You Are Not Alone_Michael, Through a Brother’s Eyes

  I’ve read the accounts that would have people believe Michael was ‘increasingly difficult’ on the road and was suddenly ‘unreasonable’ in his ‘demands’. We apparently feuded so much that we had to have rooms on different floors in hotels; we ‘didn’t speak en route to stadiums’; and we especially ‘glared’ at Michael’s guests. I honestly think some people wanted so badly to believe that the discord in the promoter/attorney meetings extended into the dressing room and hotels which it did not. No one focuses on how we went out there night after night and kicked ass on stage with a chemistry that spoke for itself. I guess success stories fall flat where news coverage is concerned. As Michael always said, ‘When they can’t pick fault with the performance, they’ll pick fault with the person.’

  I had a long-time suspicion that it was in the interests of people who worked with Michael to plant subliminal messages of conflict – both with the media and in his ears – because they wanted to be his replacement ‘brothers’ and it was far more profitable to slice into a financial pie that was for Michael alone, rather than a pie that had to be cut six ways. Many times during ‘Victory’, I thought back to when Joseph had gathered those twigs in Gary and bunched them together. Inseparable. Unbreakable. Stronger together than apart. Now, in 1984, having endured the wrench of separation once before, I held even tighter to that teaching as the entourage swelled around us.

  BAKANA THE BENGAL TIGER JOINED US on the road. Bubbles stayed at home. He would have to wait for Michael’s ‘Bad’ Tour.

  Bakana, named after the Fijian island, was my ‘plus one’, and stayed in my room. After raising a mountain lion, I had bought a cat from a friend and I had been raising her like a child, bottle-feeding her in my arms and taming her for the tour. I appreciate keeping a tiger is not something most ordinary folk would do but in Hollywood as they say, anything goes. Don’t forget Dean Martin and his pet bear! Anyway I would sometimes have to give Bakana a little bop on the nose from time to time when she got slightly rowdy, hissed and showed her fangs. As part of this taming process, I posted a photo of myself inside her cage and left one of my old shirts in a corner – I hoped to get her used to my face and smell. But I returned one day to find the photo eaten and the shirt in shreds, so we had to work a bit harder at our relationship. Thankfully, by the time ‘Victory’ began, she was impeccably behaved and took to touring like a duck to water.

  We often had to take different floors at hotels because there were only so many suites per floor. Occasionally, due to a limited number of suites, we stayed in different hotels. The days of sharing rooms were over, but there was still an open-door policy between us and we each had our own assigned security. Michael loved the thrill of us sneaking my tiger through hotel kitchens – entering via back routes as always – after she had travelled to each destination via the crew bus. On arrival in each city, we just threw a blanket over her cage and pretended it was musical equipment. Then, once in the suite, we’d do what we’d always done and blow up the phones of room service, ordering ice-cream, fries, fruit … and lots and lots of raw meat for Bakana. ‘What are you doing up there? Barbecuing?’ asked the always-agreeable voice in the kitchens.

  ‘Yeah, we’re throwing some meat on the grill on the balcony,’ I’d say, as Michael muffled his laughter. Room service staff always seemed to accept our story that we took a travelling barbecue wherever we went. ‘So much hotel food, we just like cooking it ourselves,’ I said.

  Bakana loved the five-star cuisine, even if the wardrobe department didn’t love Bakana. It was usual for a rolling rack of outfits to be wheeled into our rooms each day, but I’d always find my clothes hanging outside on the door knob and the door frame. As Bill Bray said, ‘There ain’t nobody going in Jermaine’s room when that joker’s got a tiger in there!’

  Michael helped nurture Bakana on the road and was as unafraid as the other brothers when he fed her meat and gave her a bottle of milk. When we came offstage, all pumped and unable to sleep, there was no better release than wrestling with a growing tiger on the carpet. But, eventually, just as with Bubbles, she became fully grown and the decision was taken to release her into a national park in Oregon. For many years, there was a tiger running wild out there with as many fond memories of the ‘Victory’ Tour as we had.

