A Note About the Interviews and This Book
The conversations that Michael and I taped for publication were voluminous, far-reaching, and covered many important topics. I have therefore divided them into two books. This volume, the first of the two, deals with Michael the man. Who was he and what were the formative influences of his life? What scarred him and why did he never find inner peace? What was his worldview and how did he see God, human purpose, and his relationship with both? Michael discusses his childhood and the all-important question of the relationship with this father. How he lived at home well into his twenties and how he handled the growing influence of fame.
Michael illuminates some of the most important questions of his existence, such as his spiritual life, his relationship with family, fame, why he hated his appearance, and the abject loneliness in which he lived. Why only other childhood stars could understand him and why he learned to be wary of women’s motives. He addresses how he came to love strange pets and what led him to become so dependent on attention from fans. He talks about historical incidents, current events, and emotions such as jealousy and hatred. Michael also discusses the differences that came between him and his first wife, Lisa Marie Presley, and the chasm that eventually developed between him and the Jehovah’s Witnesses Church. Most ominously, he speaks of his fear of growing old, his preference for an early death, and his plans to one day disappear.
The second book is devoted in its entirety to Michael’s view of children. In it Michael develops a complex and sophisticated philosophical system of what adults can learn from kids and argues that the most successful adults are those who have never lost their inner child. Michael delves deeply into the innocence of children and explains how he could never harm a child. He addresses why he always wished to be around kids and why did he not want to grow up himself. He gives surprisingly compelling answers but they only further enhance the question as to whether his interest in children was an unhealthy, even criminal, obsession or whether we were the ones guilty of ascribing impure motivation to someone who just wanted to help needy kids. His take on children and childlike qualities will leave you, depending on your perspective, either amazed at his profundity or disturbed at his capacity for intelligent rationalization.
The conversations presented here include the verbatim words Michael said with only the most minor, occasional edits for clarity. My questions and comments have been edited as needed, both for brevity and to enhance the experience and understanding of Michael. The conversations themselves are for the most part presented intact, but arranged thematically, and in a few instances, some conversations were divided thematically.
Together, the two volumes will present a Michael Jackson you never knew existed. They may also cause you, as they did me, to shed a tear not for the death of a superstar or cultural icon but for a tortured and broken soul who once had highly developed insight and sensitivity but who in the end represented a colossal waste of life and potential.
I trust that the conversations contained herein will lead you to see Michael’s beauty, Michael’s pain, Michael’s insights, and Michael’s ugliness all in equal measure, but that you will also learn to judge him far more charitably once you come to know the depth of his anguish. Because for all his money and all his fame, Michael Jackson lived with a level of unhappiness that most of us can scarcely comprehend. And now that he is dead, now that the demons of his life have finally consumed him, now that we know that he lived in such torment that he downed bottles of pills nightly and still had no rest, perhaps we can find it in our hearts to show him a morsel of compassion.
A SETTING THE STAGE
The Writing Was on the Wall: Talking About Dying Young
Michael always spoke to me about the power of mystery. He was not a recluse merely because he was shy but also because he believed in it. He had to keep his profile partially hidden to retain the interest of the public. In celebrity terms, overexposure was death. So I asked him. . .
Shmuley Boteach: So would you say the best thing that’s ever happened to the Beatles is the fact that they broke up, and that’s why they had this longevity, because suddenly, kaboom!, they weren’t around anymore, so you could never get bored of them? They never fizzled?
Michael Jackson: Yeah, Marilyn Monroe died young. You didn’t get to see her grow old and ugly. I mean that’s the mystery of James Dean.
SB: And people say about the Beatles, “I wish they were together.” MJ: Yeah, yeah.
SB: And you [the fan] become part of the wish then. The public keeps them going because they so badly want them back together.
MJ: Absolutely, or else they’d be funky and old now and you wouldn’t care.
SB: So is that an argument, Michael, for you to say one day, “That’s it,” and quit?
MJ: Yeah, I would like some kind of way to disappear where people don’t see me anymore at some point, and just do my things for children but not be visual. To disappear is very important. We are people of change. We need change in our lives. That’s why we have winter, spring, summer, fall.
Here, I started to get worried about what Michael meant by “disappear.” It’s one thing to leave show business. It’s another to harbor a death wish. So I said. . .
SB: Okay, but you want a long life and a healthy life. You don’t want to disappear like, God forbid, the way some of these stars have disappeared, the way Marilyn Monroe has. You don’t want to die young?
MJ: Um, you’re asking me an interesting question. You sure you want my answer?
SB: I do.
MJ: Okay, I’ll give you my honest answer. Okay, um. My greatest dream that I have left—I have accomplished my dreams with music and all that and I love music and entertainment—is this children’s initiative, is this thing that we are doing. But, um, ’cause I don’t care about [anything else], I really don’t, I don’t care about [career], I honestly don’t Shmuley. What keeps me going is children, or else I would, I would seriously. . . I’ve told you this before, I swear to God I mean every word. I would, I would just throw in the towel if it wasn’t for children or babies. And that’s my real, my honest [answer]. . . and I’ve said it before, if it weren’t for children, I would choose death. I mean it with all my heart.
