Michael Jackson

by J. Randy Taraborrelli

  Since the time of the hyperbaric chamber and Elephant Man's bones, Michael has never stopped complaining about the press, and has even written songs about his victimization at the hands of the media; for instance, ‘Leave Me Alone’. In 1993, Oprah Winfrey asked him about the hyperbaric chamber during her televised interview with him. ‘I cannot find an oxygen chamber anywhere in this house,’ she said in mock exasperation. ‘That story is so crazy,’ Michael remarked, annoyed. ‘I mean, it's one of those tabloid things. It's completely made up.’ He explained that what happened was that he saw the chamber at the The Brotman Burn Center and decided to ‘just go inside it and hammer around, and somebody takes the picture. When they process the picture, the person who processes the picture says, “Oh, Michael Jackson!” He made a copy and these pictures just went all over the world with this lie attached to it. It's a complete lie. Why do people buy these papers?’

  In May 2003, when he was about to release the tamed Michael Jackson's Private Home Movies documentary to combat the sensational one by Martin Bashir, he told People, ‘ I want people to see the real me. I don't have sex with little kids. I don't sleep in hyperbaric chambers, and don't have elephant bones in my body. So many things are said about me, and I have no idea where they came from.’

  In the end, the hard truth probably hurts more than any wacky fiction: Michael Jackson is responsible for his own image. He's given the media plenty to work with over the years and, in turn, the media has assisted him in achieving what he once stated was his ultimate goal, that of making his life ‘the greatest show on earth’.

  Jackie, Jermaine and Janet

  By August 1987, after many years of acrimonious litigation, Jackie Jackson's marriage had officially ended, mostly due to his unfaithfulness to Enid. Two months later, Jermaine's marriage ended after almost fourteen years. Again, his relationships with other women was key to the marriage breakdown. He even had a child with another woman, a baby Hazel had considered adopting rather than end her marriage over it. Then, she became pregnant at the same time. It was an emotional rollercoaster for everyone involved. To some family members, the scenario eerily resembled that of Joseph, Katherine and Joh'Vonnie.

  One had to wonder who could be blamed for such emotional bankruptcy. Had Joseph's influence been so damaging to his sons that they just didn't know how to conduct themselves in a relationship? Had Katherine's acceptance of Joseph's philandering warped their view of fidelity? Or was show-business excess responsible for their behaviour? Were, they so accustomed to entitlement brought about by fame, they knew no boundaries? Today, the brothers look back on the 1980s and regret many of their personal decisions. ‘It's not easy growing up,’ Jermaine has said. ‘We made mistakes. We all make mistakes.’

  While Hazel and Jermaine litigated their divorce, Hazel continued living at the couple's Benedict Canyon home in Beverly Hills with their children. Meanwhile, Jermaine, his girlfriend Margaret and their new baby moved in with… Joseph and Katherine!

  Katherine was opposed to having her son, his new romantic interest and their baby Jiving at Hayvenhurst since he was not yet divorced from his wife. To her, the living arrangements did not seem, as she put it, ‘moral’. However, when Joseph insisted that Jermaine and his new family moved into the estate (which Michael owned), the debate was over.

  For Michael's part, he didn't approve of anything that had occurred in the marriages of Jackie and Jermaine. Even Tito was having trouble with Dee Dee. However, he seemed to sense that the brothers were doing the best they could, under the circumstances of the way they were raised. ‘We have had to learn a lot of stuff on our own about how to treat people,’ he told LaToya. ‘That's what's so hard, isn't it? I mean, no one taught us anything.’

  ‘Except for Mother,’ LaToya added.

  ‘Except for Mother,’ Michael agreed. Then, after a beat. ‘Still, look at how hard she has had it. What are we supposed to learn from that?’

  By June 1987, Michael Jackson still did not want the Bad album to be released. He didn't think it was ready for commercial consumption and was nervous about the public's reaction to it. He was also understandably concerned about comparisons to Thriller. ‘ He's afraid to finish the record,’ said Frank Dileo. ‘The closer he gets to completing it, the more terrified he becomes of that confrontation with the public’

  While Michael was sweating out Bad, his sister Janet was finally having her first major recording success with the A&M album Control. At this time, Janet was in the thick of a power struggle with her father over just that – control: of her music career and of her life.

