eddie and Frank are in their twenties today, and are still good friends of
Michael’s. In court papers connected to one of the many suits filed against
Michael in recent years, one by a business manager, Myung Ho Lee, states
that Michael once loaned Dominic Cascio $600,000 to start a restaurant in
New Jersey. However, the restaurant was never opened. Today, Frank
Cascio goes by the name Frank Tyson, and is one of Michael’s most trusted
assistants.
Some in his camp had serious reservations about Michael continuing to
be seen in the company of children at such a critical time in his life. Was he
still so out of touch he didn’t realize how inappropriate, not to mention
dangerous, such behaviour was? Or, as one adviser put it, ‘I guess the
therapy thing didn’t take, did it?’
Michael could not be swayed from continuing his friendships with
children publicly. In fact, after being in therapy at Charter, Michael was
more emboldened to live his life on his own terms, rather than consider any
restrictions.
‘Look, I almost died,’ he told one associate. ‘Do you know how close I
was? Now that I am past it, no way am I not going to do what I want to do,
when I want to do it and how. It’s plain and simple,’ Michael concluded,
‘and anyone who doesn’t like it can just go to hell.’
Michael Jackson has been hailed as a genius of a businessman. No matter
how eccentric he seemed, it was said, he was actually a shrewd marketing
genius – and the joke was on us. Maybe on some level that was true.
However, one can’t help but wonder if such a ‘genius’ would not know
when to just… stop. Many of Michael’s actions, especially in the last ten
years, have caused observers to question if the perception of ingenuity in
the 1980s was actually just good timing, and his willingness to take full
advantage of it. Is it possible that Michael just made a couple of amazing
albums, and then inherited the world because of his showmanship and
ability to surround himself with others who were true marketing geniuses,
like John Branca?
Others have argued that Michael’s insistence that he be seen in the
company of young boys demonstrates a consciousness of innocence on his
part. If he had been guilty of the crime for which he had been accused,
would he continue to flaunt his relationships with youngsters?
The bottom line is that Michael has done whatever he has wanted to do
for most of his life, living in a world of privilege and entitlement simply
because he is who he is. He has never understood the notion of ‘appropriate
behaviour’ because, in truth, he’s never had any reason to live
appropriately. It’s a strange commentary on celebrity and fame that the
public’s perception of Michael as being bizarre has had its advantages.
After all, how can he be judged by normal, common-sense standards when
he’s ‘Wacko-Jacko’?
However, in December of 1993 Michael was about to experience, if just
for one day, what it might be like in the real world, where people often have
to do things they may not necessarily want to do.
Upon Michael’s return to the United States, he was immediately served
with a warrant for the long-threatened strip search by the police. According
to the order, officers expected to examine, photograph and videotape
Michael’s entire body, ‘including his penis, anus, hips, buttocks and any
other part of his body. Michael Jackson should be notified,’ according to the
order, ‘that he has no right to refuse the examination and photographs. Any
refusal to cooperate with this order will be admissible in a court and an
indication of his guilt.’ Also, it was explained to his attorneys that if he
didn’t cooperate, the police would probably just arrest him on ‘probable
cause’ and take him away in handcuffs, in front of photographers. This
scenario was more than anyone in his camp could even fathom.
Apparently, Jordie had claimed that Michael had distinguishing marks on
his genitals. He even drew a diagram of Michael’s penis on a napkin for
police, and wrote on it: ‘Michael is circumcised. He has short pubic hair.
His testicles are marked with pink and brown marks. Like a cow, not white
but pink colour. He has brown patches on ass, on his left glut.’
The police were now determined to learn if Jordie’s description was
accurate. If so, then he obviously had seen Michael Jackson unclothed.
The photo session, set for 20 December, promised to be as torturous an
experience as Michael ever had in his life. Present from Santa Barbara
would be its District Attorney, Thomas Sneddon, as well as a detective,
photographer and a doctor. From Los Angeles, were Michael’s attorneys,
Johnnie Cochran and Howard Weitzman, and Dr David Forecast, one of
Michael’s physicians from the United Kingdom, as well as another
detective and another photographer (employed by Michael), all of whom
had arrived by helicopter.
After everyone arrived at Neverland, it took Johnnie Cochran and
Howard Weitzman an hour to get Michael to leave his bedroom and go into
the parlour, where the photos were to be taken. Finally, Michael came into
the room, wearing a brown robe. It was agreed that his attorneys and
Sneddon would leave the room and not be present for the photos.
Bodyguard Bill Bray was allowed to remain, as would the two detectives
and two photographers and two doctors.
As everyone was getting settled, Michael took a look at one of the
detectives and, for no reason anyone could think of (except that he may
have mistaken him for someone he knew), began shouting at him. ‘You!
Get out! I don’t want you here for this. Get out!’ Michael then tried to storm
from the room. However, one of the doctors grabbed him. ‘Hold on,
Michael,’ he said, ‘hold on.’ Johnnie and Howard, upon hearing the ruckus,
came back into the room. ‘Get these sons of bitches out of here,’ Michael
screamed at them, now referring to everyone in the room. He was agitated
beyond all measure and actually seemed high, though everyone present
hoped that was not the case.
The District Attorney’s photographer, Gary Spiegel, began taking
photographs of Michael while he was still seated on the couch. Michael
blocked his face with his hands, as if thwarting a paparazzo.
Finally, an anguished Michael was told to stand on a platform in the
middle of the room as if about to have his pants hemmed by a tailor. He was
still wearing a bathrobe. ‘Please don’t make me do this,’ he said, his doe-
like eyes watery. ‘This is terrible. Don’t make me.’
‘Sir, we have no choice,’ said one of the detectives.
Then, while standing on that platform and staring at a picture of
Elizabeth Taylor on the wall, Michael took off the bathrobe. Under it, he
wore a bathing suit.
‘You’ll have to take it off, sir,’ said the detective.
Still staring at the photograph of Elizabeth, Michael slipped the bathing
suit off… under which he had on boxers.
‘Sir, please.’
Crying softly now, Michael slipped off the boxers and stood, naked,
stripped not only of his clothing but of the one illusion he’d always had:
that of his invincibility. All eyes went right to his penis, which did not
appear to be circumcised.
‘Is the subject uncircumcised?’ asked the doctor. Everyone stepped in for
a closer look.
‘Yes, he is…’
‘No, he’s not…’
‘Yes.’
‘No’
‘Oh my God,’ Michael whimpered. He looked dizzy, as if about to faint.
‘You don’t know?’ asked one of the detectives of Michael’s physician.
Michael’s medic became indignant. ‘Sir, I have never seen his penis
before now.’
‘Well, the subject is clearly not circumcised,’ decided the other doctor,
finally. He made a note of his finding.
As everyone circled him slowly, they began making other feverish
notations about Michael’s body.
Yes, he did have patchy-coloured skin on his buttocks, as Jordie
described.
Yes, he had short pubic hair.
Yes, his testicles were marked, pink and brown.
However, no matter how many different ways they looked at it, all
seemed to agree that his penis was uncircumcised. But, did that matter? In
fact, an uncircumcised penis can look circumcised when aroused. If
Michael had been sexually excited when seen by Jordie, would anyone, let
alone a thirteen-year-old know if he was circumcised or not? But there was
now doubt about the identity of the person in question.
‘I then took several photographs of Jackson’s penis,’ said Gary Spiegel.
‘First the right side, then the left. When I was photographing the left side,
the D.A.’s doctor told Michael Jackson to lift up his penis. He didn’t want
to, so there was a lot of discussion about that. Finally he did it. Then, he
angrily jumped off the platform. ‘That’s it,’ Jackson said. ‘That’s enough.’
He put on his robe and ran out of the room.’
The detectives looked at each other, one of them moved towards the
room in which Michael’s attorneys had been waiting. Then, as the detective
headed back into the living room, Michael’s lawyers stomped down the hall
to get their client back before the waiting cameras. The cops were
uncomfortable as they listened to what most would have guessed to be a
rebellious teenager arguing loudly with strict, disappointed parents. Then,
after fifteen minutes of cries, shrieks and pleas – silence. A moment later,
the sound of one loud plaintive wail resonated through the house. Michael
Jackson had been broken. He pounded his bare feet hard against the wood
floor, moving towards the room he had worked so hard to make perfect for
waiting guests.
‘When this whole thing is done, I want pictures of you,’ Michael said,
pointing angrily at one of the photographers, ‘and you, too,’ he said,
jabbing his finger at the other one.
Again, Michael stood naked. More pictures. Then, videotape.
‘Please,’ Michael said, his tone now pleading. ‘Can we stop now?’
One of the doctors pulled out a ruler.
‘That’s it,’ said Michael’s physician. ‘Mike, get dressed. This is a joke. I
can’t believe it myself.’
Michael quickly put on his robe. ‘Don’t you ever, ever, ever let that
happen again,’ he said, unleashing his anger on poor Bill Bray, who just sat
in the corner the whole time looking mortified.
‘But I didn’t do nothin’, Mike,’ Bill said. ‘Why you hollerin’ at me?’
Ignoring Bill’s question, Michael stepped off the platform and ran from
the living room. ‘How could this happen to me?’ he screamed on his way
out. He was shaking. Observers said it looked as if he was about to have a
melt-down. ‘How could this happen to me?‘ he kept repeating.
LaToya in Madrid
It was in the winter of 1993 that perhaps the most damaging blow of all to
Michael Jackson’s image was struck, and it came from a family member:
his own sister, LaToya. Though she had not seen or talked to him in a
number of years, LaToya claimed to have exclusive information about
Michael. As it happened, like many of Michael’s household employees who
had sold stories to the tabloid press, LaToya and her husband, Jack, had
their own sliding scale of scandal: for a fee of $50,000 she would come
forth with certain secrets about familial abuse that she had not yet revealed
in her many interviews about the subject. However, for twice that, she
would open up twice as much – and for a half-million she would throw
caution to the wind and just come out and admit that Michael was a
paedophile, and that she had proof to support her allegation.
The bidding war began with the British News of the World tabloid, who
ponied up a substantial amount of money, only to be topped by the
American National Enquirer and Star. However, during the course of the
week, as editors pushed for details of LaToya’s revelations, negotiations
collapsed. It became clear that she didn’t have much to offer, after all. Left
without his planned windfall, Jack then arranged for LaToya to hold a press
conference in Tel Aviv, Israel, where she was on tour.
‘Michael is my brother and I love him very much,’ she said, reading from
a prepared statement, ‘but I cannot and will not be a silent collaborator in
his crimes against young children. If I remain silent, then that means I feel
the guilt and humiliation that these children are feeling, and I think it is very
wrong. Forget about the superstar, forget about the icon. If he was any other
thirty-five-year-old man who was sleeping with little boys, you wouldn’t
like this guy.’
She also said that she had seen cancelled cheques made out to several
boys for large sums of money, shown to her she said by her mother,
Katherine, suggesting that Michael had bought their silence. She said that
she sympathized with the children, ‘because I am a victim myself. When
parents abuse their children, the children go on to be abusers themselves,’
she said. ‘Do you know how many children are going to psychiatrists
because of Michael? So many, many children.’
The Jackson family, understandably upset by LaToya’s position, then
hosted a press conference at their Encino estate. Distraught, Katherine said,
‘LaToya’s lying. I’ll tell her to her face she’s lying. I can’t believe I have a
daughter out there saying these things to sell her brother down the river.
She’s been brainwashed by her money-grabbing mongrel of a husband.’
For weeks to come, LaToya’s charges made big news, while she finally
started making big money. That she is Michael’s sister gave her point of
view special credibility; her stories did more damage to Michael than
anything that had ever been charged by any housekeeper in his employ.
From country to country, LaToya and Jack ventured forth, pitting television
producers and newspaper editors against one another in bidding wars for
her anecdotes about Michael. Meanwhile, family members continued to
vilify LaToya. ‘But Michael supports the entire Jackson family, financially,’
LaToya said. ‘They have to support him.’
In December 1993 I was asked by the producers of a Spanish television
show in Madrid called La Máquina De Mentira (The Lying Machine), to
appear with LaToya and discuss with her the allegations she had made
against Michael. As it was explained to me, LaToya would be hooked up to
a lie detector machine. Then, I was to ask her questions about why she
believed Michael was a paedophile. The television audience would be able
to judge, by virtue of how LaToya fared on the test, the veracity of her
observations.
Coincidentally, 22 December, the day we were in the studio and waiting
to go on the air, was the same day Michael gave a four-minute speech from
Neverland, first carried live by CNN and then rebroadcast all over the
world.
‘I ask all of you to wait and hear the truth before you condemn me,’ he
said, holding back tears. ‘Don’t treat me like a criminal, because I am
innocent.’
Dressed in a red shirt with red lipstick, false eyelashes and long strands
of hair framing his heavily made-up face, Michael had harsh words for the
media which, he charged, ‘has dissected and manipulated these allegations
to reach their own conclusions.’ He grew more emotional when describing
the examination and subsequent photo session of his body: ‘I have been
forced to submit to a dehumanizing and humiliating examination by the
Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Department and the Los Angeles Police
Department earlier this week. They served a search warrant on me which
allowed them to view and photograph my body, including my penis, my
buttocks, my lower torso, thighs and any other areas they wanted. They
were supposedly looking for any discoloration, spotting blotches or other
evidence of a skin colour disorder called Vitiligo, which I have previously
spoken about.
‘It was the most humiliating ordeal of my life, one that no person should
ever have to suffer. And even after experiencing the indignity of this search,
the parties involved were still not satisfied and wanted to take even more
pictures. It was a nightmare, a horrifying nightmare. But if this is what I
have to endure to prove my innocence, my complete innocence, so be it.’
‘Don’t treat me like a criminal,’ Michael insisted, ‘because I am
innocent.’
As LaToya stared at the TV screen, tears sprung from her large,
expressive eyes. She seemed lost in thought until Jack Gordon burst into the
room and laid waste to her reverie. ‘The show is off,’ he said. ‘I’m not
allowing LaToya to be hooked up to any damn lie detector.’
‘Why?’ LaToya wanted to know.
‘We agreed on fifty thousand dollars,’ Jack explained. ‘But with Michael
crying his eyes out on TV, I’m doubling her fee to a hundred thousand. I
just told the producers, and they said to go to hell. So, we’re out of here.
The hell with them.’
Jack grabbed LaToya by the arm.
‘I’m sorry you came all the way to Spain for nothing,’ she told me,
looking victimized. ‘What a waste of time for you. You must think I’m a
terrible person, now. But, really, I’m not.’ She was then hustled from the
room by her husband. ‘Tell Michael I’m sorry,’ she said, while being
whisked away.
Years later, LaToya would insist that the allegations she’d made against
Michael were all Jack’s fabrications, which she was made to repeat against
her will. Though it would take a few years, by 2003 she and Michael had
cleared the air between them and were, again, close. LaToya also
apologized to the rest of her family members; they then all accepted her
back into the fold.
Michael Pays Up
By 1 January 1994, nearly two million dollars had been spent by
prosecutors and police departments in California jurisdictions on the
investigation of Michael Jackson. Two Grand Juries had questioned more
than two hundred witnesses, including thirty children who had been friends
of Michael’s over the years. Not one witness could be found who could
corroborate Jordie Chandler’s story, and without other witnesses the
authorities’ case against Michael was weak. Perhaps Michael had the
undying loyalty of the youngsters with whom he’d had sex? Or, maybe all
of those who had investigated the singer were inept? Or was it possible that
he was innocent?
11 January marked Jordie’s fourteenth birthday, but he had no party. He
wasn’t in the mood to celebrate, he said. When he blew out the candles on
his cake, Evan asked him to make a wish. ‘I wish this nightmare would
end,’ he said. As a gift, Evan gave him a bottle of mace, for his protection.
On that same day, more damage was done to Michael’s image when
transcripts of depositions in the Jackson – Chandler civil suit were filed in
Los Angeles Superior Court as part of a motion brought by attorney Larry
Feldman. Arguing that he should be allowed access to Michael’s financial
records since, as he put it, ‘there is substantial probability’ that his client
would prevail in the suit, Feldman filed the transcripts as a demonstration of
the evidence against Jackson. Also included was a new declaration from
Jordie, who had repeated the original allegations he had made about
Michael to police and social workers.
Transcripts filed by Larry Feldman included sworn depositions from
Michael Jackson’s former chauffeur, former maids and secretaries. Truth or
fiction, it didn’t matter; all of it was now a part of the public record.
Composed mostly of hearsay, speculation and innuendo, and much of it
from people who’d already been paid handsomely by tabloid television
programmes and newspapers to ‘reveal all’ about their boss, it was difficult
to imagine that such statements would have been given much credence by a
jury.
No doubt, Jordie Chandler’s detailed testimony would have been the
most damaging to Michael. One wondered, though, how a jury would have
reacted to the fact that the original allegation, that Michael had touched his
penis, was given while under a mind-altering drug? And what of the
question of Michael’s being circumcised or not? In the end, it would be
Michael’s word against Jordie’s, because there were no witnesses to any
episodes of molestation (but, then again, there are rarely witnesses to such
events).
Due to his celebrity status, it was possible that Michael could prevail at
the civil trial. A mountain of circumstantial evidence (not to mention the
impact that might be made on a jury by his wrong-minded determination to
continually flaunt young boys in public) was probably not enough to secure
a verdict against him. However, the question then was: was it worth it for
him to find out? His attorneys didn’t think so, feeling that more harm than
good would occur by having so many disclosures made public. Plus, what if
he really was guilty? What would such a trial do to the already-victimized
Jordie Chandler? Though Jordie certainly wasn’t the primary concern of
Michael’s attorneys, they empathized with him and felt a sense of
responsibility to him simply because of his youth. They probably didn’t
care much about his father, though, not after all that had occurred.
When Larry Feldman began nosing into Michael’s finances, he had
crossed a line. ‘A lot of terrible business had gone down for Michael, but
once Feldman started demanding information about his bank accounts, we
knew the game was over,’ said one of Michael’s advisers. ‘You can take
pictures of Michael’s dick, and he’s not gonna like it. But once you start
trying to figure out how much money he has, that’s where he stops playing
around.’
Unbeknownst to even Michael’s attorneys, Lisa Marie Presley had also
tried to influence his decision to settle. A seasoned survivor of many
publicity wars, she had long thought that Michael should end the matter
with a cash pay-out. She was finally able to convince him that, as she later
put it, ‘some things, like a good night’s sleep, are more important than
public opinion.’
He wanted to get on with his life, Michael said, so that he could finally
marry Lisa. Not much movement had occurred in their relationship since
his odd proposal to her on the telephone, and he was afraid that she was
becoming impatient with him. ‘The only thing I got out of therapy is that
it’s my responsibility to have a good life,’ he said, ‘and maybe I can have
that with Lisa. I don’t want to lose her, now.’
Indeed, Michael Jackson was finally leaning toward paying Evan
Chandler the money Jordie’s father had originally sought. ‘They’ve worn
me down, I admit it,’ he told one of his attorneys. He wondered what more
‘they can do to humiliate me, to ruin me? I don’t know what else to do but
pay the guy.’
The attorney suggested that, perhaps, they should have done as much at
the beginning of the debacle.
‘It’s not like we didn’t try, now is it?’ Michael observed, wryly. ‘What a
nightmare this has been, to now only end up back at square one.’ He
concluded that he was so unhappy about all of it, he wished he could ‘just
crawl into a hole.’
Another thing had also changed for Michael: he no longer wanted to
think about Jordie Chandler. No one could mention the youngster’s name to
him. If, as they say, a thin line exists between love a hate, Michael seemed
to cross it after he was forced to pose naked for the police. The subject of
Jordie was off limits from that day onward.
On 16 January, Michael hosted a party for two hundred underprivileged
children at Neverland. There he was, on news broadcasts all over the world,
cavorting with children and gaily leading them in their fun day, like a Pied
Piper. Some observers wondered if he had any sense, at all. His advisers
were more frustrated than they were angry. (‘I give up,’ said one. ‘I fucking
give up.’)
Michael’s behaviour would never change, that much was clear. True to
form, he was going to continue doing what he wanted to do, and that would
have to be the end of it.
On 25 January 1994, Michael Jackson agreed to pay twenty-two million
dollars to Jordie Chandler, Evan Chandler, June Chandler-Schwartz and
attorney Larry Feldman. Twenty million of it was earmarked for Jordie.
One million each went to Evan and June. Larry Feldman then got about five
million from all three of them in contingency fees. Jordie’s money would be
held in a trust for him, to be paid out over the intervening years under the
supervision of a court-appointed trustee.
‘He had sex with Jordie, and he paid a price,’ said a member of Jordie’s
family of Michael. ‘He ruined the kid’s life. I hope he learned a lesson, the
pervert. But I doubt it. He should be in jail. But he’s not, so good for him.’
In the end, no criminal charges would be brought against Michael by the
police or the Grand Juries, citing a lack of evidence. They had many
witnesses, said the police, but no victims who actually wanted to testify
against Michael Jackson.
‘All’s well that ends well,’ said Anthony Pellicano, bitterly. ‘From the
beginning, this case was always about how much money the father could
get out of Michael Jackson. So he got what he wanted, I guess.’
Attorney Michael Freeman, who had represented June Chandler-
Schwartz, says that, in his opinion, Michael was innocent of any wrong-
doing. ‘I think he was wrongly accused,’ said the attorney. ‘I think that
Evan Chandler and Barry Rothman saw an opportunity and went for it.
That’s my personally held opinion. I believe it was all about money, and
their strategy, obviously, worked.’
Elizabeth Taylor’s comment about the end of the investigation and
litigation was classic spin-doctor Liz. ‘Thank God this case is being
dismissed,’ she said. ‘Michael’s love of children is one of the purest things I
have ever seen, it shines like an extra sun, despite the media’s distorted
lens. I always knew this would be thrown out of court, and I am so
grateful.’
The Last Word on the Matter
When I conducted a telephone interview with Michael in August 1994, after
the allegations were settled, he told me, ‘Too much damage had already
been done to everyone involved. I don’t care what people think. I know the
truth. If anyone has ever gone through something like this, they’d know
you’ll do anything to end it.’
Of the case, Michael suggested extortion, but without actually saying as
much since he was not supposed to speak about the case by legal agreement
(which didn’t stop him, though, in other instances). ‘Lots of people are
always trying stuff like this, trying to hurt me, embarrass me. I thought this
was just another one of those things. I never dreamed it would blow up to
be the mess it became. I’d never hurt a child, and any child who has ever
been my friend knows that. I’d never, ever, ever hurt any child on this
planet.
‘I want to go on with my life,’ he said, passionately. ‘I want to make
records. I want to sing. I want to perform again. Tell my fans I have
supreme confidence that they’ll judge me on stage and in the recording
studio, just as they always have. I don’t believe this nightmare will interfere
with my career,’ he added, ‘because I’ve spent too many years developing
my relationship with the fans. They should just know that, yes, I paid some
money. So what? But no, I’m not guilty. I did nothing wrong.’
I asked him if he was concerned that, his fans aside, he would be thought
of by much of the general public as having been guilty because of the way
he settled the case. His answer was direct: ‘It’s my talent. My hard work.
My life. My decision.’
Today, Jordie Chandler is twenty-three years old and living on eastern Long
Island near the beach in a $2.35 million home, under an assumed name. He
and his family also own a high-rise apartment in Manhattan and a
condominium in Santa Barbara.
Evan Chandler also lives in Long Island – under an assumed name.
June Chandler and David Schwartz are divorced.
Jordie hasn’t seen Michael Jackson since that day in Anthony Pellicano’s
office a decade ago when Evan and Michael had their final show-down. The
last instalment of Michael’s payments to Jordie was paid in June 1999.
Michael and Lisa Marie Become Lovers
On 1 February 1994, Michael telephoned Lisa Marie Presley at her estate in
Hidden Hills, California. He was at his hide-out in Westwood. ‘Hey, listen
up, girl,’ he said, according to her memory, ‘I’m heading up to Las Vegas to
see The Temptations and the Fifth Dimension. Come with me. I’ll get us a
suite at the Mirage and we can party like there’s no tomorrow.’
‘Am I staying in the suite with you?’ she asked
‘Hell, yeah,’ Michael said. ‘What do you think, girl?’
‘I think I’m still married,’ Lisa said.
‘Then separate rooms, if that’s what you want,’ Michael responded.
Lisa agreed to go; the next day, the two flew up to Vegas in Michael’s
private plane.
Otis Williams of The Temptations once told me, ‘Man, we were
backstage after the show, and here comes Mike with this chick, and he’s all
up in her face, kissing on her, and we were saying, “Who the heck is this
girl?” Finally, he introduced her: Lisa Marie Presley. You could have
knocked me over with a feather. I said to the guys, “Check this out. The
King of Pop and the King’s daughter, together. It had to happen. They
looked pretty cosy.”’
Two weeks later, Lisa accompanied Michael again to the MGM Grand in
Las Vegas for his appearance on The Jackson Family Honors Special (the
programme Jermaine had been working on for months). Designed to pay
homage to Elizabeth Taylor and Berry Gordy, the television special was
also an attempt by the Jacksons to project a wholesome image to a now-
suspicious public.
Janet made a quick appearance performing her hit ‘All Right’, before
vanishing from sight as if embarrassed for herself and everyone else on
stage. She had little to do with any of her family members, and steadfastly
refused to appear in the planned finale. She even checked into the Luxor
Hotel, rather than take a chance on running into anyone named Jackson at
the MGM Grand, where most of them were staying. Michael also wanted
little to do with his father or siblings, which was not a surprise. Though
Jermaine had generously offered him a suite at the MGM Grand, he chose
to stay at the Mirage.
‘When does the boy grow up and not have to go to the family reunions?’
Lisa has said he asked her. He said that it was taking ‘everything I have’ to
show his face in public again after all that had happened with the
Chandlers, ‘and to now have to do it at one of these things is really hard for
me.’ If it wasn’t for his mother, he said, he would never even attempt it.
‘But if you weren’t here, there wouldn’t even be a show,’ Lisa observed.
‘Exactly,’ Michael said, dryly. He adjusted the red arm band on his black
military jacket. ‘If I could, I think I would pay twenty million dollars for
them to be more famous than me.’ He seemed exhausted. ‘What a relief it
would be to accept their love and not have to wonder what they have
planned for me, next.’
It was then that Lisa had an uncomfortable encounter with Elizabeth
Taylor, who had tried to coax Michael into performing. He didn’t want to
sing. Rather, he just wanted to make an appearance, present an award, and
then sit in the audience. As Elizabeth tried to change his mind, an already-
protective Lisa intervened. ‘Look, he’s not going to perform,’ she told
Elizabeth, ‘so you might as well just leave it alone.’ Elizabeth, taken aback,
gave Lisa a once-over and remarked, ‘Well, you’re the boss, I guess,’ and
walked away.
(In the end, after the show was broadcast, Michael ended up getting
dragged into a messy lawsuit between the producers of the show against the
Jackson family.)
When they got back from Las Vegas, on 21 February, Michael invited
Lisa to Neverland. The two spent hours walking hand in hand on the well-
manicured property, as Lisa’s children, Danielle, five, and Benjamin Storm,
eighteen months, played with their nanny. Workers at the estate recall
seeing Michael and Lisa kissing while high atop the Ferris wheel, then
nodding graciously to the Neverland staff members as they sauntered from
one ride to the next.
There were times when Michael seemed unable to contain his laughter;
he seemed to appreciate Lisa’s sharp and clever mind as much as he
relished her new role as protector and sounding board. ‘I can run anything
by her,’ he said, ‘and she has a good point of view about it. She’s on top of
everything, she knows so much. I’ve never known a person like her.’
He made sure all of her needs were met in an instant. If she got thirsty, he
would clap his hands once and, as if by magic, a waiter would appear with
an aperitif. If she was too tired to walk, someone driving a golf cart would
appear to take her back to her room for a nap.
For the first two days, Lisa and her children stayed in one of the visitors’
units on the property. On the third night, Michael ordered a dinner of
poached salmon and cucumber salad to be served to him and Lisa on one of
the candle-lit terraces. Afterward, he presented Lisa with a gift: a three-
strand, pearl choker with a diamond clasp at the front, worth about $50,000.
That evening, while her children and their nanny slept in the guest quarters,
Lisa stayed with Michael in his bedroom.
Did they make love? Lisa, say her friends, is a woman who enjoys
physical intimacy and would not become involved in a relationship that was
not sexual. She was aware that her mother and father had stopped being
intimate shortly after she was conceived. Elvis met Priscilla when she was
just fourteen; he was twenty-four. The two lived together for six years
before marrying in Las Vegas, but were never intimate. Then, on their
honeymoon, Priscilla got pregnant. Eight months later, Lisa was born. After
that, Elvis would never touch Priscilla again saying he felt weird having sex
with his child’s mother. ‘I was young and accepted his way of life as
normal,’ Priscilla recalled. Though she was one of the most publicized
women in America, Priscilla then lived in a sexless marriage for a couple of
years before she got involved with her karate instructor – and that was
pretty much the end of her marriage to Elvis. Lisa was not about to find
herself in the same situation.
In truth, Lisa and Michael had an intense and active sex life, which came
as a surprise to many people. According to all available evidence, it was the
first time he had ever experienced such chemistry with a woman, or with
anyone, for that matter. His associates say the early stages of the romance
impacted his personality in positive ways, in terms of his self-confidence
and self-image. ‘Apparently, Michael Jackson is a freak in bed,’ said Lisa’s
friend Monica Pastelle. ‘Lisa said he was amazing, and she’s been around.
Everyone was saying, “No way, Lisa. It can’t be true. Michael Jackson? Are
we talking about the Michael Jackson, the one with the glove?” However,
she wasn’t joking, and it wasn’t long before she didn’t think it was funny,
either.’
Who knows why it became so intense for Michael with Lisa. However, it
was this surprising – some may think of it as astonishing – sexual
component that most cemented the relationship between Michael and Lisa.
The ‘first time’ for them was in Florida, during a weekend stay at Donald
Trump’s Mar-A-Lago estate in Palm Beach. Donald recalls seeing Michael
and Lisa walking hand in hand on his estate, seeming lost in a mutual
dream. In a photograph taken that day, Lisa was elegantly dressed in a
severely tailored, black silk dress that fell in fluid lines around her shapely
figure. Michael was wearing a sharp, black suit, scarlet-coloured shirt and
matching tie. At one point, he dropped to one knee and kissed her hand. She
urged him to his feet; the two embraced. Michael gazed at her intensely,
mesmerized by her face. They kissed. He pulled from his vest pocket a
small, wrapped box. When she opened it, Lisa’s face lit up. Pearls.
‘It was romantic,’ Donald Trump recalled. ‘Later, I asked Michael how
things were going and he said, “Great. I just got to kiss the most beautiful
girl in the world. I hope I’m worthy of her. I think I might marry her.”’
‘They made love at the Trump estate,’ said another one of Lisa’s
confidantes. ‘She said it was intense, it took her breath away. I have no idea
what they were doing, or what he was doing to her, but since she gravitates
toward the unconventional, she was out of her mind over this guy. Maybe
it’s hard for some to believe,’ she concluded, ‘but true, just the same.
‘After that first time, she went to turn on the lights, and he leapt out of
bed and ran into the bathroom so she wouldn’t see his body. He emerged
twenty minutes later, in full makeup and wearing a silk robe.
Then, they went at it, again. He liked her to wear jewellery in bed. They
were into role-playing games, though Lisa would never say who was
playing what kind of role.’
To say that Michael wanted children is to understate the way he felt about
procreation. He craved offspring. When Lisa didn’t become immediately
pregnant, even before they were married, he began to express his
disappointment. ‘I want children,’ he said, ‘and I thought we would be
expecting one within a couple of weeks of making love. But Lisa says it
takes time. I don’t have time,’ he said. ‘I want it to happen, now. I want
children so badly.’
Michael and Lisa Marie: Happily Ever After?
On 26 May 1994, Michael and Lisa were finally married in the Dominican
Republic after a brief and, according to her, ‘uneventful’, courtship. Lisa’s
divorce from Danny Keough had been finalized twenty days earlier.
Lisa’s mother Priscilla had married the most famous singer of her time
back in 1967, and now Lisa followed suit with a man who was, arguably,
pop music’s biggest star. Though Michael and Lisa claimed to be crazy
about one another, much of the public just thought they were crazy. ‘I
actually did fall in love with him,’ she told Newsweek in the spring of 2003,
‘but I don’t know what was on his menu.’
The close relationship they had forged during the time of the allegations
was known only to those in Michael’s and Lisa’s inner-circle. The two had
managed to keep the fact that they even knew each other out of the press.
Therefore, when they married, it was like a bolt from the blue.
Lisa was in love with Michael; did he feel the same about her? Always
painfully conscious of the emptiness of his life, he said that he’d been
missing out on ‘too much’ and wanted to now jump-start his life. After the
Jordie Chandler business, the gnawing, empty space in his heart somehow
seemed more terrifying than ever. He was determined to now ‘start living’,
he insisted and, at the time, that meant being in love with a woman,
marrying and having children with her. Lisa Marie Presley was that woman.
‘When he nearly lost everything because of the allegations and then the
drug abuse, he was determined to set things straight,’ recalled one of his
associates. ‘He may have been in love with her, I don’t know. I think he was
actually in love with what she represented: conformity and kids. Everyone
who knew him felt it was too soon after rehab for him to be jumping into a
marriage, especially since he’d never been married and had no idea what he
was doing. I knew he wasn’t emotionally equipped for it. I also think the
physical relationship was a powerful tool in convincing him that, yes, she
was the one. However, as far as I know, she had been the only one.’
Michael was deeply disappointed in the wedding ceremony, he later
admitted. He’s a romantic. He’d always hoped for a grand, opulent and
loving affair, like Jermaine’s wedding had been so many years earlier. It
was significant to him that he one day have a ceremony to join him with
someone he loved and to express his affection for that person before family
and friends. Sure, he had romanticized the notion over the years, but so
what? People have done so throughout the ages, and have seen those
dreams become reality in their lives. Michael never imagined that he would
run off and marry a person in secret, as if ashamed of his relationship.
What Michael and Lisa ended up with was a fifteen-minute ceremony in
front of a judge at his home in La Vega, eighty-five miles east of Casa de
Campo, a resort owned by fashion designer, Oscar de la Renta (where
Michael and Lisa had sequestered themselves in a four-thousand-dollar-a-
night oceanfront villa). The ceremony was conducted in Spanish, and
translated to Michael and Lisa by one of the attorneys present. Instead of
the tuxedo he had dreamed of wearing on his wedding day, Michael wore
black pants and matching shirt with a cowboy belt, bolero and black
flamenco hat. Lisa also wore black. They exchanged heavy gold wedding
bands. Michael later said he missed having Katherine present and to some
extent, even Joseph. ‘It just didn’t feel right,’ he said. ‘It felt empty, like
everything else in my world.’
Rather than blame his frustration on his and Lisa’s lack of preparation for
the event, Michael blamed it on the media saying that there was no way he
could have had the ritual of his dreams, ‘because the press would have
made it a fiasco.’ It was a shame, felt those who knew him and cared for
him, that he kept missing out on a good and fulfilling life because of his
celebrity, and that he continued to blame such intangibles as ‘the media’ for
his grief over it. After all, even his friend Elizabeth Taylor managed to have
big and wonderful wedding ceremonies along the way.
Perhaps it’s a clue to their insecurity about what they were doing that
Michael and Lisa didn’t warn their families and friends about the wedding,
lest someone try to induce them to reverse their decision. It wasn’t a
surprise, perhaps, that Michael didn’t confide in Katherine, Joseph or his
siblings, considering his complex relationship with them. However, that he
didn’t tell Elizabeth Taylor in advance was really startling – especially to
her. When Michael finally telephoned Elizabeth from the Dominican
Republic to give her the news, she was so distraught she spent the next day
on the telephone with friends saying that she was, as she put it, ‘so worried
about Michael, I don’t know what to do. I’m pulling my hair out over it!
What has he done? What has he done?‘
That night, Elizabeth was with friends at the Polo Lounge in the Beverly
Hills Hotel. When a reporter asked her if she would confirm rumours of
Michael’s marriage, she snapped at him, ‘I am not in the business of
clarifying rumours. Now, be gone!’
The fact that Lisa kept the news from her mother, Priscilla, to whom she
is close, also spoke volumes. It would be almost a week before Lisa
confirmed to her frantic mother that she had married Michael Jackson.
Feeling strongly that Michael was exploiting her daughter and using her
to rehabilitate his damaged image, Priscilla was not happy about the news.
‘Can’t you see what he’s up to?’ she asked her, according to what Lisa later
recalled. ‘It’s so obvious.’
Lisa disagreed. She felt that Michael truly loved her. He had said as much
and she had no choice, she felt, but to take him for his word. ‘I can’t say
what his intentions were with me, but I can say it was the most real thing I
think he’s had,’ Lisa noted in the spring of 2003. ‘My mother was like,
“Timing! Hello?” But I rebelled against my mom, of course, and tried really
hard not to think like that, not to believe that.’
‘My God! Use your instincts,’ Priscilla admonished her. She could not
believe her daughter would marry, of all people on the planet, Michael
Jackson. ‘What does your gut tell you?’
‘It tells me that you should mind your own goddamn business,’ Lisa shot
back. ‘It’s time for me to lead my own life and for you to stay out of it.’
Clearly she and Priscilla had issues that pre-dated her marriage to Michael.
Also, her sexual chemistry with Michael was so intense, Lisa wasn’t about
to give it up.
‘All I wanted at the time was to believe what he was telling me, and that
was it. It was this whole psychodrama that was going on, and I really put
my mother through it. She thought he was lying to me, using me.’
Lisa’s ex-husband, Danny – still a trusted friend – was also unhappy
about the union. He knew better than to drag her into a fight with her about
it, though. However, he told her that he was concerned, about her and about
their children. It seemed to him, as it did to everyone else in her life, that
she had made a big mistake.
Michael decided that he didn’t want to announce the marriage. He said he
wanted them to have their privacy. However, Lisa disagreed. ‘The more we
hide it, the more interest there will be in it,’ she argued. ‘Shouldn’t we just
announce it so that the interest will die down?’ She didn’t know Michael
very well, did she? Of course, what he really wanted to do was to create a
big, worldwide controversy about his relationship with her; he just couldn’t
help himself.
His strategy worked. For the next two months, the press ran with
headlines speculating as to whether or not Michael and Lisa had been
married. Meanwhile, the two took a duplex apartment suite in Trump Tower
in New York (directly below Donald Trump’s), while Michael began work
on a new album.
If Lisa thought she was famous before, she would discover an entirely
new – and unwelcome – sort of celebrity, as Michael’s wife. One of his
bodyguards remembered, ‘It was chaos with the media and fans suspecting
the newlyweds were in the suite, but not able to confirm it. One morning,
we were getting ready to leave, and Mike had to explain the strategy
involved in getting them out of there. He didn’t want them seen together.
For him, everything was a big drama. Nothing could just occur easily; it had
to unfold with loads of bedlam and confusion. That’s just what he’s used to,
and I think he thrives on it.’
As Michael was putting on his hat and his surgical mask and his
sunglasses and his makeup, he explained to Lisa, ‘See, first you leave, and
they’ll take you downstairs in the back, and then – whoosh! – off you’ll go
in the car with the smoky windows. Then, I will do the same. And we’ll
meet up later, and nobody will be the wiser.’ He seemed delighted by the
intrigue.
‘He was all ready to go, looking like Michael Jackson looks with the
mask on his face and hat on top of his head,’ said the bodyguard. ‘She sized
him up from head to toe and said, “Fuck, no. Screw this shit.” And she just
got into the front elevator and went down to the lobby, alone. He started
screaming, “Lisa! No! It’s dangerous out there! They’ll eat you alive!”
Then, he turned to me and said, “Don’t just stand there you big idiot, follow
her.” So, I raced down after her in another elevator. When I got there, she
was gone. When I went back up and told Michael, he freaked out. “My poor
wife! She’s been kidnapped,” he said, acting like the biggest drama queen,
ever. “How will I live with myself? Call the police,” he shrieked. “No, call
the FBI. No, call the CIA.” I said, “Look, man, she’s probably in a coffee
shop somewhere eating a doughnut. Let me find her.” I did find her, an hour
later, in a bar down the street, having a martini with some guy she’d just
met, and it was ten in the morning. I thought to myself, What a match-up
this is.’
Finally, in July, Michael and Lisa announced that they’d been married the
previous May.
When I appeared on the United States news programme, Good Morning
America to report on the news of Michael’s marriage, I joked that ‘the
newlyweds are registered at Toys ’R’ Us.’ There was, I felt at the time, little
choice but to remain light about the subject, the reaction to the news had
been so cynical in America. After the show was broadcast, I received a
telephone call from an irate Michael. ‘How could you say that?’ he
demanded. ‘How can you make light of my marriage? I love Lisa. Why
won’t people believe that? Why won’t people let me be happy?’
‘You have to understand that it does seem odd,’ I explained. ‘The
marriage came out of nowhere. There are people who don’t believe it’s
legitimate.’
‘You know what? I don’t care what people think,’ Michael said angrily.
‘She’s my wife, I love her.’
I took the opportunity to ask Michael a few questions about the
relationship. Did he and Lisa have a pre-nuptial agreement? ‘No way,’ he
said. ‘What kind of marriage would that be?’
Was Lisa pregnant, as had been reported? ‘No,’ he said, ‘but we want
children and we will have children. But don’t rush me,’ he said, now
giggling.
There had been recent reports that Lisa had plastic surgery in a Los
Angeles hospital, her breasts enlarged and liposuction on her hips, at
Michael’s behest. It was preposterous, but I decided to ask him about it,
anyway. ‘Ridiculous,’ he told me. ‘Just try telling Lisa Marie what to do. It
would never happen. I would not be able to convince her to do anything.
The truth,’ he said, ‘is that she had scar tissue removed from an
appendectomy, and dermabrasion on her face to get rid of old acne scars.’
He also volunteered an anecdote about giving her an engagement ring
(after his telephone proposal, once they were in Los Angeles, together).
‘Lisa and I were in the living room [at Neverland] having a glass of wine,’
he said. ‘We had just finished watching All About Eve, starring the great
Bette Davis. We both love that movie. I walked over to her, reached into my
pocket and pulled out this huge, diamond ring. “So what do you think?” I
asked her. “You wanna?” She screamed out, “Yes, yes, yes.” So, anyway, I
gotta go,’ he concluded. ‘Just tell people to leave us alone, will you? We’re
happy. That should be the end of it.’
As it turned out, even though Lisa was in love with Michael, she – not he
– was the one with certain goals she hoped to achieve as a result of the
marriage; chief among them was the realization of her musical career.
‘Michael told Lisa that he would attempt to get her a record deal at Sony,’
says her friend, Monica Pastelle. ‘Yes, she loved him. She didn’t marry him
because of the offer to help her career, but it was on the table as something
he was going to work on for her.’
For the next year, the newlyweds divided their time between Michael’s
27,000-acre ranch in Santa Ynez, California, and Lisa’s one-acre estate in
Hidden Hills, a hundred miles away. Some thought Lisa and her two
children would move into Neverland. No chance. She wanted to maintain
her independence. Plus, her kids thought Michael was a little strange,
especially five-year-old Danielle. No matter how hard he tried with her,
Michael could never win over the girl. He was usually so good with
children, but not with Danielle. She would take one look at him, squeal and
run in the other direction. ‘What’d I do? What’d I do?’ Michael would ask.
Therefore, whenever Lisa and her offspring went to stay at Neverland, she
would tell her housekeeper, ‘Just pack our toothbrushes and a few
comfortable pairs of walking shoes, ’cause I don’t think we’ll be staying
very long.’
Once she started living with him in their residences, Lisa was even more
amazed at the degree to which Michael was emotionally repressed.
Determined to ‘fix him’, she busily went about the work of peeling away
layer after layer, as if he were an onion. However, it was difficult; the
protective layers around him were thick and impenetrable. It had taken
years for him to become who he was, and he wasn’t going to easily change.
He didn’t want to become more communicative, as Lisa had insisted. He
didn’t want to become more extroverted, either, as she had suggested.
Most maddening to Lisa, her new husband continually blamed other
people for problems that were clearly of his own making. Lisa, a
Scientologist, maintained that she was the architect of her own life and had
no one to blame but herself for the aspects of it that had not worked out for
her. When her first marriage to Danny Keough ended, she didn’t blame the
press or her fame, she blamed herself and later felt that she had made a
critical mistake in ending it. She wished she could go back, but she couldn’t
– so she moved forward and found a way to incorporate Danny into her life,
as a best friend.
‘Lisa felt Michael was too much into playing the victim,’ said Monica
Pastelle. ‘Maybe it was understandable, given all he’d been through in the
last year. Their relationship became strained as she tried to prod him along,
make him feel less sorry for himself, lift his spirits. She said he was like a
young boy, angry at the world. She had no patience at all with the lost
childhood routine. “Who hasn’t had a miserable childhood?” she would say.
“Show me someone who loved every single second of their childhood, and
I’ll show you a person who has deluded himself into believing such a
thing.”’
Going Public
Michael and Lisa certainly didn’t make many television appearances, but
the two that they did agree to do together are memorable. In September
1994, they made their first television appearance as husband and wife on
the MTV Awards in New York, in front of two hundred and fifty million
television viewers.
Backstage, according to Lisa, Michael announced to her, ‘Now, check it
out, girl. I’m going to kiss you when we get out there.’
‘Oh no, you’re not,’ she said.
‘Oh, yes I am,’ he said, smiling. He thought they were bantering, but Lisa
wasn’t kidding.
‘No, Michael,’ she said. ‘That’s bullshit. Absolutely not. I don’t want to
do it.’
‘Oh, sure you do,’ he remarked. ‘It’ll be great.’
‘I’m telling you, don’t you fucking do that, Michael,’ she warned him.
‘I’m serious.’
About an hour later, they walked on to the stage to thunderous applause,
holding hands. Lisa didn’t know when the kiss was going to happen, she
would recall, but she knew he was going to do it because ‘by this time I
realized that he does whatever he wants to do.’ She said that, as they
walked out from the wings, she was squeezing his hand so hard, ‘I think I
cut off the circulation.’
‘Just think, nobody thought this would last,’ Michael told the audience
with a grin. He motioned to Lisa. Then, he embraced her and kissed her
fully on the lips.
‘It looked awkward because I wanted out of my skin,’ Lisa said, years
later. ‘I hated it. I felt used, like a prop,’ she said. ‘It was awful.’
‘Afterward, they had a huge fight about it,’ said Monica Pastelle. ‘Her
whole thing was, “I told you no, and you just disregarded it.” But Michael
thought it was great, a showstopper. He was all about the show, you know?
What could they do that would cause headlines? That’s where his head was
at. “But people will be talking about that kiss for decades,” he said. “Don’t
you see? They’re gonna run that clip over and over.” Lisa was pissed off for
days. “Don’t you fucking even come near me,” she told him.’
That same week, Michael became annoyed by newspaper reports that
suggested that if Elvis Presley were alive, he would not approve of the
marriage. ‘I think we need to find out,’ he said. He suggested that he and
Lisa have a seance to contact the King. He was serious. He told Lisa he had
friends who could communicate with the deceased, and that they could
make it possible for him and Lisa to talk to Elvis and ask his opinion of the
union. Lisa thought the idea was tasteless. When Michael continued to push
it, she lashed out at him. ‘I said no,’ she told him, angrily, ‘and if you stay
on this particular road, they’re gonna need a medium to contact you in the
great beyond, because I’m about to put you there, right now,’ Michael never
mentioned the idea, again. ‘Jeez, it was just a suggestion,’ he said, later.
‘Can’t a guy even have a suggestion?’
Nine months later, in June 1995, Michael and Lisa were interviewed on the
American television programme Dateline by reporter Diane Sawyer.
While it is true that Michael rarely grants television interviews (the last
one had been in 1993 with Oprah Winfrey), one would have been hard-
pressed to remember any time Lisa had ever been seen answering questions
on television. Prior to this highly anticipated broadcast, only frozen images
of her came to mind – photographs of a fragile blonde child with a droopy
glare and sad, pouting expression reminiscent of her father’s. It was easy to
imagine her as a poor little rich girl, victimized by her privileged, heavily
scrutinized circumstances. That wasn’t really true of her as an adult, though.
After years of therapy through Scientology, she had long ago come to terms
with her celebrity. ‘My best trait is that I don’t put on a front for anybody,’
she observed. ‘I’m honest. Scientology has helped me a lot. It teaches you
to stay what we call “clean”, to understand your feelings and not hold
things in. Yeah, I’ve had a difficult life, in some ways,’ she allowed. ‘But
I’ve gotten through it, and have done all right for myself.’
On the night of the television interview, Lisa appeared to the world as a
sophisticated, twenty-seven-year-old brunette, gorgeous and, it would seem,
anyway, nobody’s victim.
As the Jackson couple sat side by side, they fielded questions from Diane
Sawyer about their private life. In talking about the allegations, Michael
said, ‘I could never harm a child or anyone. It’s not in my heart. It’s not
who I am and it’s not what I’m even interested in.’ Diane then asked, ‘What
do you think should be done to someone who does that?’ Michael
responded, ‘To someone who does that? What do I think should be done?
Gee, I think they need help in some kind of way, you know?’
He then explained why he decided to settle the Jordie Chandler case. ‘I
talked to my lawyers and I said, “Can you guarantee me that justice will
prevail?”’ Michael recalled, ‘And they said, “Michael, we cannot guarantee
you what a judge or a jury will do.” With that, I was like catatonic. I was
outraged, totally outraged. So I said, “I have got to do something to get out
from under this nightmare, all these lies and all these people coming
forward to get paid and these tabloid shows, just lies, lies, lies, lies.” So we
got together and my advisers advised me. It was hands down, a unanimous
decision to resolve the case.’
Throughout his explanation, Diane had continually attempted to interrupt
him to ask how much money he had spent on the settlement. Finally, a
protective Lisa abruptly cut her off and said, ‘He’s been barred to discuss
it.’
Diane asked, ‘The specific terms of the agreement?’
Lisa confirmed, ‘The specific terms, and the specific amounts.’
It was going fairly well, until Diane Sawyer asked the loaded question to
which no one ever has a good answer: ‘What is a thirty-six-year-old man
doing sleeping with a twelve-year-old boy, or a series of them?’ Michael
fumbled for a bit, giving his usual monologue about the innocence and
purity of such behaviour, until Lisa, looking frustrated, decided to put the
matter into perspective.
