Michael Jackson, Inc.

by Zack O'Malley Greenburg

  Though the album didn’t meet Jackson’s lofty sales expectations, it was a major hit, moving 600,000 copies in the US during its first week. Dangerous would go on to sell 40 million units worldwide.10 Even as the album climbed the charts, a new reality was starting to take shape within Jackson’s empire. Branca and Dileo were gone, Yetnikoff had been ousted, and it seemed that nobody in Jackson’s modified inner circle was willing to tell him no—or even nudge him away from a bad decision, as Branca had with the Bela Lugosi tale that saved the “Thriller” video.

  Jackson’s spending showed no signs of slowing. New extravagances included tens of millions in renovations to Neverland, complete with a zoo and a railway line large enough for a full-size steam locomotive.11 Because he’d averaged $58 million in annual earnings over the prior four years, his cash flow remained positive—for the time being, anyway. But the working relationships between the remaining employees of Michael Jackson, Inc. and its founder were faltering.

  “When John Branca was involved, I would get phone calls from Michael, we would meet when he was back in Los Angeles or I’d be in Tokyo or London,” says former ATV president Dale Kawashima, who left his job in December 1991. “But . . . I didn’t have personal contact with Michael within the last year or so. It wasn’t the same for me.”12

  The growing distance between Jackson and the decisions being made about his business was evident even to those who happened to be passing through his orbit for only a short while.

  “I never saw him, with the exception of one time, ever get involved with anything businesslike,” recalls Saul “Slash” Hudson, the longtime guitarist for Guns n’ Roses whom Jackson had recruited to play on “Black or White.” “The people around him seemed to be very eager to shelter him from all that.”13

  * * *

  Though Dangerous hadn’t come anywhere close to topping Thriller, it still put Jackson back in the spotlight and helped him earn $35 million in 1991—an excellent showing, but noticeably lower than his peak during the Bad era. The international tour that followed was also shaping up to be a massive moneymaker. Gallin hoped to use the momentum to burnish the singer’s image, which for some observers was still tainted by bizarre tabloid tales.

  “He definitely had a strange image, almost like he was not from this planet or this world,” recalls Gallin. “And . . . I thought people have to hear Michael talk, see that he is from this planet and that he’s much more a human being and normal than they think he is.”14

  If the public couldn’t be convinced of that, Gallin feared Jackson’s commercial success—and, therefore, his own job—might be in jeopardy. He believed the best way to humanize Jackson was to put him in front of the largest television audience possible in two settings: an Oprah Winfrey special and a Super Bowl halftime show. When Gallin made the suggestions, Jackson initially resisted. But after assurances that he’d have creative control over both, he relented.

  “Had he not wanted to, he would not have done it,” says Gallin. “He was smart enough to know he had to reconnect with the American public.”

  The NFL was interested in bringing Jackson aboard for the same reason as Oprah: ratings. During the previous year’s halftime show, a sizable chunk of viewers watching the game on CBS were so unenthused about the combination of Gloria Estefan, Brian Boitano, and Dorothy Hamill that they flipped to Fox to see a new episode of In Living Color.

  The migration caused a ten-point dip in ratings during the biggest television event of the year, something that CBS and the NFL were desperate to avoid in the future.15 To secure Jackson, the league agreed to cover the extravagant production costs—as it now does for all halftime acts16—and to contribute $100,000 ($160,000 in today’s dollars) to his newly formed Heal the World charity.17 Jackson and his touring band then rehearsed twenty-eight days in January at the Rose Bowl.18

  On a sunny Sunday in Los Angeles, with the Dallas Cowboys leading the Buffalo Bills by a score of 28 to 10 halfway through Super Bowl XXVII, some 100,000 people waited at the Rose Bowl—and perhaps 1 billion more in front of televisions around the world—as Jackson prepared to take the stage. Suddenly, his image appeared in video form on one of the stadium’s Jumbotrons, spinning around in a gold shirt and black pants as the organ blared a few notes from “Thriller.”19

  Then the stadium was filled with a noise that sounded like the flushing of a great cosmic airplane toilet, and Jackson’s image disappeared into a vortex on the screen—only to emerge from a puff of smoke in human form atop the Jumbotron. Seconds later, the same thing happened on the screen on the other side of the stadium. And then, with the puzzled thousands cheering the ersatz Jacksons wildly, the whooshing sound returned. As fireworks crackled behind the stage at midfield, the real Michael Jackson erupted from its center as though shot by a cannon, landing on his feet, his motions looking as effortless as an Olympic gymnast sticking a jump.

