Michael Jackson

by J. Randy Taraborrelli

  When Michael sang the first line – ‘Don't look so sad, I know it's over’ – Katherine's eyes immediately began to well up with tears. Any observer might have thought that she was thinking of her marriage to Joseph, who was not even sitting with her but, rather, elsewhere in the room. As Michael sang the song – his voice pure, his delivery eloquent – Katherine rocked back and forth in her chair, looking as if her son's performance had completely swept her away. No mother had ever gazed upon her son in a more loving manner, and Michael's expression was equally moving.

  Michael Meets the President

  Around this time, John Branca received a telephone call from Transportation Secretary Elizabeth Dole asking if Michael would donate ‘Beat It’ as background music for a thirty-second television commercial and sixty-second radio spot on drunk driving. When John presented the idea to Michael, his reaction was swift. ‘That's tacky,’ he said. ‘I can't do that.’

  John told Michael he would call Elizabeth Dole and tell her that they were not interested. However, Michael then got an idea. ‘You know what?’ he mused. ‘If I can get some kind of an award from the White House, then I'll give them the song. How about that?’ he said, now excited. ‘See what you can negotiate with them, Branca.’

  ‘What do you want?’ asked John, bemused.

  ‘Well,’ Michael said, like a kid coming up with a Wish List. ‘I want to go to the White House. I want to be on a stage with the President [Ronald Reagan], and get an award from him. And I sure want to meet Nancy [First Lady, Nancy Reagan]. The whole works. Why not? You think you can do that, Branca. Can you get me an award from the President?’

  John laughed. ‘Well, I can sure try.’ The next day, John Branca went to work on the idea. He telephoned Elizabeth Dole and told her that she could have the song for her drunk-driving campaign if she dreamed up some kind of humanitarian award that the President could present to Michael. She agreed. The President agreed, as did the First Lady.

  The presentation was set for 14 May 1984. It had started out as an exciting day. In fact, it was said that there hadn't been that much excitement at the White House since the day the hostages came home from Iran. For the occasion, the President wore a navy blue suit, navy blue and grey striped tie and white shirt. Nancy was chic in a white Adolfo suit trimmed with gold buttons and gold braid. It hardly mattered what she wore, though, for anyone standing next to Michael Jackson that day would pale in comparison. Michael appeared resplendent in an electric-blue sequined jacket adorned with sequined braid, a sequined gold sash, and sequined gold epaulets. He also wore his trademark single white, rhinestoned glove.

  Hundreds of White House officials and secretaries, many of them clutching cameras, gathered on the sun-speckled lawn to catch a glimpse of Michael. More than a hundred yards back from the stage, the White House fence was lined solidly with fans, many wearing a single white glove like the one Michael sported.

  Two thousand people cheered as Ronald Reagan stepped on to a stage on the White House South Lawn with Nancy and Michael. ‘Well, isn't this a thriller,’ he said. ‘We haven't seen this many people since we left China. And just think you all came to see me.’

  As Michael, the President and the First Lady walked to the Oval Office, one middle-aged White House office worker standing across from the Rose Garden shrieked, ‘I saw his foot. I saw his foot!’

  A special metal detector was constructed in the Jacqueline Kennedy Garden to screen Michael and his entourage of eight security men; Frank Dileo, John Branca and publicist Norman Winter. There was also a young man with Michael, a person no one seemed to know, except for Michael. He was dark, in his early twenties, and good looking. Dileo, Branca and Winter were perplexed as to who this person was, and when Michael was asked how the man should be identified to the press, he said, ‘He's a close friend of mine. I don't care what you tell people. It's no one's business.’ Norman Winter must have known that the presence of this mystery friend would raise some eyebrows. In order to protect Michael from controversy, he identified the man as a Secret Service agent.

  Once at the podium, the President noted that Michael was ‘proof of what a person can accomplish through a lifestyle free of alcohol or drug abuse. People young and old respect that. And if Americans follow his example, then we can face up to the problem of drinking and driving, and we can, in Michael's words, beat it.’ After the President handed him a plaque, the only words Michael nervously spoke – or whispered, rather – were, ‘I'm very, very honoured. Thank you very much, Mr President.’ A pause. ‘Oh, and Mrs Reagan, too,’ he added as an afterthought. Then, he giggled as if it suddenly occurred to him that yes, he really was standing there with the President of the United States.

