You Are Not Alone_Michael, Through a Brother’s Eyes (18 page)

THE HAYVENHURST YEARS

WHEN MICHAEL, AGED 13, SAW THE
swimming-pool with two dolphins set into its bottom tiles, there was no question about it: Hayvenhurst was the dream house – which music had provided. It was May 1971, and Mother and Joseph put down our California roots in the LA suburb of Encino in the San Fernando Valley. Today the house is very different: then it was a bland one-storey ranch-style property, devoid of Michael’s later redesign. But there was still a lot going for it because it had previously been owned by Earle Hagen, the Emmy-award-winning composer of television scores, so its walls were already charmed with music and it had its own studio. It came with six bedrooms, the pool, a basketball court and two acres of land screened by trees, set back from a main road.

We could swim till dusk and have breakfast under the morning sun, sitting on the flagstoned patio, looking out over the gardens, with lemon and orange trees. Suddenly, for the first time in our lives, we had space – although we had sacrificed views of Hollywood for the suburban practicalities of large-family living.
Our family had now grown to 13 members, with the addition of Jack Richardson and Johnny, so we needed every inch of the 8,000 square feet the house offered.

Back then, Hayvenhurst sat behind the wrought-iron rails of an electric gate – the start of life lived behind gates. The house had classic seventies décor: lots of sliding doors, plastic seating, gaudy colours and wood panelling, and we felt we’d hit the big-time with a spiral staircase that twisted its way out of the sunken living room with its wraparound couch. The sleeping arrangements now meant twin rooms for Marlon and me, Tito and Johnny, Michael and Randy, La Toya and Janet, Jackie and Ronny (with Michael and me still sharing on the road). I read somewhere that Hayvenhurst was so big that we started ‘losing touch’ and ‘had to make plans in advance to see each other’, but that wasn’t true: it was a house, not a castle. Thirteen people can make 8,000 square feet feel compact.

The new house was a sure sign that we were making serious money, and we each received an allowance of five dollars a week. Michael spent his on art materials. He also developed a fascination with magical tricks – he loved the process of illusion. The more surprised Mother looked – as he turned an umbrella into a flower or when a coin disappeared from his hand – the happier he was. Mother bought new furniture for the first time and treated herself to a new wardrobe. Joseph bought a new Ford Kombi and Jackie had his own pride and joy: an orange Datsun 240Z (until the day he reached for some gum while driving and totalled it north of Ventura Boulevard).

Despite our new wealth, our parents never spoiled us. The work ethic remained in place: they didn’t want us thinking that money was no object – Joseph even installed a pay-phone. And we were still given chores. Had anyone visited us on any random weekend, they would have found Tito and me doing vacuuming and laundry, Michael, Randy and Janet washing the windows, and Jackie and La Toya mopping floors and raking leaves.

Joseph still ruled. It eased from its worst excesses, but that’s not to say he didn’t still have a short fuse. There was a time when
Michael was dressed and ready to join Mother at the Kingdom Hall and Joseph wanted him to rehearse for a national tour. But it was a Sunday, and Michael clung to Mother. Joseph ended up smashing a window in his fury, while mother and son left to pray with Jehovah. Over time, Randy and Janet got to know what the belt felt like, mainly for disobedience, and our pre-tour rehearsals at home were still administered under the threat of a beating. We were on the world stage now; nothing could go wrong. We had ‘made it’ and the media endearingly referred to Joseph as ‘Papa Joe’, but that didn’t mean he could change his character and way of being overnight.

MICHAEL RECEIVED SOME KIND OF DEATH
threat. I don’t remember the details, but it was enough for us to be pulled out of public school in favour of private. Nobody was taking chances, especially after one of the Supremes, Cindy Birdsong – Diana Ross’s replacement – was kidnapped after being attacked in her home in the year we moved West. She was being driven to Long Beach when she managed to unlock the car door and throw herself from the moving vehicle on to the highway. Maybe that was the reason behind two new additions to the household: Lobo and Heavy, the German Shepherds. Lobo snarled to such a degree that whenever a journalist visited our house he always warranted a mention in the interview. (Fans of Janet may remember she wore a key as an earring – that was for Lobo’s cage because she, as the chief dog lover of the family, ended up taking care of him.)

There was also Johnny’s Dobermann. With characteristic mischief, he named him ‘Hitler’, but we didn’t mention that to the press.

