Michael Jackson (59 page)

When contacted by the Associated Press, Frank Dileo confirmed the report. ‘I told Michael, “That damn machine is too dangerous.
What if something goes wrong with the oxygen?” But Michael won't listen. He and I are in disagreement about this. He really
believes this chamber purifies his body – and that it will help him accomplish his goal of living to be a hundred and fifty.’

And to
Rolling Stone
: ‘ Michael knows if I tell him something, it's the truth. I don't have to agree with things if I don't want to. In other
words, because I know this is eventually going to come up in this interview anyway, the hyperbaric chamber. I'm one hundred
per cent against that. I don't want it around. I've spoken about it publicly. Some managers couldn't have that conversation
with their artist. They'd be too afraid. He respects my opinion. He doesn't always listen.’

He added to
Time
, ‘ I can't figure him out sometimes.’

Even Michael's plastic surgeon, Steven Hoefflin, got in on the act and said he tried to talk Michael out of ‘this wacky idea'.
However, Michael ignored everyone's fears and made room for the chamber in his bedroom.

When Joseph Jackson heard the story on the TV news, he ran up to Michael's bedroom to see if Michael had a hyperbaric chamber
in there. ‘But I didn't find anything,’ he recalled. ‘So I figured, well, either the story is untrue… or the chamber is on
its way.’

‘I don't think I allowed Michael to have that thing in the house,’ Katherine added.

Michael's family was obviously not let in on the joke. ‘Joseph always stood behind Michael when it came to these kinds of
rumours,’ said his friend of twenty-five years, Jack Richardson. ‘He'd say, “Michael's not sleeping in no chamber. Don't believe
what you hear about my son.”’

‘I never asked him about that chamber thing,’ Janet said. ‘I have no idea what that was about. It's not in the house, or I
would know it. But knowing Michael, if he is doing something like that, it probably has to do with his voice.’

‘I realized then that Michael Jackson liked to see himself portrayed in an absurd, bizarre way,’ Charles Montgomery said.
‘In the years to come, I would do the biggest number of stories on Michael in the
Enquirer
. Before I ran anything, I would always check its accuracy with people close to Michael. I almost always had full cooperation
from his camp. Michael is one of the smartest entertainers in the business. He knows how to get his name out there. He knows
about PR. He knows how to control his career. I think he's brilliant.’

Michael was astonished by the way his fiction made headlines. Many untrue stories had been written about him in the past,
and he had been angry about them. Now, he was exacting his revenge against the media. ‘I can't believe that people bought
it,’ he said of the hyperbaric chamber idea. ‘It's like I can tell the press anything about me and they'll buy it,’ he added,
as if recognizing the full potential of his communications power. ‘We can actually
control
the press,’ he concluded. ‘I think this is an important breakthrough for us.’

Once, Frank Dileo was asked about the wisdom of doing whatever he could do to make Michael seem as incredible as possible
or, as he put it, ‘to keep him as popular and in demand as anyone can be.’ ‘Might all this hoopla damage the singer's already
fragile psyche?’ asked reporters Michael Goldberg and David Handleman for
Rolling Stone
.

‘It's too late anyway,’ Dileo responded. ‘He won't have a normal life even if I stop.’

Another publicity gimmick sprang forth from Michael Jackson's imagination in May 1987, one that was just as fantastic and – as
it would happen – as damaging to his image as the hyperbaric chamber scam.

For years, Michael had been fascinated by the 1980 film about John Merrick,
The Elephant Man,
starring John Hurt. When he screened it in his private theatre, he sobbed his way through the entire film, he was that moved
by it. John Merrick, the hideously deformed, Victorian sideshow-freak, was an outsider in a seemingly endless search for love
and acceptance – just like, in his own view, Michael. In researching Merrick's life, Michael heard that his remains were kept
in a glass case at the London Hospital Medical College. He wanted to see the ninety-seven-year-old skeleton, of course, and
during a trip to England he obtained special permission to inspect the exhibit. (Because it attracted droves of tourists to
the hospital, it had been removed from public view after the movie was released.) Michael was awe-struck by the exhibit and,
as he examined the skeleton, said to Frank Dileo, ‘I sure would like to have these bones at Hayvenhurst house. Wouldn't it
be cool to own them?’

