Jacko, His Rise and Fall: The Social and Sexual History of Michael Jackson (2 page)

At that time in his life,
Joe wanted to be a musical
star himself. His R&B
band was called "The
Falcons," and the boys in
the band, the members of
which included Joe's
brother, Luther, rehearsed
almost nightly in the tiny
two-bedroom bungalow
already overcrowded with
the burgeoning Jackson
family.

Young Michael

Sometimes when her
husband was away on gigs
with The Falcons,
Katherine suspected that he was wasn't remaining faithful to her. But she'd
decided long ago to overlook his transgressions as a means of salvaging her
marriage.

One afternoon, Tito went to the closet in Joe's bedroom and removed his
father's most precious possession, his guitar. Playing with the guitar in the
small living room, the boy broke one of the strings. Later that night, after supper, when Joe started to play his guitar, he discovered what Tito had done. He
grabbed Tito by his neck and forced him into the living room. Having repaired
the string, Joe demanded that Tito play for him. "I wanna hear you play that
guitar. And you'd better be good! If you're not good, I'm gonna beat the hell
out of you!" Although prepared for violence, hard-to-please Joe was
impressed with Tito's guitar playing.

It was on that night that Joe realized that all his sons had musical talent.
If he couldn't make it in the music world himself, maybe his sons could bring
in big paychecks with Joe managing their money. He began to rehearse not
just with Tito, but with his oldest boys, Jackie and Jermaine. As soon as he
was old enough-well, barely-the apple-cheeked Michael joined in pounding those bongos. "The kid is a dynamo," Joe told Katherine.

"What have I been telling you?" she asked.

A few weeks later, Joe decided that his own career with The Falcons was
going nowhere. He threw all the energy he'd used for his own music into
developing the careers of his sons-and he was a brutal taskmaster, even beating them with a switch or a belt when one of the boys missed a note or a dance
step.

Joe told the members of The Falcons that he didn't practice birth control. "One kid came right after the other. With all the hungry mouths to feed, I had
to bring home a paycheck." He would later claim, "I sacrificed my own career
for the sake of my sons. They were not grateful for what I did for them, especially Michael, the most ungrateful of them all."

"Even before our first record contract," Jermaine said, "we used to have
to be in before the street lights came on. It was rehearse, rehearse, and then
rehearse some more. We missed out on being kids. We could never play with
the other boys on the block because we had to tend to business-and that
meant making music."

Joe began to spend money he couldn't afford buying musical instruments
for his children. This led to some bitter fights with Katherine, who needed the
meager funds to put food on the table.

Joe used brutality to control his sons, Katherine preferring a more emotional and psychological approach in her possessiveness. Her family was her
world. To lose her family would be tantamount to losing her reason for living.

Born in Arkansas but reared in dirt-poor rural Tennessee, where his dad
taught school for fifteen dollars a week, Joe Jackson came up the hard way.
He was determined to make it big. He learned to discipline his own children
based on the harsh beatings and strict punishment he received from his own
father, the iron-fisted Samuel, a devout Lutheran who "tolerated no sass from
a snot-nosed kid."

The Jacksons (left to right) in the 70s:

Jackie, Janet, Michael, Tito, La Toya, Marlon, Randy, and Jermaine.

Joe's father had always proclaimed, "Spare the rod, spoil the child." Joe
took his father's advice. Instead of a rod, he used leather belts, razor straps,
and wire coat hangers evocative of Joan Crawford in Mommie Dearest. When
none of those devices seemed to do the job, he balled up his fist and plowed
it into one of his boys' noses. Blood would spurt out, but Joe succeeded in getting his point across.

Sometimes in the middle of the night, he would put on a fright mask and
burst into the boys' room with a kitchen knife poised menacingly. The brothers' horrified screams could be heard throughout the working-class neighborhood.

Katherine was born in a small hamlet in Alabama that is no longer on the
map. She sang spirituals in her church and listened to country music on the
radio. Hank Williams was her favorite. Sometimes she'd take Michael in her
lap and sing such old favorites as "Cotton Fields" or "Wabash Cannonball" to
him.

Michael was about four years old when he noticed that his mother walked
with a limp. When he asked her about it, she said that she'd been crippled with
polio when she was a young girl growing up in the South. Claiming that musical talent was "a gift from God," she began to take him to the Sunday services of the Jehovah's Witnesses. Often only Maureen-nicknamed "Rebbie"-
and La Toya would go with her. Her husband and her sons would rarely, if
ever, accompany her.

