The Michael Jackson Tapes

by Shmuley Boteach

  Michael’s life was a complete mess. He was a celebrity spendthrift who had an as-yet unexplained relationship to children. Additionally, his many fears for their safety compelled him to hide his children behind veils. He had little communication with the normal, everyday, outside world, let alone his own family, and was desperately in need of healing in virtually every aspect of his life. Amid promising me that he would never again be alone with children, clearly this was a practice Michael was continuing, at least with Gavin, the boy we had met at Neverland. Michael desperately needed spiritual guidance and moral direction, not another camera crew. Never in my life have I seen a single TV program so completely polish off a man’s future as did Living with Michael Jackson, which is not to fault Bashir and the people who made the documentary but rather Michael and his team for ever agreeing. It was most unfortunate that people who cared so deeply for Michael advised him so poorly.

  As Michael moved back into his identity as a star, he became more secretive and secluded from me. For example, he had promised me that he would never again have plastic surgery. Yet I was told by people in his circle that he had had another procedure that he hid from me. It was partly out of embarrassment—he was ashamed to show me that he was not strong enough to keep to our goals and plan for him—and partly because, by now, he could not suffer my criticisms, which increased with time. Most significantly, whereas before he looked to me as a trusted guide and loving friend, he was now treating me as an irritant.

  As I saw him falter—wake up late, miss meetings, spend money he didn’t have—I began to offer ever-increasing rebukes. They were offered gently and lovingly, but they were rebukes nonetheless, and Michael had absolutely no idea how to handle them.

  The day of our last planned event was March 25th. It was a community-based literacy and health initiative in Newark, New Jersey, and it was the straw that broke the camel’s back. My dear friend Cory Booker was our partner in the event. At the time he was a councilman and today is the mayor of Newark and one of America’s most admired, accomplished, and inspirational leaders. Although an African-American non-Jew, Cory was president of my student organization, the Oxford L’Chaim Society, when he was a Rhodes Scholar at the university. He is one of the most special, loving, and uplifting human beings I had ever met, and together at Oxford we hosted great world leaders, such as Mikhail Gorbachev, to lecture to our students on values-based themes.

  Cory and I continue to be like brothers and Michael had met Cory several times at our home for the Friday night Sabbath dinner. Michael immediately saw in Cory what I had seen all those years before and many times commented to me how inspired he was by my soul-friendship with Cory. Michael agreed to distribute children’s books to parents in Cory’s ward of Newark. It was to be a beautiful opportunity to highlight the importance of reading children a bedtime story.

  But by the time we actually went to Newark, Michael was already getting weary and wary of all the events he had to show up for—it had been a whirlwind six weeks of being in the public eye in an entirely unfamiliar role. I knew we were on our way out. He seemed to be slowly leaving the work we had launched together. He was going back to being a superstar.

  The event at Newark with Councilman Booker was a huge success and hundreds of families were in attendance. We distributed thousands of books. But on the way back to his van, Michael barely spoke to me. I could tell he was angry. Always the gentleman, Michael never showed overt hostility and I never once witnessed him lose his temper. Rather, if he was annoyed he would simply withdraw. He would punish you by taking away the one thing that meant the most to him: attention.

  We arrived back at Michael’s hotel suite and I underwent one of the most painful experiences in my friendship with Michael. One of Michael’s principal managers sat me down, with Michael looking on, and began explaining to me why Michael was upset. “Yes, Shmuley, Michael loves you but he is annoyed. You just don’t get it.” Carnegie Hall and Oxford were one thing. But a bunch of families in Newark? Michael is the biggest star in the world. He doesn’t do things like that. A councilman in a small New Jersey city? Michael is around presidents and prime ministers. I was debasing his fame, abusing his celebrity.

  Then the manager said something to me that I shall never, for the rest of my days, forget: “You want to make Michael normal. What you don’t understand is that he’s famous because he’s not normal.”

