You Are Not Alone_Michael, Through a Brother’s Eyes (31 page)

That same week, before the ‘Smooth Criminal’ video was even wrapped, Michael wrote to the Kingdom Hall disassociating himself from the Jehovah’s Witnesses and specifically asking not to be recognised as a baptised Witness. I know it broke his heart because he was severing such a long-standing tie, but he felt he had been placed in an impossible position. It devastated Mother, too, but she made it clear that he was her son and she supported his decision because she understood his need for artistic freedom. The matter was never discussed again. Jehovah’s Witnesses don’t
discuss with the disassociated or the de-fellowshipped their reasons for leaving and that seemed to suit everyone.

MICHAEL’S SENSE OF HUMOUR NEVER MATURED
and I suspect that anyone who ever spent time with him will confirm that he was still playing hide and seek, and still acting chief prankster beyond the age of 40. Bill Bray remained a merciless target for his jokes and his new manager Frank Dileo wasn’t spared either. Michael would toss a bunch of his 100-dollar bills out of the hotel window for fans or dump a bundle of cash in the bath and turn on the taps. Only one thing could have been worse to Frank and that was wetting one of his big fat cigars.

Being back on the road meant we could revert to being ourselves and the fun we had was silly, infantile but
fun
. Michael, Marlon and I dropped water bombs from hotel windows high above a table of suited businessmen having an al fresco lunch, knowing the water would turn into a mist of ‘rain’ halfway down. We then drenched each other in water-pistol fights. Placed eggs in people’s shoes. And Michael held a toilet roll and let it unravel from the balcony. Tour boredom didn’t get any easier as we got older so we spent a lot of time goofing off, making our own entertainment and no doubt retaining the title of Best Behaved Group in the History of Music. I think we made the Osmonds look devilish by comparison.

The post-concert food fights were always the best. Michael would be standing and talking, looking all serious with Frank Dileo and someone else from the tour, and I’d be watching. With Michael’s back to me, I’d hurl a handful of peanuts or almonds, peppering them. You could always tell when innocent bystanders on the crew weren’t used to our historic bombardments because they’d hold their arms and hands to their faces, asking us to stop. Responsible adults being bombed by the ‘kids’. Michael would crack up laughing. ‘ERMS! You’re going to get it now!’ he’d shout. Before you knew it, all the brothers were at it, unleashing tracer fire of a thousand M&Ms. When they ran out, we’d throw pieces of
banana, shrimp, berries and cake, re-enacting our favourite scenes from
The Three Stooges
.

Harrison Funk captured most of this fun on camera and we had to get used to him walking into our dressing room without knocking as he started blasting away with his flashgun. As a trusted member of the team, he had
carte blanche
to take photos whenever he liked. Unguarded. In private. Then, one day, Michael asked him to put his cameras down and take a break. Harrison thought this a very nice gesture – an artist recognising the hard-working photographer. Then, as he stood there picking at the fruit plate, Michael came up from behind him and poured an ice bucket full of shrimp cocktail over his head. Welcome to the family.

AS VICTORY PASSED THROUGH JACKSONVILLE, FLORIDA,
Bill Bray had taken a decision not to tell us about the numerous death threats the team had been receiving. Especially the one from a worrying individual named James Huberty. Every tour and group gets its share of crazies and we knew that; we just didn’t need the distraction of a reminder.

But two weeks into the tour all that changed. We knew nothing of what was going down until we were resting up in our individual suites. I was alone in my room, kicking back on the bed, when there was a fierce knocking on the door. I sprang up and Bill rushed in with a fire marshal, uniformed officers and sniffer dogs. Lucky for them that Bakana was in her cage. These guys were ‘clearing’ each room, said Bill, as he tried to explain what was going on. Just a precaution, he said. But it was the most frantic precaution I’d ever seen. Once the all-clear had been given, it was explained that there had been a shooting at a McDonald’s restaurant in San Diego. A man had walked in and gone mad with an Uzi, shooting dead 22 people and injuring 19. ‘What’s a shooting in San Diego got us panicking for in Florida?’ I asked.

‘Because the shooter was James Huberty – the same guy who’s been threatening you jokers,’ said Bill. Even though he had been killed in the shootout, no one was taking any chances after he had hinted at
a little surprise for the Jacksons while on the road. At least, it was something sinister like that. Understandably, everyone was freaking out as the San Diego incident played itself out on television.

