Authors: Steve Knopper
He continued. “There are these two sweet little kids—a girl and a boy—and they’re so innocent. They’re the quintessential form of innocence. Just being in their presence, I felt completely speechless. I felt I was looking in the face of God whenever I saw them. They inspired me to write ‘Speechless.’ ” Taking in the exchange at his office in Los Angeles, where Michael had called in from a friend’s house in New Jersey, Llewellyn didn’t think enough of the answer to remark on it. But Frank DiLeo, Michael’s former manager, might have reacted this way:
Uh-oh.
I
. Computer-generated graphics, later used to fill out war scenes in movies like
300
, were still too expensive and cumbersome, even on Michael Jackson’s budget, in 1996.
II
. While Jackie was helping Paula, Enid jammed the car into reverse, running over her husband’s leg, according to Margaret Maldonado Jackson—which is why he couldn’t perform during the Victory tour.
III
. MJ fans often say
HIStory
was the first tour in which he lip-synched, at least in spots, to give himself a break. True? “That is a controversial question,” backup singer Darryl Phinnessee says coyly. “It’s akin to asking about a magic trick on the show.”
T
he members of the Jackson 5 formed a horizontal line onstage, as they’d done off and on for thirty years. ’NSYNC, including Justin Timberlake in black leather pants and a fedora, fell in next to them. It was the middle of “Dancing Machine,” on September 7, 2001, and as the familiar pre-disco rhythm dragged the song to the instrumental break, everybody in the crowd knew what was about to happen. The horns came in, and Michael Jackson stepped to the front of the line, at center stage, lifting his shoulders to start the Robot. It had only been two years since his last public performance, in Munich, which had been energetic and spectacular, and everybody was expecting the same this time around. But forty-three-year-old Michael, perhaps for the first time ever, didn’t seem into it. He hopped forward and sideways and bent his skinny body into the usual mechanical shapes, but his dancing had no life. As tens of thousands of fans watched at New York’s Madison Square Garden, and millions more on the CBS broadcast, Michael Jackson looked for all the world like he wanted to go back to bed.
The September 7 and September 10 concerts, marking the thirtieth anniversary of MJ’s first solo hit, “Got to Be There,” had not been his idea. David Gest, the Jacksons’ longtime friend, a show-business
veteran, and the future husband of Liza Minnelli, wanted to produce it. When Gest had called Michael to suggest a concert with a Jacksons reunion, Michael declined. But Gest knew Michael’s financial situation.
“He was basically bankrupt, more or less,” recalls Ronald Konitzer, one of MJ’s business partners of the time. Gest appealed to Michael’s wallet. Fans could get nosebleed seats at the Garden for $45, but those who wanted to see the stage would have to pay as much as
$2,500—the most expensive ticket in concert-business history. Gest explained that, thanks to a licensing fee for a later CBS special, Michael would receive a guaranteed payment of
$7.5 million. The numbers talked Michael into it. He insisted on inviting his famous friends. So when Elizabeth Taylor demanded a
$250,000 necklace to wear to the show, he agreed. And when Marlon Brando demanded
$1 million merely to sit on a couch and say a few words, as well as appearing in a later video, Michael agreed to that, too. Jermaine had all kinds of “requests and demands,” as Michael’s associate Frank Cascio recalled. During one secret Hollywood rehearsal, Jermaine called paparazzi in advance and was outside chatting with photographers when MJ’s people showed up in a vehicle, took a look at the scene, and abruptly reversed course.
Stars were summoned. In addition to ’NSYNC, Britney Spears, Whitney Houston, and Gladys Knight signed on to perform classic MJ songs. Michael did not rehearse, although he showed up unexpectedly to watch his protégé, Usher, who’d spent much of his young career talking up Michael’s influence. “Good,” Michael had told him. “Very good.” His hero’s presence made the young, usually unflappable R&B superstar nervous, which showed during the early seconds of his elaborate “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’ ” routine. “It’s like LeBron James and Michael Jordan sitting courtside, watching,” Usher said.
Gest nailed down a plan for MJ to sit in the front row at eight
P.M.
By 8:30, he wasn’t there. Karen Faye, Michael’s makeup artist, went to his hotel room, where a doctor she’d never seen before intercepted her
and said he’d given the singer a
“sleeping aid.” Soon Gest sent Frank Cascio to Jackson’s hotel room.
Cascio found him and called back.
“He’s sleeping.”
“What do you mean, he’s asleep?” Gest responded.