‘Let me just say,’ she began, ‘that I’ve seen these children. They don’t let
him go to the bathroom without running in there with him. They won’t let
him out of their sight. So when he jumps in the bed, I’m even out [of the
bed], you know? They jump in the bed with him.’ Lisa – mother of two –
was on the spot; her credibility was in question just by virtue of the fact that
she was sitting there with her husband, on TV, trying to explain why it was
okay for him to sleep with children who were not his own. She had to at
least give it her best shot.
Unrelenting, Diane followed up, ‘But isn’t part of being an adult and
loving children keeping them from ambiguous situations? And again, we’re
talking about over an intense period of time here. Would you let your son,
when he grows up and is twelve years old, do that?’
Lisa gamely jumped in for more of the impossible. ‘You know what? If I
didn’t know Michael, no way,’ she said. ‘But I happen to know who he is
and what he is and that makes it, you know…’ Her voice trailed off. ‘I
know that he’s not… you know? I know that he’s not like that and I know
he has a thing for children…’ Her voice trailed off, again. ‘Sorry…’ she
finally said, at a loss.
‘I just wonder, is it over?’ Diane asked, turning to Michael. ‘Are you
going to make sure it doesn’t happen again? I think this is really the key
thing people want to know.’
‘Is what over?’ Michael asked.
‘Are there not going to be more of these sleepovers in which people have
to wonder?’
‘Nobody wonders when kids sleep over at my house,’ he said. ‘Nobody
wonders.’
‘But are they over?’ Diane pushed. ‘Are you going to watch out for it?’
‘No,’ he answered. Then, acting as if he didn’t know what she was
talking about – or, maybe he really didn’t – he did a double-take and asked,
‘Watch out for what?’
‘Just for the sake of the children and because of everything you’ve been
through?’
‘No, because it’s all moral and it’s all pure,’ Michael said, stubbornly. ‘I
don’t even think that way. It’s not what’s in my heart.’
‘So you’ll do it again?’ she asked.
‘Do what again?’
‘Have a child sleeping over?’ Diane clarified, now looking annoyed.
‘Of course,’ he answered. ‘If they want. It’s on the level of purity and
love and just innocence, complete innocence,’ he concluded. ‘If you’re
talking about sex, then that’s a nut. It’s not me. Go to the guy down the
street, ’cause it’s not Michael Jackson. It’s not what I’m interested in.’ (A
consequence of this interview was that Evan Chandler sued him – again! –
claiming that he had breached the terms of the settlement with Jordie.
Michael’s lawyers eventually got the suit dismissed.)
It was a shame that Michael couldn’t have conceded to Diane Sawyer
that he may have used poor judgement in the past. She was on his side,
trying to work with him, and pushing for him to do the mature thing – or at
least the responsible thing – and say that he would exercise more caution in
the future where youngsters were concerned. There were many ways he
could have approached the matter, but being obstinate and haughty was not
the best way. ‘I had off-the-record information that there were some
ambiguities about the case in Jackson’s favour,’ Diane Sawyer later
explained. ‘Still, I have heard people say, after seeing him during that
interview, that a parent would be crazy to let their child be alone with him,’
Later, in the interview, when asked whether her marriage to Michael was
a sham, Lisa said of such rumours, ‘You know it’s crap. I’m sorry. It’s the
most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. I’m not going to marry somebody for
any reason other than the fact that I fall in love with them, period. And they
[the public] can eat it if they want to think anything different.’
Lisa hoped the couple would be perceived as serious, not silly, during the
televised interview. However, Michael’s mugging and clowning – as if he
was testing to see how many faces he could get away with before his strict
mother would send him to his room – undermined her efforts. She was
exasperated, especially when he put his two fingers behind her head as if
making devil-horns. However, the interview was emblematic of their
relationship: she was the adult, he was the child.
‘What a fucking disaster,’ Lisa said the day after the interview. She was
mortified, and angry. ‘I am so pissed off at that Diane Sawyer, the way she
pushed and pushed and pushed about our sex life. Jesus, that was terrible.
Oh my God. I can’t believe it,’ she said, shaking her head miserably. ‘I
can’t even fucking believe that was on TV.’
‘I don’t know, I thought it was pretty cool,’ Michael said, thoughtfully. ‘I
mean, we made some good points about the allegations. We made a good-
looking couple, too. People loved it, Lisa.’ He reached over and put his arm
around her, lovingly. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said, ‘it was all right.’ Lisa rolled
her eyes.
What originally brought Lisa and Michael together was the drama of
molestation allegations and subsequent drug abuse. Her desire to work out a
crisis for him was a powerful, motivating force in their relationship.
However, once the drama was over, they had little more to fall back on but
their surprising physical relationship. ‘It was right after the Diane Sawyer
show that things started going bad,’ says Monica Pastelle. ‘Lisa started to
wonder if she’d made a mistake in choosing him as a life partner. The great
sex continued, though. It was the thing that made it difficult for her to see
straight where he was concerned. Whatever was going on in the privacy of
their bedroom was enough to keep her hooked into the relationship.
However, things were getting strained. When they weren’t in bed making
love, they were fighting.’
One adviser recalled, ‘I was in the studio with him as he cut some new
music when Lisa walked in. She slumped down next to Michael, looking
miserable. They didn’t say one word to each other. He just played with his
knobs and dials, ignoring her. Then, after about five minutes of silence, Lisa
gave him a long look. She got up. On her way out the door she said, “Nice
talkin’ to you, as always.” He ignored her. I said, “Yo! Mike! What’s up? Is
everything okay with you two?” He said, “Sure. We’re doing just great. I
don’t know why she’s so pissed off at me.” Then, as if hit by a sudden
thought, he said, “Wait! Do you think she’s on her… you know… her…
you know… her,” and he lowered his voice dramatically, “herperiod?”’
Lisa Marie Wants to Know Why Michael
is ‘So Selfish’
In October 1994, about six months after Michael and Lisa were married, the
two of them and some friends were invited to dine with Elizabeth Taylor at
her Bel Air home. Sixty-two-year-old Elizabeth took twenty-six-year-old
Lisa aside to offer some hints as to how she might keep her husband happy.
‘Always look your best,’ she told Lisa. ‘He’s into glamour, and you must be
into it, too. And if you don’t like the jewellery he gives you, fake it; act like
you do. And keep separate bedrooms to keep him guessing. Also,’ she said,
‘find the right colours and wear the hell out of them.’
Later, when Elizabeth was out of ear shot, Lisa asked Michael, ‘What era
is she living in? No wonder she’s been divorced seven times!’
‘Now, Lisa,’ Michael said, with a wag of his finger. ‘Be nice.’
Lisa also found it amusing that Michael was, as she put it to one intimate,
‘an absolute cosmetics freak’. He would spend hours in the bathroom, she
said, putting on and taking off different kinds of makeups. In fact, she never
saw him without his makeup. If they slept together, in the morning Michael
would be gone before she awakened – in the bathroom, applying his
morning makeup. She’d look at his pillow and find it smeared with makeup.
‘It didn’t bother her,’ said one friend. ‘She thought of it as being sort of
rock and roll, freaky, you know? “Lots of rock stars wear makeup,” she
said. “Whatever. I don’t care, as long as he’s happy. What do I care?” Lisa
would try to surprise him, though, by waking up before him and then
tapping him on the shoulder. The sun would be up, and there he would be,
with smudged makeup in the light of day. “No, Lisa,” he would shriek,
“don’t look. Please, don’t look!” Then, he would jump out of bed and
scamper into the bathroom. Lisa would crack up.’
However, light moments like that one between Michael and Lisa had
become rare. A major problem for them in their marriage was that Michael
insisted that he still be free to go on vacations with young male friends,
even though he was now a married man. Lisa did not believe her husband
was a paedophile; she made that much clear. ‘I wouldn’t have let him near
my kids if I ever thought that,’ she later said. ‘Never once did I see him do
anything inappropriate, ever.’ However, she was dismayed that he would
still want to be seen in the company of youngsters, considering all that they
had been through with the Jordie Chandler matter. She felt that any public
display with youngsters, and especially with boys, would only serve to
spark more rumour and innuendo about him and, by extension, her. While
many in her husband’s ‘world of wonder’, as she called his insulated
environment, put up with Michael’s poor judgement, she wasn’t going to be
one of them. However, Michael was not going to compromise; he had no
experience with the notion. When the two fought about the ongoing
presence of youngsters in his life, he laid down the law: he was going to do
what he wanted to do and, if Lisa loved him, she would have to accept his
choices.
‘Lisa didn’t understand how Michael could disregard her feelings,’ said
James Cruse, who knew her well at the time. ‘It was embarrassing for her to
constantly defend his actions, always explaining that he was not a
paedophile, he was misunderstood, he was a child at heart and, blah, blah,
blah… the same stuff you always hear about the guy. He didn’t seem to care
that it was hard on her. He just wanted to live his life the way he had always
lived it. ‘What I do is none of your business,’ he told her. That really set her
off. ‘How can you say that? Of course it’s my business,’ she told him.
‘You’re my husband. You ‘re my business.”
‘Why are you so selfish?’ Lisa hollered at Michael one evening in front
of staff members at Neverland. They had just finished dinner and settled
themselves in front of the fireplace, the blazing logs casting a warm glow
over them. As they all talked, Michael slipped into the conversation that he
was considering a vacation to France with the Cascio brothers from New
Jersey, Eddie II and Frank. Lisa was stunned.
‘How did you get to be this way?’ she demanded, her eyes hard and
condemning. ‘Do you care how that makes me look, you going on vacation
with two kids? Don’t you care about me, at all?’
‘Me? Selfish?’ Michael asked, seeming dismayed. ‘But look at the
money I give to charities. Why, Lisa! I love all the little children of the
world.’
According to witnesses, Lisa stared at him, her mouth agape. ‘What does
that have to do with anything?’ she countered. She was furious and getting
more so by the second. ‘I’m talking about you and me, Michael. Not, all the
little children of the world. In fact,’ she concluded, ‘you are the most selfish
person I have ever known.’
Michael grimaced, as if struck in the stomach. Quick tears sprung to his
eyes. No one had ever talked to him like that before, not since Joseph,
anyway.
‘Oh, what’s the use?’ Lisa asked, ignoring his hurt. ‘You don’t get it, do
you? The little children of the world,’ she repeated, angrily. ‘I can’t even
believe you would say that to me.’
‘I got into this whole “I’m going to save you” thing,’ Lisa admitted in
2003. ‘I got some romantic idea in my head I could save him and we could
save the world. I thought all that stuff he was doing, philanthropy and the
children thing and all of that, was awesome. OK. Hello. I was delusionary.’
Later, when Michael recounted the incident to another associate, he said
of his wife, ‘Man, she’s so mean to me. I’m like, why are you being such a
bitch to me? What’d I ever do to you?’
‘It’s too soon after your rehab, Mike,’ said the adviser. ‘This kind of
conflict isn’t good for you. You should be working on staying drug-free.’
‘Eddie and Frank and I have been friends for years,’ Michael said, not
seeming to hear his friend’s remarks. He shook his head in disbelief. ‘We’ve
been all over the world together. It’s all innocent. Now, Lisa hates me
because of it.’ He stopped, as if hit by a bolt of lightning. ‘Oh my God, she
hates me. It’s Katherine and Joseph all over again, isn’t it?’
‘Look, forget about those Cascio kids,’ offered the adviser. ‘Come on,
Mike. You can see them, any time. Why mess things up any more with your
wife?’
‘Because I’m a grown man,’ Michael said as he rose to leave the room.
‘And I don’t need anyone’s permission to go on a vacation with my good
friends. That’s why.’
Michael did have his vacation in Paris with Eddie and Frank Cascio, in
July 1995… and without Lisa.
Michael Goes on the Record
In September 1995 rumours surfaced that Michael and Lisa Marie were
ending their marriage, causing an international firestorm of headlines. I
managed to get Michael on the telephone for an interview for the Australian
magazine, Woman’s Day, to check it out. ‘Let me just say this,’ he told me,
impatiently: ‘No. No. No. No. These stories are damn lies made up by
people who hope they’ll get lucky with one of them and hit it big.’
I asked if he wanted to further respond to reports that Lisa did not know
about his vacation to Paris with the Cascio brothers. ‘Like I wouldn’t have
told her?’ Michael asked. He sounded tense, stressed out. ‘Like she
wouldn’t read about it anyway, or see us photographed by every newspaper
photographer in the world? Neither one of us could have a secret from the
other, even if we wanted to,’ he said. ‘We’re so happy,’ he added of his
marriage. ‘We do it our way. I don’t know if it’s conventional. My parents
have been married for forty years. Is their marriage conventional? Were
Lisa’s parents in a conventional marriage? I don’t think so. I love being
married, knowing that Lisa is there,’ he continued.’ She’s strong. She’s
smart. She’s on my side, listens to me, understands me, understands my
world.’
The child molestation allegations came up, once again. There had been a
report that the twenty-five-million-dollar settlement would be paid to Jordie
Chandler in instalments of $466,000 a year over forty years. It wasn’t
accurate. However, the report further indicated that Michael spends more
than that amount on toys. ‘That’s not true, either,’ he confirmed. ‘I probably
don’t spend more than,’ he paused, as if calculating the figure in his head,
‘about a hundred and fifty thousand a year on toys.’
Also at this time, Santa Barbara District Attorney, Tom Sneddon, was
quoted in a Vanity Fair article as saying that the criminal investigation
against Michael was not over. ‘It is in suspension,’ he said, ‘even if the civil
case has been settled with cash.’
‘What the heck does that mean?’ Michael asked, heatedly. ‘Either there is
an investigation, or there isn’t one. It’s over. Let it rest.’
During the course of our conversation, the subject of the photo session with
the police came up. ‘Those photos did not match [Jordie’s description],’ he
told me. ‘How many times do I have to say this to you? They did not match.
Now, I’m hanging up,’ he told me, ‘because you crossed the line with that
question.’
‘Wait,’ I said. ‘One more thing: do you know that a writer says he found
a videotape of you with some kid. Do you want to respond to that,
Michael?’
‘It’s not true,’ he said, sounding dismayed. ‘Even if I were the most
deviant person in the world, why would I keep a tape like that?’
In fact, Michael Jackson sued Victor Guitterez (author of a book about
Jordie and Michael for private publication, called Michael Jackson Was My
Lover) for claiming that such a videotape existed, and challenged him to
produce it. Apparently, no such tape existed. Victor lost the suit and ended
up owing Michael almost three million dollars. He declared bankruptcy,
moved to Chile, and hasn’t been heard from since.
‘People will believe anything about me. I don’t care any more. Is that
what you want to hear? Then, fine,’ he concluded, lashing out at me. ‘In
fact, why not just tell people I’m an alien from Mars. Tell them I eat live
chickens and that I do a voodoo dance at midnight. They’ll believe anything
you say, because you’re a reporter,’ he concluded, spitting our the word
reporter. ‘But if I, Michael Jackson, were to say, “I’m an alien from Mars
and eat live chickens and do a voodoo dance every night at midnight,”
people would say, “Oh, man, that Michael Jackson is nuts. He’s cracked up.
You can’t believe a damn word that comes out of his mouth.”’
Finally Michael said in a weary voice, ‘People don’t know what it’s like
for me. No one knows, really. No one should judge what I’ve done with my
life,’ he concluded, ‘not unless they’ve been in my shoes every horrible day
and every sleepless night.’
Enter: Debbie Rowe
Michael first met Debbie Rowe in the early 1980s when he went to his
dermatologist to complain of a skin condition. Panicked because of the
emergence of mysterious blotches, he was certain he had a deadly skin
cancer. Ace Johnson, who worked as an assistant for Joseph Jackson at the
time, recalls, ‘That was when Mike was told he had Vitiligo. “Oh no,” he
said, “I am a freak.” I distinctly remember him telling me that there was a
white girl named Debbie in the doctor’s office, a nurse and receptionist,
who was helping him through the ordeal, always there for him.’
Dr Arnold Klein suggested to Michael that if he needed someone to talk
to about his medical condition, he should call Debbie any time, day or
night. For a short while, Michael did telephone her daily to ask her medical
questions, and cry on her shoulder. They were soon good friends. ‘At the
time, his brothers thought maybe this would be the beginning of a romance
for Michael, since all he talked about was Debbie,’ recalled Ace. ‘Jermaine
said, “I want to meet this Debbie chick. Mike’s got it bad for her.” Michael
giggled and laughed, like a kid with a crush.’
Whenever Michael came to the office for treatment, Debbie would fuss
over him. In reciprocation, whenever Michael released a new CD he would
send her an autographed copy. Debbie would hang his CD picture jackets
on the walls of her office until, one day, Arnold Klein asked her to remove
them, saying that such a display of affection for a patient could be
misconstrued.
Tanya Boyd, who was a good friend of Debbie’s, remembered, ‘She
would obsess about Michael saying, “I’m going to talk to him about
opening up more, he’s too inhibited.” She cared about him, would be up all
night long on the phone with him. She said he was best on the telephone.
“All of his defences break down when he doesn’t have to look at you, face
to face,” she said. She felt that he was sweet and misunderstood and also a
rebel.’ Echoing Lisa Marie’s sentiment about him, Debbie told Tanya. ‘If
people knew him like I know him, they would not think he was so strange.
He’s unique, kinky, actually. I like that in a guy.’
‘Some thought they’d end up together. When I asked Debbie if she was
romantically interested in Michael, she became evasive. She ended up
marrying someone else for a few years – divorced him [in 1990] because
she said she felt trapped – but I believed she was interested in Michael.’
Over the years, Debbie and Michael continued their friendship, often
confiding in one another about their unhappy marriages.
By 1995, Deborah Jean Rowe was thirty-six, about ten years older that
Lisa Marie Presley. Born in 1958 in Spokane, Washington, to Gordon Rowe
and Barbara Chilcutt, she had been relocated to Los Angeles by the time
she was fifteen. At that time, her parents divorced, and her father left the
United States for the Middle East. She graduated from Hollywood High
School in 1977, and began working as an assistant to Arnold Klein. In
1982, she married Richard Edelman, then a thirty-year-old teacher at
Hollywood High. They moved to a small apartment Van Nuys, California,
where Edelman started a computer consulting business. Their marriage
began to crumble in 1988; a year later they filed for bankruptcy with assets
of forty thousand dollars and debt worth twice that much.
Debbie was truly an unusual character. When she was just a bit younger,
she was a biker chick who enjoyed dressing up in black leather and roaring
around Los Angeles at breakneck speeds. Mario Pikus, a friend of hers at
the time and a fellow biker, recalled, ‘She had so many crashes that her
powerful 2000cc machine was covered in dents. And she swore like a
sailor. Everything she said was peppered with four-letter words. She was
like one of the guys. She used to drink beer and tequila, and she had this
habit of punching you in what was supposed to be a friendly gesture. After
she had a few drinks, her friendly jabs could knock the wind out of you.
‘She never had any money, she was always broke. But one day, after a
road trip, she said she had to stop by her parents’ place. I was stunned. It’s
near Bruce Willis’s home in Malibu, and it makes his house look like a
shack. It’s got to be worth four million dollars.’ Inside the home, Pikus
(who is a professional artist) estimated that there might have been ten
million dollars in paintings and sculptures. Debbie explained that her step-
father was a real estate magnate. ‘They seemed to have a warm relationship,
but it was clear that Debbie didn’t take any money from him. Her
apartment, which cost her about seven hundred dollars a month, was a dark
little place, kind of cheap and depressing. But it was a shrine to Michael
Jackson. Every inch of wall space was taken up by posters and photographs
of him. Lots of them were signed, ‘To Debbie – Love, Michael.’
It’s fascinating that Michael was able to have someone in his life like
Debbie, a person about whom the public was completely unaware. It had
been presumed by his fans – mosdy because of the way Michael
complained about his lack of privacy – that if ever a woman became a part
of his life in any meaningful way, the world would know about it, instantly.
It would make headlines. However, somehow, Debbie was kept a secret
from Michael’s fans and the press for more than a decade.
‘When he went into the rehab for the drug problem, Debbie was
relieved,’ says Tanya Boyd. ‘She’d been so worried about him, never out of
touch with him during any of the Jordie Chandler business. He may have
been talking to Lisa on the telephone a lot, but he was also speaking to
Debbie – though I suspect Lisa did not know about that. When he got out of
the hospital [Charter], he started dating Lisa, but he never stopped seeing
Debbie, either, even after he married Lisa.’
Lisa’s friend, Monica Pastelle, recalled, ‘Lisa once told me that she heard
Michael was interested in a white nurse who worked for his dermatologist.
She laughed it off. She thought he was probably trying to make her jealous,
playing games. Still, she was interested enough to go to the doctor’s office
and sneak a look at this generously proportioned blonde, blue-eyed nurse
named Debbie. After she saw her, she said, “I’m not sure Michael would
ever be interested in her. She’s not his type. He likes glamour. However, I
think she’s into him. I think they’re, I don’t know, dating, or something. It’s
crazy.”’
It turned out to be true. While he was with Lisa, Michael was seeing
Debbie secretly, if only as a friend. When Lisa found out about it, she
thought it odd that he would keep it from her. However, she suspected that
he had many secrets and this one was probably the least noteworthy of
them. She did some research and realized that Debbie was, as she put it in
2003, ‘a nurse who had a crush on him.’
Lisa called her ‘Nursey’, she didn’t seem concerned about her. One
friend recalled, ‘One afternoon, in passing, she said, “So, Nursey called
about ten times today looking for Michael. I finally had to tell her, please,
he will call you back, okay? Jesus Christ!” I said, “Lisa, what is that
about?” She said, “Oh, I don’t know. She’s got it bad for him, I guess. I
have no idea what her thing is. I have enough trouble trying to figure out
Michael. I’m not about to start trying to figure out his friends, too.” That
was her feeling about Debbie Rowe. She didn’t think of her as a threat.’
Lisa Marie Confronts Michael in Hospital
When in September 1995 Michael and Lisa appeared together at the MTV
Awards, she sat at his side looking pissed off and miserable. She was tired
of arguing, tired of trying to save him from himself. She had recently called
Katherine Jackson to ask what she thought she should do about Michael’s
insistence that he continue to have young boys in his life. ‘I want to save
this marriage, but I also want to save Michael,’ she said, according to what
Katherine later recalled to a friend. ‘He’s just looking for trouble. What can
I do? This whole thing is freaking me out.’
‘I don’t know what you can do, but I know what you can’t do: you can’t
try to tell him what to do,’ Katherine advised her daughter-in-law. She told
her what many people already knew: ‘Michael does what he wants to do.’
She also suggested that Lisa call Johnnie Cochran, saying that the attorney
might be the one to address the issue with Michael. Lisa called Johnnie.
‘My God! It’s all so innocent, this business with kids,’ Johnnie told her. He
suggested that if she wanted to save her marriage she would ‘have to let
Michael be who Michael is.’
‘You think she could have hid it for just one night in front of the
cameras,’ Michael later complained to his mother about Lisa’s glum
appearance on the MTV Awards. ‘But, no, not her. She puts her feelings
right out there, doesn’t she? She’s so open.’
‘But that’s what you liked about her,’ Katherine reminded him.
‘Yeah, but now it’s working against me,’ Michael observed.
Despite the fact that their marriage seemed in trouble, Michael was still
pushing for Lisa to become pregnant. Whenever he brought up the subject
of having children, though, Lisa acted as if it wasn’t a serious issue for
them. ‘I mean it,’ he told her, according to a later recollection. ‘I’m very
serious. I want us to have children. I don’t think you’re hearing me,’ he
said.
However, Lisa had heard him loud and clear. She had two children with
Danny Keough. She knew how much she loved them, could never live a
single day without them. Projecting ahead, she wondered what would
happen to the child they would have if the marriage ended. ‘When I
imagined having a child with him,’ she confirmed in 2003, ‘all I could ever
see was a custody battle nightmare.’ Also, after getting to know him better
and watching his day-to-day interactions with people, she became
convinced that he was too emotionally immature to raise a child. ‘I think he
needs a parent,’ she told one confidante, ‘and maybe shouldn’t be one
himself, yet.’ However, she wouldn’t tell him all of that, at the time.
Instead, she just hoped he would give up on the idea, at least for the time
being.
Also, by this time, the heated physical intimacy Lisa had enjoyed with
Michael had cooled. It could have only lasted so long, without real
communication between them. She decided to use their waning physical
intimacy as an excuse. ‘I think we have to have sex in order for me to get
pregnant,’ she told him, according to what she later recalled. ‘And you
know what? I ain’t doin’ it.”
Michael wasn’t convinced that he and Lisa had to engage in sexual
activity in order to have a family of their own. He wanted children; that was
his chief goal and he had made it clear. The question, then, became how to
achieve it. Finally, one day over breakfast he told her, ‘Look, my friend
Debbie said she will get pregnant and have my baby. If you won’t do it,
then she will. How about that?’
Lisa didn’t know how to take Michael’s statement. Was it a challenge? A
threat? Or just a fact? It certainly wasn’t the kind of news most wives would
welcome hearing from their husbands: if you don’t have my baby, my nurse
will. She was amazed by the seriousness of his tone. Who would then raise
this child? She and Michael? Debbie? Or, just Michael, alone? Life with
Michael Jackson was getting a little weird for her, as if it hadn’t been weird
enough up until that time. She met his direct gaze calmly. ‘No kidding?’ she
remarked. ‘Well, cool, then. That’s fine with me,’ she said in a controlled
tone. ‘Tell her to go ahead and do it.’
The weeks slipped into months. By the winter of 1995, Lisa and Michael
weren’t even speaking, and not because Lisa didn’t want to communicate
with him, but because she simply could not find him. She didn’t know his
whereabouts, only that he was not at Neverland – and no one in his camp
would give her any information. After spending about a week trying to find
him, there was a floral delivery from him at her home in Hidden Hills:
dozens of red roses with a card that read, ‘Love, Michael.’ Under the
circumstances, the gesture made no sense. Exasperated, she threw the
flowers into the trash.
At about this time, she was already furious with him because of a cover
story in TV Guide during which he was quoted as saying that she told him
Elvis once had a nose job. ‘He was quoting me, “Presley told me Elvis had
a nose job,” which is absolute bullshit,’ she now recalls. ‘I read that and I
threw it across the kitchen. “I told you what?”’
‘It was getting nasty,’ she recalled, ten years later. ‘I was ready to kill
him, I swear to God.’
In December 1995, Michael finally returned to Neverland. Priscilla
Presley decided to pay him a surprise visit to find out what was going on
with her son-in-law. ‘When she arrived, she saw Michael in the living room
playing with about a dozen babies, all crawling about, some laughing, some
crying,’ recalled Monica Pastelle. ‘It was like a big nursery, with a grown
man in the middle of it all, seeming in a state of bliss. Though nothing
wrong was going on, she was flabbergasted. It was so unsettling, Priscilla
left, immediately.’
Lisa was speechless when her mother confronted her about what she’d
seen.
A week later, Michael went to New York to begin rehearsals for a concert
at the Beacon Theater, ‘Michael Jackson – One Night Only’, which was
scheduled to be broadcast on cable television to 250 million viewers on 9
December. On 6 December, he collapsed during a practice session and was
hospitalized at New York’s Beth Israel North Hospital. His doctors said he
was suffering from heart arrhythmia, or irregular heartbeat prompted by
severe dehydration, gastroenteritis and a chemical imbalance affecting his
liver and kidneys. He also had a viral infection. Yet earlier in the day, he
seemed fine. Marcel Marceau, who was going to make an appearance on
the HBO programme during Michael’s performance of ‘Childhood’, had
been at the rehearsal when Michael collapsed. ‘He was so full of energy, in
absolutely wonderful condition,’ said the mime, who turned away for a
moment during Michael’s practice session of ‘Black and White’ under the
hot and blinding lights.
‘I heard silence,’ said the mime, ‘and everything stopped. I looked and he
was on the floor.’
By the time medics appeared on the site, Michael’s heartbeat was
irregular and his blood pressure low. He had on so much makeup, they had
to check his pallor by the color of his chest when they lifted his shirt.
As soon as he was checked into the hospital, Michael’s press people
telephoned Lisa in Los Angeles and, with frantic explanations, begged her
to fly to her husband’s side. ‘Hell, no,’ was her response. ‘Screw him. I’m
not going. Why should I?’
She wasn’t going to get out of it that easily, however. Michael’s collapse
had made big news: ‘Jacko on his Backo’ screamed the front page of the
New York Post. The hospital even set up a telephone number with daily,
automatic message updates on his condition. The media had assembled in
front of the hospital, waiting for his wife to arrive to be with him. His
‘people’ then badgered her ‘people’ about Michael’s image and how it
would ‘look’ if his wife wasn’t at his side. After all, even Diana Ross had
shown up. Finally – and surprisingly, to her friends, anyway – Lisa gave in.
Arriving at the hospital the next day, wearing a black pea coat and
sunglasses, she was whisked through a side entrance.
It’s possible that Michael really did want Lisa to be with him. However,
when she got there he must have been sorry she’d agreed to the public
relations manoeuvre. She showed up with fire in her eyes. When she
walked into the room, the first thing that hit Lisa were all the framed posters
of Shirley Temple as a child-star, Mickey Mouse and Topo Gigio, the
strange, little puppet-mouse popular from the old Ed Sullivan Show in the
1950s and 1960s. When Lisa looked down at Michael, he appeared to be on
his death bed; it seemed as if he had tubes coming out of every limb. He
reminded her, she would later say, of the pathetic creature from E. T. at the
end of the movie when the alien has taken a turn for the worst. As she stood
there, ‘E.T.’ gazed up at her weakly and, mustering all his strength,
managed to say, ‘Hi, Lisa. How are you?’
Lisa wasn’t moved. She didn’t care much about Michael’s health, not at
that moment, anyway. She suspected that he wasn’t suffering from
‘exhaustion’ or ‘dehydration’. He had long ago confided in her about his
panic attacks. According to those who know her well, she figured that he’d
suffered another and, based on his destabilized condition, that it had been
quite a jolt to his system. Surely, though, it wasn’t because of the upcoming
concert, she speculated. He’d made many such appearances, why would this
particular one cause such a reaction? The broadcast had actually now been
postponed indefinitely, costing both Michael and HBO a fortune. (It would
never happen.) Whatever was going on with him was serious. Now that
Michael was a captive audience, she wanted to confront him. So where had
he been? Why was he so anxious? Most importantly, where did she stand
with him?
Michael usually tries to avoid confrontation. So, for his irate wife to
barge into his safe, hospital haven was upsetting. His heart must have been
thundering in his chest.
Making matters more tense was the fact that the Cascio brothers had just
left the room five minutes earlier. Had Lisa seen them? It was difficult to
tell; her face was that impassive. But it’s likely she wouldn’t even have
recognized them now. Still, it was a close call.
Lisa closed the door behind her. She and Michael then engaged in a
private and, judging from the shouting going on in the room – hers, not his
– heated conversation. ‘I’m like a lion, I roar,’ she would say in 2003. ‘I
won’t be a victim. I don’t sulk, I get angry. I go immediately into
retaliation.
‘I couldn’t figure out what was wrong with him,’ she recalled. ‘I started
asking questions, and it was always a different story. He said I was causing
trouble and stirring up problems. He told me, “You’re making my heart rate
go up,” and asked me to leave. I said, “Good. I want out. This is insane, all
of it.”’
When the door to Michael’s room opened, Lisa burst out as if shot from a
cannon, past everyone in the hall and straight to the elevator. ‘Mrs Jackson,’
exclaimed one of the doctors. ‘My goodness! Your husband cannot be upset
like this. He’s much too fragile. If you’re going to do this, you’ll not be able
to visit him.’
Lisa gave him a sharp look.
Michael’s mother, who had been pacing in the hallway, regarded her
daughter-in-law intensely. She could not fathom that Lisa would fly all the
way from Los Angeles to New York just to fight with her son. Janet, who
had also rushed to be at her brother’s side, had just gone to the ladies’ room.
As Lisa stood waiting for the elevator, Katherine walked up to her and
exploded in stunned disbelief. ‘What is wrong with you, Lisa,’ she hissed.
‘You are so spoiled. I can’t believe that you would do this to Michael.’ At
that moment, the elevator opened and Lisa got into it. She turned, faced
Katherine and gave her a critical look. Luckily for Katherine, the elevator’s
doors then slammed closed between them.
Lisa wanted to see Michael the next day. ‘Absolutely not,’ Michael’s
handlers told her. There had been a meeting with Jackson family members
and it was decided that Lisa was an antagonizing presence in Michael’s life,
and that he should now be protected from her, at all costs. Furious, Lisa
went back to Los Angeles.
Perhaps a clue to Michael’s behaviour – his distancing himself from Lisa
and his subsequent, apparent panic attack – can be found in analysing a
chain of events from late 1995. It would be many years later that Debbie
Rowe would reveal that she became pregnant that December. Michael had
certainly given Lisa fair warning that Debbie would have his baby if she
wouldn’t do it. ‘Tell her to go ahead and do it,’ Lisa had said. If she was
being sarcastic, perhaps Michael didn’t catch the mockery.
Did Lisa know about the pregnancy? ‘I don’t think Debbie even knew
yet,’ observed Monica Pastelle. ‘I think by the time Michael was on his
back in the hospital, she was only a couple of weeks’ pregnant. As for Lisa,
if she had known, do you think Michael would have been still drawing
breath when she left that hospital room?’
It certainly appears either that Michael was a fast worker when he
realized his marriage was in trouble or that he had a master plan to father a
child, once and for all, which did not involve his wife. Some have said that
Michael and Debbie were intimate. Others have said Debbie is ‘not his
type’ and insist that they underwent the process of artificial insemination
shortly before Michael ended up in the hospital. Since no one who knows
them well enough to be privy to such information wants to discuss it,
Debbie’s pregnancy remains one of Michael’s most sensitive secrets. ‘I can
only tell you that I did not discuss it with him,’ said one of his advisers. ‘I
did not want any more information about any of it.’
When Michael was released from the hospital after a week, he went off to
Euro-Disney in France to recuperate. He must have had at least a half-dozen
children with him, judging from photographs taken on his vacation.
On 18 January 1996, I appeared on CNN to announce that Lisa Marie
Presley had filed for divorce from Michael Jackson. In her petition, she
noted the ‘Date of Separation’ as 10 December 1995, just after she saw
Michael in the hospital. ‘This person is one of the biggest entertainers out
there,’ Lisa told Newsweek in 2003. ‘He is not stupid. He’s very charming
when he wants to be, and when you go into his world you step into this
whole other realm. I could tell you all about the craziness – all these things
that were odd, different, evil or not cool – but it still took me two and a half
years to get my head out of it.’
In March 1996, Debbie Rowe suffered a miscarriage. ‘I was just
devastated,’ she has said. ‘I thought I would never be able to have a baby,
and I really wanted to have his. Michael was there to console me the whole
time.’
It’s fascinating, in retrospect, that Debbie’s pregnancy and subsequent
miscarriage – as well as her very existence in Michael’s life – had still
escaped public scrutiny. It seems incredible that someone of Michael’s
celebrity status could be married to one woman and planning a baby with
another… and no one in the media would catch on to any of it. How, one
wonders, did he manage it? ‘Carefully,’ responded someone in Michael’s
camp, only half-kidding. ‘Very carefully.’ Or, perhaps not very well at all, it
could be argued… if, in fact, he had a panic attack over it.
Michael’s divorce from Lisa was finalized on 20 August 1996. As part of
the settlement, Lisa received ten per cent of royalties from Jackson’s
HIStory album. According to the agreement, she was allowed to write a tell-
all book about her marriage, if she ever chose to do so; she did not sign a
so-called ‘confidentiality agreement’. At the time, though, Lisa just wanted
to get on with her life and career. She said that she had great regard for
Michael and refused to speak critically of him. She knew that he wasn’t
entirely venal… she just didn’t know, at this point, what to think of him. So,
she chose to preserve her dignity by keeping sacred their private life
together. Seven years later, though, in the spring of 2003, Lisa began to
discuss her frustration as Michael’s wife during promotion of her long-
anticipated debut album, To Whom It May Concern, on Capitol Records.
Michael was deeply conflicted by the end of his marriage to Lisa, his
heart flooded with despair. Never before had he connected with a woman,
or maybe even another person, on the level that he had with her. She had
been there when he most needed her, during the dark days of allegations
and drug abuse. ‘She’s like a force of nature,’ he said of her, ‘always there
for me. I don’t know how I’ll be without her.’
He also had a strong sexual connection to her, and that had been a first
for him. Previously, he hadn’t been able to open himself up, feel uninhibited
and truly, physically intimate with anyone. However, for some reason, he
was able to let himself go with Lisa. Who knows why? It’s easy to be
sceptical of Michael’s relationship with her, but doing so risks ignoring his
obvious humanity. Despite the plastic surgeries and maddening friendships
with boys, and all of the rest of the eccentric behaviour that goes into
making Michael Jackson such a strange individual, he is still a human being
with emotions, feelings and a beating heart – and, somehow, Lisa Marie
Presley was the one to truly touch it, to truly affect him. ‘I’m afraid it will
never happen for me, again,’ he said at the time. ‘I’m scared to death that
it’s over for me, now.’ Indeed, it was difficult for him to let it go.
Michael spent a couple of weeks lamenting what had occurred with Lisa.
‘Lisa said that the part of him that is critical of himself – the beaten child
part of him – really kicked in after the divorce was finalized,’ said Monica
Pastelle. ‘He wanted to call and talk to his best friend, her. He didn’t want
to let go. She needed space, though. She really needed time away from him.
She felt that he had really screwed with her mind, and she got sick and her
body started breaking down after the divorce. She poured her life into him.
Now, she needed to reclaim it for herself. He had a hard time with that.’
In the end, Michael Jackson had no choice but to go on alone. He was a
survivor, he told himself. He had music to work on, career commitments – a
huge, world tour coming up with a show that, as always, demanded his
complete focus. Besides, he and Lisa had different goals in life. He wanted
to raise children; she already had two, and had made it clear that she didn’t
want any more with him. Michael wasn’t used to waiting for other people to
catch up with him and with his goals. When Debbie Rowe said she would
have his baby, he jumped at the opportunity. With glacial determination
replacing his despondency, he was ready to push onward. That had always
been his way; at the age of thirty-eight, he wasn’t going to change.
Debbie is Pregnant
In September 1996, Michael embarked on a new worldwide concert
schedule, the HIStory tour, the first leg of which began in Prague, Czech
Republic, and would not end until Honolulu, Hawaii, at Aloha Stadium in
January 1997. The second leg would begin in Bremen, Germany, in May
1997 and end in Durban, South Africa, in October 1997. During the tour,
Michael would perform eighty-two concerts in fifty-eight cities to over 4.5
million fans. It was a gruelling schedule. All told, the HIStory tour visited
five continents and thirty-five countries.
A month after the tour began, and just a few months after his divorce was
finalized, Michael made headlines again with another bombshell revelation:
a woman was carrying his baby. Debbie Rowe was five months’ pregnant,
which meant she and Michael had been working on a baby while he was
still technically married to Lisa. Debbie later explained, ‘I said, “You
deserve to be a father. Let me do this for you. Let me have your baby.” He
was surprised, but he said, “Yes. Let’s do it.”’
Debbie’s existence in Michael’s life – and her pregnancy – was finally
revealed when she was tricked into discussing it with a ‘friend’ who was
surreptitiously tape-recording the conversation. ‘She just didn’t know any
better,’ explained Tanya Boyd, one of the neighbours in the Van Nuys
apartment complex where she lived at the time. ‘She was an open-hearted
girl who never dreamed that there were people out there tape-recording
conversations for the tabloids.’
However, there it was, for all to see, on the front page of News of the
World (3 November 1996). ‘I’m Having Jacko’s Baby,’ blazed the headline,
with individual photographs of Michael and Debbie. She was appalled. ‘Oh,
my God, no,’ Debbie said to a friend who was with her when she saw a
copy of the publication. ‘Please, tell me it does not say that. It’s my own
fault. Look at this thing. Look at it. They’re treating us like freaks!’ Debbie
took the newspaper and flung it across the room, angrily. Then, she sank
into a chair, buried her face in her hands, and burst into tears. ‘Those
bastards,’ she kept said. ‘How can they do this to Michael? He doesn’t
deserve it. And he’s going to be so mad at me.’
In truth, the article was fairly accurate, especially reading it
retrospectively. In it, Debbie was quoted as saying that Michael was,
indeed, the father of the baby, and that he’d be raising the child without her.
She also said, according to what the News of the World reported as being on
the tape-recording, that the two had engaged in sexual activity, but that
when she did not immediately become pregnant, they decided to try what
she said Michael referred to as ‘a foolproof way of doing it’: artificial
insemination. She said that the process occurred at the Los Angeles Fertility
Institute (on Brighton Way in Beverly Hills). The first time ended in
miscarriage, she said. This time, she felt she would carry to full term. The
article also said that Debbie would receive about $500,000 from Michael
when she delivered the baby.
The revelation was almost as startling – and maybe more so – than the
excitement that had resulted from Michael’s surprise nuptials to Lisa Marie
Presley. The questions from the media came fast and furiously: who was the
expectant mother? What is she to Michael? Why is it that no one had ever
heard of her before? It all seemed strange, almost like a publicity stunt.
Debbie’s father, Gordon Rowe – a retired cargo pilot who lived in Cyprus
– went on the record to say that the baby was conceived by artificial means
at the Los Angeles Fertility Institute.
‘She broke the news to me in a telephone call,’ he said. ‘I only speak to
her once in a while, and I knew something was up. She said straight off:
“I’m going to have Michael’s child.” After I recovered from the shock,
Debbie said, “Come on, it’s not so bad. We had the child by artificial
insemination.” I said, “Debbie, why artificial insemination? Isn’t he capable
of fathering a child like anyone else?” She laughed and said, “Michael
doesn’t do anything like anyone else.” I said to her, “Isn’t this the same man
who was charged with child abuse?” She said, “He wasn’t charged with
anything, not at all.” Then, she told me, “Dad you have no idea who the real
Michael Jackson is. He is the most compassionate person I have ever met in
my life. If you could only spend one day with him, you would love him like
I do.”’
Gordon had rarely seen Debbie since he and her mom, Barbara, divorced
more than twenty years before; he had not been directly involved in her
upbringing since the early 1970s. ‘She’s always been a rebel,’ he said of
Debbie. ‘Maybe if I’d been more of a father, things would have been
different.’ After his comments received worldwide publicity, he issued a
general retraction of everything he had said, each and every word. It
appeared that Gordon spoke too soon, and that Michael was unhappy about
his comments. The pop star soon issued his own statement: ‘The reports
speculating that Ms Rowe was artificially inseminated, and that there is any
economic relationship, are completely false and irresponsible.’
However, Steve Shmerier, a California computer executive who dated
Debbie for six months before her first pregnancy with Michael, insists,
‘Debbie told me she had agreed to try for a baby using artificial
insemination as a favour to a friend. No names were mentioned. But with
hindsight, you don’t need to be a genius to figure out who she was talking
about. She is simply not the maternal type, though. She’s always said she
had no interest in having children. The only reason she agreed to do this
thing for Michael was the understanding that she would not become a
traditional wife.’
Michael could insist that the baby was not the result of artificial
insemination, and the public and press could either believe him or not.
However, he went a step too far in also claiming that there was no
‘economic relationship’ with Debbie. Such a statement only weakened his
credibility about the baby’s conception. After all, who in his right mind
would believe that he wasn’t giving Debbie some money? Even the
surrogate mother who comes into the picture as a complete stranger is
compensated for her services, let alone those who are close friends of
fifteen years. Is it logical that Debbie Rowe would have a child for one of
the wealthiest entertainers in show business and that he, in return, would
not give her even a dime for her trouble?
In fact, according to reliable sources, Debbie has received millions of
dollars from Michael over the years, not as payment for her services but as
‘gifts’ to her. When Michael’s former business manager Myung Ho Lee
sued him for fourteen million dollars in 2002, among the court papers filed
was Michael’s monthly budget, which included ‘payment to Debbie Rowe’
for $1.5 million. Whether she’s getting money from him every month,
annually, or per child, she will never have to worry about finances again.
Michael arranged for other financial annuities for her, as well as eventually
buying her a $1.3 million home in the exclusive Franklin Canyon enclave of
Beverly Hills, in the fall of 1997. He and Debbie would never live together.
‘At the time that the story broke, Debbie was supposed to meet him in
Australia,’ said Tanya Boyd. ‘She presumed that the trip would be off, that
Michael would be so upset about what had happened that he would refuse
to see her. She cried a lot that day.’
Debbie frantically attempted to locate Michael in Sydney to explain to
him how she had been deceived by her ‘friend’. However, before she could
reach him, he was on the telephone, calling her. Contrary to what Debbie
expected, as she recalled it, Michael could not have been more loving and
understanding. She now says that it was during that telephone call that she
realized that Michael was the man for her. ‘Look, I can understand how this
terrible thing happened,’ Michael told Debbie. ‘I’ve been tricked by the
media before. Relax. It’ll be okay, I promise.’
‘Debbie so appreciated him,’ said Tanya Boyd. ‘Even though she had
obviously created a huge jam, he didn’t blame her for it. That went a long
way toward making him a saint in her eyes. She was so relieved, she
decided that she would be loyal to him, and once you have Debbie Rowe’s
loyalty, you have it for life – unless you screw up, royally.’
‘Focus, Debbie,’ Michael told her. ‘Keep your eye on the goal, which is
that you and I have this baby. Of course, the press would find out about it,
eventually. I expected it. They have made my life miserable for years.’
Though he tried not to show it to the expectant mother, Michael actually
was apprehensive about the news of Debbie’s pregnancy being made public.
First of all, would his fans put it all together and realize that he’d been
working on having a baby with Debbie before he was even divorced from
Lisa? How would that look? (Oddly, it would turn out that much of his
public wouldn’t figure it out, or, at least, care.) Not only was he unsure how
his fans would take it, he was worried about the reaction of his mother,
Katherine.
Indeed, Katherine, still a devout Jehovah’s Witness, was not happy to
learn from news broadcasts that her son was fathering a child with a woman
to whom he was not married. ‘This reminds me of what Michael’s father
did in the seventies,’ Katherine said, privately, speaking of Joh’Vonnie. ‘It
broke my heart. I won’t have history repeat itself with Michael. I just won’t
have it.’
After the news of Debbie’s pregnancy broke, Katherine tried to reach
Michael overseas. It was difficult because of his tight schedule but on the
day the pregnancy story broke, Katherine managed to find Debbie, whom
she had met on several occasions, at a neighbour’s apartment, where she
was hiding out from the stalking media. That neighbour recalled, ‘I picked
up the telephone, hoping it was Michael calling for Debbie from Australia,
and this woman on the other end said, “Would you please put Miss Rowe
on the phone?” I thought it was a reporter, so I said, “She’s not here.” And
the woman said, “Well, this is Michael Jackson’s mother. Can you help me
locate her?” I have no idea how she got my number. I handed Debbie the
phone.’
Katherine was, as Debbie’s neighbour put it, ‘sweet as she could have
been to her.’ For about thirty minutes, she talked to Debbie about the
sanctity of marriage, and about the Jehovah’s Witness faith. Debbie was
impressed. In fact, by the time she ended her conversation with Katherine,
she had not only agreed that it would be best if she married Michael, she
was practically ready to convert.
When Michael found out that Katherine and Debbie had spoken, he
probably sensed that his life might be about to change. Indeed, according to
one of his associates, when Michael finally spoke to Katherine on the
telephone, she asked him to marry ‘that nice girl, Debbie’ and ‘give your
child a name, not like your poor, half-sister, Joh’Vonnie.’ Michael had never
wanted to repeat the sins of his father, so Katherine perhaps knew how to
appeal to him or, as the associate put it, ‘She pushed all the right buttons.’
Michael agreed that he should marry Debbie. ‘It’s definitely the right
thing to do,’ he said.
When one reviews the chain of events described by their intimates, it’s
interesting that Katherine’s telephone call to Debbie and Michael had such
an impact on their future together. Prior to the Jackson matriarch’s
involvement, the plan was that Debbie was to have been a ‘surrogate
mother’ for Michael – a close friend doing a favour for him by having a
baby, which she would then give him to raise. After the birth of the child,
Michael intended to issue a statement, and then keep the mother’s identity a
secret, in much the same way the identities of most surrogate mothers are
protected. A good example of what he and Debbie intended is the way he
has handled the identity of the woman who gave birth to his very blond
third child, Prince Michael II. We don’t know who she is, other than that
she’s not Debbie; Debbie has denied maternity. He has not divulged her
name, and he hasn’t married her, either. It wouldn’t have been easy, of
course, to keep Debbie’s identity undisclosed, but since he has managed to
keep the other woman’s identity out of the press, it obviously can be done.
Over the years, Michael had proven that, if he wishes to do so, he can keep
secrets about his private life.
However, Debbie’s having confided to a traitorous friend about the
pregnancy, the resulting publicity, and then Katherine’s concern, altered
Michael’s master plan – and also his life. As a result, he was not only going
to be a father, but a husband – again.
While speaking to her on the telephone, Michael insisted that Debbie
keep her plans to visit him in Australia and, in fact, take the next plane. She
agreed to meet him at the Sheraton on the Park Hotel, where the Jackson
contingency occupied forty rooms. However, she did not know then that she
was going to be marrying him, there. ‘She was surprised when she finally
got there, and he told her of his plan,’ said Tanya Boyd. ‘She called me [on
November 12, 1996] and said, “Guess what? I’m marrying Michael
tomorrow.” I asked her if she loved him. She thought it over for a moment,
and answered, “Yes, I do, sort of.” I pushed. “Romantically?” She paused,
and said, “The kind of love I have with Michael is bigger, more important,
than that. It’s not the kind that most people can understand. Simple love
affairs end. This relationship will never end.”’
Michael’s New Family
On 13 November 1996, Michael Jackson sat down at a grand piano in his
two-bedroom suite at the Sheraton on the Park Hotel in Sydney. With a
flourish, he played the Wagner march known as ‘Here Comes the Bride’.
Michael had on a creamy foundation and transparent powder that made his
face almost stark white. He had extra eyeliner on his lids, emphasizing their
almond shape; his eyes stood out like dark coals. He highlighted his nose
and cheekbones with bronze tones. His eyebrows were tweezed and
darkened. He had on a black hat and one long curl framing each side of his
face. Also, he appeared to have fake sideburns. The total effect was nothing
short of jaw-dropping, in that Disneyland sort of way.
