Untouchable

by Randall Sullivan

  Jackson rallied outside the New York headquarters of his record company, Sony, on July 6, 2002, for failing to do enough to promote Invincible, and brandished a sign showing Tommy Mottola with devil horns. (Mark Mainz/Getty Images)

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  In early 2008, Michael Jackson was subjected to the most invasive and thorough examination of his finances that had ever been performed, courtesy of Washington, D.C.–based accounting firm Thompson, Cobb, Bazilio and Associates. The good news was that Michael had credibly claimed a net worth of $236.6 million. The bad news was that only $668,215 of that wealth was liquid. Thompson, Cobb calculated that Jackson owned $567 million in assets, including $33 million in equity on Neverland Ranch, his $390 million share of the 750,000-song Sony/ATV catalog, and $20 million worth of cars, antiques, and collectibles, but that his total debts amounted to $331 million. Given his refusal to surrender his ownership of the song catalog, the only alternatives were to borrow more money or file for bankruptcy.

  In the short term, London-based Barclays Bank saved him from the latter fate by assuming more than $300 million in Jackson debt held by Fortress Investments in a new loan secured by the Sony/ATV catalog. Additionally, HSBC bank and a hedge fund called Plainfield Asset Management were loaning Michael $70 million against MiJac Music, the company through which he controlled the rights to his own songs, as well as those of Sly and the Family Stone and others he had purchased before buying the Beatles catalog. The loan came with a 16 percent interest rate on terms that allowed him to defer payments for more than a year. None of that money would go into Jackson’s pocket, though. Much of it had been used to settle thirteen outstanding lawsuits (not including Sheikh Abdullah’s), among them the cases involving Marc Schaffel and Dieter Wiesner. In addition, Michael had agreed to pay John Branca $15 million to buy out the attorney’s share of the ATV catalog (Branca had already earned an estimated $20 million from the ATV deal) and to sever their relationship. What remained, plus all dividends, profits, and payments from the two song catalogs, would be used to service Michael’s debts. Sony had agreed to guarantee all of the loans through September 2011 in exchange for the right to purchase half of Jackson’s share in the ATV catalog for just under $200 million and Jackson’s agreement that the company could spend up to $400 million to purchase the 125,000-song Famous Music LLC catalog, which included rights that ranged from the Footloose theme song to Eminem’s “The Real Slim Shady.” What Michael would receive in exchange was the guarantee of a cash distribution of $11 million per year through 2011.

  Among the obvious problems he was left with was that living on $11 million a year wouldn’t work for Michael Jackson, not when his “personal expenses” were at least $8 million per annum and dozens of legal matters remained pending. Furthermore, he would have to discover a major new stream of income before September 2011 to avoid losing everything. On top of that, Fortress Investments still held the note on Neverland Ranch and intended to wring every penny from him that it could.

  Still, encouraging signs were appearing in Michael’s life. Most significant was the surprisingly successful release of Thriller 25. Sony had waited until November 30, 2007, to announce the release, timed to the exact date that the original version of Thriller had appeared in record stores a quarter century earlier. Thriller 25 began showing up on shelves only a little more than two months later, in early February 2008, and Sony knew within days that it had struck at least a minor pocket of gold. The first week’s domestic sales totaled 165,805 units, putting Thriller 25 in the #1 spot on Billboard’s top pop catalog chart. If eligible, the album would have entered Billboard’s top 200 in the #2 spot. It was selling even better overseas. Thriller 25 was eligible for full placement on foreign charts and within a week was #1 in France and Belgium; #2 in Germany, Australia, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, and Switzerland; #3 in the UK and Denmark; #4 in Spain; #5 in Spain, Austria, and Ireland; and #6 in Italy and the Czech Republic. Sensing what it had, Sony committed to a level of promotion for Thriller 25 that few of the company’s original releases received, making agreements in the weeks before the album went into distribution for midnight showings of John Landis’s Thriller video at Odeon cinemas throughout the UK, followed by a forty-episode “ThrillerCast” Internet podcast, a “Thrillicious” Sobe Life Water campaign that would kick off at halftime of the Super Bowl, and the presentation of a Lifetime Achievement Award to Michael at the NRJ Awards in Cannes, among numerous other PR and advertising events. The largest retail music chain in Britain, HMV, planned to host an event featuring twenty-five Michael Jackson impersonators, plus the “Thriller LIVE” dancers on the day Thriller 25 CDs and vinyl records began appearing in its stores. Even the critics were being kind, especially to the remixes of “The Girl Is Mine 2008” (by will.i.am) and Akon’s “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’ 2008.” Rolling Stone was so impressed that it gave Thriller 25 five stars, compared to four for the original version.

