The Michael Jackson Tapes

by Shmuley Boteach

  In New York Michael took me to a dealer whose entire showroom was crowded with original Norman Rockwells. Michael ran from paintng to painting, excitedly explaining every detail to me. I have rarely een him so animated.

  Elizabeth Taylor: A Special Bond

  Michael Jackson: Elizabeth Taylor is very childlike. There’s nothing that you can do when she’ll say, “I don’t want to do that.” When Bug’s Life came out, she bugged me over and over to fix my schedule so we could see the cartoon. So we had to go to a public theater at about 1:00 o’clock. She makes me go out every Thursday because she says I’m too reclusive. Everybody’s at work, so there’s no one there and we never pay. . . we come with nothing and they always say, “Oh, my God, Elizabeth Taylor and Michael Jackson.” We get free popcorn, everything. She loved Bug’s Life and loves Neverland. She’ll go on the carousel and the Ferris wheel, but not the scary rides.

  There are other childlike qualities of Elizabeth Taylor. She was in Jane Eyre around eight or nine. Our fathers were very much alike, tough, hard, brutal. She’s playful and youthful and happy and finds a way to laugh and giggle even when she’s in pain. She’s ready to play any game, go swimming. She’s very good with children. She loves toys and cartoons. I get to learn so much from her. She’ll tell me about James Dean and Clark Gable and Spencer Tracey and Montgomery Clift, because she did movies with all these people. She tells me what they were really like, the ones who were nice people and the ones that weren’t.

  We were in Singapore—she came on most of the Dangerous tour with me—and we decided we wanted to go to the zoo. And we hung out and had our own private tour and we had fun. She’s Prince and Paris’s godmother and Macaulay’s their godfather. She’s just retained that little girl quality. That little child you see in Jane Eyre and Lassie Come Home, that’s still in there. It’s in her eyes. She has this glow like a child. It’s so sweet. But Shirley [Temple Black], too. She says, “You get it, don’t you. You’re one of us.”

  [Elizabeth Taylor and I] we’re like brother and sister, mother and son, lovers. . . it’s a potpourri. . . it’s something special. We go through this whining thing on the phone. . . “I need you. . . .” “Oh, I need you, too.” We can talk about anything. She’s been my most loyal friend. She says she adores me and would do anything for me. She says Hollywood has to write a movie for the two of us. We just have to do something together.

  Shmuley Boteach: Do you get jealous when she dates other men? She got married in your backyard.

  MJ: Do I get jealous? Yes and no. I know that if we ever did anything romantically, the press would be so mean and nasty and call us “The Odd Couple.” It would turn into a circus and that’s the pain of it all. You know, I push her in a wheelchair sometimes, when she can’t walk. It’s none of their business what we have together. I have to be with people like me. Some rappers will say to me, “Let’s hang out. Let’s go down to a club.” And I’ll say, “What? Let’s hang? I don’t think so.” That kind of thing’s not a party for me.

  On that tour [Dangerous], she fed me because I wouldn’t eat. When I get upset, I stop eating, sometimes until I’m unconscious. [The molestation allegations had just been lodged against Michael while he was on tour in 1993. Hence, the reason for his upset.] She took the spoon and opened my mouth and made me eat. She said she wouldn’t let me go without her, and her doctors advised her not to go. She went to Thailand and followed the tour all the way to London. I ended up at Elton John’s and he was really sweet hiding me. He’s one of the sweetest people you could meet on this planet. He and I took care of Ryan White, all his medical expenses.

  Then they started doing it intravenously. I go through these serious food crises when I could go weeks without eating. I take stuff to keep weight on. What turns me off is that I don’t like eating anything that used to be alive and now it’s dead on my plate. I want to be a strict vegetarian, but my doctors keep trying to throw in chicken and fish.

  PART 8

  ON CHILDREN AND INNOCENCE

  Can Children Teach Us Love?

  Many of you reading this are no doubt of the opinion that Michael gravitated toward children for all the wrong reasons. But it is worth hearing his words here. Michael would tell me constantly that he loved innocence. Now, remember. Michael was performing in clubs from the age of five. He shared with me that he used to see strippers and other adult scenes as a small child. As I’ve consistently maintained, it is very possible that he came to associate sex with something perverted and corrupt. He was seeing things that no child should witness. Hence, his love of innocence. Children were innocent. They provided a refuge from this prurient world into which Michael had been immersed. There is a powerful lesson here for all the parents out there. Be careful of exposing your kids to adult content. It can scar and damage them for life.

  Shmuley Boteach: Do you think children can teach us love?

  Michael Jackson: Yeah, in a different way because they are so affectionate. They can teach us affection and it is quintessential affection and it is pure innocence. That’s why I love them so much. I was telling Frank the other day, “Frank, I am in love with innocence, that’s what I’m in love with. That’s why I love children so much.” Innocence is God. To be that innocent and approach things with such a sweet outlook on life, with truly just sweet. . . Where a kid will walk around the house and you’ll go, “What are you doing?” and they answer, “I don’t know, playing.” It’s so sweet. I love that. That’s why [in] the painting [on a wall in Michael’s house is a picture showing hundreds of children playing at Neverland]. . . one kid is screaming in the wind because he is feeling so good. He is just screaming to be screaming. I love that. Romance. Romance.

