This Day in Michael

September 6th

2006-09-06T21:00:00.000-04:00

In the September 6, 1980 Billboard, LaToya Jackson's first single debuted on the R&B Chart. Produced by Michael, "Night Time Lover" peaked at Number 59. Mother Katherine wasn't thrilled. She preferred the version Michael scrapped after "reconsidering" the song. "Michael's jealous," she told LaToya. "He's scared somebody in the family will be bigger than him, so he had to go back in the studio, make it different, and now it isn't as good." LaToya admits to liking the first take better. Still, she trusted her brother's instincts. She was surprised he was working with her at all. After they were finished recording, Michael confided he resisted initially only "because Joseph wanted me to." LaToya understood: "Nothing more needed to be said."

Michael used his voice in the studio. "Neither he nor I plays the piano expertly," LaToya explains. So, Michael sang the rhythm of instrumentation he wanted: "Dat, da-da-dat, dat, da-da-dat—okay, that's what the drums are going to do, while the bass is going, a-dum, dum, dum, dum, a-dum, dum, dum, dum." LaToya was shocked by his professionalism. "I expected we'd joke around," but Michael addressed her "over the studio intercom, as if talking to a complete stranger." What he produced sounds borrowed, a quick-tempo homage to Nile Rodgers' Chic disco. Musically, Michael's chorus evokes "I Want Your Love." But LaToya's delivery differs from the cool repose that Nile directs with precise phrasing. Chic's ladies want that love coyly, measured over syllables that bounce. They've noticed someone staring from across the dancefloor. They're flirting back melodically. The romance comes from hypnotic a-dum's and Nile's steady strum. LaToya's needs are a little more urgent. The sister who listened only to Frank Sinatra coos just as Michael wants: "Baby, save my soul tonight / I need your lovin' / This is right for me / Your touch is strong, you see / Can I hold on and be your night time lover?" That grip fills a hole.

Earlier that year, Michael's disappointment created another one. At the Grammy's, Michael won "Best R&B Vocal Performance—Male," the only nomination Off the Wall generated. "My family thought I was going crazy," Michael remembered, "because I was weeping so much." Michael didn't want to be relegated to R&B awards. That night, Dionne Warwick won for "Best Pop Vocal Performance—Female" and Donna Summer won for "Best Rock Vocal Performance—Female." He felt slighted by the industry, disconnected from everyday life. Working on Off the Wall compounded the isolation he carried already: "I had very few close friends at the time and felt very isolated. I was so lonely that I used to walk through my neighborhood hoping I'd run into somebody." According to LaToya, Michael's "an extremely sensitive soul, like Mother." He channeled his vulnerability then into "She's Out of My Life." He cried at the end of each take. After several tries, producer Quincy Jones relented and left the sobs in the mix. In Moonwalk, Michael explains the ballad's "about knowing that the barriers that have separated me from others are temptingly low and seemingly easy to jump over and yet they remain standing while what I really desire disappears from my sight."

"She's Out of My Life" vanished from Billboard's R&B Chart nine weeks before LaToya's "Lover" entrée. Michael's "Life" fared just slightly better, peaking at Number 43. But it shot up the Hot 100. With the ballad he thought "too personal," Michael became the first to have four Top 10 singles from one album. "It's a start," he offered about the accomplishment. He saw this last Wall single as a metaphor. The lryics admit the young man "took her for granted" and acted "so cavalier." But in Moonwalk, the song illustrates his troubles dating: "Something always seems to get in the way." Namely, his suitors pry: "The things I share with millions of people aren't the sort of things you share with one." Offstage, Michael prefers to hold his own despair close: "I believe I'm one of the loneliest people in the world." He hid his anguish so well then, his mother didn't know about it until she read his autobiography. "I do recall Michael's having a difficult time making friends his own age," she adds. "He had tried, but a couple of boys had been nasty to him—out of jealousy, Michael thought."

Michael had another chance to show his reserve. Six days after the Grammy's, brother Randy almost killed himself wrecking his Mercedes 450SL. His legs were shredded. His pelvis was cracked. Before the Jacksons arrived at the hospital, Randy nearly died again. A nurse gave him, not the other man in the room, a methodone shot. After the doctors started his heart again, they thought they might have to amputate. A policeman told LaToya and Michael he was shocked Randy was still alive, let alone conscious. They could hear Randy moan, "I'm in so much pain." Michael took his sister aside: "LaToya, don't say one word; don't show any emotion." She gasped when she saw Randy. She remembers how "Michael, exasperated, led me out by the arm and tried comforting me."

There were other gasps on Thursday, September 6, 2001 at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City. Boy-banders 'N Sync just bounced through "Pop" for MTV's annual Video Music Awards bash. The group's video would win four, including the fan-voted "Viewer's Choice" award. After shoulder shimmies and gee-whiz pelvic grinds, they returned center stage, where a larger-than-life Etch-A-Sketch had descended. Static interrupted their song's electronic pulse. On the board were the words "King of Pop." Then, a familiar profile drew itself. The Etch-A-Sketch lifted for Michael to bound out of light and smoke. The beat resumed for 40 seconds of Michael poplocking. Accompanying him was Justin Timberlake beat-boxing.

It was either an inter-generational romp or a vain attempt to demonstrate Michael's continued relevance. The New York Times' Jon Pareles saw the latter when Michael reprised a similar matching with Justin's then-girlfriend Britney Spears. The two dueted "The Way You Make Me Feel" the next night, for the first of his 30th Anniversary concerts. At Madison Square Garden, Jon Pareles saw desperation. Michael "looked not like the song's smitten suitor, but a stalker hoping her popularity might rub off on him." At the Opera House, Michael blew kisses to the audience for longer than he danced. He posed with the bottle of pop Justin held to introduce the number. Michael didn't have any of Justin's irony.

September 5th

2006-09-05T21:00:00.000-04:00

On Wednesday, September 5, 1984, Frank Dileo and Norman Winter held a press conference at a West Hollywood sound studio. Norman introduced "what may be an unprecedented move." He read first: "Superstar Michael Jackson today instructed [us] to 'once and for all set the record straight.'" Michael's publicist explained that "the potential risk of reacting to ... unfounded rumors" could no longer silence him. Then, Michael's manager steps to the podium to read his client's response. Once done, he retreats to a control booth. Reporters belt, "Hold on! Frank, come on! Why isn't Michael here himself? What's going on, really?" Norman explains that Michael's upset by reports of his alleged homosexuality: "The fact that they say he's gay is completely ridiculous. If little girls want to grow up and marry Michael, now they know they've got a chance." Norman's comments referred to hundreds of fan letters begging Michael to come out, heterosexually. Michael's statement never mentions homosexuality directly. He starts with, "No! I've never taken hormones to maintain my high voice." He denies he's surgically altered either his eyes or cheekbones. There's no mention of his nose. Finally, he proclaims, "I plan to get married and have a family. Any statements to the contrary are simply untrue."

Five years earlier, Michael confronted a reporter himself: "I am not homo. Not at all. ... I'm not going to have a nervous breakdown because people think I like having sex with men. I don't and that's that. If I let this get to me, it will only show how cheap I am. I'm sure I must have fans who are gay, and I don't mind that. That's their life and this is mine. You can print that." Then, he seemed genuinely dumbfounded that anyone would believe the rumor: "Is it my voice? Is it because I have this soft voice? All of us in the family have soft voices." Michael's vocal coach Seth Riggs, who started with him in 1978, came to his employer's defense before the news conference. Seth's support sounded like a talking point: "We're all fed up with the lies and nonsense about this boy we love so much. Michael is different. ... He's not of this world." When Seth debunked the hormone rumors, he let slip just how mundanely Michael speaks. "He isn't naturally falsetto," he resolved. "His voice is as low as yours or mine. Natural, male, husky. But he doesn't like it. He calls it his 'frog' voice, so for personal reasons, after I had taught him to reach that level and maintain it, he decided to stick with it. But it's just a technique—a trick."

