You Are Not Alone_Michael, Through a Brother’s Eyes (20 page)

Earlier, while kicking our heels in the dressing room, Marlon noticed a small hole in the wall, reached by standing on a chair. We knew this was an exciting ‘find’ because his face was doing one of those screams without emitting noise. Clearly delirious, he waved us over, jabbing at this hole in the wall and keeping his hand over his mouth. One by one, we fought for our turn to place our eye to it … giving us direct sight into the neighbouring dressing room. There, sitting on the toilet, was a lady whose name shall remain
nameless, but Michael was beside himself, pointing to his ass to confirm that, yes, we had all seen her naked butt. Man, she would have killed us had she known, but on a night performing in front of the Queen, this one woman had provided us with our biggest thrill of the tour without even realising it. Even performing at the Liverpool Empire the following week and breaking all attendance records in the Beatles’ home city couldn’t beat that for a bunch of Indiana boys.

WHEN WE PLAYED THE MID-SOUTH COLISEUM
in Memphis, we were excited because it meant that we’d not only be reunited with Rebbie, but we’d get to meet her daughter, our new niece Stacee, then about 10 months old. As we flew in from another state, Rebbie drove from Kentucky to our hotel for the night and management arranged for a crib to be set up in a side room of one suite. No one was more excited than Michael when our eldest sister arrived and he was the perfect, doting uncle. He spent more time with Stacee, pulling faces to make her coo and laugh, than he did with anyone else. In fact, I don’t know who was entertaining whom as they crawled around on hands and knees. We left them alone, with Michael dangling a red, white and black transistor radio, shaped like a globe, over her crib. We must have been catching up with Rebbie in the adjoining room for about an hour when we wondered, ‘Is Michael still in there?’

Rebbie went to check. Seconds later, she popped her head around the door, waved us over, but put a finger to her lips. We all crept to the doorway and saw the funniest, cutest sight – Michael had climbed into the crib, cuddled up next to Stacee and fallen fast asleep. It was an angelic picture. Michael was 13 – a good two decades away from that horrible period in his life when some would suggest his pure love of children was sinister and perverted. And yet his empathy, gentleness and connection with children was always an intrinsic and innocent part of him.

The clues to his pure heart were not only evident in private, they were there to be seen in public, too. Of all the journalists who
interviewed him over the years, his favourite was a lady called Lisa Robinson. She was the one reporter he trusted, knowing she wouldn’t twist what he said. After his death in 2009, she wrote up a compilation in
Vanity Fair
of her numerous taped interviews. In one segment, she republished a Q&A session she had done with Michael.

How many children would you like to have?
20. Adopted. All races
.

What is your most prized possession?
A child
…

It dated from 1977. Michael was 17 years old.

AUSTRALIA FELT LIKE ANOTHER PLANET, AND
with each new frontier we conquered, Rose Fine had us reading about different histories, cultures and peoples. Wherever we went, she scheduled the odd afternoon of sightseeing. To her, touring with the Jackson 5 was a grand version of a school field trip. Australia greeted us like royalty and rolled out the red carpet. At one place, there was a reception with a fancy buffet fit for a king. I can’t pinpoint the exact city, but the Aussie hospitality was so legendary that everywhere seemed the same. Anyway, we were by now so slick with the social pleasantries that any official event was part of the routine and we worked the room, smiling away the jet-lag.

As we mingled, Joseph wandered off and approached a crowd of about a 100 black teenagers, standing behind a fence. They were Aboriginals. Rose had told us how Sydney Opera House sits on Bennelong Point, a camp taken from the Aboriginal people by the British in pre-colonial days. We were starting to wonder what Joseph was doing when he marched over and said he wanted to invite this group inside. The organisers told him that wouldn’t be permitted ‘because they are Aboriginal.’ To someone who had striven for respect and equality as a black man, this was a red rag to a bull. Next thing we knew, he was back at the fence, taking a young Aboriginal girl by the hand and pulling her through a small gap. She looked scared and bewildered at first, but her friends started to follow and squeezed through, one by one. You could
have heard a pin drop as the white guests watched our father trample over social etiquette and protocol.