  Rather than launch immediately into a song, Jackson stood still as a statue for seventy-two seconds, an eternity on television. His first move was a slight turn of his head; after that, he waited another twenty seconds before slowly removing his sunglasses. Only then did he finally launch into his first song, “Jam,” the beginning of an electrifying medley that included snippets of “Billie Jean,” “Black or White,” “We Are the World,” and “Heal the World.” There was moonwalking, crotch grabbing, and a finale that involved a chorus of children decked out in local attire from the countries of the world, sporting garb from sombreros to lederhosen.

  Dallas would go on to slaughter Buffalo by a score of 52–17—the Cowboys would have amassed the highest point total of any Super Bowl winner had it not been for the infamous fumble by an end-zone-bound Leon Lett—and the game’s viewers didn’t stray from the halftime show this time. Despite the fact that the game was a blowout, the Super Bowl went on to draw a score of 43.9 on Nielsen’s scale, an 8.6 percent increase from the previous year and the best since 1987.20

  The NFL’s executives quickly realized that a Super Bowl halftime show could be more than marching bands and figure skaters mixed with the occasional pop star. In subsequent years, it became a showcase for some of the biggest names in music, including U2, Paul McCartney, Prince, the Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen, Madonna, and Beyoncé.

  Less than two weeks after the game, Oprah Winfrey made the trek to Neverland to film her live special, which was billed as Jackson’s first televised interview in fourteen years. The singer strolled out in black pants and a red military-style shirt—and roundly dismissed some of the recent stories on topics from the Elephant Man’s bones (“Where am I going to put some bones?”) to his ever-lightening skin color (“I have a skin disorder that destroys the pigmentation”) to the number of times he’d had plastic surgery (“You can count on two fingers”).21

  During the interview, Jackson also discussed his love life, saying that he was dating Brooke Shields, who accompanied him to the Grammys in 1984. Later, surprise guest Elizabeth Taylor described Jackson as “the least weird man I’ve ever known . . . highly intelligent, shrewd, intuitive, understanding, sympathetic, generous to almost a fault.” Perhaps the most revealing moment of the interview came when Winfrey asked Jackson if he was happy with the way he looked now. “I’m never pleased with anything,” he said. “I’m a perfectionist.”

  The show went a long way toward demystifying Jackson. There were no hyperbaric chambers in his house, and Bubbles the chimp didn’t make any cameos. Jackson came off as a shy, gracious, wealthy young man who lived an unusual but not deviant lifestyle; on camera, Neverland seemed like the sort of estate many regular people might daydream about owning.

  When the ratings rolled in, the result for Winfrey was just as positive as it was for her subject. Michael Jackson Talks to . . . Oprah Live and her subsequent celebrity interview highlight reel became the second- and third-highest-rated segments of her career—only the 1988 weight-loss episode where Winfrey carted out sixty-seven pounds of actual fat on a red wagon performed better than t
he two related to Jackson.22

  “He was unquestionably the biggest star in the world, the most talented,” says Gallin. “Everybody wanted to be in business with him. . . . At that moment in time, something that Michael wanted to do, there would always be someone who wanted to finance it.”23

  * * *

  Michael Jackson met thirteen-year-old Jordan Chandler in 1992 after his car broke down near a used-auto-rental outlet operated by the boy’s stepfather.24 Jackson later hosted Jordan, his sister, and his mother at Neverland on multiple occasions and even took them with him on trips abroad.

