Michael Jackson

by J. Randy Taraborrelli

  When Michael got home to the Encino compound, one of the first things he did was call Steve Howell: ‘Can you come up here and set up the video equipment in my room so I can watch the Three Stooges?’

  That afternoon, Michael took a spin around the property in his electric car, a close copy of the vehicle from Mr Toad's Wild Ride at Disneyland. From the street, outside the gate, his fans – who were always there – could see him whizzing up and down the driveway like a little boy so happy that his mother had finally let him out to play. After he put away his expensive toy, Michael playfully tossed the gown he wore in the hospital over the gate to the fans.

  To this day, Michael experiences some pain in his scalp where he was burned. ‘They knew I could have sued them,’ Michael wrote of Pepsi in his book Moonwalk, though most people felt that it was probably the production company, not Pepsi, that was responsible. ‘But I was real nice about it.’

  Well, he wasn't that nice. At Michael's request, John Branca pressured Pepsi-Cola into a monetary settlement. He wanted $1.5 million. The company argued that the sum was way too high. They would pay, but the accident wasn't even their fault; they blamed the production company. ‘How about a half mil?’ one of the soft drink's lawyers suggested. Finally, under threat of a lawsuit, Pepsi-Cola paid Michael $1.5 million.

  Michael Jackson accepted the money, then donated it to the Michael Jackson Burn Center, which had been established in his honour at Brotman after the accident.

  ‘I never smile when I dance’

  By February 1984, Michael Jackson's accident had been the subject of news reports for weeks. The publicity had only served to heighten the suspense about the forthcoming Pepsi commercials, which were to be aired for the first time during the upcoming Grammy Awards programme. Some people began talking about their ‘debut’, as if they were among the most newsworthy events of the century. Before the Grammys, the commercials would be ‘unveiled’ at a black-tie event for one thousand bottlers at New York's Lincoln Center; the commercials would also be screened for the press in New York, have their world premiere on MTV at no cost to the sponsor, and then, finally, appear as consecrated commercials during the Grammy telecast.

  Down to the very last minute, though, Michael gave the Pepsi-Cola Company a difficult time. When he saw the finished product (actually two commercials: the concert scene and a ‘street’ scene featuring Michael with dancer, Alfonso Riberio), Michael adamantly insisted that they were not good enough; Michael hated them. There was too much of his face in the concert spot, he said. The bigger problem was that Michael wouldn't talk directly to the Pepsi executives about his concerns. Either he was acting spoiled or he was shy. No one was sure.

  Roger Enrico then telephoned Joseph to complain that they couldn't make the commercials ‘better’ if Michael refused to talk about them. No matter what people may have thought about Joseph personally, they respected the fact that he was usually willing at least to listen to them. If he thought an idea had merit, he would do his best to convince Michael to consider the proposal favourably.

  ‘Look, it's not easy for Michael,’ Joseph Jackson told one Pepsi executive. ‘He's got great ideas, but he can't always express them. Let me help. I can act as a go-between and make it easier on everybody. I know the kid. I know how he thinks.’

  A few hours later, Joseph called Roger. ‘I have Michael here,’ he said, ‘and I'm sure you guys can work things out.’

  There was a pause.

  ‘Go ahead. Talk to the man?’ Joseph urgently whispered. ‘Get on the phone, Michael.’

  Michael got on the line. He then complained to Roger that he was made to take off his sunglasses during the taping, and that he really hadn't wanted to do that. He had been promised, he said, that there would be only one close-up without the shades, ‘and now I see lots of close-ups of me with my glasses off.’ Moreover, he fretted that there was too much of him in the commercials, ‘way over four seconds of my face.’ The film was too dark. He spins twice during the routine. ‘And I only agreed to one spin,’ Michael reminded Roger. Also, in the commercial with Alfonso Riberio, which he liked and said was ‘magic, just magic’, he wanted bells to sound when Alfonso bumped into him as they danced, ‘like the sound of a wind chime.’

  ‘Bells?’ Enrico asked, dazed.

  ‘Yes, bells.’

