Michael Jackson (57 page)

‘I
do
want to be perfect,’ Michael confirmed. ‘I look in the mirror, and I just want to change, and be better. I always want to
be better, so maybe that's why I wanted the cleft. I don't know how else to explain it.’

Of course, one of the public's favourite theories about him is that Michael was trying to transform Himself into the image
of Diana Ross – as if Diana has a cleft in her chin! Mostly this theory is the result of the popular connection between the
two stars over the years, and some family members' recollections of Michael making statements to Janet and LaToya such as,
‘You're not pretty until you start looking like Diana.’ After surgery and with the help of carefully applied makeup, Michael
sometimes
did
resemble Diana, with tweezed, arched eyebrows, high cheekbones, and a tapered nose (actually much more tapered than Diana's).
Still, the resemblance was in the eye of the beholder. When an associate told Diana that Michael was trying to look like her,
Diana was dismayed by the notion. She sized Michael up and snapped, ‘I look like
that?
’

In fact, Michael does not want to look like Diana, even if he was enraptured by her image, allure, glamour and, also, her
power. He did try to recreate her from time to time, though, by playing out certain ‘Miss Ross’ fantasies in front of witnesses.
Beverly Hills limousine chauffeur, Ralph Caricosa, recalls having driven Michael to a destination. He looked into the rear
view mirror and asked, ‘Where to now, Mr Jackson.’ Michael said, ‘Call me Miss Ross, won't you?’ Then, there was the night
Diana caught him putting on her makeup backstage at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. Former Supremes star Cindy Birdsong reported
that when Diana scolded him (‘How many times have I told you to stay out of my makeup!’), Michael responded by saying, ‘But,
Diana, it's
magic.
’

Once, when Michael checked into the swank Helmsley Palace in Manhattan, he telephoned the front desk from a house phone in
the lobby and, in front of amused witnesses, used his best imitation of Diana's speaking voice to hoodwink the operator. ‘My
suite is not good enough,’ he said, acting like a disgruntled diva. ‘How
dare
you put me in that suite? There are no flowers, and I think I saw a mouse, and I'm, well, I'm just really
upset.
I can't even go back up there.’

‘Who is this?’ the surprised operator apparently asked.

‘Why, it's Miss Ross,’ Michael answered, trying to suppress a giggle. ‘Miss
Diana
Ross. Who do you think it is? How dare you even ask?’

By the time the operator put him on hold, Michael was grinning from ear to ear. ‘She believes me,’ he whispered, excitedly.
‘She thinks I'm Diana Ross!’

The operator came back on the line. ‘Diana Ross isn't staying here.’

‘Oh, she's not?’ Michael responded. ‘Sorry.’

Then he quickly hung up, laughing so hysterically he could barely catch his breath.

Most people who know Michael agree that there are two reasons why he has had so much plastic surgery. First of all, he strove
for some ideal of physical perfection, or his version of it, anyway. He spent most of his life studying pictures of himself,
not to mention the hours dancing in front of mirrors, looking at videos, deciding which are his best features and which are
not. ‘I just want to look the best I can look,’ he told Frank Dileo.

‘But when do you stop?’ Frank asked.

Michael shrugged. ‘I'm a work in progress,’ he said with a gentle smile.

Publicly, Frank never had much patience for questions about Michael's plastic surgery, mostly because he could not explain
it. ‘Okay, so he had his nose fixed, and the cleft – big deal. I got news for you,’ he said, ‘my nose has been broken five times.
It's been fixed twice. Who gives a shit? Who cares? Elvis had his nose done. Marilyn Monroe had her nose done, had her breasts
done. Everybody's had it done.’

As well as improving his appearance, Michael also had another reason for the operations. All of the Jackson boys grew up to
resemble their father, Joseph. Michael could not have imagined a worse fate for himself, and he did everything he could do
to destroy the resemblance. Certainly, he has many of his father's characteristics, whether or not he recognizes them: Joseph's
determination to the point of ruthlessness, his coldhearted business sense, and on the plus side, his love of family. Emotionally,
Michael may be a lot like Joseph – though he would never emulate Joseph's coldhearted unfaithfulness in love – and, he has said,
it frightens him. Outside, though, he isn't like Joseph at all.

