Author: Fred Colby

2009

June 24 (Wednesday) : Michael goes to the Staples Center where he meets with the production team to finalize some visual elements of the show. Afterwards, he attends a meeting about a planned Halloween TV special scheduled to air on October 31, 2009 on CBS, featuring footage of “Thriller” and “Threatened” from the shows. Later, MJ rehearses three songs: “Thriller”, “Threatened”, and “Earth Song”.

June 23 (Tuesday) : Michael and the “This Is It” team start rehearsing at the Staples Center in L.A. Michael rehearses several songs in full including Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin, Jam and They Don’t Care About us.

June 22 (Monday) : Production for This Is It moves from The Forum to the Staples Center in Los Angeles. Karen Faye Faye goes over to Michael’s house to replace his wig. She waits a couple of hours and is told to leave, MJ doesn’t want to do it.

June 19 (Friday) : During the last day of rehearsal at the Forum, Michael seems upset, not coherent, drugged and disoriented so following Kenny Ortega’s suggestion he decides to go back home in order to rest.

June 18 (Thursday) : Michael does not show up at rehearsals. Randy Phillips goes to Michael’s house at 100 Carolwood Way. In the presence of Dr Murray he demands Michael to stop seeing Dr Klein and stop takings the drugs Dr Klein give him. Michael finally goes to the rehearsal at the Forum at 9:30 pm visibly shaken. He hugs his dancers and crew, he’s wearing a Michael Bush jacket that was supposed to wear during I Just Can’t Stop Loving You in the concerts. He rehearses I’ll Be There, The Jacksons medley and Black Or White.

June 17 : Stage rehearsals running through the first half of the set (Wanna Be, Speechless, Jam, The Drill, Human Nature, Smooth, The Way You Make Me Feel). MJ coaches the dancers on Dangerous, gets off-stage and sees them rehearsing the dance routine.

June 16 : Michael attends rehearsals at the Forum. Michael & team try new stage production effects such as the side fans, the toasters, the cherrypicker and more. Stage rehearsals from the top of the setlist to the Jacksons medley. On his way back to his house, Michael seems “confuse and incoherent” according to Talitha.

June 13 : Michael cancels rehearsals in “Doctor’s orders”.

June 7 : Michael has an 11am appointment with Lou Ferrigno. Michael goes to Culver Studios at 1:30 PM then he meets Seth Riggs at 3:30 pm at the Forum. At 5pm, Michael rehearsed with Band.

June 6 : Michael and his team checks special effects & stage production for the show. When Michael takes off the Balmain jacket, he is ready to perform on stage. A few songs from the second half of the setlist were rehearsed including You Are Not Alone, Billie Jean and Man In The Mirror. At the end of the evening, the complete staff gets on a round and Michael says some inspiring words for what they expect to live in the coming months.

June 5 : Rehearsals at The Forum. Michael arrives and hugs his dancers while the band is playing “Heartbreak Horel”. Vocal coach Dorian Holley warms up with Michael. Michael rehearses Human Nature, I Just Can’t Stop Loving You, Thriller, Beat It and a bit of Don’t Stop Til you Get Enough.

June 4 : Michael attends rehearsals at the Forum for the first time. Michael visits Culver Studios on the set of The Drill/TDCAU and Thriller which would be shown on the backdrop screens of the show. Michael coaches the dancers before and during the filming, he also checks the visuals for Earth Song. Songs rehearsed : The Drill/TDCAU, Jam, Smooth Criminal, The Way You Make Me Feel, Stranger In Moscow.

June 01 : The “This Is It” team leaves Center Staging for a bigger place : The Forum in Inglewood, California.

May 29 : Michael has a meeting with his team to check visual references for the dome projects that were in the works. As Michael leaves the venue, some fans stop him in his car to take some photos, these being the last photos they got with him.

May 27 : First day of rehearsals at the Forum in Los Angeles.

May 13 : Michael hires magician Ed Alonzo to work on the “This Is It” show.

April 22/23 : Michael rehearses songs at CenterStaging.

April 16 : Michael goes to CenterStaging where he meets Frank Dileo, Travis Payne and his fans Talitha and Robert.

April 13/14/15 : Auditions take place at the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood to select the dancers for Michael’s upoming concerts. Michael attends the final call back on the 15th along with his choreographer Travis Payne and creative director Kenny Ortega. They select 6 men (with 4 understudies) and 2 women (with 2 understudies) on a 2-year contract to perform “national” and “international” venues on the “This Is It” tour.

March 28 : Michael goes to CenterStaging, a studio in Burbank, California with Kenny Ortega and Travis Payne to start rehearsals for This Is It.

2008

Early January : Michael rehearses with Lavelle Smith for the upcoming Grammy Awards. But soon after the performance is cancelled.

2002

April 24 : Michael performs “Dangerous”, “Black Or White” & “Heal The World” (joined by Diana Ross!) during a fund-raiser for the Democratic National Committee’s Every Vote Counts ‘campaign held at the mythic Apollo Theatre in Harlem. This is Michael’s last live performance in front of an audience. Brett Barnes, Prince, Paris, Blanket, Grace, the Cascio family Chris Tucker & Rodney Jerkins attend the event. Afterwards Michael makes a photoshoot with Bill Clinton. While in NYC Michael introduces Prince, Paris & Blanket to President Clinton and Diana Ross and his son Evan Ross.

April 23 : Michael and his dancers rehearse for the upcoming ‘A Night at the Apollo’ performance.

2001

October 21 : Michael is in Washington DC where he participates at a TV concert for the victims of September 11. He performs “Man In The Mirror” and at the end, he sings “What More Can I Give” with all the artists of the night (including Usher & Mariah Carey) Prince, Paris, Macauley Culkin, the Cascios, Kenny Ortega & Marc Schaffel attend the concert backstage.

September 10 : Michael performs a second concert at the Madison Square Garden . At the end of You Rock My World, Usher & Chris Tucker gets on the stage to dance with him!

September 7 : It’s Michael’s day in New York City ! All the biggest stars of music, films & sport gather to attend his concert at the Madison Square Garden . Michael arrives one hour late with Elizabeth Taylor and during the first part of the show he watches tributes perfomances of his songs by today’s biggest artist in a VIP section with all his family & friends (Joe, Katherine, Rebbie, Macauley Culkin, the Cascios, Gregory Peck, Mark Lester & many more) while other friends such as Liza Minelli or Marlon Brando pay him respect on stage. During the second part of the show, Michael performs a live medley with the Jacksons (joined by N’Sync on Dancing Machine), + The Way You Make Me Feel in duet with Britney Spears, Billie Jean, Black Or White with Slash, You Rock My World & We Are The World with Quincy Jones, Yoko Ono and many stars.

September 6 : Michael goes to the Madison Square Garden to rehearse his duets with Britney Spears, Whitney Houston & N’Sync.

August 9 : In a Los Angeles dance studio, Michael starts rehearsing a medley with his 5 brothers for the upcoming New York concerts.

1999

June 27 : Michael performs his second concert in Munich . During Earth Song, a technical problem occurs and the central section of The Bridge Of No Return collapses which hurts Michael’s feet and back (he’s taken to the hospital after the show). The show is broadcasted live on German TV.

June 25 : Michael performs performs at Chamsil Olympic Stadium in Seoul, Korea, for his “Michael Jackson & Friends” charity concert. He also speaks of Korea and its president at the time. He performs a medley (Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough”/”The Way You Make Me Feel”/”Scream”/”Beat It”/”Black or White”/”Billie Jean”), “Dangerous”, “Earth Song”, and “You Are Not Alone”. The concert is broadcasted live on Koean TV. Backstage he spends time with Boys 2 Men and Mariah Carey.

June 24 : Michael rehearses his performance for MJ & Friends in Seoul including the song “She’s Out Of My Life” cut from the final setlist.

June 13-20 : Michael rehearses for the concerts in Los Angeles.

1997

October 15 : 82nd and last concert of the History World Tour at the Kings Park Stadium in Durban, South Africa.

October 12 : Concert at the Johannesburg Stadium in Johannesburg, South Africa.

October 10 : Concert at the Johannesburg Stadium in Johannesburg, South Africa.

October 06 : Concerts at the Green Point Stadium in Cape Town, South Africa. Nelson Mandela and his family attend the show.

October 04 : Concerts at the Green Point Stadium in Cape Town, South Africa. Nelson Mandela and his family attend the show.

September 6 : Last concert of the European tour at the Estadio José Zorrilla in Valladolid, Spain.

September 3 : Michael performs in Ostend, Belgium at the Hippodrome Wellington. He dedicates the rescheduled concert to Princess Diana.

September 1 : After hearing the tragic death of his friend Princess Diana, Michael cancels his concert in Ostend.

August 29 : Concert at the Parken Stadium in Copenhagen, Denmark, on Michael 39th birthday. A huge cake is presented to him on stage!

August 26 : Concert at the Helsinki Olympic Stadium in Helsinski, Finland.

August 24 : Concert at the Helsinki Olympic Stadium in Helsinski, Finland.

August 22 : Concert at the Tallinn Song Festival Grounds in Tallinn, Estonia.

August 19 : Concert at the Valle Hovin in Oslo, Norway.

August 16 : Concert at the Ullevi stadium in Gothemburg, Sweden.

August 14 : Concert at the Parken Stadium in Copenhagen, Denmark.

August 10 : Concert at the Hockenheimring in Hockenheim, Germany.

August 3 : Concert at the Leipziger Festwiese in Leipzig, Germany.

August 1 : Concert at the Olympiastadion in Berlin, Germany.

July 27 : Concert at the Stade Charles-Ehrmann in Nice, France.

July 25 : Concert at the St. Jakob Stadium in Basel, Switzerland.

July 19 : Concert at the RDS Arena in Dublin, Ireland.

July 17 : Concert at the Wembley Stadium in London, United Kindom.

July 15 : Concert at the Wembley Stadium in London, United Kindom. Lisa Marie Presley ans Katherine Jackson attend the show.

July 12 : Concert at the Wembley Stadium in London, United Kindom. Lisa Marie Presley ans Katherine Jackson attend the show.

July 09 : Concert at the Don Valley Stadium in Sheffield, United Kingdom. Debbie Rowe attends the show.

July 6 : Concert at the Olympiastadion in Munich, Germany. Debbie Rowe attends the show. This concert is filmed for a planned DVD release. The film was never released due to MJ being unimpressed by his vocals brought on by laryngitis. In 2010, TV channels such as RTL 5, ZDF, WOWOW, and Veronica TV broadcast the Munich concert in HD, and those broadcasts can be found on YouTube. This broadcast contains footage mostly from the Munich July 6th show, but it has some snippets from the first Munich show (July 4th) and a large snippet of the Leipzig show (August 3rd) during the Jackson 5 Medley speech.

July 4 : Concerts at the Olympiastadion in Munich, Germany. Debbie Rowe attends the show.

July 2 : Concert at the Ernst-Happel-Stadion in Vienna, Austria. Debbie Rowe attends the show.

June 29 : Concert at the Parc Des Princes in Paris, France. Debbie Rowe attends the show.

June 27 : Concert at the Parc Des Princes in Paris, France. Debbie Rowe attends the show.

June 25 : Concert at the Stade de Gerland in Lyon, France.

June 22 : Concert at the Krakelshaff in Bettembourg, Luxemburg.

June 20 : Concert at the Stade Olympique de la Pontaise in Lausanne, Switzerland.

June 18 : Concert at the San Siro stadium in Milan, Italy.

June 15 : Concert at the Parkstadion in Gelsenkirchen, Germany.

June 13 : Concert at the Nordmarksportfeld in Kiel, Germany.

June 10 : Concert at the Johan Cruyff Arena in Amsterdam, Netherlands.

June 8 : Concert at the Johan Cruyff Arena in Amsterdam, Netherlands.

June 6 : Concert at the Weserstadion in Bremen, Germany.

June 3 : Concert at the RheinEnergieStadion in Cologne, Germany.

May 31 : Michael kicks off the European leg of the History Tour at the at the Weserstadion in Bremen, Germany.

May 29 : In Bremen, Germany, Michael makes a visit at the mayor of Bremen, Germany “Hening Scherf” and greets the fans before going to do his soundcheck at the stadium for his HIStory World Tour.

April : Michael rehearses for the second leg of the History Tour at the Disneyland Paris parade rehearsals studios.

January 4 : Concert at the Aloha Stadium in Honolulu (Hawaii), United Stades. Many family members attend the show including Katherine & Joe.

January 3 : Concert at the Aloha Stadium in Honolulu (Hawaii), United Stades. Many family members attend the show including Katherine & Joe.

1996

December 31 : Michael gives a free a free concert at the Jerudong Park in Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei. It’s a gift paid by the Sultan of Brunei for his people.

December 28 : Concert at the Fukuoka Dome in Fukuoka, Japan.

December 26 : Concert at the Fukuoka Dome in Fukuoka, Japan.

December 20 : Michael gives a concert at the Tokyo Dome in Tokyo, Japan.

December 17 : Michael gives a concert at the Tokyo Dome in Tokyo, Japan.

December 15 : Michael gives a concert at the Tokyo Dome in Tokyo, Japan.

December 13 : Michael gives a concert at the Tokyo Dome in Tokyo, Japan.

December 10 : Concert at the Asia World City Concert Grounds in Manila, Philippines.

December 8 : Concert at the Asia World City Concert Grounds in Manila, Philippines.

December 4 : Concert at the Burswood Dome in Perth, Australia.

December 2 : Concert at the Burswood Dome in Perth, Australia.

November 30 : Concert at the Burswood Dome in Perth, Australia.

November 26 : Concert at the Adelaide Oval in Adelaide, Australia.

November 24 : Concert at the Melbourne Cricket Ground in Melbourne, Australia.

November 22 : Concert at the Melbourne Cricket Ground in Melbourne, Australia.

November 19 : Concerts at the Queensland Sport and Athletics Centre in Brisbane, Australia.

November 16 : Michael gives a second concert at the Sydney Cricket Ground in Sydney (attended by Debbie).

November 14 : Michael gives a concert at the Sydney Cricket Ground in Sydney.

November 11 : Michael gives a concert at the Mount Smart Stadium in Auckland, New Zealand.

November 9 : Michael gives a concert at the Mount Smart Stadium in Auckland, New Zealand.

November 5 : Concert at the Impact, Muang Thong Thani in Bangkok, Thailand.

November 1 : Concert at the Stadium Merdeka in Mumbai, India.

October 29 : Concert at the Stadium Merdeka in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

October 27 : Concert at the Stadium Merdeka in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

October 25 : Concert at the National Stadium in Singapore, Republic of Singapore.

October 22 : Concert at the Zhongshan Soccer Stadium in Taipei, Taiwan.

October 20 : Concert at the Chungcheng Stadium in Kaoshung, Taiwan.

October 18 : Concert at the Zhongshan Soccer Stadium in Taipei, Taiwan.

October 13 : Concert at the Jamsil Olympic Stadium in Seoul, South Korea.

October 11 : Concert at the Jamsil Olympic Stadium in Seoul, South Korea to an audience of 50,000.The concert is filmed and later released commercially in Asia.

October 7 : Michael performs a historic concert at El Menzah Stadium before 60 000 people in Tunis, capital of Tunisia. The performance marks the first time MJ performs in the continent of Africa.

October 2 : Concert at the Johan Cruyff Arena in Amsterdam, Netherlands.

September 30 : Concert at the Johan Cruyff Arena in Amsterdam, Netherlands.

September 28 : Concert at the Johan Cruyff Arena in Amsterdam, Netherlands.

September 24 : Concert at the La Romareda stadium in Zaragoza, Spain.

September 20 : Concert at the Lotnisko Bemowo in Warsaw, Poland.

September 17 : Concert at the Central Dynamo Stadium in Moscow, Russia.

September 14 : Concert at the Stadionul Național in Bucharest, Romania.

September 10 : Concert at the Ferenc Puskás Stadium in Budapest, Hungary.

September 07 : Michael kicks off his History World Tour before 130 000 people at the Letná Park in Prague, Czech Republic.

September 06 : Michael rehearses for the opening night of the History Tour at the Letná Park in Prague, Czech Republic.

Late july : Michael resumes the History Tour rehearsals in San Bernrdino, California.

July 16 : For the Sultan’s birthday celebrations, Michael performs his first ever free concert before 60 000 people at the Jerudong Amusement Park in Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei. The concert is taped and eventually offered to the people of Brunei.

June : Michael starts rehearsing for the History Tour with Kenny Ortega.
He also rehearses for a special concert in Brunei based on the Dangerous Tour concept.

1995

December 8 : Just hours before the first show is scheduled to take the stage with a live audience, the cast and crew at the Beacon Theatre is again asked to assemble themselves for a meeting, with Margolis delivering the news that no one wants to hear : The show will not go on.

December 7 : The One Night Only cast and crew continues to run numbers and camera block at the Beacon Theatre.

December 6 : Fouth day of dress rehearlsals at the Beacon Theatre. Just before 5 P.M, during the second of several planned full-day dress rehearsals at the Beacon Theatre, and just two days after he and Marcel Marceau had fronted the media to promote the HBO special, Michael collapses on stage. Witnesses recall that it was during camera blocking for “Black or White” that Jackson’s collapse took place. Michael is rushed to Beth Israel Medical Center North at 170 East End Avenue on the Upper East Side of New York. Meanwhile, a meeting is called in the lobby at the Beacon Theatre.

December 5 : Third day of dress rehearlsals at the Beacon Theatre.

December 4 : Second day of dress rehearlsals at the Beacon Theatre. Michael is rehearsing his “Childhood” performance at the Beacon Theatre with French artist Mime Marceau and they welcome the press.

December 3 : First day of dress rehearlsals at the Beacon Theatre : “We were at the Beacon for a total of about seven days. By the time we got the set in, and lit, and got all the technical equipment in. I think we rehearsed on the stage for four days, and Michael wasn’t there the first day as it was mostly a dance rehearsal for the dancers to find their spacing on the stage. And then Michael came in and rehearsed the second, third and fourth day. The first day that Michael was there he did a half-day, and the second and third days were full days for him.”

Mid November : Michael starts reheasing for his upcoming HBO Special at Sony Studios in New York City with executive producer Jeff Margolis and several chroreographers (Jamie King, Barry Lather, Kenny Ortega, Travys Payne, Lavelle Smith Jr, Debbie Allen). Brab Buxer is the musical director and Michael Bush creates the costumes.

1993

November 12 : Michael announces in an audio-taped message that he is cancelling the rest of the tour in order to seek treatment for an addiction to painkillers.

November 11 : Last concert of the Dangerous World Tour at the Estadio Azteca in Mexico City, Mexico.

November 09 : Concert at the Estadio Azteca in Mexico City, Mexico.

November 7 : Concert at the Estadio Azteca in Mexico City, Mexico.

November 2 : Michael reschedules his third Mexican concert due to a severe toothache.

October 31 : Concert at the Estadio Azteca in Mexico City, Mexico.

