You Are Not Alone_Michael, Through a Brother’s Eyes

  Other than that we didn’t see much of Michael. He was the star of the show, producer, director, lights consultant and father, making sure everything was right and everyone was happy. He had a different dressing room from us and stayed in a different hotel – his usual haunt, the Helmsley Palace.

  Back at the Plaza Hotel where the rest of us were staying, I told myself we needed to keep doing this, maybe every two, three or five years. Every time I was back in that performance zone with the brothers, the click of pieces fitting together was loud and proud. It was that buzz and those possibilities that kept me awake that night.

  As my family slept, I stood at the hotel window looking out into the city that couldn’t sleep either. Madison Square Garden had felt so alive, New York City felt so alive, I felt so alive … There seemed so much euphoria in the air that night.

  THE NEXT MORNING I WAS LYING on my hotel bed when one of the brothers rang and told me to turn on the television. Like everyone else, I watched the events of 9/11 play out their horrible sequence. Being in Manhattan, cocooned in one of the city’s hotel rooms and feeling that flying bombs were everywhere, it didn’t feel so much like a terrorist attack, more an alien invasion. There was a sense of not knowing what was out there, how many there were in number, and when they’d strike next. And these were ‘beings’ that attacked us, not Muslims. True Muslims don’t abuse Islam like that, and they certainly don’t take down towers containing fellow Muslims. It was surreal watching the city being attacked and I never again want to feel such helplessness for myself, my family and the country. Also, we knew that Marlon was in the air. He’d left early that morning to head home to Atlanta. Later, we found out that his plane had been turned around and landed safely. Thankfully, none of us had had a clue that Michael was due at a meeting that morning at the top of one of the Twin Towers. We only discovered this when Mother phoned his hotel to check he was okay. She, Rebbie and a few others had left him there around 3am. ‘Mother, I’m okay, thanks to you,’ he told her. ‘You all kept me up talking so late that I overslept and missed my appointment.’

  We agreed to get ourselves back to California. But how? No flights were taking off, and although Janet was in LA and had booked two tour buses, she was told that they wouldn’t be allowed on to Manhattan., We were feeling marooned when Randy had a brainwave. He decided we should ‘hijack’ a bus. Seconds later, we were standing in the middle of the street and flagging down the first one that came along. It just so happened that the driver was also the owner of the bus company. We told him we needed two buses for the Jacksons. ‘Where you headed?’ he asked.

  ‘California,’ we said.

  ‘How much you paying?’

  I can’t remember the cash amount, but he and a second driver were hurridly loading our luggage before we changed our minds. Michael was making his own getaway plans, so with everyone else aboard, we crawled towards George Washington Bridge. I remember looking back at the island as we pulled away and seeing all that evil smoke hanging in the air. It was an impossible reality to comprehend, but all I needed to understand was that everyone was safe as we headed home, leg by leg, state by state.

  MICHAEL WAS DESPERATE TO DO SOMETHING for those who had suffered on 9/11 and he dug out an old song from his unreleased archive, ‘What More Can I Give?’, first written after the LA riots of 1992, as inspired by Rodney King, the black guy whose police beating triggered the unrest. For years, this song was called ‘Heal L.A.’ It was one of those songs with a universal message, which is why Michael resurrected it in the hope of raising millions of dollars for the victims’ families and survivors in New York. This was a mission that brought together the likes of Céline Dion, Gloria Estefan, Beyoncé, Mariah Carey and Usher. They, too, felt that the song’s message was powerful and timely, and Michael wanted to share it with the world. But Sony didn’t agree and the song wasn’t released: it received airplay, but it didn’t do what it should have. Creatively speaking, it was a crazy decision. Crazy to everyone but Michael, because he felt that tactical decisions were now being taken to hamper him commercially.

  Slowly but surely, as his working relationship with Sony’s new head Tommy Mottola unravelled, he started to open up about what was going on inside the empire where he was a partner. It would turn out the politics that snared his 9/11 song were just the start.

  Meanwhile, a family meeting was called at Hayvenhurst. An issue of family politics first needed to be dealt with.

