You Are Not Alone_Michael, Through a Brother’s Eyes (12 page)

After her conversion the only ‘special occasion’ was the obligatory visit with Mother to the local Kingdom Hall. It was her responsibility to show us the love of God: Joseph rarely joined us as we dressed up in our second-hand smart pants, jacket and tie to sit in the chairs and get shushed for fidgeting, moaning or rocking our feet. Only the hymns brought things to life.

Mother ensured we made time for Bible study. The Old and New Testaments and the faith’s main publications, the
Watchtower
and
Paradise Lost
magazines, were always on the living-room table. A fellow Witness joined Mother to read over the scriptures as Jackie, Tito, Marlon, Michael and I sat squashed up on the sofa, with the girls at our feet, Bibles in our laps and pencils in hand to underline certain passages to be discussed at the next sermon. Rebbie couldn’t wait to join Mother on ‘field service’ – going from door to door to spread Jehovah’s message. The times we trailed after Mother, up and down people’s pathways, were a lesson in determination if nothing else.

I watched curtains twitching and used to count how many seconds it would be before the door was slammed in Mother’s face. Rejection didn’t faze her – she was serving Jehovah. Bless her, she’s still blazing a trail in His name in California to this day. The one lesson imprinted on our minds from our own Bible study was that we’d take a fast trip to Hell if we didn’t serve Jehovah and attend the Kingdom Hall. Our Judgement Day was Armageddon, when all evil life would be destroyed and a new world created for the chosen 144,000. Salvation hinged on our devotion to Jehovah.

Just in case our young minds were not imaginative enough, the
Watchtower
illustrated what Armageddon would look like. I remember reading it with Michael, scanning vivid illustrations of buildings imploding and people falling into cavernous cracks in the earth, arms reaching out to be saved. The anxiety spread as we pondered the questions that would decide our fate. Do we honour Jehovah enough? Are we good enough for eternal life? Will we survive Armageddon? If we get into trouble with Joseph, does that mean we’re in trouble with Jehovah, too?

‘I want to go to Paradise!’ I said, more out of fear than enthusiasm.

‘Mother, are we going to be saved?’ asked Michael.

The most important thing in life, she said, was to be good and be good to others: salvation is granted to those who keep the faith, do field service and live according to the scriptures. As an adult, Michael would later accept the
Watchtower
illustrations as ‘symbolism’, but as boys, it was still scary to wonder how Jehovah noticed
the difference between us being good and, say, the mailman. What about the times Michael gave kids in the neighbourhood candy and I didn’t? Mother’s stock answer was the same: Don’t worry, He sees everything.

And then there was the proximity of Armageddon. When was it going to happen? Next week? How long have we got? An inquisitive mind like Michael’s never could stop thinking about it. I can see him now looking up to an elder to ask some earnest question, only to be patted on the head and humoured. But witnesses seemed forever braced for the end of the world. The first Armageddon was estimated to be 1914. When that didn’t happen, it was changed to 1915 … And they’re still waiting.

I distinctly remember when the Jackson family was convinced it was coming: 1963. The Russians seemed sure to bomb the US, JFK was assassinated, and then the suspected gunman, Lee Harvey Oswald, was shot – an event we watched on our black-and-white TV. Our household was sure all this was a prelude to the end of the world – and we brothers had never been so keen to get to the Kingdom Hall to honour Jehovah.

Michael always said he was raised biblically. In fact, he was the only one of the Jackson 5 to be baptised. Michael prayed, I did not. Michael learned the Bible, I did not. I didn’t appreciate that Jehovah was the ultimate Father because we were made to believe that He can disown you if you don’t behave. The threat of abandonment – of being ‘de-fellowshipped’ – was ever-present. Michael would learn all about Jehovah’s threat of banishment in later life but in his childhood, the threat of it was a whip in itself.

When the Jackson 5 took off, I would say his faith became his bedrock; something solid to hang on to, a place to which he could retreat and be regarded not as famous but as equal and normal. Witnesses never made a fuss of Michael because they were only allowed to make a fuss of Jehovah. The Kingdom Hall brought him a sense of normality that, in the outside world, dwindled year upon year. Michael was dedicated to walking the higher path. I know that he confided in God and felt He was a presence you could never
fool or hide anything from. In later life, he once told me he still felt a twinge of guilt for celebrating Christmas and birthdays.