  Michael’s spirits were lifted to the point that he began to show real commitment to the long-promised “comeback album” he was recording at Studio X. Reports from those who were spending time in the studio with him verged on the ecstatic. “Michael Jackson is working day and night on this great, great record,” will.i.am told the audience at the Cannes MIDEM conference. “I heard and seen him in the studio and he is creating a masterpiece . . . Before the year is over Michael Jackson will be back on top of the charts.”

  Reports that release of the comeback album was imminent had been appearing for months in the media. An HMV store in England had actually advertised the release date as November 19, 2007, under the title 7even. There would be fourteen songs on the album, the promotional materials said, divided by half into an A side and a B side with Michael appearing on the cover shaped into the figure of a seven. That date passed without any sign of the record, of course, and one new scheduled release after another was postponed without explanation. The public was teased with leaks that came in tiny drips spaced far apart. Michael harmonizing with The Fugees’ Pras on “No Friend of Mine” was posted briefly on the producer Tempramental’s MySpace page and stirred a rhapsodic response from fans stunned by how smooth and powerful Jackson sounded. “Man, he still sings like a bird,” will.i.am told MTV. The cut quickly disappeared. Michael’s collaboration with Akon on a song called “Hold My Hand” was leaked to YouTube, and again fans went wild, but the cut was pulled from the Internet thirty-six hours later. Chris Brown, 50 Cent, Syience, and Carlos Santana all said they were hoping to work with Michael.

  By the time Michael left the Palms at the end of February 2008 he had recorded more than a hundred new songs but still had not selected the ones he would include on his comeback album. Michael was nervous about the public reception and kept putting off the release. “It’s tough when all eyes are on him and there is so much young competition out there,” Ne-Yo explained to Rolling Stone. Michael had told him “this album needs to be better than Thriller,” Ne-Yo added. Who could live up to that standard? “He needs killer melodies,” Ne-Yo said. “He’ll call me back and say, ‘I really like song number three. Song number four, the hook could be stronger. Song number one, change the first verse. Okay, bye.’ Click. And then I redo them and he’s like, ‘Okay, they’re perfect. Send me more.’ So I don’t know what he’s keeping and what he’s getting rid of.”

  Michael refused to talk about the album with Rolling Stone or anyone else. All he would say even to those who were working with him was that whatever he came out with next had to be the best work he had ever done. Otherwise, the world would ask why he had even bothered.

  When Michael left the Palms at the end of February in 2008, it was for the most modest residence he had called his own in many years. Not that the hacienda-style home at 2710 Palomino Lane was anything less than palatial, 20,638 square feet of luxurious living space that included a spectacular Spanish Chapel, set among gardens and trails that wound through a nearly two-acre lot set among the equestrian properties of an established community situ
ated just west of downtown Las Vegas. Michael and his children wouldn’t be living in the main house, though. Instead he had rented the property’s 3,982 square foot guesthouse, agreeing to move in without having the premises painted or repaired. The monthly rent was $7,000, less than a tenth of what it had cost Michael to live in the Monte Cristo house; he paid $49,000 cash to cover the full six months of the lease agreement, including the security deposit, and for that price was able to negotiate use of the main house’s 8,500 square foot basement for the storage of his memorabilia and art collections. The kids were happy that the property included a large swimming pool for them to splash around in and that the horse trails provided plenty of room for them to run with their new puppy, Kenya. There was room for a small security trailer just inside the front gates and neighbors likely would imagine that the Jacksons were living in the mansion, not the the guest quarters. Rancho Circle Shopping Center was within walking distance.