  Six news photographers covering the event wore white gloves on one hand as they shot pictures of the Reagans and Jackson. The whole event took about nine minutes. Afterwards, nine police motorcycles and several vans and mounted police escorted Michael from the White House.

  But before they left, the entourage was given a special tour of the White House; Michael was particularly fascinated by a portrait of Andrew Jackson in a military jacket very much like the blue-sequinned one he wore that day. After the tour, the group was scheduled to spend time with the President and the First Lady.

  Things took a turn for the worse, though, when Michael arrived at the Diplomatic Reception Room where he was to meet privately with the Reagans. He had been told that only a few children of staff members would be present. Instead, there were about seventy-five adults. Michael put one foot into the Reception Room, took a quick look around, and then ran out, down the hall and into the bathroom off the Presidential Library. Frank Dileo and the rest of the entourage followed him. However, before they could reach him, Michael closed the door and locked it.

  ‘Hey, Mike, come on out,’ Frank said.

  ‘No. They said there would be kids. But those aren't kids,’ Michael shouted back.

  ‘But there will be children. We'll go get the children,’ a White House aide promised. Then he turned to an assistant. ‘Listen, if the First Lady gets a load of this, she's going to be mad as hell. Now you go get some kids in here, damn it. Get James Baker's kid. She's cute. [Chief of Staff James Baker had brought his six-year-old daughter, Mary Bonner.] I don't care who you get, just get some kids in here.’

  Frank then addressed the closed bathroom door, again. ‘It's okay, Michael. We're going to get the kids.’ His voice had a patient tone, as though he were soothing a disturbed child. John Branca stood near by, watching with a bemused expression on his face.

  ‘Well, you'll have to also clear all of those adults out of there before I come out,’ Michael warned.

  ‘Done.’

  Someone ran into the Reception Room. ‘Okay, out!’ he said. ‘Everybody out. Out, out, out!’

  Senior staff and cabinet members cleared that room so quickly, an observer might have thought there had been a bomb threat.

  ‘What's happening?’

  ‘Where's Michael Jackson?’

  ‘Has he left?’

  Everyone spoke at once as they were ushered from the room.

  The aide then ran back to the bathroom door, where a cluster of men with worried looks had congregated. He conferred with one of Michael's people. ‘Okay. You can come out now, Michael,’ Norman Winter said, finally. ‘Everything is okay.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ came back the soft voice.

  Frank Dileo knocked on the door with his fist, one loud thud. ‘Okay, Mike, outta there. I mean it.’

  The bathroom door opened slowly. Michael appeared. He looked around, slightly embarrassed. Frank put his arm around him. ‘I'm sorry,’ Michael told him, ‘but I was told there wouldn't be so many people.’

  Michael was then ushered back into the Reception Room, where awaiting him were just a few officials and their children. Elizabeth Dole was the first to approach Michael. She handed him a copy of Thriller and asked him to sign the record jacket.

  Then Ronald and Nancy Reagan
arrived and led Michael into the Roosevelt Room to meet some other aides and their families.

  Nancy Reagan whispered to one of Michael's staff. ‘I've heard that he wants to look like that singer Diana Ross, but really, looking at him up close, he's so much prettier than she is. Don't you agree? I mean, I just don't think she's that attractive, but he certainly is.’

  The First Lady waited for a response. There was none.

  ‘I just wish he would take off his sunglasses,’ she said. ‘Tell me, has he had any surgery on his eyes?’

  The aide shrugged. He knew better than to discuss Michael's private life, even with the President's wife.

  She studied Michael closely as he spoke to her husband on the other side of the room. ‘Certainly his nose has been done,’ she observed, her tone hushed. ‘More than once, I'd say. I wonder about his cheekbones, though. Is that makeup, or has he had them done too?’

  By this time, the First Lady didn't act as if she actually expected an answer, but the aide shrugged again anyway.

