Jacko, His Rise and Fall: The Social and Sexual History of Michael Jackson (89 page)

Security guards at Neverland reported that whenever
Lisa Marie came to visit, she always left the property
before midnight to drive her children back to their
own $4 million home in Hidden Hills.

Even after the passage of many weeks, reporters continued to speculate about the state of the marriage.
One particularly outrageous rumor making the rounds
asserted that Michael wanted a child with Lisa Marie,
and that he had a candidate in mind as the secret
father. That candidate was Michael's long-time friend
and traveling companion, Frank Cascio. Michael,
according to the rumors, was committed to witnessing
the moment of conception wherein Frank, without a
condom, would penetrate Lisa Marie. Neither Lisa
nor Michael ever commented on this outrageous
rumor.

According to the staff member, Michael was "filled
with anxiety and tension whenever Lisa Marie came to visit. He was particularly irritable on those days, and obviously didn't welcome her presence, especially when he was keeping boys in his room, which
he continued to do even after the Jordie Chandler fiasco."

Occasionally they would talk, usually in the presence of others, as it
seemed that Michael sometimes didn't want to be alone with his new wife.

He warned her that if she attempted a musical career, she would inevitably
be compared to her father, perhaps unfavorably. "I think that there is that huge
mountain to climb," she told him. "Oh, people always think about him when
they think about me. There will always be some of that, and I must embrace
it and understand it. I have to find a good balance between my own identity
and the role of always being the daughter of Elvis Presley."

In one bizarre story that may have only the slimmest basis in truth,
Michael was said to have promised Lisa Marie that he'd build a replica of
Graceland in the greater Santa Barbara area. But then the pop star changed his
mind. He came up with the idea of moving into the actual Graceland. To do
that, however, he would have to get the approval of his mother-in-law,
Priscilla, who runs the board that controls Graceland. "She would never have
gone for that," reported a publicist.

When the married couple traveled to Memphis for a Pay-Per-View tribute
concert to Elvis on October 8, 1994, they stayed at the Adam's Mark Hotel,
but in separate suites. Michael even refused to visit Graceland, where he once
said he wanted to live. When Priscilla asked him to perform as part of the
evening's entertainment, reports say that he refused, declaring, "I'm not
appearing on a bill with other singers, especially one called Dwight Yoakam."
Priscilla later told friends in Memphis, "Lisa Marie is married to a jerk."

Within Michael's presence, Lisa Marie once spoke candidly about her role
as one of the most famous offspring in music history. "I could capitalize off
Elvis in a zillion cheesy ways. Just look at Natalie Cole for example. She
raised daddy from the grave for a hit song. I might not be the greatest of
singers, certainly no female Elvis, but I plan to bring a sense of my own identity to my music. I'm not going to go through life singing `Hound Dog' to a
bunch of drunks at a night club in Memphis."

She also revealed that she and Michael talked about how hard it had been
"growing up in a fish bowl. I'm not someone who desires or wants attention,
and that's why I'm different from you," she told him. "I became famous the
day I was born. But I've never been one of those people who run around, you
know, walking every red carpet and going to every opening of every envelope,
touting Presley perfumes and singing Elvis cover songs. I don't want attention."

Michael and Lisa Marie agreed to a joint appearance on ABC Television
just before the release of his HiStory album. The host was a very friendly Diane Sawyer, who didn't ask the
really tough questions. At the
appointed time, Michael and Lisa
Marie showed up at ABC with a
phalanx of attendants, including
attorney Johnnie Cochran.

"You Are Not Alone" video,
Lisa Marie, left, and MJ

Eventually aired on June 14,
1995, the Sawyer interview took
place on the old MGM set on the
Sony Pictures lot in Culver City.

The world was watching as
Michael and Lisa Marie faced
Diana Sawyer on Prime Time Live. "I was seventeen," Michael said in a voice
evocative of a little girl, "when I first met Lisa Marie. And she was seven."

It was obvious that they hadn't rehearsed their stories enough, since there
were contradictions. Michael claimed that he'd kept in touch with her over the
years. Lisa Marie said they had not been in contact.

At one point she said that children "won't leave him alone-they follow
him into the bathroom." As claimed by some members of Michael's staff at
Neverland, that even included young boys taking off their underwear and join-
ing Michael in the shower. "Didn't it ever occur to Michael Jackson to lock
the bathroom door if he wanted privacy from young kids?" a commentator
asked after viewing the show.

Cynics had their tongue in their cheek when the couple discussed their
dream of having children-something that would never happen. They even
talked about leaving America, possibly moving to Switzerland. Lisa Marie
denied that her marriage to Michael was one of convenience. "Why would I
marry somebody I didn't love? I admire him, I respect him, and I love him.
He's in the studio, I'm in the kitchen. We run around the same house and we're
normal people. And we don't sleep in separate bedrooms." Actually, Lisa
Marie was not being truthful. Michael's staff leaked news to the press that
they not only slept in separate bedrooms, but in separate houses.