“I could tell he’s out of it and not completely there. I started shouting at him,” Cascio would say. “I said, ‘What did you take?’ He told me he took a shot of Demerol. He said, ‘My back was killing me.’ I said, ‘You’re just looking for an excuse to get out of the show. Isn’t that right?’ He wouldn’t answer me. I knew that was what it was.”
Jackson managed to rouse himself, climb onstage, and muscle-memory his way through the old routines, from the Motown hits to “Billie Jean” to “The Way You Make Me Feel.” It was Marlon Jackson, though, who killed it, in a shiny gold jacket, dropping to his knees and bouncing up again, Godfather of Soul style, in the night’s most impressive single move. MJ did a bit better on the second night, but he was clearly not the same King of Pop the world had seen during the
HIStory
tour just five years earlier.
The 1997
HIStory
tour had sapped Michael’s spirit, and the back injury he suffered during his 1999 charity show in Munich continued to plague him.
“I usually come to the show not feeling like I really want to do it because of being overworked, but once I get there I feel the spirit of the entire audience before I even get on stage,” he told one interviewer. “And then the magic takes place—no matter how you feel, even dead sick and weary—suddenly you just go out and do it. The energy comes out of nowhere. It’s like the gods are blessing you.” Buried within the usual MJ rhetoric about magic and energy were revealing words—
overworked, dead sick, weary
. During the interview, he pledged to never again do a world tour and to focus instead on records and films. But Hollywood hadn’t been enthusiastic about filming a Michael Jackson movie after the Jordan Chandler situation. While his name floated around as a possible star for a role in a film about Edgar Allan Poe, studios remained skeptical, even nasty.
“Whenever he wanted to make a movie, it was
impossible,” says Howard Rosenman, a veteran Hollywood producer. “How could you put that face on a screen, sixty feet high, with that nose he had, and that skin? He looked like Phantom of the Opera.”
So no tours. And no movies. Which meant no income, other than the undying engine of the Sony ATV catalog—Beatles songs were still lucrative at a time when MP3s, Napster, and the Internet were ravaging the record industry.
I
Recording extravagances, Neverland upkeep, and shopping expeditions plunged him deeper into debt. From 1995 to 1999, the Sony catalog paid him between
$6.5 million and $14 million a year. The publishing catalog for his own songs, Mijac, added another $2 million to $9 million annually. But his accountants, lawyers, and business partners were resolutely unable to convince Michael to stop hemorrhaging so much cash.
“You couldn’t just confront him with the reality,” says Ronald Konitzer, one of Michael’s financial advisers at the time. “The mistake they all made was talking in
their
language—there was a lawyer talking about legal problems, there was an accountant talking about accounting and cash-flow problems. Three minutes into a conversation like that, he would fall asleep.”
In the late nineties, Michael had turned to Korean-born and University of Chicago–trained lawyer
Myung-Ho Lee, who ran a Seoul company called Union Finance and Investment Corporation. Lee set to ruthlessly overhaul Michael’s finances.
“Michael gave him all kinds of ability and authority and power, and he exercised it to push John [Branca] out, any way he could, and push me out,” says Zia Modabber, one of Michael’s longtime lawyers, who had defended him in a number of cases after the Chandler settlement turned Michael into a legal punching bag. Lee became close enough to Michael’s business affairs to
realize the singer was
“cash poor.” Michael had exhausted a $90 million loan in 1998; through Bank of America, Lee secured new loans for a total of $200 million over the next two years.
Lee had to be constantly vigilant to save Michael from what he would call “erratic behavior”—throwing his money down any number of rabbit holes. At one point, Michael met a woman named “Samia,” who claimed to be a personal adviser to a Saudi Arabian prince. While Lee’s people were investigating Samia, Michael communicated with her directly, believing promises she would buy him a $40 million villa and a yacht. With Lee’s help, Michael paid $7.4 million to MJ Net, a German entertainment-memorabilia company, for use of his likeness on products, including a state-of-the-art audio speaker system with photos of Michael on the front panels. He invested $2 million in a fuel-cell technology company. He was “extremely interested” in a company that had engineered a magnetic motor, for use as a high-efficiency generator, and attempted to invest $10 million before reducing his stake to $2 million. For all these deals, Lee took a 2.5 percent fee. Eventually, Lee sued Michael, divulging juicy details in his complaint: Michael had wired
$150,000 to a Mali bank to pay Baba, a voodoo chief who ritually sacrificed forty cows in a ceremony designed to curse Steven Spielberg and David Geffen. By way of response, Jackson’s attorneys accused Lee of using Michael’s assets to enrich himself in elaborate ways: he paid for his sister’s $50,000 Lexus and the rent on two Century City condos, including furnishings, utilities, and cable bills.
