You Are Not Alone_Michael, Through a Brother’s Eyes

  John Branca, a fair-haired New Yorker, had become my brother’s new attorney and he, too, would provide expert guidance in the years ahead. The Branca-Dileo combination was the professional operation Michael was happy to have surrounding him. Meanwhile, Weisner and Mann would manage the other brothers as the Jacksons.

  By now, all the family knew that Michael’s fame was at a level none of us had experienced before, but aside from the sales figures, the non-stop media coverage and the fans outside the gates, it was hard for us to measure. One day, La Toya was out and about in Beverly Hills when she got snarled up in traffic. Every street around her was gridlocked. She waved to a police officer and asked if there’d been an accident.

  ‘There’s no accident,’ he told her. ‘That Michael Jackson fella’s just walked into a shop.’

  ‘Oh,’ said La Toya. ‘Okay.’

  When she relayed that story, we started to understand the reality we’d now be dealing with.

  THERE HAD BEEN A LOT OF changes in my career, too. Ironically, it was Joseph who suggested that I needed to shake things up a little. ‘You’ve gone as far as you can at Motown – you need a change. You need to go see Clive Davis.’

  Joseph had known Clive since he was president of Columbia Records before he had founded and built the growing empire of Arista Records. Everyone in the music industry knew of Clive, a savvy trail-blazer with a nose for hits who had previously signed artists like Janis Joplin, Earth, Wind & Fire, Bruce Springsteen and Aretha Franklin to name a few. Starting Arista from scratch, he’d taken the label from a big fat zero to $70 million in his first four years and his roster of acts was growing all the time. As Joseph told me then, ‘That is a man who knows what he’s doing and where he’s going.’

  Before I went to see Clive, at a meeting that Joseph would arrange, I needed to speak with Mr Gordy. I couldn’t line something up and then jump ship without letting him know. When we had the ‘big talk’, we both knew that my solo career and producer work had exhausted all its options at Motown and our professional relationship had reached a natural end. But that didn’t make my heart weigh any lighter. As we talked, he made it easier for me. ‘You and Hazel need to see how it is to work with other people,’ he told me, ‘and get out from beneath my wings. As your father-in-law, I want to see you grow.’

  Although several years remained on my contract, he released me and, after 14 years at Motown, I left with immense gratitude, with songs still inside me – and as a ready and able producer. This time, leaving felt right and the circumstances were never in dispute. The difference was that I had no one in my ear telling me what to do.

  Clive Davis asked to see me at his bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel. When he came out west from New York, that was where he stayed: Bungalow 1B, with poolside cabana number 10. Always. Clive was a creature of habit.

  When I parked, I suddenly felt nauseous and uncertain – perhaps because I’d always thought that the day I left Motown would be to reunite with my brothers and this wasn’t moving me towards that. So, as I walked up the pathway to the bungalows, I found myself questioning the wisdom of this move.

  As I reached Clive’s bungalow, a monster bee buzzed around me with the determined assault of an Apache helicopter. I’m petrified of bees, and I took this as a sign that said, ‘Stay away,’ or ‘Danger’. So I headed back down the path.

  ‘JERMAINE! Where you going?’

  I turned around and there was Clive – smart, wearing sunglasses – at his door, waving someone off, and waving me in. Ozzy Osbourne said, ‘Hi!’ as our appointments crossed each other.

  ‘Perfect timing, come on in,’ said Clive.

  Over the next hour, we had a fine meeting and I liked him enormously. Whatever his mind is spinning with, you always feel like you’ve got his full-on attention. I told him that I still wanted to make great music and he gave me some pointers as to how he saw things. The upshot was that we shook hands and I signed to Arista.

  ‘Now, before you leave, can you put your producer’s cap on for a minute?’ he asked. ‘I have this new artist …’ He pushed a tape into his VHS recorder and we sat back to watch this tall girl with model looks and an incredible voice singing in a club in somewhere like New Jersey. She must have been about 18. That was my first sight and sound of Whitney Houston. ‘She needs material,’ he said. ‘She’s going to be huge. I’m working with other producers. We’re not rushing her. What do you think?’

