Joe pushed them to hone their craft at the expense of all other activities, including having a social life appropriate for children their age. “They couldn’t talk to nobody, couldn’t do nothing,” says Catherine Sinclair, who grew up in Gary and lived near the Jacksons when Michael was young. “[Joe] wouldn’t allow it.”29
The brothers did get to socialize with kids outside of school by playing sports, particularly baseball. While his siblings practiced, Michael would sit in the dugout, studying his music.30 Jackie was such a good pitcher that pro scouts sometimes attended his high school games. But when Jermaine collided with another player while chasing a fly ball—ending up with a black eye and fourteen stitches—Joe made his boys stop playing sports so as to avoid injuries that could derail their musical careers.31
He didn’t seem quite as concerned about potential injuries doled out by his own fists. Keith Jackson remembers Joe putting on boxing gloves “to toughen us up, just boxing with each other and stuff like that.”32 Behind the scenes, the blows were more severe. Joe delivered regular beatings for missteps in rehearsal and household infractions alike.
“If you messed up, you got hit, sometimes with a belt, sometimes with a switch,” Michael later wrote. He’d occasionally retaliate, throwing fists—or, at least once, a shoe—at his father, but that only made things worse. “That’s why I got it more than all my brothers combined. I would fight back and my father would kill me, just tear me up.”33
Joe seemed unremorseful when I asked him why he employed corporal punishment. “Everybody that I knew of, especially black people, they whupped their kids,” he said. “I never beat the kids . . . I never beat nobody. But my wife whupped those kids more than I did because I was working jobs, and she was at home with them all the time. So, yeah I whupped them some, but I got a lot of whupping myself when I was a kid.”34
When he wasn’t at home disciplining his children or working long shifts at the mill, Joe was busy landing agreements with a range of regional music power brokers. Two such players were Pervis Spann and E. Rodney Jones, DJs for Chicago’s WVON. They were so impressed by hearing the Jackson 5 at Chicago’s Regal Theatre during the winter of 1966 that they offered to manage the group.35
Though the DJs spent $40,000 on polishing, promoting, and otherwise preparing the Jackson 5 for the big time, all of the major labels passed on the group—including Berry Gordy’s Motown, which turned down the boys as many as eight times.36 Yet Joe remained defiantly optimistic, often telling Katherine, “I’m going to take these boys to Motown if it’s the last thing I do!”37
Michael and his brothers had one suitor—a local label called Steeltown Records. The fledgling company had been founded in 1966 by aspiring music executive Ben Brown and songwriter Gordon Keith, a Gary steelworker. The latter had discovered the Jackson 5 thanks to gig advertisements tacked to local telephone poles. When he saw the boys play in person, he was hooked.
“I could not understand for the life of me why they had been turned down by so many people in the business,” says Keith, then a very religious man. “My belief system provided for thinking that, if I wanted to, I could probably fly. So I think the good Lord meant for me to be the one to take them forward.”38
By 1967, Keith was eager to sign the Jackson 5 to a long-term deal, but Joe refused, insisting on something that would give his boys the option of leaving if Motown ever called. Eventually Keith caved to Joe’s demands. “I only had a six-month contract signed with [Steeltown],” says the elder Jackson. “I didn’t want to be hung up in no long-term contract.”39
Joe signed the deal because he figured it would enable his boys to cut a few songs and gain some valuable exposure. He was right. The Jackson 5 recorded a track called “Big Boy,” written by saxophonist Eddie Silvers (a onetime member of Fats Domino’s band) in Chicago. Thanks in part to Keith’s help getting local radio play, the single started selling by the Volkswagen mini-busload—about 50,000 copies, according to Jermaine.40
“When that record with its killer bass line began to get radio play in Gary, we became a big deal in our neighborhood,” Michael recalled. “No one could believe we had our own record. We had a hard time believing it.”41
Soon the boys were scoring bigger gigs. They traveled along the chitlin circuit, piling into Joe’s van to play 2,000-seat theaters in Rust Belt cities like Cleveland and Baltimore, earning $500 per night. Along the way, Michael continued to learn by peppering the musicians he met with questions, as Smokey Robinson recalls in his autobiography.