Tito, Marlon, Michael and I now attended the Walton School in Panorama City. Its liberal attitude better suited our touring requirements and we were treated as equal with everyone else. Michael still had to audition for the part he landed in a school production of
Guys and Dolls
.

One day, we brothers were hovering around the school gates when everyone’s attention was caught by a hearse parking at the kerb.
Who arrives at school in a hearse? That’s not cool.

Out stepped this tall, good-looking dude with an Afro that was almost as impressive as ours. He was engaged in a full-on sulk with an adult – I think it was his mother – about not wanting to go to this lousy school, he didn’t like it, and it was too far from home (he lived in Hancock Park).

Then, he turned and spotted Tito. ‘Wait … You all at this school?’

‘Yeah – except Jackie,’ said Tito.

I have never seen a kid switch so fast from sulks to smiles. Before we knew it, John McClain, the funeral director’s son, was standing on the pavement waving off his mother, thinking he had arrived at the coolest school in the world. He became a friend for life and his constant presence at our house meant that we regarded him almost as an adopted brother. As a teenager, it was clear he had musical ambitions of his own as a guitarist/songwriter/composer, and he and Tito often jammed together. John shared Michael’s hunger to learn and he was fascinated by our Motown education. Whatever Mr Gordy taught us, I passed on to him. He had a mischievous side like Michael, so when those two got together, it was always double trouble.

I was standing with them in the playground one afternoon when we saw this kid called George having a great time on the swings, about 50 yards away. ‘I bet you can’t throw this peach and hit him on top of the head!’ said Michael, daring me, forgetting my outfield accuracy.

‘How much?’

Michael knew he’d hooked me. ‘Two bucks.’

Game on. He handed me the peach. I adjusted my eyes to the arcs of the pendulum called George and I took aim. The peach flew and … BOOM! George swung right into it.

Michael jumped up and down – like he used to during Katz Kittens games – then ran off as George wondered who and what had hit him.

Their biggest joke was on a mouthy kid called Sean and they decided he needed teaching a lesson. John, no doubt relying on skills learned in the funeral trade, dug a hole in the school grounds, about four feet deep. I didn’t witness how they got him in there, but Sean – all blond hair and Beatles cut – somehow ended up knelt in the hole as Michael and John kicked in the soil, burying him to his chest. Then, a teacher marched out.

‘Who did this? Get him out of there right now!’

It was one of those rare times when I heard a teacher use the admonishing words: ‘I’m surprised at you, Michael Jackson!’

Michael stuck to me like glue outside class. Wherever I looked, he was there, wearing his black velour hat, hanging in my shadow. There was one time when I thought I’d shaken him off. It was after a photography class and I’d disappeared with a girl who had invited me into the dark room because she said she wanted to kiss me. With the door shut, we were awkwardly overcoming our teenage shyness in the red luminescence, reaching the point where our lips were about to touch, when – ‘I CAUGHT YA! I CAUGHT YA!’ Michael burst in.

He caused such a commotion that a teacher arrived to find out what all the noise was about. As I explained my way out of being with a girl in the dark room, I heard Michael running down the hallway, laughing.

THERE WERE SO MANY GIRLS COMING
at me back then, and my teenage self found the attention impossible to resist, but sneaking a girl by Bill Bray’s door, and knowing when Joseph was not around, was a skill in itself. Because it was also ‘forbidden’, it felt like a home run every time I managed to get a girl beyond checkpoints and beyond the threshold of the bedroom door. I had never been so grateful for exterior fire exits and back stairways. The awkward problem, of course, was sharing a room with Michael. What made this worse was that if he knew I was pursuing a certain girl, he’d deliberately attach himself to my hip. But once – one golden once – Michael was nowhere to be seen and I managed
to sneak away from some hotel gathering to hook up with the prettiest of girls.

Back home, I had been seeing a lot of Hazel Gordy, but while we liked each other – and sent endless love letters – puppy love had not advanced into anything serious, leaving me free to build my experience on the road. We older brothers had a way of describing how far we got with a girl: from ‘first base’ (the kiss) to ‘second base’ (touching/clothes off) to ‘third base’ (the sex) and, in my hotel room that night, I was an LA Dodger running wild; eyes closed, on top of this girl, kissing and touching with a freedom I didn’t think possible. ‘That feels really good …’ she said. I was getting serious, she was groaning. Third base was in sight. I had one hand stroking her face, and the other on the mattress beside her head.