  MICHAEL DIDN’T NEED PETS AS COMPANIONS because he had his two extra guests in tow: his ever-present shadows from the Kingdom Hall. Following through from the ‘Thriller’ video, ‘Victory’ allowed me to see first hand the set-up of having two independent Jehovah’s Witnesses travelling with him city to city. This pair – a man and a woman, both nice enough people – were always immaculately turned out and hovered without saying too much. They were just a … presence. I’d like to say that they faded inconspicuously into the background but it’s hard to ignore people whose role you know is to ‘monitor’ everything. I started wondering what their thoughts were about Randy slaying alien-like Cretons at the start of each concert. Nothing was said, so I presumed Jehovah only had a problem with the occult, not encounters of the third kind.

  At first, Michael seemed okay with this arrangement because the monitors were presumably as good as having God’s eyes watching over him. But if there was one overwhelming characteristic of my brother, it was his need for space – especially creative space. It was as essential to him as food and water. Place him in a straitjacket of discipline in any way and he was always going to rebel. I had never known someone so self-disciplined and yet he struggled to tolerate being disciplined by others. So it was never going to end well when he had to think inside the box when his instinct was to think outside it.

  Michael started to make his point at the very start of ‘Victory’. We rode together as brothers en route to stadiums, but didn’t always share the same vehicle at other times because the elders took up two seats alongside Michael. Often, there was also Frank Dileo and photographer Harrison Funk. Growing entourages meant that it wasn’t always possible to travel together. But the following story was a funny memory of Michael’s that Harrison – whose friendship and lens was trusted to roam freely with him for many years – has assisted with.

  Their van had stopped at a set of traffic lights in Kansas City when Michael spotted three hookers on the street corner, with one wearing sequined hot pants. Michael’s eye couldn’t help but wander. ‘Oh my goodness, hurt me!’ he said, playfully – Jackson-speak for ‘Oh wow, she’s looking hot’. Then, just as the lights were about to change, he stuck his gloved hand out of the window and waved. Three hookers did a double-take, wondering if that was … just maybe … it can’t be … Michael Jackson. Just to make sure that they were certain, Michael opened the van door a little and, looking back as the van began to move away, he showed his face, chuckled, and then slammed the door tight. He twisted around in his seat to watch three hookers jumping up and down with excitement. I don’t know what the two Jehovah’s Witnesses made of this interaction but it made Michael’s day and made one thing clear: he wasn’t always going to be squeaky-clean.

  The ‘monitors’ would stay in place for three more years. But then, in 1987, each side’s tolerance of the situation mutually expired when he shot the video for ‘Smooth Criminal’. Ironically, the inspiration behind this hit would have been enough for the Kingdom Hall to get stirred up again, but they never found out because Michael kept that inspiration hidden, for understandable reasons. The video had an Al Capone-style feel, but ‘Smooth Criminal’ was actually inspired by a serial killer who spread fear throughout Los Angeles and San Francisco between 1984 and 1985. Richard Ramirez, a self-confessed devil worshipper, was the ‘Night Stalker’ who took 14 lives. In most cases, he forced his way into people’s homes before brutally murdering them with a knife (hence the appearance of a flashing blade in the video). As Michael’s first verse described:

  As he came into the window

  It was the sound of a crescendo

  He came into her apartment

  He left the bloodstains on the carpet

/>   She ran underneath the table

  He could see she was unable

  So she ran into the bedroom

  She was struck down, it was her doom …

  There were two reasons not to reveal this inspiration at the time: first, so that the media didn’t accuse him of glorifying such a heinous crime; and second, he didn’t want the elders to know that a worshipper of the occult partly ‘inspired’ this song. But if he thought he had been clever in swerving trouble, he was mistaken because, in the end, the elders found something else to be upset about. During the music video, there was a scene where Michael sprayed an underground bar with bullets, using a machine-gun. It was a real firearm, and one that he’d been trained to use by ammunition experts on set. It was fun, harmless and necessary for the story-line. But no Jehovah’s Witness is allowed to hold or possess a firearm, let alone use one. The official rebuke from the Kingdom Hall was harsh. It asked Michael to consider where his priorities lay: as a Jehovah’s Witness or as an artist. As distraught as my brother was by this implied choice, it was the final straw: what church asks you to reconsider the very gift that God gave you? Michael had been the perfect ‘disciple’, going door to door in Encino, but that seemed to count for nothing when his creativity was up against the rule book.