  The Chandlers were one of many families he’d befriended, and Jordan one of many children he would entertain at his ranch. He’d host groups of youngsters ranging from terminally ill kids sent his way by the Make-A-Wish Foundation25 to middle-schoolers Frank and Eddie Cascio, the sons of a hotel manager at New York’s Helmsley Palace, where Jackson stayed when he was in the city.26

  At Neverland, Jackson’s young guests would sometimes spend the night; according to Frank Cascio, he’d give them his bed and sleep on the floor. To be sure, this wasn’t normal behavior for an adult, let alone for the most famous musician in the world. Then again, nobody ever accused Michael Jackson of being normal. In 1992, though, nobody had accused him of much worse.

  “When he was with children, he could be himself,” wrote Cascio in his book, My Friend Michael. “He’d been in the spotlight his entire life and people looked at him differently because of that. But children didn’t care who he was. I certainly didn’t.” Adds childhood pal Greg Campbell: “He liked to be around little kids, he always had that in him.”27 Oprah Winfrey noticed the same trait, telling the singer, “What’s fascinating to me about you is that obviously you have this childlike aura about you, and I see children with you and they play with you like you’re one of them.”28

  Jordan Chandler’s biological father Evan, a man with the only-in-Los-Angeles occupation of dentist and screenwriter, seemed to share that attitude when his son began spending time with Jackson. Evan felt so comfortable with the singer that he asked him to pay for a renovation of his home. After an uneasy Jackson ignored the requests,29 Chandler seemed to grow worried that he was being replaced as a father by Michael Jackson, of all people.30

  As his son continued to spend time with Jackson, often having sleepovers (and sometimes sharing a bed), he started to wonder if something more sinister might be occurring. He hired an attorney who then contacted Beverly Hills psychiatrist Mathis Abrams and described the situation; without meeting with any of the parties involved, the doctor wrote a letter saying that it seemed there may have been sexual contact in the scenario described.31

  Evan told his son’s stepfather that he was pondering accusing Jackson of molestation. “If I go through with this, I win big . . . I will get everything I want,” he said. “And [Jackson] will be destroyed forever.”32

  About two weeks later, while Evan was removing a problematic tooth from his son’s mouth, Jordan suggested that he’d had sexual relations with Jackson (it’s worth noting that, at the time of this initial admission, the boy was under the influence of an anesthetic called sodium amytal, which has been known to cause false memories in some patients).33

  Rather than going directly to the police, Evan arranged a meeting at a Los Angeles hotel and made his next request of Jackson: $20 million to fund four of his screenplays (he had already cowritten the 1993 Mel Brooks flick Robin Hood: Men in Tights). If he didn’t get the money, Chandler would publicly accuse Jackson of sexually abusing his son.34

  Jackson asserted his innocence and rejected Chandler’s demands; about two weeks later, the latter took his son to see Dr. Abrams in person. There, Jordan Chandler reportedly told the psychiatrist that he’d had sexual contact with Jackson. Dr. Abrams then notified the authorities.

  As Jackson headed to Asia for the second leg of his tour, the biggest story of the decade was about to explode.35

  * * *

  Around this time, Michael Jackson was involved in two film projects with an old colleague—Rusty Lemorande, who’d written and produced Captain EO.

  Executives at some of the major Hollywood studios, impressed with Jackson’s work on EO and in his revolutionary music videos, were finally coming to share the singer’s belief that he could become a full-fledged movie star like Elvis Presley.

  With backing from one of the major studios, Lemorande was working with Jackson on what he describes as “a supernatural musical film that featured fantastical characters and settings.” By the summer of 1993, there was already a full-scale mock-up in the works.

  “We put it up in a rented studio in East Hollywood,” Lemorande recalls. “Draped all with black cloth, you could kind of go from room to room and experience this thing interactively. It was really enchanting, with black light and little tiny lights. There was a circus set, a highly detailed, magic circus train—interior and exterior—a miniature of an entire inner city block, and models of various fantasy characters that Michael would portray.”36

  Lemorande was on his way to the studio one day in August for final preparations before showing the elaborate setup to Jackson when he got some shocking news: Jackson was under investigation for child molestation. Suddenly, a production that looked like a lock to launch the next step in Jackson’s film career—complete with ten musical numbers—was very much on the rocks.

