You Are Not Alone_Michael, Through a Brother’s Eyes

  ‘Calm down, Erms, we’re flying in style,’ said Michael, laughing at me.

  How things had changed since Mobile, Alabama. It was evening, heading into dusk, and I painted headlines in the pink sky: ‘JACKSONS WIPED OUT IN HELICOPTER TRAGEDY’. And then we flew over the Giants stadium, skimming its noise. We looked down into this bowl crammed with people waiting to see us and saw every one of those minnows looking skyward and cheering. They knew it was our helicopter, presumably because it had been announced. We landed about two blocks away before jumping into limos. I think that that night we gave one of our best performances, which goes to show that there’s nothing like a bit of fear to get you pumped up before a show!

  I was always happiest riding to a venue when the tyres remained in contact with the ground. The pre-concert atmosphere in the van was always the same: going over last-minute reminders about this turn and that cue. But all Michael could talk about was the segment where he got to show off his love of magic. In a scene he’d dreamed up under the guidance of tour illusions master Franz Harary, one of my brother’s two giant spiders crawled electronically onstage to eat him, trapping him under its legs. Michael played dead. He was lifted on to a table covered with a bed-sheet. When Randy pulled that sheet away, he had vanished into thin air. If there was one element of the show Michael wanted to get just right, it was this moment. En route to the stadiums, he’d be running it through with Randy, who was struggling in his role as magician’s assistant. ‘Give it a beat … wait a little more until you pull the sheet away,’ said Michael. ‘You’re doing it too soon, and the audience is figuring out the trick!’ Randy kept pulling the sheet too hard, too soon. Sometimes, you could still see Michael rising into the air, attached to wires and cables. We’d be back there, laughing, and Michael would be getting so frustrated. I’m pleased to report that Randy eventually nailed it, proving that magic is just as much about timing as music is.

  Those rides to the stadium reminded me of the times we’d squeezed into Joseph’s VW van back in the day. Our routine and mind-set had not altered over the years. We still plotted and planned and laughed. There was only one thing missing from the flashback: our old driver Jack Richardson. Those cigarettes had taken their toll and he had died of lung cancer. We missed him badly, from the van and from our lives. 1984 was a tough year in that respect because we also lost an idol in Jackie Wilson and a dear friend in Marvin Gaye, shot by his father during a drunken dispute. We wept for all three of them and dedicated the tour to their memories, because each had been an important influence on our lives. ‘Victory’ was a reunion in which we toasted absent friends.

  A NEW FRIEND WHO STARTED HANGING out with us in New York was Madonna, whose star was rising somewhere between her first single ‘Holiday’ and her movie, Desperately Seeking Susan. Dressed in all black with a proud cleavage, navel-baring cropped top and wild, scrunchy hair, she seemed to be a constant presence backstage at Madison Square Garden and the Helmsley Palace – Michael’s favourite hotel in New York. At first, she actually came across as shy. She seemed like more of a VIP fan than a fellow artist as she moved between rooms at the hotel, being social, spending most of her time with Michael and Randy. It was certainly a productive networking time for her. Not only did she end up being managed by the Jacksons’ management, Weisner and De Mann, she would recruit our keyboard player, Pat Leonard, as her musical director, and our drummer Jonathan Moffett for her ‘Virgin’ Tour.

  In later years, it would also become obvious how much Michael inspired her artistically: his signature crotch-grabbing dance was all over her ‘Express Yourself’ video, and take a listen to ‘Material World’. That beat, that bass line? In my opinion, that’s ‘Can You Feel It’ right there. I always sensed that Madonna was hovering with intent, looking to get some action from somebody, but Michael was indifferent to her back in 1984, which was probably why she turned first to Randy. The obstacle with him was overcoming the girlfriend who was not only with him but on his arm. Short of walking around with a sign saying, ‘I’m taken’, the situation couldn’t have been clearer. But we soon learned that very little deterred Madonna. Ignoring his girlfriend, she walked up to Randy, grabbed his face and stuck her tongue down his throat.

