Before You Judge Me

by Tavis Smiley

  He sees that there are several copies of his own book, Moonwalk, on the shelves, although he wrote it back in the eighties. He remembers the agony that accompanied its publication. He had agreed to write it with the help of a ghostwriter at the behest of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, then an editor at Doubleday. He considered the former First Lady a great woman and was deeply flattered when she approached him. But then came the anguish of shaping his story. Before this, he had never stopped to consider what it meant to narrate the critical events of his life. He struggled with the process and procrastinated for years.

  “While he loved books and carried them with him wherever he went, creating one was just not as exciting as finding the right note or step or guitarist,” explained his editor, Shaye Areheart. “So the writing of this book took a long time.”

  When he did agree to be interviewed, Michael dwelled on his childhood and the cruelty of his father. After Michael himself, his father, Joseph, emerges as Moonwalk’s most memorable character.

  Michael rejected the work of the first ghostwriter and began consulting directly with Areheart. Eventually a second writer, Stephen Davis, was employed, although his name did not appear on the book’s cover. After finally approving the contents and allowing the book to go to press, Michael had a crisis of conscience. He worried that the memoir would alienate his family. He was especially concerned about his descriptions of the beatings he suffered at Joseph’s hand. He feared that he had been too candid. Through Michael’s attorney, John Branca, Doubleday was instructed to scrub the project. At the last minute, though, the publisher persuaded Michael to release the book, which immediately became a bestseller.

  Michael loves books and bookstores. In addition to Book Soup, he has been a regular customer at the area’s biggest independent stores: Dutton’s, in Brentwood; Skylight, in Los Feliz; and Hennessey + Ingalls, specialists in books on architecture and art, in Santa Monica. One of his favorite features of the Carolwood estate is the wood-paneled library. His holdings in Neverland include ten thousand books.

  An autodidact, Michael has always been attracted to self-help tomes. He was intimately familiar with the essential self-affirmation books, from Norman Vincent Peale’s The Power of Positive Thinking to Og Mandino’s The Greatest Salesman in the World. He read Joseph Murphy’s The Power of Your Subconscious Mind and Shakti Gawain’s Creative Visualization. From Berry Gordy he learned to love the nineteenth-century poem “If” by Rudyard Kipling, which concludes with lines that Michael took to heart:

  If you can fill the unforgiving minute

  With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,

  Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,

  And—which is more—you’ll be a man, my son!

  Michael’s favorite philosopher-poet, Ralph Waldo Emerson, also wrote in the nineteenth century. Several times Michael read Emerson’s famous essay on self-reliance. Emerson’s contemporary Herman Melville spoke to Michael through his epic, Moby-Dick. Michael related to the novelist’s obsession with the ultimate catch. Michael never tires of reading to his children the books and stories that he loved as a child: “Rip Van Winkle,” Treasure Island, and of course Peter Pan.

  Michael’s hunger for information is insatiable. Learned teachers who befriended him, like Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, have noted the wide range of his intellectual curiosity.

  “Even when Michael doesn’t have time to read the books, he loves the feeling of being surrounded by them,” said Bob Jones, who helped curate the Neverland library. “He once told me that books exude a spirit that, even [when] unread, he can feel. He knows that knowledge is a precious commodity. No matter the circumstance, he never stops seeking knowledge. He also knows that knowledge is power, and I think it’s fair to say that Michael is a man interested in amassing the kind of power that edifies.”

  His purchases at Book Soup brighten Michael’s mood. He looks forward to considering new ideas, exploring new stories, listening to the reassuring voices of writers with the wisdom to tame the storm that all too often assaults his soul.

  Reading long into the night is another way to induce sleep. Michael can take his mind off himself and the pressing problems. He can read himself into oblivion.

  At some point, though, the excitement of the book wears off. His eyes are heavy with slumber and he can no longer focus on the words on the printed page. The words blur. The ideas scatter. His body is bone-tired. But his mind is awake.