From one of the other rooms came Debbie Rowe, six months’ pregnant,
wearing black and holding a small arrangement of flowers. It had just been
ten days since the world knew that he was about to become a father and
now, thanks to his mother, he was about to become a husband, again. As
fifteen of their friends watched, thirty-eight-year-old Michael and thirty-
seven-year-old Debbie – both wearing black – were wed in a simple
ceremony. Michael’s best man was a new friend of his named Anthony –
who was eight years old. Michael identified him as a nephew. (However,
unless there are relatives unknown to other family members, he doesn’t
seem to have a nephew by that name.) Michael further explained that the
boy had been depressed by the death of one of his parents. ‘I brought him
with me to cheer him up,’ he explained.
As they stood in the suite, decorated, wall to wall, with exotic orchids,
roses and deep pink lilies, Michael presented Debbie with a $100,000
diamond and platinum ring. After being pronounced man and wife, they
exchanged an affectionate look and a brief, tentative kiss. Debbie seemed
tense, holding herself stiffly. When they drew apart, Michael held her away
from him, gazing deeply into her face. He then leaned in and kissed her on
the neck. ‘You are so beautiful,’ he said, holding her with his eyes. ‘More
beautiful than I ever imagined the mother of my child would be. Thank you
so much, Debbie. Thank you so much for being… you.’ It was a touching
moment.
The next evening, Michael and Anthony attended the Australian premiere
of Michael’s short film Ghosts and walked side by side in front of the
clicking and whirring cameras. Michael looked content in one of his
military outfits and a black silk surgical mask. Anthony, who wore a simple,
short-sleeved black shirt, was dark-haired, good-looking… and, in the
opinion of most observers, a dead-ringer for Jordie Chandler.
Meanwhile, Debbie was in her hotel suite making long-distance
telephone calls to friends in the United States. Marsha Devlin, another one
of her Van Nuys neighbours at the time, recalled that Debbie told her she
needed her to pay her telephone bill for her. ‘She had left the States in such
a hurry, she forgot to pay it,’ said Marsha. ‘It was disconnected already; she
owed back money for the bill. If she had money from Michael by this time,
you sure would never know it. She told me she had about three thousand
dollars in the bank.’
When Marsha asked, Debbie told her that Michael did not stay with her
in her suite at the Sheraton on the Park Hotel the night before they wed, nor
on their wedding night. Instead, she said, he stayed with ‘an assistant’ in
another room, ‘so that I could get some rest. I was exhausted.’ Less than a
week later, Debbie returned to Los Angeles, never having slept with
Michael in Sydney.
The day before he married Debbie Rowe, Michael telephoned Lisa Marie
Presley in Los Angeles to tell her of his plans. He still cared deeply about
her, he said, and didn’t want her to ‘read about the wedding in the papers’.
He felt dreadful, he told her, about the way their relationship ended, ‘with
us saying mean things to each other. And now I’m moving on,’ he told her,
according to a later recollection, ‘but I don’t really feel that it’s right, not
without your blessing.’ In fact, those close to Michael say that he was so
anxious about his marriage to Debbie, he was jittery and would begin to sob
at the slightest provocation, his tears flowing, unchecked. No wonder he
was worn out; his life had been filled with such confusion and anxiety for
as many years as he could remember, the stress of it keenly felt, especially
while on the road with yet another strenuous tour. He was bone tired;
getting up on that stage and executing his trademark dance steps had
become more of an ordeal with each passing year. ‘I’m getting too old for
this shit,’ he said.
Lisa didn’t know how to react to Michael’s telephone call. She still loved
him, she said, but she was adamant that they would never be together,
again. Therefore, he should go forth and do whatever he wanted to do with
his life, with Debbie Rowe, or anyone else. She gave him her ‘blessing’.
Anyway, it was time for her to move past the madness of his world, to stop
trying to fathom the unfathomable. After she and Michael ended their
marriage, she fell into a serious health decline, ‘the worst two years of my
life,’ as she put it. Privately, she said that she hoped he was content in his
new life, but she knew him too well. His sadness sprang from so many
years of distrust and unhappiness, how could a marriage to someone with
whom he wasn’t in love possibly end his misery, even if she was having a
baby for him?
Lisa may have been concerned, but much of the public and media’s
reaction to Michael’s second marriage was just cynical. It appeared that he
married a person he didn’t love, who was having a baby that may or may
not have been his, or maybe conceived artificially. ‘Please respect our
privacy,’ Michael said in a statement, ‘and let us enjoy this wonderful and
exciting time.’ As for Debbie, many people didn’t know what to make of
her, either. On its front page, the Daily Mirror published a photograph of
her on a hotel balcony in Sydney cradling her head in her hands in dismay,
probably expressing exasperation at the presence of an army of paparazzi,
below. However, the bold headline suggested otherwise. It read: OH GOD! I’VE
JUST MARRIED MICHAEL JACKSON.
Prince Michael Jackson, Michael’s son, was born in February 1997 at
Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. (He is now known as Prince Michael I.
Michael’s grandfather and great-grandfather were both named Prince.) He
and Debbie cut the umbilical cord together. The baby was weighed. He
spent five hours in intensive care with a minor problem, and then Michael
rushed him out of the hospital and off to Neverland.
When Debbie was released from Cedars, she recuperated at a friend’s
house.
‘I have been blessed beyond comprehension,’ Michael said in a
statement, ‘and I will work tirelessly at being the best father I can be. I
appreciate that my fans are elated, but I hope that everyone respects the
privacy that Debbie and I want and need for our son. I grew up in a fish
bowl and I will not allow that to happen to my child. Please give my son his
privacy.’
Michael and Debbie posed for photographs with Prince in March, at the
Four Seasons Hotel. Though the poses seemed warm and Michael and
Debbie appeared to be proud parents, it had actually been the first time
Debbie had seen the baby since the day she gave birth to him six weeks
earlier. She was smuggled into the hotel room, given the infant to hold, told
to smile for the camera with Michael… and then, her work done, thanked
profusely by Michael and sent on her way. She did seem very loving to her
child – who was light-skinned with black hair and dark brown eyes – during
the time she cradled him in her arms. No doubt, however, she would not
want to have become too attached to Prince. It would just make matters
more difficult for her. Under ordinary circumstances, a surrogate mother
would never be called upon to have to pose for pictures with the baby she
had given to someone else to raise. However Debbie Rowe, always
amenable to whatever was asked of her, was in a different world…
Michael’s world.
A woman who worked as a chef at Neverland recalls the way Prince was
nursed during his first six months. ‘Debbie was not a significant presence,’
she said. ‘We never saw her. The baby was cared for by a team of six
nannies and six nurses. They all worked eight hours each, in shifts, so the
baby would always have two nurses and two nannies by his side. They were
kept under constant video surveillance, which was monitored by members
of Jackson’s security team. The nannies all have special training. The day-
team do exercise drills with the baby to build up his strength. The night-
team began reading and singing to Prince when he was only three weeks
old. When Prince cries, he seemed to be calling for his mama. It was eerie,
almost as if the baby didn’t have a mother at all. There are no pictures of
Debbie. Mr Jackson has just one photo by his bed, and that’s of Lisa Marie
as a child in the year when the two of them met.’
She said Prince sometimes slept in Michael’s room in a crib filled with
stuffed animals. ‘The room was more like a nursery than a room for a
grown man,’ she recalled. ‘There were two life-sized figures outside, like a
toy shop. One is a boy scout, the other is a girl in a British policeman’s hat.
Inside there was Peter Pan stuff on the walls and a bunch of Nintendo
games we were told not to touch.’
One nanny who worked at Neverland said, ‘There was a feeling of being
a bit under siege. Nevertheless, the baby did get exceptional care. We had to
measure the air quality in his room once every hour. When we fed him, all
the utensils had to be boiled first and could only be used for one type of
food. They were all thrown away after a single use.’ Prince was given new
toys every day and, apparently for sanitary reasons, Michael instructed his
staff to discard his ‘old’ toys after Prince has gone to bed. ‘Debbie Rowe
really had no input,’ the nanny said. ‘I saw her maybe three times and she
seemed very sullen.’
For Debbie, one perk of being Michael’s wife was the opportunity to rub
shoulders with the rich and famous. However, sometimes she didn’t rub as
closely as she might have hoped. For instance, she had been anxious to
meet Elizabeth Taylor. However, Elizabeth was annoyed at Michael at this
time because Michael had never introduced Debbie to her, and she couldn’t
fathom that he would go off and marry someone she didn’t know. Michael
told Debbie to go ahead and try to meet Liz if she wanted to, but that it
wouldn’t be a good time for him to be an intermediary. Debbie attempted to
contact Elizabeth, telephoning her a few times. At one point, she gave
Elizabeth’s secretary her mailing address, so that Elizabeth would have it in
her appointment book. One day, she received a note from the screen star:
‘Thank you for your interest in my career. Enclosed, please find a signed
photo. With affection, [signed] Elizabeth Taylor.’
‘Debbie laughed when she got it,’ said Tanya Boyd. ‘She thought it was
the funniest thing in the world. She even framed it! “So close,” she said of
Elizabeth Taylor, “yet so, so far.”’
Lisa Marie has a Change of Heart
Michael Jackson is a powerful person who has a strong effect on people,
even the most wealthy and famous who want nothing more than to be in his
life. Apparently, Lisa Marie Presley was not immune to that influence.
Despite all that had happened with him in their twenty-month marriage, she
was compelled to keep abreast of the goings on in Michael’s life. Maybe in
an effort to achieve that goal, she suddenly began socializing with
Michael’s sister Janet. A few months earlier, the two were spotted together
at a club in Manhattan called Life, seemingly enjoying each other’s
company and causing people to wonder what in the world they were doing
together.
Lisa explained to friends that she was advising Janet on how to get back
in shape for her upcoming Velvet Rope tour; Janet had apparently gained
about forty pounds and was determined to lose them, and more. However,
it’s unlikely that Lisa and Janet were going to the gym together. It simply
looked like they were having fun because, that same week, they were seen
shopping, having lunch, going to the movies and even catching an off-
Broadway play, both in disguises. In September 1997, Lisa attended the
launch party for Janet’s Velvet Rope CD. Shortly after, they attended the
MTV Awards together.
When Michael heard from Janet that she was socializing with Lisa, he
became intensely interested. ‘Does she ever talk about me?’ he wanted to
know. ‘I’ll bet she hates me, now. Does she hate me, now?’
Janet told her brother that Lisa seemed to hold no grudge against him for
what had happened in their relationship and, in fact, would actually like to
see him. What she didn’t tell him was that Lisa had been suspicious of
Michael’s marriage to ‘Nursey’. She knew Michael well enough to know
that his goal had always been to have children, and he didn’t seem to care
how he got them. He had wanted Lisa to bear him a child, but she drew the
line there since she didn’t want to bring a child into an unhappy union. She
suspected that he and Debbie had an agreement to have a baby, and that
their marriage was just a device to make it legitimate. Janet confirmed all of
those suspicions, telling her that Michael ‘did it [married Debbie] for
Katherine, really.’ Lisa didn’t hold against Michael any of his choices
where Debbie was concerned. ‘You can’t blame someone for being exactly
who they are, can you?’ she asked her friend, Monica Pastelle. ‘A lot of
people use surrogate mothers and, if you look at this and really kinda squint
at it, I think that’s what it is. But,’ she hastened to add, ‘it gives me a
terrible headache if I think too hard about it, so I try not to.’
Michael then telephoned Lisa to ask if they could be friends. ‘I’ve always
loved you,’ he said to her, according to a later recollection, ‘and I hate that
way it ended between us. I really do.’
Lisa told him that an important aspect of her Scientology training is that
she not hold on to bitterness and anger, and that she had dedicated herself to
get past any negative feelings about him. He was happy to hear it. He then
invited her and her children to join him in South Africa where his HIStory
tour was finally wrapping up. His mother and father would also be there, he
said, so Lisa wouldn’t have to feel awkward about the propriety of such a
visit. They were helping him watch Prince Michael, he explained. (That
may have been true, but Michael also had a team of nurses and nannies on
hand.) Lisa couldn’t resist; she said, yes.
Whatever Lisa’s intentions had ever been involving Michael, she still had
a deep connection with him – and seeing him building a family with another
woman wasn’t easy for her. It had been some time since she had immersed
herself in his world, which as she once said, was ‘the only way to figure out
how he’s doing. You can’t ask someone how a rollercoaster ride is while
they’re still on it – you just have to hop on too.’ Lisa had to see for herself
how he had adjusted to life since they parted company. A lot had changed
for him. He had sidestepped the molestation allegations, released new
music, toured successfully, married, had a child. Finally, it appeared he was
settling down, finding himself. Would she now find a new Michael Jackson,
one that had risen from the ashes of the broken man she knew before. It was
this curiosity that took her across the Atlantic, twice. She would first join
him in London, where he would be playing Wembley Stadium (12-17 July).
She had Scientology business there, she said. Then, she would return to the
States, and rejoin Michael at the end of the tour in South Africa.
Perfect, Michael must have thought. As it happened, Debbie was joining
him in France, Austria and Germany (25 June-6 July), just a week before
Lisa’s arrival, to see him and Prince Michael, who was about four months
old. By that point, she’d only seen the baby once, maybe twice, since he
was born. She was planning to leave before the London dates, which was
fine with Michael because she and Lisa would then not cross paths.
In Germany, Michael was upfront with Debbie and told her that Lisa
would be joining him on his next dates in England and then, later, in South
Africa. Debbie wasn’t thrilled with the news – she may have thought Lisa
was encroaching on her territory – but she got over it, quickly. Their
relationship wasn’t such that she could tell him what to do, anyway, even if
they were married. Plus, she didn’t really care. ‘Look, the thing is this,’ she
told a friend. ‘I don’t tell Michael Jackson how to live his life, and he
doesn’t tell me how to live mine. [Debbie always referred to her husband as
“Michael Jackson”.] And that’s a fact,’ she concluded. ‘So if he wants to
run around with his ex-wife, I’m not going stop him. Because I don’t want
him stopping me if I want to do the same thing with my ex-boyfriend.’
‘But that’s not a normal marriage, is it?’ protested Debbie’s friend.
‘We’re talking Michael Jackson’s marriage, here,’ quipped Debbie.
‘Come on! Get real. I have it under control. I’m a grown-up, and I know
what I’m doing, and so does he. Besides,’ she said, ‘I think we’ll have a big
announcement, soon.’
Debbie didn’t explain at the time, but she and Michael either had sex (as
they would later insist), or did something more artificial to make it happen,
but while she was in Paris, staying at the Disneyland Hotel outside the city,
she became pregnant with his second child. She knew her relationship with
Michael – such as it was, whatever it was – was not in jeopardy. They had
an arrangement; it seemed to work.
Meanwhile, in London, Lisa and her two children joined Michael and his
parents in London. They all stayed in Michael’s $10,000-a-night suite at the
luxury Carlton Towers hotel.
Michael’s three dates at Wembley Stadium were all sold out; he was in a
terrific mood. However, as devoted as Lisa was to it during their visit, she
didn’t have enough quality time with him to get a handle on Michael’s state
of being.
Three months went by, and Lisa joined him again in South Africa in
October. This time Lisa stepped off the plane with a shock of blonde hair,
moderately resembling the shade of Debbie’s hair. During this trip, she
made a concerted effort to ‘weasel’ her way (as she later put it) into his
busy days.
Lisa and Michael, and his parents, son and her children, all stayed at the
Palace Hotel in the centre of Johannesburg. The former couple was seen
holding hands and beaming at one another. Yet, beneath the veneer of her
pleasant smiles, Lisa had begun to grow uncomfortable with the new
Michael Jackson. While he was not nearly as troubled as he had been
during her reign in his life, some of the changes she saw in him bothered
her.
For one thing, the vulnerability that he had before, born maybe of
paranoia or an impending sense of doom, had now been replaced with a
kind of bravado. It appeared that Michael felt invincible. A particularly
troubling fact for Lisa was the appearance of a thirteen-year-old Norwegian
boy. He was a cute kid who wore a red baseball cap all the time, given to
him by Michael. His presence, even if it was innocent, was disconcerting.
Did Michael still not realize how dangerous it was for him, in terms of his
public image, to have young boys with him on tour?
On Friday 10 October, Michael performed before 47,000 people at
Johannesburg Stadium. Afterward, Lisa spent hours backstage with
Michael. During that time together, she attempted to raise the topic of
Michael’s new friend. The appearance of impropriety was something that
she felt had to be addressed. Yet, Michael made it clear to her that the issue
would not be discussed. It seemed he no longer required, or at least
welcomed, her counsel.
It had been the self-doubting, vulnerable part of Michael Jackson that had
always been the bridge between him and Lisa Marie Presley. Now, without
that part intact, and with the bridge of their sexual compatibility also broken
down, Lisa felt not just powerless, she also felt like an outsider.
The next day, Lisa and her children were on hand for the formal
ceremony when Michael was made an honorary member of an African
tribe, Bafokeng Ka Bakwena (People of the Crocodile). The 300,000-strong
Bafokeng is regarded as one of the richest in the country due to its
ownership of the world’s second-largest platinum reserve. Katherine and
Joseph, who met the tribe a few days before, were also given ‘citizenship’
certificates.
Dressed in a military-style jacket adorned with gold badges on the chest
and arms, Michael walked slowly through a crowd of native women and
children in the town of Phokeng, ninety miles northwest of Johannesburg,
after the ceremony. With Lisa clutching his arm proudly, Michael smiling
benevolently and touched the hands of his admirers as if he was visiting
royalty. At all times an aide carried a blue-and-yellow umbrella to provide
shade for him and Lisa.
That afternoon, Michael and Lisa went water-skiing at South Africa’s
Sun City resort. Then, that night they had dinner with Katherine at the
resort. During the meal, they applauded as youngsters dressed in leopard
skin tribal garb performed for them.
The next day, Michael rehearsed for his concert at Johannesburg
Stadium. Lisa, with her plans to depart already made, watched from
backstage, waiting for Michael to finish so she could say her ‘goodbyes’.
A small coterie of people watched Michael as he and the dancers
rehearsed ‘Thriller’. In the middle of the song, he halted the performance.
‘Hold it, guys,’ he said. ‘That’s all wrong. It goes like this. Watch.’ He then
glided across the stage effortlessly, as if on air, thereby demonstrating the
correct moves for his troupe. Katherine, who was standing with Lisa,
beamed.
‘When I think of how bad it got with those damn lies, and how far he has
come since then, I have to cry,’ Katherine said, not taking her eyes off her
son. ‘He was almost destroyed. Now, just watch him, he’s so darn good.’
She then put her arm around Lisa and gave her a warm look. ‘And it’s
because of you that he got through it. Do you know that? Do you know how
much we appreciate what you did for him?’
Lisa smiled dimly and shrugged her shoulders. ‘I don’t know if I helped,
or not,’ she told Katherine, modestly. ‘I did love him. That I know. But, face
it, Katherine, your son is one big mystery.’
Katherine tilted her head back and laughed. ‘Girl, tell me about it,’ she
exclaimed.
Michael came off the stage just as the two women were sharing their
conspiratorial moment. ‘Now, what are you two gossiping about?’ he asked,
good-naturedly.
‘You!’ they both said, in unison.
He executed a quick, soft shoe routine, made a funny face at them, and
went back to work.
Lost Love
In November 1997, Debbie Rowe announced that she was pregnant with a
girl, her second ‘gift’ to Michael. This was the child they said had been
conceived in Paris. Michael was elated. At this time, he bought her a new
house in Los Angeles. She moved in with her two pet dogs, and seemed
happy with her life.
Michael anxiously prepared himself for the birth of another baby, excited
to see his family grow. Though he and Debbie still did not live together –
and never would – they got along well. She was his friend – the one who
had his children. The other woman in his life, Lisa Marie Presley, was still
the one who had his heart, and Debbie knew it. ‘She told me that Michael
had Lisa’s picture in his bedroom, on his nightstand,’ said Tanya Boyd.
‘Debbie never had any misguided notion that Michael was in love with her,
and she’s never been in love with him either, I don’t think. “What he has
with Lisa, now that’s true love,” Debbie told me. “I have always known it,”
she said. “I’ve never fought it. I’ve only encouraged it.” She never wanted
to come between Lisa and Michael. “If Lisa would have had his children,”
she told me, “I never would have done it for him. There would have been
no reason for it.”’
On Saturday, 7 February 1998, Michael got together with Lisa for dinner
at the Ivy in Los Angeles. He had telephoned her and said he wanted to take
her out for her thirtieth birthday, which had been about a week earlier.
They arrived at the restaurant holding hands. Michael wore a black hat
and matching surgical mask, Lisa a dark blue dress with a gold choker.
Because they didn’t have a reservation, the manager took them into his
office and served them drinks while they waited for a table in a quiet,
romantic corner. Once seated, Lisa enjoyed a plate of steamed vegetables.
Michael ate crab cakes and fried chicken. However, he slipped the food
underneath his mask, rather than take it off. One wonders what it might be
like to sit across the table from a person who is eating while wearing a
surgical mask. ‘Once you get past the preposterousness of it,’ Lisa
explained, privately, ‘and decide in your head, okay, now, look, the guy is
not going to take the mask off…’
For dessert, they shared a piece of cake, decorated with a single candle –
which Lisa happily blew out. ‘How’s it going with Debbie?’ Lisa wanted to
know, according to what she later recalled to a friend.
Half-heartedly, Michael said it was ‘okay’ with his wife. He had another
glass of red wine, his fourth. He told her that as much as he cared for
Debbie, when he was with her, ‘I focus on what I don’t have, instead of
what I do have. I just want to be in love. Like what you and I had. I was so
afraid,’ he told her, according to her memory. ‘I know now that I closed you
out. What can I do now?’
Lisa says that she didn’t respond. She no longer had the answers to his
problems – not that she ever did – or the solution to his life. There wasn’t
much she could propose, except perhaps the most basic of offerings
between two people with a history who still care about each other. ‘I want
you to know,’ she told him, ‘that if you ever need a friend, I’m here for you.
You have such a good heart, Michael,’ she added. ‘But, dude, tell me this:
why do you have to be so fucking strange?‘
The two dissolved into laughter, probably realizing that there was no
simple answer to that question.
After dinner, they strolled down Robertson Boulevard in Beverly Hills,
window shopping under the watchful eye of paparazzi. At one point,
Michael kissed the top of her head and put two fingers under her chin,
lifting it so her eyes would meet his. His arms closed around her,
enveloping her. They kissed through his silk mask, as if he was some kind
of comic book super hero and it made all the sense in the world. She then
snuggled against him. A paparazzo memorialized the tender moment, the
photographs appearing five days later in a tabloid.
Later, they were driven to Santa Monica for a long walk on the beach,
talking late into the night.
‘I love her,’ Michael told one of his associates the next day, ‘more than
anything, more than anyone, I still love Lisa. We have such a strong
connection.’ His eyes filled with tears. ‘That was my one shot, man,’ he
said. ‘I did a lot of foolish things. I may never get another shot, you know?’
‘In another world, we would be together,’ Lisa would say, ‘just not in his
world, I’m afraid.’
Two months later, Michael was the father of a new daughter.
Paris Katherine Michael Jackson was born on 3 April 1998 (named after
the city in which her parents say the baby was conceived, and also after her
grandmother and her father). Michael’s associates contacted the Pope at the
Vatican in Rome about the possibility of his christening the baby. However,
a Vatican official sent a letter to Michael through his representation in Los
Angeles explaining that The Pontiff would not want to be involved in ‘what
may be perceived by some as a publicity stunt’. (The Vatican had already
been down this same road with Madonna a few years earlier when she
attempted to have the Pope baptize her first child, Lourdes, but was also
turned away.)
When their ‘arrangement’ no longer felt right to Debbie, she asked for a
divorce, and he gave her one on 8 October 1999, no questions asked. He
gave her about ten million dollars in a settlement, beginning with a first
payment of $1.5 million in October.
Michael continued with his life and career in 2000 and 2001 – as noted
later in this text. Then, another baby was born to him in 2002, a boy he
named Prince Michael II. He has told confidants that he hopes to have more
children in the future, and that all of the boys will be named Prince Michael
(III, IV, etc…).
Prince Michael II has the nickname ‘Blanket’. Michael has explained,
‘It’s an expression I use with my family and my employees. I say, “You
should blanket me or you should blanket her,” meaning like a blanket is a
blessing. It’s a way of showing love and caring.’ It was this particular child,
nine months at the time, whom Michael dangled off a balcony in Germany
in November 2002, causing a flood of editorials speculating about his
emotional stability and suitability for fatherhood. Michael was bewildered
by his own actions and distraught by the media coverage. He was also
embarrassed; what would his friends and family think? He publicly
apologized for his behaviour, saying that he became caught up ‘in the
moment’.
Afterwards, Michael received a letter from Elizabeth Taylor, dated 19
December 2002, which lifted his spirits. ‘Don’t ever let them [the public]
get you down, Michael. You’re loved by too many, especially this kid. I
love you just as much as I always have and understand you just as much as
I always have. Don’t hide. You haven’t done anything to be ashamed of. Be
proud of how you are bringing up your children. God knows I am. I love
you with all my heart, and because I know you so well. I will always
understand where others may not. But, you know something: screw the
others. All my love, Elizabeth.’
Michael has not revealed the identity of the mother of his third child. He
would explain that the two older children were ‘a natural conception’ –
meaning, he said, that he and Debbie had sex – and that the new baby was
the result of artificial insemination. ‘I used a surrogate mother and my own
sperm cells,’ he explained. ‘She doesn’t know me and I don’t know her. I
didn’t care what race she was as long as she was healthy and her vision was
good. And her intellect – I wanted to know how intelligent she is.’ He first
noted that the mother was a black woman, then later changed the story and
said he didn’t know her identity. Prince Michael II is very blond. Debbie
had confirmed that the child is not hers. If he knows who the mother is, he
has decided not to reveal her name.
The Martin Bashir Documentary
In February 2003, another strange chapter in Michael’s life opened with the
highly controversial documentary, Living with Michael Jackson, which first
attracted fifteen million viewers in the United Kingdom and more than
double that in the United States. The programme made excitable headlines
on both sides of the Atlantic for its subject, Michael, and
interviewer/presenter, Martin Bashir.
Prior to the Michael Jackson interview, Martin Bashir was most famous
for his 1995 television dissection of Diana, Princess of Wales. Almost
twenty-three million people watched her confess royal unhappiness about
her difficult marriage to Prince Charles, his relationship to Camilla Parker
Bowles and the complex, personal embarrassment Diana called ‘three in a
marriage’. Soon after, the Queen urged Charles and Diana to divorce.
Because Diana had won global sympathy with her interview, Michael
believed Martin when he presented himself as ‘the man who turned Diana’s
life around’. Actually, if he had examined the history of the Diana
documentary, he would have found that it didn’t help her. As she revealed
details of her tragic recent life in a halting, hypnotic voice, it was as if she
had decided to self-destruct, and do it on television. During her interviews,
she seemed distant, aloof and damaged. To her advantage, though, she was
the victim of certain challenges, such as eating disorders and marital
discord, which could, at least, be understandable to the viewer. There was
no way she would be viewed as a freak of nature. Instead, she appeared to
be a sad woman whose life had spun out of control – and was still spinning,
in fact – and who had decided to just come clean with it. However, Michael
Jackson – with his plastic surgeries, babies with no maternal presence and
intense fascination with youngsters – took a greater risk when he decided to
allow Martin Bashir into the environment his first wife called his ‘world of
wonder’.
After his Diana extravaganza, Martin Bashir won an award from the
British Academy of Film and Television Arts and was named the Royal
Television Society’s Journalist of the Year for 1996. He subsequently
landed other high-profile interviews, including one with anguished gay
British actor-comedian Michael Barrymore, in the news after the drowning
of a young man during a party at his house.
Martin courted Michael Jackson for five years, trying to convince him to
participate in the documentary. Finally, after being recommended by
Michael’s friend, the paranormalist Uri Geller, Martin was given an
audience with Michael, during which he was able to convince him to
cooperate. Michael then allowed him total access to his life for eight
months, despite the fact that his advisers felt that such cooperation would
not bode well for him. Martin Bashir spent time at Neverland in California,
and travelled across the United States and Europe with Michael. (Uri would
later regret having ever introduced Michael to Martin.)
The most interesting aspect of the documentary is not what it revealed,
though much of it was astounding. What fascinates about Living with
Michael Jackson is that its subject ever allowed it to be filmed, which
suggests that Michael either still does not understand how he is perceived
by much of the public or that he doesn’t care. He truly believed, according
to those who know him best, that it was a savvy public relations manoeuvre,
to allow a stranger to document his world from an outside view point and in
a way that would prevent Michael from having control over the final
content. He wasn’t thinking clearly about it. He thought it was a cool thing
to do because Diana had done it, and he felt sure that the public would be
interested in his life. He never imagined anyone would be shocked by it
because he simply does not think he or his life is shocking.
Some in Michael’s camp – like John Branca, it was said – never believed
the project would be completed. Like many entertainers, Michael involves
himself in many projects that never get past the developmental stage, and it
was hoped that this one would be another on that list. Such a project would
surely never have been released in days-long-gone when others had
influence over him.
Some supporters of Michael’s have tried to spin the Martin Bashir
documentary as a positive in the star’s life, saying that he presented a
sympathetic image of himself in it. Of course, while watching him discuss
the beatings he endured by his father, one’s heart went out to him. Michael
recalled that Joseph sat in a chair as the boys rehearsed, ‘and he had this
belt in his hand. If you didn’t do it the right way, he would tear you up,
really get you. It was bad. Real bad.’ He is still traumatized by his
childhood and it doesn’t appear that he has come to terms with much of it.
However, that said, most of the rest of the 110 minutes made Michael
appear to be about as eccentric a character as pop culture has ever
produced.
For instance, his description of Paris’s birth: ‘I was so anxious to get her
home after cutting the cord – I hate to say this – I snatched her and just
went home with all the placenta and everything all over her. I just got her in
a towel and ran.’
Privately, Debbie Rowe takes the absurdity to a new level by confirming
that Michael had the placenta frozen! (Of course he did, one might observe.
How else could he keep it?)
Michael’s constant complaining about sensational tabloid coverage of his
life seems irrelevant when his actions are jaw-dropping enough to provide
true material to such publications. ‘Wacko-Jacko Kidnaps His Own baby
Just Hours After Birth’, screamed the front-page headline in Star in April
1998. (‘He just snatched the kid away from her.’) ‘Jacko Snatches Baby
Minutes After Birth’ blared the headline in National Enquirer that same
week. (‘Michael gave Debbie a peck on the check, took Paris in his arms
and whisked her off.’) Who would have believed these stories? However,
even the writers of those articles may have thought it a leap to report that
Michael had the placenta frozen; that would have been too much of a stretch
even for them!
Another scene showed him feeding Prince Michael II with a bottle. As he
fed the infant, concealed by a green chiffon scarf, Michael vigorously
bounced him on his knee. ‘I love you, Blanket,’ he cooed, ‘I love you,
Blanket.’ Then, seeming somewhat wild-eyed and jittery, he recalled his
actions on the balcony in Germany, explaining that he had the infant firmly
in hand when he briefly dangled him off the side, and that it was the media
that was responsible for the ensuing fracas, not him. ‘Why would I put a
scarf over the baby’s face if I was trying to throw him off a balcony?’
Michael asked, angrily. ‘We were waving to thousands of fans below and
they were chanting to see my child, and I was kind enough to let them see.’
Of his love for children, he noted, ‘I’ll say it a million times. I’m not
afraid to say it. If there were no children on this earth, if somebody
announced that all kids are dead, I would jump off the balcony immediately.
I’m done. I’m done.’
Most maddening, perhaps, was Michael’s insistence that ‘I’ve had no
plastic surgery on my face, just my nose. It helped me breathe better, so I
can hit the higher notes.’ He claimed that he’s only had two surgeries, both
on his nose. I’m telling you the honest truth. I don’t do anything to my
face,’ he said. After all of these years, one would think he would have a
better way to deal with the issue of plastic surgery. How about: ‘Obviously,
I have had plastic surgery. Next question, please.’ Who could argue with
that?
Throughout the ages, the one safe haven to which a celebrity can always
retreat from an aggressive media is the ‘No Comment’ zone. It works.
Jackie Kennedy, for instance, rarely had an interesting public comment to
make about anything, and no one held it against her. It’s often better, in fact,
if celebrities have nothing to say, especially if they are unconventional
people who behave in a way that, no matter how much they try, they simply
will not be able to explain to anyone’s satisfaction.
For anyone who knew Michael, watching the Martin Bashir documentary
was painful. Lisa Marie Presley telephoned Neverland the next morning,
telling his assistant that she wanted to speak to Michael as soon as possible.
She was in another state, on a radio tour for her album. Still, she took the
time to call to see how her ex-husband was handling the highly publicized
controversy.
When Michael heard that Lisa was trying to reach him, his heart began to
race. He still hasn’t got over what he shared with her and, according to what
he has said, believes that one day, somehow, they will be together again.
When Lisa married actor Nicolas Cage in Hawaii in November 2002,
Michael had been troubled. When they separated after less than four
months, he called her to check in on her. ‘Oh, don’t worry about me,’ she
told him. ‘It’s just another shit storm in my life. I’m getting through it, just
shovelling through the bullshit.’ He laughed.
He called her at the number she left for him. ‘Dude!’ Lisa said as soon as
she got on the line. ‘That documentary fucking sucked, man. What were
you thinking?‘
They couldn’t stop laughing. Leave it to her to lift his spirits. ‘Oh, screw
Martin Bashir,’ she said. ‘That guy’s never gonna work again, Michael.
Who would ever trust him? He’s over. You fucking killed his career.’
‘I think maybe he tried to kill mine, Lisa,’ Michael said.
‘Oh, please,’ she told him, ‘it’s gonna take more than that shit head of a
reporter to kill your career, believe me.’
It could be argued that Martin had exploited Michael with all of his
leading questions, his presumptions, expressed fascination and
bemusement. For instance, he encouraged Michael to climb the tree atop
which he writes many of his songs while at one with the beauty of
Neverland, his so-called ‘Magic Tree’. One doubts he did so because he
was trying to show Michael’s playful side. What he got was the image of
Michael sitting alone, on top of a tree. It worked; it was touching and even
somewhat disturbing. When Martin later followed Michael on a Las Vegas
shopping spree and observed him spending thousands of dollars on the
worst, most gaudy furnishings, was he doing it for any other reason than to
make Michael look like a spectacle? But why, by the same token, did
Michael allow himself to be seen this way? There were also a number of
sanctimonious voiceovers from Martin as he stood in judgement of Michael
and his life.
Michael was at home, in Neverland, with a few friends and advisers
when he viewed an advance copy of Living with Michael Jackson, just
before it aired in the UK. He expected to be pleased with it. ‘However, he
knew within five minutes that he was going to be very unhappy,’ said an
associate. ‘He watched quietly. You could hear a pin drop in the room, no
one wanted to say a word. When it was over, he was quiet. He kept saying,
“I can’t believe he would do this to me.” There was a lot of discussion
about blocking the programme’s broadcast, but not much hope held out for
it. Mike drank a lot of wine, that night, trying to dull the misery. It wasn’t
until the next day that he became angry. Then, he was adamant that he
didn’t want it released. His attorneys said there was no way to block it.
“Don’t tell me that, now. Find a way,” he said, angrily. However, they were
never able to do that.’
In the final analysis, though, Michael did say what he said and was the
way he was – tricky editing had nothing to do with him, at the age of forty-
four, holding hands and giggling with a cancer-survivor, age twelve, and
admitting that he sometimes sleeps in the same room with him. Recalled the
youngster, his head nuzzling against Michael’s shoulder, ‘I was, like,
“Michael, you can sleep in the bed,” and he was, like, “No, no, you sleep in
the bed,” and I was, like, “No, no, no, you sleep in the bed,” and then he
said, “Look, if you love me, then you’ll sleep in the bed.” I was, like, “Oh,
man!”’ said the youngster. ‘So, I finally slept in the bed.’ (Michael slept on
the floor.)
As the boy spoke, Michael gazed upon him steadily, clearly wanting to
convey his affection and devotion. Once again, by his own doing, he had
presented himself to the world in a way that would cause the raising of
eyebrows and the wagging of tongues. Michael told Martin, ‘I have slept in
a bed with many children. Why can’t you share your bed? The most loving
thing to do is to share your bed with someone. When you say “bed”, you’re
thinking sexual. They make that sexual; it’s not sexual. We’re going to
sleep, I tuck them in and I put a little music on, and when it’s story time, I
read a book. We go to sleep with the fireplace on. I give them hot milk, you
know, we have cookies. It’s very charming, it’s very sweet; it’s what the
whole world should do.’
Of course, talent and excess go hand in hand in the entertainment world,
and in some ways Michael Jackson may be no more eccentric than certain
other stars in pop history. Imagine what Living With Elvis might have
looked like in his declining years, secluded at Graceland, paranoid and on
drugs? The problem for Michael is that he has been publicly wigging out
for more than fifteen years, since the hyperbaric chamber scam of 1986.
‘No, I am Peter Pan,’ he told Martin Bashir. ‘I’m Peter Pan in my heart.’
Such PR has never served him well in the court of public opinion; his
wacky image only serves to diminish his important, hard-earned legacy in
the entertainment field.
Perhaps Lisa Marie said it best to Playboy writer, Rob Tannenbaum: ‘For
a while, Michael was like the Wizard of Oz, the man behind the curtain. At
one time, he was really good at manipulating a Howard Hughes type of
image. He became this bigger-than-life figure. But at some point, it turned
on him and he became this freak [in some of the public’s view]. And now
he can’t get out from under it. When you’re the king of your own palace,
there are no morals or ethics or integrity. Everyone will kiss your ass and
then give you the push that knocks you over.’
After Living with Michael Jackson aired in the United States, an unhappy
Michael issued a statement saying that he felt ‘devastated’ and ‘utterly
betrayed’ by the documentary, that he viewed it as ‘a gross distortion of the
truth’ and a ‘tawdry attempt to misrepresent’ his life and his abilities as a
father. Michael clearly felt that the journalist had let him down. Blaming the
sensational tone of the documentary on its editing and on what he saw as
Bashir’s bad-faith intentions, Michael then launched a turn-about-is-fair-
play offensive by releasing a sixteen-second extract of unreleased film that
would, it was hoped, make Bashir look like a complete ass.
In Living with Michael Jackson, Martin accused Michael of having little
time for his own youngsters: Prince Michael I, then five; Paris Katherine
Michael, four; and baby Prince Michael II. Of the Jackson offspring, Martin
noted, ‘The children are restricted. They are over protected.’ He branded
Michael ‘broken, childish and self-obsessed’. He said, ‘I came away quite
saddened and deeply disturbed by what I saw.’
However, on Michael’s footage, Bashir gushes, ‘Your relationship with
your kids is fantastic. In fact, it almost makes me weep when I see you with
them because your interaction is so natural, so loving and so caring.
Everyone that comes into contact with you knows that.’ Michael Jackson
replies: ‘Thank you.’
Did this film make Martin Bashir appear to be a liar, and Michael an
exemplary parent? Perhaps, to some, it did. To others, it came as little
surprise that an interviewer would attempt to ingratiate himself to the
person that he’s talking to in order to encourage him to be more candid.
It was then decided that Michael would release an entire two-hour
documentary about his life, as seen by him and some of his inner-circle.
Fox-TV, in America, paid him two million dollars for the rights to The
Michael Jackson Interview: The Footage You Were Never Meant to See, and
then the programme was sold around the world. Because his interpretation
of Martin Bashir’s un-released footage would not have been enough to
sustain an entire documentary, Katherine and Joseph were brought in to
defend him, as were others such as his brother, Jermaine, his makeup artist,
Karen Faye, and Debbie Rowe.
Debbie’s attempts to explain her relationship to Michael, and to their
children, may have done him more harm than good. ‘My kids don’t call me
Mom because I don’t want them to,’ she said. ‘They’re Michael’s children.
It’s not that they are not my children, but I had them because I wanted him
to be a father. People make remarks, “I can’t believe she left her children.”
Left them? I left my children? I did not leave my children. My children are
with their father, where they are supposed to be. I didn’t do it to be a
mother… If he called me tonight and said let’s have five more [children],
I’d do it in a heartbeat.’
She seems well-meaning; her heart in the right place. However, Debbie’s
unconventional relationship with Michael, and especially with her children,
is perplexing, no matter how much logic she tries to ascribe to it. It’s
probably better left unpublicized, unexploited.
After the duelling documentaries were broadcast – Martin’s and
Michael’s – Michael once again dismissed his longtime attorney, John
Branca, this time, by fax. John was said to be sorry to go, but also a bit
relieved. His had been an exhausting job, on and off for twenty-five years,
made even more frustrating when Michael stopped taking his good advice.
As a friend as well as his attorney for so many years, it was difficult for him
to see Michael make some of his choices. Also, the woman managing
Michael at this time, Trudy Green, quit her position – she, too, did not know
Michael had finalized a deal with Bashir until it was too late to do anything
about it. Then, Michael fired his accountant, Barry Siegel, as if completely
cleaning out the shop.
At this same time, a website published previously unseen documents
filed by authorities a decade before when Jordie Chandler detailed his
alleged sexual abuse at Michael’s hands. It had to happen; more reminders
of the past misery with Jordie and Evan, and all as a result of the
appearance of impropriety that resulted from footage of Michael holding
hands with a twelve-year-old on the Martin Bashir documentary. After the
release of the lurid five-page document, Michael issued a statement saying
he ‘has respected the obligation of confidentiality’ and that Jordie’s
declaration was just being used to ‘further sully’ his [Michael’s] character.
‘It will never go away, will it?’ he then asked one adviser, seeming
miserable. Just when he was able to forget about Jordie Chandler for a time,
he had to once again be reminded of him. ‘It’s not fair. Why won’t the
media leave me alone?’ he asked. ‘Why?’
If Michael truly wants to redeem himself, perhaps he should do the one
thing he has never done: join us, the general public, in acknowledging the
strange, disturbing aspects of some of his behaviour and attribute them to
something, rather than continue to act as if they don’t exist. Instead, he
issues statements such as one after the Martin Bashir interview, in which he
said, ‘I am bewildered at the length to which people will go to portray me
so negatively.’ Then, he allows his enablers to come forth with their own
proclamations: ‘He’s not crazy. It’s the public that’s crazy. He’s not nuts.
It’s the public that’s nuts. Why don’t you understand? Why don ‘t you get
it?‘ Rather, one wishes Michael Jackson would be the one to finally ‘get it’,
apologize for any perceived impropriety and say, ‘To tell you the truth, I
don’t know what I was thinking.’
HIStory, Blood on the Dance Floor & Invincible
Michael Jackson survived the devastating child molestation allegations of a
decade ago, but it could be argued not without considerable damage to his
recording career. In fact, his record sales have dipped dramatically since
1993.
In 1995, a double CD was issued, HIStory – Past, Present & Future,
Book 1. The package boasted fifteen of his greatest hits (‘Beat It’, ‘Billie
Jean’, and the rest) and fifteen new songs, such as the thoughtful ‘Stranger
in Moscow’, the elegant ‘Earth Song’ and ‘Scream’ (with Janet, the first
single release from the package).
‘You Are Not Alone’, also included, remains among Michael’s best
songs; it made chart history in America by becoming the first song ever to
go straight to number one on the Billboard charts in its first week. It also
topped the chart in Britain, after debuting there at number three. On
listening to ‘You Are Not Alone’, one wonders how many times Michael
tried to tell himself, during his most desperate and anguished times, that he
did have support in his life, from a higher power, or even friends and
family, whether he actually believed it or not.
The only problem with ‘You Are Not Alone’ was the bizarre video for it,
in which Michael and Lisa Marie frolic about semi-nude against an ethereal
backdrop. ‘I don’t know why I did it,’ Lisa says. ‘I was sucked up in the
moment. It was kind of cool being in a Michael Jackson video. Come on!’
Actually, the semi-nudity made no sense and was a bit disconcerting; one
wished they would put their clothes back on.
Another stand-out is Michael’s version of Charlie Chaplain’s ‘Smile’.
What a vocal performance and delivery he gives to this song! Never has he
sounded more sincere, more gorgeous. The song was scheduled for release
as a single, but cancelled at the last minute when it was decided it was
probably not commercial. However, some promotional CDs – now
collectors’ items – did slip out, with pictures of Michael nattily dressed as
Charlie Chaplain.
Huge statues of Michael were constructed and unveiled in a number of
European cities to coincide with the record’s release. (Leave it to Michael to
have a huge statue of himself towed down the Thames as a publicity stunt!)
Also, a controversy over the lyrics of ‘They Don’t Care About Us’ broke
out, with Michael accused of anti-Semitism because of his lyrics ‘kike me’
and ‘jew me’. He replaced them with ‘strike me’ and ‘do me’ as a result.
However, any publicity for Michael is usually good publicity when he’s
promoting a record. HIStory went on to sell about fifteen million copies
worldwide, a slip down from Dangerous, which had managed twenty-seven
million (Bad sold twenty-five million; Thriller went on to fifty-two million,
and Off the Wall, fifteen million). Still, HIStory was a major success –
artistically as well as commercially – though one largely ignored by a media
still distracted by his turbulent and vastly entertaining personal life.
Blood on the Dance Dloor – History in the Mix, Michael’s 1997 album,
contained five new songs and eight previously unreleased, kick-ass dance
remixes of songs such as ‘Scream’, ‘You Are Not Alone’ and ‘Stranger in
Moscow’ from HIStory. Several of the other songs on Blood are also
memorable. ‘Ghosts’ stands out, perhaps because it’s so evocative of
Michael’s spell-binding ‘Ghosts’ long-styled video in which he is
transformed into an old, white man with no rhythm. (It’s classic, must-see
Michael Jackson.)
The bad news for Michael was that the collection was not a success in
America; it was dismissed by critics and much of his audience, who seemed
confused as to whether it was a new release or some kind of hybrid
combination of songs. Michael’s British fans, however, did not disappoint:
Blood was a major hit in the United Kingdom, kicking off with the single
release of ‘Blood on the Dance Floor’ debuting at number one, then the
album. In truth, there may be nothing in his entire catalogue better than
‘Blood on the Dance Floor’, a song that many of Michael’s American fans
don’t even know exists, it was so overlooked. He wrote and produced it
himself.
Blood only sold about four million copies worldwide. While it’s not fair
to equate the sales of an album of mostly remixes with the sales of his other
products, this was still a weak showing. It, and the ‘Ghosts’ video, like
much of what Michael did at this time, was lost in the ongoing controversy
of his world: the ongoing confusion about children, Lisa Marie, Debbie
Rowe… Without that, this stellar work would no doubt have found an
appreciative audience.
It should also be noted that it was because of its weak showing Sony
executives no longer viewed Michael as being ‘invincible’. Heads would
not roll, it was learned, if he had a flop record, or if he was unhappy with
the company. After Blood on the Dance Floor disappointed in the USA, he
was never a company priority again.
Invincible (released in October 2001), was said to be the most expensive
recording ever produced. Sony advanced Michael about forty million
dollars to make it. They then spent another twenty-five million to promote it
(though, it’s difficult to specify how such funds were allocated because the
promotion was so weak).
From the beginning, Michael didn’t seem excited about the project, and
perhaps his lack of enthusiasm and focus became apparent to some
listeners. The fact that it took about three years to compose the album –
more than fifty songs were produced, mixed and remixed with writers and
producers being hired and fired and hired and fired – made some observers
feel that Michael was, as one producer put it, ‘sick to death of the whole
thing.’
Also, Michael began battling with Sony early in the production of
Invincible. He had thought that the licence to the masters to his biggest-
selling albums (Thriller, Bad, Dangerous, etc…) were to revert back to him
in 2000, and was counting the days until that would happen. He would then
be able to market the songs himself in some way or with some other label,
and not have to split the proceeds with Sony. However, when his advisers
checked his contract, they found that the classics revert back to Michael
only if he releases about one new CD for Sony every couple of years –
which was never going to happen in Michael Jackson’s world, one in which
he spends years on just one project. There was even a Christmas CD
specified in the deal (he’s not done one of those since 1970, with The
Jackson 5), which Michael said he didn’t know about, as well as a couple of
soundtracks. Michael was way behind in this proposed release schedule,
would never be able to catch up, and wouldn’t think to even attempt to do
it. However, for each specified album he did not deliver (which was most of
them), Sony was able to add a few more years to the countdown of rights
reversion of the others. As it stood, Michael would be just a tad older than
God before the rights to his top-selling albums would ever be reverted to
him.
After some investigation into the matter, it was learned that the same
attorney who represented Michael on this deal had also represented Sony.
(How, one wonders, was this ever allowed to occur?) Thus Michael
managed to extricate himself from the entire Sony deal, then, using the
obvious conflict of interest in this negotiation as leverage… In the end, it
was decided he would be able to leave Sony, but not until he had delivered
Invincible, then a Greatest Hits package and then a Box Set.
Still, signed to the label or not, Michael would owe Sony hundreds of
millions in advances, loans and other monies the company had invested into
in his chaotic personal life and professional career. Michael was so
chagrined by the situation with Sony that he really didn’t want to produce
another record for them.
If he received a telephone call while in the studio recording Invincible, it
could mean the end of that day’s work. ‘Sorry, I’ve got business to take care
of,’ he’d announce while walking out the door. If he had to go to the
bathroom, the production staff would fret because Michael would
sometimes sneak out and not be seen or heard from for days. ‘He’s an
artist,’ explained one producer. ‘They’re usually pretty nuts.’
However, when the album was finally released, it demonstrated
something many of Michael’s supporters already know: he is best when
recording his own material, such as the sublime ‘Speechless’, which is
really the only track he solely wrote (in about forty-five minutes, he says,
after a water-balloon fight with his children) and produced, from beginning
to end. However, he doesn’t seem to have the fire in his belly he once did to
write and produce his own music, therefore Invincible was largely a
compilation of material from outside songwriters and producers, such as
Rodney Jerkins, the hit-making mastermind behind tunes by the Backstreet
Boys, Britney Spears, Brandy and Destiny’s Child. If Michael wants a
huge-selling album in his future, perhaps he should write and produce it
himself – all of it. He still has the magic touch, if not the drive, ambition
and, perhaps, self-confidence.