  Michael was silent as he listened. Clearly he had found someone to do his dirty work. This was a planned and sanctioned speech. So there it was. Two sides of Michael Jackson, forever in conflict, forever at war. The normal, cute, adorable child from Gary, Indiana, who just wanted to sing and make people happy versus the reclusive superstar who was prepared to walk with a giraffe, befriend a chimp, mask his face, and disfigure his countenance, all in an effort to be mysterious and aloof so the public would never stop focusing on him.

  I pondered the words. He is famous because he’s not normal. And in that statement I saw the full tragedy of Michael’s life. Here was a man so bereft of love, so dependent on attention, that he would do almost anything to get it. If it meant becoming the world’s biggest freak show, he would pay that price too. The public’s opinion of him be damned. Just so long as they were still talking about him.

  When I took him to Newark, New Jersey, to give out books to parents from low-income households to read to their children, I did so in the belief that he was more interested in doing good with his celebrity than pursuing fame. But the superstar had won out. The wholesome boy had been buried alive. And a superstar doesn’t do mundane things like distribute books to a bunch of nobodies. And he doesn’t do so for a mere councilman who is trying so hard to improve the lives of working families. (What a tragic irony to see all these years later that Michael is now sadly no longer alive and Cory Booker is hailed today as one of America’s most accomplished mayors and is being spoken of in many circles as destined for national leadership).

  So our relationship slowly unraveled and I finally decided that it was time to call it quits. I was there to help Michael improve his life and consecrate his celebrity to a cause larger than himself. If he could not sustain the effort, if I was to be told he only involves himself with causes that behooved his fame, if I was expected to become another silent hanger-on, I was going to move on. I left Michael’s hotel knowing that in all likelihood we would never be close again. That the right thing to do when one could no longer assist someone in crisis was at the very least not to bless his decline by sitting and watching in complacent silence.

  It was the last time I saw Michael.

  Two weeks later Michael called from Miami. He said, “I’m sending a plane for you” and then he spent a half hour on the phone trying to get me to come, telling me he still wanted to do our work together. He blamed our rift on the people who surrounded him. I felt the tug. Plus, I was raised in Miami and still had family there I could visit at the same time. I said I would think about it, and I did. But ultimately, I decided not to go. If Michael was serious about rededicating himself to the work we had begun, it would manifest itself through tangible action rather than empty words.

  I waited for him to return to New York, but time went on and the announcement was made for two thirtieth anniversary concerts at Madison Square Garden that were to take place in September.

  I was disappointed in Michael. I felt he had misrepresented himself to me and misrepresented himself to the world. He made me believe that his first priority was to help the world’s children and live a life of unequalled altruism. And while he may have believed that, in reality Michael could never fully overcome the gravitational pull of superstardom. More than anything else, Michael misrepresented himself to himself. He had two sides, the giver and the narcissist, but was blind to the latter.

  My relationship with Michael wasn’t quite finished, however. Summer came and my family was together on an RV trip. Frank called and said, “Michael asked me to call you. We can’t do the concert without you. You’re
his closest friend, Shmuley. He wants you and the kids to be there. It just wouldn’t be the same otherwise.” I pulled off the highway to talk it over with my wife. I knew I had to decide right then and there. Thank God my wife was there. I wasn’t sure I had the power to resist the magnetic attraction of a superstar. My wife, who is the most wholesome person I know and who has a complete immunity to all things involving fame and celebrity, helped me over the mountain and I decided that I would decline.

  I was Michael’s friend and rabbi, not his fan. My purpose was to redirect his life with a moral and spiritual foundation, not to clap when he moved his feet. I would not be a sycophant. I would never go back to our friendship unless I could influence him positively. I would not sit passively and watch his decline. I could never allow myself to be compromised in this way. I called my office and dictated the following message to be faxed to his personal assistant:Rabbi and Mrs. Shmuley Boteach thank Mr. Michael Jackson for his kind invitation to his thirtieth anniversary concert but regret that they will be unable to attend.

