by Tavis Smiley
When asked about Michael’s managers before Dileo, Yetnikoff was less enthusiastic. “In the seventies and early eighties, when he was still with his brothers, his father was in the picture, along with Ron Weisner. But during those years, even when he broke through with Off the Wall, he still hadn’t come into his own, and management wasn’t as crucial as it became with Thriller.”
“It was during Thriller that Michael fired Ron Weisner and had no management at all,” Quincy Jones remembered. “This alarmed me. I compared it to a 747 flying around with no one in the cockpit. So when he finally saw the need and hired Dileo, I was relieved.”
“When Michael relieved Dileo of all his duties in 1989, if he could have, he would have canned me as well,” said Yetnikoff. “The problem was that he had this fixation about Bad selling a hundred million copies. At that point, Thriller might have sold fifty million, and Michael was determined that Bad would have to double that number. The truth is that Bad spawned five number one singles. At the time, no other album had ever accomplished that, not even Thriller. It didn’t matter to Michael that, by any normal measure, Bad was a worldwide smash, selling tens of millions. Because he couldn’t stop comparing it to Thriller, a once-in-a-lifetime phenomenon that would never be matched, he considered Bad a failure and started firing the key members of his team—mainly his lawyer, John Branca, and manager, Dileo—who had been so critical to his success. He wanted David Geffen to take over as manager. But Geffen saw himself as a mogul, not a manager. Geffen asked Michael, ‘Do you wash windows?’ ‘No, I don’t wash windows,’ Michael said. ‘Well, I don’t manage,’ Geffen said. So Michael hired Sandy Gallin, who was also handling Dolly Parton and Cher. That’s about the same time—1990—I got fired from Sony, the Japanese firm I convinced to buy CBS Records. My underling, Tommy Mottola, took over. History would prove that Mottola had an even harder time managing Michael than anyone.”
The Michael-Mottola relationship imploded in 2001, when Michael claimed that Sony wasn’t properly promoting Invincible, his new release. He went so far as to hold a press conference, where he was introduced by Reverend Al Sharpton. That’s when Michael called Mottola a devilish racist. Mottola argued that Sony had spent some $40 million on the production and promotion of Invincible, and that if the record’s sales didn’t exceed those of Thriller—Michael’s unchanging goal—it was not the label’s fault.
Invincible did reach number one, but its worldwide sales of eight million were seen as a disappointment and evidence of a decided downturn in Michael’s commercial appeal. Two thousand and one was also the year of the CBS television special celebrating Michael’s thirtieth year in music. The show, which included a Jackson brothers reunion, was taped during two concerts—one on September 7, the other on September 10, the night before the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. The national tragedy overwhelmed Michael’s big celebration.
Three years later, in the summer of 2004, Michael, charged with seven counts of committing lewd acts against a minor, was viscerally moved to see Frank Dileo, the manager he had fired some fifteen years earlier, seated in the Santa Barbara County courthouse, there to lend his support.
Now, in March of 2009, the question of who manages Michael—a question that has vexed him for the past three decades—is more crucial and confusing than ever.
Michael was raised to do the right thing. From the start, he was the ultimate good boy: obedient, respectful of authority, a model son. But when the role of father merged with the roles of musical coach and business manager, emotional confusion ensued. Young Michael derived great pleasure from thrilling audiences at venues—high school sock hops, shopping center openings, nightclubs, and theaters—that had been booked by his dad. At the same time, he railed against Joseph’s tyrannical disposition. Because he sensed his own inordinate talent at an early age, Michael assumed a stance of leadership. Even as a kid, he was the front man. And of all the Jackson boys, Michael took the brunt of Joseph’s rage. He literally got hit hardest.
In his memoir, Moonwalk, Michael described throwing a shoe at Joseph and swinging at him with his little fists. He claimed that he got abused more than all his brothers combined. When Joseph attacked him, he remembered fighting back, although, in Michael’s words, “My father would kill me, just tear me up.”
And yet throughout his life, Michael would credit Joseph with teaching him all he knew. Along with bitter resentment, there was heartfelt gratitude. The result was that in all future relationships with managers, Michael would carry the heavy emotional baggage of his childhood. He would see in every future manager shadows of his original paternal manager. Ron Weisner, Frank Dileo, Sandy Gallin, Tohme Tohme—all were charismatic men of driving ambition. Each shared Michael’s dream, which was, in fact, the dream that he shared with Joseph: not simply spectacular success, but a series of endless successes, one necessarily more record-setting than the next. Each successive manager shared the desperate dream of world conquest. To achieve this dream, Michael needed these men, just as he needed his own father. And just as he resented his father and his father’s menacing dominance, so too did Michael resent each of his managers. Consequently, as Marvin Gaye had predicted, Michael was, at once, unmanageable and desperate for good management.
With the This Is It concerts close at hand, Michael knows that he needs management more than ever. He is grateful that his current manager, Tohme Tohme, brought him together with the AEG group. Without AEG, he might well have lost everything. And yet Tohme Tohme, and by extension AEG’s Randy Phillips, has taken on the role once held by Joseph. They are imposing upon Michael what he begins to see as a cruel and heartless discipline. Ten shows have turned into fifty. And now Michael is hearing Phillips drop hints that he should really cash in and take the show on the road. Eventually it may go around the world. Michael begins seeing this, like so much of his life, spinning out of control.
