Hayvenhurst
Joseph Jackson is known among his friends and associates as a man given to overextending himself by investing in unsteady business ventures outside of the careers of his children. Of course, some of the investments have been profitable. For instance, a limousine company he owned did manage to turn a profit. More often, though, Joseph would lose his investment and then some. For instance, he once started his own record company, which cost him a small fortune. He had also invested a great deal of money in producing and managing singing groups, perhaps to prove that he could do for others what he had done for his sons. However, none of his acts ever amounted to much, if anything. And who in his circle would ever forget ‘Joe-Cola’, his own soft drink – which also failed in the marketplace? One had to give him credit for trying, though. He was never afraid to take a chance, invest in what he thought might be a good idea and take it all the way to fruition. After all, that's how he got The Jackson 5 to Los Angeles, and to Motown, wasn't it?
By the beginning of 1981, however, Joseph was having financial problems serious enough to warrant his wanting to sell the Encino estate. It's a tribute to him that he never attempted to siphon money from his children's income to solve his own financial problems. ‘I'd say we were among a fortunate few artists who walked away from a childhood in the business with anything substantial – money, real estate, other investments,’ Michael would say. ‘My father set all these up for us. To this day I'm thankful he didn't try to take all our money for himself, the way so many parents of child stars have. Imagine stealing from your own children. My father never did anything like that.’
Joseph may have been a lot of things, but he wasn't was a thief. He took care of his children's investments, and if they lost money – and all of them did, except for Michael and Janet – it may be because they have inherited Joseph's penchant for bad investments. It wasn't because they didn't receive money that was owed to them.
Joseph found the perfect buyer for his Encino estate: his own son, Michael.
One might wonder if Joseph first examined the ramifications of his offer to Michael before he made it. No doubt, once he changed roles from owner to tenant, his relationship with Michael would change as well. Barring unusual circumstances, in most familial situations, the heads of the family provides the lodgings; when the children become adults, they move on to their own homes. Changing roles in a basic way can often contribute to family dysfunction. Joseph had always held fast to the theory that a father should be able to control his children – no matter what their ages, their desires, their expertise. Being so determined to be in charge, it's surprising that Joseph never realized how threatened he would eventually feel by having to live in his son's house – especially when it had once been his own. Of course, Joseph was dealing with Michael, and he knew and understood Michael's gentleness towards Katherine, if not towards him. He knew that Michael wouldn't kick them out of the house. In the end, Michael paid about $500,000 for his equity in the estate. Katherine and Joseph owned the other half. Eventually, Joseph would sell his quarter to Michael, leaving 25 per cent to Katherine. One might also wonder if he had considered that the next time Katherine wanted to evict him, it might be a lot more likely that he would have to leave since she and Michael owned the estate, not him.
Once he took over part-ownership, Michael decided to completely demolish and rebuilt the house. The address may have remained the same, but the new estate – Michael's estate, which took two years to finish – became palatial in scope. What sweet and poetic justice it was that Michael was able to destroy the house in which he had so many bad memories and, from its ashes, raise a new one, perhaps fresh with possibilities for the future. While on tour in England a few years earlier, he had become enchanted by the Tudor-style mansions he saw in the countryside. When finished, the estate was – and still is, today – indeed, special.
The brick-laid drive opened to an ornate three-tiered white fountain in front of a Tudor-style home. All of the windows of the house were made of leaded stained glass with bevelled panes. When Michael was in residence, the Rolls-Royce that Tatum O'Neal helped him select sat parked in front of the four-car Tudor-style garage opposite the home. (Michael was still uneasy about driving; he would much rather take an hour-long detour than have to drive on the freeway in Los Angeles. ‘I can't get on them,’ he complained, ‘and I can't get off them, either.’)
A large ‘Welcome’ sign appeared above the garage doors. In the centre of the garage structure stood an oversized clock with Roman numerals. Upstairs, on the second floor of the garage, a visitor entered a three-room picture gallery with hundreds of photographs of the Jackson family on the walls and even the ceilings.
Outside, graceful black and white swans could be found languishing in backyard ponds. A pair of peacocks; two llamas; two deer, a giraffe and a ram were also in residence. The animals, kept in stables at night, were allowed to roam freely during the day. Muscles, the eight-foot boa constrictor, was, he told me, ‘trained to eat interviewers’. Once, Katherine was straightening out the living room when she discovered Muscles under one of the couch cushions. She let out a scream that might have been heard all over Encino.
Next to the garage, Michael constructed a mini-version of Disneyland's Main Street U.S.A., including the candy store. There was a replica of a robotic Abraham Lincoln, which spoke, just as the Lincoln attraction did at Disneyland. Whenever Michael went to Disneyland, his ‘favourite place on earth’, there would be total chaos because of his fame. Therefore, he preferred the Disney employees to lead him through the back doors and tunnels of the attractions. In Encino, he built his own little world of Disney, a precursor to the expansive amusement park he would one day build at Neverland. Other puppet characters were added to the private amusement park. ‘These are just like real people,’ Michael explained to the writer who looked at them askance. ‘Except they don't grab at you or ask you for favours. I feel comfortable with these figures. They are my personal friends.’