October 30 : The Dangerous Tour’s Mexico City concert is canceled and postponed to the following day.

October 29 : Michael performs a concert the first of five concert at the Estadio Azteca before 100 000 people in Coyoacán, a borough in Mexico City.

October 23 : Michael performs at the Estadio Nacional Julio Martínez Prádanos in Santiago, Chile.

October 21 : Michael’s first concert in Santiago is cancelled due to a back injury.

October 17 : Concert at the Estádio do Morumbi in São Paulo, Brazil.

October 15 : Concert at the Estádio do Morumbi in São Paulo, Brazil.

October 12 : Michael performs his third concert at the River Plate Stadium in Buenos Aires, Argentina before an audience of 70000 spectators.

October 10 : Michael performs his second concert at the River Plate Stadium in Buenos Aires, Argentina before an audience of 70000 spectators.

October 08 : Michael performs his first concert at the River Plate Stadium in Buenos Aires, Argentina before an audience of 70000 spectators. For the first time this year, he includes ‘Man In The Mirror’ in the song list.

September 27-October 6 : Following the cancellation of the South African concerts due to continued violence there, Michael takes a break and goes to Switzeland with Frank & Eddie.

September 26 : Michael performs a concert at the Port of Santa Cruz de Tenerife in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, one of the capitals of the Canary Islands. Minutes before the show he meets backstage Laurent Hopman, the president of his French fan-club. Katherine & the Cascios boys are also there.

September 23 : Concert at the BJK İnönü Stadium in Istanbul, Turkey.

September 21 : Concert at the Yarkon Park in Tel Aviv, Israel.

September 19 : Concert at the Yarkon Park in Tel Aviv, Israel.

September 15 : Concert at the Luzhniki Olympic Stadium in Moscow, Russia.

September 11 : Concert at the Mizuho PayPay Dome Fukuoka in Fukuoka, Japan.

September 10 : Concert at the Mizuho PayPay Dome Fukuoka in Fukuoka, Japan.

September 6 : Concert at the Taipei Municipal Stadium in Tapei, Taiwan

September 4 : Concert at the Taipei Municipal Stadium in Tapei, Taiwan.

September 1 : Concert at the National Stadium, Singapore in Singapore, Republic of Singapore.

August 30 : The second concert in Singapore is cancelled when Michael collapses backstage moments before the show is due to begin suffering from a severe migraine.

August 29 : Concert at the National Stadium, Singapore in Singapore, Republic of Singapore on Michael’s 35th birthday.

August 27 : Concert at the Suphachalasai Stadium in Bangkok, Thailand.

August 26 : Michael’s concert is is again rescheduled for august 27 (he releases an audio-taped message to his fans).

August 25 : Michael’s second concert in Bangkok is rescheduled to august 26 because Michael is suffering from acute dehydration.

August 24 : Michael launches the third leg of his Dangerous World Tour with a concert at the Suphachalasai Stadium in Bangkok, Thailand.

August 16 : Michael has Dangerous tour rehearsals in Los Angeles.

August 15 : Michael has Dangerous tour rehearsals in Los Angeles.

August : Michael rehearses for the 3rd leg of the Dangerous World Tour.

Late June : In Los Angeles, Michael starts rehearsing for the 3rd leg of the Dangerous World Tour.

1992

December 31 : Last concert of the second leg of the Dangerous tour at the Tokyo Dome with Slash playing the guitar! Michael celebrates New Year’s eve on stage with a countdown.

December 30 : Concert at the Tokyo Dome. 

December 24 : Concert at the Tokyo Dome.

December 22 : Concert at the Tokyo Dome.

December 19 : Concert at the Tokyo Dome.

December 17 : Concert at the Tokyo Dome.

December 14 : concert at the Tokyo Dome in Tokyo.

December 12 : Michael kicks of the japonese leg of his Dangerous World Tour with a concert at the Tokyo Dome in Tokyo.

October 4 : Five hours before Michael is due to perform in Istanbul, Turkey, the concert is canceled. Michael goes to London.

October 1 : Michael performs a concert at Lia Manoliu National Stadium in Bucharest (demolished in 2008 and replaced since 2011 by the Arena Națională), the largest stadium in the country, with a capacity of nearly 70,000 people. The concert is broadcasted live to 61 countries across the world and on October 10 on HBO.

September 26 : Concert at the Estádio José Alvalade in Lisbon, Portugal.

September 23 : Concert at the Vicente Calderón Stadium in Madrid, Spain.

September 21 : Concert at the Estadio Carlos Tartiere in Oviedo, Spain.

September 18 : Concert at the Estadi Olímpic Lluís Companys in Barcelona, Spain.

September 16 : Concert at the Stade de Toulouse in Toulouse, France.

September 13 : Concert at the Hippodrome de Vincennes, near Paris, France.

September 11 : Michael cancels another concert in Basel, Switzerland.

September 8 : Concert at the Stade Olympique de la Pontaise in Lausanne, Switzerland.

September 6 : Michael cancels his concert in Gelsenkirchen because of severe throat problems.

September 4 : Concert at the Friedrich-Ludwig-Jahn-Sportpark in East Berlin, Germany.

September 2 : Concert at the Hans-Walter-Wild-Stadion in Bayreuth, Germany.

August 30 : Concert at the Südweststadion in Ludwigshafen, Germany.

August 28 : Concert at the Waldstadion in Frankfurt, Germany.

August 26 : Concert at the Ernst-Happel-Stadion in Vienna, Austria.

August 23 : Concerts at the Wembley arena in England.

August 22 : Concerts at the Wembley arena in England.

August 20 : Concerts at the Wembley arena in England.

August 18 : Concert at the Glasgow Green in Glasgow, Scotland.

August 16 : Concert at the Roundhay Park in Leeds, England.

August 13 : Concert at the Weserberglandstadion in Hamelin, Germany.

August 10 : Concert at the Volksparkstadion in Hamburg, Germany.

August 8 : Concert at the Weserstadion in Bremen, Germany.

August 5 : Concert at the Cardiff Arms Park in Cardiff, Wales.

August 1 : Michael cancels the third Wembley concert at the last minute due to a nausea-type virus.

July 31 : Concert at the Wembley stadium in London, England. Michael meets Prince Charles backstage before the concert and presents him with a cheque for £200 000 for the Prince’s Trust.

July 30 : Concert at the Wembley stadium in London, England. Janet, Rene & Tina attend the show.

July 25 : Concert at the Lansdowne Road in Dublin, Ireland.

July 22 : Concert at the Rock Werchter in Werchter, Belgium.

July 20 : Concert at the Gentofte Sportspark in Copenhagen, Denmark.

July 18 : Concert at the tockholm Olympic Stadium in Stockholm, Sweden.

July 17 : Concert at the tockholm Olympic Stadium in Stockholm, Sweden.

July 15 : Concert at the Valle Hovin in Oslo, Norway.

July 11 : Concert at the Müngersdorfer Stadion in Cologne, Germany.

July 7 : Concert at the Stadio Brianteo in Monza, Italy.

July 6 : Concert at the Stadio Brianteo in Monza, Italy.

July 4 : Concert at the Stadio Flaminio in Rome, Italy.

July 1 : Concert at the De Kuip in Rotterdam, Netherlands.

June 30 : Concert at the De Kuip in Rotterdam, Netherlands.

June 27 : Michael kicks off the Dangerous World Tour with a concert at the Olympiastadion in Munich, Germany.

June : Dangerous Tour rehearsals continue in L.A.

May 16 : Michael tapes his Dangerous Tour rehearsals at at Culver Studios.

May : Michael starts the Dangerous Tour rehearsals in L.A with Kenny Ortega, Lavelle Smith, Greg Phillinganes and Brad Buxer.

May 10, 2000 : Prince Albert of Monaco presents Michael with the Artist Of The Millenium Award at the very end of the World Music Awards ceremony in Monaco.

Prince Albert: I am very pleased to present the 2000 Millenium Award to an artist whose music, generosity and unmatched showmanship has lent color and brightness to the 20th century. A thousand years from now when the history of popular music is examined no single performer will be as remembered and as celebrated as Michael Jackson.

It’s rare for a child performer to be successful in his adult career and than still that career to take off into the stratosphere as Michael’s did. And at the close of the century he has sold more records around the world than any single artist in the history of the medium. […] His influentual song ‘We Are The World’ and his international ‘Heal The World Foundation’ are just two of his many charitable efforts that have raised millions of $ for hundreds of important causes. Simply put Michael Jackson’s influence on entertainment, on charity and in fact on our entire culture is absolutely immeassurable. As we enter the 21st century we can look forward to even more outstanding achievements in music and feature films from this incredibly talented artist. It’s been a privilege to wittness Michael’s dazzling journey over the years which has transformed him from a singer to a superstar and from a charming little boy to a dignified man.

(Video intro to ‘Childhood’ and ‘Beat It’. Michael Jackson appears behind a white curtain. The curtain goes up and Michael glides forward on a little catwalk. Then he walks on stage wearing a head microphone. He shakes hands with Prince Albert.)

It’s an honor and privilege to present the 2000 Millenium Award to Michael Jackson.

(Prince Albert hands the award over to Michael Jackson.)

Michael Jackson: Thank you very, very much Prince Albert. I’m incredibly honored to have been chosen to receive this award. I’d like to thank the World Music Awards and especially the fans.

(Screams from the crowd.)

And you are the reason…you are the reason, why I continue to do what I do. I’ve been performing…

(A fan shouts: “I love you!” Michael smiles.)

I love you too. I love you. I’ve…I’ve been performing since I was 5 years old, so I haven’t had what you call an ordinary life, but I’ve been blessed with so many extraordinary opportunities and so many wonderful, wonderful friends all over the world that I wouldn’t change a minute of it, really.

I love you more! And I am so proud to thank…I thank God, and I am so proud God gave me the gift of song. And the world gave me the opportunity to be heard through music. And it’s because of moments like this I can say with all my heart that I’m very proud to be an entertainer. And… You ain’t seen nothing yet!

November 30, 2001 : Michael attends the G & P Foundation’s ‘Angel Ball’ benefit gala for cancer research at the Marriott Marquis Hotel in New York City with Schmuley Boteach and Denise Rich. Two members of boy band N-Sync, Lance Bass and JC Chasez, introduce him onto stage. MJ is presented with an award for his work fighting cancer from the G&P Foundation.

Two members of boy band N-Sync, Lance Bass and JC Chasez, introduced him onto stage. In their introduction they talked about Michael’s musical achievements with his album ‘Thriller’ and his charity song ‘We Are The World’, which, as JC said, sold 800,000 copies within three days of release!! They also talked about his humanitarian efforts. On this subject, Lance said:

No artist does as much to make the world a better place, and no other celebrity is more humble about his good work. What else can I say about him? He’s bad, he’s a thriller.”

When they introduced him onto the stage the audience erupted into applause. As Michael walked up, an orchestral version of ‘We Are The World’ was played. Michael then started his speech:

Wow, it’s incredible. I’m extremely honoured and moved by this gracious award, and first and foremost, I’d like to thank our hostess and my date tonight, Denise, who, with her beautiful spirit and abundant kindness, has quickly found a special place in my heart.

My close friend Rabbi Shmuley Boteach introduced me to Denise and I’m very grateful. Thank you Shmuley, thank you so much for making this evening possible for me and for all of the important and meaningful projects that we have begun together.

I’m honoured Mr. President to receive this award in your presence, and I wanna, I wanna thank you all, for the years of dedication and service that you’ve rendered to the American people, you’ve been an incredible president and I love you.

And of course N-Sync; it’s great to meet you guys you know, and it’s an honour to receive this award, not only do you make all the girls scream, but I was also thrilled to learn that you are continuing the tradition that I also believe in, in using your accomplishments to help others with your own charitable foundation.

Cancer is the number one killer of children and it is only when we join together on evenings like this, that we can summon the courage and determination to stop it from ever robbing another child of the precious gift of life, or a parent of the joy of watching their child grow.

God bless you all for the love and support you’ve offered this evening; and I love you all very much. Thank you.”

March 6, 2001 : Michael goes to the Oxford University to give a moving speech about childhood.

On March 6, 2001, Michael Jackson adressed the Oxford Union (Oxford university, UK) to launch his new initiative ‘Heal The Kids’. After giving a very emotional speech, during which he broke down into tears, Michael basked in a five-minute long standing ovation.

During the speech, which ran approximately 40 minutes, Michael addressed the emotional neglect of today’s children as well as the emotional neglect of his own childhood. He spoke about his troubled relationship with his father and briefly of his own children, Prince and Paris. Michael’s speech also covered such topics as violence in US high schools, illiteracy in the US and UK, and even the very tragic story of James Bulger, the toddler who was abducted and killed by two older children in Liverpool.

Thank you, thank you dear friends, from the bottom of my heart, for such a loving and spirited welcome, and thank you, Mr President, for your kind invitation to me which I am so honoured to accept. I also want to express a special thanks to you Shmuley, who for 11 years served as Rabbi here at Oxford. You and I have been working so hard to form Heal the Kids, as well as writing our book about childlike qualities, and in all of our efforts you have been such a supportive and loving friend. And I would also like to thank Toba Friedman, our director of operations at Heal the Kids, who is returning tonight to the alma mater where she served as a Marshall scholar, as well as Marilyn Piels, another central member of our Heal the Kids team.

I am humbled to be lecturing in a place that has previously been filled by such notable figures as Mother Theresa, Albert Einstein, Ronald Reagan, Robert Kennedy and Malcolm X. I’ve even heard that Kermit the Frog has made an appearance here, and I’ve always felt a kinship with Kermit’s message that it’s not easy being green. I’m sure he didn’t find it any easier being up here than I do!

As I looked around Oxford today, I couldn’t help but be aware of the majesty and grandeur of this great institution, not to mention the brilliance of the great and gifted minds that have roamed these streets for centuries. The walls of Oxford have not only housed the greatest philosophical and scientific geniuses – they have also ushered forth some of the most cherished creators of children’s literature, from J.R.R. Tolkien to CS Lewis. Today I was allowed to hobble into the dining hall in Christ Church to see Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland immortalised in the stained glass windows. And even one of my own fellow Americans, the beloved Dr Seuss graced these halls and then went on to leave his mark on the imaginations of millions of children throughout the world.

I suppose I should start by listing my qualifications to speak before you this evening. Friends, I do not claim to have the academic expertise of other speakers who have addressed this hall, just as they could lay little claim at being adept at the moonwalk – and you know, Einstein in particular was really TERRIBLE at that.

But I do have a claim to having experienced more places and cultures than most people will ever see. Human knowledge consists not only of libraries of parchment and ink – it is also comprised of the volumes of knowledge that are written on the human heart, chiselled on the human soul, and engraved on the human psyche. And friends, I have encountered so much in this relatively short life of mine that I still cannot believe I am only 42. I often tell Shmuley that in soul years I’m sure that I’m at least 80 – and tonight I even walk like I’m 80! So please harken to my message, because what I have to tell you tonight can bring healing to humanity and healing to our planet.

Through the grace of God, I have been fortunate to have achieved many of my artistic and professional aspirations realised early in my lifetime. But these, friends are accomplishments, and accomplishments alone are not synonymous with who I am. Indeed, the cheery five-year-old who belted out Rockin’ Robin and Ben to adoring crowds was not indicative of the boy behind the smile.

Tonight, I come before you less as an icon of pop (whatever that means anyway), and more as an icon of a generation, a generation that no longer knows what it means to be children.

All of us are products of our childhood. But I am the product of a lack of a childhood, an absence of that precious and wondrous age when we frolic playfully without a care in the world, basking in the adoration of parents and relatives, where our biggest concern is studying for that big spelling test come Monday morning.

Those of you who are familiar with the Jackson Five know that I began performing at the tender age of five and that ever since then, I haven’t stopped dancing or singing. But while performing and making music undoubtedly remain as some of my greatest joys, when I was young I wanted more than anything else to be a typical little boy. I wanted to build tree houses, have water balloon fights, and play hide and seek with my friends. But fate had it otherwise and all I could do was envy the laughter and playtime that seemed to be going on all around me.

There was no respite from my professional life. But on Sundays I would go Pioneering, the term used for the missionary work that Jehovah’s Witnesses do. And it was then that I was able to see the magic of other people’s childhood.

Since I was already a celebrity, I would have to don a disguise of fat suit, wig, beard and glasses and we would spend the day in the suburbs of Southern California, going door-to-door or making the rounds of shopping malls, distributing our Watchtower magazine. I loved to set foot in all those regular suburban houses and catch sight of the shag rugs and La-Z-Boy armchairs with kids playing Monopoly and grandmas baby-sitting and all those wonderful, ordinary and starry scenes of everyday life. Many, I know, would argue that these things seem like no big deal. But to me they were mesmerising.

I used to think that I was unique in feeling that I was without a childhood. I believed that indeed there were only a handful with whom I could share those feelings. When I recently met with Shirley Temple Black, the great child star of the 1930s and 40s, we said nothing to each other at first, we simply cried together, for she could share a pain with me that only others like my close friends Elizabeth Taylor and McCauley Culkin know.

I do not tell you this to gain your sympathy but to impress upon you my first important point : It is not just Hollywood child stars that have suffered from a non-existent childhood. Today, it’s a universal calamity, a global catastrophe. Childhood has become the great casualty of modern-day living. All around us we are producing scores of kids who have not had the joy, who have not been accorded the right, who have not been allowed the freedom, or knowing what it’s like to be a kid.

Today children are constantly encouraged to grow up faster, as if this period known as childhood is a burdensome stage, to be endured and ushered through, as swiftly as possible. And on that subject, I am certainly one of the world’s greatest experts.

Ours is a generation that has witnessed the abrogation of the parent-child covenant. Psychologists are publishing libraries of books detailing the destructive effects of denying one’s children the unconditional love that is so necessary to the healthy development of their minds and character. And because of all the neglect, too many of our kids have, essentially, to raise themselves. They are growing more distant from their parents, grandparents and other family members, as all around us the indestructible bond that once glued together the generations, unravels.

This violation has bred a new generation, Generation O let us call it, that has now picked up the torch from Generation X. The O stands for a generation that has everything on the outside – wealth, success, fancy clothing and fancy cars, but an aching emptiness on the inside. That cavity in our chests, that barrenness at our core, that void in our centre is the place where the heart once beat and which love once occupied.

And it’s not just the kids who are suffering. It’s the parents as well. For the more we cultivate little-adults in kids’-bodies, the more removed we ourselves become from our own child-like qualities, and there is so much about being a child that is worth retaining in adult life.

Love, ladies and gentlemen, is the human family’s most precious legacy, its richest bequest, its golden inheritance. And it is a treasure that is handed down from one generation to another. Previous ages may not have had the wealth we enjoy. Their houses may have lacked electricity, and they squeezed their many kids into small homes without central heating. But those homes had no darkness, nor were they cold. They were lit bright with the glow of love and they were warmed snugly by the very heat of the human heart. Parents, undistracted by the lust for luxury and status, accorded their children primacy in their lives.

