MJ: They were like, “Michael Jackson!” I would go, “Oh God! Are they going to be my friend because of Michael Jackson? Or because of me?” I just wanted someone to talk to.
Already in this comment you could see the development of the two personalities that would forever collide in Michael’s person. There was Michael Jackson, the King of Pop, an aloof superstar who had everything and needed no one. And Michael Jackson, the shy kid under the mask, who lacked even a single real friend.
SB: Did you find it?
MJ: Yeah, well, I went to the park and there were kids playing on swings.
SB: So that’s when you decided that children were the answer. They are the only ones who treat you as a person?
MJ: Yeah. That’s true.
SB: So that’s the age that it hit you, “Oh my gosh. I did lose my childhood, because these are the only people I can identify with.”
MJ: I suffered a lot in that way. I knew that something was wrong with me at that time. But I needed someone. . . That’s probably why I had the mannequins. I would say because I felt I needed people, someone, I didn’t have. . . I was too shy to be around real people. I didn’t talk to them. It wasn’t like old ladies talking to plants. But I always thought I wanted something to make me feel like I had company. I always thought, “Why do I have these?” They are like real babies, kids, and people, and it makes me feel like I am in a room with people.
Realize the import of these words. Michael Jackson was so lonely that he turned to mannequins to feel like he had human company. That is the degree of isolation he experienced (and it’s an experience shared by many who make it to the top and lose connection to family, friends, and community).
SB: Why were you too shy to talk to real people? Was it because you had only ever learned to perform and you weren’t given the opportunity to hang out?
MJ: That’s it. There was no hang-out time.
SB: Do you still feel lonely?
MJ: Not nearly the way I used to. No.
SB: Clearly you have your kids, which makes a very big difference. But there is a part of us that isn’t only a parent. There is part of us that needs other forms of interaction.
MJ: What kind of interaction?
SB: Someone you can unburden yourself to emotionally in a way that Prince couldn’t understand or Paris couldn’t understand.
I was alluding to an intimate soul mate.
MJ: Mmmm. Friends and certain people you can trust. Elizabeth [Taylor], or whoever. . . Mac [Macaulay Culkin], Shirley Temple [Black], people who have been there.
Amazing, the only people he thought could ever understand him were others who had been robbed of their childhood.
SB: So it is always people who have been there, all these childhood stars?
MJ: They [people who have not been childhood stars] say, “Yeah, I know what you mean,” but they don’t know what you mean. They are just trying to agree with you.
SB: Do you discuss with friends who were also child stars individual things that happened to them? Or do you not even need to say it: Do you sort of understand it?
MJ: You know, it’s like telepathy. I wish you could have seen Shirley Temple and myself.
Just a few weeks before this conversation Michael had been to visit Shirley Temple Black in San Francisco.
SB: Are you still in touch with her?
MJ: I am going to call her. I’ve gotta call her again. I kept thanking her and she was saying, “Why?” and I said, “Because of all you have ever done for me.”
SB: Do you think you will ever dedicate a song to her?
MJ: I would love to.
SB: So Macaulay Culkin doesn’t need to say to you, “I was on the set and this happened with my father.” You don’t even have to have conversations like that?
MJ: Oh yeah. There is this precious sweet little soul who is a baby,
Macaulay Culkin, who is wondering, “How did I get caught up in all of this? I never asked to be an actor.” He always wanted out. You gotta watch that energy when he gets heavy on his father, man, it tears into him and that’s what happens, you know. Oh, but I saw it myself with him. [Michael screams] “Mac get in here!” the screaming. . .
SB: So that reminded you of what you had to go through? He made a lot of the choices that you did. He tried to hold onto his childhood for as long as possible. But there are other childhood stars who didn’t, like Brooke Shields, whom you were once close to. What about someone like Brooke Shields who to the world looks like she didn’t make childhood choices, she didn’t try to rediscover her childhood. Do you think it will exact a price? Do you think that Macaulay Culkin and you and others can be healthier because you understand what you are missing and you need to compensate?
MJ: You know, with certain people I understand and with certain ones I don’t. With her she started out being a model, so it wasn’t like being on the set all day, every day. She did modeling. She wasn’t a movie star until she did, I think it was Pretty Baby, and she played a female prostitute at the age of. . . I think it started around twelve for her. There was a lot of photography, so it wasn’t like all day like what we did, all day, from early to night. I think it affects people differently, but it is all the same. She is very sweet, smart. She is not an airhead. She is real smart. A lot of people think that when someone is beautiful they are like an airhead. She is very smart.
SB: What other childhood stars have you been close to?
MJ: Not a lot of them are left. That’s what is scary. Most of them self-destruct.
SB: At age thirteen you became a character in a cartoon series. Was that hard to handle?
MJ: I woke up every Saturday morning. I couldn’t wait.
SB: To watch The Jacksons?
