The Michael Jackson Tapes

by Shmuley Boteach

  MJ: I couldn’t hurt them like that.

  SB: Do you want to find them a Rose Fine kind of figure, a bit of a motherhood figure?

  Rose Fine had appeared in our earlier conversations. She was Michael’s and his siblings’ childhood tutor and surrogate mother.

  MJ: That would be nice. That would be sweet. If the person is completely sincere like Miss Fine was, who would read to them and teach them and give them the right values and teach them that there’s no difference and that we are all the same people. She used to always rub my face and I never used to understand why. She used to say I had beautiful hands. And I used to say, “Why, don’t all hands look alike?” But now I see what she means because now I do it to my kids. I rub their face like that because they are so sweet. [Laughs] I never understood why she did it to me. Then you grow up and you realize that it is an endearing thing to do, to say, “I love you.”

  In truth Prince and Paris had a surrogate mother in their impressive and devoted governess, Grace, a polished, highly intelligent and very dedicated woman from Rwanda.

  Celebrity Relationships Gone Wrong—Madonna and Others

  I asked Michael about his celebrity friends. Why could he connect with them more than noncelebrities?

  Michael Jackson: Yeah, but I don’t really have Hollywood friends. I have a few.

  Shmuley Boteach: Why don’t you? Why don’t you hang out with more celebrities?

  MJ: Because I don’t think they are all real people. They love the limelight and I don’t have anything in common with them. They want to go clubbing and afterwards they want to sit around and drink hard liquor and do marijuana and do all kinds of crazy things that I wouldn’t do. We have nothing in common. Remember the line I told you? Madonna laid the law down to me before we went out. “I am not going to Disneyland, okay? That’s out.” I said, “But I didn’t ask you to go to Disneyland.” She said, “We are going to the restaurant and afterwards we are going to a strip bar.” I said, “I am not going to a strip bar.” Guys who cross-dress! Afterwards she wrote some mean things about me in the press and I wrote that she is a nasty witch, after I was so kind to her. I have told you that we were at the table eating and some little kids came up. “Oh my God, Michael Jackson and Madonna. Can we have your autograph?” She said, “Get out of here. Leave us alone.” I said, “Don’t ever talk to children like that.” She said, “Shut up.” I said, “You shut up.” That’s how we were. Then we went out again and went to the Academy Awards and she is not a nice person. I have to say it. She is not a nice person.

  SB: Did the people around you feel that it was important to be seen with her?

  MJ: They knew nothing about it. This was totally between her and me.

  SB: So you gave it a chance and it didn’t work?

  MJ: Yeah, I gave it a chance like I try and give everything a chance.

  SB: You basically saw that your values do not match those of most Hollywood people.

  MJ: No, they do lots of crazy things that I am not into and at the time I was with Madonna she was into these books, a whole library of books of women who were tied to walls. She said, “I love spanky books.” Why do I want to see that?

  SB: I think a lot of it is the image. She once said something to the effect that she would much rather read a good book than have sex. I think the other vulgar stuff is part of the outrageous image she tries to cultivate.

  MJ: She’s lying [about preferring to read a book]. I can’t judge. I don’t know if she has changed or if she [is] trying to claim she has changed.

  SB: Why does she say mean things?

  My own belief is that Madonna had changed. A devotee of Kabbala, she has brought many elements of Judaism into her life, has taken a Hebrew name, and has discarded her raunchy image. She also seems to be a very devoted and loving mother.

  MJ: I think she likes shock value and she knows how to push buttons on people. I think she was sincerely in love with me and I was not in love with her. She did a lot of crazy things and that’s how that went. I knew we had nothing in common. But I am pretty sure that having a baby has to change you. I don’t know how much she has changed. I’m sure she is a better person than before.

  SB: She has two children now.