The initial single release was the somewhat formulaic Rodney Jerkins
song, ‘You Rock My World’. It had been Sony’s decision; Michael was
against it and fought for the upbeat, probably more commercial
‘Unbreakable’ to be issued. He had already conceived of a video for the
song. It’s interesting that even at this stage of his career, his choices were
vetoed by his label. In the end, ‘You Rock My World’ stalled at number ten
in the United States. It debuted at number two in the United Kingdom, but
dropped from there quickly. Sales in the rest of Europe were comparable; a
Top Ten hit in most countries, but not a huge record.
The video for ‘You Rock My World’ was a miscalculation; it looked like
a remake of the ‘Smooth Criminal’ short-film, but with Michael in a black
suit instead of a white one. In most of the production, Michael seems to be
camouflaging the top half of his face with his fedora, causing the viewer to
wonder what he is trying to hide. Again, he didn’t seem inspired by the
concept, anyway – even if it did have a weird cameo appearance by Marlon
Brando. There had been upsetting debates between Michael and Sony over
the video’s budget, and by the time he was to begin production he was, as
one of his intimates put it, ‘completely over it, done with it.’ The dancers
had rehearsed for days before Michael appeared on the set. When he finally
arrived, he did pretty much the same variety of jerky, robotic steps he’s
been doing for years, as if trapped in his own myth and afraid to break out
of it.
A stand-out on Invincible is Carole Bayer Sager’s, Kenny ‘Babyface’
Edmonds and John McClain’s sparkling, ‘You Are My Life’. It was
recorded just five weeks before the album was released – that’s how late in
the schedule they were considering material. The writers first played it for
Michael on a Thursday, he loved it – changed the lyrics from ‘You Are My
World’ to ‘You Are My Life’ (and got a songwriting credit in the process!)
and then recorded it the next evening. John McClain, an executive at
DreamWorks Records, has been one of Michael’s most trusted and capable
advisers for decades. He wrote the song based on a finger exercise he had
created for his guitar practice!
The second release from the album was ‘Cry’. However, Michael was so
angry at Sony for the budget allocated for the video, he refused to even
appear in it. Then, the delightful ‘Butterflies’ began receiving radio, and
could have been a hit record. However, again, Jackson and Sony battled
over the video, and production was cancelled – as was the commercial
release of the song.
The battle lines were boldly drawn between Michael and Sony in a war
that continued to be so bitter it would contribute to the commercial failure
of Invincible. The executives at the label, all the way up to its chieftain at
the time, Tommy Motolla, didn’t care what Michael thought about
anything, he was now that low on their priority lists. His very good song,
‘What More Can I Give?’ (recorded with a host of pop stars in the wake of
9-11 in an effort similar to ‘We Are The World’), was shelved by the label.
Of course, Michael didn’t help matters when he hired a former gay porn
director to direct the video; the man is a friend of his, and Jackson didn’t
feel that anything was wrong with the association. However, he
inadvertently provided Sony with more ammunition to use against him.
Frustrated and angry at the label for this and other sins, Michael then went
on a terrible, ill-advised campaign against Tommy Motolla, holding a press
conference and other public events in the summer of 2002 to call him a
‘racist’, insisting he is ‘very, very, very… devilish.’ This was not his best
moment.
In the end, Invincible sold only about ten million copies worldwide – a
crushing blow for Michael, as well as for loyal fans who campaigned for it
with more devotion and organization than Michael’s own label, Sony,
possibly did. Even though it entered the Billboard charts at number one, it
sank quickly, falling out of the Top Ten in a month. It also debuted at
number one in the UK, Germany, Holland and a number of other countries,
but didn’t last long at the top of those charts either – except in France,
where it was number one for three weeks. (In Britain, it fell out of the Top
Ten completely in three weeks.) The reviews were, generally, dreadful, and
often unfair, focusing on the artist’s unusual nature, rather than his music.
Maybe the expectations had been so high for a new Michael Jackson
collection, there was no way for any recording to rise to the occasion, let
alone one caught in the cross-fire of such acrimonious exchanges between
artist and label.
Justin and Britney
Michael Jackson does try to stay current with musical trends, as evidenced
by some of the hip-hop production work on Invincible. One way he
attempts to do that is to keep the lines of communication open with popular
young entertainers, such as pop heart-throb Justin Timberlake. Michael is a
big admirer of Justin’s and was determined to meet him. A couple of years
ago, when Justin was about twenty, Michael asked Wade Robson (who,
when he was a youngster, was brought forward by Anthony Pellicano to say
that he slept innocently in bed with Michael), to arrange a meeting. Robson
was a friend of Timberlake’s and worked with him and ’N Sync as a
choreographer.
‘Are you kidding?’ Justin said when asked by Wade if he’d be interested
in meeting Michael. ‘Hell, yeah. Who wouldn’t want to meet Michael
Jackson? He’s my idol.’ The meeting would take place at the Four Seasons
Hotel in New York.
At the appointed hour, Wade, his girlfriend Mayte Garcia (ex wife of
Prince), and Justin showed up in the hotel lobby… with Justin’s then-
girlfriend, Britney Spears. Britney, who is a big admirer of Michael’s,
simply couldn’t resist tagging along.
‘Oh no,’ Michael said when told that Justin had brought Britney. ‘I didn’t
invite her. Why’d he have to bring her?‘
‘Well, she’s his girlfriend, Mike,’ said one of his advisers.
‘Oh man, you gotta be kidding me?’ Michael remarked. ‘He brought his
girlfriend? Damn. I just wanted to see Justin. Maybe she should wait
downstairs, or something?’
The notion that Britney Spears might wait in the lobby while Michael
entertained Justin, Wade and Mayte was not an idea his associates felt they
could suggest. ‘Mike, look. You can’t keep her waiting in the lobby,’ said
one of them. ‘How’s that gonna look? She’s one of the biggest stars in show
business, Mike. Come on!’
‘Oh, man,’ Michael protested again, chagrined by the turn of events.
‘Damn. She’s just gonna be in the way.’
On and on went the discussions. Finally, Michael agreed to allow them
both up to his suite.
Once they got up there, however, Michael was enchanted by both Justin
and Britney. They were so thrilled to meet him, the two lavished more
praise upon him than he’d probably gotten in about a week.
‘How about when you did the moonwalk on that Motown show?’ Justin
said, according to one recollection. ‘Man, that was so fucking cool. You are
the coolest, Michael. I can’t believe I am standing here with Michael
Fucking Jackson.’
‘And how about that “Thriller” video?’ Britney enthused. ‘That was the
best. You revolutionized videos, dude. You are the fucking best.’
His indelible influence on modern pop is so far-reaching and entrenched,
it’s probably not surprising that Justin and Britney were dazzled to be in his
presence. Michael beamed; as far as the top teen stars of the day were
concerned, he was still the man. *
‘Everyone wants to be crazy’
Michael Jackson has earned an estimated $500 million dollars in his
lifetime, about $100 million from 1982’s Thriller alone. A report by the
business magazine Forbes last year estimated his net worth at $300 million
but warned that he had incurred big debts and that his spending seemed to
be out of control.
Though Michael has made some canny investments, he has experienced
financial difficulties in recent years because of his high overheads. He
spends money like mad, as demonstrated when he appeared to shell out
about six million dollars in minutes on baroque vases and urns, with Martin
Bashir’s cameras rolling in Las Vegas. ‘I want that one,’ he exclaimed, ‘and
that one and that one and… yoo-hoo? How much is that one!’ (However, he
did return much of that merchandise after the programme was broadcast –
buyer’s remorse, perhaps… or maybe just a reconsideration of his taste in
furnishings.)
His staff of 120 people costs him about $300,000 a month. More than
once, the company that leases much of the amusement park equipment has
threatened to repossess it; Michael has had to come up with emergency
payments, thereby not being able to compensate certain employees.
Neverland’s monthly expenditures amount to about $1.2 million.
A couple of years ago, Michael used his one-half share of the Sony/ATV
music catalogue as collateral to borrow $200 million. (Michael bought ATV
in 1985 for $47.5 million. Ten years later, in 1995, he sold 50 per cent of
ATV to Sony for about $90 million. Sony/ATV, of course, owns the
publishing rights to hundreds of Beatles songs, as well as more than
400,000 other songs, including some of Elvis’s and even Madonna’s.) Sony
guaranteed the $200 loan for Michael. However, if he defaults, the company
can then move to claim his share of ATV.
‘He’s a ticking financial time bomb waiting to explode,’ claimed the
attorney of Myung Ho Lee, his former financial manager from 1998 to 2001
who sued him for back payment. (The suit was settled in June 2003.)
More than likely, in order to meet the loan, Michael will borrow $200
million from someone else, pay back the original lender, and then owe the
money to a new one. He’s never going to be sensible when it comes to
finances; yet he will always live like a king. According to different legal
filings along the way, he owes hundreds of thousands of dollars to
attorneys, publicists and even to limousine companies; people apparently
work for him, and then wait to be paid, because it’s worth it just to be able
to be affiliated to him. He even still owes money to the contractor who built
Neverland! Those who predict his financial downfall forget that he’s a
person with whom powerful people want to rub shoulders, no matter what,
a famous man who traffics with the international elite. There will always be
someone, somewhere, willing to bail him out, if it becomes necessary to do
so, even if he’s viewed as a poor risk. Why? Because he’s Michael Jackson.
Besides, the $200 million isn’t due until 2006. In Michael’s world, that’s
a lifetime away. There are times when he’s simply trying to get through the
week; his eye certainly isn’t on what will happen in three years. Also, he
can take comfort in knowing that he can eradicate the entire matter by doing
the one thing he most doesn’t want to do: tour. A couple of unsuccessful
CDs, videos and bad judgement calls can still not dim the glory that has
been Michael Jackson’s performing career for decades. His 1997 HIStory
tour was a monumental success for him, setting attendance records at each
stop along the way. The public might not be as supportive of his music as it
was before the allegations, but Michael still sold out concert halls after the
scandal.
For instance, he feared that he would have problems performing in the
United States, and was particularly nervous about two January 1997 dates
in Hawaii, his first American shows since the scandal (and his first US Tour
stop since 1989). However, the two concerts (4 and 5 January 1997, in
Honolulu) were hugely successful for him. While no other musical act had
ever sold out the stadium, Michael’s shows sold out in less than a day.
Hawaii promoter, Tom Moffatt enthused, ‘I’ve never seen anything like it…
there’s been nothing even close to this the Rolling Stones, Elton John, Julio
Iglesias, the Eagles.’ Evan Chandler may have thought he would ‘ruin’
Michael Jackson… and maybe he did do him significant damage where
record sales are concerned, but not when it comes to his ability to draw
concert goers.
In 2001, he was offered ten million dollars simply to perform two nights
in Las Vegas. He also had $100 million guaranteed for a national tour.
Imagine what he might command for a world tour? He could earn enough to
handle his responsibility with the bank loan – plus whatever he may require
to cover his annual Toys ‘R’ Us budget. ‘But it takes too much out of me,’
he told me of touring, back in 1995. ‘It’s like a two-hour marathon, every
show. I swear, I must lose ten pounds a concert. The expectations are too
high. It’s hard.’
Michael also spends a fortune on presents for children around the world,
some of whom he knows but many of whom he doesn’t and who are
connected to him through various charities. Also, of course, he splurges on
himself: for instance, in June 1999 he paid $1.54 million at a Sotheby’s
auction to own David O. Selznick’s Best Picture Oscar for Gone With the
Wind. Moreover, he gives generously to friends such as Elizabeth Taylor,
who is accustomed to receiving expensive baubles from Michael on a
regular basis, and he doesn’t disappoint. He recently spent $10,000 in Las
Vegas, on perfume for her.
Unfortunately, making his life more complex is the fact Michael is
always involved in lawsuits from people with whom he’s done business in
the past: former promoters, producers, managers, accountants, investment
bankers, employees have all come after him for tens of millions of dollars.
It seems that the lawsuits never stop coming. Brian Oxman, who has
represented Michael and some of his siblings for more than ten years, says
that Michael has given about 500 depositions in his lifetime and, amazingly,
been involved in more than 1,500 lawsuits. If one figures that Michael
didn’t start becoming involved in litigation until he was a professional
entertainer of about ten years of age, and it’s unlikely that the suits started
that early, it would amount to thirty-five years of lawsuits or an average of
forty lawsuits a year.
Michael, of course, is not the only one giving depositions – all of the
litigants are required to do so, as well. Such interrogations then become
public record and, often, the foundation for interesting assertions. Earlier
this year, as a result of depositions given during a lawsuit filed against
Michael, it was reported by Vanity Fair that he hired a witch doctor named,
Baba, to sacrifice forty-two cows in order to curse David Geffen, Steven
Spielberg and dozens of others on a Hate List. Sure, it’s preposterous, but in
Michael’s world – one in which he whisks his baby out of a hospital, ‘with
all the placenta and everything all over her’ – it could be argued that
anything goes.
In Michael’s song ‘Tabloid Junkie’ he wrote, ‘Just because you read it in
a magazine or see it on a TV screen don’t make it factual.’ He might have
added,’… or read it in a deposition.’
Michael becomes anxious about each lawsuit filed against him, but often
not until it involves his personal participation which is usually at the time of
deposition. ‘He has, on some occasions in the past, not eaten when he
should,’ says Oxman. ‘He can become very concerned and nervous at
depositions. He doesn’t like lawsuits, and it makes him ill to have to cope
with litigation that people heap on him. He is tired of being sued. But this is
the kind of life that Michael leads. No one wants to be reasonable.
Everyone wants to be crazy.’
Fathers and Sons
Perhaps it’s not surprising that one person more moved by Martin
Bashir’s Living With Michael Jackson documentary than maybe anyone else
in the Jackson family was Michael’s father, Joseph. Every time he sees
Michael on television describing how he was beaten as a child, Joseph can’t
help but cringe.
Today, Joseph regrets many of his actions, wishes he had made different
choices as a parent – even if he does put up a tough front. Michael first
spoke about his view of his father in a 1993 interview by Oprah Winfrey.
‘There were times when he’d come to see me, I’d get sick,’ Michael said.
‘I’d start to regurgitate. He’s never heard me say this,’ Michael added. ‘I’m
sorry,’ he said, looking into the camera. ‘Please don’t be mad at me.’ He
hastened to add, ‘But I do love him.’ Afterwards, a visibly hurt Joseph went
on television and said, ‘I didn’t know he was ’gurgitatin’, [sic] but if he did
’gurgitate, he ’gurgitated all the way to the bank.’ True to the nature of their
conflicted relationship, Michael then felt so badly about his words to Oprah
that, to show his deep regret, he bought Joseph a new automobile.
‘I was tough on him,’ Joseph told me of Michael, a few years before
Oprah’s interview. At the time, he and Michael weren’t even speaking; the
subject of their disagreement was not known to me. ‘See, the thing is that I
wanted him to know that the world was not a nice place,’ Joseph went on.
‘He was so damn sensitive, more than the other kids, I was worried about
him. Me and Katie both were. So, yeah, I admit it,’ he said, a bit
defensively. ‘I was hard on him. Maybe too much, huh?’ His eyes searched
my face for an answer. ‘Maybe I should have backed off, do you think? I
don’t know. I do know this. I would do it differently, today.’ He shook his
head, sadly and concluded, ‘What father doesn’t wish he had the chance to
go back and do it… differently?’
By February 2003, Joseph’s son, Michael, was four years older than
Joseph had been on the day he took his talented boys to Motown to audition
for the company. Then, Joseph was vigorous and full of fight, arguing with
Berry Gordy and Ewart Abner, playing around behind his wife’s back and
ordering his boys about in his own inimitable way. Now, he’s slowed down.
He sometimes finds it difficult to rise from a chair.
Those who know him best say that seventy-three-year-old Joseph
Jackson has become, in his senior years, sentimental and even sad about the
past. He wishes his relationship with his wife and children had been better,
more satisfying. Somehow, he has managed to set it straight with Katherine,
especially in the last ten years. Despite all that has happened to their family
– the in-fighting, family politics, hurt, anger, betrayal and disappointment –
Joseph and Katherine, seventy-two, remain united as husband and wife.
They have been married for more than fifty years. The names of the women
who have come and gone from their lives have been relegated to the distant
past. ‘Now, what was that girl’s name?’ Katherine recently asked him in
front of a family member. They were speaking of Gina Sprague, from
almost twenty-five years ago. Joseph thought for a moment, and had to
smile. ‘I swear to God,’ he said, ‘I can’t remember.’ Katherine looked
perplexed for a moment, then exclaimed, ‘My goodness, Joseph. Neither
can I. Oh, well…’
Given all the evidence, it could be said that what should have been the
story of a family’s transcendence and triumph over poverty turned out,
instead, to be a tale of tragedy and disappointment. However, maybe that’s a
cynical view of the Jacksons’ story. What if Joseph hadn’t been so driven to
transform the lives of his family? What if they’d never left Gary, Indiana?
Would they have been better off there? It’s doubtful. They’ve had a
remarkable, thrilling life in Los Angeles, even with all of the intense, and
often hurtful, melodrama.
‘At the root of it, we love each other,’ Joseph has explained, ‘and I guess
that’s what has kept us together all these years. Even when it got bad,’ he
said, before correcting himself with a smile, ‘even when I got bad and I
didget bad, that woman loved me, and my kids loved me, I like to think.
You don’t see that in this world so much. I’m a lucky man.’
Joseph and Katherine were both upset about the Martin Bashir
documentary. They know how easy it is to paint a sensational picture of
their most famous son. They felt that Bashir had exploited his obvious
eccentricities, and were incensed by his machinations. They were also
moved by Michael’s recollection of his childhood. It was obvious from his
demeanour that he was still in such pain.
When Joseph telephoned Michael early the next morning, he found him
crying. Michael said he felt wretched about the way the documentary had
turned out and, according to a family member, he told his father, ‘I just
hope that, in twenty years, my kids don’t see it. What will they think of me,
Joseph?’
Joseph said that he and Katherine wanted to visit him as soon as possible
at Neverland. It had been some time since they’d been to the ranch. Michael
was suspicious. In the past, whenever Joseph wanted to meet with him it
had to do with a scheme to reunite him with his brothers. Michael didn’t
have the energy to turn him down again. ‘I promise you, Michael, it’s not
about the brothers,’ Joseph said. ‘It’s about us, you and me and Katherine.
Plus,’ he said, ‘we want to see the kids. Please.’ (He was referring to his
grandchildren.) ‘They’re as important to us as they are to you, Michael.’
Michael must have been moved. Whereas show business was once
paramount in his life, it’s true that his children are, today, his primary
concern, his great passion. Ironically, the allegations of sexual abuse
levelled against him a decade ago, those charges that practically laid ruin to
his life and career, had a surprising consequence: they were the catalyst for
change. Evan Chandler, father of Jordie, had promised to ruin Michael.
‘You’re going down,’ he told him. ‘You are going down.’ It was a terrible
threat, one no person would ever want to hear. In an effort to reprioritize his
world, Michael then reached within to learn what might truly matter to him.
He wanted to be vitally involved in something meaningful, not just in show
business, and he decided that it would be in the raising of his own children
that he would find the most satisfaction. So, he had children – not in a
conventional manner, but what else could one expect of Michael Jackson?
Katherine and Joseph arrived at Neverland a few days after the United
States broadcast of the Martin Bashir programme. They would then spend
the next five days with Michael and his children. Mornings would begin
with the ritual of Katherine and Michael having breakfast together on one
of the patios, the air thick with the mingled scent of the wildflowers
Katherine has said she so enjoys. They would then feed the children in the
expansive kitchen.
Meanwhile, Joseph would sleep late in one of the guest quarters. When
he awakened, a personal butler, on staff at Neverland, would assist him with
his morning needs. Joseph would then spend afternoons with Michael,
taking in the well-manicured vistas of Neverland, talking privately. From all
accounts, they looked happy to be together. One of the few associates of
Michael’s also present that week at Neverland recalled the afternoon father
and son were seen having a picnic with Prince Michael I on one of
Neverland’s verdant lawns. Katherine and Paris were off with a staff
member to a Toys ‘R’ Us store in nearby San Maria. (The baby spent the
afternoon, sleeping.) Because it had rained earlier in the day, dampness
lingered into the chilly February afternoon. Still, as they ate a fried chicken
meal prepared by Michael’s personal chef, the bright sun shone down upon
them, three generations of Jackson men, laying on a blanket… talking,
laughing and enjoying each other’s company. ‘I love him,’ Michael later
said of his father, ‘and I totally, totally forgive him.’
Joseph and Katherine were delighted to check in on their grandchildren
and see how Michael was progressing with them. They found that Prince
Michael I and Paris are bright, confident, affectionate and considerate. They
pray before meals. They are polite, thoughtful and funny. Michael becomes
angry when they swear, as they sometimes do since most of their friends are
adults. He never spanks them, however; he would never lay a hand on them,
but as he puts it, ‘No means no.’ He doesn’t raise his voice in anger, and
doesn’t seem to have to do so – they are generally well behaved. If one does
act up, he or she has to endure a ‘time out’, which means standing in a
corner, alone, to cool off.
Michael explained that he rations the youngsters’ toys and sends presents
they receive as Christmas gifts from his fans to orphanages around the
world, allowing the children to keep just one. He has taught them not to
refer to any of their toys as ‘mine’, when friends are over to visit; he wants
them to learn to share. It’s telling, maybe, that he doesn’t like seeing his
children stare into a mirror for too long when getting ready for the day. ‘I
look great,’ young Prince once said, as he combed his hair. ‘No, you look
okay,’ Michael said, correcting him. Though Michael has always been
frightened of dogs (since being bitten as a child), he got over his fear in
order to buy the children a much-wanted Golden Retriever. If they have a
question (and children always have questions), Michael will not give them
an answer unless he is sure it is accurate. He makes use of his expansive
library to look up factual responses to even the most innocuous questions
asked by his children.
Michael and his governesses dress Prince up as if he were little Lord
Fauntleroy, whereas Paris wears dainty, lacy and velvet dresses. The baby,
Prince Michael II, seems happy and well-adjusted. All three openly adore
their father. Once a year, he dresses up in full clown regalia, and thrills
them. ‘If I could spend all my time with Daddy, I would do it,’ Prince
Michael I told Katherine. ‘I think he’s the best daddy in the whole world.’
Michael scooped the boy up into his arms. ‘And you’re the best little
Prince, ever,’ Michael said, kissing his face. ‘I love you,’ said the child. ‘I
love you, more,’ Michael responded.
While Michael was recording tracks for Invincible at The Hit Factory
Criteria studio in North Miami, Prince Michael I spilled some popcorn on
the floor. A producer was about to bend over to clean it up when Michael
intervened. ‘No, let me,’ he said, apologetically. ‘He’s my kid. I’ll clean up
after him.’ Then, according to the producer, ‘I look down and there’s
Michael Jackson on his hands and knees picking up his son’s popcorn. I’m
not sure you would see Madonna doing that.’
Of course, there could be problems for his family in the future. The day
may come when his three progeny will wonder why their mothers have
decided to play such a small part in their lives. They could feel abandoned.
Might they one day lament their childhoods, just as their father does his?
Though there are never any guarantees in child rearing – only time will tell
how these three will turn out – Michael Jackson’s family is unique in almost
every way. His children face challenges in life perhaps even greater than
those faced by their famous father.
Their being made to wear brightly coloured gauze scarves that resemble
burkas, and other kinds of disguises, in public is disturbing. The two older
ones must watch television and movies and realize that they are the only
kids on the planet earth wearing masks when it’s not Halloween. Certainly,
being forced to hide their faces in public puts the two Prince Michaels and
Paris at risk of becoming antisocial, paranoid adults.
In the summer of 2003, Michael and his two oldest children went
shopping in a Santa Monica store. He had on a red-and-white baseball cap,
and a lavender surgical mask. Prince, then six, wore smart little slacks, a
vest. Paris, then five, had on a red sweater and plaid skirt, with ruby-
coloured shoes that resembled Dorothy’s from The Wizard of Oz. Both
children had on red-and-black Spider Man masks, which covered them from
the neck up. Father and children were followed by LaToya, in a straw hat.
What a scene.
Why does Michael think his children must be protected in such
unprecedented ways from kidnappers? Again, using Jackie Kennedy
Onassis as an example, no woman was ever more famous than she was, nor
more protective of her and the President’s children. Yet, she would never
have thought to make them wear masks in public. In fact, no celebrity in
recent memory – if ever – has seen fit to disguise his or her children in such
an outlandish way. Even after Frank Sinatra’s son, Frank, Jr., was
kidnapped in 1963, Sinatra didn’t make him wear a disguise to prevent
future abductions! It begs the question of whether such costumes are for the
children’s sake, or a way for Michael to distinguish himself as the most
prominent, sought-after man in the world, thus his offspring the most
prominent, sought-after progeny? At the very least, he seems to be
imposing his own fears on to them. However, they’re his children, it could
be argued, and he can therefore raise them anyway he sees fit, as long as he
doesn’t abuse them. (Also, Debbie Rowe has said it was her idea that the
children wear masks and scarves. However, given Michael’s ages-old habit
of wearing disguises in public, that explanation doesn’t seem likely.)
The weird ways he disguises his children aside, has Michael Jackson
finally found happiness as a father?
On some days, yes, it would seem that way. From all accounts, he is a
father who is good to, and for, his children. He has joyous times with them,
watching them grow up, being completely involved in their lives.
Hopefully, parenthood has been a self-educating experience for him and
he’s now setting straight for himself his history of abuse and yearning for a
better childhood, by giving to his own children that for which he has so
longed – love, with no strings attached, nothing expected in return,
unconditional.
On other days, he remains one of the walking wounded, a lost boy holed
up at Neverland, cowering from an ever-pressing world. ‘How can I get past
the pain?’ he recently asked one associate. ‘That’s the question I ask
myself. I’m so tired of being controlled by fear,’ he admitted, ‘and by my
own bullshit.’ He’s working on himself, working on forgiveness. He has
good days, he has bad – the latter spent sitting atop his so-called Magic
Tree content to retreat into his imagination, reviewing his life, feeling
unhappy about the way things are, coping as best he can with it and wanting
to effect change in his life – just wanting some relief from it all. Who
knows, but maybe when stripped of all of his fortune and celebrity – and his
unconventional behaviour – it’s in that very human place of restless
discontent that some of us can find commonality with, of all people,
Michael Jackson.
About two years before the Martin Bashir interview was broadcast, Michael
gave a speech at Oxford University about raising children, launching his
global initiative for his ‘Heal the Kids’ charity. Much of what he said was
absorbing, especially in that it seemed to have as much to do with his
feelings about Joseph as it did about his own experiences as a father.
‘“What if they grow older and resent me, and how my choices impacted
their youth?’ Michael asked rhetorically of his children. “Why weren’t we
given a normal childhood like all the other kids?” they might ask. And at
that moment I pray that my children will give me the benefit of the doubt.
That they will say to themselves: Our daddy did the best he could, given the
unique circumstances he faced. I hope,’ he concluded, ‘that they will
always focus on the positive things, on the sacrifices I willingly made for
them, and not criticize the things they had to give up, or the errors I’ve
made, and will certainly continue to make in raising them. We all have been
someone’s child, and we know that despite the very best of plans and
efforts, mistakes will always occur. That’s just being human.’
The week Michael’s parents visited in February 2003, Michael enjoyed
most of his time with them. Of course, as sometimes happens with families
who’ve had a troubled history, there was a brief and sudden disturbance. On
the third day, Michael and Joseph became embroiled in a disagreement. The
specific subject of the quarrel is unknown, but witnesses recall Michael
loudly insisting to his father, ‘It’s none of your business, Joseph. This is my
house.’ It sounded like the sort of argument that has been engaged in by
grown children and their visiting parents throughout the ages. Joseph
stormed off to his guest quarters, where he remained for about three hours.
Katherine ran to be with Michael; the two had an intense conference in the
kitchen, as Michael cradled Prince Michael II. By sunset, however,
whatever it was that had caused the abrupt outburst had blown over; Joseph
joined his wife and son, and grandchildren, for dinner in the ornate dining
room.
On their final morning together, it again rained. As the black limousine
approached that would take the senior Jacksons on their two-hour drive
back to Encino, the day’s first sun rays shimmered through dark clouds,
suddenly filling the sky with incandescent light. Michael was dressed for a
meeting scheduled that day with business associates; he was fashioned as if
he were European royalty in a black jacket, a white-on-white tuxedo shirt
and a tie with crests on it. An artificial mane of jet-black hair in a straight,
pageboy cut fell just to his shoulders. He was also in full makeup, with
thick eyeliner and densely pencilled eyebrows and lipstick. He even had
powder on his hands. He and his mother embraced, holding on to each other
for a long moment. Katherine whispered something into her son’s ear. He
smiled, broadly, and kissed her on the cheek. Affectionately, Joseph then
took hold of Katherine’s arm and helped her into the stretch vehicle. After
Katherine was seated, Joseph turned to Michael and pulled him into a bear
hug. Michael seemed to melt into his father’s arms. The two held on for a
long moment. When he finally released him, Joseph patted Michael on the
shoulder, straightened his tie for him in a fatherly fashion, and then got into
the car.
The tall, oak gates of Neverland opened before them as the Jackson
parents were slowly driven away, leaving Michael at the foot of the long,
long road leading out of the ranch. He waved goodbye. As they disappeared
into the horizon, Michael lingered a while, perhaps with memories flooding
him fully, carrying him back to Encino with his parents, farther back even,
to Gary with the rest of his family.
While he stood there silently, a light rain began to fall. He tilted his head
back, letting the gentle drops fall upon his face. As if on cue, a young male
in his twenties, wearing a black silk shirt and slacks, hurried toward
Michael, trailed by two uniformed, ageing housekeepers. The trio gained
momentum as they realized the King was getting wet. The man opened a
bright, red umbrella with a flourish, and held it above Michael’s head. The
women wrapped him in a scarf and cloak as he stood motionless, like a
mannequin being staged for display. Michael attempted a small smile of
appreciation to the three; their faces remained stoic.
As the rain began to fall harder, Michael turned away from those gates
that opened to the outside world. The four then made the long trek back to
the main house at a slow pace: Michael and his young man-servant, side-
by-side under an umbrella; the two old maids dragging behind, becoming
drenched in the downpour. An eerie parade of strangers in the rain. None of
them speaking, all knowing their task. Onward, to Neverland.
Michael’s World Caves In… Again
He thought being ten was hard, being famous before he knew what it was to
be a human being. He thought being eighteen was hard, going through
adolescence with the eyes of the world upon him. Twenty-one was hard,
too, feeling like a phoney, not fitting in… choosing plastic surgery, hoping
it would be the solution to all his problems. He came to thirty with a desire
to do good, but it was hard. While his career was history-making, his life
remained… hard. Forty. Then forty-five… harder than he ever dreamed
possible.
The end of 2003 and beginning of 2004 has been the worst period of time
in Michael Jackson’s life. Making it even more unfortunate for him is that
he had, at the time that the last edition of this book was published, been
working, even if tentatively, on repairing his personal life as well as his
career, trying to come to terms with the past, with his father and other
family members, and making important choices about how to handle other
problems in his life. Yet he still had not made the most important decision
of all, the one having to do with the on-going habit of entertaining other
people’s children at Neverland. Such continual lapses in judgement and
caution has caused another massive personal upheaval for him, a true crisis
in his life.
What a shame. There are no other words to describe the sight of Michael
Jackson being led away in handcuffs… then, the mug shot… then, the
arraignment on child-molestation charges.
Michael was at the Mirage Hotel suite in Las Vegas on 18 November
2003 when a police raid of Neverland, the second one in ten years,
occurred. He was shooting a video for a new song, ‘One More Chance’,
written and produced by R. Kelly (who has also been arrested on child-
molestation accusations, in a case that is still pending). However, there was
no way for him to continue with the project. Seventy officers had descended
upon the Jackson ranch and spent fourteen hours searching for evidence that
might connect him to the latest charges. ‘I don’t think I’ll be able to get
through it,’ he said, according to an aide who was present. Michael looked
desperate and alone, said the aide, ‘the very foundation of his soul, shaken.
But, still, there was a strong sense among people present that he had
somehow brought it onto himself.’
It’s true that after the first allegations of molestation were made against
him ten years ago, Michael Jackson had every opportunity to change his
behaviour. He would have been smart to stop himself, not just from making
obsequious comments about young people (‘I would die if there were no
children in the world’) but from seeking out the company of other people’s
offspring. At the very least, it seemed unwise and even foolhardy for a man
once accused of molestation to continue having sleepovers with the children
of strangers.
After the Chandler case was resolved, many on Jackson’s team hoped he
would never again mention the subject of children – and certainly not be
seen on television cuddling them, as he was on the controversial Martin
Bashir documentary. As we have seen earlier, during his interview with
Bashir, Michael admitted sleeping in a bed with many children. ‘When you
say bed you’re thinking sexual,’ Michael said. ‘It’s not sexual, we’re going
to sleep. I tuck them in. It’s very charming, it’s very sweet.’ While watching
Michael holding hands with the wide-eyed and star-struck youngster in the
documentary, who was described as a cancer-survivor, anyone who had
been following Jackson’s chequered story over the years and knew his
troubled history with the parents of young boys could sense trouble ahead.
Indeed, a year later, that same boy is Michael’s accuser.
What was Michael Jackson thinking? Had he been so emboldened by the
solution to the Jordie Chandler problem that he was now arrogant about the
way he lived his life? Did he not recognize the need to protect himself from
the possibility of similar events? Was he so naive that he simply didn’t
understand the danger in which he continued to place himself by
entertaining hundreds upon hundreds of children at his Neverland ranch?
Or, one at least has to wonder, did he just have the misfortune to cross paths
with a family that is now out to get him, and ruin him?
Of course, there is another possibility: Maybe Michael Jackson is a
paedophile – a remote prospect as plain and simple as it is sick and twisted
– and he got caught… again. The question remains unanswered at this
stage, at least from a legal standpoint. There are many who believe in his
innocence, and probably just as many who believe in his guilt.
Ten years earlier, even at the height of the Jordie Chandler scandal,
matters hadn’t escalated to the point where an arrest warrant was filed
against Michael. During the latest raid in 2003, if Michael had been home,
he would probably have been taken to jail and booked, immediately. The
authorities had an arrest warrant with his name on it, and an ambulance
present in case he fainted.
There was good reason for such concern about Michael’s state of mind,
though it seems unlikely that Santa Barbara District Attorney, Tom
Sneddon, was genuinely worried about him. Michael is so fragile a person,
the Chandler case almost sent him over the brink; he became addicted to
drugs and, if not for the positive influence Elizabeth Taylor and Lisa Marie
Presley, he might never have been able to recover. However, he did recover
– and, then, paid Jordie millions of dollars to settle the matter in order that
he be able to move forward with his life.
Though Michael was able to put the other case behind him without
admitting guilt – in fact, with many declarations of innocence – his career
never recovered; his record sales were never the same. There was hope that
a 2003 CD, a greatest hits compilation called Number Ones, would help
matters when issued in November. A single from it, ‘One More Chance’, a
melodic tune with multi-layered and lush harmonies, in the vein of some of
his best 1980s work, seemed poised for success. In the UK, the compilation
found quick acceptance: Number Ones debuted at the top of the charts.
‘One More Chance’ was also a hit. It’s clear that Michael’s British fans
remain supportive. He also has the support of legions of fans in most other
countries, but not in America. In the USA, he may never be able to
rebound, especially now that he has been arrested. Indeed, in America,
Number Ones was a huge commercial disappointment, nowhere close to
being considered a hit record.
‘You have to stay strong,’ Michael’s aide told him on the day of the
Neverland raid. ‘For your children, you have to be strong.’
Michael crumpled into a chair. ‘I’ll do the best I can,’ he said. ‘But…’
His voice trailed off as he buried his face into his hands. ‘Oh, my God.
What a shock. I can’t believe this is happening to me… again.’
Explaining Away His Pain
Michael Jackson is always caught by surprise whenever something terrible
occurs in his life. He never seems able to connect the dots of unfolding
misery back to his own impulsive actions and questionable judgement.
For instance, he had never recognized that for every disadvantaged
youngster who visited Neverland Ranch, there would always be a set of
parents in the background. Some, such as those of his present accuser (and
those of Jordie Chandler’s), might be at war with each other in a battle that
could involve child custody (as it has in both cases). Also, each child and
each parent was likely to have his and her own dysfunctional history, as
well as aggressive attorneys. Since there was no way to check the
backgrounds of every child and every parent who entered his private
domain, would it not have made more sense to keep strangers out of
Neverland? If he was so determined to host an amusement park for kiddies,
could he not have maintained Neverland for that purpose, but chosen to live
elsewhere? The simple answer for Michael is: no. He must be around
children. He must have them in his midst. Neverland is a shrine to
adolescence. There are statues of youngsters and photographs of boys and
girls all over the place. He’s obsessed with kids.
How long, one wonders, can Michael and his enablers continue to
explain his strange behaviour by saying that he is compensating for a
childhood ripped from him by his career, his fame, his fans?
The duration of a person’s conscious childhood probably spans the years
between five and eighteen. Michael became famous at the age of ten. Not to
be reductive of a person’s dysfunction in such a complex world, but if one
insists upon harping on the notion of a lost childhood, then it would seem
that Michael ‘lost’ eight years. Michael bought Neverland in 1988. He has
lived there, surrounded by a dreamy and fake adolescence, for roughly
sixteen years. Therefore, it would seem that he has compensated for his
‘lost childhood’ two times over.
In truth, Neverland remains a monument to Michael’s confusion and
conflict about childhood, and not how much he missed out on it but, rather,
how much he misses it. He clings to every vestige of youth with almost
manic desperation, as if growing up would be the worst thing that could
happen to him.
The ride on the private jet, a Gulf Stream G-4, from Las Vegas to Santa
Barbara on 20 November 2003, the day Michael was arrested, was, of
course, a difficult one. He was frightened and pessimistic about the future.
‘Why does everyone else get to be happy, and I’m always thrashing through
the mud?’ he asked.
Michael arrived at the jail wearing a black suit with his hands cuffed
behind his back. He was photographed and fingerprinted and handed over
his passport; it took about a half-hour. He was charged with ten counts of
lewd or lascivious acts with a child under age fourteen, each count
punishable by three to eight years in prison. Michael was freed on $3
million bail, which means he had to come up with $300,000 – not a difficult
thing for him to do.
Later, Michael would claim that he had been abused by police officers
while at the station; they had even dislocated his shoulder! It was unlikely
that Jackson suffered at the hands of law enforcement; there were video
cameras everywhere. When did the abuse happen? He seemed fine when he
arrived at the station, and was waving to people and flashing the victory
sign when he left. The bruise Michael displayed to 60 Minutes
correspondent Ed Bradley (on 29 December 2003) as evidence of handcuffs
that had been too tight was so high on his arm it had to be the result of some
other occurrence. Some speculated that he had actually hurt himself during
the caravan ride from Santa Barbara to Las Vegas, while shaking hands with
fans out of the half-opened window of his automobile.
There was something about Michael’s detailing of police abuse that felt
impulsive in delivery, as if he hadn’t thought about it in advance but, rather,
made a snap decision in a desperate, anxious moment. It’s doubtful that he
discussed it with his attorneys in advance. Coming directly from Michael,
the accusation of abuse truly was disconcerting. Everything Michael says
these days has to hold up under scrutiny; his credibility is on the line now,
more than ever. It’s also doubtful that anyone in his camp would dare take
him to task for such impulsive behaviour, though. It is more likely that,
after they were caught by surprise, they scrambled to figure out how to
handle it.
After the accusation of abuse made headlines, the police department
retaliated by releasing a video in which it seemed Michael wasn’t abused at
all but, rather, actually treated well by the authorities. The suspicious
allegation against the police made things worse for Michael; it looked like a
diversionary tactic and caused some of his critics to speculate as to why he
would need one.
The Way He Wants It
A compelling image and one his fans want to believe is the notion of
Michael Jackson hunkering down with his staff in a boardroom, ordering
people about, expressing his ‘outrage’ about whatever is going on that day,
issuing edicts and pounding his fist on his desk as frightened minions
scramble about him. Actually, there’s little evidence to suggest that Michael
is, at least in the last few years, the calculated strategist his handlers
describe as they spin his present situation in the press. In truth, he spends
most of his time with his three children, ignoring as much as he can the
frightening details of his dilemma.
‘When he is forced to become involved in meetings with lawyers and
accountants, he is often in a tense, sullen and uncooperative mood,’ says
another person who knows him well.
Perhaps it is understandable that Michael would just as soon not face his
troubles, and maybe he’s lucky to be able to avoid most of the details. He
has many people in his employ whose job it is to shield him from the reality
of litigation, as well as the media coverage of the on-going molestation
story. When he hears of a particularly controversial report – usually second-
hand since he does not watch television or read the newspapers – he is
‘appalled’ by it. Someone then writes a statement expressing such empty
emotion, and ‘exposing’ the untruth of the story. New people in his circle
act as if we’re living in a parallel universe, and that everything ever
published or said about Michael or his family – including that which they
have said and written about each other in the past – occurred in some other
reality, not our own. The only history the public is supposed to have with
Michael is one that begins on the morning someone in his inner circle
appears on television to proclaim that all is well… and that we’re wrong-
minded for believing, or even suspecting, otherwise.
Unfortunately, coddling and indulging Michael serves to reinforce his
own self-image of being a rich kid in a mean world of money-grubbing
adults and, thus, unable – or unwilling – to deal with his responsibilities and
obligations. When he does give a firsthand interview, he seems distracted,
disconnected from reality. He expresses himself as if he’s never been
around adults, as if he has no social skills. He looks troubled, scared, sick to
his stomach. He truly is childlike. However, it remains disconcerting to hear
family members and reasonable-thinking, educated people describe him that
way as if it’s an admirable, even awe-inspiring, trait for a man in his mid-
forties, instead of a troubling, worrisome one. What can be done to help
Michael Jackson? Certainly more than just approve of him.
After his arrest, Michael came forth to say, once again, that he would
never hurt a child and the public is ‘crazy’ to think that there is anything
strange about his rapport with children. ‘I love children. I would slit my
wrist before hurting a child,’ Michael told Ed Bradley in the televised 60
Minutes interview. His eyes were wide and heavily lashed, the nose small
and sharp. He seemed delicate, frail, almost like a geisha girl as he sat so
primly in his turquoise-blue silk blouse. His hair fell to his shoulders, a jet-
black swoop that contrasted with his whitish skin. Every now and again,
someone would rush to his side, looking alarmed. He said he didn’t feel
well, he clearly wanted to wrap the interview up. He looked as if he was
about to wilt under the pressure.
Later, his family members, in support of Michael, confirmed that he
‘loves all children’ and as Jermaine put it, ‘he would never harm a child’.
Actually, the Jackson family’s defence of Michael’s obsessive love for
children does little to help him. Rather, it tends to make them look out of
touch with society and with what is considered appropriate behaviour in the
real world. Simply put, loving children and not wanting to hurt them is no
defence against child molestation. In fact, most child molesters express
great affection for their victims and feel that they are not hurting them.
Most would rather ‘slit’ their ‘wrists’ than hurt a child… and, horribly, they
all end up hurting children.
‘People in the real world will always out-number them in their world
where, it seems, anything goes,’ remarked one legal analyst. ‘They are not
going to be able to beat us, or change our minds about what makes sense
and what looks inappropriate when it comes to kids and adults. They may
as well join us in the real world, and maybe sit down and have a very strong
talk with their son and brother.’
‘After the 60 Minutes interview, we looked at each other and said, “Holy
Christ! That did not go well, did it?” says the former spokesman. “What
happened there?”
‘Michael has been around for so many years, one expects him to shine on
camera. But people who know him well know that he does not do that.
Instead, he acts as if he’s never done an interview in his entire life.
‘He tries, God knows he does, and it’s hard for him. I saw it firsthand. He
is sick before going on camera for an interview, throwing up, so nervous, so
upset, so filled with anxiety. Your heart goes out to him. You wonder how
he ever ended up in the public eye, and what an ordeal he has been through
just to get this far in it.
‘After he’s on TV, his people have to do clean-up work to minimize all of
the late-night talk-show criticism and joking, and explain that he’s fine, it’s
the public that has a problem. “Focus on the message” was always my
tactic. “Forget the messenger”. He’s innocent of any wrong-doing. I’m sure
of it. Just stick to that truth and forget how much damage he’s done by
trying to express such innocence on television. Get him help? It’s not an
option. No one is close enough to him to even presume to suggest it.’
Some observers who are sceptical of Michael Jackson’s innocence
speculate that people in his life – his attorneys, publicists, accountants and
even family members – believe in their heart of hearts that the man is guilty
as sin. It is thought that such allies of his are merely exhibiting blind loyalty
to him by publicly, and so vociferously, declaring his innocence. After all,
they have jobs to do, or family allegiances to protect, it’s thought. However,
it’s not true. If a person is around Michael Jackson long enough, he begins
to believe in him. Michael is such an unconventional, curious person, the
only way to truly fathom him and his world is to actually be in his presence,
experience it and take it all in. While he welcomes the support of his inner
circle, he does not appreciate it when they try to explain to him why
outsiders are suspect of him and his behaviour.
‘He doesn’t want to hear it,’ his former close friend Uri Geller has
explained. ‘I tried to tell him, “Michael, I know you are innocent but you
have to understand why there are others who do not believe that. You have
to stop with the children in people’s faces. You have to try to understand the
public. It’s not just you. You are in the world.” He becomes sad, and his
eyes glaze over. Then he becomes angry. No one can talk to him these days,
not really. So I think that people in his life go about the business of
defending him, and don’t bring up anything with him that really matters or
addresses the problem.’
Ten years ago, Elizabeth Taylor and Lisa Marie Presley stepped into
Michael Jackson’s world and attempted to bring some sense and wisdom to
it. They were not paid to do so, they did it out of love. If not for them, who
knows how the Jordie Chandler matter would have worked out for Michael.
Sadly, Michael no longer has allies such as Elizabeth and Lisa.
Elizabeth is too advanced in years and upset by the melodrama in her
friend’s world to be recruited for such hard duty.
For her part, Lisa simply can’t become immersed in Michael’s problems
again. It was tough on her, last time. When she ended it with Michael, she
suffered physical problems, a myriad of ailments, because she had been so
anxious for so long about him. In order to protect herself, she now keeps
her distance. Some have indicated that she is more concerned about her new
recording career with Capitol Records than she is about Michael, and won’t
align herself with him because of her fear of bad public relations… as if
Lisa Marie Presley has ever cared what the public thinks about her. Rather,
she is taking care of herself, say her friends, the way she used to take care
of Michael.
Today, Michael Jackson’s best and most reliable support comes from
people who are compensated by tremendous amounts of money to shield
him from the ugly truth of his world – and then explain away his deep
sadness and pain by acting as if it doesn’t exist. It’s not as if they have any
choice. It’s the way he wants it.
Michael’s Latest Accuser
How credible are the present charges against Michael Jackson?
While Michael is most certainly guilty of creating the appearance of
impropriety where his current accuser, Gavin Arvizo, is concerned, such
wrong-minded choices about socializing with children – and making sure
everyone knows about it – obviously don’t make him a child-molester. As
of this writing, the Santa Barbara District Attorney’s evidence against
Michael is sealed. Therefore, a firm opinion of his guilt or innocence is
premature. Understandably, loyal friends and family members believe he is
innocent based on little more than… their personally held beliefs about him.
However, critical-minded people who have no emotional attachment to him
have good reason for prudent scepticism. Still, the presumption of
innocence is on Michael’s side. That stated, the criminal case against him
seems very weak, even at this early stage.
In the year 2002 and into 2003, Gavin Arvizo and members of his family
had enjoyed being with Michael at Neverland Ranch on several occasions.
The Hispanic boy with dark hair and dark brown eyes from East Los
Angeles is a comedy aficionado who aspires to a career in that arena. At the
age of ten he had been diagnosed with cancer so he was quite ill. He’d had
an eight-pound cancerous tumour on his left kidney; doctors were forced to
remove that kidney as well as his spleen.
While he was sick, the youngster was asked by a comedy club owner in
Los Angeles what would make him happy. He said he wanted to meet
certain celebrities – one of them being Michael Jackson. (Actually, Michael
was third on the list, behind comedians Adam Sandler and Chris Tucker.)
Unfortunately, Michael has always been a sucker for young kids who want
to meet him. After the comedy club owner made quick arrangements with
Michael’s ‘people’, one thing led to another, and before anyone knew what
was happening, Gavin and both his parents, younger brother and older sister
were guests of Michael’s at his Neverland ranch. It’s a bit startling, actually,
when one considers how easy it is to gain entrée into the King of Pop’s
castle.
Just as in the case of Jordie Chandler and his family, Michael became
engrossed in the personal, complicated and troubled life of the youngster.
He not only began paying the boy’s medical expenses, and provided
transportation for Gavin to get to and from chemotherapy, he took him, his
mother Janet Ventura-Arvizo and two siblings, Daveline and Star Arvizo,
into his confidence, into his secret world. He also extended his generosity to
people they knew; for instance, he leased an apartment for the mother’s
boyfriend. He pushed and pushed until he was fully enveloped in their lives,
exactly as he had with Jordie.
Caught up in the security of Michael Jackson’s cushy lifestyle, the family
settled in. Compared to their lower-middle-class existence in East LA,
Neverland was… well… Neverland. They had safety and security – and the
excitement of knowing a big star and trafficking in his exciting and
privileged world. Janet encouraged the children to call Michael ‘Daddy’.
That was fine with Michael, but the immediate and inappropriate familiarity
suggested by the new moniker was disconcerting to observers in his camp.
Didn’t he have three children calling him daddy, already – his own?
‘It was too much,’ recalled someone close to the situation. ‘It was
Michael not remembering what had happened with Jordie Chandler and his
old man [Evan Chandler, his father], and then letting these new kids and
their mom into his world, no holds barred. Whatever they wanted, man,
they got. Money. Trips. Gifts. Toys. The whole Michael Jackson package.
360 degrees of everything… and way too much alone time with the one boy
[Gavin]. People in his [Jackson’s] camp were worried about it, but there had
been a lot of kids and a lot of families between Jordie and this new family,
and Michael had let them all into his life too, with no consequences. You
can’t reason with him… he takes his chances. The questions for me have
always been, when does this guy have time for his career, how’d he even
get to be the King of Pop when he’s so preoccupied with other people’s
lives… and how the hell does he keep track of all of these kids?’
When Gavin’s health took a turn for the better, everyone was elated.
Why, it was as if Michael was some kind of miracle worker! In just a few
months, the youngster was born again. Of course, the fact that he was
finally eating well and now able to afford the best medications in the world
– thanks to Michael’s largesse – didn’t hurt.
