Pop performers The special world of Michael Jackson

Press, 21 October 1987, Page 24

Pop performers The special world of Michael Jackson

The maker of ‘Thriller’ and ‘Bad’ seems intent on making up for a childhood lost to music

By

JOHN SMALLWOOD

According to the predictions of a leading astrologer, Michael Jackson will be the first superstar to look at all the others from close range: he will fly into space.

Jackson, born on August 29, 1958, was a Virgo who loved to be of service to others by entertaining them, said an astrologer, Frederick Davies, of New York. “It is a friendly, warm, loving sign which attracts people immediately,” he said. “There are no barriers between him and his fans.”

Mr Davies was obviously not aware of an instruction to come from the megastar’s newlythinned lips: he wanted to be shielded from audiences by a thick see-through plastic screen to avoid catching their germs while he was on stage. Jackson is at present on his first world tour as a solo act. He has performed in Japan, and will work his way westwards through 11 countries. He is due to play at Auckland and Wellington in December. There is no doubt that the tour has been a worry to the superstar whose odd behaviour, to put it politely, has been causing concern to friends and associates.

Until recently, another worry was the album to succeed the world-wide hit, "Thriller,” which sold more than 40 million copies. Jackson worked on “Bad,” his new LP, for four years. The effort seems to have paid off. “Bad” has already achieved phenomenal success.

But, more than ever, Jackson’s behaviour in everyday life has caused concern among his few friends. He has had work done on his face to slim down his nose to a narrow, tapered button; his chin is now smaller than it used to be, with a bone implant giving it a new, appealing cleft; his lips have been made thinner; his eyebrows have been shaped into an arch; his eyelids have been tattooed with permanent eyeliner; and his hair, once frizzy, has been straightened and teased into a “wet-look” style. Over the last five years he has spent more than 45 hours on operating tables while surgeons carried out his orders at a cost of many thousands of dollars. He took to wearing surgical

masks of different colours over his nose, mouth and chin. Some bystanders reckoned it was a disguise to avoid his fans, others that he was frightened of picking up germs, but it was more than likely to cover the skin of healing surgery. Jackson’s next preoccupation was a $lOO,OOO pressurised oxygen chamber, shaped like a coffin, to sleep in. Jackson believed it would enable him to live to be 150 years old. He said: “It is just part of an over-all health plan for my mind and body. I believe if I treat my body properly I’ll live to be at least 150.”

“I want to live to see the world at peace, a world without hunger, a world where children and all mankind will know no suffering. I believe if I can stay healthy in mind and body I can help to make a difference in the world. The longer I live the more I can do.”

Doctors warned him that the "oxygen coffin” could do him more harm than good and indeed might shorten his lifespan. Jackson also had a metal ball fixed in his bedroom, plugged into an electric socket, so that when he touched the surface it gave him a mild shock. He told his manager, Frank DiLeo: “It is no different from other people being stimulated by drinking coffee.” That did not go down well with the doctors, either.

But in spite of swallowing 50 vitamin pills every day, eating nothing but fruit, nuts and steamed vegetables, drinking only pure spring water from sealed bottles imported- from France, and bathing in Perrier mineral water, the doctors admit he is in pretty good shape. There are people who say that if Michael Jackson was not Michael Jackson he would have been inside a “funny farm” years ago. But more kindly folk maintain that his present oddball behaviour can be blamed on his childhood; he did not have any.

His father became the mastermind of the successful Jackson 5 group. In the 19505, Joe Jackson had been a guitarist with The Falcons in Gary, Indiana, until the pressure of having so many mouths to feed forced him into steel work. The Jackson children were Maureen (or Rebe as the

family call her) who is now aged 38, Jackie, 36, Tito, 34, Jermaine, 32, LaToya, 30, Marlon, 29, then Michael, Randy, 24, and Janet, 23.

Mrs Jackson sang country and western songs around the house, and the boys often joined in, but it was when Tito pulled out Joe’s guitar and showed an immediate musical talent that Joe decided he might be on to something. He

was so right Young Michael was singing professionally with the group when he was only eight and was a tiny lad of 11 when his pure, soaring vocals scored the group their first No. 1 hit with “I Want You Back,” in 1970. He has never known schoolfriends or other people who did not treat him as a star, and to this* day he is intrigued by the

way ordinary children live. “When I’m upset about a recording session, then I’ll dash off on my bike to a school yard just to be with children,” he said. “They can be so natural and relaxing. Then I can come back to the studio ready to move mountains. It is like magic.” Magic is a word which comes often into his talk these days. He has a multi-million-dollar box of

tricks for his world tour.

His liking for children spilled over into a wacky relationship with the diminutivee Emmanuel Lewis, aged 13, a star of the American TV series "Webster.” The friendship started in 1983 when Emmanuel came to Holly-’ wood and Jackson, who had seen him on TV commercial, telephoned Emmanuel’s mother and invited the boy to visit him. Together they played in the Jackson mansion, talking strange baby-talk to the animals in Jackson’s private menagerie, or playing cowboys and Indians, and Peter Pan characters.

