Michael Jackson (42 page)

‘He's finished,’ Michael decided of Joseph. Katherine may not have been able to get rid of him as a husband, but Michael was
sure able to unload him as a manager. Once Michael Jackson made up his mind to fire someone, he stuck to the decision, no
matter who the person was – even his own father.

‘Joseph knew it was coming,’ said Joseph's friend of fifteen years, Larry Anderson. ‘He knew his time was up.’

Michael had John Branca draw up the official documents informing Joseph that his managerial services would no longer be required.
Michael then left the house the day he knew they would be delivered by messenger. He stayed away from home until Joseph had
time to get used to the idea. ‘It's not easy firing your father,’ he would later explain, in what was quite an understatement.

In a rare show of unity, the brothers acted as one on this decision. They wanted Joseph out too and if Michael was prepared
to take the first step they would follow suite.
None
of them renewed his contract with Joseph.

Joseph was angry at first, but soon he was crushed. ‘I can't believe they're leaving me,’ he told Katherine. And his despair
caused great conflict in Katherine. Of course she was livid with him about his treatment of her; the divorce was still pending.
However, her heart went out to him over the matter of their sons. ‘I knew how much he had done for them,’ she would later
say, ‘and this… well, this was just plain suffering. I didn't want to see him suffer.’

According to one of Michael's advisers, Michael had a meeting with Joseph in the living room of the Encino house to discuss
the matter. Michel asked his adviser to be present because he didn't want to meet with Joseph alone.

‘The fact that you can't even talk to me unless you have
this
guy here,’ Joseph said, motioning to the adviser, ‘it hurts me, Michael. Do you know how it makes me feel?’ He had tears
in his eyes; he looked broken. ‘You know how I feel about you. Why do I always have to
say
it?’

Michael averted his eyes; he didn't even want to look at his father. ‘You never said it, Joseph,’ he said, venomously. ‘Don't
act like you ever said it, even once, because you never said it.’

‘After all I've done for you and your brothers?’ Joseph asked. ‘Think about it. It's always been about you and your brothers.
That's how I say it.’

Michael shot him a look of disdain. ‘Oh yeah?’ he responded, bitterly. ‘And what about all you've done to Kate? What's
that
been about, Joseph?’

Michael's comment set Joseph off, according to the witness's memory. ‘That ain't got nothin' to do with nothin',’ he said,
raising his voice to a level that made Michael recoil. Joseph rose so that he was standing above his son, who was still seated.
‘My marriage has nothing to do with you, Michael,’ he shouted at him. ‘You know I love your mother. It's between her and me.’

Michael stood up to face his father, his dark eyes were blazing. ‘It's between
all of us,
Joseph,’ he exclaimed. ‘If you can't see that, then I don't know what to tell you.’ He stormed out of the room.

Joseph then turned on the adviser. ‘It's because of you,’ he said in a hurting but still furious voice. ‘You put this bullshit
in my son's head and you're ruining our family. It's because of
you.
’ He then crumpled into a chair. Joseph appeared to be reeling as if, for him, all logic, fairness and common sense had suddenly
been suspended and now…
this.
He put his face in his hands and sat in his chair, shaking his head in disbelief.

In the summer of 1983, those Jacksons living at the Hayvenhurst estate – Michael, Janet, LaToya, and Joseph and Katherine – existed
in a state of emotional siege. Imagine it: Michael had fired Joseph as his manager, yet they were still living in the same
house together. Katherine had filed to divorce Joseph, yet he was sleeping down the hall. Of course, the sensible thing would
have been for him to move out. However, Joseph wasn't going anywhere. The fact that he didn't even own the house any longer
was irrelevant.

‘My father's very stern, very strict,’ LaToya complained to freelance writer Todd Gold at this time. ‘Deep down inside, he's
a wonderful guy, but you have to know him. If you don't, you can get the wrong impression. You'd think that he's mean and
whatever he says goes, which it does. Sometimes, though, if you really fight it out, you can have your way.’ She let out an
exasperated sigh. ‘But it's just not worth it.’

