by Donald Bogle
The home was “simple and nondescript, but we were comfortable there and never felt that we were poor or in any way deprived,” La Toya Jackson remembered. And contrary to the stories later fabricated by Motown, La Toya recalled, the family didn’t live in harsh ghetto conditions. Gary itself “boasted clean, comfortable residential neighborhoods like the one we lived in. Our schoolmates’ parents were lawyers, teachers, and blue-collar workers.” She added: “Even so, Joseph decreed that we were not to socialize with other kids. He and my mother believed that our futures depended on education, hard work, and strict discipline.”
The discipline was maintained primarily by Joseph, stern and unyielding. In later years, he said he was hard on the family because of his fears that his children might be exposed to drugs and violence, and both he and Katherine kept a vigilant eye on every move the children made. “He banished the outside world from our home until our home became our world. It’s easy to understand a parent’s desire to protect his youngsters, but Joseph took this to an extreme,” La Toya would recall. If any one of the children broke the rules of the house or if they talked back to Joe, he didn’t hesitate to forcefully whip them. Just one glance from Joseph was enough to send shivers through the children. Sometimes the kids had no idea what might set him off, when his voice, his eyes, his whole demeanor would turn mean, when his hand or fist would be raised and come down fast and hard on them.
Katherine also disciplined the children—and also had a temper. But unlike Joseph, she showed her emotions and love. Her family was the center of her universe. Her religion served as a guiding force in the children’s lives. Raised as a Baptist, and for a long time a Lutheran, she had converted to the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Stretching back to the 1870s and founded by Charles Taze Russell, the sect was an outgrowth of the nineteenth-century Bible Student Movement, which taught that the Bible was scientifically and historically accurate. The organization also prided itself on being true to the doctrines of first-century Christianity. Not known formally as Jehovah’s Witnesses until 1931, its name was based on Isaiah 43:10: “Ye are my witnesses, saith the Lord, and my servants whom I have chosen.” The dictates and doctrines of the Jehovah’s Witnesses were strict: birthdays were not celebrated nor were religious holidays such as Christmas and Easter, both considered an outgrowth of pagan rituals. Followers were not to accept military service. Nor were they to salute the flag. Nor could they have blood transfusions. Their tenets were known as “the truth.” With the belief that society is corrupt, Jehovah’s Witnesses, in many respects, separated themselves from society, its members keeping to themselves. Members also had to abide by all official doctrines. Criticism was neither condoned nor permitted. Those members who broke the rules of the organization or those who left the organization could find themselves “shunned” by other members, even their onetime close friends or family. In time, the Jehovah’s Witnesses would grow to have well over seven million followers, with its international headquarters located in Brooklyn.
To spread the word and recruit new members, the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ publications The Watchtower and Awake! were sold by members who went from door to door in towns and cities. It was through just such publications that Katherine Jackson first learned of the organization and was converted and baptized in 1963. Raising her family in the religion, Katherine herself and the children at various times would go door-to-door to sell The Watchtower and Awake! That would include Michael even after he had become famous. On the Sabbath, Katherine and her children also attended Kingdom Hall together. Michael enjoyed the communal atmosphere, the friendship of church members, the guidance of the church elders. His religious beliefs provided him with a foundation of security, and those beliefs were important to the family. That, however, did not include Joseph. He didn’t appear to put up a fuss about the religious conversion of his wife, but he never joined the group. The strict rules of the Witnesses apparently appealed to him as a way to help keep the children in line—and also separated them from the urban community around them.
