The First Book of Michael (14 page)

Even so, it’s a safe bet that Michael’s fans would have still been able to distinguish the sound of his voice from that of an imposter. As Michael prophetically expressed through the rap borrowed from the Notorious B.I.G. for ‘Unbreakable’, “How can players stand there and say I sound like them, HELLO?!”

Amongst the other historically significant soundbites that Michael incorporated into the outro for the track, ‘HIStory’, is one of himself as a child, in which he states, “I don’t sing it if I don’t mean it”.

The ruthless duplicity exhibited by the producers of the Cascio tracks is shown in how it seems they merely aimed for an imposter to sound just enough like Michael to the layperson, in order to make any legal challenge difficult.

In ‘Strength Of One Man’, a song that features on the eponymous
The Jacksons
album, the brothers sing,

“We have picked people that say they’re on our side / And after they did everything they want / They start to tell us lie, just lie after lie.”

The tenderness with which these lyrics are sung demonstrate clearly for just how long Michael and his family have had problems with being able to trust people.

Trust is a trait with double edges. A misguided trust in the goodness of all people brought Michael both unbridled love from his fans, as well as acts of malevolence from those jealous of his successes or covetous of his catalogue. Not that this malevolence was always overt, far from it. As Michael said, after his rude awakening, “There are people out there who don’t actively hold you back as much as they work quietly on your insecurities so that you hold yourself back.”

Indeed, there exists some candid footage of Michael being secretly filmed by a ‘friend’. The person behind the camera asks Michael what the greatest lesson he’s learned is. To which he replies, “Not to trust everybody.”

The
Michael
debacle has by no means been the sum of the Estate’s
perceived ineptitude. Fans believe there
is a veritable litany of examples of their being unfit for purpose.

***

Remember the hypocrisy demonstrated by the Estate’s pursuit of damages from a Japanese man, who had been using Michael’s image and likeness on items such as lighters and keyrings? The Estate released a statement regarding the case,

“Michael loved his millions of Japanese fans, all of whom deserve the opportunity to purchase legitimate and authentic Michael Jackson goods.”

Even if we bring ourselves to temporarily disregard their previous endorsement of an apparent imposter in the music, this seemingly incongruent commercial cogency is further exposed by the Estate failing to act, in anyway whatsoever, in putting a stop to costume-designer Michael Bush’s penchant for allegedly forging a Michael signature on hundreds of items marked for auction. Even on items that were produced after Michael’s death.

Furthermore, one can only assume that the Estate sued the Japanese counterfeiter for a mere $2,150 – perhaps a few bootlegged tea-towels and fridge magnets worth – as this is what they themselves valued Michael’s image at in their tax return. In comparison - to put this massive undervaluation into context - the image and likeness of Bob Marley is valued at two billion dollars. John Branca is a highly adept and experienced lawyer. It seems unusual, to say the least, that he has managed to preside over the Estate accruing a three-quarter-of-a-billion dollar tax deficit bill.

Then there was
Xscape
.

The humiliation and degradation of Michael continued in the production of an album that followed up one bearing just his first name, with one that eradicated his name entirely. None of the three albums released posthumously by Sony Music and the Estate bear an actual image of Michael – even the silhouette that adorns
This Is It
is posed by an impersonator – yet Michael was the most photographed person that has ever existed. (And people still ponder why he had issues with his self-image).

Xscape
– a paltry one-and-a-half-million copies sold -
was promoted using a ‘hologram’ gimmick of a Michael lookalike. (Not a hologram of Michael. A hologram of a lookalike.) A homogenised digital puppet programmed to perform at the 2014
Billboard Awards
. This baffling decision evokes the famous words of Sam Phillips - the owner of Elvis’ first record label,
Sun Records
- “If I could find a white boy who could sing like a black man I'd make a million dollars.”

It also brings to mind Michael’s own words,

“Record companies steal, they cheat, you have to audit them and it’s time for artists to take a stand against them because they totally take advantage of them. They forget that it’s the artists who make the company, not the company who makes the artists. Without the talent, the company would be nothing but just hardware. It takes real good talent. That’s what the public wants to see.”

The reason Sony Music gave for the relative commercial failure of the
Invincible
album, was that Michael had lost his appeal. Michael’s response was to organise protests, during which he held aloft signs that read, “Sony Kills Music”, “Sony Sucks” and “Sony Is Phony” atop an open double decker bus.

Once Michael was dead, however, it appears that Sony Music had a change of heart, and decided there was actually quite a lot of money yet to be mulched out of his name. And thus commenced a massive advertising assault in order to garner it. Who could have guessed that the zombie reanimation of Michael in the ‘Thriller’ video would prove to be so prophetic?

The tag-lines that accompanied the
Xscape
album’s promotion were: “The Best You’ve Never Heard” - which could only have been a sarcastic allusion to the fact that seventy-five percent of the track-listing consisted of lovingly bastardised versions of demo tracks that had been online for up to eleven years; and, “Hearing Is Believing” - which could only have been a sarcastic allusion to the ‘Cascio’ fiasco. In the song ‘Xscape’, Michael is heard taunting his pursuers with the words, “You want me? Come and get me!” And get him, they did.

As part of the
Xscape
project, the Estate signed a deal with Sony Music to promote their smartphone, the
Xperia
(also starts with an ‘X’ – get it?), in which the album would be exclusively included as part of the package, upon purchase of the phone. The Estate also signed a deal with car manufacture
Jeep
, who then employed the ‘contemporised’ version of ‘Love Never Felt So Good’ in an advertisement. Further, they then had one of their cars prominently featured in the video for the single ‘A Place With No Name’ (never mind that a lyric in the song concerns a Jeep breaking down). This ‘contemporised’ version of ‘A Place With No Name’ shamelessly incorporates the chords from Michael’s privacy-plea song – you couldn’t make this up – ‘Leave Me Alone’.