If the room search seemed a little over the top, it was nothing compared to the increased security. The atmosphere of the next few days was one of lockdown just in case the shooter hadn’t acted alone. We transferred out of the tour vans and into one of those armoured bank vans, steel-encased with no windows and certainly no leather. So the seats normally reserved for bags of money now had our costumed asses parked on them. Once we were clear of Jacksonville, we thought the red alert was behind us, but then we moved on to Knoxville, Tennessee, where the local newspaper had received a threat, predicting that one of us would be shot during the concert. We were again spared the details, but we found ourselves back inside the armoured van. There was talk of cancelling the Knoxville dates – but there was no way we were letting down the fans. We took advice from the head of the police unit, Lieutenant Vitatoa, and we had outriders wherever we went.

With increased security, both around us and at the stadium gates, we couldn’t have felt more over-protected – especially when we were bumping around in the back of the windowless bank van on the way to Neyland Stadium. As we rumbled along, we got talking about how serious this all was and then one of us – can’t remember who – said, ‘What are we going to do if he [a shooter] is out there?’ Before we even arrived at the venue, we had convinced ourselves that one person out of the 48,000 fans was out to get us. We started laughing. Nervously.

‘Hey, Michael, you’re up front! You’re the biggest target!’ said Randy.

‘Yeah, Mike,’ said Marlon, ‘what are you going to do?’

Michael looked at us like we were dummies. ‘I’m going to keep moving! I’m going to move so much and so fast that he’ll have a hard time getting
me
…’

That was true. It would be hard to train crosshairs on a bolt of lightning.

‘Why should I be worried?’ he continued. ‘I’m not the one tied to the spot with my guitar.’

I looked at Tito, and Tito looked at me. Michael suddenly seemed to have the safest position on stage. That’s what I’ve always said about the bass and guitar players – we’re the unsung heroes.

THANKFULLY, IT WASN’T ALWAYS ARMOURED CARS
and ass-bruising seats. We had some cool experiences. It was a lavish, no-expense-spared tour, from the lasers and special effects onstage to the spoiling treatment off it. The size of the operation meant that Michael always flew in his own private plane with his team and we flew in a separate one with some of the band. Sometimes, I commandeered the fleet of seven private jets that belonged to my friend Meshulam Riklis because I was collaborating with his wife Pia Zadora – he was the most generous man on earth. All in all, ‘Victory’ was what a tour should be: rewarding, crazy, exhilarating, spectacular and full of memorable performances.

In New York, the scenes were incredible. We were told the city had 1,000 police set aside for crowd control, which best illustrates the scale of what we found ourselves in the middle of. Tour co-ordinators told us that they sealed off Midtown on the west side when we played Madison Square Garden, which is one to tell the kids and the grandkids. A few days earlier, we had played the Giants Stadium in New Jersey and had decided to arrive in style, by Chinook helicopter. Michael and I were not the most relaxed air passengers at the best of times and there was limited seating capacity, but everyone ignored that and piled in. We had the managers, security, makeup, and Michael’s guest Julian Lennon who, contrary to what’s been reported, was accepted warmly into the camp without a fuss. An extra kid aboard was the least of my concerns. All I was thinking as we stood on the helipad was, We don’t have to cram in like sardines. The pilot can come back in 20 minutes for a second group – otherwise we’re going to be swallowing the Hudson River. But, no, everyone wanted to travel together.

Remarkably, Michael was the calmest, but as that helicopter started to take off and swing, I was convinced its alarm would sound with an electronic voice that would echo what was running through my mind: ‘Too much weight! Too much weight! Abort! Abort!’ It dipped and swayed, and I wasn’t happy. ‘There’s too many of us in this thing,’ I said.

‘Calm down, Erms, we’re flying in style,’ said Michael, laughing at me.

How things had changed since Mobile, Alabama. It was evening, heading into dusk, and I painted headlines in the pink sky: ‘JACKSONS WIPED OUT IN HELICOPTER TRAGEDY’. And then we flew over the Giants stadium, skimming its noise. We looked down into this bowl crammed with people waiting to see us and saw every one of those minnows looking skyward and cheering. They knew it was our helicopter, presumably because it had been announced. We landed about two blocks away before jumping into limos. I think that that night we gave one of our best performances, which goes to show that there’s nothing like a bit of fear to get you pumped up before a show!