The Wiz was full of them. Michael found everything about filmmaking magical, but he loved his getup. He explains in Moonwalk: "My complexion was still a mess during the filming ... so I found myself really enjoying the makeup. ... I enjoyed having the stuff put on my face. When I was transformed into the Scarecrow, it was the most wonderful thing in the world. I got to be somebody else and escape through my character." Plus, for the first time, Michael lived away from his parents in a New York apartment with sister LaToya. When not on set with Michael, LaToya hung out with singer Stephanie Mills and Diana Ross' younger brother Chico. At night, they'd go to Studio 54, what LaToya called "the hippest night spot." It was just a few blocks away from their Sutton Place apartment.

On several trips, Liza Minelli chaperoned. She made sure they were ushered by owner Steve Rubell into the sanctum sanctorum, the VIP basement. Author Truman Capote remembers watching Michael riveted by a man and woman having sex in the shadows. "I sort of expected him to be absolutely shocked," he reasoned. "But he seemed to be studying them like they were mating panda bears in the zoo." Most others there assumed Michael's sexual orientation. "Of course we thought he was gay—or at least bi," remembered one the shirtless bartenders Rubell handpicked. "If he liked men, that news wasn't for public consumption." Similarly, biographer Randy Taraborrelli defends Michael's public actions, but not the possibility of his desire: "Michael Jackson would never allow himself to have homosexual relationships, even if he did have feelings for other men. He is much too puritanical, a result of his religious background." Sister Rebbie reiterated the family's investment in Jehovah's Witness teachings: "Anyone who turned out to be homosexual would be disfellowshiped, cut off right away."

The elders were already disturbed by his "Thriller" video and suggestive dancing. They threatened to disfellowship him if he didn't destroy it. Panicked, Michael sought his lawyer John Branca's counsel. John knew the video's commercial appeal and suggested a disclaimer. Before the video started, there now appeared this message: "Due to my personal convictions, I wish to stress that this film in no way endorses a belief in the occult—Michael Jackson." On set, the star was equally inspired to assert his interest in women. His video girlfriend Ola Ray remembered Michael talking a lot about Brooke Shields between takes. Then, when "a gay guy and his friend came onto the set," Michael dismissed them. "Look at him, he's got his boyfriend with him." Ola concluded that Michael was "a space person" but noted that Marlon Brando's long-haired son Miko was around a lot: "They seemed to be best friends."

Bob Michaelson also noticed Michael's company: "On the road, in the studio, he always had some good-looking guy with him, usually somebody between 17 and, say, 20. Never a woman. Never." One of Bob's failed business endeavors with Michael was a clothing line inspired by his video outfits. Michael never lost money on Bob's ideas. Bob admits he fell for the shrewd business tactics: "Like everyone else, I was caught up in Michaelmania—like a real idiot." Bob confided these details to Christopher Andersen for his Michael Jackson Unauthorized. People who speak on the record about Michael are often disgruntled. The closer to the Gloved One, the less people speak freely. Nonetheless, Bob explains that "all the people aroudn Michael thought he was gay, no matter what they said publicly. ... But if you asked me or anyone else [in 1984], we would have said it was young men, not kids."

That's what Scott Thorson told The National Enquirer. Michael was in London with Paul McCartney watching cartoons and writing songs for Thriller. Scott was there with his companion Liberace. Scott explains, "I loved Liberace but I was never physically attracted to him. It was a different story with Michael." They'd met in Las Vegas in 1979. But in London, "we were two young men extremely attracted to each other. You could've cut the sexual tension with a knife." Michael wanted Scott to leave Liberace, who later "traded me in for a younger boy" in 1982. Liberace publicly denied he any sexual intimacy but paid a $95,000 settlement when Scott sued him for $113 million. After Liberace died in 1987, Scott wrote a book about his life with and palimony suit against him. Scott spoke with the Enquirer before Michael's 2005 trial. He warned, "if Michael tries to deny what I've said about our homosexual acts in London, I challenge him to take a polygraph. I did!" Another detail wasn't part of that dare. A few years after their London get-together, Scott visited him at the Beverly Hills Four Seasons: "I was shocked when I ... saw a couple of gay porn magazines on his nightstand. The pictures in the magazines looked like young boys."

September 4th

2006-09-04T21:00:00.000-04:00

On Monday, September 4, 1972, "Ben" had not yet won its Golden Globe Award. It just started selling the 1,701,475 copies Motown noted. It was still climbing the Billboard Hot 100 to become Michael's first solo Number One. Most radio stations were too ambivalent about the song to put it in rotation. Its delicate orchestration and plaintive vocal weren't as disturbing as the "friend to call my own" Michael celebrates. That Ben's a killer rat, the title character of a cult horror sequel. Ben squeaks in varying octaves to his best friend, a misfit boy with a heart condition who understands. They plan their assault on mankind from the sewers. Michael saw it countless times. He'd wait through the credits to see "'Ben' sung by Michael Jackson."

Michael already loved rats. Mother Katherine remembers just how much. During a family dinner at a Los Angeles restaurant, she watched Michael sprinkle crumbs into his shirt pocket. Finally, she asked what he was doing: "At that moment a rat poked its head out of Michael's pocket, and I had my answer." According to her, Michael bred them: "I'd see big brown rats scurrying through the ivy and bushes from time to time. After a while, I was surprised to see the rats seemingly change color; some were partially white, a few totally white. Then it dawned on me that Michael was letting his white rats out into the yard, and they were mating with the wild rats." He had 30 in a cage in his bedroom. Sister LaToya remembers stuffing towels under her door at night to keep out the escapees. Michael kept them until he discovered they ate each other.

"Ben" changed the way Michael sang. It gave him the clout to voice his preference. He started recording his leads separately. Later his brothers would sing around them. Often, other anonymous voices were blended into the mix behind him. Still, Michael felt he deserved more respect. He started complaining to Motown mogul Berry Gordy. Producers "won't let me sing the song the way I want to," Michael grumbled. He remained disappointed: "I could have done so much more with what I was given, if they'd let me." He was worried, too, about his newly 14-year-old body changing. LaToya noticed he kept "trying to sing high." His mother knew Michael's more pressing concern: "the shame he felt about his acne." His mood dampened: "Michael was so embarrassed by the bumps on his face that he didn't want to leave the house. When he did, he kept his head down. Even when he talked to me, he couldn't look me in the face." She saw her new son "around the house photographing flowers and dewdrops ... delving into his own world."

"Ben" does, too, with repeat listening. One pass at the ballad's two minutes and 45 seconds doesn't do justice to its precociousness. With a first listen, it's a friendship hymn. Another take brings out its plea: "Ben, the two of us need look no more / We both found what we were looking for." Michael's stress on Ben and We almost stretch them into another syllable. It doesn't express intimacy as much as make its case. After all, his four-legged friend's still searching or retreating—"always running here and there." Ben still feels "not wanted anywhere." Soon, the background sessions singers stand out. Men's voices echo young Michael's. They're almost cloying after Michael confides, "I used to say 'I' and 'me' / Now it's 'us,' now it's 'we.'" By then the strings kick in to complement the dulcet plucks of guitar strings. It's the kind of sentimentality that Angelo Badalamenti perfected for Twin Peaks' score: both familiar and unseemly. Somehow, the 13-year-old in the recording booth knew how to sell the track's hothouse love. There's a solemn confidence that the beauty of affection comes from intention, not always actualization.

