Michael Jackson (60 page)

In May 2003, when he was about to release the tamed
Michael Jackson's Private Home Movies
documentary to combat the sensational one by Martin Bashir, he told
People, ‘
I want people to see the real me. I don't have sex with little kids. I don't sleep in hyperbaric chambers, and don't have
elephant bones in my body. So many things are said about me, and I have no idea where they came from.’

In the end, the hard truth probably hurts more than any wacky fiction: Michael Jackson is responsible for his own image. He's
given the media plenty to work with over the years and, in turn, the media has assisted him in achieving what he once stated
was his ultimate goal, that of making his life ‘the greatest show on earth’.

By August 1987, after many years of acrimonious litigation, Jackie Jackson's marriage had officially ended, mostly due to
his unfaithfulness to Enid. Two months later, Jermaine's marriage ended after almost fourteen years. Again, his relationships
with other women was key to the marriage breakdown. He even had a child with another woman, a baby Hazel had considered adopting
rather than end her marriage over it. Then, she became pregnant at the same time. It was an emotional rollercoaster for everyone
involved. To some family members, the scenario eerily resembled that of Joseph, Katherine and Joh'Vonnie.

One had to wonder who could be blamed for such emotional bankruptcy. Had Joseph's influence been so damaging to his sons that
they just didn't know how to conduct themselves in a relationship? Had Katherine's acceptance of Joseph's philandering warped
their view of fidelity? Or was show-business excess responsible for their behaviour? Were, they so accustomed to entitlement
brought about by fame, they knew no boundaries? Today, the brothers look back on the 1980s and regret many of their personal
decisions. ‘It's not easy growing up,’ Jermaine has said. ‘We made mistakes. We all make mistakes.’

While Hazel and Jermaine litigated their divorce, Hazel continued living at the couple's Benedict Canyon home in Beverly Hills
with their children. Meanwhile, Jermaine, his girlfriend Margaret and their new baby moved in with… Joseph and Katherine!

Katherine was opposed to having her son, his new romantic interest and their baby Jiving at Hayvenhurst since he was not yet
divorced from his wife. To her, the living arrangements did not seem, as she put it, ‘moral’. However, when Joseph insisted
that Jermaine and his new family moved into the estate (which Michael owned), the debate was over.

For Michael's part, he didn't approve of anything that had occurred in the marriages of Jackie and Jermaine. Even Tito was
having trouble with Dee Dee. However, he seemed to sense that the brothers were doing the best they could, under the circumstances
of the way they were raised. ‘We have had to learn a lot of stuff on our own about how to treat people,’ he told LaToya. ‘That's
what's so hard, isn't it? I mean, no one taught us anything.’

‘Except for Mother,’ LaToya added.

‘Except for Mother,’ Michael agreed. Then, after a beat. ‘Still, look at how hard she has had it. What are we supposed to
learn from that?’

By June 1987, Michael Jackson still did not want the
Bad
album to be released. He didn't think it was ready for commercial consumption and was nervous about the public's reaction
to it. He was also understandably concerned about comparisons to
Thriller.
‘ He's afraid to finish the record,’ said Frank Dileo. ‘The closer he gets to completing it, the more terrified he becomes
of that confrontation with the public’

While Michael was sweating out
Bad,
his sister Janet was finally having her first major recording success with the A&M album
Control.
At this time, Janet was in the thick of a power struggle with her father over just that – control: of her music career and
of her life.

Janet had recently aligned herself with thirty-one-year-old A&M Records executive John McClain. It had actually been Joseph's
idea that John – a brilliant songwriter and session guitarist turned manager – take Janet under his wing. John had been a friend
of the family's for years; Tito taught him to play his first licks.

After Janet had two commercially unsuccessful A&M albums, Joseph insisted that if she stayed with him and worked hard, she'd
be ‘as big as Michael’. However, Janet had her doubts. ‘She's no dummy,’ Joyce McCrae said. ‘She knew there was a reason why
Michael and her brothers left Joseph, and she didn't trust her father's management. She started listening to outsiders.’

Joseph hoped that John McClain would work with Janet to polish her image and enhance her career. To that end, John encouraged
Janet to diet and exercise, and sent her to Canyon Ranch in Arizona for ten days to get her in physical shape. More importantly,
he teamed her up with the writing-producing team of Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis for what would go on to become the
Control
album. He sent her to a vocal coach, teamed her with choreographer Paula Abdul for her videos, and, in short, made her a
major star, almost overnight. In doing so, of course, he also made an enemy out of Joseph; Janet now trusted John, not her
father. He had lost the boys, and now he was losing his daughter, too. All he would have left was LaToya… and, bless her soul,
no matter what she did she wasn't going to be ‘as big as Michael’.

‘We're the dog with the bone that all the other dogs are trying to get,’ Joseph said at the time. ‘And the pressure is always
on you to hold on to what you've got. As for Janet, I was putting her on stage in Vegas back when she was still a little girl.
The wheels had already been set in motion for Janet Jackson ‘and anyone who jumps on now will be getting a free ride. I don't
intend to let that happen.’

Joseph didn't want Janet to work with Jam and Lewis; when he first heard the
Control
album, he didn't like it – especially the title track and ‘What Have You Done for Me Lately?’ (which went on to become a huge
hit). It was little wonder that Joseph didn't appreciate the concept. The album represented a personal declaration of Janet's
freedom from her father and her family; in the title track, she claims that she will now have control over all her own affairs.
She sings as if still stung by her family's meddling in her marriage to James DeBarge.

