You Are Not Alone_Michael, Through a Brother’s Eyes (41 page)

Michael was setting out to show that the power rests with the artist who has the fan-base, not the label with the smart attorneys. He said to me later, ‘From that very moment, they needed me to fail and they wanted control of the catalogue.’

INVINCIBLE
WAS RELEASED IN OCTOBER 2001
and Michael felt Sony executives were only doing what they were contractually obliged to do. They didn’t go mad on music video budgets and didn’t release the album’s strongest songs, like ‘Speechless’ and his favourite album track, ‘Unbreakable’ – a song about his spirit and defiance: ‘It’s saying nothing and no one will stop me,’ he declared.

Instead, Michael disagreed with Sony and felt they were putting out its weakest numbers. This doesn’t surprise me because there is a saying in the music industry, ‘Why fatten the frog for the snake?’, usually heard when a recording artist’s contract is about to expire, or he/she wants to leave. No label throws its promotional weight behind a want-away artist to big them up in the marketplace.

But Michael felt it went deeper than that with Sony, especially after he’d heard from fans who couldn’t find the album in certain stores.’ He based that on information received in a phone call from someone he trusted. He felt strongly that everything was designed to back him into a financial corner: the less successful his albums, the less royalty income. The less he earned, the more reliant he’d be on his share of the Sony-ATV catalogue, which he’d already borrowed against to the tune of $200 million from Bank of America … guaranteed by Sony. And the more debt he had, the stronger the chance he’d be forced to sell his interest in the catalogue. At least, that was Michael’s thinking. But he also felt a subtle pressure because I know that someone had suggested to him – before 2003 – that he could solve all his money worries by selling his 50 per cent share. But to me that missed the math of his inbuilt equity: he had borrowed $200 million against a stake-holding worth $500 million. Plus at the start of the new millennium, he could still command $80–100 million per tour. In fact, this was the mathematical argument Michael used all the time to friends. He was confident that once he was released from Sony, he would be America’s greatest artist roaming free – and there was only one bottom line: he wasn’t letting go of his greatest asset.

He wasn’t going to stay quiet either. Driven by his feeling of injustice, he took open double-deckers around London asking his
fans to boycott Sony, holding up signs that said, ‘SONY KILLS MUSIC’. That demonstration told me how upset he was; that a man of such controlled emotion and discretion could take to a battle bus waving placards like a protestor proved to me how angry and cheated he felt. I wanted to punch the air and cheer because
finally
he’d found his voice and was stepping into confrontation; I admired him for not being brow-beaten by corporate muscle.

Despite the weak promotion,
Invincible
still went to No. 1 in both the US and UK, but Michael was furious about its sales performance, believing that 13 million albums sold worldwide was not a reflection of the blood, sweat and tears he’d poured into its creation.

IT WAS REPORTED SOMEWHERE THAT
INVINCIBLE
didn’t max out on sales because Michael didn’t want to take it on tour, but that was never true. An album tour was planned, designed, and he was ready and willing to go on the road in spring 2002, nationally and overseas. But then 9/11 happened, and it was cancelled at Michael’s request. I know this led to a bust-up over the phone with Tommy Mottola. Michael blamed him for not promoting his album, and Tommy blamed him for not doing the tour that would have promoted the album. I didn’t understand Sony’s argument because my brother was one of countless artists who cancelled tours that year, including our sister Janet; the mood at that time was not to travel within the heightened sense of alert. If American targets were at risk and those terrorists audacious enough to take down the Twin Towers, then a stadium filled with fans for America’s greatest entertainer could be hit, too. Michael took the decision not to put his fans or his tour staff in that position: it was common sense.

Personally, I think that when Michael backed out of that tour in the September, Sony put the brakes on a full-on promotion in the October. It kept telling Michael that it had spent $24m on the album and needed an artist who was prepared to promote it. At one point, Michael attempted to win over the situation by playing politics with Tommy, seeking to appease him by inviting his wife, Thalia,
to sing on the Spanish version of ‘What More Can I Give?’ I don’t know if that version was ever released in Latin-American territories, but if Michael had hoped it would increase the level of promotion for
Invincible
, he would have been disappointed. The big sadness was that if 9/11 hadn’t happened, the tour would have gone ahead, keeping him performing into the year 2004.