Shortly after "Ben"'s August release, Michael spies a teenage fan backstage. He and his brothers just played the Forum in Inglewood, California, 20 miles South from their new Encino home. She's dressed in high-waisted red slacks and a matching tube top decorated with home-made Jackson 5 buttons. J-5 logos dangle from her ears. Rhonda had all of their records. She couldn't believe she had front row seats, or that Jackie Jackson was really looking at her. Michael saw her back and braided hair. Sensing someone, she turned around to find "a cute little guy. He had big teeth, a flat, wide nose, a perfectly combed natural ... like any pretty 14-year-old black boy you'd find in the neighborhood somewhere." Michael noticed the piece of paper in her hands and warned, "I don't think you should meet him." Rhonda wondered if Michael understood what was on the note. "My brothers, sometimes they don't treat girls too good," he explained. "Don't go."

Rhonda had left her boyfriend and her sister. Now she was taking a cab to an apartment building in Encino. Jackie was inside wearing briefs and gym socks. She was struck by his "high speaking voice, which was such a contrast to his masculine features." He thanked her: "We could never make it without fans like you." When she left, a white limo arrived. Michael and Marlon bounded out. Onstage that night, Marlon played the congas for one of his first appearances as the sixth Jackson 5. Now he went in to find his brother. Michael looked at Rhonda with disappointment: "Did you just have sex with my brother?" Rhonda cried. "He [had] the saddest, most understanding eyes," she remembered. "Don't ever do that again, OK?" he worried. "Are you going to be all right?" She took his seat and rolled up the window. "By now, I was really sobbing. Then I noticed that Michael had tears in his eyes, too." As she was driven away, Rhonda "looked out the back window and the last thing I saw was Michael Jackson standing there waving good-bye to me."

September 3rd

2006-09-03T21:00:00.000-04:00

By Monday, September 3, 2001, radio was behind "You Rock My World." Later that week, it would debut at Number 34 on Billboard's Hot 100 from airplay alone. Entertainment Weekly found that response to "the formulaic R&B grinder ... less than overwhelming." Its mechanical melody is certainly reserved. Choruses of Michael ooze over percussion programmed so crisply it could bounce quarters. Finger snaps prop a gooey bass line. It's another approach to "The Way You Make Me Feel," but here his lead's deeper, slower, distracted even. Michael's familiar gasps start off a come-on so blasé they anticipate The Game, Neil Strauss' pick-up manipulation manual. Disinterest draws them in. So, Michael doesn't break a sweat until he's three minutes in. Even then, he seems more entranced by his own harmonizing than the PYT he's crooning to. Near the end, his exclamatory "yeah" sounds teleported from "Remember the Time."

In four days, Michael applied the same strategy at Madison Square Garden. On the first and more-troubled of a two-night extravaganza, he took the stage two hours into the show. Once there, some complained, he danced and sang like a world-class Michael impersonator. Really, technical difficulties set the tone for this five-plus-hour installment of "Michael Jackson 30th Anniversary Celebration: The Solo Years." A late start and long pauses between celebrity tribute splashes made the night's star seem indifferent or cocky. For Michael, nostalgia's always a dicey celebration. Fans want the "Billie Jean" moonwalk. Critics complain he's resting on his laurels. Someone with a reputation for deliberate precision can't accommodate false steps. Every gesture around him gathers meaning. That night, one upstaged him. In between acts, Marlon Brando monologued from a leather couch. The Oscar winner introduced himself as a "fat fuck" and admonished the audience. "While you're wondering who that old fart is sitting there," Brando meandered, "there were hundreds if not thousands of children hacked to death with a machete, beaten to death by their parents."

This Monday, like most others, Michael did little. Tuesday is his preferred start of the week. Preparations for what some called an evening of megalomania would wait. Perhaps that's why French hornist John Clark scoffed that the first show "was pretty disorganized. We only had a chance to rehearse ... twice before we had to play." Later, in a VIBE magazine interview, Michael claims he had nothing to do with organizing those evenings. He left the line-up to "trust" and to childhood friend and event planner David Gest. For the November publicity for his Anniversary's abridged television special, Michael lists his celebrity confidants for TV Guide. Among them are attendees Liza Minelli (who sang) and Elizabeth Taylor (who watched). Michael, Liza, and Liz all "come from the same planet," he explains. "It's called Capricious Anomaly in the Sea of Space," Michael laughs. "Gee, I can't name it. ... But this is true, and this is not to be taken lightly: People who grew up as child stars have the same thing in common. You're cute, they love you; you go through the awkward stage, they don't accept you anymore. Very few make the transition to adult star. And most of them become self-destructive."

Recorded music invites obsession, seclusion. Repeated listening attunes you to the literal voices in your head. Every intake of breath or melisma distinguishes itself. In public, your headphones plug you into a community of head-nodders unified by their separate worlds. Technology mediates a wily kind of limbo. Or, as Thomas Edison heralds his 1877 phonograph invention intended to fix imperfect stenography, it can "annihilate time and space." A simple wax cylinder could "bottle up for posterity the mere utterance of man." Turn-of-the-last-century entrepreneurs quickly packaged it to savor melodies. Decades before Thriller, penny arcade goers were hypnotized by the worldly disconnect made possible by the sounds filling their ears. Recorded music didn't make live performance obsolete, as some feared. It made the experience of that spectacle all the more human. Watching someone sing a song we know already from wax or digital download exposes the mechanics of memory. What impressed us at first listen accumulates an aura from its own repetition. Seeing any present-tense rendition can jar us into recognizing the very timeliness of the magic we give to that recording. Just like us, records don't live forever. Understanding our collective mortality unsettles the fantasy that replay invites. So, not surprisingly, Entertainment Weekly blames those kind of "déjà-vu-inducing gimmicks" for making Michael's Anniversary shows feel like "posthumous events." Edison's intentions live on.

Michael doesn't need to say anything to perpetuate his mystique. "You Rock My World" producer Rodney Jerkins does a fine job by himself: "Michael is a perfectionist. Oh, my goodness, I couldn't tell you how many sessions we did—so, so many. ... He's the kind of artist who doesn't allow one mistake on his records." When Michael whispers at the song's start "I don't think they're reading for this one," he's right. A Top-10 hit can only pale to any Thriller pinnacle. The lyrics of what some panned then as a "pedestrian love song" work as a parable. With its opening lines, he could be wooing Michael the moonwalker: "My life will never be the same 'cuz girl you came and changed / the way I walked the way I talked, I cannot explain."

When Michael performed the single at the end of the second Anniversary night, he came out in unplanned pants. Very white substitutes fill in for the pair he split during "Beat It." His vocals seem canned until subtle differences become conspicuous. He holds the mic close and waits until the second chorus to strut. Michael pops onto his toes, head down, like the fans will see when the video premieres. The moves update his 27-year-old robot dance with more visual creaks, a play on his older frame. Only fleetingly does Michael acknowledge his bouncy cheerleader dancers behind him in formation. His ad-libs become more impassioned than the record. They culminate with this exasperation: "Do you hear me, man?"

