Jacko, His Rise and Fall: The Social and Sexual History of Michael Jackson (21 page)

If that statement were reported accurately, Michael was not only admitting
that he would not practice homosexuality because "the Bible says not to," but
would not partake of straight sexual encounters as well. His randy brothers obviously did not share Michael's reserve.

"Could it be true?" writer Phoebe Foggin asked. "Is Michael neither gay
nor straight but asexual? He sure sounds that way. Or does he use religion
as a shield to protect himself from reporters' probing questions?"

As time went by, Michael was having a hard time reconciling his "notorious" show business career with a draconian "Armageddon-around-the-corner
religion," as defined by the Jehovah's Witnesses. Not only were Easter and
Christmas "outlawed," and homosexuality forbidden, but extramarital intercourse between heterosexuals was condemned as well. Of course, oral and
anal sex were out of the question, because gays indulged in such pastimes. As
Barbara Grizzuti Harrison wrote in her book, Visions of Glory, Witnesses
make it clear that, "you don't have to perform a homosexual act to qualify as
a homosexual. If you have homosexual fantasies, you are a homosexual in
your heart and God sees your heart."

Michael couldn't spend all his days denying that he was a homosexual. He
also had to make music-and so he did, either with his less-talented brothers
or without them.

Still known as "The Jacksons," the brothers, with Michael as lead singer,
released their second album, Goin' Places, for Epic in the winter of 1977. It
reached only number 52 on Billboards charts, which did a lot better than
Jermaine's album at Motown. Consequently, executives at CBS began to have
serious second thoughts about the Jackson brothers.

"Goin'Places performed dismally," said an officer at Epic. "We were bitterly disappointed as we had high hopes. Even so, we decided it was too early
to boot The Jacksons. We rolled the dice and gave the boys much greater control over their next album. For all we knew, if it failed, it would be the last of
The Jacksons. As for me personally, I never liked black music. I like my music
just like I like my women and my coffee: White!"

Katherine particularly liked one single on the album, "Man of War," a plea
for peace. She noted that when her sons were at Motown, Gordy steered them
away from any kind of "black power" material, but she was glad to see her
boys record a "message song," feeling it was a sign that the Jackson brothers,
even Michael and Randy, were growing into men who took stands for what is
right.

Tito claimed that people in the business began telling him that "your
career, and that of your brothers, is history."

Everybody was disappointed except Michael. At least on the surface, he
appeared both defiant and confident. "We'll come back bigger and better than
ever," he assured both his mother and his brothers.

Greg Phillinganes, who had toured with Stevie Wonder, was recruited by
CBS to work with The Jacksons on their new album, Destiny, helping them with the arrangements. Arriving at their Encino house, Phillinganes found the
brothers "real enthusiastic and excited because this was the first time in their
entire careers that they controlled the music. All of them could write, but I
thought Michael and Randy were probably the strongest of the brothers."

Michael repaid the compliment by naming Phillinganes "Mouse," for
some odd reason. The artist was anything but. The nickname was completely
inappropriate, "except he did eat cheese," Joe claimed.

With hopes for a comeback, the Jackson brothers recorded their third LP
for Epic. Destiny was released in 1978 and was reviewed as a "coming-ofage" album for The Jacksons. In that sense, it evoked The Beatles' album,
Revolver. Michael himself selected the peacock as the symbol to use on the
back of the album. "The peacock is the only bird that integrates all the colors
of the rainbow into one. It can produce only this radiance of fire when it's in
love. Love is what we're trying to represent in Destiny. To unite the races
through the enduring symbol of love. Since politics can't save the world, give
music a chance." The name of the production company handling The
Jacksons' music became known as Peacock Productions.

"Ron Alexenburg of CBS Records made a total leap of faith in us,"
Michael later said, "and let us write and produce our own material, something
Gordy at Motown had never done."

Alexenburg "showed the faith" that none of the other top brass at CBS
had-in fact, the studio had seriously considered buying out The Jacksons'
contract for $100,000 and assigning them to the dustpan of the music industry as a faded, not-very-significant act that belonged to yesterday. "We had
about as much faith in the revival of the Jackson brothers as we did in reviving the so-called singing career of Tab Hunter," said one CBS executive.

