Untouchable

by Randall Sullivan

  During the weeks that followed, the Dunnings and their staff would say later, they witnessed none of the Wacko Jacko antics they had been reading about in newspapers for years. “We just saw a pure and utter gentleman who was an extremely great parent to his kids,” Paddy Dunning said. Even though he had no real idea of how miserable Michael had been during the past several years, Dunning couldn’t help but be touched by the joy his new guest seemed to be experiencing in Ireland. “He ate well here, and he looked healthy,” said Dunning, who saw no indication that Jackson was strung out on drugs as had been reported only recently in the English papers. Michael began taking long walks in the Westmeath countryside within days of arriving at Grouse Lodge. Dunning accompanied him at the beginning and was impressed by how fit the supposedly ill entertainer seemed: “Michael could move really quickly—I’ve never seen anyone move so quickly. He was like a ballet dancer.” Jackson was both astonished and delighted by the willingness of the local people to let him wander freely through the fields, allowing him to pass by with no more than a wave. Dunning had ordered his staff not to tell anyone that Michael Jackson was staying at Grouse Lodge, but was especially touched by the willingness of his neighbors and the shopkeepers in nearby Rosemount to join in the conspiracy of silence that surrounded the most famous visitor the area had ever seen.

  Scattered rumors of Michael Jackson sightings circulated after Michael and his children ventured into the nearby villages of Moate and Kilbeggan. The Dunnings and the Grouse Lodge staff denied all knowledge. “If someone told me, ‘I’ve heard Michael Jackson is there,’ I would tell them, ‘Yeah, so is Elvis Presley,’” Dunning said.

  Actually, Elvis was in the area. Dunning had purchased the dilapidated National Wax Museum in Dublin earlier that year and was in the process of rehabilitating it. Unhappy with the likeness of Presley that was among the most featured items in his collection, Dunning had ordered a new Elvis made, then carted the old wax figure back to Rosemount, where he stuck it under a tree out back of Grouse Lodge and forgot all about the thing. He would never forget the shaken expression on Michael’s face, Dunning said, when Jackson returned from one of his afternoon walks and breathlessly told him, “Paddy! I just met my father-in-law in the woods!”

  After a month in the converted cowshed, Michael and his party moved into a more luxurious accommodation nearby. The Dunnings also owned Coolatore House, a neighboring estate where fifteen acres of gardens and woodlands surrounded a one-hundred-and-fifty-year-old Victorian country home that the couple had restored to high standard.

  Like Patrick Nordstrom before him, Dunning was at once surprised and impressed by how constantly inquisitive Jackson seemed to be. Michael read the Irish Times cover-to-cover every day and could discuss the booming economy of the “Celtic Tiger” as well as any business executive Dunning knew. He had been fascinated by the discovery that the legendary hills of Cnoc Aiste and Uisneach were each within walking distince of Coolatore House, and read extensively about the two rises, thrilled to learn that Uisneach was the traditional geographical center of Ireland, home to the “Stone of Division” that had been used to mark the nation’s original provinces.

  Michael’s love of Irish music was at least equal to his fascination with the country’s history, said Dunning, who was constantly being encouraged by his famous guest to invite as many traditional performers as possible to play at Grouse Lodge. Michael was enthusiastic about performing with every one of the musicians who visited, and invited Dunning and the members of his staff to join in the jam sessions that became an almost nightly occurrence. He was utterly flabbergasted, Dunning would say later, to discover “just how incredible Michael was at playing any instrument.” He had not a clue beforehand that his celebrity lodger was an outstanding drummer, Dunning confessed, but was even more astonished by Jackson’s demonstration of his abilities as a guitarist who could play both lead and bass. It was when Michael sat down at the piano, though, Dunning recalled, that he the rest of the staff at Grouse Lodge were truly blown away. Jackson had traveled with a Casio keyboard for years, including the old beat-up one that he was using in Ireland. Before he played piano for them, Dunning and the others assumed that Michael’s keyboard was essentially a songwriting tool, something he noodled on while working out melodies. It was well known that Jackson had produced most of the early songs credited to him by first writing out the lyrics longhand, then singing the melody or humming the rhythm line into a tape recorder that he handed off to someone he paid to put it on paper. He had no formal music training and couldn’t write notes. Michael had taught himself to play keyboards, though, and for more than a decade now had been using them to work out tunes. How far he’d advanced in that time was revealed to the people at Grouse Lodge the first time he sat down to perform a medley of Beatles songs. The sing-alongs that formed around Michael’s sessions at the piano were the highlight of his stay for most of the people who worked at Grouse Lodge, even though the rest of the room regularly went silent so that everyone could listen to his solos. “You can’t overstate his singing voice,” Dunning would say later. “Pitch-perfect.”

