In 1987 I flew out to Tokyo with a large party of British journalists (“the Jacko Hackos”) to cover the start of Michael Jackson’s Bad tour. While nobody was allowed to meet Michael, I did get a backstage interview with his then manager, Frank DiLeo, and attended a press conference by his producer Quincy Jones. The shows themselves were astonishing.
Back then, media reports about Jackson were focused on his mild eccentricities. More serious allegations and the bizarre pattern of his personal life did not emerge until the decade after. In 1987 one could (almost) accept the party line that Michael was just a regular guy who happened to have extraordinary talents.
Meeting Frank DiLeo was unforgettable, not least because we were in a cabin underneath Jackson’s stage. The performance thundered overhead. The rotund manager revelled in his wise-guy persona of cigar-chewing Italian-American with interesting connections. Shortly afterwards, Martin Scorsese would cast him as a gangster in Goodfellas.
Backstage I also interviewed two significant figures in live music history, the tour manager Chris Tervit and production manager Benny Collins.
This article appeared in Q magazine, November 1987.
I.
Michael Jackson’s World Tour began one warm evening, Saturday July 12, at a Tokyo baseball ground, the Korakuen Stadium. The venue is set in a kind of fun factory, an entertainment complex, surrounded by the children’s fairground rides that Jackson loves too much. At one end is a long green-netted gallery where Japanese executives will carry on practising their golf swings, to the muffled thump of Bad, Off The Wall and Beat It a hundred yards away.
Inside, 38,000 fans have paid about £26 a head to sit in obedient lines and be shouted at by enormous hoardings – Mitsubishi, Yamaha, IBM – the biggest of which proclaim our sponsors for the evening, Pepsi-Cola, local phone company NTT and Nippon TV. Helicopters churn restlessly in the darkening Asian sky, just above the bright white glare of the stadium floodlights. Down on the pitch a massive black Sumo wrestler is paddling though the crowd. Every so often the fans’ excited chatter, crackling like electric static, erupts into squeals of shrill hysterics as some local hero – a Japanese soap actress, perhaps – takes his or her place in the VIP enclosure.
It is Jackson’s first solo excursion and has also been announced as his last – news that will not harm ticket sales, of course. Supposedly his career will hereafter turn to Hollywood. The tour coincides his release of Bad, an album with the awesome responsibility of matching the last one, Thriller in 1983, which has now sold almost 40 million to become the biggest selling LP in history.
Backstage behind a high and black-draped security wall is what resembles a village street. Here are wardrobe tents, catering stalls, a hospitality tent with ice-buckets of Pepsi and bowls of what could very well be Smarties, the video control room, temporary offices and one large cabin – that is Michael Jackson’s dressing room. “No admittance,” warns a sign. “No exceptions.”
Swarming about this backstage area are members of the 45-strong production crew, who have brought the raw materials of the show in 22 trucks, and worked non-stop for 38 hours to assemble them. There are another 28 people in what is designated “the band crew”, 11 of them actual performers.
A further 20 individuals comprise Michael Jackson’s official entourage. Among their number is “artist’s assistant” Miko Brando, son of Marlon, whose key position dates back to the moment he was first to reach Michael on the set of that Pepsi commercial when the superstar’s hair caught fire. Then there are two personal chefs to oversee Michael’s vegetarian diet. There is long standing personal bodyguard Billy Bray. Also in attendance are attorneys, accountants and publicity personnel. You may even see a rather sleek and expensively-dressed young man named James Osmond, formerly “Little Jimmy Osmond”, who’s along as one of Michael’s closest friends and advisors.
There are four permanent security chiefs (staff are recruited locally for each show) and two hairdressers. The inner sanctum of the party will stay, like Michael, at the Tokyo Capitol Hotel, chosen for its security advantages. Its top room will in future be known as the Michael Jackson Suite. He leaves for the stadium via an underground exit.
Covering his visit to Japan – the first stage of a tour that takes in four continents – are at least 100 foreign journalists. About ten of these are British, in a party which has christened itself the Jacko Hackos. With them are press officers from CBS/Epic in London, the head of CBS UK, and four prizewinners – two apiece from the Daily Mirror and Sun, who have won places on the trip in competitions run by the two newspapers.
