Jermaine, despre Michael , Madonna, Diana Ross, Lisa Marie Presley, Tatum , Billie Jean

"a new friend who started hanging out with us in NY is Madonna whose star was rising" "Dressed in all black with a proud cleavage, naval baring cropped top and wild, scrunchy hair, she seemed to be a constant presence backstage at MSG and the Helmsley Palace - Mike's favourite hotel in NYC. At first, she actually came across as shy. She seemed more of a VIP fan than a fellow artist as she moved between rooms at the hotel, being social, spending most of her time with Michael and Randy. It was certainly productive networking time for her. Not only did she end up being managed by the Jacksons' management, Weisner and DeMann, she would recruit our keyboard player, at Leonard, as her musical director, and our drummer Jonathan Moffett for her Virgin tour. In later years, it would also become obvious how much Michael inspired her artistically: his signature crotch grabbing dance was all over her Express Yourself video, and take a listen to Material World. That beat, that bass line? In my opinion, that's Can You Feel It right there. I always sensed that Madonna was hovering with intent, looking to get action from somebody, but Michael was indifferent to her back in 1984, which was probably why she turned first to Randy. The obstacle with him was overcoming the girlfriend who was not only with him but on his arm. Short of walking around with a sign saying "I'm taken" the situation couldn't have been any clearer. But we soon learned that very little deterred Madonna. Ignoring his girlfriend, she walked up to Randy, grabbed his face and stuck her tongue down his throat. You would have thought that kind of directness would be enough to put off someone as delicate as Michael when it came to future dating prospects but, come 1991, he and Madonna 'dated' for the shortest time. Out of all the combinations Hollywood could throw together, this was probably the most ill matched. As Michael soon found. Here was a gentle man in touch with his feminine side, and here was a wild woman with a tight grip on her masculine side. She was everything his ideal woman wasn't: brazen, outspoken, opinionated and with an unashamed shock value. I think Madonna sincerely adored Michael but the feeling wasn't mutual and she committed two cardinal sins. The first was that she played on the fears he had about relationships: that every woman tries to change a man. It was seemed she was hell bent on loosening him up, bringing him out of his shell, getting him to see life through her eyes. The second big mistake was when they were at dinner one night and she had the temerity to criticise Janet. Michael was furious and, not surprisingly, they never went on another date. DIANA Michael was married to his work, and it puzzled him that we could allow women to come between us and our music. The echoes of Joseph's conditioning were not lost on me. But Michael's passion and companion was music: he simply had no room in his life for a woman. In the brotherly void, he grew accustomed to being on his own. The more time he spent alone, the more going seemed less alien. But the propelling force was Diana Ross. she was in his ear saying he needed to chase what he wanted, adivising him how to use his name, not the family name, making him believe in her example of leaving The Supremes. One of the hottest acts around - and a mentor he adored - was telling Michael that if he wanted to be the best, he had to jump... and fly. At least, that was how the message was relayed back to me. It was life changing advice, issued in New York on the set of Universal's adpatation of the musical, The Wiz. Diana played Dorothy and Michael played the Scarecrow. It was Mr Gordy who handed him the debut screen role after Motown The whole experience lit another desire within Michael: to get more involved in movies. It also brought him exceptionally close to Diana. His devotion to our goddess of Motown developed from a teenage crush into a young man's infatuation. I think it's fair to say that, in his mind, Diana was the first woman he fell in love with. I always wondered if she felt for him the way he felt for her, or if she saw him as the little boy she'd first met. Michael felt she no longer viewed him as a boy, but as a man and a respected artist. They had the kind of true friendship that rarely exists in Hollywood and I think that was what he prized most. As for how intimate they truly became, this is where his music - nearly always semi auto biographical - should speak for itself. Go listen to the wistful lyrics of "Remember the Time" released in 1992. That song was, as Michael told me, written with Diana Ross in mind; the one great love that, as far he was concerned, escaped him. remember the time???deci a fost scrisa pentru Diana? LISA ...By the time of the big Oprah interview, Michael had already started a phone relationship with Lisa Marie, building up toward their ultimate romance -which ends the lie about a 'publicity marriage to restore his reputation' after the events of 1993. As a couple, they were flirting and talking and starting to feel something long before the extortion nightmare began. In fact, destiny's journey began in 1974 when we were in Vegas doing the family variety show... The world didn't see them step out together until 1994 -... but she had actually joined Michael in public at some charity kids event out east as a guest of former president Jimmy Carter ... Soon the house would be filled with photographs of Lisa Marie, her two children, and Michael. It had taken 20 years since they first flashed by one another in 1974 and now Jackson was in love with Presley. The King's daughter and the King of Pop -God doesn't write better movie scripts than that.... ... When he became convinced that she had broken a pact he felt they had made, it would have taken him back to that time when Joseph promised him dinner with Fred Astaire and never delivered. I'm pretty sure Lisa Marie would have felt, from that moment on, as if she was living in Siberia, because he hill have shut down and gone into retreat... The saddest thing about this whole break down is that there was genuine love and friendship between them, but all that got eclipsed and scarred within some power-struggle. At the end of the day, it came down to two people with different temperaments and different outlooks, but I had always wished for a compromise that never happened. ... What I am thankful for is that Michael only ever wanted to know what a real relationship felt like, and he wanted