As you all know, our two countries broke from each other over what Thomas Jefferson referred to as “certain inalienable rights”. And while we Americans and British might dispute the justice of his claims, what has never been in dispute is that children have certain inalienable rights, and the gradual erosion of those rights has led to scores of children worldwide being denied the joys and security of childhood.

I would therefore like to propose tonight that we install in every home a Children’s Universal Bill of Rights, the tenets of which are:

1. The right to be loved without having to earn it

2. The right to be protected, without having to deserve it

3. The right to feel valuable, even if you came into the world with nothing

4. The right to be listened to without having to be interesting

5. The right to be read a bedtime story, without having to compete with the evening news

6. The right to an education without having to dodge bullets at schools

7. The right to be thought of as adorable – (even if you have a face that only a mother could love).

Friends, the foundation of all human knowledge, the beginning of human consciousness, must be that each and every one of us is an object of love. Before you know if you have red hair or brown, before you know if you are black or white, before you know of what religion you are a part, you have to know that you are loved.

About twelve years ago, when I was just about to start my Bad tour, a little boy came with his parents to visit me at home in California. He was dying of cancer and he told me how much he loved my music and me. His parents told me that he wasn’t going to live, that any day he could just go, and I said to him: “Look, I am going to be coming to your town in Kansas to open my tour in three months. I want you to come to the show. I am going to give you this jacket that I wore in one of my videos.” His eyes lit up and he said: “You are gonna GIVE it to me?” I said “Yeah, but you have to promise that you will wear it to the show.” I was trying to make him hold on. I said: “When you come to the show I want to see you in this jacket and in this glove” and I gave him one of my rhinestone gloves – and I never usually give the rhinestone gloves away. And he was just in heaven.

But maybe he was too close to heaven, because when I came to his town, he had already died, and they had buried him in the glove and jacket. He was just 10 years old. God knows, I know, that he tried his best to hold on. But at least when he died, he knew that he was loved, not only by his parents, but even by me, a near stranger, I also loved him. And with all of that love he knew that he didn’t come into this world alone, and he certainly didn’t leave it alone.

If you enter this world knowing you are loved and you leave this world knowing the same, then everything that happens in between can he dealt with. A professor may degrade you, but you will not feel degraded, a boss may crush you, but you will not be crushed, a corporate gladiator might vanquish you, but you will still triumph. How could any of them truly prevail in pulling you down? For you know that you are an object worthy of love. The rest is just packaging.

But if you don’t have that memory of being loved, you are condemned to search the world for something to fill you up. But no matter how much money you make or how famous you become, you will still fell empty. What you are really searching for is unconditional love, unqualified acceptance. And that was the one thing that was denied to you at birth.

Friends, let me paint a picture for you. Here is a typical day in America – six youths under the age of 20 will commit suicide, 12 children under the age of 20 will die from firearms – remember this is a DAY, not a year – 399 kids will be arrested for drug abuse, 1,352 babies will be born to teen mothers. This is happening in one of the richest, most developed countries in the history of the world.

Yes, in my country there is an epidemic of violence that parallels no other industrialised nation. These are the ways young people in America express their hurt and their anger. But don’t think that there is not the same pain and anguish among their counterparts in the United Kingdom. Studies in this country show that every single hour, three teenagers in the UK inflict harm upon themselves, often by cutting or burning their bodies or taking an overdose. This is how they have chosen to cope with the pain of neglect and emotional agony.

In Britain, as many as 20% of families will only sit down and have dinner together once a year. Once a year! And what about the time-honoured tradition of reading your kid a bedtime story? Research from the 1980s showed that children who are read to, had far greater literacy and significantly outperformed their peers at school. And yet, less than 33% of British children ages two to eight have a regular bedtime story read to them. You may not think much of that until you take into account that 75% of their parents DID have that bedtime story when they were that age.

Clearly, we do not have to ask ourselves where all of this pain, anger and violent behaviour comes from. It is self-evident that children are thundering against the neglect, quaking against the indifference and crying out just to be noticed. The various child protection agencies in the US say that millions of children are victims of maltreatment in the form of neglect, in the average year. Yes, neglect. In rich homes, privileged homes, wired to the hilt with every electronic gadget. Homes where parents come home, but they’re not really home, because their heads are still at the office. And their kids? Well, their kids just make do with whatever emotional crumbs they get. And you don’t get much from endless TV, computer games and videos.

These hard, cold numbers which for me, wrench the soul and shake the spirit, should indicate to you why I have devoted so much of my time and resources into making our new Heal the Kids initiative a colossal success.

Our goal is simple – to recreate the parent/child bond, renew its promise and light the way forward for all the beautiful children who are destined one day to walk this earth.

But since this is my first public lecture, and you have so warmly welcomed me into your hearts, I feel that I want to tell you more. We each have our own story, and in that sense statistics can become personal.

They say that parenting is like dancing. You take one step, your child takes another. I have discovered that getting parents to re-dedicate themselves to their children is only half the story. The other half is preparing the children to re-accept their parents.

When I was very young I remember that we had this crazy mutt of a dog named “Black Girl,” a mix of wolf and retriever. Not only wasn’t she much of a guard dog, she was such a scared and nervous thing that it is a wonder she did not pass out every time a truck rumbled by, or a thunderstorm swept through Indiana. My sister Janet and I gave that dog so much love, but we never really won back the sense of trust that had been stolen from her by her previous owner. We knew he used to beat her. We didn’t know with what. But whatever it was, it was enough to suck the spirit right out of that dog.

A lot of kids today are hurt puppies who have weaned themselves off the need for love. They couldn’t care less about their parents. Left to their own devices, they cherish their independence. They have moved on and have left their parents behind.

Then there are the far worse cases of children who harbour animosity and resentment toward their parents, so that any overture that their parents might undertake would be thrown forcefully back in their face.

Tonight, I don’t want any of us to make this mistake. That’s why I’m calling upon all the world’s children – beginning with all of us here tonight – to forgive our parents, if we felt neglected. Forgive them and teach them how to love again.

You probably weren’t surprised to hear that I did not have an idyllic childhood. The strain and tension that exists in my relationship with my own father is well documented. My father is a tough man and he pushed my brothers and me hard, from the earliest age, to be the best performers we could be.

He had great difficulty showing affection. He never really told me he loved me. And he never really complimented me either. If I did a great show, he would tell me it was a good show. And if I did an OK show, he told me it was a lousy show.

He seemed intent, above all else, on making us a commercial success. And at that he was more than adept. My father was a managerial genius and my brothers and I owe our professional success, in no small measure, to the forceful way that he pushed us. He trained me as a showman and under his guidance I couldn’t miss a step.

But what I really wanted was a Dad. I wanted a father who showed me love. And my father never did that. He never said I love you while looking me straight in the eye, he never played a game with me. He never gave me a piggyback ride, he never threw a pillow at me, or a water balloon.

But I remember once when I was about four years old, there was a little carnival and he picked me up and put me on a pony. It was a tiny gesture, probably something he forgot five minutes later. But because of that moment I have this special place in my heart for him. Because that’s how kids are, the little things mean so much to them and for me, that one moment meant everything. I only experienced it that one time, but it made me feel really good, about him and the world.

But now I am a father myself, and one day I was thinking about my own children, Prince and Paris and how I wanted them to think of me when they grow up. To be sure, I would like them to remember how I always wanted them with me wherever I went, how I always tried to put them before everything else. But there are also challenges in their lives. Because my kids are stalked by paparazzi, they can’t always go to a park or a movie with me.

So what if they grow older and resent me, and how my choices impacted their youth? Why weren’t we given an average childhood like all the other kids, they might ask? And at that moment I pray that my children will give me the benefit of the doubt. That they will say to themselves: “Our daddy did the best he could, given the unique circumstances that he faced. He may not have been perfect, but he was a warm and decent man, who tried to give us all the love in the world.”

I hope that they will always focus on the positive things, on the sacrifices I willingly made for them, and not criticise the things they had to give up, or the errors I’ve made, and will certainly continue to make, in raising them. For we have all been someone’s child, and we know that despite the very best of plans and efforts, mistakes will always occur. That’s just being human.

And when I think about this, of how I hope that my children will not judge me unkindly, and will forgive my shortcomings, I am forced to think of my own father and despite my earlier denials, I am forced to admit that me must have loved me. He did love me, and I know that.

There were little things that showed it. When I was a kid I had a real sweet tooth – we all did. My favourite food was glazed doughnuts and my father knew that. So every few weeks I would come downstairs in the morning and there on the kitchen counter was a bag of glazed doughnuts – no note, no explanation – just the doughnuts. It was like Santa Claus.

Sometimes I would think about staying up late at night, so I could see him leave them there, but just like with Santa Claus, I didn’t want to ruin the magic for fear that he would never do it again. My father had to leave them secretly at night, so as no one might catch him with his guard down. He was scared of human emotion, he didn’t understand it or know how to deal with it. But he did know doughnuts.

And when I allow the floodgates to open up, there are other memories that come rushing back, memories of other tiny gestures, however imperfect, that showed that he did what he could. So tonight, rather than focusing on what my father didn’t do, I want to focus on all the things he did do and on his own personal challenges. I want to stop judging him.

I have started reflecting on the fact that my father grew up in the South, in a very poor family. He came of age during the Depression and his own father, who struggled to feed his children, showed little affection towards his family and raised my father and his siblings with an iron fist. Who could have imagined what it was like to grow up a poor black man in the South, robbed of dignity, bereft of hope, struggling to become a man in a world that saw my father as subordinate. I was the first black artist to be played on MTV and I remember how big a deal it was even then. And that was in the 80s!

My father moved to Indiana and had a large family of his own, working long hours in the steel mills, work that kills the lungs and humbles the spirit, all to support his family. Is it any wonder that he found it difficult to expose his feelings? Is it any mystery that he hardened his heart, that he raised the emotional ramparts? And most of all, is it any wonder why he pushed his sons so hard to succeed as performers, so that they could be saved from what he knew to be a life of indignity and poverty?

I have begun to see that even my father’s harshness was a kind of love, an imperfect love, to be sure, but love nonetheless. He pushed me because he loved me. Because he wanted no man ever to look down at his offspring.

And now with time, rather than bitterness, I feel blessing. In the place of anger, I have found absolution. And in the place of revenge I have found reconciliation. And my initial fury has slowly given way to forgiveness.

Almost a decade ago, I founded a charity called Heal the World. The title was something I felt inside me. Little did I know, as Shmuley later pointed out, that those two words form the cornerstone of Old Testament prophecy. Do I really believe that we can heal this world, that is riddled with war and genocide, even today? And do I really think that we can heal our children, the same children who can enter their schools with guns and hatred and shoot down their classmates, like they did at Columbine? Or children who can beat a defenceless toddler to death, like the tragic story of Jamie Bulger? Of course I do, or I wouldn’t be here tonight.

But it all begins with forgiveness, because to heal the world, we first have to heal ourselves. And to heal the kids, we first have to heal the child within, each and every one of us. As an adult, and as a parent, I realise that I cannot be a whole human being, nor a parent capable of unconditional love, until I put to rest the ghosts of my own childhood.

And that’s what I’m asking all of us to do tonight. Live up to the fifth of the Ten Commandments. Honour your parents by not judging them. Give them the benefit of the doubt.

That is why I want to forgive my father and to stop judging him. I want to forgive my father, because I want a father, and this is the only one that I’ve got. I want the weight of my past lifted from my shoulders and I want to be free to step into a new relationship with my father, for the rest of my life, unhindered by the goblins of the past.

In a world filled with hate, we must still dare to hope. In a world filled with anger, we must still dare to comfort. In a world filled with despair, we must still dare to dream. And in a world filled with distrust, we must still dare to believe.

To all of you tonight who feel let down by your parents, I ask you to let down your disappointment. To all of you tonight who feel cheated by your fathers or mothers, I ask you not to cheat yourself further. And to all of you who wish to push your parents away, I ask you to extend you hand to them instead. I am asking you, I am asking myself, to give our parents the gift of unconditional love, so that they too may learn how to love from us, their children. So that love will finally be restored to a desolate and lonely world.

Shmuley once mentioned to me an ancient Biblical prophecy which says that a new world and a new time would come, when “the hearts of the parents would be restored through the hearts of their children”. My friends, we are that world, we are those children.

Mahatma Gandhi said: “The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.” Tonight, be strong. Beyond being strong, rise to the greatest challenge of all – to restore that broken covenant. We must all overcome whatever crippling effects our childhoods may have had on our lives and in the words of Jesse Jackson, forgive each other, redeem each other and move on.

This call for forgiveness may not result in Oprah moments the world over, with thousands of children making up with their parents, but it will at least be a start, and we’ll all be so much happier as a result.

And so ladies and gentlemen, I conclude my remarks tonight with faith, joy and excitement.

From this day forward, may a new song be heard.

Let that new song be the sound of children laughing.

Let that new song be the sound of children playing.

Let that new song be the sound of children singing.

And let that new song be the sound of parents listening.

Together, let us create a symphony of hearts, marvelling at the miracle of our children and basking in the beauty of love.

Let us heal the world and blight its pain.

And may we all make beautiful music together.

God bless you, and I love you.

October 15, 2001 : While Quincy Jones is promoting his autobiography On the Oprah Show, Michael calls him on the phone to congratulate him.

Oprah Winfrey: […] He’s worked with everybody from Billie Holiday to Frank Sinatra to Michael Jackson. I mean, when you span that whole–th–that’s not an era of music. That’s eras. OK. Quincy doesn’t know this, but there’s somebody on the phone who wanted to be here today but could not. Most of the world knows him as the King of Pop. Say hello to Michael Jackson. Michael. Michael. So hi, Michael.

Michael: Hi.

Oprah: Hi. Thanks for joining us.

Michael: Oh, I’m honored. I’m very honored.

Oprah: What’s it like, the experience of working with Mr. Jones?

Michael: What was it like working with–with Quincy?

Oprah: Yeah.

Michael: It’s–it’s very professional, very talented, and he’s a musical visionary. He’s been around, as you know, a very long time.

Quincy Jones: Michael?

Michael: Yes?

QJ: This is Quincy. Can I call you by the name we used to call and talk to each other by?

Michael: Yes, if you want.

QJ: Well, OK, S…

Michael: I’m scared.

QJ: Smelly. What’d he say?

Oprah: He said, `I’m scared.’

QJ: Smelly. OK.

Oprah: Now where did that come from? That…

QJ: That’s very affectionate, because Michael does not use any profanity ever, right–right, Smelly?

Michael: No. P–no. That’s right.

QJ: And–and so when it got good, we’d say, That was funky.' He said,Don’t say that. It’s smelly jelly,’ you know. It’s smelly jelly, so from now…

Oprah: You don’t even use `funky’?

QJ: No. Michael doesn’t say that word. If…

Oprah: No. No.

QJ: No.

Oprah: Doesn’t say any–any kind of bad words at all.

QJ: No. I’ve heard a couple, yeah.

Oprah: Yeah. OK.

QJ: But–but not–that’s…

Michael: From who?

QJ: From–from you.

Michael: Not me …(unintelligible).

QJ: Oh, no, no.

Oprah: No. So that’s why you started…

QJ: Just smelly jelly.

Oprah: That’s why you started calling him Smelly.

QJ: Yes.

Michael: Yeah.

Oprah: What have you learned from Q that–that you take with you for the rest of your life, Michael?

Michael: I learned a lot. You once said something to me, Qu–Quincy. I don’t know if you want it repeated. But it was just beautiful. You said, `You don’t write the music. You let the write–the music write itself. Let it create itself. It’s like we’re just the source through which it comes.’

Oprah: Yeah. I–I’ve heard him say he always leaves room for God to walk in the room.

Michael: There you go.

Oprah: Yeah.

QJ: The divinity is most important.

Oprah: Well, thank you, Michael, for joining us. Thanks for taking the time to call up and say, `Hey, Q.’

QJ: I love you, Smelly.

Michael: I love you more, Quincy.

Oprah: All right. All right.

QJ: The show was great in New York.

Michael: Thank you.

October 26, 2001 : Michael participates in an Online Audio Chat with his fans hosted by Yahoo & Get Music, sponsored by Rolling Stone. With music critic/writer Anthony DeCurtis, he answers questions from fans via telephone about the new album, the recording process and his music.

Anthony: Hello Ladies and Gentleman, this is Anthony DeCurtis. You’re on Getmusic.com and we’re here tonight for a very special event. The King of Pop, one of the greatest artists in the history of popular music, Michael Jackson, is going to be joining us. He has a new record coming out on Oct. 30, it’s called Invisible [interviewer’s error]. You can check it out at Michaeljackson.com, you can preorder it at Getmusic.com.

Michael, it’s a pleasure to talk to you, man.

Michael: Pleasure to talk with you.

Anthony: Tell us a little bit about the new album. It’s your first new record in 6 years. Uh, do you still get exited when you have something come out? Obviously you’ve accomplished so much over the years. You know, do you still feel that, like, “Wow, I wonder what people are gonna think” or, you know, feel all of that kind of anticipation.

Michael: I kinda parallel it to a, uh, you know… It’s like the gestation process of, uh, birth. You know, it’s a… You know, it’s like having children, and having to raise them and bring them out into the world, and once they get into the world they’re on their own. So, it’s, it’s, very exciting. I mean, you never get too used to it, ever. It’s, uh, an incredible process. But you leave it in the hands of God, like you do when you’re having a child.

Anthony: Absolutely. We’ve got questions already beginning to pour in from your fans on the Internet. We’ve got Electric Eyes, male, writing in. Says, “Michael, you are, in my mind, the greatest artist of all time. The true King of pop, rock, and soul.” And he wants to know, “What is your favorite song on the new album?”

Michael: My favorite song on the new album. Can I pick two?

Anthony: Uh, yeah, I think you can do that. You can pretty much do whatever you like.

Michael: Uh, it would probably be ‘Unbreakable’… I’ll pick three. ‘Unbreakable’, ‘Speechless’, and ‘The Lost Children’.

Anthony: Tell us about a couple of those tracks. You know, what was it like work… I mean, were there special guests, or were you working with new producers, or how you wrote them. You know, something that gives us some flavor.

Michael: Well, the songwriting process is something very difficult to explain because it’s very spiritual. It’s, ah… You really have it in the hands of God, and it’s as if its been written already — that’s the real truth. As if its been written in its entirety before were born and you’re just really the source through which the songs come. Really. Because there is… they just fall right into your lap in its entirety. You don’t have to do much thinking about it. And I feel guilty having to put my name, sometimes, on the songs that I — I do write them — I compose them, I write them, I do the scoring, I do the lyrics, I do the melodies but still, it’s a… It’s a work of God.

Anthony: Samantha from Canada just sent us in a question. She would like to know, “How would you describe the sound on ‘Invincible’ and have you incorporated any other genres into the album?”