And his voice had the ring of truth. His comments were alarming in the extreme. Did Michael just tell me he would choose death? I couldn’t believe it. So I asked him to clarify.
SB: Choose death the way Marilyn Monroe chose death?
MJ: Some kind of way. I would find a way to go away off the planet ’cause I wouldn’t care about living anymore. I’m living for these babies and children.
SB: You see them as really a part, a spark of God here on earth?
MJ: I swear they are.
SB: So for you it’s the most spiritual thing in the world?
MJ: There is nothing more pure and spiritual to me than children and I cannot live without them. If you told me right now, “Michael, you can never see another child,” I would kill myself. I swear to you I would because I have nothing else to live for. That’s it. Honestly.
I was startled and shaken. I had to bring him back to his senses, so I said. . .
SB: So do you want to have a long life?
MJ: Let me take back that word swear, ’cause I don’t swear to God. I take that back. I don’t want to use that word. Say this question again?
SB: You said you want to disappear. Do you think it’s important to disappear?
MJ: I don’t want a long [life]. . . I don’t like, I don’t, I don’t. I think growing old is the ugliest, the most, the ugliest thing. When the body breaks down and you start to wrinkle, I think it’s so bad. I don’t, that’s something I don’t understand, Shmuley. And I never want to look in the mirror and see that. I don’t understand it. I really don’t. And people say that growing old is beautiful and it’s this and that. I disagree. I totally do.
SB: So you would die before that happens?
MJ: Um. . . I don’t want to grow old. I
would like to get. . .
I know that I shouldn’t have been cutting Michael off in the midst of such a seminal subject, but his hinting at suicide was extremely troubling, and I felt the immediate need to inspire him to choose life. So I said. . .
SB: What if you could stay young in spirit Michael?
MJ: Yeah, that’s important to me.
SB: You may have wrinkles, but don’t you want to see Prince and Paris grow up?
MJ: Yes, I do.
SB: Don’t you want to see their children?
MJ: I just don’t want to look old and start forgetting. I want to always be youthful and have the energy to run around and play hide and seek, which is one of my favorite games. I wanted to play it so badly at your house the last time we were there ’cause you have a nice big house for it. Um, I hate to see people grow old, Shmuley.
Yes, we could talk about hide and seek, but not when Michael was discussing the possibility of his suicide. So I brought him back again to the possibility of growing old yet remaining youthful and vibrant.
SB: Haven’t you seen people who grew old but kept their youthfulness. They behaved like they were still young?
MJ: Yeah, when they have a youthful heart, I love that. When they start to forget and wrinkle, [and] their body parts break down, it hurts me. Or when they get. . .
SB: Who has that happened to among the people you’ve loved? Does your mother grow old on you? Your father? Any entertainers that you know in the industry who grow old?
MJ: Yeah, people I love very much that died and I don’t understand why. I was in love with this man, in love with him. And he was my friend, Fred Astaire, and I don’t understand. You see Fred, since I was a little, a kid, Fred Astaire lived very close to our house and he used to talk to me all the time when I was little and you know he would teach me things, he would tell me you know, I was gonna be a big star and all this stuff that I didn’t even think about when I was little. And to see him dance in movies, I was like amazed. I didn’t know anybody could move so beautifully, you know? And, um, when I see him get to the point. . . One day he said to me, “You know Michael, I, if I was to do one spin right now, I would fall flat on my face. My equilibrium is totally gone.” And when he’d answer the door when I’d come to his house, this is how he [walked], just like this Shmuley. Little tiny steps and it broke my heart. That hurts me, and the day he died, it killed me, it killed me. It destroyed me. And that’s. . .
SB: But what happened to [Princess] Diana, that was a great tragedy, Michael.
I was trying to remind him that no matter how painful it was to grow old, dying a young, tragic death was much worse.
MJ: That was a great tragedy. That killed me. That killed everybody, I think.
SB: It’s not good to die young. It may make you into a myth, Michael. But life is too precious, no?
MJ: Life is very beautiful and precious.
SB: So you think one day you’re going to become just a myth.
MJ: See, why can’t we be like the trees? That come, you know, they lose their leaves in the winter, and come back as beautiful all over again in the spring, you know? It’s a sense of immortality to them, and the Bible says man was meant for immortality. But through sin and all this, we get death.
I should have said at this point that the Bible, in Deuteronomy, indeed compares humans to the trees of the field, and developed the metaphor. A tree may eventually crumble and die, but it sows the seeds for the next generation of trees and plant life. It lives on through its offspring and through its oxygenation of the air, in other words, what it does for the environment, what it does for others. So too, we may die, but our good deeds live on. Humans may not be immortal, but they exist forever through the people they love and through the good deeds they do. But for some reason, even though I have written extensively on the subject, I didn’t think of it.
