We understood his artistic need for space so we hardly saw him for most of 1982 as he pushed himself beyond the point of fatigue to perfect Thriller. But when the ‘finished’ album was played to him, he was ‘devastated’. It didn’t feel right and the final mix was off. ‘It’s like taking a great movie and ruining it in the editing,’ he wrote in his autobiography.
The team who worked with him so intimately will have known his creative ideas better than anyone. In their minds, I am sure Thriller sounded ambitiously strong, regardless of Michael’s reservations. But Michael could have umpteen tracks laid down and throw them all away – and that was exactly what he did when everyone thought Thriller was ready. When he first heard it, he ‘cried like a baby’, in his words, and said, ‘That’s it! We’re not releasing it.’ The story he told is that he stormed out of the studio at Westlake, borrowed some bike from a member of his team and pedalled as fast as he could to get away from the madness he felt. He happened upon a schoolyard packed with kids playing, so he stopped. He said all their laughter and innocence ‘put everything into perspective, and I rode back, feeling inspired again’. He then set to work on Thriller (take two). About one month later, he had tapped the outer limits of his creative ability and imagination to bring back a classic for the world to enjoy.
Thriller was released in November 1982 and started a blaze. It spent 37 weeks at No. 1 in the album charts, selling anywhere between 50,000 and 100,000 copies a week. But it achieved much more than sales and records: it marked his musical coronation. Not just in America, but worldwide. Joseph had always hoped that one day we would create music for the masses’ and I like to think we broke down a lot of racial barriers in the Jackson 5 days. But Thriller obliterated all of them and was embraced by young, old, male, female, gay, straight, black, white. It achieved what music’s soul was all about: it transcended differences and united people.
IT HAD BEEN ALMOST 18 YEARS since we had first set out as artists in Gary, and 25 since Mr Gordy had launched his label in Detroit. To mark that quarter-century milestone, NBC was taping the telecast Motown 25: Yesterday, Today, Forever.
Suzanne de Passe was one of its producers and she called to say that they wanted the Jackson 5 to perform at the reunion concert as part of the salute to Mr Gordy. It sounded amazing on paper. Just the thought of performing again with the brothers elated me. For six years, I’d had a recurring dream that I was on stage with them and I was counting a song off in my head, just about to sing … and then I’d wake. My unconscious had teased me with that promise for too long. Now, it was going to be a reality and I couldn’t wait.
I was certain Michael would feel the same, especially since his attic picture gallery celebrated this very era, and considering his love for Mr Gordy. But the reality of the music industry is that advisers have an artist’s ear and his camp’s brand focus was ‘Michael Jackson’ not the Jackson 5. It was about the future, not the past. And with everyone caught up in the momentum of Thriller, I guess no one wanted to concern him with a night in Memory Lane. As they saw it, Motown 25 would benefit Mr Gordy and the brothers, but what good could it do Michael? My brother also had his own reservations. But although it was reported that he didn’t want to perform with his brothers again, it was never about that. His early opposition was about not wanting to perform on TV. Still bruised from his CBS exposure on The Jacksons, he was surer than ever that television was a damaging medium to true stardom.
The rest of us felt he was making a mistake. Mother was the first to ask him to rethink his position. ‘Motown did give you and the brothers your start,’ she reminded him, ‘and you’d be performing on the same stage as all the acts you idolised as a boy.’
He said he’d think about it, but that hesitancy didn’t sit well with me. I rang him at home. When I heard his voice, I immediately sensed he was exhausted with the subject but I felt strongly that he was approaching this from a negative viewpoint or listening to bad advice, and brothers have the right to challenge another brother’s thinking. ‘You know, being back together will be spectacular,’ I said. ‘All our fans will be there and that magic will make good TV, not bad TV.’ I reminded him of when he’d done ‘The Robot’ dance on Soul Train and the power of that performance. How it had got half of LA’s kids up and dancing; How empowered he was by it.
