by Donald Bogle
But whatever obsession Michael had with Ross couldn’t be so great because, in essence, as a budding star himself, he would mainly have to obsess on himself. No great star can ever reach the pinnacle of stardom without layers of self-absorption. And so it would be with Michael.
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Michael also learned much from Berry Gordy. The consummate businessman and a master showman, Gordy understood how to make a deal, how to nurture talent, how to bring that talent before the public eye and to do it with the kind of ease and finesse that Joseph Jackson lacked. Joseph was crude. Gordy was smooth. Joseph had little, if any, interest in what his children thought. Gordy expressed interest in Michael’s ideas. Michael wasn’t unaware of Gordy’s reputation for being callous and calculating and perhaps unethical with his performers, but he chose to focus on Gordy’s skills. In a short period of time, Gordy was a father figure, the kind of understanding, patient paternal figure that Joseph could never be. He was willing to relax with the boys and play games like backgammon. Or have chess matches with them. None of this was lost on Joe, who certainly had mixed feelings about the Motown chieftain. For Joe, nothing was ever supposed to come between his children and himself and their mother. But he needed Gordy.
With the hits lighting up the charts, the very late 1960s and early 1970s were heady years for the brothers, as they became teen idols for millions—black and white—across the nation. With the exception only of Diana Ross and the Supremes, they had crossed over in a way that even the most talented and successful of Motown stars had not. And their huge popularity indicated yet another significant shift in American culture. Their posters were on bedroom walls. Their style—the flashy colorful outfits and hats and especially the big Afros that Jackie, Jermaine, and Michael all took such pride in—became fashion statements not only for adolescents but also for prepubescent kids. Their fans tended to have their own favorites among the brothers. Jackie was the handsome Don Juan. Jermaine was a somewhat serious heartthrob, seemingly not as experienced or yet as confident as his older brother but on his way. Tito seemed to be the most mature and settled. Marlon was the good dancer and backup, sometimes appearing as if he was giving his all to be more than simply someone who looked as if he just might be along for the ride. And Michael, of course, was the all-around favorite because he did what no child his age could do: he was a terrific, passionate singer and splendidly coordinated dancer with the perfect baby face and an impish innocence that endeared him to young and old alike.
In the past, music stars like Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Martha and the Vandellas, Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, and Mary Wells might have been viewed as favorites of rebellious youth, in opposition to their parents’ tastes and outlooks. But the Jackson 5, in many respects, were being embedded in both the cultural revolution of the late 1960s and the establishment. But no one thought or cared about that. Viewing the brothers as playmates or classmates or buddies for their children, parents didn’t seem frightened or intimidated by these wholesome youngsters—the way they would be later with the rise of rap or even with the sexy spirit of disco that would soon appear in the mid-1970s. Family appeal and acceptance was always an important aspect of the Jackson 5’s success. The same would be true of Michael himself once he had gone out on his own.
Mainstream media paid attention in a new way, too. Newspapers flocked to interview them. So did the big magazines. Jet and Ebony ran cover stories that were important in getting the word out to the black community, also in promoting a wholesome, upwardly mobile image of the group. The September 1970 Ebony featured the brothers on the cover. Four years later, the December 1974 Ebony cover had a photograph of the entire family, all nine children with their parents. It looked like a model family unit. Of course, Ebony and Jet covers might be expected for a successful black group. But seemingly unattainable was a Life cover, which had not had a black entertainer on its cover until Dorothy Dandridge’s appearance in November 1954. Afterward, occasionally other black stars would grace the magazine’s cover, yet not many. No Motown stars had gone that far until Life featured the brothers—with their parents—on the cover on September 24, 1971. A year later the woman publicized as having discovered the kids, Diana Ross, turned up on the cover of the December 8, 1972, issue. When Rolling Stone covered the group for its April 29, 1971 issue, it chose to run Michael alone on the cover with the tagline that read: “Why does this eleven-year-old stay up past his bedtime?” An animated television show for kids called The Jacksons aired in the summer of 1976, which was a true family affair that also featured Rebbie, La Toya, Randy, and Janet. Originally a four-week show, The Jacksons returned for an additional run in the spring of 1977. For a Motown act, theirs had an unprecedented level of success.
