* * *
Captain EO debuted at Disneyland in the fall of 1986; the film’s premier featured speeches, a ribbon-cutting ceremony, and appearances by George Lucas, Anjelica Huston, and Francis Ford Coppola. Even Janet Jackson, suddenly a superstar in her own right after her 1986 breakthrough album Control, made an appearance. But her most famous brother was nowhere to be found.
“Rumor has it Michael Jackson is here, but it’s as a robot or a zombie or an old lady,” said Michael Eisner in a speech to the crowd that had gathered at Tomorrowland. “So look to your left and your right, and that might be Michael Jackson standing next to you.”
Why had Jackson suddenly abandoned the project into which he’d thrown so much time and energy—and staked his Hollywood dreams on—at the last minute? There are multiple theories. Yetnikoff recalls Jackson suddenly expressing reservations about being seen gallivanting around Disneyland at the premier, an about-face as he prepared to transition to the harder-edged look he would soon bring to his upcoming album, Bad.
“I want a more grown-up image,” Jackson told Yetnikoff. “I’m not a child anymore, I don’t want to be publicized holding hands with Pluto.”16
There were also rumors that Jackson had skipped the premier due to dissatisfaction with Disney’s final edit, and that he believed the studio was preventing him from attaining perfection, at least as he saw it. Not being allowed to execute his creative vision in its entirety—and not getting exactly what he wanted—was simply unacceptable to him, hence his absence.
Still, Captain EO debuted as planned, and the reports were generally positive. The Los Angeles Times praised the film’s special effects and costumes, noting that viewers at the premier called it “brilliant,” “outstanding,” and “genius.” The New York Times called it a “smashing, 3-D extravaganza,”17 and EO remained a popular attraction in the US until it was replaced by Honey I Shrunk the Audience shortly after Jackson was first accused of child molestation in 1993. When EO returned to Disney following the singer’s death in 2009, Wired posited that “the twenty-four-year-old space opera still holds up. Mostly.”18
* * *
Lemorande sits through his umpteenth screening of Captain EO with me, and we watch as the crowd oohs and ahhs at all the appropriate points. After toying with the notion of a quick run to Space Mountain, we decide instead to hightail it back to Los Angeles before the traffic gets too bad.
It’s dusk as we approach Hollywood, and Lemorande is telling me a story. Years ago, a screenwriter he knew was working on a script commissioned by a producer in London—and had a sneaking suspicion this fellow would stiff him in the end. “So I go, ‘Do what Michael Jackson would do,’ ” he recalls.19
Before many of his concerts, Jackson insisted on personally accepting his share of the box office revenues in his dressing room before taking the stage. Lemorande suggested the screenwriter equivalent: contact the employer, personally deliver the script to London, and accept the payment there. But the screenwriter allowed himself to be talked into accepting his fee by wire—and never received it.
“He should have done what Michael Jackson said,” says Lemorande. “Any stage performer from that era probably knows that lesson. But [Jackson] really advocated it. . . . I don’t think he was against stonewalling at the last minute to get what he wanted.”
That strategy would work for Jackson at many points throughout his career, but not always—and Captain EO was one such occurrence.
“He should have been there to enjoy it and appreciate it, and Disney should have had the benefit,” says Lemorande. “That was kind of a very sad closure.”
Chapter 9
* * *
GOOD AND BAD
In early 1986, a young publicist named Michael Levine received a phone call from a talent manager who, to many observers, seemed more like a mobster than a Hollywood operative. And he was about to make Levine an offer he couldn’t refuse.
“Mr. Levine, my name’s Frank Dileo,” the manager said. “I see you’re doing very well, you represent a lot of big people. How would you like to represent Michael Jackson?”1
“Okay,” said Levine. “Let’s just say you got my attention.”
“Come to my house.”
The manager lived in a generically affluent neighborhood on the west side of Los Angeles, and he greeted Levine at the door alone, no entourage.
“Look, we decided to try you out,” Dileo began.
“I didn’t know I’m auditioning.”