Collectively speaking, the ever-watchful Jehovah, combined with our parents’ determination to ring-fence us from the threat of gang violence, ensured that we didn’t learn how to integrate socially except with each other. Even then, there was no real sense of
coming together
because of the lack of family occasions such as Christmas, birthdays and Thanksgiving. In our childhood we walked the line between Joseph’s strict expectations and Jehovah’s salvation. The stage was the only place where there were no rules; it became our one area of freedom.

WE DIDN’T THINK STAGES GOT ANY
bigger than the one that talk-show host David Frost offered us. One of his producers had been in the audience that night at the Apollo and he called Richard Aarons, saying he wanted us to perform on
The David Frost Show
from New York, to be broadcast to the whole of America. For nights afterwards, we climbed into our bunk-beds, unable to sleep through excitement. We told everyone at school that we were going to be on the TV and teachers made announcements in class.

David Frost was the Englishman with a talk-show in America: he was part of ‘the British invasion’. There were the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and David Frost – and we were on his radar.

What we didn’t know was that Joseph had been simultaneously thrown into a dilemma. We had performed again at the Regal on 17 July 1968, where we shared a bill with Bobby Taylor and the Vancouvers. Bobby was so impressed that he got on the phone to a lady who had recently moved into the Detroit apartment block where he lived. Suzanne de Passe was a 19-year-old who had just started work in town as creative assistant to Berry Gordy at Motown and we ended up auditioning for her in Bobby’s living room. As Suzanne remembers it, she rang Mr Gordy about ‘these amazing kids’, but he wasn’t impressed.

‘Kids? I don’t want more kids! I’ve got enough on with Stevie Wonder!’ To him, of course, kids were a headache, with tutors and
all. Apparently, he had been the same with Diana Ross and the Supremes at first, dismissing them as ‘too young’.

Mr Gordy clearly needed persuading, and Suzanne persuaded him. This was where Joseph had his dilemma: our invitation to audition at Motown clashed with the David Frost booking. It was dream national-television exposure versus one golden opportunity. Michael and Marlon were initially devastated when Joseph chose to audition. Instead of performing to an audience of millions from New York, we found ourselves at Motown’s headquarters – Hitsville USA – performing to a handful of people, including Mr Gordy. Joseph was smart in not grasping at the instant celebrity of television: David Frost wouldn’t bring us closer to a record deal – but the audition did.

On 23 July 1968, that audition took place before a selected group of people. We couldn’t see them because they were gathered in the dark on the other side of the glass in the sound studio; we only saw a camera on a tripod, capturing our ‘screen test’, as was standard. We sang the aptly titled ‘Ain’t Too Proud To Beg’ and ‘I Wish It Would Rain’ by the Temptations, before ending with ‘Who’s Lovin’ You?’ by Smokey Robinson. The weirdest thing was the pregnant pause that greeted our final note: no one said a word.

Michael couldn’t stand it. ‘So? How was that?’ he chirped.

‘
Michael!
’ I said in a loud whisper, embarrassed by his rudeness.

‘That was great … very good,’ said some voice. But that was all we got. We had to wait a few years before we learned the truth of the reaction when Mr Gordy wrote about it in his Foreword to Michael’s reissued autobiography,
Moonwalk
, in 2009: ‘Michael sang “Who’s Lovin’ You” with the sadness and passion of a man who had been living with the blues and heartbreak his whole life … As great as Smokey sang it, Michael sang it better. I told Smokey, “Hey, man, I think he gotcha on that one!”’

Two days later, we got the call back: Motown wanted to sign us.

‘THE BOSTON HOUSE’ WAS ANOTHER WORLD,
with a size and opulence beyond our comprehension. We’d thought only kings and queens lived so grandly, but Mr Gordy’s mock-Tudor mansion in Detroit was something else. It was also our venue for the night, to perform at one of his annual parties. One thing was certain: there would be no midnight strip-teases or fruit thrown on stage. This was no Mr Lucky’s or amateur night at the Apollo. It wasn’t a home, either. It was a residence – and one that music had provided. Michael wandered around, ever-curious, looking up at the great ceilings, shimmering chandeliers, the grand oil portraits of Mr Gordy himself.

