“The greats are basically unmanageable,” Marvin Gaye once said. “I believe it’s true of most artists with outsized talent. We’re led by our creativity, not by managerial decisions. We can’t be controlled or fenced in. I know that’s true of me, I know it’s true of Stevie Wonder, and from what I’ve heard, it was true of Mr. Mozart. Wasn’t his dad trying to manage him? Well, that makes me think of Michael Jackson, another supertalent and an artist who I’m guessing is going to be unmanageable.”
Gaye made the observation in 1980, in the aftermath of the release of Michael’s hit album Off the Wall. The statement proved prophetic. Over the course of his career, Michael hired and fired at least a dozen managers. A few were hired and fired twice. He had dozens of close advisors, many of whom were billionaires. Because his sweet nature elicited sympathy and his scattered focus revealed vulnerability, he was prey to both the well-intentioned and the unscrupulous. Fabulously wealthy princes like Sheikh Abdullah, who controlled an oil-rich kingdom, formed partnerships with Michael that seemingly guaranteed his financial security. And yet those partnerships inevitably crumbled, usually resulting in multimillion-dollar lawsuits. He was advised by mentors like Mohamed Al-Fayed, owner of the London department store Harrods, and Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal of Saudi Arabia. Billionaires like Al Malnik, Ron Burkle, and George Maloof allowed Michael and his children to live in luxury, free of charge, until he got back on his feet—and yet that was never enough. Because of his mismanagement, he always needed more—more help, more money, more ways to save himself from going under.
“Michael really had no concept of money,” said Walter Yetnikoff, president of CBS Records during the eighties, when he was one of Michael’s closest advisors. “At a time when Thriller was selling a million copies a week, he felt like he had all the money in the world. He couldn’t conceive of his money ever running out. And because his work ethic was so strong—his work ethic had, in fact, been strong since he was a child—he couldn’t help but feel entitled. Rightfully so, he felt that he earned all he made. But that meant there was no limit to his spending.
“We all have addictions—mine have become the stuff of legend—but I really do believe that Michael’s clearest addiction was to spending. When it came to shelling out money for anything, Michael had no pause button, no control. Spending gave him instant gratification. It made him feel powerful. His spending also applied to things like gifts and charity. No one was more giving. But it also had to do with self-indulgence. He wouldn’t think twice about moving into the highest-price hotel anywhere in the world, renting out the top floor, which might mean ten rooms in addition to the royal suite, and staying there for a month. And when it came to production budgets for his music or videos, the sky was the limit. In that case, it wasn’t his money—CBS was paying those bills—so his spending was even more outrageous. It meant nothing for Michael to rent out two or three fully staffed studios at the same time, with engineers on call 24/7. If he showed up to work at one of those studios, fine. If he didn’t, that was okay too. He just wanted the convenience of being able to work whenever and wherever he wanted. And because he was making a fortune—for us and as well for himself—no one was about to tell him no.”
Of Michael’s many managers, the one who looms largest is Frank Dileo, a former employee of Yetnikoff’s whom Michael came to call Uncle Tookie. Michael hired Dileo in 1984, when Thriller was still setting the industry on fire.
“Frank was working for me as a promo man at Epic records,” said Yetnikoff. “That’s the subsidiary label that had acts like Cyndi Lauper, Culture Club, and Michael. Dileo was the conduit between the label and the independent promotion men. Those were the guys responsible for getting airplay. In the eighties, they were incredibly important to sales success. Some considered the promo men a vestige of the old payola system. From where I stood, as grand czar of CBS Records, I didn’t have time to make moral judgments about influencing program directors. The shareholders wanted profits, and that meant I had to deliver hits. No one was better at working the independent promo system than Dileo. He was at the helm of the sales force when, out of the seven singles we released from Thriller, all seven went top ten. That had never happened before. I’m not saying Michael’s musicianship wasn’t absolutely terrific—it was—but Dileo’s salesmanship was equally terrific, and Michael knew it. Which is why he asked whether I’d be upset if he hired Frank as his manager.