The story might have had a truly happy ending if everyone had then gone
their separate ways. Gavin and his family might have exited Neverland
never to be seen again – with all being well that ended well.
However, at this same time, Michael was involved in the making of the
Martin Bashir documentary. Bashir had heard about the youngster and the
transformation he had undergone as a result of his connection to Jackson,
and wanted to include his story in the documentary. Because it seemed like
a good idea – he hoped people would finally understand his relationship
with children if they were to see the footage – Michael agreed to it. When
the documentary was first broadcast in the UK, and finally in the USA,
Michael was seen holding hands with Gavin while giggling and discussing
sleeping arrangements with him. He also made it clear that he saw nothing
wrong with sharing his bed with children.
After the documentary aired on 3 February in the UK, and three days
later in the USA, tongues began to wag about his odd interaction with
Gavin Arvizo. It was then that Gavin’s mother, Janet, complained publicly
that Martin Bashir had allowed her son to appear on the show without her
permission. Of course, Michael did not secure her permission, either.
However, at that time, the family was still friendly with Michael and did not
point out his lapse in judgement.
In truth, Michael Jackson isn’t used to asking anyone permission for
anything. He reasoned that, considering all that he had done for Gavin and
his family, Janet wouldn’t mind seeing her son featured on his show. After
she complained about it, it was thought that she would simply have to get
over it. However, Gavin was being ridiculed in public, other youngsters
coming up to him and taunting him for being ‘Michael Jackson’s
boyfriend’. It is understandable that Janet was upset. However, Michael had
other problems, having to do with ‘damage control’. There had been
outrage about the Martin Bashir programme, and Michael charged Bashir
with having taken statements and scenes out of context. ‘That damn Martin
Bashir show didn’t work out as well as I hoped,’ he told one of his staff
members.
To set the record straight, Michael Jackson wanted to produce his own
special and give his side of the story. He also wanted to press Gavin into
service: would he be interviewed for the new documentary and confirm that
Michael’s behaviour toward him had always been innocent? Yes, of course
he would, and this time with his mother’s permission. Michael dispatched
his so-called ‘video-grapher’, Christian Robinson, to tape an interview with
the family. It seems unlikely that Michael Jackson would have charged
Robinson with such a task if he thought the Arvizo family would ever
allege he was a child-molester.
Denials All Around
Christian Robinson, who had been documenting Michael’s experiences on
the road and at home on video tape for about two years, sat down with
mother and son at a private home to ask questions about the star’s
relationship with them. He asked if there had ever been any inappropriate
behaviour on Michael’s part. ‘They [Gavin, his sister Daveline, brother Star
and mother Janet] answered and were very upfront and said “absolutely
not”,’ he later maintained. ‘And during this interview, I told them to speak
truthfully probably more than thirty times. I kept reminding them, I want
you to tell the truth, tell your story.’
‘They all felt that a miracle had taken place,’ Robinson recalled when
speaking of Gavin’s recovery. ‘He says that Gavin and Star insisted to him
that whenever they slept in the same room with Michael, they slept on the
bed and he slept on the floor. They were so resolute in their answers, almost
as if they were getting mad at me. “Why are you asking me this? Michael is
innocent.”’ He says that ‘the family was not coached’, and ‘the family was
incredibly passionate, talking about Jesus and God and Michael as the
ultimate father figure.’
As mentioned earlier in this text, Michael’s rebuttal was finally broadcast
– the awkwardly titled, The Michael Jackson Interview – The Footage You
Were Never Meant to See – but it didn’t change the way people thought
about him. His supporters still believed in him, and his detractors remained
critical of him.
The footage of Michael’s accuser in the documentary is unsettling,
especially in light of the new charges. Gavin is bald, a result of
chemotherapy, and, according to the documentary, should have been dead
by that time but was alive thanks to his association with Michael Jackson.
There is footage of the youngster in his hospital bed, of him being pushed in
a wheelchair with Michael at his side. There is more footage of him
walking with Michael through Neverland, Gavin in a yellow baseball jersey
and the superstar in head-to-toe black and holding an umbrella as a shield
from the sun. The two are cocooned within the pleasant, familiar
surroundings of Neverland, lost in conversation, in their own… world.
Camaraderie was evident between Michael and Gavin, the kind that
springs from shared experiences and genuine affection. However, anyone
who knows Michael and has a memory for the past could look at the
footage – and also the scenes of the two in the Bashir documentary – and
sense that, once again, Michael had gone way too far with this kid. As he
did with Jordie, he gave himself over to the youngster. He has no
boundaries with anyone under the age of fourteen. Michael Jackson puts
himself right out there – no walls of defence, no safety zone, maybe, it
might be argued, no sense, either. He simply hopes that the boy, and his
family, will have the best intentions for him, just as he feels he has for
them. In some ways, it’s commendable. For a star of his magnitude to be so
naive is somehow refreshing. However, there’s still a dysfunction attached
to such bonding with children who are not his own, and it’s something that
should be addressed in his life because, obviously, it can lead to big trouble
for him – and also for the youngster. As a result of the footage, Gavin’s
entire world changed.
‘Since Mr Bashir’s documentary aired, [Gavin] and his mother have gone
into seclusion, after being bombarded for requests for interviews from
tabloids around the world,’ intoned Maury Povich, the documentary’s
narrator. He also read a statement from Janet Ventura-Arvizo: ‘I’m appalled
at the way my son has been exploited by Martin Bashir. The relationship
that Michael has with my children is a beautiful, loving, father-sons-and-
daughter one. To my children and me, Michael is a part of my family.’ In
addition, concluded Povich, Janet was considering legal action against
Martin Bashir for including her son in the special without her consent.
In truth, the boy should not have been on either show – Martin Bashir’s
or Michael Jackson’s – and both are equally guilty of having exploited him
for their own purposes. Some might argue that Janet doesn’t acquit herself,
either. However, parental guidance and direction in matters having to do
with children at Neverland is always a big part of the mystery surrounding
sleep-overs at the ranch.
Michael’s documentary aired, and people quickly forgot about it. It was
the Martin Bashir programme, however, that continued to pose a problem,
especially when concerned mental-health professionals began to lodge
complaints about it.
A number of psychologists, psychiatrists and other child advocates,
including Dr Carole Lieberman of Beverly Hills, wrote letters of concern to
the Santa Barbara Child Protective Services and the Los Angeles Child
Welfare department. ‘I felt that enough was enough,’ said Dr Lieberman,
who lodged her official complaint on 11 February 2003. ‘I couldn’t believe
that the world was standing by and letting these children be potentially
harmed.’ Others, like school teachers in Los Angeles county, also voiced
concern. One contacted the Los Angeles Department of Child and Family
Services (DCFS) saying that she felt what was seen in the Bashir
documentary between Michael and Gavin Arvizo looked strange and
inappropriate. Not only did the teacher feel that the relationship between the
two should be investigated, she also raised questions as to what kind of
mother would allow her child to be seen in such circumstances.
After receiving a few letters himself, Santa Barbara District Attorney
Tom Sneddon took the position that what appeared on screen ‘was no
substitute for credible cooperative victims’. He didn’t seem interested in
pursuing Michael Jackson again. However, he actually was interested; he
just didn’t want to tip his hand in the matter, at least not yet.
On 14 February 2003, the DSCS began its investigation.
Four days later, on 18 February, the Santa Barbara Sheriff’s department
began its own investigation, in secret.
Michael and his camp did not know about the Sheriff department’s
inquiry. However, they found out about the DCFS’s immediately, because
Janet Ventura-Arvizo telephoned as soon as she was contacted. Michael was
perplexed. ‘What the hell?’ he asked one of his representatives. ‘Someone
can call out of the blue, and they start an investigation?’ When told that
such was the case, Michael decided he wanted to know as much as he could
about the questions that would be asked by the officials… and the answers
provided by Gavin and his mother.
Shortly thereafter, DCFS representatives arranged that two social workers
meet with the family at the Los Angeles apartment of Janet’s boyfriend. At
the same time, Michael arranged to have his own representation present at
the meeting – an investigator and, also, the fiancé of comedian Chris
Tucker. (Tucker’s future wife is a mutual friend of Janet’s and Michael’s.)
When the case workers arrived for the interview, the three children were
sitting in front of a television, mesmerized by a video of Michael.
According to the tape recordings made that day by Michael’s camp, Janet
said that she was unaware of the nature of the allegations that had been
made against Michael. She said she wanted to be present for the interview
with each of her children and wondered, ‘What are my rights? What are
their rights?’ She seemed scared.
The social workers told her that their agenda would be made clear to her
during the course of questioning. They also insisted that the Jackson
representatives leave the room. A frightened Janet asked for a moment
alone with the Jackson investigator. The two then discussed how to tape-
record the interview with the DCFS in a manner, the Jackson representative
told her, that ‘won’t be suspicious. You don’t have to do nothing,’ he told
her, according to the tape recording. On the tape, it sounds as if he was
some how affixing a microphone to her clothing. ‘It’s working,’ he assured
her.
The Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Department has, on file, details of
the interview between the Arvizo family and the DCFS. ‘Michael is like a
father to me,’ Gavin told the social workers. ‘He’s never done anything to
me sexually.’ Gavin said he ‘never slept in bed with Michael.’
Furthermore, Janet said that she was ‘always aware of what goes on at
Neverland’. She elaborated, ‘Michael is like a father to my children. He
loves them and I trust my children with him.’ She said that Michael was
‘kind and misunderstood’. She described him as ‘an important part of [her
son’s] recovery from cancer.’ She said that there were times when her
children ‘would be on Michael’s bed, watching TV and eating Smors. But
for the allegations that they share a bed, it is no.’ She insisted that her
children ‘were never alone with Jackson… there’s always someone around.’
She concluded that Michael had ‘never been anything but wonderful. My
children have never felt uncomfortable in his presence. Michael has been a
blessing.’
According to the report, Gavin’s older sister Daveline was ‘teary-eyed’
during the interview. ‘Michael is so kind and loving,’ she said.
Gavin’s father, David Arvizo, was interviewed by the DCFS, separately
from the others. ‘There’s no reason to suspect any wrongdoing by Michael,’
he said. He added that he, too, attributed his son’s recovery to Michael.
Some observers have wondered why Michael had his own representatives
at the apartment for the inquiry by the DCFS. According to DCFS
standards, Janet Ventura-Arvizo and her children should have been
interviewed without anyone present, and tape recordings of their interviews
should not have been made by her… for Michael Jackson, or even for
someone working for him. Of course, the Jackson camp wanted to be there
for one simple and obvious reason: they wanted to know what was going to
be alleged. If they were able to get away with having someone present to
find out what was being said, of course they were going to try to do it. On
the tape, Janet insists that Jackson’s representatives were there ‘per my
invitation, per my request’.
Later, after reviewing all evidence available at the time, the Department
of Children and Family Services concluded that the case should be closed,
that allegations of abuse were ‘unfounded’. There was not enough proof in
the face of such denials for anyone to continue looking into the matter.
At the same time, the Los Angeles Police Department opened and closed
its own investigation quickly, and concurred that there was insufficient
evidence to move forward with any action against Michael Jackson.
Then, on 16 April, the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Department
reached its own conclusion. According to records in the Sheriff’s
Department, ‘Based on the interviews with the children and their father, it
was determined that the elements of criminal activity were not meant.
Therefore, this investigation was classified as a suspected sexual abuse
incident report, with no further action required. Case Closed.’
Months later, Santa Barbara District Attorney Tom Sneddon, in his press
conference to announce Michael’s imminent arrest, minimized the
significance of the DCFS report and its findings saying, ‘to call that an
investigation is a misnomer. It was an interview, plain and simple. And
that’s all it was.’ He also claimed, ‘that particular department [DCFS] has a
lot of problems.’
It would seem that the District Attorney’s office has ‘a lot of problems’,
too, because Tom Sneddon did not mention that the Santa Barbara County
Sheriff’s Department had actually opened – and closed – its investigation,
based entirely on the DCFS’s findings. Sneddon didn’t interview the Arvizo
family. Rather, someone from his office merely spoke on the phone to the
social worker who visited them, and obtained her notes. The fact that Tom
Sneddon then minimized the DCFS’s findings in his press conference,
though he had relied on them to close an earlier investigation of Michael
Jackson, is important information, and it does little to enhance his case that
he still hasn’t admitted it.
Booze, Naked Women… and Michael Jackson?
After the DCFS and Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s interviews of the
Arvizo family, something happened to change their minds. It’s not known
yet what transpired, but whatever it was turned them all against Michael
Jackson. Suddenly, the family was whispering to others about sexual
molestation having occurred, and stories getting back to the Jackson camp
were worrisome. However, when Michael heard about them, he didn’t seem
concerned.
‘This could be a problem,’ noted someone on his team.
‘I’m used to problems,’ Michael said, dismissively. ‘My focus now is on
my new album. I didn’t do anything, so this will go away.’
‘You mean like Jordie Chandler went away?’ he was asked.
Jordie is rarely brought up in his presence. Michael’s brown eyes slitted.
It was as if he was saying, ‘You know better than to mention that name to
me.’ He drew a deep breath and then exhaled, loudly. ‘Look, man, just take
care of it,’ he said, as he took his leave. ‘I don’t want to hear another word
about it.’
There was nothing to take care of… yet. No one knew the details of what
was being alleged… but, there was a sense that something was about to
happen, and it would not be good. ‘It was in the air,’ said a source in the
Jackson camp.
In fact, people who have been in the Jackson camp for years were
troubled enough to bring in high-powered attorney Mark Geragos, and a
team of investigators, to look into the matter. ‘He may want to continue to
be naive in the face of danger,’ said a person close to Jackson, ‘but people
who care about him smelled big trouble. They did not want have another
Jordie Chandler case on their hands. It was determined that this thing would
have to be nipped in the bud, whether MJ [Michael] took it seriously, or not.
Michael was told to keep his distance from those people, and he did.’
After Michael’s handlers drew a line in the sand between him and the
Arvizo family, Janet Ventura-Arvizo made her move: she and one of her
attorneys sought out Larry Feldman for advice on how to proceed; Feldman
is the same attorney who represented Jordie Chandler against Michael
Jackson. In the same conference room in which Feldman sat with Jordie
Chandler and his father, Evan, he sat with Michael’s new accuser and his
mother. After he heard their story, he felt there was more to it than the boy
had even alleged – and so he arranged for the boy to be interviewed by
psychologist Dr Stan Katz.
After several sessions with the psychologist, the bits and pieces finally
came together and the boy started to remember all sorts of things. Dr Katz’s
notes are part of the material being used against Michael Jackson by the
Santa Barbara District Attorney. What the family told him was exactly
opposite to everything they had ever said before about the pop star to
Martin Bashir, Christian Anderson, and the DCFS.
In the records Dr Katz wrote, ‘The accuser says he drank alcohol every
night and got buzzed… whiskey, vodka and Bacardi.’ When the youngster –
suffering from cancer, don’t forget – got headaches from the drinking,
‘Michael said, “Keep drinking. It will make it feel better.”’ Dr Katz
reported that, according to the boy, ‘Michael showed him pictures of naked
women on the computer.’ He said that he once ‘saw Michael just standing
there, naked for a moment.’ He added that Michael told him, ‘he had to
masturbate, or he’d go crazy’.
Dr Katz further disclosed that Gavin’s brother Star said that on a flight
from Miami to Los Angeles, he saw Michael lick Gavin’s head as the boy
slept against Michael’s chest. He said that Michael gave them all ‘wine,
vodka and tequila on numerous occasions’. He also said, according to the
doctor, that one of Michael’s security guards threatened to ‘kill us and our
parents if we told about the alcohol’. He said that Michael ‘talked a lot
about sex’, and that he and his brother ‘constantly sleep in Michael’s room
with Michael and his brother in Michael’s bed’. He then gave graphic
details of two sexual encounters he says he witnessed between Gavin and
Michael.
Furthermore, Dr Katz wrote that Gavin’s sister Daveline says that
Michael gave her wine, as well, and that she witnessed Michael kissing her
brother on the cheek, ‘hugging him and always rubbing him’.
According to the report, when asked about the DCFS inquiry, the family
said that they were ‘made’ to say that Michael had been a father figure and
that nothing sexual had ever happened between him and Gavin. Katz, in his
report, wrote that he believed the family had not been forthcoming in the
past but was now telling him the truth. ‘I don’t get the feeling the mom is
lying about anything, though she may distort’, he wrote. ‘I really felt the
kids were credible.’
However, of Michael Jackson, Dr Katz also wrote in his report, ‘He
doesn’t really qualify as a pedophile. He’s just a regressed 10-year-old.’
Exactly as happened in the Chandler case – the mental-health
professional, Dr Stan Katz, was compelled by California law to report the
details of the recollected sexual abuse to the police. It evolved so quickly,
everyone in the Jackson camp was a little stunned by the swiftness of
events, even though they suspected there might be trouble ahead. When told
about the report to the police, Michael’s mouth went agape. ‘Huh?’ he
asked. ‘Are you kidding me? Really?’ He seemed lost for several
heartbeats. ‘But…’ He stammered. ‘But… I thought… huh?‘
Family Dysfunction
The earlier (and important) denials of sexual abuse aside to Michael
Jackson’s videographer and also to the DCFS, there are elements of the case
against Michael that are still questionable: evidence of dysfunction in the
Arvizo family, and what such strange and troubled dynamics may have to
do with the charges against the singer, are important to review.
Years ago, in August 1998, the Arvizo family was detained on a
shoplifting charge at a J.C. Penney department store in West Covina,
California. According to J.C. Penney, the boys – Gavin and Star – were sent
out of the store by their father with an armload of clothes, the family was
then detained and Janet Ventura-Arvizo started a scuffle with three security
officers. The family’s side of the story, however, is that the boys were
simply modelling clothes for J.C. Penney – odd in that there was no
evidence to support this notion – not stealing them.
The shoplifting charges were eventually dropped, but Gavin, Star and
their mother filed a lawsuit against J.C. Penney’s for $3 million. Janet then
charged that, while being detained, she and her sons were ‘viciously’ beaten
by the three security officers, one of whom is a woman.
In more than 200 pages of documents pertaining to the case, a troubling
picture of the family matriarch emerges. The psychiatrist hired by J.C.
Penney’s to evaluate Janet Ventura-Arvizo found her to be ‘schizophrenic’
and ‘delusional’. According to the doctor, ‘She felt “sad over being a
nobody.” With no job… a “sad housewife getting fat.”’ He reports that she
was ‘treated with Zoloft’. He wrote, ‘her depression may have lingered or
worsened.’ Of course, that doctor was hired by the department store; his
report would not have been used by J.C. Penney had it not been favourable
to their case. Janet’s own therapist found her to be ‘anxious and depressed’
after the incident, but not delusional.
Most disturbing about the case, though, is that more than two years after
the incident, Janet Ventura-Arvizo added a new charge: she claimed that
one of the two male security guards had ‘sexually fondled’ her breasts and
pelvic area ‘for up to seven minutes’. It seems odd that so many years
passed before she decided to mention the sexual assault. During litigation,
the store’s psychiatrist asserted that she had rehearsed her sons to back up
her ‘far-fetched story’, and that they had all – mother and sons – suffered
‘broken bones’ in addition to her sexual assault. ‘She just came up with this
horror story, and ran with it,’ says Tom Griffin, the attorney who
represented J.C. Penney in the case. He insists there was no evidence to
back up any of the allegations; David Arvizo did not seem to want to be
involved in this aspect of the allegations.
Ultimately the department store settled with the family, paying them
$137,000 days before the scheduled trial in 2001. ‘It was an incident that
turned into, in my opinion, a scam to extract money from J.C. Penney,’ says
Tom Griffin. ‘They’re going for a home run this time,’ he concluded of the
family’s action with Michael Jackson. ‘This is a shake down. Shake down,
Part Two.’
Making matters more complex and disturbing, Gavin’s parents – who
were married as teenagers and divorced in their thirties – have had an
acrimonious relationship for years. Janet Ventura-Arvizo filed for divorce in
late 2001, about a month after the J.C. Penney settlement. By court order,
David Arvizo has not seen his children since 2002 when he pleaded ‘no
contest’ to spousal abuse. A year later, he pleaded ‘no contest’ to child
cruelty. A three-year restraining order was put into place. Since the time of
Michael’s arrest, David Arvizo has repeatedly petitioned the courts to allow
him to see his offspring. Though he insists that the children have been
rehearsed by Janet to make statements against him, he has been denied the
chance to see them, every legal step along the way.
While the family’s troubles are unfortunate, some of their actions do cast
a dark shadow over the case against Michael. There seems, at least from
appearances, to be a troubling history of exaggeration on Janet Ventura-
Arvizo’s part, and maybe confabulation, as well – which will be relevant in
the trial, say sources in the Los Angeles legal community. ‘One wonders, is
this a pattern?’ asks Karen Russell, a trial attorney in Los Angeles, not
involved in the Jackson case. ‘What happened with J.C. Penney’s, really?
Does Mrs Ventura-Arvizo have a habit of not getting what she wants, and
then coaching her kids into saying what she wants them to say, and then
proceeding legally? These are questions that will, no doubt, be posed at
trial.’
Says Dr Robert Butterworth, a New York psychologist, again not
associated with the Jackson case, ‘There’s a possibility for a child to be told
something so many times, he is not rehearsing it but, rather, actually
believes it. It’s possible for a child to become, in a sense, hypnotized by a
parent to believe a reality that didn’t occur. They go over and over it again,
but the facts have been distorted. It’s a very troubling phenomenon, very
disturbing, and it could be the death knell on this case.’
It could be argued that Michael Jackson, a celebrity with a great deal to
lose, should have made a decision to avoid Gavin’s family at all costs, if he
had known about their history (and he probably did, since he and Janet and
Gavin were, apparently, close enough to share confidences). However, the
youngster was, and is, quite ill, and perhaps Michael felt he couldn’t
abandon him under those circumstances.
Also, who knows how many other families in Michael Jackson’s life over
the years have had problems even more severe that those of his present
accuser’s? We don’t know about them because matters never escalated as
they have with the Arvizo family at the centre of the present investigation,
but it’s likely there’ve been many similar stories over the years. Without
exaggeration, it would be impossible to count the number of disadvantaged
families with whom Michael has formed emotional attachments in the last
ten, maybe fifteen, years – and equally impossible to fathom the number of
boys he has known, befriended and taken into his home and his confidence.
There is simply no way to count them, there have been so many. He’s
fortunate that only two out of what must surely be hundreds have presented
a problem for him.
Jesus Juice and Jesus Blood
Jesus Blood. Jesus Juice. Those two descriptions of red and white wine as
ascribed to Michael Jackson made headlines in February 2004, as a result of
a scathing article about him, by Maureen Orth in Vanity Fair. The allegation
made by Orth is that Michael gave Gavin Arvizo and another boy wine –
Jesus Juice – in Coke cans on a flight from Florida in February 2003.
Jackson, though, prefers Jesus Blood. This is a disturbing accusation,
obviously, but even more so because two of the charges against Michael
have to do with giving a minor ‘intoxicating agents’ in order to wear him
down for sex with him.
Orth’s primary source for increasingly lurid stories about Jackson in
Vanity Fair is his former business adviser Myung-Ho Lee. Lee was
Jackson’s financial adviser from 1998 to 2001. He sued him for $14 million
in 2002, and hasn’t stopped talking about him since – even though Jackson
settled the suit by giving him money. Lee is the person who told Orth, in
another Vanity Fair article, that Jackson hired a witch-doctor named Baba
to sacrifice dozens of cows in order to put a curse on David Geffen and
Steven Spielberg. That’s hard to believe… even for Michael Jackson.
The wine story, however, is partially true. Michael does refer to white
wine as ‘Jesus Juice’ and red wine as ‘Jesus Blood’. It’s an offbeat joke of
his, probably not a very good one, but everyone in his camp knows about it.
Also, he does drink them both from soda cans. However, Orth reports that
the concealment is Michael’s way of drinking alcohol without having
anyone know that he’s doing it. The truth is that he drinks wine out of soda
pop cans so that children won’t see him doing it. ‘He’s always around kids,
and he doesn’t want them to see him drinking,’ says someone in his camp.
‘It’s weird, but not criminal.’ Also, Jackson has always been afraid that he
would be photographed with a glass of wine in his hand, and he thinks that
would be inappropriate for his image.
An in-flight passenger profile document that has become part of the
public record in litigation between Jackson and XtraJet, the private airline
company he once hired, details the pop star’s food and beverage preferences
and seems to further confirm the wine anecdote. According to the
document, dated Sept. 1, 2003: ‘White wine in a Diet Coke can’ was
required ‘on every [the word is underlined in the document for emphasis]
flight.’ In addition, according to the passenger profile document, Michael
sometimes drank tequila, gin or Crown Royal on flights.
A strange requirement outlined in the documentation is Michael
Jackson’s desire for fried chicken from Kentucky Fried Chicken, the
American fast-food restaurant, for every meal: breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Michael demands the so-called ‘secret recipe’ with ‘original chicken
breasts, mashed potatoes, corn and biscuits with spray butter’. On short
flights, according to the documents, he requests Big Red gum, mints, cheese
and crackers and fruit plates. He will not eat broccoli or ‘strong-scented
foods’. Prince Michael I and Paris have a stricter diet and are not permitted
to eat peanut butter, sugar or chocolate. KFC is part of their regimen when
flying, but it must be stripped of all skin. According to the documents, the
children ‘typically will ask for the same thing their Dad is eating for every
meal, but he’ll determine what they are allowed to eat, like crackers.’ Also,
in bold letters next to their menu, it reads ‘NO SUGAR!’ and ‘NO
CHICKEN SKIN!’ The document says that Paris, in particular, ‘is good at
cajoling you for sugar’. Moreover, Prince Michael II, a.k.a. Blanket, is
always fed by his nanny, Grace Rwamba (who, it is noted, will never eat
KFC chicken). The toddler gets the same KFC regimen – ‘cut up into
pieces’ – in addition to crackers, grapes and juice or milk. Finally, the in-
flight behaviour of Michael Jackson – a ‘non-smoker’ – is described as
‘very timid… but will get out of his seat during takeoff and landing. Be
prepared to clean a lot after he deplanes.’
It must be noted, though, that Jackson and Mark Geragos are suing
XtraJet, accusing its staff of having secretly video-recorded his flight from
Las Vegas to Santa Barbara on the day he was arrested, and then attempting
to sell the tape. Documents that surface from XtraJet’s side of the litigation
have to be, therefore, viewed with at least some scepticism. Also, Richard
Matsuura, another youngster Maureen Orth claimed was given wine by
Michael when he was twelve, categorically denied the report as soon as the
Vanity Fair article hit the stands. He says Orth never contacted him before
writing the story. His father confirmed that his son was not given any wine
by Michael… either in a glass, or a soda can.
Stories about Michael that mix truth and fiction – such as the wine in
Coke cans anecdote – only serve to confuse people and make them wonder.
‘You can’t blame people for speculating about odd behavior. In light of
charges that he intoxicated a minor in this way, this new information that he
actually does drink wine out of soda cans does not look good for him. It has
to be a concern to his defense. There are records, and there is also, probably,
a stewardess who served Michael wine in this manner. How much of a leap
is, then, that this is something Jackson would give to a minor? When you
are speaking of this kind of person, when do you cross the line between
weird and criminal? That’s the question.’
The Time Line
It was an odd morning in the Santa Barbara courthouse on 16 January 2004,
the day Michael Jackson was formally arraigned on molestation charges.
His parents, Katherine and Joseph, were present for the arraignment to lend
their support, as were brothers Jermaine, Tito and Randy. Michael’s
attorneys showed up without their client. Michael eventually made his
entrance with his gorgeous sister, Janet. There were photographers present
from around the globe, clicking away as Michael gestured, smiled and
shook hands, as if on a red carpet. He looked strong, prepared.
Afterward, much to the thrill of the hundreds – maybe thousands – of
fans who came from around the world to demonstrate their support,
Michael jumped atop a sports utility vehicle and executed a couple of slight
moves – with his cameramen at his side documenting the odd but somehow
dazzling moment. He’s a man who understands the value of illusion – that
being that he’s perfectly fine and not broken by recent events – and, also,
the importance of simple entertainment. He was giving his fans want they
wanted from him. When he’s in public, no matter the circumstances – even
the most difficult ones – he’s on stage. He’s also enough of a dreamer to
muse that ‘one day’, the documentation of such an ‘historical’ day will
make one hell of a great film.
After the judge chastised him for being late – as if Michael has ever been
on time for anything in his entire life; the judge had better learn to yield to
‘Jackson Time’ – he humbly pleaded innocent to all the counts against him:
seven counts of child molestation and two counts of administering an
‘intoxicating agent with intent to commit a felony’. Those who know him
well have recalled, privately, that the day of the arraignment was ‘the worst
of all days for Michael’, that he was ‘scared out of his wits’, and had not
had a wink of sleep in any of the nights prior to it. A knot remained tight in
his stomach the entire morning, though one would never know it by looking
at him. His once agile dancer’s body was a mass of aches and pains, the
result of stress and anxiety. The back of his neck throbbed. His temples
hurt. His vision was blurry, he would later confide. However, he was
determined to put on a strong front for the cameras, for the public and,
especially, for his fans. He had to rise above. He’d done it countless times
before, and he’d do it again.
So, what is the case against Michael Jackson? With the DA Tom
Sneddon’s evidence still sealed, all of what he has on Michael is still
unknown, as of this writing. However, what is known is that the DA
believes that Michael abused his victim between 7 February and 10 March
2003 – that is, after the Martin Bashir documentary was broadcast, after
Christian Anderson’s interview with the Arvizo family, after Michael’s TV
rebuttal, after he hired Mark Geragos to look into the matter… and while
the DCFS and the Santa Barbara Sheriff’s Department was investigating it.
In essence, what the case against Michael Jackson boils down to, is the
following timeline:
6 February 2003 – Living with Michael Jackson, the Martin Bashir
documentary, is broadcast in the United States.
7 February 2003 – Michael supposedly begins sexually molesting the
young boy, Gavin Arvizo, who was seen in the documentary with him.
11 February – Dr Carole Lieberman lodges an official complaint that the
relationship seen between Michael and Gavin Arvizo on the Martin Bashir
documentary looks suspicious. Others complaints follow.
14 February – The Department of Children and Family Services and the
Los Angeles Police Department begin their investigations into the
relationship between the star and the boy.
18 February – The Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Department begins its
own investigation.
February (date unknown): Christian Anderson conducts an interview
with the family for Michael’s rebuttal documentary, The Michael Jackson
Interview: The Footage You Were Not Meant to See.
24 February – The DCFS and LA Police probe ends with conclusions
that any allegations are ‘unfounded’.
10 March – Michael Jackson supposedly stops molesting Gavin Arvizo.
16 April – The Santa Barbara County Department ends its investigation
and closes its case against Michael, saying that the elements of criminal
activity had not been meant.
13 June – The Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Department receives a
report from Dr Stan Katz in which the family changes its story and alleges
that molestation actually had taken place, and that Gavin Arvizo (and his
brother and sister) were also given intoxicating agents, by Michael. The
investigation is re-opened, and the family is (later) interviewed by the Santa
Barbara Sheriff’s Department.
18 November 2003 – Neverland is raided by the police.
The question remains: Which of the children’s stories is to be believed?
The one they told documentarians Martin Bashir and Christian Anderson,
and also the DCFS, that Michael Jackson was a father-figure who had
coddled a cancer victim and his siblings? Or the one they told Larry
Feldman and Dr Stan Katz, that paints him as a child-molester who had got
them all loaded and had sex with one of them?
In the Arvizo family’s defence, their supporters insist that it wasn’t until
June 2003 – when Janet Ventura-Arvizo took her son to Larry Feldman and
then Dr Stan Katz – that Gavin felt he could safely reveal details of his
molestation. Perhaps that’s true. A victim of sexual abuse often does not
want to come forward immediately with details of his ordeal. However, why
would all the children change their stories? Why does Star Arvizo suddenly
remember witnessing the sexual molestation, but previously hadn’t recalled
any of those kinds of details, or even hinted at them? Why does he also
suddenly remember being given alcohol by Michael? Why does Daveline
Arvizo now remember that she was given wine? Even if everyone had been
reticent about saying anything critical about Michael and the way he had
behaved toward them, did they have to go so far as to, instead, paint a
glowing picture of him? If they had all been too frightened or too
intimidated to come clean about any of his behaviour, wouldn’t they have
just not said much at all… instead of complimenting Michael Jackson to the
point of making him seem like their Saviour? It simply doesn’t add up.
In the end, the case against Michael Jackson will hinge on whatever
reasons Gavin, Star, Daveline and Janet Arvizo give as to why they changed
their stories, from denials to accusations – and those reasons may not even
be known until the trial begins, which will probably not be until early 2005.
Were they motivated by money? Did someone else put ideas in their heads?
Or did they all finally see the light and decide to tell their real story about
Michael Jackson? Indeed, the answers to those questions will either send
Michael Jackson to prison… or set him free.
‘Not Debbie too.’
Another surprising development in Michael Jackson’s life since the most
recent edition of Michael Jackson – The Magic and the Madness has been
the emergence of his ex-wife and mother of two of his children, Debbie
Rowe, in a surprisingly antagonistic manner. Though she has said in the
past that she has little interest in the upbringing of the children to whom she
gave birth, Prince Michael and Paris, she apparently changed her mind once
Michael was arrested.
During the months after Michael’s arrest, an alarmed Debbie attempted to
contact him to discuss his state of mind. She knows how sensitive he is, and
she was concerned about him. However, she had another agenda: she also
wanted to discuss the terms of the custody and visitation agreements,
especially after learning that the Nation of Islam was involved in Michael’s
life. She is Jewish – having converted for her first marriage – and was
‘extremely, extremely upset’, according to a close friend of hers, about
Michael’s new alignment with the Nation, an organization known to be anti-
Semitic.
It could be argued that it makes little sense, at least from a public-
relations standpoint, for Michael Jackson to be involved with any
organization deemed to be controversial. He has enough problems.
However, that said, the Nation of Islam is an easy mark – and there has
been a great deal of overheated media coverage of the organization’s
sudden association with the Jacksons because of its obviously biased
cultural positions. In fact, fundamentalist religions usually do lean toward
certain biases. For instance, Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson are both overt
in their disdain for Islam and for Muslims. There is open disdain at the top
of many religions. Is Catholicism not openly against homosexuals?
Fundamentalists of all religions often ignite emotions in people, no matter
what the religion: fundamentalist Jews, fundamentalist Christians,
fundamentalist Muslims, etc… Debbie has said, privately, that she doesn’t
want her children around fundamentalists of any religion, and especially the
Nation of Islam because of its incendiary position against whites and Jews.
Jermaine Jackson is a Muslim, though not a member of the Nation. There
are many confounding and contradicting stories about how the Nation
became involved in Michael’s life, but the simple truth is that the
organization contacted him and asked if he wanted their support… and he
said yes. Michael welcomes all support at this time, and seems happy to
have it from any quarter. Is the Nation merely involved in Jackson’s
security, as he and his handlers have insisted? Or is the group actually
managing his business affairs, as strongly rumoured? Is there some kind of
religious ‘brainwashing’ going on? It’s doubtful. The Jehovah’s Witnesses
couldn’t tell Michael what to do when was a young adult, and
Scientologists couldn’t influence him either, when he was with Lisa Marie.
It’s doubtful the Nation of Islam will be able to tell him what to do.
However, for an artist who has never preached separatism or racism, the
Nation’s involvement in his life is perplexing. To explain away the
surprising association, it’s claimed by those presendy in his camp that
Michael has known Nation leader Louis Farrakhan since he was six years
old. ‘Excuse me?’ remarked a long-time Jackson family associate. ‘Were
they socializing back in Gary? Did he come by the house for pre-Jackson 5
rehearsals?’ Indeed, how did a six-year-old boy who wasn’t even famous
yet meet Louis Farrakhan in Gary, Indiana? Small world, isn’t it?
It is known, though, that twenty years ago, Louis Farrakhan spoke out
against Michael and criticized him as a bad example to the world’s youth.
All has been forgiven, apparently, because Farrakhan is now one of
Jackson’s supporters. ‘We don’t believe Michael is guilty,’ he said in a
recent speech. ‘And there are a lot of people that know the mother who is
accusing him and the little boy that he helped to heal, and they don’t believe
Michael is guilty. What happened to the presumption of innocence? See,
black people are always guilty until they are proved innocent; white people
are innocent until they are proved guilty.’
During this time, Michael Jackson should, it could be argued, only be
presented in a way that is credible to critical-thinking people and not just
that faction of the public arena – his fans, mostly – who will believe
anything they are told as long as it is stated by a famous person, or someone
described as ‘an official spokesman’. Of course, as soon as Louis Farrakhan
made his sweeping and untrue racial generalization in an attempt to play on
the basic fears of people of colour, his support of Michael lost all
credibility, or as one pundit put it, ‘Too bad that after all these years he
doesn’t know where to draw the line.’
It does seem that the Nation has isolated Michael from those in his circle.
Even his family members, such as his own mother, have not had access to
him after the generous show of familial support at the arraignment. His
videographer, Christian Robinson, has not seen Michael since the day of the
arrest, either. He ‘absolutely’ believes that the Nation of Islam has kept him
away from Jackson. At Michael’s arraignment, a different videographer was
at his side when the star leapt atop an automobile to greet his fans. He says
that the Nation’s influence is ‘hopefully the closest thing to a jail Michael
will ever see’.
It’s easy to blame the Nation for running interference between Michael
Jackson and others, especially lately, but if one traces Michael’s history,
there has always been some person or some group of people charged with
isolating him – and at his own request.
Ten years ago, for instance, when Michael didn’t want to be pressured
during the Jordie Chandler debacle with the possibility of another Jackson
family reunion venture, his attorneys and Elizabeth Taylor were charged
with keeping his parents and siblings at bay. Remember Katherine Jackson
asking why it was that Elizabeth had access to Michael, but she did not?
Years before that, the job fell to Frank Dileo. Everyone in the family
complained then that he was the one keeping them from Michael. Before
that, John Branca was the person certain family members, blamed for
preventing them from having free access to Michael. Going all the way
back to the late 1970s, Michael’s managers Ron Weisner and Freddie
DeMann were targeted by Joseph and Katherine as being culprits
responsible for ruining their relationship with Michael by not allowing them
to speak to him.
In truth, no one has ever kept Michael Jackson from anyone in his family,
or from certain staff members, without his explicit request that distance be
created between him… and ‘them’. The representatives from the Nation of
Islam may or may not have their own financial or political agenda at hand
in their association with Michael. However, to Michael they serve what he
feels is a valuable and habitual purpose: they shelter him from those he
feels are out to drain him of whatever little joy he has left in life. Maybe his
family has all of the best of intentions, and nothing but love for him, these
days. However, if Michael doesn’t see it that way and if he doesn’t act as if
he wants them in his life, the notion of their affection and loyalty is moot.
As far as Debbie Rowe is concerned, for her to end up on the outside side
of Michael’s present circle is a surprising occurrence. The question remains,
though, as to whether or not she has a right to an opinion about Michael’s
children, and the way they are being raised. She and Michael did have a
custody and visitation agreement (while she did not have custody, she was
allowed a couple of visits a year if she wanted them, an opportunity of
which she had not availed herself in the past), but it can be changed at any
time, said her attorney, ‘with a showing of changed circumstances’. While
she gave away custody of her children, she, apparently, did not give away
her parental rights. ‘She can always go back to the courts and re-petition to
change custody,’ said one attorney, ‘however, no one ever thought she
would, but she did – after she could not get a return call from Michael, and
after she felt disrespected by him.’
When Michael set a dismissive tone with his ex-wife, his loyalists
followed suit and froze her out, as well. Suddenly, no one was returning her
phone calls, nor those of her attorney. Whereas just a year earlier, Michael
had called upon Debbie to appear in a documentary defending him against
the Martin Bashir allegations, now he wanted nothing to do with her.
‘Doesn’t she know I have enough on my hands?’ he asked one associate.
‘Why can’t she just leave me and my children alone?’
While Michael’s associates held a major meeting at the Beverly Hills
Hotel in January 2004 to discuss his future, Debbie was in a meeting of her
own: at the Ivy in Beverly Hills with two of Michael’s former managers,
Dieter Weisner and Ronald Konitzer, to discuss her concern over the
involvement of the Nation of Islam in Michael’s life, and also her options
relating to child custody.
A final straw for Debbie came in the week of 16 February 2004 when she
heard rumours that Michael had gone back into rehab, this time in
Colorado.
In truth, Michael was not in rehab in Colorado, but was being treated
there by herbalist Alfredo Bowman for what one source close to him
describes as ‘not really an addiction but definitely a dependency’ on
morphine and the prescription-drug Demerol. Michael’s use of such drugs
might explain his detached and odd demeanour of late, especially during his
interview with Ed Bradley for 60 Minutes during which he seemed
physically and mentally lethargic. According to reports, he’s been using the
medications in order to cope with the stress of the allegations and with
chronic insomnia. It’s dangerous behaviour, especially considering what
happened ten years ago when he became addicted to painkillers during the
Jordie Chandler matter and ended up in rehab in England.
Alfredo Bowman maintains an office in Beverly Hills, and another in
Honduras. He was treating TLC singer Lisa ‘Left Eye’ Lopes at his ‘USHA
Healing Village’ when she died in a car accident there, in the spring of
2002. Bowman apparently got into trouble with the New York State
attorney general a couple of years ago when that office objected to his
claiming to have found cures for AIDS, cancer and leukaemia. On his
website Bowman boasts of never having gone to school – ‘not even
kindergarten’. His website also claims, ‘We are proud to inform you that
Cosmo Therapy is part of our healing journey realigning with the energy of
life which is beyond spirituality. Return to MOTHER!!!’
Debbie tried to obtain information about Michael’s so-called ‘detox’, but,
again, was unsuccessful in contacting him, or anyone around him. The
walls around Michael and his children were up, and she was on one side,
while the Jackson camp was on the other side. She has always said that
Michael is not a paedophile; however, according to sources close to her, she
is no longer sure what to believe about him – and until she makes up her
mind, she wants guardianship of her two children. She’s even indicated in
court papers filed in Los Angeles that the children are not biologically
Michael’s, no surprise to his critics who have always been sceptical of the
paternity of his children.
In a court order filed on Friday 20 February 2004, Superior Court Judge
Carolyn Kuhl approved an agreement reached by the Rowe and Jackson
camps to have retired Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Stephen M. Lachs
preside over the case. The order said his appointment would continue ‘until
the conclusion of all matters’.
Judge Lachs works with a centre for alternative dispute resolution that
allows parties concerned about their privacy who are involved in civil
disputes to hire private judges at a rate of $650 an hour. ‘They hire private
judges so that everything can be done behind closed doors,’ said attorney
Dana Cole, an expert in family law who is not involved in this case.
However, Lachs has said that much of what occurs in his ‘private’ court
room will still be open to public scrutiny. The private judge’s rulings will be
as binding as if they were made in a regular family court.
While Michael does not wish for the matter to proceed as it is in the court
system, he has had little choice in it. Ironically, the millions he has paid
Debbie over the years have made it possible for her to become one of his
biggest adversaries, and maybe one of his biggest nightmares. He’s going
up against a woman who can afford to retain legal counsel as powerful as
his own – and using money he has paid her to do it! Michael’s signature on
the paperwork is big and sprawling, as if he was extremely agitated when
he committed it to the document.
Those in his private world say that Debbie Rowe’s re-emergence in
Michael Jackson’s life as an opposing force is as hurtful to him as the
allegations of child molestation. In retrospect, Michael handled the matter
of Debbie’s discontent the way he handles most problems – he tried to
avoid it. As has been repeatedly stated by those who know him, he is
childlike in many ways, and, it seems, has become more so in this last,
traumatizing year – especially when it comes to dealing with
unpleasantness.
Like a youngster facing some disagreeable situation, Michael simply
could not, or would not, cope with it. He was frightened that Debbie Rowe
was positioning herself to pose a serious threat to his family. His hands
would shake when he would pick up the telephone to call her. He couldn’t
follow through, he was so fearful of what it was she wanted from him and
how she might impact his relationship with his children, all three of who
have given him the greatest joy he has ever known. One of his associates
recalled it best: he handed him the phone to call her. ‘Do it, Mike. You gotta
call her,’ he said. Michael looked at him with such an anguished expression,
it appeared that he was about to let out a long, desperate scream. But he
didn’t. Instead, he put the phone down and walked away in tears. ‘Not
Debbie too,’ he said, shaking his in disbelief. ‘Not Debbie too.’
Coda
In April 2004, a secret Grand Jury convened in Santa Barbara County to
hear from witnesses brought forth by District Attorney Tom Sneddon to
testify against Michael Jackson – including his present accuser. The jury
then handed down an indictment against the entertainer on molestation
charges. The decision means that a majority of the members of the Grand
Jury felt enough evidence existed in the case against Jackson to bring it to
trial. However, a California Grand Jury is simply a function of the
prosecution; the defence does not have the opportunity to present its case,
and isn’t even present at the proceedings. Therefore, with DA Sneddon
vociferously offering everything he has against Michael Jackson – and with
no rebuttal or cross-examination of witnesses from Jackson’s team – how
could the result have been anything but an indictment?
After the indictment, to make matters even more complicated, Michael
suddenly dismissed his attorneys, Mark Geragos and Benjamin Brafman.
They were replaced by Thomas Mesereau Jr., another well-known criminal
defence attorney, who represented actor Robert Blake in his murder case
(until they parted company, citing irreconcilable differences). In an
interview, Brafman indicated that the decision did not come directly from
Michael (though he believes Michael had a hand in it), but rather from
‘advisers and family members’. He further added that the parting of ways
was ‘for reasons we choose not to discuss publicly’. It was reported that
Michael’s brothers Randy and Jermaine were influential in the matter, as
was Leonard Muhammad of the Nation of Islam.
It now seems clear that there are members of Michael’s family who have
future career plans in mind for him… and probably for themselves, as well.
They are trying to protect their brother (which is admirable) and, perhaps,
their own interests (which is probably not as commendable, but also not
particularly surprising, if one reviews family history). Again, one is forced
to wonder how much decision-making power Michael has, or even wants,
in his present dilemma… and how many other key players with mixed
agendas may enter stage left and exit stage right before the Jackson show
plays before judge and jury.
It is obviously a tragic turn of events if Michael Jackson is being targeted
with untrue allegations of child-molestation. At this writing, he is enduring
the saddest, most agonizing period of his life. Ironically, prior to this ordeal,
he was beginning to rise to the challenge of looking at his world in a new
and profound way, trying to come to terms with the ugliness of some of his
past. He seemed to be finding a measure of contentment, perhaps for the
first time, as he raised his children. He had also just begun to rediscover the
joy of music. Finally, the Jordie Chandler matter of a decade ago was
beginning to fade from public consciousness. Then, this new thing
happened, a matter so awful as to lay waste to any personal progress he had
made – setting him back years, perhaps making it impossible for him to
ever reconcile any of his troubles and to take full responsibility for his
choices, indeed his life. However, until he does so, perhaps he is destined to
repeat the same mistakes, as if he is the beleaguered star of a horrible,
Greek tragedy. In truth, there seems to never be a time when he is free of
crisis.
What other famous person has these kinds of problems? Is it that Michael
is so different, so unusual, so extraordinary, so… famous… that he is an
easy target for one kind of exploitation or another, be it one of the many
hundreds of lawsuits filed against him or, now, a second allegation of child
molestation? Or, does he somehow bring such madness onto himself by
being arrogant, or naïve… or both? Perhaps he is just one of the unluckiest
people ever to be in show-business? You have to feel sorry for the guy.
However, one fact still remains: despite his background – his childhood
fame and adult superstardom – at the end of the day it is not reductive of
who he is and the challenges he faces to remember that Michael Jackson is
only human, no more than the nine-to-five worker trying to support a large
family on a meagre wage and no less than the wealthy socialite without a
care in the world. Like everyone who draws breath, he is ultimately
responsible for making his own decisions. He’s a grown man – not a child.
He writes his own story, bringing into focus the characters he chooses to
have in his world. No one forced Jordie Chandler and his father on him, and
no one forced Gavin Arvizo and his mother on him, either. Casting those
people to play roles in his life has amounted to some of Michael’s biggest
mistakes, of that there is little doubt.
It’s sad – tragic, even. He’s such a privileged person, a man heaped with
every blessing of fame, fortune and family. One wonders why there seems
no way then, no way at all, for Michael Jackson to lead a good and
dignified – and happy – life.
What If?
It hit me while I was standing in Michael Jackson’s kitchen eating a tuna
sandwich. I’ll never forget the moment, which was as strange and surreal as
one might imagine. It had been a week and one day since his sudden death
on 25 June 2009. I had spent practically every moment doing television
interviews and reporting the terrible story for CBS News, the television
network for which I had covered Jackson’s molestation trial four years
earlier. However, this time, it was different. The King of Pop was gone. He
was dead. It seemed unfathomable to me, yet somehow, it was true. Still,
since I had so much work to do I’d been trying to suppress my heavy
emotion and complete the many jobs at hand. I found myself standing in
Neverland’s exquisite gourmet kitchen with its steel appliances and fine,
antique wood finishes because I was asked to conduct a tour of the famous
estate for a CBS-TV broadcast. And it was while standing there eating that
sandwich that it finally hit me. This is it, I realized. Michael is gone,
forever. The sinking feeling in my stomach that I’d tried to ignore for a
week gave way to almost overwhelming despair. It seemed unbelievably
unfair. I looked out from the kitchen toward the expansive outdoor patio –
the meandering brook, the enormous trees and, of course, the figurines of
little children playing – and I tried to conjure up the laughter and music that
once filled this cavernous space, the happy times.
Neverland Ranch was one of Michael Jackson’s greatest creations, the
result of his imagination gone wild. He loved it here, and no wonder; it’s
truly breathtaking. In many ways, Michael really had it made, I thought to
myself as I took a look around. He was so blessed to live here. His entire
life, in fact, was one of unbelievably good fortune. So how did it go so
wrong for him? When did it happen? Obviously, many things had gone
awry, and I had recounted the wrong turns in great detail over the years. But
what was it about this place that seemed to bring all of the chaos into focus
for me? What was it? In this very kitchen, I decided, that’s where it went
wrong. And over there, in the breakfast nook – which is really about as
large as most people’s living rooms – it went wrong there, too.
I walked into the breakfast nook, stood in the center of the room and took
a look around. It was completely empty – as was the rest of the house – but
the memories remained.
