The First Book of Michael (18 page)

Adorning one wall of Michael’s bedroom at Neverland was a framed picture of Jesus Christ, which was surrounded by pictures of
Disney
characters; his house was inhabited by statues and mannequins of cartoon figures. Though Michael’s fashion was lavish and iconic when in the public eye, the wardrobes of his bedroom were filled with red shirts and white T-shirts, which when at home, he wore every day.

Michael was uniquely complicated. We are not expected to fully understand. But, as civilised human beings, we are expected to infer positivity from his experience, as part of an endeavour to transform the world for the better.

For everyone.

The alternative is outright disaster.

People believe what they need to believe. The world needs to believe in the integrity of Michael Jackson’s message of innocence.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Every child that is born is proof that God has not yet given up on human beings.

RABINDRANATH TAGORE

The sun takes twelve days to set after its glorious zenith on what fans now refer to as
Vindication Day
. During these twelve days, clouds gradually gather: tinged by the touch of the star’s tragic tiring - exacerbating an increasing anxiety that ultimately succumbs to the bleak and black sadness that is the anniversary of Michael’s death.

Children were simultaneously Michael's Achilles’ heel and his vitality. His single-mindedness in being their advocate was his only vulnerability; a pressure point that was exploited with aplomb. As Michael said, "They try to use my love for children against me and it's so unfair, I'm very upset about it you know?”

Michael’s artistic riposte to the 1993 extortion attempt is dedicated to all the children of the world, who he claims responsibility for. Michael loved all children the way any mother loves their own.

There comes a time in most people’s lives when the fig leaf falls and the Eden of childhood ceases to be.  What with the lifelong constancy of Michael’s childhood, there were inevitably various occasions when the fig leaves of his fans fell, whilst his remained. Michael’s work being categorised into eras provides a convenient system for measuring this.

The first instance of such corruption was with the release of
Dangerous
in 1991. Grunge was the coming-of-age rally cry for the turn-of-the-decade teenager, and Nirvana’s
Nevermind
album stole the cool vote. Michael had anticipated the change in mood and ‘Give In To Me’ - which had initially been mooted as a dance number - became Michael’s rock response.

The contradiction is that
Dangerous
is often described as Michael’s coming-of-age album. Yet, as he concocted a different image for each era, a case can be made for all of them:
Off The Wall
– his first solo album featuring self-penned material, a falsetto exhale that embodied the entire genre of disco;
Thriller
– the historic unit-and-culture shifting phenomenon;
Bad
– all songs bar two self-penned, as well as his first tour as a solo performer;
HIStory
– a unique polemic sparked by a very unique inspirational spur;
Invincible
– his desire to be emancipated from Sony Music.

Though remaining stolid throughout all these distinct phases, was Michael continuing to be childlike.

The evidence for which, is ubiquitously extant: the sincere glee in Michael’s laughter during the custard-pie fight shown in the making of ‘Black Or White’; the genuine giddiness in the film of Michael and Macaulay Culkin dropping water bombs on people brave enough to pass beneath their hotel balcony; the palpability of the incredulity in Michael’s voice when asking the smiling executioner Martin Bashir, "You don’t climb trees?.. You missing out...” the delirious delight emanating from a man in his thirties charging around in a dodgem whilst eating candy floss.

Commentators of a certain ilk often remark and opine with pop-insight that a lot of Michael’s problems could have been resolved by a good therapist; how his yearning for his lost childhood could have been sated by some time spent embracing his inner child. In reality, a therapist sitting opposite Michael, attempting to help him harmonise with his inner child, would have had to contend with a man daydreaming about how to best employ his next practical joke. Michael spent each and every day embracing his inner child: meeting him at the door; welcoming him with reconciliation and rejoicing. He celebrated childhood daily – both its innocence and mischief.

Michael’s predilection for “such elementary things” as he describes in the
HIStory
track, ‘Childhood’, is evident in his words,

“I feel that they are more than just children; that they are all little geniuses and that they have a secret all of their own. A secret that they cannot always express. […] I studied child psychology because of my love for children – all over the world. […] If a kid doesn’t like you, he’ll tell you. But adults pretend and put on phoney ways. I wish the world could be full of children!"

Though this revering of naivety is by no means peculiar to him; indeed it is a trait commonly found in adults who have suffered unorthodox upbringings.

Brian Wilson, the troubled chief songwriter for the
Beach Boys
, is another example of a childlike musical luminary fond of activities that most people would deem to be unusual.

During his youth, Wilson experienced such horrors at the hands of his ferocious father as the macabre punishment of being forced to stare into his father’s empty eye socket. When terrors such as this are inflicted on the mutable and sensitive mind of a child, the resultant eccentricities in their adult behaviour suddenly become much more comprehensible. Consoling themselves by indulging in idiosyncrasies with which they feel affinity, is the right of these individuals - not merely as human beings, but also, in the case of such people as Michael and Wilson, in their status as agents of priceless artistic pulchritude with which they illuminate humanity.

In Wilson’s case, behaviours that would ostensibly be seen as bizarre by a prejudging public, include a sincere love for the US TV series about a heroic dolphin named Flipper – at which he would often cry; and his keeping of a menagerie of mechanical pets.

The essence of Michael’s philosophy is that a man such as Wilson’s father can only have become so cruel as a consequence of himself having suffered an abusive childhood. The term ‘abuse’, however, is vague and envelops a wide spectrum. What one child interprets as abuse may be very different to how another experiences it. After all, there were five members of the
Jackson 5
, yet none of them were as traumatised by the experience as much as Michael was. Which is why Michael’s philosophy was more concerned with pinpointing specific needs when helping to realise the potential of an individual.

