SB: How did you get her to do something about it?
MJ: I said you have to lose weight ’cause you look like a fat cow. I would tell her and that was mean of me to say that. She would say, “Shut up,” and I’d say “You shut up.” But I was determined to make my sister look good because deep in my heart I love her and I want to make her shine and when she became a star on, you know. . . records, I was so happy and proud because, you know, she did it.
SB: Are you still protective of her as a younger sister?
MJ: Yes, yes. . . . I just wish that we were closer. We’re close in spirit but not as family. Because we don’t celebrate, we have no reason to come together now. I wish that was instilled in us. I love what I saw you guys do, that blessing thing that touches my heart a lot. I see why you’re so close to them, it’s sweet.
On Friday nights, as the Jewish Sabbath comes in, my wife and I bless our children, one by one, to grow to be like the great figures of the Bible, the patriarchs and matriarchs of the Jewish people. Michael witnessed this several times as a guest at the Sabbath table at our home. He would always watch intently as we blessed our children.
A Painful Blessing: All I Wanted Was to Be Loved
Shmuley Boteach: Has God always answered your prayers? Michael Jackson: Usually. Absolutely. That’s why I believe in it.
SB: Do you feel that he has been with you through some of the difficult things in life?
MJ: There hasn’t been one thing that I have asked for that I didn’t get. It is not materialistic. I am going to say something I have never said before and this is the truth. I have no reason to lie to you and God knows I am telling the truth. I think all my success and fame, and I have wanted it, I have wanted it because I wanted to be loved. That’s all. That’s the real truth. I wanted people to love me, truly love me, because I never really felt loved. I said I know I have an ability. Maybe if I sharpened my craft, maybe people will love me more. I just wanted to be loved because I think it is very important to be loved and to tell people that you love them and to look in their eyes and say it.
I remember getting shivers when Michael said this. I was sitting with the most famous celebrity on earth, an icon whom so many aspired to imitate. And here he was telling me that everything he had ever done—all the songs we had heard, the dance routines, the moonwalk—were all designed simply to feel a morsel of love. I thought to myself that Michael lived in a black hole of affection of such magnitude that few of us could scarcely comprehend.
SB: But the flip side of that, Michael, is that if you were given a huge amount of love as a child, then you might not have worked as hard to be successful.
MJ: That’s true. That’s why I wouldn’t want to change anything because it has all worked out in its many different ways.
SB: So you were able to turn the neglect into a blessing?
MJ: Yeah.
SB: I remember a quote from Paul McCartney, who was asked about you when you became a big star. Someone said, “Michael Jackson, is he going to be like these other rock stars—God forbid, dead at thirty and drugs?” And McCartney said, “No. Michael, his whole character is different. He doesn’t swear, he doesn’t drink.” He said this about fifteen years ago. Did you know that about yourself, that you had a character that, if it continued like that, wasn’t going to be destroyed by fame and success?
Wow, reading this part of the conversation just eight years later really makes you sad. If only I had known at the time that this was exactly the fate that awaited him. But it was a different time, and Michael then was a very different person.
MJ: Yeah. I have always been kinda determined. I have always had a vision of things I have wanted to do and goals I have wanted to reach and nothing could stop me getting that. I am focused and I know what I want and what I want to achieve and I won’t get side-tracked. And even though I get down sometimes, I keep running the race of endurance to achieve those goals. It keeps me on track. I am dedicated.
SB: If you are completely happy with who you are, what about. . . you said you wouldn’t have done anything differently because you know that whatever experiences you had in your childhood led to who you are today, your success. So you wouldn’t do anything differently?
MJ: No. I am so sensitive to other kids because of my past and I am so happy about that.
Rose Fine: Michael’s Childhood Tutor
Michael and I were discussing Rose Fine, his childhood tutor who accompanied The Jackson 5 while they toured. Michael remained attached to her well after he had grown up and assisted in her financial support for the rest of her life. The conversation starts with me and Michael talking about air travel.
Michael Jackson: It left a terrible scar on me.
Shmuley Boteach: What?
MJ: Turbulence and being up there and thinking you are not going to live.
SB: Remember that story you told me about your Jewish tutor?
MJ: Rose Fine?
SB: You told me once on the phone that she used to say to you that if there was a nun on the plane that everyone was going to die.
MJ: She said, “We’re okay, we’re sitting on the plane and now we have so much faith. I have checked. . . there isn’t a nun on the plane.” I always believe that.
SB: Do you still look out for that nun?
MJ: I think about it! I never see a nun on the plane. She [Rose Fine] helped me a lot because she held my hand and cuddled me. After the show I would run to the room. We’d read and have warm milk and I needed that so badly. She would always say to me, “The door’s open,” and she would leave her door open.
SB: Is it possible if someone is not a biological parent to love a child as much as you love your own child? Do you love children as much as you love Prince and Paris?
MJ: Absolutely.
SB: I have always noticed one of the most impressive things about you is when I say something like, “Prince and Paris are beautiful,” you always say, “No. All children are beautiful.” You won’t let me get away with just praising Prince and Paris.