“I wasn’t at all upset. I was delighted. I was glad to have one of my confidants so close to Michael. Besides, I got a kick out of watching the two of them. Frank stood about as tall as a fire hydrant and was easily twice as wide. He always had to have an extra-long, extra-thick cigar sticking out of his mouth. Never met a man with such a strong center of gravity. One time, just for fun, I tried to knock him over. I body-slammed him and wound up on my ass. Frank hadn’t moved an inch. I think that’s another reason Michael liked him. He saw him as a rock-solid, steadying influence. It didn’t matter to Michael any more than it mattered to me that earlier in Frank’s career, he’d been convicted for betting on college basketball, a minor offense. More major was his uncanny ability to keep Michael Jackson songs and videos in heavy rotation from one corner of the globe to the other.”
When asked about Michael’s managers before Dileo, Yetnikoff was less enthusiastic. “In the seventies and early eighties, when he was still with his brothers, his father was in the picture, along with Ron Weisner. But during those years, even when he broke through with Off the Wall, he still hadn’t come into his own, and management wasn’t as crucial as it became with Thriller.”
“It was during Thriller that Michael fired Ron Weisner and had no management at all,” Quincy Jones remembered. “This alarmed me. I compared it to a 747 flying around with no one in the cockpit. So when he finally saw the need and hired Dileo, I was relieved.”
“When Michael relieved Dileo of all his duties in 1989, if he could have, he would have canned me as well,” said Yetnikoff. “The problem was that he had this fixation about Bad selling a hundred million copies. At that point, Thriller might have sold fifty million, and Michael was determined that Bad would have to double that number. The truth is that Bad spawned five number one singles. At the time, no other album had ever accomplished that, not even Thriller. It didn’t matter to Michael that, by any normal measure, Bad was a worldwide smash, selling tens of millions. Because he couldn’t stop comparing it to Thriller, a once-in-a-lifetime phenomenon that would never be matched, he considered Bad a failure and started firing the key members of his team—mainly his lawyer, John Branca, and manager, Dileo—who had been so critical to his success. He wanted David Geffen to take over as manager. But Geffen saw himself as a mogul, not a manager. Geffen asked Michael, ‘Do you wash windows?’ ‘No, I don’t wash windows,’ Michael said. ‘Well, I don’t manage,’ Geffen said. So Michael hired Sandy Gallin, who was also handling Dolly Parton and Cher. That’s about the same time—1990—I got fired from Sony, the Japanese firm I convinced to buy CBS Records. My underling, Tommy Mottola, took over. History would prove that Mottola had an even harder time managing Michael than anyone.”
The Michael-Mottola relationship imploded in 2001, when Michael claimed that Sony wasn’t properly promoting Invincible, his new release. He went so far as to hold a press conference, where he was introduced by Reverend Al Sharpton. That’s when Michael called Mottola a devilish racist. Mottola argued that Sony had spent some $40 million on the production and promotion of Invincible, and that if the record’s sales didn’t exceed those of Thriller—Michael’s unchanging goal—it was not the label’s fault.
Invincible did reach number one, but its worldwide sales of eight million were seen as a disappointment and evidence of a decided downturn in Michael’s commercial appeal. Two thousand and one was also the year of the CBS television special celebrating Michael’s thirtieth year in music. The show, which included a Jackson brothers reunion, was taped during two concerts—one on September 7, the other on September 10, the night before the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. The national tragedy overwhelmed Michael’s big celebration.
Three years later, in the summer of 2004, Michael, charged with seven counts of committing lewd acts against a minor, was viscerally moved to see Frank Dileo, the manager he had fired some fifteen years earlier, seated in the Santa Barbara County courthouse, there to lend his support.
Now, in March of 2009, the question of who manages Michael—a question that has vexed him for the past three decades—is more crucial and confusing than ever.