Then come the last 90 seconds that make the first four minutes—if not most of the evening—mere preamble. The crowd erupts when Michael bobs his head to Usher gliding in from stage right. Michael delivers two more "You Rock My World!"’s as a serenade to his acolyte. Michael touches his chest then floats to the left. The two trade robot jolts until Chris Tucker materializes to do Michael’s trademark kick. Usher applauds, “The King of Pop!” Michael falls to the floor. Whether or not it’s planned, he seems genuinely overcome. So does the crowd.

September 2nd

2006-09-02T21:00:00.000-04:00

The September 2, 1995 Billboard has "You Are Not Alone" debuting atop the R&B/Hip-Hop Songs and Hot 100 charts. For Michael, it's another record. The single was the first to debut at Number One. It was also a needed boost for the HIStory double-CD it promoted.

That hits and new music combination carried expectations as gargantuan as the Michael statue in its $4 million trailer. HIStory's expected December 1993 release was supposed to cap his pre-August accessibility. Michael's Oprah tête-à-tête in February was to launch what a former Sony executive called "Michael's first comeback." Now, there was another disc of tunes that could only pale to his feats of yore. Some songs aimed to vindicate him after a 1994 out-of-court settlement didn't. On "D.S.," Michael genuflects paranoia. There's a thinly veiled (and rhymed) slap for District Attorney Tom Sneddon when he couples C.I.A. with K.K.K. In HIStory's booklet, Michael's self-portait diplays a young boy and a caption's deceptive question: "Before you judge me, try hard to love me, look within your heart and ask, have you seen my childhood?" Who hasn't? More insinuating is the equation of spectacle with empathy. Clever is its exposure of consumerism's complicity. Most shocking was Michael's one-off expletive riff in a chorus for "Scream": "Stop fucking with me!" Sister Janet took middle-finger duty in the video.

The video for "You Are Not Alone" bares flesh. Michael's a cherubic bathing angel. The water laps where pubic hair should show. His wings extend. He romps naked with then-wife Lisa Marie Presley. Onstage, he sings glamorously solo with a shirt that seems impossible to button. He's facing backwards to show the empty seats behind him. Of course, Michael's solitude remains metaphoric, as the all-important crowd scenes remind us. There, flashes abound when the paparazzi shoots him with aesthetic savagery. Michael consents despondently. He bows but does not shield his head. The fame he stages here seems routine. Missing is the thrill of zealous fans. In Moonwalk, Michael recalls "near hysterical girls" with a certain glee. Sure, he "can testify that it hurts to be mobbed." But there's also pleasure in "a thousand hands grabbing at you." The man who loves horror movies can make his own reel whenever he plans public attention: "I know the fans mean well and I love them for their enthusiasm and support, but crowd scenes are scary."

A genuinely unnerving scene sister LaToya shares in her autobiography. Michael and mother Katherine were in Alabama to visit his grandmother after Thriller broke. One day, he went driving with Bill Bray, who'd worked security since the Jackson 5 days. Bill went to a gas station restroom while Michael browsed its store. Bill returned to Michael crying and bleeding on the floor. The white attendant was kicking and screaming, "I hate all of you!" Bill stopped the attack and any lawsuit. According to LaToya, when the assailant learned who Michael was, "he threatened to kill Michael. Bill convinced us that this person was mad, that the threat was quite serious and that it was better for everyone to drop the action."

Evan Chandler's assault on September 2, 1993 came before 8 a.m. He was struck on the back of his head walking toward his office building's elevator. He defended himself against cameras rolling with his briefcase. His brother Raymond says he had not heard Evan sob since they were kids. Raymond hung up the phone and drove to Los Angeles. They worried about the death threats and "the media frenzy ... that could very well trigger a real lunatic." Raymond remembers the palpable panic: "Were we being paranoid? No, we decided. Paranoia is unreasonable fear."

At 4 p.m., an ex-Neverland employee called because "Michael has to be stopped." She agreed to meet with Evan and Raymond in an hour in the lobby of Warner Records in Burbank. For over two hours, they exchanged hush tones in a small garden across the street. Any passerby inspired conspicuous chit-chat. She told them to seek out Miko Brando, actor Marlon's son, and Norma Staikos, Michael's chief of staff. She warned, "I don't want to stick my neck out if you're going to give up." Evan and Raymond left high-fiving. "Looking back, I've got to laugh," Raymond admits now. "Too many Charlie Chan movies, I guess." Pop culture intoxicates. Two days later, their lead called again to scream "You sold me out!" Police had questioned her that morning. The rolodex she claimed to have never materialized. Raymond never knew how the cops found her so quickly.

September 1st

2006-09-01T21:00:00.000-04:00

Gathered in the room were Los Angeles Assistant District Atttorney Lauren Weiss, Court Secretary Patty Watson, and Detective Rosibel Ferrufino. They listened to Jordan Chandler, accompanied now by notoriously aggressive lawyer Gloria Allred. On this Wednesday, September 1, 1993, Jordan repeated his testimony. Two weeks earlier, Jordan had told Detective Ferrufino more than he had anyone. He said Michael used his hands and his mouth. Jordan described Michael's penis, "not circumcised" with "blotchy-pink" patches like a cow. Journalist Victor Gutierrez relates what Jordan told a close friend three years later: "I tried to tell the therapist and the authorities that Michael never made me do anything I didn't want to but the authorities had told me that Michael had seduced me by buying toys and expensive presents. ... I am 16 years old and I know what has happened. I think people are bothered by homosexual relationships but I'm not a homosexual. I just feel an attraction toward Michael and I had sex with him."

By the time Michael's 16, he's had his sixth and last Number One R&B single with The Jackson 5. When they peform that song "Dancing Machine" on Soul Train, Michael debuts his robot dance. He assumes the "space age design" the lyrics admire in an anonymous "sexy lady." The second verse sets up Michael's TV moves, but also serve as his own manifesto: "Rythmatic, acrobatic, she's a dynamite attraction / At the drop of a coin she comes alive, yeah / She knows what she's doing, she's super bad, now / She's here to really blow your mind." Michael delivers the lines, throws his head back to the beat, then spins twice. His arms wobble like there's a short-circuit somewhere. His feet twitch right to left, but Michael glides around. His brothers stop their routine to point as if it's a surprise. Michael's shoulders and pelvis sway in time as he returns to the mic. His blank pose gives way to a broad smile.

When Michael left Singapore's National Stadium on September 1, 1993, the dawn spread across Los Angeles. Jordan was not yet apprehensive while waiting to speak with Assistant District Atttorney Weiss. According to Victor Gutierrez, Jordan was often unsettled these days. There were journalists camped outside his house, and the mandatory tests for gonorrhea, syphilis, chlamydia, and HIV. Jordan felt prodded, much like he did on the morning of July 16th. That day, with anesthesiologist Mark Torbiner's help, Jordan's father Evan pulled an overturned baby tooth. It was making the permanent one underneath come in crooked. Mark sedated Jordan with sodium Amytal for what uncle Raymond Chandler calls a "thirty-second procedure."

Some question why a barbituate known mistakenly as a "truth serum" was used for routine dentistry. U.S. Psychiatrists started conducting intravenously-effected "Amytal interviews" in the 1930s to examine the unconscious, not retrieve repressed memories. Evan used Amytal to bluff. According to Raymond, Evan told Jordan, "I know about the kissing and the jerking off." Victor says the father insisted, "I know about the kisses, the masturbation and oral sex." When he threatened to destroy Michael if Jordan lied, his son said "yes," almost inaudibly. That answer followed the question, "Did Michael touch your penis?"

