Michael Jackson

by J. Randy Taraborrelli

  While speaking to her on the telephone, Michael insisted that Debbie keep her plans to visit him in Australia and, in fact, take the next plane. She agreed to meet him at the Sheraton on the Park Hotel, where the Jackson contingency occupied forty rooms. However, she did not know then that she was going to be marrying him, there. ‘She was surprised when she finally got there, and he told her of his plan,’ said Tanya Boyd. ‘She called me [on November 12, 1996] and said, “Guess what? I’m marrying Michael tomorrow.” I asked her if she loved him. She thought it over for a moment, and answered, “Yes, I do, sort of.” I pushed. “Romantically?” She paused, and said, “The kind of love I have with Michael is bigger, more important, than that. It’s not the kind that most people can understand. Simple love affairs end. This relationship will never end.”’

  Michael’s New Family

  On 13 November 1996, Michael Jackson sat down at a grand piano in his two-bedroom suite at the Sheraton on the Park Hotel in Sydney. With a flourish, he played the Wagner march known as ‘Here Comes the Bride’. Michael had on a creamy foundation and transparent powder that made his face almost stark white. He had extra eyeliner on his lids, emphasizing their almond shape; his eyes stood out like dark coals. He highlighted his nose and cheekbones with bronze tones. His eyebrows were tweezed and darkened. He had on a black hat and one long curl framing each side of his face. Also, he appeared to have fake sideburns. The total effect was nothing short of jaw-dropping, in that Disneyland sort of way.

  From one of the other rooms came Debbie Rowe, six months’ pregnant, wearing black and holding a small arrangement of flowers. It had just been ten days since the world knew that he was about to become a father and now, thanks to his mother, he was about to become a husband, again. As fifteen of their friends watched, thirty-eight-year-old Michael and thirty-seven-year-old Debbie – both wearing black – were wed in a simple ceremony. Michael’s best man was a new friend of his named Anthony – who was eight years old. Michael identified him as a nephew. (However, unless there are relatives unknown to other family members, he doesn’t seem to have a nephew by that name.) Michael further explained that the boy had been depressed by the death of one of his parents. ‘I brought him with me to cheer him up,’ he explained.

  As they stood in the suite, decorated, wall to wall, with exotic orchids, roses and deep pink lilies, Michael presented Debbie with a $100,000 diamond and platinum ring. After being pronounced man and wife, they exchanged an affectionate look and a brief, tentative kiss. Debbie seemed tense, holding herself stiffly. When they drew apart, Michael held her away from him, gazing deeply into her face. He then leaned in and kissed her on the neck. ‘You are so beautiful,’ he said, holding her with his eyes. ‘More beautiful than I ever imagined the mother of my child would be. Thank you so much, Debbie. Thank you so much for being… you.’ It was a touching moment.

  The next evening, Michael and Anthony attended the Australian premiere of Michael’s short film Ghosts and walked side by side in front of the clicking and whirring cameras. Michael looked content in one of his military outfits and a black silk surgical mask. Anthony, who wore a simple, short-sleeved black shirt, was dark-haired, good-looking… and, in the opinion of most observers, a dead-ringer for Jordie Chandler.

  Meanwhile, Debbie was in her hotel suite making long-distance telephone calls to friends in the United States. Marsha Devlin, another one of her Van Nuys neighbours at the time, recalled that Debbie told her she needed her to pay her telephone bill for her. ‘She had left the States in such a hurry, she forgot to pay it,’ said Marsha. ‘It was disconnected already; she owed back money for the bill. If she had money from Michael by this time, you sure would never know it. She told me she had about three thousand dollars in the bank.’

  When Marsha asked, Debbie told her that Michael did not stay with her in her suite at the Sheraton on the Park Hotel the night before they wed, nor on their wedding night. Instead, she said, he stayed with ‘an assistant’ in another room, ‘so that I could get some rest. I was exhausted.’ Less than a week later, Debbie returned to Los Angeles, never having slept with Michael in Sydney.

