You Are Not Alone_Michael, Through a Brother’s Eyes

by Jermaine Jackson

  I WAS CONTRACTED TO LAFACE RECORDS and obligated to Arista for one more album, so I had no option but to wait for my producers and get used to the sour taste in my mouth. But when they were finally ready to start work, it turned out that they, too, were upset with Michael. I don’t know what studio set-up L.A. Reid and Babyface had expected with my brother, but I don’t think it included the prominence of his preferred audio engineer/ producer Bruce Swedien. He was integral to capturing and finessing Michael’s unique sound over the years and was viewed as indispensable to his production team. At Michael’s insistence he always sat behind the boards in the control room. Something about Michael’s reliance on Bruce didn’t go down well with L.A. Reid and Babyface. Nor did they appreciate the fact that Michael wasn’t going to continue with any of their songs. That, I think, was the real slap in the face. That much was obvious when, during a phone call, they shared a hook from a song they had already written for me called ‘Word To The Badd’. The hook that resonated – because of its implied selfishness – went like this:

  It ain’t about your world

  It ain’t about the things you do

  If you don’t care, I don’t care

  You keep thinking about you

  You been taking all of my pie

  You been taking for a long time …

  The lyrics they had written in anger met with my still-brewing anger towards Michael. Not only that: all my pent-up energy to get into the studio combined internally with a deepening sense of injustice. It was a perfect emotional storm in which no one was thinking, just letting fly. If a studio session is an outlet for anything, it is for releasing unexpressed emotion. Music can be cathartic that way and I won’t have been the first artist to arrive at the mic with an intention to get it all out. In fact, it was typical of me to vent on my own instead of saying anything direct to Michael.

  It’s one thing to write vocals, quite another to release them as a single. I guess it’s like keeping a diary: you let the emotion pour on to the page. You write it and in the moment, you believe it. But you’d never think of publishing those words. When I arrived at the studio to start work, I was presented with the finished song and L.A. Reid and Babyface had come up with one particular verse that went like this:

  Reconstructed

  Been abducted

  Don’t know who you are

  Once you were made

  You changed your shade

  Was your colour wrong?

  It was a clear dig at Michael, and I knew it. Those lyrics were consistent with a mistaken perception about him and I didn’t agree with them – but I did agree with the angry tone. I was mad. I embraced this secret retaliation. The moment that song sheet was in my hand, I was singing with an anger that therapists would have applauded, even if Michael’s fans would not. In my naïvety, I didn’t expect for a single second that those words would be heard outside the audience of two producers and one engineer because, in my mind, they were lyrics never intended for release. After I’d laid down my angry vocals – and felt much, much better for getting it off my chest – we recorded another version: the intended version of ‘Word To The Badd’, featuring T-Boz from TLC. It kept the same hook but ditched all of the innuendo towards Michael. I didn’t think about it again as we went on to cut the rest of the album – due for release in 1992 – which included my biggest hope: a high-energy song with an explosive beat that never lets up. It was called ‘You Said, You Said’.

  I CAN’T REMEMBER WHERE I WAS when the bomb dropped. I just remember a phone call asking if I’d heard the radio, and that was how I found out that the angry, boot-legged version of ‘Word To The Badd’ had been leaked.

  Someone had found it irresistible, and it was receiving blanket air-play on a radio station in Los Angeles and its affiliate in New York. Some smart-ass DJ had a field-day swapping between the lyrics ‘you changed your shade/Was your colour wrong?’ and Michael’s soon-to-be-released single ‘Black Or White’. I was mortified: I was the man caught on some surveillance videotape holding the gun in a crime I hadn’t committed, yet the evidence was damning. Now my image was being flashed everywhere with the headline: ‘HAVE YOU SEEN THIS ASSASSIN?’ Guilty as sin. With a sense of shame to match.

  My stupidity in trusting the catharsis of the studio, and leaving that version floating around, came back to haunt me and I was damned by the face-value evidence: Jermaine Jackson singing lyrics that attacked and ridiculed Michael Jackson. Crimes against loyalty apparently didn’t get any worse.

