But what visitors probably missed as they first stepped inside that foyer was the big wooden door immediately to the right. It could almost have been dismissed as a tiny restroom, but this was the entrance to a long narrow hallway running along the front of the property before it turned left and led to Michael’s quarters. Inside, there was a living room, bathroom, pinball machines and stairs to a bedroom. He also had a second bedroom – a master suite – upstairs in the main house, reached by the varnished staircase that climbed out of the foyer. Everything about the house was grand.
I stood on the stairs, on my first visit, taking it all in, and remembered the boy who had wandered around awestruck inside Mr Gordy’s Boston House. Did you dream this back then? Is this what you were always shooting for? I found one element of the answer downstairs in the country-style living room. There were huge self-portraits of Michael. One was of him being crowned, looking regal, another of him in military dress, decorated with medals and epaulettes, looking commanding. I had a flashback to Mr Gordy’s Napoleonic self-portrait and smiled.
Neverland was regal in its slick operation. It had its own small army of about 60 staff with seven or eight chefs in the kitchens, a housekeeping department, a team of attendants at the theme park, a crew of animal handlers for the zoo, and a host of gardeners and security. Michael even had his own health and safety officer, a fire department and fire truck, manned by two full-time fire-fighters.
I knew instantly why the house and its solitude appealed to Michael: it was the size of a planet compared to Hayvenhurst. Instead of having a limited suburban garden and being fenced in by a main road, he had acres to roam and the horizon was his boundary. He could leave his front door, go on a long walk and then take a morning drive in a golf cart. Neverland was as much about freedom as it was escapism. To place its vastness in context, the developed part of the ranch – including zoo, theme park and all buildings – probably covered something like 50 acres but that still left another 2,650. Michael would climb into his 4x4 truck and get lost in its beauty. When he drove away from the developed land, he could take numerous dirt roads, arrive in other valleys and still be on his land. It was almost cowboy country in those parts – all oak trees, twigs, tumbleweed and brush – and you half-expected a convoy of wagon trains to appear, with land-grabbers on horseback to hammer their flags into the ground, vowing no one would take away their dream to own a corner of the world.
FROM THE OUTSIDE, NEVERLAND DIDN’T LOOK much. Even when the brown gates slowly opened, you felt as though you were driving into a rambling game park, not a home. There was a private road with nothing but trees and fields for about half a mile. Then the first thing that came into view was Michael’s double-decker Neoplan motor-home, a jumbo bus parked and covered in its own court-yard on the left, waiting to be taken out on tour or to a video shoot. It was fitted out like the finest condo, with flat-screen TVs, sumptuous bed and sofas, and a big bathroom. On the upper deck, it had cream aircraft seats with burgundy piping – the windows were so high that when the vehicle was on the road, Michael said it felt ‘like you were flying.’ Even his tour bus was an experience.
Then the visitor arrived at the main grand entrance to the house, which was familiar to me because the black-and-gold wrought-iron gates were from my old house in Brentwood. They were put in storage after my neighbours had complained, ‘Living next to you is like living next to a Saudi prince.’ When Michael was looking for an impressive set of gates, he knew exactly where to come. He added the golden replica of the United Kingdom’s coat of arms: the lion and the unicorn and the motto ‘Honi Soit Qui Mal Y Pense’ which, when translated, apparently means ‘Shame be to him who thinks evil of it’. He posted that motto long before the police and Martin Bashir passed beneath the black archway announcing ‘Neverland’ in gold, with Michael’s name set within a crown motif. Michael had a fascination with royalty, and he absolutely loved the pomp and ceremony of the British monarchy. The entrance summed up Neverland for me: very Hollywood in its extravagance yet very English in its inspiration.
