Michael Jackson, Inc.

by Zack O'Malley Greenburg

  Ten days later, Jackson was back in action, appearing at a gala held at New York’s Museum of Natural History in honor of Thriller selling 35 million copies. Epic’s Susan Blond devised an unusual invitation: a single white glove with the date, time, and occasion printed on the palm. Roughly one thousand guests arrived to find the building’s towering dinosaur skeletons illuminated by thousands of flickering candles, casting eerie shadows across a crowd that included most of the Jacksons, Andy Warhol, Calvin Klein, and Brooke Shields. Outside in the frigid February night, an even bigger crowd had gathered in hopes of catching a glimpse of Jackson.

  “Even though Michael had just been on fire, he realized that these were his fans,” says Blond. “It was quite chilly, too, and he went out and gave a big wave and made sure everyone saw him. They went bananas, totally screaming.”19

  He ducked back into the party for a good while, but kept popping outside to wave to his fans. His motivation was simple, says Blond: “He wanted to go and to give them what they had come to see.”

  Yet the Pepsi incident would take its toll. The surgery Jackson had to undergo in order to stretch his scalp to cover the burned area left him in terrible pain. His only respite would come in the form of prescription painkillers such as Demerol—and he wouldn’t soon forget the relief they provided.20

  * * *

  As soon as Michael was back in shape to perform, rehearsals began in Birmingham, Alabama. And with the goal of making the Victory Tour the grandest and most glorious in history, the staging of the show became just as important as the performance.

  There was a levitation sequence with Marlon, a skit where Jermaine threatened to leave the group again unless they played one of his solo songs, and a grand entrance where Michael emerged from a hole in the ground to sing “Beat It.” Sullivan was able to book dozens of concerts across the country—though, ironically, the Jacksons wouldn’t make it to Sullivan’s home stadium at Foxborough (the town council voted down a proposed three-night stand due to noise concerns). To spread the word about other concerts, he enlisted Michael’s help.

  “I would talk to him about the marketing plan for each venue,” says Sullivan. “He had toured since he was five years old, so he had a sense of the nuances of the markets we were visiting . . . he knew what radio stations got the most play, who were the dominant entertainment figures in each market. He was a very tuned-in person.”21

  As the summer approached, the Jacksons had plenty of new material to offer those stations. “State of Shock”—Jackson’s collaboration with Mick Jagger—dropped on June 5, followed by the rest of the Victory album on July 2. Bruce Swedien remembers telling Jagger that one Los Angeles disc jockey played the song for twenty-seven consecutive hours (the rocker’s response: “How boring”).22

  There was less enthusiasm, at least on Michael’s part, for “Tell Me I’m Not Dreamin’ (Too Good to Be True),” a duet with Jermaine intended for the latter’s 1984 self-titled album.23 Shortly after the brothers had finished recording, Michael called Yetnikoff.

  “I don’t want it released as a single.”24

  “Are you crazy? This is your brother.”

  “I know, but I did it. I shouldn’t have, but I agreed to it. I don’t want it released. So you call Clive [Davis] and tell him he can’t do it.”

  “Are you out of your fucking mind? This is your brother.”

  “That’s what I want.”

  Yetnikoff then called Davis, the head of Arista Records, the label that was slated to release the duet, and explained the situation. It appeared that Jackson didn’t want the collaboration competing with his solo singles on the charts. Davis eventually compromised and released the song as a promotional single, which meant it could still garner ample radio play (which it did) but couldn’t be considered for Billboard’s prestigious singles chart. And as time went on, Jackson would only grow more tired of watching his brothers ride his coattails.