As soon as Joseph would leave the estate for a day of work elsewhere, a sense of relief washed over the premises. On Saturdays,
for instance, when he went to visit Joh'Vonnie, the Hayvenhurst household came alive. LaToya told Todd Gold, ‘We invite lots
of kids over and play some movies in the theatre, and the popcorn machine's going, the animals are all out, and everyone's
dancing to music.’

Throughout the week, Michael tried to make certain that he never crossed paths with Joseph. Should the two accidentally meet,
a loud argument would be the inevitable result. Michael would end up in his room, sobbing, Katherine trailing him there. Joseph
would follow. There would be shouting, then more crying. Doors would slam all around. The tension affected everyone; Janet
and LaToya spent a lot of time in their bedrooms with their music turned up.

Of course, the Jacksons may have been having tough personal times, but they were still the Jacksons and therefore lived with
a sense of entitlement that was, sometimes, astounding. They all expected devotion from their staff; employees had no lives
of their own. Steve Howell, Michael's videographer at the time, remembered what happened when he took a vacation to Lake Tahoe.
‘I was there with my girl and made the mistake of calling the house to see if everything was okay. “You have to get back here
right away,” Bill Bray, Michael's security man, told me hysterically. “There's no television reception and Michael needs to
watch TV! Get back here right away. So I cancelled the rest of my trip, flew back to Los Angeles, bee-lined it to the house,
only to discover that the cable wire was unplugged. I plugged it into the wall and the TV went on, and Michael sat down to
watch TV. “Thanks,” he said.’

Good help was hard to find, even in Encino. At one point, money was stolen from one of the bedrooms. The Jacksons suspected
a maid. They then began leaving money out in view, and would then sneak about and peer around corners to see who would take
it. Ah-ha! It
was
the maid. Michael was the one who busted her; twenty bucks! After that, the family employees were often tested. Katherine
would leave the alarm on the closet unarmed, the one in which she kept her minks, chinchillas, and other expensive furs. She
would leave the door slightly ajar so anyone walking by could see what was inside. She would then stand very still at a nearby
vantage point to see who expressed the most interest in the furs. That person would be scrutinized very carefully from then
onward. ‘Keep your eye on that one,’ she would tell Michael. ‘I don't trust her as far as I can throw her.’ Perhaps this kind
of surveillance kept their minds off their troubles with Joseph.

During this time, outsiders were not welcome at Hayvenhurst, especially the press who might sniff out any trouble on the home
front. Of course, persistent fans were always a problem. ‘I love my fans, but I'm afraid of them,’ Michael told photo journalist
Dave Nussbaum. ‘Some of them will do anything to get to you. They don't realize that what they are doing might hurt you,’
Michael talked of a fan who had managed to get beyond the gate. ‘We woke up and found her sitting by the pool. She had jumped
the gate. Luckily our dogs were caged at the time. They're usually out, and they would have
destroyed
her. We brought her inside. She demanded not to leave, in a very rude way, so we held her there until we had somebody come
and take her out.’

On his way out, the reporter asked Michael if he would like to join him for a bite to eat.

‘Oh, no,’ Michael said, shaking his head. ‘I can't go out there.’ He motioned beyond the electronic gate. ‘They'll get me
for sure. They're around the corner, and they want to get their hands on me.’ The terror in his eyes seemed genuine. ‘I just
don't want to go out there.’

As Michael talked to the reporter, his security man, Bill Bray – a former police officer – stood nearby watching.

Bray, who worked with Michael until his recent retirement, was formidable in his day. Once, when a Jackson employee left the
estate, a fan slipped in as the gate opened.

