Authors: Shmuley Boteach

The Michael Jackson Tapes (11 page)

BOOK: The Michael Jackson Tapes

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When Michael died I also faced a profound moral dilemma as to what to do with this conversation in which he says he wants to be buried near children. In the end, after consulting with people whom I respect, I decided that revealing it in the immediate aftermath of his death would not influence the family decision as to where he would be buried and would just subject Michael to public ridicule. I also do
not
believe that he should be buried next to children, whatever his wishes. Still, I was saddened to see plans being discussed to bury Michael at Neverland. The ranch was isolating and damaging to Michael enough while he was alive. Why condemn him to that eternal loneliness and oblivion just to increase Neverland's commercial appeal?

PART 1

CHILDHOOD FAME AND JOE JACKSON

Childhood, Loneliness, Cartoons, and Brothers

The most formative experience in Michael's life was being forced into entertainment from approximately the age of five. Michael felt he had been robbed of not just an essential part of life but the most magical part. He longed to recapture it and spent his remaining days doing just that. Some argued that Michael was a case of arrested development. I disagree. Michael Jackson
chose
not to grow up.

Shmuley Boteach: Was there an age at which you realized, “Oh my gosh, I missed my childhood?”

Michael Jackson: Yes, I remember distinctly. . . It's like being on a ride you can't get off and you think, “Oh my God. What did I do?” and you are committed and you can't get off. It hit me before I was a teenager. I wanted so badly to play in the park across the street because the kids were playing baseball and football but I had to record. I could see the park, right across the street. But I had to go in the other building and work until late at night making the albums. I sat there looking at the kids with tears running down my face and I would say, “I am trapped and I have to do this for the rest of my life. I am under contract.” But I wanted to go over there so bad it was killing me, just to make a friend to say, “Hi.” I used to walk the streets looking for someone to talk to. I told you that.

SB: How old were you?

MJ: It was during the
Thriller
album.

SB: So you were the biggest star in the whole world and. . .

MJ: I was looking for people to talk to. I was so lonely I would cry in my room upstairs. I would think, “That's it. I am getting out of
here,” and I would walk down the street. I remember really saying to people, “Will you be my friend?”

SB: They were probably in shock.

MJ: They were like, “Michael Jackson!” I would go, “Oh God! Are they going to be my friend because of Michael Jackson? Or because of me?” I just wanted someone to talk to.

Already in this comment you could see the development of the two personalities that would forever collide in Michael's person. There was Michael Jackson, the King of Pop, an aloof superstar who had everything and needed no one. And Michael Jackson, the shy kid under the mask, who lacked even a single real friend.

SB: Did you find it?

MJ: Yeah, well, I went to the park and there were kids playing on swings.

SB: So that's when you decided that children were the answer. They are the only ones who treat you as a person?

MJ: Yeah. That's true.

SB: So that's the age that it hit you, “Oh my gosh. I did lose my childhood, because these are the only people I can identify with.”

MJ: I suffered a lot in that way. I knew that something was wrong with me at that time. But I needed someone. . . That's probably why I had the mannequins. I would say because I felt I needed people, someone, I didn't have. . . I was too shy to be around real people. I didn't talk to them. It wasn't like old ladies talking to plants. But I always thought I wanted something to make me feel like I had company. I always thought, “Why do I have these?” They are like real babies, kids, and people, and it makes me feel like I am in a room with people.

Realize the import of these words. Michael Jackson was so lonely that he turned to mannequins to feel like he had human company. That is the degree of isolation he experienced (and it's an experience shared by many who make it to the top and lose connection to family, friends, and community).

SB: Why were you too shy to talk to real people? Was it because you had only ever learned to perform and you weren't given the opportunity to hang out?

MJ: That's it. There was no hang-out time.

SB: Do you still feel lonely?

MJ: Not nearly the way I used to. No.

SB: Clearly you have your kids, which makes a very big difference. But there is a part of us that isn't only a parent. There is part of us that needs other forms of interaction.