Michael: Well, the sound is… Sonically, we always try to make sure we have, you know, pristine, detailed, uh, you know, the best sound, the best engineers, the best technicians available. And of course, I tried to make the album a potpourri of just wonderful melodies of any style. Because I don’t believe in stylizing or branding any type of music. I think a great artist should be able to just create any style, any form, any… any thing from rock to pop to folk to gospel to spiritual to just, just wonderful music where every, uh, anybody can sing it, from the Irish farmer to a lady who scrubs toilets in Harlem. If you can whistle it and hum it, that’s the most important thing.

Anthony: Now, when you’re working do you find, are you in a mode where you like to listen to a lot of other music, or you’re listening to the radio and maybe picking up people’s CDs. Or when you’re working do you like to just kinda shut it all out and concentrate, you know, intently on what you’re doing?

Michael: I pretty much… I always know what’s going on, on the radio and in clubs, that people are listening to. Even though people think I live at Neverland — mentally I’m in Never Neverland all the time — I’m always connected. I always know what’s going on in the music world, all the time. Not just in America but internationally. You know, all over the world. And uh, when I’m working though, I don’t… I’m not in… I don’t think I’m influenced by a lot of the music today. Uh, I pretty much create what I think is in my heart. Very original. I try to be as original as possible. I don’t say, “OK, I’m gonna make this a great R&B song, a great pop…” I just want to make a great song.

Anthony: Like the song takes it’s own form.

Michael: Yeah. Yes.

Anthony: Well, uh, Amber here on the Internet offers you lots of love and wonders if, um, it was fun for you to make the rock… the ‘You Rock My World’ video.

Michael: Yes, that was a lot of fun. Uh, it was… We stayed up all night, which was very hard [giggling]. We, uh, it was fun hearing it blasted on the set on really good speakers. That’s one of my favorite things, hearing the music really loud. ’Cause I like to play music loud. I mean, it’s, uh… If you play something over the Internet or small speakers, it doesn’t have the same punch. That’s why you have to buy it. You have to buy that CD to really hear that punch. It makes a huge difference. Huge difference. There’s no comparison. Buying the CD is the best thing. There’s no comparison. [Interruption from host]… You can’t hear all those sounds if you do it on a smaller system.

Anthony: And when you’re, uh… So when you’re out on the video set, uh, you’re able to just kinda crank it up as loud as you want?

Michael: As loud as I want.

Anthony: Very good [laughing]. Well, we have Michael Mathew from Canada. He says, “I just saw ‘Ghosts’ on MTV. As always, you are awesome, Michael. Do you have any plans of releasing it as a DVD in America?”

Michael: Yes, it will be released as a DVD in America in it’s entirety, and some of the making of ‘Ghosts’. And that was one of my most favorite things I’ve ever done because it’s been a dream of mine for a long time to do something like, you know, scary but comical at the same time, and, uh, it’s all the elements, just fun. ’Cause I don’t want to scare people to the point where they’re afraid to go to sleep. I want it to have a little twist of humor. And within the laugher there is a tear, you know? It’s fun, you know. These ghosts, they weren’t really scary, they were fun. They walked up the ceilings. Little kids were laughing at them. They were fun. You know, we don’t want to horrify them. But we gave this fat man, this Mayor, his justice, for coming into my house, which was private property, judging me. You know.

Anthony: Absolutely. We have Cloudlee2000 who writes in and wonders, “Why did you name the album ‘Invincible’?”

Michael: Well, invincible is something of… I think it’s a proper name. It’s one of the cuts on the album and I’ve been an artist… uh, not to pat myself on the back but the Guinness Book of World Records just listed me, uh, another time, as the artist who’s had the longest stretch career ’cause since I was a little, little kid to this point with still hit records from number one records, and uh, I’m so proud and honored that I’ve been chosen from the Heavens, or whatever it is, to be invincible, and to just continue to grow and to be, you know… serve the people. It serves the people with wonderful entertainment.

Anthony: Now, one of the, you know, the kind of conventional wisdom in the music industry is, you know, audiences don’t really have an attention span any more, you know. If an artist stays away for too long the audience wanders off and goes somewhere else. Was that a concern of yours with coming out with a record and taking a while to work on ‘Invincible’ or do you, uh, are you convinced your fan base is still there and will be as strong as ever?

Michael: I’m, I’m… No, the answer to your question is that has never concerned me once and I’ve never thought of it. Because I’ve always known if music is truly great or if a movie is truly great, people want to see it or hear it. No matter where you, how long you’ve been away, or whatever the situation is. You know, greatness is greatness and if you really do a great job on what you’re doing, people want to hear it. Or they want to see it. You know, it doesn’t matter, It really doesn’t. Long as you’re an innovator and a pioneer, you know. And that’s the most important thing. Give them what they want to hear.

Anthony: Now Slimslady420 U.S. sends in a question and wonders “which song on the ‘Invincible’ album do you think you personally relate to the most?”

Michael: Ummm, ‘Unbreakable’.

Anthony: Talk a bit about that track. Now you mentioned it a couple of times, I’m getting really curious about it. Could you… What could you tell us about it?

Michael: ’Cause, uh, I’m one of the few people, probably in show business, that have been through the ins and outs, you know, of so many different things. Um, I’ve been through hell and back. I have, to be honest, and uh, and still I’m able to do what I do and nothing can stop me. No one can stop me, no matter what. I stop when I’m ready to stop. You know, and uh, I’m just saying, you know, I will continue to move forward no matter what.

Anthony: Now we have Warful writes in, “Are you working or planning to do any more short films for ‘Invincible’, specifically for the really fast tracks such as ‘2000 Watts’, ‘Heartbreaker’, ‘Unbreakable’, and ‘Invincible’?”

Michael: Absolutely, and she said… Whoever said that said the right word when they said said ‘short films’. And uh, that’s what we try to make them, short films: a beginning and middle and a ending of a story. Uh, to take the medium to a new level but absolutely. There’s like a an array of, an encyclopedia of just great short films to make from the album. It’s very exciting. I can’t wait to do ‘Threatened’. It’s a kind of scary one with Rod Serling from the Twilight Zone. I can’t wait to get my hands on that one.

Anthony: We have a question here from Nepolian3, says his name is George really, and it says, “Michael, I think this is your most cohesive and impressive album since ‘Thriller’. Or, really, ‘Off The Wall’. What are some of your most memorable moments while recording the tracks for this album?”

Michael: Most memorable moments were, it was… of all my albums I would say this one was the toughest. ’Cause I was hardest on myself. Uh, I wrote so many songs, I don’t want to say the number, just to get to uh, how many are on there, 16? Just to get to the 16 that I think are acceptable. And, um, it’s the album where… I didn’t have children before other albums, so I caught a lot of colds; I was sick a lot. Cause my children got [interruption from host]. So we had to stop and start again and stop and start and… constantly. But I enjoyed it very, very much.

Anthony: Now, when you describe yourself as being tough on yourself during the recording process. How does that, you know… what is the process that you go to. If you think something isn’t quite what it ought to be or maybe you could do better or you know, maybe you want to move something in a new direction. You know, what is that like?

Michael: If I truly told you, I don’t know if the fans would like me anymore [giggles]. I’ve had musicians who really get angry with me because I’ll make them do something literally several hundred to a thousand times till it’s what I want it to be. Um, but then afterwards, they call me back on the phone and they’ll apologize and say, “you were absolutely right. I’ve never played better, I’ve done better work, I out-did myself,” is what they’ll say. And I say, “That’s the way it should be because you’ve immortalized yourself. This is here forever. It’s a time capsule.” It’s like Michelangelo’s work. You know, it’s like the Sistine Chapel, it’s here forever. Everything we do should be that way, you know?

Anthony: To try to bring it to the best possible standard that it can be.

Michael: Absolutely.

Anthony: Now Sweetpea4286 wonders, “Are there any surprises on the new album?”

Michael: Any surprises? Boy. I think it is what it is, and you can interpret it the way you want to interpret it. Um, but uh, that’s all I can say about that. Other than some… we will be releasing some surprise CD singles at some point — something like that, yeah. In the future, though. That’s coming up.

Anthony: Very good. I wanted to ask you, just as… in performing… and recently you’ve done a couple of shows, you did a couple at Madison Square Garden and you did a show at RFK stadium, a benefit concert, and you know, obviously, you know, you… live performance has been one of the things that has distinguished you throughout your career. You’ve been offstage for a while. I wonder if you could talk a little bit about what it was like to be out there again in front of an audience and, you know, getting that opportunity to perform again.

Michael: It was, um, it’s hard to explain. It was quite exciting, to feel the audience and to see them and to be accepted so warmly by them. Um, it’s just an incredible feeling. It really is. They’re there to support you and to love you and to hear their favorite songs and you’re just standing there and they’re just giving you so much adulation and love and the spirit is just full of love, it’s wonderful. It’s very emotional. It, uh, brings me to tears. It’s wonderful.

Anthony: I remember in your book you describe that like sometime on stage is when you feel the most alive, that those are the moments that, you know, really are the whole — kind of the most transporting for you.

Michael: It is. It’s being offstage that’s difficult for me. Uh, being on stage… either writing music or writing poetry, and being on stage, and watching cartoons are my favorite things to do in the entire world. Um, that’s what brings me to life. I love that. That’s what inspires me to do what I do, you know?

Anthony: Excellent. We have a question from someone calling themself The best dancer in the world. Well, we’ve got you on the line, I’m not sure that uh, we might have to contest that a little bit. But anyway, the best dancer in the world wants to know, “Michaeljackson.com said that JayZ will appear with you on the new album. Is that true?”

Michael: No, but we are talking about doing something in the future together.

Anthony: Is JayZ an artist who’s worked you’ve liked, is ah… as a person, have you spent time with him? What’s your impression of him?

Michael: I think he’s excellent. He has incredible rhythms, counter-rhythms. And he’s just one of the newer contemporary artists that the kids really love. He’s really, really great.

Anthony: We have a question here from Sweden. Tony from Sweden writes in and says, “Hi Michael. You’re the most amazing artist of all time. I just love your music. Do you want to tour, and will you do a world tour or a European tour?”

Michael: Um, gee, we haven’t thought about it much right now, but uh, I don’t want to say it’s not in the works. Um, we’re concentrating on a lot of different things right now. But I can’t quite say.

Anthony: Fine. I wanted to ask…

Michael: You know what, in the near future I’m sure there’ll be something that’ll come up. In the near future.

Anthony: People should, ah, keep their eyes open for announcements on that front. We have a question from Noria, describes him or herself as a 32 year old Spanish fan, writing from Los Angeles, would like to know if you have any plans to release any of your songs in ‘Invincible’ in Spanish or any other language besides English.

Michael: Uh, as of now we haven’t but that would be a great thing to do. We haven’t written that off. We think it’s a big market, so that’s a great possibility.

Anthony: Especially for someone like your self who has a big International following — you know, for many people, their following is in England or in the US, but your following is very international obviously.

Michael: Thank you.

Anthony: Um, talk a bit… One of the things that was of kind of a little bit of a sensation this year was Alien Ant Farm’s cover of ‘Smooth Criminal’. I wanted to see if you’d paid attention it, if you… Do you enjoy it, or how you felt about it.

Michael: I saw it and fell in love with it. I loved it. I said, I just gotta have this come out. So, they wanted my permission; I saw it and I approved it and gave it a triple A, and said “go right ahead.”

Anthony: Fantastic. It must be interesting, as a songwriter, to have other people do your songs and come up with another interpretation. What is that like?

Michael: It’s a great compliment. It’s a wonderful compliment. It makes you feel worthy and that your music is reaching all the different generations. You know, and all the different, uh… I mean, everybody’s out there listening and that makes me very happy.

Anthony: Now we have a question from Canada. Gary, who is 19, writes in, “What other artists did you collaborate with on ‘Invincible’?”

Michael: What other artists did I collaborate with on ‘Invincible’…

Anthony: Do you have any special guests.

Michael: Umm, oh yeah, Carlos Santana. He and I have done, like, a duet. He plays the guitar and I sing and it’s something that, uh, we’ve written. And it’s really, really a nice song.

Anthony: Now had you known him from over time or did you meet him recently?

Michael: I’ve met him before, but we’ve been talking a lot on the phone recently. After winning his Grammy award he said to the press that he would like to meet me and he’s ready to work with me. So everybody’s been telling me that, and uh, I called him up and he said he really would, it would be his dream come true. And he was the nicest man. He’s so kind and so spiritual. I found him to be so humble, so I said to myself, “We have to make this work.”

Anthony: And so you wrote a song together?

Michael: Well, there’s a song that myself and two other people wrote and he was a part of it, and uh, ‘Whatever Happens’.

Anthony: Ok… We have a question from Anicia. Says, “Michael are you a fan of Chris Tucker.” Describes him being in your recent video.

Michael: I am a huge, huge fan Chris Tucker. He makes me laugh so hard. um, I uh, I’ve seen all of his films, and he’s just a funny guy. I like people who can make you laugh without using vulgarity, or bad words. For the kids, they’re for all different demographics, all the corners of the earth and he’s just a funny guy.

Anthony: We have another question from Canada. Tony, who’s 17 from Canada, writes and wonders, “How long does it take you to produce a song from the initial conception to the final recording?”

Michael: Well…

Anthony: [laughing] I guess it probably varies from…

Michael: Yeah, it does vary. And for me it’s really different than most artists because I’ll do a couple of songs, they’ll be 5, 6, 7 or 8 or 10 of them; I’ll throw them all away and start over. So, that’s a difficult question to ask me.

Anthony: I wonder if… is there a specific song on the album — say ‘Invincible’ — you know, how long… when… Do you remember getting the first inspiration for that song and then maybe the day when you finally said, “This is it, I’ve got it exactly the way I want it?”

Michael: On ‘Invincible’ itself?

Anthony: umhum.

Michael: Ummm, yes. Yes. I remember having the guys go back in and create more innovative… ’Cause we don’t… um, this is our thing, we don’t, uh, a lot of sounds on the album that aren’t sounds from keyboards, uh, that are, you know, pretty much programmed into the machines. We go out and make our own sounds. We hit on things, we beat on things, so nobody can duplicate what we do. We make them with our own hands, we find things and we create things. And uh, that’s the most important thing, to be a pioneer. To be an innovator.

Anthony: Absoluteluy. Now we have Vernay who writes to us from Newark, Delaware, the good ole USA, and Vernay says, “I’m so pleased with the new album but I was particularly touched by ‘Speechless’. What was your inspiration for this song?”

Michael: ‘Speechless’ was inspired to me by, um, I spend a lot of time in the forest. I like to go into the forest and I like to climb trees. My favorite thing is to climb trees, go all the way up to the top of a tree and I look down on the branches. Whenever I do that it inspires me for music. There are these two sweet little kids, a girl and a boy, and they’re so innocent; they’re the quintessential form of innocence, and just being in their presence I felt completely speechless, ’cause I felt I was looking in the face of God whenever I saw them. They inspired me to write ‘Speechless’.

Anthony: Well, that answer actually might touch on this next question which we have, which wonders, “Where do you look for inspiration when you write your songs. Does inspiration come from a variety of different places?”

Michael: Well, the best songs that are written write themselves. You don’t ask for them, they just drop into your lap. Then there are those songs that, you know, you kind of uh, incubate. You know, you plant the seed, let the subconscious take its course, and within time you hope something comes, and most the time it does. I don’t believe in the concept of writer’s block — that is a bad word. You create it when you say it. There’s no such thing. Um, like any painter or sculptor, they paint… they do their best work when they’re in the 60s and their 70s. Fred Astaire did his best dancing when he was in his 70s. Angelo [Michelangelo] sculpted late into his 60s and 70s, doing brilliant ingenious work. But in the music business some of these great artists have become stumped because they self-abuse themselves at a young age, with all these crazy things they drink and pills and things, and uh, that’s just not good — just not a good thing. I hate to say that to hurt anybody, but we should take care of our bodies a little more.

Anthony: Naw, I think a lot of people have realized they’ve damaged themselves. You know, many people have talked about it in recent years, you know.

Michael: Yeah.

Anthony: We have a question from Allen here who asks if you think that Rodney Jerkins and you have created a new sound for 2001.

Michael: For the song ‘2000 Watts’?

Anthony: He says, “Do you feel that you and Rodney Jerkins, of course the producer, have created a new sound for 2001?”

Michael: 2001?

Anthony: Yes

Michael: Oh. Um, that would be a nice thought, yes.

Anthony: What was it like working with him. How did you guys meet and, you know, how did your collaboration go?

Michael: He was this guy who went around Hollywood and around the industry saying his dream was to work with me to everybody. Then at Carol Bayer Sager’s house, who’s this great song writer; won several academy awards for her songwriting, said, “There’s a guy I used to work with. His name is Rodney Jerkins, he’s been crying to me begging to meet you. I mean, why don’t you pick up the phone and say “hi” to him.” And he came over that day and he said, “Please, my dream is to work with you. Will you give me two weeks and I’ll see what I can come up with.” And uh, we ended up working together.

Anthony: And what were your impressions of him, like as just somebody… What did he bring; what did you feel that his contribution was?

Michael: His contribution was he loves to create in the same kind of way that I like to create. But I pushed Rodney. And pushed and pushed and pushed and pushed him to create… uh, to innovate more. To pioneer more. He’s a real musician. He’s a real musician and he’s very dedicated and he’s real loyal. He has perseverance. I don’t think I’ve seen perseverance like his in anyone. Because you can push him and push him and he doesn’t get angry. Yeah, I think he’s a great guy, he really is.

Anthony: That is a great compliment.

Michael: And um, and Teddy Riely is just incredible. He’s innovative too. I love working with him.

Anthony: And you had worked with him in the past, of course.

Michael: Yeah, he’s one of my favorite… as a human being, he’s one of my favorite people in the world. He’s just a really sweet, kind guy. You know. And Rodney’s very funny. You laugh all day when you’re with him. He turns his music up in the studio and he starts dancing around the room. He’s fun.

Anthony: We’d like to remind everyone, you’re on Getmusic. We’re here talking with Michael Jackson, whose new album ‘Invincible’ is out on Oct. 30th. You can check it out at Michaeljackson.com. You can preorder it on Getmusic.

Now we have a question from ItsJackson who is really named Rachel from Connecticut, wonders “Do you have any new dance moves that you’ve invented while you were making your album?”

Michael: For the first time working on any album, I put a halt to dancing. Because I was just so engrossed and so infatuated with what I was doing um, I did something that was very unusual. But once the music started playing, of course, I started to dance. But um, uh, it’s starting to now create itself and, uh, with the music playing I’m coming up with some new things. But that’s coming in the future with the newer short films. They’ll be seeing… they’ll be seeing all kinds of innovative things and movements that have never been seen before. We’ll go places where we’ve never gone in dance before. Cause all the hiphop things that are happening now are beginning to look like aerobics, it’s kinda getting annoying.

Anthony: [laughs] We have a question from Simon who, you know, you’ve obviously mentioned you know, all the people who have wanted to work with you. He wonders, “Michael who would you love to do a duet with, past or present?”

