The Michael Jackson Tapes

by Shmuley Boteach

SB: It’s what I didn’t have. I even wrote about you in one of my books in the context of marriage, even though it was before I ever thought we’d meet. This was the main point, this was the beginning of the book. Chapter one, the very first chapter. How does it start? “At the heart of all our lives is a strong and potent mystery. Michael Jackson steps off an airplane and thirty thousand fans await his arrival. He feels mighty special. They all excitedly shout his name. They’ve taken off time from their work to greet and cheer his arrival. But then off the same airplane steps Mr. Jones. There aren’t thirty thousand people waiting for him to disembark. In fact, there is only one woman, Mrs. Jones, who’s been waiting. But while everyone walks by, even when Michael Jackson himself walks by, she ignores them all. To her Mr. Jones is even more important, more thrilling than the world’s biggest pop star.”

  I used you as the ultimate example of how marriage makes one person into a celebrity. In other words to my wife, I’m a celebrity. She waits for me to come home, she has a picture of me up on the wall, you know? You feel special to one person. And in life all you need is one real fan.

  MJ: That’s right.

  SB: And the secret to life is you don’t need thirty thousand, a hundred thousand. You have that, Michael. But you can count on one hand the people who have that in the world. But the idea with marriage is you get one fan. One big fan who puts you first. And that’s all you need. One sincere and loving fan who loves you for who you are, rather than tens of thousands of people who love you for what you do. That was the first thought in the most important book I ever wrote, Kosher Sex.

  MJ: It’s beautiful, Shmuley. Thank you.

  SB: I never knew I’d meet you back then, but I’ve been talking about this. Your name has come up in every lecture around the world on the subject. In other words, my whole point was, marriage is where you make one person feel like they’re a superstar like Michael Jackson.

  MJ: That’s beautiful.

  SB: But I’m a big believer in marriage. So when your relationship with Lisa started to fall apart was it very hard? Your idealism about the family, everything you believed in building the intimate family you always wanted, especially because you knew. . .

  MJ: I wanted children and she didn’t.

  SB: She felt she had her kids.

  MJ: Yeah, and she promised me that before we married, that would be the first thing we’d do was have children. So I was broken-hearted and I walked around all the time holding these little baby dolls and I’d be crying, that’s how badly I wanted them. So I was determined to have children. It disappointed me that she wouldn’t keep her promise to me, you know? After we got divorced she would hang out with my mother all the time. I have all these letters saying, “I’ll give you nine children. I’ll do whatever you want,” and of course the press don’t know all these stories and she just tried for months and months and I just became too hard-hearted at that point. I closed my mind on the whole situation.

  SB: So she thought maybe you could get back together?

  MJ: Uh huh.

  SB: But children were a major, major issue?

  MJ: Of course.

  SB: She had the kids and that was it.

  MJ: She had hers and I wanted us to feel like we all were one big family and have more. Just. . . my dream is to have nine or ten children, that’s what I want.

  SB: You’re still very young. Do you think that will happen?

  MJ: Yeah.

  SB: But then it means getting married again.

  MJ: Yeah.

  SB: Are you happy to do that?

  MJ: Uh huh. . . or adopt.

  SB: Is it possible Michael, that you’re attracting the wrong kind of girl because of your celebrity?

  MJ: It’s hard. That’s why it’s hard, it’s hard for me. It is hard. It’s not easy for celebrities to be married.

  SB: Do you think that you could only really marry celebrities so that they don’t need you as much?

  MJ: That helps, in my opinion. And they understand what you go through. They’ve been there.

  SB: They help you for the right reasons, then?

  MJ: Yeah, they’re not after, you know? What you’ve made [the money] or, you know? [singing] “That’s what you are. . . ” [He won a Grammy for that.]

  SB: Right, right.

  PART 7

  FRIENDSHIP WITH CHILD STARS

  Looking for True Friendship

  Michael was adamant that the only people in the world who could understand him were fellow childhood stars. Only they knew what it felt like to be robbed of the most magical period of life. Only they knew the loneliness, isolation—the imprisonment—that stardom brought. He often spoke to me of his dream of creating a museum of childhood stars at Neverland that would chart both their triumphs and their falls.

