[Yorin] Living with Michael Jackson

Dinsdag krijg je alle antwoorden. The King of Pop werd acht maanden lang gevolgd door interviewer Martin Bashir. Geen onderwerp wordt geschuwd, geen vraag blijft onbeantwoord. Mis het niet: Living with Michael Jackson, dinsdag om 20:30 uur bij Yorin!

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WALKING ON THE MOON WITH MICHAEL
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An eight-month visit to Neverland gave Martin Bashir a unique insight into the weird world of Michael Jackson

Thirty years ago, almost to the day, I saw the Jackson 5 at Wembley Arena. The concert was a rare treat organised to coincide with my 10th birthday. Standing on my seat at Wembley I was completely mesmerised by just one character on the stage. Thirteen-year-old Michael was the star of every song and dance routine. He was, quite simply, breathtaking.
I could never have envisaged then that 30 years later I would spend more than eight months in and around his world, as I have for my film about Jackson, to be broadcast tomorrow night. It was a unique chance to peer inside and experience, first hand, the life of this fascinating superstar.

In many ways, I discovered, Jackson is a charming chap. He loves to play practical jokes and mimic an English accent. He can be great fun on one occasion he even tried to teach me the finer points of his famous dance step, the Moonwalk (Dont slide back on your toe, slide back on your heel), and was sweetly encouraging despite my failure to get the hang of it.

In other ways he is a disturbing individual whose financial power enables him to do what he wants, when he wants to. I accompanied Jackson on one extraordinary shopping trip to Las Vegas. I say shopping trip, it was more like a multinational corporation buying furniture for all its worldwide premises.

The manager of a Las Vegas emporium full of as it seemed to me vulgar, overpriced reproduction fixtures and fittings couldnt believe his good fortune. It looked to me as though he would be able to retire after Michael Jacksons brief visit to his store.

In a single shopping trip, Jackson spent $6m on everything from 10ft-tall glass urns to oversized marble chess sets (hes already got three of these in his house). As he sprinted round the store, I kept being left behind as I tried hopelessly to calculate his spending. But he never even glanced at a price tag.

There are very few things that wealth cannot buy him. One exception is immortality though he seemed to hope that even this might one day be under his control. He confessed that he didnt want to be buried. Really? I said. No, he replied, quite earnestly, I would like to live for ever.

In these days of talentless, pointless celebrities, it may be that we regard Michael Jackson as just another name in the lexicon of distorted stardom. But that would be to ignore his musical achievements. Thriller, the record that marked the high point of his musical career, still holds its position as the biggest selling album of all time. When I saw Jackson a couple of weeks ago, he told me he was thinking of re-releasing the album later this year. He also said hed like to reshoot the legendarily spooky title track video.

In many ways this is typical of Jacksons mindset: he desperately wants to go back to the future. Neverland, the 4,000-acre ranch that is his home, with its full-size funfair (yes, I did go on a ride) and extensive zoo, is populated by more statues of Peter Pan than people. Jackson is obsessed by the notion of frozen childhood.

His own childhood wasnt a whole lot of fun. His innocence was destroyed very early on. During one of our early interviews, Jackson explained how his father would choreograph the boys in preparation for shows and concerts.

He practised us with a belt in his hand, he said. Jackson was just seven years old. The boys would have to achieve perfect pitch, voice and feet, or father Joseph would beat them. I remember hearing my mother scream Joe, youre gonna kill him, youre gonna kill him, Jackson remembered.

When I asked him how often this would occur, he squirmed. I was making him dwell on painful memories. Why do you do this to me? he said.

Despite the physical abuse, the boys never said a word and never failed to perform. From Michael Jacksons perspective it was a period of relentless discipline combined with non-stop performance a terrifying mix. But Joseph didnt stop with the violence. He was also verbally abusive in a most painful way. During adolescence the lovable baby Michael suddenly grew tall and grew spots; lots of them. His father liked to ask Michael where he got his nose from and would then follow up with the answer: You didnt get that from my side of the family.

Its tempting to attribute the stars ever-changing face to a lack of self-worth engendered by this early taunting. But Jackson is evasive on the subject of surgery. When I asked him about the rumours that he had had implants in his cheeks, a dimple made in his chin, his lips enlarged and his nose reconstructed, he practically begged me to stop questioning him. Each time his response was the same: Oh please . . . Then, like a petulant child, he exclaimed: Its stupid! Dysfunctional childhoods are all the rage for excusing the actions of adults, yet Jackson seems to have started adult life at the age of six. By then he was rehearsing at home and two years later he sang lead vocal on his first record, entitled Big Boy. The song concerns a young man trying to persuade a woman to reciprocate his affection for her. And, although aged just eight, his inflection and vocal appeal is as good as any love song you will hear in todays charts.

Perhaps the lasting impact of Jacksons childhood was to fabricate an environment around him that has prevented him from living in what most would call the real world. How many 12-year-olds receive royalty cheques of $200,000? How many musicians can claim to have assets of $1 billion? He may or may not be strictly accurate in his figures, but he has sold millions of records and somebody has banked the royalties. Money is not something hes ever had to value too much and its allowed him to create an alternative universe.

I asked Jackson how much he thought he was worth. Its way up there, he said, then tailed off. No, go on, I persisted, just how much? He wouldnt say. He said he was too embarrassed. The obvious answer is too much.

Probably the most contentious issue for Jackson is sex. I tackled him on his developing sexuality as an adolescent, on being too shy at the time to make love with his first girlfriend Tatum ONeal, and on those devastating allegations dating back to 1993, when he was accused of having sex with a boy called Jordan Chandler.

Our relationship almost collapsed at this point. He has always denied the allegations and, ultimately, he hangs all his being on the fact that, notwithstanding a multi-million-dollar out-of-court payment to Chandler in 1994, he has never been found guilty of any form of child abuse. Trouble is, if the alleged victim gets paid, then the alleged victim withdraws the complaint, and then many outside of Neverland assume the worst. Again, he operates within a place that is separate from the norms and customs of the outside world.

Yet it is his current predicament that is just as disturbing as any allegations of child abuse. Hes surrounded by bodyguards, nannies and other ancillary staff who only say what they think he wants to hear. And so the fabricated world in which he lives continues to stand firm. Every handsomely paid member of staff has a strong financial incentive to keep him sweet.

In Berlin last November I arrived at Jacksons hotel room just 30 minutes after hed dangled his youngest child from a balcony. Not one of his entourage was prepared to tell him that what he had done was ludicrous and dangerous. Because he was happy with the hundreds of fans outside his hotel, everybody had to share his view.

The final section of our film focuses on his own family and I think viewers will see Michael Jackson in a different light. How he responds to the film is impossible to predict. It will be the first time that he sees himself from the outside and this may prove to be a service to him, though Im not entirely confident.

And while I can say that it has been a privilege to get close to someone I believe to be the greatest vocalist and songwriter ever to dance on the stage of popular music, it will be a relief to walk away from Neverland and return to the relative normality of a family life, three naturally conceived children and the weekly trip to Sainsburys. Jacksons world might have been so different if hed had the chance of a similarly banal existence.

bron: www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,176-562709,00.html