Michael: Uh, if it’s past, it’d be somebody like, uh, I would say Sarah Vaughn or Nat King Cole. Present, I think, uh, Whitney Houston is brilliant and Barbara Striesand has a beautiful voice. You know, those kinds of artists, they’re just wonderful.

Anthony: What’s your impression of some of the artists who’ve come on the scene just in recent years, you know, people like Britney Speares and Christina Aguilara. You know, young pop stars who are obviously hugely popular. You know, obviously, Britney participated in your show at the Garden, you know, what was your sense about her?

Michael: I think they’re a new breed that are coming out. They’re doing a very good job. And what impressed me more about any of these artists, like Speares and Christina, they’re so determined. I’ve heard about the way they work. They’ll work on a dance step, I mean, like, for months, and, uh… to get it right, you know. Uh, they’re just so determined. And I’ve met… I’ve met Britney several times and she was very sweet and humble. She came to my room. We quietly talked for couple hours, and she was just, uh, like a Barbie doll. She was very sweet, she was very kind.

Anthony: I imagine that someone like you would be a kind of interesting and important resource for her, you know. As someone who was a star when you were so young, and then when… I don’t think people necessarily understand what a kind of strange reality that is, you know, within all the acclaim and the fame and the excitement, you know, to be a kid and have all that attention focused on you must be kind of scary also. Did you find it that way, uh, in your own experience?

Michael: Yeah, because where ever I go, um, I disguise myself, now — but now I can’t with, ’cause, you know, with what’s going on in the world — so I don’t wear a disguise. And uh, people they just go… They really go crazy. They’re very happy to see you. They feel as if they know you. You have to respond back to them like you know them. They feel they personally know you. My picture’s on their walls, you know, my music is playing in their house, so they grab you and they hug you and they touch you and they… So I usually respond back with hugs and loves and kisses. Cause I love… I love… I truly love my fans. Truly, truly from the heart. That’s the real truth. I love them. And the ones who are, um… Like when we go to a certain country and they’re outside, and outside they’re sleeping on the street and I throw them pillows and cover and everything. And I have my security guards buy them pizza so they can all eat, and get the candles and, you know, we really take care of them. They’re very, very, very sweet and supportive.

Anthony: Sam who is 20 years old and from Texas here in the US wonders, “Will you release ‘Butterflies’ as a single? That’s one of your best songs.”

Michael: ‘Butterflies’ is, uh, is a single that’s released now. It’s a single now. Tell him thank you very much.

Anthony: Great. What other plans do you have, you know, when you… As somebody who’s been a kind of innovator in terms of making short films to accompany your songs, do you conceptualize all that ahead of time or, you know, do you decide, on a kinda step by step basis, you know, this is gonna be the next single and I want to make a, you know, a kind of visual statement to accompany it. You know, how does that all proceed?

Michael: All right, the short film itself?

Anthony: Yeah.

Michael: Well, I let the song pretty much speak to me and I get in a room and I pretty much start making notes… You know, I’ll speak to a writer — like Stephen King and myself, both of us wrote ‘Ghosts’, the short film ‘Ghosts’, and we just on the telephone started writing it and let it create itself and go where it wants to go. But we try to do things that are very unusual. And it’s… it’s not an easy thing to do because you have to time it with the song, and you can’t spend too much time, and the special effects can take 5 months sometimes to execute. So, it’s just… it’s kinda difficult thing and the record company’s saying, “Come on, come on, come on, we have to go, we have to go.” So, I understand. So we try to do the best we can in the amount of time that we can execute it in.

Anthony: We have a question now, uh, Helen from Scotland says, “If you could only perform one of your songs for the rest of your life, what would it be and why?”

Michael: Ooh, it would probably be… if I could pick more than one, up to two or three?

Anthony: Yeah, I think we can go that far.

Michael: ‘Heal The World’, ‘Speechless’, um, and that’s a difficult one… I think, uh… huh… ummm, ‘You Are My Life’.

Anthony: So, you went for the ones that are the… the kind of, uh, the biggest statements, in a way, it seems to me.

Michael: Yeah, because, uh, the point is that they’re very melodic and if they have a great important message that’s kinda immortal, that can relate to any time and space, you know.

Anthony: One of the things, actually, I wanted to ask you is, you know, we’ve had these, you know, horrible terrorist attacks here in New York City and in Washington, DC. What is the role that you feel, you know, artists can play in the wake of something like that. You know, I mean, you did that benefits show in Washington. You know, is there… In music and in… you know, can artists do something to help people get through what for many of us has been a very difficult time?

Michael: Yeah, you give of yourself. You give of your talent, of your ability… The talent that was given you by the Heavens. That’s why we’re here, to bring a sense of escapism in time of need. And, uh, if you’re a painter you paint; if you’re a sculptor, you sculpt; if you’re a writer, you write; if you’re a songwriter, you give songs; if you’re a dancer, you give dance. You give people some love and some… some bliss and some escapism, and to show that you truly care from the heart, and be there for them. Not just from a distance, but show you really care. You know, take the long mile and be there for them. And that’s what I did, and many others who cared and helped. And it’s an important thing.

Anthony: We have a question now from Chili Boy who wonders, “I’ve always wanted to know, how do you come up with a dance move, and how long does it take for you to put the choreography for a song together?”

Michael: I pretty much just get in a room and I start to dance, and uh, I don’t create the dance, the dance creates itself, really. You know, I’ll do something and I’ll look back… I’ll look back on tape and I’ll go, “Wow,” I didn’t realize I had done that. It came out of the drums. You become… Dancing is about interpretation. You become… You become the accompaniment of the music. So when you become the bass of ‘Billie Jean’, I couldn’t help but do the step that I was doing when the song first starts, because, uh, that’s what it told me to do. You know, if I turn around, spin, stop, move my legs to the side and then lift up the collar of my shirt, that’s for that moment is an accompaniment.

Anthony: I remember watching that moment on television and just leaping out of my chair. It’s so extraordinary.

Michael: Thank you very much.

Anthony: That was really one of the great, great moments.

Michael: It’s all spontaneous movement. Nothing in that piece was, on, uh, ‘Billie Jean’, was planned but the ‘Moonwalk’. Everything else was just, you know, improvising, really.

Anthony: We have a question from SJ Chams who wonders, “Do you think you’ll do another duet with Janet?”

Michael: I would love to! It depends on the song, the time. When she’s in one corner of the Earth, I’m in another place. It’s very rare that our ships pass in the night. So it’s not easy to do ’cause we’re both very busy. But that would be very nice. I love working with her. She’s a true real professional and a wonderful sister.

Anthony: Excellent. Ah, we have Sheik 33 who wonders, “Who was your idol when you were a child?”

Michael: I always went nuts for… I mean, I could be asleep… In Indiana, at like 5 years old, I’d be asleep and it’d be late at night, like 1 in the morning, some show on, I remember seeing my mother run to my room, “wake up , wake up! James Brown is on! James Brown is on!” Or “Sammy Davis Jr.’s playing” or “Fred Astaire! They got a good Fred Astaire movie on.” “Gene Kelly’s on right now!” And I’d sit there with my eyes just… I’d be awe-struck, just watching. So when videos came out, I had a collection. [giggles]

Anthony: Yeah, I understand that you have a, an extraordinary collection of a kind of old movies of all of the performers that you like and, oh, the music performances of the artists that you admire. You know, talk about some of those, and some of the stuff that you’ve got that you like to watch.

Michael: Well, I… I like to, um, before I do anything, it could be any situation, I love studying the whole history of it before I take the first step to innovate. So, um, I love studying any Vaudevillian, you know, who came from that era, even though they didn’t have TV Uh, but they, uh, they transcended into television later on. I love people like Jackie Gleason, Red Skelton, I’m crazy about the 3 Stooges, uh, anything Walt Disney… And far as performers, uh, I love Anthony Newley, you know, like I said, Jackie Wilson, James Brown. So… They’re incredible! I mean, when James Brown was ‘James Brown and the Famous Flames’ he was so incredible. I would watch him and cry. I’d be crying and watching. I’ve never seen a person perform like that, ever.

Anthony: You know, it must have been extraordinary for you, as a… you know, when you were young and making records and getting to meet some of your idols, you know, that must have been such a powerful experience.

Michael: Oh, it wa… It truly was. And to have them tell me that they… they thought I was incredible, and all my life I thought they were, like, the best. It was the best… I mean, it was the best compliment I could get, and no award could be given to me that could top that. You know. When Fred Astaire or Gene Kelly, who I knew very well, or Frank Sinatra, told me I… they think I’m amazing and I have an amazing career ahead of me… As a child they would tell me this. ’Cause they were my neighbors. They lived by me. And uh, I felt very honored and happy to hear those kind of words from these legends.

Anthony: That must have been very encouraging.

Michael: yes, very.

Anthony: Now we have Mhagrice who is actually Margaret from the Netherlands, a 26 year old woman, says, “Is it true that you’ll star in ‘Men In Black II’, and will you record a soundtrack for that film?”

Michael: Uh, I don’t think we’re doing a soundtrack, but I did a… a guest appearance, like a Cameo, for ‘Men In Black’, uh, 2, and we’re expecting to do part 3 as well. And it was a lot of fun, and exciting. Um, and it’s one of my favorite films of all time. Uh, I’m a big ‘Men In Black’ fan. I love it very much.

Anthony: Well, weren’t you… Now, I understand you’re also doing ‘The Nightmare of Edgar Allen Poe’. Could you tell us a little bit about that?

Michael: Yes, that one’s coming up. It’s about the great prolific American writer, Edgar Allen Poe.

Anthony: Kind of a scary guy himself, too.

Michael: He’s very diabolical, and very dark, and… But he was a genius and it’s… But his own personal life was very interesting, and that’s what it’s about, you know. How he was, you know… What he had to go through to create such ingenious work. It’s a great story. But… and by the way, make sure the fans know, all tabloids should be out. Do not believe anything you read in a tabloid. It’s garbage and it’s junk. We should have a tabloid burning, like a big mountain — just set it afire.

Anthony: You heard it first here from Michael Jackson.

Michael: Don’t waste your time with it. It’s stupid.

Anthony: Now we have Rapmaster JA writes in, who is actually Jason from Illinois. He says, “Michael, you are undoubtedly the greatest artist in the history of the world. How do you do the ‘Moonwalk’. It’s the coolest move I’ve ever seen?”

Michael: Gee, it’s hard to explain on the phone [interruption from host]. I love moves and dancing. It’s like walking forward and backward at the same time, but not just walking, but as if you’re on a conveyer belt. And it’s, uh, it’s hard to explain. If he was in the room with me, I could show him how to do it with my fingers, or with my feet, but. Maybe he could see at the end of the ‘Jam’ video where I’m trying to show Michael Jordan how to do it. Only time I think I showed it.

Anthony: Now we have a Mark the Shark, uh, who asks, “How do you do that lean on the video to Smooth Criminal?”

Michael: Oh, ‘Smooth Criminal’, well. That one happened… it was in the middle of the shoot and it wasn’t… I choreographed it right at the moment. Took us an hour to execute it. It’s a special effect that we kind of lean as far as we can and, uh, we let the conveyor belt do the rest.

Anthony: Now Glenn from Toronto Canada asks, “Do you feel a special spiritual energy when you’re performing; do you feel you are connected to a higher force? Cause this is what you make many feel when they see you live?”

Michael: That’s exactly what it is, you’re connected to a higher source and you just go with the moment and you become one with, you know, the spirit. Not to sound religious or anything, but it’s a very spiritual… very much like religion, and it’s a God-given gift and you just go with it. And I’m honored to have been given it. And, uh, as fun to become one with the audience. It’s a one-ness, you know?

Anthony: I was reminded of, ah, some of that when you were talking about the way you would work out your moves, you know, listening to… just listening to the music and kind of disappearing into it. You know, it has like a really mystical feel.

Michael: Thank you.

Anthony: Now Charlie sends in a question and says, “What achievements in your life are you the most proud of?”

Michael: Boy, uh, one of my biggest dreams since I was really, really little… I think around 7 years old, I use to always buy the Guinness World Book of Records. [Giggles] You know what the answer’s gonna be right? I said, “Hmmm, I love to dance and sing. Hopefully one day I can be in this book.” And I believed that it was possible. So when ‘Thriller’ became the biggest selling album of all time, and it was enlisted in the Guinness Book Of World Records, and, uh, there’s so many other lists… You know, they’ve enlisted me in there like 7 different times now. It was my happiest time of my life. I was so happy.

Anthony: To what do you attribute that level of ambition and possibility you felt when you were a kid. You know, I think it’s sometimes hard for people to feel… You know, you weren’t, obviously, rich as a kid or from some kind of fancy background, but still somehow you were able to envision a life of success. What do you attribute that to?

Michael: I attribute that to my parents who always taught us to persevere and believe in yourself, have confidence, no matter what you do. Even if you’re sweeping floors or painting ceilings, do it better than anybody in the world, no matter what it is that you do. Be the best at it, and have a respect for others, and be proud of yourself… and to honor; be honorable, you know.

Anthony: Absolutely. Now, you’ve been making records for a long time, you’ve been a force on the music scene for many years. What do you think are the biggest changes in music that you’ve seen?

Michael: Biggest changes?

Anthony: Yeah, what’s changed about the music industry or about, you know, the music that’s out there. What do you think is different?

Michael: Well, I think… Ah, I don’t think people thought the Rap music would last as long as it has. And it has gone through evolutional stages — there’s more melody in it now, it’s more acceptable, because melody will never die. Will never die. And the rhythm — things are a little more rhythmic now. Because people want to dance. It’s part of the human condition; it’s part of our biological makeup. Our cells dance when we hear beats. You notice a… a one year old child will start moving hearing music. How do they know to move? ’Cause it’s biological. It’s not just hearing of the ear, it’s feeling, you know. And playing music, the grass and the trees and the flowers… They’re all influenced by music. They become more beautiful and more vibrant in how they grow. Music is a very important and powerful substance, and all the planets in the universe make music. It’s called music of the spheres. They all make a different note; they make harmony. So there’s harmony even in the universe as we speak.

Anthony: Now we have a question from Holland, uh, Femka from Holland writes, “I love the special editions from ‘Off the Wall’, ‘Thriller’, ‘Bad’ and ‘Dangerous’.” She loves you. And asks, “Why does ‘Invincible’… Why will ‘Invincible’ be coming out in different colors?

Michael: Because we wanted the fans to have some fun with it and collect them and, uh… It’s a, uh, a Limited Edition, I think. And, uh, there’s albums that I love and I will buy them 5 times, even though I have the same cover. Like, 5 times ’cause I love that album so much. So, imagine if they did a different color or just changed the color, I would buy it 5 more times. We just wanted the fans to have some fun with the pictures and with the colors and… Just to try something a little different. That’s why we did it.

Anthony: Now we have TJ who’s 17 and from Australia, wants to tell you that, “You are still my hero,” and says, “How do you explain your ability to inspire so many people all around the world?”

Michael: I just do what I do and I love doing it. And, uh, I love art. I love anything, any art. And, uh, if they’re inspired by it, I feel I’m… I pray that I’m doing my job; what I’m here to do on Earth. Because I love the fans, I love the kids, I love the babies, and that’s what give me my inspiration, the children, the babies, the fans. I love them very much.

Anthony: Now Michaela from Pennsylvania, who is 14, writes, “Michael, I’m only 14 but I’ve been a fan since I was 10. You’ve accomplished so much more than any artist ever. I was just wondering if you could change one thing about your life, what would you change?”

Michael: I would like to be able to go out in public and just be normal sometime, without people recognizing who I am, and to get a little bit of a feeling of what it’s like to, you know, be of the regular norm. To see how things are done; to learn what people speak about when they’re just casually talking. Cause soon as they see it’s Michael Jackson, the conversation changes; it all becomes about me and not about the situation — the moment, that’s happening at the moment. That would… I would learn a lot from that. I don’t get to see that unless I disguise myself and put on a lot of things, and then they stare at me, then it’s even different; it’s not the same even then. So, it’s a difficult thing to pull off. Tell him that’s a very great question he asked.

Anthony: That’s a really interesting question, actually. We have an interesting answer, as well. We have Greg from Glasgow, Scotland, wants to know, “When do you plan to release the charity song ‘What More Can I Give’?”

Michael: Well, it’s being, uh… We’re putting the final voices on and, uh, it’s coming very, very soon. We’re putting it together now; the final touches. It’s a very important song for the world. To give some feeling and some loving and some caring to those people who were thrust into orphanage, uh, or just within a matter of seconds they lost their parents and their loved ones, you know?

Anthony: Absolutely. Um, what are some of the things you are looking forward to; what are your hopes for you know, the new year. You know, we’re coming down to the end of the year, you have this album coming out, we’ve had a lot of tragedies and crisis that we’ve all faced. Everybody’s trying to keep their spirit up. When you start thinking about 2002, what… what kind of things come to mind for you?

Michael: Um, film. I love movies. To do more movies; to integrate the songs with the film. Dancing. And more peace into the world. I pray for peace all the time. And the most important thing I pray for is protection for children and babies. That’s the thing that concerns me the most, I like them to be protected and to have more children’s rights in the world, where children, you know, where there’s a day for children; a celebration for children. Give them a little more attention and love.

Anthony: Now Sergei from Russia writes in, says, “Michael, sing a cappella for us.”

Michael: [laughs] You know what, I would love to do it. But believe it or not, I’ve been sniffling since this interview, I woke up with laryngitis, I caught a cold from the children the other day. My children were sick and I caught their cold. So, tell her I’d love to do it when I visit their town in concert. And ‘Speechless’ opens a cappella, on the album, the song ‘Speechless’. It’s one of my favorites.

Anthony: Opens in an a cappella part?

Michael: It opens and closes a cappella.

Anthony: Now we have a question here from Karen who says that you’ve helped her since she was a little kid. You’ve always been one to think about other people; to care for children around the world. “What could we do for you,” she wonders. “We give you all our love, but what more could we give to you?” Obviously one of your great fans here.

Michael: When I come to town, I would love to see a children’s festival, to hear children’s choirs, uh, you know, pretty much present when I come to different countries, singing some of their favorite songs of mine. Uh, we should forge and create a children’s day, a celebration internationally, where children are honored. Where parents can take their children to the movies or to the toy store or to the park. And that, alone, will create a bonding. Because the family bond has been broken. They don’t eat with their children or speak to their children much anymore, or mother their children. And I would love to see a celebration for children. Children’s Day; a holiday. We have Mothers Day, Fathers Day — no Children’s day. And, uh, I would love when I come to town just to see them sing songs, or a parade or something. I would love that.

Anthony: Michael, we have one last question. It was a great pleasure talking with you. We have Emanuel, who is 16, from the US. Says, “Mr. Jackson, what would say to all your fans that have dreams and goals of being a star like you?”

Michael: No matter what, the most powerful thing in the world is the human mind and prayer, and belief in your self and confidence and perseverance. No matter how many times you do it, you do it again until it’s right. And always believe in your self. And not matter who’s around you that’s being negative or thrusting negative energy at you, totally block it off. Because whatever you believe, you become.