It was in these very rooms in November of 2003 that Michael Jackson
introduced the world to a young boy named Gavin Arvizo, first in the
kitchen and then the breakfast nook. He smiled at the youngster and gazed
wistfully into a television camera for a Martin Bashir documentary and
asked, ‘Why can’t you share your bed?’ Gavin, seeming totally enchanted
by the pop star, rested his head on Michael’s shoulder. ‘The most loving
thing you can do is share your bed with someone,’ Michael continued. But
after Bashir pressed the issue, Michael tried to clarify it. It was almost as if
it had suddenly occurred to him that his comments could be misconstrued.
‘Always give the beds to the company, you know?’ he said, now sounding a
lot like his mother, Katherine, known to be the consummate hostess. ‘He
[Gavin] was gonna sleep on the floor and I said no, you sleep on the bed
and I’ll sleep on the floor.’ When Bashir pressed as to why Gavin couldn’t
sleep in one of the guest units, Michael said, ‘Yes, but whenever kids come
here they always want to stay with me. They never want to stay in the guest
units, and I have never invited them in my room. They go, can I stay with
you tonight? I say, if it’s okay with your parents, yes you can.’
As I walked into Michael’s living room, I found myself staring at the
fireplace and wondering... what if? What if he hadn’t said those words on
national television? What if he had had more sense, especially after the
allegations of ten years earlier?
But was it so bad, really? Yes, it was, I decided at the time. Maybe now,
looking back on it – knowing all we know and having been so inundated
with nauseating testimony as a result of the subsequent trial – it seems
almost inconsequential. But at the time, when those words came tumbling
from Michael Jackson’s mouth, yes, it was bad. It was defining. In fact, it
was the one moment that, without exaggeration, completely ruined his life.
After the show was broadcast on 6 February 2003, certain children’s
protection agencies raised questions, and one thing led to another before,
finally on 20 September, Jackson was charged and arrested for child
molestation.
If Michael had simply not taped that one segment with Gavin, I
wondered, would he eventually have gotten into trouble somewhere else
down the line? Who knows? But as I walked back into the kitchen alone
with my thoughts, I felt so incredibly sad for him, for his family, for his
friends and for everyone whose lives were affected by a single moment
Michael probably viewed as totally insignificant as it unfolded.
Indeed, what if... ?
Memories of Santa Maria
Four years ago in the winter and spring of 2005 – 28 February through 4
June – I sat behind Michael Jackson in a courtroom in Santa Maria,
California. I’m pretty certain I was the only person present – other than his
lawyers and his family members – who had ever even met the defendant or
any of the other Jacksons. How well I remember the first day Tito walked
into the courtroom to support his brother. Everyone in the press area turned
and looked at me with raised eyebrows. I mouthed the word ‘Tito’ and they
all then quickly jotted his name in their notes. They didn’t know who he
was! It was pretty much the same with all of the family members, who
came in different configurations every day to support the most famous of
the Jacksons.
At the beginning of the trial, Michael Jackson – then forty-six – seemed
to be in very good shape. He would walk briskly into court and, as we in the
press watched, limber up by stretching his body as if he was getting ready
for a performance or an athletic event. It was interesting to watch his
dancer’s body flex and relax, and I remember thinking that he looked as fit
as he did in his memorable videos for ‘Thriller’, ‘Billie Jean’, and ‘Beat It’.
When he would turn and smile at his attorneys or even the spectators, his
charisma was strong and so evident to me. The magic was still there. He
was still Michael Jackson, I thought. People were mesmerised by him, and
somehow awed just to be in his presence. And never was that more evident
than on 1 March 2005 – the second day of opening statements – when
Michael’s lawyer, Tom Mesereau, played the controversial Martin Bashir
documentary for jurors, the very one that had gotten Michael into such
trouble. As Michael’s music played and photos of his amazing career
flashed on the screen, heads began bobbing in the courtroom. People began
to smile at one another. For a moment, it was as if we weren’t even in a
courtroom. We were transported to some other place – certainly a better
place – while Michael’s familiar voice and music filled the room. I thought
to myself, This is going to be one very odd molestation trial.
Then the testimony began.
Day after day as the prosecution stated its case and paraded one witness
after another who spoke of inappropriate behavior between Michael and
young boys, the pop star gradually seemed to fold inside of himself.
On the eighth day of testimony, 9 March 2005, Michael’s alleged victim,
fifteen-year-old Gavin Anton Arvizo, testified. Wearing a blue button-down
shirt, he seemed nervous, mumbling at times. He recounted the times
Michael gave him alcohol and said that Michael had also masturbated him
on two occasions. It was disturbing, to say the least. Michael stared straight
ahead as if a wax mannequin, displaying absolutely no emotion whatsoever.
The day after Gavin started his testimony, Michael was an hour late
getting to court. After the judge issued a bench warrant for him and
threatened to throw him in jail, he finally showed up in pajamas. He’d had a
serious back problem, it was explained, and needed medical treatment.
There was no time for him to change. It was obvious that things were not
going well for him. In fact, that bizarre day was pretty much the beginning
of the end for Michael. The real story as I saw it – besides the unsettling
testimony – wasn’t the fact that he showed up in pajamas as much as it was
that Michael seemed to be dying in front of our very eyes. He was clearly in
terrible pain, both physical and emotional. Anyone who cared about him
would have been heartsick by the sight. It was horrible to watch as he
slowly deteriorated to the point where he could barely walk into the
courtroom.
The prosecution’s case had it that twenty telephone calls between
Michael and Gavin – which started when Jackson called him in the hospital
during the youngster’s cancer treatment – were followed by the first
invitation to the Neverland Ranch. That first night, according to Gavin,
Michael suggested that he and his brother Starr sleep in Michael’s room. He
told them to ask their parents, they did, and it was agreed that they would
sleep in Jackson’s bedroom rather than in a guest cottage. That night they
supposedly watched Internet porn together. ‘I thought he was the coolest
guy in the world, my best friend ever,’ Gavin said, ‘know what I mean? I
really liked him?’
But then, out of the blue, Michael changed his phone number and
abandoned the boys. That sounded like Michael to me. He could be very
capricious. He may have felt that Gavin was just a fan and that he’d given
as much as he was going to give to him. Still, from Gavin’s expression and
demeanour on the witness stand, it was as if the boy felt betrayed, or maybe
even jilted. In fact, Gavin would testify about the time he was at Neverland
and had been told that Michael was not present. But then Gavin ran into
him there. ‘It feels like my heart broke right there,’ he recalled, choked with
emotion.
One day, according to the testimony, there was an unexpected telephone
call asking Gavin and Starr to take part in the filming of Martin Bashir’s
documentary, Living with Michael Jackson. Then, after the documentary
aired and caused a big sensation because of Michael’s misguided
comments, Gavin and his family were asked to take part in a rebuttal video
intended to be used for damage control. Gavin, his two siblings – Starr and
Davellin – and mother, Janet, then met Michael in Florida, as he testified,
and that’s when Michael supposedly gave him wine in a Diet Coke can and
called it Jesus Juice.
The sexual misconduct between Michael and Gavin was said to have
taken place back at Neverland between 20 February and 12 March 2003
(again, after the airing of the Bashir documentary). As the story went, the
Jackson camp then supposedly kept the Arvizos under strict surveillance
and effectively kidnapped them. (Tom Mesereau had a great line about this
in his cross-examination of Gavin’s brother Starr: ‘How many times did
your family escape Neverland and then go back so you could escape
again?’)
The climax of the Arvizo testimony would come in the video recording
of Gavin’s questioning by Santa Barbara police, which was shown to the
jury in the last days of the trial. Gavin again described the five times he
claimed Michael made him drink alcohol and then abused him. ‘He said
boys have to masturbate because if they don’t they go crazy,’ Gavin told the
police. ‘He said that he wanted to show me how to masturbate. I said, “no”.
He said he would do it for me. He grabbed me in my private area. He put
his hand in my pants... he started masturbating me. I told him I didn’t want
him to do that... He kept on doing it.’
Something about this story didn’t sit right with me. Maybe it was the
conspiracy charge – the allegation that a gaggle of Michael’s cohorts kept
the Arvizos at Neverland against their will at Michael’s behest. That
seemed ridiculous to me. My feeling was that if the district attorney
concocted that charge, and it seemed to me that he had, what else in his case
was fiction? If I couldn’t believe the conspiracy charge, could I believe the
rest of the charges of giving alcohol to minors and sexual molestation? But
more than that, the so-called ‘rebuttal video’ was troubling. In it, Gavin and
his family were seen praising Michael Jackson beyond all reason while
insisting that he was not capable of doing anything inappropriate with a
child, and that anyone who thought so after watching the Bashir
documentary was very wrong. And they were adamant about it, too.
However, to explain it, the prosecution claimed the whole thing had been
scripted and the Arvizos had been forced to say what they said.
Whatever the case, I felt certain that District Attorney Tom Sneddon
hated the idea of having to play that video for the jurors. After all, it made
his case against Jackson look very suspect. The fact that he was in
possession of this video and still went ahead with his prosecution made me
question his motives. In fact, it made me think he had it in for Michael
Jackson, maybe because he was never able to prosecute him for what he
believed happened between him and his first accuser, Jordan Chandler, ten
years earlier. In my opinion, once he saw the video of the Arvizos singing
Michael’s praises, he should have just said, ‘Case closed. These people are
probably liars. And even if I’m not absolutely sure they’re liars, they just
might be liars and that’s reason enough not to proceed with the ruination of
another man’s life.’
The worst day, though, was the one we members of the press privately
called ‘Porn Day’. That was the day – and it may have been more than one,
I can’t recall perhaps because I’ve tried to block it – the prosecution
showed, on an enormous screen, pornographic images of magazines found
at Neverland. It was awful. I remember sitting there watching Michael’s
mother, Katherine – a devout Jehovah’s Witness – as she was forced to look
at the lurid display. I just remember the back of her head being very still, as
if frozen in place. (At one point I believe I remember her not appearing at
all for one of the sessions.) None of it was gay porn, though. None of it was
kiddie porn. So why show it? The prosecution suggested that it was straight
porn used by Michael to turn on young heterosexual kids so that he could
then have sex with them. It didn’t make sense to me. And why show so
many images? One magazine, maybe. Two? Maybe. But stacks of them? I
wasn’t even sure they were Michael’s, to tell you the truth. In my mind, it
seemed like a manoeuvre to destroy him and his family.
At the end of the day, Randy Jackson looked at me as he left the
courtroom and gave me a thumbs-up and a big smile. It seemed odd under
the circumstances. But I returned the gesture. That evening I went back to
my room and thought about that moment with Randy. It seemed somehow
familiar to me. And then I remembered that almost thirty years earlier,
Randy had been in an automobile accident and doctors said he would never
walk again. At a press conference at the hospital, they rolled the young
eighteen-year-old Randy Jackson out in a wheelchair, both legs in a cast.
They said he would never walk again. I remember feeling sick about it.
What a tragedy. And I remember that Randy looked at me standing among
the other members of the press and gave me a thumbs-up and a big smile.
Of course, Randy not only walked again, Michael said he danced and went
on with his life in remarkable fashion. Say what you will about the
Jacksons, hope springs eternal for that family – and maybe with good
reason.
I’ll never forget another moment at the trial. It was one of the many days
Michael hobbled by me, smiled and nodded his recognition. I smiled back.
And as he passed, I remember that he smelled like old, musty clothing. It
was as if he was a wax figure in a museum, and one that had been there too
long and was in need of care and attention. Later, one of the other reporters
came over to me and said, ‘You’re putting your objectivity in jeopardy by
smiling at the defendant. People are going to think you’re on his side.’ I
shrugged my shoulders. ‘Yeah, well... ’ I muttered as I walked away. I
thought it was a little late to be concerned about objectivity, especially after
‘Porn Day’.
‘I don’t recall seein’ any head lickin’’
I have so many memories of that infamous trial. Sometimes they hit me in
waves when I least expect it, especially since Michael’s death.
For instance, I remember the day Gavin’s mother, Janet Arvizo, testified.
Her testimony on 13 April 2005 was so preposterous, so unlikely – what
with her allegation that she believed Michael was going to kidnap her
children and take them away in a hot air balloon – many of us in the press
corps actually began to feel as if we’d been duped. After all, we’d spent
months before the trial at court hearings in Santa Maria about evidence that
had been sealed. We had no idea what the DA had on Jackson, we just knew
it had to be pretty bad. But the testimony thus far provided by the DA
seemed weak and inconsistent, and when Janet Arvizo came to town with
her quirky manner, it became clear to a lot of people that this wasn’t such a
cut-and-dry case. Could it be that Michael was being set up by a family
intent on making money, maybe, or a DA determined to finally nail him?
After Janet’s testimony, one CNN reporter came over to me and said, ‘You
know what, pal? I feel so...so...used.’ It was as if he’d been promised
something by a suitor and been betrayed. A friend of mine named Michael
Lawler – an ardent Jackson admirer who had followed the proceedings so
closely he knew the evidence better than even I did – had flown in from
New York to attend the trial. I helped him get into the courtroom for Janet’s
testimony. He was so disgusted by it that he couldn’t help but mutter
something derogatory under his breath. Overheard by the officials, he
promptly got tossed right out of the courtroom. ‘The next time you help
someone get into here,’ a sheriff deputy told me later, ‘you’d better tell him
to keep his trap shut even if the witnesses are crazy as freaking loons.’
I also well remember the day Bob Jones testified, the twenty-ninth day of
testimony.
I had known Bob since I was ten years old and had more than thirty years
of history with him. He was a formidable man. As head publicist at Motown
and later the man in charge of Michael’s PR, he was the person I had to
clear in order to get to Diana Ross, The Supremes, The Temptations, The
Jackson 5 and all of the other Motown stars when I wanted to do interviews
and features about them. He never made it easy, either. He could be
incredibly intimidating and combative. He was also, at heart, a big softy. I
can’t count the number of favors we did for each other, mostly involving
me writing about some obscure Motown artist not one person on the planet
cared about in exchange for an interview with a true legend like Stevie
Wonder or Smokey Robinson.
When Bob Jones left Motown to work for Michael Jackson, he made it
tough for all of us in the press to get to Michael, as we expected would be
the case. He’d known Michael since the pop star was eight, so of course he
was protective of him. However, when there was a press day or some other
function at Neverland, we’d all find ourselves in a bus together headed out
there to cover the event. I remember him once telling me, ‘If I see you take
even one picture on the property, I’ll throw you into the lake with my own
two hands.’ And he meant it, too.
Bob left Michael’s employ in 2004 after almost seventeen years – not
counting all the years at Motown – in what seemed an unfair way, by letter,
not even a phone call. Michael just wrote him off and abandoned him for
reasons that are still unclear to me and, it seems from talking to Bob about
it, to him as well. Then Bob wrote a scathing book about Michael with
reporter Stacy Brown. Even I was shocked by it, and I don’t shock easily
when it comes to this subject matter. Of course, the prosecution loved every
rage-fueled word, especially in regard to Jordie Chandler, the boy Michael
was accused of having molested in 1993. And before the book was even
officially published, they put Bob on the witness stand to face his former
employer and tell – under oath – some of the stories about Michael and
Jordie that were in his book. What must it have been like for Bob to look
out from the witness stand and stare into Michael’s eyes after having
written such a book? Whatever his feelings, in terms of doing what was
expected of him, Bob couldn’-t – or wouldn’-t – pull it off for the
prosecution. He’d spent so many years protecting – and loving – Michael
Jackson, he simply couldn’t do it. He acted – or maybe it wasn’t acting, I’m
not sure to this day – as if he hadn’t even read the book, let alone written it
with Stacy. ‘I don’t recall seeing any head lickin’,’ Bob said when asked
about a particularly strange passage in his own book. (I have to admit, that
became a favorite line for a lot of us in the media.)
Tom Sneddon never really broke Bob Jones – no one was ever able to do
that, not to my knowledge, anyway. Bob left the witness stand after not
saying anything very damaging about Michael. In fact, in some ways, I felt
he sacrificed his own dignity for Michael that day, maybe his final gift to
his former friend and employer. He didn’t seem to care that the DA had
made him look like a liar, as long as he didn’t betray Michael Jackson on
that witness stand. Still, I had a sinking feeling that, as far as Michael was
concerned, Bob was dead to him now anyway. Bob died a couple of years
later without ever reconciling with Michael.
On that same day, June Chandler – Jordie’s mother – testified. She spoke
of the gifts Michael gave her and the pleading and begging he did to allow
him to spend time with Jordie ten years ago. She looked so devastated as
she spoke about the way her relationship with her son had been ruined – she
hadn’t spoken to him in eleven years, by his decision – and how much she
regretted ever having trusted Michael with her son. She said that Michael
lavished her with all sorts of expensive presents in order that she trust him
and, maybe by extension, allow her boy to spend private time with him, on
at least thirty occasions!
When I wrote about the Jordie Chandler business as it unfolded in 1993
and 1994, I was never certain what to think about it. Michael had been so
adamant in my interviews with him at the time – anguished telephone calls
from abroad – that he was not guilty, it was difficult for me to accept that he
was that good a liar. Also, I had many credible sources who felt certain that
Michael was being blackmailed, that he was innocent. But some of the
stories in which Jordie was concerned were so disturbing, I wasn’t sure
what to make of them. Where Gavin Arvizo was concerned, however, I
came to the conclusion that Michael wasn’t guilty based on testimony
presented in court. But when it came to Jordie Chandler, I wasn’t as certain.
How could I be?
Many of Michael’s fans and family members have been angry with me
over the years for not being unequivocal about Michael’s innocence where
Jordie Chandler was concerned. I understand that they feel Michael’s
denials to me in interviews should have been enough to convince me, and
of course his commentary about it went a long way. But the fact of the
matter is that I was never in the same room with Michael and Jordie. How
could I know for sure what went on between them? And, most important –
unlike the situation with Gavin – I wasn’t presented with more than sixty
days of sworn testimony to help me make up my mind. I wanted to believe
that Michael was innocent of any wrongdoing with Jordie Chandler, of
course. I hoped that was the case. But that doesn’t necessarily make it so. In
the end, in my view, blind faith is a wonderful thing reserved only for
family members and very, very close friends. The rest of us just have hope
– and that’s not the same as knowledge.
Then there was the small fact that Michael paid Jordie more than $25
million. Certainly that didn’t help clear his name, as far as I was concerned.
I remember interviewing Michael right after the settlement was made and
telling him that I was extremely disappointed that he’d paid the Chandlers
so many millions. I told him that from that moment on, people would
always believe he was guilty as charged. It was the first time I’d ever heard
Michael swear. ‘I don’t give a [expletive deleted] what people think,’ he
told me angrily. He said that the litigation had ruined his life, that he was
absolutely innocent but that he also had the money to make the whole thing
go away. It was the first time, I thought, Jackson didn’t make a decision
with an eye toward how it would play out in the public arena. In some
ways, I remember thinking it was a defining moment for him. I wondered if
maybe all of the image-making days were behind him and I hoped he’d now
be able to lead a more authentic life. Maybe he didn’t do it after all, I
mused, and he just wanted to get on with his life and forget that the
Chandlers ever existed. But then, ten years later, I sat studying June
Chandler on the witness stand, this shell of a woman with dead eyes. She
looked as if her whole world had come crashing down around her the day
she and her boy met Michael Jackson. And I wasn’t sure what to think. She
was, I felt, the prosecution’s strongest witness, and not so much because of
what she said – it wasn’t much, actually – but because of how she appeared
while saying it. Ruined. Totally destroyed by the circumstances of her son’s
relationship with the King of Pop.
Debbie Rowe’s Testimony
Debbie Rowe’s testimony on 28 May 2005 – the fortieth day – was
probably the most dramatic of the trial. She hadn’t seen Michael in many
years; he wouldn’t speak to her. As far as he was concerned, she’d betrayed
him more than once by wanting to see the two children – Paris and Prince
Michael – she’d had for him. ‘Sometimes she wants them,’ he’d once told
me in a phone conversation, ‘and sometimes she doesn’t, and I’m not gonna
screw my kids up by dropping her into the picture and then out of the
picture. I’m mad at her now.’
Michael was certainly angry when Debbie made a play for the children
right after he was arrested in 2003. In a legal declaration at the time, she
claimed that she kept up her visiting rights to the children for about a year
but relinquished them because she couldn’t handle all of the publicity
surrounding the relationship and thought it would be ‘in the children’s best
interests’. However, according to her statement:
‘During the past few years I maintained contact with persons close to
Michael so that I could keep updates on the children. I have their pictures
throughout my home and often reflected on the fabulous life they must have
enjoyed with their father. I was always told that our children were treated
like royalty and were very happy children. I wanted to speak with Michael
over the past few years to talk about our children but he did not want to
speak with me. Michael never returned any phone calls nor initiated any
conversation with me, so I unfortunately continued to rely on observations
of others that had personal knowledge of the children and their welfare.’
She also maintained that child abuse charges against Jackson had forced
her to reconsider, adding: ‘I believe that I will provide a more stable
environment for our children at this particular time. I believe that I have a
responsibility to protect and be involved with my children’s life and well-
being until such time as a full investigation can be conducted to determine
really what is in the children’s best interests. If I did not intercede now to
help our children I would not be fulfilling my responsibility as a parent.’
Fearing that Jackson was about to flee the country with her children before
his trial, she requested that the children’s passports be immediately
surrendered. She wrote: ‘Michael has close, influential and rich friends all
over the world. He has the ability to rent a private jet at a moment’s notice,
have the children taken from the United States and never returned.’
To Michael, a deal was a deal, no matter what – and as far as he was
concerned Debbie had signed away her parental rights in 2001 and had also
received a sizable payment from him: millions, in fact. He definitely had a
stubborn way about him, which I always presumed he got from his father,
Joseph. A person can never reason with Joseph Jackson when he has his
mind made up about something, and Michael was exactly the same way.
Also, once someone had been cut out of Michael’s life, that person was –
except for a few occasions – never thought of again by Michael. So Debbie
was out of the picture, we all knew it – and now she was being called by the
prosecution. Everyone suspected her testimony was going to be very
damaging. Certainly the prosecution thought as much, based on their pre-
interviews with her, or they wouldn’t have called her.
When Debbie was sworn in, Michael stared at her with an icy expression.
Then it was just one bombshell after another with Debbie, as always
seemed to be the case.
First of all, she admitted that she and Jackson never shared a home
together – that she never moved into Neverland. It looked as if she was
going to testify that her marriage and relationship to Jackson was just a
sham. But then, as often happened at that trial, things turned on a dime.
Suddenly – and much to everyone’s surprise, especially the prosecutors’ –
Debbie began to veer from the story she was expected to tell. First of all,
the DA promised the jury Debbie would testify that all of the compliments
she made about Michael in the ‘rebuttal video’ had been scripted. She said
just the opposite: ‘Mr. Jackson knows no one could tell me what to say.’
However, she did admit that the reason she took part in the video was that
she thought she would be ‘reintroduced to them [her children] and to be
reacquainted with their dad.’ When asked why, she got choked up, looked at
Michael and said, ‘Because he’s my friend.’ Then, when asked if she was
able to see her children after making the video, she quietly answered that
she had tried to do so for nine months until finally giving up.
Debbie also began to insist that Michael was a great father, that he would
never harm a child and that she believed with all her heart that he was
innocent of everything he was being accused of during these proceedings.
Of course, she had to admit, she hadn’t actually seen him or talked to him
for, well, she couldn’t even remember how long, it had been that many
years. Still, she said she thought of him as a friend, ‘if he’d just talk to me.’
It was sad. She was incredibly likeable, full of spit-and-vinegar (at one
point she claimed one of Jackson’s advisers was ‘full of shit’ and then
turned to the judge and apologized). When she learned while on the witness
stand that the DA had taped conversations with her without her knowledge,
she looked aghast and said, ‘You did? You did? Damn you guys!’
If anything, Debbie Rowe did Michael Jackson quite a big service that
day. If she had testified against him, as his ex-wife and mother of his two
children, there seemed no way he would ever be found not guilty. After the
trial, I interviewed prosecutor Ron Zonen for Court TV and he told me that,
indeed, Debbie ‘was probably the biggest surprise of the entire trial. We
didn’t see that one coming, did we?’
After Debbie Rowe’s testimony, we all thought, Well, she’s sure going to
get to see her kids, now. Unfortunately, even though she probably helped
keep Michael out of jail, according to most accounts she would see her
children only one time after that trial.
When Michael was in self-imposed exile in Bahrain after the trial, he sent
Prince Michael and Paris back to the States for a supervised visit with their
mother at a Beverly Hills hotel. It was the first time Debbie had seen them
in three years. The tots were told that Debbie was a family friend, not their
mother. Certainly that had to have been very painful for her. But that was it.
If she ever saw the children again, no one seems to know about it.
Following Debbie’s initial 2003 application for custody, and Michael’s
acquittal in 2005, the two of them reportedly came to an agreement for her
to give up all parental rights in exchange for about $6 million, staggered in
a ten-year deal. She received a lump sum of about $900,000 late in 2006
and then her first installment of about $600,000 on 1 September 2007. The
question is: Did she receive the other payments? It’s likely that she didn’t,
since Michael wasn’t exactly paying his bills in the last few years of his
life. If not, that could influence Debbie’s decision as to whether or not she
wants to now claim the children as her own after the death of their father.
As is now well known, Debbie would be notably left out of Michael’s
will. Keep in mind, though, that it was drawn up in 2003, a couple of years
before the trial. Apparently, though, he didn’t update it after the trial was
over.
An Odd Defence
The prosecution rested on 4 May 2005 after forty-five days. The defence
began presenting its case the next day.
Ironically, some of us felt that the defence’s witnesses were even more
damaging than the prosecution’s! For instance, the first witnesses were
Wade Robson and Brett Barnes, two young men called by Michael’s
attorney, Tom Mesereau, to testify that as youngsters they had both slept in
the same bed as Michael. My stomach twisted into knots as they told their
stories. The point was that in Michael Jackson’s world, it was okay to sleep
with little kids – it didn’t mean you were having sex with them, it just
meant you were having fun, sleep-overs. Never mind the inappropriate
nature of the whole thing or the fact that most reasonable people would find
it appalling and, at the very least, suspicious.
On the second day of testimony, Joy Robson, Wade’s mother, testified
about walking her ten-year-old son across the street from the hotel in which
they were staying to a condo in which Michael was staying and dropping
him off there to spend the night with Jackson. And, as far as she was
concerned, it was all innocent. Why? Because she knew Michael loved
children. ‘Michael Jackson is a very special person,’ she said. ‘Unless you
know him, it’s hard to understand him. He’s not the boy next door.’ I was
more than a little perplexed. I couldn’t imagine that the jury would think
this kind of thing made sense. But still, Joy seemed like a reasonable
person, so maybe it did. In Michael’s world, what made sense and what
seemed like lunacy often converged into a reality that was not easy to
describe.
At one point, Joy Robson recalled tension and jealousy among the boys
who were sleeping with Jackson, including actor Macaulay Culkin and his
brother Kieran. There was also jealousy among the families: Robson said
she told June Chandler that ‘there was tremendous emotional impact on the
children when Michael moved on to another boy’. Moreover, she said she
thought that June was ‘a gold digger’ who wanted to be ‘mistress of
Neverland’.
Marie Lisbeth Barnes testified that her son, Brett, spent dozens of nights
in bed with Michael, even accompanying the pop star on concert tours to
South America and Europe. During the tours, Brett Barnes and Michael
would share one hotel room, while the rest of the Barnes family stayed in
another, the mother said. ‘You just feel when you can trust someone and not
trust someone, and I have complete trust in him,’ Barnes explained. Was I
the only one who thought this did not speak well of Jackson? I didn’t think
so. Looking around the room, I saw a lot of confused faces. Then, when
Brett’s sister Karlee said that Michael slept with her brother for a total of
‘365 days’ over a two-year period when Brett was ten or eleven years old, I
threw my hands in the air and decided that this defence made no sense to
me at all.
In fact, throughout the defence’s case, there were stories of Michael
sleeping with boys in what was maintained to be innocent behaviour. Even
Macaulay Culkin was called to the witness stand on the fiftieth day to pretty
much testify to the same effect. But in my opinion, the defence was at its
best when pointing out inconsistencies in the Arvizos’ stories and in those
of the other witnesses against Michael. It was at its worst when trying to
make Michael’s inappropriate behaviour sound reasonable and
understandable.
It wasn’t all high-stakes melodrama, though. Some memories of Santa
Maria actually make me laugh. For instance, I remember the day we were
all in court ready for the proceedings to begin when there was a ruckus in
the back of the room. It was 3 June 2005, and Tom Mesereau was on the
second day of his closing arguments. All heads turned to see three attractive
black women trying to make their way to the front of the courtroom – all
three were teased, weaved and adorned with clanging jewelry. It was
orchestrated chaos; think The Supremes trying to get to the floor-show
stage from the back of a crowded nightclub and you’ll get the picture. It
was Janet, LaToya and Rebbie making, doubtless, the best entrance of the
trial dressed in matching black-and-white outfits. The three Jackson sisters
marched up the center aisle in perfect unison, led by Janet as if she’d just
said, ‘Okay, girls... let’s hit it. One. Two. Three. Go.’ They sat in the front
row as Thomas Mesereau finished his closing argument. ‘It only takes one
lie under oath to throw this case out of court by you,’ Mesereau told jurors.
‘And you can’t count the lies here.’ When he was finished, the judge
announced that Ron Zonen was about to begin the prosecution’s brief
rebuttal. Just then, on cue, all three Jackson sisters stood up, turned around
and promptly marched right out of the courtroom.
The Verdict
‘You have the best seat in the house,’ one of the Santa Barbara sheriffs told
me the night before he thought the verdict was to come down, on 13 June
2005. It had taken sixty-six days to get the case to the jury – -forty-five
days for the prosecution and fifteen for the defence. The jury got the case
on 3 June and deliberated for ten days. ‘Because when Jackson is found
guilty – and he will be found guilty, I assure you,’ the sheriff continued,
‘we’re going to grab him and take him out of there so fast, your head will
spin.’ I wondered why. ‘Because we’re afraid there’ll be such an uproar, his
brothers will jump the bar [which separates the spectators from the judge,
defendant and lawyer] and cause a riot.’ I was taken aback by the imagery. I
had assumed Michael would be found not guilty. The prosecution’s case
was weak, at least in my view. The kid Gavin Arvizo was not believable,
and his mother seemed emotionally unbalanced to me – as did many of the
other witnesses. It’s funny how the worst moments stand out in a person’s
mind in a trial like this one, and come back to you when you try to sort it all
out. For instance, Starr Arvizo testified that Michael walked into a room
completely naked and aroused and that the boys were horrified. Michael,
according to Starr, said it was ‘perfectly natural’ and they shouldn’t give his
erection a second thought. But Gavin testified that Jackson walked into a
room naked, saw them and tore back out again suggesting that maybe he
didn’t know they were in there – and there was no mention at all from
Gavin of Michael being aroused or of him saying it was ‘natural’. A minor
distinction? Maybe. But still... it made me wonder if the boys just forgot to
get their story straight. In fact, so many kids’ names were mentioned and so
many had testified, one of the questions back from the jury to the judge
during deliberations was: ‘Which boy are we talking about, again?’
But what if I was wrong? What if Michael was found guilty and sent to
prison? ‘He’ll never survive it,’ his brother Jermaine told me. ‘He just never
will. It will be the end for him.’
I was scheduled to be in the courtroom for the verdict on that fateful 13
June 2005, and then planned to immediately race outside and report the
results for the CBS News television audience. The reporters sitting next to
me in court that day who also felt Jackson was not guilty wondered how
they would keep their objectivity if the verdict came in otherwise. ‘I have
this awful feeling that I’ll break down into tears,’ one female news reporter,
a personal friend, told me. ‘And how will that look on TV? But it’s Michael
Jackson,’ she reasoned. ‘We have loved him since he was ten.’ I nodded. In
this case, with this kid and his family, I was sure that Michael was not
guilty. Most of the evidence – or lack of it – had proved as much to me.
Therefore I was truly scared for him. When I watched him walk slowly and
painfully into the courtroom on the day of the verdict, he already seemed
like a broken man and he hadn’t even gotten news of his fate yet. Watching
him, it was as if he was walking to a gas chamber. He had given up. I
wasn’t surprised. His dignity stripped from him, his career in a shambles,
the humiliation alone would have done in most people, let alone a person as
fragile and complex as Michael Jackson.
Of course, the verdict was that Michael was found not guilty on all
counts.
I sat and watched Michael listen to the ‘not guilty’ decisions as they were
read one by one, and as the drama unfolded, it hit me like a thunderbolt:
This man is on so many different kinds of drugs, I don’t even think he
understands he’s been found not guilty!
‘A lot of people are going to be surprised, and you don’t need a law
degree to understand this verdict,’ said CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin.
‘It is an absolute and complete victory for Michael Jackson, utter
humiliation and defeat for Thomas Sneddon, the district attorney who has
been pursuing Michael Jackson for more than a decade, who brought a case
that was not one that this jury bought at all. This one’s over.’
Later in the hallway, there was chaos as the media tried to race out of the
courthouse to report the news. Michael’s fans went berserk with joy outside,
while the media scurried about trying to find their camera and production
crews. It was total pandemonium. For a moment, I found myself shoulder to
shoulder with Michael. I looked at him, this guy I had known since the age
of ten. I smiled at him. He forced a smile back, but his expression was
vacant, his eyes empty. Having been vindicated, it should have been one of
the happiest days of his life, but it was as if he wasn’t even present to enjoy
it. For all intents and purposes, Michael Jackson was gone.
I went on the air to give my first-person account of what had gone on in
the courtroom for CBS News. For me, it was emotional; I barely got
through it.
As I was making my way through the crowd to do a live shot elsewhere
on the grounds, a woman came up to me, a perfect stranger who recognized
me. She grabbed me by the arm and pulled me in so she could make sure I
heard her over the cacophony. ‘Oh, no,’ she said, her eyes wide with alarm.
‘What if he really is innocent?’ It was as if the thought had just hit her and
that she needed to express it immediately, and I just happened to be the one
standing nearby when it came to her. ‘After all of this,’ she said, ‘what if he
really is innocent?’ As I looked at the startled expression on her face, I felt
a chill shoot down my spine and I thought to myself... Oh, my God! What if
he really is?
Aftermath
Bahrain is not an easy place to visit in the summer. Desert covers most of
the thirty islands that make up the country, and in August it’s so hot, humid
and miserable that temperatures regularly exceed 110 degrees Fahrenheit.
But this remote nation does offer one attraction. It’s the perfect place for a
troubled man to put distance between himself and his problems. Which may
explain why it was there, in the Persian Gulf, that Michael Jackson sought
sanctuary after the trial.
In August of 2005, Michael turned forty-seven. He had his freedom. But,
in truth, his problems were far from over. Rather than relish his new
independence, Michael had sunk into a deep depression, often suffering
from panic attacks and insomnia as if traumatized by the trial. He refused to
speak about it. This was not the ‘victory’ that his friends and fans had
fought for. After the verdict, the pop star all but disappeared from public
view. There were no post-trial parties, no triumphant press conferences. In
truth, Michael was in no fit state to celebrate. He was too ill. A couple of
days after the verdict, he checked into a hospital in Santa Barbara to be
treated for exhaustion and dehydration. Not long after he was released, he
took off, leaving Neverland, never to return.
‘He went into total seclusion,’ a source close to the singer told me. ‘He
was depressed, anxious, unable to eat or sleep. He almost lost it all: his
freedom, his family, his career. You don’t just bounce back after something
like that. He told me, “To this day, I wake up feeling upset and scared to
death, and it takes me a half hour to remember that it’s over.” ’
The only person Michael saw in the weeks after the trial – other than his
children and their nanny, Grace Rwaramba – was a therapist. For the first
time in his life, Jackson decided to seek counseling. It was definitely a step
in the right direction. He knew he needed help, and maybe it was an
indication of growth that he actually sought it instead of ignoring the signs.
‘He felt totally victimized by Gavin, the rest of the scheming Arvizos, and
also by the Santa Barbara district attorney, Thomas Sneddon,’ one of
Michael’s inner circle told me. ‘He had a difficult time getting past the fury
he feels about the whole situation. One day he told me, “God forgive me,
and don’t tell Katherine I ever said this, but I hate that kid. I so hate that
kid.” Then I remember he looked at me for a moment and he said, “Part of
me thinks, no, that’s not right. You shouldn’t hate. But then I think, I can’t
help it. I hate that kid for what he did to me. My therapist is telling me that I
need to get real with myself and feel what I feel, not suppress it like I
usually do. Well, how I feel is that I hate that kid. I do.” ’
As described to me, what Jackson had been experiencing sounded akin to
post-traumatic stress syndrome. He had persistent nightmares about the
trial, replaying in his head the lurid evidence against him, the many
witnesses, the pornography shown to the jury, the look of anguish on his
mother’s face. It was the worst thing that had ever happened to him, and it
made him feel raw and, if at all possible, even more disconnected.
Michael didn’t want to talk to anyone who reminded him of what had
happened in Santa Maria, even the people who were at his side throughout
the trial. His family was out, as far as he was concerned. He seemed to want
nothing to do with most of them. Some of the Jacksons were talking about a
reunion tour again, and this time it must have felt to Michael as if he really
owed them the honor – but, still, he wasn’t going to do it. He felt pressured
into becoming involved in other family matters, not to mention his
collapsing financial empire, and he simply didn’t want to traffic in either
world. So he took off. He went to Bahrain, which was about as far away as
he could get. The rejection hurt his family, deeply. Joseph desperately
wanted Michael to make an appearance at a birthday party for him in
Germany. Michael couldn’t bring himself to do it. In the end, Joseph had to
hire a Michael Jackson impersonator.
Apparently, Michael knew the royal family in Bahrain, and so he
hunkered down with them. Of course, later on the Prince would sue
Michael for breach of contract, saying they had a deal to make records and
Michael reneged.
So what else was new?
It was Michael’s lack of personal responsibility that made me want to
have nothing to do with him after the trial. I was able to get past the
molestation accusations in my reporting of him. After all, I believed him to
be not guilty in the Arvizo mess pretty much from the very beginning.
However, I simply couldn’t reconcile his total disregard for other people in
his life. In my mind, he owed his family something for their loyalty.
Perhaps they had pressured him into participating in ventures in which he
wasn’t interested in the past, but this time I felt he had an obligation to at
least try to work with them again. After all, their support must have meant
something to him during the trial. There were Jacksons there every single
day. Beyond that, I couldn’t understand his lack of loyalty to all of the
people who kept Neverland afloat in his absence during the trial. As soon as
the trial was over, practically everyone was let go without severance pay.
Dozens of caretakers, maids and other functionaries – people with children
at home who had given their all to Michael – were just dismissed by him,
seemingly without a second thought. Then there was the onslaught of
lawsuits by former attorneys and business associates, one after another after
the trial. Of course, Jackson had been anything but the consummate
businessman for at least the previous ten years, but now things were out of
control. Did he ever pay anyone with whom he made a deal? Did he ever
sign a contract he didn’t break? It was so obvious to me that he was not a
man of his word and, to be frank – as his biographer and someone who had
known him for so long – it just pissed me off. ‘I’m a man of honor,’ he once
told me. It was when I had made a joke about his marriage to Lisa Marie
Presley on the TV show Good Morning America, and he called to chastise
me. ‘If you believe anything about me, believe that.’ Indeed, looking back
on it now, I guess I felt let down by Michael Jackson. So for years after the
trial, I didn’t want to write about him. ‘But you have to be more objective,’
one editor told me. ‘Yeah, well,’ I responded. ‘When he starts paying his
bills, maybe then I’ll start writing about him again.’
In my view, Michael Jackson had a golden opportunity to reclaim his
career after the trial. I couldn’t understand why he wanted to blow it on
such an epic scale. He kept promising records that never came out, dates
that never materialized. He seemed to not have a place to live: He and his
children would live with friends in one city and then migrate to another as if
they were homeless. I didn’t want to know anything about any of it, it all
seemed so disappointing and useless to me.
Looking back on it now, I wish I’d had more sympathy for a man so
clearly in pain. He never got over the trial; that trauma was still eating away
at him. I understand that now. How could he care about anyone else when
he was just trying to get through the day himself? ‘Anyone who thinks he is
just going to bounce back after such public humiliation doesn’t know
Michael Jackson,’ his former manager Frank Dileo had told me on that June
day when he was acquitted. ‘This is devastating. For a guy like Michael,
this is life-ruining, I’m afraid.’
Indeed, after Santa Maria, little mattered to Michael – except for,
perhaps, the only thing that should have mattered: his children. His career
was in a shambles and his finances in ruin, but it was of no consequence as
far as he was concerned. He had the love of his three children, the two
Prince Michaels and Paris, and as long as that was the case, he figured he’d
be fine. Ironically, considering his nomadic existence, those who know him
best like to think that those post–Santa Maria years were among his best in
the sense that he had truly re-prioritized his life. No longer did he care if he
was Number One or not, and that had certainly been a goal of his for most
of his time on this planet. He no longer had the kind of fire in his belly a
person needs to do what Michael Jackson had already done with his life and
career. For those who wanted to see him back on top, his lack of passion for
his career was difficult to accept. But maybe he had given all he had to
give. Maybe, after so many decades in the spotlight, it was finally time for
us to just leave him alone.
Turning Fifty
A middle-aged man wearing pajamas is being pushed in a wheelchair down
a busy sidewalk by an assistant. He is gaunt and frail-looking. His skin
seems to be peeling. His fingernails are a sickening shade of yellow – or is
it brown? A surgical mask covers the bottom half of his face, large
sunglasses shield the top. He is wearing a red Marines baseball cap.
Meanwhile, three children walk ahead of him, a girl with two boys. They
seem happy – all three adorable in colorful clothing. They wear large caps
but, apparently, not in a deliberate attempt to shield their faces. ‘Slow
down,’ the man commands in a hoarse whisper. However, they ignore him
as they quickly cross the street. Once on the other side of the street and in
front of a book store, they wait for the man in the wheelchair. When he is
finally rolled their way, one of the children dutifully holds the door as the
man is wheeled into the store. ‘Thank you,’ he says weakly. Then, just as
the three children are about to enter the establishment, a wide-eyed stranger
approaches the smallest of them. ‘Was that... ?’ she begins to ask. The boy
is about to answer when a large man comes between him and the woman.
‘No. That was not,’ says the man as he takes the boy by the hand and rushes
him into the store. But then the young boy turns to his inquisitor, smiles
broadly and mouths just two words: Michael Jackson.
The scene I’ve just described was typical of what went on in Michael’s
life almost every day while he lived in Las Vegas, Nevada, in 2008. For the
most part, he spent his time wandering about the city with a gaggle of
bodyguards and his three precocious children: Prince Michael I (eleven),
Paris (ten) and Prince Michael II (six). He was almost always in a
wheelchair, wearing a bizarre outfit and appearing to be at death’s door.
Meanwhile, his record-breaking career seemed to be a thing of the past. By
all accounts, he was still not motivated to do anything. He had no real plans
for the future. He was deeply in debt. As he reached his fiftieth birthday on
29 August, one question sprung to mind: How in the world did it come to
this for a kid from Gary who once had it all?
At this time – the summer of 2008 – Michael had a deal pending to do a
series of shows in Las Vegas. However, he still didn’t seem to want to work.
In his defence, the standards of excellence he set for himself so many years
before were so high, they were practically impossible for him to meet. He
put it best to me more than ten years ago. ‘When I go onstage, people
expect a lot. They want the dancing, they want the spins, and all. They want
the whole package. But that’s a lot of work. I don’t know how much longer
I can do it. I don’t know when it’ll just not be possible.’
It’s true that Jackson couldn’t go on tour doing anything less than what
he did many years ago, his impact on our culture was so great. However, at
fifty, he had arthritic-like trouble with his knees, his ankles... even the joints
in his fingers. ‘This is why he uses the wheelchair,’ said a source at the
time. ‘He’s breaking down in so many ways. It’s hard to imagine him on
stage. In fact, it’s hard for him to imagine it. And if he can’t see it, no one
else ever will...
‘But what’s lacking these days is probably the most important part of any
entertainer – his self-confidence,’ continued the same source. ‘It’s what
gave him his drive, his creative spirit and voice. But it seems to be gone.’
Also, it seemed that Michael believed the masses of fans who once
flocked to his concerts wouldn’t be there for him in 2008. He feared his
followers had been turned against him by the trial. For instance, at a
meeting with a promoter in Las Vegas, he expressed amazement by the
success of the re-release of Thriller. ‘I’m really shocked,’ he said. ‘I can’t
believe people actually bought it. I heard it sold more than three million
copies. Can you believe it?’
‘It was the first time I had ever known him to be surprised by something
doing well,’ said an intimate at that meeting. ‘He was usually surprised by
things that did not go well. Plus, Thriller has already sold more than 100
million copies, so another three doesn’t seem like much. That he thinks it is
suggests that his expectations are pretty low.’
To commemorate the occasion of his fiftieth birthday, a CD called King
of Pop was released worldwide. British fans compiled the track listing on
certain media websites. Basically, it was eighteen of the best Jackson songs
as selected by the public. Also, he was the guest vocalist on a song called
‘Hold My Hand’, by a recording artist called Akon. He sounded terrific on
it, suggesting that the voice was still there if he was at all interested in using
it. But, alas, touring still seemed out of the question. Nothing would have
been more embarrassing to him than announcing a tour and then having it
suffer weak ticket sales.
Another former associate of Jackson’s saw him in August 2008 at the
Treasure Island Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas where he and his children saw
a performance of Mystèry by Cirque du Soleil. ‘I had heard that he’d
recently purchased a home outside of Poughkeepsie, New York, for a
million dollars,’ said that source. ‘It’s in the suburbs, in an upper-middle-
class neighborhood. Seemed strange to me, but... that’s Michael. However,
when I asked him about it, he said, “I think someone in my organization
bought that for me. I don’t know... Sounds nice, though. I’ll bet the kids
would love it.” He truly did not know the details.
‘I asked about Neverland and if he was happy that it’d been saved.
[Jackson’s abandoned hideaway had been scheduled for foreclosure because
he was in default on the $25 million loan. But an investment group called
Colony Capital LLC purchased the loan at the last minute and saved it.]
“Neverland? Why, I don’t know anything at all about Neverland,” Michael
told me. “That’s someone else’s problem now, I think. But I’m not sure... ”
‘Then I asked him if he had any plans,’ continued the source. ‘ “For
what?” he said. “For the future. Recordings? Tours?” By this time, I could
see that he was agitated by my questions. “Look, my plan is to see every
magic show in Las Vegas,” he finally said. “That’s my plan.” Then he
turned and walked away.’
‘He seems very sad and alone,’ another source told me in the summer of
2008. ‘It’s as if all of those years of success really mean nothing. It was just
all fast living and bad personal decisions and hard, hard work. He’s got the
Beatles catalog and that’s worth a lot, but it’s all on paper – money put
aside for his kids. If he liquidates it, he’d probably spend it all, so it’s good
that it’s tied up in loans and other fiscal problems.
‘Thank goodness for his kids, though,’ continued the source. ‘They give
him hope.’
From all accounts, Michael was at his best when parenting his children,
Prince Michael I, Paris and Prince Michael II, also known as Blanket. All
three are very stunning, with high cheekbones and deep-set features.
Michael saw a lot of his youthful self in his children, especially in Prince
Michael I. All three have musical ability and a sense of style, but he always
thought Prince Michael I would be the next star in the family.
For a man so youth-obsessed, so intent on fashioning himself as a child
long after he was an adult, many people in his life feared that 29 August
would perhaps be a day of reckoning for Michael Jackson. He was middle-
aged – past it, really – and there was no turning back now.
‘He spends a lot of time looking in the mirror,’ revealed one of his
associates at the time. ‘I think he has certain regrets – like the plastic
surgery. “I don’t know what I was thinking back then,” he recently said.
“Everyone makes mistakes when they’re young, I guess. But I still look
okay, don’t I? I mean, for forty?” I said, “Mike, you’re gonna be fifty.” He
gave me an impish smile and said, “It all went by so fast, didn’t it? I wish I
could do it all over again, I really do.” ’
Michael made no plans to celebrate his fiftieth, other than in a small,
private way with his children. And this time there was no big interview with
me to commemorate the occasion. As it happened, turning fifty was not a
big deal to Michael anyway. ‘He was sort of fine with it,’ one of his
brothers told me. ‘I don’t know... in a sense I was hoping for more of a
reaction, I guess. Even despair. At least that’s a real reaction, you know? It’s
like that goddamn trial deadened him inside. I want to say, “Mike, wake up!
It’s passing you by. Get with it, bro. Live your life before it’s too late.” ’
Gone Too Soon
1958 – 2009
On the afternoon of 25 June 2009, I was tooling along in my convertible on
the 101 North freeway from Burbank back to my home in Encino – into
which I’d just moved two months earlier. The top was down, the California
sun was blazing and, as always, my music was blasting loud. On this
afternoon it was ‘I Wanna Be Where You Are’, by Michael, a great little
song he recorded for Motown in 1971. I remember thinking that it sounded
particularly vibrant and exciting on that afternoon. What an astounding
performance from a thirteen-year-old kid. I remembered the day it was
released. At the time, I wondered if he would ever leave the Jackson 5. No,
I had decided; they were just too close. ‘Corner of the Sky’ was next on my
CD’s line-up. By the time that one was issued in 1973, The Jackson 5’s
career at Motown was in a steady nosedive, but who cared about such
things back then? Certainly not me. Each brother had a chance to sing on
‘Corner of the Sky’, and for any fan of the group, that was all the proof
needed to suggest that Michael wasn’t being singled out. I smiled at this
memory of my youthful naïveté. As I drove along, it truly felt as if I was
having a nostalgic Jackson 5 moment like no other. ‘I want my life to be
something more than long,’ Michael sang as I pulled into my driveway.
As soon as I got home, the news hit that Michael had been taken to the
hospital suffering from cardiac arrest. I was suspicious. He’d been
rehearsing for a series of fifty concerts to take place from July to March
2010 in London – his great comeback, or so it was hoped. It was a lot to
take on, and anyone who knew Michael knew that when he was in
preparation for these kinds of endeavors he was prone to severe panic
attacks. I recalled what happened when he was supposed to do just one
show at the Beacon Theater in New York a number of years ago. He had a
panic attack that resembled a heart attack, and it was not only about the
performance at hand – a single show! – but also about his failing marriage
to Lisa Marie Presley. He ended up in the hospital. His handler, Bob Jones,
told the media it was some sort of rare rib infection. When I asked Bob
about it years later, he confessed, ‘We thought it was a heart attack. It
wasn’t. He simply lost it because of the circumstances of his life at that
time. The boy was totally messed up, that’s all I can tell you.’ I figured this
latest scare was more of the same.