“Michael was a strange and lovely child,” he writes. “I always saw him as an old soul in the body of a boy. . . . He was also an astute student. He’d be listening and watching the other acts like a hawk, always learning.”42
Jackson also accumulated knowledge at school, often on only a few hours of sleep after driving back from a weeknight gig with his brothers. He was perhaps the strongest student of the bunch, in part because of an intellectual curiosity that manifested itself both backstage and in the classroom. “His thirst for knowledge was far greater than any of ours,” Jermaine wrote. “He was that curious kid who asked, ‘Why? Why? Why?’ and he listened to and logged every detail.”43
Joe continued to find sadistically creative ways to keep his children in line. When conventional methods couldn’t convince them to keep their bedroom window closed, he donned a scary mask one night and climbed in; the boys awoke and, upon seeing the dark figure in their room, shrieked in terror. Then Joe turned on the lights, removed the mask, and said, “I could have been someone else. Now, keep the window closed!”44
Despite the boys’ frightening home life, their musical momentum continued. In 1967, Joe entered Michael and his brothers in another talent show at the Regal Theatre. They won the contest—and a paid gig at the venue as an opener for Gladys Knight. The songstress and her Pips had just been signed to Motown and were soaring up the charts thanks to their hit “I Heard It Through the Grapevine.”
When Knight heard the Jackson 5, she immediately summoned the brothers to her dressing room and offered encouragement: “You boys should be at Motown!” Knight was the first of many who tried to get them to come to the label. At the time, Joe recalls, Motown “wasn’t ready.”45
The Jackson 5 would have to wait. But their success at Chicago’s premier concert venue had earned them something else: a call from the Apollo Theater in Harlem, New York City.
* * *
There’s a tree stump sitting on a golden pedestal in the middle of the stage at the Apollo, and Tito Jackson can’t keep his hands off of it.
It’s the summer of 2012, and he and his brothers are set to return to the legendary stage nearly half a century after their first appearance. “It’s been here forever,” Tito says of the charmed stump. “That was like a good-luck piece; rub it down and take the stage.”46
As legend has it, the slab of wood was part of the Tree of Hope, a stately plant that once stood outside the Harlem Lafayette Theatre on Seventh Avenue between 131st and 132nd Streets. For many years, performers would rub the tree before hitting the stage. Shortly after the Apollo opened in 1934 just a few blocks away, the Tree of Hope was felled to make room for the widening of Seventh Avenue. A thick piece of the trunk ended up at the Apollo, where the legend continued to grow long after the tree itself had ceased to do so.47
Jermaine Jackson insists he isn’t one for indulging in superstition or maudlin sentiment. “I didn’t touch the tree stump because I’m very picky about germs,” he says. “Tito touched it.”48
But in August of 1967, when members of the Jackson 5 arrived in Harlem for their Apollo debut, they all rubbed the tree before taking the stage—even Jermaine. “He didn’t know any better then,” pipes Marlon.49 “Not too many people had touched the tree,” says Jermaine, somberly. “At that time.”
They felt they needed every bit of luck they could get at the theater’s Super Top Dog Amateur Finals Night, where they’d face a squadron of other talented acts. They’d also
have to contend with an audience known for booing musicians off the stage—and, in some cases, throwing food at them.
As soon as they walked through the front door, the brothers found themselves surrounded by photos of artists who’d played the Apollo, including Michael’s idols Jackie Wilson and James Brown. Even the dressing rooms were grander than anything they’d experienced before. Jermaine recalls fancy coasters and meat patties;50 Jackie reminisces about playing basketball in the schoolyard across the street.51 But more than the perks, the brothers remember the Apollo’s crowd.
“There was an act on before us, and they got booed and [pelted] with eggs,” says Jermaine. “We were coming on next. Michael got scared because he thought maybe they were going to do us the same way.”52
As the eight-year-old Michael started to cry, his brothers rushed to comfort their frontman.