  That same week, before the ‘Smooth Criminal’ video was even wrapped, Michael wrote to the Kingdom Hall disassociating himself from the Jehovah’s Witnesses and specifically asking not to be recognised as a baptised Witness. I know it broke his heart because he was severing such a long-standing tie, but he felt he had been placed in an impossible position. It devastated Mother, too, but she made it clear that he was her son and she supported his decision because she understood his need for artistic freedom. The matter was never discussed again. Jehovah’s Witnesses don’t discuss with the disassociated or the de-fellowshipped their reasons for leaving and that seemed to suit everyone.

  MICHAEL’S SENSE OF HUMOUR NEVER MATURED and I suspect that anyone who ever spent time with him will confirm that he was still playing hide and seek, and still acting chief prankster beyond the age of 40. Bill Bray remained a merciless target for his jokes and his new manager Frank Dileo wasn’t spared either. Michael would toss a bunch of his 100-dollar bills out of the hotel window for fans or dump a bundle of cash in the bath and turn on the taps. Only one thing could have been worse to Frank and that was wetting one of his big fat cigars.

  Being back on the road meant we could revert to being ourselves and the fun we had was silly, infantile but fun. Michael, Marlon and I dropped water bombs from hotel windows high above a table of suited businessmen having an al fresco lunch, knowing the water would turn into a mist of ‘rain’ halfway down. We then drenched each other in water-pistol fights. Placed eggs in people’s shoes. And Michael held a toilet roll and let it unravel from the balcony. Tour boredom didn’t get any easier as we got older so we spent a lot of time goofing off, making our own entertainment and no doubt retaining the title of Best Behaved Group in the History of Music. I think we made the Osmonds look devilish by comparison.

  The post-concert food fights were always the best. Michael would be standing and talking, looking all serious with Frank Dileo and someone else from the tour, and I’d be watching. With Michael’s back to me, I’d hurl a handful of peanuts or almonds, peppering them. You could always tell when innocent bystanders on the crew weren’t used to our historic bombardments because they’d hold their arms and hands to their faces, asking us to stop. Responsible adults being bombed by the ‘kids’. Michael would crack up laughing. ‘ERMS! You’re going to get it now!’ he’d shout. Before you knew it, all the brothers were at it, unleashing tracer fire of a thousand M&Ms. When they ran out, we’d throw pieces of banana, shrimp, berries and cake, re-enacting our favourite scenes from The Three Stooges.

  Harrison Funk captured most of this fun on camera and we had to get used to him walking into our dressing room without knocking as he started blasting away with his flashgun. As a trusted member of the team, he had carte blanche to take photos whenever he liked. Unguarded. In private. Then, one day, Michael asked him to put his cameras down and take a break. Harrison thought this a very nice gesture – an artist recognising the hard-working photographer. Then, as he stood there picking at the fruit plate, Michael came up from behind him and poured an ice bucket full of shrimp cocktail over his head. Welcome to the family.

  AS VICTORY PASSED THROUGH JACKSONVILLE, FLORIDA, Bill Bray had taken a decision not to tell us about the numerous death threats the team had been receiving. Especially the one from a worrying individual named James Huberty. Every tour and group gets its share of crazies and we knew that; we just didn’t need the distraction of a reminder.

  But two weeks into the tour all that changed. We knew nothing of what was going down until we were resting up in our individual suites. I was alone in my room, kicking back on the bed, when there was a fierce knocking on the door. I sprang up and Bill rushed in with a fire marshal, uniformed officers and sniffer dogs. Lucky for them that Bakana was in her cage. These guys were ‘clearing’ each room, said Bill, as he tried to explain what was going on. Just a precaution, he said. But it was the most frantic precaution I’d ever seen. Once the all-clear had been given, it was explained that there had been a shooting at a McDonald’s restaurant in San Diego. A man had walked in and gone mad with an Uzi, shooting dead 22 people and injuring 19. ‘What’s a shooting in San Diego got us panicking for in Florida?’ I asked.