Just inside the gates, on the left, a little shop-front displayed candy and several mannequins in costume depicting old Hollywood and the 1950s period, an ornamental museum-like welcome. A few feet further on, you came to the track for the small train that toured the estate’s circumference, taking passengers to the theme park and the zoo. Bubbles and the Hayvenhurst menagerie had been joined by giraffes, elephants, lions, tigers, alligators, wolves, an orang-utan, a camel and every kind of reptile and South American bird you can think of, each housed in its own pen or cage. Not forgetting the Clydesdale horses. In the distance, you could see the main house but, before arriving there, you crossed a double-arched stone bridge, two lanes wide and spanning the narrowest stretch of the lake, where there was a mini waterfall near the flamingos – they roamed the banks as underwater jets spouted huge towers of water.
It was instantly obvious that you were entering a child-centric haven. Signposts warned ‘Be Careful, Children Playing’ and there were bronze statues of happy children: a child with a flute, a group of children dancing as a circle linked by hand, a girl pulling a boy’s arm, a kid hanging upside down from a rail, and a child kneeling down, playing with a dog. Inside the house, Michael had paintings of children from all over the world, black and white, from east to west. And all around the property, all the time, there was piped music: soothing instrumental pieces, strong with flutes and harp, and children singing, from the speakers that Michael had camouflaged as rocks and boulders.
Visitors could never tire of the amenities because, away from the zoo, theme park and quad bikes, there was also a two-storey arcade with every conceivable game and simulated ride, plus a tennis court, basketball court and a full-sized movie theatre that would put most local cinemas to shame. You name the movie, Michael had it, from modern-day smashes to Hollywood classics. If Blockbuster didn’t have a movie in stock, my brother would. You stepped inside the theatre foyer, and the ceilings vaulted about 30 feet. On one side of the entrance there was a glass case housing a miniature animatronic version of Michael dancing to ‘Smooth Criminal’ and different buttons triggered different dance moves. There was also, of course, the biggest candy store, with yoghurt, ice-cream and popcorn on tap.
But the most incredible feature of the 50-seat theatre were the two rooms at the back of the screening room: one to the far left, one to the far right. Each had a window and a bed, oxygen tank and medical monitors. These were mini-hospital suites designed and installed with young cancer patients and terminally ill kids in mind. Unable to attend the theatre in the outside world, and too sick to sit in a chair, Michael wanted them to be able to lie in bed and enjoy the cinematic experience. Each child in each room had a bedside intercom that allowed them to speak with Michael, sitting just outside the window in one of the upper rows. Wheelchair ramps were built into every ride and facility because Neverland was designed not just with his own childhood in mind, but the childhood of others less fortunate. This was a side of Neverland that you never heard the media shout about, and whenever I heard the lie – from people whose knowledge was media-educated – that Neverland was some kind of predator’s lair to lure young children, I wanted to drag them here, into this theatre, into the inside of my brother’s heart, and make them see this truth about Michael’s humanitarian spirit.
THERE WERE MANY DOWNSIDES TO MICHAEL’S fame, but he recognised early on that it gave him a platform and the power to make a difference with his music, and messages of hope, love, basic humanity and Mother Earth. He recognised the unity in music and felt its galvanising force as the only universal medium that made everyone listen, speak the same language, and brought communion between every race, creed and culture. Michael was one of those rare artists whose music shook hands with the world and brought people together. He had the biggest heart and he truly wanted to help children, nurse, nurture and make them happy, especially the unloved, the less fortunate, the sick, the infirm and the dying. This was not
some trite, trendy mission statement on behalf of a pop star, it was a purpose that he lived and breathed, dedicating vast amounts of time to many causes and donating hundreds of millions of dollars to numerous charities.