  Will.i.am, whom Jackson had chosen as his principal collaborator on the new album, agreed. “As far as [Jackson’s] vocal abilities are concerned, he’s still killing everybody,” the Black Eyed Peas front man told Rolling Stone shortly after returning from a week with Michael at Grouse Lodge in the autumn of 2006. Within a month of Jackson’s arrival in County Westmeath, a slew of high-profile collaborators were streaming toward Rosemount aboard helicopters and limousines and many more were making their appearances at Grouse Lodge via satellite hookups. “New Jack Swing King” Teddy Riley, who had worked with Michael on Dangerous, coproduced at least a couple of new Jackson songs in the Grouse Lodge studios. Shortly after Riley’s departure, his onetime protégé Rodney “Darkchild” Jerkins, now one of the most sought-after producers in the world, jetted into Dublin and made his way to Westmeath to talk about what he and Michael might do together. Jenkins had produced Jackson’s one hit single from Invincible, “You Rock My World,” which had garnered Michael his first Grammy nomination since 1997’s “Earth Song.” Michael was meeting with as many as a dozen other producers, feeling them out, searching for some sign of inspiration that would convince him he could deliver another Thriller. Akon, RedOne, Syience, and Giorgio Tuinfort all received either requests for transoceanic phone conferences or invitations to visit Michael in Ireland. Top hip-hop talent manager Charles “Big Chuck” Stanton not only flew to Ireland with his nephew, producer Theron “Neff U” Feemster, for a series of meetings with Michael, but also had the temerity to tell the Los Angeles Times about it afterward, assuring the newspaper that Michael was more focused than he’d been in years. “He’s ready to take over the world,” Stanton told the Times. “He’s got some hot records . . . We’re giving Michael a lot of edgy street records. He’s putting melodies to some hard party records.”

  Jackson only really got down to business, though, when will.i.am arrived at Grouse Lodge. The two of them had been speaking three times a week before he flew to Ireland, will.i.am recalled: “He’d be like, ‘I need you to dig deep inside! Do something that’s unprecedented!’ He’d hum a little melody over the phone or something. Eight song sketches were conjured out of phone conversations.” Three of those sketches became finished songs during the week will.i.am spent at Grouse Lodge, though only one was tracked—a number Michael had titled “I’m Dreamin’.” They would spend a solid month together in January, Michael promised, and work out the rest of the material. Will was almost as impressed as Paddy Dunning by how Michael seemed to have taken to Irish country living. “One day I was like, ‘I’m hungry,’” he remembered. “And Michael goes, ‘Take the horse. Take the horse and pick apples. It’s wonderful. We love doing it. The horses love going apple picking.’ I’m like, ‘Allll righhht.’”

  As his sense of being in a protected space grew, Michael explored farther and wider. Dunning hired a local taxi driver to d
rive Michael and Grace and the kids around Westmeath in a borrowed van with blacked-out windows. They made regular trips to the cinemas in the surrounding towns of Mullingar, Tullamore, and Athlone. In Rosemount, Michael could even walk into the pub unannounced, take a seat without being fussed over, and get some feeling for what normal life must be like among the locals. Upon returning to Grouse Lodge, Michael commented again and again on how incredible it was to be staying in a place where people seemed delighted to see him, but at the same time perfectly willing to let him be. He’d never experienced anything like it.