  ‘Because the shooter was James Huberty – the same guy who’s been threatening you jokers,’ said Bill. Even though he had been killed in the shootout, no one was taking any chances after he had hinted at a little surprise for the Jacksons while on the road. At least, it was something sinister like that. Understandably, everyone was freaking out as the San Diego incident played itself out on television.

  If the room search seemed a little over the top, it was nothing compared to the increased security. The atmosphere of the next few days was one of lockdown just in case the shooter hadn’t acted alone. We transferred out of the tour vans and into one of those armoured bank vans, steel-encased with no windows and certainly no leather. So the seats normally reserved for bags of money now had our costumed asses parked on them. Once we were clear of Jacksonville, we thought the red alert was behind us, but then we moved on to Knoxville, Tennessee, where the local newspaper had received a threat, predicting that one of us would be shot during the concert. We were again spared the details, but we found ourselves back inside the armoured van. There was talk of cancelling the Knoxville dates – but there was no way we were letting down the fans. We took advice from the head of the police unit, Lieutenant Vitatoa, and we had outriders wherever we went.

  With increased security, both around us and at the stadium gates, we couldn’t have felt more over-protected – especially when we were bumping around in the back of the windowless bank van on the way to Neyland Stadium. As we rumbled along, we got talking about how serious this all was and then one of us – can’t remember who – said, ‘What are we going to do if he [a shooter] is out there?’ Before we even arrived at the venue, we had convinced ourselves that one person out of the 48,000 fans was out to get us. We started laughing. Nervously.

  ‘Hey, Michael, you’re up front! You’re the biggest target!’ said Randy.

  ‘Yeah, Mike,’ said Marlon, ‘what are you going to do?’

  Michael looked at us like we were dummies. ‘I’m going to keep moving! I’m going to move so much and so fast that he’ll have a hard time getting me …’

  That was true. It would be hard to train crosshairs on a bolt of lightning.

  ‘Why should I be worried?’ he continued. ‘I’m not the one tied to the spot with my guitar.’

  I looked at Tito, and Tito looked at me. Michael suddenly seemed to have the safest position on stage. That’s what I’ve always said about the bass and guitar players – we’re the unsung heroes.

  THANKFULLY, IT WASN’T ALWAY
S ARMOURED CARS and ass-bruising seats. We had some cool experiences. It was a lavish, no-expense-spared tour, from the lasers and special effects onstage to the spoiling treatment off it. The size of the operation meant that Michael always flew in his own private plane with his team and we flew in a separate one with some of the band. Sometimes, I commandeered the fleet of seven private jets that belonged to my friend Meshulam Riklis because I was collaborating with his wife Pia Zadora – he was the most generous man on earth. All in all, ‘Victory’ was what a tour should be: rewarding, crazy, exhilarating, spectacular and full of memorable performances.

  In New York, the scenes were incredible. We were told the city had 1,000 police set aside for crowd control, which best illustrates the scale of what we found ourselves in the middle of. Tour co-ordinators told us that they sealed off Midtown on the west side when we played Madison Square Garden, which is one to tell the kids and the grandkids. A few days earlier, we had played the Giants Stadium in New Jersey and had decided to arrive in style, by Chinook helicopter. Michael and I were not the most relaxed air passengers at the best of times and there was limited seating capacity, but everyone ignored that and piled in. We had the managers, security, makeup, and Michael’s guest Julian Lennon who, contrary to what’s been reported, was accepted warmly into the camp without a fuss. An extra kid aboard was the least of my concerns. All I was thinking as we stood on the helipad was, We don’t have to cram in like sardines. The pilot can come back in 20 minutes for a second group – otherwise we’re going to be swallowing the Hudson River. But, no, everyone wanted to travel together.

  Remarkably, Michael was the calmest, but as that helicopter started to take off and swing, I was convinced its alarm would sound with an electronic voice that would echo what was running through my mind: ‘Too much weight! Too much weight! Abort! Abort!’ It dipped and swayed, and I wasn’t happy. ‘There’s too many of us in this thing,’ I said.