“Just do your best, just do your thing,” Jermaine remembers saying.
Tito wasn’t quite so gentle: “Get in shape, boy!”53
Michael collected himself and, after a stop at the Tree of Hope, the brothers took the stage. The Jackson 5 didn’t need the extra boost—they quickly turned the audience to their side and cruised to victory in the competition.
“We put a great performance together and people loved us,” says Jermaine. “That’s how it all started.” Adds Tito: “We never got booed.”
The Apollo’s management seemed to enjoy the Jackson 5 as much as the crowd did, inviting them back many times over the next few years to open for acts such as James Brown, Jackie Wilson, and Etta James.
Michael Jackson and his brothers had conquered the Apollo and communed with its most notable talisman, but a major-label deal continued to elude them.
Chapter 2
* * *
MOTOWN UNIVERSITY
When it comes to role models in the music business, it’s hard to beat Berry Gordy. The former boxer founded Motown Records, a label that defined and delivered the sound of a generation, in 1960. A dozen years later, he supercharged his company with a move from Detroit to Los Angeles, opening up opportunities in the broader entertainment world. And in 1988—after launching the careers of Michael Jackson, Diana Ross, Stevie Wonder, and countless others—he sold his record company for $61 million.
The octogenarian Gordy has gotten used to the trappings of success, but age hasn’t slowed his ambition. Today he’s having lunch at the Lobby Lounge on the thirty-fifth floor of the Mandarin Oriental hotel in New York, where he’s been staying for the months leading up to the debut of his latest venture, Motown: The Musical. For a man whose Detroit mansion once contained an oil portrait of him dressed as Napoleon, the eatery is fittingly grand: orchid blossoms at every table, Dom Pérignon on the menu ($85 per glass), and floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking Central Park and Columbus Circle, where cars swirl like multicolored gears of an asphalt clock far below.
Gordy’s own appearance is a tad more understated. He sports neat black slacks and a brown button-down beneath a dark blazer. When a waitress sidles up to take his order, he settles on carrot juice. These are the kinds of details that Michael Jackson used to notice when he and his brothers first joined Motown.
“Michael would stare at everything I was doing,” says Gordy, easing into his chair. “It was a little unnerving because I would look away, and then I’d look back, and Michael was studying [my] every move.”1
He pauses.
“Everything, you know,” he continues. “And I could never figure that out . . . he was just so focused on me. Everybody else would be playing, and he’d just be looking at me and watching, and I’d always feel his eyes on me.”
* * *
By 1968, the Jackson 5 had released its debut single on Gary’s Steeltown Records and wowed the tough crowd at New York’s Apollo Theater. The boys returned to Chicago’s Regal Theatre that summer, the same night as Bobby Taylor and the Vancouvers, one of Motown’s top acts.
The lead singer was so impressed with what he saw that he insisted on bringing the Jackson 5 to his label’s attention.2 It was Suzanne de Passe, one of Gordy’s lieutenants, who heard the group’s recording and decided to lobby her boss on their behalf. Despite their obvious talent, the boys from Gary would be a hard sell.3
“I was doing extremely well in so many areas in my company, and the last kind of group I wanted was a kids’ group,” recalls Gordy. “Because I had Stevie Wonder . . . he was underage, they were close to the same age, and he had to have tutors and chaperones and this and that.”4
Despite Joe Jackson’s repeated attempts get Motown’s attention, Gordy doesn’t recall any of the Jackson 5’s music making it to his ears before de Passe strong-armed him into seeing the group’s Detroit audition during the summer of 1968.5 Says Gordy: “First time I saw them, met them, heard of them, is when she dragged me into their thing.”6
He immediately understood why de Passe was so excited. The brothers were disciplined and played their parts well, but there was something about the tiny frontman. Gordy saw a child who could wring more feeling from “Who’s Loving You” than Smokey Robinson himself. The effect was almost supernatural.
