PrologueI first met Michael Jackson when we were both children. The Jackson 5 had just appeared at the Philadelphia Convention Center on Saturday evening, 2 May 1970, their first performance subsequent to signing with Motown Records. It was a heady time for the boys; Michael was a very young eleven-year-old trying to come to terms with it all. I remember him then being happy, so full of life. Something happened along the way, though… we both grew up, but in very different ways.
When I moved to Los Angeles at the age of eighteen to begin my career as a writer, I regularly interviewed Michael for magazine features. I clearly remember the dayI wrote ‘Michael Jackson Turns 21.’ Then, there was ‘Michael Jackson Turns 25.’ ‘Michael Jackson Turns 30,’ and so many other articles about him in celebration of milestones along the way, and those of his talented family members. As he grew older, I watched with mounting concern and confusion as Michael transformed himself from a cute little black kid to… what he is, today. As a journalist and frequent chronicler of Michael's life, I had somehow to make sense of what was happening, putting the pieces of the puzzle together to see how they fit in with the Michael I had known of yesteryear. Thanks to my many encounters with him, I am able to quote at first hand his intimate reactions to so much of what has taken place during his life and career.
In 1977, when I was at the Jackson home in Encino, California, to interview the family, Michael wandered into the room with bandages on his face; he was nineteen at the time. I remember being dismayed. I thought then that rumours his father, Joseph, was beating him might be true, and that bothered me for many years. Actually, as I later learned, he had just had the second of many plastic surgeries.
In another interview, conducted after Michael had just returned from making
The Wiz
in New York in 1978, he mentioned to me that he had certain ‘secrets’ he didn't wish to reveal to me, adding that ‘
everybody
has deep, dark secrets’. I never forgot his words, especially as the years went by and he became stranger, his behaviour more opaque and incomprehensible to many people.
Why are we still so fascinated by Michael Jackson after all of this time? Is it because of his awe-inspiring talent? Of course, that's part of it. The voice is instantly recognizable, and the dance moves are his and his alone. Just as he had been influenced by trailblazers before him, such as Jackie Wilson and James Brown, he has influenced a generation of entertainers. When you watch Justin Timberlake perform, does he remind you of anyone else?
Michael is also an important touchstone for many of us, personally. Since he's been famous for more than thirty years, some of us can mark moments in our lives by certain achievements in his. Many of us are old enough to remember how impossibly adorable and prodigious he was as lead singer of The Jackson 5, and we can remember where we were at when the brothers first became famous. We may recall the first time we saw him glide across a stage or screen doing the magical ‘Moonwalk’; we remember the day we first saw the ‘We are the World’ video, in which he led an all-star cast in the first charitable effort of its kind in the United States; we remember his amazing concert appearances and groundbreaking videos.
To say that Michael has succeeded spectacularly in his career is to state the obvious. However, as record-breaking and historical as his artistry has been, it is his private life that has kept many of us on tenterhooks.
We probably also remember the first time we saw each of his new physical ‘looks’, and wondered what on earth that boy was doing to his face.
Did you ever wonder if he was straight? Or gay? Or asexual?
What did you think when you first heard that he had been accused of being a paedophile?
Do you remember seeing the emotional speech from Neverland, during which he spoke of the police having photographed ‘my body, including my penis, my buttocks, my lower torso, thighs and any other areas they wanted’?
And what of Lisa Marie Presley and Debbie Rowe, his mysterious ex-wives? Have you ever speculated about the true nature of their relationships with him?
Now, he has children and makes them wear masks in public.
‘How does it feel when you're alone, and you're cold inside?’ Michael asked in his song ‘Stranger in Moscow’. Indeed, how in the world, we wonder, did he turn out as he has?
Of course, fame twists everything. It's a strange phenomenon that no one but the famous can truly understand. However, ask yourself: if your entire life had been played out under heavy and unyielding scrutiny, made even more torturous by an abusive father, what would you be like? What if you were infantilized by an adoring public who celebrated you primarily as a talented youngster? Do you think you might, over time, be compelled to infantilize yourself? Out of frustration and desperation, might you revolt and begin to do whatever you wished without considering the logic of your decisions, the common sense of your choices, or the propriety of your behaviour?
What if you also had an inordinate amount of wealth, giving you the power to redress your deepest insecurities and desires by any means at your disposal, no matter how extreme, and with no one around daring to challenge you? Don't like the colour of your skin? Fade it away. Never had a real childhood? Say hello to Neverland. Want to sleep in the same bed with boys? No problem, there. Don't like how you look? Change your face. Still don't like it? Change it to another face, and another and another.
Why can't he see what's happening to himself? we ask about Michael. Why doesn't he
understand?
How does he see himself, anyway? As the King of Pop, a trailblazing, misunderstood musical genius whose career spans an entire lifetime? Or an insecure, basically unhappy adult with enough money and power to do whatever he likes and get away with it? Perhaps only one thing is certain: if you were an unfettered combination of both, chances are you would be like… Michael Jackson.