  When the Victory Tour opened on July 6 at Kansas City’s Arrowhead Stadium, however, the outside world had little clue as to the discord that was already rankling the Jacksons. The first show had drawn reporters from Asia, South America, the Middle East, Europe, and all over North America; there were more total requests for press credentials than for the preceding Super Bowl.25

  As the brothers prepared to take the stage, a sold-out crowd of 45,000 started chanting “Jacksons” in the dark. All the fans could see at first was a giant boulder with a sword sticking out of it. Randy, dressed as a knight, dashed out and pulled the sword from the stone, then ran back behind the stage to join his brothers on a platform below the stage. Decked in aviators and military-inspired garb, they waited as the platform began to rise toward the crowd. Floodlights illuminated the stadium, the brothers whipped off their sunglasses, and with the flash of a sequined hand, Michael Jackson took the stage at his first concert since completing Thriller.

  “I don’t even know how to explain the level of crazy that it was,” Minor recalls. “Screaming, yelling, crying, fainting, pushing, shoving. Those were the things I remember the most. Just continued screaming. I mean, how could you even hear them, you’re screaming! And that was the case everyplace.”26

  The fans’ reactions seemed to be even more extreme than they were in the group’s early days. Not only would the sight of Michael Jackson leave many in a state of hysteria—or unconsciousness—but some truly believed him to be superhuman. “When they see you, they feel it’s a miracle or something,” he wrote. “I’ve had fans ask me if I use the bathroom. I mean, it gets embarrassing.”27

  One night in a Dallas hotel, a young woman decided to open a twentieth-floor window and attempt to lower herself into Michael’s room on a string of sheets tied together. When members of the Jacksons’ entourage spotted her dangling on the other side of the glass, they called the police, who removed her without further incident.28

  There were other issues on the tour, particularly on Sullivan’s end. His costs were so high that some insiders began to believe he’d have to shut down the tour early. That group included Michael Cohl, a future chief of Live Nation, whose company at the time was handling the tour’s merchandizing.

  “I just knew if the tour went down, which is what everybody said was going to happen three or four weeks in, it’d be a warm day in the Arctic before I’d see my money,” says Cohl. “And our merchandise company would go down the toilet.”29

  In August, Cohl convinced Sullivan to bring the tour to Toronto during a free weekend in October. He ramped up revenues by selling more VIP tickets and travel packages that included hotel stays; the shows were so profitable that Sullivan decided to bring him on to help run the tour going forward. Cohl immediately started cutting costs, beginning with redundant staff members and unnecessary furniture that had been lugged from city to city. Though the changes weren’t enough to make the tour profitable for Sullivan, they ensured it would generate sufficient cash to keep going.

  Despite the drama, the Jacksons still made time for self-indulgent hijinks. Jermaine had decided to bring his pet tiger, Bakana, on the road with him; Michael especially enjoyed taking the animal on jaunts through hotel kitchens. They also amused themselves by going out on their balconies and dumping buckets of water on unsuspecting passersby. Sometimes they’d throw $100 bills instead. Food fights often occurred after shows.30

  “I got a sense that they had a very brotherly type of relationship, that kind of jokey-friendly-but-I’ll-sock-you-in-the-stomach kind of fun,” says Minor. “They did travel kind of separately because they had their families with them; some of them had their wives and kids with them from time to time.”31

  Yet a cloud hung over Michael. He felt restricted—perhaps in part because of the two Jehovah’s Witnesses who traveled with the brothers and “monitored” Michael, a result of the church’s concerns over its most famous member, no doubt spurred by Thriller. He was also confined mostly to his hotel suite for his own protection, as fans circled and stalked outside. Some people close to him,
including Yetnikoff, felt that he never forgave his family for pressuring him into doing the tour.