‘He told me so himself,’ said a former girlfriend of Berry Gordy's who has known Michael for years. ‘He would do
anything
not to look like Joseph. Believe me, the last thing he wants to see when he looks at the man in the mirror is his father.
With each operation, he distances himself not only from his father but from the whole family. I'm afraid that's the sad point
of all the surgery.’

‘The tragedy is,’ concluded Joyce McCrae, a longtime intimate who worked in Joseph's office, ‘no matter how much Michael tries
to scrub Joseph off his face, he's still there.’

Or as Joseph Jackson so aptly put it, ‘It takes a father to make a son.’

It was after Michael's operation to have a cleft in his chin that he first began being seen wearing a surgical mask with a
black fedora and sunglasses. The press speculated that he was obsessed with catching germs, reminiscent of Howard Hughes'
fixation with health issues. Michael said nothing publicly. ‘If you knew Michael well enough, you knew what was going on,’
Joyce McCrae said. ‘As soon as I saw him wearing the surgical mask, I said, “Oh, he's had the cleft done.” People told me,
“What? That's ridiculous.” Well, sure enough, that's what was going on.’

At this time, Michael appeared at a movie memorabilia showcase at the Continental Hyatt Hotel in Hollywood wearing a blue
surgical mask and a black fedora. To say he looked conspicuous would be an understatement. When the vendors saw him coming
their way, they would triple the prices of all of their goods just because they knew Michael represented a windfall for them.
He was shopping for Disney memorabilia with a young boy and Bill Bray, his security man. Whenever he saw something he liked,
he mumbled through his surgical mask for Bray to purchase the item. Bray would then pull out a wad of hundred-dollar bills,
pay the vendor, and move on to the next display. The fact that the prices were raised especially for him did not escape Michael.
‘They see me coming, and they feel like I have a lot of money, so they take advantage of me,’ he told me. ‘That's not really
fair, is it?’

‘No, it's not, Michael. But what's with the surgical mask?’ I asked.

‘I had my wisdom teeth taken out,’ he told me. ‘Oh, man, the misery. You can't believe what I have been going through.’

‘Sounds awful,’ I said.

Michael shook his head, sadly. ‘It is awful.’

When Michael did not cover his face with a surgical mask, he would venture forth in public wearing a hairy gorilla head mask
with fur and beady eyes. ‘I love it when people stop and are scared,’ he said. ‘And I love it when they don't know that it's
me inside the mask. I just love that.’ It's a great paradox about Michael that he is as much a public show-off as he is a
recluse. Sometimes, though, his exploits can prove embarrassing. Once, while walking through an airport wearing the gorilla
mask, he tripped over a sand-filled ashtray and fell to the floor in a heap in front of a host of paparazzi, all because his
vision was obscured.

When the bandages came off after the cleft operation, Michael concentrated more than ever on his appearance. The new cleft
seemed oddly out of place on the bottom of his soft, ingénue-like face. After all of the procedures, Michael's nose was slimmer
than ever. It also pointed upward, an odd touch. Tweezing his eyebrows gave him a softer, even more feminine look. His skin
seemed to be getting lighter with each passing day. He had begun using an over-the-counter skin-bleaching cream called Porcelana
to achieve that look. LaToya used it as well. They had crates of this cream stored at Hayvenhurst, hording it as the most
valuable beauty product ever produced.

Also, Michael existed on a strict macrobiotic diet that had left him quite thin and made his face look even more sculpted.
‘If I ate like him, I'd be dead,’ Frank DiLeo said succinctly.

In truth, Michael Jackson had begun looking more than a little unusual. It was difficult to be in the same room with him and
not stare in disbelief, especially if you had known him since he was a child. Comedian Eddie Murphy probably put it best when
he said, ‘I love Michael, but the brother is
strange
.’

