You Are Not Alone_Michael, Through a Brother’s Eyes

  Bobby knew how to inspire us, and he taught Michael and me how to use a mic properly in the studio. ‘Guys, you’re not on stage any more,’ he’d say. ‘The mic will give you the volume, so don’t worry about projecting your voices.’ That was when Michael’s imitation came into its own. Bobby first sang a song, then Michael repeated it, note for note. If Bobby liked what he saw on stage, his judgement was validated in the studio.

  We first recorded at Motown’s headquarters, using a four-track board. The studio was in a cellar of the old house that Mr Gordy had converted into Hitsville USA in West Grand Boulevard, Detroit. It wasn’t fancy and looked nothing like an empire, but it was the epicentre of the Motown Sound so it felt instantly magical. The pre-taped arrangements were the work of the in-house rhythm section, known as the Funk Brothers – the unsung heroes behind the Motown Sound, the dynamic team of musicians who created everything we had ever heard from the label. We couldn’t believe they were our collaborators. It was as though we had jumped into the radio on the side cabinet.

  After a summer and early fall of recording, life returned to normal and we turned into a new year. Between August 1968 and March 1969, progress seemed to stall so we kept rehearsing, performing and revisiting our usual haunts – the Apollo, Guys and Gals, and the High Chaparral – to maintain our regional exposure, if nothing else.

  Ironically, it was Mother who first got restless. ‘Are you sure these Motown people are going to come through, Joe?’

  He told her to be patient – to trust the agreement. Legal loose ends were still being tied up with Steeltown Records and Motown was in the process of setting up a division in Los Angeles. All major record labels had started to head west in the late sixties and Joseph could almost smell success. ‘We’re going to Hollywood, boys. I just know it,’ he said, winking.

  But we’d be going without Rebbie. In November 1968, she married a fellow Witness named Nathaniel Brown and announced she was moving to Kentucky. Joseph was furious; Mother heart-broken. Neither found it easy to accept that she was leaving the family: their plan to keep everyone together was coming undone and there was nothing they could do. Rebbie couldn’t understand why they were not overjoyed for her happiness, but I suspect Joseph felt his control unravelling. Or maybe Rebbie’s departure was a painful reminder of losing his sister Verna-Mae? Either way, he refused to give her away on her wedding day. That duty fell, instead, to Papa Samuel.

  What upset Rebbie most was that Joseph didn’t arrange for us to be there either. A performance at the Regal was deemed more important. I never did understand how that fitted with Joseph always saying that family came first.

  Meanwhile, Randy – then six or seven – started wanting his talents to be noticed. He had watched the five of us go out most nights and weekends, leaving him as the only boy at home. He says it inspired him. Like Marlon, he had his own determination, so when Joseph handed him a pair of bongos, he practised day and night. ‘Listen, Joseph! Listen to this,’ he said, whenever we arrived home.

  ‘You keep at it,’ Joseph said, ‘and when you’re ready, I’ll let you know.’

  Randy never stopped thinking he was ready. At school, he started learning the guitar and the piano. One day, he told himself, he, too, would become a member of the Jackson 5. Janet was three years old, as cute and doe-eyed as Michael; she always wore a braided pigtail and played hopscotch in the alley, or sat cross-legged and clapped ‘patty-cakes’ with Randy. But that’s the extent of my memories of my little sister from our days in Indiana: she would make her presence felt when life eventually moved us to new pastures in southern California.

  After Motown contracts were finally resolved and a new recording contract signed, the long-awaited call came from Mr Gordy, asking us to move to Los Angeles. It was time to claim our dream ticket out of Gary and truly enter the business for which we were destined.

  Mother, Randy, La Toya and Janet stayed in Gary, packing boxes and preparing to rent out our home to a relative. But we headed west. Leaving our home-town wasn’t hard because we were leaving it for our dream. The only hard part was leaving Mother behind, but we knew she’d be following two months later so we felt okay to go.

