The whole atmosphere was relaxed with all the children enjoying each other’s company. It seems incredible, in retrospect, that Michael’s relationship with this family would lead to his arrest three years later when he would be accused of having molested that boy. Most of the time, Michael ignored both the boy and his family and I even found myself gently rebuking him for the neglect.
My children remember Gavin and his brother as being shy, and they remember how excited the boys were to have a sleepover in Michael’s bedroom. My children were invited to join too, but being girls, and religious ones at that who are allowed limited contact with boys until marriageable age, they dismissed it outright and said no without further thought. I’m surprised parents would have allowed it, especially on their first visit, but nothing that happened during those few days seemed eventful. We were at Neverland the same night that the first abuse allegedly took place, in a room that was in the same guest suite as Gavin and his family. And it’s equally hard to imagine that Michael was showing the boy pornographic materials while I was staying there with my family.
We soon discovered that our visit coincided with Michael’s forty-first birthday, on August 29th. I was very surprised to see that nothing was being done to commemorate it. I wondered if being estranged from his family and with few close friends, he had invited us in order not to spend it alone.
I went to see him in his room. He told me, “In my family we didn’t celebrate birthdays,” explaining that it was a Jehovah’s Witnesses belief not to make too much of oneself because it could lead to conceit and arrogance. I responded, “Well, in the Jewish religion celebrating birthdays is very important. It is the day you came into the world. It celebrates your existence. We have to grow on our birthdays, and growth, since it is always painful, should never be a solitary experience. It has to be shared.” The kids of both families thereby went about arranging a small party that would take place that night for Michael’s birthday.
My concern for Michael wasn’t about his birthday, though. Something about the atmosphere of Neverland, combined with the long gap since I’d last seen him, raised my alarm. His lethargy was so pronounced it might have been described as lifeless. He wasn’t so much sad as completely burned out, indolent, almost lazy, like a man who believed that life held no further mysteries or challenges. The only things that seemed to animate him were his children. He came across as a shell of a man, strangely incongruent with his electrifying stage presence and larger-than-life persona.
Michael’s staff brought in the massive birthday cards and collages that his fans had either sent through the mail or left at the gates of Neverland. They were put up in the large kitchen for Michael to see, but he did not so much as look at them. He would wake up in the very late morning or early afternoon. Although he told me he was working feverishly to complete Invincible, I almost never saw work of any kind take place. A musician who had worked with Michael on several previous albums had come up from Los Angeles to work with him on new songs for the album, but he too spent very little time with Michael.
In the evenings he did become somewhat more animated. In his large, private theater, where we ate TV dinners, complete with small trays built for the occasion, he screened his old music videos for us. Often, my wife and my kids would make their way to bed, but Michael would continue to show me his past with relish.
I began to draw a number of cursory conclusions about his malaise.
First, whatever its merits, Neverland was not a good place for Michael. It was too isolating, too remote, making him into a hermit. It was an unhealthy escape that allowed him to run away from his responsibilities, even his professional ones. Indeed, it seemed that Michael was mostly wasting his life there. Neverland got stale for me and even my kids pretty quickly. It’s one thing to visit Disneyland. It’s another thing entirely to live in it. For the first few days the rides and attractions were fascinating. But after that they lost their novelty and Neverland came to feel like a giant cage.
Second, far more than the environment was affecting Michael Jackson. The great superstar was experiencing a malady of the soul, a sadness of the spirit. All the material blessings that surrounded him seemed to mean little, including Neverland. Only Prince and Paris were able to get him out of his room and give him some energy.
Third, Michael was at a critical point in his life. He seemed to be slipping quickly, dropping into a melancholic stupor of lethargy and inactivity. If he did not pull himself out he might never recover.
Fourth, while Michael might believe that a revival in his career would bring him happiness—as was evidenced by his nostalgia in persistently screening music videos from the height of his fame, back in the Thriller and Bad days—I was fairly convinced that this was not the case. I sensed that rather than more of the same, however glitzy and grand, what Michael needed was to take his life to the next level.
This would be a huge, perhaps insurmountable endeavor for Michael (should he have even a modicum of interest), given the crushing weight of negative judgment and lack of love he was experiencing. A surprising meeting gave even more weight to these thoughts.
On about the third day of our visit, an elderly gentleman arrived at the house for a meeting with Michael and Frank. It turned out he wasn’t a record label executive as I had surmised. In fact, he was a low-level diplomat from an obscure European country whom Michael had surreptitiously met and whom he thought could help him get a UN Ambassadorship to fulfill his vision of being a kind of international spokesman on children’s issues. Michael had asked me to join the meeting, I assumed, to vouch for his character. But in chatting with the man it quickly became clear that he was at such a junior station in the UN hierarchy that he had no means to really help. The whole situation was professionally sloppy and depressing.