  Janet had recently aligned herself with thirty-one-year-old A&M Records executive John McClain. It had actually been Joseph's idea that John – a brilliant songwriter and session guitarist turned manager – take Janet under his wing. John had been a friend of the family's for years; Tito taught him to play his first licks.

  After Janet had two commercially unsuccessful A&M albums, Joseph insisted that if she stayed with him and worked hard, she'd be ‘as big as Michael’. However, Janet had her doubts. ‘She's no dummy,’ Joyce McCrae said. ‘She knew there was a reason why Michael and her brothers left Joseph, and she didn't trust her father's management. She started listening to outsiders.’

  Joseph hoped that John McClain would work with Janet to polish her image and enhance her career. To that end, John encouraged Janet to diet and exercise, and sent her to Canyon Ranch in Arizona for ten days to get her in physical shape. More importantly, he teamed her up with the writing-producing team of Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis for what would go on to become the Control album. He sent her to a vocal coach, teamed her with choreographer Paula Abdul for her videos, and, in short, made her a major star, almost overnight. In doing so, of course, he also made an enemy out of Joseph; Janet now trusted John, not her father. He had lost the boys, and now he was losing his daughter, too. All he would have left was LaToya… and, bless her soul, no matter what she did she wasn't going to be ‘as big as Michael’.

  ‘We're the dog with the bone that all the other dogs are trying to get,’ Joseph said at the time. ‘And the pressure is always on you to hold on to what you've got. As for Janet, I was putting her on stage in Vegas back when she was still a little girl. The wheels had already been set in motion for Janet Jackson ‘and anyone who jumps on now will be getting a free ride. I don't intend to let that happen.’

  Joseph didn't want Janet to work with Jam and Lewis; when he first heard the Control album, he didn't like it – especially the title track and ‘What Have You Done for Me Lately?’ (which went on to become a huge hit). It was little wonder that Joseph didn't appreciate the concept. The album represented a personal declaration of Janet's freedom from her father and her family; in the title track, she claims that she will now have control over all her own affairs. She sings as if still stung by her family's meddling in her marriage to James DeBarge.

  Control was one of the ten best-selling albums of 1986, so Janet had reason to question Joseph's judgement. John McClain said that he would have been ‘scared’ if Joseph had championed the record because, as he put it, ‘I wasn't trying to get a fifty-year-old audience. I was trying to get these kids out here. And because I'm a lot younger than Joseph, I have a clear vibe on how to do it.’

  When Janet's album sold six million copies worldwide, Michael was ambivalent about its success. One of the reasons he had such difficulty conceptualizing the follow-up to Thriller was that he was so rattled by Janet's Control and the public's overwhelming reaction to it. ‘Michael is used to being the star of that family,’ a family friend said. ‘He was not used to seeing anyone get as much attention as Janet got. It got to the point where he didn't want to dance around her because he was afraid she'd steal his steps. That's how bad it got. Janet is also competitive but has always been afraid to admit it. She didn't want to admit to herself that what she really wanted out of her life was to be as big, as famous, as Michael Jackson.’

  ‘God, you make me sick,’ Janet Jacks
on told her brother Michael one day. ‘I wish Thriller was my album.’ They laughed, but Janet wasn't kidding.

  ‘Well, Michael may not want her to be as big,’ John McClain observed at the time, ‘but it's no sin for her to want it.’

  How ‘Bad’ Can It Get?

  Finally, in July 1987, Michael Jackson's Bad was released to the public. If every artist on the planet envied the record-breaking success of Thriller, surely none of them wanted to be in Michael Jackson's Bass Weejuns when he tried to follow it up with a new record. Bad was a pleasing offering and probably would have been considered first-rate if it didn't have the dubious distinction of having to follow up not only Thriller, but also the masterful Off the Wall. Ironically, in trying to lead themselves out of the woods, Michael and Quincy Jones followed the Thriller formula too closely. Songs like ‘The Way You Make Me Feel’ and ‘Another Part of Me’ were dance-floor marvels, but the pseudo-romance of ‘Liberian Girl’, the album's answer to Thriller's ‘Lady in My Life’, didn't work as well. Nor could ‘Dirty Diana’, the production's appointed rock song – featuring Steve Stevens, former Billy Idol guitarist – hold a candle to the more convincing ‘Beat It’.