  I blurted out what was in my head the moment I heard her voice: Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell. That’s the gold standard I had in mind. A duet. Me and her. ‘I’d be excited to work with her,’ I said. ‘We’d be perfect together.’

  THE FIRST TIME I SAW WHITNEY in the flesh was at a studio in Hollywood. She was even more gorgeous in person. She walked over, we shook hands, and there was one of those recognitions that sends all sorts of wires sparking and fusing on the inside. I caught her during a break in recording, and she was smoking. ‘You don’t want to smoke those,’ I said. ‘They’ll ruin your voice.’

  She smiled. ‘You might want to live more dangerously,’ she said. Touché. This girl was quick-witted with a confidence that trod on your toes. She was that mix of street-smart East-Coast girl with an air of innocence and a vast talent. I found that a hypnotic combination.

  Her voice had strength, passion and softness, and she could use every element of her range to tell a song’s story. She could sing anything. We would spend a lot of time in the studio together, recording duets and in production, and soon enough, she was calling me Jackson, not Jermaine, setting the easy atmosphere in which we worked. We had an instant mutual respect for each other and a growing attraction. During our increasing time together, it was what we didn’t say – yet still conveyed – that sent me into a head-spin. I kept reminding myself about Hazel, the family, and everything I had built and everyone I loved. This was the stuff they didn’t warn you about when you got married, aged 19. They didn’t tell you that when you grew up there would be super-human forces to drag you towards temptation. No matter your intentions, you shall be tested. And this collaboration, with an as yet unknown artist, was to be mine.

  WHEN THEY WORK, COLLABORATIONS ARE LIKE a love affair between sounds and voices. When an artist and a producer, or two artists, find that symbiotic match in the studio, there is no better creative feeling in the world.

  Michael was fortunate enough to work with some of the best names in the music industry, but the man he most looked forward to teaming up with was his ‘musical prophet’, Stevie Wonder. Stevie was, and remains, a big friend of the family after working with us on many unreleased Jackson 5 tracks (and we did the background dooda-waps on his hit ‘You Haven’t Done Nothing’). We all shared the same precision: building up a song, seeing it as a piece of intricate art that only came together layer by layer, detail by detail, instrument by instrument. It was, Stevie always said, ‘about painting a picture using sound’. One sound was one colour. Blended together, music formed – and this was how a blind man approached his craft. He was a regular visitor to Hayvenhurst, as was Michael to Wonderland Studios, Hollywood, where he was allowed to observe Stevie put together his outstanding work on Songs in the Key of Life. ‘It was like being a fly on the wall of the greatest composer of all time,’ said Michael.

  During the eighties, we both separately collaborated with this great man and neither of us could get over how many keyboards he had, sent by every supplier in Japan and stacked like folded sun-loungers in one corner.

  When the music began, Stevie was like a kid in a candy shop, darting from keyboard to different instrument and back again, ‘seeing’ its brush strokes, humming its sound with his earphones on, head back, swaying in his seat. When he threw back his head and laughed, you knew he’d nailed a particular sound – and you knew what it meant to him. If my post-Jackson 5 years at Motown were memorable for one thing, it was for the times I got to work with Stevie on ‘You Were Supposed To Keep Your Love For Me’, ‘Where Are You Now’ and ‘
My Cherie Amour’.

  I’ll never forget the night I went to his Hollywood apartment to start collaborating on ‘Let’s Get Serious’. We were supposed to leave for a studio in Irvine at 8pm but I arrived to find a lot of Asian folk showing him the latest and greatest keyboards. Why are you wasting your time on this when we’d arranged to be somewhere? I thought, irritated. By the time Stevie had stopped messing around, it must have been 10 o’clock and not far from midnight when we arrived in Irvine. I was tired, ready to crank it out, and I couldn’t see a mic on a stand. That was when Stevie pointed to the wall and this flat-mounted plate. ‘That’s the mic? Are you kidding me? I’ve got to sing with my nose two inches from the wall?’ I said. Apparently, this ECM-type mic picked up sound better.

  ‘Before we start, you want a game of air hockey?’ he said. Had he been able to see my face, it would have told him everything. ‘You’ve only got a blind man to beat,’ he told me. I hesitated. ‘Then we’ll get to work,’ he added.