I was always happiest riding to a venue when the tyres remained in contact with the ground. The pre-concert atmosphere in the van was always the same: going over last-minute reminders about this turn and that cue. But all Michael could talk about was the segment where he got to show off his love of magic. In a scene he’d dreamed up under the guidance of tour illusions master Franz Harary, one of my brother’s two giant spiders crawled electronically onstage to eat him, trapping him under its legs. Michael played dead. He was lifted on to a table covered with a bed-sheet. When Randy pulled that sheet away, he had vanished into thin air. If there was one element of the show Michael wanted to get
just right
, it was this moment.
En route
to the stadiums, he’d be running it through with Randy, who was struggling in his role as magician’s assistant. ‘Give it a beat … wait a little more until you pull the sheet away,’ said Michael. ‘You’re doing it too soon, and the audience is figuring out the trick!’ Randy kept pulling the sheet too hard, too soon.
Sometimes, you could still see Michael rising into the air, attached to wires and cables. We’d be back there, laughing, and Michael would be getting so frustrated. I’m pleased to report that Randy eventually nailed it, proving that magic is just as much about timing as music is.

Those rides to the stadium reminded me of the times we’d squeezed into Joseph’s VW van back in the day. Our routine and mind-set had not altered over the years. We still plotted and planned and laughed. There was only one thing missing from the flashback: our old driver Jack Richardson. Those cigarettes had taken their toll and he had died of lung cancer. We missed him badly, from the van and from our lives. 1984 was a tough year in that respect because we also lost an idol in Jackie Wilson and a dear friend in Marvin Gaye, shot by his father during a drunken dispute. We wept for all three of them and dedicated the tour to their memories, because each had been an important influence on our lives. ‘Victory’ was a reunion in which we toasted absent friends.

A NEW FRIEND WHO STARTED HANGING
out with us in New York was Madonna, whose star was rising somewhere between her first single ‘Holiday’ and her movie,
Desperately Seeking Susan
. Dressed in all black with a proud cleavage, navel-baring cropped top and wild, scrunchy hair, she seemed to be a constant presence backstage at Madison Square Garden and the Helmsley Palace – Michael’s favourite hotel in New York. At first, she actually came across as shy. She seemed like more of a VIP fan than a fellow artist as she moved between rooms at the hotel, being social, spending most of her time with Michael and Randy. It was certainly a productive networking time for her. Not only did she end up being managed by the Jacksons’ management, Weisner and De Mann, she would recruit our keyboard player, Pat Leonard, as her musical director, and our drummer Jonathan Moffett for her ‘Virgin’ Tour.

In later years, it would also become obvious how much Michael inspired her artistically: his signature crotch-grabbing dance was all over her ‘Express Yourself’ video, and take a listen to ‘Material
World’. That beat, that bass line? In my opinion, that’s ‘Can You Feel It’ right there. I always sensed that Madonna was hovering with intent, looking to get some action from somebody, but Michael was indifferent to her back in 1984, which was probably why she turned first to Randy. The obstacle with him was overcoming the girlfriend who was not only with him but on his arm. Short of walking around with a sign saying, ‘I’m taken’, the situation couldn’t have been clearer. But we soon learned that very little deterred Madonna. Ignoring his girlfriend, she walked up to Randy, grabbed his face and stuck her tongue down his throat.

You would have thought that kind of directness would be enough to put off someone as delicate as Michael when it came to future dating prospects but, come 1991, he and Madonna ‘dated’ for the shortest time. Out of all the combinations Hollywood could throw together, this was probably its most ill-matched. As Michael soon found out.

Here was a gentle man in touch with his feminine side, and here was a wild woman with a tight grip on her masculine side. She was everything his ideal woman wasn’t: brazen, outspoken, opinionated and with an unashamed shock value. I think Madonna sincerely adored Michael but the feeling wasn’t mutual and she committed two cardinal sins. The first was that she played on the fears he had about relationships: that every woman tries to change a man. It seemed she was hell-bent on loosening him up, bringing him out of his shell, getting him to see life through
her
eyes. The second big mistake was when they were at dinner one night and she had the temerity to criticise Janet. Michael was furious and, not surprisingly, they never went on another date.