by Tavis Smiley
But there was another reason for turning them away, a more complex one: Michael feared that if he did entertain their concerns, he would give in to their demands. In short, Michael didn’t trust himself. He dreaded confrontations, and rather than fight, he was conditioned to surrender. Pleasing people was second nature to him. That’s why, when faced with people he did not wish to please—people he distrusted—avoidance was his default strategy.
On this last Wednesday in March, though, he is no longer able to implement avoidance. Out of respect for his mother and in an attempt to gain clarity over his relationship with Tohme Tohme and AEG, Michael is allowing Joseph and Leonard Rowe into the Carolwood estate.
Michael is right to be concerned about his propensity to placate strong-minded men. As he faces his father—his original manager—and Leonard Rowe, a promoter he knows well, the result of the meeting is predictable.
Michael submits.
The next day Rowe issues a press release that states, “Michael Jackson, universally acclaimed as the King of Pop, today named Leonard Rowe, the legendary concert promoter from Atlanta, as his new manager, replacing Dr. Tohme Tohme.”
Michael is quoted as saying, “I am very pleased that Leonard has accepted my offer to manage my business affairs during this important period in my career… Leonard Rowe has been a longtime friend and business associate whose judgment I have come to trust.”
Rowe will also produce a letter that Michael promises to sign at a later date. Coming from Michael to Randy Phillips of AEG, the document states the same basic points as the press release. The tremendous power and pull of the original triangulation—father-mother-Michael—has resulted in a coup. Michael is back in the family fold.
But is he?
Some thirty years after firing Joseph as his manager, is Michael now really prepared to grant Joseph, and Joseph’s surrogate, control over his comeback?
Rather than taking on these two heavyweights, does he simply choose the path of least resistance? Is he looking only to appease them and then shoo them out of his house as soon as possible?
Or is Michael playing them as he has played so many managers, agents, promoters, and lawyers for so many years?
Or, conversely, are the managers, agents, promoters, and lawyers playing Michael?
The game of who’s controlling whom has been going on since Michael first stepped onstage as a small child. It has never stopped. Michael is convinced that it never will.
So let Joseph and Rowe have their victory today. Let them write their press release. Let them rejoice. Let them believe that they have convinced this easily persuaded superstar that they and they alone have his best interests at heart.
In the coming days, though, let them try to call Michael and see if they can get through.
They can’t.
Just days after the meeting, Michael no longer has any interest in talking to Rowe, supposedly his new manager.
To make matters even more confusing—a state of affairs that may bring Michael some perverse satisfaction—AllGood Entertainment, the money behind Rowe, is sending a cease and desist notice to AEG. Its claim is that the This Is It shows must be canceled because they are in conflict with a reunion concert to which Michael has agreed.
Uncertain that Rowe has completely solidified his relationship with Michael, AEG is also working with Frank Dileo, Michael’s manager from the eighties. Seeing that Tohme Tohme has lost his grip, Dileo is lurking on the sidelines, trading on his once-total access to Michael and assuring both sides—AllGood, with its plans for a reunion, and AEG, with its plans for fifty London concerts—that he has Michael’s ear.
Michael is sentimental. His sentimentality complicates things even more. He considers reestablishing ties with former advisors like Dileo and lawyer John Branca. He thinks back fondly on the salad days, the time when Thriller and Bad were breaking records and money was raining down like manna from heaven. Those were the times when, in Michael’s mind, Dileo and Branca could do no wrong.
Michael sees this large cast of characters bumping into one another in a play whose plot is muddled and whose direction is unsure. Sometimes he imagines the play as comic, sometimes tragic. In either case, he must reassert himself as both author and director. It is his story and no one else’s.
If today he is willing to entertain Joseph and Rowe, that’s fine. If tomorrow he changes course and decides that his decision was hasty, that’s his prerogative. If he wants to keep his current manager, Tohme Tohme, he’ll keep him. Or if he wants to bring back his old manager Frank Dileo, well, that’s his right.
He won’t be pinned down.