  Along with his Captain EO colleagues, Lemorande was surprised to hear of the allegations. Michael had children accompany him during much of the 3-D shoot, surrounded by an adult crew of nearly one hundred. Nothing seemed amiss. Besides, Lemorande figured, Jackson had withstood controversies before, like the one referenced in “Billie Jean.” He assumed the legal process would ultimately bring out the truth.

  In the meantime, though, Jackson was on tour and the film project would have to be shelved. Just as Lemorande began to anticipate the depressing process of closing down the studio, and then packing and storing the miniature wonderland, he got a call from one of Jackson’s representatives, who asked Lemorande if there was any way he could pack up the sets and take them to the singer in Japan.

  “A limited version, yeah,” Lemorande replied. “Anything can be shipped.”

  “Well, how soon can you do it?”

  Lemorande was given a sense that there was “an imminent concern” for Jackson’s well-being—and that seeing the miniatures for the film project might help snap him out of a deep funk.

  He landed in Tokyo a few days later. Lemorande spent hours unpacking boxes and rewiring miniatures, turning a hotel suite into a magical oasis filled with ten-inch-tall hand-painted maquettes. The moment Jackson walked in that night after his show, unannounced, the look on the singer’s face said everything.

  “He was like a little kid opening Christmas presents,” Lemorande recalls. “Saying simple things like, ‘This is wonderful, wow, this is what we’re going to do.’ Just very simple utterances of pleasure and satisfaction.”

  The room was kept dark to maintain the fantasy illusion, and Lemorande and Jackson toured the room with a flashlight. The singer held each figurine, lifting the arms and moving the legs like toys. Says Lemorande: “He really seemed a kid who was still playing out a childhood.”

  Jackson left the room with a smile on his face, perhaps convinced that he still had a future in Hollywood. As Lemorande turned off the lights and packed up the maquettes and displays, however, he couldn’t help but feel they’d never see the light of day—and that the same held true for Michael Jackson’s film career.

  * * *

  Back in the US, the headlines were already rolling in. “Peter Pan or Pervert?” blared the front page of the New York Post, while Newsweek asked, “Is He Dangerous or Off the Wall?”37

  Evan Chandler filed a civil lawsuit for $30 million; at the same time, the district attorneys of Los Angeles and Santa Barbara counties launched criminal investigations. Police raided Neverland, Hayvenhurst, and a condo Jackson owned in Los Angeles, seizin
g notes and writings.38

  Jordan Chandler described the singer’s private parts in a sworn affidavit, and Jackson was forced to submit to a full body search when he eventually returned to the US. In front of a group of detectives and doctors, he had to stand naked and lift up his penis so that a photographer could shoot it from all angles. “None of the markings on Michael’s body matched the boy’s description,” wrote Jermaine Jackson. “In fact, the imagination bore no resemblance to the reality.”39

  There were plenty of others who stood by Jackson: the rest of his family, the hordes of adoring fans, and even the Cascios—who were so convinced of his innocence that they permitted two of their sons to join Jackson on tour in Tel Aviv. That didn’t seem inappropriate to Frank, then about the same age as Chandler.

  “Let me be absolutely clear: odd as it may seem for an adult to have ‘sleepovers’ with a couple of kids, there was nothing sexual about them,” wrote Cascio years later as an adult. “Nothing that was apparent to me then, as a child, and nothing that I can see now, as a grown man scrutinizing the past. Michael was truly just a kid at heart.”40

  The Cascios accompanied Jackson as the tour moved on to Switzerland and Argentina. The King of Pop helped the boys with their homework, taught them about the music business, and showed them a world far different from their New Jersey home. As the weeks went by, however, they began to notice something unusual. Every night, a doctor came to give Jackson “medicine”—which Frank would later identify as the painkiller Demerol.

  The boys’ host seemed to be relying on prescription drugs to put his mind and body at ease, and the side effects occasionally manifested themselves. One time while they were doing schoolwork, Jackson blurted out: “Mommy, I want to go to Disneyland and see Mickey Mouse.” When Frank repeated the words back to him, Jackson said, “Sometimes the medicine makes me do that.”