‘Boys! Come on over and meet your new fans!’ said Joseph. The joy on the faces of the Aboriginal teenagers was something to behold and Joseph was laughing, making his point. No one asked them to leave and after an awkward transition, the night continued to be a success as whites and Aboriginals mixed at the Jackson 5 party.

Some days later, we received an invitation from the Aboriginal community to visit them at a remote reserve. ‘We wouldn’t advise going there, Mr Jackson,’ said some official. ‘We cannot guarantee your safety.’

Joseph ignored that advice, and Michael said it simply, ‘We can have Aboriginal fans, too, can’t we? They are no different.’

With a translator in tow, we ended up having a memorable time at the Aboriginal reserve, feeling like overdressed aliens among the bare-chested tribe. Yet we faced no wariness or judgement. What struck us was how spiritual the whole place felt. We watched people carve tree bark, and we learned the simple joys of the boomerang and how to play the didgeridoo – Tito still has one as a treasured souvenir.

It was in Senegal that we encountered our first African baobab tree – one of Mother Nature’s marvels, thousands of years old, with a trunk that can grow to anything between 15 and 40 metres in girth. The tree at the front of 2300 Jackson Street was a twig by comparison. ‘This is one of the strongest trees you will ever see,’ said Rose Fine, ‘and there was a time in the 1880s when the baobab’s hollow trunk was used as a prison.’ In Western Australia. For the Aboriginals.

Michael was perplexed. How could something so naturally beautiful – a creation of Mother Earth – be twisted and used to incarcerate people? Trees were family, not prisons. Light and dark. Good and evil. These were the contradictions of life that we had yet to understand.

MICHAEL HAD SEEN MOST OF THE
world before he turned 18, and it was an incredible experience to share as brothers, filling our passports on Motown’s dime and moving beyond Europe to Australia, New Zealand and Japan. Out of all our travels, the most insane episode happened in the Brazilian city of São Paolo. Just when we thought we had seen it all, when it came to mania, our South American tour surprised us.

We flew into São Paolo, and our equipment – instruments and wardrobe – followed us on the next flight. Come the evening of the concert, we discovered this hadn’t been such a great idea. The second flight was delayed or cancelled, and no one was sure if it would arrive in time for the show. The optimists in the camp kept saying things like ‘Maybe it will still show up – there’s plenty of time yet,’ but everyone could hear the concert hall filling up. Within an hour, it was full to capacity and we were empty-handed.

That was when someone thought it would be a good idea to go out there, ‘talk to your fans and explain the situation.’ With no fanfare, the house lights on full beam, we brothers – plus a promoter – walked onstage wearing the T-shirts and jeans we had flown in. The crowd went crazy. Jackie raised his hands for quiet and attempted an explanation. I’m not sure how our English was received by the Portuguese-speaking crowd, but they must have understood the basic facts – no wardrobe, no equipment, no concert – because the boos and heckles started. The mic passed to me. Maybe the ‘heart-throb’ could calm things. But the boos got louder. So we passed it to Michael. Maybe the cute front man could kill it. But nothing was working. Beneath the rising boos, we heard a chant growing in Portuguese which, we were later told, was the equivalent of ‘BULLSHIT! BULLSHIT! BULLSHIT!’ We were lost, looking at each other, wondering what to do. A bottle bounced on to the stage. Then it was raining cans and coins. All the time, we stood there, putting our arms up, ducking and stepping back to dodge whatever was thrown, trying to get them to understand. But it was futile and growing increasingly hostile. Jackie ordered us offstage. As we turned away, it sounded like the whole of Brazil was booing us back to America.

‘We need to get out of here,’ said Bill Bray, backstage.

A handful of angry fans jumped on to the stage, and we ran for the bus outside. By now, a sizeable crowd had anticipated our exit, with more and more spilling out of the gates. We each made it on to the bus and the doors closed. ‘GO, DRIVER, GO!’

As he started to pull away, fans were hammering on the sides, venting their anger. Everything had turned ugly so we were glad to be getting out of there. On a seat two rows behind me, Michael looked as white as a ghost, curled up in his seat.

‘WAIT!’ screamed Marlon. ‘There’s ROSE!’