Such enormous decisions with such huge financial repercussions would require a CEO with long experience in the Wall Street world of high finance. Michael is far from being that person. He is instead a creative artist who lives life emotionally. More than ever, he is ruled by his feelings.
And at the end of March, his feelings are such that he’s content to allow his decisions to waver, taking one stance today and retreating from that same stance tomorrow.
Let the factions fight over him however they please. Let them vow loyalty. Let them each claim that they have only his best interests at heart.
Michael has been swimming with showbiz sharks for so long that he is well aware of the dangers. He trusts none of them, yet he needs all of them—or at least at times he believes he does.
Time and again, he has made a mess of his financial life. Having earned tens of millions, he has spent tens of millions more than he has made.
He needs money. He loves what money can buy. But as someone raised as a fundamentalist Christian, he’s persuaded that money really is the root of all evil. He sees what it’s done to his family. He sees what it’s done to him.
Art, uncorrupted by money, calls to him.
The pure act of creativity is the one distraction that saves his sanity. In that act, managers and mothers, fathers and agents, lawyers and promoters, play no part.
The song he hears inside his head is “Leave Me Alone,” the plaintive cry from the Bad album in which he asks the world to stop dogging him, stop deceiving him, stop making him feel sorry. This is the song in which he tells the world not to come begging at his doorstep.
Another song he hears inside his head is “Unbreakable,” from the Invincible album, in which he wonders why so many presume that they can get to him with any scheme, and why others seek to bury him. This is the song in which he confirms his tenacity. He won’t be stopped.
He’ll live with the confusion. He’ll deal with what he has to deal with, but he’ll escape. “Xscape,” the unreleased song that Michael wrote a decade earlier with producer Rodney Jerkins, has him lamenting a pernicious system controlling his life. He needs to find an exit, a way to escape so he can free his mind. The system—the malicious press, the incestuous network of moguls, managers, and agents—is ruling the world. The system is ruling his world. The system will surely bring him down if he doesn’t find the strength to persevere. He views the system as an omnipotent author intent on writing endless lies. The system is invading his personal space. The system perpetuates a game that he can never win yet cannot afford to lose. The system involves his family, his advisors, his so-called friends. The system is all-pervasive. In singing a song about the system, Michael finds that the act releases the tension. But after the song is sung, the system remains in place. The system is immutable.
Night after night, with thoughts of the system swimming through his brain, Michael cannot sleep.
10
More and Better
At the end of March, with Michael’s managerial situation more befuddled than ever, one thing is clear: what counts most is not only pleasing the public but thrilling them. When all is said and done, this has been Michael’s primal motive from the very beginning. The emotional chaos surrounding him—the brutality of his father, the maneuvers of his mother, the jealousy of his brothers, the gnawing self-doubt that he developed as a boy—was overwhelm
ed by the joy of performance. As a performer, he thrived on adulation. Like any normal person, he loved being adored. And even when the adoration became abnormal—when millions of fans throughout the world treated him with worshipful reverence—he sought more. More became his mantra: more record sales, more ticket sales, more recognition from his peers, more awards for his feats, more love from his public.
In Michael’s mind, this love is far from unconditional. The love is dependent on giving his fans a better record, a better show, a better performance, than they have ever experienced. He can never rest on his laurels or past triumphs. To do so would invite creative death. Creative life requires a colossal effort to mount a spectacle the likes of which the world has never seen. Relaxation is not an option. The pressure of performance means that mind, body, and spirit are geared to one purpose: the realization of the greatest show on earth. Michael looks to his idols, P. T. Barnum and Walt Disney, and recognizes in them his own relentless drive to attract an ever-wider mass of people into a wondrous world of his own making.
But if This Is It is to succeed—and it must—Michael has no time to lose. That wondrous world requires meticulous planning. Because he demands both absolute perfection and dazzling wizardry, the work ahead is daunting. Michael feels himself swinging into action. It’s a good feeling. He beats back the lethargy of these last days, remembering that he’s about to assume a role he relishes like no other. He’s about to reintroduce himself to the world as one of history’s greatest showmen.