  In the end it was a painful but necessary moment. I was acknowledging that something about Michael was beyond redemption and that if I returned to his orbit I would sink too. I later explained to Frank that I was never the friend of Michael Jackson the superstar. I loved and cared for Michael Jackson the man. Since he had buried that side of himself, I was moving on. I wanted to go back to what I had been before Michael Jackson: a rabbi who tried to spread the glory of God rather than bask in the glow of a superstar.

  His Demons

  There was a time when I felt Michael could redeem his life, and that I could be a strong, perfect, caring guide to help him. Many others thought they could play that role too—from his mother Katherine, to his first wife Lisa Marie Presley when he was coping with the 1993 allegations and his drug addiction, to Frank Cascio, whose devotion to Michael knew no end. But for all Michael’s strengths—his fierce determination, his pure talent and charisma, his patience, his innate gentleness and love of children—there were forces in his life that he didn’t want to overcome or didn’t have the strength to—especially his own hubris, his use of drugs, and the stone around his neck with the 1993 and then 2003 molestation charges.

  Messiah Complex

  What most corrupted the life and career of Michael Jackson was his belief that he was different from ordinary folk—more elevated, more sensitive, more long-suffering—and thus not subject to rigid rules of right and wrong. His hubris knew no bounds. If you thought he was having too much plastic surgery, well, you could never understand the imaging needs of a superstar. And if you thought that sharing a bed with a child, however platonic, was morally deplorable, well, that too was because seeing it from your mortal vantage point could never enlighten you as to how the self-proclaimed “voice for the voiceless” saw it. While Michael could be forgiven for his naïve assumption that even hardened mass murderers have something good left in them, what is truly shocking is his belief that he could somehow have gotten through even to Adolph Hitler, as our conversations will later demonstrate.

  To justify sharing a bed with children, he told boldface lies. For example, his telling Ed Bradley on 60 Minutes that Gavin Arvizo arrived at Neverland in a wheelchair and had to be carried to places such as the game room was preposterous. The boy I saw that day in August 2001 was extremely active, running around from ride to ride, and might even have been construed as wild. It’s not, I think, that Michael consciously wished to deceive. Rather, he was so insecure about himself that he had to always sound like more of a saint than he was. Michael’s insecurity led him to being an extremist. It was not enough to be a humanitarian. He had to be the greatest humanitarian on the planet. It was not enough to give hope to a child with cancer. Always the martyr, he pictured himself carrying the child on his back through a parched desert with no promised land in sight.

  With the passage of time, I watched Michael’s unhealthy Messiah complex grow, no doubt egged on by ingratiating fans who never rebuked him for behavior, which was clearly self-destructive. He refused to accept responsibility for his actions and blamed others’ jealousy for his incessant problems.

  The Bible’s word for an adulterous wife is sotah. It literally means “to stray, to turn aside, to depart the path of love and righteousness.” It is a word that is relevant to the sins of Michael Jackson. For his sins—aside, of course, from the extremely serious allegations of child molestation— were never crimes he committed against someone else. They were primarily crimes against himself, a departure from the way of light, a detour into an ever-thickening darkness.

  He could never see that a man who spends tens of millions of dollars on himself per annum, sulks in the most lavish lifestyle, and even has his security people holding his umbrella for him while he is on trial (where you would think he might finally have learned to exhibit some humility) is hardly the Messiah. He’s just another damaged and self-absorbed celebrity.

  Drug Use

  Michael confused his afflictions of soul with ailments of the body. But whereas once upon a time the light of celebrity was hot enough to make him feel better, he had reached a stage where even that no longer warmed him. Drugs became the only balm by which to dull pain. As time went on I understood why things like painkillers or plastic surgery were so attractive to Michael. Michael knew nothing but pain.

