The Michael Jackson Tapes

by Shmuley Boteach

  SB: Did you ever tell him how upset you were?

  MJ: No. He doesn’t know to this day how much he hurt me. That’s why I won’t make promises I can’t keep.

  One of Michael’s fatal flaws was his inability to see the corruption that was slowly overtaking his life. He swore he would never be like his father, and that meant never breaking a promise. But in his last years Michael was plagued by numerous lawsuits that claimed he regularly broke promises he made. A failure to honor commitments became something that marked much of his later life, which I too unfortunately witnessed. Michael meant well, but as in so many other areas of life, he could not summon the courage to live by his convictions.

  Michael’s Appearance: An Ugly Man in the Mirror

  Shmuley Boteach: You have to live a long happy life. But do you really think that one day you will decide to become a recluse and disappear?

  Michael Jackson: Yeah.

  SB: Live at Neverland and lock up the gates. Will that be it?

  MJ: Yeah. I know I am.

  SB: But why? Because you don’t want people to see you growing old?

  MJ: I can’t deal with it. I love beautiful things too much and the beautiful things in nature and I want my messages to get out to the world, but I don’t want to be seen now. . . like when my picture came up on the computer, it made me sick when I saw it.

  SB: Why?

  MJ: Because I am like a lizard. It is horrible. I never like it. I wish I could never be photographed or seen and I push myself to go to the things that we go to. I really do.

  He was referring to the public lectures I was having him do, like Oxford University in England and Carnegie Hall in New York. But it was very important that I push Michael to get out of his reclusive mode and to appear in public to serve a higher calling.

  SB: Michael, some people have written that your father used to say that you were ugly. Is that true?

  MJ: Uh-huh. He used to make fun of. . . I remember we were on a plane one time, ready to take off, and I was going through an awkward puberty when your features start to change. And he went, “Ugh, you have a big nose. You didn’t get it from me.” He didn’t realize how much that hurt me. It hurt me so bad, I wanted to die.

  SB: Was that a hostile remark aimed at your mother, “You didn’t get it from me?”

  MJ: I don’t know what he was trying to say.

  SB: Do you think it is important to tell children they are beautiful?

  MJ: Yes, but not to overdo it. You are beautiful inside. Do it that way. Prince looks in the mirror as he’s combing his hair and he says, “I look good.” I say, “You look okay.”

  SB: Don’t you think your father instilled in you a belief that you are not handsome? So you tried to change your appearance a bit, and you are still not happy. So really you have to begin to love your appearance and yourself and all of that.

  MJ: I know. I wish I could.

  SB: We all have problems with our appearance. Look, I have this scraggly beard. When I do TV appearances, the people I work with always tell me to cut it, to trim it. But my religion doesn’t let me cut my beard, and it gets long.

  MJ: Would you like to cut your beard?

  SB: Yes, to be honest I would. Not completely. Just trim it. But God and my religion are more important to me than looks and appearances.

  MJ: You are not allowed to?

  SB: Essentially, no. I roll it up here. A lot of rabbis cut their beards and some don’t. . . .

  MJ: When they cut theirs, is that against the rules?

  SB: The rules are interpreted differently by different rabbis. The Bible says you can’t use a knife on your face. So some people take that to mean, literally, a knife. So these are the people who cut their beard with an electric shaver but not with a razor, a naked blade. To others the meaning of the verse is any kind of sharp object that cuts the beard. But my wife, Debbie, says, “I didn’t marry a man who is going to try and conform to society. I married a man I wanted to respect and you are a rabbi. Be proud of who you are.”

  MJ: She doesn’t mind the beard?

  SB: Not only doesn’t she mind, she would be very upset if I cut it at all. She said to me just this morning, “If you really love and respect me you would never say that because it bothers me that you want to trim your looks to fit in more.” My wife wants me to live always by my principles.

  MJ: That’s amazing.

  SB: The other night, Thursday night, you looked fantastic. [Michael had gotten all dressed up for Denise Rich’s Angel Ball cancer fundraiser]. You were the best-looking guy there. So you don’t like being photographed?