  SB: Almost like they believe in love, they are not afraid to get hurt. People are afraid to love today.

  MJ: [Are] love and romance two different things? That’s why I am getting confused. I see romance as something that is longed for. You long for that out of a stage.

  SB: Do you see romance as contrived by Hollywood movies?

  MJ: Yes. Very.

  SB: Kids are a bit romantic. They have romances in kindergarten. MJ: You mean like crushes on other kids?

  SB: Yes.

  MJ: Yes, they do. They can teach you to be loving and sweet and they teach us in that way that probably. . . They give everybody a chance and I teach Prince and Paris to love everybody.

  Why Michael Remained Childlike

  Shmuley Boteach: When people use the expression adult, it can mean mature, balanced, educated, temperate. It can mean patient. But it also has negative connotations that I want you to comment on. It can connote being cynical, untrusting, scheming, manipulative, corrupt, judgmental, scarred. Tell me some of the negative things that adults learn as they grow older.

  Michael Jackson: They just have so many problems, adults. They have been so conditioned by other people’s thoughts and feelings. That’s why I don’t trust most dogs. It’s not the dog. It’s because people in-still what they believe and all their anger and frustration is embedded in that dog and he becomes this vicious, crazy thing. And I don’t know what kind of package he is bringing to me when he comes up to me and sniffs me. So it’s like another adult. That’s why I get afraid.

  Indeed, when we met Michael amid having every animal under the sun, including tigers and elephants, he had no family dog. Michael asked me why we didn’t have a dog either, and I said that I was concerned the children would not take care of it. Then, just before my daughter Chana’s tenth birthday, Michael called from Neverland. “Shmuley, will you be angry if I get the kids a dog, just a real little one?” “Well Michael, that’s real nice of you. But as I said, I’m concerned that the kids won’t take care of it.” A day later, the door bell rang. There was no one there. But on the doorstep was a beautiful toy Maltese puppy. The kids were thrilled. Marshmallow, as the children named her, has been a member of our family ever since. A few weeks later, when Michael came for dinner with his kids, his children played with the
dog and begged him for a dog as well, a request that Michael finally granted, telling me that our puppy had helped him get beyond his own fears of dogs. But then, our pet was his gift.

  SB: So you want to know what the person’s motives are. You want to know if he has a vicious nature or. . .

  MJ: Yesssss. But that is the perfect representation of what people have let themselves become. Somewhere along the line they have gotten lost and I believe in just staying childlike and innocent and simple. As Jesus said, “The greatest among me is like this little child here. Be like him and you are the greatest in my eyes.” When a lot of adults first come to me, they look at me and they are checking out what you are wearing and who you are with. I see it. Then once they speak to me and they see that I am just a simple person who wants to be a friend, their heart melts. I see it.

  SB: So children are accepting initially. They don’t judge.

  MJ: Yes, they let it all hang out. Kids go, “Oh my God, it’s Michael Jackson.” And I go, “Hi.” An adult will smile and go, “Hi.” Then, judging it a little bit, they go, “I like your stuff,” but they won’t let it all come out. [They won’t let themselves appear impressed.]

  SB: Why won’t they? Why do they bottle up their enthusiasm? Are they trying to show, “I’m not going to be won over by you. . . I’m a person, too.” Is it insecurity?

  MJ: They are having a psychological warfare going on, how to approach me, what to say, what not to say. [But what I want them to know is that they should] just be yourself, be like a child. Be innocent. Be the way you were when you were born.

  SB: Maybe what you are saying to them is this: “I am not trying to be bigger than you. I am who I am, and you just be who you are.”

  It’s almost as though you are saying that children are more of your equals than adults are.

  MJ: Of course they are. I can relate to them much easier. They don’t come with all the baggage or stuff. They just play. They don’t want anything from you. You don’t want anything from them but love and innocence, and to find true happiness and magic together.

  SB: It’s also like adults make you into someone you don’t want to be. You don’t want to be defensive and artificial and you don’t want to have stupid small talk. When kids come to you with all this enthusiasm you are Michael. But around adults you come with another agenda. You give the analogy of the dog. You don’t know how to react so you get defensive. They make you into someone you don’t want to be.

  MJ: That’s right. That’s why I have become. . . not to say that I have let them win the war, but I just don’t care to be around them. You can put the message out there. We will change a lot of people [to be more childlike]. We will literally and mentally baptize them with our words and our books, whatever we are doing. But there are so many out there who have shut the door mentally and they don’t want to be changed and they refuse to see the light. But we could help a lot of people, a lot of them are just very, very hard. They have been so conditioned. But I believe you can change a lot of people. That’s what’s so wonderful about it all. You can show them. There are grown-ups who come to Neverland and they say to me, “You know, I haven’t done the things I have done here in years. . . you can let your guard down and be a child again.” I say, “That’s what Neverland is for. To return to your innocence. To have fun.”

