‘No mistake. We have no rooms booked,’ he repeated.
We effectively begged for a room, which we were eventually given – facing an alley and trash-cans. Michael was, typically, the first to question what had happened when we got to the basic quarters of our second-rate room. ‘Why would someone treat us like that because of our skin colour?’ he asked. It confused him because he knew our fans were both black and white, and it was the first time we had been made to feel unwanted, let alone unpopular.
It made us more determined to kick some butt onstage, because we soon recognised the importance of being black kids performing for black fans who could now identify with us. We were carrying the torch for our forefathers, winning respect for every black kid with a dream. The screams and cheers that night felt like a lot more than just Jackson-mania: they felt like defiance and victory. As Sammy Davis Junior had said in 1965: ‘Being a star has made it possible for me to get insulted in places where the average Negro could never hope to go and get insulted.’
Michael’s memories of Alabama were not the greatest back then, because when we left Mobile our 727 plane hit bad weather and severe turbulence. I think we were all nervous flyers to begin with and preferred touring in the VW camper van, but we seemed to have a concert every few days so we had no choice but to take to the skies. But this flight left Michael – and me – petrified when it abruptly dropped and started shaking violently. Sitting together, we gripped the armrests tightly. When I looked to my left, Michael was crying, his eyes screwed tight. Armageddon must have flashed through both our minds, and it didn’t help that the skies were dark and the cabin lights kept flickering. When the conditions calmed, a stewardess came over and crouched beside Michael to reassure us both of how normal such an event was. That calmed us – until the pilot ruined it after we landed: ‘The airplane was hard to control but we got through it, didn’t we?’
Our fears increased in 1972 when we saw news footage of some Eastern Airlines passenger plane going down in the Everglades, dropping from 2,000 feet during its descent into Miami.
Some time later, when it came time to leave the hotel for the airport in a city I can’t remember, we couldn’t find Michael. One minute he was with us, the next he was not. Bill and Joseph started to worry until instinct reminded us of a habit Michael had adopted when he was in trouble at 2300 Jackson Street. Sure enough, Bill found him hiding under the hotel bed, crying and refusing to come out. ‘I’m not getting back on that airplane – I’m not! I’m not!’ Outside, there was stormy weather and heavy rain.
Everyone tried the gentle art of negotiation – Bill, Suzanne and Jack Richardson – but the next memory I have is of seeing Bill walking from the limo to the plane steps, carrying a kicking and screaming Michael over his shoulders. Such tantrums happened a few times when Michael didn’t feel safe and he usually screamed for Mother. Joseph was there, of course, but he didn’t provide – or was incapable of providing – the love and comfort when needed. Instead, we brothers and a stewardess often pulled him through. And, yes, plenty of candy helped, too.
The J5 juggernaut kept trail-blazing across America and demand for us spread across the rest of the world. We had calls to perform in every major city and it was hard to understand that we were big in Australia and Japan. They seemed like other planets, but Joseph said we were ‘going to conquer the world.’ Our fifth single, ‘Mama’s Pearl’, became our first song not to reach top spot. The same happened with ‘Never Can Say Goodbye’ a few months later, and we had to settle for the No. 2 position on both occasions, but neither Joseph nor Mr Gordy complained.
Whatever we had started had grown bigger than anyone imagined and seemed unstoppable. Life was coming at us so fast and none of us brothers knew where it was leading or how much better it might become. But we understood that the day the fans stopped screaming was the day we stopped playing, so we rolled out second and third albums, lined up more tour dates, and kept the profile rolling with interviews to Teen magazine, Soul, Time, Life, Ebony and Rolling Stone, the latter calling us ‘THE BIGGEST THING SINCE THE STONES’. And somewhere within all of this, we managed to squeeze in school. Somehow. In Japan, we were declared ‘The Most Promising Vocal Group’, which followed our 1970 accolade in America – Billboard’s Top Singles Recording Artists and NAACP’s Image Award for Best Singing Group 1970. Motown hired Fred Rice, who had worked with the Beatles and the Monkees, to begin franchising us around the world with dolls, clothes … and hair-spray. He even started talking to New York animators Rankin & Bass, the makers of ABC’s The King Kong Show, about turning us into cartoon characters. ‘I’m going to have your faces everywhere,’ he said. ‘You’re the black Beatles.’