  The day before he married Debbie Rowe, Michael telephoned Lisa Marie Presley in Los Angeles to tell her of his plans. He still cared deeply about her, he said, and didn’t want her to ‘read about the wedding in the papers’. He felt dreadful, he told her, about the way their relationship ended, ‘with us saying mean things to each other. And now I’m moving on,’ he told her, according to a later recollection, ‘but I don’t really feel that it’s right, not without your blessing.’ In fact, those close to Michael say that he was so anxious about his marriage to Debbie, he was jittery and would begin to sob at the slightest provocation, his tears flowing, unchecked. No wonder he was worn out; his life had been filled with such confusion and anxiety for as many years as he could remember, the stress of it keenly felt, especially while on the road with yet another strenuous tour. He was bone tired; getting up on that stage and executing his trademark dance steps had become more of an ordeal with each passing year. ‘I’m getting too old for this shit,’ he said.

  Lisa didn’t know how to react to Michael’s telephone call. She still loved him, she said, but she was adamant that they would never be together, again. Therefore, he should go forth and do whatever he wanted to do with his life, with Debbie Rowe, or anyone else. She gave him her ‘blessing’. Anyway, it was time for her to move past the madness of his world, to stop trying to fathom the unfathomable. After she and Michael ended their marriage, she fell into a serious health decline, ‘the worst two years of my life,’ as she put it. Privately, she said that she hoped he was content in his new life, but she knew him too well. His sadness sprang from so many years of distrust and unhappiness, how could a marriage to someone with whom he wasn’t in love possibly end his misery, even if she was having a baby for him?

  Lisa may have been concerned, but much of the public and media’s reaction to Michael’s second marriage was just cynical. It appeared that he married a person he didn’t love, who was having a baby that may or may not have been his, or maybe conceived artificially. ‘Please respect our privacy,’ Michael said in a statement, ‘and let us enjoy this wonderful and exciting time.’ As for Debbie, many people didn’t know what to make of her, either. On its front page, the Daily Mirror published a photograph of her on a hotel balcony in Sydney cradling her head in her hands in dismay, probably expressing exasperation at the presence of an army of paparazzi, below. However, the bold headline suggested otherwise. It read: OH GOD! I’VE JUST MARRIED MICHAEL JACKSON.

  Prince Michael Jackson, Michael’s son, was born in February 1997 at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. (He is now known as Prince Michael I. Michael’s grandfather and great-grandfather were both named Prince.) He and Debbie cut the umbilical cord together. The baby was weighed. He spent five hours in intensive care with a minor problem, and then Michael rushed him out of the hospital and off to Neverland.

  When Debbie was released from Cedars, she recuperated at a friend’s house.

  ‘I have been blessed beyond comprehension,’ Michael said in a statement, ‘and I will work tirelessly at being the best father I can be. I appreciate that my fans are elated, but I hope that everyone respects the privacy that Debbie and I want and need for our son. I grew up in a fish bowl and I will not allow that to happen to my child. Please give my son his privacy.’

  Michael and Debbie posed for photographs with Prince in March, at the Four Seasons Hotel. Though the poses seemed warm and Michael and Debbie appeared to be proud parents, it had actually been the first time Debbie had seen the baby since the day she gave birth to him six weeks earlier. She was smuggled into the hotel room, given the infant to hold, told to smile for the camera with Michael… and then, her work done, thanked profusely by Michael and sent on her way. She did seem very loving to her child – who was light-skinned with black hair and dark brown eyes – during the time she cradled him in her arms. No doubt, however, she would not
want to have become too attached to Prince. It would just make matters more difficult for her. Under ordinary circumstances, a surrogate mother would never be called upon to have to pose for pictures with the baby she had given to someone else to raise. However Debbie Rowe, always amenable to whatever was asked of her, was in a different world… Michael’s world.

  A woman who worked as a chef at Neverland recalls the way Prince was nursed during his first six months. ‘Debbie was not a significant presence,’ she said. ‘We never saw her. The baby was cared for by a team of six nannies and six nurses. They all worked eight hours each, in shifts, so the baby would always have two nurses and two nannies by his side. They were kept under constant video surveillance, which was monitored by members of Jackson’s security team. The nannies all have special training. The day-team do exercise drills with the baby to build up his strength. The night-team began reading and singing to Prince when he was only three weeks old. When Prince cries, he seemed to be calling for his mama. It was eerie, almost as if the baby didn’t have a mother at all. There are no pictures of Debbie. Mr Jackson has just one photo by his bed, and that’s of Lisa Marie as a child in the year when the two of them met.’