MJ: To watch The Jackson 5 cartoon. I felt so honored that I had been made into a cartoon. I was so happy, you have no idea. We didn’t have to do anything. It was someone else’s voice. They just animated us and used our songs off the albums that we recorded and it played for years and years. I remember I was in Brunei in a hospital doing a show for the Sultan. It was the most beautiful hospital I have ever seen in my life and I’m laying in bed and there’s The Jackson 5 cartoon playing on television and I’m like, I can’t believe this. They show it all the time. The same company did The Beatles, The Osmonds, and The Jackson 5.
SB: So this is one of the things that you liked the most?
MJ: Oh, I loved it.
SB: Did that make you feel more connected with the children round the world? Because you know that children mostly are going to watch it right?
MJ: I loved it. It put me in another world. It was like, “God, I’m in another world.” I felt special. I think I felt more special about that than the hit records and the concerts and everything. That impressed me more than any of the other stuff.
SB: Now, out of your five brothers you were getting more attention than any of them. You were becoming the star until you were spun off as a solo artist. Was that hard for your brothers to handle? Was it hard for you? Was there any analogy to the story in the Bible about Joseph getting more attention than his brothers, until they hurt him?
MJ: It didn’t come into my mind and I didn’t see it until later and then it showed up later. My mother saw it, but she wouldn’t bring it to my attention. But I think the wives kind of instigated it. It is what broke us up as a group. Wives are what broke up the Beatles. It is what broke up Martin and Lewis. It’s what broke up all of the great acts. The wives get involved and they start saying to one member, “You’re the star. He needs you. You don’t need him.” Then he comes into work the next day puffed up with pride and they start to fight. And that’s what happened with me and my brothers. They really did. I saw it happen.
This was the first instance where Michael would express his distrust of women and how he came to see many women as manipulative, conniving, and prepared to use their sexuality to gain power over men. Many today believe that Michael Jackson was gay. I personally never saw any evidence of it. On
the contrary, Michael constantly remarked on the attractiveness of women in my presence. What I believe is that Michael was attracted to women, but did not trust them and thus could not share intimacy with them. His perception that women sought control over men and would abuse their sexuality to achieve it made him something of a misogynist, the exception being his mother Katherine, who Michael adored. But this perception that women could be sleazy and sexually manipulative developed when Michael performed in seedy nightclubs from a very early age where he recalled watching women stripping and sexually tempting men. If that happened, and I don’t doubt Michael’s description, he was clearly too young to witness such toxic spectacles and the damage that was done was lasting and in some ways irreversible.
SB: That’s what turned you off marriage a bit?
MJ: It really did. I said, “I don’t want no part of this.” I said, “I am not getting married.” I said it for years.
SB: Was there any way to have stopped it? Could you have said to your brothers, “Look! What is happening to us?” Could you have stopped it? They married young. They must have been lonely as well.
MJ: They married young to get away from my father, to get out of the house. We begged them not to get married and they did.
SB: Why did you stick around the house?
MJ: I was there at the height of Thriller. I thought I was still this little kid. It’s not time for me to go yet. I’m still a boy. It’s not time for me to leave home yet. I really felt that in my heart.
SB: But you were still afraid of your father? How does that come together?
MJ: He wasn’t managing me at that time, but he was getting a royalty check. He was a little calmer and he was proud of me. But he wouldn’t say it.
SB: Did you want to hear it from him?
MJ: I needed it.
SB: More than anyone in the world?
MJ: Yeah.
SB: He still never said it. And he doesn’t say it now? Do you think that he knows that you are the biggest star in the world, or do you still think in his mind he doesn’t get it?
MJ: He knows that but he finds it hard to give you a compliment and that’s what made me into such a perfectionist trying to impress him. He’d be in the audience and he would make a face like this. He’d go [makes facial gesture] and it would scare the bejesus out of you and you’d think, “I can’t mess up. He’ll kill us.” Everybody would clap and he would be like, “We’re going to hit you hard. Don’t you mess up.” I’d be like, “God, I’m in trouble after the show.”
SB: Given that there are two motivating forces in life, fear and love, could you have gotten even further if the motivation had been love? Like if your father had said, “Michael, I’ll love you anyway, but you can do it.” Sure, you can now decry the fear that your father instilled in you. But the problem with that is, you became the biggest star in the world. So maybe fear is a better motivating force than love. To be sure, I don’t believe that. But does your example show that that’s true?
MJ: I think there is a balance. Is it worth giving up fatherhood? Is it worth giving up the love I could have bestowed upon him, and having that camaraderie when we look in each other’s eyes, walking through the park, holding hands? I don’t think it is worth giving up all that. I am sorry. That’s golden.
SB: If your career now suffers for being a hands-on father, you are prepared to accept that price?
MJ: No, I am not prepared for that. I can do both. I feel I have to.
SB: You feel that God gave you this potential, this gift, and you have got to do something with it?
MJ: I have to.