Before she converted to the teachings of the Jehovah's Witnesses,
Katherine had been a member of both a Baptist and a Lutheran church, until
she learned that the ministers of each congregation were having extramarital
affairs. As a Jehovah's Witness, she
would eventually be confronted
with evidence that her husband was
also having extramarital affairs.

Katherine, Michael, and Joe Jackson,
circa 1972

Even so, she steadfastly
stood by her new faith that condemned "fornicators (in this case
her own husband and later her children), idolaters, masturbators, adulterers, and homosexuals." Most of
these labels-and more-would
eventually be applied to members of
her own family. But Katherine never
lost the faith that condemned many
of the pastimes of her own offspring.

Michael became an ardent disciple of the Jehovah's Witnesses and
remained so until that religious cult "disowned" him.

When Michael turned five, Katherine once again caught him singing in
the falsetto of a toddler, this time in front of a mirror. He perfectly impersonated Jermaine's lead vocal. For the second time, she was awed by her young
boy's amazing talent. It was hard to admit it to herself, but she concluded that
Michael's vocalizing, despite his age, surpassed that of Jermaine's. Jermaine
had been Joe's favorite, and his father had been grooming the boy as the lead
singer. That night, Katherine confided to Joe, "I think we have another lead
singer." She didn't say "a replacement" but "another."

Michael was summoned into the living room. There Joe demanded that
he sing for him. "Joe was really shocked when he heard our boy," Katherine
said. "So young, so talented." To an increasing degree, his parents realized
that they had given birth to a very special talent.

After the first week of rehearsing with Michael, Joe made an unusual prediction of stunning accuracy. "The kid is going to become the biggest entertainer in the world."

When his brothers finally heard Michael sing, "all of us were shocked,"
as Jackie remembered. "Michael was practically in diapers, but we knew he'd
be our lead singer. Jermaine's days as lead singer were over." He was shunted aside, leading to a life-long resentment and envy of his more famous brother.

By the time Michael was six years old, he sang in public at the Garnett
Elementary School. Singing a capella, he chose "Climb Ev'ry Mountain"
from The Sound of Music, performing brilliantly enough to impress hard-toplease Joe and bringing tears to Katherine's eyes.

That same year, "Ripples and Waves," the first name of The Jackson 5,
began to enter-and win-talent contests in Gary. Joe financed a comical
record by them called "Let Me
Carry Your Books to School."

Michael not only replaced
Jermaine as lead singer, but he
began to take over in other ways
too. Soon he was choreographing
their steps and even designing
costumes for The Jackson 5.

The Jackson residence in Gary, Indiana

By the age of seven, Michael
was performing professionally
with his brothers. At a talent contest at Roosevelt High School in
Gary, the brothers won by singing "My Girl," a hit song from The Temptations.

"I was scared," Michael later recalled. "Afraid we'd be booed off the
stage. The audience might not like us. I was untested. But I also felt I could
do it. I knew I'd not forget the lyrics or make one big mistake. I was determined, and I pulled it off."

Joe continued to arrange bookings for his sons, the entire troupe hiring out
for only eight dollars for a performance. That was only the base pay.
Audiences were enthusiastic about the boys, and on a good night the sons
brought back one hundred dollars, all derived from tips, to help Katherine run
the household.

While still working at the steel plant, Joe drove his sons to gigs at night.
Sometimes he'd take a leave from work and travel cross-country with his boys
in a small van.

Although Joe privately told Katherine how talented he felt Michael was,
he didn't let his son in on that. In front of his brothers, Joe often denounced
Michael. "You're one ugly fucker. I'm handsome. You couldn't be my son.
Your mama must have fucked the milkman. You're also the dumbest piece of
shit that ever got up to entertain an audience. The only way you can get a
squeal from a woman is to crawl on the floor and look up her dress. You're so
clumsy I'm ashamed to call you my son." When Michael seriously angered
him, Joe took out a pocket knife and held it to Michael's throat, threatening to
slit it.

As a little boy, Michael performed in the wildest and raunchiest of the
honky-tonks of "Sin City," the nickname for Gary.

"When not in Gary, the Jackson brothers were appearing in the seedy
dives of Chicago, a van ride of around 90 minutes from Gary, where most
known perversions could be catered to," in the words of one habitue of the
nightlife scene in The Windy City.

Michael got his taste of female nudity watching strippers peel down and
tossing their G-strings into the hard-drinking crowd of men, with a few "butch
dykes," as they were called, in the audience seeking a thrill as well.