Veterans of Michael’s last jaunt, the 1984 “Victory” tour of America with the Jacksons, comment on how small scale this current show is. Back then they had upwards of 250 people on the road, including personal staffs for each Jackson brother, who seemed in perpetual dispute with one another. Michael, we’re told, is much happier and more relaxed this time around.
The tour manager is a Glaswegian, Chris Tervit, whose previous experience goes back to Deep Purple, Curved Air and Kilburn & The High Roads. His partner is American production manager Benny Collins, who recently completed Bowie’s Glass Spider tour. Together the quit the Victory tour because “it was not organised to our liking”, so they were gratified to be asked back for this one.
Chris Tervit is unstinting in his praise for his employer: “He’s interested in everything that goes on here, from soup to nuts. Other artists don’t seem to have the time. Michael is such a hard worker, it frightens me sometimes. I used to work in a shipyard and I never worked as hard as this kid works.
“He’s a nice guy. He’s such a great artist you have respect for him. Anything he asks you to do, you go out there and bleeding do it for him, just because he’s such a talent… I’ve caught him making jokes about my Scottish accent, just the relaxing stuff that goes on between people. He’s a pretty ‘regular guy’ – I know that sounds strange but it’s true. Except his talent is amazing.”
Benny Collins nods in agreement. Like Chris Tervit he can’t reconcile the Michael Jackson he works for (“both a boss and a friend”) with the weirdo he reads about in UK tabloids and America’s National Enquirer magazine. “When I was in Europe with David Bowie I heard they were gonna have a germ-free screen around the stage! Now I just laugh when I see that stuff.”
Tervit: “It does get annoying in that he really doesn’t deserve it, the things they say about him. When you know the kid: he understands exactly what he wants to do, he understands the mechanics of it, and he never asks for anything outrageous. You could put him up there with just a bunch of band gear and people would still think it was the best show they’d ever seen.”
II.
The Michael Jackson stage show is indeed superb. If the opening night at Tokyo was ever so slightly subdued, then the second night – when the performers, after months of rehearsal, knew that it could be done for real, and the audience knew there was nothing to be expected except some great entertainment – was everything you could hope for.
It should reach Britain by around late spring of next year [1988], although the venues have not been fixed yet (one intriguing rumour is that they’re considering a long-ish run of dates at the Royal Albert Hall, instead of Wembley). By then the show will have changed somewhat, and taken in much more of the new songs. For the moment, all he does off the Bad album are its title track and the previous single I Just Can’t Stop Loving You.
The stage set is a jagged tangle of hi-tech wreckage: Michael’s idea, and partly inspired by the movie Bladerunner. “He wanted something that didn’t look too smooth,” says the tour manager. In fact it looks like a misunderstanding between a tower block and a Jumbo Jet.
Jackson’s preparation for the shows involved long spells of fasting and obsessive dance practice – he didn’t eat for nearly two days before the opening night, but the people close to him say that this has nothing to do with nervousness.
Musically it’s a retrospective set at this stage – the official reason being that as Japan never saw the Victory tour it’s only fair to give them a run-through of songs from Off The Wall and Thriller albums. This he duly does, plus a perfunctory medley of Jackson 5 hits (“the old songs, done the old-fashioned way”: I Want You Back, The Love You Save/I’ll Be There) and a couple of latterday Jacksons tracks like Heartbreak Hotel [later renamed This Place Hotel]. It’s a little disappointing not to hear more of the Bad material, but again we’re assured he’ll have worked this in by the time he reaches the US and UK.
Consequently there’s a familiar look to much of the concert – he moonwalks through Human Nature, dusts off the single silver glove for Billie Jean, and brings on the dancing ghouls in Thriller, as per the video. All the same his singing voice has never sounded better and the dancing is brilliant throughout. Although Jackson’s onstage pronouncements are limited to a few brief Japanese pleasantries of the Hello/Thank you/I love you variety, his pleasure is evident and he seems in no way detached or aloof. The received image of Jackson as a frail ethereal waif is entirely dispelled: he attacks the upbeat numbers with a fierce energy and sexual intensity that that will make for some explosive evenings when he eventually meets some audiences that are less restrained than those of Tokyo.
