Jacko, His Rise and Fall: The Social and Sexual History of Michael Jackson (15 page)

Nearly all critics agreed that Michael was practically a Fred Astaire when
it came to dancing, but Cher was no Ginger Rogers. "As a Cherokee she could
perform tribal dances-and that was about it," another critic unkindly proclaimed.

At the end of the broadcast, Cher was exhausted from the strenuous workout the Jackson brothers had put her through. She was amazed at their seemingly boundless energy. To pay his respects, Michael visited her in her dressing room.

"So tell me, Michael, who in the fuck is the world's top diva: Moi or
Diana Ross?"

"You both are big talents," he said, embarrassed at being put in such a
spot.

"Okay, I'll concede that she's a better singer. Hell, I don't like the sound
of my own voice that much. I'm a much better actress than I am a singer.
Singing is like going to a party at someone else's house. Acting is like having
the party at your own house." Cher would repeat this sentiment to various figures in show business. "What about you, kid? Plan to stick to singing?"

"I never told this even to my family, but I want to become a movie star
like Diana. And not just in singing roles either. I want to win an Oscar."

"A noble ambition, but I don't know about that Oscar," Cher said.
"Winning little baby Oscars with their cute butts is my fantasy. My ambition
is to win as many Oscars, or as many nominations, as Katharine Hepburn."

"Who is she?" Michael asked. "Another singer?"

"You're in show business and you don't know Kate Hepburn?" Cher
asked in astonishment. "Fuck, kid. Get real!" As a joke, she said, "Hepburn,
my favorite actress, was Scarlett O'Hara in Gone With the Wind."

Not knowing that Cher was joking, Michael took this as gospel. "I'm
gonna see that movie some day."

Again joking, Cher said, "Have the Butterfly McQueen part rewritten for
you. You'd be great at it. Repeat after me, `Miss Scarlett, Miss Scarlett, I don't
know nothin' 'bout birthin' babies."'

"I could do that!"

"Listen, take some advice from your mamma mia here. At first people
laughed me off as a joke when I was breaking into the business. Some fucking joke! Before my career is over, I'll have one hundred million in the bank."
Cher underestimated her potential, ending up with a vast fortune of $600 million.

"I was a shy kid living in a fantasy world," she said.

"I still live there," Michael said.

"Fine," Cher said. "But live in the real world too. I've heard stories about
you. You're gonna be ridiculed like I was. But stand up to your critics."

"How can I do that?"

"By becoming so God damn successful that even your harshest critics
can't hurt you. You can become so rich and powerful in show business that the
hecklers won't matter any
more."

Cher

"I hate it when people tell
lies about me," he said.

"Deep down, we all do, but
don't tell anybody I said that."
She looked at the time. "Gotta
go now. I've got a date with a
hot young boy. A little older
than you. You're still a bit
young for me. You like girls,
don't you?"

"I can take `em or leave
`em," Michael said.

"Yeah, right! There's nothing wrong with liking boys. Who in hell wouldn't like boys? The world is filled with holes to stuff.
Finding the perfect prick is like looking for the Holy Grail."

Appalled and intimidated, Michael thanked her profusely for letting his
brothers appear on her show and quickly hurried from her dressing room.

Cher called after him. "Seriously, boy, I wasn't planning to seduce you."

In spite of their initial introduction, Cher and Michael saw each other
from time to time, but never really became friends. Eventually, the publicity
about child molestation and other accusations turned her against Michael.

By 2003, she was telling the press, "I don't really care what he does to his
face. He could just erase it as far as I'm concerned. I don't like him anymore.
And it's because of his children. I cannot imagine putting my children through
what he puts his children through. I once saw him with one of his kids rolled
up in a blanket, and I was thinking, `What kind of life is this?' He and I were
friends when he was little. I watched him grow up and all that, but, you know,
you dangle a baby over a balcony, that's it for me. If it was up to me, he
wouldn't have those babies now. This guy is nuts. As an artist, I can't fault his
art because he was brilliant. I wouldn't buy anything now."