  I got on the phone straightaway to Mr Gordy, the one person I knew who would be calm in a crisis.

  His advice was as straightforward as I needed it to be. ‘Did you write it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But you sang it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Were you upset when you sang it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, you have to take full responsibility, Jermaine. There’s nothing more I can say.’

  I must have sat in my car for an hour after that call, berating myself, wanting to slam my head first against the dashboard and then through the windshield. I wanted to ring Michael instantly, but what was the point? I’d only leave a message that would go unreturned. Especially now. I wanted to tell the world that I hadn’t done this and hope they believed my lie. Because the real me hadn’t done it, and that was the truth. But I had to own up and step up.

  I owned up on CNN with Larry King. I tried to explain, find context and plead mitigating circumstances. I tried to explain it was a song I should never have sang, let alone recorded. But none of that public stuff mattered in the scheme of things. What mattered now was repairing the damage with Michael. Inevitably, he called Mother, wanting to know what the hell was going on, and he wanted to double-check that it was really me singing those lyrics. He couldn’t believe it. No one could. Everyone I cared about looked at me and asked, ‘What were you thinking?’ and I had no answer. Anger never has made sense after the fact.

  But Mother has always been one for brokering peace in the family and it was she who called a meeting at Hayvenhurst so that we could speak one-on-one. ‘Don’t listen to the media,’ she told Michael. ‘Don’t listen to your advisers. Listen to what Jermaine has to say and sort this out like brothers, like men.’

  For the first time that I could remember we were going to confront an issue face to face. We were going to point to the biggest, fattest elephant that had ever taken refuge in one of our rooms and we were going to call it what it was.

  I WAS UPSTAIRS AT HAYVENHURST WHEN I heard Michael in the lobby and formal, ominously hushed voices – a sound you’d normally associate with a grim summit. I came down to find him, Mother and Joseph waiting for me in the library. He looked solemn as he took the sofa seat 90 degrees to my right, our knees almost touching. He had Mother at his side, and Joseph took the sofa directly opposite me, at the far end of the coffee-table. I cannot remember a time when we’d previously had a bust-up of any kind, not even as children. So the awkwardness between the two of us was alien. First, the distance. Now the discord.

  At first, we avoided eye-contact. Michael looked down. I stared at Mother. Joseph looked like he wanted to bang our heads together, but said nothing: a father intently watching his sons work something out on their own.

  It was Mother who got things going, reminding us about love and how close we were; that it should never have come to this. I went first. Not with an apology, but with the undercurrents. It is a conversation that remains vivid. ‘We used to be close,’ I said, ‘but it’s been eight years … eight years, Michael. Eight years that we haven’t spent proper time together. I’m speaking for all of us, not just me.’ He looked at me. Now we had eye-contact. I continued: ‘In those eight years, everyone has said everything they can about this family as if they know us and know you, and we should have stuck together but you went off and –’

  ‘And for those eight years you thought I deserved that song?’ he interrupted. ‘That is hurtful, and I d
idn’t expect that … not from you, Jermaine.’

  ‘I didn’t write it.’

  ‘You sang it.’

  ‘I sang it when I was upset, but those lyrics don’t reflect how I feel about you and you know it,’ I said.

  ‘You put your voice to those lyrics,’ he said, forcing his point home.

  I could see in his eyes how hurt he was, and it killed me, knowing that I was responsible. ‘I’m sorry I hurt you,’ I said. My betrayal acknowledged, I tried to explain how I had reached out to him numerous times, leaving messages, and how frustrating that felt. ‘Like the King Tut movie idea you ignored …’

  ‘I don’t know anything about a King Tut movie,’ he said, looking genuinely surprised. ‘I didn’t get any of those messages.’

  ‘Doesn’t that tell you something? That the people around you are not passing on messages from us!’ I said, feeling agitated all over again, renewing my suspicion that our messages were being filtered by his gatekeepers.

  Michael promised to look into it.

  ‘But that still doesn’t excuse how much time you let pass during those eight years,’ I reminded him. If we’re going to do this, let’s bring it all out, I thought.