Neverland’s privacy meant that no one witnessed the busloads of charity groups and terminally ill children who, month after month, visited Neverland as invited guests. Like the 200 deprived children from the St Vincent Institute for the Handicapped, or those kids from the Big Brother, Big Sister organisation. Michael never publicised these visits because he’d only have been accused of a publicity stunt. So let me remind everyone that in the millennium issue of The Guinness Book of Records, Michael was named as the pop star who gave to and supported the most charity organisations. It was the one record he never boasted about. Not that he needed a public pat on the back because the gratitude came via the thousands of letters from charity leaders and parents, who wrote to explain how a visit to or a weekend at Neverland had provided either a long-needed therapeutic day out for a sick son or daughter, or a dying child with happiness. The busloads of children and the army of grateful parents – who trusted what they saw and not what they read – are worth bearing in mind in the context of what came later.
I witnessed my brother’s sincere connection with kids when we visited hospitals in almost every city during the ‘Victory’ Tour. Throughout his career, he would build time into every schedule to visit children’s hospitals, cancer wards and orphanages around the world. In those privileged moments that I shared on such visits, I saw him using the craft God had given him to give something back. His interaction with a child was the most unquestionably pure thing to witness.
I guess you had to be there to see a dozen bald kids running around Neverland, temporarily forgetting their chemotherapy. But I saw what happened when he walked into a room at a hospital: a child’s sickness seemed to vanish for a moment as his or her face lit up and their eyes widened. I often saw parents and nurses crying at this breakthrough. I used to compare Michael’s impact to the joy that Santa Claus or Mickey Mouse caused when they walk into a room.
No one in our family was surprised by any of this because his empathy with children had always been an intrinsic part of him and Mother remembers him watching television and crying over some terrible event on the news. Central to this hyper-sensitivity was his religious upbringing and, as he always reminded us, ‘Jesus said to be like children, to love children, to be as pure as children, and … see the world through eyes of wonderment.’ He always believed that we ‘should give our hearts and minds to the little people we call son and daughter because the time we spend with them is the Sabbath. It is Paradise.’ This thinking – this mind-set – is essential to understanding how my brother approached and viewed his relationship with children.
When fans listen to his song ‘Speechless’ from his Invincible album, they are listening to that kind of wonder because he wrote it seated high in the branches of that oak tree at Neverland, while watching a boy and girl at play. That was because both girls and boys visited the ranch: I stress that because of the loaded myth that only ‘young boys’ were guests and that was never the case.
He couldn’t bear to witness suffering in children. Mother always tells the story of how she and Michael were at home watching the news in 1984 when the cameras focused on the famine in Ethiopia. Michael saw images of skeletal starving children, with flies clustered around their mouths, and just wept. That was the spark for his ‘We Are The World’ collaboration with Lionel Richie and a lifelong dedication to charity.
The story that best sums up my brother’s humanitarianism was when he heard about a gunman opening fire in a school playground in Stockton, Northern California, killing five children and wounding another 39. It was February 1989 when such incidents were not as common as they seem today and his devastation was overwhelming. His instinctive response was to rush to Cleveland Elementary School, but then he checked himself. ‘Will my presence help or hinder? I can’t sit here, but I don’t want to cause more problems.’ He was torn between the mayhem his fame could cause and his sincere wish to help.
In the end, after allowing three weeks to pass, he followed his instinct and flew up. As photographer Harrison Funk tells it, he wanted to make his visit as low-profile as possible and was sneaked into the school in a detective’s car. When he arrived, he walked into an assembly of children in a large classroom and gave a passionate talk about hope, comfort and God. Then he handed out toys and recordings of his song ‘Man In The Mirror’, which contains that lyric about making the world a better place. Afterwards, he visited a local church to spend time with parents of the victims. Remember, this was at a time when Michael was at the pinnacle of his career and yet – without having to and without prompting – he took time to reach out to a community recovering from a terrible tragedy. For me, the biggest cheer for that compassion came from eight-year-old Thahn Tran, who had lost his younger brother in the shooting. He spoke to a reporter of the strength my brother had given him: ‘I didn’t want to go back to school, but Michael made it all right again. If he goes there, it must be safe.’ Michael found this kind of response ‘more rewarding than anything I can get from a sold-out stadium or a No.1 hit’ because he knew he was doing good and not just entertaining. There are many similar stories about him the world over.