As to the band, long-term mainstay Greg Phillinganes commands the all-pervading lead keyboards with glassy precision, but the remainder of the cast is notably unknown. According to a member of the camp, they’re “musicians that he knew before, musicians that he knew of by reputation, and some other people who came along and auditioned and surprised the heck out of us.” Visually the line-up wears a strange amalgam of glam-rock, Mad Max and futuristic punk. Most worrying of all are the haircuts, several of which should be reconsidered at the earliest opportunity.
In general the show is low on extravagant effects, which is just how it should be – even as it stands some of the choreographed routines distract too much from Jackson himself. There is nothing impromptu on offer, not a gesture unconsidered. But the one unique touch is exceptionally neat: he climbs a staircase at one point to disappear inside a silver-curtained booth, which then elevates to the top of the stage. The curtain is pulled aside, Michael has vanished, and instantaneously reappears atop a moving platform at the opposite side, his cape billowing behind him as, in a different costume, he tears into Beat It. The illusion is spectacular – it derives from Michael’s fondness for magic tricks – and forms the highlight of a night that’s not short on moments of entrancement.
III.
Meanwhile backstage, Michael’s manager Frank DiLeo is not disposed to relax. “He’s impulsive, he gets restless,” an aide explains. While the music is booming out into the crowd around the other side, DiLeo’s stocky 5 foot 2 inch frame is pacing the tents and cabins, his trademark unlit cigar clamped between teeth, wisecracks issuing from the side.
DiLeo, 39, is an Italian American from Pittsburgh. He’s altogether without the nervy smoothness and predilection for corporate jargon that characterises so many senior figures in the US music industry. People appear to get along with him, not least because he leaves them knowing where they stand. “He’s an arrogant sonfabitch,” says one insider. “The thing with Frank is, at least when he’s pissed off, you know he’s pissed off.”
Whatever business acumen he’s offered since taking on the Jackson job four years ago, not the least of his contribution has been the blunt sense of humour with which he’s brought the operation down to earth after the astronomical success of Thriller.
His schedule of meetings goes on, even during the show. One such function, on the second night, is to meet this writer in a makeshift office that shudders to the beat of Billie Jean. [With me is another journalist, Chris Heath of Smash Hits.] What’s the best thing about being Michael Jackson’s manager, I enquire.
Shoulders hunched, palms out-turned: “Hey, I get to talk to you!”
And, erm, the second best thing?
[He shoots a glance at Chris.] “I get to talk to him!”
Essentially a record industry man, DiLeo began at CBS in 1968, moving through other labels like RCA, Bell and Monument until returning to CBS in 1979, where he became head of the Promotion and Video departments of the CBS subsidiary label Epic. Which was where his involvement with Jackson began.
“We just evolved a relationship through working on Thriller. Just out of that, one day out of the clear blue, he asked me to manage him.
“I felt very honoured, but also asked him if he wouldn’t mind thinking about it a couple of days. I felt that basically I was a record man, and I was being groomed for a larger job in CBS, and that maybe he was just a little bit caught up with the success of Thriller and I felt that it maybe it was rather spontaneous.
“So that was on a Tuesday and I said, Look, if you’re serious about it give me a call on Friday and we’ll try to work it out. And if you don’t call, there’s no hard feelings and we’ll just continue business. And then Friday came and about 11 o’clock at night he called me and he says, Yeah, I think we really want to do this with you. And it was then we got the lawyers working.
“That’s sort of how it worked out. It’s a great honour to work for and with him, and I think we’ve developed ourselves into a good little team.”
What are the special problems of being Michael Jackson’s manager?
“Some of the things that make it very hard are we can’t really go anywhere together. We do everything at his house or some room or wherever. You get the normal problems, the fans are outrageous, photographers follow you all day long. Those are the bad things.”
Does that get Michael down?
“No, it doesn’t get him down, he’s not particularly annoyed, he doesn’t get mad about it. It’s OK with him. It only becomes annoying to me because I’m not as used to it as he is. Maybe after five or six years I will be.”
Do you want to be a very visible manager, say like Colonel Parker and Elvis?
“I don’t want to be visible. In fact I wanna be more like the Colonel when he was un-visible. Michael’s the star, I’m just the manager. And I’m basically a quiet fellow and so… I do these little interviews every once in a while because the company asks, but it’s not really my forte in life.”
Don’t you have to shout at people a lot to be a really successful manager?
