The Michael Jackson Tapes

by Shmuley Boteach

  Lisa. . . we’re still friendly, but she’s running around. She just changed her number and we don’t have the new one yet.

  SB: Can you immediately tell innocence?

  MJ: Right away, although I find it harder to tell with women because they’re so smooth. But with men, I can usually tell, because they’re more open and like puppies, while girls are more like cats. You know how if you’ve been on vacation and get home and a puppy is all over you, while with a cat, it’s, “Hey, I don’t need you. You walk over to me and pick me up.” They give you attitude. They’ll walk right by you even though they haven’t seen you in three months. Women are very smart. Walt Disney always said they’re smarter than men, and [he] always hired more women.

  Thinking About the Perfect Woman

  Shmuley Boteach: The same principle of not being overexposed. Would you advise women in relationships to do the same thing? Would you say to people today who get bored of one another, “You know, fifty percent of marriages end in divorce and so much of it is that husbands and wives just get tired of one another. They get weary and bored. Would you say that if there was more mystery, if they learned to hold back and leave room to discover one another, then there would be more adventure in their relationship?

  Michael Jackson: Yeah, yeah. I think going away is good. Like they say, “Absence makes the heart grow fonder.” I totally believe in it. Going away is really important. I don’t understand how people can be together all day with each other and be totally fine. I think it is sweet and beautiful. . .

  SB: Have you seen marriages like that?

  MJ: I have seen couples, yes. I don’t know how they do it. Because creatively they have to do so many things.

  SB: So the women you have dated, the ones who were smart enough not to throw themselves at you, were they the ones that you were more interested in, the ones who weren’t always available and you had to chase them a bit?

  MJ: The ones who were classy and quiet and not into all the sex and all the craziness because I am not into that.

  SB: They are the ones that you are more interested in?

  MJ: Aha. I don’t understand a lot of things that go on in relationships and I don’t know if I ever will. I think that is what has hurt me in my relationships because I don’t understand how people do some of the things they do.

  SB: Mean things?

  MJ: Mean things and vulgar things with their bodies. I don’t understand it and it has hurt my relationships.

  SB: So for you love is something very pure?

  MJ: Very pure. It shocked me some of the things.

  SB: What was it about Diana, that kind of a woman, her dignity, that kind of innocence? Do you see that often in people where they have a regal bearing to them?

  MJ: No, we don’t see it and that’s what I love. I think she truly cared about people’s feelings and really tried to make the world a better place. I really believe that her heart was out for other people. You could see it in some of the photos where she is touching those little baby’s faces and they are sitting on her lap and she would be holding them. That is not faked. You could see it. When you see the queen come out she has got these gloves on and she is waving from a distance, you can see the heart. You can see. You put your money where your mouth is and you go in those huts and go in those ditches and sit with them and sleep there. That’s doing it, that’s what I do. Remember when you said you saw my picture in China in some hut, some lady’s hut. I go in there and I touch the people and I see them.

  Michael was reading my mind. When I watched the videos of Princess Diana holding disease-ridden children in her arms, it moved me just as much.

  SB: When you are in a meeting, are you able to see who is the hard-nosed businessman, bottom line is everything, he’ll manipulate, lie, whatever it takes, and the ones who are pure, more innocent, who you want to do business with? Can you see immediately? Or, on the contrary, do you see with a child’s eyes and see goodness in everybody, which is why you have sometimes ended up with people who aren’t the nicest people?

  MJ: That’s true, too. It works both ways, but you can detect it and feel it in another person. There is this man in LA and he works in a vinyl record shop and he has got to be in his fifties and he has the spirit of an eleven-year-old boy. I always stare at him and he stares at me and there is like this telepathy going on. He talks like a kid and the way he moves his eyes. I say to myself, “This is so interesting.” I’d like to get to know him better and find out what is this. I mean it. It’s amazing. I feel it. I feel it in children right away, of course. I pick up on it like that and children can tell it in you.

  SB: It’s almost like a relief. Here is someone who understands me? MJ: Yeah. Their eyes light up when you come over and they want to play and they feel it.

  SB: Michael, have you never met a woman like that who loves those same things, who’d play hide and seek with you, who’d love the water fights with you?

  MJ: Not yet. The ones I have had are jealous of the children. All of them. They get jealous of their own kids and start competing with them. That rubs me in a bad way.

  SB: Theoretically, if you were Adam in the Garden of Eden and you found an Eve like that, would that be your ideal woman?

  MJ: Absolutely. I haven’t found it [women who want to play]. . . I think more guys are more apt to goof off. Even when they are much older, their thirties, and a woman will come in and say, “What are you doing? Don’t do that. Are you crazy?” The guy will go, “What, we are just having fun?”

  SB: Women almost feel that it is immature if they behave that way, no? MJ: Yes, but if you look in history you never see real serial killer women.

  SB: Yes, but they don’t play the way boys do.

  MJ: I know they don’t.

  SB: Even at a younger age they are playing with dolls and they are marrying Barbie and Ken. In other words, the quintessential thing is that if boys are shooting spit balls at each other, the girls will say, “Stop doing that.” Even then they want to be older. It is almost against their gender. Have you ever found girls who like the practical jokes that you like? Have you ever found a woman who collects comics?

