You Are Not Alone_Michael, Through a Brother’s Eyes

  There was also ‘The Jacksons’ TV special with Janet, La Toya and Rebbie on CBS, but Michael privately cringed over its scripted comedy and canned laughter. It was vaudeville all over again, but instead of being restricted to a quiet corner of Vegas, it was broadcast across America.

  Michael worried that over-exposure would jeopardise his musical career. We had always said that too much TV could burn out an artist like a light-bulb left on too long, and this bad experience would turn him off from exposure on television shows.

  As for me, life without the brothers was a reality check. Motown put everything into the production of my album, My Name Is Jermaine, but it didn’t get behind its promotion as much as it could have. It had other priorities, like Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye and Diana Ross. So much for everyone’s suspicions about me becoming ‘the favourite son’.

  This reality would hit home hardest in 1982 when the track ‘Let Me Tickle Your Fancy’ with Devo hit No. 17 in the US and carried Billboard’s red dot symbol, signifying it was ‘a bullet’ set to climb. But Motown didn’t harness the momentum. The song lost the bullet and started falling. I remember wandering around London at the time, feeling despondent and marooned. My most notable chart success at Motown was with ‘Let’s Get Serious’, which reached No. 9 in the Billboard Hot 100 and No.1 in the US R&B charts in 1980 before earning a Grammy nomination for Best Male R&B Vocal Performance. People said that a nomination must be nice, but all I heard was Joseph’s voice reminding me that it’s the winning that counts.

  However hard I tried over the years, it was never the same without my brothers. I didn’t regret sticking to my principles; I just regretted the new reality. In truth, neither I nor the Jacksons could recapture the magic and heights of the Jackson 5. In that respect, we chased our own shadows for much of the late seventies and early eighties. I continued recording, but also decided to channel my energies into becoming a producer, guided by Mr Gordy. ‘Find ’em, sign ’em, mind ’em and re-sign ’em,’ he always said. I had my own office and a roving brief to find and produce new talent. With Hazel, we brought in Stephanie Mills, Switch and DeBarge. If I didn’t exactly flourish in the charts, I advanced behind the scenes.

  MICHAEL COMPARED HIS CAREER TO THE American presidential plane, Air Force One, a 747 like no other, looking to take off and cruise in its own exclusive flying corridor. In his mind, the plane was his ‘empire’. It needed to be aerodynamic. He needed to know each and every passenger he was carrying, and every working part. He was ‘the pilot, flying solo’. This was an analogy he sketched out on paper as a master plan as early as 1978. He was entertaining the idea of going 100 per cent solo long before he did.

  But if the ultimate decision to stand alone was tough for me, it was excruciating for him. He was a people-pleaser who hated the idea of confrontation or causing upset. In the studio, his creative instinct pushed forward a gentle but assertive insistence, but in his personal life, he preferred to stick his head in the sand and hope an issue would work itself out. In his heart, he knew that he carried the Jacksons, which weighed on him heavily.

  In my opinion, two key factors brought his solo career to a head. First, the brothers left home one by one. Marlon married his girl Carol, and Randy moved out to find independence, aged 17. Michael – so used to the comfort of brothers around him – was left at Hayvenhurst with Mother, Joseph, Janet and La Toya. Rebbie observed the situation from afar, saying he ‘resented the brothers moving out of the house.’ She says, ‘He didn’t see how he could build effectively on the strong musical foundation they had established if the brothers didn’t remain 100 per cent focused.’

  Michael was married to his work, and it puzzled him that we could allow women to come between us and our music. The echoes of Joseph’s conditioning were not lost on me. But Michael’s passion and companion was music: he simply had no room in his life for a woman. In the brotherly void, he grew accustomed to being on his own. The more time he spent alone, the more going solo seemed less alien. But the propelling force was Diana Ross. She was in his ear, saying he needed to chase what he wanted, advising him how to use his name, not the family name, making him believe in her example of leaving the Supremes. One of the hottest acts around – and a mentor he adored – was telling Michael that if he wanted to be the best, he had to jump … and fly. At least, that was how the message was relayed back to me.

