‘What? You gotta be kidding me?’ said Dave. ‘Is it really Michael Jackson? Are you sure? Maybe he’s one of those wacky impersonators. It can’t be the Michael Jackson.’
‘It sure is,’ Mel said. ‘I’m bringing him in, now.’
‘Then I gotta call June,’ Dave said, now excited. Dave and his wife, June, had been having marital difficulties and, more often than not, he was not staying at their home, although they were still on friendly terms. He called June and told her to bring her son Jordie to ‘the shop’ for ‘a big surprise’.
June and Jordie arrived on the scene before Michael. When Michael finally showed, he presented quite a sight wearing a black turban with a veil over his face and dark, over-sized sunglasses. He also wore a long-sleeve black silk shirt, jeans and tennis shoes. The only parts of his body visible were his hands, which seemed pale.
Whenever June Chandler-Schwartz walked into a room, heads turned. A striking woman of Asian extraction, she wore her dark hair to her shoulders with bangs cut straight above her eye line. Her smile incandescent, her manner outgoing, she moved with elegance and grace. Michael was quickly taken by her as she excitedly introduced herself and then Jordie.
Actually, Jordie had seen Michael on several occasions over the years, the first time being at a restaurant in Los Angeles when he was about four. The young boy didn’t approach Michael, of course, but instead gawked at him while the entertainer ate his food.
That same year, 1984, was the year Michael was burned filming the Pepsi commercial. Like thousands of fans, Jordie – still just four – sent a letter and picture of himself to the Brotman Memorial Hospital where Michael was recovering. He included his telephone number in the note. Two days later, much to his parents’ excitement, Michael called Jordie to thank him for the note, and to also tell him that he thought he was ‘a beautiful young boy’.
In 1989, when Jordie was nine, Michael’s manager Frank Dileo contacted Jordie’s mother to ask if she and her family would like four tickets to see Michael in concert in Los Angeles. Of course, she accepted. They enjoyed the show but, though they attempted to do so, did not meet with Michael backstage after the concert. As the years went on, Jordie continued with his adolescent fan-worship of Michael Jackson.
In the spring of 1992, Jordie got the idea for a spoof of Kevin Costner’s film, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, which he called Robin Hood: Men in Tights. For a twelve-year-old, he was amazingly creative. Jordie and his father, Evan, wrote the script (along with Evan’s friend, J. D. Shapiro) and with the help of some of Evan’s show-business friends, father and son actually got their script produced into a major movie. Though the movie, produced by Mel Brooks, was not a commercial success, the youngster had two more ideas in mind and was working with his father on them. To young Jordie Chandler, it seemed as if almost anything was possible. Now, he was face to face with his idol, the so-called ‘King of Pop’.
Jordie was dark-haired with big, luminescent eyes. He was on the verge of manhood, but certainly not there yet. His face was lean and angular, its raw-boned sharpness softened by its olive complexion. Anyone looking at him would say, ‘That kid is going to be stunning in about ten years.’ However, standing before Michael, he was just a boy with a big smile on his face.
June wrote down a telephone number and handed it to Michael. ‘You should call Jordie sometime,’ she suggested, as if the notion of a twelve-year-old being ‘friends’ with a thirty-three-year-old pop star was the most natural thing in the world.
‘Mom!’ Jordie protested, embarrassed.
‘No, Jordie,’ she said, according to a later recollection from, Jordie. ‘You guys can be friends.’
‘For sure,’ Dave Schwartz said as he walked into the room. ‘Give him a call, Michael. He’s your biggest fan.’
‘Yeah, okay,’ Michael said as he signed the final paperwork for the rental car. He took the paper from June and stuffed it in his pocket. Michael then looked over his glasses and took in the twelve-year-old. ‘So, look, I’ll call you, Jordie,’ he said. ‘Okay?’
‘Sure,’ the youngster answered. He flashed a dazzling smile at the singer. ‘Oh, boy!’
‘Yeah,’ Michael exclaimed, seemed tickled by the youngster’s enthusiasm. ‘Oh, boy!’ he repeated.
Have You Seen His Childhood?
