Michael Jackson: the tipping point of weirdness

This piece gets the weirdness of Michael Jackson across. Read it and weep for the death of a person.

The man who wasn't there -- Michael Jackson phone home:
In April 1981 — before Jacko was known as Wacko — a young Danny Baker was summoned to interview the King of Pop in LA. Here, he recalls a surreal encounter.

On average I still get asked about Michael Jackson about once a month. Sometimes the phone will ring and it’ll be a Japanese magazine or a Danish television station asking if I have a spare hour to tell them all about Michael. I once received a letter via the BBC from a girl in Iceland who inquired if I still had anything Michael might have signed or, I promise you, touched. Perhaps the best of all was the 0800 pay-per-minute phone company who said they’d give me £5,000 for the cassette tapes of my interviews with him plus a slice of the subsequent action. So, it appears that other than his employees, Uri Geller and Bubbles the Monkey, among the few other adult life forms Michael Jackson has met in the past couple of decades are two British journalists: me and Martin Bashir. This, by anyone’s standards, is not a life well lived.

I was a writer at the New Musical Express and even back then we were stunned by the wisdom of his advisers. “The NME?” we gasped, “Why does he want to give a world exclusive to the NME? Has he ever read the NME?” True, at the time, the NME was the biggest selling music weekly in the world but, equally, it got that way because it pioneered the kind of flip, raspberry-blowing irreverence toward celebrity that so overwhelms us all today. We were hardly going to glowingly salute the King of Pop. There would be absolutely no suggestion of “copycontrol”. Yet Michael had okayed it and was apparently “really looking forward to opening his heart” to this unknown British hack. Are you sensing a pattern here?

I remember he arrived late, very late. I had already been in Los Angeles for a couple of days and was told that the interview would take place only when Michael felt “ready”. In the meantime Epic Records had cushioned me in the Sunset Marquis Hotel with an unlimited tab and a chauffeur on permanent standby in case I wanted to go somewhere.

When the photographer Joe Stevens and I were eventually scrambled to the appointed meeting nothing happened for about three hours. Well, when I say nothing that’s not entirely true or fair. The other Jacksons began turning up in dribs and drabs. First to arrive was Tito, a surly hunk of seniority among the brothers, who launched right in by saying that any questions I had I should direct by name to whichever Jackson I felt was best suited to answer. “So if you are gonna talk about the business or how we came to be what we are today or what our plans are,” he continued without meeting my eye, “there’s no point asking . . . I don’t know . . . Michael, for instance.” Uh-oh. It was as if the air-conditioning had suddenly gone into reverse. I could see that there were going to be two big problems with this proviso. The first was that I suddenly couldn’t recall a single other Jackson brother’s name. Indeed had Tito not been wearing a baseball cap with the word “Tito” on it I might have believed he was called Harpo. Maybe they would all wear name hats; that’d be a reprieve. Otherwise I was sunk. Suddenly the junior suite at the Sunset didn’t seem so free any more.

The second snag was that . . . Oh how should I break this to him in terms he could understand? Well, how about this: Tito, you may find this hard to believe, but nobody in the entire world gives a rat’s ass about the Jackson 5 any more. It’s over. In effect, since the release of Michael’s Off the Wall, there’s just John Lennon and His Four Ringos, and you, my ageing bro, have the biggest nose of them all. But of course, Tito Jackson didn’t need to be told that. He and Jackson 5 plc knew it only too well; hence his clumsy attempt to chop his kid brother off at the knees before his arrival could reduce his once acclaimed siblings to mere shadows. This barely concealed panic at Michael’s staggering talent and runaway success was to become the overriding tone of the meeting among the brothers. But let us first get him into the room.