  “Everybody’s family is dysfunctional, that I’ve ever known,” says the former CBS chief. “I’m sure Eisenhower maybe had [a normal family]; there aren’t too many people. I’m in AA, so I don’t know anybody that’s not dysfunctional. But his family was more dysfunctional than most.”32

  In addition to the pressures of family and religion on the tour, Michael felt the decision-making process limited his artistic freedom, particularly when it came to showcasing his new solo work. “It was a nice feeling, playing with my brothers again,” he stated in his autobiography. “But I was disappointed with the tour from the beginning. I had wanted to move the world like it had never been moved. . . . I was disappointed in the staging of ‘Billie Jean.’ I wanted it to be so much more than it was. I didn’t like the lighting, and I never got my steps quite the way I wanted them. It killed me to have to accept these things and settle for doing it the way I did.”33

  Some who observed Jackson on the tour also noticed that he occasionally drifted into a state somewhere between restlessness and loneliness. Around four o’clock in the morning after one show in Dallas, Minor happened to peer out the window of her hotel room. Below, a thin figure ambled through the courtyard, trailed by a bodyguard. It was Michael. With the adrenaline from that night’s performance still rocketing though his veins, the singer couldn’t fall asleep. But he couldn’t leave the hotel, either—not without creating a major scene, anyway.

  “The heaven he lived in was not a paradise,” says Minor. “It’s got to be a very sad thing when you can’t go anywhere, can’t do anything. You’re just kind of in a cage . . . these people would tear you to pieces.”34

  The Victory Tour wrapped up on December 9, 1984, at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles, the last of seven consecutive sold-out shows there. As the crowd danced and cheered in the warm California rain, Michael stopped for a moment between songs to make a surprise announcement. “This is our last and final show,” he said. “It’s been a long twenty years, and we love you all.”35

  The brothers weren’t thrilled—they’d been hoping to continue the Victory Tour abroad—but Michael had spoken. He had left his family in an excellent financial position (though that wouldn’t prevent them from trying to get money from him in the future): the Jacksons had sold 2.25 million tickets. With merchandise revenues, the final tally was a tad north of $70 million, far surpassing the tour’s projected $55 million total.36 Could Jackson have sold that amount by himself on his first tour after Thriller? “Yeah,” says Cohl. “Of course.”37

  Yet Jackson’s brothers would take home about $6 million apiece. The picture wasn’t quite so rosy for Chuck Sullivan. Long before the Victory Tour’s last note, he knew he wouldn’t be getting his money back. Even with Cohl’s changes, the setup expenses for three sold-out shows at Meadowlands Stadium in New Jersey had ballooned to $1 million, plus another $1 million for exit costs. With all the tour’s accoutrements, from swords in stones to rising platforms to magic tricks, the story was the same all around the country.

  In the end, the tour’s costs totaled $78 million—$8 million more than the total ticket sales—and Sullivan was on the hook for the difference.38

  * * *

  Michael Jackson donated his share of the Victory Tour’s proceeds to a handful of charities, including the T. J. Martell Foundation and the United Negro College Fund—about $6 million in total—as promised. Still, he wasn’t about to spend half a year of his life on the road and come away empty-handed.39

  While traveling the country during the summer of 1984, Jackson noticed that many of the fashion statements he made in his videos had been picked up by some of the millions who’d flocked to see him perform with his brothers. But someone else was profiting from all those imitation “Thriller” jackets. So Jackson and his advisors huddled to formulate a plan. Rather than let the market be overrun with third-party knockoffs, why not offer the genuine article? For funding, they didn’t have to look further than Chuck Sullivan, who offered them $28 million, including $18 million up front. The licensing deal also included a fragrance—Jackson tested more than fifty different combinations before deciding on one.40

  “He had quite an awesome command of rights and rights values,” says Sullivan. “This really was generated by him.”

  And so, in 1984, Michael Jackson became the first music star to have his own clothing line. Sullivan brought in Warren Hirsh, the fashion maven who’d launched a line of Gloria Vanderbilt–branded jeans in the late 1970s, to help oversee the effort. They planned to debut the Jackson clothing line in the fall of 1986, around the time Jackson’s new record was set to hit stores. Expectations were high: $70 million in retail sales for the first fifteen months of 1986 (about $150 million, adjusting for inflation).41

  Unfortunately for Sullivan, Bad’s release would end up being delayed for a year, but the clothing came out as scheduled. Without the boost of an album’s buzz—and more important, free advertising in Jackson’s music videos—the products were met with lukewarm sales, leaving Sullivan with far less than the $28 million he’d paid for the rights. Still, Michael Jackson walked away with double-digit millions—and paved the way for the hip-hop fashion boom of the 1990s and 2000s.