In some respects, Katherine Jackson’s belief in her nonmainstream religion was not that different from Sara Taylor’s belief in the teachings of Christian Science. But with the publication of the newspaper The Christian Science Monitor, Christian Science acquired an intellectual cachet that gave it a credibility that possibly lifted it eventually out of the realm of a cult. On the other hand, many frowned upon the Jehovah’s Witnesses, mistakenly viewing it as a religion for lower-class, unschooled African Americans. But African Americans would compose about 20 to 30 percent of the group’s membership; most Jehovah’s Witnesses were white. Still, while others might label the religious organization a cult, Katherine and her children never viewed their faith in this way. Instead, Katherine drew strength from her religion just as Sara drew strength from Christian Science. Though neither would have said it, both had such strong convictions that they no doubt felt the world could be damned for not understanding the power of their respective faiths.
Unlike Sara Taylor, who gave up her own theatrical aspirations rather early and focused on her daughter, Elizabeth, Joe Jackson wasn’t as quick to give up his dreams of being a music star. Forming a blues group with his brother Luther and some friends that they called the Falcons, Joe and the others regularly practiced at the Jackson home. According to Jermaine, the group performed “at local parties and venues to put some extra dollars in their pockets.” The Falcons eventually disbanded. But unable to leave his music behind, Joe practiced on his guitar, his most prized possession, which he kept locked away in the bedroom closet. “And don’t even think about getting out my guitar,” he warned the kids.
But it didn’t stay locked away for long. Fascinated by the idea of playing the guitar, Tito started to wait for those occasions when Joseph was out of the house and the coast was clear, then took the coveted guitar from the closet and played it while performing with his brothers. At the sound of Joseph returning home in his Buick, Tito would quickly replace the guitar in the closet. One day, however, he broke a string on the instrument. When Joe saw what had happened, he hit the ceiling and demanded to know who had been messing with his guitar. Tito admitted he was the culprit but he also professed that he knew how to play. Joe was still angry but he calmed down. “Let me see what you can do,” he told him. When he heard his son perform, a lightbulb immediately went off in Joe’s head. Shortly afterward, he arrived home with a package that was handed over to Tito. Inside was a new guitar for his son. But Joe admonished him that it meant he had to rehearse with his brothers.
Shrewd, ambitious Joseph saw possibilities with his sons. They were not simply playing around. They had the potential, in his view, to be a group, to make it to the top. Any number of kids fantasized about music careers or pop stardom. Any number of kids put those dreams aside once they were no longer teenagers. But Joseph Jackson never saw stardom for his boys as a long shot, never as a pipe dream. Stardom was an inevitability. But it would take hard work, discipline, and focus.
The concept of a musical group was a natural because 2300 Jackson Street was a musical home. Not only had Joe performed with his Falcons, but Katherine sang around the house. Among Michael’s earliest memories were those of Katherine “holding me and singing songs like ‘You Are My Sunshine’ and ‘Cotton Fields.’ She sang to me and to my brothers and sisters often.” Growing up hearing the names of famous black performers—Jackie Wilson, James Brown, David Ruffin, and other Motown stars—as a part of everyday life in the home, all the children became steeped in show biz history with a knowledge and respect for black musical giants. They also all liked performing. Though the eldest son, Jackie, was an outstanding athlete with dreams of a career as a baseball star—and was even scouted by the Chicago White Sox—after an injury, or perhaps mainly due to Joseph’s insistence, all his energies went into music with his brothers. Jackie was also a terrific dancer and won dance contests with his sister Rebbie in the area. Marlon was a good dancer, too. Tito loved the guitar. And Jermaine
not only played bass guitar but also sang lead for a time.
Even before he could talk, Michael’s love of music, rhythm, movement, and dramatic pauses and soaring tempos was apparent. “Ever since Michael was very young,” Katherine later told Time, “he seemed different to me from the rest of the children. I don’t believe in reincarnation, but you know how babies move uncoordinated? He never moved that way. When he danced, it was like he was an old person.” La Toya also commented that her mother realized Michael was “different” from the time he was born—“quick to walk and talk. . . . She made a point never to boast about any of us, but of Michael, my mother would allow, ‘I don’t want to say he’s gifted but I know there’s something special about him.’ ” He was also a student of music: he carefully watched an entertainer, like James Brown, picked up on his routines, both as an impassioned vocalist and a dancer, and could soon imitate him, adding his own flair and dash. The same was true for Michael of Jackie Wilson, who was his number one idol. In 1963, five-year-old Michael—then a student at Garnett Elementary School—gave his first performance for an audience. He sang “Climb Ev’ry Mountain” in a school pageant. Sitting in the audience were Katherine and her father, Prince Scruse.
