The Michael Jackson Tapes (26 page)

SB: So that means there was almost like one girl in the whole world that you could marry because even a rich woman would want your name. You needed someone with money
and
a name. You were down to a Presley or a McCartney or something like that.

MJ: I know. Lisa was great. She was a sweet person. But it is hard to tie me down. I can't stay in one place one time so that's why I don't know if I [can] really be completely married all the time.

SB: Did you want to be a father to her kids?

MJ: Yes.

SB: Do you still stay in touch with the children?

MJ: Yes, and with her.

SB: But marriage is too confining?

MJ: Yes. I don't know whether I am disciplined enough because I am such a rolling stone. I have such a life when I am always on the move and women don't like that. They want you to be settled in one place all the time but I have to move. I have been in the same city as where my house is and I'll check into a hotel just to feel like I am going somewhere. My house is right there. I guess I am just moving all the time, moving.

SB: You have gotten used to it. That's your lifestyle.

MJ: I love being on the move, love it.

SB: It impresses me that everywhere you go you take your children with you. So you are on the move but it is almost like your household moves with you. Prince and Paris aren't unsettled because of it because their source of security is always with them. But what about the families who don't have the resources for that, and most don't? They don't have enough to be able to fly the kids around here and there. Businessmen who have to travel, they fly economy just to afford their own fare, and they can't possibly bring their kids along every time. Should they not travel?

MJ: I feel bad for their children. I feel bad for their children. I always ask pilots and stewards how do they do it? The children suffer. Absolutely. They suffer.

SB: You wouldn't be doing this if Prince and Paris were going to suffer as a result. You are doing it because you have the resources to bring them where you are.

MJ: I couldn't hurt them like that.

SB: Do you want to find them a Rose Fine kind of figure, a bit of a motherhood figure?

MJ: That would be nice. That would be sweet. If the person is completely sincere like Miss Fine was, who would read to them and teach them and give them the right values and teach them that there's no difference and that we are all the same people. She used to always rub my face and I never used to understand why. She used to say I had beautiful hands. And I used to say, “Why, don't all hands look alike?” But now I see what she means because now I do it to my kids. I rub their face like that because they are so sweet. [Laughs] I never understood why she did it to me. Then you grow up and you realize that it is an endearing thing to do, to say, “I love you.”

Michael Jackson: Yeah, but I don't really have Hollywood friends. I have a few.

Shmuley Boteach: Why don't you? Why don't you hang out with more celebrities?

MJ: Because I don't think they are all real people. They love the limelight and I don't have anything in common with them. They want to go clubbing and afterwards they want to sit around and drink hard liquor and do marijuana and do all kinds of crazy things that I wouldn't do. We have nothing in common. Remember the line I told you? Madonna laid the law down to me before we went out. “I am
not
going to Disneyland, okay? That's out.” I said, “But I didn't ask you to go to Disneyland.” She said, “We are going to the restaurant and afterwards we are going to a strip bar.” I said, “I am not going to a strip bar.” Guys who cross-dress! Afterwards she wrote some mean things about me in the press and I wrote that she is a nasty witch, after I was so kind to her. I have told you that we were at the table eating and some little kids came up. “Oh my God, Michael Jackson and Madonna. Can we have your autograph?” She said, “Get out of here. Leave us alone.” I said, “Don't ever talk to children like that.” She said, “Shut up.” I said, “You shut up.” That's how we were. Then we went out again and went to the Academy Awards and she is not a nice person. I have to say it. She is not a nice person.

SB: Did the people around you feel that it was important to be seen with her?

MJ: They knew nothing about it. This was totally between her and me.

SB: So you gave it a chance and it didn't work?

MJ: Yeah, I gave it a chance like I try and give everything a chance.

SB: You basically saw that your values do not match those of most Hollywood people.

MJ: No, they do lots of crazy things that I am not into and at the time I was with Madonna she was into these books, a whole library of books of women who were tied to walls. She said, “I love spanky books.” Why do I want to see that?

