MJ: I did not.
SB: So it’s important to be truthful. Let’s say you have a musician who isn’t up to speed and he is holding back the whole album. What do you do?
MJ: I just went through it in there with the string players. One lady was playing completely off rhythm and I told the guy, “Let her continue. But the next day we just can’t have her come,” and she wasn’t told that she could come the next day. But we did it quietly.
SB: So you do sometimes have to deal with these difficult situations and you deal with it with honesty but without trying to hurt them.
MJ: You have to do it without hurting them.
SB: So there is a way of being truthful without being painful?
MJ: Absolutely. I don’t go on the casting calls for my short films [Michael always called his music videos “short films”] especially when there are children being cast. I don’t want to stand there and say, “Okay let’s see what you can do,” and they do it and they don’t get a call back. Then they’ll say, “Michael Jackson turned me down.” I have somebody else tape everybody and I look at it at home and I decide. I cannot face the pain of them not being accepted. I always have to do it that way.
It eluded Michael that what he was really saying was that he hated confrontation and he let his underlings do his dirty work. This contributed to the multitude of Michael’s inauthentic relationships. He attracted sycophants who toadied up to him rather than giving him honest criticism because they saw from the outset that the only way Michael handled confrontation was to withdraw behind his curtain of handlers. If you criticized him, even as a friend who really cared, you’d never hear from him again. But being surrounded by brownnosers has never contributed to anyone’s mental health and stability.
SB: So, honesty is very important in the way you raise Prince and Paris.
MJ: [Turning to Prince] Doo-Doo has been on that Prince. That’s full of doo-doo. Don’t put it on your hair. That’s the dog doo-doo shovel. Don’t put it in your hair.
I left this in because of all the lies in the media about Michael being a germophobe and how his kids were not allowed to even touch a toy that had been on the floor. Here, Michael’s son was playing with one of the dog’s excrement shovels and Michael simply told him, in the middle of our conversation, to put it down because it was dirty. They didn’t disinfect the boy.
SB: By the way did you hear what I said earlier that Paul McCartney has supposedly one of the biggest cartoon collections? You were saying about these great artists being childlike?
MJ: Yes, yes. He loves cartoons and takes them very seriously. He collects them. Mine is bigger than his now, if you go into the video library we have got rows and rows because I love cartoons. It is a great escape for me, the world of cartoons.
SB: [In thinking about your success] did you say something to yourself? “I was fortunate, it was from God, it is not just me. This is a divine gift. I have no right to be arrogant?”
MJ: Yeah. People always ask me how I didn’t let it all go to my head. Um, because obviously it’s not me. So how dare you think this is your doing, it’s not me. It’s not Michelangelo. He was touched with divine inspiration. That was a gift. I think you can cultivate something to a certain extent. But to be given real genius, that’s like a gift.
Michael’s response is at once humble and troubling. Yes, he believes that God has given him a gift, his talent, and that since it has been bequeathed to him he must eschew arrogance. But in the same sentence, he compares himself to Michelangelo. Perhaps Michael really is an artistic genius. But his delusions of grandeur, his need to constantly elevate himself into the world’s foremost pantheon of artistic geniuses of all time, was one of the main factors in his rapid decline. Simply put, humility is protective and arrogance is corrosive. But maybe I was just being judgmental, so I said. . .
SB: Judgmental people are always small-minded people. They are nitpickers. How did we go from being big to small, Michael? As we mature, our bodies get bigger but often our minds seem to get smaller. Do you feel that children have bigger hearts than adults? What causes them to shrink?
Why didn’t yours shrink? The more famous people become, the less love they have in their hearts because they become more self-absorbed. What makes people go from being big-minded to being small-minded, to being petty? Because they feel intimidated. They feel that their dreams were not realized and they become defensive. So your defense mechanism is to judge, to dismiss. What makes us get smaller and why didn’t you get smaller? Why didn’t you become more self-absorbed as you became more famous? Why do you care about the rest of the world? You have helicopters and private jets. Why would ordinary children suddenly figure in your life?
MJ: You know why, Shmuley? When you have seen the things I have seen and traveled all over the world, you would not be honest to yourself and the world to be that way. I just couldn’t see myself not being touched by the things I have seen, like that village in China, and the things I have seen in Africa and Russia and Germany and Israel.
My wife Debbie and I married in 1988 in Australia. On the way back to the United States, we stopped in Hong Kong for a lecture I was to give and we took a day trip into China. A tour guide took us to a mud hut in a small village and showed us a picture of the woman who owned the hut posing with Michael Jackson. It was the strangest thing. What was Michael Jackson doing in this woman’s hut? Well, apparently a few years earlier he had taken a private tour of the region. The elderly woman who owned the hut had an emaciated cat. Michael took out a $100 bill and told the woman to feed the cat. She kept her promise, but when it was fattened up, she ate it. When I met Michael I told him the story. He remembered the village, but was disheartened to hear the cat had been served up as dinner.