September 1st ended with Michael back at the Raffles Hotel. He made it through another sold-out Singapore show, delayed two days by his backstage collapse. His MRI's showed no abnormalities. Elizabeth Taylor may or may not have been comforting him that night. Away from the public's view, it's difficult to know just how Michael passes the time. One Neverland Ranch staffer claims Michael's relationship with the icon "was hyped as a kind of camouflage." On her extended visits there, she'd dine alone. Michael was in his hideaway he could access through the door in his master bedroom closet. Ex-Neverland security chief Robert Wegner said Michael "could just get in and hide."

Whatever Michael was doing in his Raffles suite, Evan Chandler was in L.A., preparing himself. He was meeting with criminal attorney Arthur Baren. To Baren, Evan made his plea: "I want you to understand, I have no fear of an extortion charge. I have no fear of going to jail. I have one fear only, and that is there's going to be a deal made and I'm not willing to cut a deal." His son was across town, meeting more confidently now with the Assistant District Attorney. "I wasn't so nervous this time," he recalled. "Lauren was really nice. I think she knew I was telling the truth." More than a month later, she thanks Jordan for the interview with a letter: "I just wanted to let you know that the investigation of your case is proceeding full speed ahead. I expect that we will make a filing decision some time early next year. Hope all goes well with you at school and in your personal life. You are a great kid!"

August 31st

2006-08-31T21:00:00.000-04:00

Michael Jackson couldn't land the film roles he wanted, so he brought Martin Scorcese to him. Well, first Michael's manager Frank DiLeo had to push Michael toward Scorcese. Or Quincy Jones did. Quincy says he called Scorcese, busy then editing The Color of Money. "We need you for four days," he explained, to help create a "tougher" image for the first Bad video. Michael wanted George Lucas or Steven Spielberg, but agreed to Scorcese if he could put his stamp on things. Publicly, Scorcese would say only that Michael was "sympathetic, sweet, and open." Shooting started in January. The production budget doubled, then tripled. On Monday August 31, 1987, CBS debuted the 16-minute results with a special called "Michael Jackson—The Magic Returns." That morning, Bad was released: $6.99 for the record or cassette, $12.99 for the CD.

Most critics found the video ridiculous, cartoonish. Even biographer Randy Taraborrelli calls it "a pitiful parody" of the story famed novelist Richard Price wrote around the song. Price's inspiration came from Harlem-born Edmund Perry, the Phillips Exeter graduate killed by a plainclothes police officer. He died a block from home, on Morningside and 113th Street around 9 p.m., June 12, 1986. The prosecution claimed that Edmund and his surviving brother went looking for someone to rob. The defense insisted the white officer was drunk. The courts exonerated him and acquitted the brother. No witness either maintained their story or came to the stand unmotivated. In The New York Times, Brent Staples laments how "Edmund succumbed to the American fascination with angry black men."

"Bad" twists the allure of that monster role. Black-and-white footage follows Michael home to Harlem. He takes the Metro North train from the Duxston School to endure ribbing from his trio of childhood friends. Among them is Wesley Snipes. He taunts "Joe College" about what he's learning at "that little sissy school." Wesley wants to know: "Are you bad or what?" So, Michael searches the subway for a suitable victim to mug only to warn the older man. When Wesley confronts Michael, he screams back, "You ain't bad, you ain't nothin'!" With one cut, there's color and eight sonic bursts. Ethnically diverse dancers jump in from all sides. Michael himself drops from the ceiling. Breathing provides the soundtrack. The camera luxuriates on Michael's sudden transformation. He's a superhero of sorts, awash in buckles, zippers, and black leather. Sound effects attend to his every move. His hair whooshes. The choreography has percussion. He screams over the track. It's not anger as much as rapture. On one of the days Scorcese filmed in Harlem, Madonna dropped by to watch. She was both shocked and delighted by Michael's new conspicuous gesture: "Did you see that? Is he grabbing his balls? Oh my God."

Michael has little investment in realism. His videos dissolve any verisimilitude they create. What seems real implodes with inconsistencies. For example: how can Michael drop down from above in his leather get-up? A couple frames earlier, he was demure in a hoodie. It makes no sense because this quick change artist is much more into referencing or implying. Visual associations can be coy, elusively forthcoming. They work within the provided framework, but infer differently. As "Bad" dancer Casper attests, Michael's inspiration for his subway maneuvers came not from Edmund Perry but West Side Story. Michael would replay scenes "over and over again" for the dancers gathered about him: "When he saw something he liked, he'd let out a yelp. 'Oooh, did you see that? Did you feel that?'"

Just as palpable is the video's debt to The Wiz. Michael's friends banter much like the crow-men do to Michael's Scarecrow. The yellow brick road the film's black Dorothy and crew follow leads them through the same Harlem subway stations. Even the "Bad" video's fantasy of color in-between black-and-white recalls The Wiz's own source material. Michael's certainly aware of The Wizard of Oz starlet Judy Garland. Four pages into his autobiography Moonwalk, he contrasts his ambition with Judy's parents. "I wasn't forced into this business by stage parents the way Judy Garland was," he distinguishes himself. "I did it because I was compelled to do it, not by parents or family, but by my own inner life in the world of music." That inner world makes "Bad" compelling, too, even before the song's mechanical pulse make the video's theatrics colorful. When Michael leaves the Duxston School, the video reveals him in a progressively more personal space. It culminates with the intimacy of his railroad-style apartment. The camera watches him enter from his bedroom, just off the kitchen. He goes in to find a note from his mother on his typewriter. She's working. He holds it up to read it. There's a poster taped to his wall of Luther Vandross.

Michael trades the Metro North train for a subway with the only schoolmate who has similar circumstances. When he leaves Michael, they exchange the following slogan: "Be the man." A similar tenacity everyone expected from Bad's sales. The inevitable Thriller comparisons abounded. On the morning of Michael's CBS special, newsstands carried music critic Jon Pareles' unfavorable verdict. Despite writing eight of Bad's ten tracks, Michael shares even less of himself. Largely impersonal lyrics make way for his singular, isolated voice. Pareles concludes that Bad's "commercial fate depends on whether Mr. Jackson's audience wants shadows along with smooth surfaces."

Those shadows were in the cover shot Michael wanted, the one scrapped by Walter Yetnikoff, then president of CBS Records. It was a close-up of Michael's face wrapped in black floral lace. Red lips are partially obscured. His eyes stare ahead. That picture had to wait five years for Dancing the Dream: Poems and Reflections Written by Michael Jackson. It decorates a fable called "The Boy and the Pillow." When the youngster sells it to a peasant girl for a penny, his father murmurs, "You have learned well." The goose down pillow wrapped in silk brocade is worth far more. But the girl offers her penny "out of devotion."

August 30th

2006-08-30T21:00:00.000-04:00

Michael Jackson collapsed backstage in costume, taped fingertips and all. He was supposed to be on in a few minutes. Elizabeth Taylor insisted he go to the hospital for an MRI. The crowd waiting hours for his second show in Singapore's National Stadium were told only the following: "He is ill." Of course, disappointment became anger this August 30, 1993. A teenager sulked: "If he's so sick, why did he even go out on tour?" Michael's third canceled show marked a week of allegations and public statements. In private, Michael told a friend he felt "the world hates me now—and it's tearing my heart to shreds."

In L.A., Michael's private detective Anthony Pellicano and lawyer Howard Weitzman held a news conference. They played a secretly-made tape of Evan Chandler, a "Beverly Hills dentist, who moonlights as a screenwriter," according to People. Even doctored, the recording did nothing to prove extortion. More importantly, it propelled coverage in the direction Michael had with increasing skill since Thriller. A September 6th Time cover story calls that command the "tacit agreement of trust with Jackson as his star rose." That's what draws us into all that Michael does. When we watch him, "we know it's theater."