Since 2009, there has been a lot of debate and misunderstanding about my brother’s appetite for the road because he made no secret of the fact that he didn’t like touring. It induced anxiety, insomnia and dehydration, and left him feeling miserable. His insomnia was the curse of live shows that left him filled with adrenalin. Other artists may empathise with this, but Michael suffered chronically. That was why, on most tours, he took a qualified anaesthetist with him. This choice had
nothing
to do with a prescription-drug dependency, and everything to do with the desperate need to sleep when on the road: he needed to be knocked out in order to rest. But with a specialist alongside him –
and his intake closely monitored
. Michael also trusted that his physicians would monitor him at all times while he was under. While this may seem unorthodox, it was his coping mechanism when touring – a quick fix to a long-term problem that illustrated the downside to touring.

On the other hand, a strong force willed him on to that stage. Getting out there, performing for his fans, immersed in his music, brought a euphoria that he struggled to resist. He’d talked about ‘no more touring’ since as far back as 1981 – and look how much he toured after that. Michael could turn to the person on his left and say, ‘I’m never going to tour again,’ then swivel around and say to the person on his right, ‘I’m going to tour again.’ He was born to entertain and was forever torn between what his head and soul said. Touring drained him but it exhilarated him, too. Once
Invincible
had been cancelled, it was inevitable that Michael would tour again but he would do it when the time was right, and on his terms.

WHENEVER MICHAEL CHECKED INTO HIS HOTEL
suite in any city, in any country around the world, hordes of fans waited in the street in all weathers to see which balcony he’d appear on, because they knew his routine: he’d always step out to wave and acknowledge them, and toss out a pillow with his autograph. Balconies were his stage, too.

In 1988, he was staying at the beachfront Negresco Hotel in Nice, France, during the
Bad
tour and some sweltering August days; it was so hot that firefighters had to spray the fans with hoses at the concerts. On one ‘off night’, and with Michael restricted to his suite as usual, he threw ‘souvenirs’ out of the window – fruit, pens, mini-bar snacks, grooming kits – to the fans below. At first, all anyone outside could see were these hotel missiles. But then Michael, the clown, put out his gloved hand. Everyone cheered. Then he extended his arm. Everyone cheered some more. Then he leaned out to wave and say hello. Everyone went crazy. When photographer Harrison Funk, who was in the room with him, relays that story to this day, it still makes me smile. Once Michael had run out of objects to throw, and seeing that the crowd had now multiplied tenfold, he decided he wanted a photograph to capture the moment, but with just his sequined gloved hand in the foreground and the mass of fans in the background, probably a hundred feet below.

‘How can we get
that
shot?’ he asked excitedly.

It was an impossible shot, even if Harrison stood on top of wardrobes or hung from the curtain rail. ‘I can’t get it,’ he said. ‘We’d need a crane or a helicopter.’

‘Okay, let’s do it!’

Harrison knew he wasn’t joking. Michael was one of those pull-out-all-the-stops artists and when he had an idea, however outlandish, he wanted to execute it. Ultimately, after logistical calls with hotel management, he accepted that (a) a helicopter couldn’t get close enough and (b) health and safety wouldn’t allow it – but he’d had to face up to the impossibility before he’d give up on his idea. That was Michael: not really thinking, just acting on the spur of the moment.

MICHAEL’S THIRD CHILD, PRINCE MICHAEL II,
a.k.a ‘Blanket’, was born on 21 February 2002. Debbie was not his mother: she had asked for a divorce three years earlier. I know little about that separation, except that I don’t think heartbreak was involved because they had never lived together, never been a conventional couple, and their arrangement had run its course. But Michael wanted more children so ‘Blanket’ came along as a result of artificial insemination with an anonymous surrogate mother. Nobody knows who she is, not even the family. I think it’s wonderful because that woman kept her privacy – and Michael achieved something that rarely happened: nobody got to the bottom of something personal to him. Such were the small victories he earned in his private life.