MJ: I remember this newborn baby fighting to live, newborn with all the things in the nose, in a hospital in Israel. How could your heart not go out to something like that? I said to everybody, the kids, everybody, “Come here kids. You have to see this,” because I think they understand the sensitivity of how children are important, helping others, reaching out to the world, to the underprivileged. Being materialistic and showing this sense of me-ism all the time [is something I deplore].
SB: Why didn’t your success go to your head? You pride yourself on not being arrogant. How did you retain your sensitivity? Why didn’t it go to your head? Why did you visit orphanages? Why didn’t it happen to you? How did you remain large, how did you remain grand and nonjudgmental when you should have become more self-absorbed? It’s happened to everybody else. You’ve seen it happen to your friends, I’m sure, who’ve had success.
I recognize that this question goes against my previous point that Michael’s self-absorption as a superstar made it impossible for him to take criticism. Both are true. When I conducted this interview, I had a lofty view of Michael. I was amazed at how humble and approachable he was. And it wasn’t an act. There were always two sides to Michael, the soft gentle boy who hailed from Gary, Indiana, and the superstar who believed he deserved nonstop adulation. As time went on I would see less of Michael and more of the superstar.
MJ: That’s hard to answer. I am just more sensitive to people’s pain and love. I think it’s just inside me.
The Pain of Performing, the Pressure of Staying on Top
Shmuley Boteach: Do you always feel that you are always proving yourself, that you are always having to perform, that there is never rest, that you were never given that period where you could play without having to worry and to impress?
Michael Jackson: I love art. I love it too much. My mother knows that about me. I love painting and sculpting and all that stuff. I always got an A in Art and English. They were the two classes I always got an A-plus. I had very little school schooling other than my tutor. But the years I did have it, the teacher always used me as an example to the class of good English and good storytelling because we all had to write the same stories. But she used to make me go out front—which I hated—and read my story to
the class and I would get huge applause. Not because of who I was but because they truly enjoyed the stories I wrote. I had a portfolio of all of that stuff because I am an artist, too, and I like to draw and paint. And somebody stole it and it broke my heart because I always wanted to save it. One day it will pop up somewhere because I am a realist and I am not abstract. There are people that I am in love with, totally in love with them. I would die for them. I love Michelangelo. I love Charlie Chaplin with all my heart. I love Walt Disney. These are the people I am nuts over. These are my people. I love the great ones.
SB: There is this phenomenal pressure. Do you always have to be Michael Jackson, 100 million album sales?
MJ: And the press, they wait with knives.
SB: For you to fail?
MJ: Absolutely. They try and shred me apart so it has to be beyond expectation, beyond brilliant. I give everything I have.
SB: But it wears you out?
MJ: Yeah. Because when you are the top-selling artist of all time, the records that are broken, they wait. . . you are the target.
SB: What gives you rest, what gives you strength? Is it Prince and Paris?
MJ: Prince and Paris and children all over the world. Not just Prince and Paris—all children.
SB: Do you feel that if the next album is not amazing that you are not going to be special?
MJ: It would be a terrible blow to me [if I did not perform as well as I wish] because I put real pressure on myself and I demand the best out of myself. I really do. The best of the form or the medium that I work in, and I put a lot of pressure on myself. So to have that happen, if that was to happen, it would be psychologically destroying for me.
SB: But do you feel that people would still love you if you were not as successful? Would you still feel loved? A child has to feel loved even if he or she doesn’t do well at school.
MJ: Yes, I would, because of the past work. But I wouldn’t be comfortable with it. I try not to look at the past.
SB: Do you think that because of some of the things that you described to me, a very difficult childhood—without the birthdays, without the Christmases—that is why success in your career has become so important?
MJ: Probably. I think so.
SB: Do you think you punish yourself a bit too much, that’s why there is so much pain? You punish yourself immensely if things aren’t perfect?
MJ: I really do. I know that’s true. I’d rather be the one responsible for it because I have the final say and the final cut on everything. In the past it has been very successful. Oh God, but if that [diminishment of success] was to happen, I don’t know what I would do.
SB: But don’t you see, Michael, that’s what you have to get over. MJ: I know, but I can’t get over it. It’s me. I’m not made that way.
The Master of Mystery
What was undeniable about Michael was that he rose to the very top of his profession worldwide. One of the most important ingredients in his remaining at the top was his intuitive understanding of the power of mystery. It was a subject I wanted to get into deeply with him.
Shmuley Boteach: Alright, I want to speak about something with you which is crucial to this book. Of all the things I’ve seen about you, I have to tell you, I have never seen anyone who understands the power of mystery the way you do. In other words, in the Jewish religion the use of mystery is very important. The prophet Isaiah says that angels, the Seraphim, have six wings. Why six? Well, “With two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew” (Isaiah 6:02). Isn’t that amazing? The angels are so modest, so mysterious, that they use their wings to cover up. Michael Jackson: That’s beautiful.
SB: I’ve written about this extensively in my books, Michael. Mystery is one of the principal ingredients that I prescribe for relationships. The holy is always mysterious. It’s always covered. And the Torah scroll, the Bible scroll that we read from in the synagogue is kept covered and hidden away by multiple layers, in the ark, concealed by curtains, veils, and doors. It’s like three things you need to take away in order to see it. And similarly when Rebecca and Isaac meet in the Bible, before they get married and fall in love, the first thing that Rebecca does upon encountering Isaac is to cover her face. The same thing is true when Moses sees the burning bush. What’s the first thing he does? He turns away and hides his face from seeing God.