“I don’t think so. I think that if you’re honest, and people know that you know what you’re talking about, all I have to do is tell them. Sometimes you may have to tell them a little firmly. But I’m not one who raises his voice very much and I get all the results there is to get. If you treat people with respect you’ll get it back. I don’t like managers that go screaming and hollering and throwing their authority.
“I’m not the type that calls up the restaurant and says, I wanna table, I’m Michael Jackson’s manager. If they don’t know who I am I don’t really care. It’s a lot easier to go in and hand a guy a $50 bill or $20 to get the table you want rather than relying on Michael’s name.
“I ate before Michael and I’ll eat after Michael.”
Why do you two get on so well? You’re not obviously similar people.
“You don’t think we look alike?”
Well, Michael’s very interested in health, and so on.
“What makes you think I’m not? [Laughs.] I think we get along because our goals are the same. Whatever we do or create, we try to do the best. We both want to be successful, and as far as making something good, there are financial gains – we’re not fooling anybody. But we both have the same attitude that we don’t do things for financial gain, and we do them to make them better. If we make money from them, fine.”
Then what about your Pepsi sponsorship deal, which makes you a huge amount of money even though Michael doesn’t drink it?
“That’s me. I make association deals. We don’t endorse, we associate. They’re gonna sell a lot of Pepsi and they have to pay what I think deserves to be paid. It’s not as if we’re getting a penny a can. I tried that! They wouldn’t go for it.”
Doesn’t Michael feel odd getting people to drink something he wouldn’t drink himself?
“Well, each of us has got to drink something. That’s his personal habit or whatever. But Michael isn’t down on anybody for drinking it. That would be wrong. If he was to say, Nobody should drink Pepsi, and then endorse it, then be associated with it, that would be wrong on our part. But that’s not what he’s doing. He doesn’t drink beer, but if you want to go out and have a couple of beers, then God bless you. If you go to his house, he has liquor in his home, doesn’t mean he drinks it.”
Of all the press that you read about Michael, what percentage is true?
“The things that are true are when they say that he’s a great entertainer, a great dancer. And I think he is, by far. I’ve been in the record business for 20 years, y’know, and I have a little knowledge of entertainers. He is by far the greatest I have ever seen. And I’ve seen the Tony Bennetts, I’ve worked with them, the Sinatras and everybody. In their era they were great. But in this era, he is it. There’s no two ways about it.
“The things I hate they print – if that’s your next question, which it probably is – is when they discuss his plastic surgery. Because it’s bullshit. The man has had two operations in his life: to fix his nose and to put a cleft in his chin.
“Everybody in the world strives to look better. If you get up at 6.30 tomorrow, you’ll see 80 million people jogging, exercising. Why? They wanna look better, y’know? Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe, there’s not a person in Hollywood or in this business that hasn’t had a nose job.
“And the difference in his face, in the way he looks – I mean, the point is, if you took a picture of yourself every 10 years and lined them up, you would look different. Nine years ago he became a vegetarian, which also changes the way you look. The guy went from being maybe 150 lbs to weighing 125 lbs. If I lost 40 lbs I’d look a lot different: my face goes down, my features become more prominent. That’s what it is.
“I’m probably gonna take some legal action at some point to stop that, y’know? The most important thing to the fans is the music. Even though they read that, it doesn’t hinder them from buying his records.”
(DiLeo readily agrees to go through a list of the most lurid stories about Jackson, to confirm or deny them one by one.)
Does he take Bubbles the chimpanzee with him everywhere, and even sleep in the same room?
“He doesn’t come with him everywhere. Bubbles is a pet, it’s not like it’s his best friend in the world. I hope I’m his best friend in the world. I go with him everywhere. I don’t sleep with him, I just go with him. We have separate rooms. Bubbles is a pet and occasionally he brings him out; he likes to have him do things with the kids, and what a great thing! Naturally if you could afford to keep a monkey, I think everybody in the world would like to own one. It’s no big deal.”
Is Michael having his face tinted?
“Absolute 100 per cent garbage.”
Does he have “100 Million” written on his mirror at home, as reported in Rolling Stone, meaning he’s set that figure as a target for sales of Bad?
“I read that. That’s ridiculous. I don’t know where they got it. When the guy asked me about it I told him it was ridiculous.”
Did he attempt to buy the bones of John Merrick, the Elephant Man (which are preserved in the London hospital where he died)?