Anthony: They say that the thing that most affects people, or the way that you can really tell someone’s had a successful life is the way that they deal with success or the way they deal with failure or challenges. That sounds like what you’re saying.

Michael: Yes, and after all that, the most important — most important: Stay humble. The humbleness that a child, like a new born baby has. Even though you become powerful or have power with people, with your talent… like with what Michelangelo did with sculpting, you know, underneath all that be as humble as a child, as a baby, and be as kind and as giving and loving. They don’t become puffed up with pride.

Anthony: I think we’re gonna sneak in one last question here from someone called Invincible103, “Halloween is coming up. Do you have plans to, uh, kind of dress up; do you have plans for a Halloween party?’

Michael: Uh, no. I was going to just go trick or treating. Go out, knock on some doors and get some candy. I love trick or treat. It’s one of my favorite ones. I love dressing up like some kind of monster or something and knocking on the doors. No body knows it’s me, and I get candy.

Anthony: Now if Michael Jackson turns up at your door, people.

Michael: [giggles]

Anthony: Sure, wouldn’t it be nice to have some nice things on hand for him. Well, Michael it was great, great pleasure talking to you. A lot of fun, and uh, everybody wishes you the best with your new record. We’re all looking forward to it.

Michael: Thank you so much and God bless you. Thank you.

Anthony: Thank you very much.

November 12, 2001 : Michael is on the cover of TV Guide with an exclusive interview and pictures.

Michael Jackson tries to reclaim his throne as the King of Pop When you have been in show business 35 years — when you been a legend in show business for much of that time — you know how to make an entrance. At least Michael Jackson does.

The King of Pop doesn’t simply arrive anywhere, and his appearance in a lush room at the pricey Beverly Hills Hotel is no exception. He is two hours late. He is preceded by his bodyguard, whose security check includes peeks behind curtains and into closets and bathrooms. Then the guard dims the lights. When the door finally swings open, it is not Jackson but two small children who bolt into the room: Prince, 4, whose dark hair is bleached blond, and Paris, 3, whose brown curls tumble to her shoulders. Finally, their father arrives.

His image is ubiquitous his sculpted face and doe eyes peer at us from supermarket stands seemingly daily and yet unique. He’s slight, wearing a blue military shirt and his trademark short black pants and white socks. And then there is his nose. His famous nose, which, on this day, is covered by gray bandages.

“It is analgesic tape,” he says, quietly but good-naturedly. “For allergies.”

With his children playing on the floor by his feet, he talks about his life, politely and with an amazing sense of poise and self-possession. He is a man at times indignant about the press but able to laugh at himself, which may be the most surprising thing about Michael Jackson. At one point, he doubles over giggling at the thought of how at concerts women have fainted in his presence.

And yet he is apprehensive. At 43, Jackson is at a crossroads in his career, urgently trying to transform himself from ’80s icon to a player in the current pop scene. His first step in a climb back to the top were the two recent concerts at Madison Square Garden, his first public performances in America in 12 years. They have been edited into a two-hour television special titled ‘Michael Jackson: 30th Anniversary Celebration’, airing Tuesday, November 13 (CBS, 9 pm/ET). He is anxiously awaiting reaction to his latest album, ‘Invincible’ (at press time, its first single, ‘You Rock My World’, had reached No. 10 on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart, while the video has been an MTV staple). In addition, he has written and is producing a ‘We Are the World’-type song called ‘What More Can I Give’; its proceeds will benefit victims of the September 11 attacks. And he will make a cameo appearance in next summer’s film sequel ‘Men in Black 2’.

In the end, it was Michael Jackson the father, a man deeply connected to his children and his own childhood, who left the most lasting impression.

TV-Guide: This television special celebrates your long career. Do you remember the first time you ever stepped onstage?

Michael: I was 5 years old. And it was at a public-school recital. We had to wear white shirts and short knickers. And I remember them saying, “Little Michael Jackson is coming up to sing ‘Climb Every Mountain’.” I got the biggest applause. When I went to my seat my grandfather and mother were crying. They said, “[We] can’t believe how beautiful you sound.” That’s the first one I remember.

TV-Guide: It’s rare for you to do a TV special.

Michael: I’ve turned down so many because I just don’t like to go on television. I get embarrassed. So I’ll do a performance, but I won’t watch it until almost a year or two later because I’m always disappointed in something I did.

TV-Guide: The concerts that were filmed for this special were packed with big stars. That couldn’t have been disappointing.

Michael: The [second] show was good. [The first show] was horrible because, technically, there were a lot of breakdowns and intermissions in between each act. It was very difficult. The audience was waiting and waiting and waiting.

TV-Guide: What does it feel like when you’re dancing onstage?

Michael: I am a slave to the rhythm. I am a palette. I just go with the moment. You’ve got to do it that way because if you’re thinking, you’re dead. Performing is not about thinking; it’s about feeling.

TV-Guide: Do you plan the dance steps?

Michael: Certain steps are set with my brothers. But when I’m alone, it’s all improvised. Nothing is planned, ever. All the dance schools now teach kids to count, and that’s completely wrong.

TV-Guide: What do you think about current pop groups like ’N Sync? Are they imitating you?

Michael: I think they’re very good singers. I know them very well, and we hang out every once in a while and laugh and play. I have no problem with them imitating [me]. It’s a compliment. Everybody has to start out looking up to someone. For me it was James Brown, Sammy Davis Jr., Jackie Wilson, Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly.

TV-Guide: The special features an appearance by Marlon Brando. How did he get involved?

Michael: Brando’s a good friend of mine. I’ve known him for about 20 years. He comes to my house all the time. He loves to play with the kids. I play with his grandchildren, and we love to watch movies.

TV-Guide: Who else do you spend time with?

Michael: Elizabeth [Taylor], Brando, Gregory Peck, these are very close friends of mine. Either they’re much older than me or much younger. I’ve never had real contact with a person on my age level. I think this happened because all my life I played clubs, since I was 5 years old. I saw people drunk, fighting, and it was just disgusting. When people say to me today, “Hey, let’s go to a club,” I go, “No way.” If I go, it’s not a party for me — too many autographs and photographs.

TV-Guide: Was that true at your postconcert party at [the] Tavern on the Green restaurant?

Michael: It was worse then I couldn’t breathe because everybody [was crowding around].

TV-Guide: And you fainted?

Michael: That’s a rumor. It was sensationalism. [The press] made it up. As usual. They love doing that to me.

TV-Guide: What did happen?

Michael: Nothing. I didn’t faint. Not even close. [The press has] done this for so long, and it’s disgusting. [Gently, to Paris, who is skipping around the coffee table] Paris, you can’t make noise. You can’t no, don’t bump the table. [The reporters are] tape recording.

TV-Guide: Liza Minnelli also sang at one of the concerts. You two seem very close.

Michael: I speak to Liza every week. We come from the same planet. Like Elizabeth does.

TV-Guide: What planet is that?

Michael: It’s called ‘Capricious Anomaly in the Sea of Space’ [this is from ‘Planet Earth’ off ‘Dancing the Dream’] [laughs]. Gee, I can’t name it. Just beyond our solar system, I think. But this is true, and this is not to be taken lightly: People who grew up as child stars have the same thing in common. You’re cute, they love you; you go through the awkward stage, they don’t accept you anymore. Very few make the transition to adult star. And most of them become self-destructive. And it’s very sad.

TV-Guide: How did you avoid self-destruction?

Michael: I think religion entered in.

TV-Guide: Are you still a Jehovah’s Witness?

Michael: Yeah. I’ve done, you know, we call it pioneering. We do 90 hours a month. I don’t do as much now because I’m busy. You go door to door. I wear a fat suit, pop-bottle glasses, mustache, buck teeth and, like, an Afro wig. And I knock on the door and say we’re Jehovah’s Witnesses.

TV-Guide: This special is in conjunction with the launch of your seventh solo album, ‘Invincible’. Is this your comeback?

Michael: I don’t see it as a comeback. I only do an album every four years. It’s just that I’ve been on hiatus, writing.

TV-Guide: The album features rap stars Will Smith and Jay-Z. It’s hard to imagine you working with Jay-Z, whose image is a bit rougher than yours.

Michael: [He] was just so sweet. And you hear these crazy stories about something [some of these rappers] did the next day, and it’s hard to believe. I always see them to be very kind. Perfect gentlemen.

TV-Guide: What’s the message of ‘Unbreakable’, the first song on the album?

Michael: That [I’m] invincible, that I’ve been through it all. You can’t hurt me. Knock me down, I get back up. [To Prince, who begins to bang his Snapple lemonade on the coffee table] See the noise you’re making? You’ve got to be nice and quiet.

TV-Guide: You are known for being eccentric. Did growing up in the limelight have something to do with that?

Michael: [Smiling coyly] It depends on what kind of eccentricities you’re talking about.

TV-Guide: People call you ‘Wacko Jacko’.

Michael: But that’s not nice. They do that because they’re jealous. I haven’t done anything. I go to hospitals and orphanages. And we take huge bags of toys. I spend thousands of dollars. What’s wacko about that?

TV-Guide: Because of the way you are portrayed in the press, people wonder, “Is he strange?”

Michael: [Exasperated] I did Oprah. I did Diane Sawyer. [People] saw me. [The press] is just completely jealous. And it’s just one of those things that I have to deal with.

TV-Guide: How do you deal with it?

Michael: I turn it into positive energy. And I write about it, I dance about; it’s in my movement, it’s in the expression on my face. And it becomes a part of me, part of my creation. And I try not to let it get to me. Because if you do, you’ll go crazy.

TV-Guide: Your first video, for the single ‘You Rock My World’, is actually a 15-minute short film. How did you come up with its gangster theme?

Michael: I don’t know — the idea just kind of happened. In Cuba. Hot summer night. A club run by these hoods. I just wish [MTV] would show the long version. The short version I don’t like at all. It’s not entertaining enough.

TV-Guide: How much are you involved in the video-making process?

Michael: When you say Michael Jackson, people always think of an entertainer. They don’t think of the fact that I write songs. I’m not trying to brag, but I write them, and I direct a lot of [the videos]. I don’t think [younger artists] are aware of those things, which I think would be inspiring for them.

TV-Guide: When you were making this video, did you think, “I want this to be as good as the one for ‘Thriller’”?

Michael: No, because I know I didn’t have the time to execute that. There are ones that are coming up that will be better.

TV-Guide: Do you let your kids watch MTV?

Michael: At a certain age I will, not now. They are going to have to be 15 or 16.

TV-Guide: Do you watch TV?

Michael: I love PBS, the Discovery Channel, The Simpsons. I love Sesame Street. I could watch it for hours. But my favorite show is Malcolm in the Middle. It reminds me so much of [my brothers and me] when we were little.

TV-Guide: Which character do you relate to?

Michael: Malcolm. Mainly because he tries to fit into society, and he doesn’t like E.T. or Bambi, he can’t adjust to other people’s concepts. And I feel like that a lot of times. Once I’m offstage, I feel awkward, like this is not where I’m supposed to be.

December 14, 2001 : Michael gives an interview to USA Today.

Michael In The Mirror (USA Today, 2001)
By Edna Gunderson

BEVERLY HILLS — The first words from Michael Jackson seem to portend a candid dialogue. “Excuse my skin,” he says. “I just came from the dermatologist. So pretend you don’t see it.” That instruction is tough to obey when dealing with the most scrutinized figure in entertainment, especially one whose many eccentricities include donning disguises in public and heavy cosmetics for the camera. While Jackson is sporting little literal makeup today, figuratively the mask never drops completely.

What was billed as a no-holds-barred interview at times entails jousting with two fiercely protective handlers determined to keep the focus on Jackson’s artistry, despite earlier assurances by an Epic Records publicist of unfettered access. All topics were declared fair game except “the pedophilia issue.” The settlement of a 1993 suit against Jackson, alleging sexual abuse of a 13-year-old boy, forbids parties to discuss details.
Jackson vehemently denied allegations at the time and has not addressed it since. The subject is never broached during this hour-long interview. Less scandalous matters — his ex-wives, his plastic surgery odyssey, even concerns he’s discussed in the past — are deemed off limits as they arise.

One roadblock is hit after Jackson waxes nostalgic about famous friends. “Frank Sinatra lived right above us. He’d see us playing basketball every day. And Fred Astaire lived around the bend. I would have a chance to talk to them and learn and listen. Those were golden moments. When I was 16, we were doing Las Vegas every night, and Elvis (Presley) and Sammy Davis Jr. would sit me and my brothers in a row and lecture us. ‘Don’t ever do drugs,’ they told us. I never forgot it.”

Reminded of his own painkiller habit, Jackson goes quiet. Manager Trudy Green, monitoring the interview with Epic executive Steve Einczig, forbids him to respond, even though he confessed the addiction and subsequent treatment in a TV statement nearly a decade ago.

She interrupts again when talk steers to Debbie Rowe, who bore Jackson two children during a marriage from 1996 to 1999. He appears to have sole custody of Prince, 4, and Paris, 3, his constant companions. Asked to comment on persistent rumors that the marriage was arranged to provide offspring, Jackson falls silent. “No, no, no!” Green protests. “This isn’t what we’re here for.” A second stab: Do the kids spend time with their mother? “He doesn’t want to talk about that,” Green interjects. “This is about Michael as an entertainer.”

Granted, the entertainer often is overlooked in the cultural obsession with Jackson’s offstage life. If he agrees to dwell on personal areas, Jackson laments, “that will become the whole story.”

Fair enough. Jackson’s professional accomplishments during his 38 years in show business merit notice, to say the least. He’s sold 65 million albums in the USA, racked up 44 solo hit singles and still holds title to history’s best-selling album, 1982’s Thriller, the global champ with 26 million copies.

Invincible, released Oct 30, entered Billboard at No. 1 with sales of 366,000 copies, about 25,000 shy of 1995’s HIStory. The album spawned radio hits You Rock My World and Butterflies but fell out of the top 10 after four weeks despite a self promotion flurry capped by the Nov. 13 airing of Michael Jackson: 30th Anniversary Special. The two-hour CBS special, culled from a pair of New York concerts toasting his three decades as a solo artist, reached 25.6 million viewers, proof aplenty that Jackson remains an object of fascination.

Today is no exception. Onlookers at the Beverly Hills Hotel strain to glimpse Jackson as a path is cleared and he’s swiftly ushered into a bungalow, his face concealed under a hat, sunglasses and black surgical mask. He spends 40 minutes “settling in,” as Green puts it. Finally prepared for an audience, Jackson greets his visitor with a handshake, a shy smile and the odd comment about his complexion. The makeup seems confined to his cheeks and jaw line. His eyebrows are darkened and groomed; the deep brown eyelids could be eye shadow or vestiges of his original skin tone. Vitiligo, an autoimmune disorder characterized by loss of skin pigment, has left much of his face and hands pale. His tiny nose is bandaged. He offers no explanation, and questions later about his skin condition are summarily shot down by Green.

Tall and slender, Jackson wears a brown leather jacket, red shirt, pinstripe trousers and his signature white socks with black loafers. Prince, his dark hair bleached blond, is clad in similar footwear and a kiddie police uniform, complete with plastic handcuffs hanging from a belt loop.

“These keys work!” he announces before returning to his drawings at a nearby table. Seated in an upholstered chair in the softly lighted suite, Jackson appears relaxed and poised, if a tad weary. He is generous in praising peers. He’s flattered by copycats and loves Alien Ant Farm’s cover of Smooth Criminal, including the video send up of Jackson’s quirks. His eyes light up at talk of upcoming movie projects, especially plans to co-direct a film with director/actor Bryan Michael Stoller in May. He laughs about his earthquake phobia, turns glum when reflecting on a domineering father and gives weight to theories of his eternal boyhood in enthusiastic chatter about toys and theme parks.

Jackson radiates unshakable self-confidence about his musical skills and flashes irritation only when pressed about the press. A rare interview subject, he agreed to this encounter in hopes of emphasizing a message that’s frequently obscured by gossip.

“All I’m saying is heal the world, save our children,” he says.
Jackson aggressively courts media attention, yet remains frustrated by the level of scorn and speculation directed at him. It’s a pet peeve that gets a rise out of the usually soft-spoken star.

“The guy who hits the most home runs is always the target,” he complains. “It’s human nature.”

As he did in Leave Me Alone and Tabloid Junkie, Jackson condemns the prying press in Invincible track Privacy: “You keep on stalking me, invading my privacy. … Stop maliciously attacking my integrity.”

Flanked by chaperones, Jackson faces interrogation with genial resignation and no hint of butterflies.

Q: How do you respond to inaccurate articles about you?

A: I don’t pay any attention. The fans know the tabloid garbage is crap. They always say to me, “Let’s have a tabloid-burning.” It’s terrible to try to assassinate one’s character. I’ve had people come to me, and after meeting me, they start crying. I say, “Why are you crying?” They say, “Because I thought you would be stuck up, but you’re the nicest person.” I say, “Who gave you this judgment?” They tell me they
read it. I tell them, “Don’t you believe what you read.”

Q: Do these rumors persist because you don’t refute them?

A: No. I’ve done so much in the past. I did the most watched TV interview in history with Oprah Winfrey (in 1993). But (the media) tend to want to twist what you say and judge you. I want to keep it on the music and the art. I think about some of my favorite people who ever lived. If I could stand face to face with Walt Disney or Michelangelo, would I care what they do in their private life? I want to know about their art. I’m a fan.

Q: How do you shield yourself from being hurt by criticism?

A: Expecting it, knowing it’s going to happen and being invincible, being what I was always taught to be. You stand strong with an iron fist, no matter what the situation.”

Q: Critics refer to you as the self-proclaimed King of Pop. Did you choose that title?

A: I never self-proclaimed myself to be anything. If I called up Elizabeth Taylor right now, she would tell you that she coined the phrase. She was introducing me, I think at the American Music Awards, and said in her own words — it wasn’t in the script — “I’m a personal fan, and in my opinion he is the king of pop, rock and soul.” Then the press started saying “King of Pop” and the fans started. This self-proclaimed garbage,
I don’t know who said that.

Q: The New York concerts marked your first U.S. shows in 12 years. Were you nervous?

A: No. It was an honor to be back with my brothers again. The producer wanted a cavalcade of luminaries from different fields of endeavor. It was a great honor to have them salute me. It was heartwarming, a happy, fun occasion.

Q: Would you consider another tour with your brothers?

A: I don’t think so. I would definitely do an album with them, but not a tour. They would love to tour. But I want to move on to other things. Physically, touring takes a lot out of you. When I’m on stage, it’s like a two-hour marathon. I weigh myself before and after each show, and I lose a good 10 pounds. Sweat is all over the stage. Then you get to your hotel and your adrenaline is at its zenith and you can’t fall asleep. And you’ve got a show the next day. It’s tough.

Q: If you don’t tour, how will you satisfy public demand as well as your need to perform?

A: I want to direct a special on myself and do songs that touch me. I want something more intimate, from the soul and heart, with just one spotlight.