  ‘It's all so peculiar, really,’ Nancy observed as Ronald Reagan shook Michael's hand. ‘A boy who looks just like a girl, who whispers when he speaks, wears a glove on one hand and sunglasses all the time. I just don't know what to make of it.’ She shook her head in dismay, as if at a loss for words.

  Finally, the Jackson employee broke his silence. ‘Listen, you don't know the half of it,’ he said, rolling his eyes. He looked at her with a conspiratorial smile, expecting her to laugh. She didn't. Instead, she stared at him for a cold moment. ‘Well, he is talented,’ she said as she walked away, ‘and I would think that's all that you should be concerned about.’

  ‘Their last shot’

  Michael may have been treated like an American hero in May 1984, but the tide would turn in June when the plan for distribution of tickets for the Victory tour – now scheduled to begin in Kansas City on 6 July – was announced. Joseph Jackson, Don King and Chuck Sullivan came up with a unique concept: tickets would be thirty dollars each and sold in lots of four only. Ordering tickets did not guarantee getting them. The names of those who ordered would be selected at random by a computer drawing coupons that had to be cut out of advertisements published in local newspapers. Therefore, the Jacksons fan had to send a $120 postal money order * – plus a two-dollar service charge for each ticket – and the coupon, all in ‘a standard Number Ten envelope’, to the ticket address printed in the advertisement.

  Promoters predicted that as many as twelve million fans would mail in $1.5 billion in money orders for the twelve-city, forty-two-concert Victory tour, but only about one in ten applicants would actually receive tickets. In order even to be considered, the money orders were to be postmarked at least two weeks before the concert. With the delay in returning money to the unlucky ones – four to six weeks – the promoters and the Jacksons would have use of it for six to eight weeks. Assuming the tour sold $144 million in tickets, as the promoters estimated, $1.4 billion in excess payments would have to be returned. In a common money-market deposit account in a bank, which paid about 7 per cent interest, that money would earn eight million dollars a month for the promoters and Jackson family. The Jacksons' spokesman, Howard Bloom, said that whatever interest that would accrue on each $120 order would go toward costs of handling and postage for unfilled orders.

  If you were a lucky winner and allowed to see the Victory show, you wouldn't know if you were going to go – or which show you would attend – until two days before the concert. If the mail was delayed, the tickets could easily arrive after the concert.

  The tickets were obviously priced too high for even white middle-class kids if they had to buy them in lots of four. It's almost impossible to imagine that many of Michael's most loyal followers, kids from the ghetto, would be able to afford the luxury of seeing the concert.

  Making matters more distasteful, The Jacksons and their promoters said that they would like to not have to pay for the advertisements from which the coupons were to be clipped, saying that those ads should be run free of cost as ‘public service advertisements’. Of course, most newspapers didn't see it that way. ‘It's just a way to make more millions for the Jacksons,’ said Bob Haring, executive editor of the Tulsa World.

  Before the outrageous plan was announced, Michael and John Branca met with the brothers to try to talk them out of it.

  ‘We got to get as much as possible for the tickets,’ one of the brothers said. ‘The sky's the limit.’

  ‘No,’ Michael argued. ‘That's not the way to do it. There's going to be a backlash. The tickets shouldn't be more than twenty bucks each. And the mail order idea is terrible.’ In fact, the tickets for concerts by the Rolling Stones and Bruce Springsteen at this time were sixteen dollars each. Michael had wanted a simple twenty dollar ticket price, no lots of four, no money orders, no coupons.

  The brothers voted against Michael, five to one.

  ‘Okay, that's it,’ Michael decided later in a meeting with John Branca and Frank Dileo. ‘This is going to be my last tour with the guys. I'm very serious. So I don't want you to try to run anything. Let them do it all their way. I'm just one vote out of six. Let them do their thing. This is their last shot. I'm out of it.’

  ‘But why, Mike?’ Frank wanted to know. ‘They're gonna fuck it up.’