  It was life-changing advice, issued in New York on the set of Universal’s movie adaptation of the musical The Wiz. Diana played Dorothy, and Michael played the Scarecrow. It was Mr Gordy who handed him this début screen role after Motown acquired the movie rights, proving the lack of acrimony following the split, but my father-in-law was initially unsure how Michael would react to his approach.

  I was at the ranch when the phone rang and he sounded me out. ‘Are you kidding me?’ I said. ‘Michael loves The Wizard of Oz! It’s right up his alley! He’s got to play that role!’

  It was between him and the Broadway star Ben Vereen (who, ironically, would play the Wizard in the musical Wicked in 2005), but Michael landed the part after impressing Universal.

  Ultimately, the movie bombed but Michael won plaudits and the highest praise came from the director, Sidney Lumet, who said, ‘Michael is the most talented young person to come along since James Dean – a brilliant actor, a phenomenal dancer, one of the rarest talents I’ve ever worked with. That’s no hype.’ The whole experience lit another desire within Michael: to get more involved in movies. It also brought him exceptionally close to Diana.

  His devotion to our goddess of Motown developed from a teenage crush into a young man’s infatuation. I think it’s fair to say that, in his mind, Diana was the first woman he fell in love with. I always wondered if she felt for him the way he felt for her, or if she saw him as the little boy she’d first met. Michael felt she no longer viewed him as a boy, but as a man and a respected artist. They had the kind of true friendship that rarely exists in Hollywood and I think that was what he prized most. As for how intimate they truly became, this is where his music – nearly always semi-autobiographical – should speak for itself. Go listen to the wistful lyrics of ‘Remember The Time’, released in 1992. That song was, as Michael told me, written with Diana Ross in mind; the one great love that, as far as he was concerned, escaped him.

  MICHAEL NEVER MENTIONED FEELING lonely at Hayvenhurst without the brothers. He concealed it well, even though he lived under the same roof as my parents and sisters. I don’t think any of us knew it was ‘one of the most difficult periods of [his] life’ or how ‘isolated’ he felt until we read his autobiography.

  Of course, he built a special bond with Janet and she became his virtual shadow. Those two were so alike it was sometimes uncanny. Janet, although a tomboy, was the female version of Michael in many ways: sensitive, gentle, inquisitive, socially brittle but heartily strong, and full of kindness. But she wasn’t always around because her acting abilities had landed her a role in the CBS sit-com Good Times, playing Penny, which put her on set most days nine-to-five. Michael always had La Toya and they were also close.

  He adored his sisters. Without them, he would have been utterly lost. But I think there is something about being brothers that only a brother can know. And I suspect the same detachment that hit me hit him. Maybe it was the shared realisation that we had no real friends outside the industry. We never had. Not in Gary. Not in Los Angeles. Our pace of life, the many schedules and our countless dreams had got in the way of forming true bonds. ‘Friendship’ was a word we heard but never really understood.

  So, when he got bored, Michael told Mother he was going for a walk down the street and I guess she assumed he was getting out to clear his head. Ventura Boulevard is the longest east-to-west thoroughfare that links the San Fernando Valley with Hollywood and he had only to turn left out of the gates and walk less than one block to reach the crossroads next to the local supermarket. Michael didn’t wander down there to clear his head: he went to find friends – ‘to me
et people who didn’t know who I was … I wanted to meet anybody in the neighbourhood.’

  It was years later when we briefly spoke about this. ‘Why didn’t you call me? Or the other brothers?’

  ‘You had Hazel. I didn’t want to disturb you.’ That was Michael: afraid of coming across as a nuisance or upsetting someone else’s plans. Or maybe it was because we had never needed to organise our togetherness before, so the idea of arranging to meet up, unscheduled, was alien among the brothers. Whatever the reason, it was not the first time Michael had been in distress and failed to reach out to his family. He’d rather suffer quietly, walk away and seek his answers in a stranger. It was as if he wished to enter into a bond where the slate was clean. Not that such a hope would be realistic. As he told me, traffic only stopped in Ventura Boulevard when motorists spotted ‘Michael Jackson!’ hovering on the street. They wound down their windows and asked for his autograph; they took his photo. I can only imagine his sadness when his expectations ran up against that reality.