SB: I think a lot of it is the image. She once said something to the effect that she would much rather read a good book than have sex. I think the other vulgar stuff is part of the outrageous image she tries to cultivate.

MJ: She's lying [about preferring to read a book]. I can't judge. I don't know if she has changed or if she [is] trying to claim she has changed.

SB: Why does she say mean things?

MJ: I think she likes shock value and she knows how to push buttons on people. I think she was sincerely in love with me and I was not in love with her. She did a lot of crazy things and that's how that went. I knew we had nothing in common. But I am pretty sure that having a baby has to change you. I don't know how much she has changed. I'm sure she is a better person than before.

SB: She has two children now.

MJ: Yeah, I know. How would you like getting a phone call and she is telling you that she is putting her fingers between her legs. I would say, “Oh Madonna, please.” She said, “What I want you to do when I hang up the phone is to rub yourself and think of me.” That's the kind of stuff she says. She does. When I see her she says, “This is the finger I used last night.” Wild, out of control.

SB: But you were raised that all things romantic should have a certain modesty. . . the values you were raised with are very similar to core Jewish values. That kind of thing that Madonna was saying is only shocking at first. Then it quickly becomes humdrum and boring. That's why she has to push the envelope and become more
and more shocking just to sustain our interest in her. When people have their breasts out the whole time then you stop looking. Do you see that as vulgar?

MJ: What she does? Absolutely. She is not sexy at all. I think sexy comes from the heart in the way you present yourself.

SB: Have you ever found women who are a bit more modest to be more attractive for that reason?

MJ: Yeah. I don't like the women who are always saying, “My nails need to be done. I have to do my toes. I need a manicure.” I hate all that. I like it when girls are a little bit more tomboyish. If they wrestle, climb a tree. . . I love that. It is sexier to me. I like class, though. Class is everything.

SB: If a woman walks round with all her cleavage showing. . .

MJ: Frank
loves
it.

SB: A man might want to have sex with a woman like that. But it doesn't mean he would want to fall in love with a woman like that.

MJ: Of course you want to look. I am in love with innocence and I tell Frank that.

SB: Have you met women who have that innocence or by and large would you say that this generation is cultivating women who are not innocent, who are not encouraged to preserve their innocence?

MJ: I wish they were.

SB: Celebrities are targets for people who marry them for the wrong reasons, their fortune and their name. But don't you know when someone is interested in you for the wrong reason?

MJ: You don't know.

SB: The ancient rabbis said that words that emanate from the heart penetrate the heart. That sincerity cannot be faked. You can't tell when someone is faking it and is full of it?

MJ: It is hard because the women today can do a good job of faking it. I mean a real good job. They are so smooth. Look in the Bible. Women have taken the most powerful men down to nothing because
of what is between their legs. Samson, nobody could cut his hair, and he had sex with Delilah.

SB: Monica Lewinsky and Clinton. . . what everyone overlooks is that she went after him, which doesn't excuse Clinton, but she's not off the hook either.

MJ: Didn't I say that the other day? One woman did so much pain to this president. How much can a woman do to try and hurt a president? Look what she caused, and that's why I don't like Barbara Walters because she instigated a lot of it. She made it all on television. She tried to come here today and I cancelled it.

MJ: I don't like clubs now, I did all that when I was eleven, eight and going back—nine, eight, seven, six. Fights break out, people throwing up, yelling, screaming, the police sirens. Our father never let us become a part of it other than to perform and leave. But
sometimes in having to do that you would get caught up in some of the craziness. I saw it all. The lady who came on right before, when The Jackson's were little, “And now next, The Little Jackson 5,” was the lady who took off
all
her clothes. Threw her panties into the audience and the men would grab them and sniff them. I saw all this. Her name was Rose Marie and she put these things on her breasts and moved them around and she showed everything. So when I became sixteen, seventeen and guys would say, “Let's go clubbing,” I would go, “Are you crazy?” And the guys would be like, “No, are
you
crazy? We can get girls, we can get liquor.” But I had done that. I did that when I was a baby. Now I want to be a part of the world and the life I didn't have. Take me to Disneyland, take me to where the magic is.

