Before You Judge Me

by Tavis Smiley

When it comes to reducing the trauma surrounding his sleep, Michael is in no mood to take chances. He can no longer tolerate the all-night anxiety that comes with extreme insomnia. He cannot afford to have his days ruined by sleepless nights. He has to take action. And now that Murray is in his camp, he is certain that he will be given the right medicines to protect his precarious peace of mind.

  On the morning of May 10, after a rough night during which the medicines apparently did little to promote his rest, Michael calls Murray. Michael sounds half-asleep, and his words are alarmingly slurred. He speaks to his doctor about his grandiose ambition for London. The effect is unnerving, chilling, even ghostly.

  “Elvis didn’t do it,” says Michael in an eerily despondent voice. “Beatles didn’t do it. We have to be phenomenal. When people leave this show, when people leave my show, I want them to say, ‘I’ve never seen nothing like this in my life. Go. Go… It’s amazing. He’s the greatest entertainer in the world.’”

  Still barely coherent, in his drugged-out haze Michael describes his dream of a children’s hospital. “I’m taking that money,” he says, “a million children. A children’s hospital, the biggest in the world. ‘Michael Jackson’s Children’s Hospital.’ Gonna have a movie theater, game room. Children are depressed… in those hospitals, no game room, no movie theater. They’re sick because they’re depressed. Their mind is depressing them. I want to give them that. I care about them, them angels. God wants me to do it… I’m gonna do it, Conrad.”

  Michael continues to reflect on his role as something of a savior. “Don’t have enough hope,” he says, speaking of young people. “That’s the next generation that’s gonna save our planet… My babies… They walk around with no mother. They drop them off, they leave—a psychological degradation of that. They reach out to me: ‘Please take me with you.’ I’m gonna do that for them. That will be remembered more than my performances. My performances will be up there helping my children and [will] always be my dream. I love them.”

  And here Michael repeats what he has convinced himself is the absolute essence of his psychological dilemma:

  “I love them,” he repeats, “because I didn’t have a childhood. I had no childhood. I feel their pain. I feel their hurt. I can deal with it. ‘Heal the World,’ ‘We Are the World,’ ‘Will You Be There,’ ‘The Lost Children.’ These are the songs I’ve written because I hurt, you know, I hurt.”

  Countless times Michael has told himself—and the world—that he is the victim of a childhood-less life. This is the great narrative he has built up around himself. He believes it with all his heart. Because he has been forced to work—driven first by his father, and later by his own fierce ambition—he has been divested of what he fantasizes could have been a normal childhood. No carefree days playing in the park, no buddies from school, no kite flying or fishing in the stream, no strolling through the woods.

  In Michael’s mind, deprivation is tightly linked with entitlement. Or, as he wrote in his signature song “Childhood,” it has been his “fate to compensate.” What he didn’t have then he must have now.

  What he did have then was, of course, his family. However he might characterize his childhood (or lack thereof), during those early years he was not only surrounded by family; he was smothered by family. His family-centric beginnings formed his attitudes about everything. Once he got away from his family, he found the kind of freedom he had never known in childhood.

  Yet his family, like his sense of childhood lost, is something he can neither forget nor escape.

  18

  Family Reunion

  For Michael, his family of origin is a source of confusion. Love is mixed with skepticism, skepticism is mixed with nostalgia, nostalgia is mixed with reality, and reality is mixed with pain.

  For over forty years, the Jacksons, raised in the public relations ethos of show business, have sugarcoated a wildly dysfunctional dynamic with a narrative that claims family unity above all.

  As a child brutally teased by his brothers for his skin condition and less than manly mannerisms, Michael suffered deeply. In turn, he unmercifully teased his baby sister, Janet, about her weight and the size of her backside. Although Michael would later idealize children as the purest form of humanity, the truth was that he knew firsthand how cruel they could be.

  He knew that adults could be even crueler. He watched Joseph mistreat Katherine by fathering a child outside their marriage. He viewed some of his brothers mirroring his father by mistreating their wives through long series of extramarital affairs. Watching his siblings, Michael saw marriage after marriage fall into ruins. In the eighties, he privately cited that very fact—the grave number of betrayals and ruined relationships he had seen in his own family—to explain his determination not to marry. And yet when he did marry, both of his marriages ended quickly and unhappily.