  Michael soon realised that his true self was invisible; all people saw was the image of ‘Michael Jackson’. This is what fame does: it eclipses the real you, and someone like my brother had no chance of being ‘seen’ for who he really was as a private person. From that day on, his friends would have to come from an eclectic group of A-list Hollywood names.

  THERE WAS SERENDIPITY IN MICHAEL DOING The Wiz because its musical score maestro was Quincy Jones, who became the producer on Michael’s first solo album, Off the Wall, in 1979. Michael had heard of Quincy before The Wiz because Quincy had a high-profile concert group called Wattsline and also ran an LA workshop for unknown artists. When he first agreed to work with my brother, he said: ‘If he can make people cry singing about a rat, then he’s something special!’

  Initially, this album was viewed as another solo project under the group umbrella, just as before, and Michael would ultimately take his material on the Jacksons’ Triumph Tour, their fourth album. I don’t honestly know if he reckoned, based on the performance of his previous albums, it would be a success but the Quincy factor changed everything. He and Michael proved a great team, hand in glove. Quincy helped extract and shape Michael’s ideas; the mechanic to his creativity. Together, they carved out Michael’s signature sound and Off the Wall ultimately sold around eight million copies in the US, achieving two No. 1s in the Billboard Hot 100: ‘Rock With You’ and ‘Don’t Stop Till You Get Enough’, the latter winning a Grammy for Best R&B Vocal Performance (Male).

  But Michael didn’t celebrate that first Grammy; he wept. He watched the ceremony at home and felt crushed that he didn’t win Record of the Year. For an album that had been embraced by the industry, critics and fans, one Golden Gramophone didn’t match his hopes or expectations. He felt snubbed, not honoured; he felt that his great work had been largely overlooked but it didn’t defeat him. It made him hungrier and he adopted the ‘I’ll show ’em’ attitude. He decided to ‘reach beyond’ and set his sights on domination, a clutch of Grammys, and creating ‘the biggest-selling record of all time.’ This was the ambition he would write on his bathroom mirror at Hayvenhurst: ‘THRILLER! 100s MILLIONS OF SALES … SELL-OUT STADIUMS’. It was a desire driven by his conditioning never to be second best and motivated by the same yearning with which he had vowed to have his name in The Guinness Book of Records. Michael also knew what it would take to get him there. Focus. Dedication. Determination. Perseverance. He wrote those words everywhere. Aged 21, he decided to take charge of his life.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Moonwalking

  ‘YOU ARE CONFIDENT … YOU ARE strong … You are beautiful … You are the greatest.’

  In my mind, I am relistening to a tape and it is Michael’s unmistakable voice. He’s talking to himself. ‘You are confident … You are strong … You are beautiful … You are the greatest,’ he repeats. He is meditative and alone, speaking in a tone as soft as the lightest breath. I hear it today as clearly as I did back then; one of Michael’s morning meditations in the eighties, a mantra captured on a voice recorder so that he could play it back as a pep-talk to himself. He was like a sportsman in the dressing room before stepping into the public arena on a must-win day, eradicating any doubt or fear of failure. With Michael setting out to conquer the music world, he needed to be mentally strong. I don’t know if it was a technique handed down by Muhammad Ali, but ‘the greatest’ suggests to me that it was, as an extension of our training: think it, see it, believe it, make it happen.

  I first heard this mantra in 1984, in the studio with Michael, when we recorded a song called ‘Tell Me I’m Not Dreaming’. We’d been talking about negativity and he said something about controlling our thoughts, adding, ‘Listen to this.’ If he were still alive, he would probably cringe at my sharing this because it was a very private ritual. But if his legacy is about the empowerment of others with his music or wisdom, then I think this insight is appropriate because it shows that Michael Jackson – the King of Pop, the greatest entertainer – was human, too. It says that his self-esteem needed a kick up the butt just like anyone else’s.