  Both commercials were quickly re-edited with Michael's changes in place. Michael then took a look at the new product and telephoned Roger Enrico with the verdict. ‘Hello, Mr Enrico. This is Michael Jackson,’ he said. ‘You know, the person you spoke to the other day about the commercials.’

  Roger remembered.

  The commercial with Alfonso Riberio was fine, he said. However, there was still too much of him in the concert endorsement. He was seen for a total of five seconds. There should only be four seconds of his image, he said. Also, he was seen smiling in one dance moment.

  ‘So?’

  ‘So, I never smile when I dance,’ Michael explained.

  ‘Oh.’

  On 7 February Michael was inducted into the Guinness Book of Records during a ceremony at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, in recognition of Thriller having broken all records for album sales at twenty-five million copies. CBS Records held a black-tie party for fifteen hundred guests at the Museum of Natural History. Michael was accompanied to the event by actress Brooke Shields. Her ‘people’ had gotten in touch with his ‘people’ and suggested that she would be the perfect date. ‘Why not?’ Michael decided.

  When Michael got back to Los Angeles, he met with Joseph, Katherine, his brothers and Don King to tell them what he had decided about the tour. ‘I want to rename it,’ he said. ‘I don't like “Victory Tour” I want to call it “The Final Curtain”.’

  Michael wanted to make it clear that the upcoming tour would be the end of the road for him and his brothers. Once they finished, he would not work with the Jacksons again, thus ‘The Final Curtain’.

  ‘None of the brothers liked that name at all,’ Marlon recalled. ‘Our parents didn't like it either. Michael was making it sound like a funeral, like someone had died. But we weren't dying.’

  Michael wasn't happy with the name ‘Victory tour’ because of the obvious implication that the tour was, somehow, a victorious occasion. Actually, he felt that he'd been defeated by being coaxed by his mother into participating in the event. As far as the new name was concerned, however, he was, not surprisingly, outvoted.

  ‘How many Grammys do you think I'll win?’ Michael asked Quincy Jones.

  Quincy shrugged. Smart man. He knew better, after the Thriller outburst, than to make any predictions.

  ‘Well, all I can say is I hope I win a lot of 'em,’ Michael said with a smile.

  A review of the history of the Grammys – the awards programme that the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences established in the late 1950s as a pop music equivalent of the Oscars – reveals that Grammy winners are not always the true pre-eminent artists and recordings of their time. For example, Elvis Presley never won a Grammy for any of his major pop vocal performances, even though he was the most influential pop artist of the last forty years. Chuck Berry was also routinely omitted. The Beatles only received four Grammys, which is amazing considering their impact on popular music and our culture. Bob Dylan's ground-breaking Highway 61 Revisited album won no Grammys in 1965. David Bowie's important Ziggy Stardust collection didn't even win a nomination in 1972. James Brown, The Rolling Stones, Sly Stone and Diana Ross have never received Grammy Awards. Quite simply, the six thousand notoriously conservative people who vote for those awards are not apt to quickly recognize the importance and significance of new artists.

  There are also other, political considerations. It has long been rumoured that both the nominating process and the final electoral process of the Grammy Awards are dominated by major record companies that have turned the award into a self-congratulatory sham. By 1983, this contest had come down to a struggle between two la
rge superpowers – the Warner Brothers/Elektra-Asylum/ Atlantic-Atco faction (WEA) and the Columbia/Epic faction (CBS). As a result, it was very difficult for non-WEA and non-CBS recording artists to win Grammys. Motown artists, with the exception of Stevie Wonder, were usually not even in the running. In fact, in 1982, CBS won twenty-one of a possible sixty-two awards, including all the major citations.

  Michael wasn't interested in the politics of the Grammy Awards. ‘Who cares?’ he once told a friend. ‘All I want is as many of 'em as I can get.’