  Michael was still hoping to buy the Sultan of Brunei’s estate at 99 Spanish Gate Drive. Even Ron Burkle, though, had not been able to find a bank that would loan Jackson the money to buy the place. The 37,000-square-foot main house that the sultan’s wastrel younger brother, Prince Jefri Bolkiah, had commissioned nearly a decade earlier remained unfinished and uninhabitable, needing “a million or so just to get the house up to par to a move-in condition,” as one Las Vegas real estate broker described it. Underwriting a mortgage on the property—even at the reduced price of $60 million—made no sense to anyone who looked at Michael Jackson’s finances. Michael grew increasingly despondent, especially when Sony informed him it would be withholding his royalties from Thriller 25 in order to cover what it was costing the company to service his share of the song catalog.

  The person who signed the lease on the Palomino property was Michael Amir Williams, a Nation of Islam foot soldier who had taken responsibility for the fleet of automobiles that Jackson had assembled in Las Vegas. At a moment when Jackson was vulnerable, Louis Farrakhan had dispatched a small contingent of NOI members to Las Vegas. One of Farrakhan’s own sons was installed in the Palomino guest house as the family’s cook and Williams (whom Jackson and his children addressed as “Brother Michael”) began identifying himself to other people not as the star’s driver but as “Mr. Jackson’s executive assistant.”

  “The Muslims made Michael nervous, and he got tired of having them around pretty quickly,” said one of the several attorneys representing Jackson during 2008. “But he didn’t want to offend Farrakhan, so he felt sort of stuck with them. And then I guess he started to trust Brother Michael.”

  Only after settling in at Palomino Lane did Michael finally acknowledge the looming catastrophe of a foreclosure on Neverland Ranch. Fortress Investments had given him until March 19, 2008, to ante up $24,525,906.61 or face an auction that day on the steps of the Santa Barbara County courthouse at which the ranch and everything on it would be sold to the highest bidder. One week before the scheduled sale, Londell McMillan told the Associated Press that Michael had worked out a “confidential” agreement with Fortress that would allow him to retain ownership of Neverland. The clock was still ticking, though, according to Fortress, which had given Michael just a few more weeks to find either a new lender or a buyer for the ranch. The timing was just right for another would-be white knight to gallop onto the scene, and an interesting candidate showed up at precisely the right moment, almost as if he had answered a cue.

  Dr. Tohme R. Tohme was a cryptic character who complained constantly that his penchant for privacy was misread by a media that described him alternately as “mysterious” or “shadowy.” Various news reports identified Tohme as a Saudi Arabian billionaire who had trained to be an orthopedic surgeon before becoming what the Associated Press would call “a financier with a murky past.” In fact, Tohme was a Lebanese-American raconteur-slash-real estate investor whose principal place of business was the bar of the Hotel Bel-Air. There, Tohme exercised his extraordinary gift for facilitation, brokering assorted deals that drew alternately on sources of Middle Eastern or Southeast Asian money, as well as an impressive range of international contacts. Tohme had grown wealthy—or at least apparently wealthy—in the thirty-plus years since arriving in America by diversifying into almost every conceivable kind of business enterprise, working nearly always as a highly paid middleman.

  “I have a relationship all over the world. I can find money,” he modestly explained. “Doc,” as he preferred to be known among his American friends, was a compact but broad-shouldered man in his late fifties whose heavy, broken features and rolling gait gave him the look of someone who had spent years boxing in the welterweight division. He wore custom-made suits but spiced his conversations with growls, barks, snarls, and singularly colorful curses. Many people in Los Angeles, when first introduced to Tohme, were intimidated by his gruff manner. He did not mind letting a person he had just met know he was tired of explaining that having the same first and last names was not uncommon among Middle Easterners, and yet could charm just about anyone on the rare occasion he chose to do so. As he told it, many wealthy Arabs and Asians, including members of various royal families, counted him among their friends. So did Jermaine Jackson, who saw an opportunity in his brother’s distress.

