‘We’re giving Michael his space now,’ Jermaine said at the time. ‘But after he finishes his tour, we’re all going to attack him – with love.’
Michael might have responded by saying, ‘Please, don’t do me any favours.’
None of the Jacksons was even able to contact Michael. It was sad that he didn’t feel comfortable contacting his family members, but he sensed that whenever he opened himself up to them they ended up wanting something from him, and he had nothing else to give. ‘Dirty Diana’ realized Frank Dileo’s prophecy of five number-one hits from the Bad album, the first album in pop history to generate five number-one singles. Yet, despite all of the touring, his last two singles, ‘Another Part of Me’ and ‘Smooth Criminal’ did not make number one. Michael wants every record to go to number one. The sales of the Bad album stalled at seventeen million, amazing but still a far cry from Thriller‘s sales of almost forty million. It was obvious that Michael would not break his own sales record, which depressed him.
‘They think he’s shy and he’s evasive and all of this,’ observed his guitarist David Williams. ‘No. He’s just fucking scared and tired of people bugging him.’
Whenever Michael went out, it was in disguise. For instance, he visited a pharmacy in Westwood disguised with a large Afro wig and dark glasses. Still, he was picked out by the store’s manager. ‘I recognized him the minute I saw his nose and chin,’ he said. When asked what Michael had purchased, he answered, ‘A hand-held power vibrator.’
One does have to wonder about the true reasons for Michael’s outrageous disguises. It seems that when he truly wants attention, he wears a costume so ridiculous he gets the desired result. Occasionally, though, matters get out of hand. For instance, Michael once went into a jewellery store in Simi Valley, California, wearing a wig under a baseball cap, a phony-looking moustache, and fake buck teeth. He was accompanied by a young boy. Nervously, he continually adjusted his moustache while looking into a mirror. When employees feared the suspicious character was ‘casing the joint’, a security guard asked him to step outside and demanded an explanation. ‘I have to wear a costume,’ Michael said. ‘I’m Michael Jackson.’ Michael then removed the disguise. By that time, however, three squad cars had arrived, as had a huge crowd. Michael’s presence, along with the police, had caused such hysteria, everyone present had to have his autograph. He happily signed for all. Perhaps the get-up did serve a purpose, but not the one most people thought it was supposed to serve; he clearly wanted the attention. He loves his fans, and he also loves knowing they still love him.
Another time, though, things didn’t work out as well. When Michael was driving his Rolls while wearing a disguise, he was stopped by a police officer who thought the automobile ‘looks like a stolen car’. (Of course, there is a prevailing racism among some police officers in America who routinely stop blacks who are driving expensive cars.) Michael didn’t have his licence with him. Worse, he had an outstanding ticket. The officer didn’t believe he was the Michael Jackson, even when he removed the disguise. The next thing he knew, he was in the Van Nuys jail. Bill Bray bailed him out. Afterward, Michael said, ‘It was the coolest thing, ever. I never thought I’d get to go to jail. I loved every second of it.’
LaToya Gets Naked
Michael was only able to avoid his relatives for about a month before, at the end of January, his sister LaToya created enough familial chaos to make it necessary that he re-surface. Michael was now thirty. He had spent the last twenty years concerned with the public’s perception of him and his family. Ever since the day in 1969 when Berry Gordy and Diana Ross taught him to lie about his age, Michael had understood the importance of public relations. He had always helped to present an image of solidarity where the Jackson family was concerned, even embarking on the Victory tour with his brothers when he really did not want to do so. Now, LaToya threatened to shatter the family’s carefully constructed image of wholesomeness by stripping naked for Playboy.
The Playboy lay-out was the culmination of a chain of events that had all but destroyed LaToya’s relationship with her family. She had been unhappy because the albums she had thus far recorded were all poor sellers. ‘I want platinum albums,’ she complained. However, Joseph realized that LaToya had limited vocal ability and stage presence; there wasn’t much he could do with her. He had tried to convince her to model, but she was ambivalent about it even though she was a beautiful young woman. She, like Michael, has had her nose operated on more than once, though she denies ever having rhinoplasty, and other work, as well. ‘I don’t know who she’s trying to fool,’ Marlon laughed.