Of course, Michael Jackson had long associated himself with children, regularly visiting with ill children on his concert tours and inviting underprivileged youths to tour his ranch. His philanthropic activities, including those executed by his Heal the World Foundation, were well known. In the past, Michael had often been seen in the company of young celebrities, such as Emmanuel Lewis and McCauley Culkin, as well as with many youngsters who are not famous, which was why Jordie’s mother and stepfather saw nothing unusual about encouraging a friendship between the pop star and their son.
‘One of my favourite pastimes is being with children,’ Michael had explained in an interview, ‘talking to them and playing with them. Children know a lot of secrets and it is difficult to get them to tell. Children are incredible. They go through a brilliant phase, but then when they reach a certain age, they lose it. My most creative moments have almost always come when I am with children. When I am with them, the music comes to me as easily as breathing. When I’m tired or bored, children revive me. Two brown eyes look at me so profoundly, so innocently, and I murmur, This child is a song.’
In the early nineties Michael Jackson’s interest in children was viewed by most quarters where it was known about as odd, but not necessarily inappropriate.
Michael was thought of as not only a virgin, but asexual. He was viewed as ‘damaged goods’, a brilliant entertainer who gave his all to his work because he had no personal life in which to find satisfaction. No one believed he actually had romances with girls like Tatum O’Neal or Brooke Shields, no matter how much he insisted that such affairs of the heart had taken place in his life. Mostly, where Michael’s personal life was concerned, one felt a sense of sadness about it. He was an oddity, a brilliant performer and legendary recording artist whose image was perplexing and eccentric, but not sexual. Even when he grabbed his crotch during his performances, the action didn’t have a sexual connotation to it as much as it did the imprint of another clever bit of choreography. Then, of course, there was all of that business about his ‘lost childhood’…
‘He’s a man who has never had a childhood,’ Bert Fields, one of Michael’s attorneys, explained to me – as if I wasn’t aware of Michael’s background. ‘So he’s having his childhood now, you see? His friends are little kids. They have pillow fights. It’s all innocent.’
I had a discussion with Michael along those same lines in 1991, after the original publication of my biography of him. I saw him and LaToya at a Record Collectors’ Convention in the parking lot of Capitol Records in Hollywood. He was wearing a bright red shirt, black satin pants… and a black surgical mask. When LaToya went off in search of records by The Partridge Family, Michael and I began talking about the music of our youth and, somehow, we began talking about his childhood. ‘I missed my childhood,’ he said, sadly.
Having personally witnessed just a bit of Michael’s childhood in Encino, I offered the opinion that perhaps his childhood wasn’t as bad as he remembered it. The biggest misconception about him is that he has lived his life sheltered from ‘the real world’, and that this is why he has practically withdrawn from society. In fact, Michael has had more life encounters than most people. An immensely gifted performer, he has travelled the world many times over, entertaining people of all colours, races and religions. He is intimate with the exhilaration of a thunderous ovation, of a standing-room-only crowd. He knows what it is to be ‘special’, to be able to make demands and expect them to be met because of who he is. He knows what it’s like to have great wealth, to be able to give his mother a million dollars so she won’t have to work. He has experienced the pleasure of giving, of being charitable, of seeing the faces of deathly ill c
hildren light up just because he is who he is.
‘A lot of kids starve, Michael,’ I reminded him. ‘A lot of kids are poor, they become addicted to drugs. A lot of kids don’t live in mansions with servants. A lot of kids have it a lot worse that you did. In fact,’ I said, maybe feeling a little too self-confident, ‘I think you had a pretty good childhood. You travelled. You had friends. You did what you wanted to do, didn’t you? You performed. You entertained. It was fun. I think you miss your childhood, yes. But I don’t think you missed out on it.’
Michael stared at me, angrily. ‘No, it was horrible,’ he countered. ‘I had a terrible childhood. All of that performing. All that recording. The fans took over my life,’ he said, pointing at me. ‘I never got to play,’ he complained. ‘It was awful.’
‘See you ‘round,’ he said, turning his back on me. ‘I’m going to find ‘Toya.’
The memory of that brief exchange has stayed with me over the years, especially when the common explanation to Michael’s increasingly unusual behaviour became that he had ‘missed out’ on his youth.