“Yeah. Well, Michael has seen the movie, saw the play and he loved it. He just fell in love with it, the fact that the guy was a sensitive person, all the problems that he had. We wrote them a letter, not to be published. But it gets out, it leaked from the UK. We tried, they turned us down, that’s life, y’know?
“Besides, everybody’s got skeletons in their closet…”
What about the oxygen chamber he’s supposed to sleep in (apparently believing it will prolong his life to 150 or so)?
“What it is, is a bed in a chamber. I’m not for it, I’d rather not discuss it, and it’s not something that he necessarily does every day. I’m on the record as saying I hate it, and I do.”
Has he brought it on tour with him?
“No, I wouldn’t let him bring it.”
Has he left the Jehovah’s Witnesses?
“Yeah, that’s correct. He told me he’s left, but the best way to start a war, or a bad relationship, is to discuss politics or religion. I don’t discuss my religion with Michael, he doesn’t discuss his. That’s why we get along. So to my knowledge there’s no particular reason; he made that decision and that’s for him to deal with.”
It’s been said that he’s jealous of his sister Janet’s success, and also disapproved of the raunchiness of her act.
“He’s not mad because she’s successful. He’s very happy for her – it’s his younger sister. And he’s not shocked by the sexiness, he thinks it’s great. They’re very good friends.”
Is this really Michael’s last tour?
“That’s correct. I think this’ll be his last tour. He wants to do one solo tour, then we’ll probably go into making movies.”
Does he really wear that face mask?
“Well, sometimes. This whole country wears masks. (True: they’re a not uncommon sight on the streets of Tokyo.) And they’re the smartest people in the world. He wears it to prevent people from getting a cold, and he doesn’t want to catch one either.”
(DiLeo goes on to describe Jackson as both “playful and business-like; he’s very smart.”) What sort of games does he play? Does he surprise you with snakes?
“Me, I hate snakes. We have a very strong understanding about snakes. But he’s a good practical joker.”
You’ve got the biggest artist in the world. What can you do next?
“Am I supposed to die after this? Whatever new challenge will come, will come. Hopefully I will probably stay with Michael for a long time. At this point we get along very well and I don’t see any problems. I have certain goals for both of us, and I will try to help us both attain those goals. For me to attain mine, he must attain his. We’re just taking it one step at a time. So, I don’t know. Maybe I’ll just retire and hang out with my kids.
“Or I’ll become a newspaper writer. That could be fun.”
IV.
Along with Frank DiLeo, the other key figure in Michael Jackson’s scheme of things is Quincy Jones, the producer who shaped all three of the solo LPs. Aged 54, Jones’ career takes in a staggering list of credits, from forming his own band as a teenager with Ray Charles, working as producer or arranger with Duke Ellington, Frank Sinatra and B.B. King, writing film scores, making Lesley Gore’s hit It’s My Party, cutting his own run of funk successes like Ai No Corrida, Stuff Like That and Razzamatazz, and overseeing the USA For Africa record We Are The World (at which he made his famous request that participating stars “check their egos at the door”).
A dapper, quietly self-possessed man, Quincy Jones is just along for the ride here in Japan, with no particular role except to enjoy the shows and watch Michael work. On the morning of the first show, however, he gives a press conference somewhere deep inside a vast hotel. He begins by recalling the time he spent with Michael Jackson on the recently completed Bad.
“I’ve been in the studio with him for 12 months, and you see this little guy, it’s hard to believe that this is the same little guy who gets up on the stage and changes so much. You really do forget he’s a performer in the studio.
“He never throws his weight around, he’s courteous, we have a lot of fun and joking. And it’s a real test of a relationship when you’re in the studio 12 months. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard that famous Troggs tape…” (He’s referring to a tape that’s circulated around the music industry for many years, of the ’60s English group attempting to produce their own record. Approaching the task with an utter lack of unanimity, and stupendous incompetence, the band’s members end by yelling obscene abuse at each other’s ideas. The tape is apparently authentic, and quite hilarious.)
“When he used to sing new songs to me he’d make me turn the other way, and he’d get behind the couch and he’d turn the lights out. But he has a totally opposite personality when he gets on stage, and all this energy and straightforward aggression comes out. It’s like meeting another person.