Michael Jackson arrived last, accompanied by his sister Janet. At that point the world hadn’t heard of Janet Jackson and at first I thought she might be his PA. She showed him to a chair and then, taking the seat next to him, appeared to run through an elaborate itinerary in barely a whisper. At this point of his life Jacko was still recognisably human. He was still clearly a black guy and not the eerie wraith we have now learnt to gawp at. However, he was plainly not about to crack open a beer and ask about the sports scores either. He wore the most enormous mirrored dark glasses and once seated — and this really threw me — picked up a phone and held it to his ear. “Should I wait until he’s through?” I said to Janet. “Oh no, he’s not talking to anybody,” she replied with a smile, “it’s just something he feels comfortable with.” And she giggled a little giggle. And Michael giggled a little giggle. And the brothers slumped back in their chairs, scowling. “Also,” she went on, “any questions for Michael? Could you ask them to me and I’ll get your answer for you.” This was too much. “What, he can’t just answer me himself?” I shot back at her. “Oh he will eventually, he just has to feel comfortable with everything first,” she replied calmly. “But he’s only sitting four feet away,” I pointed out and, regrettably we lapsed into bickering. Meantime, Tito, Randy, Grumpy and Sneezy were all saying, “Hell. What’s wrong with us? We’re here too, you can ask us anything you like!” At this point I suddenly realised we were all talking over and around Michael Jackson as though, well, as though he wasn’t really there at all.

An Epic press officer entered and asked if everything was OK. Janet told her with a light laugh that I had a problem adjusting to Michael’s “ways”. So I was asked to step outside and the EPO gave me a little talk. “Danny, Michael is a very individual individual. It is important to understand that. It has taken us a long time to get him to where he is now. Now, he will speak to you but you must let him judge that moment. Actually I’m glad we have this time because I didn’t get a chance to tell you what he regards as off limits for this interview.”

Oh brother, this was getting better and better. “Individual individual”? “Where he is now?” What on earth did that mean? It is important to understand that at this point in the early 1980s, although Jackson was already one of the biggest pop stars in the world, the words “Wacko” and “Jacko” had never been heard in tandem. Nobody knew he was crazy yet. At least nobody much outside the people gathered in and around that room. I certainly didn ’t and had brought a notepad full of what I thought would be relevant questions on the state of black music and black culture in America today. Now I was starting to sense that I might as well have been asking them of George Burns.

So, what was “off limits”? “OK now,” she continued. “Firstly, no swearwords. Secondly, Michael is a devout Jehovah’s Witness so no talk about birthdays and Christmas.” I ask you to picture my face at this point. “Lastly,” she went on, “he will under no circumstances be drawn on what he thinks of the Osmonds. Are we cool with that?” The Osmonds? The Osmonds hadn’t had a hit in ten years. This man had just finished Thriller. Good God, where was this kid’s mind at? And now, of course, suddenly all I wanted to ask about was the Osmonds. Anyway, back in I went. Michael remained serene and glued to his phone and, if I wanted him to respond to anything at all, it seemed you had to ask things like “Who’s your favourite actor, Michael?” To which Janet would whisper, “He wants to know who your favourite actor is.” Then Michael would mutter, “ Robert De Niro,” to Janet and then Janet would say “Robert De Niro” to me. Was I confused? Intimidated? Freaked out a little? No, I was loving it. I was an NME writer and I was getting plenty here.

I also noticed that when the brothers answered questions they wouldn’t talk to me. They would talk, bellow even, at Michael. It was as if this was a rare get-together and they were using it as a surrogate therapy session. They had plenty they wanted to get off their chests before he disappeared into another level of fame altogether. For example, when I asked what it was like in the days before the Jackson 5 were famous one of them, let’s say Marlon, said: “Oh, see, that’s something Michael wouldn’t remember. We were on the road 365 days a year back then. We had no help, no crew. Tito, Jackie and me we had to haul the drums, the microphones, everything ourselves. Set it all up, take it all down, move on to the next town. Seven shows a week, man. Michael — he’d be asleep in the bus, man. Just come on, sing and dance, then be too small to do the real dirty work.”

When I inquired about what sort of music they started out playing I got: “I remember we had this one Joe Tex song Skinny Legs and All – it was Michael’s job to run out in the crowd and lift up all the girl’s skirts during that. He don’t remember those days.” The siblings all broke up at this. Michael didn’t and seemed uneasy. “Oh please, don’t say that. I’m so embarrassed by that now. I would never dream of . . .” They wouldn’t let him off the hook. “Embarrassed? Damn it, Michael, that was your favourite part of the show!” More laughing.