MJ: What kind of interaction?

SB: Someone you can unburden yourself to emotionally in a way that Prince couldn't understand or Paris couldn't understand.

I was alluding to an intimate soul mate.

MJ: Mmmm. Friends and certain people you can trust. Elizabeth [Taylor], or whoever. . . Mac [Macaulay Culkin], Shirley Temple [Black], people who have been there.

Amazing, the only people he thought could ever understand him were others who had been robbed of their childhood.

SB: So it is always people who have been there, all these childhood stars?

MJ: They [people who have not been childhood stars] say, “Yeah, I know what you mean,” but they don't know what you mean. They are just trying to agree with you.

SB: Do you discuss with friends who were also child stars individual things that happened to them? Or do you not even need to say it: Do you sort of understand it?

MJ: You know, it's like telepathy. I wish you could have seen Shirley Temple and myself.

Just a few weeks before this conversation Michael had been to visit Shirley Temple Black in San Francisco.

SB: Are you still in touch with her?

MJ: I am going to call her. I've gotta call her again. I kept thanking her and she was saying, “Why?” and I said, “Because of all you have ever done for me.”

SB: Do you think you will ever dedicate a song to her?

MJ: I would love to.

SB: So Macaulay Culkin doesn't need to say to you, “I was on the set and this happened with my father.” You don't even have to have conversations like that?

MJ: Oh yeah. There is this precious sweet little soul who is a baby,

Macaulay Culkin, who is wondering, “How did I get caught up in all of this? I never asked to be an actor.” He always wanted out. You gotta watch that energy when he gets heavy on his father, man, it tears into him and that's what happens, you know. Oh, but I saw it myself with him. [Michael screams] “Mac get in here!” the screaming. . .

SB: So that reminded you of what you had to go through? He made a lot of the choices that you did. He tried to hold onto his childhood for as long as possible. But there are other childhood stars who didn't, like Brooke Shields, whom you were once close to. What about someone like Brooke Shields who to the world looks like she didn't make childhood choices, she didn't try to rediscover her childhood. Do you think it will exact a price? Do you think that Macaulay Culkin and you and others can be healthier because you understand what you are missing and you need to compensate?

MJ: You know, with certain people I understand and with certain ones I don't. With her she started out being a model, so it wasn't like being on the set all day, every day. She did modeling. She wasn't a movie star until she did, I think it was
Pretty Baby
, and she played a female prostitute at the age of. . . I think it started around twelve for her. There was a lot of photography, so it wasn't like all day like what we did, all day, from early to night. I think it affects people differently, but it is all the same. She is very sweet, smart. She is not an airhead. She is real smart. A lot of people think that when someone is beautiful they are like an airhead. She is very smart.

SB: What other childhood stars have you been close to?

MJ: Not a lot of them are left. That's what is scary. Most of them self-destruct.

SB: At age thirteen you became a character in a cartoon series. Was that hard to handle?

MJ: I woke up every Saturday morning. I couldn't wait.

SB: To watch
The Jacksons
?

MJ: To watch
The Jackson 5
cartoon. I felt so honored that I had been made into a cartoon. I was so happy, you have no idea. We didn't have to do anything. It was someone else's voice. They just animated us and used our songs off the albums that we recorded and it played for years and years. I remember I was in Brunei in a hospital doing a show for the Sultan. It was the most beautiful hospital I have ever seen in my life and I'm laying in bed and there's
The Jackson 5
cartoon playing on television and I'm like, I can't believe this. They show it all the time. The same company did
The Beatles
,
The Osmonds
, and
The Jackson 5
.

SB: So this is one of the things that you liked the most?

MJ: Oh, I loved it.

SB: Did that make you feel more connected with the children round the world? Because you know that children mostly are going to watch it right?

MJ: I loved it. It put me in another world. It was like, “God, I'm in another world.” I felt special. I think I felt more special about that than the hit records and the concerts and everything. That impressed me more than any of the other stuff.