He assembles the team that has served him well in the past: director Kenny Ortega, who collaborated with Michael on the Bad and Dangerous tours; Travis Payne, the brilliant choreographer of the “Scream” video; Christian Audigier, the wardrobe coordinator who understands Michael’s demand for sartorial sensationalism and is already designing outfits adorned by hundreds of thousands of Swarovski crystals; and band members that include drummer “Sugarfoot” Moffett, young Australian rock guitar virtuoso Orianthi Panagaris, and singer Judith Hill, who will duet with Michael on the crowd-pleasing “I Just Can’t Stop Loving You.”
As he lays out his plans to Ortega, it becomes clear that Michael’s vision is, as always, for more and better. Beyond the songs themselves—the dozens of his megahits that must be refashioned to appear fresh and new—there is the grand concept. Since the Bad tour in 1988 that concluded with the self-reflective “Man in the Mirror,” Michael has sought to give his shows thematic depth. They must be more than the sum of their parts. They must have meaning. In the nineties, Dangerous included “Heal the World,” just as HIStory included “Earth Song.” Expanding the ecological message, he wants This Is It to hammer home the urgency of the issues surrounding global warming and environmental neglect. Just as he urged his fans to save the children in 1985’s “We Are the World” video, twenty-four years later he will implore us to save the planet.
In Michael’s view, his high-minded purpose—to raise the consciousness of his audience—must be realized without concern for cost. The visual effects must be the latest and greatest. He wants to employ a helicopter to shoot spectacular angles of Victoria Falls through an IMAX lens. He envisions performing in front of a background of jaw-dropping 3-D videos of himself on the biggest LED screen the world has ever seen. There will be dazzling holograms and an enthralling mash-up of live interactions with filmed images geared to generate shock and awe.
Mounting the stage is a monumental task that must be accomplished in a matter of weeks. For rehearsals, AEG has rented the soundstages where MGM created the illusion of the burning of Atlanta for the epic film Gone with the Wind. Michael relishes his reconnection with Hollywood. He thinks back to those exciting times when, in the eighties, he was working with the most powerful names in show business—Disney, Lucas, Coppola—and made Captain EO, a creation that then boasted the biggest budget of any short film in movie history.
Michael demands that AEG fly in not dozens but hundreds of dancers from locations all over the world. He insists that the pool of prospects be vast so that he and Travis Payne can select the best of the best.
It’s time to take care of business. Time to start rehearsing. Time to get in shape.
Keeping up the routine he already established, Lou Ferrigno arrives at the Carolwood mansion to find a cheerful Michael playing hide-and-seek with his kids. Later, Lou will describe Michael as the ultimate Mr. Mom.
Dressed in all-black workout attire, Michael is ready to go. For a short while, he and Lou reminisce about the days before the HIStory tour, when the trainer successfully whipped Michael into shape. It will happen again. Lou sees Michael as loose and relaxed, a fun-loving, cooperative client willing to do exercises geared toward building his stamina and maximizing his flexibility.
Still in an ebullient mood after his workout, Michael decides to spend the evening watching movies with the kids—his favorite way to relax. There’s E.T., which he’s seen a hundred times and of which he narrated a Grammy-winning audio version for children. No character means more to Michael than this pure-hearted alien, misunderstood because of his peculiar form. Children naturally gravitate to E.T. because, in Michael’s view, children are trusting. Adults fear E.T. because adults are intolerant.