‘I love how you stroke my thighs,’ she continued, ‘… you’re real gentle …’
I’m not stroking your thighs
. ‘… it feels good,’ she whispered. I peeked open my eyes and manoeuvred my head to take a sly look down the bed, and that’s when I saw it – Michael’s arm, reaching up and over from underneath the bed, his hand circling her thigh.

‘MICHAEL!’ I jumped up, the poor girl was mortified and Michael, chuckling, was already scrambling for the door. I could have killed him, not only because he was hiding there the whole time, but because he heard me whispering all these sensual, sweet nothings that he would tease me with for weeks after. I refused to speak to him that night. When we turned out the lights and he wished me goodnight, I said nothing. He waited a few minutes in the dark and then brokered the peace. ‘She got some real creamy thighs!’ he said. And we both burst out laughing.

GIRLFRIENDS WERE TECHNICALLY BANNED, SO JACKIE’S
and my illicit conquests were kept on the down-low. First, Motown wasn’t keen on promoting us as anything other than boys-without-girlfriends-and-looking-for-love. We understood that our appeal was contained in the hope that we could one day become our fans’ boyfriends. Second, outside the bubble of Motown PR, Joseph’s
equally image-conscious rules didn’t allow girlfriends, and this came across loud and clear. Girlfriends are bad for you. Girls will distract you. Girls will wreck record sales. You will lose fans. They will stop screaming for you – and so forth. We older brothers rolled our eyes. It was an extension of ‘never let the outside in’.

But I’m not sure Michael fully understood. If anything, it confused him. For the longest time, he was expected to play the public role of available boyfriend, but was then told girls were career poison and would stop him becoming the best. If he ever doubted the seriousness of this unwritten rule, he saw its truth rammed home one day when Joseph caught Tito with Dee Dee, his childhood sweetheart and future wife.

Tito was at the school gates waiting to be picked up when our father pulled up with Jack and saw him kissing Dee Dee. It opened a big can of whoop-ass. When Tito got in the van, Joseph really gave it to him. Tito protested, screaming how much he loved this girl, but Joseph kept hitting him, yelling that his selfish actions were going to split up the group. I know it upset Michael because when we stayed up late on the road, talking about girls, he spoke all hush. He asked me about how to treat a girl, wondering when was the right time to make the first move on a date. ‘I always want to be a gentleman,’ he said, 14 going on 42.

Not that Michael was
completely
green. At certain venues or functions, Jackie and I used him as our wing-man when Joseph wasn’t looking. Our father never suspected the young ones of hitting on older girls, so Michael’s adorability became our secret weapon. ‘You see that cute one over there,’ we’d say, ‘go over and ask for her number.’

When an approach didn’t concern him personally, he was devoid of shyness. He’d walk right on over and start talking. We’d see the girls coo and, nine times out of ten, he returned with a piece of paper, mission nonchalantly accomplished. ‘Here’s her number. She’s real nice!’ he’d say.

But we had different tastes back then. Where I was looking for easy girls, he idealised a young lady. Where I dreamed of getting
them back to my room, he dreamed of taking them for ice-cream and watching cartoons. He was fussy; I was not. In fact, when it came to girls – and women in later life – he studied them in the same way he studied great artists. He looked out for every delicate detail: mannerisms, hair, smile and the way she walked. And his ideal chick ‘needs to be honest and kind.’ He always said that. As a boy, he wondered aloud if ‘honesty’ was too much to ask. ‘Will they want us for who we are, or want us because we’re the Jackson 5?’

I always gave realistic advice: ‘Michael, take these girls for what they are – great admirers of what we do, but they don’t really know us.’

‘But they love us … and they’d do anything for us!’

Big brothers shouldn’t have to dash little brothers’ hopes, and it was hard for me then to explain the distinction between the fans I brought back to the room and the true love he romanced about. ‘You don’t need to worry about any of this stuff yet,’ was my cop-out.

Michael just kept on nurturing his growing crush on Diana Ross – his idea of the perfect woman. ‘A girl has to be as dignified and beautiful as Diana,’ he said, and it was a view he would carry into adulthood. One day, at the house, he started teasing a teenage La Toya and Janet, and told them: ‘you aren’t pretty until you start looking like Diana!’