MJ: I love those stories.
SB: So in the Bible mystery is very important. I’ve never seen anyone who understands the power of mystery like you. I’ll give you some examples and I want you to comment on them. Number one, my kids are walking around Neverland. There’s candy everywhere. My kids love it because they’ve never seen this, there’s popcorn machines and there’s snow cone machines, and as long as stuff is kosher, they’re eating this and eating that. And although Prince and Paris are surrounded by all this stuff, you say to them, “No, only on your birthday you can have this.” Grace told us they aren’t allowed to use the swings and all that so that they don’t get bored of it. And whenever we go to FAO Schwartz, Prince can buy toys but he has to wait to open them. And especially when it comes to your career, you’ve understood the power of being hidden. Like now, I look at all these new acts, even ’N Sync and even Britney Spears [whom Michael and I had just met in his hotel room], and I was watching them on Entertainment Tonight and they did an interview and I said, “My gosh are they short-sighted. You should do what Michael does. Never be ubiquitous.” But they can’t because they so badly need the attention, they can’t hold back.
I had learned this from Michael. We were once in his hotel room and Britney popped up on TV doing an interview. Michael commented to me that she was everywhere and it was going to hurt her career. “I would never do what she’s doing. In a few years no one will want to hear her anymore. She knows nothing about mystery.’” And this was years before her crotch-displaying antics.
SB: So there are two things I want to ask you. Talk to me about mystery and what it means to you and how did you get the discipline to hold back when you know that every TV show wants you? I mean, gosh, we’re being pounded by every single show in America right now to get an interview with you. How do you, where does that discipline come from? Especially Michael, this is important to comment on, because people, your detractors will criticize you and say, “Michael’s a child, he behaves like a child” when really the only definition of maturity that everyone agrees on, is that maturity involves a capacity for delayed gratification. When other people act impetuously, and you can be patient and wait for things in their proper time, that’s considered the essence of maturity and self-control.
MJ: Thank you.
SB: And your career is built on that and I’m not just saying that to flatter you. It’s true, I’m amazed at it. So talk to me about mystery. How do you know this, where did it come to you, the power of that which is concealed?
MJ: Wow, you’re so observant. It’s amazing how you notice details. Um, I studied. . . I love psychology, I love magic, I love. . . I love real beauty. I love real talent. I love when something’s miraculous, when something’s so beautiful you shouldn’t get it. What I love about Halley’s Comet, and I always say this to my lawyer, Halley’s Comet is no more of a miracle than the moon or the sun. But we make a big deal about it because you see it once in a lifetime and everybody’s out there to see it. You know astronomers and fans and people and it’s this thing that circles around the solar system but you see it once in a lifetime. If it happened every night nobody would care, but to me the moon is just as miraculous. I always talk about deer and dogs and cats. A lot of people go, “There’s a deer! There’s a. . . ” ’cause they’re shy, they’re always hidden. It’s a big deal to see a deer, I mean, and I appreciate that, how people should appreciate real ability and I always say I don’t care if you’re the most talented person in the world, if you come on the television everyday people will regurgitate you. You have to know how to play your audience. You have to know that and it’s true, Shmuley
. And it’s not just a game. But it’s real for me, it’s real for me. It really is.
SB: How do you know that? For example, I had to be taught this. I write about this a lot in my books but I began to develop a lot of my ideas on it from insights from other writers, thinkers, philosophers, etcetera.
MJ: [If you remain mysterious, people will be] more interested, yeah. SB: Look if a woman is always taking off her top, no one’s going to want to see her breasts.
MJ: That’s right.
SB: But if she does it once in a while, that’s what makes it so exciting. That’s what makes it erotic.
MJ: That’s right.
SB: But when it’s, everyday. . .
MJ: That’s right.
SB: Like you go to the African tribes and women walk topless, it’s nothing.
MJ: Nothing, nothing. Leave something to the imagination. I believe in that and people are all. . .
SB: Did someone teach you that?
MJ: No. No, it just, looking at. . . learning from nature and learning you know, just watching and studying, being a serious observer. And umm, you can say to somebody, you can go, “There’s six doors, you can open any of those doors. But the fifth door, don’t open it. Don’t open the fifth door, no matter what.” Of course everyone is going, “What’s behind door number five?” because it’s the great mystery. And that’s, everyone wants to expose door number five because you know. . . And I love that and it’s not like a game but I want people to appreciate talent and ability. I only do an album every five years. Other artists do an album every year and my albums outlast and outsell all the other artists. And people wait for it. There’s like, you know, a whole pulse going on about this album. [Michael was working on completing Invincible at the time.] Its like a fever, they’re waiting, they’re waiting. It’s important to wait.
SB: So what is it about the hidden which makes it outlast the revealed? What is it about holding something back that people want it suddenly?
The Michael Jackson Tapes Page 15