  As for Sullivan, his family sold the Patriots to Victor Kiam, owner of Remington shavers, in 1986 for $87 million.42 He says the deal had nothing to do with financial troubles related to the Victory Tour or Jackson’s clothing line and everything to do with estate planning for his father, who’d been diagnosed with prostate cancer.43

  Two years later, the Sullivans sold the Patriots’ stadium as well. The buyer? Robert Kraft, who paid $25 million for the building. He’d go on to buy the Patriots for $172 million in 1994, amassing a multibillion-dollar personal fortune while guiding the team to three Super Bowl victories in four years.44 For contributing to the set of circumstances that circuitously led to that run, Patriots fans can thank Michael Jackson.

  * * *

  Back at the Yale Club, Sullivan hasn’t displayed a hint of bitterness toward Michael Jackson, his family, or his handlers. Remarkably, he doesn’t even seem to regret signing up to promote the Victory Tour. Though he lost millions on the project, he’s still reaping dividends as an indirect result.

  For example, he explains, the Rolling Stones were playing a show at Madison Square Garden in 2003 that was being filmed as an HBO special. By then, Sullivan’s brother Pat was running a mobile television broadcasting company called Game Creek, and he wanted the contract to provide production services for the show. So Chuck called Cohl, who was working the Stones’ tour, and asked for the business.

  Game Creek’s previous experience was only with sporting events, but Cohl vouched for the company, and the Stones agreed to let the company handle production at the Garden. HBO was so happy with the results that they hired Game Creek again. The company subsequently worked to provide production for the likes of Oprah Winfrey, Justin Timberlake, David Letterman, Céline Dion, and both inaugurations of Barack Obama.

  “So the bottom line is that, not directly from the Jacksons but as a result of doing the Victory Tour, we have made up the losses,” says Sullivan. Or, in other words, “The Victory Tour did have a grand and glorious silver lining for the Sullivan family.”45

  Chapter 7

  * * *

  BUYING THE BEATLES

  When Sony/ATV chief Marty Bandier was a long-haired twenty-three-year-old, he got his first job in music simply because he looked the part. A senior partner at his law firm took one glance at him and assigned him to work on a music publishing deal.

  “ ‘We’re going to make an acquisition . . . and we think you have some knowledge of music,’ ” Bandier recalls the partner saying. “Only looking at my hair.”1

  In the wake of its 2012 acquisition of EMI Music Publishing, Sony/ATV controls more than two million songs by artists ranging from Eminem to the Beatles, making it the world’s lar
gest music publishing company—and Bandier still looks the part. High above the corner of Madison Avenue and Fifty-sixth Street in Sony’s New York headquarters, the septuagenarian executive sits behind a caramel desk as big as a barn door, sporting a monogrammed dress shirt with the top two buttons undone. His flowing locks are mostly intact, though perhaps a bit shorter, bright white and combed back neatly against his scalp.

  Bandier’s office brims with mementos related to his company’s most treasured artists: next to his computer there are figurines of John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr; Elvis Presley curls a sausage-sized lip from a black-and-white poster that occupies the entire west wall.

  On a ledge by the window, though, there’s a less showy artifact from an artist to whom Bandier is even more inextricably tied—Michael Jackson. The musician was responsible for creating the $2 billion company Bandier now runs, and he’s represented in this particular room by a blood-red volume the width of two telephone books, titled THE OFFICIAL MICHAEL JACKSON OPUS.

  “Once I got here, the first signing was Lady Gaga,” recalls Bandier. “[We have], you know, Taylor Swift. Those are all things that Michael owns half of.”

  Though Jackson didn’t play an active role in bringing those two on board, he was the one who shelled out the cash to buy the catalogue’s core. Says Bandier: “Michael had a great sense of the value of music . . . the guy picked out songs that have lasted forever.”