  She said Prince sometimes slept in Michael’s room in a crib filled with stuffed animals. ‘The room was more like a nursery than a room for a grown man,’ she recalled. ‘There were two life-sized figures outside, like a toy shop. One is a boy scout, the other is a girl in a British policeman’s hat. Inside there was Peter Pan stuff on the walls and a bunch of Nintendo games we were told not to touch.’

  One nanny who worked at Neverland said, ‘There was a feeling of being a bit under siege. Nevertheless, the baby did get exceptional care. We had to measure the air quality in his room once every hour. When we fed him, all the utensils had to be boiled first and could only be used for one type of food. They were all thrown away after a single use.’ Prince was given new toys every day and, apparently for sanitary reasons, Michael instructed his staff to discard his ‘old’ toys after Prince has gone to bed. ‘Debbie Rowe really had no input,’ the nanny said. ‘I saw her maybe three times and she seemed very sullen.’

  For Debbie, one perk of being Michael’s wife was the opportunity to rub shoulders with the rich and famous. However, sometimes she didn’t rub as closely as she might have hoped. For instance, she had been anxious to meet Elizabeth Taylor. However, Elizabeth was annoyed at Michael at this time because Michael had never introduced Debbie to her, and she couldn’t fathom that he would go off and marry someone she didn’t know. Michael told Debbie to go ahead and try to meet Liz if she wanted to, but that it wouldn’t be a good time for him to be an intermediary. Debbie attempted to contact Elizabeth, telephoning her a few times. At one point, she gave Elizabeth’s secretary her mailing address, so that Elizabeth would have it in her appointment book. One day, she received a note from the screen star: ‘Thank you for your interest in my career. Enclosed, please find a signed photo. With affection, [signed] Elizabeth Taylor.’

  ‘Debbie laughed when she got it,’ said Tanya Boyd. ‘She thought it was the funniest thing in the world. She even framed it! “So close,” she said of Elizabeth Taylor, “yet so, so far.”’

  Lisa Marie has a Change of Heart

  Michael Jackson is a powerful person who has a strong effect on people, even the most wealthy and famous who want nothing more than to be in his life. Apparently, Lisa Marie Presley was not immune to that influence. Despite all that had happened with him in their twenty-month marriage, she was compelled to keep abreast of the goings on in Michael’s life. Maybe in an effort to achieve that goal, she suddenly began socializing with Michael’s sister Janet. A few months earlier, the two were spotted together at a club in Manhattan called Life, seemingly enjoying each other’s company and causing people to wonder what in the world they were doing together.

  Lisa explained to friends that she was advising Janet on how to get back in shape for her upcoming Velvet Rope tour; Janet had apparently gained about forty pounds and was determined to lose them, and more. However, it’s unlikely that Lisa and Janet were going to the gym together. It simply looked like they were having fun because, that same week, they were seen shopping, having lunch, going to the movies and even catching an off-Broadway play, both in disguises. In September 1997, Lisa attended the launch party for Janet’s Velvet Rope CD. Shortly after, they attended the MTV Awards together.

  When Michael heard from Janet that she was socializing with Lisa, he became intensely interested. ‘Does she ever talk about me?’ he wanted to know. ‘I’ll bet she hates me, now. Does she hate me, now?’

  Janet told her brother that Lisa seemed to hold no grudge against him for what had happened in their relationship and, in fact, would actually like to see him. What she didn’t tell him was that Lisa had been suspicious of Michael’s marriage to ‘Nursey’. She knew Michael well enough to know that his goal had always been to have children, and he didn’t seem to care how he got them. He had wanted Lisa to bear him a child, but she drew the line there since she didn’t want to bring a child into an unhappy union. She suspected that he and Debbie had an agreement to have a baby, and that their marriage was just a device to make it legitimate. Janet confirmed all of those suspicions, telling her that Michael ‘did it [married Debbie] for Katherine, really.’ Lisa didn’t hold against Michael any of his choices where Debbie was concerned. ‘You can’t blame someone for being exactly who they are, can you?’ she asked her friend, Monica Pastelle. ‘A lot of people use surrogate mothers and, if you look at this and really kinda squint at it, I think that’s what it is. But,’ she hastened to add, ‘it gives me a terrible headache if I think too hard about it, so I try not to.’

