Jacko, His Rise and Fall: The Social and Sexual History of Michael Jackson (31 page)

At the Grammy Awards in February of 1984 at the Shrine Auditorium in
Los Angeles, Michael remembered Hepburn's advice. He removed his sunglasses "for the girls in the balcony."

Oddly enough, in a picture that Hepburn consented to pose for with
Michael, it was she who was wearing the sunglasses-and Jackie Kennedy's
1960s style at that.

On the set of On Golden Pond in New Hampshire, Michael could sit
patiently for hours, listening to Hepburn's "bits of wisdom" acquired over
many a decade of what she called "my trials and tribulations. If you survive
long enough, you're revered-rather like an old landmark building."

Long after Michael had left the set of On Golden Pond, he continued his
phone dialogue with Hepburn. She said, "I always liked bad eggs, always,
always-and always attracted them. I had a lot of energy and looked as if I
was (and I was) hard to get. I wasn't mad about the male sex-perfectly independent, never had any intention of getting married, wanted to paddle my own
canoe, didn't want anyone to pay my way."

In time, Hepburn introduced him to some of her grandnieces and grandnephews, some of whom belonged to the Jehovah's Witness clan. The actress
held the cult in total disdain, but introduced her extended family members to
Michael anyway. He often went door to door with them handing out pamphlets, many of which attacked "the sin" of homosexuality.

In 1981, at Michael's invitation, Hepburn agreed to go to her first rock
concert, starring Michael himself, as staged at Madison Square Garden in
New York. Thinking her grandniece would enjoy Michael's performance more
than she would, Hepburn took the nine year old with her.

Hepburn wanted to see for herself what "all the fuss was about, all those
hysterically screaming fans." Members in the audience that night included
Andy Warhol, Victoria Principal, Tatum O'Neal, Jane Fonda, and Steven
Spielberg.

"It's not my kind of music," Hepburn later admitted. "I prefer Judy
Garland. But the boy can move about the stage. He's got the grace of Fred
Astaire minus that bitch, Ginger Rogers, a woman I loathe to this day. That
dyed blonde heifer and I competed for the queenly throne of RKO and also for
the same beaus until I finally decided to let her have the worthless lot of them.
I mean, who would want Lew Ayres for more than a night?"

Bob Jones, Michael's publicist, later claimed that "I saw a man who
embarrassed himself at Katharine Hepburn's house." He was referring to the
night when Hepburn gave a dinner party honoring Michael at her Turtle Bay
residence in New York. Michael had ordered his photographer to wait outside.
After dinner, the photographer asked her if she'd pose with Michael for a picture. "Absolutely not!" she virtually shouted at him. "This is a private affairnot something to make the front page of the National Enquirer."

Before the night was over, Michael told her that he'd seen all her films.
Several writers, including biographer Scott Berg, later claimed that Michael
was "caught with his pants down. He was unable to name any."

Actually that was not quite true. Everyone from Liza Minnelli to Tatum
O'Neal, even La Toya, knew that Michael was addicted to Hepburn movies. He loved her voice and her haughty air on camera. Of course, Little Women,
with all its sentimentality, would forever remain his favorite but he also liked
Adam's Rib and The African Queen. He didn't like Suddenly, Last Summer.

At the time of the Turtle Bay dinner, Michael had not seen the film, Gone
With the Wind. When queried about which of her movies were his favorites,
he included Gone With the Wind among his favorites. She looked flabbergasted. "That, my dear boy, was a role I lost to one Vivien Leigh. The producer,
David O. Selznick, made the mistake of his life by not casting me as Scarlett
O'Hara. Vivien won only one Oscar for her performance. I would have won
three."

Now it was Michael's turn to look flabbergasted. "But I thought it was
possible to carry home only one Oscar per performance."

She laughed at this and took his arm, leading him toward the door since it
was her bedtime. "My dear boy, of course, you're right. I was speaking in
hyperbole."