‘A place where boys have rights’
A week after meeting him, Michael Jackson telephoned Jordie Chandler. As the two discussed their lives and hobbies, Jordie expressed an interest in playing video games. Michael then invited the boy to his ‘hide-out’, an apartment he maintained in Century City, California, which most of Michael’s family and staff members had only heard about, but had never actually seen. Michael explained that he had an arcade at the apartment and felt sure that Jordie would have fun there. Of course, Jordie wanted to go. However when he asked his mother for permission, she denied it citing upcoming school tests for which the youngster needed to study. But in the weeks to come, Michael continued telephoning Jordie; the two became fast friends.
On 27 June 1992, Michael embarked on his Dangerous concert extravaganza, the first of thirty-nine performances on the first leg of the tour taking place in Munich, Germany, at the Olympic Stadium. It was a complex production with the expected bombastic special effects and lighting, dancers, musicians and others involved in the fantastic multimillion-dollar presentation. In all, Michael would perform eighteen numbers – including hits such as ‘Wanna Be Startin’ Something’, ‘Thriller’, ‘Billie Jean’ and ‘Beat it’ – and four from the current Dangerous album. At the end of the show, in front of nearly 75,000 people, Michael appeared to strap on a jet and rocket right out of the stadium. (Actually, a stunt double did the trick, which was orchestrated by illusionist, David Copperfield.) Even without John Branca at the helm, Michael was making winning decisions; he sold the rights of his Dangerous tour to HBO for twenty million dollars, the highest sum ever paid for a live concert. When the network broadcast the final show of the first leg of Michael’s tour, HBO gained its highest rating up until that time.
Because Michael was involved in every aspect of the show, from sound to lighting to costumes all the way down to ticket sales, it demanded all of his focus. How he managed to even give Jordie Chandler a second thought during this time is remarkable, yet he did just that. For the next nine months while on the road, Michael telephoned his new friend on a weekly basis. For Michael, it was as if Jordie had become his lifeline to the real world, to his home, as he performed in front of hundreds of thousands of adoring strangers. In fact, Michael also had eleven-year-old Brett Barnes with him from Australia, as well as nine-year-old Prince Albert von Thurn und Taxis, son of Gloria von Thurn und Taxis of Bavaria and already one of the richest kids in the world. His staff was used to having to accommodate children while on the road with Michael, no one ever questioned it. However, even though he had other youngsters with him, Michael’s thoughts were of Jordie. According to what Jordie later recalled of his late-night, long-distance conversations with him, Michael told him about Neverland. ‘It’s a place where boys have rights,’ Michael said, promising to take Jordie there as soon as the Dangerous tour was completed.
Michael also told Jordie about his charity work, how he had raised funds for needy children’s organizations round the world with his Heal the World Foundation, and his plans for a World Congress of Children to bring together youngsters from one hundred nations. ‘Children,’ Michael explained, ‘are the hope of the world.’ Sometimes, Michael said, he sent his staff members to a toy store in one of his pick-up trucks. The employees fill the truck with toys until ‘there’s not a single inch left’ in the pick-up bed, and bring them to Neverland. Then, ‘as they gather all around me, smiling and laughing,’ Michael distributed the toys to all the needy children. He promised to introduce Jordie to Elizabeth Taylor one day, telling him, ‘she’s really old, but she’s still cool. She’s won, like, fifteen Oscars!’ (Taylor has actually won two.)
When Michael returned home from the final stop on the tour’s first leg, Japan, on 31 December, he found that Elizabeth Taylor had decked out Neverland for the Christmas holidays, with hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of elaborate decorations. Though Michael, raised a Jehovah’s Witness, never celebrated Christmas, he was still overwhelmed by Elizabeth’s kind gesture. He called Jordie to tell him about it. ‘You should see it,’ he said, the youngster later recalled. ‘It’s like a Winter Wonderland. The only thing that would make it better would be having you here. Then, it would be absolutely perfect.’