Winding brick paths decorated with exotic flowers and neatly cut shrubs led to secluded corners of the large estate where Michael would often wander alone to meditate. The swimming pool was huge and inviting. Water spouted from four fountainheads carved like bearded Neptunes on a retaining wall. A waterfall spilt in front of two lovebirds, the ceramic fashioned in elaborate, colourful tile work. Cool-looking water cascaded down into the main pool, and then flowed into a bubbling Jacuzzi.
On the ground floor of the main house was a thirty-two-seat theatre with plush red velvet seats and equipped with 16-millimetre and 35-millimetre projectors. The walls and the curtain in front of the screen were teal blue. Michael spent countless hours in the theatre; there were always Fred Astaire movies ready to be screened, as well as Three Stooges films. ‘I put all this stuff in here,’ he observed, ‘soI will never have to go out
there,
’ he said, indicating to the outside world.
There was also a wood-panelled trophy room where many of Michael's trophies were displayed in mahogany cases. All of the Jacksons' gold and platinum albums cover the walls. The family joked that if LaToya ever managed to get a gold album, there will be no place to hang it. (So far, that has not been a problem.)
Amid the magazine covers and other memorabilia, there was a six-foot-long diorama of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. ‘One dayI got a call from Mike,’ recalled Steve Howell, who was employed by Michael as a video historian. ‘“Come by with the video equipment, you'll never guess who's comin' over.” “Who?” I asked. “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs!” He'd hired Disney's costumed actors. I said, “Oh, okay, cool.” Nothing was unusual when you worked for Michael.’
Steve's video of that day shows a childlike Michael, twenty-six years old at the time, playing with the dwarfs in the trophy room and being serenaded by Snow White. From the expression on his face, one might think it was one of the happiest days of his life.
A circular white marble staircase with a green carpeted runner led to the upstairs quarters: a gym, and four bedroom suites, each with its own bathroom. Michael's bedroom was large and cluttered. ‘I just want room to dance and have my books,’ he said. He had no bed; he slept next to the fireplace on the floor, which was covered with a plush green rug. Some of the walls were covered with fabric. Pictures of Peter Pan hung on others. There were wooden shutters over the windows, which he usually kept closed. The room was always a mess, not slobbish, just messy – books and records were everywhere, videotapes and music tapes piled high. Fan mail was stacked in the corners.
Also in the bedroom were five female mannequins of different ethnic groups – Caucasian, Oriental, Indian and two blacks. They were posed, looking with blank eyes at visitors. Well dressed and life-sized, they looked like high-fashion models, wearing expensive clothing. Michael said that he originally planned to have one room in the house specifically for the mannequins, but he changed his mind and decided to keep his plastic friends in his room. Katherine must have been relieved.
‘I guess I want to bring them to life,’ Michael explained. ‘I like to imagine talking to them. You know what I think it is? Yeah, I think I'll say it. I think I'm accompanying myself with friends I never had. I probably have two friends. And I just got them. Being an entertainer, you just can't tell who is your friend. So, I surround myself with peopleI want to be my friends. And I can do that with mannequins. I'll talk to them.’
Dr Paul Gabriel, a professor of clinical psychiatry at New York University Medical Center, has a theory about Michael's penchant for mannequins – which he still has today, as seen on Martin Bashir's 2003 documentary about him: ‘That's a special eccentricity, in the category of narcissism. We like to think we're beautiful. We make images of ourselves. Children are very narcissistic. They see themselves in their dolls, and that's what this is about for Michael Jackson. After age five or six, they begin to give some of that up, but he apparently never did that.’
Later, there would be a crib in the corner of the bedroom, which was where Michael's chimpanzee, Bubbles – who became a celebrity himself – slept.
Michael's bathroom was impressive, all black marble and gold. The sinks had brass swans for faucets.
A winding stairway led from the bedroom up to a private balcony on which Michael had an outdoor Jacuzzi for his own use.
LaToya's bedroom was down the hall from Michael's. ‘He makes so much noise,’ she once complained. ‘You hear music in his room when he's trying to create. Or you hear the Three Stooges on TV, and he's up all night, laughing. The light is always on; Michael is forever reading books. You can't get in his room for the books and junk. I feel sorry for the housekeeper.’ Ever the practical jokester, Michael enjoyed hiding bugs and spiders under LaToya's sheets so that she would scream upon finding them. Also, said LaToya, Michael wouldn't think twice about going into anybody's bedroom, opening drawers, and looking inside. He would frequently exasperate his family members by poking his nose into their personal businesses, but he would become extremely upset if anyone ever did such a thing to him.
Hayvenhurst – unofficially named after the Encino street on which it was located – was the perfect retreat for Michael Jackson. It was certainly a far cry from the modest home in which he had been raised as a small child, and even from the traditional home that had previously been on the property. From the roof of the house, Michael would watch the sunset and the glow of the twinkly white lights that decorated all of the property's trees and outlined the framework of the house.