  Consequently, on May 14, 2009, he arrives with profoundly mixed feelings at the surprise celebration of his parents’ sixtieth wedding anniversary, orchestrated by sister Janet. The date of Katherine and Joseph’s marriage was actually November 5, 1949. No one is quite sure why the party is taking place some six months earlier. But more troubling is the undisputed fact that Michael’s parents have lived separate lives, in separate residences, even in separate cities, for decades. He wonders what, exactly, is being celebrated.

  The answer, of course, is the idealized story sold to the press and embraced, at least at times like this, by the family itself. The story says that the Jacksons are all living happily ever after. It’s a story that claims we’re all for one and one for all, the same story that allows Michael to leave the isolation of the Carolwood estate and bring his children to a private room at Chakra, an Indian restaurant in Beverly Hills, so that they can mingle with their grandparents, uncles, aunts, and cousins.

  For most of the Jacksons, this is the first time they have seen Michael since he left the country after the 2005 trial. During the years that he sojourned in the Middle East and Ireland and subsequently settled in Las Vegas, before coming to Los Angeles to prepare for the London shows, he has kept his family at arm’s length. Although the various members supported him during his legal nightmare, he pulled back from his family.

  “His family saw him as the goose that laid the golden egg,” said Bob Jones. “A long time ago—as early as the eighties—Michael had lost patience trying to solve the money woes of his parents and brothers. Like his song says, he wanted to be left alone.”

  But he also wants his children to feel that they do, in fact, belong to a large and loving dynasty. When four generations of Jacksons come together in the name of family solidarity, there is an undeniable feeling of goodwill and mutual support. Who is Michael to deny Prince, Paris, and Blanket such a warm and nurturing experience? Why shouldn’t his kids enjoy the emotional benefits of being part of a large community of loving relatives?

  The idea of one big happy family might be a myth, but it is a myth, on an evening such as this, that Michael can’t resist. Besides, his siblings are people with tremendous natural charm. He loves seeing Janet and La Toya, with whom, at various times in his life, he has been extraordinarily close. Jackie, Tito, Marlon—they’re all smiles, bubbling with enthusiasm about finally getting everyone together. Jermaine is especially gracious, telling Michael how much he loves one of Michael’s most enchanting songs, “Fly Away,” which was eliminated from the Bad album. As Jermaine sings Michael the background parts, Michael joins him in harmony.

  Harmony prevails. Relatives that Michael has not seen in far too long bring a broad smile to his face. He loves seeing his nieces and nephews, many of whom—like Tito’s children, Taj, Taryll, and TJ, who formed the singing group 3T—he personally helped in their private and professional lives.

  There are the private jokes that he shares with Janet, the two giggling like schoolkids. There are warm hugs from the people who knew him first and knew him best. Some, like La Toya and Jermaine, are concerned that Michael is alarmingly thin, but he seems st
rong nonetheless. His sweet spirit is intact. His spirit is buoyed by the attention he receives. Michael cannot help but feel genuine love coming his way.

  He is here for his family and his children, but mostly for his mother. He could not bear to disappoint her by staying away. His presence pleases her greatly. She is, after all, the powerful matriarch, the only member with the emotional authority to bring this disjointed family together. It is Katherine Jackson who has decided that, in spite of its bitter and acrimonious past, her marriage to Joe Jackson is still cause for celebration. And it is at this party that Michael is reminded that he is expected to attend a meeting tomorrow with his parents and their man, Leonard Rowe.

  Just when Michael thought that Rowe was out of the picture, Rowe is back. Despite the dominance of Frank Dileo, Rowe is still angling to manage Michael by producing a reunion concert that will bring financial rewards to the Jackson family.

  The purported purpose of this evening is simply to affirm family love. And yet when the celebration is over, Michael is made to see that there is another agenda. That agenda—mixing family loyalty with business—has been operative since he was a child.

  For this middle-aged man, nothing has changed.

  The May 15 business meeting makes Michael exceedingly uncomfortable. The setting is a secluded bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel, where moguls and movie stars mingle among well-heeled tourists.

  In Michael’s mind, the goodwill of last night’s family reunion is gone. Family fellowship has led to family obligation. Michael thought he was through with such obligations long ago, yet he sits, quietly and only half attentively.