  I took the bait. He was right: it would be no contest. But, of course, I’d walked right into it. He kicked my ass not just in one game but in the second, third and fourth that I insisted we play until I beat him – and never did. Stevie Wonder is not just good at hide and seek, he’s a demon at air hockey, too. In victory, he was standing opposite me with both hands on the table and rocking from side to side, head rolling, with that trademark grin on his face.

  It was now about 1.30am, and I saw red mist. In a fit of pique, and feeling pissed that I’d been messed about and then beaten at air hockey, I lifted up the table and let it smash back down on its legs. ‘Oh, man,’ said Stevie, ‘you’re fired up – you want to sing now?’

  And that was how we came to record ‘Let’s Get Serious’ – because the best producers know exactly how to bring out the best in their artists.

  MICHAEL’S COLLABORATION WITH HIMSELF WAS POETIC and unique. To imagine his music-making process is to peel back his hit songs to their rawest form: captured on his tape recorder from his mouth. Nearly all the songs you’ve ever heard that were written and created by my brother were first arranged in full in his head. No sitting at a piano or a keyboard and seeing what came to him; no experiments with technology: his inspiration arrived at any time. If he was in a meeting or a restaurant and you suddenly saw him grabbing a sheet of paper or a napkin to write on, you knew something was forming in his head to be captured on tape at the soonest moment. For example, ‘I Just Can’t Stop Loving You’ came to him one morning when he was in bed. He grabbed his tape recorder and laid it down there and then. These flashes of inspiration were ‘God’s work,’ he said. He would grab his tape recorder and, like the most skilled beat-boxer, he used his mouth as an instrument to create the beat and then imitated each part: the drums, the bass, the horns, the strings and so on. He did this until the structure and feeling of the song were just as he wanted them.

  Once in the studio, he’d find the instrument he’d first imagined, then play his recording to get the song from his head into everyone else’s heads. As he sang it on tape, they played it – and it had to match exactly what he’d first envisaged. In effect, Michael was channelling an orchestra and this sonic blueprint from head to musical imitation was just as impressive to hear as one of his finished songs. He also had the knack of running through a tune once and knowing how to sing it. I don’t think he ever struggled for the right sound – or words: when he surrendered to inspiration, everything fell into place. For him, music was an endless source of material from within; a constant stream that he just had to step into and take from.

  Then came the writing, and whenever Michael sat down with his pad and pencil, he was always looking at how the video was going to be at the same time. He wrote visually – finding the image or scene in his head, then applying the words. He loved what he did because he felt it was such a magical, spiritual process. As he said, around this time in 1983, ‘I just love to create magic. I love to put something together that’s so unusual, so unexpected, that it blows people’s heads off.’

  Which was exactly what I was thinking when I called him in the Fall of that year to invite him to do a duet.

  I DON’T KNOW THAT I HAD completely given up on sharing a studio again with Michael, but I’d reached the point of thinking it highly improbable. Especially after his career-defining Thriller album. But sometimes it takes just one thought and phone call to change everything. ‘Tell Me I’m Not Dreaming’ was written for my début album with Arista, Jermaine Jackson, and my co-writers Michael Omartian and Bruce Sudan – Donna Summers’ husband – helped create a slamming track. The moment I started humming the melody, I knew exactly whose voice was needed for this duet. ‘I have a new song … and it’s perfect for me and you,’ I told Michael on the phone.

  He had no problem coming to the studio, even if he hadn’t properly understood what was required. ‘Am I singing on this? Or doing backgrounds?’ he asked. I don’t know many ‘superstars’ who’d ask such a question after showing up. I had ensured that no one was there but me, him and an engineer to push the buttons. After Thriller, the last thing he needed was a bunch of eyes staring at him, so the fewer people the better.

  The moment we got to work and he heard the instrumental, he was dancing. ‘I love this … I love the sound of this,’ he said, holding the earphones to his head with both hands. What struck me most about that recording session was how well we knew our way around the studio and console. The last time we’d recorded together, in 1975, we were surrounded by a team, being told what to do. Now, there we were, as fully-fledged producers. Just the two of us. We talked about those good old days and how green we were, and we joked and laughed about memories, almost forgetting that we were there to record. But there was that clock again, reminding us that we only had one afternoon to get this done.