“We’ll give you a project. You do this well, you’ll represent Michael Jackson.”
“What’s the project?”
Recalling the meeting a quarter of a century later, Levine describes feeling like he was about to enter a parallel universe that night at Dileo’s abode. What the manager proposed was exciting, crazy, and somewhat dangerous—and not very financially rewarding, at least in the short-term.
“You’re not getting paid,” said Dileo. “You do this, and if it’s great, you’ll have Michael [as a client].”
* * *
That same year, Michael Jackson gave copies of the P. T. Barnum biography Humbug to Branca and Dileo, along with some advice: “Study the greats and become greater.”2
Jackson was already widely acknowledged as one of the top music stars of all time, and he had earning power to match. In 1986, he landed a $10 million endorsement deal with Pepsi, shattering his own previous record. His ATV catalogue was generating profits of nearly $10 million annually. And Thriller was still paying dividends as well: In the four years following the album’s release, he’d earned a total of $191 million.
By the end of 1984, Thriller had sold more than 20 million units in the US alone, but other artists were beginning to catch up. Madonna released Like a Virgin that same year, selling 6 million US copies in just twelve months; Prince starred in the film Purple Rain and released a soundtrack of the same name that quickly sold 8 million.3 They were encroaching on Jackson’s turf both commercially and culturally, bringing raw sexuality to the pop sphere with songs like Madonna’s title track and Prince’s “Darling Nikki,” which prompted Tipper Gore to push for the inclusion of “Parental Advisory” stickers on potentially offensive music.4
Jackson would adopt an edgier image for Bad, but first, to help build anticipation, he decided to remove himself temporarily from public view (says biographer and historian Joe Vogel: “He hated the idea of overexposure after Thriller”). So after he co-wrote the charity single “We Are the World” in 1985 with Lionel Richie (and recorded it with a cast that included Bruce Springsteen, Ray Charles, Diana Ross, and Billy Joel), Jackson more or less disappeared, avoiding awards shows, interviews, and public appearances that year.
In the meantime, he and Dileo plotted his grand return, with Levine’s covert assistance. Jackson delineated this philosophy in a series of unpublished notes (a few of which I was allowed to view while writing this book), including one titled “Thoughts on Work and Secrecy”:
When working on any project, work with the best people in the business, the best people in the world—expertise in every field of endeavors, the best chemistry, the best unity—and work in secrecy. And when it’s least expected, hit everybody between the eyes with the phenomenal, the most powerful, unexpected project. Then it becomes historical because you have a perfect gem. But strive for excellence and perfection in everything. Study the greats and become greater—in secrecy.5
Jackson planned to reemerge in September 1986, launching a Barnum-inspired publicity blitz that would take him all the way up to the release of his next album. Humbug describes Barnum as someone with whom Jackson might have identified at the time: “intelligent and energetic, a devoted family man, an abstainer from liquor,” someone who exhibited a “mastery of showmanship.”6
Of course, Barnum wasn’t the greatest role model in all areas. The book points out that he made his fortune on the backs of indentured “freaks,” advertising grandiose (and, often, completely false) stories about their re
spective histories. He sometimes sabotaged the parts of his business that were grounded in fact, spreading rumors that an old woman in his troupe was an automaton and that his “bearded lady” was actually a man. As the author puts it: “Deception, humbugging, cheating, these were some of the words that Americans commonly associated with Barnum, during his life and ever since.”7
Barnum’s primary interest was to create a spectacle. For Jackson, that’s where Levine came in. Dileo gave him some photographs of the singer lying down in a hyperbaric oxygen chamber—a medical contraption that looks like a clear coffin with dials on the side—with the goal of making the world believe Jackson was sleeping there every night so that he could live to age 150. Levine’s task was to plant the story with members of the tabloid press by any means necessary.