  15

  Heat

  Monday, April 20, 2009, is a scorcher. It’s over a hundred degrees in downtown L.A., the hottest day of the year.

  The heat is on Michael to meet about the design of the show.

  The heat is on Michael to show up for rehearsals.

  The heat is on Michael to finally make a decision about a manager.

  But Michael ignores the heat. Michael is cool. Michael is moving, as he always does, to the beat of his own drummer. He’s playing with the kids, trying to calm them down. They’re upset because their nanny, Grace Rwaramba, has been fired. No reason is given. It may well be that Michael fears that the children’s attachment to Grace has become greater than their attachment to him. Michael reassures his kids that, more than ever, he will be with them night and day. He is the only parent they need.

  To keep things on the upbeat, he watches YouTube clips of the tap-dancing Nicholas Brothers. Their acrobatic routine from the film Stormy Weather, which floored him as a child, floors him again. He flashes back to when, in the seventies, he and his brothers danced with the Nicholases on national television—a highlight of the Jackson 5 days. Stormy Weather has Michael thinking of Lena Horne, whom he met when she played Glinda the Good Witch in The Wiz. He watches the exquisite twenty-five-year-old Lena sing the title song in Stormy Weather before watching the equally exquisite sixty-one-year-old Lena sing “Believe in Yourself,” the emotional climax of The Wiz. As much as Michael adored Diana Ross and loved working with her on The Wiz, it was Lena Horne, he told friends, who stole the show and brought tears to his eyes when she appeared, in all her glory, as an angel of determination and hope.

  Determination and hope are on Michael’s mind as he ignores the mounting messages from the outside world.

  Determination and hope, he knows, are what will get him through this long crisis of the soul that has clung to him ever since he announced the This Is It shows.

  Michael has felt himself growing increasingly anxious, experiencing what he fears might be panic attacks. With that in mind, he visited Dr. Allan Metzger, who prescribed a couple of medicines: clonazepam, to treat the anxiety, and trazodone, an antidepressant commonly used to promote sleep.

  The anxiety has been somewhat assuaged, but not the dreaded sleeplessness. While many claim good results using trazodone, Michael has no such luck. Time and again, he experiences medicine that should be soporific as stimulating. He’s fed up with experimenting with drugs that he knows full well are not going to work. He knows what works: propofol for sleep and Demerol for pain.

  There is a degree of pain—or at least discomfort—on Tuesday, April 21, when he returns from the Beverly Hills office of Arnold Klein, described by some as Michael’s go-to Dr. Feelgood. The cause of the discomfort is the application of large quantities of Botox, followed by three hundred milligrams of Demerol. When the treatments are over, Michael silently slips out of the office, donning a hoodie and a surgical mask.

  But by midweek Michael can no longer use the distractions of Botox treatments and shopping sprees to avoid making a managerial decision. Three different men have represented themselves as Michael’s guy. The uncertainty is especially distressing to AEG, whose multimillion-dollar investment in Michael mushrooms with every passing day. The company needs to know the name of Michael’s appointed representative. Who has his trust? Who can honestly say that he is speaking for him?

  If AEG’s Randy Phillips could easily get Michael on the phone, things would be different. But Michael is purposefully inaccessible. He has bee
n this way for decades. Let others guess his intentions. Let others discern his motives. Michael likes camouflage. He revels in mystery. It pleases him that those underwriting his art—particularly promoters and record executives—do not know what he’s thinking or planning.

  But, while that strategy may have worked when Michael was on top, working the comeback trail is a different deal. Being kept afloat by AEG, he can no longer sidestep the issue of representation.

  The candidates are:

  Current manager Tohme Tohme, brother Jermaine’s friend, the man who brought in AEG and defines himself as the chief architect of Michael’s financial resurrection.