  I laid down my verse and he produced me, then vice versa. After that we traded ad-libs, singing into our individual mics, across the floor from one another. ‘I think this has got No. 1 written all over it,’ I said.

  ‘You think it’s going to outsell “Thriller”?’ he teased. ‘What if it does, Jermaine? What if it does?’

  ‘Maybe I should write it on my mirror.’ Michael liked that. ‘The sales don’t matter,’ I added. ‘I’m just happy that you’re singing this with me.’

  That’s why that record remains special: because it was a personal collaboration between Michael and me. Ultimately, the song was never released as a single in its own deserved right. There was a big conference call between our labels that we both listened in on. Sony didn’t want him on a song that would, they said, conflict with his own new releases. I think Michael wanted to help a brother. I think Sony was never going to lift a finger to help Arista with a song featuring its artist. When you’re tied up in recording contracts, brothers helping brothers is not an argument. Not that the wily Clive Davis was going to be outdone and I always knew he’d find a way of getting it out there. ‘Tell Me I’m Not Dreaming’ became the poor-relation B-side to my later hit ‘Do What You Do’ because, that way, it didn’t classify as an official release.

  I lived with the setback because the amount of air play that song received confirmed my instinct: it was a deserved No. 1 in everything but name. Anyway, there was increasing talk in the family of doing a reunion tour as brothers. First, the studio. Then, maybe, the stage. It sounded too good to be true.

  PAUL MCCARTNEY WAS AN ARTIST WITH whom Michael had always wanted to collaborate and 1983 saw them create ‘The Girl Is Mine’ for the Thriller album and ‘Say, Say, Say’ for Paul’s Pipes of Peace. But two significant things happened behind the music. First, when Michael was in London with Paul and Linda McCartney, one topic of discussion was the lucrative business of music publishing. Paul showed off a booklet from MPL Music Publishing, detailing a catalogue of songs he owned, including Buddy Holly’s hit-list. Music publishing is the smart end of the industry: while you can be an artist with a timeless hit it’s the person who owns the rights to the song w
ho makes the money each time it’s played, covered or performed live. The more prestigious the song catalogue, the more money you make. I can see my brother now, soaking up another lesson from another great artist he admired and quietly telling himself that he, too, must follow suit. One day.

  After London, Paul came to California to shoot the ‘Say, Say, Say’ video in which the storyline was about a pair of vaudeville con-artists rolling through different towns with their horse and cart – Michael built in a cameo role for La Toya. The location was a ranch at Los Olivos in the Santa Ynez Valley, about two hours’ north of Los Angeles. It was isolated and idyllic – a world away from Encino, LA’s smog and the fame that surrounded him. If he longed for anything, it was for a sense of freedom and the ability to breathe. Ever since he’d spent time at my old ranch in Hidden Valley, he had dreamed of owning one. I don’t know if Michael knew it then, but the ‘Say, Say, Say’ video brought the idea of ‘home’ to Sycamore Valley Ranch – the very place he would purchase five years later and name ‘Neverland’.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The Hardest Victory

  IF THERE IS ONE YEAR THAT stands out like a trophy across the decades, it is 1984. It was the greatest of years and, looking back, there was a distinct theme of victory, milestone and record-breaking running right through it. Our family friend Jesse Jackson became the first major black presidential candidate in US history. My NFL buddy Walter Payton of the Chicago Bears broke Jim Brown’s career record of 12,312 yards gained with a ball (and gave me one of his cracked helmets). And America’s newest athletics hero, Carl Lewis, equalled Jesse Owens’ four gold medals at the Summer Olympics in LA.

  It was also the year in which American Bruce Chandliss became the first astronaut to float free in space with his self-controlled backpack and the Statue of Liberty had her torch removed for the first time in 100 years so the flame could be repaired. Ghostbusters set the box office alight, making $212 million in its first six months. It was also fitting that this was the year Michael collected his record haul of Grammys and was awarded the 1,793rd star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.