That same year, his father at first didn’t consider putting Michael in the group. He was too young. But when Michael started singing along, Joe and his sons all saw the boy’s talent. Jermaine, who had sung lead, was replaced by Michael. That would be a long-standing point of tension for Jermaine, no matter what he would say in later years.
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Daily, the boys were not permitted to stick around school once classes ended to participate in extracurricular activities. Instead, each rushed back home, grabbed his instrument, and practiced. “When the other kids would be out on the street playing games, my boys were in the house working—trying to learn how to be something in life,” Joe said. “They got a little upset about the whole thing in the beginning because other kids were out there having a good time.” Once Joe returned from work, he watched the boys to see their progress. Rehearsals went from 4:30 to 9:00 p.m. without any letup. A fierce taskmaster, Joe didn’t hold back on criticism. Nor did he hold back on raising his hand to keep his sons in line. The boys felt their father could be brutal and that also there was another way to keep them disciplined. But no one could tell the old man that.
La Toya remembered that Jackie received “the most punishment.” When she asked her mother why Joseph treated the eldest son so badly, Katherine replied: “I don’t know . . . he just never liked him.” La Toya always believed that Jackie—basically serious and quiet and a handsome heartthrob for young women—had the potential for major stardom. “But endless psychological and physical battering wore him down.” Joseph’s favorite? Jermaine, who was, according to La Toya, opinionated, outspoken, stubborn, was also a playful teaser and a family leader. Yet as La Toya perceptively noted, in response to Joe’s “volatile nature, all the Jackson kids grew up basically soft-spoken and extremely gentle. We worried about hurting one another’s feelings.”
Of all the children, Michael was the most sensitive and the most affected by Joseph’s corporal punishment—and also the most rebellious, the child who stood up to his father. “Not surprisingly, none of us ever mustered the courage (the foolhardiness?) to defend ourselves against him. Except Michael,” recalled La Toya. When still very young, he once ran from his angry father, not ready to be hit. Another time he grabbed a shoe and threw it at his father. Still, he often suffered at the hands of an irate Joseph.
Rehearsals could prove especially difficult. Once Michael was in the group, it was often a battle with Joseph. “If you messed up during rehearsal, you got hit. Sometimes with a belt. Sometimes with a switch,” Michael recalled. “But I’d get beaten for things that happened mostly outside of rehearsal,” Michael recalled. At home, Michael would talk back when Joe had a tirade, which just incensed Joe all the more.
But early on, Michael, child prodigy that he was—though no one quite thought of him that way at the time—was also the subject of Joe’s wrath because musically he insisted on doing things his way. “Now, you do it the way I told you to!” Joe would yell. But Michael would refuse. Sometimes he cried. Joe would continue to demand that Michael do as he was told, to which Michael would say he wouldn’t, and in time, he told his father, “Don’t you hit me. ’Cause if you ever hit me again, it’ll be the last time I ever sing. And I mean it.”
The beatings weren’t the only thing to alienate Michael and his brothers from their father. It was also Joseph’s inability to be a part of the emotional life of the family, to express his feelings about anything other than the boys’ music. He didn’t even want the children to call him Dad or Father. Instead, he was to be called Joseph. They couldn’t have a private conversation without fears that Joseph might overhear them. It went on for years, even later when they moved into a larger home in California. Appearing to take joy in frightening his children, he might pound on La Toya’s door at night. “Open this door or I’ll break it down,” he might scream. Later keeping guns in their home, he took a “perverse pleasure in aiming at one of us and squeezing the trigger,” recalled La Toya, who said her mother objected to the guns because once on a hunting trip he’d shot out her brother-in-law’s eye—by accident. Baffled and bewildered by this man who headed the household, Jermaine believed Joseph was impossible to understand.