Outside, there was an ornamental fountain and marble Greek statues. Inside, there were butlers and white people working as household staff. Everything was so ornate, immaculate and clean. We arrived as newly-signed Motown artists, even if our signed contracts had got snagged due to some legal issues we didn’t ask about, but it was ‘nothing to worry about’ and our host didn’t seem too concerned. It was his first time showcasing us so the night
was a big deal. It was the winter of 1968 and we had no idea what to expect.

The bearded, effusive Mr Gordy greeted us, his sole performers for the night, at the door with a golf club in his hand. (He had a putting green out back.) Our ‘dressing room’ was the pool house just outside the indoor swimming pool and the ‘stage’ was an area set aside at the far end of the pool, with just enough room for Johnny’s drums and Ronny’s keyboard. Guests would face us from the opposite end and down the flanks, between the Greek columns.

As men in suits and women wearing diamonds started to gather, Michael and Marlon kept running outside from the pool-house to take a peep through the windows to see who was out front. Jackie, Tito, Johnny, Ronny and I got changed and sat around, going over the performance in our heads. Suddenly Marlon darted in. ‘Smokey Robinson is here!’ He dashed back out.

Then Michael’s head appeared at the door. ‘Whoa! I’ve just seen some of the Temptations!’

Then Marlon: ‘Gladys Knight is here!’

Then Michael again, shrieking: ‘DIANA ROSS! I’VE JUST SEEN DIANA ROSS!’

Tito and I jumped up and raced outside to make sure it wasn’t another of his pranks. But it was true. Mr Gordy had gathered the
crème de la crème
of his Motown family – and who knew how many other movers and shakers from the music industry? Ever since July, we had kept pinching ourselves that we were actually Motown artists – grouped with the Temptations, the Marvelettes, Martha & the Vandellas, Smokey, Gladys, Bobby Taylor, Diana Ross, Marvin Gaye and the Four Tops. For so long, they were who we wanted to be and where we wanted to be. And we were about to perform for half of them.

Jackie grew agitated. ‘Guys, we need to concentrate. Come on. Do y’all know what you’re supposed to do?’ The occasion was clearly getting to him, and Michael and Marlon’s regular news updates weren’t helping. Funnily enough, it was the one occasion
when Joseph wasn’t backstage. He was busy rubbing shoulders with the big names and maybe that was why Jackie had the jitters. ‘C’mon, y’all … we must get this right. Let’s focus,’ he said. After Joseph, Jackie was the one who most used that word.

Michael and Marlon settled down and we gathered in a huddle and told one another that we should ‘go out there and tear this place up’. That was how we spoke before a show over the years: ‘Tear ’em up’; ‘Let’s knock ’em out’; ‘Let’s kill ’em’; or ‘Let’s go out there and hurt ’em’. Michael carried forward these phrases into his work as a solo artist. Anyone who worked with him will recognise that vernacular. Fighting talk, borrowed from Joseph.

As kids, we knew the calibre of talent waiting to watch us and yet we didn’t for a second feel out of our depth or inferior. As Motown’s first child group, we couldn’t wait to do our set: ‘My Girl’, ‘Tobacco Road’ and a James Brown number. The big question in our mind was: how would they react? What were these Motown folk like in a private setting? In an audience?

If there were two absent people we wanted out there, it was Mother and Rebbie. Mother had waited in the wings for so long on our behalf, taken a back seat, sacrificed her own dreams and missed her boys most weekends. And when Motown first exploded, Rebbie was the one going to the local record store, buying the newly-released 45s and dancing the ‘sock hops’ with Jackie. She was all about what Mr Gordy had invented – ‘the sound of young America’. Or, as another Motown motto would go, ‘It’s what’s in the groove that counts’.

Once we were poolside, with mics and instruments in hand, we looked out across the lit water and kept spotting the faces of the greats who were watching. It took one wink from Michael and then we started killing it. The energy of that performance was incredible and we could tell our VIP audience was into it. They weren’t just gracious, they
loved
it. By the second verse of ‘My Girl’, they were clapping and dancing and cheering, even whooping when Michael turned on his moves and set fire to the place. As we took our bows, we spotted Mr Gordy front-centre of the standing crowd, clapping
the loudest, smiling the widest alongside Joseph, puffing out his chest. Always a good sign.