Control
was one of the ten best-selling albums of 1986, so Janet had reason to question Joseph's judgement. John McClain said that
he would have been ‘scared’ if Joseph had championed the record because, as he put it, ‘I wasn't trying to get a fifty-year-old
audience. I was trying to get these kids out here. And because I'm a lot younger than Joseph, I have a clear vibe on how to
do it.’

When Janet's album sold six million copies worldwide, Michael was ambivalent about its success. One of the reasons he had
such difficulty conceptualizing the follow-up to
Thriller
was that he was so rattled by Janet's
Control
and the public's overwhelming reaction to it. ‘Michael is used to being the star of that family,’ a family friend said. ‘He
was not used to seeing anyone get as much attention as Janet got. It got to the point where he didn't want to dance around
her because he was afraid she'd steal his steps. That's how bad it got. Janet is also competitive but has always been afraid
to admit it. She didn't want to admit to herself that what she really wanted out of her life was to be as big, as famous,
as Michael Jackson.’

‘God, you make me sick,’ Janet Jackson told her brother Michael one day. ‘I wish
Thriller
was
my
album.’ They laughed, but Janet wasn't kidding.

‘Well, Michael may not want her to be as big,’ John McClain observed at the time, ‘but it's no sin for
her
to want it.’

Finally, in July 1987, Michael Jackson's
Bad
was released to the public. If every artist on the planet envied the record-breaking success of
Thriller,
surely none of them wanted to be in Michael Jackson's Bass Weejuns when he tried to follow it up with a new record.
Bad
was a pleasing offering and probably would have been considered first-rate if it didn't have the dubious distinction of having
to follow up not only
Thriller
, but also the masterful
Off the Wall.
Ironically, in trying to lead themselves out of the woods, Michael and Quincy Jones followed the
Thriller
formula too closely. Songs like ‘The Way You Make Me Feel’ and ‘Another Part of Me’ were dance-floor marvels, but the pseudo-romance
of ‘Liberian Girl’, the album's answer to
Thriller
's ‘Lady in My Life’, didn't work as well. Nor could ‘Dirty Diana’, the production's appointed rock song – featuring Steve Stevens,
former Billy Idol guitarist – hold a candle to the more convincing ‘Beat It’.

The problem with
Bad,
critics argued, was that unlike
Off the Wall
and
Thriller,
it offered few truly memorable songs. Michael wrote most of
Bad
himself, perhaps propelled by his newfound interest in music publishing and the millions in songwriting royalties he garnered
from songs he wrote for the last two albums. Rod Temperton, whose talents helped make
Off the Wall
and
Thriller
such outstanding albums, was not represented. The album's most intriguing moment is the reflective ‘Man in the Mirror’, written
not by Michael but by Siedah Garrett and Glen Ballard. Having gospel stars Andrae Crouch and the Winans sing on the track
seemed a weak attempt to musically endear Michael to a black audience.

However, it was the album's title track that came under the most fire from the black music community because it seemed that
it should have been the easiest thing for Michael to pull off. Michael was black, his critics reasoned. He began with Motown.
He's a funky dancer. Vocally, his roots are steeped, at least to some extent, in gospel. Is ‘Bad’ the funkiest – the
blackest
– he could get? At best, noted most critics, ‘Bad’ was a lightweight attempt at a serious, black music.

The ‘Bad’ video was directed by Martin Scorsese, at Quincy Jones's suggestion. Michael was unfamiliar with Scorsese's work,
having seen only one film he directed,
New York, New York.
He had wanted George Lucas or Steven Spielberg to direct the video. However, at this time, Frank Dileo was trying to toughen
Michael's Peter Pan image and felt that another Spielberg-style fantasy would be counter-productive. Street music – particularly
the rap and hip-hop genres – had begun to dictate pop music and fashion. As a result, Frank thought it would be beneficial for
Michael to get back to ‘basics’. He believed the image of a street-tough cat would serve his client well.

From the start, there were problems on the set, especially when Michael tried to tell Scorsese how to direct the video. According
to a friend of Scorsese's, the filming of ‘Bad’ was ‘a nightmare’. Scorsese has said that the cost of the production went
‘two or three times over budget’, reaching about two million dollars. However, Scorsese has made no negative comments about
Michael and says he found him to be ‘sympathetic, sweet, and open’.

The ‘Bad’ script, written by novelist Richard Price, was inspired by the story of Edmund Perry, a Harlem youth who was educated
at a prep school and was shot to death by a New York plain-clothes policeman who claimed he had tried to mug him. What began
as a good idea – an attempt to recapture the rebellious spirit of ‘Beat It’, probably Jackson's most important video – ended up
an ill-conceived, albeit entertaining, parody.

‘Michael loves
West Side Story,
’ said dancer Casper, who danced in the ‘Bad’ video. ‘He had us watch the film one night. He sat on the bed and we dancers – me,
Jeffrey, Daniel, Greg Burge and some others – were sprawled all about in a hotel room. He'd have us watch some scenes, and when
he saw something he liked, he'd let out a yelp. “
Oooh,
did you see that? Did you feel that?” he'd say. That was the attitude he said he wanted in the video,
West Side Story.
’