  At the table are Joseph and Katherine, Leonard Rowe, and AEG executives Randy Phillips and Paul Gongaware. Having learned about Rowe’s latest end run, AEG is concerned that his plan will undermine the O2 shows.

  Rowe is concerned that AEG is cheating Michael. He accuses the promoters of scalping tickets for the London show and excluding Michael from the profits. Phillips denies the charges. Siding with Rowe, Joe is especially animated, loudly exclaiming that he will not stand by and see his son hoodwinked.

  Rowe continues to push his plan: his backer, Patrick Allocco of AllGood Entertainment, is offering $30 million for a Jacksons reunion concert on July 3 at Texas Stadium, home of the Dallas Cowboys.

  Michael is not interested, especially when the AEG execs explain that their deal is exclusive. Contractually, Michael cannot perform at any other venue until he has completed all fifty O2 shows. That should conclude the meeting, but Joe is not through. Katherine pleads with her son to hear what his father has to say.

  Together, Joe and Leonard make their case. On an hourly basis, Michael will make far more for this one reunion concert than for all his O2 shows combined. Beyond that, he will be bailing out his family. Joe needs the money, and so do his brothers. Where’s Michael’s sense of loyalty?

  Michael allows Randy Phillips to reassert the legal impossibility of mounting any concerts before London. The contract is ironclad.

  If that’s the case, Joe argues, then the least Michael can do is give him, his mother, and his brothers a cut of the AEG deal.

  Michael’s patience is exhausted. Angrily, he tells his father no—no, he will not make him a party to his AEG engagement; no, he will not participate in any reunion concert; and no, he will not rehire Rowe as his manager or promoter. What’s more, Michael insists that his brothers issue a statement confirming the fact that there will be no reunion concert.

  Three days later, on May 18, the Jacksons—Jackie, Tito, Marlon, and Randy—do just that. To head off any possibility of legal action brought by AllGood Entertainment against Michael for refusing to participate in a reunion concert, the brothers now publicly claim that no such offer was ever made to them. They separate themselves entirely from AllGood. They wholeheartedly support Michael in his refusal to perform at Texas Stadium and wish him the best for his upcoming This Is It dates in London.

  Seeing that Michael is adamant about being left alone to concentrate on the task before him—getting ready for London—the family finally backs off. But they are not happy.

  Neither is Michael. The struggle for his mind has drained his soul. Although he ultimately rejects the argument that AEG is cheating him, those accusations resonate with his own previous doubts. He does, in fact, feel exploited—not just by AEG, but by everyone. He’s still uncertain about the jump from ten to fifty shows. And, although it’s been explained to him over and over again that his financial stability—plus the acquisition of Prince Jefri’s dream mansion in Vegas—cannot be realized without the full complement of performances, he remains skeptical. No matter: he will send a letter to Rowe, clearly stating that Rowe is not his manager and that he, Michael, wants no part of a Jacksons reunion show.

  Yet as he leaves the Beverly Hills Hotel, Michael remains riddled with equivocation. He feels both relief and regret at separating himself from his family—relief from the pressure of monetarily supporting them, and regret that the love and warmth from last night’s reunion has so quickly dissipated. He is also disquieted by the fact that his future is in the hands of people about whom he harbors grave doubts.

  Confusion returns. Confusion remains. Confusion clouds his mind as he wonders, Who do I trust? When do I trust? How do I trust?

  Confusion follows him as his entourage, pursued relentlessly by the ever-present paparazzi, snakes its way through Beverly Hills before arriving at the offices of Dr. Arnold Klein.

  Then another feeling, this one generated by an injection of Demerol, replaces confusion. The new feeling—an old feeling—is, at least temporarily, a good feeling, a feeling that allows him to float above it all.

  But when that good feeling dissolves and evening comes, confusion returns and is only defeated when Michael drifts off, with the assistance of Dr. Murray and the nightly dose of propofol, the milky substance that finally allows him to disappear deep, deep, deep into the dark comfort of dreamless sleep.