  Shmuley Boteach: Love and fear, as I said, are antithetical. They are like fire and water. The more of the former, the less of the latter. The more valuable you feel, the less you fear your destruction. The more love you have in your life, the less room there is for fear.

  Michael Jackson: That’s right. I used to walk the street asking for people to be my friend. It’s true, in Encino right down there. People would look at me and go, “Michael Jackson!” I just wanted to talk to somebody. I was up there alone in the house and my mother and father were downstairs watching television. And I was up in my old room and all my brothers and stuff had moved out because they were married and stuff, and I was up there all alone and you can’t go anywhere. You feel like a prisoner and you feel like you are going to die. And that’s it. I am walking and I would just go walking down the street and traffic would get backed up and people would be taking pictures. I knew I looked sad and some people would come up and talk, and they would go, “What are you doing?” I’d go, “I am walking.” They’d go, “Why are you walking? Where are all the guards?” I said, “I don’t feel like all that. I just want to walk and I am looking for someone to talk to me.” So they would talk to me. I’ve done that many times. I’d ask people to be my friend and they’d say, “Sure.” It’s true. I’d go to the parks. Then I realized that that could be dangerous too, but I was hurting that much.

  SB: Were they intimidated when you asked them to be your friend? Did they say, “I can’t be your friend. . . you are Michael Jackson?”

  MJ: I would even ask for their phone numbers. Then I realized it is hard to find a friend because they are befriending you as the thing that they see. Are they a real friend? So it became difficult.

  SB: But you have found some real friends like Elizabeth Taylor.

  MJ: Yes.

  Michael and Shirley Temple Black: Kindred Spirits

  Michael had just gone to meet Shirley Temple Black, for the first time, at her home in San Francisco. He was very excited when he got back, and we discussed what such visits with fellow childhood stars meant to him, which proved to be a sensitive subject.

  Shmuley Boteach: We were talking about Shirley Temple Black. She said to you that in you she found a kindred spirit because you were a child star and she was a child star?

  Michael Jackson: Absolutely.

  SB: So you arranged to go and see her?

  MJ: Well, a good friend of hers is a good friend of mine. I have known this guy for twenty-five years, and he is such a nut. [Michael is referring to producer/promoter David Guest, best known, outside Hollywood, for marrying, then divorcing, Liza Minnelli.] But he has become a real powerful person because he produces a lot of shows and does all these celebrity events, and he is a great guy. So I went up there with him. We also went to the Memorabilia Convention a lot because I love movie memorabilia. I was in disguise there every day but I think they knew it was me. But it was fun. I had a great time with Shirley Temple.

  SB: How long did you spend with her?

  MJ: We spent several hours. I went to her house. I left there feeling baptized, I really did. I didn’t know that I would break down crying when I saw her and I just broke down. I said, “You don’t know how you’v
e saved my life.” She goes, “What do you mean?” I said, “So many times I have been at the end of my rope and I have felt like throwing in the towel and I just look at your picture and I feel there’s hope and I can survive this.” She said,

  “Really?” And I said, “Yeah.”

  I [used to have] a guy who would travel with me. His job was that before I got to every hotel, [he] was to set up the whole hotel room to Shirley Temple. I would do this for many, many years. All her pictures and cut-outs, that was what he did. So that when I walked in I would see her. I would have her taped to my mirror backstage. She was so happy. She said, “I love you, I want us to be closer.” She said, “I want you to call me, you understand me?” She looked at me and said, “I’m sorry I grew up.” I said, “You are not to apologize, because I know what it is like, I have been there.”

  There was a time I was in an airport—and I will never forget this as long as I live—and there was this lady who said, “Oh, The Jackson 5. Oh my God! Where’s little Michael? Where’s little Michael?” I go, “Here I am.” She went, “Urhhhg! What happened?” They want you to stay young and little forever. You go through that awkward stage and they want to keep you small. She [Shirley Temple] had it bad because not only did she go through the stage, it was the end of her film career. But I have graduated to other things. Most of the child stars don’t make it because they become self-destructive. They destroy themselves because of that pressure.