Another person Michael brought in to help with his financial affairs was Marc Schaffel, who had been a freelance ABC cameraman and shot footage of the Jacksons during the Victory tour in 1984. An entrepreneur with an unusual past—he’d directed and produced gay pornographic movies such as
Every Last Inch
and
Tomorrow Always Comes
—Schaffel connected with Michael in 2000 at the home of their mutual dermatologist Arnold Klein. In June 2001, Michael authorized Schaffel to form a company, Neverland Valley Entertainment, to work
on film and video projects. He was also what he called Michael’s
“bag man.” Bank of America, as Michael’s lender, imposed restrictions that, as Schaffel would say, made it “difficult for Jackson to spend and distribute money as he wished.” Because Michael didn’t maintain a bank account, fearing creditors would try to seize even more of his money, he had Schaffel take out his own cash from the bank and reimbursed him later. Schaffel delivered these cash loans in paper bags, sometimes from an
Arby’s restaurant—to the point that Michael told Schaffel he liked how his money smelled.
“He liked his french fries—which was code for ‘bring me cash,’ ” says Howard King, Schaffel’s attorney. “And if he wanted a lot of cash, he’d ask Marc to ‘supersize his fries.’ ” Schaffel’s loans to Michael included $380,395 to buy custom cars, such as a Bentley Arnage and a Lincoln Navigator, and $30,000 for unpaid temporary security guards who were threatening to quit.
II
“We all had large amounts of cash on us,” Schaffel says. “But fifty thousand dollars was petty cash for a day shopping for MJ.”
On the morning after the second thirtieth-anniversary show at Madison Square Garden, Michael had slept just an hour or two. His friend, Frank Cascio, was due to return a $2 million diamond watch that Michael had borrowed from Los Angeles jeweler David Orgell to wear for the concerts. Cascio’s plan was to wake up early and return it to a Bank of America outlet so Michael could avoid buying it permanently. Cascio slept through the alarm. Aubrey, MJ’s bodyguard, woke him up with a phone call:
“Hello, sir. I just want to let you know that planes hit the twin towers.”
Schaffel says Michael, like everybody else in New York, was
“completely freaked out.” He feared marauding terrorists were out to kidnap his children. He asked for $500,000 in emergency escape money, in case his family had to “go underground.” But
Aubrey insists Michael never asked for cash, handled the disaster with no panic whatsoever, and spent the morning watching the news in his hotel suite.
III
Michael left Manhattan for the Cascios’ home in Franklin Lakes, New Jersey. The bridges and tunnels were closed, so Michael’s entourage of Paris, Prince, Grace, and the four Cascio brothers relied on a retired New York cop who served on Michael’s security team for permission to leave the city.
“As we crossed the George Washington Bridge, we looked downtown and saw the smoke,” Cascio wrote. “The first tower had fallen.” Schaffel recalls Michael and his group staying at the Cascios’ house for a couple of days; Aubrey says they were there for roughly a month.
After that, in Schaffel’s recollection, Michael left New Jersey for White Plains, New York, where Sony provided him with a private jet at an airport hangar. Michael’s entourage and actor Mark Wahlberg’s entourage then reportedly fought over the use of the jet until Sony awarded it to Michael. (In a TMZ interview after Randall
Sullivan published this revelation, Wahlberg strenuously denied it ever happened.) Then Michael decided he didn’t want the plane and made plans to return to California by tour bus.
“We all flew back on the plane to LA, minus MJ, who took a bus back across the country,” Schaffel recalls. Other reports say Michael flew to Santa Barbara.
Through all this, Michael had been thinking about a song he’d written, “What More Can I Give?,” inspired in part by his visit with Nelson Mandela in South Africa in 1990. As with many of his compositions, he’d been tinkering with the song for years, under various
titles, at first intending to put it out as a charity single for Kosovar refugees. After 9/11, Jackson talked with Schaffel about retooling the song into a tribute for families who’d died in the attacks, and Schaffel met with McDonald’s executives about selling it in restaurants. The fast-food men estimated they could sell five million copies and made a
deal for $20 million. With Schaffel as his middleman, Michael signed Beyoncé, Mariah Carey, Tom Petty, and other pop superstars to contribute. Celine Dion teared up in the video. Schaffel kept the rights to the song.