We looked out of the window and there, fighting her way through the crowd, with her clutch held aloft in both hands, was our tutor. In the rush to get out of there, we had left her behind, reading a magazine in the dressing room. Rose had one of those seventies hairstyles that flopped at the fringe and hung in one neat style, but she looked now as if she had been dragged backwards through a rosebush. As she banged on the door, the driver opened it, let her in and snapped it shut again, leaving our dishevelled tutor – all breathless and red-faced – standing at the front, in the aisle.

‘Well! I can’t
believe
there is not one
gentleman
in the whole
bunch
!’ she said, pronouncing every word precisely.

Thankfully, there was no time for a discussion about it. At that very moment, the driver put his foot down, jolting Rose into the front seat. Then – CRASH! – a brick shattered a side window. CRASH! Another. We all hit the deck. It was a terrifying experience to be under attack. I was crying. Michael was crying. Randy was crying. We couldn’t comfort each other because we were too busy lying low, covering our heads. As we pulled away, the bus kept receiving hits from God knew what, and the ambush seemed to go on for ever. By the time we reached the comparative safety of the hotel, it had three shattered windows and countless dents. Michael and I were quivering wrecks, pleading with Joseph that he mustn’t make us go back and perform there. Thankfully, he announced we were leaving on the first flight the next morning.

Come daylight, we were up and ready, and took a replacement bus to the airport. As Jack and Bill started organising the unload, we walked into the terminal to check in and realised our drama was not over: we were met by a group of soldiers, each holding machine guns across their chests, and some official was forcefully explaining that we were not allowed to leave until we had honoured our contractual commitment. There was a lot of serious talk we didn’t hear, but the symbolic muscle of the army was a deliberate reminder that we were going nowhere. The upshot of this madness was that we had no option but to return to our hotel and wait another 24 hours for our equipment to show up.

It felt kind of strange doing a show that we were made to do, and it put a real dampener on our spirits. It was probably the one concert we didn’t feel excited to perform, but we still got into show-mode and turned it on. And you know what the crazy thing was? The fans had a wild time: they screamed and sang, and fainted – and told us how much they loved us.

WE ACTED THE FOOL ALL THE
time so when Motown’s collaboration with Rankin & Bass came good, we found it apt that we morphed into cartoon characters in ABC’s animated series,
The Jackson 5
. For Michael, the reality that our life had been turned into a cartoon had him more excited than he was over any album or concert. He was in front of that television each Saturday morning, at home or in hotels, like it was the only thing to watch in the world. Each episode featured our songs but they used actors for our voices, so we didn’t even have to work for it. That made Motown’s Fred Rice a magician in my book. For Michael, the cartoon was a C.S. Lewis fantasy turned real. In that Narnia-like space, the make-believe version of our lives came without the rough and tumble of Jackson-mania. In his eyes, we were now on a par with Mickey Mouse and, as a Disney nut, he
loved
that. As he grew older, he was torn about the cartoon’s success. On one hand, he loved ‘being’ a cartoon character that belonged in another world. On the other, those re-runs threatened to keep us forever perceived
as the child group and Michael was by now itching to break out from the restrictions of bubblegum soul. If he didn’t necessarily want to grow up as a person, he wanted to develop as an artist.

PUBERTY IS ALWAYS A POTENTIAL THIEF
for a child star: it threatens to take away the image your dream is built on. Michael and I both struggled with acne; mine still stubborn and raging as an 18-year-old, his rabid and new at 14. A liking for fried food and soda in dressing rooms had caught up with us. Like me, Marlon – who also suffered – accepted the break-outs without too much angst, and I didn’t think Michael would be any different. I didn’t appreciate
how much
he worried about the threat his acne posed to his image because he never really spoke about it. We didn’t talk about that sort of thing. What ‘cool’ teenage boy does? We Jackson brothers were especially bound that way. We had been taught so much about pride, respect and performance that we had never learned the art of easy communication. We didn’t check in with one another unless it was album talk, tour madness, choreography ideas, basketball plans or girls. So Michael suffered quietly as his features changed and his skin flared up with pimples. Indeed he locked it deep inside, except for the odd worry he expressed to Mother.