  SB: What’s the pressure?

  MJ: The pressure is that they were so loved and liked and they reached an age when studios don’t want them anymore. The public [doesn’t] recognize them anymore. They are a has-been. A lot of them don’t make it past eighteen or nineteen, or in their twenties. . . that’s the truth—like all the Our Gang kids. Bobby Driscoll who played So Dear to My Heart, Song of the South, died at eighteen. All these people and you trace their lives and it’s the same thing, and it’s tough.

  SB: Did you discuss that with her?

  MJ: Yes. We discussed it.

  SB: How did she transition from being a huge star to getting older and not being cute anymore?

  MJ: She said she was very strong and it was real hard and she cried a lot. And you do cry a lot. I cried a hell of a lot. She was just real strong with it, and it is hard. She is writing another book. She has done one. She is doing another. Her first was called Child Star. I haven’t read it. I am not ready for it.

  SB: Do you feel that she is one of the few people who understand you because you had no childhood and she had no childhood?

  MJ: I said to her, “Did you enjoy it?” She said she loved it and I said, “I loved it too.” I loved being on stage and I loved performing, but there are those like Judy Garland who were pushed out there, who didn’t want to do it, and that got really tough. Elizabeth made it through. She has been to hell and back and she was a child star, and that’s why we understand each other so much. We really do.

  SB: Are all child stars like you? Do they all love children?

  MJ: They all love children, they all do. They have these playful things around them and they act like kids because they never got a chance to be kids. They all have this fun stuff in their house and nobody understands it. There has never been a book written about it because there are very few of us who have made it and can talk about it. It’s not easy. . . it’s really not easy.

  SB: So you feel confident being around her? You said you felt baptized. Do you feel redeemed being in her presence?

  MJ: Mmmm, yeah. [He starts crying.] I don’t know if you understand.

  SB: To be honest I don’t completely, but I want to.

  MJ: You really don’t, do you?

  SB: I have been trying. Just explain to me where does the pain come from? Can you explain it, or when you are around Shirley you don’t have to. She just understands?

  MJ: It’s like telepathy. You can feel each other speak and look into one another’s eyes and I feel her and she feels me that way. You pick it up and you detect it so fast. It is like communicating silently. It really is and I knew I would feel that way when I saw her, I knew it. It’s the same with Elizabeth [Taylor].

  SB: What’s the source of your pain, Michael? When you break down like that, what is hurting?

  MJ: What is hurting is that it all happened so fast and time has gone by so fast. You feel you missed a lot of things. I wouldn’t redo any of it. But the pain comes from the fact that you didn’t really get the chance to do important simple things and that hurt. Simple little things, like you don’t know. . . I never did birthdays or Christmases or sleepovers or none of that simple, fun stuff. Or going into a shopping market and just grabbing something off the counter, you know all those simple things like going out in society and being normal.

  SB: So the whole world dreams about being in front of one hundred thousand people at a concert and you’re dreaming about the little things that everyone else gets to do?

  MJ: That’s why when I befriend people it’s usually not the celebrities, it’s usually the simple normal family somewhere. I want to know what their life is like. That’s why I went to that hut in China or going to some of the mud houses in South America. I want to know what it is like. I have slept in crazy places where people say, “Are you nuts?” And I say, “No, I want to know what it’s like.”

  SB: What do you feel that you have missed? Do you feel that you missed out on something essential to life? It is almost like in your childhood you can just be loved without having to prove yourself. Is that what you miss? That you always had to work, to prove yourself, you could never just be? You had to be evaluated, judged, stared at. You were a curiosity item?

  MJ: Yes, and you get tired and it just wears me down. You can’t go somewhere where they don’t manipulate what you do and say, that bothers me so much, and you are nothing like the person that they write about, nothing. To get called “Whacko,” that’s not nice. People think something is wrong with you because they make it up. I am nothing like that. I am the opposite of that.