He grows suspicious of Tohme Tohme. It was Tohme Tohme who first convinced Michael that selling some of the contents of Neverland would rid him of depressing memories and gain him much-needed revenue. When Michael agreed, Tohme Tohme contracted Julien’s Auctions to facilitate the sale. In describing the enormous quantity of art up for sale, auctioneer Darren Julien described it as “Disneyland collides with the Louvre.”
But when Michael saw the catalog in which photographs of those contents were featured, he had a change of heart. He couldn’t stand the idea of losing hundreds of objects dear to him. Eventually the auction was canceled, but the result was still another legal mess. Michael blamed Tohme Tohme.
When other forces sense Tohme Tohme losing favor, they move in for the kill.
Patrick Allocco, head of AllGood, the concert promotion firm, has met with Michael’s father in hopes of arranging a Jacksons reunion concert. Joseph allegedly tells Allocco that Frank Dileo is back in Michael’s good graces and is the one to facilitate the deal. But later still, another man claims that he’s managing Michael: Leonard Rowe, the African American promoter who has also teamed up with Joseph and signed all the Jackson boys minus Michael to a reunion show of his own making. All this is happening before, during, and after Tohme Tohme has gotten Michael to agree to AEG’s multiconcert deal.
Millions are at stake.
Millions have been promised.
Given the precarious finances of the Jacksons, whose history is marked by many bankruptcies, Michael’s family is eager to get back in the game. The family needs money. Many of the siblings have not been able to stay afloat for long without Michael’s help. The same applies to Joseph. Michael’s posttrial refusal to perform or tour—his retreat to Bahrain and Ireland, his seclusion in Vegas—was disastrous for his family’s finances. The minute it became clear that Michael might take the stage again, the family—and promoters claiming to represent them—came running.
On March 17, 2009, as Michael prepares to return to the office of Dr. Arnold Klein for more dermatological treatments and more Demerol, the battle for Michael’s divided heart an
d troubled soul is growing uglier, day by day.
7
Spring
Friday, March 20, 2009
Still haunted by insomnia, Michael awakens late in the morning and, before anything else, checks in with his children, who are quietly reading books and playing games. He feels pride when he sees how self-sufficient they have become. Though he dotes on them shamelessly, he has also raised them to follow their natural curiosity. He is determined that, in contrast with his own childhood, in which leisure didn’t exist and curiosity about anything other than ways to improve the stage show was never encouraged, Prince, Paris, and Blanket have a freedom never afforded him—the freedom to simply be children. Given the bizarre circumstances of their lives, Michael is especially pleased that they appear well-adjusted and happy.
Although he has never failed to keep them close to him, he has also, particularly in these past six years, led an unsettled and madly peripatetic existence, running from country to country, often covering the children in masks and himself in disguises. In some ways, the unorthodox lifestyle and unpredictable movement may contribute to the bond between Michael and his kids. In Arabian palaces, country estates in Ireland, penthouse hotel suites in Vegas, and now a mansion in Holmby Hills, they huddle together for emotional warmth and the reassurance that, though their world may be ever-shifting and uncertain, they will always have one another. As a family unit, they are extraordinarily tight-knit.
While eating lunch with the kids, Michael hears a TV newscaster announcing that spring has officially arrived. He smiles and sighs, thinking back over these difficult past months. Today there is reason for celebration. Michael sees spring as the season of hope. Spring is victory over the harshness of winter. Spring is about eternal renewal. Jesus came back to life in spring. Spring proves that depression—depression of growth, depression of spirit—is but a temporary thing. Ultimately, depression lifts and we move forward, onward, upward. Looking back, Michael recognizes this as the movement of his life. No matter how deep the misery, he has always managed to overcome. Tenacity is in his blood. Tenacity is in his history. So on this first day of spring, his heart swells with good feeling. He’s optimistic. He has faith.
As is often the case when his mood is joyful, he puts on music. Music—especially classical music—heightens his joy. Debussy’s Arabesque no. 1 is a piano composition he has heard a thousand times. Each listening brings him enormous pleasure. Waves of sound wash over him, calm him, excite his imagination. He listens to other compositions he has heard hundreds of times before, pieces that invoke a sense of wonderment and delight—Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite, Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring—and bring him into a world where rejuvenation and replenishment recur in accordance with God’s divine plan.
As always, music nourishes Michael. Even the thought of creativity fills him with positive energy. He acts on that energy by going to work on a suite of classical songs that have been stirring his mind for months. Sometimes he hears this music as a theme to an unseen movie, like the film scores of Elmer Bernstein. Among Bernstein’s work, his score for To Kill a Mockingbird is Michael’s favorite. Because it’s a story seen from a child’s point of view, a film with clear heroes and villains, Michael embraces it with his whole heart. He also identifies closely with the film because it is set in the thirties in small-town Alabama, the very state and moment in time in which Michael’s mother grew up.