Shmuley Boteach: Let me ask you about loneliness. So wherever you travel, you, thank God, have an entourage. People you've been with for a long time, Frank and Skip [Michael's bodyguard at the time, a very pleasant and decent man from New Orleans]. But it's still not like having a wife in your life or something. Do you get lonely? Or is there so much going on in your life that it doesn't really happen?

Michael Jackson: Like lonely for like a wife? For like a mate? Like that?

SB: Yeah.

MJ: I've been through two bad divorces and I just got out of the second one. Even when married to those women that I was married to, I'd go to bed hurting. I was hurting. I was crying last night as I went to sleep and I didn't sleep good last night. And I cry, Shmuley, because I feel this. . . and I'm not trying, I'm telling you the honest truth and if you don't believe me you can ask Frank. Frank knew how I was hurting. I just was feeling all the pain of the children
who suffer and I was hurting so much. That's why I was trying to reach any child I knew who had pain, from [Michael mentions a little girl who was battling cancer and whose family he met at our home] to Gavin [Michael's later accuser]. I was trying to like, calling, dialing and I woke up the first thing, the first person I called was [the little girl's] house and she had gone already. It hurts me. But I think that's where my real love comes from, Shmuley. If I can help in that way, I'm fine and I don't need the other [romantic love]. You know if I meet some girl somewhere and I think she's beautiful, which I see a lot of them, that's great. I mean, I'll go on a date or something. Nothing wrong with that. Jennifer Lopez looked awfully good the other day, she did. I was shocked 'cause I never thought. . . She looked good [Michael laughs as he says this].

SB: But have you given up on women understanding you? You tend to think that children will understand you a lot better?

MJ: I'm not easy to live with in that way for a wife. I'm not easy and I know I'm not easy. Because I give all my time to someone else. I give it to children, I give it to somebody sick somewhere, to the music. And women want to be the center. And I remember Lisa Marie would always say to me, “I'm not a piece of furniture, I'm not a piece of furniture. You just can't . . .” I say, “I don't want you to be a piece of furniture,” and, you know, there'd be some sick little girls calling on the phone and she'd get mad and hang up on them. And, you know, I feel that's my, that's my mission, Shmuley. I have to do it.

SB: What if you found a woman who was that soft, who was incredibly soft?

MJ: Like a Mother Teresa or a Lady Diana or. . . That would be great. It would be perfect.

SB: Would that be better than having to do it on your own?

MJ: Absolutely, and Lisa was great with going to the hospitals with me, and she was so sweet about that. They would tie the babies to the bed or chain the children down. We'd go unchain. . . we'd go free all these babies. I hated that and she, she discovered a lot of that injustice with me. Countries like Romania and Prague, Czechoslovakia and all that, Russia. You should see what they do
to the children in those. . . you'd be shocked. They chain them to the wall like they're animals and they're naked and they slept in their tinkle and their feces too. It's just so sad, it made me sick. So we brought clothes and toys and just love and love. I love them and I went back every day visiting them, hugging them, wanting to take each and every one of them to Neverland.

SB: When you started becoming this childhood star, did you realize that your childhood was slowly slipping away? You won a contest at age eight. In 1964, you were chosen as lead singer for the family band. Did that make you feel excited or were you worried? Did you think to yourself, “Where is all this headed? What's it going to lead to?”

MJ: I didn't think about it. I didn't think about the future. I just took each day as it came. I knew I wanted to be a star. I wanted to do things and make people happy.

SB: Did you know what the cost was going to be in terms of childhood?

MJ: No way. No way.