MJ: They are to me. I see beauty in all children. . . they are all beautiful to me. It is so beautiful and I love them all—equally. I used to have arguments about it with people who didn’t agree with me. They say you should love your own more.
SB: Rose Fine, although she wasn’t your biological mother, was able to show you a lot of motherly affection?
MJ: And boy did I need it. I was never with my mother when I was little, very seldom, and I had a wonderful mother. I see her as an angel, and I was always gone, always on tour doing back-to-back concerts, all over America, overseas, clubs, just always gone. That helped me a lot. We took care of her [Rose Fine] until the day she died, Janet and myself. She just died recently.
SB: Do you think she should be mentioned in the context of our children’s initiative?
MJ: Please do. She needs to be remembered.
SB: How old was she?
MJ: She would never tell me her age. I think she was in her nineties.
She used to say, “When I retire from you I will tell you my age.” But when she retired she still wouldn’t tell me. She was with us all the way from the very first professional tour of The Jackson 5 until I was eighteen. The first tour was after we broke big—the first hit single. She would always have the power, like some of the concerts would start late and she would always have the power to stop the show because the Board of Education would say, “You kids cannot go past your time legally.” She would always let it go on. She couldn’t hurt the audience.
SB: And then she would teach you during the day?
MJ: Aha.
SB: Regular subjects? Mathematics? English? She taught all five of you together?
MJ: Yes together, three hours. She taught Janet, all of them.
SB: Tell me a bit more about her.
MJ: Yes, Rose died this year. Janet and myself, we paid for her nurse and her hospital care, and if her television broke down or the electricity, or there was anything wrong with the ho
use, we would cover her bills. Now her husband is sick so I am taking care of him, and because we felt she is our mother and you take care of your mother.
SB: You really felt that?
MJ: Absolutely. She was more than a tutor and I was so angry at myself that when she died I was far, far away. I couldn’t get there. I was in Switzerland and Evvy [Michael’s secretary] called me on the phone and told me that she was dead. I went, “What? I am in Switzerland. I can’t. . . .” It made me angry, but I did all I could.
It also hurt when I came to the door to see her and I went, “Mrs. Fine, it’s Michael,” and she would go, “You’re not Michael.” I would say, “It’s Michael,” and she would say, “Don’t say you are Michael. You are not Michael.” That kinda sets into the brain and they don’t recognize you. That hurts so much. Growing old is not always pretty. It is sad.
SB: How would a child deal with something like that? You have tried to retain your youth, your playfulness, all the things that we talk about. Do you see it as a curse, growing old?
MJ: In a way, when the body starts to break down. But when old people return to childhood, I have seen them, they become very playful and childlike. I relate very well to old people because they have those qualities of a child. Whenever I go to a hospital I always find a way to sneak into another room to talk to the old people. I just did it two days ago because I was in the hospital and they were so sweet and they just welcome you like a child does. They say, “Come in,” and we talk. They are simple and sweet.
SB: So life is almost like a circle. You start as a child and then you go through this adult phase, which isn’t always healthy. There are a lot of negative things about it, and you come back, in elderly age, to that innocence, you become a lot more playful. You have a lot more time the way children have. I guess that’s why grandparents get along so well with their grandchildren.
MJ: Old people and children are very much alike. They are carefree and play—free and simple and sweet. It is just a spiritual feeling. I don’t visit the old people’s homes as much as I have the orphanages. A lot of them get Alzheimer’s and they don’t recognize. But I have a great relationship with older people. I love talking to older people and they can tell you stories about when they were kids and how the world was in those days and I love that. There was an old Jewish man in New York a long time ago who said to me, “Always be thankful for your talent and always give to poor people. Help other people. When I was a little boy my father said to me, ‘We are going to take these clothes and these pieces of bread and we are going to wrap them up and you run down the street and up the stairs and knock on the people’s door and place it in front of the door and run!’ I said, ‘Why did you tell us to run?’ He said, “Because when they open the door I don’t want them to feel the shame. They have pride. That is real charity.” I have never forgotten that [story of the old man]. That’s sweet, isn’t it? And he did that as a little boy all the time.
SB: So have you tried to do charitable acts that no one knows about?
MJ: Yes, without waving a flag. He [the man Michael is quoting above] is saying real charity is giving from the heart without taking credit, and when he ran they didn’t know who had left it. It was like God had dropped it there, you know? It was so beautiful. I never forgot that story. I was around eleven when I was told that. He was old, really sweet, a Jewish man, I remember.
In the Jewish religion the highest form of charity is when the benefactor does not know the identity of the recipient, and the recipient does not know the identity of the benefactor. Hence, the Jewish custom of putting money every day into a charity box at home or into a publicly administered fund that is later distributed to the poor.
SB: Was she [Rose Fine] a committed Jew? Was she observant of her faith? Or was she more of a secular Jew?
MJ: What does that mean?
SB: Did she refrain from traveling on the Sabbath, did she eat only kosher food, things like that?