Michael was too busy in January, however, to entertain any guests at Neverland. On his agenda was the NAACP [National Association for the Advancement of Colored People] Image Awards on 16 January, President Clinton’s Inaugural Ball on the 19th and then the American Music Awards on the 25th – each performance requiring days of rehearsal time. Then, he had the Superbowl on the 31st, where he performed with a 750-member choir and a 98,000-person flashcard stunt to promote the Heal the World Foundation. At the end of the show, 3,500 children joined Michael on stage for ‘Heal the World’. 120 million people watched Michael’s performance.
On 10 February 1993, Michael gave an internationally televised interview to Oprah Winfrey. During it, Michael and Oprah gave the world a nighttime tour of Neverland and Michael then revealed, for the first time, he suffers from Vitiligo. He also spoke of his ‘girlfriend’ Brooke Shields. When Oprah pushed to learn if Michael was still a virgin, he clarified that he was ‘a gentleman. You can call me old-fashioned, if you want.’ When asked about plastic surgery, he said he had ‘very little. You can count it on two fingers.’ Elizabeth Taylor made a surprise appearance, as if just passing through, to declare that Michael ‘is the least weird man I have ever known.’ (Michael later presented her with a $250,000 diamond necklace to thank her for the compliment.) It was a terrific, ratings-winning broadcast, drawing an audience of more than ninety million; the fourth most-watched entertainment show in US TV history.
The next day, Michael called June Chandler to invite her, Jordie and his half-sister Lily, to his estate for the weekend. With Michael so much in the headlines as a result of the interview with Oprah, it must have seemed surreal to June that he had invited her and her family to the same place she had just seen displayed on television, even offering to put them up for the night. June accepted Michael’s invitation.
June and the children arrived at Neverland Ranch early on Friday afternoon. The servant who greeted them suggested that they be seated in the parlour and wait for ‘Mr Jackson’ as he scurried off to fetch soft drinks. June, Jordie and Lily sat side by side on one of the couches and looked at their surroundings, their mouths agape. Simply put, they could not believe their eyes. Was it possible that they knew a person who lived here?
Though the twenty-five-room, mock-Tudor mansion’s living room was large-scale and packed with opulent furnishings, there was also a sense of warmth and elegance about it, with pine-panelled walls, fine Italian antiques (a little over-done but, of course, for Michael excess is never enough), and big, over-stuffed furniture, the kind into which one would sink six inches upon being seated. Here and there, were eccentric treasures: life-size mannequins of senior citizens and youn
gsters having tea; giant oil paintings of Elizabeth Taylor hanging in elaborate, carved and gilded frames; the white, bugle-beaded gown Diana Ross wore in the final scene of Lady Sings the Blues encased in a large glass box – with pink lights glowing around it. There were pictures of children, everywhere, both boys and girls. The house was perfectly still; nothing stirred. It was quiet as a tomb, no music, not a sound.
Outside, as far as the eye could see, were more than 2,000 verdant acres of bucolic landscape, reminiscent of the English countryside. It was impossible to imagine that anyone owned this place, it was so expansive, with its deep blue four-acre lake way off in the distance. Statues paid homage to Scottish author J. M. Barrie and his creation Peter Pan. From more than a hundred speakers, disguised as rocks in the flowerbeds, emanated Disney music (never Michael’s own music, to which he rarely listens). There was a zoo with a menagerie of alligators, giraffes, lions, a twelve-foot albino python and a seventy-thousand-pound elephant named Gypsy (a present from Elizabeth Taylor). There was also ‘Cricket’, the thirty-four-inch-tall stallion and Petunia, the potbellied pig, and Linus, the two-foot-tall sheep. Of course, Bubbles the chimpanzee also lived on the property, often sitting in the cinema with Michael, eating free candy from the sweets counter. ‘Sometimes he takes off his diaper and goes on the floor, but mostly he’s very clean,’ Michael had told Jordie. Then, of course, there were the many rides: the Ferris wheel, bumper cars, steam trains… and, for the little ones, a carousel, fire trucks and frog hoppers. Some might have found it disturbing that hundreds of security cameras were positioned all over the estate, hidden inside little bird-houses. However, Michael viewed it as a necessary precaution. If any one of the thirty full-time gardeners or ten ranch hands didn’t smile enough, or seemed otherwise unhappy, he would be dismissed – another necessity. After all, this was supposed to be a happy place.
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