"What does that mean?" Michael asked.

"Go home and look it up in the dictionary," she advised.

Later, Michael did just that but never found the word. "How could I look
it up in the dictionary if I don't know how to spell it?"

Irene Mayer Selznick, the daughter of Louis B. Mayer, was also invited to
that dinner in Turtle Bay, at 244 West 49th Street, but politely turned down the
invitation. Selznick told Bob Gottlieb, book editor: "Can you believe what
she's done now?" Selznick asked Gottlieb, referring to Hepburn, with whom
the bisexual Selznick had once had a love affair. "She's dared to invite me to
dinner with-of all people-Michael Jackson! Just how low can she sink? Is
Kate insane?"

To others of her friends, Selznick asked, "Just why is Kate hanging out
with the likes of Michael Jackson? You've heard of white trash. Jackson and
his whole family are black trash. The invitation to dinner is just another
attempt of Kate's vulgar, even pathetic, desperation to keep herself in the news
columns and to keep up with what she thinks is the current scene."

When Michael wasn't "hanging with" the elite of Hollywood, he was
rehearsing, writing his own songs, or recording with his brothers. He still hadn't broken from them. Far from it.

In 1980, Epic released Triumph, the album that would be backed by a
nationwide tour. "Can You Feel It?" was one of the hits from that album.

Carried to the far corners of America, the tour included the most intricate
"lighting magic" and pyrotechnics of any of the Jackson road show appearances to date. After singing "Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough" (not on the
Triumph album), Michael seemingly vanished in a puff of smoke as a special
effect created by the great magician Doug Henning.

In Atlanta, a major stopover on the tour, Michael told reporters: "I wish
the world was full of children. I plan to have twenty children of my own and
adopt kids, too." At the time of his appearance in that southern city, a series of
unsolved murders of black children was mysteriously occurring. As a sign of
solidarity, Michael requested that about a quarter of a million dollars from his
two shows there go to help needy black families.

The tour began in Memphis on the hot summer night of July 9, 1981, ending in a record-breaking four-night performance on other hot nights at the
Forum in Los Angeles. When Joe finally tallied up the gross for his sons, it
came to an astonishing five million dollars. "My boys are here to stay-they
ain't going nowhere," Joe said. "They are the top of the heap, and I'm gonna
see that's where they remain."

On the tour, the Jacksons-with Michael, of course, as the star attraction-played 39 cities. Michael hinted that this might be his last tour with his
brothers. In an uncharitable moment, he said, "I'm fed up with all the screaming fans, the security problems, the different environments every night. I plan
to continue to do records, but I want to devote time to making movies. I plan
to become an even bigger film star than I am a singer."

Throughout the tour, Michael was constantly asked by reporters if he
planned to split from his brothers and establish himself as a solo recording
artist. His answer to Ebony magazine was enigmatic at best. "Yes and no!"
Michael said.

An oddity on the Triumph tour was a song called "This Place Hotel."
When Michael had originally written it, he'd called it "Heartbreak Hotel," but
executives at Epic had insisted on a change of name. Michael later said, "I
swear that was a phrase that came out of my head, and I wasn't thinking of
any other song when I wrote it." No one believed Michael. How could he not
have thought of Elvis's big-time hit when he wrote "Heartbreak Hotel?"

"As important as Elvis was to music, black as well as white, he just wasn't an influence on me," Michael claimed. "I guess he was too early for me.
Maybe it was timing more than anything else. By the time our song had come
out, people thought that if I kept living in seclusion the way I was, I might die
the way he did. The parallels aren't there as far as I'm concerned, and I was
never much for scare tactics. Still, the way Elvis destroyed himself interests
me, because I don't ever want to walk those grounds myself."

"Heartbreak Hotel" (Michael's version) opens with a scream. The voice
was that of La Toya. Michael himself admitted that this was "not the most auspicious start to a recording career."