In our hotel room, Michael and I always expressed our dislike of that comparison. Why did everything white and great need a black equivalent? We were not the black Beatles, we were the black Jackson 5. Outwardly, when the press made the same comparison, we smiled graciously and took the compliment but this comparison ignored one fact: two of our songs – ‘I’ll Be There’ and ‘ABC’ – had knocked Britain’s finest from the No. 1 spot and that felt as good as anything to us. That was how fiercely proud we were, carrying forward our competitiveness from the talent-contest days. We were winners. We had to be the best. And the talent of others always forced us to raise our bar the highest.
THE ONE PLACE WE WERE GUARANTEED a warm welcome was Gary, Indiana, when we returned home to perform two concerts at Westside High School in early 1971 – our first visit ‘home’ in 14 months. Something like 6,000 people turned out each night, and it was all captured on camera for a television special called Goin’ Back to Indiana.
We had landed by helicopter in the school parking lot, in the snow, and there was a real carnival vibe. Even our helicopter joined the home-coming with a banner along its tail saying: ‘WELCOME HOME JACKSON 5’. We walked from the helicopter to a waiting limousine and the locals didn’t so much as mob us as ogle us, fascinated by the boys who had returned from their Motown makeover. We weren’t a distant fantasy on a bedroom wall to these people, we were one of them.
As we pulled around the corner and our old home came into view, we saw one difference straightaway: the new, if temporary, street sign – ‘Jackson 5 Boulevard’. Everyone held up duplicates and behind them, on the snow-covered lawn in front of our house, there was a bigger sign: ‘WELCOME HOME JACKSON 5 – KEEPERS OF THE DREAM’.
The street was swamped, and kids started shouting out memories.
‘Remember me? We went to elementary school together!’
‘You know me! I met you one time at …’
‘Michael! I was there when you sang “Climb Ev‘ry Mountain”!’
And then we found the one face in the crowd we had been looking for: our old buddy Bernard Gross. We pinched his chubby cheeks and he laughed. ‘You out in the sunshine making all that money now!’ he said. ‘Congratulations, guys, you deserve it.’
‘We’re still the same – not changed!’ we said, which was internally true. But we noticed how most people, except Bernard, looked at us differently – looking into us curiously. Outwardly, the changes were obvious. We had a wardrobe department now, and we sparkled without using Vaseline. But we didn’t feel better than anyone else: we just felt lucky and privileged. And we’d never thought we’d ever stand outside our house and feel privileged. It was hard going back because the taste of California had broadened our horizons. Life had moved us on, and being in Gary felt like trying on a pair of shoes you’ve outgrown but don’t want to throw away.
Even our house seemed reduced somehow. Outside, everything appeared the same, right down to the bricks stacked in the backyard. But as soon as we stepped inside, we all said the same thing: ‘How did we fit in here, let alone live here?’ We brothers went to our old bedroom where our bunk-beds were no more.
Michael and I stood around, looking at the crowds in the street. ‘Can you believe they’ve done all this for us?’ he said. Then nostalgia rewrote history: ‘We l
eft behind a lot of friends, didn’t we?’ he said.
‘Left a lot of folk behind, but gained fans around the world,’ I said. ‘We’ve got friends everywhere now.’ It was optimism, which made the reality seem rosier at the time.
Outside, Mother and Joseph basked in their deserved glory. Colleagues from ‘The Mill’ turned up and Mother’s friends from the street and Sears were there. Everyone seemed sincerely happy for us. At an official reception at the school, Gary’s mayor, Richard Hatcher, said we had put the city on the world map (which was probably also why they renamed the Palace Theater the Jackson 5 Theater) and he presented us with the ‘key to the city’. That was a huge honour for our family. We seemed to have the keys to the best things in life at this time, but there was something earned in the symbolic freedom that Gary offered; it officially recognised the struggle before the achievement.