‘Blanket’ became unintentionally famous at the age of nine months old when Michael stood at his hotel balcony in Berlin, Germany, with a sheet over the baby’s head, holding him momentarily over the balcony’s top rail. He was in and out of those double doors in less than five seconds flat, and it was
supposed
to be a moment of playfulness, but then came the condemnation. Suddenly, back home in LA, we were reading reports about how he was ‘a reckless father’ who had ‘risked his son’s life’ by ‘dangling’ him over the balcony. Dangling – ‘to hang loosely so as to be able to swing freely’ according to the dictionary – was the word everyone used, making it sound like the poor kid was hanging on for dear life from a fraying rope, when the truth is that Michael always had the firmest grip on the baby, with one arm tight to his chest under his chin, and the other holding the sheet to his head. I’m not saying what he did with ‘Blanket’ wasn’t foolish because it was – he knew it was – but the whole episode was blown out of proportion, with talk of child protection services and Berlin police interviewing him for child neglect.

Michael issued an apologetic statement, admitting his ‘terrible mistake’, but privately he was furious. ‘I was proud [as a father]. I wasn’t thinking,’ he told me, ‘but I knew the grip I had – yet they came after me like I’d held a gun to Blanket’s head!’

Eventually, the media interest faded and I told him, ‘Just be happy the press don’t know how forgetful you are!’ He laughed, because we both remembered
that
memory.

Michael was probably the most forgetful person I knew – because, as an artist, he was preoccupied with creativity. One Family Day at Hayvenhurst, Prince and Paris were there with ‘Blanket’, who was still in diapers, tucked up in a carrier-cradle. At the end of a happy afternoon, Michael’s chauffeur loaded everything into the trunk and the children got in the car. We were all on the steps and Michael was all smiles, with his arm waving out the window as they drove away. We knew what he had forgotten, even if he didn’t. How long would it be before he realised?

We waited and waited. About five minutes later, we saw the nose of the car turn back into the driveway. The car door flew open and Michael jumped out, looking all sheepish and with his hand to his mouth, dashed out, rushed by us and hurried back inside. ‘Oh, I forgot Blanket!’

MICHAEL BECOMING A FATHER WAS THE
completion of everything. No matter what he faced on the outside, his happiness – his reminder of what was important in life – now centred on Prince, Paris and ‘Blanket’. They made him happy: they took away his loneliness and provided him with a greater purpose than music.

His performance as a father was an example of what fatherhood should be. He instilled in them the love Mother gave us, and he provided the kind of emotional fathering that our father, through no fault of his own, could not. Michael was father and mother rolled into one and he took that dual role very seriously. That didn’t mean he was a pushover, though: his discipline was authoritative without being physical. I remember once when both Prince and Paris were acting up and I was visiting with my children, Michael’s voice was no whisper in the wind that day: ‘I’m so ashamed of you acting like this!’ he told them. ‘Now go to your rooms!’

He was huge on teaching them manners, respect and kindness, and he would insist that they spoke when someone walked into the
room. He would tell them: ‘Introduce yourself … Say hello … Say your name.’ When an adult walked in, it was no excuse to be distracted by toys. His directness was part of the honest communication that he felt was paramount in raising a child: always tell them, every single day, that you love them; hold them and be with them when they fall asleep so that they trust you will be there for them – as he always was.

WE ALWAYS KNEW WHEN TROUBLE WAS
going down. Our early warning system – which paradoxically always came too late – were ‘the eyes in the sky’, the news helicopters hovering over Hayvenhurst. The moment we heard those rotor blades, we’d turn on the television and, nine times out of ten, the breaking news involved Michael. We’d start ringing round and regroup, reaching out to Michael and ensuring Mother had support. It took place so many times that we might as well have instituted a practice drill. Sometimes we’d wonder where the next big one would come from. It was like living with California’s earthquakes – you just learn to live with the daily risk that the very city you call home could implode at any minute. It’s the ‘Big One’ that is always in the back of the mind, locked away with the survival kits. Michael always said that he’d climb a tree and take cover in its branches. I don’t know if he did that when the 1994 Northridge earthquake struck, though. But when that terrible event happened, it made up Joseph’s mind: he was moving to Vegas and safer ground. God had found the one thing to terrify our father, but Mother refused to move out to Nevada. So, after 35 years of marriage, they decided to live apart and split their time between two homes, finding a late independence they were both happy with in what is not an uncommon arrangement with people of their generation. Their marriage had survived much worse than distance, and our family had survived more earthquakes than most. Ones that shake you to the core and shatter everything you’ve built. Ones that make you come together and fight harder than you’ve ever fought in your life. No matter how big the
earthquake, we survive. And they always start with a tremor that seems like nothing at first.