to be loved, and find true love. As much as the reality didn't work out in the end, his heart finally got to know true love and I think a part of it stayed with Lisa Marie right until the very end.... tatum The secluded privacy of [my ranch/beach house] appealed to [Michael]. That was presumably what appealed to my neighbours, too: actors Ryan O'Neal (four doors down) and Beau Bridges (directly next door). It was during my morning runs on the beach that I used to wave at Ryan's daughter, Tatum, as she stood on the balcony. She was a 13 year old child star at the time, having won an Oscar at the age of 10 for Best Supporting Actress in Paper Moon. I told Michael there was "this real pretty girl" living nearby and, coincidentally, he started showing up at the beach house more and more at weekends. But here's the ironic thing: they waved at each other but never spoke until they bumped into one another in a club on Sunset Strip. "It's meant to be," I joked. "It's nothing, we're just friends," he said, playing down its importance. But it was obvious from Tatum's visits to Hayvenhurst that they were boyfriend and girlfriend. She was clearly smitten and he was giddy around her, but Michael was guarded about when and where he saw her. I don't remember one visit to Malibu when he left my house to see her, or they met at the beach. Which seemed odd, but Michael's sense of privacy and discretion, even among his siblings, was notable. I am aware that Tatum has publicly distanced herself from being Michael's childhood sweetheart, but I don't think my brother suggested that they shared a blazing passionate love affair. It was nothing but puppy love. But what matters is that, in my brother's heart and mind, Tatum was his first girlfriend. Billie Jean There have been many theories about the song's inspiration, with suggestions that Billie Jean was a specific woman. But as Michael made clear in his autobiography, she is actually a composition of the most obsessed fans, as witnessed during our Jackson 5 days. The song tells the story of a woman trying to trap a man with a false pregnancy and its true back story lies in two incidents. First one lady mailed me a pair of pink baby shoes to the Bel Air home I'd shared with Hazel. An attached note read: "These are for the baby we'll be having. I am pregnant with your child." Then Jackie received a similar fantastical claim in a handwritten letter sent to his home. As the two most prolific boys with the ladies, we were wide open to such claims but they they ignored the fact that we practiced safe sex. Michael never slept with a fan so no such claim could be made against him. In later years - after the song became a worldwide hit - the family described a certain kind of fan as a Billie Jean. It wasn't intended to be a compliment - because that song is no love story - but a few people but their hands in the air to claim the notoriety over imagined relationships with Michael. Billie Jeans were fans Michael was wary of. The interior walls of the guard house we installed at Hayvenhurst were covered with photos and sketches of what each woman looked like. The most notorious Billie Jean was a woman we knew as Yvonne, an African American with three kids. She was always loitering around, convinced Michael loved her. One day, she waited at the front gate until Mother came out to see her. She had shaved the heads of her three children they had lice and she needed Michael's help because "These are your grandchildren. These are the children I had with Michael." Another Billie Jean lived in the UK but the 5,000 mile journey has never deterred her. She actually took out a lawsuit against the family, saying she had married Michael in secret and they'd had a child. She even presented convincing looking marriage and birth certificates as "evidence" in a case that obviously went nowhere. But the most astonishing incident happened later at Neverland when a Billie Jean accessed the grounds. When security found her, she was carrying a bonda fide driving license from the DMV with a photo and an address that said "Neverland Ranch," Figueroa Valley and the zip code - and the name Billie Jean. It was incredible the lengths these women went to. I need to stress that the vast majority of Michael's fans were not Billie Jean's; they were the most dedicated, loyal and loving fans an artist could wish for, and he knew better than anyone. He shared a unique association with the people he called his 'soldiers of love.' Once security had screened groups of fans outside Hayvenhurst, he'd come out to spend a few minutes chatting and signing autographs. He was forever trying to make himself accessible in an increasingly inaccessible reality. Jerm on the strippers: Quote: "What [Katherine] didn't immediately know was that some of the late night acts that followed included strippers. That was the variety of bar acts back then and we often came offstage to find half naked ladies in fishnets and suspenders waiting in the wings. If christmas and birthdays were a sin in the eyes of Jehovah, then sharing a venue with exotic strippers was tantamount to hanging with the Devil, so you can't blame Joseph for not detailing our exact itinerary to Mother. But the game was up one night when a stray lacy accessory found its way into one of our bags. Mother marched out of our bedroom holding an elaborate nipple tassel between her fingers. "WHERE did THIS come from?" For once in his life, Joseph was speechless. "You have our children up all night when they have school in the morning and you have them peeking at NAKED women? WHAT kind of people do you have our sons mixing with? This is QUITE the life you are showing them, Joseph!" We brothers viewed such incidents differently. In my mind, a woman's body is hypnotic and beautiful, but Michael saw these women as degrading themselves to tease men, and men treating them like sexual objects. Yes, he gawped and giggled like the rest of us, but his lasting impression formed differently. He always remembered our regular stripper - her name was Rosie - tossing her panties into the crowd and jiggling her bits as men tried to touch her. Michael always hid his eyes, "Aww, man! That's awful. Why she do that?" Mother has said that she didn't realize there were strippers until she read Michael's official biography. I think that's the official line for the sake of the Kingdom Hall. Not that her objections had anything to do with being a Jehovah's Witness. As she says, what mother of any faith would want her young sons mixing in such an environment so late at night?