  MJ: I wish I could never be photographed and I wish I could never be seen. Just for entertainment so I design the dance the way I want it to look, and the film the way I want it to look.

  SB: Now you want to do movies?

  MJ: I love movies, but I can control it, you see. I can’t control how those pictures come out with the lighting and my expression at the time. Arggh.

  SB: If a child said that to you, “I hate being photographed,” what would you say to that child?

  MJ: I would say, “You don’t know how beautiful you are. It’s your spirit that’s. . . ”

  SB: So why are you prepared to say that to everybody except yourself?

  MJ: I don’t know. [He said this in a voice of confusion and resignation.]

  SB: You see from your fans that tons of women are throwing themselves at you. So that must mean that you are handsome and desirable. You feel all the time that they want to fall in love with you?

  MJ: When I think about it—I would never say this on TV—but if I went on stage thinking about what goes through women’s heads, I would never go out on stage. If I was suddenly to start thinking about what they were thinking about. . . sex, or what I look like naked, then, oh God, that would be so embarrassing. I could never go out. That’s so horrible.

  Here again you see how Michael immediately associates women with prurience. The sexual displays to which he was apparently subject as an innocent and vulnerable child in nightclubs may have done lasting damage. As far as Michael was concerned, the screaming women at concerts wanted to have sex with him. Sex, to Michael’s mind, seemed to be what was most on a woman’s mind.

  SB: A lot of people like being a sex symbol. You don’t like it because you are shy about it. Do you know when some women speak to you that it’s what’s on their mind?

  MJ: Umhum. They tell me.

  SB: I want to have sex with you?

  MJ: Aha.

  Michael’s Fear of His Father

  Shmuley Boteach: You know, Michael, I used to judge my father a lot and one day I stopped judging him because he had his own challenges. He has had a very difficult life that began in abject poverty in Iran. And it wasn’t easy for Jews growing up in Iran. Who knows what his childhood was like? Do you still judge your father?

  Michael Jackson: I used to. I used to get so angry at him. I would just go in my room and just scream out of anger because I didn’t understand how a person could be so vicious and mean. Like sometimes I would be in bed sleeping, it would be 12 o’clock at night. I would have recorded all day, been singing all day, no fun, no play. He comes home late. “Open the door.” The door is locked. He said, “I am going to give you five seconds before I kick it down.” And he starts kicking it, breaking the door down. He said, “Why didn’t you sign the contract?” I go, “I don’t know.” He goes, “Well, sign it. If you don’t sign it you are in trouble.” It’s like, “Oh my God, why? Where is the love? Where is the fatherhood?” I go, “Is it really this way?” He would throw you and hit you as hard as he can. He was very physical.

  SB: Did you begin to feel that you were a moneymaking machine for him?

  MJ: Yes, absolutely.

  SB: Just like Macaulay Culkin described? So you felt used?

  MJ: Yes. And one day—I hate to repeat it—but one day he said, and God bless my father because he did some wonderful things and he was brilliant, he was a genius,
but one day he said, “If you guys ever stop singing I will drop you like a hot potato.” It hurt me. You would think he would think, “These kids have a heart and feelings.” Wouldn’t he think that would hurt us? If I said something like that to Prince and Paris that would hurt. You don’t say something like that to children and I never forgot it. It affects my relationship with him today.

  SB: So that if you didn’t perform for him he would stop loving you? MJ: He would drop us like a hot potato. That’s what he said.

  SB: Did your mother always run over and say, “Don’t listen to him. He doesn’t mean it.”?

  MJ: She was always the one in the background when he would lose his temper—hitting us and beating us. I hear it now. [Adopts female voice.] “Joe, no, you are going to kill them. No! No, Joe, it’s too much,” and he would be breaking furniture and it was terrible. I always said if I ever have kids I will never behave like this way. I won’t touch a hair on their heads. Because people always say the abused abuse and it is not true. It is not true. I am totally the opposite. The worst I do is I make them stand in the corner for a little bit and that’s it and that’s my time out for them.