Michael came across as desperate, thus conveying the impression even he acknowledged: given the 1993 allegations of child molestation (for which he never went to trial and was never found guilty), he was damaged goods and no one would be interested in him. But the meeting was extremely revealing in an important way.
I suddenly realized that this weight, this feeling of shame, was the major source of Michael’s sadness. The 1993 allegations had compromised his integrity and squandered his credibility, especially in the area of children. Like all of us, Michael Jackson wanted to be thought a good person. Indeed, in my book The Private Adam, I point out that few things cause a man or woman more pain than to be thought of as wicked. We all attempt to tenaciously protect our reputations. Michael was crushed by the fact that people believed he was a pedophile. The pain was made all the greater because he wanted to consecrate his fame to a cause larger than himself. His celebrity, like Neverland, was a form of incarceration. He desperately wanted to use his fame to help the world’s kids but was prevented from doing so because many thought him a monster.
Michael Jackson was no different than other men (and women) of accomplishment who suffered from the pain of a tarnished reputation. For example, Senator John McCain said that although he was a prisoner of war for five years in the Hanoi Hilton, suffering torture and the most inhuman deprivations, the pain was nothing compared to the accusation that he was one of the “Keating 5,” a group of senators who had been accused of using their position to give favors to a savings and loan executive, although he was subsequently fully acquitted.
Thomas Jefferson, who led a life riddled with suffering, including the death of his young wife and all but one of his children, similarly said that the worst pain he ever faced was when he was accused of cowardice as Governor of Virginia during the American Revolution. Even the famous gangster Meyer Lansky, who wanted more than anything else to be known for his goodness in his service to society, once boasted that “Everyone who came into my casino knew that if he lost his money it wouldn’t be because he was cheated.” Lansky made sure to give large amounts of money to charity.
It was clear to me that Michael understood that he lived a profoundly contradictory existenc
e. On the one hand, he was arguably the world’s best-known entertainer and famous for loving children. On the other hand, average American parents would never trust him with their own kids and found his interest in children suspicious at best and criminal at worst. With the junior diplomat paying him a visit at Neverland, he was trying to restore his reputation.
On the day of Michael’s birthday, I felt compelled to tell him that something seemed really wrong; some key ingredient of his life seemed missing. Going a step further, I said: “I was thinking what to get you for your birthday and I have discovered it’s quite a conundrum. What do you give to the man who seemingly has everything? All I came up with is that you’re not in need of any material gifts, but you are hurting deep down. If I could, I would offer you what I believe you need most—the gift of inspiration.”
That comment was an icebreaker. Michael opened up to me more than ever before. The shyness and reticence disappeared. He began to tell me that I was correct about his deep pain and permanent sadness. “All I have ever wanted in life was to do something for the world’s children. Fame, money, they mean nothing to me. I want to devote my life to helping kids.”
While he did not say it outright, it was clear he realized that there was little involvement he could have with kids after the serious events of 1993, including the multimillion-dollar settlement with his accuser, which, while never officially made public, the whole world seemed to know about, down to the most intimate details. Those allegations, he said, were a lie. He repeated it over and over. They were designed to extort money. He could never harm a child. People were jealous of his success and tried to bring him down. His lawyers told him to settle because the media circus surrounding the allegations was destroying his life and ruining his career. And he repeated that he did not care about the money. He cared that people thought ill of him.
Up until that comment I was convinced that Michael could relate only to people who deferred to him or even fawned over him with a steady diet of compliments. While we had had many interesting conversations, and I’d given him some cursory spiritual direction and counsel that I hoped was helpful, I never expected our friendship to penetrate to a deeper level. It had been a year since we’d met, but until our trip to Neverland, I hadn’t penetrated below the surface or broken any significant ground.
Soon I would return with my family to the East Coast, and Michael would go back to his life as well. Yet suddenly, Michael Jackson had opened up to me in a way that, I suspected, he had rarely done with anyone else before. I decided to rise to the challenge, beginning by sharing some of the distasteful truths about his life.
I looked at him and told him that, if he wanted to be a credible global spokesperson for children, he was going about things in entirely the wrong way. “You need a new approach to your project of helping children and to the entirety of your life,” I ventured. “What you lack above all else is credibility. You are famous, sure. As an artist, they give you credit for your immense talent. But as a human being, the world thinks you are strange at best and a bit crazy at worst. They think there is something really fishy about you and kids and many even think you’re guilty of the 1993 accusations. Only through a major lifestyle shift—a moral makeover—can you gain back the respectability you’ve lost.”
At any moment, I expected to get the glazed look I had seen before when subjects came up that were either unpleasant or too much of a strain for Michael to handle. But I did not get that. On the contrary, he listened to every word I said and then eagerly asked, “Would you be able to help me do this?”
Whoa! Was he really listening?