Q: How did you react when Invincible topped the chart here and in a dozen countries?

A: It was a lovely feeling. I cried happy tears to see all the love.

Q: Invincible was several years in the making. Does your perfectionism slow the process?

A: It did take a while because I’m never happy with the songs. I’ll write a bunch of songs, throw them out, write some more. People say, “Are you crazy? That’s got to go on the album.” But I’ll say, “Is it better than this other one?” You only get 75 minutes on a CD, and we push it to the limit.

Q: Did you approach Invincible with a single theme in mind?

A: I never think about themes. I let the music create itself. I like it to be a potpourri of all kinds of sounds, all kinds of colors, something for everybody, from the farmer in Ireland to the lady who scrubs toilets in Harlem.

Q: Has it become easier to write songs over time?

A: It’s the most effortless thing in the world because you don’t do anything. I hate to say it like that, but it’s the truth. The heavens drop it right into your lap, in its totality. The real gems come that way. You can sit at the piano and say, “OK, I’m going to write the greatest song ever written,” and nothing. But you can be walking down the street or showering or playing and, boom; it hits you in the head. I’ve written so many
like that. I’m playing a pinball machine, and I have to run upstairs and get my little tape recorder and start dictating. I hear everything in its totality, what the strings are going to do, what the bass is going to do, the harpsichord, everything.

Q: Is it difficult translating that sound to tape?

A: That’s what’s frustrating. In my head, it’s completed, but I have to transplant that to tape. It’s like (Alfred) Hitchcock said, “The movie’s finished.” But he still has to start directing it. The song is the same. You see it in its entirety and then you execute it.

Q: After such a long absence, did you have doubts about your current relevance?

A: Never. I have confidence in my abilities. I have real perseverance. Nothing can stop me when I put my mind to it.

Q: After Sept. 11, you wrote a benefit song, What More Can I Give? What’s the status?

A: It’s not finished. We’re adding artists, and I’m getting myself satisfied with the instrumentation.

Q: Is it your belief that music is a tool for healing?

A: It’s a mantra that soothes the soul. It’s therapeutic. It’s something our body has to have, like food. It’s very important to understand the power of music. Whether you’re in an elevator or a department store, music affects the way you shop, the way you treat your neighbor. (Prince hands Jackson a drawing. “I appreciate it,” Jackson says. “Do you have to go to the bathroom?” Prince: “No.”)

Q: Invincible hasn’t enjoyed record-breaking sales. Does Thriller cast too big a shadow?

A: Absolutely. It is tough because you’re competing against yourself. Invincible is just as good or better than Thriller, in my true, humble opinion. It has more to offer. Music is what lives and lasts. Invincible has been a great success. When The Nutcracker Suite was first introduced to the world, it totally bombed. What’s important is how the story ends.
(Prince surfaces again with another picture. “What did you promise me?” Jackson asks. “To be quiet?” Prince responds, then retreats.)

Q: How has fatherhood changed you?

A: In a huge way. You have to value your time differently, no doubt about it. It’s your responsibility to make sure they’re taken care of and raised properly with good manners. But I refuse to let any of it get in the way of the music or the dance or the performing. I have to play two different roles. I always wanted to have a big family, ever since I was in school. I was always telling my father I would outdo him. He had 10 children. I would love to have like 11 or 12 myself.

Q: What have you taught your children?

A: I try to make sure they’re respectful and honorable and kind to everybody. I tell them, no matter what they do, work hard at it. What you want to do for a lifetime, be the best at it.
(Prince is staring. “Stop looking at me,” Jackson says, smiling.)

Q: And what have your kids taught you?

A: A lot. (Parenthood) reminds you to do what the Bible has always told us. When the Apostles were arguing among themselves over who was the greatest in Jesus’ eyes, he said, “None of you,” and called over a little boy and said, “until you humble yourself like this child.” It reminds you t o be kind and humble and to see things through the eyes of children with a childlike wonderment. I still have that. I’m still fascinated by clouds and the sunset. I was making wishes on the rainbow yesterday. I saw the meteor shower. I made a wish every time I saw a shooting star.

Q: What are your wishes?

A: Peace and love for the children. (Prince returns, gazing intently. “Stop that,” says Jackson, gently turning the boy’s head away. “Can you be still?”)

Q: You’ve said you plan to home-school your kids. Given your fame, how can you provide a normal life for them?

A: You do the best you can. You don’t isolate them from other children. There will be other kids at the school (on his property). I let them go out in the world. But they can’t always go with me. We get mobbed and attacked. When we were in Africa, Prince saw a mob attack in a huge shopping mall. People broke so much stuff, running and screaming. My biggest fear is that fans will hurt themselves, and they do. I’ve seen glass break, blood, ambulances.

Q: Are you resentful that stardom stole your childhood?

A: Yeah. It’s not anger, it’s pain. People see me at an amusement park or with other kids having fun, and they don’t stop and think, “He never had that chance when he was little.” I never had the chance to do the fun things kids do: sleepovers, parties, trick-or-treat. There was no Christmas, no holiday celebrating. So now you try to compensate for some of that loss.

Q: Have you made peace with your father?

A: It’s much better. My father is a much nicer person now. I think he realizes his children are everything. Without your family, you have nothing. He’s a nice human being. At one time, we’d be horrified if he just showed up. We were scared to death. He turned out really well. I wish it wasn’t so late.

Q: Did music offer an escape from childhood worries?

A: Of course. We sang constantly in the house. We sang group harmony while washing dishes. We’d make up songs as we worked. That’s what makes greatness. You have to have that tragedy, that pain to pull from. That’s what makes a clown great. You can see he’s hurting behind the masquerade. He’s something else externally. Chaplin did that so beautifully, better than anyone. I can play off those moments, too. I’ve been through the fire many times.
(Prince is back. He leans against the chair to gawk at the king of pops. “Stop looking at me,” Jackson implores, clearly unnerved by the tyke’s scrutiny. “You’re not making this easy.” Both of them chuckle, and Jackson warns teasingly, “You may not get that
piece of candy.”)

Q: Do your religious beliefs ever conflict with the sexy nature of your music or dancing?

A: No. I sing about things that are loving, and if people interpret it as sexy, that’s up to them. I never use bad words like some of the rappers. I love and respect their work, but I think I have too much respect for parents and mothers and elderly people. If I did a song with bad words and saw an older lady in the audience, I’d cringe.

Q: But what about your trademark crotch-grabbing moves?

A: I started doing that with Bad. Martin Scorsese directed that short film in the subways of New York. I let the music tell me what to do. I remember him saying, “That was a great take! I want you to see it.” So we pushed playback, and I went aaaah! I didn’t realize I was doing that. But then everyone else started doing that, and Madonna, too. But it’s not sexual at all.

Q: How are you spending your free time these days?

A: I like to do silly things — water-balloon fights, pie fights, egg fights. (Turning to Prince) You got a good one coming! I don’t think I’ll ever grow out of that. At my house, I built a water-balloon fort with two sides, a red team and a blue team. We have cannons that shoot water 60 feet and slingshots that shoot the balloons. We got bridges and places to hide. I just love it.

Q: After 38 years in show business, fans still mob you. Are you immune to adulation?

A: It’s always a good feeling. I never take it for granted. I’m never puffed up with pride or think I’m better than the next-door neighbor. To be loved is a wonderful thing. That is the main reason I do this. I feel compelled to do it, to give people some sense of escapism, a treat to the eye and the ear. I think it’s the reason I’m here.

Q: Why do you think people are jealous?

A: If you look back in history, it’s the same with anybody who’s achieved wonderful things. I know the Disney family well, and Walt’s daughters used to tell me it was difficult when they were in school. Kids would say, “I hate Walt Disney. He’s not even funny. We don’t watch him.” Charlie Chaplin’s kids, who I know well, had to take their children out of school. They were being teased: “Your grandfather is stupid. He’s not funny. We don’t like him.” He was a genius! So you have to deal with this jealousy. They think they’re hurting you. Nothing could hurt me. The bigger the star, the larger the target. At least they’re talking. When they stop talking, you have to worry.

Q: How did you gear up for the physical demands of your special concerts (which aired as a two-hour CBS special)? Do you exercise?

A: I hate exercise. I hate it so much. The only thing I do is dance. That’s an exercise. That’s why I like some of the karate stuff or kung fu. It’s all a dance. But sit-ups? I hate it.

Q: Were you intimidated by and of the other superstars on the bill?

A: No. I enjoy watching performers. It’s all school for me. I never stop learning. It was really inspiring.

Q: Are you more enamored with modern music or vintage stuff?

A: I like the earlier stuff. It’s more melodically conscious. Today people rely on a beat or a rhythm, which is nice, but I said this time and time again, melody will always be king. You have to hum it.

Q: You’ve teamed with a huge variety of musicians. What attracts you to a particular collaborator?

A: If I see some potential in their ability as an artist or musician, I’ll give them a hook or a line or a phrase and see how they play it or execute it. Sometimes we go all day and it’s still not right.

Q: Did you learn that lesson from your parents?

A: Our parents taught us to always be respectful and, no matter what you do, to give it everything you have. Be the best, not the second best.

Q: You are often pursued by mobs of fans. Are you ever scared for your own safety?

A: Never ever. I know exactly what to do when it gets really rough, how to just play them. As long as they can see you, they’re crazy, but you can put yourself in the eye of the hurricane. If you duck and they can’t see you, they calm down.

Q: Your inner circle seems to consist of very young friends and much older ones. What connects you to people like Marlon Brando or Elizabeth Taylor?

A: We’ve had the same lives. They grew up in show business. We look at each other,and it’s like looking in a mirror. Elizabeth has this little girl inside of her who never had a childhood. She was on the set every day. She loves playing with a new gadget or toy, and she’s totally awe-inspired by it. She’s a wonderful human being. So is Brando.

Q: What happened to your plans to build theme parks in Europe or Africa?

A: We’re still working on a couple of projects. I can’t say right now where. I love theme parks. I love seeing children coming together, having a good time with their parents. It’s not like it used to be, when you put your kids on the merry-go-round and sat on the bench eating peanuts. Now you enjoy it with them. It builds a unity to the family.

February 2002 : Michael is on the cover of the March issue of VIBE magazine with an exclusive interview & photoshoot that took place in December 2001 at Neverland.

I first met Michael Jackson some 33 years ago when Diana Ross introduced the Jackson 5 — then a brand-new Motown act — to 350 music and media folk at the Daisy Club in Beverly Hills. My husband, Ken, and I were then publishing Soul, one of the first national black-entertainment newsmagazines.

Ten year old Michael already knew how to charm a crowd. Acknowledging Diana’s support, he said, “After singing for four years and not becoming a star, I thought I would never be discovered — this is, until Miss Ross came along to save my career.”

Just four months later, the Jackson 5’s first single, ‘I Want You Back’, soared to the top of the Billboard Hot 100 charts, followed two months later by ‘ABC’. Thousands of letters from across the country poured into our mailbox. Responding to the Jackson’s first tour, one reader wrote: “Those youngsters performed in a manner that could be harmful to one’s health. The heart can only stand so much soul, and their performance was definately an overdose.”

Over the next decade, Soul kept up with the Jackson family as a guest at parties, weddings, and concerts. We were also regular visitors to the family home, where Michael — soft-spoken, polite, curious, and quiet — was usually off by himself, drawing or playing with his snakes and other pets, while his older brothers, cousins and visitors played basketball. But when Soul stopped publishing in 1980, I lost touch with the family.

And then Michael became a pop-culture superstar, changing the face of music, dance, fashion, and music video with hit after hit. He was idolized and chased by fans and media wherever he went. He took an art form, refined and packaged it, and became an international icon. The American Music Awards recently named him the Artist of the Century. When it comes to the King of Pop, the world is insatiable.

You can tell a lot about someone by the people who work for him. Arriving at Michael’s 2700-acre Neverland Valley Ranch in Los Olivos, Calif., north of Santa Barbara, I’m greeted by some of the 70-odd members of Michael’s exceedingly friendly staff, which helps the self-proclaimed King of Pop maintain the comples and welcomes busloads of visitors a year, mostly kids who suffer terminal illnesses.

Dressed in black slacks, white socks, black loafers, and a soft yellow shirt, Michael greets me with a warm smile hello and a big hug. He then excuses himself to see about his son, Prince, 5, and daughter Paris, 3, who have just returned from a long walk and are excitedly chattering to their dad about their day.
The governess, who closely resembles Michael’s mother, Katherine, suggests I have a brief look around the ranch before dark. So I take off in a battery-powered golf cart, while Michael spends some time with his babies.

I discover an amusement park, playground, train station, arcade, swiming pool, Jacuzzi, bumper-car tent, and various areas where anumals roam free. I spot a llama, a parrot, a cheetah, a pony, and several deer.
Michael is ready to talk when I return 45 minutes later. I’ve brought along a bound volume of Soul, and he looks at the old photographs and laughs at himself, his brothers and a picture of Diana Ross. “Do you remember interviewing me when I was little?” he asks, reminding me of the time Soul talked to him through his ‘interpreter’, Janet. “It wasn’t a game, it was real,” he says. “I felt afraid. I felt that if my sister was there, the person would go easier on me.”

Often very animated, Michael goes from a whisper to raucous laughter in a split second. The only matter that he refuses to address is his plastic surgery. “That’s a stupid question,” he says. “That’s one reason I didn’t do interviews for years.”

At a time when stars routinely boast about their Bentleys and blingbling, Michael is singularly modest. He brushes off a question about his financial health — there have been recent reports of trouble — saying only, “I’m taken care of fine.” Michael makes money when he sleeps. He owns half of Sony/ATV Music Publishing, which includes most of the Beatles catalog as well as songs by Jimi Hendrix, Bob Dylan, Miles Davis, Babyface, and Elvis.

At 43, Michael is indisputably back. ‘Invincible’, his first album in four years, was No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart. His two sold-out tribute shows at Madison Square Garden last September (just before the terrorist attacks) were later aired as a CBS special watched by more than 25.7 million viewers, making it that network’s highest-rated music special of all time.

As we resume the conversation that began so many years ago, I discover that, in spite of all the flash and tumult of Michael’s time in the spotlight, he’s remarkable unchanged still caring, inquisitive, and sensitive.

Jones: How is it to be competing for sales with the likes of ’N Sync and Britney Spears, children who were basically born at the height of your fame?

Michael: It’s a rarity. I had No. 1 records in 1969 and ’70, and still entered the charts in 2001 at No. 1. I don’t think any other artist has that range. It’s a great honor. I’m happy, I don’t know what else to say. I’m glad people accept what I do.

Jones: What are your thoughts on the current state of R&B?

Michael: I don’t categorize music. Music is music. They changed the word R&B to rock n’ roll. It was always been, from Fats Domino to Little Richard to Chuck Berry. How can we discriminate? Its what it is — great music, you know.

Jones: Are you feeling hip hop?

Michael: I like a lot of it, a lot of it. I like the music. I don’t like the dancing that much. It looks like they’re doing aerobics.

Jones: How did you decide to feature Biggie Smalls on ‘Unbreakable’, off ‘Invincible’?

Michael: It wasn’t my idea, actually. It was Rodney Jerkins’, one of the writer/producers working on the album. It was my idea to put a rap part on the song, and he said, “I know just the perfect on — Biggie.” He put it in, and it worked perfectly.

Jones: Why did you choose Jay-Z for the remix of the first single, ‘You Rock My World’?

Michael: He’s hip, the new thing, and he’s with the kids today. They like his work. He’s tapped into the nerve of popular culture. It just made good sense.

Jones: What was it like for you to appear at New York’s Hot 97 Summer Jam concert as Jay-Z’s guest?

Michael: I just showed up and gave him a hug. There was a tumultuous explosion of applause and stomping, a lovely, lovely welcome, and I was happy about that. It was a great feeling — the love, the love.

Jones: Does it bother you to see people emulate you, such as Usher, Sisqo, Ginuwine, and even Destiny’s Child?

Michael: I don’t mind it at all. These are artists who grew up with my music. When you grow up listening to somebody you admire, you tend to become them. You want to look like them, to dress like them. When I was little, I was James Brown, I was Sammy Davis Jr., so I understand. It’s a compliment.

Jones: Did you know that you were creating timeless classics when you were recording ‘Thriller’ and ‘Off the Wall’?

Michael: Yes, not to be arrogant, but yes. Because I know great material when I hear it, and meoldically and sonically and musically, it’s so moving. They keep the promise.

Jones: Do you feel there’s a greater acceptance of black artists these days?

Michael: I think people have always admired black music since the beginning of time, if you want to go back to Negro spirituals. Today, the market is just accepting of the fact that that’s the sound. From Britney to ’N Sync, they’re all doing the R&B thing. Even Barry Gibb of the Bee Gees he always tells me [immitating a British accent], “Man, we do R&B.” I say, Barry, I don’t categorize it, but it’s great music. I understand where he’s coming from. I love great music — it has no color, it has no boundaries.

Jones: You seem to be enjoying life as a single parent.

Michael: I never had so much fun in all my life. That’s the truth. Beacause I’m this big kid, and now I get to see the world through the eyes of the really young ones. I learn more from them than they learn from me. I’m constantly trying things and testing things on them to see what works and what doesn’t. Children are always the best judges to monitor something. If you can get the kids, you’ve got it. That’s why Harry Potter is so successful — it’s a family-oriented movie. You can’t go wrong there. We want a wide demographic, and that’s why I try not to say things in my lyrics that offend parents. I don’t want to be like that. We weren’t raised to be like that. Mother and Joseph [Michael’s father] wouldn’t say stuff like that.

Jones: What do Prince and Paris listen to?

Michael: They listen to all of my music, and they love classical, which plays all around the ranch. They like any good dance music.

Jones: How would you feel about your children becoming pop icons, based upon your experience?

Michael: I don’t know how they would handle that. It would be tough. I really don’t know. It’s hard, since most of the children of celebrities end up becoming self-destructive because they can’t live up to the talent of the parent. People used to always say to Fred Astaire Jr., “Can you dance?” And he couldn’t. He didn’t have any rhythm, but his father was this genius dancer. It doesn’t mean that it has to be passed on. I always tell my children, You don’t have to sing, you don’t have to dance. Be who you want to be, as long as you’re not hurting anybody. That’s the main thing.

Jones: Which artists — past and present — inspire you?

Michael: Stevie Wonder is a musical prophet. All of the early Motown. All the Beatles. I’m crazy about Sammy Davis Jr., Charlie Chaplin, Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly, Bill ‘Bojangles’ Robinson — the real entertainers, the real thing, not just gimmicks, showstoppers. When James Brown was with the Famous Flames, it was unbelievable. There are so many wonderful singers — Whitney Houston, Barbra Streisand, Johnny Mathis. Real stylists. You hear one line, and you know who it is. Nat ‘King’ Cole, great stuff. Sam Cooke — they are all ridiculous.

Jones: How involved were you in selecting the artists to perform in your 30th anniversary special?

Michael: I wasn’t involved at all.

Jones: How were you able to let go of something so big and so special?