  JOSEPH TREATED US TO OUR FIRST colour television in 1969. I think he felt we had earned it this time. And that was how the move out West felt – like someone had turned the contrast dial, taking us from the bleak black-and-white of Gary to the vivid, vibrant colour of California. The drive from Los Angeles airport to Hollywood was a discovery in itself. For the first time we saw the towering, verdant palm trees, a cloudless blue sky, the bronzed people in tight T-shirts and flared jeans, and we smelt pines and freshness. It contrasted sharply with Gary. All we had ever known was the foul air of steel mill smoke with its smell of sulphur dioxide and polluting red-hazes.

  At street level, Los Angeles felt alive. We had arrived in the land of milk and honey, and Michael and I hung out of the car windows either side, a cooling breeze in our Afros. We drove around Hollywood and saw homes barely hanging on to hills, and mountain ranges in the distance.

  In those first few days of July 1969, we watched sunsets and went to the beach – all Michael wanted to do was ride the Hippodrome carousel on Santa Monica Pier – and we toured inland to find the best spot to see the Hollywood sign. We visited Disneyland and LA Zoo, and Michael fell in love with Mickey Mouse and the animals. We even managed a road trip to San Francisco.

  Our first base was a playground for the music industry – the Tropicana Motel in West Hollywood. In those days, if you were music royalty, you checked into Chateau Marmont but if you were new in town, you stayed at the Tropicana – a white-painted, two-storey motor lodge built into a squared horseshoe, off Santa Monica Boulevard. It had a few bungalows in its grounds and a swimming pool, and the T on its front sign was a palm tree. We got excited about that. Palm trees were everywhere: there were almost as many palm trees as there were hippies.

  We had a view of the Hollywood Hills from our room and all we did was swim. The motel was built into a slope, which meant the roof was only about 10 feet higher than the pool deck out back. Johnny Jackson fancied himself as an Olympic diver and was the first to climb up on to the tiles and show off: ‘Watch me! Watch me! I’m going to do a double somersault!’ We watched as – smack! – he belly-flopped with a splash. Johnny’s humiliation was our signal to join in and we took running jumps from the roof and dive-bombed, ass first.

  Meanwhile, as the search continued for a rented family home in LA – paid for by Motown as part of our deal – we found ourselves moving to new temporary accommodation: the home of the boss, Mr Gordy, whose next-door neighbour happened to be Diana Ross.

  BACK THEN, DIANA WAS A 25-YEAR-OLD hit-maker, whose star was outgrowing – and was soon to be detached from – her fellow Supremes. She lived in the Hollywood Hills in a home that was all white and bright, with sumptuous cushions, billowing curtains and shag-pile carpets that we would do our best to ruin. Wide floor-to-ceiling sliding doors led to the pool deck and the balcony overlooked a grid of distant rooftops set within LA’s basin. It was built into a hill directly beneath Mr Gordy’s home, where he lived with his children. He called it The Curzon House.

  It was a big wooden ranch-style property that managed to sprawl on its lot. Its most impressive feature was at basement level, where a window looked into the swimming-pool, like an aquarium. Michael and I would sit down there, looking up at people swimming on the surface, and imagine we were staring through a port-hole of our own submarine. There was a basketball court, too, so Jackie was happy, but Michael developed an annoying gift for scoring baskets with the most audacious shots. He’d throw the ball from afar, using both hands, and it was in without touching the sides. What he lacked in height, he made up for in accuracy.

  We lived at Mr Gordy’s for a week or two, but spent some afternoons and evenings at Diana’s, walking the winding street between the two. I say we lived ‘between two homes’ because that was how it felt. But it wasn’t true tha
t any of us, including Michael, lived with Diana. This was another of those marketing myths – upheld by Michael in his book in 1988 – for the sake of image. That’s not to say we didn’t spend good times there. Diana taught me to swim, coaching me in her pool, holding me afloat as I held on to the sides and kicked my legs while Michael and Marlon played ball in the deep end.

  It helped that Diana’s brother Chico, who was my age, 14, was a ready-made playmate. He was a boy version of his older sister – the mouth, the wide eyes, the big smile – and we grew close. He ensured that we found pockets of time to play pool, table tennis and basketball with Mr Gordy’s boys, Berry Junior, Terry, Kerry and Kennedy – the son who would, much further down the line, also become a Motown artist known as Rockwell. (In 1984, he would release the smash hit ‘Somebody’s Watching Me’ featuring Michael and me on backing vocals.) Sports always turned into a Jacksons versus Gordys event, with Chico as their ringer – and we always kicked their butts, especially at baseball and football. The Gordys were sports-mad and I don’t think they expected the brothers from Gary to be any good.