  Michael’s drug use was difficult to detect because of how spacey and out-of-it everyone expected him to be. Plus, it was easy to assume that Michael took strong painkillers only when he was in physical pain. In the time that I knew him, he always seemed intent on me having a positive view of him and nothing untoward was ever done in my presence.

  In retrospect, there were more signs that he was on something than I or anyone around him recognized or acknowledged. Michael was very forgetful. He sometimes seemed woozy. His head once drooped completely at the home of a friend that I had taken him to meet. But I just thought that with the kind of crazy hours he kept—Michael was going to sleep at 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning—he was just always tired. Michael often called me and spoke as if he was either tremendously inspired or a bit off. “Shmuley, I’m just calling to tell you that I love you. I looovvveee you. IIII llloooovvveee yooouuu. . . ” “I love you too, Michael,” I would say. But by and large, those conversations were very short, and I thought to myself, yes, that’s strange, but that’s Michael. He’s different. He’s eccentric.

  What perhaps should have made me most suspicious was Michael’s constant physical ailments. He was always complaining that a part of his body was hurting or had been injured. This, of course, became a central staple of his trial. But the Angel Ball was my earliest exposure to it. Michael claimed that he had been slammed against a wall by fans and fellow celebrities trying to get his autograph. But even if that had happened, it seemed as though the smallest knocks could completely incapacitate him. And that was either true—Michael did have a very fragile disposition—or he was using these ailments, which in his mind were real, as an excuse to take more painkillers.

  A few weeks before the major address Michael was to give at Oxford, when he was back in California and I was in New York, Michael called to tell me he had broken his foot while practicing dancing at Neverland. “Are you going to cancel Oxford?” I asked. “No,” he said. “It’s way too important.” In due course, Michael arrived in Britain in a foot cast and on crutches. I heard him give a number of conflicting stories about how he had broken his foot, but again, I made nothing of it, thinking that Michael was forgetful.

  A doctor traveled with him to England from the United States and stayed in Michael’s hotel. Whenever he would complain of terrible pain from his foot, they would go together into his room and emerge, about a half-hour later, with Michael looking glassy-eyed. I asked the doctor about his background and his practice, and as I recall he seemed to give inadequate responses. He was a personal physician who practiced in New York. I wondered why he had accompanied Michael all the way from overseas just because
of a broken foot. There were doctors in England if Michael needed one. But if he was being administered more painkillers for his broken foot, which is what I suspected, Michael was still nowhere near being so out of it that he couldn’t function.

  Michael did come three hours late to Oxford, which meant that he did not attend the dinner that was staged by the Oxford Union in his honor, and he did arrive three hours late at our mutual friend Uri Geller’s wedding ceremony the next day where I officiated and Michael served as best man. But other than that, the trip to Britain went off without a hitch.

  As I was about to embark on my return flight home, Michael, who was staying on in Europe, reached me on my mobile phone. “Shmuulleeeey,” he dragged out the word, partially slurring it, “yesterday at the wedding, I was just staring at you conducting the ceremony. I was staring at you because I love you, because you’re my best friend. I just loooovveeee you.” I responded as I always did, “I love you too, Michael.” “But no,” he said, “you don’t understand. I loovvveeee yooouuuu,” dragging out the words for effect. It was a flattering phone call, but it made me alarmed that Michael was on something very strong. I would continue having conversations with him about staying off the poison of prescription drugs. He never fought me and always agreed.

  When Michael was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame that March, he invited me and my wife, Debbie, as his guests to the dinner at The Waldorf-Astoria in New York City. Although he was still on crutches, he seemed completely lucid. I spent a few hours in his suite helping him write his acceptance speech and he seemed cheerful and in good spirits. The next time we did a public event together was a few weeks later when we went to Newark, New Jersey. Michael’s foot had healed and he was out of the cast. On that day, Michael seemed fine. Confident, chewing gum, and irritated with me as I explained earlier, but nothing more. I was certain that whatever medication he was taking had been connected with his broken foot and was now in the past.