  Michael went into a long-winded justification, saying it wasn’t deliberate, he was just busy. There had been a lot of travelling and touring, and recording and shooting videos. He went on and on with what I considered to be rationalising.

  Eventually I had heard enough. ‘BUT, MICHAEL, WE’RE YOUR FAMILY! You’ve GOT to make time for family!’ I yelled, and in a fit of frustration, I slammed my fist on the coffee-table. The cups and saucers jumped on the silver tray and Michael almost leapt out of his skin. There was something so timid and fragile about him, so easily startled, that I felt bad for raising my voice. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I didn’t mean to make you jump …’

  Then he smiled. ‘Look at your face,’ he said, and then he started to laugh. ‘You’re so uptight!’ As kids, we’d laughed nervously in the most serious of situations and Michael’s chuckling, made me laugh now. With that, everyone relaxed. Everything that had seemed so serious now seemed silly and pointless, and we wrapped up the big talk by mutually accepting fault. We both stood, gave each other the biggest hug and said, ‘I love you,’ almost in unison.

  From that day on, Michael turned up to more Family Days, even if he never again became regularly available to us, as he had been in the old days. The main thing was that we had cleared the air.

  To this day, some of Michael’s fans hold ‘Word To The Badd’ against me in a way that he did not, but ultimately what mattered was forgiveness between brothers. As family, you don’t look at a dispute in the same way the public does – the issue was blown out of proportion on the outside, increasing the perception of us as a dysfunctional family. Sometimes it seemed that we weren’t allowed to argue, lest someone suggest we were a family ‘at war’. The truth was that our difficulties were no bigger or smaller than any other family’s, but they became magnified by my actions and Michael’s fame. Thankfully, we’ve always been able to put matters into perspective and move on. It takes a lot more than a few ill-considered lyrics to break the ties of kinship between us.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Forever Neverland

  NEVERLAND WAS INTENDED TO BE MICHAEL’S happy-ever-after. It wasn’t quite his romantic castle on a hill, but it was still perfectly removed from the outside world, and it had a breathtaking charm. I doubt there was a more magical place on earth away from Disney. I may have fewer memories of it than I do of 2300 Jackson Street and Hayvenhurst, but they are just as rich.

  To this day when a warm breeze blows across my face and I hear water trickling from a fountain to merge with a child’s laugh, I’m back in my brother’s happy valley and I see him surrounded by children playing. I see him wearing one of his hats, sprinting across the freshly-mown grass beyond the swimming pool, armed with a water balloon or a pump-action water pistol, chasing and soaking the opposite ‘team’. I see him on the back row of the giant Pirate Ship at the theme park, waiting until it is suspended in its up-swing … and then he pelts everyone sitting below with candy.

  I see him in the bumper cars driving better than he ever did on LA’s freeways, doubled up with laughter as we smash into him from all sides. I see him in the movie theatre, slouched back in his chair, tossing popcorn in the dark at anyone on the first few rows – the last person they suspect is Michael. I see him walking around the grounds near the lake, holding an umbrella to shield himself from the sun, heading to the cluster of Indian tepees. I see him in a golf cart, customised to look like a mini Rolls-Royce or a Batmobile – complete with stereo sound-system.

  I see him lazing at home with the ‘Michael Jackson image’ hung up in the wardrobe as he shuffles about the kitchen – morning or night – not so pristine in a white V-neck T-shirt, pyjama bottoms or sweat pants, and black velvet house slippers with a gold crest and the letter ‘J’ on the toe. I see him as clear as if it was yesterday. I see him as I never want to forget him.

  And if, as you just read that, you see a grown man acting like a child – not conforming to how things should be and feeling free to let his inner-child run wild – then you, too, see the unashamed truth of who Michael really was, being himself in the one place where he was allowed to be himself.