‘Yeah, well forget it,’ Frank said.

‘But… hmmmm.’ Michael looked as if he had an idea.

‘Uh-oh,’ Frank said.

Remembering the hyperbaric chamber hoax, Michael came up with the idea that he should make an offer to the hospital to buy
the John Merrick exhibit just to see what kind of press it would generate. ‘Man, that is crazy,’ Frank told him.

‘I know,’ Michael said, excited. ‘That's why we have to do it.’

In truth, Frank was all for it; he liked a good show as much as anyone else, and certainly as much as Michael. Therefore,
claiming that Michael's absorbing interest in the remains of John Merrick was based on his awareness of ‘the ethical, medical
and historical significance of the Elephant Man’, Frank told members of the press that he had offered a half-million dollars
to the hospital for the bones. The offer was not publicized in the complex, cloak-and-dagger manner by which the hyperbaric
chamber hoax made news. Rather, Frank called a couple of writers himself and gave them the scoop; the rules for such madness
had, it seemed, become somewhat more flexible.

‘What's he gonna do with the skeleton, Frank?’ a reporter wanted to know.

‘I don't know,’ Dileo said, ‘except that he'll probably put it in the room while I'm trying to have a meeting with him.’

As expected, the media was interested in the story. The pop star who sleeps in a hyperbaric chamber wanted to buy the Elephant
Man's bones. How could that
not
cause a stir? The wire services – Associated Press and United Press International – both picked up the story. By June, much of
the public interested in such things was talking about Michael's latest eccentricity. The British media began referring to
him as Wacko-Jacko.

Michael and Frank failed to realize, however, that the media might check with the London Hospital Medical College to verify
that an offer had been received by them. In fact, when contacted by the press, officials at the College said they had received
no such offer, that they had only heard about Michael's interest in Merrick's remains by reading about it in one of the British
tabloids. Even if they did get an offer, the spokesman said, ‘We would not sell the Elephant Man. It's as simple as that.’

‘Oh, man, why didn't we think to cover our bases,’ Michael said to Frank. ‘Now we gotta make a real offer. And, anyway,’ he
added, ‘of course they'll sell it if the money is right. Every man has his price.’

‘You serious now,’ Dileo asked. ‘You really want them, now?’

‘Yeah, I do,’ Michael said. ‘Let's get 'em.’

Now, Michael actually wanted the skeleton, but not because of any devotion to John Merrick but rather because he was told
he couldn't have them.

Frank telephoned the hospital and made an offer of a
million
dollars for the Elephant Man's bones. The hospital officials said they were insulted. A spokeswoman told the press, ‘Indeed,
he offered to buy it, but it would be for publicity and I find it very unlikely that the medical college would be willing
to sell it for cheap publicity reasons.’

Back in America, Katherine Jackson figured out that the story was bogus. However, she thought it had been Frank's idea; she
never dreamed that it was Michael's. She called Frank and said that she was upset; ‘you're making Michael look like an idiot.’
Frank told her that all he was doing was trying to make Michael appear to be more interesting. Katherine didn't like his explanation,
though, and made her feelings clear. However, when Frank asked Michael what he thought about his mother's concern, Michael
said, ‘Kate doesn't understand show business. So, don't worry about it.’

At this same time, the Jehovah's Witnesses' elders in Woodland Hills, California, began pressuring Michael again. They felt
strongly that the recent publicity was doing him great damage, and that it reflected poorly on the Witnesses, because Michael
was so representative of the faith. Michael was becoming disenchanted with the church's elders by this time, mostly because
he didn't want to be told what to do. What's more he couldn't reconcile his lifestyle and career to the religion's strict
tenets. In truth, it's almost impossible to be a Jehovah's Witness and be an entertainer. Therefore, in the spring of 1987,
Michael withdrew from the Jehovah's Witnesses. A letter from the Jehovah's Witnesses headquarters in Brooklyn, New York, sent
out as a press release, stated that the organization ‘no longer considers Michael Jackson to be one of Jehovah's Witnesses.’
Gary Botting, coauthor of
The Orwellian World of Jehovah's Witnesses
and a Witness himself, said that leaving the religion ‘is worse than being disfellow-shipped, or kicked out.’ He observed,
‘If you wilfully reject God's only organization on earth, that's the unforgivable sin… the sin against the Holy Spirit.’