  The benefit of these victories was that I shone in front of his daughter, Hazel, standing on the sidelines. Hazel was 14, and she had beautiful eyes, skin like honey, and was beyond sweet. I liked her when Suzanne de Passe first introduced us in an elevator at Motown but she was the boss’s daughter so I had to behave myself. It was hard to resist the one amazing thing we had in common: we both loved Bazooka Joe bubble gum. In my book this was a meeting of minds and I couldn’t hide it, especially from Michael. Younger brothers are embarrassingly perceptive and he couldn’t wait to taunt me: ‘Erms is in love! Erms is in love!’

  What I liked about Hazel was that she was always honest, sincere and devoid of snobbery despite her well-to-do background. I was also in awe when she happened to drop into conversation that she’d often played hide-and-seek with Stevie Wonder and her brothers at Hitsville. That made her the coolest girl in LA. ‘Wait,’ I said, as the one obvious question dawned. ‘How do you play hide and seek with Stevie? I mean, how does he find you?’

  ‘Easy,’ said Hazel. ‘He takes off his belt and starts swinging it around the room. When he hears someone go, “Ow!”, he says, “Found you!”’ That was the day Stevie climbed even higher in my estimation.

  Michael loved playing hide and seek. If he wasn’t swimming, that was the game he always wanted to play, revelling in the suspense of being found or not. And then there was his other pastime: learning to paint, courtesy of Diana. She had set up easels and canvases in her living room and bought us paints, which was probably not the wisest decision with five boys in an all-white pristine environment: paint equalled fun, and fun meant going wild. When she was out, we decided to splash each other with our brushes. After a few mad minutes, we stopped – and saw multicoloured blotches all over her carpet. Michael was mortified. ‘She’s going to kill us! What are we going to do?’ In Gary, it would definitely have been an offence punishable with the belt or switch.

  Thankfully, Diana was a lot more forgiving. It was a mistake, we must clean it up, but it was never mentioned again.

  She passed on her appreciation of art to Michael. He had an ‘eye’, as well as a voice, she said. We brothers had watched on the odd occasions when Joseph painted in our living room in Gary. Michael yearned to paint even then, but Joseph never invited him to get involved and he was too afraid to ask. He painted fruit and birds with Diana. Sometimes we didn’t see him for days because he was immersed in his ‘art lessons’ or books on Michelangelo, Picasso and Degas. I think he learned a lot from being in Diana’s company. She coaxed him out of his shell because he was the shyest of the brothers and yet, as our front man, he needed the biggest personality.

  Today’s artists could learn a thing or two from Diana’s wisdom, style and class. Lots of modern-day performers emerge from nowhere and jump onstage without going through any kind of charm-school process. Motown trained artists to be stars: it groomed, prepared and educated them for the big-time. The likes of Diana Ross & the Supremes or the Temptations weren’t born with silver spoons in their mouths, but when you saw them on TV, you thought they were kings and queens. There was no need for headline-grabbing stunts. It was all about the class, finesse and elegance of a performing artist and Diana epitomised the true superstar.

  She was the perfect mentor for Michael because he instantly adored her. It was obvious from the way he looked up to her and hung around her – and she mirrored it back. She was special to each of us, but there was a unique bond between her and Michael. She was sister, best friend and mentor rolled into one, and they shared one of those inexplicable but natural understandings. Diana always said Michael had ‘a great vibration and an aura of nothing but love.’

  We learned a lot from her professionally, too. Her softness carried a forceful edge because she knew what she wanted, and wouldn’t have it any other way. One time she warned us about Hollywood and said we needed thick skins and wise people around us but, as kids, it was hard to see how such a fun town could hurt anyone. In fact, in one 1970 interview, Michael told a reporter: ‘Diana Ross has told me that people in show business can get hurt. I don’t see how, to tell the truth. Maybe one day I will … but I doubt it.’