All the media puns remind us. The subtitle of Time's "Michael's World" article is almost expected: "Is He Dangerous or Just Off the Wall?" We read everything Michael together, as one performance. It confirms what we think we know already. Didn't we already suspect something, anyway? Those near Michael at the World Music Awards in Monaco that May did. During the ceremony Jordan Chandler sat in his lap. Michael hugged him warmly from behind. The National Enquirer carried a picture of Michael with Jordan, his sister Lily, and mother June. It came underneath the headline "Jacko's New Family." Jordan sports the trademark red shirt topped with a black fedora hat.

The more visible and the more talkative, the stranger Michael became in 1993. And the more we watched. His Feburary chat with Oprah galvanized 90 million viewers. The truth of what he said then was less compelling than watching him talk. Bob Merlis, Senior VP of publicity at Warner Bros. Records voiced the consensus on that interview's effect: "I think it made him a sympathetic figure instead of just a total inscrutable weirdo." But even Michael's odd contradictions were part of the act we loved, including the sinckers about his toothless crotch-grabbing. We like to think we're in on the joke. Was this August week just another kind of zipper show-and-tell? His nether regions choreography had already encouraged a close-up on the 50-yard-line at January's Super Bowl. In the "Black or White" video, Michael zipping atop a car he just smashed required its own sound effect.

Reporters listen to Evan Chandler talk on cassette. He explained what the media was still getting their hands around. "It's going to be bigger than all of us put together," he warned. The news "is going to crash down on everybody, and destroy everybody in sight." Another prepared statement drew attention in Las Vegas. Jermaine Jackson wanted to show that "our family has come together in unity and harmony." Missing was sister LaToya. The Jacksons share a "collective, unequivocal belief that Michael has been made a victim." They also want to announce an upcoming reunion concert, the proceeds of which will go to unspecified "children's causes."

Michael leaned on Elizabeth Taylor's shoulders. They made their way through the kitchen of the Raffles Hotel to avoid the throng in front. Inside, there were enough eyewitnesses to see him visibly weak. His physician Dr. David Forecast determined that Michael suffered from "acute vascular migraines." They didn't seem to prevent the daily calls he made to L.A. Michael wanted updates on the transfer of his publishing company to EMI music. This record-breaking deal netted him over $70 million. Over the phone, he sounded "hurt and disturbed by what people have said about him," an adviser testifies. Michael was particularly distraught over "what the press has been doing, all the leaks."

August 29th

2006-08-29T21:00:00.000-04:00

Jehovah's Witnesses aren't supposed to celebrate birthdays. Nevertheless, here Michael Jackson stands onstage in Copenhagen, August 29, 1997, on his History tour. Shuffling in behind him is a troupe resembling The Band of the Grenadier Guards. They sport red coats and black felt towers strapped across their chins. But their white trousers are the converse of the official uniform for the oldest military band of the British Army. Among other performances, that group's distinctive duty remains the birthday parade for the Queen of England. For the now-televised event, popular since World War I, everyone expects perfection. So does Michael for the musical assembly behind him. On cue, they welcome fireworks and a seven-tiered cake no one eats. He sips from a plastic cup and hides his face with a black towel. The bashful smile we know competes with the big screen projecting it. The pixelated image looms so close to what's transpiring, it pulls everything in.

Nine years earlier, for his 30th birthday, Michael gave to the British charity "Give for Life." Onstage during his Leeds stop on the Bad tour, he presented a check for £65,000 in front of a sold-out crowd. Backstage was Jimmy Safechuck, the blue-eyed, nine-year-old alum of a 1988 Pepsi ad called "Dressing Room." For the television spot, Jimmy dons Michael's shades, sparkly black jacket, and fedora hat. Jimmy's fingers pull the brim down over his eyes. The hat perks up to reveal Michael's face. On tour, Michael brought that transformation fantasy within Jimmy's reach. Michael had his costume designer Greg Upshaw make kid-sized versions of his stage outfits. Once, they both came onstage in strappy costumes modeled after Michael's in the "Bad" video.

In Singapore, Elizabeth Taylor and then-husband Larry Fortensky check into their penthouse suite across from Michael's at 1:30 a.m. This Sunday August 29, 1993, she inspired Michael to eat two slices of carrot cake with butter frosting. With a diet of milk and bread, Michael had lost nine pounds since the allegations commanded global headlines. Today, Michael was panicked that L.A.'s District Attorney would arrange for an extradition. Still, he waved to fans gathered at the colonial Raffles Hotel for a glimpse of the dazed star. He turned 35 in a red shirt and black hat. The media was there, too, of course, but uncertain. Most outlets were uncharacteristically cautious. Michael's reaction to the news became its own safer story. So did a film icon's transcontinental journey to be the stalwart by his side. Journalists made the flight with her. There was plenty of time for platitudes: "He'd rather cut his own wrists than harm a child." She believed in her friend's "integrity, his love and trust in children. I know he will come out all right. Michael is a very proud man, and he has good faith. He's a very spiritual and a very religious man."

In 1969, Michael was in the midst of his own launching. His birthday seemed insignificant. In October, he would make his television debut, introduced by Diana Ross. 18 days before his eleventh birthday, she presented him performing with his brothers at the Daisy, a swanky disco in Beverly Hills. The telegram she sent as an invitation heralded the "brilliant" Jackson 5, "featuring sensational eight-year-old Michael Jackson." He soon understood that "if someone said something about me that wasn't true, it was a lie. But if someone said something about my image that wasn't true, then it was okay. Because then it wasn't a lie, it was public relations." Michael was a quick study. In attendance that evening was Judy Spiegleman, who gushed in Soul magazine about "an eight-year-old kid who became a man when a microphone was in his hand."

August 28th

2006-08-28T21:00:00.000-04:00

On Friday August 28, 1987, London's Daily Telegraph revealed Katherine Jackson's heartbreak, as verified secondhand by "one friend." In Michael, his mother saw only a stranger, "a curious freak" who relished "another personality behind the new face." She was distraught when he disassociated himself from the Jehovah's Witness congregation that May. What little she knew of her son didn't match this man "sharing his home with a menagerie of animals." Now, Michael brandished his peculiarity. It was a conspicuous reminder of just how different he had always been. According to that family friend, the Jacksons had spoiled the "small and fragile" Michael, "but they never understood him." He showed only what he wanted to: "He never allowed them to enter his private world."

The speculation about Michael's off-camera life made it contradictory. How could Michael have one when his eccentricities and reclusiveness proved to be so marketable? When everything you do becomes newsworthy, what doesn't become part of the public record? What exactly would Michael do without us watching? Sister LaToya explains: "Even when Michael isn't working, he's working."

So all-encompassing was the anticipation for Bad, it seemed everyone was both on Michael's payroll and an eager spectator. Michael reports worked like promotion and revealed curious investment. For some media outlets, Michael's imminent unveiling pre-empted other breaking developments. For example, the cover of the August 23rd New York Daily News proclaims "EIGHT DAYS TO GO." Deemed less thrilling for New Yorkers that day was Governer Cuomo and Mayor Koch's announcement. A raucous 15-year debate ended with $810 million committed to rebuild the West Side Highway.