  He needn't have worried. Michael Jackson was, quite simply, too popular for the Academy to ignore. He was so popular, in fact, that everyone agreed on his importance; he had become rock music's most commonly celebrated hero, and he was a CBS artist, to boot. When the Grammy nominations were announced, he received an unprecedented twelve nominations – the highest number of mentions for any single performer in Grammy history – including Record of the Year (‘Beat It’), Album of the Year (Thriller), and Song of the Year (‘Beat It’ and ‘Billie Jean’); a nomination for Best Children's Recording for his narration of E.T.; nominations for the engineers who remixed the instrumental track of ‘Billie Jean’ for the B-side of a single, and for the songwriters who wrote ‘PYT’ for his album; nominations for his producer, Quincy Jones; and an additional Best Producer nomination jointly shared by Michael and Quincy. In fact, Jackson's closest competitor was his producer and occasional arranger, Quincy Jones, who received six nominations.

  Along with Thriller, the Police's Synchronicity and the Flashdance soundtrack also received nominations for Album of the Year, as did Billy Joel's An Innocent Man and David Bowie's Let's Dance.

  The Grammys

  On Tuesday, 28 February 1984, Grammy night, the scene at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles was one of pure pandemonium. Giant klieg lights cut dramatic white patterns in the dark sky above. Fans in their roped-off areas were ready to scream and call out the names of anyone they might recognize. When twenty-five-year-old Michael Jackson arrived for his coronation as king of the pop music world, he wore a spangled uniform with epaulets and the rhinestoned glove on his right hand. With him was Brooke Shields.

  Actually, Michael didn't want to go to the awards show with Brooke. Shortly before the ceremony, she came by the Encino house unexpectedly to ask him if he would consider taking her to the show. Although they had been friends for two years, it's unclear whether Brooke, eighteen years old at this time, actually felt attracted to Michael, or whether she knew that going with him to the Grammys would generate enormous publicity for her. She had already accompanied him to the American Music Awards in January when Michael swept the night (winning eight trophies) and to the Guinness Awards in February. Her picture, with Michael's, had been in every newspaper across the country.

  Brooke Shields was instantly recognizable back in 1984, but not really a major star. Her career had not been critically acclaimed; her later films usually flopped. Her famous jeans commercials were no longer airing, and a movie called Sahara had temporarily been shelved. Smart and well-spoken, she was attending Princeton University in New Jersey at the time. Brooke and Michael enjoyed each other's company and related to one another in that both understood the pressure of being a child star with demanding parents. Brooke's mother-manager, Teri, was delighted by her daughter's association with Michael.

  LaToya and Janet were in the kitchen when Michael rushed in to tell them of Brooke's request. ‘I don't want to take her,’ he said, according to LaToya's memory. ‘I really, really don't.’

  ‘Well then tell her, Michael,’ LaToya said. ‘Tell her no if you don't want to take her.’

  ‘But I can't.’

  ‘Why not?’ Janet asked.

  ‘Because I don't want to hurt her feelings,’ Michael explained. Visibly cringing, he then went back into the living room.

  A few moments later he rejoined his sisters, wearing a sheepish grin.

  ‘Well?’ LaToya asked.

  ‘I'm taking her,’ Michael said, sounding defeated. How ironic that the pop star who had not been intimidated by record business honchos Berry Gordy and Walter Yetnikoff had been hectored by Brooke Shields into doing what he did not want to do.

  Months later, Michael and his employee Steve Howell were reviewing photographs from the awards show. One was of him with Brooke Shields. ‘What's she like?’ Howell asked.

  ‘Oh, she's okay,’ Michael said, nonchalantly. ‘But I only took her to help her out,’ he added. ‘There was no romance. All of this was strictly for her, for the sake of publicity.’

  Indeed, when Michael and Brooke arrived in a white Rolls-Royce just moments before the ceremony began, there was such hysteria from the fans one might have thought they were visiting royals. Poor Tatum O'Neal was at the entrance door with four friends, watching the madness. Michael, Brooke and a coterie of security guards rushed right by her. ‘Michael. Hey, Michael!’ Tatum shouted. Too late. He was gone. She turned to her friends. ‘I'll introduce you to him later. I promise/

  Michael, wearing heavy pancake makeup and loads of eyeliner, sat in the theatre's front row with Brooke and Emmanuel Lewis, who had met them there. Brooke seemed uncomfortable about having to share her date with a twelve-year-old. Earlier, when photographers descended upon them, Michael held Emmanuel with one arm and hugged Brooke with his free hand. It was as if he was trying to remind Brooke – and maybe the public – that the presence of a child on their date meant that he really wasn't serious about her. ‘Let's get out of here,’ Brooke was heard saying to Michael. ‘People are making fun of us.’