“The truth is stranger than fiction,” says Levine, recalling his conversation with Dileo. “There was nothing in my first meeting that Rod Serling couldn’t have written.”8
Predictably, the National Enquirer took Levine’s bait: “Michael Sleeps in Hyperbaric Chamber,” a headline declared. Somewhat more surprisingly, the mainstream press picked up on the story as well. These writers may have known it was all a ruse, but they couldn’t stop themselves from covering the singer’s purported antics. The Associated Press ran a piece on September 16 revealing Jackson’s alleged ambitions of eternal youth while noting that doctors considered such strategies dangerous.9
Levine’s work continued to cause ripples. A few days after the Associated Press story, Jackson’s personal physician went on the record with words that seemed to lend credence to the rumors about his patient: “I would not recommend that he undergo treatment,” Dr. Steven Hoefflin was quoted as saying. “Michael has many bizarre ideas and sometimes these ideas are ahead of his time.”10
The media mentions continued to pile up, but the whole scenario was already seeming a little too bizarre for Levine. “At this point, who’s crazy? Me?” he asks, recalling the episode. “Possible, right? Definitely. Or Michael?”
A month after the hyperbaric story became international news, Levine called Dileo.
“Frank, you didn’t pay me for this,” he said. “Am I going to represent Michael Jackson?”
“I’ll get back to you.”
Levine didn’t hear back after a few days, so he called again.
“It’s gonna happen,” said Dileo. “You gotta trust me. . . . Michael and I [are] going to hire you, you’ll see what we’ve got planned for you. We’re just getting warmed up.”11
Levine wasn’t involved in the next stunt, and it was a doozy. Exhilarated by the press generated by the hyperbaric chamber articles, Jackson and Dileo decided to leak a story that the singer wanted to pay $500,000 to acquire the skeleton of Joseph Merrick—a nineteenth-century sideshow act whose physical deformities earned him the nickname Elephant Man—from the London Hospital Medical College.12
When stories began to circulate, representatives from the institution insisted they hadn’t received such a bid, and that even if they had, the bones weren’t for sale. Suddenly incensed by the rejection of his nonexistent offer, Jackson reportedly resolved to buy the bones. He made an offer of $1 million, which was, of course, rebuffed (the negative publicity also contributed to a growing rift between Jackson and the Jehovah’s Witnesses, and he withdrew from the church).
Perhaps he was simply following Barnum’s example too closely. The author of Humbug, the book Jackson so enthusiastically gave to Branca and Dileo that same year, explains that Barnum believed controversy wasn’t a bad thing, and that “the only requirement was to keep the issue alive and in print. Any statement was better than silence.”13
There’s a fine line between feeding the media stories about a star’s eccentricities, real or constructed, and becoming a tabloid punch line. By trying to buy human remains—or at least wanting to be seen as trying to buy human remains—it seemed Jackson had slipped past a crucial midpoint.
* * *
By 1987, Jackson’s business dealings were also generating plenty of controversy. The Beatles’ own recordings had never been licensed for use in a commercial. That changed when Nike paid $500,000 to put “Revolution” in a television spot.
Jackson’s team obtained permission from Yoko Ono before signing off on the deal. (“John’s songs should not be part of a cult of glorified martyrdom,” she reportedly said. “They should be enjoyed by kids today.”)14 At any rate, neither Jackson nor his company was named in the lawsuit. Though he owned the composition of “Revolution,” EMI Records held the rights to the song’s master recording—with the Beatles’ actual voices—and could have blocked its use. Under that scenario, Jackson could still have licensed a cover of the song to Nike; die-hard fans might not have been pleased with that either, but it would likely have caused much less of a stir. “The thing that disturbed the [living] Beatles was that [the commercial] used their master recording,” says Bandier.15
Paul McCartney was furious. He felt the Beatles’ recordings shouldn’t be in commercials, period. So he joined the surviving Beatles in a lawsuit targeting Nike, its ad agency, and Capitol-EMI. Jackson’s reaction: “Why is he fussin’? Paul owns Buddy Holly[’s catalogue], doesn’t stop him from licensing songs.”16 (McCartney later told David Letterman that, when he expressed his dissatisfaction with the way the singer was handling his songs, Jackson told him, “It’s just business, Paul.”17)
Even though Jackson had turned down dozens of offers to license the songs, including one for a Beastie Boys recording of “I’m Down” slotted for the group’s Licensed to Ill18—the “Revolution” controversy became part of a broader backlash over Jackson’s purchase of the ATV catalogue. The Houston Chronicle slammed him for “exploiting” a counterculture anthem in the name of a $75 pair of running shoes, while the Los Angeles Times called the commercial “revolting” and “sacrilegious.”19
John Lennon biographer Jon Wiener blasted Jackson in the New Republic as a Pepsi-flogging sellout, compared to other musicians like John Mellencamp, Bob Seger, and Joan Jett, who “have had the integrity to refuse to license their music.”20 (In 2007, Mellencamp would catch some flak of his own for allowing one of his songs to appear in a Chevy commercial.21)
Even Tom Petty weighed in. “I hate to see these Beatles songs selling sneakers and stuff,” he said. “Because the music always meant more to me. I don’t wanna think of ‘Good Vibrations’ as a Sunkist soft drink commercial. I think it cheapens that value of the song.”