Randy claimed that doing the Destiny album "was the greatest test for my
brothers and me." Marlon Jackson vowed, "We'll show the fuckers that we're
not washed up in the business."

All of The Jacksons were collectively credited for five of the eight songs
on the album. The first single release on the album, "Blame It on the Boogie,"
flopped, but the brothers hadn't written that one. The song was written by
three writers from Europe. One member of that trio, ironically, was named
Michael Jackson (no relation).

Their own song in solo release, "Shake Your Body (Down to the Ground)"
peaked at number seven on Billboards pop chart, selling two million records.
Dick Clark declared it "the great dance record of the 70s." It was a joint effort
of both Michael and his younger brother, Randy, and it shot up to become a
platinum disc, generating across-the-board play on radio, becoming one of the
most requested disco singles of 1978. Even Truman Capote and Lee Radziwell
(Jackie's sister) were seen dancing to it at New York's Studio 54.

The final song on the album, "That's What You Get (For Being Polite)"
was almost about Michael himself, in that it laments the woes of a "sensitive"
young man who remains emotionally unfulfilled, as Michael was in his own
closeted life.

After the release of the Destiny album, The Jacksons went on a nationwide
tour, which left Michael so terribly exhausted at one point that he lost his
voice. A specialist pronounced that his throat was coated with blisters. Marlon,
standing close to Michael, had to sing some of his words for him. The audiences didn't detect that Michael was merely lip-synching.

The tour grossed $750,000 but Michael claimed, "I was very unhappy and
stayed in my hotel room when I wasn't on stage. I came alive only when I was
performing. That's the only time in my life I'm happy."

Joe forced Michael to grant interview after interview to reporters or magazine feature writers. Michael agreed although the questions had to be funneled through Janet. Sitting next to her, Michael would listen to a reporter's
question, then would hear Janet repeat it. He then told his answer to Janet,
who relayed it to the reporters sitting across from Michael and his sister. "It
was so bizarre," said Steve Demorest of Melody Maker magazine.

It was with Demorest that Michael first expressed his "very strong interest" in children, although he made the claim that, "I would never father one
myself."

One reporter found that Michael offstage showed "no masculinity at all.
He had mastered that breathless whisper of Jackie Kennedy which he interspersed with Marilyn Monroe's pre-coital, come-hither voice-with a few
Minnie Mouse caught-in-a-mousetrap squeals thrown in for good measure. If
he talked like that in a bar in Broken Bow, Nebraska, he would have been
hauled out into a back alley and beaten up as a faggot. In other words, Michael
didn't speak like John Wayne at all."

Despite the many rumors, instead of a hot sex life, Michael was devoted
to his music. On the dawn of his 18th birthday, he found solace in his work.

Still fighting to gain more artistic control over his own voice and the
words he sang, he said: "There's a lot of music inside of me that I haven't
brought out. We put our hearts into other writers' songs but they're not the
cure. They're not really us."

Michael used music to escape from his own personal insecurities about his
looks. Acne continued to plague him. "I seem to have a pimple for every oil
gland," he said. "My skin is too dark, my nose too wide." He knew that in time
the pimples would go, but not his looks. He dreamed of having lighter skin.
"As for the nose," he told his mother, "there are surgeons who can do something about that."

When Katherine told Joe that Michael might possibly be considering plas tic surgery on his nose, he replied: "If he goes through with that, I'll bash his
face in, new nose and all, and then he'll really need to go to one of those
butchers."

His brothers continued to tease him, making him feel even more insecure.
All of them had learned to drive except Michael. For some reason, he was petrified to get behind the wheel of a car. "In that case," Joe told him, "you'd better earn enough money so that you can always afford a chauffeur in your
future." Michael finally got a driver's license. By then, he was twenty-three
years old.

During the 70s, Michael lived in an escapist world. Unlike some performers, such as Warren Beatty or Barbra Streisand, he had no interest in politics
or the outside world. Robert Redford might express concern over the polluting of the environment, but all Michael saw of America was a hotel suite or
else an auditorium.