  Leonard Rowe, his father’s friend, who claims there’s an easier way to make a fortune than fifty grueling shows. Rowe argues that one colossal reunion concert will rake in millions.

  Frank Dileo, the former Epic promo man from the Thriller and Bad glory days, who reminds Michael that, under his guidance, those glory days can return.

  Dileo convinces Michael to sign a letter—written by Dileo in Michael’s voice—to AEG, saying that Tohme Tohme will not serve as “production manager” during the This Is It shows.

  Three days later, AEG informs Tohme Tohme that he is out.

  Dileo is in.

  It appears that some of the old guard, including attorney John Branca, may well be making a comeback of their own.

  For Michael, it’s back to the future.

  Michael makes decisions with gnawing equivocation. He liked Tohme Tohme. He thought the man had good ideas. He leaned on him heavily for the better part of a year. Tohme Tohme represented a break from the past and fresh hope for the future. But if what Dileo says is true, Tohme Tohme has been exaggerating his connection to the world’s most powerful media moguls. He doesn’t have access to the billions of dollars required to make the kind of movies Michael has dreamed of producing and starring in.

  Yet while Tohme Tohme was on the scene, Michael relied on his judgment. He felt that the man sincerely cared. As with every close advisor to Michael, it was more than a professional relationship. Tohme Tohme gave Michael the feeling that it was a personal relationship based on genuine love.

  In fact, everyone around Michael can’t help loving him. Michael elicits sympathy. His vulnerability attracts caretakers. The problem is that the desire to help him—even save him—is more often than not corrupted by greed. To get close to Michael is to get close to his money. To care for Michael is to care for his money.

  The question for Michael has always been one of the quality of care—no easy task. The moneymen surrounding him have, for the most part, always been charming, successful, energetic, and brimming with confidence. Michael has wanted to believe in the sincerity of their efforts.

  Yet when things go wrong—when, for example, Bad, for all its success, fails to sell anywhere near his unrealistic goal of one hundred million copies—Michael tends to turn on those advisors who have reinforced his fantasy projections. Drawn to men whose grandiose vision matches his own, he quickly loses faith in those same men when the vision isn’t realized.

  At the same time, Michael, more emotionally fragile than ever, lacks the psychic energy to build still another new managerial relationship. He recoils at the idea of going through that arduous process. The path of least resistance leads him back to familiar faces, old friends he once abandoned. Now in crisis mode—Can I shake my lethargy and find the drive to whip the This Is It show into shape? Can I put my trust in the ever-controlling AEG?—Michael feels the need for old friends. It’s easy to forget the reasons they were once fired. Those were old suspicions, old fears. This is a new day.

  In the struggle between darkness and light, Michael tries gallantly to move toward the light, no matter how faint the glow.

  On the same day that he fires Tohme Tohme, Michael is still in search of a glowing facial image. He returns to Klein’s office, where he is treated with not only Botox but Restylane, a filler used to smooth out the skin and eliminate wrinkles and crow’s-feet. The medicine is injected into Michael’s lips and right cheek. It’s an uncomfortable procedure followed by an even larger dose of Demerol than usual—375 milligrams. Because the condition of his skin has become increasingly problematic, he’s given a prescription for Ultravate to relieve irritation. When he leaves the office, Michael is wearing a black fedora. His eyes are hidden behind dark aviator glasses, his face is wrapped in a black cloth, and his mouth is covered by a blue surgical mask. He looks like a mummy.

  To distract himself from his physical discomfort, he decides to go shopping, this time for antiques.