They also came face-to-face with racism during a tour that took them to Mobile, Alabama. While being driven to their hotel, they endured the hostile attitude of their white limousine driver, who refused to remove their luggage from the car. Once the brothers opened the trunk to pick up the luggage, there was, said Jermaine, “Ku Klux Klan paraphernalia, clearly intended for our eyes.” Inside the hotel, no bellhop helped with the luggage. At the receptionist desk, they were told there were no reservations for them, which, of course, was untrue. Traveling with them and handling their business was Motown’s Suzanne de Passe, who put her foot down. In the end, they got rooms but hardly the top-of-the-line accommodations they were now accustomed to.
As the fame and the wealth of the Jacksons expanded, Michael also saw the racism it drew out. He remembered an incident that occurred when his mother was driving a Mercedes from a market in Encino where she had shopped. A white man shouted out to her: “Go back to Africa, you nigger.” Michael said, “It hurt me so much that that happened to my mother.” Other times, he said, when his brothers would park their Rolls-Royces in a public area, they would return to find “that some guy had taken a key and scratched the car because there is a black man driving it.”
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Still, throughout all the acclaim and attention, as well as the hassles and humiliations, onstage the brothers were pros. Offstage, they were wide-eyed, energetic, playful, mischievous kids. While on tour, their hotels became their playgrounds. Leading the pack was Michael, a born prankster who loved dropping water balloons outside the hotel windows. All the brothers relished pillow fights, playing jokes on room service, running through the hallways and corridors yelling, yapping, laughing, joking. As Jackie and Jermaine grew older, their hormones raging, they were soon sneaking girls into their hotel rooms, and sometimes Michael hid under beds while Jermaine set out to score with a girl. Often there to supervise the boys was Suzanne de Passe. On tour also was their tutor Rose Fine, who in her long career had taught such other showbiz kids as Ron Howard, Annette Funicello, and Jodie Foster. Fine somehow managed to sit the boys down for their lessons. Much as it had been with Elizabeth, Michael had to switch gears, maneuvering his way from a world of adult responsibilities to one in which he was a kid again, calm and collected, to study and learn about a world outside show business.
Michael came to love Rose Fine dearly. In fact, all the brothers and the rest of the family, including Janet and La Toya, were fond of her. She was a middle-aged woman who refused to tell anyone her age. The kids knew, though, that she was married and had a daughter and also a grown son, a doctor who had studied at Harvard. He died young, and it devastated Rose and her husband. Warm and friendly, she traveled with the brothers from the time of their first professional tour until Michael was eighteen. Never was she a detached, stern schoolmarm. During all those lonely times on the road—when Michael was away from Katherine, whom he always missed—she gave him motherly comfort. When Rose saw that he was terrified of air travel, she would try to alleviate his fears by holding his hand. After a performance, “I would run to the room,” he said. “We’d read and have warm milk and I needed that so badly. She would always say to me, ‘The door’s open,’ and she would leave her door open.”
His edu
cation would be spotty. Daily, he had three hours of schoolwork. Rose taught all the basic subjects, such as English and arithmetic. She was a dedicated teacher whom he admired and always credited as the one “who instilled in me a love of books and literature.” “I read everything I could get my hands on.” La Toya recalled that Michael’s room at home would be lined with books on all types of subjects. His favorite topics: philosophy and biography. Interesting him most were the lives of every “great artist, businessman, and inventor that ever was.” Puzzling him was why some such remarkable figures self-destructed. Clearly fascinating him, as time moved on, was the decline of Elvis Presley. Nonetheless, he never forgot her, and years later he and his sister Janet took financial care of Rose “until the day she died.” Afterward, he and Janet provided for her husband.