MJ: Not that I remember. She taught me a lot about the Jewish way. I don’t know if she ate the kosher food, but I always felt so bad for her because her son suffered so badly. He was a doctor who died early and the day he died, I remember how deeply dark and sad she was. He was a wonderful doctor, went to Harvard, and he was tall and handsome. He had some kind of brain tumor. I can’t imagine losing your own child like that, let alone losing any child.
SB: Did you find out anything about Judaism from Rose Fine?
MJ: She taught me about the Jewish culture and I will never forget when I was a little kid we landed in Germany, she got real quiet. I said, “What’s wrong, Miss Fine?” You know how kids can tell when something is wrong with their mother? She said, “I don’t like it.” I said, “Why?” She said, “A lot of people suffered here.” That’s when I first learned about the concentration camps, through her, because I didn’t know nothing about it. I’ll never forget that feeling. She said she felt cold there, she could feel it. What a sweet person. She taught me the wonderful world of books and reading and I wouldn’t be the same person if it wasn’t for her. I owe a lot to her and that’s why I am dedicating the new album to her.
SB: Do you think she saw you as her son?
MJ: She called me her son. Whenever you go on the plane you see these seven little black kids and a black father, all got big Afros, and this white Jewish older woman would be in the back. They would stop her and go, “Who are you?” She would say, “I’m the mother.” She would say it every time and they would let her go. Sweet story. She was special. I needed her.
SB: Did she show you unconditional love?
MJ: Yes.
SB: So you think unconditional love can be shown even by two people who are not related by blood?
MJ: Oh my God, yes, of course. I think I learned it through her and I have seen it and I have experienced it. It doesn’t matter with blood or race or creed or color. Love is love and it breaks all boundaries and you just see it right away. I see it in children’s eyes. When I see children, I see helpless little puppies. They are so sweet. How could anybody hurt them? They are so wonderful.
SB: She died this year so that means you have to deal with grief. How does a child deal with grief? A child lives in a paradise, a perfect world that we are trying to describe. Adults are later largely corrupted through their wars and their jealousy and their cynicism, and suddenly along comes death and even a child has to deal with a death. So how do you deal with death? And how does a child deal with death?
MJ: Yes, I have had to deal with death and it is very difficult.
PART 2
JEHOVAH’S WITNESSES YEARS AND RELIGION
Rejection by the Jehovah’s Witnesses Church
Religion was a big part of Michael’s life. He was raised by his mother Katherine to be a devout Jehovah’s Witness. Michael took his religious commitments so seriously that even after the Thriller album he still continued to go missionizing every Sunday, knocking on people’s doors, giving them copies of the Watchtower, and trying to convince them that God existed. But as time went by, Michael became alienated from his Church. It was a fateful estrangement. Michael, in my opinion, never recovered from the loss of his spiritual anchor and most of the bizarre elements that would come to characterize his life began with his exit from the Church.
Michael described his childhood experiences as a Jehovah’s Witness in an article I wrote for him that appeared on Beliefnet.com, the well known spirituality website, on people’s experiences with the Sabbath. His memories of that time were so vivid and meaningful to him that I thought it made sense to share a bit of them here:When people see the television appearances I made when I was a little boy—eight or nine years old and just starting off my lifelong music career—they see a little boy with a big smile. They assume that this little boy is smiling because he is joyous, that he is singing his heart out because he is happy, and that he is dancing with an energy that never quits because he is carefree. But while singing and dancing were, and undoubtedly remain, some of my great
est joys, at that time what I wanted more than anything else were the two things that make childhood the most wondrous years of life, namely, playtime and a feeling of freedom. The public at large has yet to really understand the pressures of childhood celebrity, which, while exciting, always exact a very heavy price.
There was one day a week, however, that I was able to escape the stages of Hollywood and the crowds of the concert hall. That day was the Sabbath. In all religions, the Sabbath is a day that allows and requires the faithful to step away from the everyday and focus on the exceptional. I learned something about the Jewish Sabbath in particular early on from Rose, and my friend Shmuley further clarified for me how, on the Jewish Sabbath, the everyday life tasks of cooking dinner, grocery shopping, and mowing the lawn are forbidden so that humanity may make the ordinary extraordinary and the natural miraculous. Even things like shopping or turning on lights are forbidden. On this day, the Sabbath, everyone in the world gets to stop being ordinary.
But what I wanted more than anything was to be ordinary. So in my world, the Sabbath was the day I was able to step away from my unique life and glimpse the everyday.
Sundays were my day for “Pioneering,” the term used for the missionary work that Jehovah’s Witnesses do. We would spend the day in the suburbs of Southern California, going door to door or making the rounds of a shopping mall, distributing our Watchtower magazine. I continued my Pioneering work for years and years after my career had been launched. Up to 1991, the time of my Dangerous tour, I would don my disguise of fat suit, wig, beard, and glasses, and head off to live in the land of everyday America, visiting shopping plazas and track homes in the suburbs. I loved to set foot in all those houses and catch sight of the shag rugs and La-Z-Boy armchairs with kids playing Monopoly and grandmas baby-sitting and all those wonderfully ordinary and, to me, magical scenes of life. Many, I know, would argue that these things seem like no big deal. But to me they were positively fascinating.
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