  SB: I think you are right. I hate when I hear things like that the abused abuse. It means that you are condemned to be a bad person.

  MJ: It’s not true. I always promised in my heart that I would never be this way, never. If—and it can be in a movie or in a department store—I hear someone arguing with their child, I break down and cry. Because it reflects how I was treated when I was little. I break down at that moment and I shake and I cry. I can’t take it. It is hard.

  SB: When my parents divorced, we moved away and my father lived 3,500 miles away from us. And it was difficult to be close to him. But I love him, and I try never to judge him, and I have made a great effort to be much, much closer to him. We have to take seriously the Bible’s commandment to always honor our parents. The Bible doesn’t say, “Honor them if they’ve earned it.” It simply commands us to honor them. Just by virtue of them having given us life they have earned it.

  MJ: I am scared of my father to this day. My father walked in the room—and God knows I am telling the truth—I have fainted in his presence many times. I have fainted once to be honest. I have thrown up in his presence because when he comes in the room and this aura comes and my stomach starts hurting and I know I am in trouble. He is so different now. Time and age has changed him and he sees his grandchildren and he wants to be a better father. It is almost like the ship has sailed its course and it is so hard for me to accept this other guy that is not the guy I was raised with. I just wished he had learned that earlier.

  SB: So why are you still scared?

  MJ: Because the scar is still there, the wound.

  SB: So you still see him as the first man. It is hard for you to see him as this new man?

  MJ: I can’t see him as the new man. I am like an angel in front of him, like scared. One day he said to me, “Why are you scared of me?” I couldn’t answer him. I felt like saying, “Do you know what you have done?” [voice breaks] “Do you know what you have done to me?”

  SB: It is so important for me to hear this. Because as your friend and as someone who is asked constantly about you, it is so important for me to understand these things. It is so important for the world to understand this. You see Michael, no one would have judged you as harshly if they had heard this. They would have made more of an effort to empathize with your own suffering rather than just condemning you. Do you call him Dad or Joseph?

  MJ: We weren’t allowed to call him Dad when we were growing up. He said, “Don’t call me Dad. I am Joseph.” That’s what he told us. But now he wants to be called Dad. It is hard for me. I can’t call him Dad. He would make it a point: “Don’t call me Dad. I am Joseph.” I love when Prince and Paris call me “Daddy,” or when you hear little Italian kids call “Papa,” or Jewish kids call “Poppy.” Sweet, how could you not be proud of that? That’s your offspring.

  SB: From what age did he tell you not to call him Dad?

  MJ: From a little kid all the way up to Off the Wall, Thriller.

  SB: He felt he was more professional that way?

  MJ: No. He felt that he was this young stud. He was too cool to be Dad. He was Joseph. I would hate him to hear me say this. . . .

  SB: I read somewhere that your mother was thinking of getting divorced and she filed or something.

  MJ: I don’t know if she filed, maybe. No, no, she didn’t file. She wanted to, many times, because of other women and because he was difficult. But in the name of religion she only can divorce on the grounds of fornication. And he has been in that area before and she knows it. But she is such a saint that she won’t part with him. She knows he is out doing other things and fooling around and she is so good and he will come home and lay next to her in the bed. I don’t know anyone like her. She is like a Mother Teresa. There are very few people like that.

  SB: So she is a long-suffering, saintly kind of woman. Do you feel that she has suffered too long? That she shouldn’t have put up with it?

  MJ: We used to beg her to divorce him. We used to say, “Mother, divorce him.” She used to say, “Leave me alone. No!” We used to say, “Get rid of him.” We used to scream at her, “Divorce him” when we were little. But many years we’d hear the car coming down the drive. He always drove a big Mercedes and he drives real slow. “Joseph’s home, Joseph’s home, quick!” Everybody runs to their room, doors slam.

  SB: You were that scared of him?