I wish it had been.
The news that Michael Joseph Jackson had died after being rushed to the
Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center hit most people with the kind of
defining-moment impact of President John F Kennedy’s death, or that of his
son, John-John, or Princess Diana... John Lennon. People will always
remember what they were doing when they learned of Michael’s passing. I
immediately went to work reporting the story for CBS News.
The news cycle was fast moving and difficult to reconcile, especially
when it became clear that, probably, Michael’s cardiac arrest was the result
of a drug overdose. Numerous vials of the dangerous anesthesia Diprivan
(propofol) were found in his rented Holmby Hills estate shortly after a
nurse named Cherilyn Lee went on the record as saying that Jackson had
asked her to seek it out for him. It is taken intravenously and should never
be administered outside a hospital. Many doctors went on the record saying
that while they have heard of the drug being abused by health care
professionals, who have ready access to it, they had not heard of it being
used as a sleep aid medication. ‘Propofol induces coma, it does not induce
sleep,’ Dr Zeev Kain, the chair of the anesthesiology department at the
University of California Irvine, said. ‘I can put you in a coma for as many
days as you want. And, in fact, in intensive care units who have patients
who are on a ventilator, that’s one of the drugs they use.’ Dr Rakesh
Marwah, of the anesthesiology department at the Stanford University
School of Medicine, added that the drug can definitely lead to cardiac arrest
without proper monitoring. ‘Propofol slows down the heart rate and slows
down the respiratory rate and slows down the vital functions of the body,’
he explained. Not enough carbon dioxide exits the body; not enough
oxygen enters. And the situation can cause the heart to abruptly stop. ‘[It is]
as dangerous as it comes,’ Kain said. ‘You will die if you will give yourself,
or if somebody will give you, propofol and you’re not in the proper medical
hands.’
‘I want it to hit my vein and I want to be asleep,’ Michael had told his
nurse of the drug he so wanted, which she refused to find for him. ‘I don’t
even want to wait a second for it to get into my system. I want to be
knocked out, asleep.’
It made sense, even if it was chilling. Michael probably would have paid
a million dollars for a good night’s sleep. He’d suffered from insomnia for
many years, but that was the least of his problems. He also had lupus, the
chronic autoimmune disease that plagued him for years. Of course, he had
vitiligo, even if there was some dispute as to whether it was genetic or a
form brought on as a consequence of skin bleaching agents he’d used over
the years. There were other physical ailments as well having to do with his
back, his knees and other problems associated with a dancer’s body as it
ages. Also, much of the plastic surgery he’d had over the years began to
affect him as he aged. He was deeply ashamed of the way he looked as a
result of the plastic surgery – much of which he regretted – and the ravages
of lupus, so he would therefore dress in strange outfits to hide his body,
with standard-issue surgical masks and hats and sunglasses. The stranger he
looked, the more attention he attracted; and the more attention he generated,
the greater his unhappiness. It was a vicious cycle, and not one with which
he was unfamiliar. On top of everything else, he suffered from severe bouts
of depression. It’s no wonder he was given so many different kinds of
prescriptions.
The big question, of course, is whether or not Michael was addicted. For
anyone privy to his real world, this question merely stated the obvious: Of
course he was, and everyone knew it. ‘If he could get his hands on some
Demerol, you can be sure he’d do it,’ said one person close to him. ‘I can’t
count the number of times people close to him tried interventions. There
was no reaching him, though. You can’t help a person who doesn’t want it.’
Sources close to Jackson told CNN’s Dr Sanjay Gupta that the singer
actually traveled with an anesthesiologist who would ‘take him down’ at
night and ‘bring him back up’ during a world tour in the mid-90s.
It’s true that Michael was used to getting what he wanted in his life, and
if it was a certain drug to ease his emotional or physical pain he expected to
be able to get his hands on it, no questions asked. However, he was not a
man who just wanted to get high for kicks. He wasn’t scoring his drugs
from some roadie behind a tour bus. He was getting them from licensed
doctors who were answering his cries for help. Should some of those
doctors have known better than to just give Michael what he wanted rather
than find some better way to treat him? Obviously. But one put it best to me
when he said, ‘When you were sitting there in the room with him, and he’s
crying and he’s in pain and he hasn’t slept in a week... and he begs and begs
you for help, you had to help. You had to. People on the outside find it easy
to judge and point fingers. You have to be there to understand his level of
physical and emotional pain.’ It’s telling that the drug he most seemed to
crave was a kind of anesthesia. He wanted to be numb, not only to his pain,
but to the world. It was as if he’d had enough and he wanted out.
Michael’s finances were always the subject of great interest, and the most
common question at his death was: How broke was he? There’s no simple
answer to that query, and anyone on the outside of Michael’s circle who
tries to assemble bits and pieces of financial information in order to get a
clear understanding of what’s going on is a person who doesn’t know what
he’s talking about. I spent many hours with Michael’s brilliant attorney
John Branca, who structured Michael’s finances. (Michael was best man at
John’s wedding in 1987, that’s how close they were.)
As much as I know about his wealth, I still don’t fully understand the
details and, when reporting the story, have never tried to act as if I do. I
know this much, though: As long as there was a million dollars somewhere
that Michael could get his hands on – even if some of it was hidden in a
pillow case by his kids’ nanny, Grace – he was fine. (And, yes, apparently
that would happen!) Gone was the shrewd businessman of the 1980s who
stayed on top of every one of his bank accounts and demanded full
disclosure of detail from Branca – who worked for Michael from 1980 until
2006 and then returned shortly before his death.
Though Branca came back to a messy quagmire of debt and asset
leverage that would probably baffle even the most expert financier, Michael
was, for the most part, not that concerned about any of it. Again, the
molestation trial in Santa Maria can be pointed to as the primary reason
Michael lost interest in his wealth. Nothing much mattered to him after the
trial. He told people close to him that the reason he had signed on to do the
London concerts was not because of the hundreds of millions of dollars that
could be generated. It was, as he put it: ‘Because my kids are old enough to
appreciate what I do, and I’m young enough to still do it. I don’t care if
people don’t show up,’ he said, maybe a little disingenuously. Of course,
the tickets sold out unbelievably quickly – the public still wanted Michael,
that much was clear.
Judging from the way he performed on the brief clip of ‘They Don’t Care
About Us,’ released after his death by AEG Live, the concert’s promoters,
Michael was in fine form. He seemed to really want to make a point with
this show – that he was back and still The King, and he looked, at least
from this particular clip, as if he could have pulled it off. Amazingly,
despite his lack of self-confidence and his broken down body, the man still
had what it took and he looked damn good. That said, it would be foolhardy
to think that the coming dates would have gone off without a hitch. After
all, nothing in Michael’s life and career in recent times was ever easy. There
were probably plenty of canceled concerts on the horizon due to ‘illness’,
‘exhaustion’, ‘dehydration’ and all of the other common maladies of
performers under duress. Still, the shows he would have gotten through
would have been memorable. For any diehard fan, it seemed Michael
Jackson was really ready to deliver. Moreover, the fact that he had brought
back the great duo of the 1980s who helped mastermind his biggest
successes – his former lawyer John Branca, and former manager Frank
DiLeo – suggested that maybe he had his eye on the future, and maybe, just
maybe, he actually cared about it.
The last time I saw Michael Jackson face to face was on verdict day in
Santa Maria when I congratulated him on his victory but he seemed to not
understand what was happening. The haunted look in his eyes that day
disturbed me for many months after the trial. I spoke to him on the phone
only twice in the intervening four years, both very brief conversations for
magazine stories about career plans that didn’t materialize. When I sent him
a copy of my Elizabeth Taylor biography, he called to tell me he enjoyed it.
He sounded good, but how could anyone know for sure? Ten minutes after
he hung up, I received another telephone call, this one from one of his
flacks. ‘Don’t you dare use Michael’s compliment as an endorsement of
your book,’ I was told. How annoying. ‘Please,’ I told the caller, ‘I’ve been
around a long time. I know better. Give me a break.’ The handler sighed
into the phone. ‘We’ve all been around a long time,’ she said, now seeming
exhausted. ‘Maybe too long, huh?’ I agreed. ‘Yeah... maybe a little.’
I was at CBS News getting ready to tape a segment about Michael’s
family when the will was filed. As I stood among my colleagues and pored
over the contents, the mention of Diana Ross caught my eye. It was his
wish that she – not Debbie Rowe – care for his children in the event that
Katherine not be able to do so. It seemed absolutely appropriate to me.
Michael lived with Diana for a short time when he first moved to Los
Angeles at the age of eleven. He idolised her and she doted upon him, even
though she had a busy life and was about to leave The Supremes for a solo
career. Then she went on to have five children of her own, not one of whom
has ever been in any kind of public scandal. She and Michael hadn’t been
close recently, but that’s only because Michael wasn’t close to many people
in the last four years of his life. What a tribute to their enduring friendship
that he would trust her with what meant the most to him – his children.
‘You are going to be a great, great star,’ she’d once told him over breakfast
when he was eleven, according to what he once told me. Then, with
maternal purpose, she added, ‘Now eat your cereal.’
It was as if Michael considered Diana’s prediction to be a mandate
because, certainly, there was never a bigger star than Michael Jackson.
Whether it was the beautiful melodies of his music, the harmony as it
poured out of his voice, or the staccato-like dance moves that reached a
penultimate crescendo with his gravity defying moonwalk, Michael Jackson
had a unique ability to inspire, to give hope to, to unite. Where others have
tried – and often in vain – to use their talents and skills in a way that honors
God and the inherent goodness of his nature, Michael Jackson was able to
unite millions of people, regardless of race, creed, religion, age, gender,
sexuality or nationality, behind messages of service and sacrifice, peace and
love, hope and change and the freedom of expression. Whether through
songs like ‘Heal the World’, ‘We Are the World’ or ‘Man in the Mirror’, he
brought the plight of the world’s suffering to the attention of all as only he
could. In many respects he gave a voice to the voiceless, a face to the
faceless and hope to the hopeless. If a little African-American boy from
Gary, Indiana, could make it to the 2,600-acre Neverland Valley Ranch in
Santa Barbara, California, then maybe it was possible for anyone to make it.
With hard work and determination, maybe we could all reach for our
dreams. Michael Jackson certainly did just that, didn’t he?
The Man in the Mirror
I cannot imagine a world without Michael Jackson in it.
For the past forty years we have all been witness to Michael’s heroic rise
and tragic fall. We cheered as he made history with record after record,
album after album. We watched in awe as he broke barriers and made
impossibilities become realities. We appreciated his iconic sense of style –
one sequined white glove, white socks, black leather shoes, red leather
jackets, and a black fedora – and longed to do the moonwalk with perfect
precision. We watched in shock as he transformed his image time and time
again. We felt outrage at the allegations of child molestation, not knowing
who or what to believe. And we watched in sadness as the world’s longest-
running reality show reached its tragic and somewhat surreal conclusion on
25 June 2009.
After his death, I went back to Neverland to conduct a tour of the estate
as part of my coverage of Michael’s death for CBS News. The first time I
set foot on the property was before Michael had even purchased it. As it
happened, in the spring of 1983 Michael’s publicist, Bob Jones, invited a
few select members of the press to the Santa Ynez Valley to watch as
Michael and Paul McCartney made the video for ‘Say, Say, Say’.
Something happened – we never did find out what – and Michael didn’t
show up for the taping. So Paul invited the contingent of reporters to the
home he was renting during the production – Sycamore Valley Ranch,
which, of course, became Neverland. Once we got to the ranch, we in the
press corp never even saw Paul again. However, he made sure we were well
fed and then sent us on our way. I wasn’t invited into the house but from the
spacious grounds – acre after bucolic acre – I knew it was a special place.
When I found out six years later that Michael had purchased the home, I
thought he was certainly moving up in the world.
Standing in the empty main house after his death, I remembered the four
or five occasions – all press events to announce certain charities in which
Michael was involved – I was invited to the estate during the seventeen
years Michael lived there: 1988 through 2005, certainly many of the most
pivotal and, also, confounding years of his life. The house and surrounding
grounds were always filled with laughter and music, even if at times it
seemed a somewhat eerie and unreal place. In the past, I had only been
permitted access to the living and dining rooms and, once, as I recall it, into
the kitchen. I believe I was in the library once with Michael’s attorney John
Branca as well. But now, on this strange day, I had free reign to explore the
entire estate. There’s something very sad about an abandoned home, and
Michael’s was no exception. Seeing it empty was a strange experience.
Even Michael had never seen it that way; he purchased it furnished and then
added his own – many of his own – pieces. He would have been astounded
to see the place so completely empty. How lucky Michael was to live here, I
thought. To have come from such meager beginnings in Gary, Indiana – and
I’d also been to that small clapboard house, incidentally – to this sumptuous
estate was, without a doubt, a journey like no other. I remember him
pointing out the barbecue area outside the kitchen and telling me, ‘You can
take all of Hayvenhurst’ – the estate he and his family bought in the early
1970s and which he remodeled in the 1980s after buying out his father –
‘and fit it right there in that little corner. How about that!’
But what must it have been like, I wondered, for Michael to walk the
bricked halls of the main house in the middle of the night, fearing that he
might spend almost twenty years of his life in a jail cell? That had to have
been the flip side of living at Neverland in his final years there. How did he
ever survive the fear, the anguish? And then I thought, My God! If he had
gone to prison, maybe he would still be alive! But, then again, what kind of
life would that have been for Michael Jackson? No, I decided, he would
rather be dead than be in prison. No doubt about that, I’m afraid.
As I walked into Michael’s bedroom, it was as if his spirit still remained.
I looked at the fireplace and imagined it lit with a warm glow. I thought
about the painting of The Last Supper that had once been placed over his
bed, with Michael in Christ’s place. I thought it was the most ridiculous and
maybe even blasphemous piece of art I’d ever heard of when I learned that
he’d bought it for this room. But suddenly, standing there, it seemed to
make sense to me. Crucified by the circumstances of his life, it was as if
poor Michael Jackson had no chance at all.
I thought about him alone at night in that very room, trying in vain to
sleep. Rising, pacing the halls, going back to bed... surrounded by bottles of
pills and who knows what else... taking anything to escape the insomnia,
the anxiety. The never-ending tape loop of his thoughts. I walked into his
bathroom and over to his sink. I looked at the tile on the counter – each one
seemed to be a royal crest from a different European family. There I stood,
gazing at the very mirror into which Michael had stared day after day, while
probably wondering the same questions that many of us have asked
ourselves at one time or another in our lives: Why do I look this way? Why
do I feel this way? What can I do now to make that one crucial change that
will help me, if not to truly love myself, at least to achieve some peace of
mind? And I looked into my own eyes. I studied the reflection of a man in
the mirror who had spent so many years of his own life trying to
comprehend another person’s journey, looking for threadbare clues that
might answer the simple question: Why? As I did, I began to realize that, as
is always the case with our most legendary celebrities and icons, while their
gifts, talent and dynamism are often unparalleled, they are at the very core
no different, no more or less unique, extraordinary and difficult to
understand than anyone else. I began to feel at one with the sheer humanity
of Michael Jackson, and all its complexity, fallibility and grace. I never
thought such a thing possible about somebody at once so magical and yet so
mystifying to the point of madness. Our lives had been so different. But,
finally, I think I understood the truth about Michael – a truth that, in the
end, is far easier to understand than the man who personified it on the
greatest stage of all for a generation. Like most of us, he was a man who did
the best he could with the cards he’d been dealt, sometimes with
magnificent results, sometimes with tragic failure; the results of which were
magnified a thousand times over because of his astounding success, and the
vulnerable young age at which he achieved it. Indeed, staring at my own
reflection in Michael Jackson’s mirror, I began to feel such empathy for
him, such pity for him...and such great love for him as well. But more than
anything, I felt immeasurable sorrow for him and for what his life should
have been like – could have been like – in only...
The Jacksons posed for a family photo in June 1970. Top row: Jermaine,
fifteen; LaToya, fourteen, Tito, sixteen; Jackie, nineteen. Bottom row:
Michael, eleven; Randy, seven; Joe; Janet, four; and Marlon, thirteen. (©
1970 Soul magazine. All Rights Reserved.)
Michael in 1971. (J. Randy Taraborrelli Collection)
An early publicity photo of The Jackson 5 (1969). Top Row: Tito, sixteen;
Jackie, eighteen; Jermaine, fifteen. Bottom Row: Marlon, twelve; and
Michael, eleven. (Retro Photo)
By the time The Jackson 5 played the Los Angeles Forum in 1970 ‘Jackson
Mania’ was in full bloom. Michael seems to be doing his best James Brown
impression here. (Retro Photo)
By the end of 1972, the family was enjoying tremendous success. Top row:
Jackie, twenty-one; Katherine (with newly frosted hair); Joe; Janet, six;
Jermaine, eighteen; Michael, fourteen. Bottom row: Marlon, fifteen; Randy,
ten; Tito, nineteen; and LaToya, sixteen. (J. Randy Taraborrelli Collection)
Diana Ross was credited with discovering The Jackson 5. Here, she seems to
be telling Michael and Marlon, ‘Now here’s what I want you to say…” (J.
Randy Taraborrelli Collection)
Twelve-year-old Michael doing his slick Frank Sinatra impression on Diana
Ross’s Diana! Special, April 1971. (J. Randy Taraborrelli Collection)
Thirteen-year-old Michael in his bedroom, posing with one of his many pet
rats. The bedroom walls were always covered with cartoon figures and
publicity photos of entertainers (note the pictures of The Jackson 5 and The
Supremes). (J. Randy Taraborrelli Collection)
Tito was the first brother to marry. Dee Dee Martes was told to sign a
prenuptial agreement before the wedding on 17 June 1972. (Retro Photo)
When Jermaine Jackson married Berry Gordy’s daughter, Hazel, the
ceremony made the worldwide news. (J. Randy Taraborrelli Collection)
Jackie married Enid Spann on 24 November 1974. Theirs was a sometimes
difficult union and Enid held on as long as she could. (J. Randy Taraborrelli
Collection)
When Marlon married Carol Parker on 16 August 1975, the couple kept their
union a secret… rather than risk the wrath of Marlon’s father, Joe. (Retro
Photo)
Michael in 1977, at the age of nineteen, before plastic surgery. (© 1977 Soul
magazine. All Rights Reserved.)
Michael Jackson and J. Randy Taraborrelli as youngsters in the late 1970s,
before the madness set in…
Michael turned twenty-one in August 1979. Here, he poses for a photo
wearing a rebel cap – perhaps signifying a newfound independence. From
this time on Michael would have a hand in all of his business matters. (©
1979 Soul magazine. All Rights Reserved.)
An extremely rare photograph of Michael Jackson’s half-sister, the lovely
Joh’ Vonnie Jackson, sixteen when this picture was taken in February 1991.
Ms Jackson hopes to follow in the footsteps of her famous half-brothers and
–sisters, and become an entertainer. (J. Randy Taraborrelli Collection)
In 1977, the Jackson daughters hoped to start their own singing group.
However, since LaToya and Rebbie couldn’t see eye-to-eye on the group’s
direction, and Janet wanted to be an actress, the act never got off the ground.
Left to right: LaToya, twenty-one; Janet, eleven; and Rebbie, twenty-seven.
(© 1977 Soul magazine. All Rights Reserved.)
Michael in October 1978 as the scarecrow in The Wiz, a huge box-office
disaster. (J. Randy Taraborrelli Collection)
Jermaine Jackson with author J. Randy Taraborrelli, 1980. Jackson was
ambivalent about his decision to stay with Motown when his borthers signed
with CBS Records. He told Taraborrelli, ‘I don’t feel I left them. I feel they
left me… here at Motown.’ (Mike Jones)
In July 1980, Joe Jackson celebrated his fifty-first birthday. Left to right:
Joe’s mother, Chrystal; Gina Sprague, nineteen; Marlon, twenty-three; Janet,
fourteen; and Randy, seventeen. Michael did not show up. Katherine, who
suspected that Gina and Joe were having an affair, was seated at a nearby
table when this picture was taken. (J. Randy Taraborrelli Collection)
By the time this photo was taken, 7 February 1984, Michael Jackson was
sitting on top of the world, thanks to his Thriller album. ‘You get one frame,’
Michael told photographer David McGough, who waited five hours to take
this picture. ‘That’s it. If I close my eyes, too bad.’ McGough took his ‘one
frame’, and this was the result. Michael is wearing a hat because his scalp
was burned less than two weeks earlier while taping an ad for Pepsi. (David
McGough/DMI)
On 7 February 1984, Michael was inducted into the Guiness Book of World
Records for recording the most successful album in music industry history,
Thriller. Right, Michael with his manager, Frank Dileo. (David
McGough/DMI)
Michael Jackson set a new music industry record on 28 February 1984,
when he walked off with an unprecedented eight Grammy Awards, the most
won by an artist in one year. Michael gives the thumbs up to photographers
as he drops off his date, Brooke Shields, at her Los Angeles hotel following
the awards after-party. (John Paschal/DMI)
On 30 November 1983, a press conference was held at Tavern on the Green
in New York to announce that the Jackson brothers would be reuniting for a
tour. Left to right: Marlon, twenty-six; Michael’s friend, Emmanuel Lewis,
twelve; Michael, twenty-five; Randy, twenty-one; Tito, thirty; Jackie, thirty-
two; and Jermaine, twenty-nine. Promoter, Don King, with the ‘interesting’
hairdo, is posed flashing the peace sign. (David McGough/DMI)
Michael’s bizarre hyperbaric chamber hoax made worldwide headline news.
To this day, many people believe that Michael slept in such a contraption,
when actually the whole thing was a publicity stunt concocted by Michael.
(Transworld Feature, Synd.)
Twenty-nine-year-old Michael on stage in March 1988 during the Bad tour.
(David McGough/DMI)
Michael receives the BMI Michael Jackson Award on 8 May 1990, in
Beverly Hills. (Kevin Winter/DMI)
Michael and his friend Jordie Chandler (far right) and Jordie’s mother, Lily,
in 1993 at the World Music Awards in Monaco. It was during this trip, Jordie
alleged, that the sexual misconduct began between him and Michael. (Rex)
On 22 December 1993, Michael gave a speech from his Neverland ranch
about the allegations. ‘I ask all of you to wait and hear the truth before you
condemn me,’ he said, holding back tears. ‘Don’t treat me like a criminal.’
(Corbis)
Was he telling the truth? Though Michael denied that anything sexual
happened between him and Jordie, pictured here in 1993, he ended the
ordeal with a huge cash settlement to the youngster and his family. ‘I had to
go on with my life,’ Michael explained to the author of this book. ‘Too many
people had already been hurt.’ (Rex)
On 26 May 1994, after the Jordie Chandler scandal, Michael went on to
marry Lisa Marie Presley. At the time, most observers viewed the union as a
public relations manoeuvre. However, as it happens, the truth is stranger
than fiction: he and Lisa had a strong sexual chemistry; it was the first time
Michael had ever felt so intensely about another person. (Corbis)
On 13 November 1996, Michael married Debbie Rowe. And it was Debbie
who gave Michael his longed-for children. (Corbis)
Michael with his daughter, Paris (left), and son, Prince Michael I, on a public
outing, in 2002. He covered their faces, he said, in order to avoid kidnapping
attempts. (Corbis)
This is the photo that caused a huge sensation in November 2002, when
Michael dangled his nine-month-old son, Prince Michael II, from a balcony
in Germany. He apologized for it, but he was never able to live it down.
(Corbis)
This is a rarely seen photo of Michael and Diana Ross. Michael so loved and
respected Diana he stipulated in his will that, in the event of his death, she
care for his three children if his mother, Katherine, was unable to do so. (J.
Randy Taraborrelli Collection)
Michael’s children have always been a source of fascination. Jackson’s
second wife, Debbie Rowe, is the mother of Prince Michael I (left) and Paris
(in the middle). Prince Michael II’s mother is unknown. (National Photo
Group/Valdez)
The memorial service for Michael Jackson, held at the Staples Center in Los
Angeles on July 7, 2009, was a deeply touching event, with the most moving
tribute of all given by Jackson’s 11-year-old daughter, Paris Katherine
Michael. Here she is surrounded by members of the family: siblings Janet,
LaToya and Jermaine, and Jackson’s older son, Prince Michael I.
(GABRIEL BOUYS/AFP/Getty Images)
There were many rumors of Michael’s declining health in the months prior
to his death, but he certainly looked fit in this photo taken on June 23, just
two days before his death. Michael was in rehearsals for his comeback show
in London, which were to have begun in July. (Photo by Kevin Mazur/AEG
via Getty Images)
Personal Acknowledgements
I owe a debt of gratitude to so many people who saw my work and research
regarding Michael Jackson through its many incarnations over the years. It
would be impossible to acknowledge them all – I started writing about
Michael for the Black American newspaper in New York back in the
1970s!- – but I would like to at least try to recognize a few.
I would like to thank my publisher, Jamie Raab at Grand Central
Publishing, and all of the terrific people there who worked so hard to pull
together this updated edition of my Michael Jackson biography under such
a pressing deadline. This book has not been available in America in almost
fifteen years. It’s so wonderful to see it back in print, and now fully
updated.
I would also like to thank my domestic agent, Mitch Douglas, for his
dedication to me and to this work. Also my European agent, Dorie
Simmonds, was instrumental in assisting us with this project, and I thank
her for years of great representation.
I would like to thank Thomas Mesereau, the attorney who represented
Michael Jackson during his 2005 molestation trial and won Jackson an
acquittal on all counts. I would also like to thank Brian Oxmon, the
Jacksons’ family lawyer. I most certainly must also acknowledge John
Branca, Michael’s trusted attorney for many years of his life. I think
lawyers have a bad rap sometimes, but these three gentlemen always had
Michael’s best interests at heart, and I have the greatest respect for them. I
thank them for their support of what I have tried to do over the years in
reporting Michael’s story.
In 2005 I covered the Michael Jackson molestation trial in Santa Maria,
California, for CBS News and Court TV. I returned to CBS News in 2009 to
cover Michael’s death for the network. I’ve met so many amazing people
during my time with CBS – media colleagues, many of whom I now count
as good friends of mine and who were so supportive of me in my efforts to
do my best job. I would like to acknowledge just a few of them here: my
very good friends Bruce Rheins and Dawn Westlake, Jennie Josephson,
Manuel Gallegos, Vince Gonzalez, Jennifer Sieben, Soshea Lebowitz,
Sherri Sylvester, Ben McShane, Susan Filan, Anne Bremner; Jim Moret,
Maureen Orth, Michelle Caruso, Leslie Miller, Miguel Marquez, Quintin
Cushner, Peter Bowes, Peter Shaplin, Lisa Strum Sweetingham, Pat
Ketchum, Diane Dimond, Jim Meitus, Pat Ketchum, Savannah Guthrie,
Dawn Hobbs, Stacy Brown, Andrew Cohen, Trent Copeland, Hal Eisner,
Aphrodite Jones, Jane Velez-Mitchell, Roger Friedman, Jim Thomas, Dan
Whitcomb and Mike Taibbi. I apologize to any whose name is not on this
list. You are definitely in my heart, if not on the tip of my tongue at this
moment. Thanks as well to Raymone K. Bain for her work, and also for
being Michael’s spokeswoman during our time in Santa Maria.
I must thank, of course, the Jackson family. Sometimes over the last
thirty years of my reporting about them, I have been in their favor. Often
not. It’s unfortunate, but that’s the way it goes when it comes to the media
and celebrities. However, I have the greatest respect for the Jacksons, and I
hope they know it. I consider many of them to be my good friends. I have
so many memories of my experiences with them over the years at the
Hayvenhurst estate in Encino when I was first starting my career. I have
interviewed them all so many times and have done my best to be fair and
empathetic. I am so very sorry for their loss of Michael. Their grief is, I
know, incalculable. I send them all my love: Joseph and Katherine, Rebbie,
Jackie, LaToya, Tito, Randy Marlon and Jermaine. This book is dedicated
to the memory of their son, their brother...their loved one, forever.
Special thanks to Mike Lawler for his advice and support on all-things-
Jackson. He has helped me in so many ways over the years where Michael
is concerned, and I am very grateful to him.
Hillel Black was the editor of the original edition of this work back in
1990. Michael Jackson: The Magic and the Madness was our second
collaboration; Mr Black also edited Call Her Miss Ross. No author could
ever have hoped for a better, more patient person to shepherd a book.
Paula Agronick Reuben was invaluable to me in so many ways for many
years early in my career. I was fortunate to have been able to work with her
on the original edition of this book Michael Jackson: The Magic and the
Madness. She is a consummate professional and a close friend.
Private investigator and researcher Cathy Griffin was a vital contributor
to this project. I am especially indebted to her for locating sources who had
seemingly disappeared from the face of the earth. Ms Griffin also conducted
scores of interviews for this work, and I am extremely grateful to her for
that as well.
Special thanks to Stephen Gregory, not only for so many years of
friendship but also for all of his invaluable input into this book. He is
always there for me, without fail.
I must thank Jonathan Hahn, a fellow journalist, my publicist, and also
my good friend. A fellow couldn’t ask for a better sounding board than
Jonathan. Thanks also to Alysia Garrison for being so vital and important to
Jonathan, and also to me.
I must thank Cloe Basiline for all of her work on transcriptions of
interviews for the new edition of this work. She spent many hours working
under the tightest deadline imaginable to accurately put down every word. I
would also like to thank Stewart Payne, who conducted important
interviews for me for this updated book. James Burrell also conducted
interviews for me in Gary, Indiana. Thanks to him we were able to track
down people who worked with Michael and his brothers in the early days,
people who have never before been interviewed. I must also thank Thomas
DeWitt for all of his research work in the United Kingdom on what he calls
‘The Jackson Case’. Three other researchers whose kindnesses should not
go unacknowledged are Maxwell Taylor, Irene Roberts and Geri Thomas.
These researchers typed many of the notes and other minutiae that were
unearthed during library research, saving me and others involved with this
book so much time and energy. I am indebted to them.
Researcher Julio Vera spent many hours in the Los Angeles Superior
Courthouse locating court records so valuable to my research. I thank him
for his patience and perseverance. John Redman also conducted interviews
for this book, and I much appreciate his assistance.
I would like to acknowledge my roots at Soul Magazine, the publication I
used to read as a little kid and helped edit as an adult. Thank you, Regina
Jones, for encouraging me in the early days of my career. And thanks to my
buddies Steve Ivory, Leonard Pitts and Reggie Wilson. All these years later
– thirty, at least – and we’re still friends. I so value all of my time and
history with Soul, and between the three of us fellows it would be
impossible to count the words in print we devoted to Michael and the
Jackson family. I like to think our interviews and stories about the family
are an important part of the historic record and go a long way toward
explaining them for generations to come.
Special thanks to these individuals for their support in tangible and
intangible ways on the original edition of this book, including Cindy
Adams, Larry Anderson, Kristopher Antekeier, Sherman Armstrong,
Stewart Armstrong, Gil Askey, Virginia August, Vern Austin, Billy Barnes,
Glenn Bascome, Jeffrey Beasley, Louis Becker, Gary Berwin, Cindy
Birdsong, Stanley Blits, Judith Blum, Wayne Brasler, Len Brimhall, Robert
Brimmer, Ralph Brine, Robert Brown, Kenneth and Dolores Bruner and
family, Maryann Bryant, the late and so-memorable Walter Burrell, Mark
Butler, Tim Burton, Lee Campbell, Geron Canidate, Luis Cansesco, Eddie
Carroll, Gordon Carter, Lee Casto, Tony Castro, Kenneth Choi, Herman
Cohen, Rob Cohen, Paul Coleman, Michele Connolly, Marvin Corwin,
Richard Crane, Ted Culver, Barbara Dalton, Hal Davis, Etterlene DeBarge,
David Delsey, David Doolittle, Lamont Dozier, Stewart Drew, David
Duarte, Beverly Ecker, Carl Feuerbacher, Mickey Free, Rosetta Frye, Rudy
Garza, Rick Gianotos, Louise Gilmore, Sylvester Goodnough, Theresa
Gonsalves, Martha Gonsalves, Berry Gordy and the entire Gordy family,
the late and wonderful Vivian Greene, Susaye Greene, Michael Gutierrez,
Scott Haeffs, Sharlette Hambrick, Virginia Harris, Max Hart, Mickey
Herskowitz,Jerome Howard, Mary Ellen Howe, Steve Howell, Willie
Hutch, Monty Iceman, A. D. Ingram, Terry Ireland, Johnny Jackson, Sarah
Jackson, Susie Jackson, Walter Jackson, Etta James, Joyce Jillson, Edward
Jimenez, Val Johns, Gregorio Jove, Patty Kellar, Curtis Kelly, Mark Kelly,
David Kelsey, Randall King, Ken Kingsley, Mark Kotler, Dr Robert Kotler,
George Lakes, Lance and John (The Hollywood Kids), Randy Lane, Harry
Langdon, Joseph Layton, Edward Lewis, Jack Lewis, Michael Lewis,
Yolanda Lewis, Dr Carole Lieberman, Harold Long, Leonides Lopez, Peter
Lounds, Gregory Matthias, Joyce McCrae, Maryann McCullough, James
McField, Phillip Meadows, Charles Montgomery, Byran Moore, Clarence
Moore, Lee Moore, Mark Mussari, Susan Myerson, Kenneth Nagle, David
Nuell, Bernard Pancheco, Ross Pendergraft, the late and so-very-missed
Derrick Perrault, James Perry, Marcus Phillips, Rhonda Phillips, Stewart
Phillips, Andre Pittmon, Jonathan Ptak, John Reitano, Rich Reitano, Deke
Richards, Jack Richardson, Lionel Richie, Seth Riggs, David Ritz, Grace
Rivera, the late Danny Romo, Stanley Ross, the late Raymond St Jacques,
Ramone Sandoval, Stan Sherman, Joseph Simon, Liz Smith, James Spada,
Reed Sparling, Judy Spiegelman, Gina Sprague, Steven Sprocket, Rick
Starr, Nancy Stauffer, Robert Waldron, Vince Waldron, Marjorie Walker,
Dan Weaver, Harry Weber, Tim Whitehead, Susan Williams, Edward Willis,
Douglas Wilson, Jeffrey Wilson, Rob Yaren and John Whyman.
I would also like to acknowledge the late but never forgotten former
wives of Jackie and Tito Jackson, Enid Jackson and Dee Dee Jackson. They
were so helpful to me in the past. Both were wonderful, giving women who
left us much too early. They are so missed by their friends and families.
I would also like to acknowledge those who played such a big part in
Michael’s success and whom I have also interviewed in the past: Diana
Ross, Suzanne dePasse, Bobby Taylor, Tony Jones, Chris Clark, Nancy
Leiviska, Gladys Knight and the late (great) Bob Jones.
I could never do alone what I do with my books, and if I forgot any
single person who contributed in any way to the research of this book –
particularly those who are employed by my researchers – I am truly sorry. It
does take a team of professionals, not just a single author, to tackle a project
such as Michael Jackson: The Magic, The Madness, The Whole Story, and I
am eternally grateful to all of the players.
As I have often stated, without a loyal team of representatives, an author
usually finds himself sitting at home writing books no one reads. Therefore
I thank all of those from USA Team JRT who somehow mastermind the
chaos in my office: attorneys Joel Loquvam, James M. Leonard and James
Jimenez; C.P.A Michael Horowitz, of Horowitz, McMahon and Zarem in
Southern California; and Felinda DeYoung, also of Horowitz, et. al.
I also want to thank Jeff Hare at Warner Bros. for being such a good and
trusted friend and for always understanding and appreciating the work that I
do.
Thanks, also, to Brian Newman for his assistance in so many ways.
Some other good friends I must acknowledge are Andy Steinlen, George
Solomon, Frank Bruno, Andy Hirsch, Richard Tyler Jordan, Jeff Cook,
Andy Skurow, Hazel and Rob Kragulac, Scott Allen, Freda Payne and Greg
Abbott, Scherrie Payne, Brandon Schmook, Lisa Reiner, Felipe Echerri,
Steve Ridgeway, Billy Barnes, Barbara Ormsby, Rick Starr, John
Passantino, Linda DiStefano, Mr and Mrs Joseph Tumolo, Daniel Tumolo,
Charles Casillo, Mark Mussari, Peter Spotswood Dillard, John Carlino,
Wayne Brasler, Jackie Percher, Tony and Marilyn Caruselle, David Spiro,
Mr and Mrs Adolph Steinlen, David and Frances Snyder, Abby and Maddy
Snyder, Maribeth and Don Rothell, Mary Alvarez, Mark Bringelson, Hope
Levy, Tom Lavagnino, Eric Underwood, Ersan Jon Capan, John Townsend,
David McCormack, Steven Kay, Jesus Rodriguez, Walter Tabayoyong,
Nick LaRocco, Roman D’Angelo, Susan Kaya, Marlene Morris, Kac
Young, Aaron Lawrence, Erik Rodriguez, Nolan Blackford, Daniel Feser,
Martha Vamos, Jared Murphy and William (Wm) Rodriguez. I know I have
forgotten some people and that when this is published I’ll be kicking
myself. Whoever you are, if I have forgotten to mention you here, know
that I owe you a big dinner to make it up to you.
I have always been so blessed to have a family as supportive as mine. My
thanks and love go out to Roslyn and Bill Barnett and Jessica and Zachary,
Rocco and Rosemaria Taraborrelli and Rocco and Vincent, and Arnold
Taraborrelli and Yvette Jarecki.
Special thanks to my father, Rocco, who has always been my inspiration
and who continues to encourage me in ways too numerous to count. When I
was a kid, it was my dad who always made sure I had the best seat in the
house whenever any of the Motown stars came to perform near my
hometown. If we couldn’t sit in the first row, we simply wouldn’t bother
going! Always the best for his son – that was my dad’s philosophy. I thank
him so much for that, and I continue to be inspired by him every day of my
life.
My mom, Rose Marie, was also very supportive of my interest in
Motown as a youngster. I was a puzzlement, to be sure, always locked away
with my Motown music, my journals about the artists’ lives and careers, my
crazy scrapbooks about them...my endless telephone conversations with
them. To this day I can’t imagine what my parents were thinking of their
son! My mother was my biggest fan, though. I miss her every day.
I must also acknowledge those readers of mine who have followed my
career over the years. Specifically, I would like to thank Michael Jackson’s
many fans. At times over the years I have made them happy with my
reporting of their star. Other times...not so much. I think most of Michael’s
followers who know my work realize that I have tried my best to be fair and
accurate. Michael’s memory lives on in his devoted following – indeed, in
all of us who cared about him. I am eternally grateful to anyone who takes
the time to pick up one of my books and read it, but especially to Michael’s
loyal following. I thank you so much.
What can I say about the death of Michael Jackson, a guy I first met
when he was just ten and a person I have interviewed and written about so
many times over the years? It states the obvious to say that there was never
any other person like Michael, and there’ll never be anyone to take his
place. Yes, he had his demons. Like all of us, he had his flaws. The last
fifteen years of his life, in particular, were so very challenging. However, I
like to think he is at peace now. I’m not, though. Not now, anyway. And I
know in my heart things will never quite be the same for me...not without
Michael.
J. Randy Taraborrelli
July 2009
Source Notes
Much of the material in this book was drawn from personal interviews and
conversations with Michael Jackson and the Jackson family over the years,
from the 1970s through the 1990s. Among those interviews:
Michael Jackson in May 1972 (New York), June 1973, August 1973, July
1974 (Madison Square Garden, New York), November 1974, October 1977
(New York, for The Wiz), August 1978 (Encino), 19 April 1979 (Valley
Forge, Pennsylvania);
Michael Jackson on 18 January 1980 (Los Angeles), 18 September 1980
(sound check at the Forum, Los Angeles), 26 September 1980 (backstage at
the Forum), October 1980 (Encino, with Janet Jackson), June 1982, April
1983 (Universal Amphitheater, Los Angeles), January 1984 (Shrine
Auditorium, Los Angeles), June 1984 (Birmingham, Alabama, with Tito
and Jackie), 29 June 1984 (Atlanta, with Jackie), November 1986
(Universal Amphitheater, Los Angeles), 2 March 1988 (rehearsal, Madison
Square Garden), 16 January 1989 (sound check, Sports Arena, Los
Angeles), 30 January 1989 (rehearsal for American Music Awards, Shrine
Auditorium, Los Angeles), 13 November 1989 (rehearsal, Sammy Davis,
Jr., 60th Anniversary television special, Los Angeles), spring 1991 (Capitol
Records ‘Record Collectors’ Swap Meet’);
Michael Jackson on 3 February 1992 (press conference, Radio City
Music Hall, New York), 26 August 1993 (from Bangkok), July 1994 (after
my appearance on Good Morning America to announce his marriage to Lisa
Marie Presley), August 1994, September 1995 and 7 February 1998 (with
Lisa Marie Presley at the Ivy restaurant in Los Angeles).
Moreover, I drew from interviews with:
The Jacksons – Jackie, Tito, Marlon, Michael, Randy, and parents Joseph
and Katherine in February 1975, (Radio City Music Hall, New York), June
1975, July 1975, January 1976, March 1977, April 1977, May 1977, August
1978 and September 1979 (all at Hayvenhurst in Encino), November 1983
(press conference, Tavern on the Green, New York);
Tito, Marlon and Jackie Jackson in July 1974 (Pittsburg, Pennsylvania)
and December 1978 (L’Ermitage Hotel in Los Angeles);
Jermaine Jackson in April 1979 (at Motown Records in Los Angeles) and
May 1980 (Shrine Auditorium, Los Angeles);
LaToya Jackson and Jack Gordon, December 1993 (Madrid, Spain).
Also useful in my research were two lengthy court documents: Sworn
Deposition by Michael Jackson, dated 15 January 1976 and Sworn
Declaration of Michael J. Jackson, 20 February 1976. (These declarations
became part of case number C139795: Michael Jackson et al. v. Motown
Record Corporation of California et al., 30 March 1976.) Text and
background from both documents were used throughout the book.
For research purposes, I secured many hundreds of Motown interoffice
memos regarding Michael Jackson and The Jackson 5. Because of the
confidential nature of these communications, and to protect those former
Motown employees who made them available to me, these memos are not
enumerated here, though they were vital to my research.
Voluminous Motown press department releases (and also releases from
different public relations firms representing Michael Jackson, The Jackson
5, and The Jacksons, as well as individual members) were individually
judged as to their validity and value and utilized where appropriate.
As the editor-in-chief of Soul magazine (1980) and later its publisher
(1981-82), I had access to the complete Soul files. Soul was one of the first
black entertainment publications (Jet and Ebony were both general interest
publications) and, as such, had a close association to Motown. Many of the
Motown acts received their only national exposure through Soul. A great
deal of the material in this book was culled from the extensive Soul files
(1966-82), including previously confidential notes and memos.
Practically all of the interview sources listed here contributed to more
than one subject area of the book, but in most cases they are listed only
once.
Wherever practical, I have provided sources within the body of the text.
For some of the published works consulted, see the bibliography. The
following notes are by no means comprehensive but are intended to give the
reader a general overview of my research. Also included are occasional
comments of an extraneous but informative nature.
Early Years
I obtained background information on the families of Joseph Jackson and
Katherine Scruse from census records dating back to the late eighteen
hundreds. I also obtained the birth certificates of Joseph Jackson and Kattie
E. Scruse (Katherine Jackson); Martha Bridgets’s Affidavit to Amend a
Record of Birth, filed on 4 May 1930; as well as Joseph and Katherine
Jackson’s Certificate of Marriage in Crown Point, Indiana. I compared this
and other information to what Katherine Jackson wrote in her memoirs, The
Jacksons – My Family (St Martin’s Press, 1990), and added a substantial
amount of information to her account of her and Joseph Jackson’s
backgrounds.
I also drew from the interview I had with the Jacksons in August 1978.
I interviewed relatives and friends of the Jacksons’ family, including Ina
Brown (14 September 1989), Johnny Jackson (5 October 1990), Luis
Cansesco (3 November 1990), and Terry Ireland (1 December 1990). I drew
some information from articles in Right On!, Soul, and Rolling Stone (see
bibliography).
My private investigator, Cathy Griffin, contacted Gordon Keith, former
owner of Steeltown Records in Gary, Indiana, to obtain an interview. He
and Griffin had numerous conversations; background information was
culled from a conversation on 16 September 1990. Mr Keith would not
consent to an interview with me, however.
I also drew some information, particularly Ben Brown’s quotes, from a
segment of P.M. Magazine about Michael Jackson, which aired in 1984.
Early Years and Motown
Some of the material in these sections is from my 1979 interview with
Michael Jackson.
Joe Simon’s quote was culled from an interview I conducted with him in
1979. Etta James’s comments were extracted from an interview I conducted
with Miss James on 12 May 1978. Other quotes are from sources in Gary,
Indiana, who requested anonymity.
For the material regarding Berry Gordy and Motown, I drew heavily
from research conducted when I wrote the book Motown – Hot Wax City
Cool and Solid Gold, published by Doubleday in 1986. I also drew from
personal interviews with Melvin Franklin (1977), Smokey Robinson
(1980), Diana Ross (1981), Lamont Dozier (1985) and Maurice King
(1985).
Richard Arons was contacted for an interview and did speak with Cathy
Griffin at his Beverly Hills home for three hours on 12 November 1990.
Some of Arons’s memories are used here for background purposes.
However, he would not consent to an interview with me. Miss Griffin also
spoke to Bobby Taylor for two hours on the telephone in October 1990.
Some of what Mr Taylor remembered was used here for background
purposes.
Motown Years
For much of this material, I drew heavily from a thirty-page Sworn
Declaration of Berry Gordy, dated 4 March 1976. The declaration was
given under oath during the court battle between The Jackson 5 and
Motown. In it, Gordy explained how the group was signed to the label,
what his involvement with the act was and how their first records were
recorded. He also reconstructed telephone conversations between himself
and Joseph Jackson at the time of the group’s signing on 26 July 1968, and
conversations between himself and other Motown employees regarding his
dismay over The Jackson 5’s appearances in Las Vegas.
I also drew from a thirty-page Sworn Declaration of Ralph Seltzer,
Motown’s vice president of corporate affairs, dated 5 March 1976. Seltzer
recreated the dialogue, to the best of his memory, between himself and
Joseph Jackson on 25 and 26 July 1968, the days of The Jackson 5’s
audition and then signing to Motown. Seltzer spoke in depth about the
Motown recording contract and its terms, his impressions of Joseph Jackson
and Jack Richardson, his opinion of the Motown recording contract he had
them sign, how Jackson signed the contract without benefit of outside
counsel, how he had his sons do the same and how Seltzer executed
contracts by other artists at Motown. He also detailed Bobby Taylor’s
involvement in discovering The Jackson 5 and spoke of the Christmas party
at which The Jackson 5 performed and Joseph Jackson’s impressions of
Gordy Manor. (Regarding that Christmas party, I also drew from my
interview with the Jacksons in 1978 and an interview I conducted with
Diana Ross in June 1972.)
I also utilized my personal interview with Ralph Seltzer on 6 June 1989,
in which he discussed Gordy’s aversion to allowing an artist to take a
Motown contract home for review purposes.
I culled a good deal of information from the twenty-five-page Sworn
Deposition of Suzanne dePasse, Motown’s vice president, creative division,
dated 4 March 1976. DePasse remembered in vivid detail The Jackson 5’s
audition for Motown, the recording of certain of their hit records, the early
tours, her impressions of Joseph and Katherine Jackson, and the original
contract negotiations for The Jackson 5.
I extracted information from the five-page Sworn Statement of Anthony
D. Jones, executive assistant to the vice president, creative division, dated 4
March 1976, in which he detailed Motown’s marketing campaign for The
Jackson 5.
I also gathered facts from the fifteen-page Sworn Statement of Alan D.
Croll, attorney for Motown Record Corporation. Interestingly, Croll’s
statement contradicted Seltzer’s claim that Joseph Jackson was not
represented by outside counsel: Croll claimed that Jack Richardson acted as
counsel for the Jacksons (though Richardson was not an attorney).
I drew from lengthy Sworn Depositions given by Richard Arons, Joseph
Jackson’s attorney, and Joseph Jackson on 18 November 1975. In his
deposition, Joseph Jackson answered questions regarding his antagonistic
relationship with Berry Gordy and Ewart Abner.
Most interesting were the Sworn Depositions of each member of The
Jackson 5, which were taken on 15 January 1976, including Michael
Jackson’s. Portions of Michael’s twenty-five-page deposition and the
lengthy depositions of his brothers were integrated into the information
found in other parts of this work.
I acquired copies of the original seven-page Motown contracts, dated 26
July 1968, for each member of the group.
Some of Bobby Taylor’s comments to my private investigator, Cathy
Griffin, were utilized. I, too, interviewed Bobby in 1995 and again in 1996.
I referred to my interview with Jermaine Jackson in 1980 for some of the
details of the meeting at Diana Ross’s home in August 1969.
I viewed a videotape of The Jackson 5’s performance at the Daisy on 11
August 1969, and used as source material newspaper accounts of the
festivities that evening. I also interviewed Paula Dunn on 6 January 1990.
Judy Spiegelman’s comments were published in Soul.
I also obtained copies of the nine-page recording contracts with Motown,
dated 11 March 1969, for each member of The Jackson 5.
I procured a copy of the Parent’s or Guardian’s Guaranty obligating
Michael Jackson to perform certain duties as part of his commitment to
Motown, dated 11 March 1969.
I also obtained many correspondences between Berry Gordy and The
Jackson 5 and Joseph Jackson regarding the Saturday morning cartoon
series, the wedding of Jermaine Jackson and Hazel Gordy, the Las Vegas
opening and the deterioration of Motown’s relationship with The Jackson 5.
These were all in the public domain, used as evidence in Motown’s suit
against The Jackson 5.
I was also able to obtain a complete list of the 469 songs recorded by The
Jackson 5 at Motown – including all of those that were not released – as
well as the session costs for each tune. I also viewed the entire 16-
millimetre black-and-white Motown audition film, now transferred to VHS
videotape, for some details.
Motown Hit Years
Much of this material was drawn from two lengthy interviews I conducted
with Deke Richards on 22 September and 3 November 1990.