  The problem with Bad, critics argued, was that unlike Off the Wall and Thriller, it offered few truly memorable songs. Michael wrote most of Bad himself, perhaps propelled by his newfound interest in music publishing and the millions in songwriting royalties he garnered from songs he wrote for the last two albums. Rod Temperton, whose talents helped make Off the Wall and Thriller such outstanding albums, was not represented. The album's most intriguing moment is the reflective ‘Man in the Mirror’, written not by Michael but by Siedah Garrett and Glen Ballard. Having gospel stars Andrae Crouch and the Winans sing on the track seemed a weak attempt to musically endear Michael to a black audience.

  However, it was the album's title track that came under the most fire from the black music community because it seemed that it should have been the easiest thing for Michael to pull off. Michael was black, his critics reasoned. He began with Motown. He's a funky dancer. Vocally, his roots are steeped, at least to some extent, in gospel. Is ‘Bad’ the funkiest – the blackest – he could get? At best, noted most critics, ‘Bad’ was a lightweight attempt at a serious, black music.

  The ‘Bad’ video was directed by Martin Scorsese, at Quincy Jones's suggestion. Michael was unfamiliar with Scorsese's work, having seen only one film he directed, New York, New York. He had wanted George Lucas or Steven Spielberg to direct the video. However, at this time, Frank Dileo was trying to toughen Michael's Peter Pan image and felt that another Spielberg-style fantasy would be counter-productive. Street music – particularly the rap and hip-hop genres – had begun to dictate pop music and fashion. As a result, Frank thought it would be beneficial for Michael to get back to ‘basics’. He believed the image of a street-tough cat would serve his client well.

  From the start, there were problems on the set, especially when Michael tried to tell Scorsese how to direct the video. According to a friend of Scorsese's, the filming of ‘Bad’ was ‘a nightmare’. Scorsese has said that the cost of the production went ‘two or three times over budget’, reaching about two million dollars. However, Scorsese has made no negative comments about Michael and says he found him to be ‘sympathetic, sweet, and open’.

  The ‘Bad’ script, written by novelist Richard Price, was inspired by the story of Edmund Perry, a Harlem youth who was educated at a prep school and was shot to death by a New York plain-clothes policeman who claimed he had tried to mug him. What began as a good idea – an attempt to recapture the rebellious spirit of ‘Beat It’, probably Jackson's most important video – ended up an ill-conceived, albeit entertaining, parody.

  ‘Michael loves West Side Story,’ said dancer Casper, who danced in the ‘Bad’ video. ‘He had us watch the film one night. He sat on the bed and we dancers – me, Jeffrey, Daniel, Greg Burge and some others – were sprawled all about in a hotel room. He'd have us watch some scenes, and when he saw something he liked, he'd let out a yelp. “Oooh, did you see that? Did you feel that?” he'd say. That was the attitude he said he wanted in the video, West Side Story.’

  The video's storyline is about a lonely, sheltered school kid, constantly badgered by peer pressure and neighbourhood street toughs. The youngster transforms himself into a bold, avenging hell-raiser. It all goes awry for the viewer, however, because of Michael's ridiculous-looking outfit. Clad in black – boots with silver heels and buckles; a leather jacket with zippers, zippers and more zippers; a metal-studded wristband and a wide belt with silver studs and chains – Michael was slightly overdressed for the ghetto.

  The video's debut produced a cynical reaction. Radio stations and newspapers held contests to see who could correctly guess how many buckles were on the costume. The Los Angeles Times, for instance, was deluged with responses from readers:

  ‘There's one buckle no one will ever detect, and it's located at the back of his head, to pull the flesh snugly over his ever-increasing new features.’

  ‘The buckles are part of the continuing treatment he is undergoing to alter his appearance to that of Liz Taylor as she looked in National Velvet.’

  ‘Sixty-six buckles – left over from his oxygen gizmo…’

  More than the buckles, Michael's concept of what really is bad – as in ‘tough’ and ‘streetwise’ – seemed distorted and caricatured. He shouted; he stamped his feet; he flicked his fingers and shook his groin. He tugged at his crotch repeatedly. Is this what Michael sees from the tinted window of his limousine?