“If you are serious, and you take it seriously,” I said, “then, yes. I will be prepared to help you. I think you can do a lot of good with your life. God has given you a microphone to the world that few people in history have ever possessed. But you have got to get your life together if you are not to squander your potential. Today is your birthday and the clock is ticking.” Right then and there I began to outline a program that Michael would follow for the next nine months.
I told him that the first thing he needed to do was get people to take him seriously. “Your life did not end in 1993,” I said. “Even though the allegations against you were very serious, you were never arrested, charged, or convicted. If serious people take you seriously, and you undertake respectable actions and get away from your more frivolous pursuits, then the world will overlook your past and respect you again. If you’re going to be a spokesperson for children, you need to surround yourself with respected thinkers, authors, statesmen, and, especially, childrearing experts. And you can never be alone with a child that is not yours, again. Ever.”
Michael immediately agreed with me. He verbalized his commitment to never being alone with kids.
I had a click of insight that the solution for Michael was to work with parents and caregivers rather than kids. After all, the problem for many kids was that they were being raised by proxy because parents were too busy, too stressed, or too uninterested to give children what they needed most—time and love, family dinners, bedtime stories. “Work on bringing your message to the world’s parents,” I said. “You will help the kids and the world will be grateful.”
I then told him he had to get his energy back. “Neverland may be beautiful, but it is way too isolated. You have got to get out of here and be around people who inspire you. You are a person who thrives on that adrenaline rush that comes from crowds but here you are in this beautiful paradise. But you have to ask yourself, are you here because you love it or because you are hiding?”
Then I talked about the obstacles he faced. The world simply did not get what he was about. “Every day there are a thousand lies about you in the papers,” I said. “I myself read that you have ten nannies for the kids, and that if one of their toys so much as touches the floor you immediately throw it in the garbage because you’re a germophobe. From being here, of course, I have seen that all that is a lie.” (Michael had one nanny, Grace, a sweet and highly intelligent woman from Rwanda who was responsible for sparking my considerable interest in the terrible Rwandan genocide of 1994, about which I would later write many columns.)
“And there are tons of other lies, as well. You have done a very poor job of explaining yourself to the world or responding to these incessant attacks. You have never explained why you have chosen to remain so childlike and people do not understand it. In light of the 1993 allegations, and in the absence of such explanations, people are bound to conclude that a forty-something adult who refuses to grow up is either spoiled or has a screw loose.”
Finally, I told him that he had to make sure that he had the ingredients of a wholesome life. I could see that they were mostly absent. On his birthday, no family members came to visit. There was no regular Sunday church attendance. Indeed, aside from his personal faith, God seemed to be entirely absent from the life of Michael Jackson. He had no interaction with loving friends and seemed to take little satisfaction from his work. His children had no other kids to play with and their degree of isolation was anything but healthy.
Michael indicated that this would be a wonderful birthday present. “My whole life is about doing things for kids. If I can’t help children, I don’t want to live. I’m desperate and I think you’re the only one who can help me. You’re my friend. I love you, and I know you can help me.”
To be sure, it was extremely seductive and flattering to have a man as influential as Michael telling me that I was the only one who could help him. It didn’t so much feed my vanity, because my issue has always been insecurity much more than vanity (although the argument can be made that they are intimately intertwined). But it certainly made me feel special.
Was this a cosmic drama that was playing out? Could it be that a rabbi and a rock star could team up to help make the world a better place? Could the dream that I had harbored, ever since I watched my parents’ divorce at the tender age of eight, of healing and strengthening families, come to fruition through the
agency of Michael’s fame and extend the effect of the writing and speeches I’d already been giving around the world? Or was my natural, internal brokenness, coupled with my desire to be recognized as an exponent of values, simply grabbing onto a rickety foundation to anchor itself? Only time would tell.
What was certain was that this was a unique challenge. An opportunity to help a man change and to help rehabilitate a person who was becoming a friend, who was a star, and who shared my love for children and the need to value them in our culture. I, after all, had seven (we now have nine, thank God). If Jay Leno owned seven antique cars, he was to be lauded for his impressive collection. But I went around apologizing for having overpopulated the world with seven kids. I was part of a religion that cherishes the innocence of children as the most spiritual of qualities. Why, even the Cherubim, the twin angels who sat atop the Holy Ark in the Holy of Holies, the most sacred part of the Temple in Jerusalem, had the faces of children. As a rabbi, I am the representative of a culture that values family and children above all else. And now I was being asked by one of the most recognizable names on earth to assist him in his work to improve the lives of children around the world.
I went back to my room and got my laptop, and, with Michael and Frank at my side, I started typing out a plan of action that could turn Michael’s life around, leverage his fame to heal families, expose him to some of the world’s most respected people, and bring sound healthy foundations back into his life.
The Michael Jackson Tapes Page 3