  MJ: Yeah, I know. How would you like getting a phone call and she is telling you that she is putting her fingers between her legs. I would say, “Oh Madonna, please.” She said, “What I want you to do when I hang up the phone is to rub yourself and think of me.” That’s the kind of stuff she says. She does. When I see her she says, “This is the finger I used last night.” Wild, out of control.

  SB: But you were raised that all things romantic should have a certain modesty. . . the values you were raised with are very similar to core Jewish values. That kind of thing that Madonna was saying is only shocking at first. Then it quickly becomes humdrum and boring. That’s why she has to push the envelope and become more and more shocking just to sustain our interest in her. When people have their breasts out the whole time then you stop looking. Do you see that as vulgar?

  MJ: What she does? Absolutely. She is not sexy at all. I think sexy comes from the heart in the way you present yourself.

  SB: Have you ever found women who are a bit more modest to be more attractive for that reason?

  MJ: Yeah. I don’t like the women who are always saying, “My nails need to be done. I have to do my toes. I need a manicure.” I hate all that. I like it when girls are a little bit more tomboyish. If they wrestle, climb a tree. . . I love that. It is sexier to me. I like class, though. Class is everything.

  SB: If a woman walks round with all her cleavage showing. . .

  MJ: Frank loves it.

  Michael gestured to Frank Cascio, who was sitting right next to us. We all laughed.

  SB: A man might want to have sex with a woman like that. But it doesn’t mean he would want to fall in love with a woman like that.

  MJ: Of course you want to look. I am in love with innocence and I tell Frank that.

  SB: Have you met women who have that innocence or by and large would you say that this generation is cultivating women who are not innocent, who are not encouraged to preserve their innocence?

  MJ: I wish they were.

  SB: Celebrities are targets for people who marry them for the wrong reasons, their fortune and their name. But don’t you know when someone is interested in you for the wrong reason?

  MJ: You don’t know.

  SB: The ancient rabbis said that words that emanate from the heart penetrate the heart. That sincerity cannot be faked. You can’t tell when someone is faking it and is full of it?

  MJ: It is hard because the women today can do a good job of faking it. I mean a real good job. They are so smooth. Look in the Bible. Women have taken the most powerful men down to nothing because of what is between their legs. Samson, nobody could cut his hair, and he had sex with Delilah.

  SB: Monica Lewinsky and Clinton. . . what everyone overlooks is that she went after him, which doesn’t excuse Clinton, but she’s not off the hook either.

  MJ: Didn’t I say that the other day? One woman did so much pain to this president. How much can a woman do to try and hurt a president? Look what she caused, and that’s why I don’t like Barbara Walters because she instigated a lot of it. She made it all on television. She tried to come here today and I cancelled it.

  Michael’s view of women was shaped by his childhood experiences—which were not childlike at all. I believe this negative image of women has unfortunately remained with Michael and may account for why there were very few women in his inner circle. Michael saw women as catty, fomenting jealousy between men, as he believed his sisters-in-law did between The Jackson 5. Women, to Michael’s mind, could be sleazy. They were materialistic and more interested in Michael’s money than in him. Of course, this misogynistic view, for which Michael may not be to blame, is wildly offensive. But it speaks volumes of the kind of people—and perhaps the kind of women—Michael had drawn to him in the past and
how it had scarred him in the present.

  But there is something more. As I noted earlier, there can indeed be a connection between these prurient sexual scenes that Michael witnessed as a small and impressionable child and what many believe to be his adolescent sexual interests. It could well be that at that vulnerable age Michael developed an impression of adult sexuality as manipulative and squalid, and searched, in his own broken way, to find a carnality that was much more innocent. Of course, conjecture in this regard is not always helpful. What is certain, however, is that children are scarred by exposure to adult sexuality that they are not equipped to handle.