As the music to some unwritten film swirls around in his head, Michael sings bits of melody and harmony into a tape recorder. For months now, he’s been composing what he calls classical music. His plan is to engage an orchestrator to transcribe his work. Because he is unable to read or write music, he depends upon others for his musical notations. Many of his orchestral predecessors—Barry White, Isaac Hayes, Marvin Gaye—were similarly situated. Their musical minds were vast. They conceived enormous melodic and harmonic constructions. In their heads, they could hear the completed piece. They were able to delineate each discrete part, from the strings to the brass to the reeds to the rhythm. Like Michael, they were musically preliterate. Their lack of formal training, though, in no way impeded their ability to forge compositions of great beauty and deep complexity.
Michael’s musical reveries don’t last long. His serene mood is shattered when he is reminded of an ugly press report. For his entire adult life, he has had a troubled relationship with publicity.
Early on, he understood its essential role in show business. He saw how, although Bobby Taylor brought the Jackson 5 to Motown, the label changed the story, telling the world it was Diana Ross who discovered the group. Taylor remembered how Michael came to him and said, “It isn’t true, Bobby. You were the one who found us. Now they want us to lie.”
“This was an innocent kid,” said Taylor, “with a pure heart. I hated to break it to him, but I had no choice. ‘Look, Mike,’ I said, ‘this is how this mean ol’ world works. To attract the maximum amount of attention, sometimes you have to make up things. If you don’t, there’s a good chance you’ll be ignored. And being ignored in this business is the kiss of death.’”
A couple of years later, when Rolling Stone put Michael on the cover with the heading “Why does this eleven-year-old stay up past his bedtime?” the truth was that Michael was almost thirteen. By then, though, exaggerating his youth was nothing new. His father had been doing it for years. The thrill of seeing himself on a magazine cover compensated for the distorted facts. Besides, what harm was done?
The harm came in the eighties. Michael had long been accustomed to the limelight, but the onslaught of superstardom overheated the engines of his already burning ambition. Bob Jones, head of Motown publicity, had worked with the Jacksons since 1970, and in the mideighties was hired by Michael as his personal publicist. Though Jones was unceremoniously dismissed in 2004, when called to testify in the 2005 trial, he was protective of his former employer.
“When it came to publicity,” Bob Jones once explained, “Michael was a mad genius. In that heady period between Thriller and Bad, he found it difficult to process the enormity of his success. While it’s true that he’d been a star since he was a little kid, he suddenly found himself in an entirely different position—this wildly exalted position—and he just wasn’t prepared. Being the world’s biggest star—bigger than even the Hollywood stars he idolized, like Gregory Peck, Katharine Hepburn, Sophia Loren, Fred Astaire, and Elizabeth Taylor—excited him tremendously. You have to remember that this was when the company he admired most, Disney, was begging him to create a movie for their amusement parks, and just like that, he found himself in discussions with George Lucas and Steven Spielberg. All this sent him over the top.
“He was absolutely thrilled by this avalanche of publicity. Like every entertainer I’ve ever known, he loved being on the cover of dozens of magazines. He reveled in all the attention. And he also couldn’t get enough. Because the press was so solicitous, so eager to grab any crumb he threw their way, he began to toy with them. Many of those absurd stories, like the one about his sleeping in a hyperbaric chamber, originated from him. He had me leak those items and got a good laugh when they actually appeared in print.
“Part of this has to do with Michael’s playfulness: he likes to scare guests with Muscles, his boa constrictor. He never tires of dropping water balloons on unsuspecting victims and engaging in water gun fights. I warned him, though, that playing with the press is risky business. Today they love you. Tomorrow they devour you. But those were days when Michael truly felt invincible. As naive as it sounds, he really did believe that he could go on managing the press, just the way he managed the making of his music. When this strategy blew up in his face, when, in the early nineties, the accusations assaulted him and the media turned on him with a vengeance, his rage, I believe, was not only directed at the press, but also directed at himself for creating a dangerous dynamic that had spun so crazily out of control.”
Many of Michael’s most emotionally charged and lyrically engaged so
ngs—“Leave Me Alone,” “Why You Wanna Trip on Me,” “Scream,” “Tabloid Junkie,” “Privacy,” and the posthumously released “Price of Fame” and “Breaking News”—center on what became his poisonous relationship with the press.
“Part of the problem,” said Bob Jones, “was that Michael identified with historical figures like Howard Hughes and P. T. Barnum. He told me that he loved Hughes because of Hughes’s uncanny ability to intrigue the public. He loved how Hughes was able to play people. Michael also had me buy copies of Barnum’s biography Humbug for everyone at MJJ Productions. It was required reading. Michael loved how Barnum created spectacle, but he also loved how he created illusion. But mainly he admired how Barnum had the press eating out of his hand. When it came to putting on the greatest show on earth, anything goes. That was Michael’s philosophy. The trouble, of course, was that Barnum was working in the nineteenth century. In the twentieth century of Michael Jackson, the press didn’t mind biting the hand that fed it. Soon as they drew blood, feeding frenzies ensued. That blood sport became a major industry unto itself. And the more Michael tried to derail the industry, the more he cried out against it, the stronger it became.”