  Dunning himself drove when Michael wanted to visit Dublin. “We’d pull up to a red light and Michael would look out the window, because he’d be sitting up front with me, and a person would not believe their eyes,” Dunning recalled. “They would go into semishock at the sight, not knowing what to believe—is this Michael Jackson that’s pulled up alongside me on Dame Street?” As they drove back home through the Irish countryside, the two of them sang duets, recalled Dunning, who especially enjoyed their rendition of “The Girl Is Mine.” Michael sang the Paul McCartney part, Dunning remembered, “and I did Michael Jackson.”

  One of Michael’s regular stops on his trips to Dublin was the Ailesbury Clinic in Merrion Court, where he spent many hours with the clinic’s medical director, Dr. Patrick Treacy. For going on two decades, it had been Michael’s practice to cultivate relationships with cosmetic surgeons in any city or country where he spent significant time. The enormous number of procedures that had been performed on his face required constant maintenance, and the trust he invested in the physicians who did this work for him inevitably resulted in something that resembled friendship. He tried to become familiar with the doctors he sought out even before they met. In researching Patrick Treacy, Michael had been pleased to learn that the doctor was not only an advanced Botox, Dysport, and dermal filler trainer who instructed physicians worldwide, but was also renowned for his implants of permanent facial prostheses and for his skill with radiofrequency lasers. During his visits to the clinic, Michael usually made a beeline for the glass room where the high-end cosmetic creams and lotions were stored, Treacy recalled. His famous patient would fill his pockets with tiny bottles of Nicholas Perricone, Agera, and Matriskin potions that cost as much as $200 apiece. “What have you got?” the doctor remembered asking Michael one day when he arrived at the glass room just as Jackson was coming out. Michael, looking sheepish, laid out what he had collected on the counter. “Well, you certainly have good taste,” the doctor said, “but there’ll be nothing left for the Irish ladies.” Michael apologized, grinning “mischievously,” Treacy recalled, then said, “Just put them on my bill.” Of course, he didn’t think of what Michael had done as “stealing,” the doctor was quick to say, because, well, he was Michael.

  Treacy traveled to Grouse Lodge almost as often as Michael came to Dublin. The two also drove together to the Crumlin Children’s Hospital, in a suburb north of the city, where Treacy was attending to a brother and sister, ages five and seven, who had been horribly burned by a gasoline bomb set off during a gang war in Limerick. Michael wouldn’t stop asking about these two children, Treacy remembered. “He continually asked me, Were they in pain? Would they be given morphine? Would they be scarred? Why could he not go in and see them?” This last question came up again and again. He refused, Treacy explained, because “it could be read totally the wrong way by seeing him go into a pediatric hospital so soon after the pedophilia case.” Michael, though, refused to take no for an answer. “Do you think I would ever harm a child?” he demanded to know, and the doctor knew they had come to a pivotal moment in their relationship. He most decidedly did not believe Michael would harm a child, said Treacy, but he still refused to let Michael come into the hospital with him.

  Michael’s excursions were almost always made in the afternoons or early evenings because while his kids were “in school” he spent nearly every minute working. Only after dark would he let himself truly “play.” He recorded dozens of songs in Studio Two, where he loved the acoustics. The only disquieting note was that none of the tracks were finished. It was as if Michael wanted to start as many new projects as possible to avoid reaching the end of any of them.

  By the time Michael had been in residence for a couple of months, Dunning was practically convinced that Jackson would be settling down permanently in the Irish Midlands. Michael was in contact with at least a couple of property agents who were showing him estates in Westmeath and the adjoining counties. When Dunning bought a derelict Georgian estate called Bishopstown House about a mile down the road from Grouse Lodge, his famous guest visited it with him and the two discussed in detail what sort of renovations should be done, all with an eye toward Michael settling in for at least a long visit at some future point. “He found a comfort here in Westmeath,” Dunning recalled. “I felt he didn’t want to leave.”

  The idyll had to end, of course, as Michael must have known all along. The tabloid press still didn’t have a fix on him, but they were closing in. Unconfirmed reports of Michael Jackson sightings in nearby villages captured the attention of local journalists, who were especially intrigued by stories about the big-time, bling-wearing rap producers who were being ferried into Westmeath County from Dublin’s Shannon Airport. Three guards had been posted on rotation at the top of the drive at Grouse Lodge, put there to intercept unwelcome visitors, according to the Westmeath Independent, which in October 2006 took note of the “heavy security presence” in Rosemount.