Michael Jackson’s comments about Richards were culled from a BBC
interview he gave in June 1972. His comments about Diana Ross and early
Motown experiences are from my July 1979 interview with him.
As well as obtaining a list of every song recorded by The Jackson 5 at
Motown, I also reviewed a computer readout of all of Motown’s exact sales
figures up until December 1990. This computer readout is over ten
thousand pages long and includes the album, tape and CD sales of virtually
every Motown release from the time of the company’s inception. I refer to
these figures quite often in this book. I also used this catalogue when I
researched Call Her Miss Ross.
Berry Gordy’s comments about Michael Jackson’s living with Diana
Ross were culled from the Sworn Declaration of Berry Gordy, dated 4
March 1976.
I reviewed Ralph Seltzer’s petition to Superior Court on 29 October 1968
and quoted from the court transcript of the hearing before Judge Lester E.
Olson on that day. Also referred to was the Order Approving Minors’
Contracts, filed 7 November 1969, and Order Approving Petition for
Approval of Amendments to Contracts of Minors, filed 10 September 1970,
both in Los Angeles Superior Court.
I interviewed Virginia Harris on 3 September 1990. Susie Jackson was
interviewed on 21 September 1990. Two close friends of Katherine
Jackson’s, who requested anonymity, were also interviewed.
I viewed a videotape of the Hollywood Palace segment, 18 October
1969, and interviewed Jack Lewis on 3 March 1990.
I also gathered information from other sources, including interviews with
Stan Sherman (19 March 1990), Phillip Meadows (4 April 1990), Gordon
Carter (3 June 1990), Susan Williams (5 August 1990) and Eddie Carroll
(15 September 1990). I interviewed Willie Hutch in June 1978 in Marina
del Ray and drew from that interview. I also have some sources who
worked closely with Berry Gordy and who requested anonymity.
I viewed a videotape of The Jackson 5’s performance on The Ed Sullivan
Show on 14 December 1969.
I drew from Suzanne dePasse’s interview on The Pat Sajak Show on 19
May 1989.
I was fortunate enough to have attended The Jackson 5’s first appearance
as a Motown attraction at the Philadelphia Convention Center in April
1970. I was not, however, at the airport when they arrived. (That’s where
even I, a die-hard Motown fan, drew the line.) I utilized Motown’s press
release accounts of that day in this chapter.
The information about Gordy and the Osmonds was culled from a
conversation with Nancy Leiviska. I also drew from an interview I
conducted with Clifton Davis in 1978.
I utilized features on The Jackson 5 in Right On!, Creem, Ingenue, Time
and Sepia magazines (see bibliography).
I viewed a videotape of the television specials Diana (18 April 1971) and
Goin’ Back to Indiana (19 September 1971).
In the matter of the property at 4641 Hayvenhurst Avenue, Encino,
currently owned by Michael Jackson and LaToya Jackson, I relied on an
extensive Property Profile supplied by Fidelity National Tide Insurance
Company. This profile includes an in-depth and legal description of the
property. The profile also contains the original Grant Deed signed by Earle
and Elouise Hagen, filed in Los Angeles County, which released the
property to Joseph and Katherine Jackson on 25 February 1971; the Deed of
Trust from Great Western Savings and Loan Associates, dated 27 April
1971, with details of how Mr and Mrs Jackson arranged to purchase the
property with Berry Gordy’s assistance; and the Quitclaim Deed signed by
Katherine Jackson on 24 June 1987, and filed in Los Angeles County, in
which she released her share of equity in the property to her daughter
LaToya Jackson.
I also used as source material a Property Profile supplied by World Tide
Company in which property, sales and tax information were examined.
I interviewed Lionel Richie for a Soul cover story on The Commodores
in 1981 and drew from that interview.
I drew from the interview I conducted with Tito Jackson, Marlon Jackson
and Jackie Jackson in 1978.
The incident between Rhonda Phillips and Jackie Jackson was recreated
based on personal interviews with Ms Phillips on 8 March 1990 and 15
March 1990.
Among other sources I consulted were back issues of Soul magazine. I
also drew from my interviews with Ken Kingsley (14 April 1990), Stewart
Drew (3 May 1990), Mark Butler (12 June 1990), Gil Askey (5 March
1984) and Walter Jackson (5 December 1989).
I relied on press reports and eyewitness accounts regarding The Jackson
5’s various tours overseas.
I depended on press reports – including those found in Soul, the Los
Angeles Times and Ebony – as well as eyewitness accounts to write about
Jermaine Jackson’s wedding to Hazel Gordy. I also reviewed press releases
from Motown Records.
I drew from my interviews with Walter Burrell (6 March 1989), Steven
Sprocket (24 June 1990), Harry Langdon (16 March 1984), Joyce Jillson
(20 February 1990), Hal Davis (5 March 1985) and Susie Jackson. I also
drew from an interview I conducted with Marvin Gaye in 1982. Steve
Manning’s comment about Hazel Gordy was published in Ebony.
I obtained background information on The Jackson 5’s trip to Africa from
press reports. Also, I drew from Cathy Griffin’s conversations with Richard
Arons. The comments by members of The Jackson 5 about Africa were
published in Soul magazine.
I viewed a videotape of the Cher show on which The Jackson 5 appeared
and interviewed one of Cher’s assistants for a biography of Cher (St
Martin’s Press, 1987); the assistant requested anonymity at that time.
Katherine Jackson v. Joseph Jackson (I)
Details of the divorce action brought by Katherine Jackson against Joseph
Jackson were culled from the following documents filed in Los Angeles
Superior Court, Los Angeles County, all case number 42680:
Petition for Dissolution of Marriage, 9 March 1973.
Certificate of Assignment of Transfer, 10 March 1973.
Financial Declaration, 11 March 1973.
Katherine Jackson’s Sworn Declaration, 16 March 1973.
The Final Years at Motown
The background on Sammy Davis, Jr., was culled from information
contained in his excellent second autobiography, The Sammy Davis, Jr.,
Story – Why Me? I also drew from my 1978 interview with Michael
Jackson and my 1980 interview with Jermaine Jackson. Some of Janet
Jackson’s comments were published in Interview. I also culled information
from Vince Aletti’s features on The Jackson 5 in the Village Voice (see
bibliography). Also, I viewed a videotape of The Jackson 5’s entire Las
Vegas act.
I viewed a videotape of The Jackson 5’s performance on The Bob Hope
Show.
I interviewed Raymond St Jacques in March 1987 and culled comments
about Isomand and Cross and his relationship with the Jacksons from that
interview.
I also interviewed friends of the Jackson family who requested
anonymity.
Enid Jackson’s memories of her first encounters with Jackie Jackson
were culled from interviews conducted with the late Mrs Jackson for this
book on 29 October 1990, 7 November 1990 and 19 November 1990.
Jackie Jackson’s comments about his wedding were meant to be published
in Soul magazine on 6 December 1974, but most were not. I obtained a
transcript of the interview.
Information regarding Jackie Jackson’s automobile accident was culled
from a report in Soul magazine.
Theresa Gonsalves was interviewed on 5 January 1991.
Details of Michael Jackson’s meeting with Berry Gordy on 14 May 1975
were culled from the Sworn Declaration of Michael Jackson, 20 February
1976. (The declaration became part of case number C139795: Michael
Jackson et al. v. Motown Record Corporation of California et al., 30 March
1976.) I also referred to Michael’s account of his meeting with Gordy in his
autobiography, Moonwalk.
I drew from my interviews with Gil Askey (5 March 1984) for my first
book, Diana.
I obtained a copy of the Jacksons’ original CBS recording contract.
The confrontation between Jermaine and Joseph Jackson was recreated
based on my interview with Jermaine Jackson in 1980.
I referred to an interview with Jermaine and Hazel Jackson in Ebony. I
also referred to Katherine Jackson’s autobiography, The Jacksons – My
Family. I also used as source material reports from The Hollywood Reporter
and Variety (see bibliography).
I referred to my interview with Marlon Jackson in 1978 to recreate the
scene at Westbury Music Fair when Jermaine walked out on the group. I
was present backstage after the show.
Also I obtained a copy of Berry Gordy’s application, dated 30 March
1972, to register The Jackson 5’s name as being owned by Motown
Records. I obtained a copy of the United States Patent Office’s acceptance
of Gordy’s request, and documentation that Gordy owned the name
exclusively. I obtained the Forms of Patent from the United States Patent
Office, numbers 965,808 and 965,809, registering in the name of Motown
Record Corporation the logo Jackson 5ive and the name Jackson 5, ‘For
entertainment services rendered by a vocal group, in class 107, Int. Cl. 41.’
I drew from an interview I conducted with Melvin Franklin in 1977 for
The Black American.
Again, I referred to the Sworn Declaration of Joseph W. Jackson, 20
February 1976.
I obtained a transcript of the Jacksons’ press conference at the Rainbow
Grill in Manhattan on 30 June 1975. I also obtained a copy of the 1 July
1975 telegram from Michael Roshkind to Arthur Taylor, president of CBS,
informing him that The Jackson 5’s name belonged solely to Motown
Records. I also interviewed witnesses to the press conference. Vital to my
research were Motown memoranda from Tony Jones to Joseph Jackson
regarding The Jackson 5’s activities at Motown.
I also interviewed Martha Gonsalves (3 June 1990), Edward Lewis (16
July 1990), Michael Lewis (16 September 1990), Susan Myerson (1
October 1990), Harry Weber (5 October 1990), Mark Kelly (15 November
1990) and Lee Casto (2 December 1990). Joyce McCrae was interviewed
by Cathy Griffin on 14 October 1990.
The matter of the late Enid Jackson’s filing for divorce from Jackie
Jackson is documented in papers originally filed in September 1975 in Los
Angeles Superior Court, County of Los Angeles, but also included in the
1985 divorce case, file number DI57554.
I obtained a copy of Marlon and Carol Jackson’s wedding certificate,
dated 16 August 1975. Joseph Jackson’s comments about his son’s wedding
were originally published in Soul, January 1976.
The Sworn Deposition by Michael Jackson, dated 15 January 1976, was
utilized.
I used as source material an interview with Jermaine Jackson by Cynthia
Kirk in Good Evening, 29 April 1976.
I viewed videotapes of all episodes of the Jacksons’ television series for
CBS-TV.
Motown v. The Jacksons
Details of the lawsuit brought by Motown Record Corporation against the
Jacksons were culled from the following documents filed in Los Angeles
Superior Court, Los Angeles County, all case number C139795:
Michael Jackson et al. v. Motown Record Corporation of California et
al., 30 March 1976.
Tariano Jackson, Sigmund Esco Jackson, Marlon Jackson and Michael
Jackson, a minor, by Joseph Jackson, his Guardian v. Motown Record
Corporation of California, Inc., 11 February 1977.
Ralph Seltzer’s Sworn Deposition, 24 March 1976. In this fifty-page
deposition, Seltzer recalled Joseph Jackson’s original negotiations with
Motown regarding his sons’ recording contracts. Of Joseph Jackson and the
Jacksons, he remembered, ‘I do not recall that any of them read the contract
prior to signing it.’
Supplemental Declaration of Joseph W. Jackson, 30 March 1976. In this
lengthy document, Jackson gave his version of the day he and his boys
signed their Motown contracts and described how he felt about Ralph
Seltzer and Berry Gordy. He also recreated the telephone conversation with
Gordy in which he thought he had successfully renegotiated the contract’s
original terms.
Sworn Declaration of Joseph W. Jackson, 20 February 1976. Jackson’s
declaration shed more light on his dealings with Motown, the ‘take-it-or-
leave-it contracts they made us sign,’ the accommodations Motown
arranged for them when the group moved from Gary to Los Angeles, how
‘neither I or my sons ever read any contracts we signed once we got to Los
Angeles,’ and his relationship with Johnny Jackson. Most importandy, he
reconstructed angry conversations he had with Jermaine regarding
Jermaine’s decision not to sign with CBS Records. Joseph Jackson’s
memory of these conversations corroborated Jermaine’s in an interview
with me on 27 May 1980.
Sworn Declaration of Richard Arons, 20 June 1979. As Joseph Jackson’s
attorney, Arons was privy to all of Jackson’s business dealings, and he
described, in this fifteen-page document, how Joseph went about searching
for a new label for his sons and how his sons reacted to leaving Motown.
I also reviewed 367 other legal documents and correspondence relating to
this case, from which I gleaned details applicable to this book.
Flashback to Early Days on the Road
Tito, Marlon and Jackie Jackson have discussed their father’s behaviour in
the early days while on the road in a number of interviews. We discussed it
in our interview in 1978. Michael wrote about these experiences – though
not in a very in-depth manner – in Moonwalk. For evaluation purposes, I
drew from my interview with Beverly Hills psychiatrist Dr Carole
Lieberman on 8 January 1991. Also interviewed: Yolanda Lewis (5 June
1990), James McField (30 October 1990), Gregory Matthias (15 November
1990), Gregorio Joves (1 December 1990), Sarah Jackson (2 May 1990)
and Tim Whitehead (18 November 1990). I also drew from interviews with
Theresa Gonsalves, Tim Burton and Sylvester Goodnough.
Tatum O’Neal declined to be interviewed for this book. Biographical
information about her and her family was culled from accounts published in
Good Housekeepings, Ladies’ Home Journal and Redbook. The information
about Michael and Tatum at the Playboy mansion was culled from an
interview with Michael Jackson in Soul magazine.
The rumours about Michael Jackson and Clifton Davis were published in
many publications. Michael discussed the matter with reporter Steve Ivory
for Soul (issue of 12 September 1977). I interviewed Clifton Davis in 1978.
Michael and I also discussed rumours of his homosexuality in 1978. His
comments about that subject are interspersed through this book.
The Wiz and Off the Wall Years
I interviewed Rob Cohen, producer of The Wiz on 14 February 1989 and
again on 25 April 1989. I also interviewed the film’s director, Sidney
Lumet, on 22 August 1978.
Other information was drawn from interviews with James McField, Susie
Jackson and Theresa Gonsalves. Having written about The Wiz in depth in
my 1989 book, Call Her Miss Ross, I utilized research conducted for that
work in this chapter. I attended the press conference for The Wiz at Astoria
Studios in September 1977, interviewed Michael at that time and drew from
an interview I conducted with Diana Ross on 19 October 1981.
I drew from an interview with the Jacksons at their home in Encino in
August 1978 and another interview with Michael Jackson in July 1979.
I also culled material from early published accounts of Michael’s
relationship with Quincy Jones. I interviewed Quincy Jones during a break
in the recording of a Brothers Johnson album in 1979, and some of the
material regarding Off the Wall is culled from that interview.
Cheryl Terrell, Joh’Vonnie Jackson, and Other Subject Matter
I obtained a copy of Joh’Vonnie Jackson’s birth certificate, 30 August 1974.
I also obtained property information on Cheryl Terrell’s Gardena,
California, apartment building from World Tide Company. Residents of the
apartment house were interviewed on 25 August 1990. Cheryl Terrell spoke
to my private investigator, Cathy Griffin, on 29 August 1990, but declined
to be formally interviewed for this book.
I obtained the Escrow Instructions from Imperial Escrow Company for
the property on 6908 Peach Avenue, Van Nuys, purchased by Joseph
Jackson as trustee of the Joh’Vonnie Jackson Trust, 25 January 1981, as
well as a Property Profile on 6908 Peach Avenue from World Tide
Company.
I obtained a copy of the Trust Corporation established for Joh’Vonnie
Jackson on 23 February 1981.
I also procured a Property Profile supplied by Fidelity National Title. The
profile includes a copy of the Individual Quitclaim Deed signed by
Katherine Jackson releasing any of her interest in the property to Joseph
Jackson, and the Quitclaim Deed executed on 20 January 1980, and signed
by Joseph Jackson, turning the same property over to the Joh’Vonnie
Jackson Trust.
Joh’Vonnie Jackson posed for our photographer; the photo appears in this
book.
I drew from my and Cathy Griffin’s interviews with Marcus Phillips (3
June 1990), Tim Whitehead and Stanley Ross (1 November 1990) and
Jerome Howard.
Paula Reuben interviewed Carol L. Kerster in June 1990.
I also drew from Charles Sanders’s story of Jermaine and Hazel Jackson
in Ebony in August 1981.
Gina Sprague v. Joseph and Katherine Jackson, Randy Jackson and
Janet Jackson
Gina Sprague was interviewed for this book on 16, 18 and 21 September
1990.
Susie Jackson was interviewed on 21 September 1990.
I obtained a copy of the police report (DR. number 80-749111) filed by
Gina Sprague on 16 October 1980.
Other details of Gina Sprague’s lawsuit against Joseph Jackson,
Katherine Jackson, Randy Jackson and Janet Jackson, a minor, were culled
from the following documents filed in Los Angeles Superior Court, Los
Angeles County, all file number C383387:
Complaint for Personal Injuries, Assault and Battery, Conspiracy, 21
September 1981.
Sworn Declaration of Gina Sprague, 20 September 1981.
Sworn Declaration of Gina Sprague, 21 September 1981.
Sworn Declaration of Joseph Jackson and Katherine Jackson, 22
September 1981.
Answer to Complaint for Personal Injuries, Assault and Battery,
Conspiracy, 5 March 1982.
Notice of Motion for Order Granting Leave to Amend Complaint, 16
November 1982.
Sworn Declaration of Michael S. Fields. Fields was Gina Sprague’s
attorney.
Amended Complaint, 11 January 1983. This ten-page complaint
graphically depicted details of what Sprague alleged happened the day she
was attacked.
Fifty-two other court documents relating to the Sprague v. Jackson case
were also used as source material.
I also obtained legal documents filed by Joyce McCrae, an employee of
Joseph Jackson’s, on 16 June 1981: Complaint for Declaratory Relief,
Partition, Money Due on Demand to Establish Deed Absolute as Mortgage
and Judicial Foreclosure, and Joseph W. Jackson v. Joyce McCrae, 16 June
1981, case number C371220. Both were filed in Los Angeles Superior
Court, Los Angeles County. Though I decided not to write about this
particular suit – which involved a condominium jointly owned by Jackson
and McCrae – I utilized the documents to learn more of Jackson’s
relationship with McCrae and Gina Sprague. In this lawsuit, McCrae
claimed, ‘I was asked to testify at a hearing held at the Los Angeles City
Attorney’s office regarding assault charges filed against Joseph Jackson’s
wife by Ms Gina Sprague. When I informed Joseph Jackson that I had been
asked to testify, Joseph Jackson told me that he wanted me to stay out of the
matter. I did testify at the hearing on 17 December 1980. I am now
informed and believe and allege that my employment was wrongfully
terminated by Joseph Jackson in retaliation for the testimony I gave at that
hearing regarding his relationship with Gina Sprague…’
The Early Eighties
I obtained the Grant Deed filed in Los Angeles County on 20 February
1981, in which Thomas Laughridge and Billie Laughridge granted to
Michael Jackson unit nine at 5420 Lindley Avenue, Encino.
I also obtained the Individual Quitclaim Deed filed in Los Angeles
County on 26 May 1981, by Michael Jackson, granting 25 per cent of the
property to his mother, Katherine Jackson.
I referred to Robert Hilburn’s Los Angeles Times feature, ‘The Jacksons –
Hail and Farewell’, 13 September 1981.
I also referred to the Billboard magazine special on Michael Jackson (21
July 1984) and Steven Demorest’s article on Michael Jackson in Melody
Maker (see bibliography).
The interview I conducted with Michael Jackson through his sister Janet,
took place on 3 October 1981, at the Jackson family’s home in Encino.
Katherine Jackson v. Joseph Jackson (II)
Details of Katherine Jackson’s second action to divorce Joseph Jackson
were culled from the following documents filed in Los Angeles Superior
Court, County of Los Angeles, all case number D076606:
Application for Order and Supporting Declaration of Katherine Jackson,
19 August 1972. This form appears to have been filled out by Mrs Jackson
personally. She typed the information used in this book regarding her
charge that Joseph Jackson spent ‘in excess of $50,000’ on ‘a young
woman’ and that he had ‘purchased for her parcels of real property from our
community funds.’
Katherine Jackson’s Request for Dissolution of Marriage, 12 November
1982.
Katherine Jackson’s Sworn Declaration, 16 April 1983.
Joseph Jackson’s Sworn Declaration, 18 April 1983.
Sworn Declaration of George M. Goffin in support of Motion to Compel
Answers to Interrogatories, 8 April 1983. Goffin was one of Katherine
Jackson’s attorneys.
Notice to Produce Documents, 10 May 1983.
Sworn Declaration of Minda F. Barnes, 15 June 1983. Barnes was
another of Mrs Jackson’s attorneys. This document details Mrs Jackson’s
difficulty in obtaining financial information from Joseph Jackson.
A five-page letter from George M. Goffin, Esq., to Arnold Kassot, Esq.,
dated 20 April 1983, was particularly revealing; from it were culled details
of the Jackson family’s income and wealth.
A twenty-page declaration of George M. Goffin, 15 June 1983, was vital
to the research of this book since it described the manner of the purchases
of the Hayvenhurst property, the Peach Street property, the Jackson Street
property and the Lindley Avenue property. It also explained Michael
Jackson’s financial participation in the purchase of Hayvenhurst and the
Lindley Avenue condominium.
Exhibit B, Schedule of Community Property Assets, 15 June 1983, was
also invaluable to the research of this book in that this exhibit contained a
complete list of all of Joseph and Katherine Jackson’s financial assets and
liabilities, as well as the dates of all of their acquisitions, and the costs of
purchase of all of their properties and Michael Jackson’s involvement in
those purchases.
The Sworn Declaration of George M. Goffin in Support of Motion for
Withdrawal as Attorney of Record, 1 November 1983, detailed Goffin’s
attempts to continue with the divorce action in the case of Katherine
Jackson v. Joseph Jackson and Mrs Jackson’s unavailability to him. It
explained the possible reasons why she had changed her mind about the
divorce.
Twenty other documents pertaining to this divorce action were also
reviewed.
Some of the late Enid Jackson’s comments were culled from an interview
conducted with her on 7 November 1990.
Thriller and Victory Tour Years
I obtained a thirty-page Sworn Declaration by Michael Jackson in Carlin
Music Corporation v. Michael Jackson, case number C347206, 28 February
1983. In it, Michael explained why he was angry not only with his father
but also with Ron Weisner and Freddy DeMann. Jackson also explained his
publishing goals, his future plans at CBS Records, and John Branca’s new
involvement in his career. The document is signed by Jackson in huge,
scrawling letters.
Mickey Free was interviewed on 7 June 1989.
I also drew from Gerri Hirshey’s features on Michael Jackson in Rolling
Stone (see bibliography).
I referred to Alexander Lowen, Narcissism: Denial of the True Self (New
York: Macmillan, 1981) and Alice Miller, Prisoners of Childhood
(translated from German by Ruth Ward, New York: Basic Books, 1981).
I viewed many hours of Steve Howell’s extensive video collection of
Michael Jackson at home in Encino in order to be able to describe
Hayvenhurst. Michael Jackson was upset with Steve Howell when Howell,
a former employee, attempted to sell copies of these tapes to the television
programme A Current Affair. Howell claimed that, as the cameraman, he
owned the tapes. Jackson claimed that, as Howell’s employer, he (Jackson)
was the owner. A Current Affair aired some of the footage but decided
against further broadcasts.
Steve Howell was interviewed for this book on 28 August, 4 September
and 12 September 1990.
I wrote in detail about Suzanne dePasse’s efforts to recruit talent for the
Motown 25 special in my book Call Her Miss Ross. I drew from some of
that research. Michael Jackson also wrote about his meeting with Berry
Gordy in his autobiography, Moonwalk. I also drew from interviews with
James McField (30 October 1990) and Geron ‘Casper’ Canidate (29
October 1980), Jermaine Jackson (27 May 1980), Larry Anderson (23
October 1990), Joyce McCrae (15 October 1990), Carole Lieberman (8
January 1991) and Randall King (1 September 1989).
I also drew from published reports of the firing of Weisner-DeMann.
I referred to Dave Nussbaum’s interview with Michael Jackson published
in the Globe, 10 April 1984.
John Branca provided some background for the information on the
Victory tour as he did for an article in Rolling Stone by Michael Goldberg,
from which I also culled information. I attended the press conference at the
Tavern on the Green on 30 November 1983.
Some of the information about Don King’s background was culled from
1984 Current Biography Yearbook.
Background on Jehovah’s Witnesses came from Barbara Grizzuti
Harrison’s Visions of Glory: A History and a Memory of Jehovah’s
Witnesses (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1978). I also referred to
comments by Michael Jackson in the 22 May 1984 issue of Awake!
Louise Gilmore was interviewed on 3 August 1990; Seth Riggs was
interviewed by my researcher John Redman on 14 October 1990. I also
drew from an interview I conducted with Joseph Layton on 23 December
1986, for my book Carol Burnett – Laughing Till It Hurts (William
Morrow, 1988).
I also referred to Roger Enrico’s The Other Guy Blinked (New York:
Bantam, 1986).
The incident with Michael’s glove was described by Bob Giraldi in The
Making of Thriller. I interviewed witnesses to the accident on 27 January
1984, and referred to newspaper accounts. There were also a number of
anonymous sources for information in these sections of the book.
Janet Jackson’s Annulment of Marriage from James DeBarge
I interviewed James DeBarge in July 1995, after the original edition of this
book was published.
Details on Janet Jackson’s marriage to James DeBarge and the eventual
annulment of that union were culled from the following documents filed in
Los Angeles Superior Court, Los Angeles County, all file number 05113:
Petition to Nullify Marriage, filed by Janet Dameta DeBarge, 30 January
1985.
Income and Expense Declaration of Janet Dameta DeBarge, 30 January
1985.
Request to Enter Default, 4 June 1985.
Summons served to James Curtis DeBarge, 10 April 1985.
Amended Petition for Dissolution of Marriage, filed by Janet Dameta
DeBarge, 17 July 1985.
Notice of Entry of Judgment, 18 November 1985.
Notice of Annulment and Restoration of Wife’s Former Name to Janet
Dameta Jackson, 18 November 1985.
Also shedding light on Janet’s marriage were details of the lawsuit that
resulted from a traffic accident in which Janet and James DeBarge were
involved while driving Katherine Jackson’s Mercedes-Benz. The suit,
brought by Manuel R. Mendez, Carmen Mendez and Barbara Beebe, a
minor, against Katherine Jackson, James DeBarge and Janet Jackson, was
recorded in the following documents filed in Los Angeles Superior Court,
Los Angeles County, all case number C522917:
Complaint – Personal Injury, Property Damage, Wrongful Death, 15
November 1984.
Manuel R. Mendez, Carmen Mendez and Barbara Beebe, a minor, v.
Katherine Jackson and Janet Jackson, 8 January 1985.
Manuel R. Mendez, Carmen Mendez and Barbara Beebe, a minor, v.
Katherine Jackson, James DeBarge and Janet Jackson, 2 March 1988.
Declaration of Robert J. Davis, 30 January 1989. Davis was the Jackson’s
attorney. This document illustrated Davis’s difficulty in obtaining payment
for his work from Katherine Jackson and Janet Jackson, and also
demonstrated the way the family tends to deal rather unfairly with attorneys
representing them.
Interrogatories to Defendant, Janet Jackson, 28 February 1985. Janet
Jackson discussed her relationship with James DeBarge, her mother and
other family members. It is fascinating that most of what Ms Jackson was
compelled to reveal here had nothing at all to do with the minor accident in
which she was involved.
Post-Victory Tour Years
Louis Farrakhan’s comments about Michael Jackson were widely published
on 12 April 1983.
The Denise Worrell Time magazine story was published on 19 March
1984. I also drew from my interviews with Michael’s cousin, Tim
Whitehead, and with Steve Howell. I also interviewed Kenneth Nagle (3
January 1989), Harry Weber (3 February 1990), Patty Kellar (15 March
1990), Ted Culver (3 April 1990), David Kelsey (5 May 1990) and Harold
Long (19 May 1990). I drew from Cathy Griffin’s interview with Joyce
McCrae.
John Branca provided some background information on the ATV
acquisition on 9 January 1991, just as he had done for Robert Hillburn’s
analysis of the acquisition in the Los Angeles Times on 22 September 1985,
which I also utilized as secondary source material. I also drew from
published interviews with Paul McCartney (see bibliography).
Bad Years to 1991
Frank Dileo met with my private investigator and researcher Cathy Griffin
for three hours at the Sunset Marquis Hotel in Los Angeles on 11 October
1990. Some of the material in this book was culled from that conversation.
A meeting was set up between Dileo and myself on 19 October 1990.
However, just prior to that date, a People magazine article about Dileo was
published in which he was critical of Michael Jackson. After receiving an
intimidating telephone call from one of Jackson’s representatives, Dileo
decided not to meet with me.
I then interviewed Frank Dileo in August 1995, after the original edition
of this book was published.
Byron Moore and Max Hart were interviewed on 30 August 1990.
Mitchell Fink reported on Michael’s viewing of Purple Rain in the Los
Angeles Herald Examiner on 5 July 1984.
I utilized J. C. Stevenson’s article on Janet Jackson in Spin and also
referred to Cathy Griffin’s interview with Joyce McCrae.
Most of my sources regarding Michael Jackson’s publicity stunts – the
sprained wrist during the filming of Captain EO, the hyperbaric chamber
and the Elephant Man’s bones – must remain confidential due to the nature
of these sources’ employment in the record industry. I did refer to
‘Michael’s Next Thrill: An Oxygen Chamber’ in the Los Angeles Herald
Examiner (17 September 1986), ‘Michael Jackson’s Bizarre Plan to Live to
150’ in the National Enquirer (16 September 1986) and ‘Michael Jackson
Wants Merrick’s Bones’ by Patricia Freeman in the Los Angeles Herald
Examiner (30 May 1987). I also referred to a story about Michael’s
hyperbaric chamber in Time (September 1986). Charles Montgomery, who
wrote the hyperbaric chamber story, was interviewed in January 1991. Jack
Richardson was interviewed on 23 October 1990. The joke about Michael’s
nose was published in Playboy in the December 1987 issue.
A note about ‘We Are the World’: by January 1991, more than sixty-one
million dollars had been raised from the sales of this song to fight hunger in
Ethiopia. In addition to record sales, funds also came from the marketing of
‘We Are the World’ T-shirts, posters, books and videos.
In other unrelated matters, I used as secondary material ‘Buckle Debacle’
by Bill Steigerwalk in the Los Angeles Times (8 November 1987). I also
referred to my interview with Jerome Howard in discussing Katherine
Jackson’s interest in working for Michael Jackson.
In the matter of Michael Jackson’s 1988 purchase of Sycamore Ranch, I
had a number of anonymous sources, and I also relied on an extensive
Property Profile supplied by Continental Lawyers Title Company on 27
September 1990, which includes an in-depth, legal description of the ranch.
The profile also includes the Individual Grant Deed filed on 11 April 1988,
in which John Branca and Marshall Gelfand, co-trustees under the Trust
Agreement dated 11 April 1988, granted the property to Michael Jackson.
Also interviewed: Gary Berwin (16 November 1990), Steven Harris (17
November 1990), Phillip Meadows (22 November 1990), Bernard
Pancheco (1 December 1990), Virginia August (3 December 1990), Glenn
Bascome (6 December 1990), Patty Kellar (8 December 1990) and Douglas
Wilson (10 December 1990). Frank Dileo discussed his feelings about
being fired by Michael Jackson in numerous published interviews to
promote the film GoodFellas. I also referred to Dileo’s television
appearances to promote the film, including one on Personalities on 25
October 1990.
The story about Michael Jackson, the Blarney Stone and AIDS was
published in the Rolling Stone issue of 6 October 1988.
LaToya Jackson’s allegations that Michael had been molested as a child
were reprinted in numerous publications and also broadcast on CNN in July
1988. She and I also discussed the matter in 1993, in Spain, after the
original edition of this book was published.
In the matter of Lavon Muhammad, aka Billie Jean, I used as source
material Muhammad’s handwritten Petition for Dissolution of Marriage, 19
January 1988, and the case of Michael Jackson v. Lavon Muhammad, 1
February 1987, filed in Los Angeles Superior Court, Los Angeles County,
case number 17925. Numerous employees were subpoenaed to testify to
Muhammad’s harassment of Michael Jackson.
I obtained a copy of Michael Jackson’s current contracts with CBS
Records. I also had a number of anonymous sources, many of whom are
still working for Michael Jackson, who provided the bulk of the information
in the last two chapters of the book.
Dr Robert Kotler was interviewed on 4 November 1990.
Donna Burton, Dr Steven Hoefflin’s secretary, was contacted on 30
November 1990.
I also referred to the Handbook of Nonprescription Drugs, seventh
edition, by the American Pharmaceutical Association.
I reviewed the transcript of the Jacksons’ appearance on Donahue, 10
November 1989, and the transcript of LaToya Jackson’s appearance on
Donahue, 9 February 1989. I also reviewed the transcript of Katherine
Jackson’s appearance on Sally Jessy Rafael, 30 November 1990.
Janet Jackson is the first artist to have seven Top Five singles from one
album, her Janet Jackson’s Rhythm Nation 1814. She signed one of the
largest recording contracts in history when she pacted with Virgin Records
in March 1991 for an estimated thirty-two million dollars. Some observers
feel that Michael may have delayed the finalization of his own ‘billion-
dollar’ contract with CBS (now Sony) until Janet’s deal was announced,
giving her the chance to hold the record for biggest contract before stepping
back in to reclaim it for himself.
Michael Jackson and the Koreans
Regarding the Korean/Moonies incident, I drew from personal interviews
with Jerome Howard on 29 October 1990 and Kenneth Choi on 11 January
1990.
I also used as source material the following documents filed in the United
States District Court for the Central District of California, all case number
CV 90 4906 KN:
Segye Times, Inc., v. Joseph Jackson, Katherine Jackson, Jackson
Records Company, Inc., Jackson Family Concerts International, Jerome
Howard, Kyu-Sun Choi, Mi Rae Choi, Michael Jackson, Jermaine Jackson,
Bill Bray, Ben Brown d/b/a Jackson Marketing & Distributing Company
and Does 1 to 100, 17 October 1990.
Bill Bray v. Kenneth Choi, 17 October 1990.
Michael Jackson v. Segye Times, Inc., 17 October 1990.
Sworn Declaration of Michael Jackson, 17 October 1990.
Michael Jackson v. Kenneth Choi, 17 October 1990.
Sworn Declaration of Bill Bray, 17 October 1990.
Answer of Defendant Michael Jackson to First Amended Complaint, 17
October 1990.
Answer of Defendant Bill Bray to First Amended Complaint, 17 October
1990.
Katherine Jackson v. LaToya Jackson Gordon and Jack Gordon
Details of the lawsuit brought by Katherine Jackson against LaToya Jackson
were culled from the following documents filed in Los Angeles Superior
Court, Los Angeles County, case number NWC55803:
Katherine Jackson v. Jack Gordon; LaToya Jackson aka LaToya Gordon,
February 28, 1990.
Notice of Pendency of Action, Katherine Jackson v. Jack Gordon; LaToy
a Jackson a/k/a LaToya Gordon, 2 March 1990.
Michael Jackson and Jordie Chandler
I interviewed Michael in August 1994, regarding Jordie and Evan
Chandler’s allegations. Most of the material from that interview was
deemed too sensitive at the time and, therefore, went unpublished until now,
with the publication of this revised edition of Michael Jackson: The Magic
and the Madness. Some of it, however, appeared in the following articles I
wrote, from which I also drew for the new edition of this book: ‘Michael
Jackson: “I’d Never Hurt a Child” – World Exclusive: First Interview Since
Explosive Charges’ by J. Randy Taraborrelli (Michael’s Noted Biographer),
Star, 6 September 1994; ‘Save Me, Elizabeth. Save my Life! – World
Exclusive’ by J. Randy Taraborrelli, Star, 13 September 1994; ‘Shocking
Truth About Michael Jackson Strip-Search Photos – What they Show –
World Exclusive’ by J. Randy Taraborrelli, Star, 20 September 1994.
I attended at least a dozen press conferences relating to the allegations
and took advantage of the many opportunities I had to question attorneys
Bert Fields and Howard Weitzman and investigator Anthony Pellicano to
clear confusing matters in my mind, and then reported my findings on
American television broadcasts relating to the case. (Note that the secretly
tape-recorded conversations between Evan Chandler and Dave Schwartz
were played by Anthony Pellicano during two such press conferences, on
30 August and 1 September 1993. The tapes were also broadcast on the
television programme American Justice, 21 September 1994.)
Most of my other sources for information regarding the sensitive issue of
Jordie Chandler must remain confidential.
In a perfect world, there would be no reason for confidentiality: everyone
would be able to speak his mind without fear of repercussions. However,
many of those interviewed are high-profile people who still work in the
entertainment industry today. Others work in the Los Angeles Department
of Children’s Services, the Sheriffs Department of Santa Barbara,
California, and the Child Abuse Unit of the Los Angeles Police
Department. It is not fair to expect these sources to risk their careers and the
trust of their clients (if they are in the representation field) so that they can
assist me in my work with a book. Other than to set the record straight,
these individuals have nothing to gain from offering valuable insight and, in
some cases, everything to lose.
The same is true of reporters who work for Associated Press and other
news agencies that utilize confidential sources, I make every effort to check
the legitimacy and accuracy of any source who requests anonymity. If I do
not trust a source, no information from that person is utilized – whether the
person requested anonymity or not. Also, I always have more than one
source for any information that might be considered controversial.
Whether to use significant information given under a condition of
anonymity is always a difficult decision for a writer. However, I feel a
strong obligation to my readers to present the facts as best I can, just as I
feel an obligation to my sources to protect them should they feel protection
is necessary.
From the text, the reader should be able to glean that I have interviewed
most of the principals involved in the Jordie Chandler matter over the years,
even though they wish not to be acknowledged here.
I also drew from lengthy conversations with Larry Feldman, Michael
Freeman, Anthony Pellicano, Diane Dimond, Vinnie Zuffante, Mark
Quindoy, Jack Gordon, LaToya Jackson, Ernie Rizzo, Lauren Weis, Gary
Spiegel, Robert Wegner, Charles T. Matthews, Tom Sneddon, Harry
Benson, Russell Turiak and Susan Crimp.
I also referred to voluminous court records and documents, including
complaints, motions and depositions pertaining to ‘Jordan Chandler v.
Michael Jackson‘ Case Number SC026226.
Moreover, I referred to all of the documents pertaining to Chandler v.
Jackson (ABC and Diane Sawyer and Lisa Marie Presley), Court Case
Number SM097360. This was the case filed by Evan Chandler after
Michael and Lisa appeared in a television broadcast with Diane Sawyer and
proclaimed his innocence.
I also referenced: Rothman v. Jackson (Weitzman, Fields, Pellicano),
Case Number SC32081; Morris Williams, Leroy A. Thomas, Donald Storks,
Fred Hammond and Aaron White v. Michael Jackson, Case Number
BC093593; Michael J. Jackson v. Diane Dimond, Stephen Doran, K-ABC
Radio and Paramount Pictures Corp., Case Number BC 119773 (as well as
‘Michael Jackson’s Statement Re Lies and Falsehoods’ from Howard
Weitzman, Esq., 11 January 1995.
Michael and Lisa Marie Presley
I drew from my interviews with Lisa Marie Presley, which first appeared in
‘Suspicious Minds – The Troubled Life and Times of a rock ‘n’ roll
Heiress’, by J. Randy Taraborrelli, Sunday Magazine (The Times), 14 April
1996.
In 1997, as a consequence of the strong reaction to the Sunday Magazine
feature, I began researching and writing a book about Lisa Marie Presley,
which was to be called Elvis, Priscilla, Michael and Me. However, I
abandoned plans for the book when my career went into a different
direction (with my biography of Frank Sinatra). I conducted a great deal of
research for the Lisa Marie biography, some of which appeared in articles I
wrote, such as: ‘Lisa Marie Presley – Seule, toujours seule‘ by J. Randy
Taraborrelli, Paris Match, June 1996; ‘Lisa Marie, Michael and Debbie’ by
J. Randy Taraborrelli, Star, 25 February 1997; ‘Michael and Lisa Marie’ by
J. Randy Taraborrelli, Star, 4 March 1997; ‘Millionaire Lisa Marie Presley’
by J. Randy Taraborrelli, Star, 11 March 1997.
Of course, I also drew from my own interviews with Michael, and stories
based on those interviews, such as: ‘Michael Insists: ‘This Marriage is no
Joke”’ by J. Randy Taraborrelli, Star, 27 September 1994; ‘Jackson Insists
Kiss was a Thriller’ USA Today, 13 September 1994; ‘Jacko Finally Breaks
His Silence’ by J. Randy Taraborrelli, Woman’s Day, September 1995.
On 18 January 1996, I appeared on CNN to announce that Lisa Marie
Presley had filed for divorce from Michael Jackson. For that broadcast, I
conducted my own, independent research, from which I also relied for this
updated book.
I also drew on my article, ‘Princess Heartbreak’ by J. Randy Taraborrelli,
New Idea, 28 January 2002.
I also referred to my research for the following articles: ‘The Secret
Power of Liz Taylor’ by J. Randy Taraborrelli, Woman’s Day, 11 December
2000; ‘Taraborrelli Defends Jackson (and Himself!)’ by Michelle Cushing,
‘King of Pop’, the Official Magazine of MJ News International, Issue
Number 6, 1996; ‘Jackson scandal will be History’, New York Post, 22 June
1994; ‘Michael Promises No More Plastic Surgery’ by J. Randy
Taraborrelli, Woman’s Day, 25 December 2000; ‘Diana Ross and Michael
Jackson’ by J. Randy Taraborrelli, Woman’s Day, December 2000.
Regarding Michael’s hospital stay in 1995, I reported the story for CNN
on 6 December, and did my own independent research for it at that time.
Thanks to Donald Trump, Hugo Alvarez-Perez, Marcel Marceau, Brett
Livingston-Stone, Monica Pastelle and Otis Williams of The Temptations.
Of course, I was the reporter at the Polo Lounge in Beverly Hills to
whom Elizabeth Taylor said, ‘I am not in the business of clarifying
rumours,’ and then issued the somewhat startling order, ‘Now, be gone!’
I also referred to reams of press coverage and TV interviews given by
Lisa Marie Presley to publicize her Capitol Records 2003 release, To Whom
it May Concern, including ‘Q and A with Lisa Marie Presley’ by Rob
Tannenbaum, for Playboy, May 2003.
I also referred to the court records relating to Lisa Marie Presley’s
petition to dissolve her marriage to Michael Jackson (Case Number
BD22906).
Michael and Debbie Rowe up to Present Day
For most of these chapters, I drew from my own television reporting on
Michael Jackson in the United States and Europe. It would be too lengthy a
list for me to detail all of the television programmes I have appeared on
having to do with Michael, Lisa Marie Presley and Debbie Rowe since the
publication of the first edition of this book; I have made literally hundreds
of appearances on shows such as Today, Good Morning America, CBS This
Morning, Prime Time – Live, Dateline, The Larry King Show, CNN
Headline News, and many others, expressing my views about Michael
based on my own independent research.
Some of my most recent television appearances relating to Michael
Jackson had to do with analyzing his interview with Martin Bashir, on
programmes such as: ‘Michael Jackson – UnMasked’, Dateline, NBC, 17
February 2003; ‘Michael Jackson,’ Prime Time, 6 February 2003; The
Many Faces of Michael Jackson – Prime Time Special Edition, ABC, 17
February 2003; CBS-This Morning, 18 February 2003. I also reported on
Michael for Michael Jackson: The E! True Hollywood Story, June 2003.
I was also a contributor to the highly rated documentary Michael
Jackson’s Face, on Channel 5 in the United Kingdom, the highest-rated
original programme ever broadcast on the channel.
I also drew from my research for ‘The Secret Michael Jackson’” (three-
part series,) by J. Randy Taraborrelli, Daily Mail, September 1998.
Thanks also to Gordon Rowe, Steve Shmerier, Marsha Devlin, Tanya
Boyd, Mavis McDermott, Mario Pikus and Theodore Miller for their
assistance in understanding Michael’s marriage to Debbie Rowe.
Library Research
The following institutions were extremely helpful to my research:
American Film Institute Library; Associated Press Office (New York);
The Bancroft Library (University of California, Berkeley); The Brand
Library Art and Music Center; British Film Institute Library Archives; Born
Free Foundation; Boston Herald Archives; The Beverly Hills Library;
British Broadcasting Corporation; University of California, Los Angeles;
California State Archives (Sacramento); Corbis-Gamma/Liaison; The
Glendale Central Public Library; Hayden Library; The Hartford Public
Library; The Hollywood Library; The Houghton Library (Harvard
University); Hulton Picture Library; Lincoln Center Library of the
Performing Arts; Kobal Collection; The Los Angeles Public Library; the
Los Angeles Times; The Margaret Herrick Library (Academy of Motion
Pictures Arts and Sciences); the Michigan Chronicle; Museum of Modern
Art (The Film Study Center); Museum of the Film; National Archives and
the Library of Congress; The Neal Peters Collection; New York City
Municipal Archives; New York Public Library; New York Daily News; New
York Post; New York Times; Occidental College, (Eagle Rock, California),
Philadelphia Free Library (Theater Collection); Philadelphia Public Library;
Philadelphia Historical Society; the Philadelphia Inquirer and the
Philadelphia Daily News; Photofest; Princeton University (The William
Seymour Theater Collection).
Bibliography
One book I so value and which I would like to single out as wonderful is
Michael Jackson: A Visual Documentary by Adrian Grant from Omnibus
Press, London. It was first published in 1994, and then updated a number of
times. If the reader wants to know more about Michael, go to an edition of
this terrific book.
For this updated edition of Michael Jackson – The Magic and the
Madness, I referred to many hundreds of articles having to do with the
Michael Jackson molestation investigation and his marriages to Lisa Marie
Presley and Debbie Rowe. Space simply does not allow the publication of
the lengthy list of these features. One, in particular, that I think deserves
special mention is: ‘Did Michael Do It?’ by Mary Fischer for GQ, October
1994.
Also helpful were: ‘Not Necessarily the News’ by Tom Rosenthal,
Esquire, January 1995; ‘Nightmare at Neverland’ by Maureen Orth,
January 1994 and ‘Prime Time Lies’ by Maureen Orth, Vanity Fair,
September 1995; ‘Jackson Files Slander Suits’ by Adam Sandler, Daily
Variety, 13 January 1995; ‘Jackson Pays; Case Closed’ by Jeffrey Jolson-
Colburn, Hollywood Reporter, 25 January 1994; ‘Priscilla Presley – My
Daughter, Myself’ by Jim Jerome, Ladies Home Journal, August 1996;
‘Can He Put Himself Together, Again?’ by Tom Maurstad, Dallas Morning
News, 18 June 1995; ‘Is This the End?’ by Dana Kennedy, Entertainment
Weekly, 10 September 1993; ‘Michael’s World’ by Cathleen McGuigan,
Newsweek, 6 September 1993; ‘Who’s Bad?’ by Richard Corliss, ‘Time to
Face the Music’ by Dana Kennedy, Entertainment Weekly, 17 December
1993; ‘Inside Michael’s World’ by Joey Bartolomeo and Jennifer Tung, US
Weekly, 24 February 2003; ‘Michael Jackson – The Man in the Mirror’ by
Mary Murphy and Jennifer Graham, TV Guide, 10-16 November 2001;
‘What Friends Are For’ by Karen Schneider, People, 2 December 1996;
‘Michael Jackson – Losing his Grip’ by Maureen Orth, Vanity Fair, April
2003; ‘Michael Tells Where I Met Lisa Marie and How I Proposed’ by
Robert E. Johnson, Ebony, October 1994; ‘Neverland Meets Graceland’ by
Tom Gliatto, People, 1994; ‘The King as Pop’ by David Friend, Life,
December 1997; ‘A Frank Talk with Priscilla Presley’ by Vernon Scott,
November 1994; ‘Wanna Be Stopping Something’ by Tom Sinclair,
Entertainment Weekly, 21 September 2001.
I also reviewed the PBS Frontline documentary, ‘Tabloid Truth: the
Michael Jackson Scandal’, which was broadcast on 15 February 1994, as
well as the transcript of CNN’s Larry King Live discussion of Michael
Jackson on 21 February 2003.
J. RANDY TARABORRELLI is the New York Times bestselling author of Elizabeth;
Jackie, Ethel, Joan: Women of Camelot; Sinatra: A Complete Life;
Call Her Miss Ross; and the forthcoming The Secret Life of Marilyn
Monroe, among other titles, as well as a frequent contributor to many
publications and a CBS News consultant. He lives in Los Angeles.
* In 1993, Michael sent Jackie an extravagant gift, perhaps trying to win
her over. Recalled Stephen Styles, who was a close friend of John F.
Kennedy Jnr’s, ‘Michael was pushing for a deeper relationship, I think. But
you just didn’t do that with Jackie; she was the one to set the boundaries.
One day, my phone rang and it was John. “You will never guess what’s
going on around here,” he said. “My mother is fit to be tied.” Then, he
explained to me that a big screen TV had been delivered to Jackie’s
apartment building from Michael, and that was so large they couldn’t even
get it in the front door of the lobby. It was just out in the middle of the
sidewalk on Fifth Avenue, with a giant pink bow on it that said, “For Jackie.
The Most Wonderful Woman in the World.” A big crowd had gathered,
hoping that the most wonderful woman in the world would come down and
claim her prize. “My mother is having a fit, about it,” John said, laughing.
They finally got it up to her apartment, but they had to disassemble much of
it just to get it in the lobby.’
* Later, Arnold Klein was forced to testify at a Grand Jury. He brought
along his assistant, Debbie Rowe. The two testified that Michael had been a
patient since 1983, was diagnosed with Vitiligo and acne in 1986, and was
given his first of many prescriptions of Benoquin, a bleaching cream, in
1990. Klein said he had never seen Jackson’s penis, but – on one occasion –
saw his buttocks when Michael had tried using his Benoquin bleaching
cream there. Klein also confirmed the incident with Michael’s scrotum,
when he tried to bleach it in the spring of 1993. However, Rowe treated him
for that particular problem, not Klein.
* In 2001, Michael, Justin and ’N Sync made a couple of TV appearances
together, on Michael’s megalomaniacal thirtieth anniversary television
special, and then on the MTV Video Music Awards that year. Britney also
appeared on the anniversary programme, performing ‘The Way You Make
Me Feel’ with Jackson. However the footage was cut from the broadcast
due to contractual issues.