As things turned out, his voice changed to his advantage: it kept its pitch and he learned how to use other voices, giving him an infinite range, with the ethereal timbre that was uniquely his. There were ridiculous rumours that he received hormone injections to keep that sweet high sound. Even when his voice coach Seth Riggs vouched for its natural range, people doubted it. But his voice was the least of his concerns. Michael’s acne was a confusion he wasn’t expecting. And then there was his nose. It widened noticeably and he hated it. In fact, he hated his skin and his nose so much that he found it hard to look at himself in the mirror. This wasn’t just typical teenage self-consciousness: it became a full-blown inferiority complex. The more he looked at himself, the unhappier he felt. In fact, he was painfully brittle during conversations with anyone, always looking down to avoid eye contact.

His comfort zone, as always, was the stage or the ‘platform’ of press interviews when reporters spoke of how ‘energised’, ‘inquisitive’ and ‘ebullient’ he was. In performance mode, Michael’s teenage woes were well concealed behind makeup or the performer’s personality he projected. Offstage, our merciless teasing only made matters worse, but teasing is what brothers do, and we all had to go through it. When my acne first kicked in, they – including Michael – called me ‘Bumpy Face’ or ‘Map Face’ and Marlon was ‘Liver Lips’. I even received a second label, ‘Big Head’, because my head was, apparently, too big for my body. So when Michael was called ‘Big Nose’, it was just part of the common initiation into manhood – but he struggled with it. Not that we knew so until much later.

Michael always recalled Joseph using the tease, and that was what hurt him most – hearing it from an adult’s lips and from the man who had driven home the importance of image all our lives. ‘Hey, Big Nose, come over here,’ said Joseph. Michael said nothing and cringed each time.

I woke up one morning concerned by a discoloured area that had appeared on the inside of my left thigh, a white blemish – the size of a spot. It bothered me so I had it checked out. The doc said
it was tiny area of vitiligo and was nothing to worry about unless it started to spread. And there were bigger issues to tackle – like the acne. Michael and I spent mornings busting those bumps together, standing side by side in front of the mirror, and we used the skin-bleaching cream Nadinola, because Michael soon learned that, for black kids, busting and picking leaves a mark darker than the natural skin colour. We viewed Nadinola as a magic potion: one tiny dab could fade a little area of discoloration, keeping our skin tone even.

As I write this, I am fully aware that this one fact – if taken out of context – is in danger of fanning the myth that Michael bleached his skin so that he would appeal to a wider audience: nonsensical when you think how vast our Jackson 5 fan base already was. Anyway, over-the-counter Nadinola is used for acne and skin discoloration. Its three per cent hydroquinone is nowhere near strong enough to transform anyone’s actual pigmentation. So I’ll be clear: Michael never bleached any part of his face or body, save for the dark spots on bad-skin days. In later life, other measures would be necessary to treat more serious skin conditions. Suggestions that he was trying to stop being a black man hurt him greatly, especially when his pigmentation was like La Toya’s – she was always that paler shade when younger. Michael was proud of his roots as a black man and proud to be a record-breaking black artist – but learning how headlines started was all part of growing up.

I don’t think any of us anticipated growing pains as a group. On paper, our hit records, cohesion, synergy and public demand made us the least likely group to split. But we hadn’t reckoned on the impact of becoming young men who would want to move out, have wives and raise children. Michael, especially, didn’t see the realities of adulthood coming.

MR GORDY ANNOUNCED SOLO PROJECTS FOR
Michael and me, deciding to showcase our diversity from under the umbrella of the Jackson 5 as Motown capitalised on our separate fan bases. Within this opportunity, we never forgot that the group came
first: the Jackson 5 was our security, the solo projects were our experimental adventures. We felt that any independent success could only strengthen the brand. Michael went first with ‘Got To Be There’, which charted at No. 4 in the Billboard Hot 100, followed up with ‘Rockin’ Robin’ at No. 2 and then his first solo No. 1 ‘Ben’, which sold 1.5 million copies. My LP
Jermaine
spawned the single ‘Daddy’s Home’ – a cover of the Shep & the Limelites hit – and it reached No. 3, selling around one million copies. We would both release other solo singles until 1975 but none of them worried the Top 10.