Addressing the subject of Michael’s success, I received the following heart-warming response: “Well, his sales are good for us because people who buy one of his records will probably look in the section behind and get one of ours too.” All the time Michael looked as though he would rather be somewhere else. I really started to feel for him. Small slips got pounced on. Here he is on the opening track he’d written for the latest, and as it turned out last, album with his brothers. “Well, I wrote that opening track in that way . . . because I thought it would make a good opening track.” There was a pause and then Tito, with some justification, said: “Oh great answer Michael.” More laughter and Michael became further detached from proceedings.

Later, when most of the others had left and there was just him and me, he became a different person. Well, more animated anyway, although, sadly, just as trite. The peacock on their new album sleeve represented “colours coming together”. He didn’t feel there was such a thing as black music and was happy for Blondie to have hits with rap songs because they knew how to “cross over”. He considered what he did neither rock nor soul, but just showbusiness. Benny Hill was a genius. The Sex Pistols were cool because Sid Vicious was a funny name. He asked where I went to have fun in London. Often his thoughts would peter out in mid sentence as if he had just caught the sound of his own voice and had no confidence in it. Incredibly, it seemed that Michael Jackson just wasn’t used to being listened to.

At the time I wrote that Jackson was like Chance the Gardener in Being There. That’s clearly wrong because Chance was mistaken for a genius. Jackson was a genius and I was with him at about the time that gift began to truly overwhelm him. Seismic personal and professional changes were happening to him that would prove impossible to govern. Chief among these was surely that his family, the only connection he had to a wider world, was starting to lose any meaning for him and that he was about to destroy everything they had slogged and sweated to build. He was condemning them to become the Osmonds and there was nothing he could do about it.

I remember watching the video to the song Bad some time later, the one Martin Scorsese shot as a gangland fight in a subway station. In the film Jackson was at his peak, a cutting-edge pop star playing the coolest member of a streetwise gang setting the pace and breaking the rules. Everybody wanted to be Jackson at that point — especially Jackson. Instead here was a confused and frightened boy who though totally comfortable, assured even, headlining Madison Square Garden, had not the slightest idea how to walk to the corner shop and buy a loaf of bread. In the real world he was a sham, and the worst thing about that was not only did he know it, but he wasn’t allowed to forget it by those once close to him.

I last saw him in Los Angeles a few days later when he acquiesced to a photo session. (The camera had really panicked him at the initial meeting.) He was far more relaxed and friendly now and kept reminding me of different Benny Hill sketches, even asking me to do bits of Monty Python stuff “in a British accent”. He was fun. But then, he was away from everyone and wearing stage clothes and make-up. I bade him goodbye at the lift. “Take care, Michael,” I said, and he reacted as if he’d never heard the phrase before. “Yes. Take care. Yes, I will ‘take care’,” he said chuckling. “You take care too, Sid Vicious!” he said. Mercy, a joke even.

Then he caught himself again, and stopped still. For a moment he didn’t know what to do. In that instant a PA said he was wanted on the phone. His voice became small again. “Do you know who it is?” he asked. The assistant said she wasn’t sure. He looked uneasy and walked back down the corridor. That was my last glimpse of what was left of the real Michael Jackson. Though he was not yet completely insane, I believe he still knew the difference between Jackson the unassailable megastar and the little Jackson kid. Soon he was going to make a choice and that was all going to change. Totally, irrevocably and so thoroughly that not even his own family would recognise him.

IT'S A WEIRD, WEIRD WORLD WE LIVE IN, Master Jack. Jehovah's Witness: maybe that's the big clue to Michael Jackson. They're pretty strange religious people. They go round to houses like the Mormons and knock on doors to proselytize. Mind you, there were two groups who survived best in the death camps: Jehovah's Witnesses and Communists. Why? Because they had strong faiths. Which kept them together when all around them were falling apart. Not that it seems to have done MJ much good.