“He has one way that he can get us out of an argument. He says, What makes me dance? That automatically shuts me up, because he’s a very serious dancer so he’s gonna have the last word on that.”
Does Quincy ever worry that Jackson’s lifestyle is rather unreal?
“He’s been in this business since five years old, and it’s difficult when you’re that successful and famous, that young, to get a realistic point of view about life. But I think, just considering what he’s all about, and his stature in the business, Michael’s overwhelmingly sane and normal. Because, I’ve seen a few that have just had one record they go absolutely nuts, to the point where they can’t even get to their next record.
“The music business is a little unreal anyway. Nobody deserves as much attention as most of the people get, or as much money or adulation. So you have to have a pretty strong centre to hold on to your balance. And I think he has that – he astounds me that he’s so balanced.”
So how does Quincy explain the eccentricities, the animals in the studio and so on?
“I don’t think it’s so eccentric. It’s a little off-the-wall. But it could be cocaine, y’know? (Meaning, it could be worse.) And Bubbles is a funny little guy, he’s fun to be around. I’m not crazy about that python – he’s friendly, but I just don’t like snakes. But the chimp is a lot of fun, great sense of humour, very polite, great table manners… You’re in a studio for a year, you get desperate for entertainment!
“He loves children and he loves animals, and my guess is that because he’s very connected to his soul, he likes the idea of the truth involved – and when you deal with an animal you don’t have to go through any games, that’s for sure. I think he trusts children and animals more than adults.”
Can he see Michael getting married at some stage?
“I think he’s getting to that stage. I don’t know about settling down. I sense that he’s changed a lot, he’s a lot looser now.”
Was there pressure involved in following up a record as successful as Thriller?
“Yes, everybody expecting to have to compare it with the album. It’s very difficult, even if you’re the most mercenary, to stack up three million dollars here and say, Write me three million dollars’ worth of music. Because the two don’t communicate with each other. It doesn’t work like that at all. Songwriting especially: that’s the only thing there’s no science to. That’s totally in God’s hands.”
How aware was Michael of Prince, and of his rise to prominence?
“Prince was making his biggest thrust right at the time of Thriller, and Michael’s success had gotten so far out of control, at one point you could just feel it breaking that barrier, in almost a scary fashion. And right after that I think the public freaked out because all the hoopla was going on, and here comes Prince with Purple Rain, and in my opinion when the backlash started they used Prince to whip Michael with: it’s time for you to get pulled down and Prince is gonna be the one to do it.”
(Jones confirms the two superstars did meet on one occasion: “a social call”. Nobody is claiming that the pair got along famously. There was, it seems, some polite conversation about vegetarianism.)
Is Quincy aware of Michael’s aptitude for business affairs?
“I know he understands it very well. He’s been in the business a long time and he’s seen a lot of things happen, and I’m sure the best education in business is to get burned a lot. And there’s a lot of people around who’ll take care of that.
“He’s a Virgo, and they always seem to have it all together. He’s very organised, he thinks in a very meticulous way. And details are really what it’s all about in the final analysis.”
Why does Quincy call him Smelly?
“Because he doesn’t use profanity at all, and where most musicians will say, Man, that music is FUNKY, he says smelly. Smelly Jelly.”
Smelly himself was not, alas, in ready supply for the journalists assembled in his honour over the opening days of the tour. Undeterred, the British contingent of Jacko Hackos continued to file the type of Wacko Jacko stories they’ve been writing for the past three years. Even Robert Maxwell, in Tokyo on business, was to be cruelly disappointed in his hope of meeting the star.
More fortunate were the CBS executives who’d arrived from every territory in their company’s empire. Excitedly they lined up at exclusive receptions to shake the great hand and bear such glad tidings as they were able to summon up. Bad has outsold Thriller in Norway within four days of its release! Bad is Number 1 in Britain and outselling the Number 2 album by 12 to 1! (The UK is indeed, proportionately speaking, one of Michael’s loyalest fiefdoms.)
It is reported that his favourite remarks were “Thank you” and “That’s wonderful”. For recreation, he went to a funfair. His ambition, while in Japan, is to visit the Tokyo Disneyland. He will undoubtedly bring Bubbles the chimpanzee.
He seems happy enough, in his own unknowable way. And Quincy Jones says, “I can see him doing Billie Jean at 70.”