But in the wake of our charted successes, I suddenly faced a press that was curious to find rivalry. ‘What’s it like being your brother’s rival?’; ‘Jermaine, Michael went No. 1, do you wish you had, too?’ They were questions from an old script, as yellowed as a newspaper left in the window too long. Journalists forgot that we were brothers first, artists second. Michael cheered me like he had on the baseball field. I had his back like I’d had it in Gary, at school and onstage. Our upbringing was about pushing each other to raise the bar. That is healthy competition, and that was what we shared. Music didn’t usher in rivalry, but we saw how the outside perspective betrayed what we were as brothers. I’ve always said that when you’re looking into the goldfish bowl it’s impossible to know what the fish are thinking – yet people still try. During our transition into adults, the ‘rivalry’ and ‘jealousy’ between Michael and me would stick to our media portrayal. It was like everything else that left its mark in childhood – an emotion, a feeling, a scar, an experience: it never goes away.

As a group, we would release four more albums:
Skywriter
,
Get It Together
,
Dancing Machine
and
Moving Violation
. We moved away from bubble-gum soul into a sound that was more funk with a pop edge. But while our average worldwide album sales hovered around the two million mark, our chart success wasn’t through the roof any more. We were no longer permanent residents of the Top 10 and found ourselves struggling to make the Top 50 albums. Measured against our early successes, it was a decline that we
struggled to understand. Somewhere between albums – say mid-1973 – I started to hear the first murmurings of worry that Motown’s team wasn’t bringing it any more. Michael – believing more and more in his creativity – spoke about how we needed more freedom to write our own material, and I could see Joseph paying attention. Their view was that we were hit-makers not releasing enough hits, and that Motown wasn’t promoting us as vigorously.

I couldn’t understand the complaint. Why are you getting so hung up on one or two records going nowhere when we’ve had so many hits? I thought. The juggernaut wasn’t stopping, the touring demand was still there, and the crowds were still screaming. It was hardly a crisis. Anyway, I had bigger things on my mind. After a succession of teenage conquests, I realised there was no one in the world quite like Hazel Gordy, so I proposed when she joined up with us on an East-Coast leg on tour, and she said yes.

Ever since we’d arrived in LA., the Jacksons and the Gordys had been one. Now we were cementing that bond. We were both ecstatic. Back then, I believed in the ‘forever’ and the happy ending; I believed that nothing good would ever end.

I KNEW IT WASN’T GOING TO
be easy breaking my happy news to the family. That was why I left it for a few days, to think over my approach. I dreaded telling Joseph, because – ever since Tito had married Dee Dee the previous year – he thought he was losing us, and he didn’t handle it very well. His reaction was always going to be unpredictable. I worried about telling Michael because we were so close that I knew he’d feel the wrench of me moving out. Bottom line in our house: marriage wasn’t celebrated as the joy of two people coming together, it was initially viewed as a wedge driving apart a winning team of brothers.

I remember rehearsing the conversations in my head but all I could visualise was Joseph’s angry face and Michael’s sad eyes. Maybe that was why I chose to break the news first to Joseph from a phone booth when our tour passed through Boston, with Hazel
by my side. (By now, Joseph didn’t accompany us all the time. He dropped off on occasion to rest up, trusting the Motown operation.)

When I phoned Encino, Mother answered. I told her the news. She was delighted. ‘Joseph always said that girl was crazy about you,’ she said. ‘Let me go get him. He’s out in the garden.’

Joseph was either blowing the leaves or cutting the grass, and I seemed to be waiting an age, pushing dimes into the coin slot. Mother came back to the phone. ‘I’m sorry, Jermaine … he can’t come to the phone. He’s busy in the garden.’ The resignation in her voice told me everything, and it crushed me. Mr Gordy backed me. My own father didn’t – and that hurt.

That same night, I plucked up the courage to tell the rest of the brothers. ‘We already know,’ said Michael. ‘I love Hazel. I’m really happy for you.’ He was all smiles, and would refer to this new addition to the family as ‘Mrs G’.

What he didn’t say was that he saw his brothers’ marriages (Jackie would soon marry his girl, Enid) as events that left him behind. I learned all this from Mother later. ‘He’s not feeling good about it, Jermaine,’ she said. ‘He feels everything has changed and everyone is leaving him. Marlon and Randy will be next. He’s sad. He’s scared of being lonely.’

