* * *
Jackson finally completed Invincible after four years of recording, and Sony set the launch date for October 30, 2001. The year marked Jackson’s thirtieth as a solo artist, and he decided to plan two anniversary concerts at Madison Square Garden to celebrate.
His friend David Gest, a concert promoter and sometime reality television star, agreed to produce the show; Frank Cascio, now an adult, had become Jackson’s personal assistant and headed up the planning behind the scenes. The latter had developed some concerns that went beyond staging the show—he was worried that Jackson was relying increasingly on “medicine,” his code name for prescription painkillers.7
Cascio had tried a number of times, unsuccessfully, to confront Jackson. He was so worried that, in September, he approached Randy, Tito, and Janet Jackson and explained the situation. They eventually tried to stage an intervention, but Michael insisted everything was fine. “My family talked to me about my medicine,” he told Cascio. “They were out of line.”
If something was wrong with Jackson, it wasn’t readily apparent to the outside world at his anniversary concerts. Both shows featured a solo set by the King of Pop, a Jackson 5 mini-reunion, and performances by stars including Britney Spears, Usher, and Gloria Estefan. After the second show—on September 10—Michael retired to the Helmsley Palace hotel, while the brothers checked into the Plaza nearby. When they went to sleep that night, they had no idea they’d wake up in a different world.8
September 11 dawned cool and crisp in New York without a cloud in the sky, but by the middle of the day, the atmosphere was choked with thick black smoke billowing from the ruins of the World Trade Center. Almost immediately, Jackson started thinking about how he could release his song “What More Can I Give” as a charity single, aiming to raise money for the families of those who perished in the attacks. But according to Cascio, Sony was more concerned with Jackson’s next album; the single was never officially released, escalating the tension between Mottola and Jackson.
Invincible debuted at number 1 on the Billboard charts the following month, selling 366,000 copies in its opening week—slightly less than HIStory, but enough to handily defeat new albums by Enrique Iglesias and the Backstreet Boys.9 Initial reviews were mixed, typified by the New York Times, which both praised Jackson as the “skillful musician at work in the album’s multitracked marvels” and concluded that “there’s no joy or humor in it.”10 The numbers, however, said he was still the King of Pop.
Jackson had hoped to go on tour following the release of the album, but decided against it after the September 11 attacks (though he’d been offered $100 million to do so11). Had he performed even a handful of shows in the following year, he would have given Invincible—not to mention his own bank account—a much-needed boost.
In the months before the album’s release, Jackson’s relationship with Mottola soured further when the latter purportedly tried to impress someone by walking into one of the singer’s recording sessions unannounced, only to find that Jackson wouldn’t let him in. As the story goes, Mottola reacted by sending him a nasty fax.12
Perhaps because of the bubbling vendetta between Jackson and Mottola, perhaps because of the singer’s decision not to tour, Sony stopped promoting Jackson’s latest work after just two months. By contrast, they’d spent two years promoting Dangerous and HIStory. The label released only three singles and two videos (one of which Jackson didn’t appear in because of his feud with Sony).
Jackson seemed to think Sony wanted his album to fail. If his cash flow issues worsened, he might have trouble making payments on a $200 million loan administered by Bank of America and secured by his stake in Sony/ATV.13 So, in July 2002, Jackson went to New York to publicly express his dissatisfaction with his label. At a press conference in Harlem with activist Al Sharpton, he took the stage to speak about the plight of black artists in the music business, an exploitative history that he’d learned as a youngster and fought to avoid as an adult.
“Throughout the years, black artists have been taken advantage of, completely,” he told the crowd. “It’s time now that we have to put a stop to this incredible, incredible injustice.”14
Jackson went on to cite examples from James Brown to Sammy Davis Jr., praising them as artists who inspired and paved the way for him. After a few moments, he went on the offensive. He singled out Sony and Mottola, calling the latter “a racist” and “very, very, very devilish.” Later, he paraded around New York atop a double-decker bus, at one point holding up a sign that showed Mottola’s face with devil horns drawn on in red.