When LaToya decided that she no longer wanted Joseph to manage her, she followed the example set by Michael, her brothers and Janet: she fired him by having her attorney send letters of dismissal to him at home, even though she still lived there with him. Of course, Joseph ignored the letters. Finally, she decided to confront him. ‘I will sit on you for five years before I ever let you go,’ he then told her, angrily. After all, she was the only Jackson he had left. There had to be something he could do with her, he decided. Later, he thought that he might be able to get her involved in the Jackson – Moonies Project.
‘But they don’t want her, Joseph,’ Katherine told him. ‘They just want the boys.’
‘They’ll take her if I tell them they have to take her, or they don’t get Michael,’ Joseph said.
Katherine wasn’t so sure about Joseph’s logic, especially since she didn’t know how they were even going to convince Michael to do the tour.
If Joseph couldn’t represent LaToya, then he wanted to be sure no one else could, either. ‘In other words, he was saying I’d never get anywhere on my own,’ LaToya recalled, ‘and he’d make certain of that.’ When LaToya asked Katherine for assistance, Katherine said, ‘I don’t want to get in the middle of it. It’s between you and your father.’
Hoping to placate their daughter into remaining with Joseph, he and Katherine hired an outsider, Jack Gordon, to manage LaToya, under Joseph’s direction. Her parents hoped that she would no longer feel as trapped. Jack, who was in his mid-forties – had served time in prison for trying to bribe the Nevada State Gaming Commission. He has also been linked to underworld dealings and allegedly ran a brothel in Nevada for four years. In a short time, Jack became more than LaToya’s business associate. Before anyone in the family knew what was happening, he and LaToya were plotting a way to extricate her from Joseph and Katherine’s hold.
‘When I questioned him about some major expenses he and LaToya were running up on Joseph’s account, Jack threatened my life,’ Jerome Howard recalled. ‘The man was dangerous, but LaToya felt that Joseph was dangerous, too. “Do you know my father?” she asked me once. “No, you don’t,” she answered for me. “You don’t know what he’s like, Jerome. You don’t know what I’ve been through.”’
In March 1988 – just three days after Michael moved out of the Encino home – LaToya took off with Jack Gordon. She took just two suitcases, left her Mercedes in the driveway, and didn’t look back. The family blamed Jack. They all hated him, and he returned the animus. ‘I love Joseph like poison,’ Jack said.
In order to boost LaToya’s career, Jack made the deal with Hugh Hefner that she would strip for a photo lay-out. He reported that she would receive a million dollars for disrobing. She probably was paid half as much. LaToya explained her decision, to Hollywood columnist Frank Swertlow: ‘It was a matter of my letting my family know I am an individual and I want my independence. That’s very difficult when you come from a large family and you’ve been controlled all of your life.’
When Katherine heard about the photo essay, she couldn’t believe her ears. Neither could anyone else who had known LaToya. ‘LaToya was always the puritanical one,’ said longtime friend Joyce McCrae.
‘I used to always cover my body from head to toe,’ LaToya told Playboy. ‘I guess my shyness came from growing up the way I did, being so sheltered and having a strict father.�
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Katherine telephoned LaToya and asked if it was true. ‘Are you posing for a Playboy centrefold? Please, ‘Toya, tell me it’s not true.’ One wonders why Katherine even bothered. Did her famous children ever tell her the truth about their activities?
‘Oh, Mother,’ LaToya said, ‘where do you hear these things? Of course it’s not true.’ She then did what Michael always did – she blamed the media for lying about her. ‘Don’t believe what you hear, Mother,’ she said. ‘You should know better.’
Later LaToya would explain why she lied to Katherine. ‘Mother did ask me if I had posed for Playboy. She asked very specifically, “Did you pose for the Playboy centrefold?” I told her no, and that was the truth. I did pose for Playboy – but not for the centrefold. It was for elsewhere in the magazine.’