SB: Now, out of your five brothers you were getting more attention than any of them. You were becoming the star until you were spun off as a solo artist. Was that hard for your brothers to handle? Was it hard for you? Was there any analogy to the story in the Bible about Joseph getting more attention than his brothers, until they hurt him?

MJ: It didn't come into my mind and I didn't see it until later and then it showed up later. My mother saw it, but she wouldn't bring it to my attention. But I think the wives kind of instigated it. It is what broke us up as a group. Wives are what broke up the Beatles. It is what broke up Martin and Lewis. It's what broke up all
of the great acts. The wives get involved and they start saying to one member, “You're the star. He needs you. You don't need him.” Then he comes into work the next day puffed up with pride and they start to fight. And that's what happened with me and my brothers. They really did. I saw it happen.

This was the first instance where Michael would express his distrust of women and how he came to see many women as manipulative, conniving, and prepared to use their sexuality to gain power over men. Many today believe that Michael Jackson was gay. I personally never saw any evidence of it. On the contrary, Michael constantly remarked on the attractiveness of women in my presence. What I believe is that Michael was attracted to women, but did not trust them and thus could not share intimacy with them. His perception that women sought control over men and would abuse their sexuality to achieve it made him something of a misogynist, the exception being his mother Katherine, who Michael adored. But this perception that women could be sleazy and sexually manipulative developed when Michael performed in seedy nightclubs from a very early age where he recalled watching women stripping and sexually tempting men. If that happened, and I don't doubt Michael's description, he was clearly too young to witness such toxic spectacles and the damage that was done was lasting and in some ways irreversible.

SB: That's what turned you off marriage a bit?

MJ: It really did. I said, “I don't want no part of this.” I said, “I am not getting married.” I said it for years.

SB: Was there any way to have stopped it? Could you have said to your brothers, “Look! What is happening to us?” Could you have stopped it? They married young. They must have been lonely as well.

MJ: They married young to get away from my father, to get out of the house. We begged them not to get married and they did.

SB: Why did you stick around the house?

MJ: I was there at the height of
Thriller
. I thought I was still this little kid. It's not time for me to go yet. I'm still a boy. It's not time for me to leave home yet. I really felt that in my heart.

SB: But you were still afraid of your father? How does that come together?

MJ: He wasn't managing me at that time, but he was getting a royalty check. He was a little calmer and he was proud of me. But he wouldn't say it.

SB: Did you want to hear it from him?

MJ: I needed it.

SB: More than anyone in the world?

MJ: Yeah.

SB: He still never said it. And he doesn't say it now? Do you think that he knows that you are the biggest star in the world, or do you still think in his mind he doesn't get it?

MJ: He knows that but he finds it hard to give you a compliment and that's what made me into such a perfectionist trying to impress him. He'd be in the audience and he would make a face like this. He'd go [makes facial gesture] and it would scare the bejesus out of you and you'd think, “I can't mess up. He'll kill us.” Everybody would clap and he would be like, “We're going to hit you hard. Don't you mess up.” I'd be like, “God, I'm in trouble after the show.”

SB: Given that there are two motivating forces in life, fear and love, could you have gotten even further if the motivation had been love? Like if your father had said, “Michael, I'll love you anyway, but you can do it.” Sure, you can now decry the fear that your father instilled in you. But the problem with that is, you became the biggest star in the world. So maybe fear is a better motivating force than love. To be sure, I don't believe that. But does your example show that that's true?

MJ: I think there is a balance. Is it worth giving up fatherhood? Is it worth giving up the love I could have bestowed upon him, and having that camaraderie when we look in each other's eyes, walking through the park, holding hands? I don't think it is worth giving up all that. I am sorry. That's golden.

SB: If your career now suffers for being a hands-on father, you are prepared to accept that price?

MJ: No, I am not prepared for that. I can do both. I feel I have to.

SB: You feel that God gave you this potential, this gift, and you have got to do something with it?

MJ: I have to.

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