In the lyrics for the
Thriller
album outtake, ‘Scared of the Moon’, Michael laments the repercussions of negative childhood experiences,

"The years go by swiftly /And soon childhood ends / But life is still fearful / When evening descends / But now there are others who sit in their room / And wait for the sunlight to brighten their gloom / Together they gather / Their lunacy shared / Not knowing just why they’re scared / Scared of the moon".

***

Michael said - with utmost sincerity – that he was "Peter Pan in his heart."

Michael was a famously voracious reader, and within his vast library existed a number of J.M Barrie biographies. Michael evidently found affinity with the life story of the author of
Peter Pan
. The vast vacuum of self that resulted from such a uniquely peculiar upbringing as Michael’s became filled with the story of Barrie, his artistry, and the love he received from his fans, and later, children. The love his children provided is perhaps another reason why Michael rarely took to the stage during the latter decade of his life.

Michael’s gravitation towards the Peter Pan personality coincided chronologically with the self-motivation note he wrote to himself in which he decided to become a whole other person. Of course, this also coincided with Michael growing physically into an adult man. Perhaps this choice to inhabit Peter Pan was a subconscious longing to keep hold of the love he had experienced from the public as a child? The only love, apart from his mother, that he’d ever experienced.

Concurrently, this Peter Pan persona also contained the side-effect of being enigmatic – and gave him the option of testing conformity. It could also have been a subconscious attempt at self-sabotage, or a test of the loyalty of those around him.

In the footage of Michael eating candy floss in the dodgem, he is wearing one of the jackets used for ‘Jam’ on the
Dangerous
tour. The image is a fascinating juxtaposition that demonstrates the dichotomy between Michael the man-boy and Michael the man-performer.

This capacity for transformation can be seen during the Wembley
Bad
tour rendition of ‘Dirty Diana’. Watch - after a hunched, self-conscious walk through the dark towards centre-stage - how Michael spontaneously ignites into character with the activation of the spotlight as the first chord is struck. A particular persona possesses him.

Michael didn’t live long enough to fulfil his dream of becoming a movie star, what with each of his attempted excursions into the medium seemingly stymied in some way or another (the closest Michael got was with his insistence on referring to his music videos as ‘short films’, and - although was once nominated for an Academy Award, which he didn’t win - he did buy one in 1999
for a record $1.54 million).

However, one need only to recognise how easily they are moved by any of the many characters he embodied in his plethora of music videos to appreciate that Michael possessed and exuded the requisite charisma to be successful on celluloid. Furthermore, regardless of Michael’s lack of movie roles, one only needs to listen to his ability to evoke character through the power of his voice. As Michael said himself in his book,
Dancing The Dream,
“In infinite expressions I come and go."
Michael was a great friend of the genius actor Marlon Brando – Brando’s final role before his death being his cameo in the ‘You Rock My World’ video. Brando provided Michael with acting lessons, perhaps in gratitude - what with Brando’s self-confessed preferred method for getting into shape for a movie role being to close the living room curtains and dance to Michael’s music.

Another entertainment figure that most wouldn’t imagine had a great deal in common with Michael, is Lou Reed - what with the differences in their respective artistic output. However, there is honour and understanding among artists, and there is an anecdote in which Reed becomes an unlikely defender of Michael.

The former Czech President, Václav Havel, had hosted Michael in Prague Castle during Michael’s stay in the Czech capital on the
HIStory
Tour, in 1996. Nine years later, during the 2005 trial, Havel and Lou Reed, who were great friends, conducted an onstage conversation at Prague’s Švandovo divadlo drama theatre.  They only disagreed once all evening, and it was over Michael.

Havel had invited Michael to stay with him in 1996, because he was interested in him as a “civilisation phenomenon.” However, Havel moaned to the theatre audience that - instead of spending time with him discussing his cultural significance - Michael preferred to “go to the third courtyard and say hello to the children.” The audience laughed at Havel’s snide and insinuating dig at Michael. However, Lou Reed, annoyed at the audience’s reaction, then jumped to Michael’s defence, saying, “He’s a great singer, a great dancer, then there’s all this other stuff and people don’t pay attention… I think Michael Jackson is one of the greatest dancers in the world … the Fred Astaire of our generation.”

“I recognise his skills, but I’m not a fan,” Havel responded.

“He wasn’t in my castle,” retorted Reed, eliciting a far bigger laugh than Havel had managed to muster with his lazy cynicism.

Havel had hosted Michael, then harboured his bullying anecdote for nine years before this event. It took a creative and non-judgmental mind such as Lou Reed’s to see beyond the painfully superficial perspective of the Czech President. It’s yet another example of treating Michael as a pariah because of his differences; of cynics abusing their positions and Michael’s vulnerabilities to intensify his insecurities for their own gain; of referring to encounters with him as “meeting the freak,” as the slavish, fat cat employers referred to their starving and emaciated employee (another of the insults revealed for all to see in the email correspondence produced as evidence in the AEG trial). Their employee – a man that co-owned the most valuable music catalogue on the planet, who was now somehow in a position in which he was frantically desperate to be capable of earning enough money to put a roof over his children’s heads. A man that was doing this by spreading his message; a message that demanded the world prioritise a universal love and respect for children and childhood.