  Jackson was actually given some cover by the embarrassing imbroglio that flared up in the south of France during the second week of October, when assorted British tabloids and the New York Daily News published photographs that purported to be of Michael dressed as a woman out shopping with his daughter Paris on the sidewalks of Saint-Tropez. The slightly blurred images of a slender figure outfitted in high-heeled shoes, a short-sleeved silk top, skinny jeans, and a floppy women’s sun hat, while carrying a fluorescent orange handbag and holding a young girl’s hand, were accompanied by stories that breathlessly informed readers that it was the first time one of the entertainer’s children had been seen out in public without a veil. “In keeping with Jackson’s love of the eccentric,” as one of the British papers put it, “Paris was dressed almost identically to her famous father.” Within days of the shots’ worldwide publication, however, the photographer who had snapped them admitted that it might not have been Michael Jackson after all, and the public was left to ask, as it had been doing for years, “Who knows?”

  Perhaps in response to the Saint-Tropez photos, or maybe because Raymone Bain and will.i.am combined to convince him that it was time to “do some publicity,” Michael agreed a few days later to allow Access Hollywood to send its correspondent Billy Bush to Grouse Lodge with a camera crew to shoot tape of the world’s most famous missing person working with will.i.am. on his new album “at a remote location in Ireland.” Michael clearly did not want Bush’s visit to turn into a full-scale interview and insisted upon answering questions as obliquely as possible while seated at a studio control panel, seemingly absorbed in mixing a song. Bush tried several times to create a conversation about Michael’s “comeback,” but gained little traction.

  “Do you see something big with the music that you make again, or getting that groundswell going?” Bush asked. “Doing clubs and intimate things and getting it bigger and bigger and bigger?”

  “You know, I’m not sure, on that level,” Michael said.

  Fortunately for Bush, will.i.am was not so reticent. “Big!” was his reply to the question about the scale of Michael’s plans for the future: “Something needs to put a jolt back in the music industry. And the only thing that can do that is the jolt itself. The energy that sparked the imagination of the kids that are . . . me, you know, the Justin Timberlakes, we’re all products of this [man]. So the only person who can put that jolt back into that monstrosity of entertainment and music is the one who created that.”


  “Are you writing new material?” Bush asked Michael.

  “I’ve never stopped,” Michael answered softly, with a smile. “I’m always writing a potpourri of music, you know. It’s how it is.” He turned his head and moved away before Bush could follow up. Bush was so desperate for footage that he sought out Paddy Dunning, who told him, “Michael gets up in the morning and makes breakfast for [the kids], usually porridge and fruit.”

  The most revealing moment of the Access Hollywood crew’s visit to Grouse Lodge had come during the setup that preceded Bush’s attempted interview, when Michael and the cameraman discussed how he would be lit. “Less shadow,” Michael suggested.

  “Less shadow,” the cameraman repeated. “It’s more frontal. You like that?”

  “I like that, but can you pump more?” Michael asked. “Like a little hotter?”

  “You mean warmer?” the puzzled cameraman suggested. “Like a little hotter?” “No, brighter,” Michael told him. “Take away the shadows. I’m trying to look like I slept,” he added with a laugh, “and I need your help.”

  The insomnia that plagued Michael Jackson for more than two decades had grown steadily worse since the airing of the Bashir documentary two and a half years earlier. Before discovering drugs, he had tried to put himself to sleep with bedtime stories. During the Triumph tour in 1980, he traveled with a custom-calibrated recording machine with three separate clocks that switched on in the middle of the night to resume playing whatever book on tape he was listening to at the time. He almost always awoke within two or three hours of closing his eyes. He began to use pills or injections to sleep after the Chandler affair in 1993, but built up tolerances that required higher and higher doses. Frank Cascio, who was working for Jackson full time by then, recalled collecting his employer’s stashes of Xanax, Percocet, and Valium and keeping them with him every night before Michael went to bed. “I wanted to always make sure I had them with me and not have anything in his room where he didn’t wake up and say, ‘I can’t sleep tonight,’ and not realize what he’s taking,” Cascio explained.