  During the ceremony, cheers rose from fans in the balcony and from industry colleagues who filled the orchestra seats every time Michael's face flashed on the studio monitors or his name was even mentioned. When the two Pepsi commercials ‘premiered’, the audience reacted with a tidal wave of applause and whistles. It was obvious that he was the man of the moment, and before he had even won a single award. Comedienne Joan Rivers noted in an explanation of how the votes were tabulated, ‘The reason we're reading the rules is so that all the losers will know why they lost to Michael Jackson.’

  That night, Michael made Grammy history when he won eight awards out of a possible ten wins on twelve nominations (three of his nominations were in one category).

  Not since the brilliant maturation of Motown's Stevie Wonder in the mid-seventies (he won five Grammys in 1973 and 1974) had the public, press, and industry – three factions that seldom see eye-to-eye on anything – agreed so wholeheartedly on an entertainer's importance to our pop culture. In a sense, the unanimous recognition of Michael Jackson at the Shrine Auditorium meant that fans, critics and voters had agreed on a new pop music king.

  Accepting the Best Album award for Thriller (which, by this time, had sold twenty-seven million records, was the biggest-selling album in history and still number one on the Billboard charts), a nervous and shy Michael said, ‘This is a great honour. I'm very happy.’

  When he later picked up the seventh and record-breaking Grammy, he took off his dark glasses in a victory salute – ‘for the girls in the balcony’. Katharine Hepburn (‘my dear friend’) had scolded Michael for wearing the shades at the American Music Awards and told him he was ‘cheating’ his fans by not allowing them to see his eyes.

  Michael accepted one award with the comment, ‘I have something very important to say… really,’ and proceeded to pay touching tribute to legendary rhythm-and-blues star Jackie Wilson, who had recently died.

  Jackie was one of Michael's show-business idols. After suffering a heart attack onstage in New Jersey in 1975, Jackie lay in a helpless, practically vegetative condition in a nursing home. All of the Jackson children went to visit him one day in 1977. His primary caretaker was Joyce McCrae, who would go on to work for Joseph Jackson Productions. She was Gina Sprague's nemesis in the work place. Jackie couldn't speak; he could only blink once for no and twice for yes. All of the Jackson siblings were gathered around his bedside, trying not to cr
y, as Joyce introduced them, one by one. When she got to Michael, Jackie smiled and blinked twice. McCrae recalled, ‘There was a happiness on his face that was just so precious, so deep, and so moving. He was so glad they were there. It was a special moment.’

  Michael also won Best Record (‘Beat It’) and Best Vocalist in three areas: pop (‘Beat It’), rock (‘Thriller’) and rhythm and blues (‘Billie Jean’). He also won Best Children's Album (E.T.), Best Rhythm-and-Blues Song (‘Billie Jean’) and Best Record Producer, an award he shared with Quincy Jones. Jackson's two losses were to The Police, who copped three Grammys in all for the Synchronicity album and the single ‘Every Breath You Take’. All told, his eight wins topped Paul Simon's previous record of seven in a year, earned in a 1970 sweep for Bridge over Troubled Water.

  In one acceptance, he called CBS head Walter Yetnikoff to the stage with him. Later, he invited LaToya, Janet and Rebbie to join him.

  Backstage, after the awards, Michael didn't have much to say to the press. It had already been made clear to the media that he would not be available for interviews – he would allow photos only. The assembled media, having been deprived of the opportunity to ask Michael questions about his winnings, had no choice but to ask all of the other winners how they felt about Michael's achievement. ‘I've seen four phenomena in my lifetime: Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, The Beatles and Michael Jackson,’ Quincy Jones noted.

  ‘What's your favourite song?’ someone shouted out to Michael as he walked away.

  ‘ “My Favourite Things” by Julie Andrews,’ Michael responded.