Michael's decision to leave the church puzzled his mother, Katherine, and caused her great despair. Katherine wasn't sure
she knew her own son any longer. However, there was no discussing the spiritual matter with him – literally. As it is strictly
prohibited for a Witness to discuss matters of faith with ex-members, even if they are family, Katherine says that she has
never asked Michael what happened, and she says that she never intends to ask such questions. ‘I was not required to “shun”
my son,’ she claimed, referring to rumours of that nature. ‘But we can't talk about matters of faith any longer, which is
a shame.’

Katherine maintained that her relationship with Michael continued to be warm. ‘Michael still asks my advice,’ she said. ‘And
he helps me choose my clothes. He tells me to put on lipstick when company's coming. He has encouraged me to lose weight.
He said, “Elizabeth [Taylor] lost all that weight. If she has, you can. And if you don't like it, you can always have plastic
surgery.” But I wouldn't do that,’ Katherine hastened to add.

Michael soon lost interest in the Elephant Man's bones. As expected. It had certainly generated a great deal of press for
Michael, though none of it favourable.
Playboy
magazine facetiously reported, ‘Rumour has it that the descendants of the Elephant Man have offered $10,000 for the remains
of Michael Jackson's nose.’ In time, the controversy blew over. Gone, but not forgotten. Ever.

Michael's phony quest for John Merrick's bones created a domino effect in the tabloids, one from which his image would never
truly recover. After the Elephant Man's Bones story, unscrupulous journalists began creating their own fictions about Michael,
and they did so with a vengeance. After all, if Michael wanted the kind of publicity he had been diligently courting, why
not accommodate him? Crazy-Michael stories sold millions of magazines.

In a short time, according to the tabloid press, Michael had asked Elizabeth Taylor to marry him and said, ‘I could be more
special than Mike Todd. I could be more attentive and generous than Richard Burton, but she turned me down.’ He also apparently
tried to convince Elizabeth to sleep in his hyperbaric chamber; was convinced that the world would end in 1998; refused to
bathe in anything but Evian water; and had seen John Lennon's ghost (who convinced him to use The Beatles song ‘Revolution’
in a Nike ad). And the stories about Bubbles the Chimp seemed to never end. None of the stories was true, though, and Michael
went on to complain bitterly about them, never admitting (and maybe not even understanding) that he was the one who had thrown
the first punch. Since Michael refused to do any interviews in an effort to maintain his inscrutability, the stories just
spread without contradiction or explanation.

CBS Records executive Bobby Colomby recalled, ‘Michael kept asking why so many bad things were being said about him. He didn't
understand it. He said it really hurt to read all that stuff. I tried to tell him that the problem was his. I explained to
him that he'd never seen Bruce Springsteen on the cover of the
National Enquirer
in a hyperbaric chamber. Even if that picture came in, they wouldn't believe. I said, “But you, Michael, spend so much time
working on your mystique, on being reclusive and unusual, that people will buy anything with your name on it.” He said he
understood… kind of.’

To this day, the stories continue. Some true, some false, all mad.

Since the time of the hyperbaric chamber and Elephant Man's bones, Michael has never stopped complaining about the press,
and has even written songs about his victimization at the hands of the media; for instance, ‘Leave Me Alone’. In 1993, Oprah
Winfrey asked him about the hyperbaric chamber during her televised interview with him. ‘I cannot find an oxygen chamber anywhere
in this house,’ she said in mock exasperation. ‘That story is so crazy,’ Michael remarked, annoyed. ‘I mean, it's one of those
tabloid things. It's completely made up.’ He explained that what happened was that he saw the chamber at the The Brotman Burn
Center and decided to ‘just go inside it and hammer around, and somebody takes the picture. When they process the picture,
the person who processes the picture says, “Oh, Michael Jackson!” He made a copy and these pictures just went all over the
world with this lie attached to it. It's a complete lie. Why do people buy these papers?’