After Gerald Ford became president following Richard Nixon's resignation, one newspaper reporter was startled to learn that Michael still thought
Nixon was president. "Just who is president now?" Michael asked. The astonished reporter told him it was Gerald Ford. "I didn't know that," Michael
responded, "but I never read newspapers, not even Variety. I find cartoons
more interesting."

Michael's lack of education also showed up in his speech. He was still
using such expressions as "don't got no."

But during the filming of The Wiz, co-starring Michael, Diana Ross
topped even Michael in her ignorance of American presidents. When he
noticed that Ross was edgy and nervous about a scene, director Sidney Lumet
told her: "You have nothing to fear but fear itself."

"Catchy line," she said. "Did you make that up or steal it from someone?"

Lumet admitted stealing it from Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

"Never heard of him, but you should hire him to rewrite all my lines in
this film."

Not satisfied with being a "mere singer" (his words), Michael harbored a
secret dream of becoming a movie star. His chance for film stardom came
when Lumet offered him the key role of the Scarecrow in The Wiz, a 1978
black version of MGM's 1939 The Wizard of Oz. The Wiz had been a smash
hit on Broadway, winning seven Tony awards. Budgeted at thirty million dollars, the film version of The Wiz would be the most expensive film ever produced with an all-black cast.

Jermaine was dead set against Michael accepting the role, even though at
the time he was still married to Hazel and still at Motown with a career going
nowhere. "You'll fuck it up!" he warned Michael.

Joe also was against Michael accepting the role, fearing that it might "make him into a big movie star-and then he'll bolt from his brothers." For
years, Joe had been searching for the right film script in which "all my sonsnot just Michael-would be the stars." So far, he'd come up with no acceptable script.

The role of the Scarecrow seemed ideal for Michael, who admitted that he
was "too bouncy for the Tin Man and too light for the Lion."

Michael nearly lost out on the role right before filming began when he
suffered a lung attack on the beach on July 4, 1977. "They had to rush me to
the emergency hospital," he later recalled. "The doctor said it was pneumothorax. That's bubbles on the lungs. Many slim people have this condition. The
doctor also told me I had a mild case of pleurisy." At the time Michael stood
five foot nine, a mere 105 pounds spread across a skeletal frame.

When he recovered and arrived at the studio to shoot the movie, he found
make-up a grueling task and a painful ordeal. It took five hours every morning for make-up artists to transform Michael into his role. When they were finished, Michael faced the camera in a fright wig with a tomato nose. The heavy
makeup left his skin blotched and marked. "My eyes were red and sore," he
said. "At the end of the day, my fans outside would point at me and say, `Hey
that guy's on drugs-look what it's doing to him!"'

The Wiz was inspired by the film that had brought fame to Judy Garland,
who wandered far from Kansas and over the rainbow. Michael dreamed that
The Wiz would launch him into a successful movie career as well. Even more
than he wanted to be a singer, he craved fame on the screen, much as Madonna
would do.

In The Wiz, Michael faced a tough act to follow. The Scarecrow role had
brought screen immortality to actor Ray Bolger, who painfully had to see
Michael's rendition of what had been his piece-de-la-resistance. After watching it, Bolger said, "The Wiz shortened my life by five years."

A savvy show biz entertainer, Bolger instinctively knew that Michael had
not been inspired by his own interpretation of the Scarecrow, but by Charlie
Chaplin instead. Like Chaplin, Michael too would later be accused of child
molestation. Chaplin remained his favorite actor. "I wanted some of the quality of The Little Tramp in my Scarecrow," Michael claimed.

Michael had seen all available copies of Chaplin's films, including his
favorite, The Gold Rush, released in 1925. In the words of one writer, Michael
borrowed Chaplin's "disjointed, floppy movements and his shy, retiring onscreen character."

"I love acting so much," Michael told a reporter from The New York Daily
News. "It's fun. It's just neat to become some character on the screen, another person different from yourself. That's especially true when you really
believe you're the Scarecrow and not just acting. At the end of the day, I hate to take my makeup off. Sometimes I go home and keep it on while I watch old
movies starring Katharine Hepburn or Fred Astaire. I've always hated the
word `acting.' Or `I'm an actor.' What one should say is not that but `I'm a
believer."'