When asked about his reaction to Jackson’s theory that Sony was trying to ruin Jackson’s career in order to gain full control of Sony/ATV, Mottola, who left the company in 2003, was predictably emphatic with his denials. “It’s total bullshit,” he said. “Why would anyone sabotage anything when you’re there to make money? That’s the same as people saying our government was part of the 9/11 conspiracy. I mean, come on.”15
Shortly after Jackson’s barrage, Al Sharpton went on record saying he didn’t believe Mottola was a racist, and that he hadn’t known what the singer was going to say ahead of time.16 Around the same time, Jackson received a call from Berry Gordy, who’d seen the media coverage of the comments. The Motown founder told Jackson he shouldn’t be playing “the race card” and advised him not to do it again.
“We’ve never done that,” Gordy explained to his onetime protégé. “Our philosophy is there’s music for all people, and it’s not about white and black. And we can’t [do that], especially you, because you’ve never felt that way. You’re angry now, you’re bitter now. Think it over.”17
“I agree with you,” replied Jackson. “I don’t have to think it over . . . I’m so glad you called me.”
Jackson promised Gordy he wouldn’t repeat the incident. But he’d never be able to shake the feeling that his catalogue—and the wealth it generated—made him a target on many different levels. That fear was likely the reason he agreed to have an attorney named David LeGrand investigate just about every one of his advisors in 2003, including John Branca.18
LeGrand wondered if Branca and Mottola were somehow conspiring to defraud Jackson, funneling away his cash to offshore bank accounts. Though there wasn’t any proof of such a scheme to begin with, the theory was enough for the singer, who sent Branca a one-page letter informing him that he and his firm had been terminated, effective immediately. Jackson gave no reason for the move, explaining only that LeGrand would be his new attorney.19
LeGrand then hired Interfor, a private intelligence company reportedly run by former Israeli Mossad agents, to look into the matter. Though the agency did suggest it might be possible to uncover a potential offshore scheme if it had “additional time and a proper budget,” it was unable to find any signs of impropriety.20
In the end, the incident turned out to be nothing more than a witch hunt. LeGrand was later asked under oath if he’d found any fraud on Branca’s part. His reply: “I was given no credible evidence to support those charges.”21
* * *
As new operatives parachuted into the power vacuum at Michael Jackson, Inc., the news emanating from the King of Pop’s sphere seemed to grow more bizarre by the day.
In April 2003, Vanity Fair reported that Seoul-based lawyer Myung-Ho Lee—yet another “business advisor”—had wired $150,000 to Mali at Jackson’s insistence. As the story goes, the recipient of the payment was a voodoo chief named Baba, who arranged for forty-two cows to be sacrificed in a ritual meant to curse Jackson’s former pals Geffen and Spielberg.22
And then there was the “baby-dangling” incident, where Jackson appeared at the window of a Berlin hotel and held one of his children out over the safety bars for a crowd of onlookers to see. The spectacle prompted German authorities to launch an investigation, and Jackson to issue a statement apologizing for his “terrible decision.”23 But was it a sign of madness or a strategic miscalculation? “Michael Jackson is about
as crazy as Colin Powell,” photographer Harry Benson told Vanity Fair. “He knows everything he is doing. He holds his baby over the balcony and everybody goes crazy, but he’s in every newspaper around the world.”
It seemed that Jackson had fallen back into his Bad-era overreliance on the teachings of P. T. Barnum: that any publicity was good publicity. The incident in Germany was not. It’s certainly possible that he planted the voodoo story; like the Elephant Man bones incident, however, it was too strange regardless of whether it was real. And with no album or tour to promote, it was unclear what good the publicity would have done, anyway.