‘That was different,’ he said. ‘That was then. I don’t want to do no more TV. I want to be doing music videos and live performances. I don’t want to do what the Osmonds are doing.’ He was calm but resolute. I could do nothing but respect his artistic reasons, and I was resigned to the fact we’d be doing Motown 25 without him. Privately, I was crushed.
The next thing I knew, Mother was on the phone saying Mr Gordy had turned up. I wouldn’t have put any money on a positive outcome, because if Mother couldn’t persuade Michael, then no one could. But my father-in-law had always said that the defection to CBS Records ‘was not only amicable but wrapped in love’, as far as the brothers were concerned and he visited Michael to convey how important it was for him to be there on the night.
‘Think about it,’ he told Michael, ‘up there again with Jermaine … together again … back onstage. It will be magic!’ Mr Gordy had never forgotten that phone call Michael had made before the Westbury Music Fair, saying he needed me. ‘But it’s not just Jermaine who needs you now,’ he added. ‘It’s me and the Motown family.’ He reminded him that Smokey would be back with the Miracles, and Diana Ross would reunite with the Supremes. No one could imagine the night without Michael reuniting with the Jackson 5.
Michael saw wisdom. ‘Okay, I’ll do it,’ he said. But on one condition: he’d do a Jackson 5 medley but then he wanted a solo spot to showcase ‘Billie Jean’ – a CBS Records song on a night dedicated to Motown. You have to admire that kind of nerve and maybe that was why Mr Gordy agreed to the compromise. Either way, everyone was in agreement and we all wanted to make this thing feel special.
We got busy and rehearsed our group choreography at both Hayvenhurst and Jackie’s house but none of us knew what Michael had up his sleeve for his solo spot. At some point, he had decided he’d use the television platform to try out a move he’d borrowed from street-dancers, one he had been finessing for the past two years. It was a move called ‘The Moonwalk’.
The one thing Michael fussed over for this grand performance was his wardrobe. He had the white sequined glove, the Sammy Davis-style half-mast black pants, white socks, the silver sparkly shirt, and he asked his management to order a black fedora, ‘something that a secret agent would wear’. But the jacket? However hard he looked, he couldn’t find it. He opened the doors of his quarters, looked down the hallway and saw that Mother’s bedroom door was open. As a lover of anything shiny, he had once seen her wear a black sequined jacket and he went to her closet to fish it out. He put it on and walked downstairs to find its owner in the kitchen. ‘This would be a good jacket for me to do a show in!’ he said. ‘And it fits good!’ He loved it because when he moved it sparkled. ‘Imagine it under the lights,’ he said. That was how Mother’s jacket found its place in history. With a dance borrowed from the streets of LA and a jacket from Mother’s closet, Michael was show-ready.
One question fans always ask me about the Moonwalk moment is: ‘What was Michael like before and after the performance?’ In people’s minds, this defining moment of his career has adopted a significance they assume was present in its build-up: that Michael was locked in some kind of trance-like focus, ready to unleash his wonder on the world. The truth was a little less remarkable. He treated the telecast at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium like a piece of cake. It was a big deal for Mr Gordy and Motown, but it was just another performance for Michael. When we asked him what he was planning for his spot, he simply said, ‘I’m going to do something that might work.’ And then we didn’t see him. He just … disappeared. He must have been gone half an hour.
‘Where you been?’ I asked, when he came back to the dressing room. He started chuckling and th
at mischievous grin spread across his face. ‘Been up in Diana’s rooms … She’s got some serious suitcases going on!’ he said.
Wait. I’ve just seen Diana Ross – and you weren’t with her.
He looked at me. I looked at him, and we died laughing.
‘You’ve been rooting through Diana’s stuff!’ So that was one part of the question answered. What was Michael like before the show? He was nosing about his mentor’s dressing room, wondering what she had in there.
He was also all over the production team during rehearsals, wanting to know every detail of the telecast. Every performer has to run through ‘camera blocking’ to allow the director to frame his shots, but Michael wanted to know what those shots were, how many cameras he had and at what angles. All this before the editing process! It was part of his methodical approach – and control.