  Chandeliers so fabulous that they look as though they could have hung in the Palace of Versailles; majestic stone lions to grace the entrance of Prince Jefri’s Las Vegas estate, which Michael still fervently hopes to buy; massive oil paintings of pastoral scenes and proud aristocrats from an earlier era; gilded Queen Anne armchairs covered in scarlet silk; Victorian armoires of carved walnut; statuaries of kissing cherubs and weeping angels; hand-painted porcelain plates; jade pottery from ancient China; medieval tapestries; trinkets from India—enough stuff to furnish a mansion. Some of it is authentic, some of it fake. Michael doesn’t differentiate, doesn’t care: if the object is truly beautiful, if it sings to his soul and lifts his heart, that’s enough. Shop owners are only too happy to extend to him all the credit he needs. To buy without restraint affirms Michael’s commitment to a future filled with unlimited possibilities: more lovely things, more lovely days, more time at home with his children, more peace, more calm, more life lived without anguish or fear.

  By the weekend, the fear and anguish are back. The side effects from the Botox and Restylane have left him in excruciating pain. On Saturday, April 25, Arnold Klein opens his office just to attend to Michael, this time giving him a full battery of treatments, including intralesional steroid therapy. Michael remains there for nearly five hours, not leaving until 9:30 p.m., with a prescription for prednisone.

  On Monday morning, Michael is back at Klein’s, this time in the company of his kids. Another three hundred milligrams of Demerol, more Restylane, more Botox. Afterward, more shopping. He and the children stop at the Ed Hardy store. In spite of being hounded by hysterical fans and aggressive paparazzi, Michael manages to do his shopping, leaving with twenty bags of merchandise.

  On Tuesday and Thursday, April 28 and 30, Michael makes two more treks to Klein’s office. Meanwhile, Dr. Conrad Murray, still waiting for an employment contract from AEG, is nonetheless ordering a variety of strong sleep-inducing medicines for Michael—among them lorazepam and midazolam—as well as a second supply of propofol.

  Murray knows that keeping his patient healthy is more than a matter of sanctioning Michael’s intermittent sessions with muscleman Lou Ferrigno. Michael must start getting a good night’s sleep.

  To Michael, it seems that sleep should be the easiest, the most natural thing in the world. We breathe, we eat, we drink, we sleep.

  At night, wary of so many ineffective drugs, Michael tries drifting off by reading Shakespeare.

  “Shakespeare was Michael’s go-to poet,” said Bob Jones, his personal publicist for over three decades. “He never tired of reading the Bard.”

  Now Michael is seeking out those passages concerning his nightly vexation. The most famous and relatable is from Henry IV, Part 2. The king is afflicted with the same maddening malady as Michael: chronic insomnia. Henry envies those citizens—the lowly, the poor—who can achieve what he, a mighty ruler, cannot. He laments how even a cabin boy in the midst of a raging storm is able to sleep. Playing the part of the king, Michael mouths the monarch’s words:

  How many thousand of my poorest subjects

  Are at this hour asleep! O sleep, O gentle sleep,

  Nature’s soft nurse, how have I frighted thee,

  That thou no more wilt weigh my eyelids down

  And steep my senses in forgetfulness?

  Why rather, sleep, liest thou in smoky cribs,

  Upon un
easy pallets stretching thee

  And hush’d with buzzing night-flies to thy slumber,

  Than in the perfumed chambers of the great,

  Under the canopies of costly state,

  And lull’d with sound of sweetest melody?

  O thou dull god, why liest thou with the vile

  In loathsome beds, and leavest the kingly couch

  A watch-case or a common ’larum-bell?

  Wilt thou upon the high and giddy mast

  Seal up the ship-boy’s eyes, and rock his brains

  In cradle of the rude imperious surge

  And in the visitation of the winds,

  Who take the ruffian billows by the top,

  Curling their monstrous heads and hanging them

  With deafening clamor in the slippery clouds,

  That, with the hurly, death itself awakes?

  Canst thou, O partial sleep, give thy repose

  To the wet sea-boy in an hour so rude,

  And in the calmest and most stillest night,

  With all appliances and means to boot,

  Deny it to a king? Then happy low, lie down!

  Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.

  As the King of Pop, Michael’s crown is just as heavy, his unease just as vexing. He relates to the line that says sleep is “nature’s soft nurse.”