  MJ: It is a rarity. If I find one I will go nuts. Especially, if she has those qualities and is beautiful inside. It would be a home run for me. That’s why guys hang out. Because they can do that.

  SB: Thinking about mothers and fathers, mothers are really good at doing homework with their kids and being more nurturing. But the rough playing is what the fathers do. They get on the floor and get dirty, wrestle, build castles with them in a sandpit. Isn’t that interesting? It creates an imbalance in the book to an extent. On the contrary, it is the girls in school that are always ridiculing the boys for being immature. “Look at those boys. Look at the way they are behaving.” Maybe the women need to be taught the art of playfulness as much as the men.

  MJ: Do you not think it’s embedded in them biologically? Biologically, as a breed, don’t you think women are just a different species?

  SB: They are definitely different, but the question is, “Why don’t they want to play?” The funny thing is this: when they play, it’s when they flirt. In other words, if you chase them round the room and there is something romantic going on, then they will run around with you and laugh and giggle. But it’s specifically when it is romantic. They don’t do it with each other. You don’t see two girls running round the room, playing hide and seek or wrestling each other, the way they’re prepared to suddenly when it’s a boyfriend. A lot of fans—the women who are interested in you—would do all these things just to make you happy. But you don’t know if they were doing it because they are really enjoying it. It seems that it’s only romance that makes women playful. But then, sometimes it bothers men, because the women become like a tease and, you know, they have this power over you with these little games they play. I have got to find four or five women who fit into this opening chapter who are very successful but who have retained child-like qualities and, so far, we hav
e come up with one. When you think of Bill Clinton don’t you think of a guy as being pretty playful? He goes to McDonald’s and he jogs and. . .

  MJ: Riding his bike at the White House. Did you see it? He was riding his bike in the White House to get him to the next meeting. A great shot of him in Vanity Fair. Can you think of Hillary doing that? Nope, not in a million years. I can think of little girls who would join in with play. Girls who are tomboys.

  SB: Okay, when they are tomboys. But when they get older, do they still play to the same extent?

  MJ: Do you think it is in their heart that they can just be themselves and be dignified?

  SB: What women seem to look forward to more than anything else is falling in love. They don’t look forward to the playfulness in the same way. But once they’re in love a carefree playful side is released.

  MJ: I have to play.

  SB: Is there a difference in how your male fans and female fans relate to you?

  MJ: Sometimes. But I am finding today, and it is so true, that guys today are really changing and I have watched it happen through my career. Guys scream with the same kind of adulation that girls do in a lot of countries. They are not ashamed. They are shaking, “I love you.” We have guys chasing us around.

  SB: But the fanatics are the women.

  MJ: Yeah, they are loyal, women. They have been loyal. They are activists. They will fight you about me.

  Motherly Figures

  Shmuley Boteach: Do you find it easier to be closer to motherly figures in your life like Elizabeth Taylor, your own mother, who you always praise, and your sister Janet? Do you find that women are more child-like than men? Are they gentler, are they less competitive, less mean? You have been around some mean women, as well, who behave in a masculine-aggressive way, like Madonna. You told me that she can be mean. Is that a feminine trait or do you feel that she has a real masculine streak in her? Do you find it easier to be closer to women?

  Michael Jackson: In some ways, yes, and some ways, not. It depends on the age. I have seen some women who are very bitter and mean and they become ladies later. They come into their own and they become good people. I have seen it in my brothers’ ex-wives who were horrible. They were like nightmares when they were young. With time and age they become good people. But they were horrible, just horrible. Then with time they just level out, that’s what I like when they become truly good.

  SB: But, intuitively, do you find women easier to get along with? Are they softer than men? I mean, I personally find women more naturally nurturing, more refined, possessed of a greater nobility of spirit, I have to tell you.

  MJ: I am trying to be real honest with you.

  SB: But many of your closest friends seem to be women.

  MJ: Women are softer than men. Yeah, that’s true.

  SB: Do you think that a child star as cute as Shirley Temple, do you think a boy star could be that cute?

  MJ: Yeah, but he wouldn’t have the same. . . Shirley Temple just had something that was meant to give us bliss and make us smile. SB: Are you more protective of Paris because she is a little girl? MJ: Paris can stand [on] her own sometimes much more. Prince won’t stand up for himself. People can push him about and he won’t stand up. She won’t take anything from anybody. She fights. She’s tough, very tough. It’s true, man. Prince will let people take complete advantage of him and won’t say anything.

  SB: He is more like his father, like you.

  MJ: I was like that. My mother always told me, “Don’t let people hurt you. You are too much like me.” She would cry, “You are too much like me. I don’t want you to be like me. I hurt so much.” Because people take advantage.

  SB: But you never toughened up. It seems that you would rather be taken advantage of than do the taking advantage of. It hurts to be taken advantage of. But it doesn’t hurt as much as being a mean and aggressive person. Mean-spiritedness is a form of internal corruption and it makes it impossible to be happy. Notice that evil people never seem happy. They are miserable and they seek to make other people just as miserable as they are.