“That delighted me and kind of scared me at the same time,” says Gordy. “Because I was saying, ‘Wow, how could he do that? Has he been here before?’ ” From Michael Jackson’s viewpoint onstage, though, it didn’t seem like he and his brothers were on the verge of a record deal with Motown. “People stared through us like we were ghosts,” he recalled.7
Yet Gordy was already laying out a plan for their repertoire. The bluesy songs that Michael sang were beyond impressive, but the Motown chief felt that something more carefree would be a better fit—and as he looked at the future King of Pop, the notes of “I Want You Back” started to coalesce in his brain (a memory so powerful that, upon relating it to me, Gordy bursts out in song: “Oooooh baby, dot da dee a dee, da da da . . .”).8
Whether or not Gordy composed the song on the spot is another matter. Michael was under the impression that Gordy and his team of songwriters had originally written “I Want You Back” with Gladys Knight in mind and titled it “I Want to Be Free,” but that hearing the Jackson 5’s audition changed Gordy’s mind.9
At any rate, there was some business to settle before the group’s first major hit could be recorded. Gordy signed the Jackson 5 to a deal that gave the group 6 percent of 90 percent of the wholesale price of each album sold, a standard Motown royalty rate. That sum would then be split five ways, leaving Michael with about two cents per album (wholesale prices back then were roughly $2 per record)10—not much by today’s standards, which generally call for rates in the 10 percent to 15 percent range for up-and-coming acts.11
Joe Jackson had been so eager to get his boys to Motown that he neglected to tie up certain loose ends. Gordy discovered this when he got a call from his legal department saying that somebody named Richard Arons had shown up and claimed he owned half of the Jackson 5 through a previous agreement. Annoyed, the Motown boss told Jackson that such attachments weren’t part of the deal they’d made—and that he and his children were free to leave if they couldn’t honor it.12
Then there was the matter of Steeltown Records. Label cofounder Gordon Keith claims that nobody ever bought the Jackson 5 out of their contract with him, and that he’s now owed “millions and millions of dollars” as a result.13 Gordy says he knew nothing of any such deal, and that Joe Jackson (who insists the Steeltown pact had already expired)14 was able to resolve the group’s legal issues to Motown’s satisfaction. Says Gordy: “They came back to us clear with no attachments.”15
Once the wrangling came to a close and the Jackson 5 officially joined Motown’s roster, Gordy went to work with his team of producers and songwriters—Freddie Perren, Alphonso Mizell, and Deke Richards—collectively known as the Corporation. Michael remembers the Motown boss sitting the boys down and telling them that not only would their first single become the biggest hit in the country, but that their second and third records w
ould make it to number 1 on the charts as well. “I’m gonna make you the biggest thing in the world,” he told them. “And you’re gonna be written about in the history books.”16
* * *
The distance from Gary, Indiana, to Los Angeles, California, is 2,030 miles—farther apart than Rome and Baghdad. For Michael Jackson, the gulf between the way he experienced his birthplace and his adopted hometown was just as vast. That first became apparent when he and his brothers moved west in 1969 at the behest of Gordy, who was about to relocate his label’s headquarters to Tinseltown.
“When we flew to California from Chicago, it was like being in another country, another world,” Jackson wrote. “To come from our part of Indiana, which is so urban and often bleak, and to land in Southern California was like having the world transformed into a wonderful dream . . . trees had oranges and leaves on them in the middle of winter.”
There, Jackson was able to continue studying Gordy up close—and, from afar, stars like Fred Astaire, Marcel Marceau, and Katharine Hepburn. But he was perhaps most enamored of Diana Ross. She and Gordy lived on the same street in Beverly Hills, and Jackson stayed frequently with both of them during his first year and a half in California while his parents closed up their house in Gary and looked for a new one in Los Angeles.
Ross encouraged Jackson’s growth as a visual artist as well as a musical one, often buying him pencils and paints. She took him to museums, where she introduced him to the works of Degas and Michelangelo. Though few know it, Jackson went on to become a skilled draftsman, in part because of Ross’s influence.
Michael Jackson, Inc. Page 3