  You would have thought that kind of directness would be enough to put off someone as delicate as Michael when it came to future dating prospects but, come 1991, he and Madonna ‘dated’ for the shortest time. Out of all the combinations Hollywood could throw together, this was probably its most ill-matched. As Michael soon found out.

  Here was a gentle man in touch with his feminine side, and here was a wild woman with a tight grip on her masculine side. She was everything his ideal woman wasn’t: brazen, outspoken, opinionated and with an unashamed shock value. I think Madonna sincerely adored Michael but the feeling wasn’t mutual and she committed two cardinal sins. The first was that she played on the fears he had about relationships: that every woman tries to change a man. It seemed she was hell-bent on loosening him up, bringing him out of his shell, getting him to see life through her eyes. The second big mistake was when they were at dinner one night and she had the temerity to criticise Janet. Michael was furious and, not surprisingly, they never went on another date.

  Shortly afterwards, he started a more suitable courtship with an old friend, actress Brooke Shields. She was demure, elegant and the epitome of beauty and grace. Brooke had been in his life since the mid-eighties and Michael was extremely fond of her. I know she spent time with him in the studio as he worked in 1991–2, and this was a time they were seriously dating. Even though it ultimately didn’t go anywhere, they remained lifelong friends and Michael always felt able to reach out to her. That line of communication never closed until the day he died.

  VICTORY’S SCHEDULING MEANT WE WEREN’T SOLIDLY on the road for five months. We had periods back home and we had off-days built in, which gave me time to continue my collaboration with Whitney Houston on her début album. Clive Davis was still building the hype about his protégée, throwing parties on both coasts and clearly wanting to ride this collaboration on the crest of the brothers’ tour. There was always some club to attend, like the Limelight in New York, or a promotional party in LA, where Whitney and I made our well-choreographed entrances. I didn’t know at the time, but someone from Arista was always nudging the writing elbows of gossip columnists in the hope of building an are-they-or-aren’t-they mystery. But it seemed the press was more interested in the fact that Whitney spent a lot of time with a woman named Robyn Crawford. Whitney once described their friendship as being ‘closer than sisters’ – and that was all journalists needed to read between the lines. They were curious about her sexual orientation before her album was even released.

  Having witnessed this kind of false diversion play itself out in Michael’s life, I had every sympathy, but we also laughed about it in the studio because, trust me, if you had spent more than two minutes in the charged energy of the ‘Whitney whirlpool’, you didn’t need to ask how that fire smouldered.

  I knew I was in trouble in the face of that fire when Clive booked us on to the CBS soap opera As The World Turns to test our duet ‘Nobody Loves Me Like You Do’ for the wedding scene of Betsy (Meg Ryan) and Steve (Frank Runyeon). I remember when she held my hand mid-song as the cameras rolled – an unrehearsed moment – and something hit me. The frisson just kept developing the more we worked together.

  Back in the studio, we recorded and produced songs like ‘Take Good Care Of My Heart’, ‘If You Say My Eyes Are Beautiful’, ‘Sweetest Sweetest’ and two unreleased ones called ‘Don’t Look Any Further’ and ‘Someone For Me’. With each session, we were in each other’s eyes, almost cheek to cheek around the mic, selling the lyric, feeling the song – and that intense professional chemistry crossed over. Come the end of a powerful rendition, Whitney would just stay close to the mic, close to me, and say, ‘What are you going to do with me, Jackson?’ She held the seductive gaze. I lost my words. Then she walked away.
r />   These were turning into duets between temptation and forbidden love, and the studio sessions gave us what felt like stolen time together. I arrived on those days with butterflies, because the whole experience of being around Whitney was intoxicating. I admitted silently to myself that I had the strongest feelings for a remarkable woman, whose heart was as beautiful as her face, and it became increasingly hard to sing love songs with all that emotion and unspoken passion between us. I spoke to no one about this until the day Michael raised an innocent enough question: ‘So how’s it going with Whitney?’ He’d heard me predict that ‘She is going to be the biggest thing when people hear her voice.’

  ‘We’re getting along very well,’ I told him, smiling.

  ‘You like her?’ he asked.