The house still stands today, looking no different from the outside. It is occupied and still in the ownership of our parents. I’m not sure they will ever truly let go of our roots. In 1989, we came together as siblings – all nine of us – to release the song ‘2300 Jackson Street’. Those lyrics, which include Michael in the first verse, said more back then than I can convey without music now. It is the song of home and family, but Michael and I particularly liked the line that runs ‘My friends, I won’t forget your name, I’m still the same …’ And that was all Michael was ever really trying to say throughout his life.
THE MIDDLE
THE HAYVENHURST YEARS
CHAPTER EIGHT
Life Lessons
WHEN MICHAEL, AGED 13, SAW THE swimming-pool with two dolphins set into its bottom tiles, there was no question about it: Hayvenhurst was the dream house – which music had provided. It was May 1971, and Mother and Joseph put down our California roots in the LA suburb of Encino in the San Fernando Valley. Today the house is very different: then it was a bland one-storey ranch-style property, devoid of Michael’s later redesign. But there was still a lot going for it because it had previously been owned by Earle Hagen, the Emmy-award-winning composer of television scores, so its walls were already charmed with music and it had its own studio. It came with six bedrooms, the pool, a basketball court and two acres of land screened by trees, set back from a main road.
We could swim till dusk and have breakfast under the morning sun, sitting on the flagstoned patio, looking out over the gardens, with lemon and orange trees. Suddenly, for the first time in our lives, we had space – although we had sacrificed views of Hollywood for the suburban practicalities of large-family living. Our family had now grown to 13 members, with the addition of Jack Richardson and Johnny, so we needed every inch of the 8,000 square feet the house offered.
Back then, Hayvenhurst sat behind the wrought-iron rails of an electric gate – the start of life lived behind gates. The house had classic seventies décor: lots of sliding doors, plastic seating, gaudy colours and wood panelling, and we felt we’d hit the big-time with a spiral staircase that twisted its way out of the sunken living room with its wraparound couch. The sleeping arrangements now meant twin rooms for Marlon and me, Tito and Johnny, Michael and Randy, La Toya and Janet, Jackie and Ronny (with Michael and me still sharing on the road). I read somewhere that Hayvenhurst was so big that we started ‘losing touch’ and ‘had to make plans in advance to see each other’, but that wasn’t true: it was a house, not a castle. Thirteen people can make 8,000 square feet feel compact.
The new house was a sure sign that we were making serious money, and we each received an allowance of five dollars a week. Michael spent his on art materials. He also developed a fascination with magical tricks – he loved the process of illusion. The more surprised Mother looked – as he turned an umbrella into a flower or when a coin disappeared from his hand – the happier he was. Mother bought new furniture for the first time and treated herself to a new wardrobe. Joseph bought a new Ford Kombi and Jackie had his own pride and joy: an orange Datsun 240Z (until the day he reached for some gum while driving and totalled it north of Ventura Boulevard).
Despite our new wealth, our parents never spoiled us. The work ethic remained in place: they didn’t want us thinking that money was no object – Joseph even installed a pay-phone. And we were still given chores. Had anyone visited us on any random weekend, they would have found Tito and me doing vacuuming and laundry, Michael, Randy and Janet washing the windows, and Jackie and La Toya mopping floors and raking leaves.
Joseph still ruled. It eased from its worst excesses, but that’s not to say he didn’t still have a short fuse. There was a time when Michael was dressed and ready to join Mother at the Kingdom Hall and Joseph wanted him to rehearse for a national tour. But it was a Sunday, and Michael clung to Mother. Joseph ended up smashing a window in his fury, while mother and son left to pray with Jehovah. Over time, Randy and Janet got to know what the belt felt like, mainly for disobedience, and our pre-tour rehearsals at home were still administered under the threat of a beating. We were on the world stage now; nothing could go wrong. We had ‘made it’ and the media endearingly referred to Joseph as ‘Papa Joe’, but that didn’t mean he could change his character and way of being overnight.