The Father-Manager
Shmuley Boteach: What if someone were to say, “Michael. Look. So you disagree with the way your father raised you. He was a strict disciplinarian. He could be tough and even mean. But his methods worked.” And even you, now, you can say that professional success is not what primarily matters, and I would agree with you. But you were the one, in one of our first conversations, that said, “I owe my father a lot. He taught me how to move and how to dance.” And being a big star, you’ve repeatedly said, is very important to you. So what if someone said, “You’re wrong and he’s right. He made you what you are today. So how dare you be so ungrateful?” Especially, Michael, since he grew up in such poverty and wanted to save you from his fate of working in the steel mills. He thought, “Better Michael practice and rehearse as a kid, rather than play on the monkey bars, because at least this will give him a good income later and he can live a life of dignity.”
Michael Jackson: He did a brilliant job with training me for the stage as an artist, but [as a] father he was very, very strict. I hate to judge him, but I would have done things a lot different as a father. I never felt love from him. I remember being on the airplane and they used to have to carry me on the plane because I hated turbulence and I would be screaming and kicking because we would take off in storms. I remember it very clearly. He would never hold me or touch me and the stewardesses would have to come and hold my hand and caress me.
SB: Was he an angry man?
MJ: I think he was bitter. I don’t know why. Man, he is not like that anymore, but he was tough. The toughest person I have ever met. SB: What if someone said to you, “Look Michael. You can’t have it both ways. He was a great manager but not a warm and affectionate parent. He taught you how to move and he taught you discipline.” Are you going to say that you would be prepared to give up being the biggest recording star in order to have had a loving childhood? Or do you feel the choice is not necessary, that you could have been who you are without?
MJ: He could have done all the other things with me and had time to be a father sometime—play a game or catch a ball. I remember I told you the one time he put me on a pony. I don’t think he even realized how that is marked in my brain forever.
SB: That was one of the most moving stories about fatherhood that I have heard. That a single gesture on the part of a father to a son could make such an indelible mark is astonishing and very moving.
MJ: I think about it today and I wish he had done a little more, just a little more. To this day I would have felt totally different about it.
SB: And maybe you wouldn’t have been as eager to prove yourself. If you were shown a lot of love as a child, maybe you wouldn’t need the world to love you and you wouldn’t be the superstar. Would you be prepared to give it up in order to be more loved as a child?
MJ: No. I would never give it up. That’s my job. I was given this for a reason. I really believe it and feel it. . .
SB: . . . that God has chosen you, given you this special. . .
MJ: I really believe that. If you could see some of the faces around the world and people say, “Thank you, thank you for saving the life of me and my children. Can I touch you?” and then they start crying. It’s like healing. We are given this for a reason. . . to help people.
SB: So what Shirley Temple did for you with those posters [that you could put up in your hotel rooms to feel safe], you are doing for people around the world and to a much bigger extent.
As you’ll discover later, Michael instructed his advance staff to put up pictures of Shirley Temple on the walls of his hotel rooms before a performance.
MJ: Oh yeaaah. Oh yeaaah. That’s it and I just wanted to say, “Thank you” [to Shirley Temple Black for inspiring Michael in his low moments] and I started to cry so badly that I just couldn’t get the words out and she touched my hand and rubbed it like that.
SB: Michael, when you say to her that you didn’t know if you could continue, and then you had a look at the posters of her movies when she was a kid, what was going to defeat you? What was it? The mean-spiritedness that people were showing? The fact that you always had to work to keep up to be the best? All those things?
MJ: Working hard, not having a chance to stop and play and have a lot of fun. We got a little bit in the hotels with pillow fights between me and my brothers and stuff like that and throwing stuff out of the window. But re
ally we had hurt a lot. I remember we were on our way to South America and I was at home and it was time to go and I started crying so bad that I hid. I did not want to go and I said, “I just want to be like everyone else. I just want to be normal.” And my father found me and made me get in the car and go, because we had to do a [concert] date. Then you meet people on the road, somebody on your floor, could be a family, and you know that you have to have as much fun as you can in a short time because you are not going to see them again and that hurts. You know that the friendship won’t be a long one. That kind of stuff really hurts bad, especially when you are a little kid.
SB: Your whole life you have had to put your career before your nurturing relationships. So do you have something nurturing in your life today? A car can’t run without gas, and you can’t continue without love being given to you. You can’t just give love and never get it back. And to say you get it from the fans is not enough, Michael, because they love you for what you do and not for who you are. They love you for the electricity and excitement you bring into their lives.
MJ: I get it back through the happiness and the joy that I see in the eyes of the children. They saved my life so I want to. . . give it back [Michael starts crying]. They saved me. I am not joking. Just being with them, just seeing them. It really has.
SB: When you grew up, did you feel promises were broken to you? MJ: My father broke a big one that I’m angry with to this very day.
He cajoled me into signing a contract with Columbia when I was eighteen with the promise that I’d get to have dinner with Fred Astaire.
Earlier of course, Michael implied that Fred Astaire lived in his neighborhood. I did not ask him about the discrepancy.
MJ: My father knew that I loved Fred with all my heart. He knew I would sign without reading the contract, and he walked away happy and he never did anything about it. He’d say he was sorry or whatever. It broke my heart that he did that. He tricked me.
The Michael Jackson Tapes Page 9