That night, after Michael puts the kids to bed and kisses them good night, E.T. stays on his mind, and he decides to rewatch a film that excites his imagination in a similar fashion: The Elephant Man. The story, set in Victorian London, contains all the elements that Michael finds compelling. John Merrick, the central character, is trapped in the kind of freak show that might have been promoted by P. T. Barnum. When walking through the city, Merrick hides his head with a hood. He must conceal his disfigured skull, just as Michael has been moved to disguise his identity when he goes out in public. Merrick appears to be monstrous, but a physician’s loving care awakens his mind and brings out the dignity of his character. When cruel sensation-seekers assault him, he cries out, “I am not an animal! I am a human being! I am a man!” Michael relates wholeheartedly. Just as the sensation-seekers torture Merrick, the media tortures Michael. And for all his attempts to reconfigure his face, Michael, like Merrick, has been repelled by his own image for as long as he can remember. Thus he wears masks. Thus he transforms himself into a werewolf. Thus, in the short film he wrote with Stephen King in 1996 called Ghosts, Michael plays both the tortured and the torturer, the accused and the accuser, morphing into a variety of different monsters. In the video for “Black or White,” a song that pleads the case for tolerance, the morphing takes on epic proportions. Michael’s face becomes everyone’s face: every race, every hue, every age, every gender.
Michael sees how the world hates the other, the outlier, the one who dares to be different, the disfigured, the alien, the mysterious creature who doesn’t speak the language of those who resort to ridicule and scorn.
These are the figures—with their distorted faces and frightening apparitions—to whom Michael passionately relates. He feels for them. He is them.
Yet at the same time, as much as he loves how films like The Elephant Man challenge our sense of aesthetics, he equally adores fluffy fantasies like Funny Face, in which Fred Astaire and Audrey Hepburn scale the heights of song and dance make-believe beauty. Hollywood-defined beauty—especially in the picture-perfect visages of his friends Katharine Hepburn, Elizabeth Taylor, and Sophia Loren—is close to Michael’s heart. He seeks such beauty for himself.
Torn between his extraordinary empathy for the imperfectly figured and his obsession with the perfectly formed, Michael is both tolerant of differences in others and intolerant of flaws in himself. He never tires of studying the golden age of Hollywood photography of Horst P. Horst and George Hurrell, in which luminous stars like Greta Garbo and Gene Tierney are cast in alluring black-and-white, shadow-and-light shadings of unblemished beauty.
“Beauty’s only skin-deep,” sang the Temptations, a Motown group that became one of the earliest models for Joseph Jackson’s young sons. Michael knows the truth of t
hat statement. Given his extreme sensitivity and empathetic nature, he seeks to pierce the veil of appearance and get to the heart of things. Yet veils and masks and cosmetic surgeries are as much a part of his life now as ever before.
He knows that in a few days he will be returning to the office of Dr. Klein, where Michael’s appearance is the only concern. Now his concern is to quiet his mind, preoccupied, as always, with a million matters big and small: the managers, the shows, the dancers, the rehearsals, the stage, the special effects. If only he can quiet his mind, he can find sleep. But sleep, that most precious of commodities, eludes him.
11
Interlude
On the last Sunday in March, Michael is at the Wynn Las Vegas, where he has taken his children to see a show. While there, he has arranged to meet Dr. Conrad Murray on a matter of paramount importance: his peace of mind.
Michael realizes that this pernicious insomnia cannot go unattended. Murray agrees. They have a plan of action. But rather than reflect on the plan before he puts it into action, Michael prefers to listen to some of his own music. It comforts him to wax nostalgic about the last period in his life that could be called careless. These were his early years at Neverland; it was the first time he left his mother’s home. This was before the accusations, the two marriages, the children, the continuous assaults from the press. Ironically, he titled the project that marks this period Dangerous, perhaps subconsciously aware of impending menace. At the time, the transition from Off the Wall to Thriller to Bad to Dangerous made sense. Michael is always motivated to raise the stakes.
During the course of the afternoon in his suite at the Wynn, he hears the title track, “Dangerous,” and immediately feels a sense of pride. After three straight albums with Quincy Jones, part of the risk that Michael ran—indeed, part of the danger—was in deciding to self-produce. Having meticulously studied the techniques of the masters—Bobby Taylor, Berry Gordy, Hal Davis, Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, Deke Richards, Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff, and Quincy—Michael felt ready by the beginning of the nineties to take the next step and break out on his own.