Jackson (Nancy Sinatra & Lee Hazelwood)

 

In 1977, when I interviewed Michael and Tito Jackson, the Jackson brood were just coming out of a long period in the relative doldrums. The Jackson 5 had become one of Motown’s most well known acts initially charting with I want You Back in 1969 and being the first band ever to have their first four singles top the American charts. They continued to produce many more hits until they seemed to run out of steam in 1973. Michael was always the focal point of the band and during their successful career as a vocal group, he had taken time out to have solo hits like Ben, Got to be There and She’s Out of My Life. A label switch to Philadelphia hadn’t really solved the problem of the band’s decline, but a subsequent move to Epic seemed to have done the trick. When they came into the UK for a promotional tour, Let Me Show You the Way to GO was already flying towards the number one slot.

 

When they arrived in the self-op they were accompanied by an elderly white lady who wasn’t introduced to me. Although this was some time before Michael became quite possibly the most successful artiste in pop history, he was very much the head brother and if felt like Tito was there more or less, as a stooge. Michael was unrecognisable from the physical person he would eventually become. He had a shortish afro and all the standard physical attributes of a late-teenager of African extraction. If you’d been able to put that Michael next to the Michael Jackson of the Bad period then you would have struggled to realise they were the same person. We did introductions and voice levels and I began to ask the questions. My interviews were not the standard Radio 1 fodder of ‘nice to see you, what’s your favourite colour, are you enjoying your visit to the UK etc’. I liked to get more inside people and find out what made them tick. I began by asking Michael about his childhood. He wasn’t very forthcoming. It’s obvious these days why that would be a difficult subject for him, what with all the subsequent revelations of alleged abuse by his father, but this was way before those stories surfaced, so I wasn’t to know. Anyway Tito saved the day by chiming in and giving me a few stories about schooldays in Gary, Indiana. I then went back to Michael and asked him about his family life and how it must have been quite strange being in such a showbiz family from, what was for him, a very early age. Obviously that was way out of his comfort zone but again how was I to know. Michael stared at me quite menacingly and muttered that he couldn’t remember. Once again Tito answered for Michael in a lively but not particularly enlightening manner. I then asked about the situation with Michael’s solo career and rumours that he was once again going to flee the nest and pursue a path away from his brothers. At this point Michael quite petulantly asked me why I was asking all these dumb questions. Why wasn’t I just talking about the record, which is why they were there. I explained that I liked to get context and background in my interviews so that the listeners would feel they had got closer to the artistes and the artistes would feel like they were more than just chart statistics. Michael hissed at me

 

“You’re just weird!”

 

I carried on as if I hadn’t heard and asked more questions not about the record. Michael’s response was to sit there with his arms folded staring into space and seething. Tito continued to play the go-between trying his best to keep the interview going with light hearted banter about nothing in particular, but it was easy to see for both parties this was going nowhere. I turned to Michael and said that if he wasn’t prepared to answer my questions then it was pointless to continue wasting each other’s time. He said that he would only answer questions about the record. I didn’t feel inclined to let an interviewee dictate the terms in such a manner. Sometimes when agreeing to do an interview artistes would stipulate ‘no-go areas’ usually to do with their private lives which was fair enough, but I’d never had anyone making such specific stipulations before. I turned around and rather melodramatically switched off the tape machine before turning back to Michael and Tito and saying that I thought it was best if we just stopped there and they left the studio. The white lady came across and protested that I was treating her charges badly but I pointed out that they were there to answer questions and if Michael wouldn’t do that then there was no point prolonging the agony. She gathered up the brothers and led them out of the studio. As they were leaving I thanked Tito for his co-operation and told him that I hoped there were no hard feelings. He turned and grinned at me, put his hand out and said

 

“Hey”

 

Michael wouldn’t even look at me, let alone say goodbye.

 

Within a couple of days I had an official letter of complaint from a CBS UK bigwig. I phoned and spoke to someone in the promotions department and asked them what they were thinking of, complaining about me! They had sent me an artiste for interview who refused to answer questions and had completely wasted my time. I suggested if we were going to continue working with each other they ensure this didn’t happen again and banged the phone down.

 

This little hiccup didn’t seem to damage Michael’s ambition any as The Jacksons entered another period of chart success with records like Can You Feel It and Shake Your Body Down to the Ground, before Michael went off to do the rumoured solo career, commencing with the album Off the Wall. He enjoyed global success on a level not experienced by any other artiste but then the well-publicized ‘weirdness’ crept in and eventually took over, causing much of his fan-base to desert him. he is now rumoured to be broke, but just what does broke mean when you are talking about someone whose royalty cheques were once bigger than the GDP of many a small country?

 

I suppose the one thing I can take from all of this is having had the privilege of Michel Jackson calling me ‘weird’!