Steve Howell recalled, ‘I was talking to Mike in the front yard. It was about three in the afternoon. I remember the time
of day because at three – when the kids got out of school – two guards went on duty, instead of one. Mike and I were talking,
and the next thing I knew this girl walked up to us and said hello. Then, she gave him a big bear hug. With her back to me,
Mike motioned to me with his arms helplessly as if to say, Who is this person? I was about to say something when, suddenly,
I felt the air break. Something moved like –
whoosh!
– the speed of light. It was Bill Bray.

‘He grabbed that chick, smacked her to the ground, handcuffed her and dragged her out of there. The cops came, took her away.
She was crying hysterically, probably scared to death. Michael took it all in, turned to me and without missing a beat, said,
“So, anyway…” And we went back to talking like nothing had happened.

‘We had a lot of fifty-one fiftys around there, so that was nothing new.’ A 51–50, Steve Howell explained, was police terminology
for a mentally unbalanced person.

*

How long could the siege continue? Joseph had a good deal of resolve and, as he may have put it at the time, ‘It will continue
for as damn well long as I
want
it to continue.’

Finally, Katherine had enough of the divorce drama – which was dragging on throughout this parallel family crisis. Years later,
she explained her predicament. ‘I was stuck between a rock and a hard place,’ she recalled. ‘Even though I wanted Joe out,
I didn't want to go public by having him forcibly removed. I knew that the press would jump on the story, and I couldn't bear
the publicity. It was the strangest of times for me. Some days, just the sight of him would fill me with anger. Other times,
I found myself talking to him as if nothing had ever happened between us.’

After ten months, Katherine decided to withdraw the divorce papers. Without Joseph, she decided she would only lead an empty
and shallow existence, anyway. She loved him still, she told herself, though she said she didn't know why she felt that way.

‘A part of me believes that a person hurts herself more than the person she's feuding with by holding a grudge. Also,’ she
explained, ‘I subscribe to Christ's teaching on forgiveness. How many times, He said, do you forgive a person? Seventy times
seven… as many as it takes.

‘But I'm not going to pretend that suddenly everything was the way it used to be between Joe and me,’ she concluded, perhaps
somewhat romanticizing her tumultuous history with him. ‘Because it wasn't.’

Michael Jackson suspected that, with his parents now reconciled, Joseph might expect to be welcomed back into the fold not
only as Katherine's husband, but also as the boys' manager. ‘And that's not gonna happen,’ he told Janet, according to her
memory. ‘Mother may want him back, but I don't, and I don't think my brothers do, either. There's no way they'll let him back
in.’

Joseph was a bit craftier, however, than Michael may have thought because he did have a plan to get ‘back in’ and it was one
he knew that Michael's brothers would find irresistible: a reunion tour.

Many of the artists who participated in the Motown anniversary television special felt a new sense of brotherhood and camaraderie
with the label. After the programme, Berry Gordy re-signed The Four Tops to the company and teamed them with The Temptations
on vinyl, just as they had been united on stage that evening in Pasadena. Other artists began to negotiate with Berry, as
well. Holland-Dozier-Holland were back, and even Diana Ross was socializing with Berry again. It was as if they were all trying
to recapture the feeling they had had during the glory days of Motown – everyone, that is, except Jermaine Jackson.

After the show was taped, Jermaine began meeting with his brothers and Joseph about the possibility of his leaving Motown,
reuniting with the group, and going out on the road again, together. Michael knew nothing about these meetings. ‘Michael's
success can only help us,’ Tito said. ‘He's way up there above us, and maybe he can throw down a rope and let us climb it.’
A tour would also relieve Marlon of certain financial pressures. He and his wife, Carol, had separated but were now reconciled.
They were determined to make their marriage work, despite their financial challenges. They needed some assistance, however.

At this time, the brothers also prepared a new Jacksons album for CBS called
Victory.
Michael did not want to be involved in the project. He would write and sing only two tracks and participate in the writing
of a third, and even that much participation was too much for him. However, as they recorded the album, the brothers became
excited at the prospect of touring to promote it once it was released.