Michael also denied that the drawings made by Jordie Chandler matched
police photographs of his genitalia. "There was nothing that matched me to
those charges," Michael alleged. He was backed up by Lisa Marie, who said,
"There was nothing."

When Michael told Sawyer that "The whole thing is a lie," he breached
his confidential settlement with Jordie Chandler.

At one point the question-and-answer session went like this:

SAWYER: What is a thirty-six-year-old man doing sleeping with a twelve year-old boy or a series of them?

MICHAEL: Okay, when you say "boy, " its not just boys. I never invite just
boys to come in my room. Thats ridiculous. And thats a ridiculous question.
(The question was not ridiculous but rather pertinent, and Michael's answer
was an obvious lie.)

MICHAEL: I guess you want to hear it, the answer I'll be happy to answer
it. (He obviously was anything but happy.)

MICHAEL: I have never invited anyone into my bed, ever Children love me,
I love them. They follow me, they want to be with me. But anyone can come in
my bed-a child can come in my bed if they want. " (Critics, who mocked
Jackson, later cracked, "I bet many a kid has cum in Michael's bed.")

Observers who had expected Sawyer to be confrontational later asserted
that "she had all the fierceness of the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man."

A hesitant Sawyer was edging up to the big question of the night. "I didn't spend my life as a serious journalist to ask these kinds of questions, but I'm
not oblivious to the fact that your fans have one question they most want ..."

With defiance on her face and disgust in her voice, Lisa Marie interrupted, "Do we have sex? Okay. Go ahead. Is that what you were going to ask?
Yes! YES! Yes!"

Sawyer was called a "wimp" by Brad Dilford, a journalist, who later said
that "Sawyer did not challenge Michael on any of his more questionable
claims." Sawyer was also accused of several misstatements, including that
Michael had been cleared on child molestation charges. Actually, the DA was
officially keeping the case open until the statute of limitations would take
effect in 1999.

On the show, Michael
denied that the police in their
raid on Neverland and on his
secret condo had seized books
with pictures of nude boys. The
police, however, maintained that
they did confiscate such materials.

United they stood

Actually, Michael left himself an out. When Sawyer asked
if material depicting young,
undressed boys had been found
among his personal effects,

Michael replied, "No, not that I know of, unless people sent me things that I
haven't opened."

In a review of the show, journalist Julene Snyder said, "Putting the two on
live TV may have seemed like a good idea at the time, but it's hard to say
which came across worse on camera. Lisa Marie quickly established herself
as a tough, if inarticulate, cookie, who'd fit right in at a rundown trailer park.
She is not now, nor has she ever been, a brain surgeon. Her quote in the current issue of Vibe magazine, which sports a nearly life-size headshot of hubby
on the cover, starts off sweetly enough but quickly degenerates into a convoluted hiss of rage: `Michael is a true artist in every fact of his natureextremely aesthetic and very, very romantic. This is who he truly is despite
degrading comments made in the past by certain larva. I can't wait for the day
when all the snakes who have tried to take him out get to eat their own lunch
and crawl back in the holes from which they came. We know who they are and
their bluff is about to be called."'

After the interview was aired, Tom Sneddon, the Santa Barbara DA who
had been involved in the Jordie Chandler controversy, claimed that Michael
had lied. "His statement on TV is untrue and incorrect and not consistent with
the evidence in the case."

An enraged Evan Chandler witnessed the interview in which his son was
virtually called a liar. Michael also claimed that the settlement is "not about
all this crazy, outlandish money. No, it's not at all." There was no suggestion
that the settlement was in the millions.

In the aftermath of the airing of the interview, Evan Chandler filed a $60
million lawsuit against Michael. In the suit he named not only Michael, but
Lisa Marie Presley, Diane Sawyer, and ABC News. Attorneys for Lisa Marie
eventually got her dropped from the suit, claiming that she had never been a
party to the Chandler settlement. And eventually, a judge dismissed charges
against Sawyer and ABC.

Matters were settled privately between Evan and Michael's lawyers. The
terms would never be made public, but as regards the Chandler affair, Michael
would never again utter a statement such as "the whole thing was a lie."

During the Sawyer interview, Lisa Marie had burst into anger when questioned about whether her Church of Scientology may have urged her to marry
Michael, perhaps as a means of gaining a rich convert. "This is crap," she said.
"I'm sorry. It's, like ridiculous. It's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard.
I'm not going to marry somebody for any reasons other than the fact that I've
fallen in love with them. Period. And they can eat it if they want to think anything different!"

She has admitted that she was expelled from boarding school because of illegal drug abuse, especially cocaine. She later claimed "I got off drugs
because of my religious conversion." When she was ten years
old, she had a crush on the actor
John Travolta. When meeting
him for the first time, they developed a friendship in spite of their
age differences. The actor is credited with encouraging her membership in the Church of
Scientology, an organization to
which her mother was already
devoted.

Lisa Marie with her son, Benjamin, 2001