He explained it best in an interview with Ebony magazine in 2007 and what he said applied to every live performance and music video he ever did. He said: ‘I don’t care what kind of performance you are giving – if you don’t capture it properly, the people will never see it. You’re filming WHAT you want people to see, WHEN you want them to see it, HOW you want them to see it, what JUXTAPOSITION you want them to see. You’re creating the totality of the whole feeling of what’s being presented … ’cause I know what I want to see. I know what I want to go to the audience. I know what I want to come back.’
For me, the perfect moment came when we walked onstage as the original Jackson 5, and the magic and chemistry returned naturally. All that had altered was that we weren’t kids any more and, golly, we had fun that night. I was overcome with this sensation of ‘WE’RE BACK!’ even if it was for only one night. I didn’t care, because this was the moment that, in the back of my mind, I’d known would happen again. I embraced it with a kind of home-coming jubilation. Poetically, when it was my part to sing on ‘I’ll Be There’, during the medley, my mic went out. Michael, alert to every beat, sensed it, saw my lips move with no sound and scooted over to share his mic, putting his arm around me as I sang. There is a wonderful picture of this moment, with both of us smiling. I think many people thought it was staged as we both leaned into his mic, but it was a technical glitch we got away with and that image is one I treasure from a momentous night.
At the end of our medley, Randy walked on and had his moment to recognise his input with the Jacksons, and then we bowed and everyone in the auditorium stood. That ovation meant everything, and we hugged each other before walking off, leaving Michael alone in the spotlight.
Now it was his turn, on his own. ‘I have to say,’ he told the audience, ‘those were the good old days. I love those songs. Those were magic moments with all my brothers, including Jermaine, but … er … those were good songs … I like those songs a lot, but especially … I like …’
The crowd started to scream and someone shouted, ‘“BILLIE JEAN!”’
‘… the new songs!’ Cue his virtuoso routine, which sent the place crazy with those kicks, toe-stands and spins of his. It was all improvisation, going with the beat. And then, at the bridge of the song, came the rehearsed moment: his first five-second burst of the Moonwalk, followed by another five seconds at the end. Ten seconds that would be talked about forever – and 10 seconds I missed when live.
I was in the wings with a restricted view, standing with the Four Tops and the Temptations, when I heard the audience go nuts and I said, ‘He got ’em … Mike’s got ’em!’ The other brothers watched it on small monitors and I knew from their reaction that the seventh child had just pulled off something special.
Michael came offstage to a standing ovation but was probably the only doubtful-looking person in the house. ‘How was it? Did it work?’ he asked.
Marvin Gaye, the Temptations and Smokey Robinson told him they were blown away, and then comedian Richard Pryor idled up. ‘What was that? That was incredible – the greatest performance I’ve ever seen!’ We lost Michael in a crowd of praise and superlatives as everyone gathered around him. Mother and Joseph were in the audience somewhere, with our father screaming, ‘He stole the show! The boy stole the show!’
That ‘Billie Jean’ performance was the best performance Michael had ever been talked into. It was also the best I ever saw him do. It poured rocket fuel on the Thriller album and sales went even crazier, peaking at a million a week. More importantly, within all the phenomenal success and wealth it generated, Michael finally sealed his name in The Guinness Book of Records. Thriller became the biggest-selling record of all time, ultimately shifting more than 100 million copies worldwide, and it earned him his desired clutch of Grammys – winning a record number of eight. The kid who used to sing for a plate of cookies had now surpassed even our father’s greatest expectations by setting two records, neither of which has been matched or surpassed since.
Unbeknown to Michael, one of his idols was among the millions of viewers watching his Moonwalk from an armchair at home. My brother had no idea how his performance had touched this particular person until the phone rang the next day at Hayvenhurst. And even then, he struggled to believe it when he found Fred Astaire on the other end of the line. ‘I watched it and I taped it, and I watched it again this morning,’ said Fred, ‘You’re a helluva mover. Man, you really put them on their asses last night!’