Michael: Trust.

Jones: What was your experience on September 11?

Michael: I was in New York [after performing at Madison Square Garden on September 7 and 10], and I got a call from friends in Saudi Arabia that America was being attacked. I turned on the news and saw the Twin Towers coming down, and I said, Oh my God. I screamed down the hotel hallway to our people, Everybody get out, let’s leave now! Marlon Brando was on one end, our security was on the other end. We were all up there, but Elizabeth Taylor was at another hotel. We all got out of there as quickly as we could. We jumped in the car, but there were these girls who had been at the show the night before, and they were banging on the windows, running down the street screaming. Fans are so loyal. We hid in New Jersey. It was unbelievable — I was scared to death.

Jones: On another tip altogether, what do you do for recreation?

Michael: I like water-balloon fights. We have a water-balloon fort here, and we have a red team and a blue team. We have slings and cannons, and you are drenched by the time the game is over. There’s a timer, and whoever gets the most points is the winner. If I’m going to do some kind of sport, I have to laugh. I don’t do anything like basketball or golf. Basketball is very competitive, and so is tennis; they make you angry. I’m not into that. It should be therapeutic. I also like to go to amusement parks, hang out with animals, things like that.

Jones: Do you have a fantasy of something that you’d like to see in your lifetime?

Michael: I would like to see an international children’s holiday to honor our children, because the family bond has been broken. There’s a Mother’s Day, and there’s a Father’s Day, but there’s no children’s day. It would mean a lot. It really would. World peace. I hope that our next generation will get to see a peaceful world, not the way things are going now.

Jones: Has singing ever stopped being fun and become work?

Michael: It’s always been fun. Unless I get physically sick, it’s always fun. I still love it.

Jones: Many of us see you as a historic figure, an innovator who has set a standard that still exists in music. Where does Michael Jackson go from here?

Michael: Thank you, thank you. I have a deep love for film and I want to pioneer and innovate in the medium of film — to write and direct and produce movies, to bring incredible entertainment.

Jones: What kinds of movies? Are you looking at scripts?

Michael: Yes, but nothing has been finalized yet.

Jones: Are you ever lonely?

Michael: Of course. If I’m onstage, I’m fine there. But you can have a house full of people and still be lonely from within. I’m not complaining, because I think it’s a good thing for my work.

Jones: Tell me about the inspiration for ‘Speechless’. It’s very loving.

Michael: You’ll be surprised. I was with these kids in Germany, and we had a big water-balloon fight — I’m serious — and I was so happy after the fight that I ran upstairs in their house and wrote ‘Speechless’. Fun inspires me. I hate to say that, because it’s such a romantic song. But it was the fight that did it. I was happy, and I wrote it in it’s entirety right there. I felt it would be good enough for the album. Out of the bliss comes magic, wonderment, and creativity.

Jones: Do you collect anything?

Michael: I like anything to do with Shirley Temple, the Little Rascals, and the Three Stooges. I love Curly. I love him so much that I did a book on him. I got a hold of his daughter, and we wrote the book together.

Jones: Is there anything that you would like to say to VIBE readers?

Michael: I love Quincy Jones. I really do. And also, I want to tell the readers not to judge a person by what they hear, or even what they read, unless they hear it from the person himself. There is so much tabloid sensationalism. Don’t fall prey to it, it’s ugly. I’d like to take all the tabloids and burn them. I want you to print that! Some of them try to diguise themselves, but they are still the tabloids.

Jones: Finally, how do you channel your creativity?

Michael: I don’t force it, I let nature take its course. I don’t sit at the piano and think, I’m going to write the greatest song of all time. It doesn’t happen. It has to be given to you. I believe it’s already up there before you are born, and then it drops right into your lap. It’s the most spiritual thing in the world. When it comes, it comes with all the accompaniments, the strings, the bass, the drums, the lyrics, and you’re just the medium through which it comes, the channel. Sometimes I feel guilty putting my name on songs — written by Michael Jackson — because it’s as if the heavens have done it already. Like Michelangelo would have this huge piece of marble from the quaries of Italy, and he’d say, “Inside is a sleeping form.” He takes a hammer and chisel, and he’s just freeing it. It’s already in there. It’s already there.

June 01, 2002 : Michael gives an interview to Gold Magazine. In the interview he talks about a new movie project named “Wolfed”

Michael Jackson is the ‘King of Pop’, the man who made the biggest-selling album in history; a man whose dance routines and tunes have entranced people in every corner of the globe, from Johannesburg to Jakarta, from London to L.A.

But he is also an enigma. A child star with his siblings in the Jackson Five, he comes from an immensely talented family and, as youngest son [Randy is younger ;-)], carved for himself the most successful solo career of all of them. He is one of the few world-famous children who have gone on to become world-famous adults; and now he is reinventing himself again, as a film star.

Despite his fame, despite the fact that he has been performing, creating and improvising almost since he was old enough to walk, Jackson is shy of publicity. He may have hordes of fans and photographers surrounding him whenever he steps out in public, but he is an intensely private man who lives with his family on his fairy-tale Neverland ranch in California. In this rare interview, he talks candidly to Magdalena, the ‘Gold Girl’, about fame, the burden of his childhood stardom, his view on the media, and his future in film.

Magdalena: Do you most see yourself as a musician, an entertainer or an entrepreneur?

Michael: Probably all of the above, because I love entertaining and I always will love entertaining. I love becoming a slave to rhythm. Because dancing is about interpreting the sounds and accompaniments of the orchestra. You know, you become the sound, you become the bass, you become whatever you hear, and you do it bodily. But I try not to get so caught up in it all that you don’t think about your future. So many great entertainers have just been taken in the past, and they ended up lonely, sad and broken. I’ve always said to myself, I never want to be that way and I’m going to try my hardest to learn about the business side, support myself, invest my money, save. Who knows what tomorrow brings? You want to be protected financially so you can support yourself.

Magdalena: Would you like to be remembered as a great entertainer?

Michael: I love movies and I love art — and an architect is an entertainer, the guy who builds a rollercoaster is an entertainer. He knows where to build the slopes, and the big anticipation when you go up… He makes you go, “Oh my God!” when you get to the top before you come down. It’s just the same as structuring a show or a dance.

Magdalena: Does it ever become a burden to be one of the most recognized stars in the world?

Michael: There’s nowhere in the world I can actually go and have privacy. The thing that hurts the most is the fact that your privacy is taken away from you. To use the silly expression, you live in a fishbowl, but it’s true. I do disguises… People know them all, it’s very hard, very hard.

Magdalena: What kind of disguises?

Michael: Fat suits, buck teeth, glasses, afros, prosthetics, make-up jobs, everything. Just to sit in the audience and experience it the way an audience would experience a show; I want to feel how they feel.

Magdalena: Do they find you out?

Michael: Sometimes, yes. In the beginning, no. Then they start looking me in the eyes. I put these things on and then they start looking behind the glasses… Girls are very smart, you know. You can trick a guy quicker than you can trick a girl. Women can just pick it up. They know the way you move your body, the way you walk, the way you gesture. I hear them go, “Look at the way he moves his hand”, or “Look at the way he was walking”, and I think, “Oh no.”
Magdalena: If you were invisible for a day in London, what would you do?

Michael: Oh boy. Who would I like to slap? Let me see [laughs]… I think I’d find one of the tabloid paparazzi and kick his ass, ‘Moonwalk’ style. I’d really like to knock them off one of those little scooters they ride around on, I really would, knock the cameras right out of their hands. They’re so annoying. I’d go for them first, yeah. They drive you nuts. You can’t get away from them. It’s terrible.

Magdalena: Who has inspired you the most professionally, and who do you relate to?

Michael: Probably Walt Disney; because when I was little I grew up in an adult world. I grew up on stage. I grew up in night clubs. When I was seven, eight years old I was in nightclubs. I saw striptease girls take off all their clothes. I saw fights break out. I saw people throw up on each other. I saw adults act like pigs. That’s why to this day I hate clubs. I don’t like going to clubs — I did that already, I’ve been there. That’s why I compensate now for what I didn’t do then. So when you come to my house, you’ll see I have rides, I have a movie theatre, I have animals. I love animals — elephants and giraffes and lions and tigers and bears, all kinds of snakes. I get to do all those wonderful things that I didn’t get to do when I was little, because we didn’t have those things. We didn’t have Christmas. We didn’t have sleepovers. We didn’t have school, we had private school when we were touring. I didn’t go to a state school. We tried it for two weeks and it didn’t work. It was very difficult. It’s hard growing up a celebrity child. Very few make that transition from child star to adult star. It’s very difficult. I relate to Shirley Temple. I met her in San Francisco and I sat at her table and I cried so bad. She said, “What’s wrong Michael?” I said, “I love you. I need to be around you more.” She goes, “You’re one of us, aren’t you?” and I said “Yes, I am.” Somebody else said, “What do you mean?” and she said, “Michael knows what I mean.” And I know exactly what she meant — to have been there as a child star and to have graduated to have succeeded in making that transition to fame as an adult is very difficult. When you’re a child star people don’t want you to grow up. They want you to stay little for ever. They don’t want you to work afterwards. It’s very hard.

Magdalena: Tell me more about your interests in theme parks — what is it about them that interests you?

Michael: My favorite thing about theme parks — and I have a pretty good outlook on it because I’ve traveled the world many times over — is I love seeing people simply come together with their families and have fun. It really does bring them closer together. I go for fun, but I also go to study. I go after hours to most parks because I can’t go in the regular hours. They’re kind of like a ghost town.

Magdalena: I hear you have some ideas for a theme park in Las Vegas?

Michael: I’ve done many projects in Las Vegas, and what I think I’ve done is I’ve widened the demographic there. Because when I was a little kid — I was no more than eight years old — my brothers and I would go to Las Vegas, and at that time kids weren’t even allowed to walk on a casino floor. So we used to stay up in our rooms, bored, with nothing to do while everyone else gambled. There was only one place for kids in Vegas at the time, called ‘Circus Circus’. It was a hotel and the theme they had there was clowns. So there was a trapeze man and there were chimps doing the little unicycles. When I got older we played Vegas a lot — we performed there many, many times — and I thought about it and I said, “It’s really not fair that there’s nothing here for children,” so I started to conceive a couple of ideas for certain hotel owners. And now it’s like the family-themed vacation kingdom, it really is.

Magdalena: Who are your favorite people?

Michael: I love people who have really contributed to the pleasure and happiness of the planet and mankind, people with light — from Walt Disney to Gandhi to Edison to Martin Luther King. These are people with light, people who really cared about children, bringing families together, and love. That’s what I try to say in my music and in my songs. If you go to one of my concerts, my shows, you will see 200 000 people swaying, holding candles, saying, “We want to heal the world,” and “We love you.” I’ve seen it around the world from Russia to Germany to Poland to Africa to America. We’re all the same. People cry in the same places in the show. They get angry in the same places in the show, they get the pathos in the same places.

Magdalena: Was Fred Astaire your friend?

Michael: Yes. Fred Astaire was my neighbor. I used to see him every day when I was riding my little motorscooter. He always told me, he would always say when I was a little kid, “You’re gonna be a big star.” He told me that he thought I was an incredible entertainer and a great mover. And he always used to say, “You’re the best,” and I’d say, “No, you’re the best.” I remember the first time I did the ‘Moonwalk’. Fred called me at home. He was screaming on the phone, raving. He said it was the best performance he’d ever seen. I said, “Oh, come on.” He said, “Michael, you put them on their ass.You’re a hell of a mover. You’re a hell of a dancer.” I said, “Well, coming from you, I don’t need any awards.” Because I was nominated for an Emmy for that performance, and I didn’t get it, but it didn’t matter to me because Fred Astaire said he loved my performance, and that’s all the award I needed.

Magdalena: If you could work with anyone, alive or dead, who would that be?

Michael: If I could work with anybody it would be Charlie Chaplin, who I love so much. Also, Laurence Oliver was a genius, really.Those two guys, I think. And also the king, Brando.

Magdalena: Last year you put together a short film, ‘You Rock My World’, with the assistance of Marlon Brando. What was it like working with the master?

Michael: Brando is a good friend of mine. He’s very much like me. He doesn’t go many places. He comes to Neverland or he stays in my house in Mulholland Drive, or he goes to Tahiti. His son worked for me for more than 20 years, and his other son was in my class in private school. He’s just a giant. You see, Brando’s smart, because when he works with me he always says, “I know what buttons to push to get emotion from you.” He knows me so well. He knows how to get me ticked off, so he’ll say certain things to get me really geared up. He’s a genius. He’s a king. He’s the last of that generation. He’s a brilliant man, a lovely person. I love him and he’s my good friend.

Magdalena: You had a cameo in ‘Men In Black II’, was that fun to work on?

Michael: The ‘Men In Black’ project really was a lot of fun because I introduced myself as the new guy.

Magdalena: It was obvious from the video of ‘Thriller’ that you have a great interest in the visual arts.

Michael: Everything I do I like either to direct myself, or work closely with the director — we co-direct and come up with the ideas together. If you look at ‘Ghosts’, it says co-written by Michael Jackson and Stephen King. We wrote it on the telephone, Stephen and I — he’s a lovely guy, he’s amazing. We wrote it on the phone, just talking together.

Magdalena: Who are the figures in the movie business you most admire, and why?

Michael: I just love Robert De Niro. I think he’s such a multi-faceted actor. He can play anything from a comedian to a priest to a psychopathic killer to an idiot to a charming uncle to just anything. And of course, any of the great dancers.

Magdalena: Who would be your ideal leading lady, and why?

Michael: An actress? [laughs] You and I should do a film together. Let’s do it, I’d love that…

Magdalena: There was talk of you going to the moon to perform an authentic ‘Moonwalk’ here. Is there any truth in this?

Michael: [laughs] There is some truth in it. It’s not a rumor. I’ll just say that.

Magdalena: You outbid Paul McCartney for the Beatles archive. What was so special about it?

Michael: No, I didn’t, he didn’t bid for it. It was for sale and I liked it and I bought it, like buying a piece of art.

Magdalena: Tell me more about your passion for children’s charities. Which organizations do you support?

Michael: Well, I have a charity for kids that I created myself, called ‘Heal the World’. And whenever I do a concert or anything pertaining to entertainment, I give a certain amount to ‘Heal the World’ — you know orphanages, hospitals, kids who need a lung or a liver, we’ll find it, we’ll pay for the surgery. On tour, I do as many hospitals and orphanages as I do concerts. We go to 12-years-olds and we take boxes and boxes and boxes of toys, a bunch of Michael Jackson posters and paraphernalia. They love it.

Magdalena: How much more do you feel you want to achieve in your life?

Michael: I’m never satisfied. There are so many different avenues and so many different things that I want to do. I’ve done a lot, but I don’t think it’s enough, which is why I don’t put up any awards or anything in my house. You won’t see any awards in my house, I put them all away in storage. Because if you get caught up in that, you start to feel like, “Oh, man, I did it.” There’s so much more, so many more mountains to climb.

Magdalena: If one of your children came to you and said, “Dad, I want to be a pop star,” what’s the best advise you could give them?

Michael: The best advise that I would give them is it’s a lot of hard work, and be prepared, because it’s not all joy all the time. And that you’ve got to have rhinoceros skin, because the bigger the star, the bigger the target. The tabloid press are bastards, and you’ve got to have rhinoceros skin to deal with that kind of ignorance mentality. They do it simply to sell papers, because bad news sell, not good news. They simply make it up. If they don’t have anything, they just make it up. I’m nothing like the way the tabloids have painted me out to be, nothing. Nothing like that. They’re the ones who are crazy. They’re ignorant. I always say to my fans “Let’s have a tabloid burning. Let’s make a big mountain out of tabloids and just burn them.” The real fans who love me know that garbage isn’t true. They know. They’re smart.

Magdalena: Have you always wanted to do film? If your family had not been such successful musicians, would you have turned to it earlier in your life?

Michael: I’ve always wanted to do film, but the tours got in the way. That’s why I want to take several years off just doing film. I’d like to get six great movies behind me, and then I’ll do a little bit of touring, then I’ll do more filming.

Magdalena: What kind of ideas do you have for film?

Michael: I have ideas for film and movement and dance and things that people have never seen. I can’t wait to just surprise people. That’s why I’ve been dying to start a film production company, and I’m very excited that that’s what we’re doing with ‘Neverland Pictures’. I get to just have a clean slate and play and create and sculpt.

Magdalena: Tell me a little bit about the werewolf idea in your films, and how does it relate to video?

Michael: I haven’t read the script yet for ‘Wolfed’ — it’s one of the movies that we’re going to be making and I’m really excited about it. I’m so happy to be working with Sammy Lee. We’re doing some great projects together in film, and I’m really excited.

Magdalena: And ‘Wolfed’ will be the first film?

Michael: As of now, our schedule says that ‘Wolfed’ will be the first film. That’s going to be fun. I want it to be really scary. Rick Baker wants to do all the visual effects. He has seven Academy awards. Rick is very excited about it too — he did ‘American Werewolf in London’. He won an Oscar, and he said, “Michael, that was nothing.” That’s nothing compared to what he can do today. And he did ‘Thriller’ and he said of that, “It’s nothing.” He can go way beyond that. He did all the Eddie Murphy films, ‘Clumps and Nutty Professor’ and all that ‘Men In Black’ stuff, too. He does all that.

Magdalena: So tell me how you would like to be remembered?

Michael: How would I like to be remembered? As a person who came and brought light to the world, some escapism. Also as the ‘voice for the voiceless children’, because I love them. I’m living for the children. If it weren’t for the kids, I would throw in the towel. A baby, a child — now that’s amazing. They’re little geniuses, you know, little geniuses. They really are.

Magdalena: Do you enjoy being a father?

Michael: It’s my favorite thing. I love it. I love it. I love it.

Magdalena: The other day I saw you pick up your daughter when she was sleeping. You just picked her up, and I could see the joy in your face…

Michael: Oh, I love them. The Jacksons have a lot of kids. I have a lot of nephews and nieces. There’s a lot of us!

Magdalena: What is your relationship with your brothers and sisters?

Michael: I love my brothers and sisters. When I’m with them we laugh. It’s like a different version of yourself. We can just laugh and giggle and talk about old times. We’re not together as much as we’d like to be. We’re all busy. We’re all in show. We’re always doing something. If I’m in town, Janet’s out of town. If we’re both here, my brother’s somewhere else. Everybody’s running around, you know.

Magdalena: Are you a family man? What do you like doing with your family?

Michael: My personal family? My Children? We love just sitting together, talking, shooting the breeze. We sit by the lake. I take them for a walk every day at my house. We sit by the lake and we throw rocks in the water and we just talk.

Magdalena: What do you think is the deepest form of love someone can feel? And have you felt it?

Michael: Wow, I think that’s really a matter of opinion. Have I felt the deepest form of love? I don’t know what would be the deepest… [long pause] and interesting question… [repeats question a few times]. I love my children very, very much, and I always look in their eyes and tell them that — I think that’s the most important thing.