Michael, who felt the same way, found his father to be a mystery. “He built a shell around himself over the years, and once he stopped talking about our family business, he found it hard to relate to us. We’d all be together and he’d just leave the room.”
The only thing that didn’t mystify the children was their father’s determination that his sons succeed. Not only were there the endless rehearsals and the isolation from the rest of their Gary community but also there soon were the very early performances. “I rehearsed them about three years before I turned them loose. That’s practically every day, for at least two or three hours,” said Joe. “I noticed, though, that they were getting better and better. Then I saw that after they became better they enjoyed it more. Then it was time to go out and do talent shows. We won the highest talent show in Indiana and then we went over to Illinois and won there. It got so we could play nightclubs in Chicago like the High Chaparral and the Guys and Gals Club. This was on the weekends. I had a Volkswagen bus and I bought a big luggage rack and put it on top and had everybody on the inside of the bus. One day I noticed when I was coming out of the yard that the instruments on top of the bus were taller than the bus.”
Joe wouldn’t relinquish his dream for his sons. In this respect, his fierce determination to make the world see his children’s talents was not much different from that of Sara Taylor. Both Sara and Joe were fighters to the end, albeit Sara used her charm during such battles. Joe, however, could be openly relentless and ruthless in his drive for his children. Both were propelled by a belief in their children’s talents as well as a complicated love for those children.
“Between 1966 and 1968 most weekends were spent on the road building our reputation,” Jermaine recalled. Weeknights meant performing locally, mainly at Mister Lucky’s in Gary, where they earned their first paycheck. Jermaine recalled, “$11, split between us. Michael spent his on candy, which he shared with other kids in the neighborhood.” A cynical Joseph said, “He earns his first wage and spends it on candy to give to other kids.”
Otherwise their gigs were at all sorts of places: small clubs, juke joints, dives where the boys were exposed to some of everything, both the upside and dark underside of show business. They met strippers and female impersonators and the sometimes rowdy but always appreciative audiences. Michael remembered the times when he crawled around, looking up the skirts of women in the audience. None of this mattered much to Joe because he kept a very protective eye on the boys. He also understood that boys will be boys. It also didn’t matter to Joseph that when his sons performed in the middle of t
he week, they had school the next day. A performance might not start until eleven thirty, Jermaine recalled. They could sleep on the drive home—where they would arrive in the early hours of the morning. Michael also recalled: “Sometimes really late at night we’d have to go out. It might be three in the morning—to do a show. My father forced us. He would get us up. I was seven or eight. Some of these were clubs or private parties at people’s houses. We’d have to perform.” It might be in Chicago or later New York or Philadelphia. “I’d be sleeping and I’d hear my father say, ‘Get up! There’s a show!’ ” The feeling was that they could catch up on their studies as best they could. School was secondary for Joseph, not of much consequence. The main thing he wanted—as the time on the road expanded—was a record deal for his sons. But the boys tried to study, especially Michael, who liked to read, to discover new things, places, people through the magic of books and later his travels.
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In the midst of what otherwise might have been a storm, with their father always breathing down their necks, with the demands of establishing a professional act, of creating a career, with the need of isolation to build that act and career, Michael and his brothers all found comfort and a haven in their mother. Michael said, “If she found out that one of us had an interest in something, she would encourage it if there was any possible way. If I developed an interest in movie stars, for instance, she’d come home with an armful of books about famous stars. Even with nine children she treated each of us like an only child. There isn’t one of us who’s ever forgotten what a hard worker and a great provider she was.” He remembered always his mother’s “gentleness, warmth, and attention.”