Everything grew bigger and grander for the entire family, who moved to a twelve-room house on Bowmont Drive, just north of Beverly Hills. Then in May 1971, there came the really big move to Hayvenhurst in Encino, California. Though their new home was described by Jermaine as “a bland one-story ranch-style property” with typical 1970s decor, the place was far from chopped liver, and it thrilled its new occupants with its flagstoned patio, where breakfast was served, and its lemon and orange trees. The family could take a swim in its pool. Or play basketball on their own private court. Inside was a sunken living room and a spiral staircase that fascinated the family. There were also six bedrooms. Everyone felt that, unlike the home in Gary, now they could breathe and live with some privacy, although they still shared bedrooms. They were also protected from prying eyes. Jermaine recalled: “Back then, Hayvenhurst sat behind the wrought-iron rails of an electric gate—the start of life lived behind gates.”
Despite the money and the public adulation, Joseph and Katherine worked hard to keep the children as normal as possible. Each Jackson child had chores. Each had an allowance of five dollars a week. Money shouldn’t be wasted. “Joseph even installed a pay-phone,” said Jermaine.
Religion remained an important part of the children’s lives. On Sundays, the children and Katherine still attended church together. Michael valued the fellowship and feeling of normalcy when at church, where everyone was treated in the same way.
Michael also continued—now and in the years to come—what was termed the church’s “pioneering” missionary work on Sundays. With his mother, he would still go door to door in the California suburbs and in the malls to sell copies of The Watchtower. Because of his fame, Michael donned disguises. He sometimes wore fat suits, fake facial hair, wigs. His soft voice might have been a giveaway, though no one seemed to notice except children, who would follow him. Michael enjoyed their attention and said he felt like the Pied Piper of Hamelin, that figure of German folklore and legend who during the Middle Ages had played his pipe and led the rats of the plague-stricken area to follow him out of the city. When the mayor of Hamelin refused to pay him for his services, he played his pipe again and led the children of the area away. For Michael, the Pied Piper was a humane hero to the innocent young. Regardless, he enjoyed such excursions where he believed he saw in the homes where he sold The Watchtower another side of life, totally removed from the show business atmosphere that was enveloping him.
Yet attending church services and the “pioneering” work became increasingly more difficult because of the brothers’ schedules and their travels. Michael, however, could never leave his religion behind. It was too instilled in him.
By now, Michael was immersed more than ever in the world of entertainment, its history, its transitions, its icons. Sometimes stars have knowledge only of the entertainers they have grown up watching. Sometimes, shockingly, they have no sense or much interest in a long history of entertainment of which they were a part. That was not true of Michael. He couldn’t learn enough about movies, music, television, theater. To a certain extent, this was true of all the Jackson children, who, to their credit, were aware of past entertainers, past entertainment milestones, and landmarks. During these years and in those that followed, Michael remained eager to learn as much as he could and to meet those whose talent had dazzled him. At home, he remained a playful, spunky kid, still playing tricks on his siblings, performing magic acts for his mother, fascinated again by the power of illusion.
But for Michael and his brothers, the simple pleasures of home and heart were few and far between. Mostly, it was business as usual: rehearsing (under the unforgiving eyes of Joseph), perfecting new dance steps (often under the choreography of Jackie), mastering new songs, touring, and spending long hours in recording studios. But in the mid-1970s the Jackson 5 faced new career challenges.
Gradually vanishing was that political fervor of the late 1960s, those days of youthful rebellion and student revolt, of a fundamental questioning of America’s traditional values and virtues. The protests against the war in Vietnam and the national outrage about the Watergate scandal that led to the resignation of President Richard M. Nixon ultimately gave way to a more relaxed time, a period of both personal examination and escapism. The stormy years of Nixon would be replaced first by the relief and relative calm of the Gerald Ford years, then the short-lived optimism of the Jimmy Carter era. If anything, there appeared, in the mid- and late 1970s, a desire to forget the woes of the world, to withdraw from the demands of social and political issues, to retreat from all those complicated dilemmas—basic inequities and injustices in the system—that had propelled the young of the past decade. Described by Tom Wolfe as the “Me” Decade, the 1970s indeed shaped up as an era when a new generation looked inward rather than outward. Self-analysis. Self-awareness. Staying fit. Eating healthy. Jogging. Exercising. Practicing Transcendental Meditation. Taking control of one’s body and mind. All seemed to characterize the period.