Jackson carried the 40-pound boy in his arms in public, took him to a Grammy Awards ceremony, and at the American Music Awards introduced Emmanuel to the audience, saying, “He is my inspiration.” A Hollywood insider said: “Before Emmanuel came on the scene, Michael mostly talked to his llama, boa constrictor, peacocks, swans, and chimp. He’d also dress up his collection of shop window mannequins and hold long one-sided conversations with them. He maintained that the good thing about them was that they couldn’t answer back.”

No attempts to create sexual scandals around Jackson have succeeded. The wildest thing he is reported to have done was to share a Jacuzzi whirlpool bath with his first girlfriend, the actress Tatum O’Neal, at a showbusiness party before she married John McEnroe. Then he was seen in the company of the actress, Brooke Shields, at a time when her public image was on the wane during her studies at Princeton University and following the flop of her film "Sahara.” Jackson’s aides put a damper on that friendship, saying Shields was only out for the publicity. Next came a blonde beauty, Karen Faye. The make-up artist, aged 25, became Jackson’s first real girlfriend in October last year. A happy Jackson told a friend: “We love each other deeply. I have never felt this way before. She has turned my life around.”

But it did not last Early this year Faye walked out She said to friends: "Michael just wanted to stay in with his animals. Playing second fiddle to a chimp isn’t my idea of fun.” The chimp in question is called Bubbles. Almost everywhere Jackson goes, Bubbles goes too, dressed in designer

clothes of exactly the same style and material as his master’s. There have been other women, older and more in the mould of mother figures. First there was the singer, Diana Ross, whom he has known from his childhood days of the Jackson 5 and with whom he became obsessed — he tried to model himself on her and copy her style. They played together in the all-black musical film “The Wiz” — he was the Scarecrow.

Liza Minelli is another trusted confidante with whom Jackson will spend hours discussing one of his great idols — Liza’s tragic superstar mother, Judy Garland, whose great hit was “Somewhere Over The Rainbow.”

It was Quincy Jones who said: "Sometimes I think he’s from another planet”

Jackson recorded the narration for a storybook album based on that other famous fantasy figure from space, E.T. E.T.’s creator, the film-maker Steven Spielberg, said: "If E.T. did come down to Earth I’d expect him to find his way to Michael Jackson’s front door. Like E.T., Michael is one of the last living grown-up innocents.” Another venture into the film world was “Captain Eo,” a space fantasy for the Disney organisation, lasting only 17 minutes. The producer was George Lucas, of “Star Wars” fame, and the director was Francis Ford Coppola ("The Godfather”). Rumour had it that the cost was around $l5 million. There are new songs and stunning dance routines from Michael, along with amazing special effects during a war between “goodies” and “baddies” in space. The 3-D film is so effective that it seems like the screen characters are in the theatre with the audience. It is being shown in Disneyland on a massive 54ft by 24ft screen.

Jackson’s fortress-like home in California is reputed to have cost s2*6 million. He shared it with his parents, before they parted, and sisters LaToya and Janet, both of whom embarked on solo careers. The mansion was equipped with its own 32-seat cinema, its own sauna and exercise room, and its own studio for Jackson to work in. The grounds were home to his collection of animals, now ranging from the llama to a giraffe; the boa constrictor, Muscles, had the run

of the house, with Bubbles the chimp.

Top executives in record companies in America agree that Michael Jackson is not only a singer, dancer, writer and producer, he is the biggest industry in the country. And how it has grown! When Joe Jackson’s boys made their first professional appearance at a down-at-heel nightclub in their drab industrial hometown of Gary, he was paid $5 for their performance. When they started making records as the Jackson 5 in 1969, Michael was “paid” $2O a week, which he spent on sweets. When he rejoined his brothers for their vaunted “final tour together" in 1984, the profits were put at $57 million. With merchandising, videos, cable TV rights, TV specials, and "live” concert albums, the figure had zipped up to the $lOO million mark.

On stage be is like a human tornado, spinning on his heels and toes at high speed to his hypnotic disco songs. There is no doubt about it — Jackson is the biggest pop star in the world, with young fans doing their best to emulate him. They should know that every Sunday he dances alone in his room until he collapses, crying and laughing with the excitement of it all. He calls this strange practice his "dance ritual”

Jackson is a man of staggering contrasts. He can shrewdly pull the strings of the multi-million dollar one-man industry he has created. Then, suddenly, he will slip out of a board meeting to sit alone in a corner, patiently playing with a pile of children’s toys. But for such a person, Jackson can be very tough about the marketing of his image. When his father once dismissed a management team as “white help” Jackson said that kind of remark turned his stomach

Not everything turned in his favour, though: problems arose on the Jackson empire business front — sales of his Magic Beat perfume, aimed at teen-age girls, failed, and Michael Jackson dolls and clothing financed to the tune of around $2O million also flopped.

But Jackson made $7O million from his "Thriller" album alone, and his personal fortune so far is around $250 million.

He has been described, rightly perhaps, as a calculating entertainer who has established his own licence to print money. —Copyright DUO, 1987.

Warnings

Concern

Industry