  ‘Yeah, I like her.’ Still smiling.

  ‘Oh, you really like her!’ He started chuckling.

  ‘I really like her,’ I said. Smile now gone.

  Michael got excitable. ‘You in love with her?’

  ‘I can’t be in love,’ I said. ‘I’m married.’ That was a deliberate lie. I was caught between the guilt of saying it out loud and the respect for his position because he was, at this time, still a devout Jehovah’s Witness. I guess I didn’t want to be a disappointment to him having for so long been an example. I can’t remember what his exact words were in the back and forth that we had, but for a man with limited experience of this kind of thing, he had the wisdom of a sage. He didn’t fuel the temptation as some guys would. He reminded me about Hazel. About family. About not getting wrapped up in the moment. He gave the soundest advice, and I knew that doing ‘the right thing’ was ultimately what I had to do.

  Clive Davis was a true friend, too. ‘How are you and Whitney going? Things good, Jermaine?’ he’d ask. He always knew more than he let on and always said his door was open, before giving me a big hug followed by a pinch of the cheek. Whitney and I spoke endlessly about our shared predicament and as much as I wanted to lose myself in all these feelings, I told her to wait. I spoke of ‘one day’ and ‘maybe’. Ultimately, we had to go our separate ways and it killed us both even if it was the right and sensible option.

  I don’t think anyone punched the air harder than I when the album Whitney became the biggest début album ever, selling 16 million copies worldwide after its release in 1985. Two years later, her follow-up album turned her into the first female artist to have an album début at No. 1. We didn’t see each other for years after we finished recording. In fact, she saw more of Michael than of me: backstage at one of his concerts in New York, and then again in 1988 when she was onstage with Quincy Jones to help present Michael with an honorary doctorate in humanities from Fisk University. I saw newspaper photographs of them together in this moment and I observed the irony of them side by side.

  In 1985, I received a phone call from someone close to Whitney, telling me that she was releasing her new single ‘Saving All My Love For You’. Like Michael, she expressed herself through song. And when I watched the official music video, I soon realised that it was also autobiographical with its parallels – and coded message – to what we had recently shared in the studio together. I guess we had both left a deep and abiding impression on one another and her positive impact has never left me.

  WE ENDED THE TOUR VICTORIOUS AT the Dodgers Stadium, LA. Seven nights of back-to-back sell-outs. We had played to a total of two million fans across America – a long way from 30 or 40 people at Mr Lucky’s. I remember those final dates for the rain that lashed down, soaking the fans. And yet they still had a good time and danced, like most Californians tend to do when the heavens rarely open. If there was one thing the brothers were certain of, it was that we had made an impact with our reunion, and Europe would have heard about the excitement we had caused. We couldn’t wait to take Victory across the Atlantic and retrace our steps from the good old days.

  Our American ride finished on the evening of 9 December 1984 and we went through a range of emotions. Tito’s prediction was right: it was the tour we never wanted to end. But I looked forward to the as yet unplanned European leg. As we reached the show’s climax and the crowds cheered, Michael took the mic. We thought he was going to speak for us all. He didn’t. He spoke for himself. ‘This is our last and final show. It’s been a long 20 years and we love you all …’ He hadn’t prepared us for that one. I initially thought he was referring to the last and final show on American soil. I’m pretty sure this was how the other brothers felt, too. Maybe it was our continued wishful thinking, but there it was: finality.

  What’s absolutely not true is that we said to each other things like ‘the little prick’ or ‘what a creep’, as was reported because (a) that’s not how we speak at all and (b) that’s not how we viewed it, even when we realised Michael had announced his detachment from the Jacksons. It was actually not something we addressed or confronted with him. As was typical between us. Anyway, Michael had explained to Mother that, ‘This is something that I just need to do alone,’ so we had to accept it – and who were we to hold him back? I’m not going to pretend it didn’t hurt because it did: it hurt deeply. But not once did we ever criticise or blame Michael because we knew he loved us and this was an artistic decision. If there is one thing to understand about our family, it is the pride we have in one another. However hard someone’s decision might be, family trumps everything. Brothers first. Artists second. But I believe the outside world has struggled to understand that thinking because it has only known us as artists, and we just happened to be brothers.