  MJ: Yeah, I’d rather suffer. I hate to say it because I have suffered a lot. God, have I suffered. But I would rather suffer.

  SB: You have seen the ugly side of people.

  MJ: I have seen the worst. . . the nightmare of the human condition, the human soul. I would never even think that common man would be capable of behaving in such a way.

  Oblivious of his own similar behavior until the bitter end, Michael, unfortunately, could give as good as he got. He ran around in a double-decker bus, specially rented for the occasion, to call his friend Tommy Mattola, the head of Sony music, the devil. Unfortunately, he could be quite blind to his own shortcomings.

  SB: Children never did that to you, Michael. You never saw the ugly side of them? Unless they were influenced by their parents.

  MJ: Unless you see a bunch of kids together and they are picking on each other and just to impress each other that they had a bad upbringing. If I were to raise the kids to do some of the things that you hear about in the news, they would be totally different kids. They wouldn’t conceive of doing such a thing. If I was raised in Jamaica I would have a different accent. If I was an English kid I wouldn’t . . . it is all about environment. But genetics plays a big deal and teaching and holding and touching and looking in your eyes and saying, “I love you, I need you, you’re here because I love you. I bought you this because I love you.” Like I say to Prince and Paris, “You know why I bought you this?” They say, “Because you love me.” I say, “Yes, that’s why I bought it.” They need to know that. I wish I could have heard that more. My mother is great. She is a saint. She is a real saint.

  PART 6

  ROMANTIC RELATION SHIPS AND GETTING HURT

  Women and Trust—Lisa Marie Presley and His Brothers’ Wives

  Shmuley Boteach: How do you feel about men who are not faithful to their wives?

  Michael Jackson: I don’t think it is good. But I understand it. I know that is a strange answer.

  SB: You find women fall in love with you all the time as this mega star, so you don’t judge men who are unfaithful, because sometimes you’ll ascribe it to women who make themselves available?

  MJ: I don’t judge them because women can do some things that make guys very unhappy. I have seen it with my brothers. I have seen my brothers crying, in tears and pulling the grass out of the lawn with frustration because of their wives.

  SB: Do you think a lot of their wives were more interested in their success than in them?

  MJ: Absolutely. They were after their money. That’s why I said to myself that I would never be married. I held out the longest. I stayed at home until I was twenty-seven, twenty-eight.

  SB: So was part of the attraction to Lisa Marie that she had her own money and her own fame and you didn’t have to be anxious that she was interested in you for the wrong reasons?

  MJ: Absolutely, and she didn’t take a penny [when we got divorced]. She didn’t want anything. She makes about a million dollars a year from Elvis memorabilia and selling all that stuff and she has her own thing. She is not here to take, you know.

  Michael always spoke with affection and respect for Lisa Marie Presley, with the one exception when he told me that she had wanted him to get involved with Scientology and got pushy. He had to tell her that he had no interest in becoming a Scientologist. Michael was dismissive of Scientology and spoke of how the practices of Scientologists that he had been exposed to were not sufficiently spiritual or substantive for him.

  SB: So that means there was almost like one girl in the whole world that you could marry because even a rich woman would want your name. You needed someone with money and a name. You were down to a Presley or a McCartney or something like that.

  MJ: I know. Lisa was great. She was a sweet person. But it is hard to tie me down. I can’t stay in one place one time so that’s why I don’t know if I [can] really be completely married all the time.

&
nbsp; SB: Did you want to be a father to her kids?

  MJ: Yes.

  SB: Do you still stay in touch with the children?

  MJ: Yes, and with her.

  SB: But marriage is too confining?

  MJ: Yes. I don’t know whether I am disciplined enough because I am such a rolling stone. I have such a life when I am always on the move and women don’t like that. They want you to be settled in one place all the time but I have to move. I have been in the same city as where my house is and I’ll check into a hotel just to feel like I am going somewhere. My house is right there. I guess I am just moving all the time, moving.

  At the entrance to Michael’s home in Neverland, there were large suitcases that were permanently packed and always ready to go. In the same way that some people buy two of everything—one for the primary home, and one for the weekend home—Michael had a version of that, only the spare things were permanently in the suitcases. He explained to me that he travels so much that he doesn’t see the point in ever packing or unpacking. The things in the suitcases never came out.

  SB: You have gotten used to it. That’s your lifestyle.

  MJ: I love being on the move, love it.

  SB: It impresses me that everywhere you go you take your children with you. So you are on the move but it is almost like your household moves with you. Prince and Paris aren’t unsettled because of it because their source of security is always with them. But what about the families who don’t have the resources for that, and most don’t? They don’t have enough to be able to fly the kids around here and there. Businessmen who have to travel, they fly economy just to afford their own fare, and they can’t possibly bring their kids along every time. Should they not travel?

  MJ: I feel bad for their children. I feel bad for their children. I always ask pilots and stewards how do they do it? The children suffer. Absolutely. They suffer.

  SB: You wouldn’t be doing this if Prince and Paris were going to suffer as a result. You are doing it because you have the resources to bring them where you are.