At twenty-seven years of age, Michael Jackson faced the challenge of recording an album that would top the tremendous success
of
Thriller
. Could he do it? Could
anyone
? In the summer of 1986, when he began working on the follow-up album, which would be called
Bad
, Michael put himself under enormous pressure. Extremely competitive, even against himself and his own achievements, he felt
that if he did not top
Thriller's
record sales of nearly 38.5 million, he would be perceived as a failure. Moreover, he needed to have success with the single
releases. Once, he discussed the phenomenon of the four hit singles from the
Off the Wall
album, which had preceded
Thriller
in 1979. He told writer Gerri Hirshey, ‘Nobody broke my record yet, thank God. Hall and Oates tried, but they didn't.’ Eventually
he matched his own record with the
Thriller
album, the final US tally being: ‘This Girl is Mine', number two; ‘Billie Jean’, number one; ‘Beat It’, number one; ‘Wanna
Be Startin' Somethin'’, number five; ‘Human Nature’, number seven; ‘PYT (Pretty Young Thing)’, number ten, and ‘Thriller’,
number four. He needed to do better than that with
Bad
.

When he began working on the album, he taped a piece of paper that said ‘100 million’ to his bathroom mirror. He wanted
Bad to
be, as he put it, ‘as perfect as is humanly possible’. Before they started to record the album in August 1986, Michael and
Quincy Jones chose from sixty-two songs Michael had written. ‘Fifty per cent of the battle is trying to figure out which songs
to record,’ Quincy said. ‘It's total instinct. You have to go with the songs that touch you, that get the goose bumps going.’
In the end, eight of the ten songs on
Bad
would be written by Michael. Interestingly, Michael cannot read music. He writes his songs in his head, sings them on to
a tape, and then hires musicians to put them down on paper. He is an incredibly musical person, however. The notes he imagines,
and the way he hears them composed in song, often astound the most trained of musicians.

One song planned for the album was a rhythm-and-blues-tinged number intended as a duet, ‘I Just Can't Stop Loving You’. Michael
had wanted Barbra Streisand to record the song with him, but she turned him down. ‘I can't believe she would turn me down,’
he said. ‘Doesn't she know that this is going to be the biggest album in history?’ Michael suggested that ‘my people’ get
back in touch with ‘her people’ and ‘tell her she's about to make a big mistake’. Barbra explained she wasn't interested because
she was worried that the age difference between them would make the lyrics seem unbelievable, plus she didn't like the song.
Frank Dileo was unfazed. ‘I knew the song was a hit – with or without Barbra Streisand,’ he said.

‘Forget her,’ Michael reasoned. ‘Let's get Whitney Houston.’ However, Whitney wasn't interested either. ‘Believe me, I didn't
lose any sleep over it,’ Frank Dileo said of Houston's decision. Someone suggested Diana Ross. ‘No way. Bad idea,’ Michael
responded, straightaway.

Michael didn't explain that Diana was angry with him for a recent misunderstanding. He had made plans to go to dinner with
her at a Hollywood restaurant called Le Dome. However, Elizabeth Taylor telephoned and invited him to a meal that same evening.
Wanting the best of both worlds, Michael asked her if she would like to join him and Diana. Elizabeth, who must be the centre
of attention, accepted his offer, as long as Diana met them at the restaurant. In other words, Elizabeth did not want to join
Diana's party. She wanted a party of her own. Michael didn't understand the ego game involved in her decision; he just thought
she was being friendly. Anyway, the only thing on his mind was how ‘magical’ it would be to have Diana Ross and Elizabeth
Taylor sitting at the same table with him.

Once he and Elizabeth arrived at Le Dome, Michael telephoned Diana to ask her to join them there. Diana was not pleased. She
had been under the impression that
she
was supposed to be his date that evening. ‘This is not the way to do things, Michael,’ she scolded. She told him that the
two of them would have to dine some other time, and
not
with Elizabeth Taylor. She was angry, and Michael knew it; she wouldn't return his calls. It wasn't the right time to ask
Diana to record a duet with him. Instead, Quincy recruited singer Siedah Garrett to do the song with Michael, and it would
end up the first single release from
Bad
.