  On reflection, Michael wasn’t just detaching from the Jacksons as a group, he was also disentangling himself from the messy politics. I knew he couldn’t tolerate another round of all that. When you are a giant talent, why put up with it? We had wanted to ride with him, but what we carried with us was too much of a weight, I think.

  So, with that one decision, a single branch was removed from our tightly-bound bundle. Separated. Weaker. Breakable. Not as an artist – because his career would go from strength to strength – but as a brother, as a person. Michael was riding high within a never-ending glory and, for as long as the good times rolled and the success brought in untold wealth, everyone wanted to hang on to his magic carpet ride, now that the excess baggage had been removed.

  IF THERE WAS ONE THING I always prided myself on, it was the ability to spot my brother from 1,000 yards. Even when in disguise, like that day when he was taking a break from the ‘Ghosts’ video. His eyes and aura were unmistakable. He could never fool me. I knew it. Michael knew it.

  For most of 1985, we had only seen one another intermittently because we both returned to the studio to concentrate on solo projects. He started his pursuit of topping Thriller by working on his follow-up album, Bad, and I began work on my second Arista album, Precious Moments. By the time the spring of 1986 rolled along, Michael was still cutting tracks but my album was out and included my duet with Whitney ‘If You Say My Eyes Are Beautiful’ and a song that would become a Top 20 hit in the US, ‘I Think It’s Love’.

  I then kicked off the ‘Precious Moments’ Tour with dates around America, which eventually brought me home to the Universal amphitheatre in LA some time that May. In the back of my mind, I’d always hoped Michael would come to see me, just like the rest of the family, but I had accepted that he was consumed with Bad. At least, that was the impression he gave. What I didn’t know was how much he wanted to attend the gig as a surprise, but hadn’t wanted to cause a fuss in the crowd. ‘It’s Jermaine’s night, not mine,’ he told Harrison Funk. Michael couldn’t so much as step outside without causing a mob scene, let alone attend a concert with a few thousand people.

  I was in my dressing room backstage, in costume, with my daughter Autumn and son Jermaine Junior, hovering near the door where my Israeli security guy stood guard. And then I saw Harrison in the frame, with a battery of cameras slung around his neck, accompanied by Kevin Wilson, the son of comedian Flip Wilson, whose shows we had always done as the Ja
ckson 5. I allowed Kevin and his buddy Marcus to open the show with a comedy act and they had people with them backstage.

  ‘And this is Uncle Willy,’ said Harrison, introducing a fan, a pasty-looking white man, aged in his forties, wearing a hat and looking a bit long in the face. I wasn’t really paying attention because show time was approaching, but I shook this guy’s hand and thanked him for coming.

  ‘I’m a huge fan of your music,’ he said.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said – and everyone burst out laughing. So hysterically that I looked behind me to see if anyone was pulling a prank. But there was nothing.

  ‘Jermaine,’ said Harrison, ‘it’s Michael … Uncle Willy is Michael!’

  I looked hard at ‘Uncle Willy’ and even though his face was dead-pan, his eyes were laughing. ‘Oh, no, no, no, no, NO!’ I screamed. The disguise was so incredible that I’m pretty sure Michael looked at himself in the mirror that night and wondered who the hell was staring back. I’ve included a photo in this book to show you just how unbelievably unrecognisable he was. During the ‘Bad’ Tour, it was this disguise, along with others, that allowed him to mingle and sight-see among the crowds in places like Vienna and Barcelona.

  Not only had he succeeded in fooling me, he’d made my night by turning up to watch the concert. As I took to the stage, now feeling on top of the world, I knew that out there in the crowd somewhere, together with Janet and La Toya, ‘Uncle Willy’ was blending in, unnoticed. He was sitting among people who, for one night only, shared a row with Michael Jackson and didn’t even realise it.

  MICHAEL’S DISGUISES WERE HIS ONLY CHANCE to become fleetingly anonymous. He worried now that his fame might lead to him being assassinated, like John Lennon.