  How people judge this truth, and project their views of ‘normal’ behaviour, will always say more about them than it ever did about Michael. Take Martin Bashir, the British documentary-maker who brought his lack of understanding of anything child-like into Michael’s world in 2003. On camera, Michael told him how he loved to climb his favourite oak tree and sit in its branches and write songs, at one not just with nature but with his past: the tree outside our bedroom in Gary; the tree trunk he touched for good luck at the Apollo; Joseph’s twigs that taught us togetherness; and then my image that a tree is like our family – the parents are the trunk, the children its branches. ‘I love climbing trees,’ Michael told Bashir. ‘I think it’s my favourite thing. Having water-balloon fights and climbing trees.’

  Bashir didn’t get it, so he projected his idea of normal: ‘Don’t you prefer making love or going to a concert? You really mean that? You prefer climbing trees and having a balloon fight?’ He would later remind Michael that he was, at the time, a 44-year-old man. And that was where this journalist’s ‘examination’ instantly failed: regardless of whether or not others can identify with how Michael was, it doesn’t change who he was. The core fact is that my brother looked at life through a child’s eyes. Age, status, persona and other people’s expectations of him had nothing to do with it. He had a child’s heart and he never outgrew a child-like enthusiasm for fun – and this was why he had a natural affinity with children.

  People with suspicious minds would turn this characteristic into something it wasn’t, but if you accept his child-like spirit, you are at the starting point to understanding him and his joy in ‘elementary things’. Is this ‘normal’? Probably not. But I’ll never forget a quote that someone once read to me: ‘Normal is just someone you don’t know very well.’ A privileged few knew Michael very well, and he was as ‘normal’ as can be when holding the cards that life had dealt him within an extraordinary life. Running backwards to chase after his childhood was the most normal thing in the world for him to do. Michael might not have fitted many people’s idea of ‘normal’, and that’s because his sense of compassion was rare. But to truly know him was to love him, and to see him was to appreciate what Neverland was, too: a toy town filled with innocence and fun. I always said that my brother might as well have been the offspring of Walt Disney or William Hamley or Frederick Schwarz. At face value, it really was as beautifully simple as that.

  HOWEVER VISITORS APPROACHED NEVERLAND – by air or road – one landmark guided them there. A mountain peak, with one side shaved clean and the other still thick with brush and trees, was the first thing we looked for in the distance either from the helicopter or from
Highway 54 heading inland from the coast at Santa Barbara. If you kept your eyes on that highest point, which ducked in and out of view on the winding road, it was impossible to get lost. Michael named it Mount Katherine in honour of Mother because mountains represent something solid and serene and spiritually strong. Katherine Street ran in front of the train station, which he called Katherine Station. Mother was celebrated in the detail and in the distance, always part of Michael’s landscape.

  She was the first of the family to lay eyes on his new home, joining him after his European tour with Bad. As mother and son arrived at the property, they were greeted by two magnificent Clydesdale horses that pulled a Cinderella carriage driven by men wearing top hats. At the end of a winding road through open fields, she arrived outside the main house on the right. Huge oak trees cast shadows on the brick-paved forecourt and a statue of Mercury stood inside a decorative mini-roundabout. On her left, across the courtyard, were the guest-houses that overlooked a four-acre lake. Mother wasn’t surprised to find that Michael had chosen another Tudor-style property and the previous owner had done it up inside: oak walls and beamed ceilings with varnished wooden floorboards. Think dark oak tones, exposed brickwork, brass features and mullioned windows, and you have the feel of this dreamy home – a 13,000-square-foot residence, surrounded by canyon stone paths, shingle and manicured lawns as lush green as the finest golf courses in the world.

  Michael also had rainbow flowerbeds again, the most spectacular being the Geneva-inspired giant flower clock on the grass slope beneath the train station – you reached it by following the driveway from the house up and around a slight incline. Inside the house, standing in the widest foyer, the life-size model butler stood to attention, holding his tray of cookies. To the left, there was a den-like room, with a grand piano that bore framed photos of the family and a five-feet-high miniature model of a medieval castle on the floor as its centrepiece – a château that Michael had his eyes on in France. To the right, there was a library, filled with the smell of old books and velvet photo albums. Finally he had the grand library that would make Rose Fine proud.