  MJ: I don’t like clubs now, I did all that when I was eleven, eight and going back—nine, eight, seven, six. Fights break out, people throwing up, yelling, screaming, the police sirens. Our father never let us become a part of it other than to perform and leave. But sometimes in having to do that you would get caught up in some of the craziness. I saw it all. The lady who came on right before, when The Jackson’s were little, “And now next, The Little Jackson 5,” was the lady who took off all her clothes. Threw her panties into the audience and the men would grab them and sniff them. I saw all this. Her name was Rose Marie and she put these things on her breasts and moved them around and she showed everything. So when I became sixteen, seventeen and guys would say, “Let’s go clubbing,” I would go, “Are you crazy?” And the guys would be like, “No, are you crazy? We can get girls, we can get liquor.” But I had done that. I did that when I was a baby. Now I want to be a part of the world and the life I didn’t have. Take me to Disneyland, take me to where the magic is.

  Loneliness, Wanting Children, and Lisa Marie Presley’s Second Thoughts

  Shmuley Boteach: Let me ask you about loneliness. So wherever you travel, you, thank God, have an entourage. People you’ve been with for a long time, Frank and Skip [Michael’s bodyguard at the time, a very pleasant and decent man from New Orleans]. But it’s still not like having a wife in your life or something. Do you get lonely? Or is there so much going on in your life that it doesn’t really happen?

  Michael Jackson: Like lonely for like a wife? For like a mate? Like that?

  SB: Yeah.

  MJ: I’ve been through two bad divorces and I just got out of the second one. Even when married to those women that I was married to, I’d go to bed hurting. I was hurting. I was crying last night as I went to sleep and I didn’t sleep good last night. And I cry, Shmuley, because I feel this. . . and I’m not trying, I’m telling you the honest truth and if you don’t believe me you can ask Frank. Frank knew how I was hurting. I just was feeling all the pain of the children who suffer and I was hurting so much. That’s why I was trying to reach any child I knew who had pain, from [Michael mentions a little girl who was battling cancer and whose family he met at our home] to Gavin [Michael’s later accuser]. I was trying to like, calling, dialing and I woke up the first thing, the first person I called was [the little girl’s] house and she had gone already. It hurts me. But I think that’s where my real love comes from, Shmuley. If I can help in that way, I’m fine and I don’t need the other [romantic love]. You know if I meet some girl somewhere and I think she’s beautiful, which I see a lot of them, that’s great. I mean, I’ll go on a date or something. Nothing wrong with that. Jennifer Lopez looked awfully good the other day, she did. I was shocked ’cause I never thought. . . She looked good [Michael laughs as he says this].

  SB: But have you given up on women understanding you? You tend to think that children will understand you a lot better?

  MJ: I’m not easy to live with in that way for a wife. I’m not easy and I know I’m not easy. Because I give all my time to someone else. I give it to children, I give it to somebody sick somewhere, to the music. And women want to be the center. And I remember Lisa Marie would always say to me, “I’m not a piece of furniture, I’m not a piece of furniture. You just can’t . . .” I say, “I don’t want you to be a piece of furniture,” and, you know, there’d be some sick little girls calling on the phone and she’d get mad and hang up on them. And, you know, I feel that’s my, that’s my mission, Shmuley. I have to do it.

  SB: What if you found a woman who was that soft, who was incredibly soft?

  MJ: Like a Mother Teresa or a Lady Diana or. . . That would be great. It would be perfect.

  SB: Would that be better than having to do it on your own?

  MJ: Absolutely, and Lisa was great with going to the hospitals with me, and she was so sweet about that. They would tie the babies to the bed or chain the children down. We’d go unchain. . . we’d go free all these babies. I hated that and she, she discovered a lot of that injustice with me. Countries like Romania and Prague, Czechoslovakia and all that, Russia. You should see what they do to the children in those. . . you’d be shocked. They chain them to the wall like they’re animals and they’re naked and they slept in their tinkle and their feces too. It’s just so sad, it made me sick. So we brought clothes and toys and just love and love. I love them and I went back every day visiting them, hugging them, wanting to take each and every one of them to Neverland.