  God Heals Through Children

  Shmuley Boteach: All the pain that you have endured with all the attacks, and I have seen it firsthand, and I say to people, so much of the garbage that is said about you is invented and unfair. So why haven’t you just become a cynical adult, and thrown in the towel?

  Michael Jackson: I’ll tell you. Because with the pain, and the arrows that people have shot at me nobody else would have been able to take it. They would have probably committed suicide by now. . . they would have become a drunk. Because they have been very cruel and rude to me. And if they don’t think I hear it and see it, I do. I do. It’s been the children. I am holding on for them or else I wouldn’t have made it. I really wouldn’t have made it.

  SB: The children have given you the support to continue? Or are you saying you continue because you believe that God gave you a mission to try and care for these neglected children?

  MJ: God gave me a mission, I feel, to do something for them and they have given me the support and the belief and the love to hold on, hold on. When I look in the mirror I feel healed all over again. It’s like being baptized. It’s like God saying, “Michael, everything will be ok,” when I look in the eyes of a child.

  SB: So as far as you are concerned, you seem to be saying that you have completed every mission apart from your greatest mission and you are hanging on for that great mission and that is that you can bring care to children. Does that mean that you no longer have the same musical ambitions?

  MJ: Are you kidding? It is heightened a trillion-fold now, from dancing to music, it inspires me even more now.

  SB: But can you show love to adults, do you still trust adults?

  MJ: I trust adults. . .

  SB: But you are still wary initially. . . you have to be.

  MJ: Yes, because they have really betrayed and deceived me in so many different ways and at so many different times. I have had adults with tears coming down their face, saying, “It’s a shame what you have been through and I would never ever ever ever hurt you or do anything. And they turn around and they hurt me. Honestly, that’s the kind of crap I have been through. . . tears rolling down and hugging me. And they end up a year later suing over some ridiculous. . . like a photographer over some pictures, or some person who gets terminated and I didn’t terminate them, but I get sued by them and I didn’t do it. This is the sort of silliness.

  SB: At that moment they probably meant it and that’s the problem. A day later emotion can change. But deep down you can still trust. You may have cause to feel betrayed and let down, but you have to overcome the fear you have of people. That is extremely important. I wouldn’t be your friend if I didn’t believe that. You’ve taught me more about appreciating my kids, and I want to teach you more about being fearless.

  MJ: Ah, that’s sweet. I have had so many parents come to me, because when their kids see me, they fall in love with me. They go nuts. They wanna play and climb trees and I do all that with them. They take me aside with tears in their eyes and go, “Michael, I don’t know my children. You have taught me to really spend time with my children. I need to learn that.” They tell me that all the time.

  SB: But children bore most adults, especially if they’re not their own.

  MJ: But how? Honestly, tell me the truth, do they really bore them?

  SB: Yes. First, because children need a phenomenal amount of patience and most adults do not have patience. Second, children ask so many questions, and, the adult thinks, “I want to get on with my work!” Because parents have decided that making a million dollars is important, but the child wanting to know why a cat has four legs is not important. Do you like those questions from children? Do you think that children know what is important even more than adults?

  MJ: It depends on value, on what we consider to be truly important. In my true opinion, to be an entrepreneur and climb the corporate ladder and all those other, worldly things that people do, that’s worldly to them. I think children worship fun, love, they worship attention. They want a fun-filled day, things that when you experience it with them you have a special place in their heart forever. It changes who they become and what our world becomes, the totality of what happens in this universe becomes. It is the future.

  SB: But what if someone says, “Fun isn’t serious. We have to work. We have to cure diseases. We have to build houses and find out what the weather forecast is for the weekend. And fun doesn’t do any of that. Children have to grow up to know that they have responsibilities, that they have to do work.”

  MJ: I think we learn through play, through having fun and after having fun I think magic happens. Or during having fun, magic happens. I know for me i
t does. I wrote one of the prettiest songs I’ve ever written when I was playing with some children, for this album. It completely came from them and when I had my songs laid out I go, “Ok, this one came from this kid, and this one came from this kid.” They inspired it. It came from their being and their presence and their spirit. It’s true.

  SB: So children are like a swimming pool and the water represents Godliness. And as you get older and grow up the water begins to freeze until it becomes ice. And children are just this reservoir of warm, free water and you can just play, whereas ice is hard and cold and not inviting. So you want to get adults to thaw, as it were, melt the pool again.

  MJ: That’s why when I direct movies—and I am going to start directing again soon—I see everything through the eyes of a child. All my stories are going to be about issues about children, how they are affected by the world and how they see the world through their eyes, ’cause that’s all I can relate to. I can’t deal with some court story or murder crime. I don’t understand that. I can understand if a kid were involved in a crime and tracing his life and what happened and why it happened and how he is feeling being sentenced to life and what goes on in that little heart that is pounding. I can understand that. I can direct that, I can write about that because I feel that.

  SB: How can an adult get that feeling? Is it a gift? Can I acquire it? Being around you I do feel it more.

  MJ: That’s really sweet.