Cher avoided a question about Michael's plastic surgery. Fans of Cher and
Michael on the web asked this provocative question: "Which one has had
more plastic surgery?"

Appearing on more and more TV specials such as Cher's was only one of
Joe's schemes.

To show Gordy that he too could be an impresario, Joe established his
own record company, calling it Ivory Tower International Records. "Ivory is
not a good name for black groups," Gordy warned him. The first group Joe
signed was an "all-gal" singing quartet from Ohio. It took as its name the awkward-sounding "M.D.L.T. Willis." As Gordy predicted, the group bombed.
One member of the troupe bombed in more ways than one.

Joe told Jermaine that he felt Michael "is old enough to lose his virginity." Joe persuaded one of the members of M.D.L.T. (the exact identity of
whom is not known) to go to Michael's hotel room and seduce him. The singer
was only too willing. She also agreed that it was about time that Michael
"knew the taste of a woman."

From all reports, the evening was a disaster. Joe secured a pass key and
gained admittance to Michael's bedroom. The girl slipped in and apparently
tried to get physical with Michael, but a row developed. There was pushing
and even wrestling, with Michael fleeing to the balcony. He screamed at the
girl to leave his bedroom and even promised "to pray for you." He told her
that he wasn't like his other brothers, "seducing every slut in Los Angeles."
Highly insulted, the attractive singer stormed out of Michael's bedroom and
spent the next few years telling anyone even remotely interested that "Michael Jackson is a fag!"

Joe failed in this attempt to get Michael to surrender his virginity to a
woman. But where daddy didn't make it, Michael's brothers hoped to succeed.
One night they hired two of the best-looking hookers they could find-one
blonde, one black-and sent them to Michael's hotel bedroom. Jackie, in a
phone call to Michael, claimed the young women were friends of The Jackson
5 and wanted Michael's autograph.

Up until then, the brothers had been telling reporters that "Michael's no
virgin." Tito even claimed that "my little brother's had more girls than all the
other brothers combined." Of course, that was gross exaggeration. Perhaps it
was done to camouflage the fear that Michael might be a homosexual. Even
when he was fifteen, the whispering campaign had only begun and would
greatly intensify in the years ahead.

Details are lacking but when the hookers were allowed inside Michael's
room, they apparently let their intentions become known, especially when
they tried to take off Michael's clothes. In panic, he tried to flee the room, only
to find his bedroom door bolted from the outside. His brothers stood in the
hallway, catcalling into Michael. "After you've finished with them, we get
sloppy seconds," one of the brothers called.

To protect himself from the voracious women, Michael burst into tears.
"What a turn-off," one of the hookers said. "Have you ever tried to seduce a
guy who's crying like a five-year-old baby? No fun at all!"

The black hooker told one of the brothers, "Your pansy brother was reading the Bible when we left him."

"Getting Michael to surrender his cherry was a daunting task that no
woman and I mean that literally-would ever be able to accomplish,"
claimed a Motown executive. "Even when they invented Viagra, it wouldn't
cure Michael. Not that one!"

"Michael just wasn't interested in the opposite sex," the executive continued. "I suspected that he was gay from the first day I met him. I truly don't
know how Joe Jackson felt on the subject. I knew that homosexuality was
against Katherine's religion. I also saw that the brothers were embarrassed by
all this gay talk. They wanted Michael to be a lady-killer. But he wasn't. He
just wasn't. Nor would he ever be. Let's face it: unlike his older brothers,
Michael is no pussyhound."

Although just beginning his teenage years, Michel became the one
Jackson brother that the girls, and even older women, pursued now that
Jermaine was married. "I have a son older than Michael," said Alexis Klucker
of Alabama, "but I still wanted to seduce that little boy. I don't know why, but
I wanted him. Pimples and all, it didn't matter."