  Michael used positive self-talk when he needed to feel good or make something happen: ‘When you say it out loud, and you keep repeating it, the subconscious can make it come true,’ he always said. To him, speaking into a tape recorder – a device never far from his side to capture an arrangement or lyric that came into his head – was as natural as making a wish. He wrote about this in his autobiography, explaining how he made wishes while watching sunsets, casting out those hopes for the sun to take with it. As a boy, he always made a wish before diving into the pool. These wishes were focused on creating the best-selling record of all time. We all believed in positive visualisation, but Michael took it to a whole new level: messages on his mirror, mantras on his tape recorder, imagining his name in The Guinness Book of Records, and wishes cast into sunsets and swimming pools.

  I have no doubt that he was telling himself that he was the greatest in the run-up to his ‘This Is It’ concert in London; a featherweight champion psyching himself up for a comeback. He was his greatest critic with each new album and tour; he didn’t view himself as the fans did. The adulation may have been Michael’s constant source of love, but it didn’t guarantee self-love in a public environment where the media labelled him ‘wacko’ and ‘weird’. Mental strength becomes the biggest challenge when the fans don’t expect you to fall but the world’s media are waiting for the moment you do.

  Michael believed that if he put something out there – and said something was so – it would become reality, and everyone in the family knew that he was promising the kind of solo album that would astound us all. But that creative process was strictly private. According to Mother, he locked himself away in his quarters and she only knew the song-writing was going well because, occasionally, she’d pass his door and hear a ‘Whoo!’ and excited clapping.

  IF OFF THE WALL DIDN’T BRING a clutch of awards, it swelled his ‘fan-dom’, and the days of Jackson-mania meant he was ready and equipped for it. That was probably a good thing because disturbing incidents started to happen. Once, Mother went into a back room behind the garage and got the fright of her life. There, in a sleeping-bag, lying next to a bunch of discarded food wrappers, was a young girl, looking equally startled. Ever the saint, Mother asked her what she was doing.

  ‘Waiting for Michael,’ she said innocently.

  ‘How on earth did you get in? How long have you been here?’

  ‘About two weeks. Will Michael see me?’

  We knew how she had gained access but I’m not going to advertise the fact, even if we have blocked it off today. But that’s how big the property was: she had been able to go unnoticed for that long.

  Yet that was a minor incident compared to the time Mother decided to take a nap in her bedroom. She was probably lying there for about half an hour when she felt a presence. She opened her eyes and, looking down on her, standing beside her bed, were two of th
e most innocent-looking fans. ‘We didn’t know what to do … we didn’t want to wake you,’ they said, ‘but we’ve come to see if we can ask for Michael’s autograph.’

  Mother didn’t call the police because ‘I didn’t want them getting into trouble.’ But our position would be less forgiving when the ‘Billie Jeans’ of this world started to show up.

  There have been many theories about the song’s inspiration, with suggestions that ‘Billie Jean’ was a specific woman. But, as Michael made clear in his autobiography, she is actually a composition of the most obsessive fans, as witnessed during our Jackson 5 days.

  The song tells the story of a woman trying to trap a man with a false pregnancy and its true back-story lies in two incidents. First, one lady mailed me a pair of pink baby shoes to the Bel Air home I’d shared with Hazel. An attached note read: ‘These are for the baby we’ll be having. I am pregnant with your child.’ Then Jackie received a similar fantastical claim in a handwritten letter sent to his home. As the two most prolific boys with the ladies, we were wide open to such claims but they ignored the fact that we practised safe sex. Michael never slept with a fan so no such claim could be made against him.

  In later years – after the song became a worldwide hit – the family described a certain kind of fan as a ‘Billie Jean’. It wasn’t intended to be a compliment – because that song is no love story – but a few people put their hands in the air to claim this notoriety over imagined relationships with Michael.

  Billie Jeans were fans Michael was wary of. The interior walls of the guard-house we installed at Hayvenhurst were covered with photos and sketches of what each woman looked like. It resembled a sheriff’s office with ‘Wanted’ photos. The most notorious Billie Jean was a woman we knew as Yvonne, an African-American with three kids. She was always loitering around, convinced Michael loved her. One day, she waited at the front gate until Mother came out to see her. She had shaved the heads of her three children, saying they had lice and she needed Michael’s help because ‘These are your grandchildren. These are the children I had with Michael.’