After speaking to LaToya, Katherine telephoned Michael and, with a sigh of relief, told him that everything the family had heard about her and Playboy was a lie manufactured by the media. However, Michael had already begun his own investigation into the matter and realized that there was more to the story. He decided to take matters into his own hands.
After making a few more telephone calls, Michael learned that a meeting at Hugh Hefner’s mansion had been scheduled for the next day, regarding LaToya’s pictorial. That day, he drove to the mansion and, under the guise of wanting to visit Hugh’s menagerie of animals, snooped around the estate with one of his young friends. When he walked into one of the parlours, he found a group of men sitting around a table, nervously stuffing colour photographs into their briefcases. ‘What’s goin’ on in here?’ Michael asked with a ‘caught ya’ grin. Hugh walked over to Michael and shook his head. The two then had a discussion about LaToya, during which Hugh promised to send Michael the pictures by messenger later in the week, ‘after they’ve been touched up.’
A week later, Michael received the photographs. ‘I can’t believe this is my sister,’ he told a person who still works for Michael today. ‘This ruins the family image. That’s it. There’s nothing left.’
Michael’s employee said, ‘All he cared about after seeing the pictures was his mother and her blood pressure. “I’m afraid that when Kate sees these pictures, she’ll have a heart attack,” he told me. “I’m not even going to tell her I have them. Hopefully, they’ll touch up ’Toya’s, uh, her, uh, nipples, at least. I mean, do we have to see her nipples?”’ Michael hoped that the photographs he received did not represent the actual lay-out. Perhaps all of them had not been utilized in it. Perhaps LaToya’s nipples had been camouflaged in some way. He telephoned LaToya.
She says he told her he thought the photos were lovely, which doesn’t seem likely. When he asked if she had an advance of the final lay-out, she confessed that she did have it. Would she send it to him? No, she said.
A month later, the lay-out was published. Michael’s worst fears about the spread of eleven photos were realized. Could that really be LaToya, posing nude with a sixty-pound boa constrictor slithering between her legs? ‘Boas aren’t dangerous unless they’re hungry,’ she observed in the accompanying text.
After the initial shock, there was shame and embarrassment. Katherine and Rebbie were both humiliated; not only had Latoya disrobed, but she had clearly had some work done on her breasts. Whereas they had once been small, they were now… bountiful.
For Joseph, seeing his daughter sprawled out in Playboy with a snake was an agonizing experience. One of his friends claimed that he and Katherine sequestered themselves at Hayvenhurst for a month, not because they were afraid to be confronted but rather because they were heartsick over what LaToya had done to them. They also blamed Jack Gordon for convincing her that posing for Playboy would be a good career move.
Michael, too, was irate with his sister, but not only for her career choice and the fact that she had further damaged the family’s image. He certainly did not find artistic merit in the photographs and told one friend that, as far as he was concerned, they represented pornography. However, Michael was more angry with LaToya because she publicly claimed that he had approved of the pictures, and was glad she had taken them. ‘When he started hearing LaToya say on television that he was the only one in the family who approved, he went nuts,’ said Steven Harris, a former associate. ‘He called his mother, and they had a long, painful conversation about it. “How can I talk to her about anything if she twists what I say for her own purposes?” he asked. Katherine and Michael decided it was best if Michael never spoke to LaToya. He changed his number and didn’t give it to her. Of course, she couldn’t get it from anyone else in the family. No one would dare give it to her once Michael made it known that he didn’t want her to have it. It was a shame. They had been so close.’
‘You know what?’ he told his attorney, John Branca. ‘I can’t control her, just as they [presumably his family] can’t control me. So, good for her, I guess. She did what she had to do and she didn’t care about any of us, did she? When I do that kind of thing, they all come down on me, hard. So, good for her if she can take it. Good for her.’ Michael then instructed the rest of his staff never to bring up the subject of LaToya’s Playboy lay-out in his presence. ‘I don’t want to hear one more word about my sister’s big breasts,’ he concluded. ‘I just want to forget the whole thing ever happened.’
A Million-dollar Bounty on Michael’s Head
‘We need Michael Jackson.’