A new Michael album carried greater cultural weight. Michael made sure to that with Bad's two-year theatrical buildup. A series of odd public stunts put his known musical talent in balance with his increasingly enigmatic choices. Individuating himself in public like this was a canny tack, an unexpected gamble. Michael's maneuvering undermined the clean-cut accessibility of his most thrilling incarnation. It heralded the trend that New York Times music critic Jon Pareles saw dismantling Michael's own juggernaut wake: "After the big bang of the early 1980's, when music video and pop geared to the widest possible audience led to the world-beating sales of Michael Jackson's Thriller, the pop audience is splintering again." Some worried that Michael himself was cracking. They read Michael's newly-visible plastic surgeries and lighter skin as proof. He was dismantling the very image that already stood for a singular nostalgia, an unrepeatable moment in music history.

Those two years in the studio produced tension and disappointment. Michael wanted Bad to be "as perfect as is humanly possible." He couldn't do the duet he wanted with Barbra Streisand, and then Whitney Houston, for the album's first Number One single "I Just Can't Stop Loving You." Prince declined the invitation to duel with Michael on the title track. By June 1987, the pressure he felt was almost unbearable. According to Randy Taraborrelli, an associate of Michael's explained: "The closer he gets to completing it, the more terrified he becomes of that confrontation with the public."

On August 28, 2002, Michael met with publishers at the Westin in Stamford, Connecticut. The lighting in the penthouse is nightclub dim. Michael's trying to look scruffy, with facial hair punctuating the rhinestone studs on his slippers. He wears shades. To those gathered, Michael seemed disoriented. After they handed him their latest catalogues, he asked what company they represented. Michael wanted to write a real autobiography now. He wasn't ready when Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis "twisted his arm" to do Moonwalk. Michael cried softly when talking about his loneliness. No one understands he's just a regular guy. He was disappointed that Diane Sawyer let him down with the June 1995 PrimeTime Live interview. He confided that he barely keeps in touch with his family. He rolled his eyes at the idea of a Jacksons camping trip. Michael shared his recent horror walking the gaming floor with Chris Tucker in Las Vegas. "It was terrifying," Michael explained in his public whisper. "People had to touch me. They had to keep coming up to me and touching me." He sighed, "I am thoroughly bored with myself."

August 27th

2006-08-27T18:58:00.000-04:00

Publicly, Michael Jackson was "acutely dehydrated." Privately, some claim he was a heavily medicated combination of angry and devastated. He muttered to himself and sobbed uncontrollably. He wouldn't eat. One of the Oriental Hotel's chambermaids claims to have found him sucking his thumb in a fetal curl. Rumors spread of a suicide attempt. Two canceled shows since Tuesday only stoked speculation. Then, he re-emerged Friday, August 27, 1993. The sold-out crowd in Bangkok's National Stadium was ecstatic to see the choreography Michael hardly strayed from. He plans his performances meticulously.

For "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin,'" he wears the same gold leotard on top of black pants. It looks unfastened from the back. After a couple a cappella hee-hee's, Michael launches into a particularly athletic arrangement. This fast, the routine seems procedural rather than sensational. Only once does his voice and demeanor stand out. He thrusts his pelvis and points to the crowd with an almost menacing stare while he delivers the following lines over a frenzied tempo: "Someone's always tryin' to start my baby cryin' / Talkin' squealin' lyin' / Sayin' you just wanna be startin' somethin.'" He wags his index finger left and right.

Michael didn't talk much between numbers, as usual. Michael never felt comfortable with onstage banter. Once, he explained to Bruce Springsteen when they met in September 1984 that he couldn't tell stories like the Boss. Bruce assured him that fans "like to hear your voice do something besides singing." But Michael balked: "To me, it feels like people are learning something about you they shouldn't know."

After nine months of promoting Dangerous and speaking more in public than he had in a decade, Michael let others do the talking. The lines between spokespeople, the media, and friends were indistinguishable. Private detective Anthony Pellicano claimed the allegations were merely leverage. This was but one of the "25 to 30" blackmail schemes he helped Michael squash. The New York Times likened the media frenzy to "Hollywood's gossip mills churning." Following the Reverend Jesse Jackson's advice, the Los Angeles Times used "restraint" in its coverage. Even the rarely wary New York Post coupled its "PETER PAN OR PERVERT" cover story with another headline inside: "DON'T BELIEVE THE DIRT! THIS IS A GUY WHO DOESN'T EVEN SWEAR!" Also in Michael's defense was actor Corey Feldman, then 22-years-old, who acknowledged he'd slept in the same bed with the thriller: "There was no sexual connection. ... I was molested as a child, and I know the difference." Such good press didn't raise Michael's spirits as much as the knowledge that he would have a special guest for his next performance in Singapore on his birthday: Elizabeth Taylor.

August 26th

2006-08-26T21:00:00.000-04:00

The whoop near the start of "Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough" doesn't just propel that track's crisp drums. It signals an overlooked guile. Its glee contradicts the aw-shucks proposition leading up to it: "You know, I was ... I was wondering, you know, if ... if you could keep on because ... the force, it—it's got a lot of power." By Sunday, August 26, 1979, the joyful force of that cry also pushed the single up to number 54 on Billboard's Top 100. Michael Jackson was fasting that day, dancing until he collapsed on his bedroom floor, sweating, laughing, and crying. He was waiting for the next seven weeks, when "Don't Stop" would top the chart and only whet his ambitious appetite.

He was venturing out with Quincy Jones in the studio and with new looks in public. Michael's favorite disguise then was a black abaya and niqab, Muslim women's traditional dress and veil. It worked better than wigs, hats, and beards, except when someone spotted his white socks and sneakers. A similar discovery made headlines in November 2005 when Michael walked mistakenly into the wrong bathroom in Bahrain. Another accident changed Michael's appearance in May 1979. While on the Destiny tour with his brothers, he tripped during a pirouette and landed face first. A nose job left him with a treasured cartilage souvenir, according to sister LaToya, and a new confidence for the Off the Wall cover. Michael smiles broadly. His thumbs are hooked to his tuxedo pants pockets, but his palms are open with fingers outstretched.

Off the Wall focused Michael. He'd felt dejected from losing his voice on the Destiny tour that wrapped up in June. Doctors made him lip-synch two weeks' of shows. Brother Marlon sang the upper register with Michael's mouth merely moving, disconnected. Michael never again wanted to be stage decoration. Working with Quincy was one part of that awakening witnessed by writer Gerri Hirshey: "One minute his face had the distant, dazed glint of prophecy; interviewing prospective accountants, it wore the chilly, reasoned mask of Market Imperative." Brother Tito noticed him make that change, too: "It was as if something had snapped in him. ... I don't know. He never did say much. You never really knew what he was thinking."

In the studio, Michael came prepared. Quincy was amazed when Michael would put down two leads and three backgrounds in one day: "He does his homework." For "Don't Stop," Michael recorded a series of "overdubs as a kind of group. I wrote myself a high part, one that my solo voice couldn't carry on its own, to fit in with the music I was hearing in my head, so I let the arrangement take over from the singing." Afterward, he'd sit with Quincy's engineer Bruce Swedien to hear the effect of the mix, then go over the tapes at home.

His mother Katherine was concerned when she first heard "Don't Stop," particularly with what its title could mean. Michael was developing a taste for double entendre. He defended the song and explained he didn't intend anything untoward. Still, "if you think it means something dirty, then that's what it'll mean." Michael used a similarly coy strategy in a Jet magazine interview with Robert Johnson published that August. He makes sure to mention but lament the "nasty rumor" of his sex change operation. Then, he introduces the following fan encounter: "This beautiful girl with blonde hair was trying her hardest to pull me into her to kiss her. She said, 'You're so sexy, kiss me.' When I showed no kind of interest in her she said, 'What's wrong, you fag?' and walked off."