  MJ: Yeah. I always said, “When I come home and walk through the door I want the kids to go “Daddy,” and jump all over me and that’s what mine do. I want just the opposite. I don’t want them to run.

  Protective of Janet

  Shmuley Boteach: Let me just share one thought. You said your father would humiliate you when you were in concert and he would make you cry and push you out on stage in front of all the girls who loved you. . . to do what? To show his power over you?

  Michael Jackson: Well, um, no. He wouldn’t do it on the stage. Like, after a show, there’d be the room full of girls. He would love to bring the girls in the room, my father. And after the show we’d have something to eat, or whatever, and the room would be just lined with girls giggling, just loving us, like “oh my god!” and shaking. And if I was talking and something happened and he didn’t like it, he’d get this look in his eye like. . . he’d get this look in his eye that would just scare you to death. He slapped me so hard in the face, as hard as he could, and then he’d thrust me out into the big room, where they are, tears running down my face, and what are you supposed to do, you know?

  SB: And how old were you now? [Prince in the background, “We’re three!”. . . laughing]

  MJ: Uh, no more than like, twelve. . . eleven, something around there.

  SB: So these were the first moments that you felt shame in your life? Really humiliated?

  MJ: No, there were other ones. He did some rough, cruel. . . cruel. . . I don’t know why. He was rough. The way he would beat you was hard, you know? He would make you strip nude first. He would oil you down. It would be a whole ritual. He would oil you down so when the tip of the ironing cord hit you [makes noise mimicking], you know . . . and it would just be like dying and you had whips all over your face, your back, everywhere. And I always heard my mother like, “No, Joe! You’re gonna kill ’em. You’re gonna kill ’em, no!” And I would just give up, like there was nothing I could do. And I hated him for it, hated him. We all did. We used to say to our mother, we used to say to each other, and I’ll never forget this. Janet and myself, we used to say. . . I used to say, “Janet, shut your eyes.” She’d go, “Okay, they’re shut.” And I’d say, “Picture Joseph in a coffin. He’s dead. Did you feel sorry?” She’d go, “No.” Just like that. That’s what we used to do to each other as kids. We would like play games like that. And that’s how hateful we were. I’d go, “He’s in the coffin, he’s dead. Would you feel sorry?” She�
��d go, “Nope,” just like that. That’s how angry we were with him. And I love him today, but he was hard, Shmuley. He was rough.

  SB: But did you know that that was part of being corrupted as a child when you start feeling that way—hatred? Did you know, “I gotta get rid of this somehow. I gotta do something about this”?

  MJ: Yeah, I wanted to become such a wonderful performer that I would get love back.

  SB: So you could change him, you thought. If you. . . so you thought that if you became a great star, very successful, and were loved by the world, and were very successful, your father would love you too.

  MJ: Aha.

  SB: So you could change him that way.

  MJ: Aha. I was hoping I could and I was hoping I could get love from other people, ’cause I needed it real bad, you know? You need love, you need love. That’s the most important thing. That’s why I feel so bad for those kids who sit in those orphanages and hospitals and they’re all alone and they tie them to the beds—they tie them because they don’t have enough staff. I go, “Are you crazy?” And I go to each bed just freeing them, releasing them. I say, “This isn’t a way to do children. You don’t tie them down.” Or they have them chained to the walls in some places, like in Romania. And they have them sleep in their own feces and their tinkle.

  SB: Do you identify more with people like that ’cause you’re also that sensitive?

  MJ: Yeah, I always hold Mushki [my eldest daughter who was about 12 at the time] the most ’cause I feel her pain. She’s in so much pain. When Janet went through her fat stage she cried a lot, my sister Janet. She decided to just lose it all, “I’m gonna lose this,” and she did it. She used to be very unhappy.

  SB: Are you very protective of her as a younger sister?

  MJ: Yeah, I was determined to make her lose weight. I was bad. I would tease her to make her lose it. I didn’t like it on her. I didn’t like it because I knew she would have a hard time.