And this was the man whom the authorities would later want the world to believe had a perverted mind and was capable of harming children.
PRINCESS DIANA WAS A FELLOW HUMANITARIAN Michael had always admired and they finally got the chance to meet backstage at Michael’s Bad concert at London’s Wembley stadium in 1988. In my mind, they were fame’s kindred spirits: both hugely misunderstood, both ridiculed for heartfelt missions, both hounded by the paparazzi, and both reduced to wearing disguises to gain a little privacy.
From what I understood, Michael and Diana spoke on the phone irregularly between 1991 and 1994, and I know that more calls were placed from Kensington Palace to Neverland than vice versa. And they apparently shared one other trait: the ability to spend literally hours on the phone. It seemed that Princess Diana didn’t care for time differences and when she wanted to speak, she called, and Michael – who had never been the best of sleepers – was often wide awake. Once they got going, they could talk for hours. When I asked him what she was like, he said she was ‘a wise, sweet, sweet woman’, and she had told him that Prince William and Prince Harry loved playing his music loudly in her apartment. Given my brother’s admiration for anything royal, I’m sure he liked hearing that!
In 1995, Diana gave a BBC Television interview to Martin Bashir and it was seen as a PR coup, helping the world better understand her. Michael made a note of it: if she trusted Bashir, that was good enough for him.
ALMOST THREE YEARS BEFORE DIANA’S TELEVISION confessional, Michael gave his own broadcast interview to set the record straight via an up-and-coming host who, because of her unfamiliar face, had to introduce herself to the viewers: ‘Hello, I am Oprah Winfrey.’
Michael, who had since parted company with his manager Frank Dileo due to differences of opinion, wanted to speak out for the first time in 14 years because newspaper headlines were increasingly poisonous. ‘Wacko Jacko’ journalists were now making up headlines everywhere, but Oprah confirmed one lie when she searched Neverland high and low for a sleep-in oxygen chamber and admitted: ‘I could not find one anywhere …’
The bully mentality of the British tabloids – picking on his appearance, making fun of him – was particularly upsetting because it had the effect of denying Miachel’s humanity, making him a simple caricature to poke fun at. He decided on an at-home interview with Oprah that would go out live to remove any chance of clever editing. That willingness to leave himself wide open before a global audience indicated how sincere he was: there were no prima donna rules, question approval or conditions. Just give it your best shot. What you see is what you get. Watched by one hundred million viewers.
For me, the ??
?world exclusive interview with the most elusive superstar in the history of music’ turned out to be more of a career-changing triumph for Oprah than it was for Michael: it seemed to kick up more dust than it brought clarity. Although Michael never used the word ‘abuse’, this was the interview that would cast Joseph as abusive. It was also the occasion on which Michael publicly revealed that he suffered from vitiligo, which destroyed his dark skin pigmentation, answering speculation that he was bleaching his skin because ‘you don’t like being black’. I always felt that his honest answer was greeted with cynicism and led to more, not less, speculation about his skin. The truth is that Michael noticed a small white patch on his stomach around 1982, just as I had found a spot on one thigh. Where mine didn’t worsen, his spread. I had suspected something was going on as early as 1984 and ‘Victory’, because he started to cover up all the time.
It is not true that his vitiligo was the reason behind him wearing his sequined glove: that was an idea first suggested to him by Jackie. In fact, Michael only wore a glove or wore a white forearm cast to draw attention to his hand movements; his trousers stopped short to show the white socks that drew attention to his feet. He even wrapped his fingers with white tape so that when he performed, ‘the white follows the light’. Little details like this had artistic reasons in my brother’s mind and that was his genius.
But his daywear and show costumes on ‘Victory’ revealed as little skin as possible: round-neck vests, high-buttoned shirts, and sleeves that showed only a hint of wrist. I suspected something but really had no idea how serious his vitiligo was getting.