‘Everyone wants to be crazy’
Michael Jackson has earned an estimated $500 million dollars in his lifetime, about $100 million from 1982’s
Thriller
alone. A report by the business magazine
Forbes
last year estimated his net worth at $300 million but warned that he had incurred big debts and that his spending seemed to be out of control.
Though Michael has made some canny investments, he has experienced financial difficulties in recent years because of his high overheads. He spends money like mad, as demonstrated when he appeared to shell out about six million dollars in minutes on baroque vases and urns, with Martin Bashir’s cameras rolling in Las Vegas. ‘I want that one,’ he exclaimed, ‘and that one and that one and…
yoo-hoo?
How much is
that
one!’ (However, he did return much of that merchandise after the programme was broadcast – buyer’s remorse, perhaps… or maybe just a reconsideration of his taste in furnishings.)
His staff of 120 people costs him about $300,000 a month. More than once, the company that leases much of the amusement park equipment has threatened to repossess it; Michael has had to come up with emergency payments, thereby not being able to compensate certain employees. Neverland’s monthly expenditures amount to about $1.2 million.
A couple of years ago, Michael used his one-half share of the Sony/ATV music catalogue as collateral to borrow $200 million. (Michael bought ATV in 1985 for $47.5 million. Ten years later, in 1995, he sold 50 per cent of ATV to Sony for about $90 million. Sony/ATV, of course, owns the publishing rights to hundreds of Beatles songs, as well as more than 400,000 other songs, including some of Elvis’s and even Madonna’s.) Sony guaranteed the $200 loan for Michael. However, if he defaults, the company can then move to claim his share of ATV.
‘He’s a ticking financial time bomb waiting to explode,’ claimed the attorney of Myung Ho Lee, his former financial manager from 1998 to 2001 who sued him for back payment. (The suit was settled in June 2003.)
More than likely, in order to meet the loan, Michael will borrow $200 million from someone else, pay back the original lender, and then owe the money to a new one. He’s never going to be sensible when it comes to finances; yet he will always live like a king. According to different legal filings along the way, he owes hundreds of thousands of dollars to attorneys, publicists and even to limousine companies; people apparently work for him, and then wait to be paid, because it’s worth it just to be able to be affiliated to him. He even still owes money to the contractor who built Neverland! Those who predict his financial downfall forget that he’s a person with whom powerful people want to rub shoulders, no matter what, a famous man who traffics with the international elite. There will always be someone, somewhere, willing to bail him out, if it becomes necessary to do so, even if he’s viewed as a poor risk. Why? Because he’s
Michael Jackson
.
Besides, the $200 million isn’t due until 2006. In Michael’s world, that’s a lifetime away. There are times when he’s simply trying to get through the week; his eye certainly isn’t on what will happen in three years. Also, he can take comfort in knowing that he can eradicate the entire matter by doing the one thing he most doesn’t want to do: tour. A couple of unsuccessful CDs, videos and bad judgement calls can still not dim the glory that has been Michael Jackson’s performing career for decades. His 1997
HIStory
tour was a monumental success for him, setting attendance records at each stop along the way. The public might not be as supportive of his music as it was before the allegations, but Michael still sold out concert halls after the scandal.
For instance, he feared that he would have problems performing in the United States, and was particularly nervous about two January 1997 dates in Hawaii, his first American shows since the scandal (and his first US Tour stop since 1989). However, the two concerts (4 and 5 January 1997, in Honolulu) were hugely successful for him. While no other musical act had ever sold out the stadium, Michael’s shows sold out in less than a day. Hawaii promoter, Tom Moffatt enthused, ‘I’ve never seen anything like it… there’s been nothing even close to this the Rolling Stones, Elton John, Julio Iglesias, the Eagles.’ Evan Chandler may have thought he would ‘ruin’ Michael Jackson… and maybe he did do him significant damage where record sales are concerned, but not when it comes to his ability to draw concert goers.
In 2001, he was offered ten million dollars simply to perform two nights in Las Vegas. He also had $100 million guaranteed for a national tour. Imagine what he might command for a
world
tour? He could earn enough to handle his responsibility with the bank loan – plus whatever he may require to cover his annual Toys ‘R’ Us budget. ‘But it takes too much out of me,’ he told me of touring, back in 1995. ‘It’s like a two-hour marathon, every show. I swear, I must lose ten pounds a concert. The expectations are too high. It’s hard.’
Michael also spends a fortune on presents for children around the world, some of whom he knows but many of whom he doesn’t and who are connected to him through various charities. Also, of course, he splurges on himself: for instance, in June 1999 he paid $1.54 million at a Sotheby’s auction to own David O. Selznick’s Best Picture Oscar for
Gone With the Wind
. Moreover, he gives generously to friends such as Elizabeth Taylor, who is accustomed to receiving expensive baubles from Michael on a regular basis, and he doesn’t disappoint. He recently spent $10,000 in Las Vegas, on perfume for her.
Unfortunately, making his life more complex is the fact Michael is always involved in lawsuits from people with whom he’s done business in the past: former promoters, producers, managers, accountants, investment bankers, employees have all come after him for tens of millions of dollars. It seems that the lawsuits never stop coming. Brian Oxman, who has represented Michael and some of his siblings for more than ten years, says that Michael has given about 500 depositions in his lifetime and, amazingly, been involved in more than 1,500 lawsuits. If one figures that Michael didn’t start becoming involved in litigation until he was a professional entertainer of about ten years of age, and it’s unlikely that the suits started that early, it would amount to thirty-five years of lawsuits or an average of forty lawsuits a year.
Michael, of course, is not the only one giving depositions – all of the litigants are required to do so, as well. Such interrogations then become public record and, often, the foundation for interesting assertions. Earlier this year, as a result of depositions given during a lawsuit filed against Michael, it was reported by
Vanity Fair
that he hired a witch doctor named, Baba, to sacrifice forty-two cows in order to curse David Geffen, Steven Spielberg and dozens of others on a Hate List. Sure, it’s preposterous, but in Michael’s world – one in which he whisks his baby out of a hospital, ‘with all the placenta and everything all over her’ – it could be argued that anything goes.
In Michael’s song ‘Tabloid Junkie’ he wrote, ‘Just because you read it in a magazine or see it on a TV screen don’t make it factual.’ He might have added,’… or read it in a deposition.’
Michael becomes anxious about each lawsuit filed against him, but often not until it involves his personal participation which is usually at the time of deposition. ‘He has, on some occasions in the past, not eaten when he should,’ says Oxman. ‘He can become very concerned and nervous at depositions. He doesn’t like lawsuits, and it makes him ill to have to cope with litigation that people heap on him. He is tired of being sued. But this is the kind of life that Michael leads. No one wants to be reasonable. Everyone wants to be crazy.’