A minor victory resulting from the fan furore at the censoring of the lyrics to the
Michael
track ‘Hollywood Tonight’ (in which the removal of the words “Because she’s only fifteen” simultaneously sanitised the song of all context) was Sony Music’s subsequent decision for the
Xscape
release to include the controversial aspects of the song ‘Do You Know Where Your Children Are’ - in which Michael emotes from the perspective of a prostituted twelve-year-old girl, with the words, “Save me from this living hell… ‘cos I’m terrified.”

The
Xscape
track ‘Blue Gangster’ is heavy with poignancy, with its lyric, “Look what you done to me? / I can no longer smile”, and the inherent despair comprising the “Aaah aaah aah” of the bridge being tangible.

***

It should go without saying that Michael would have been less than happy with the posthumous tinkering of his art. As he said in 1980,

“I do believe deeply in perfection. I’m never satisfied… If you’re just satisfied with anything, you’re just going to stay at one level and the world will move ahead.”

For many, however, it was not even the principle of Sony Music releasing songs that Michael was unsatisfied with and had deemed unready to add to his historically unique canon of work. It was more the very idea of Sony Music accumulating wealth off Michael’s back, when he had strived and suffered for so long to be rid of their shackles. As Michael mused,

“I could never just make records for people to buy and just get rich from. That’s no good for me. There has to be more than that…
I try to write, put it in song. Put it in dance. Put it in my art to teach the world. If politicians can’t do it, I want to do it. We have to do it. Artists, put it in paintings. Poets, put it in poems, novels. That’s what we have to do. And I think it’s so important to save the world.”

Michael cried upon discovering how much longer he had to endure on his contract with Sony Music; and he whooped with joy when it finally drew to a close. On notes he made just prior to his death, Michael wrote about contacting Universal or Warner Bros. for a future record deal. He had spent an entire decade of his life trying to emancipate himself from Sony Music’s chains, only for him then to have an image of his head photoshopped posthumously - for the
Xscape
album artwork - into what is reminiscent of the collars used to restrain flea-ridden dogs. The inspiration for this artwork apparently being drawn from a photo-shoot that Michael did with Arno Bani, in which he is portrayed as a Pharaoh. Though Michael was so unhappy with the resulting pictures, he requested that they be burned.

In 2003, upon discovering that John Branca was representing both him and Sony Music at the same time, Michael instructed his then-lawyer David LeGrand to terminate John Branca’s employment contract. Such a conflict of interest would be undesirable in the best of scenarios - never mind one in which Michael was concurrently campaigning against Sony Music. It is therefore an understandable bugbear of the fan community, that upon the untimely death of Michael, Mr. Branca was announced as executor of his Estate. Branca thus became the executor of a will within which Michael’s name is incorrect; his children’s names are incorrect; and Michael’s handwritten, time-stamped signature was ostensibly scribed in Los Angeles, albeit at a time and date that freely available video evidence proves Michael was three thousand miles away, at the other end of the United States. In New York. Protesting against Sony Music.

How could Michael be simultaneously signing charge of his posthumous assets over to John Branca in both New York and Los Angeles, at the very same minute, at the very same hour, on July 7, 2002?

Fan conversation often refers to Michael as having superhero qualities. We had been hitherto unaware that teleportation was one of them.

Other indiscrepancies, beyond the practicalities behind the signing of the will, and questions concerning the employment of an imposter in the attempt to pull the wool over fans’ ears for improper profit, also need resolving.

The reason given by the Estate for not adhering to the 20% charitable donation stipulation of the will, is that the Estate’s first responsibility was to take Michael out of debt. Yet, biggest-selling posthumous artist - with the largest-ever-grossing concert film and
Cirque du Soleil
world tour - later, the donations remain to be borne out. Although an unpaid three-quarter-of-a-billion dollar tax bill – a result of the Estate valuing Michael’s half of the ATV Catalogue at $0 (I wonder what Sony Music value their half to be?) – has been.

Katherine Jackson’s request for an audit was dismissed out of hand.

For what it’s worth, Estate attorney Howard Weitzman did respond to the will-signing anomaly. He explained that the signatories must have simply forgotten where they were.

***

Apostles of Capitalism adopt the poignant messages of our heroes, then twist them into throwaway slogans with which to sell their wares. With CGI, it is all-too easy to insert a long-dead icon into an advert. It’s a technique that is becoming increasingly ubiquitous. How long before we see a commercial for plastic surgery featuring a computer-generated Michael telling us to, “Make that change”?!

The attempted caricaturisation of Michael continues apace. The memory of the human being known as a record-breaking philanthropist and catalytic culture converter is being systematically reduced to pyrite falsities, through schemes that lure us into lining the pockets of already filthy-rich men, as if we are all whorish, turncoat magpies. Michael is their golden calf; but to us, he is the rotating ox: he is our homecoming and food. It is materialism versus spiritual nourishment. It is soul versus sequins. We are the curators of Michael’s legacy, and deceitful songs in his discography is a fundamentally unacceptable situation. And it will take the stamina and stoicism of warriors to remain focussed in our fight. The importance of curating Michael’s legacy to an exemplary standard is revealed when considering that a legacy ferments. It ferments in myth and truth.