  ‘Because if anything goes wrong I don't want to hear about it,’ Michael explained. ‘I don't want to hear about it from my mother, my father or my brothers. Let them do it their way and I'm out of it. Maybe the money they make from this will set them up comfortably. Then, I'm out of it.’

  When the plan was made public, fans from coast to coast were outraged. The Los Angeles Herald Examiner ran a telephone poll with the question: Are Michael Jackson's fans being taken advantage of? Of the 2,795 people who responded, 90 per cent said yes.

  The newspaper published an editorial chastising the Jacksons: ‘It's hard not to conclude that the Jacksons' promoters, if not the young stars themselves, are taking advantage of their fans. It's been said that all the Jackson brothers, including Michael, helped plan the tour. If so, they should have shown a little more consideration for the fans who have made them so rich and famous.’

  Other newspapers across the country followed suit, lambasting the Jacksons and, because he was the most famous one, Michael, in particular. ‘The Jackson tour has not been about music. It's been about greed and arrogance,’ wrote the Washington columnists Maxwell Glen and Cody Shearer. ‘What good does a drug-free, liquor-free, I-brake-for-animals image do when the overriding message is “Give Me Your Piggy Bank.”’

  As a youthful role model, the press was terrible publicity for Michael. ‘I didn't even want to do this tour,’ he complained, exasperated. ‘Now look what's happened.’

  Despite the furor, when the first coupons were printed in the Kansas City Times, scores of fans waited in the dark for the early morning papers to hit the streets. The Times published an extra 20,000 copies to meet the demand. Postal employees were ready with 140,000 money order forms for the expected avalanche. The tickets sold out rapidly.

  Still, it looked bad for Michael. Frank Dileo advised him that if he didn't take a position against the brothers' and the promoters' apparent greediness, his reputation could be damaged. ‘They don't care about your future,’ Frank told him. ‘Their only concern is their present, to make as much as they can, while they can. You have a career that's gonna be longer than this tour. They probably don't.’

  Michael wasn't sure how to handle the matter. ‘What I really want is for all of it to just go away,’ he said, which wasn't much of a problem-solving strategy. Finally, an open letter appeared in the Dallas Morning News that impacted Michael. Eleven-year-old Ladonna Jones wrote that she'd been saving her pennies to see The Jacksons but that she couldn't possibly save enough to buy four tickets. She very pointedly asked Michael, ‘How could you, of all people, be so selfish?’

  When an aide showed Michael the letter, he was upset by it. Greed and selfishn
ess really had been at the heart of the tour plans; he knew it. But hadn't his family already made more money than most people would ever make in their lifetimes? Of course they had. It took a child's sadness, however, to force him into action.

  Though he hadn't wanted to make any major decisions about the tour in order to be distanced from the drama of it, he now realized he had to take action. He called a meeting with Joseph, Don King and Chuck Sullivan. ‘Change the ticket policy,’ he told them. ‘It's a rip-off. You know it. I know it. Now, change it. Or I won't tour.’

  ‘But, Mike,’

  Michael wouldn't discuss the matter. If the situation wasn't changed, he said, the brothers would have to tour without him.

  The next day, plans were made to change the system.

  The Misery of the Victory Tour

  Michael, who had dropped to 105 pounds from his normal weight of 125 pounds – the skinniest he had ever been – looked as if he was under a great deal of stress when he and his brothers arrived at the Hyatt Hotel in Birmingham, Alabama, on 26 June for a week of meetings about the tour. As Michael checked in, he had become so dizzy he had to lean on one of his bodyguards for support. When a hotel cook approached to say hello to him, the guard released his grip and the star nearly crumpled to the floor. It seemed to some observers that Michael barely had the strength to walk. How was he going to perform?

  Perhaps the problem with fatigue had to do with Michael's eating habits. At Michael's orders, his Sikh cook, Mani Singh Khalsa, fed him a diet of cashews, pecans, seeds, herbs and spices. ‘He's a health nut,’ said his cousin Tim Whitehead, a roadie on the tour. ‘People don't know that the reason he's a vegetarian is not so much because of what meat does to a person, but because he can't stand the idea of having an animal killed so he can have dinner. I've often wondered how he gets by on the little food he does eat.’