SB: But maybe you go to a different place, to a higher place, and your soul, being suddenly unrestricted, can actually move closer to the people. Think about it. God is here right now, Michael. We both believe that, even though you can’t touch him or feel him. Are the souls of our loved ones very different?
MJ: I would love to come back as, as, as a child that never grows old, like Peter Pan. I wish, I wish I could believe that that’s true, that I keep coming back. I hope that’s true, I would like to believe that, Shmuley.
SB: In reincarnation? You keep on being reincarnated as a baby? MJ: Yeah, even though our, my religion [the Jehovah’s Witnesses Church], talks against it, that there’s no such thing as [reincarnation]. . . When you die, the soul dies and it’s like this couch, the dead, you know? But there’s the promise of the resurrection and all that.
SB: But for the Hindus, they believe you come back.
MJ: I’d like to believe that, and I like what the Egyptians and the Africans do, how they bury [their dead]. . . I’d like to see, we would all like to see, what the other side looks like. Don’t we?
SB: We wish we knew what lies after life, what heaven is like.
MJ: Yes, because there are so many concepts.
SB: Do you think there are children playing in Heaven?
MJ: Oh, God, I pray that that is what it is like.
SB: Are there adults playing there, too?
MJ: I would think so and I would think that they are very childlike. Like Adam and Eve, it is just a happy garden, a perfect peaceful place. I pray that it is like that.
SB: Are you afraid of death?
MJ: Yes.
SB: We all are.
MJ: I always said I want to be buried right where there are children. I want them next to me. I would feel safer that way. I want them next to me. I need their spirit protecting me. I always see that in my mind and I see myself and I hate to see it. I see myself and I see children lying there to protect me.
In light of Michael’s subsequent death just a few years after this conversation, these are obviously disturbing and haunting remarks. He said clearly that if he could no longer work with, or on behalf of, children, he would find some way to take himself off the planet. After Michael’s arrest on the second allegations of child molestation on November 20, 2003, it was clear that he could never again work with children. So did Michael commit suicide? No. I firmly believe he did not. He loved his own kids too much to ever contemplate an active form of death that would orphan them. Rather, I believe that in the wake of the 2003 allegations, although he was later vindicated and found innocent, Michael lost the will to live. The vast increase in his drug intake shows that he lived much of his remaining years in a drug-induced stupor. There was no way he was unaware that consuming this huge amount of drugs could kill him. Michael often told me that he knew all about prescription drug medication, and he took enough to become an expert. So Michael did lose the will to live, and he slowly shriveled as a human being. He agreed to do his final concerts not because he had any intrinsic interest in his music or career but because he needed the money. The only question that still remains and which I cannot answer is why Michael’s love of, and dedication to, his own kids was not enough to in-still within him a continued passion for life. But alive or dead, it did not much matter to Michael, just as long as he could numb the pain with the poison that eventually killed him.
When Michael died I also faced a profound moral dilemma as to what to do with this conversation in which he says he wants to be buried near children. In the end, after consulting with people whom I respect, I decided that revealing it in the immediate aftermath of his death would not influence the family decision as to where he would be buried and would just subject Michael to public ridicule. I also do not believe that he should be buried next to children, whatever his wishes. Still, I was saddened to see plans being discussed to bury Michael at Neverland. The ranch was isolating and damaging to Michael enough while he was alive. Why condemn him to that eternal loneliness and oblivion just to increase Neverland’s commercial appeal?
PART 1
CHILDHOOD FAME AND JOE JACKSON
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Childhood, Loneliness, Cartoons, and Brothers
The most formative experience in Michael’s life was being forced into entertainment from approximately the age of five. Michael felt he had been robbed of not just an essential part of life but the most magical part. He longed to recapture it and spent his remaining days doing just that. Some argued that Michael was a case of arrested development. I disagree. Michael Jackson chose not to grow up.
Shmuley Boteach: Was there an age at which you realized, “Oh my gosh, I missed my childhood?”
Michael Jackson: Yes, I remember distinctly. . . It’s like being on a ride you can’t get off and you think, “Oh my God. What did I do?” and you are committed and you can’t get off. It hit me before I was a teenager. I wanted so badly to play in the park across the street because the kids were playing baseball and football but I had to record. I could see the park, right across the street. But I had to go in the other building and work until late at night making the albums. I sat there looking at the kids with tears running down my face and I would say, “I am trapped and I have to do this for the rest of my life. I am under contract.” But I wanted to go over there so bad it was killing me, just to make a friend to say, “Hi.” I used to walk the streets looking for someone to talk to. I told you that.
SB: How old were you?
MJ: It was during the Thriller album.
SB: So you were the biggest star in the whole world and. . .
MJ: I was looking for people to talk to. I was so lonely I would cry in my room upstairs. I would think, “That’s it. I am getting out of here,” and I would walk down the street. I remember really saying to people, “Will you be my friend?”
SB: They were probably in shock.
The Michael Jackson Tapes Page 8