Even as the strange stories continued to trickle out, Jackson did seem to be focused on building businesses that could replace the physically grueling process of touring as a major income stream in the next phase of his career. This was a much wiser emulation of Barnum, who in Humbug described himself as “thoroughly disgusted with the life of an itinerant showman”; he preferred to have “a respectable, permanent business.”24
To that end, Jackson had renewed his interest in buying Marvel. The US economy was in a rut after the tech bubble popped, and stocks were at their lowest levels in half a decade, meaning that some of the best entertainment companies could be had at bargain rates. Jackson’s advisor Dieter Wiesner says he put together a consortium of investors—including banks in Germany, Switzerland, and the US—and they were ready to meet Marvel’s $1.4 billion asking price. Jackson told him to start the bidding at $900 million.
“His plan was just unbelievable,” Wiesner recalls. “He was saying, ‘Dieter, we have to have all the rights. On the one side, I have this Beatles catalogue, I have this Mijac catalogue. On the other side, I will have this Marvel catalogue with forty-eight hundred different characters like Spider-Man, Incredible Hulk, all these things.’ He knew exactly what he wanted to do.”25
Wiesner says Jackson was also working on a multimillion-dollar deal to become the face of the new Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren, a $500,000 supercar that boasted gull-wing doors and a 625-horsepower V-8 engine. His name would be inscribed on the inside of every door, and an animated King of Pop would moonwalk across the speedometer each time the car started. Wiesner also claims Jackson was doing creative consulting for various Las Vegas properties—and that the singer conceived both the volcano at the Mirage and the fountains at the Bellagio.
But in Wiesner, it seems Jackson might have found an advisor whose humbuggery could rival P. T. Barnum’s. Representatives of Mercedes-Benz couldn’t confirm that a project with the singer ever existed.26 A spokesperson for MGM said that Jackson did have conversations with casino billionaire Steve Wynn, and did create music for a Siegfried and Roy show. The rest, however, was a mirage: “Michael was not involved with the fountains or the volcano in any way.”27
The King of Pop had dismissed the close advisors who’d helped him build his empire, his court had been infiltrated by jesters, and his entire kingdom was now in jeopardy.
* * *
In 2002, Jackson received a request from a British filmmaker named Martin Bashir, who wanted to spend the better part of a year following the singer around Neverland to make a documentary called Living with Michael Jackson. Ten years earlier, Oprah Winfrey’s interview had painted him in a reasonably positive light, and perhaps Jackson thought Bashir’s work might have a similar effect.
But when the video aired in February 2003, it quickly became apparent that Bashir was seeking a different angle. His piece focused heavily on the King of Pop’s changing physical appearance and his relationships with children. In one scene, Jackson discussed sharing a bedroom with Gavin Arvizo, a thirteen-year-old cancer survivor he’d invited to Neverland numerous times (the boy would stay in Jackson’s bed while the singer slept on the floor nearby).28
Viewers assumed the worst, though, and Jackson’s reputation was shattered once again. Hoping to stave off further devastation, Jackson rushed to create a way to show that Bashir had cherry-picked the most unflattering parts of his time at Neverland. With the help of the singer’s own videographer, Hamid Moslehi, the “rebuttal video” aired on Fox weeks later; a collection of home videos followed in April (according to court documents later filed by Moslehi claiming he hadn’t been paid, Jackson received $13 million for the two videos).29
The rebuttal seemed to reveal that Bashir had an agenda. On camera, the filmmaker called Neverland “a dangerous place for a vulnerable child to be.” Off camera, he lavished praise upon Jackson: “Your relationship with your children is spectacular . . . it almost makes me weep when I see you with them.” At one point, Bashir even asked the singer, “Do you sometimes despair at human nature? Can you ever do anything right?”30
For a few months, it seemed that Jackson’s rebuttal had been sufficient, and that the scandal had blown over. But in the fall of 2003, about ten years after Jackson’s settlement with the Chandlers, the Arvizos formally accused the singer of child molestation. The charges also included administering an intoxicating agent to a minor, false imprisonment, and extortion. The King of Pop was in Las Vegas when he heard that Neverland had been raided again. Unable to believe that the same nightmare was unfolding, he snapped—throwing chairs, knocking over tables, and generally smashing everything in sight.31
When Jackson recovered, he turned to his first choice for legal representation: Los Angeles lawyer Tom Mesereau, a Harvard grad with a shock of shoulder-length white hair and a reputation for doing pro bono work in the black community, particularly on cases that involved the death penalty. But he was busy preparing to defend Robert Blake in his murder trial and declined. When Mesereau withdrew himself from that case (due to “a falling out over some internal matters”), he received a call from Randy Jackson, who’d taken over as his brother’s de facto business manager.