  SB: When you started becoming this childhood star, did you realize that your childhood was slowly slipping away? You won a contest at age eight. In 1964, you were chosen as lead singer for the family band. Did that make you feel excited or were you worried? Did you think to yourself, “Where is all this headed? What’s it going to lead to?”

  MJ: I didn’t think about it. I didn’t think about the future. I just took each day as it came. I knew I wanted to be a star. I wanted to do things and make people happy.

  SB: Did you know what the cost was going to be in terms of childhood?

  MJ: No way. No way.

  The phone rings. Michael talks to the president of Sony Records, Tommy Matolla, who has invited Michael to his wedding. Michael says he wants to sit musicians with him so he can throw peanuts at Tommy. I think to myself, “Michael’s playfulness never ends.”

  MJ on phone: Tell the guys to let the music talk to them and not to, like, jump on it right away. Listen to it a couple of times and let the melody create itself. That’s the thing, let the music speak to them. Alright? Goodbye.

  SB: Is that your dream that one day, like part of the messianic future, as far as you’re concerned, that all these kids will come and live in Neverland and live happily ever after?

  MJ: Yes.

  SB: And if you had the resources truly you would just. . .

  MJ: I would do it, Shmuley. I would do it. I would love it.

  SB: Lisa Marie was good about at least visiting. So she had no problem going and doing some of the compassionate things of giving these children love and making them feel special?

  MJ: She had no problem doing that but her and I had several big arguments ’cause she’s very territorial with her children. Her children were [her major concern]. . . and I said, “No, all children are our children,” and she never liked that coming from me. She was very angry about that. Plus, she had a fight with me one time when two little boys in London killed this other kid and I was going to visit them ’cause the queen gave them adult sentencing of life. These were like eleven- and ten-year-old boys and I was going to go to the prison and visit them. She said, “You idiot. You’re just rewarding them for what they did.” I said, “How dare you say that.” I said, “I bet if you trace their life you can find they didn’t have parents around, they didn’t have any love, nobody there to hold them look in their eyes and say, “I love you.” They deserve that, even though they’re going to get life, I just want to say I love you and hold them.” She said, “We’ll, you’re wrong.” I said, “No, you’re wrong.” Then the information came out that they came from broken families, were never watched as little kids, attended to. Their pacifier was those Chucky movies with the stabbings and the killings. And that’s how they became conditioned to that.

  SB: Did she admit then that you had a point?

  MJ: Nope, she thinks I’m rewarding bad kids.
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br />   SB: Did she want you to be a father to her children?

  MJ: Well that was once asked of her. She was asked that question on TV and she said, “No, they have a father. Their father is Keogh,” that other guy. But I was really good to her children. Every day I’d bring them home something and they’d be waiting by the window for me and hug me. I love them. I miss them so much.

  SB: Did she get used to living in Neverland or was it too isolated?

  MJ: Lisa didn’t live at Neverland. We visited Neverland the way. . . I lived at her house in the city and every once in a while we visited Neverland. It’d be like our big fun weekend.

  SB: And her children liked it?

  MJ: Are you kidding me? They were like in heaven.

  SB: And you were happy to show it to them?

  MJ: Mm hmm.

  SB: Did it have more meaning to you suddenly when you had a family you could show it to?

  MJ: Yes, yes. It’s just a place to make families, to bring them together, to bring people together through love and playful spirit and nature. It makes families closer, Neverland. It’s healing.

  SB: Since you idolize the family was it very hard for you when you had to go through that divorce then?

  MJ: Which one?

  SB: With Lisa.

  MJ: Was it hard for me?

  SB: Did you see the writing on the wall? That you were different? Meaning my parents divorced when I was eight. So I really, really romanticized marriage.

  MJ: Really?

  SB: Oh phenomenally. It’s what all my books are about, marriage. Because I couldn’t deal with. . .

  MJ: So you really believe in marriage and all that? You love marriage?

  SB: It’s what I believe most in the whole world. I believe in family, I really do.

  MJ: I do too, Shmuley.