YOU ARE NOT ALONE
Michael Through a Brother’s Eyes
Jermaine Jackson
Epigraph
I have built a monument more lasting than bronze and higher than the royal palace of the Pyramids. I shall not totally die, and a great part of me will live beyond death. I will keep growing, fresh with the praise of posterity.
– Horace, 23 BC
Contents
Title Page
Epigraph
Prologue – 2005
The Beginning – The Early Years
1. Eternal Child
2. 2300 Jackson Street
3. God’s Gift
4. Just Kids With a Dream
5. Cry Freedom
6. Motown University
7. Jackson-mania
The Middle – The Hayvenhurst Years
8. Life Lessons
9. Growing Pains
10. Separate Ways
11. Moonwalking
12. Animal Kingdom
13. The Hardest Victory
14. The Reunion Party
The End – The Neverland Years
15. Once Said …
16. Forever Neverland
17. Body of Lies
18. Love, Chess and Destiny
19. Unbreakable
20. 14 White Doves
21. The Comeback King
22. Gone Too Soon
Photographic Insert
Epilogue – Smile
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher
Prologue
2005
THE BATHROOM MIRROR AT A LITTLE hotel in Santa Maria, California, is fogged with condensation, and there is so much steam from my morning shower that my reflection is rendered invisible. As I stand at the sink, dripping wet and wrapped in a towel, the opaque glass is now nothing but an inviting canvas of mist on which to log a thought I have been repeating in my head.
‘MICHAEL JACKSON 1,000% INNOCENT’, I daub with my finger, ending with a full-stop that I convert into a smiley-face. Believe in the happy ending.
I stare at this message and focus on a visualised outcome: victory, justice and vindication. It is 10 March 2005: day 11 of the courthouse circus that sees my brother accused of child molestation.
‘MICHAEL JACKSON 1,000% INNOCENT’, I read again. I continue to stare at the top left corner of the mirror, watching the smiley-face start to run. Transfixed, I flash back to Michael’s bathroom at the Hayvenhurst estate in Encino, outside Los Angeles – his home prior to Neverland – and know that I am mimicking in 2005 what he did in 1982. Back then, in the top left corner of his mirror, he took a black felt permanent marker – to match the black marble – and scrawled: ‘THRILLER! 100 MILLION SALES … SELL OUT STADIUMS’.
Think it, see it, believe it, make it happen. Will it into reality, as taught to us in childhood by our mother, Katherine, and father, Joseph. ‘You can do this … you can do this,’ I can hear Joseph insisting during early, scratchy rehearsals as the Jackson 5, ‘we’re doing this over and over until you get it right. Think about it, say it, see yourself doing it, visualise it happening … and it will happen.’ Plant it in your head and focus with all your heart, Mother added, more gently. This was drilled into our young minds decades before positive-thinking became fashionable. Our minds are preprogrammed not to entertain doubt or half-heartedness.
Michael knew the scale of the breakthrough, innovation and success he desired as a solo artist with the Thriller album, so that one thought transcribed on his mirror was his positive starting point. Years after his move to Neverland, the permanence of the pen’s marker had flaked and the message appeared to have disappeared to the naked eye, yet it had left its imprint embedded in the glass, because each time that mirror fogged, the faintest outline of his words could still be seen, as if it were one of those secret codes written by a magic pen. Condensation and misted glass always remind me of Michael’s written ambition.
From the eighties, nobody knew about a lot of what he created until its execution, but the idea or concept was written down somewhere he could see it daily, or recited into a voice recorder as a visualisation he could see or hear. He didn’t share ideas because he didn’t want anyone to interfere; he relied on mental strength for his focus. Between November 2003 – when he was arrested and charged – and this day in March 2005, he’s needed that strength.
Awake at 4.30am each day of the trial, he’s bracing himself, getting prepared, psyching himself up to withstand another day of ritual humiliation.
Yesterday, 9 March, Gavin Arvizo, the 15-year-old boy being showcased as ‘the victim’, began his incredulous testimony, going into graphic detail. I was seated behind Michael the whole time, as I have been since the start.
Outwardly, my brother projects a hardened image: detached, expressionless, almost cold. Inwardly, the bolted brackets that had been holding him together are snapping violently under pressure, one by one.
I look at my mirrored message now fading as the air rushes in, but the intent remains stark: Michael will be found innocent. I would carve it into my grandmother’s gravestone if I could. Think it, see it, believe it, make it happen.
But whatever intent I put out there is not enough to remove the ache and worry we feel as a family. I find myself constantly reflecting, going back to a time when we believed Hollywood to be only a magical place; when we believed in the Yellow Brick Road.
I watch the local news on the television in my room, looking ahead to day 11 of the trial. I think of Michael at Neverland. The cars will be pulling up in the courtyard. He will have been up four hours, eaten breakfast on a silver tray in his room, alone – stealing time on his own – before coming downstairs, giving himself 45 minutes between departure and arrival. His routine is clockwork, organised like some back-stage itinerary.
I think of all he has achieved, and all he is now being put through.
How has something so beautiful turned so twisted and ugly? Did fame do it? Is this the end-game in the American Dream when a black man achieves success on this magnitude? Is this what happens when an artist becomes bigger than his record label? Is this about publishing rights? Ruin the man, keep the money-machine?
These are the questions that race through my mind.
Are his Hollywood friends and one-time attorneys, allies and producers staying away because they regard him as nuclear – treating friendship like a sponsorship deal? What about those divisive people who whispered into a malleable ear that we, his family, should be kept at a distance, not trusted. Why aren’t they alongside him now, whispering encouragement and support?
Michael is fast realising who his friends aren’t, and what family means. But now his liberty is at stake, and everything he has built up is in danger of collapsing. I want to turn back time: lift the needle off the record and return us to the first track as the Jackson 5 – a time of togetherness, unity and brotherhood. ‘All for one, and one for all,’ as Mother used to say.
I