Michael never did say anything, then or later. Instead he hid his true feelings, not wishing to ruin my happiness or spoil the big day.

WITH MR GORDY AS THE BRIDE’S
father, it was always going to be a ‘wedding of the century’, as
Ebony
magazine billed it. I didn’t have much say in its theme or decadence. It was like creating a new album: I’d just show up, do my thing and everything would fall into place. The guest list was a Who’s Who of the music industry and the grand theme a Winter Wonderland at the Beverly Hills Hotel with 175 white doves, artificial snow and Smokey Robinson singing ‘Starting Here & Now’ written especially for us. Hazel and I found ourselves on the cover of
Soul
and
Life
for an ‘inside the wedding exclusive’.

Come the big day on 15 December – one day after my nineteenth birthday – Mr Gordy handed over his beautiful daughter at the end of the aisle by pinching my upper arm and winking, as if to say, ‘She’s yours now, you take care of her.’

The day went like a dream, and I was so carried away that I didn’t see Michael, dressed in his groomsman suit, sitting alone at a table, all glum. I remained oblivious to the separation he felt. Anyway, Hazel and I had found a house in Bel Air so I was only going to be a 15-to-20 minute drive away, and we’d still be recording and touring together. If anything, the positive consequence was that our marriage tied us to the heart of Motown. I couldn’t see the downside; I just presumed everyone was happy for me.

But some days later, Hazel told me that her father had received a letter from Tito. The gist of it was that he felt it unfair that Hazel and I had received such a lavish wedding when he and Dee Dee had had to settle for something more sedate. Or words to that effect. This complaint overlooked one fact: the wedding was provided by Mr Gordy in his capacity as a father of the bride, not as president of Motown. But that didn’t stop me being viewed as the brother receiving special treatment from the boss.

I didn’t believe for a second that Tito was behind that missive. Men don’t get jealous about the trappings of a wedding – wives do – but he had signed it and that made me wince. Not that I said anything. I brushed the letter’s contents under the same carpet where Michael kept his feelings about the splintering effects of marriage. We didn’t like confrontation. Big elephants have sat in our rooms all our lives and been ignored for the sake of avoiding conflict. Better to have peace (Mother’s way) than cause upset (Joseph’s way).

It seemed Hazel’s and my wedding caused ripples in the Gordy and Motown families, too. It would also transpire that Marvin Gaye – a genius riddled by his own insecurity, and Hazel’s uncle by his marriage to Mr Gordy’s sister, Anna – was concerned too. I later learned (as confirmed by his confidant and collaborator on ‘Sexual Healing’, David Ritz) that he worried about ‘the new singer walking into the family’, saying, ‘It’s all part of Berry’s plan to
replace me.’ It was crazy talk from an incredible artist in a class of his own, but Marvin had irrationally convinced himself that I would now become the favourite son of the Motown family.

Looking back, it’s hard to believe that my love for Hazel caused such ructions. Thankfully, I was too wrapped up in my own happiness to care.

IF THERE WAS ONE SIGHT OF
himself that Michael did like in the mirror, it was when he was dancing. For our 1974 single ‘Dancing Machine’ – which went to No. 2 in the charts – he wanted to try something ‘different’ and perfect a dance he’d seen in street theatre: ‘The Robot’. He used every spare minute to practise in front of the mirror at Hayvenhurst or in the studio, and probably before he went to bed. When I saw his first attempt, it seemed scratchy and disjointed, but when he finally showed us the polished version, it was incredible. He glided like he had wheels on the balls of his feet and electric wires running through each joint. He became remote-controlled. ‘The Robot’ was his first real signature move long before the Moonwalk moment, but none of us knew how it would go down when he first performed it during ‘Dancing Machine’ on the
Soul Train
show. All I can say is, go YouTube it, because you’ll see how electric it was when Michael first threw his hat into the ring to announce that one of the most poetic dancers of our generation had arrived. Kids all over Los Angeles were busting ‘The Robot’, and the song put us back in the Top 10. That was the power of dance and television, we said. Noted for the future.