  EVER SINCE THE THIRTIETH ANNIVERSARY SPECIAL, there had been whispered concerns about Michael’s welfare. Some in the family had intuitively picked up on certain things in New York and suspected he was struggling with his prescription-drug dependency again. I hadn’t noticed anything that worried me, but looking back, I saw how he’d kept his distance – a different hotel, different dressing room, spending little time with us, post-show or -rehearsal. Initially I had put that down to Michael being Michael, wanting his space. Then someone explained to me that Michael hadn’t wanted to be near us, and had made certain people around him promise not to tell his brothers or sisters how he was; from nanny to members of his entourage to management to guards. Suddenly, everything fell into place. I have learned that when someone is aware of their struggle, yet cannot get on top of it, the last people they need close to them are those who see through the social mask. Family is not an employed ‘yes-man’, or an adoring fan-base.

  When those kind of realisations started to dawn, the family decided to act on its suspicions and Michael’s siblings descended on Neverland in early 2002. I was out of town but Mother, Jackie, Tito, Randy, Janet, Rebbie and La Toya all headed north, with a doctor, ready to carry out an intervention. When they arrived, unexpected, the guards wouldn’t let them in so one of the brothers scaled the wall, jumped over and pressed the button to open the gates for the cars.

  As they reached the main house, they found nothing untoward. Michael was apparently heading for the pool with Prince and Paris, walking hand in hand – Nanny Grace took them away so everyone could talk with their father.

  The confrontation was emotional. Tito suspected something wasn’t right and pleaded with Michael for the truth – if anything was wrong, he stressed, Michael must reach out: the family was always there for him. Michael was reassuring and relaxed. He said everyone had got it wrong. He was fine; there was nothing wrong with him, he insisted. Even the doctor had to agree. So there was actually no intervention and everyone departed happier, if not 100 per cent reassured.

  We know that Michael would admit, in later lawsuits, that his judgement could have been impaired by the painkillers he’d been taking, so there was no doubt some concealment was going on, but it’s hard to get to the truth when someone hides behind distance and those serving them.

  We would also find out that the chief reason why Michael had once again fallen foul of a reliance on pain medication was because of an incident in 1999 that had left him in more pain than ever before. He was doing a half-hour set during some charity show in Munich, Germany, and was standing on a bridge that rose up on hydraulics as he performed ‘Earth Song’, taking him higher and higher above the stage as the song reached its crescendo. The bridge was supposed to lower slowly, returning him to the stage. Instead, the mechanics failed and the bridge just fell from its four-storey height with Michael gripping the rails, but still singing. In that instant, an engineeer hit the emergency stop button and that one action probably saved my brother’s life – it didn’t stop the fall, but it slowed the collapse to what one band member described as ‘fast slow motion’. Michael landed hard, hitting the concrete floor at parachute-landing speed.

  Everyone backstage and in the band feared the worst, thinking he was sure to have broken a few bones in such a crashing fall. Meanwhile, the audience cheered, thinking this was all part of the show. Amazingly, Michael got to his feet, clambered back on stage and finished the song. Those in the wings knew he was struggling but he refused to come off. In fact, after ‘Earth Song’, he performed ‘You Ar
e Not Alone’. Adrenalin was, it seemed, carrying him through. But as soon as he got offstage, he passed out and was rushed to hospital. When one of the band members later asked him why the hell he didn’t just come offstage, Michael told him: ‘Joseph always taught us that no matter what, the show must go on’ – a mind-set that would also become telling in June 2009.

  Miraculously, Michael had not broken any bones but he had seriously put his back out and this would cause him constant pain and suffering for the rest of his life, which was why Demerol brought him relief. I’m not sure my family knew of this backstory when it descended on Neverland, but what has frustrated me is that news of their non-intervention only broke after Michael’s death but was reported as ‘an intervention’. There is a big difference between an intended intervention and one that actually happens. More importantly, an event in 2002 – and the circumstances behind it – can have nothing to do with a sudden death in 2009, and I am confident this truth will be proved by justice and time.