  Michael may have been a little overdressed for an urban subway rider, but the surrounding players and dancers certainly looked the part. However, it was difficult to imagine their being so quick to follow anyone – black or white – who looked as effeminate as Michael did in this video. There was something disconcerting about Michael – wearing more pancake makeup than Joan Crawford ever did and flaunting Kirk Douglas's chin cleft – shrieking at a group of tough, black gang members, ‘You ain't nothing'.’ The viewer couldn't help but think, This boy is going to get hurt. As one observer noted, ‘In Michael Jackson's loathsome conception of the black experience, you're either a criminal stereotype or one of the Beautiful People.’

  The original photograph intended for the cover of the Bad album was a close-up of Michael's heavily made-up face superimposed with black floral lace. Walter Yetnikoff, president of CBS Records, purportedly phoned Frank Dileo and said of the feminine-looking picture, ‘Look, this cover sucks.’ The photo eventually used – Michael in a tough-guy-with-fists-clenched-at-his-side pose, wearing his leather outfit from the ‘Bad’ video – was taken as an afterthought during a fifteen-minute break while shooting the video.

  Michael's first single from Bad, ‘I Just Can't Stop Loving You’, was released worldwide on 27 July 1987, and went straight to number one in America, and to the same position in the UK after just two weeks.

  Then, Michael's Bad album debuted at number one on the Billboard charts, an amazing feat proving that even when Michael does wrong, he can do no wrong. The album received generally lukewarm reviews, but that didn't matter either. ‘We win,’ Frank Dileo said. ‘We're into winning.’

  The second single, ‘Bad’, also went to number one in America, Britain and countries around the world. (In the UK the album was even number one for five weeks, and remained on the charts for an amazing 109 weeks. It sold 350,000 copies in five days, the first time that had ever happened in Britain for any artist.)

  Michael had a hit on his hands with the Bad album, but certainly nothing as big as Thriller, However, could it ever have attained Thriller status? Isn't it enough that Michael managed such a feat once in his amazing lifetime?

  In September 1987, the month his Bad tour kicked off in Tokyo, People published a cover story on Michael with the headline, ‘Michael Jackson: He's Black. He's Bad. Is This Guy Weird, Or What?’

  Apparently, such coverage was what the Elephant Man had
wrought…

  Cutler Durkee, the writer of the feature, explained that the public's perception of Michael Jackson had shifted from ‘Here's a really interesting guy’ to ‘Here's a guy I don't understand any more’. Durkee hastened to add, however, that that's precisely why people continued writing about him.

  Of course, Michael had good reason to be unhappy with the story. ‘They made me sound like a freak,’ he said. ‘None of that stuff is true.’

  Because of such adverse publicity, Michael's tour had a shaky start. Michael thought the act still needed work, but he had no choice but to begin the schedule. The dates were set. Therefore, in September 1987, he reluctantly began what would end up being an exhausting, eighteen-month-long world tour. ‘Whatever we play,’ Michael and his crew members would yell while clapping their hands and stomping their feet just before hitting the stage, ‘it's got to be funky!’

  After a successful kick-off in Japan, where he was dubbed ‘Typhoon Michael’ (and grossed twenty million dollars), Michael had problems in Australia. Ticket sales proved low. Foreign newspapers had latched on to that ‘Wacko-Jacko’ moniker and the Aussies thought he was a head case. ‘He's giving the world a gift, his talent,’ complained his former sister-in-law Enid Jackson, ‘and, in return, the world tries to crucify him.’

  While Michael was on tour, he wrote a letter to People and asked that it be published. He wanted to make known his feelings about the adverse publicity he'd received of late. In an odd writing style – no margins, no indentation, and childlike penmanship – Michael wrote:

  ‘Like the old Indian proverb says, do not judge a man until you've walked 2 moons in his moccosins [sic]. Most people don't know me, that is why they write such things in wich [sic] most is not true. I cry very often because it hurts and I worry about the children. All my children all over the world, I live for them. If a man could say nothing against a character but what he can prove, his story could not be written. Animals strike not from malice, but because they want to live, it is the same with those who criticize, they desire our blood, not our pain. But still I must achieve. I must seek truth in all things. I must endure for the power I was sent forth, for the world, for the children. But have mercy for I've been bleeding a long time now. MJ.’