“Tom, we’ve always wanted you,” Randy explained. “Johnnie Cochran always said you’re the best . . . he said that if we were in trouble, he’d want you defending [Michael] and you were the one that could win.”32
Mesereau agreed to speak with Randy and Michael in person, and flew to Florida, where they’d been staying. The lawyer remembers Jackson being very quiet, sitting in the back of the room. His only questions had to do with who Mesereau was, how he lived his life, and how he approached his profession. Apparently the attorney’s answers were enough for Jackson; Mesereau and his partner, Susan Yu, took over less than two weeks later.
One of the first things Mesereau noticed was the leadership structure of Michael Jackson, Inc., which was such a mess that the Los Angeles Times ran a feature trying to sort through the singer’s long list of past and present advisors. Among them: Leonard Muhammad, who was known for running a series of allegedly deadbeat soap companies affiliated with the Nation of Islam until landing a role running Jackson’s security and business operations, and Marc Schaffel, a director and producer of porn movies who had helped film two TV specials for Jackson.33 Wiesner, meanwhile, had returned to Germany after the Nation of Islam became involved with Jackson’s finances.
“I would have thought the world of Michael Jackson, when I met him, would be run like a major corporation,” says Mesereau. “And I found out it wasn’t true. This is a man who could wake up on any given morning and if he wanted to make millions of dollars somewhere in the world, he could do it. . . . If he wanted to go to any continent, any country, he could do it. So why does he have these mediocre advisors whispering in his ear?”
Mesereau plunged directly into his task. He moved to Santa Maria, where oral arguments began in early 2005. Not wanting to attract any attention from the legions of media members who’d flooded the town, he lived like a monk for six months, eschewing bars and restaurants and going to bed every night at eight o’clock. He spent most of his waking hours in a duplex that he called the War Room, accompanied by binders upon binders of material on the case.
As he grew to know Jackson better, Mesereau came to see that Jackson was much different from the caricature commonly portrayed in the press. He wa
s thoughtful, kind, and incredibly well read—the singer frequented many of the same used book stores as Mesereau. Jackson also knew the cultural history of the United States all too well, and saw himself as a modern-day version of early twentieth-century boxing champ Jack Johnson: a black man who’d won a white man’s game and was in danger of being taken down on false charges.
But Jackson also understood Mesereau’s insistence on keeping the likes of Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson from turning the case into a cause célèbre and potentially alienating a jury that didn’t include a single black person. That didn’t sit well with another member of Jackson’s retinue—Raymone Bain, a boxing-agent-turned-music-publicist who’d taken over as his spokesperson; she had asked both men to come to the trial. Jesse Jackson showed up in Santa Maria; she told Mesereau it was a matter of protecting Michael’s legacy.
“If Michael Jackson is convicted, his legacy is going to be dying in a California State prison,” countered Mesereau. “We’re not going to make a racial issue out of this.” (Bain was relieved of her duties shortly thereafter.)34
The case against Jackson hinged not only on proving that the singer had plied Arvizo with alcohol and molested him. To nail him on charges of extortion, the prosecution tried to establish that the King of Pop was somehow so desperate financially that he would decide to hold an impoverished family hostage in order to extort cash from them—and called an expert witness who seemed to have little idea of what the Sony/ATV catalogue contained (he couldn’t name any songwriters added in the past year), even though that was a crucial component of its future value.35
Jackson had always been hyper-aware of his catalogue’s worth, and the trial only underscored this for him. He’d call Mesereau and Yu in the middle of the night to thank them for doing such a good job—and to beg them not to let anyone pay them off to deliberately lose his case.
Michael Jackson, Inc. Page 20