  MICHAEL’S RELATIONSHIP WITH SONY HAD TURNED sour after he realised a few things about the contract he had signed, and it turned a harmonious relationship with Walter Yetnikoff into an acrimonious divorce from Tommy Mottola.

  First, after reading the small print, he found out that Sony retained the rights to his masters until 2009/2010 when he’d understood they reverted to him in 2000. Second, he discovered that the attorney who’d advised him had also advised Sony, leaving him to wonder if his interests had ever been best represented. He felt there was a clear conflict of interest that freed him to negotiate an early exit from the label, on one condition: he’d deliver one more album (Invincible), a greatest-hits compilation (later titled Michael Jackson Number Ones) and a box set. Michael resented these terms but he had to deliver if he was to be free, taking with him his 50 per cent stake in Sony-ATV Music Publishing – a move Sony hadn’t seen coming when it had merged interests back in the nineties.

  Sony’s new reality was that Michael was now the artist/partner in the uniquely powerful position of leaving the label as a free agent yet retaining influence in all matters Sony-ATV, rights, licences and profits. Michael’s confidence in his strategy showed when he took to the stage of a London club to bemoan the fact that companies take advantage of artists. He told fans pretty much what he had told the family: ‘I have generated several billion dollars for Sony … several billion … and they really thought that my mind is always on music and dancing, and it usually is, but they never thought that this performer would … out-think them. I’m leaving Sony a free agent, owning HALF of Sony … and they are very angry at me,’ he said, then added a gentle taunt to those listening in Hollywood: ‘I just did good business, you know.’

  Michael was setting out to show that the power rests with the artist who has the fan-base, not the label with the smart attorneys. He said to me later, ‘From that very moment, they needed me to fail and they wanted control of the catalogue.’

  INVINCIBLE WAS RELEASED IN OCTOBER 2001 and Michael felt Sony executives were only doing what they were contractually obliged to do. They didn’t go mad on music video budgets and didn’t release the album’s strongest songs, like ‘Speechless’ and his favourite album track, ‘Unbreakable’ – a song about his spirit and defiance: ‘It’s saying nothing and no one will stop me,’ he declared.

  Instead, Michael disagreed with Sony and felt they were putting out its weakest numbers. This doesn’t surprise me because there is a saying in the music industry, ‘Why fatten the frog for the snake?’, usually heard when a recording artist’s contract is about to expire, or he/she wants to leave. No label throws its promotional weight behind a want-away artist to big them up in the marketplace.

  But Michael felt it went deeper than that with Sony, especially after he’d heard from fans who couldn’t find the album in certain stores.’ He based that on information received in a phone call from someone he trusted. He felt strongly that everything was designed to back him into a financial corner: the less successful his albums, the less royalty income. The less he earned, the more reliant he’d be on his share of the Sony-ATV catalogue, which he’d already borrowed against to the tune of $200 million from Bank of America … guaranteed by Sony. And the more debt he had, the stronger the chance he’d be forced to sell his interest in the catalogue. At least, that was Michael’s thinking. But he also felt a subtle pressure because I know that someone had suggested to him – before 2003 – that he could solve all his money worries by selling his 50 per cent share. But to me that missed the math of his inbuilt equity: he had borrowed $200 million against a stake-holding worth $500 million. Plus at the start of the new millennium, he could still command $80–100 million per tour. In fact, this was the mathematical argument Michael used all the time to friends. He was confident that once he was released from Sony, he would be America’s greatest artist roaming free – and there was only one bottom line: he wasn’t letting go of his greatest asset.

  He wasn’t going to stay quiet either. Driven by his feeling of injustice, he took open double-deckers around London asking his fans to boycott Sony, holding up signs that said, ‘SONY KILLS MUSIC’. That demonstration told me how upset he was; that a man of such controlled emotion and discretion could take to a battle bus waving placards like a protestor proved to me how angry and cheated he felt. I wanted to punch the air and cheer because finally he’d found his voice and was stepping into confrontation; I admired him for not being brow-beaten by corporate muscle.

  Despite the weak promotion, Invincible still went to No. 1 in both the US and UK, but Michael was furious about its sales performance, believing that 13 million albums sold worldwide was not a reflection of the blood, sweat and tears he’d poured into its creation.