When Smokey Robinson and Marvin Gaye came over and expressed their enthusiasm, we started to feel that we
must
be good. Everyone talked about ‘the little fella’ – Michael – and Diana Ross made a beeline for him. She said a few words and grabbed his cheeks like an auntie meeting her favourite nephew. I was talking to someone else at the time, but I saw how starry-eyed he was. That was actually the first time we met Diana, which puts to bed the Motown folklore that insisted it was she who discovered us. That marketing myth was invented because, we were told, it was stardom by association, so we memorised it as ‘fact’ to tell journalists.

That night, we stayed at Bobby Taylor’s apartment in Detroit and rang Mother in Gary, each one of us taking turns on the phone to tell her how brilliantly the night had gone. ‘Did they really like it? Did they really? I’m so proud of you boys.’

PEOPLE HAVE ALWAYS ASKED, ‘WHAT
EXACTLY
is the Motown Sound?’ In 1983, Smokey – the label’s first artist – tried answering that question: ‘The Motown Sound is the bottom, you know. They got the foot working and you can hear the bass real good.’ In his 1994 autobiography, Mr Gordy defines it as ‘rats, roaches, struggle, talent, guts and love’. I’d go further: its uptown-downtown mix is part funky, part melodic, with a distinct pop sound thrown in. And then there’s the feel-good mood it evokes, tapping into universal human emotion, elevating happiness, remembering desire, soothing heartbreak, as inspired by Mr Gordy’s early days with Jackie Wilson. It’s a catharsis that touches you; a force that compels you to move. It’s that blend of beats, bass lines, drums, keyboards, tambourines, hand-claps and the interplay of harmonies that create an instantly knowable sound, and one on which we built our live performances and musical education. And even then I don’t feel I’ve done it justice.

Our first Motown tutor was Bobby Taylor and we spent a lot of time with him in the months before Mr Gordy’s party, working at
weekends and when school was out for summer. He didn’t have much room in his apartment so we threw down mattresses and sleeping-bags on his carpet. It felt like the sleepover we were never allowed to have. Bobby, a tremendous singer himself, spent those summer weeks producing us and cutting tracks like ‘Can You Remember?’, ‘Who’s Lovin’ You’, ‘Chained’ and ‘La-La-La-La-La Means I Love You’ and ‘Standing In The Shadows Of Love’, songs that would feature on our first album. We must have cut more than a dozen covers from the likes of the Delfonics, Smokey Robinson, the Temptations and Marvin Gaye, and that work allowed us to ease into the recording process as a team prepared our original material.

Bobby knew how to inspire us, and he taught Michael and me how to use a mic properly in the studio. ‘Guys, you’re not on stage any more,’ he’d say. ‘The mic will give you the volume, so don’t worry about projecting your voices.’ That was when Michael’s imitation came into its own. Bobby first sang a song, then Michael repeated it, note for note. If Bobby liked what he saw on stage, his judgement was validated in the studio.

We first recorded at Motown’s headquarters, using a four-track board. The studio was in a cellar of the old house that Mr Gordy had converted into Hitsville USA in West Grand Boulevard, Detroit. It wasn’t fancy and looked nothing like an empire, but it was the epicentre of the Motown Sound so it felt instantly magical. The pre-taped arrangements were the work of the in-house rhythm section, known as the Funk Brothers – the unsung heroes behind the Motown Sound, the dynamic team of musicians who created everything we had ever heard from the label. We couldn’t believe they were our collaborators. It was as though we had jumped into the radio on the side cabinet.

After a summer and early fall of recording, life returned to normal and we turned into a new year. Between August 1968 and March 1969, progress seemed to stall so we kept rehearsing, performing and revisiting our usual haunts – the Apollo, Guys and Gals, and the High Chaparral – to maintain our regional exposure, if nothing else.

Ironically, it was Mother who first got restless. ‘Are you sure these Motown people are going to come through, Joe?’

He told her to be patient – to trust the agreement. Legal loose ends were still being tied up with Steeltown Records and Motown was in the process of setting up a division in Los Angeles. All major record labels had started to head west in the late sixties and Joseph could almost smell success. ‘We’re going to Hollywood, boys. I just know it,’ he said, winking.