  19

  Elvis

  Just as Michael has studied the lives of Jesus Christ, P. T. Barnum, Charlie Chaplin, Walt Disney, and Fred Astaire, he has carefully studied the life of Elvis Presley. Even before marrying Elvis’s daughter, Michael was obsessed with Elvis’s myth. He relates to Elvis as an artist with working-class roots whose rise to icon status revolutionized popular culture. With the exception of the Beatles—who were, after all, a quartet, not a solo act—Michael became the biggest artist since Elvis. Like Elvis, Michael grew up in the throes of fundamentalist Christianity. And like Elvis, Michael wandered away from his church, seeking spiritual paths with an Eastern bent. Elvis also battled with prescription drugs.

  On this May morning, a few hours before Michael is due to return to Dr. Klein’s office, he thinks about Elvis’s search for a peace of mind that he could never find. Michael has read about how the prescription medicines both helped and hurt Elvis. He remembers reading statements by Priscilla, Elvis’s former wife, about the doctors Elvis controlled and the spiritual guides he met.

  Through his hairdresser, Elvis was introduced to a number of books—Siddhartha, by Hermann Hesse; The Prophet, by Kahlil Gibran; Autobiography of a Yogi, by Paramahansa Yogananda—that Michael himself has read. Priscilla described Elvis’s visit to the Self-Realization Fellowship Lake Shrine in Pacific Palisades, a few miles west of the Carolwood estate. It was there that Elvis heard the name Sri Daya Mata, the woman who became the spiritual leader of the self-realization community after the death of Yogananda. Later, Elvis and Priscilla drove up Mount Washington to meet Sri Daya Mata, called “Ma” by her followers. The words she said to Elvis resonate with Michael. When Elvis admitted that he wanted a crash course in spirituality, when he said he was in a hurry to achieve a higher state of mind, Sri Daya Mata explained that, when it comes to matters of the soul, there are no shortcuts. Spiritual evolution is a slow process. It takes months, years, decades. Patience is needed. Patience is mandatory. Without patience, there’s no progress. With patie
nce, change is certain.

  Michael knows the rest of the Elvis story all too well. The Colonel, Elvis’s Machiavellian manager, saw his client’s spiritual search as a threat to the financial well-being of everyone in the Elvis camp. Because Elvis, like Michael, was vulnerable to managerial manipulations, he was easily sidetracked. The Colonel quickly put a stop to what he perceived as Elvis’s seduction by mumbo jumbo. He cut off communication between Elvis and the guru. The Colonel couldn’t afford to have anyone mess with his client’s mind.

  Michael’s mind goes back to Deepak Chopra, one of the several wise men with whom he has consulted over the years. Michael met Chopra—world-renowned author, meditation teacher, and holistic physician—back in the late eighties. It was Chopra, a favorite of Oprah Winfrey, who introduced Michael to meditation, Sufi poetry, and the works of the Bengali literary light Rabindranath Tagore. Later, Chopra’s son, Gotham, worked with Michael on the Dangerous tour. It was also through Chopra that Michael met and hired nanny Grace Rwaramba.

  Michael didn’t merely seek spiritual advisors; he sought gurus who, like himself, had achieved international notoriety. He courted, in addition to celebrated meditation teachers, the company of famous magicians like David Blaine and David Copperfield. The latter was set to work on the This Is It shows until he priced himself out of Michael’s range.

  Michael often dreamed of combining magic and meditation. He was intrigued, for example, by the notion of levitation. He loved all phenomena that challenged and altered reality.

  “I once told Michael that the purpose of the artist is to reveal those unknown worlds that exist beyond our mortal perceptions,” said Marvin Gaye. “I said that the true artist must lift the veil of surface reality. Michael knew just what I was talking about.”

  A seeker of the deepest reality, Deepak Chopra acted as editor and ghostwriter for Michael’s 1992 collection of poems, short stories, and meditations, Dancing the Dream. Sold as a souvenir during the Dangerous tour, the book, replete with dozens of photos of Michael, deals with the themes of love, courage, and magic. Most prominent are the subjects of underprivileged children and the pain of lost childhood. In writing about lost children, Michael is essentially writing about himself. Compared to his days as a believing Jehovah’s Witness, his theology now is radically transformed to the point that he envisions God as a woman. He sees “her” in the glow of a rainbow, the beauty of a deer, and the affection of a father. In what is either a Freudian typo or an intentional play on words, the book is “Deicated to Mother with love.” A poem that Michael includes called “Mother” does, in fact, deify Katherine as a faultless angel.