‘We must have Michael Jackson.’
‘How do we get Michael Jackson?”
In February 1989, faxed communications from Kenneth Choi flooded into Jerome Howard’s office regarding the ‘Jackson – Moonie Project’. Still, no one wanted to approach Michael just yet; they were afraid he would give them an instant ‘no,’ and that would be the end of it. ‘Finally, in desperation, the Koreans came up with an idea,’ Jerome recalled, ‘a reward. A bounty was placed on Michael’s head. The price: one million dollars. Anyone – family member or business associate – who could get Michael’s signature on the contract would get a million dollars, money which would come straight from the Moonies. Now, everyone wanted to approach Michael,’ Jerome concluded with a chuckle, ‘and right away.’
Katherine decided to take the proverbial bull by the horns and telephone Michael at Neverland to give it her best shot. As she gently tried to explain the proposed tour, feeding him information about it as gingerly as possible, Joseph stood nearby, pacing. Finally, he was about to burst. He snatched the phone from her hand. ‘Michael, now you listen here,’ he declared. ‘You said you wanted us to be a family again,’ he said, referring to their last telephone conversation from Japan. ‘Now, look. I got these rich Koreans and they got this big deal and I want you to do this thing, Michael, ’cause we’re gonna make a lot of money and we need this money and you know we do and – ’
‘Joseph, put Mother back on the phone.’
Michael then told Katherine to forget about it. He wouldn’t even consider another family venture, especially if Joseph was involved in it. He reminded Katherine of the time (in 1985) when Joseph aligned with a Hollywood producer to develop a film based on ‘Beat It’ which was to star Michael – and Michael didn’t know anything about it. He later had to disavow the project which, he said, was embarrassing. ‘He’s always doing things to get me involved in projects with him, and I’m not going along with it,’ Michael said. He didn’t want to tour with the brothers again, either. ‘That’s over,’ he told his mother. ‘I mean it,’ he concluded. ‘Forget it, Kat. [Michael often calls his mother ‘Kat’.] I won’t do it and I want you to please just drop it. Do you understand?’
The good ol’ days when Katherine was able to convince Michael to do anything she asked of him were clearly in the past.
By February 1989, financial matters had gotten so desperate for Joseph and Katherine that they could no longer afford to pay Jerome Howard his salary; he had settled for $3,000 a month, even though they had originally agreed to pay him $10,000, and now he wasn’t getting anything. Therefore,
he became even more interested in concluding the Jackson – Moonie Project not only to generate revenue for the family, but for himself, as well. He decided to go directly to Frank Dileo for assistance. Unfortunately, no one in the family knew how to get to Frank. The brothers barely knew him, and Katherine and Joseph never liked meeting with him about anything because, they claimed, he would then go back to Michael and misrepresent what they had said. Katherine, in particular, didn’t like Frank – especially after he said she was ‘crazy’ for thinking Michael could do a better show with his brothers.
Jerome finally had to pay an associate of Frank’s $2,000 for an introduction to Frank, who, as it turned out, was at a weight-reduction centre run by Duke University in North Carolina. Jerome called Frank and arranged a meeting for them with Kenneth Choi. It took place in a North Carolina hotel room at the end of February 1989. Frank told Kenneth that if Katherine was involved in the deal, he would talk to Michael about it. ‘He loves his mother,’ said Frank. ‘I don’t know. I ain’t promisin’ nothin’. But, maybe…’ At that point, Kenneth opened his briefcase and took out two cashier’s cheques made out for $500,000.
‘These are for you,’ he declared. ‘A million dollars.’
Frank laughed in his face. ‘I can’t take a million bucks from you. What, are you crazy?’ he said. ‘I can’t guarantee Michael Jackson will do anything for you. Michael is a smart man. He makes up his own mind. No one tells him to do anything. Do you understand that?’
As promised, Frank then discussed the situation with Michael. Michael said he didn’t want to be involved. Frank told him to think it over, ‘and maybe you’ll change your mind, maybe you won’t. It’s your decision.’
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