Says Jackson biographer Joe Vogel: “If you look through news archives around this time, he was shredded by the media. People really didn’t like the idea of him owning the Beatles catalogue (and using it for commercial ends). The catalogue was a great financial investment, but it also made him a big target in the years to come.”22
* * *
It was against this backdrop that Jackson recorded his follow-up to Thriller. Branca initially suggested that the singer release an album of covers before embarking on his next original project.
“I was trying to get him to record Sly and the Family Stone, and some of the other songs that I bought for him, because I figured that’d be another way to make a profitable deal,” Branca recalls. “I said, ‘That’ll take the pressure off of having to top Thriller and compete with yourself.’ . . . He looked at me like I was from Mars.”23
Jackson couldn’t fathom not competing with himself—both commercially and artistically. Before he started recording songs for the album that would eventually become Bad, he taped a note to his bathroom mirror with the number of copies he was determined to sell: 100 million.
Many of those close to Jackson felt that his lofty sales goals stemmed from the way Joe Jackson had taught his sons to measure their success. “If you sold a lot of records, if when you did a concert you sold out, then you were doing the right thing,” says Forger, who spent a great amount of time with Jackson while working as an engineer on Bad. “[And] his family was very poor. And he wanted to not have t
o return to never having money.”24
To top Thriller, Jackson knew Bad would have to be flawless. Before joining Quincy Jones at Westlake Recording Studios, Jackson spent months with a skeleton crew that included Forger, tinkering with tracks at the studio he’d built at Hayvenhurst (he called it “the laboratory”). They worked on about sixty songs, nine of which eventually made the eleven-track album.
Jackson also hired a musician named John Barnes—both to play piano and synthesizers on Bad, and to help fill the album with sounds not usually found on mainstream pop albums. They’d wander around Southern California and record everything from machinery clanking to birds chirping to cars whizzing past, hoping to capture something that could be woven into the fabric of a hit song.
By the time Jackson got to Westlake and began recording with Quincy Jones and the reunited A-Team, he had plenty of novel tracks to choose from. In order to simplify the process, he and Jones covered a big bulletin board in the studio with index cards, writing the name of a song on each. Those that didn’t quite measure up were quickly removed; the best remained on the board.25
Jackson’s abilities were clear to everyone around him, even those who weren’t music aficionados. “One time, I asked Michael, ‘Where do you come up with these incredible lyrics and melodies?’ ” remembers Bea Swedien, Bruce’s wife. “He said, ‘I just wake up and they’re in my head.’ ”26
During rehearsals for the This Is It concerts two decades later, Jackson joked that if he didn’t write down these ideas and turn them into music, God would give them to Prince. Jackson had initially envisioned the title track of Bad as a duel with his rival, but when they met to discuss a potential collaboration before the recording process began, Prince startled Jackson by bringing him a voodoo amulet. “I never want to talk to that guy again,” said Jackson afterward.27
Michael Jackson, Inc. Page 13