  By the end of August, Motown had rented our new home at 1601 Queens Road, sitting on the corner of one of those climbing, winding roads in the Hollywood Hills. This was our base as we set to work on our first album for Motown.

  I DON’T THINK ANYONE CAN SAY they knew the scale of the fame and success that awaited us, but Mr Gordy certainly had a precise strategy. ‘I’m going to make each one of you a star,’ he promised, one afternoon in his living room, with us sitting on the sofa and him in an armchair, surrounded by some of his creative team. He then outlined his vision. It was characteristically bold, aggressive and confident: we’ll release three back-to-back No. 1 singles, stay hidden, make people wait, let the mystique build … then go on tour. Three No. 1s? Wow, you believe in us that much? Our eyes must have widened because Mr Gordy laughed. ‘Trust me, you’re going to be sensational’ – he used that word all the time – ‘and when you finally get out there, there will be pandemonium.’

  The faces around him smiled and agreed, but let’s face it, we had the easy part (performing) and the executives got the hard part (making it happen). We would come to know that the ‘release-only-No.1s’ was not a hope but an edict for his songwriters to heed. No. 1 was the level where he traded. There was a reason why he called the Motown headquarters ‘Hitsville USA’. We also understood the subtle lesson in keeping us hidden – the strategy of wait-and-reveal: release the music to get people talking … but don’t let them see you. Give ’em nothing. Leave ’em in suspense, like a movie. Get them curious and when they’re hooked, get them over-excited. Then, when the mood is right, ‘reveal’ the great spectacle, album, appearance or concert.

  Michael would later compare this build-up to a magician’s act – the unseen sleight-of-hand behind the music to whip up the magic of the actual performance. We’d heard the great stories from Joseph about how Mr Gordy – whose ancestors were slaves – had walked away from a job on the car assembly lines of Detroit and started his label in 1959 with 800 dollars, five employees and a natural ear for music. (Mr Gordy would sell Motown to MCA for $61 million in 1988.) He could write songs, play the piano, produce, manage and inspire; he had even been to London and produced a track for the Beatles. He launched black music in a decade of race riots and the civil rights movement; a time of shocking violence when black people were treated as second-class citizens and beaten for exercising democracy. One year before our arrival in LA, Dr Martin Luther King was assassinated in Memphis. Yet Mr Gordy stood up to be counted and heard, as he first employed an equal number of blacks and whites, then invented a black sound that was embraced by white America and the rest of the world. That was the real triumph in Joseph’s eyes, and it mirrored what he had always wanted for us: to appeal to black or white, man or woman. br />
  Mr Gordy was humble, too. To us, over the years, he actually became the biggest star at Motown because he chose to pour his time and vision into others. When he could have been the cover story of Time or Life, he said, ‘No, it’s not about me, it’s about my artists.’ He was a small man, yet imposing with his presence; he was a power-house who commanded your attention and everyone jumped when he walked into a room. When he looked at us, he did so studiously, as if eyeing something we couldn’t see, something he wanted to extract and maximise.

  Mr Gordy was much more than the president of Motown Records. If Diana Ross was a surrogate mother to us, he became a second father. At his house, he always took time to play with us: backgammon, pool, chess, swimming, and on the mini-bikes. Michael observed that Mr Gordy spent time with us in a way that Joseph never did. Quality time, not rehearsal time. Michael had yearned for our father to communicate in this way but I guess Mr Gordy was a lot freer in himself; a gentle family man as well as a mighty businessman, deftly balancing the two. The best example was one night when he turned in early, leaving us downstairs. ‘I don’t care what you all eat or what you do,’ he said, ‘just clean up behind yourselves.’ Do what you like. I’m trusting you – feel free. We looked at each other disbelievingly, waited till the door closed, raided the fridge, then jumped in front of the TV. Hollywood seemed like an unrestricted heaven.

  I’ve heard the stories that Mr Gordy was unfair, ruthless and mean, but that’s alien to me because we only experienced someone loving. I think those who have criticised him have been non-business-minded folk or former artists who felt they should have got this or that, and forgot he had made them household names. Those who went elsewhere and signed new, improved record deals also forgot that he had done all the hard work, groomed them and built them a world platform that had made them attractive to rivals – which would become relevant to us further down the line.