  SB: Someone once said that the essence of loneliness is to feel that you are not understood. Do you get lonely in the place you’re at for that reason?

  MJ: Yes, of course.

  SB: You are there all by yourself, and you feel moved when you are with someone like Shirley Temple because she is in that same lonely place?

  MJ: Yes, she gets it. And you can talk to her. It is hard to make other people understand it because they haven’t been there. You have to feel it, you have to touch it, to know what it is really like.

  SB: Did Shirley Temple Black retain her child-like qualities the way you have? Is she playful, or did it take you to bring that out in her?

  MJ: It was just there, she came to the door with her apron on. She was cooking in the kitchen and after we ate, she kept touching my hand at the table and rubbing it, as if she knows what to do, do you know what I mean? Afterwards we sat at the table and we talked, we just sat and talked. I was looking at these wonderful pictures. She had each movie that she has ever made in picturesque form in this bookcase and they are originals by [George] Hurrell, the great photographer, and you go through these things and it is amazing. She had every dress she has ever worn in the movies. She has everything. I promised her I will do a museum for child stars and she [will] give all her stuff to the museum and I would get other stuff, all the pictures, everything, to honor child stars. People don’t know what happened to them. I don’t think people know that Bobby Driscoll went missing for about a year and nobody recognized him. His own family didn’t know that he was the one in the pauper’s grave with a heroin overdose. He was a Disney giant, the voice of Peter Pan. He played in So Dear to My Heart. He won an Academy Award for The Window and Song of the South. I just see those kids and I can relate to them like that.

  It would be nice if the people who now own and run Neverland would consider honoring Michael’s wish and build the child star museum that he envisioned. Perhaps it would be a valuable lesson to all those parent
s who push their children into early acting careers.

  SB: Are you going to see her again?

  MJ: Oh yes. I’m going to invite her to Neverland. She told me to make sure to say hello to Elizabeth. She kept asking about her.

  SB: Do they know each other?

  MJ: They have seen each other and spent some time together. But I told Elizabeth today and she said, “Ohhh. You must say Hi from me.” I told Elizabeth I spent the weekend with her, and she says, “You did?” I said, “Yes.” And she was shocked that I went up there. It was great.

  SB: What was it about Shirley Temple, her specifically, that touched you so deeply, and do you think that every little girl can have a Shirley Temple inside her?

  MJ: Her innocence, how she made me feel good when I was so sad. It wasn’t so much her dancing and singing. It was her being. She was given a gift to make people feel good inside. All children have that but, man, she is so angelic to me, and every time I see her, it can be on a film or a picture, I feel so good. I have her pictures all in the room there. It makes me so happy.

  SB: Did you see Shirley Temple in Shirley Temple Black when you met here? Was she still the little girl? Was she like you? Did she retain that child-like innocence, or did you bring it out in her? MJ: It’s still there. She is so sweet.

  SB: How many people do you meet who are like that? Is it realistic? Do you meet a lot of adults around whom you can be defenseless and who you don’t have to have your guard up for, or feel intimidated by?

  MJ: Very few.

  SB: So very few have achieved this. Is it people like Elizabeth Taylor, specifically childhood stars? People who didn’t have a childhood spend their lives trying to regain it and that’s what makes them child-like?

  MJ: Yeah, and some people just have it naturally. A lot of creative people have it, and they had great childhoods. I have met them and worked with them, like directors and writers, and it’s like we are all the same in that way. We all collect the same stuff, are fascinated by the same stuff. I see it. I go to George Lucas’s basement and all the stuff he collects is the same stuff I collect. Steven [Spielberg], same stuff I like and collect. We swap notes on collecting things. It’s simple things like old bubblegum cards or certain magazines. . . to original Norman Rockwell paintings. I mean I was at Steven Spielberg’s house today and he has got the most beautiful original Norman Rockwell painting. It’s so big and beautiful.