Michael was listening so intently to the melodies in his head then that little else seemed to register. He wore the same jeans and socks for days, with shoes untied. LaToya explains that "when he was twenty, Michael decided deodorant was unhealthy and daily showering excessive." Really, Michael was preparing for his 21st birthday on August 29th. He explained the milestone he'd set for himself to Randy Taraborrelli the month before: "When I become 21, things will be different. I really feel that being a man is doing exactly what you want to do in this life and to do it successfully and to conquer a goal. ... And if it's great, to share it." Michael wanted to be one of the "real men" he admired, not just for their accomplishments, but for "how much joy they have given to other people, how many they have influenced."

August 25th

2006-08-25T21:00:00.000-04:00

On the evening of Saturday, August 25, 1984, Michael Jackson did more than take the stage with his brothers for the 21st show of their Victory Tour. He justified its existence.

This first night in Buffalo, New York, begins again with a backcloth of white light. Lasers slice through billowing smoke until they find our Michael pulling a sword from a stone. At times, the stage and its star are hard to differentiate. Each sparkle and whir in time. Or, stop as if posing for a photograph exactly three minutes into "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin,'" the show's—and Thriller's—opening number. No sound but the crowd. Michael breaks the pause with insistent phrasing: "If you can't feed the baby, then don't have a baby." The brothers shimmy and the rhythm continues on cue.

Michael's hands-on direction was a prerequisite for his participation in a tour he'd wanted to call The Final Curtain. His meticulous theatrics wowed crowds but disappointed everyone else Jackson on the tour. Days before the Buffalo show, in Detroit, Michigan, the brothers wanted to accept a multi-million dollar offer to videotape and release the tour. Not only did Michael refuse, he threatened he wouldn't perform if they went ahead without his consent. Now, however, there were enough cameramen onstage with them that brother Marlon nearly stumbled over one.

Michael was already producing his own off-stage videos. He amused himself between shows not with his brothers, who traveled separately to the next city, but with another kind of choreography. He staged things to tape. On camera, he didn't feel "lost to the world," as he worried Broadway actors must feel after the curtain falls. With theater, "you don't capture that moment," he explains in an August 1982 interview. With film, you can; and its "shown all over the world and it's there forever. Spencer Tracy will always be young in Captains Courageous and I can learn and be stimulated by his performance."

In 1984 and 1985, Michael practiced his later public fascination with military imagery through his Victory shenanigans. He studied by watching them again. In each city, he'd don a flashy band major uniform and march with local police officers, all straightfaced, with matching shades shielding their eyes. At the Detroit police station, he filmed himself surrounded. Officer Allan Booze remembers Michael: "Some people might say he looks like a fag, but I would never say that. He looked frail, almost sickly. But he had a real big hand. I'm a big guy, but when we shook hands, his went all the way around mine."

The Victory tour changed only our perception of Michael, the defunct lead singer for the now 5-less backing band called The Jacksons. He always loomed over his brothers, years before his height or record sales did. He moved precociously long before he moonwalked. Sliding backwards was just another example of him looking forward. So was his onstage prelude to "Beat It," which started the finale of "Billie Jean" and "Shake Your Body (Down to the Ground)." Michael writhes beneath a mechanical spider with searchlight eyes, then levitates, overcome and lifeless, until he vanishes. He's resurrected in red leather and zippers, just like he still is in the music video.

In Moonwalk, Michael complains that "fans imagine you to be almost an illusion, this thing that doesn't exist." But twelve years before Victory, he knew the lasting power of reproducible images. An almost fourteen-year-old Michael knew somehow that optical sensations can focus our feelings. When touring with his brothers behind his first solo record, "Got To Be There," he was already marketing himself. He had an idea his tour manager nixed: "Before I sing that song, let me go offstage and grab that little hat I wore for the picture on the album cover. If the audience sees me wearing that hat, they'll go crazy." Michael's still proving that insight. His iconicity stands not only for him, but also for our connection to him.

August 24th

2006-08-24T21:00:00.000-04:00

Tuesday, August 24, 1993, found Michael Jackson straddled across the International Date Line, between today and yesterday. He may not have been awake that morning in his penthouse suite at the Oriental Hotel in Bangkok when the news broke with the L.A. evening news. KNBC scrambled for any information about a police raid at Neverland for the 4 p.m. broadcast. By 5 p.m., they showed officers hauling boxes marked "EVIDENCE" from Michael's condo in Century City. Los Angeles Police Department Commander David Gascon said little to explain the footage. He was "not disclosing any aspect of the investigation at this point."

The people who called Hard Copy correspondent Diane Dimond would. The one who worked for California's Department of Children and Family Services urged Diane to meet the other. The voice insisted that "enough is enough. He's got to stop getting away with this." Just after 7:00 p.m., Diane and her producer Steve Doran met the go-between at an Italian restaurant in Santa Monica. Diane spent two hours taking shorthand by candlelight. Steve kept the conversation going with ice tea and appetizers. In Diane's hands was an "Emergency Response Referral" and notes from an interview with the reporting child and his father. At first glance, they looked legit. Diane's notes include the following sentence: "Minor says MJ and he got erections after rubbing each other."

Michael had arrived in Thailand on the 21st without Jordan Chandler, his 13-year-old friend Diane Diamond calls "stunningly handsome." Instead, he landed with tour staging that takes three days to assemble. The media took longer to get a story straight. Unknown to most then, the L.A.P.D. ventured outside their jurisdiction only hours after Michael's jet took off. Santa Barbara District Attorney Tom Sneddon learned about the raid when the BBC called for comment. By the time Diane and Steve Doran paid the check, the sun was setting on the 23rd in LA. As they left the restaurant, it was also approaching noon on the 24th in Bangkok. That evening was the scheduled launch of the second leg of his Dangerous tour.

Soon Michael would do his vocal exercises. His longtime voice coach Seth Riggs was always impressed with Michael's three-and-a-half octave range, "from basso low E up to G and A-flat above high C. A lot of people think it's falsetto, but it's ... all connected, which is remarkable." But when he traveled with the Bad tour, Riggs was perplexed by Michael's new addition to the routine. He was holding both a note and his arms up in the air while spinning about. Michael explained to him, "I may have to do it onstage, so I want to make sure it's possible."

Microphones were all around. "We don't want to feed any wild speculation on this matter," maintained Commander David Gascon. Michael's attorney Harold Weitzman explained the allegations the L.A.P.D. would not confirm: "What has transpired here is the result of a rejected demand made by the father of one of Michael's young friends." Private detective Anthony Pellicano echoed that Michael was the subject of "extortion gone awry."

The Dangerous show opens with the "O Fortuna" section from Carl Orff's Carmina Burana, those infamous driving strings used in The Omen, and so many of the horror films Michael loves. Michael has them open his Dangerous video collection, too. They provide the sound for mute, frenetic shots of fans screaming, crying, overcome. Michael catapults himself from underneath the stage for the sold-out crowd filling Bangkok's National Stadium, and stands, as if frozen. No music. Sure, Michael may be known for his moonwalk, and his crotch grabs, but that stare is as much a signature move. He watches us take him in. The crowd roars, but he waits, center stage. At roughly the same time in L.A., his voice comes through Howard Weitzman: "I am confident the Department will conduct a fair and thorough investigation, and its results will demonstrate that there was no wrong-doing on my part."