  He and Jermaine had been introduced by mutual acquaintances in the Los Angeles Muslim community, said Tohme, who was “intrigued but not impressed” when his new friend asked him, in April 2008, to meet with his brother Michael in Las Vegas. “Jermaine came to my house to see me and he said, ‘Michael needs your help. His house is going on the auction block. You gotta help him save it,’” Tohme recalled. “I said, ‘I gotta look what it is, then we’ll see.’” In other words, he and Jermaine made some sort of deal.

  Tohme traveled to Las Vegas the next day in a white Rolls-Royce driven by Jermaine. A story would spread later that Tohme provided the Rolls to Jermaine to secure a meeting with his brother. Both men deny this. What Tohme recalled best about their arrival in Las Vegas was being startled by the circumstances in which he found the world’s most successful recording artist. “I couldn’t believe that this is Michael Jackson living in an environment like this and in a house like this,” he recalled. “It was a pretty average place and it really needed to be cleaned and painted. It was messy. He was a single guy with three kids and there was a dog and he didn’t have any housekeeper.” Grace Rwaramba had been ordered out of Michael’s life yet again shortly before they left the Palms, so “he was taking care of the kids and the dog and the place all by himself,” Tohme recalled. “He had hurt his right foot and he couldn’t move around too well, so stuff was piling up. He was sitting in a wheelchair when Jermaine introduced us, wearing pajama bottoms and two different-colored slippers.”

  Amid the squalor and disarray of the Palomino house, Michael’s demeanor was plaintive. He seemed desperately lonely. According to the security guards, they had been the only guests, besides the nanny and the children’s teacher, at Paris’s tenth birthday party on April 3, and for them it had been a sad affair. Grace would say later that she had been forced to pay for the balloons they used for decoration with her own credit card and that the people she had brought in to clean the house for the party would not come back because they were never paid. “I am thinking, ‘This is Michael Jackson! This is the King of Pop!’” Tohme recalled. “And he was so humble. I looked in his eye and I could tell he was sad. Not embarrassed, but sad. A combination of many things. I was really shocked about how he was living and I wasn’t shy about it. I told him, ‘This is not a place for you, Michael. What are you doing here?’ And he said, ‘Everybody abandoned me. I don’t have anybody. I have no friends. They all turned their backs on me.’ He wasn’t feeling sorry for himself, though. It didn’t sound like that at all.

  “Michael told me, ‘Please, please help me save Neverland.’ He didn’t want to go through the embarrassment of foreclosure, and he knew that the media hated him and would make a joke of him.”

  Toh
me agreed to do what he could, shook hands, and left with Jermaine. They were driving back to LA, Tohme recalled, when his cell phone rang: “It was Michael. He said, ‘I want you to come back and talk with me.’ So we went back and he said to me, ‘I have no one. I want you to be with me.’”

  Tohme returned to LA again and began calling every big real estate investor he knew. One after another turned him down. “I got a couple of friends of mine to visit Neverland with me,” he recalled, “but they said, ‘No, I don’t wanna do it. It’s full of problems.’”

  Finally, Tohme tried his American friend Thomas Barrack, a billionaire real estate investor for whom he had arranged financing on a previous deal. Barrack, who as a young man had served as a deputy undersecretary in Ronald Reagan’s Interior Department, boasted a reputation as a prescient fellow. Donald Trump conceded that no one, including himself, had a better eye for the value of a property than Tom Barrack. Back in 2005, Barrack had told Fortune magazine that he was just about ready to get out of the U.S. real estate market because, “There’s too much money chasing too few deals, with too much debt and too few brains.” In 1991, Barrack founded the private equity firm Colony Capital, a company that had done more than $35 billion in transactions in the years since. “Tom was in Europe when I called,” Tohme remembered, “and when I asked if he would like to buy the note on Neverland, he said no. When he came back to LA I went to see him and said, ‘Come on, man, do it.’ And he said no, he doesn’t wanna be involved with Michael Jackson. So I said, ‘Why don’t I introduce you to Michael, so you can see what kind of human being he is.’ Because, see, I know already that Michael still has that magic in him. You sit with him and he will take you over. He had that flair. So I convinced Tom to go to Las Vegas and meet Michael. And after just a few minutes I can see that Tom Barrack is becoming very interested in Michael Jackson.”