In the late summer of 2001, Michael Jackson’s family were after him again. It was two days before his scheduled departure for New York, where his 30th Anniversary concerts were to be staged at Madison Square Garden.
Performers would include Destiny’s Child, Ray Charles and Whitney Houston, and friends Elizabeth Taylor and Marlon Brando had been recruited to deliver televised speeches. Michael wanted his family in New York as well; his brothers to perform a medley of hits from their days as the Jackson 5, while his parents sat in special box seats.
The Jacksons insisted that they should receive appearance fees and it was agreed that family members would get honorariums of $250,000, even those who would just be there to watch the sho
Just days before the first concert, though, Jermaine Jackson read an article that said his brother would be making as much as $10 million from the two shows and convinced his parents that Michael should pay the three of them another $500,000 apiece. Jermaine and his father Joe drew up a contract and, with mother Katherine in tow, chased Michael around California to try to get him to sign.
Michael took refuge for several days at the house of his friend Marc Schaffel, co-producer of the event, then made a dash north to Neverland Ranch. He and his two young children, four-year-old Prince and three-year-old Paris, had barely set foot inside the house when Joe, Katherine and Jermaine appeared at the gate. Michael told the security guards to tell his family he wasn’t there. Joe Jackson, though, refused to budge. ‘I’m his father,’ Joe told the guards.
‘I need to use the bathroom. His mother needs to use the bathroom. Let us in.’ Frantic, Michael phoned Schaffel. If they got through the gate, his family would hound him to sign this contract, he explained. But he couldn’t keep his mother locked outside when she was pleading just to use the bathroom. He told Schaffel he would instruct the guards to tell his family again that Mr Jackson was not on the premises, but to admit them so that they could use the facilities.
But as soon as Joe and Jermaine were through the gate, they drove to the main house and pushed their way inside. ‘They literally ransacked the place,’ Schaffel remembered. Michael retreated with Prince and Paris to a hiding place concealed behind a secret door at the back of his bedroom closet and phoned Schaffel from there.
He was in tears, literally whimpering into the phone. Until the time he found a way to live off his sons’ talent, his father Joe had worked the four-to-midnight shift as a crane operator amid the blast-furnace heat of the Inland Steel Mill, in Gary, Indiana.
He earned barely enough to sustain the family home – a tiny aluminium-sided cube in which 11 people shared a bathroom. Michael’s memories of early rehearsals all centred on the father/manager who bellowed at them constantly, smacking his sons or throwing them into walls if they made a mistake. When the band signed to Motown, Michael was quickly singled out as the star.
Jackie and Tito possessed only modest musical talent and Marlon had none at all. Jermaine had an adequate singing voice. Such was Michael’s talent that just one year after signing with the label, the group delivered a debut record, I Want You Back, that shot to the top of the Billboard Hot 100. In February 1970, the Jackson 5 released their second single, ABC.
And with The Love You Save and I’ll Be There, they became the first group ever to send their first four releases to the top of the charts. Between tours, Joe and his sons returned home to a five-bedroom, six-bathroom mansion in the Los Angeles enclave of Encino. There was an Olympic-size swimming pool, sports facilities, luxury cars and servants’ quarters.