  IT WAS REPORTED SOMEWHERE THAT INVINCIBLE didn’t max out on sales because Michael didn’t want to take it on tour, but that was never true. An album tour was planned, designed, and he was ready and willing to go on the road in spring 2002, nationally and overseas. But then 9/11 happened, and it was cancelled at Michael’s request. I know this led to a bust-up over the phone with Tommy Mottola. Michael blamed him for not promoting his album, and Tommy blamed him for not doing the tour that would have promoted the album. I didn’t understand Sony’s argument because my brother was one of countless artists who cancelled tours that year, including our sister Janet; the mood at that time was not to travel within the heightened sense of alert. If American targets were at risk and those terrorists audacious enough to take down the Twin Towers, then a stadium filled with fans for America’s greatest entertainer could be hit, too. Michael took the decision not to put his fans or his tour staff in that position: it was common sense.

  Personally, I think that when Michael backed out of that tour in the September, Sony put the brakes on a full-on promotion in the October. It kept telling Michael that it had spent $24m on the album and needed an artist who was prepared to promote it. At one point, Michael attempted to win over the situation by playing politics with Tommy, seeking to appease him by inviting his wife, Thalia, to sing on the Spanish version of ‘What More Can I Give?’ I don’t know if that version was ever released in Latin-American territories, but if Michael had hoped it would increase the level of promotion for Invincible, he would have been disappointed. The big sadness was that if 9/11 hadn’t happened, the tour would have gone ahead, keeping him performing into the year 2004.

  Since 2009, there has been a lot of debate and misunderstanding about my brother’s appetite for the road because he made no secret of the fact that he didn’t like touring. It induced anxiety, insomnia and dehydration, and left him feeling miserable. His insomnia was the curse of live shows that left him filled with adrenalin. Other artists may empathise with this, but Michael suffered chronically. That was why, on most tours, he took a qualified anaesthetist with him. This choice had nothing to do with a prescription-drug dependency, and everything to do with the desperate need to sleep when on the road: he needed to be knocked out in order to rest. But with a
specialist alongside him – and his intake closely monitored. Michael also trusted that his physicians would monitor him at all times while he was under. While this may seem unorthodox, it was his coping mechanism when touring – a quick fix to a long-term problem that illustrated the downside to touring.

  On the other hand, a strong force willed him on to that stage. Getting out there, performing for his fans, immersed in his music, brought a euphoria that he struggled to resist. He’d talked about ‘no more touring’ since as far back as 1981 – and look how much he toured after that. Michael could turn to the person on his left and say, ‘I’m never going to tour again,’ then swivel around and say to the person on his right, ‘I’m going to tour again.’ He was born to entertain and was forever torn between what his head and soul said. Touring drained him but it exhilarated him, too. Once Invincible had been cancelled, it was inevitable that Michael would tour again but he would do it when the time was right, and on his terms.

  WHENEVER MICHAEL CHECKED INTO HIS HOTEL suite in any city, in any country around the world, hordes of fans waited in the street in all weathers to see which balcony he’d appear on, because they knew his routine: he’d always step out to wave and acknowledge them, and toss out a pillow with his autograph. Balconies were his stage, too.

  In 1988, he was staying at the beachfront Negresco Hotel in Nice, France, during the Bad tour and some sweltering August days; it was so hot that firefighters had to spray the fans with hoses at the concerts. On one ‘off night’, and with Michael restricted to his suite as usual, he threw ‘souvenirs’ out of the window – fruit, pens, mini-bar snacks, grooming kits – to the fans below. At first, all anyone outside could see were these hotel missiles. But then Michael, the clown, put out his gloved hand. Everyone cheered. Then he extended his arm. Everyone cheered some more. Then he leaned out to wave and say hello. Everyone went crazy. When photographer Harrison Funk, who was in the room with him, relays that story to this day, it still makes me smile. Once Michael had run out of objects to throw, and seeing that the crowd had now multiplied tenfold, he decided he wanted a photograph to capture the moment, but with just his sequined gloved hand in the foreground and the mass of fans in the background, probably a hundred feet below.