One woman, Betty Scaff, was arrested on the grounds of the Jackson's Encino mansion. Somehow she'd managed to elude security and even the
guard dogs. When Michael came out through the back door and headed for his
own private zoo, she jumped out from her hiding place in the bushes. She
attacked Michael and ripped off most of his clothes, demanding that he
impregnate her.

Before she was hauled away by security, the woman proclaimed that if
Michael would father a child with her, the kid would grow up "to become the
second Jesus Christ."

In tears, Michael retreated to his bedroom to nurse his wounds and to
brood for three days over this violent attack.

"I think Michael had every reason to fear women from that point on in his
life," said Lennox Biggs, who once worked for Motown. "Girls grabbed his
groin. They took wads of his hair. They demanded sex from him. And this one
bitch even tried to rape him. How could he grow up viewing women as objects
of love? To him, all women were sexual predators trying to take his precious
virginity. Michael held onto that virginity-at least with women-like it was
something worth protecting."

Joe failed to hook Michael up with a woman, but he got all his boys a
booking into Las Vegas for the winter of 1974. Conditions were much
improved for black entertainers there following the efforts of Sammy Davis
Jr. When Davis first appeared in Las Vegas, he couldn't stay in the same hotel
where he entertained all-white audiences.

Even during the mid-70s, Vegas audiences were still mainly white. Black
acts didn't succeed very well there, unless they were crossovers, as The
Supremes had demonstrated. Vegas nightclubs were also a showcase for the
stars of yesterday, often booking nostalgic acts like pompadoured Frankie
Avalon who sang "Venus" every night.

Gordy predicted that the Jackson brothers would bomb before the allwhite audiences, but Michael was more enthusiastic. "If Sammy can be a hit
there, so can I!" he said.

Joe wanted his boys to open at "the top joint," which means the MGM
Grand. The Osmonds had been a big hit there, and Michael felt he and his
brothers could top them.

For their opening night, Joe ordered La Toya to go on the stage with her
brothers. She was only seventeen. Imitating the Osmond act, he also brought
in Randy, who was only twelve, and even Janet at seven years old. Joe created novelty acts, having Janet and Randy impersonate Sonny and Cher in a
satirical skit.

On her own, little Janet got a standing ovation with her take on the "Come
Up and See Me Sometime" gal, Mae West. To hear a seven-year-old say, "It's
not the men in my life but the life in my men that counts," made for a hilari ous evening.

La Toya wanted to have more of a star role, but Joe wasn't impressed with
her vocal range. He ordered her to lip sync. "Don't let one sound escape from
your throat," he demanded, causing La Toya to burst into tears and run from
the rehearsal hall. But on opening night, she obeyed her father's commands.

The Jackson 5 wooed the audience, especially Michael's acts, including
his brilliant impersonation of Diana Ross. Later, when Ross heard what he'd
done, she was "furious" at Michael for holding her up to public ridicule.

Another highlight of the show came when The Jackson 5 imitated The
Andrew Sisters, the favorite singers of the boys who won World War 11.

Caught unaware by the sudden success of The Jacksons in Vegas, Gordy
told the press, "I wanted to see the boys expand their musical horizon." Joe
was furious when word got back to him. "The fucker predicted we'd bomb.
Now he's taking credit for my success."

When the show opened at Radio City Music Hall in New York, Vince
Aletti, a critic, was one of the first to write about the "new" Michael on stage.
"No matter how much I love the other Jacksons, it is Michael who is the
group's aesthetic focus. His stylized show-biz posing (the bends and turns,
arms outstretched and sweeping the air in front of him; little self-hugs with his
head thrown back) is becoming a little disturbing, at moments even grotesque
for a boy who's still a very skinny sixteen. But when he isn't being Engelbert
Humperdinck, he's supreme and so controlled it's almost frightening. In his
motel room, when he tells you he's in the 11th grade, it might seem strange,
but it's believable. Seeing him onstage, dancing, and striding confidently out
to the edge, you just know he's lying."