YOUNG MICHAEL:)

MOJO Magazine - Issue 97; December 2001

by Ben Edmonds, Gerri Hirshey & David Fricke

(sometime around 1969)

Quote:

While the contracts were being ironed out - Joe Jackson had previously entered into an agreement with a local company back in Gary - the kids shuttled back and forth between school in Indiana and Taylor's apartment in Detroit. "That is, as long as I had an apartment," Bobby laughs. "Having all these young, boisterous house-guests always around, making music or making mischief, didn't sit well with my neighbours. Listen to this: My youngest brother Jerome and Michael were busted for peeping on the people next door. They leaped from my balcony to the next, and then to the one beyond that, just to watch this couple having sex. And this was way up on the 19th floor! Crazy kids. Not long after that I was invited to leave the building." Taylor then found a house which he says was more suited to constant influx of Jacksons.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Quote:
The group had done some preliminary recording under Taylor's supervision in Detroit, mostly covers from Jobete catalogue. This continued in LA through early 1969, and Taylor put the studio-green Michael through his paces. "I did very little vocal rehearsal," he explains. "I liked to go into the studio almost cold, and look for spontaneous combustion to happen. At first, Michael would be in the middle of a song and start going, "Ooh Ooh'. I'd say, What the f*ck is that 'ooh' ish? That's James Brown, not you. Bring your ass - this is how I talked to him - bring your stupid little ass in here. Then I'd sing it down and say, You think you can get anywhere near what I did, you little punk? Then I'd turn my back on him as he re-sang it. You know what? Every time I challenged him, the little f*cker reached down and delivered. Brought tears to my eyes."

Quote:
His approach to recording the backing vocals, for which he used only Michael, Jermaine and Jackie, was quite different. "I was wondering how I was gonna get these little boys to do exactly what I needed 'em to do," Taylor chuckles, "and then it hit me: Cutie-pie girls! So I used to hire girls to come into the studio and hang out, just sit around and watch. I know how guys are, and they'll always give you their best if there's a pretty girl they want to impress."




Quote:
Bobby Taylor has never received the acknowledgment he feels is due him. "Berry Gordy told me one thing that turned out to be true," he snorts. "He said that once the Jacksons got rich, they won't remember who I was. I've never asked 'em for shit, but if go by just to visit they won't let me in the compound. My daughter Danielle was hired as a dancer on one of Michael's videos. During the shoot he kept staring at her, until she finally went over and asked him what he was staring at. He said she reminded him of someone, and she told him, Well, I should. You used to baby-sit me. My father is Bobby Taylor. And he told my daughter - listen to this - 'Oh, I don't think I ever thanked him for all he did. Will you thank him for me?'

"Will you thank him for me???? Berry Gordy, Berry Gordy, how right you were, sir."

Quote:
Michael was so intensly focused on completing his solo transformation - one that emcompassed production, songwriting, choreography, image and five-year business plan - that Katherine Jackson confessed she was worried for her fifth son. In the months preceding the record's release, he had become obsessive about his ritual of fasting and dancing unto collapse every Sunday. Workout's end found Michael prostrate on the floor of his room, sweating, laughing and crying. He hardly seemed to eat anything. He walked around in the same clothes for days, shoes untied. Sam Moore, late of the mighty soul duo Sam And Dave, scarcely recognised the boy he had held on his lap during card games in the basement of Harlem's Apollo Theater. "I saw him wandering along a street in Encino," Moore told me. "He looked like a street guy, or homeless. I hollered out, Michael, is that you? I love that kid, and I was worried."