By the early 1970s, popular music started to change, reflecting the nation’s altered mood swings and the more relaxed social atmosphere. Within a few years, a new generation danced and dreamed to the tune of disco that dominated the airways and the music charts. Recording artists like Donna Summer, Alicia Bridges, and Labelle or a group like Chic became favorites of the young. To stay on top meant the Jackson 5 had to musically reinvent themselves. The days of delicious bubblegum soul and that stream of one-hit-right-on-the-heels-of-another was gone. Berry Gordy himself may have believed the group might not have a long shelf life. It had happened with any number of acts at Motown and other music companies. That was the nature of popular culture: music that was direct and immediate to one generation often became dated and then discarded by the next. But Gordy felt differently about Michael, whom he persuaded in 1971 to record a solo record, “Got to Be There,” which became a huge hit. Jermaine also recorded a single. In 1972, Michael had another solo hit with the song “Ben,” recorded for the movie of that same title. A love ballad of sorts—the tale of a dying boy who felt his pet rat, Ben, was his only friend—“Ben” was a precursor to some of Michael’s future romantic songs. So successful was he—in communicating youthful angst in matters of the heart—that “Ben” was nominated for an Oscar for Best Original Song for the picture. Jackson performed it at the Academy Awards ceremony, held in 1973.
Michael had four solo albums—Got to Be There and Ben, in 1972; Music & Me, in 1973; and Forever, Michael, in 1975. The latter two were commercial disappointments. Jackson, however, held off from a solo career, part of his reluctance growing out of concern about his family’s reaction. Joe Jackson was determined that Michael succeed with his brothers. So the Jackson 5 had to survive in this new era. Working hard to come up with a new sound, the group was successful, in late 1973, with the thumping and rousingly sexy disco hit “Dancing Machine.” Two years later, they had another disco hit “Forever Came Today.” But these hits seemed like exceptions in the drift of their career. Joe Jackson and his sons saw a wall standing in front of them. That wall was Motown. No longer was Motown able to consistently come up with songs for them that marched to the beat of the times. The Jackson 5 had to create another b
eat, another rhythm that would mark a new maturity or outlook to match that of their evolving fan base. The group had to perform music that could lead the brothers into young adulthood—with their fans right by their side. Of all the brothers, Michael was most vocal about their professional dilemma.
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But compounding Michael’s professional frustrations were personal ones. By 1974, his brothers Tito, Jackie, and Jermaine had all married. Marlon would wed in 1975. No longer was there that daily brotherly camaraderie that had meant so much. “An understandable change occurred as each of them became closest to his wife and they became a family unit unto themselves. A part of me wanted us to stay as we were—brothers who were also best friends—but change is inevitable and always good in one sense or another,” Michael said. Especially hard for him was the situation with Jermaine, who had married Berry Gordy’s daughter Hazel in 1973 and thus was bound, in some way or another, to side with his father-in-law once there was any showdown with Motown.
In the mid-1970s something else ate at and depressed Michael as he experienced the pangs and torments of adolescence. Uppermost on his mind was his appearance, which he felt was marred by a terrible case of acne. “I got very shy and became embarrassed to meet people because my complexion was so bad,” he said. “The effect on me was so bad that it messed up my whole personality. I couldn’t look at people when I talked to them. I’d look down, or away.” It became hard to go out because he would have to face people. He drastically changed his diet, eliminating greasy foods. “That was the key,” he said. For someone who grew up enjoying fast food, it wasn’t easy. Later he stopped eating meat altogether.