Michael said that his version of "Heartbreak Hotel" had "revenge in it and
I am fascinated by the concept of revenge."

Michael, watching the 1975 Hepburn film, Love Among the Ruins, heard her utter a line that had stayed in his mind. "There's no harm in a little
revenge," Hepburn said to movie audiences, perhaps meaning it in her private
life as well.

The performance attended by Hepburn at Madison Square Garden was
recorded and later distributed by Epic as a two-album set in 1981.

Jacksonmania was sweeping the land. Wherever you went in America,
including driving in your own car, you could hear The Jackson 5, The
Jacksons, or Michael as a solo artist singing such 70s favorites as "Rockin'
Robin" or "Ain't No Sunshine."

Like a Nora Roberts novel recycled from the 1980s to capitalize off her
subsequent fame, Motown continued to release Jackson records from its backlog. In 1981, the company reissued the previously recorded "One Day in
Your Life," which became Michael's first solo hit in Britain. That same year,
Motown also released Michael's single, "We're Almost There."

After seeing Michael perform at Madison Square Garden, Spielberg was
impressed. He decided at the end of the show that he wanted to approach
Michael about narrating the storybook for the E.T. album for MCA. Michael
had seen E. T. the Extra-Terrestrial three times and had cried every time. He
was delighted to accept the offer, especially when he learned that he would be
working with his friend, Quincy Jones, on the album.

But, first, Michael had one request. He wanted to meet E.T. Spielberg
arranged for him to meet the extra-terrestrial robot. "E.T. grabbed me in an
embrace," Michael later said. "He was so real that I was talking to him. I
kissed him before I left."

Michael told Ebony magazine that, "I really felt that I was E.T., and it was
because his story is the story of
my life in some ways. He's in a
strange place and wants to be
accepted, which is a situation
I've found myself in many
times. He's most comfortable
with children, and I have a
great love of kids. He gives
love, and wants love in return,
which is me."

MJ and ET

He also made an astonishing statement in noting that
E.T. could lift off and fly away
when he wanted to get away
from this Earth. "I can identify
with that," Michael said. "I also believe that a human being can fly. We just don't know how to think the
right thoughts and levitate ourselves off the ground."

In an interview with reporter Gerri Hirshey, Spielberg said, "I've never
seen anybody like that Michael Jackson. He's an emotional star child. Those
were Michael's actual tears heard on the recording when E.T. lays dying."

Although many in the business have derisively dismissed Michael as a
"flighty faggot" or "for being out of touch with reality," others such as
Spielberg sensed a strong business sense in him.

Since turning 21, Michael had managed his own affairs, earning more
money than any other singer in the history of music. When his contract with
Joe expired, Michael took over the reins of his own career.

The downside to Michael's show business savvy is that he also was
launched into a lifestyle as a big-spending performer who in time would
squander millions and millions of dollars. "As a big spender, Michael would
in time cause Elvis to blush in his grave," said Bob Jones.

Michael wasn't thinking about Elvis but the biggest-selling female
singing star of all time when he flew the Concorde from London to Los
Angeles after a visit with Paul McCartney. Diana Ross needed a hit solo for
her new album, Silk Electric, for RCA.

Michael had a pet snake at Encino-called "Muscles"-and as he flew
across the Atlantic the nucleus of a song came to him. "I didn't have a tape
recorder when the song popped into my head," he said. "So I had to suffer
through the faster-than-sound flight until I reached Encino. As soon as I did, I
whipped that baby onto tape."

Both Ross and executives at RCA were surprised at the message of the
song. It wasn't an ode to a snake but extolled the joy of having the muscles of
a man "all over your body."

"If written and sung by a male singer," said an executive at RCA,
"`Muscles' would be as gay as a goose, as queer as a nine-dollar bill, as faggy
as a drag queen at three
o'clock in the morning at
an all-male revue where
the strippers show it hard.
I don't give a fuck what
Jacko says. The song is a
paean to well-built
hunks."