That one call meant more to Michael than any number of Grammys. Fred Astaire admiring him was the ultimate as far as he was concerned, and life had finally fulfilled Joseph’s CBS signing-on promise in an unexpected way. It might not have been a dinner, it was more important than that: it was praise from his hero, and that carried more meaning.
What’s extra-nice about this story is that Michael got to meet this legend some weeks later and Fred Astaire held out the palm of one hand and imitated the Moonwalk with two fingers before Michael gave him a demonstration. Fred apparently told my brother that he was ‘the best dancer he had ever seen’, but it was the warning he issued that sticks in my mind: he told Michael that his ‘Billie Jean’ performance would bring social pressure for him to dance at the drop of a hat. ‘Remember, you’re not a performing monkey – you’re an artist. You dance for no one but yourself,’ he apparently said. Michael, as ever, made a mental note.
As for Mother’s jacket, she never did get it back. Michael needed it for his now-famous routine. Some years later, he presented it to Sammy Davis Junior. In return, Sammy gave him a treasured wristwatch, which Michael gave as a keepsake to Mother. Seemed like a fair swap to me.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Animal Kingdom
AROUND THE TIME MICHAEL WROTE ‘Earth Song’ in the mid-nineties, I sat down and wrote an outline for a children’s story with him in mind. I called it The Pied Piper of Hood River and it was set around the beautiful fields and rivers of Oregon. In this fable, a young musician lives in the wilderness, protects the forest from evil forces and talks with animals. It was partly inspired by Michael: I’d always seen him as something of a Dr Doolittle because he had an uncanny way of communicating with animals. He was not a horse-or dog-whisperer, more an all-round animal-whisperer. ‘Give them love, you get love back,’ he said.
It didn’t matter how wild or exotic, animals seemed to trust him. I once said that if you threw him into a cage of lions, you’d come back an hour later to find him sitting against a wall with two lazing in his lap. Several visits to LA Zoo confirmed his desire to be surrounded by animals and he collected his own menagerie at Hayvenhurst, starting with another snake – Muscles the boa constrictor – three cockatoos and a stunning collection of koi carp in the pond at the far end of the garden. The two of us also kept horses at the ranch of actor Richard Whitmore.
One day, Michael decided he wanted a llama. He asked me to take him to nearby Agora and we ended up at this lot packed with hay and horse trailers. From the car, we eyed four llamas out back. I parked between two trailers, unintentionally shielding my Mercedes from view. It was the only parking spot available. When we walked into the o
ffice – two kids dressed casual but smart in T-shirt and jeans – this guy, bent across a counter doing some paperwork, didn’t even look up when he said, ‘We’re not hiring.’
‘We ain’t looking for no job,’ said Michael, wearing his shades. ‘We’re here to buy a llama.’
The man looked up. Not a flicker of recognition on his face. It took me about two seconds to know that his musical taste ventured nowhere near the Thriller album. ‘We don’t have any llamas,’ he said. The look on his face said it all: you can’t afford it.
‘You have four of them out back,’ I said, trying to keep calm.
‘You know how much they cost?’
Michael smiled. ‘We know how much they cost.’
Then came an incredible bombardment of questions, fired by the man’s prejudices and assumptions. ‘Can you afford a llama? What do you boys do to afford a llama? Where will you keep it? Have you thought about this?’
Ever patient, Michael explained that we had a house with grounds and were serious customers. ‘I know how to look after all kinds of animals,’ he added.
The man begrudgingly asked to see some ID. Michael handed over a bank card. I handed over my driving licence. And then night became day.
‘You’re those Jackson boys?’ said the man, his face lighting up. He began to back-pedal about how he had to be careful and he couldn’t sell to just anyone; you understand how it is. But we didn’t understand: we saw right through him.
You Are Not Alone_Michael, Through a Brother’s Eyes Page 24