  Michael then telephoned Lisa to ask if they could be friends. ‘I’ve always loved you,’ he said to her, according to a later recollection, ‘and I hate that way it ended between us. I really do.’

  Lisa told him that an important aspect of her Scientology training is that she not hold on to bitterness and anger, and that she had dedicated herself to get past any negative feelings about him. He was happy to hear it. He then invited her and her children to join him in South Africa where his HIStory tour was finally wrapping up. His mother and father would also be there, he said, so Lisa wouldn’t have to feel awkward about the propriety of such a visit. They were helping him watch Prince Michael, he explained. (That may have been true, but Michael also had a team of nurses and nannies on hand.) Lisa couldn’t resist; she said, yes.

  Whatever Lisa’s intentions had ever been involving Michael, she still had a deep connection with him – and seeing him building a family with another woman wasn’t easy for her. It had been some time since she had immersed herself in his world, which as she once said, was ‘the only way to figure out how he’s doing. You can’t ask someone how a rollercoaster ride is while they’re still on it – you just have to hop on too.’ Lisa had to see for herself how he had adjusted to life since they parted company. A lot had changed for him. He had sidestepped the molestation allegations, released new music, toured successfully, married, had a child. Finally, it appeared he was settling down, finding himself. Would she now find a new Michael Jackson, one that had risen from the ashes of the broken man she knew before. It was this curiosity that took her across the Atlantic, twice. She would first join him in London, where he would be playing Wembley Stadium (12-17 July). She had Scientology business there, she said. Then, she would return to the States, and rejoin Michael at the end of the tour in South Africa.

  Perfect, Michael must have thought. As it happened, Debbie was joining him in France, Austria and Germany (25 June-6 July), just a week before Lisa’s arrival, to see him and Prince Michael, who was about four months old. By that point, she’d only seen the baby once, maybe twice, since he was born. She was planning to leave before the London dates, which was fine with Michael because she and Lisa would then not cross paths.

  In Germany, Michael was upfront with Debbie and told her that Lisa woul
d be joining him on his next dates in England and then, later, in South Africa. Debbie wasn’t thrilled with the news – she may have thought Lisa was encroaching on her territory – but she got over it, quickly. Their relationship wasn’t such that she could tell him what to do, anyway, even if they were married. Plus, she didn’t really care. ‘Look, the thing is this,’ she told a friend. ‘I don’t tell Michael Jackson how to live his life, and he doesn’t tell me how to live mine. [Debbie always referred to her husband as “Michael Jackson”.] And that’s a fact,’ she concluded. ‘So if he wants to run around with his ex-wife, I’m not going stop him. Because I don’t want him stopping me if I want to do the same thing with my ex-boyfriend.’

  ‘But that’s not a normal marriage, is it?’ protested Debbie’s friend.

  ‘We’re talking Michael Jackson’s marriage, here,’ quipped Debbie. ‘Come on! Get real. I have it under control. I’m a grown-up, and I know what I’m doing, and so does he. Besides,’ she said, ‘I think we’ll have a big announcement, soon.’

  Debbie didn’t explain at the time, but she and Michael either had sex (as they would later insist), or did something more artificial to make it happen, but while she was in Paris, staying at the Disneyland Hotel outside the city, she became pregnant with his second child. She knew her relationship with Michael – such as it was, whatever it was – was not in jeopardy. They had an arrangement; it seemed to work.

  Meanwhile, in London, Lisa and her two children joined Michael and his parents in London. They all stayed in Michael’s $10,000-a-night suite at the luxury Carlton Towers hotel.

  Michael’s three dates at Wembley Stadium were all sold out; he was in a terrific mood. However, as devoted as Lisa was to it during their visit, she didn’t have enough quality time with him to get a handle on Michael’s state of being.