But we’d be going without Rebbie. In November 1968, she married a fellow Witness named Nathaniel Brown and announced she was moving to Kentucky. Joseph was furious; Mother heart-broken. Neither found it easy to accept that she was leaving the family: their plan to keep everyone together was coming undone and there was nothing they could do. Rebbie couldn’t understand why they were not overjoyed for her happiness, but I suspect Joseph felt his control unravelling. Or maybe Rebbie’s departure was a painful reminder of losing his sister Verna-Mae? Either way, he refused to give her away on her wedding day. That duty fell, instead, to Papa Samuel.

What upset Rebbie most was that Joseph didn’t arrange for us to be there either. A performance at the Regal was deemed more important. I never did understand how that fitted with Joseph always saying that family came first.

Meanwhile, Randy – then six or seven – started wanting
his
talents to be noticed. He had watched the five of us go out most nights and weekends, leaving him as the only boy at home. He says it inspired him. Like Marlon, he had his own determination, so when Joseph handed him a pair of bongos, he practised day and night. ‘Listen, Joseph! Listen to this,’ he said, whenever we arrived home.

‘You keep at it,’ Joseph said, ‘and when you’re ready, I’ll let you know.’

Randy never stopped thinking he was ready. At school, he started learning the guitar and the piano. One day, he told himself, he, too, would become a member of the Jackson 5. Janet was three
years old, as cute and doe-eyed as Michael; she always wore a braided pigtail and played hopscotch in the alley, or sat cross-legged and clapped ‘patty-cakes’ with Randy. But that’s the extent of my memories of my little sister from our days in Indiana: she would make her presence felt when life eventually moved us to new pastures in southern California.

After Motown contracts were finally resolved and a new recording contract signed, the long-awaited call came from Mr Gordy, asking us to move to Los Angeles. It was time to claim our dream ticket out of Gary and truly enter the business for which we were destined.

Mother, Randy, La Toya and Janet stayed in Gary, packing boxes and preparing to rent out our home to a relative. But we headed west. Leaving our home-town wasn’t hard because we were leaving it for our dream. The only hard part was leaving Mother behind, but we knew she’d be following two months later so we felt okay to go.

JOSEPH TREATED US TO OUR FIRST
colour television in 1969. I think he felt we had earned it this time. And that was how the move out West felt – like someone had turned the contrast dial, taking us from the bleak black-and-white of Gary to the vivid, vibrant colour of California. The drive from Los Angeles airport to Hollywood was a discovery in itself. For the first time we saw the towering, verdant palm trees, a cloudless blue sky, the bronzed people in tight T-shirts and flared jeans, and we smelt pines and freshness. It contrasted sharply with Gary. All we had ever known was the foul air of steel mill smoke with its smell of sulphur dioxide and polluting red-hazes.

At street level, Los Angeles felt alive. We had arrived in the land of milk and honey, and Michael and I hung out of the car windows either side, a cooling breeze in our Afros. We drove around Hollywood and saw homes barely hanging on to hills, and mountain ranges in the distance.

In those first few days of July 1969, we watched sunsets and went to the beach – all Michael wanted to do was ride the
Hippodrome carousel on Santa Monica Pier – and we toured inland to find the best spot to see the Hollywood sign. We visited Disneyland and LA Zoo, and Michael fell in love with Mickey Mouse and the animals. We even managed a road trip to San Francisco.

Our first base was a playground for the music industry – the Tropicana Motel in West Hollywood. In those days, if you were music royalty, you checked into Chateau Marmont but if you were new in town, you stayed at the Tropicana – a white-painted, two-storey motor lodge built into a squared horseshoe, off Santa Monica Boulevard. It had a few bungalows in its grounds and a swimming pool, and the T on its front sign was a palm tree. We got excited about that. Palm trees were everywhere: there were almost as many palm trees as there were hippies.

We had a view of the Hollywood Hills from our room and all we did was swim. The motel was built into a slope, which meant the roof was only about 10 feet higher than the pool deck out back. Johnny Jackson fancied himself as an Olympic diver and was the first to climb up on to the tiles and show off: ‘Watch me! Watch me! I’m going to do a double somersault!’ We watched as –
smack!
– he belly-flopped with a splash. Johnny’s humiliation was our signal to join in and we took running jumps from the roof and dive-bombed, ass first.