MICHAEL RECEIVED SOME KIND OF DEATH threat. I don’t remember the details, but it was enough for us to be pulled out of public school in favour of private. Nobody was taking chances, especially after one of the Supremes, Cindy Birdsong – Diana Ross’s replacement – was kidnapped after being attacked in her home in the year we moved West. She was being driven to Long Beach when she managed to unlock the car door and throw herself from the moving vehicle on to the highway. Maybe that was the reason behind two new additions to the household: Lobo and Heavy, the German Shepherds. Lobo snarled to such a degree that whenever a journalist visited our house he always warranted a mention in the interview. (Fans of Janet may remember she wore a key as an earring – that was for Lobo’s cage because she, as the chief dog lover of the family, ended up taking care of him.)
There was also Johnny’s Dobermann. With characteristic mischief, he named him ‘Hitler’, but we didn’t mention that to the press.
Tito, Marlon, Michael and I now attended the Walton School in Panorama City. Its liberal attitude better suited our touring requirements and we were treated as equal with everyone else. Michael still had to audition for the part he landed in a school production of Guys and Dolls.
One day, we brothers were hovering around the school gates when everyone’s attention was caught by a hearse parking at the kerb. Who arrives at school in a hearse? That’s not cool.
Out stepped this tall, good-looking dude with an Afro that was almost as impressive as ours. He was engaged in a full-on sulk with an adult – I think it was his mother – about not wanting to go to this lousy school, he didn’t like it, and it was too far from home (he lived in Hancock Park).
Then, he turned and spotted Tito. ‘Wait … You all at this school?’
‘Yeah – except Jackie,’ said Tito.
I have never seen a kid switch so fast from sulks to smiles. Before we knew it, John McClain, the funeral director’s son, was standing on the pavement waving off his mother, thinking he had arrived at the coolest school in the world. He became a friend for life and his constant presence at our house meant that we regarded him almost as an adopted brother. As a teenager, it was clear he had musical ambitions of his own as a guitarist/songwriter/composer, and he and Tito often jammed together. John shared Michael’s hunger to learn and he was fascinated by our Motown education. Whatever Mr Gordy taught us, I passed on to him. He had a mischievous side like Michael, so when those two got together, it was always double trouble.
I was standing with them in the playground one afternoon when we saw this kid called George having a great time on the swings, about 50 yards away. ‘I bet you can’t throw this peach and hit him on top of the head!’ said Michael, daring me, forgetting my outfield accuracy.
‘How much?’
Michael knew he’d hooked
me. ‘Two bucks.’
Game on. He handed me the peach. I adjusted my eyes to the arcs of the pendulum called George and I took aim. The peach flew and … BOOM! George swung right into it.
Michael jumped up and down – like he used to during Katz Kittens games – then ran off as George wondered who and what had hit him.
Their biggest joke was on a mouthy kid called Sean and they decided he needed teaching a lesson. John, no doubt relying on skills learned in the funeral trade, dug a hole in the school grounds, about four feet deep. I didn’t witness how they got him in there, but Sean – all blond hair and Beatles cut – somehow ended up knelt in the hole as Michael and John kicked in the soil, burying him to his chest. Then, a teacher marched out.
‘Who did this? Get him out of there right now!’
It was one of those rare times when I heard a teacher use the admonishing words: ‘I’m surprised at you, Michael Jackson!’
Michael stuck to me like glue outside class. Wherever I looked, he was there, wearing his black velour hat, hanging in my shadow. There was one time when I thought I’d shaken him off. It was after a photography class and I’d disappeared with a girl who had invited me into the dark room because she said she wanted to kiss me. With the door shut, we were awkwardly overcoming our teenage shyness in the red luminescence, reaching the point where our lips were about to touch, when – ‘I CAUGHT YA! I CAUGHT YA!’ Michael burst in.
You Are Not Alone_Michael, Through a Brother’s Eyes Page 16