Michael was raised to do the right thing. From the start, he was the ultimate good boy: obedient, respectful of authority, a model son. But when the role of father merged with the roles of musical coach and business manager, emotional confusion ensued. Young Michael derived great pleasure from thrilling audiences at venues—high school sock hops, shopping center openings, nightclubs, and theaters—that had been booked by his dad. At the same time, he railed against Joseph’s tyrannical disposition. Because he sensed his own inordinate talent at an early age, Michael assumed a stance of leadership. Even as a kid, he was the front man. And of all the Jackson boys, Michael took the brunt of Joseph’s rage. He literally got hit hardest.
In his memoir, Moonwalk, Michael described throwing a shoe at Joseph and swinging at him with his little fists. He claimed that he got abused more than all his brothers combined. When Joseph attacked him, he remembered fighting back, although, in Michael’s words, “My father would kill me, just tear me up.”
And yet throughout his life, Michael would credit Joseph with teaching him all he knew. Along with bitter resentment, there was heartfelt gratitude. The result was that in all future relationships with managers, Michael would carry the heavy emotional baggage of his childhood. He would see in every future manager shadows of his original paternal manager. Ron Weisner, Frank Dileo, Sandy Gallin, Tohme Tohme—all were charismatic men of driving ambition. Each shared Michael’s dream, which was, in fact, the dream that he shared with Joseph: not simply spectacular success, but a series of endless successes, one necessarily more record-setting than the next. Each successive manager shared the desperate dream of world conquest. To achieve this dream, Michael needed these men, just as he needed his own father. And just as he resented his father and his father’s menacing dominance, so too did Michael resent each of his managers. Consequently, as Marvin Gaye had predicted, Michael was, at once, unmanageable and desperate for good management.
With the This Is It concerts close at hand, Michael knows that he needs management more than ever. He is grateful that his current manager, Tohme Tohme, brought him together with the AEG group. Without AEG, he might well have lost everything. And yet Tohme Tohme, and by extension AEG’s Randy Phillips, has taken on the role once held by Joseph. They are imposing upon Michael what he begins to see as a cruel and heartless discipline. Ten shows have turned into fifty. And now Michael is hearing Phillips drop hints that he should really cash in and take the show on the road. Eventually it may go around the world. Michael begins seeing this, like so much of his life, spinning out of control.
He grows suspicious of Tohme Tohme. It was Tohme Tohme who first convinced Michael that selling some of the contents of Neverland would rid him of depressing memories and gain him much-needed revenue. When Michael agreed, Tohme Tohme contracted Julien’s Auctions to facilitate the sale. In describing the enormous quantity of art up for sale, auctioneer Darren Julien described it as “Disneyland collides with the Louvre.”
But when Michael saw the catalog in which photographs of those contents were featured, he had a change of heart. He couldn’t stand the idea of losing hundreds of objects dear to him. Eventually the auction was canceled, but the result was still another legal mess. Michael blamed Tohme Tohme.
When other forces sense Tohme Tohme losing favor, they move in for the kill.
Patrick Allocco, head of AllGood, the concert promotion firm, has met with Michael’s father in hopes of arranging a Jacksons reunion concert. Joseph allegedly tells Allocco that Frank Dileo is back in Michael’s good graces and is the one to facilitate the deal. But later still, another man claims that he’s managing Michael: Leonard Rowe, the African American promoter who has also teamed up with Joseph and signed all the Jackson boys minus Michael to a reunion show of his own making. All this is happening before, during, and after Tohme Tohme has gotten Michael to agree to AEG’s multiconcert deal.
Millions are at stake.
Millions have been promised.
Given the precarious finances of the Jacksons, whose history is marked by many bankruptcies, Michael’s family is eager to get back in the game. The family needs money. Many of the siblings have not been able to stay afloat for long without Michael’s help. The same applies to Joseph. Michael’s posttrial refusal to perform or tour—his retreat to Bahrain and Ireland, his seclusion in Vegas—was disastrous for his family’s finances. The minute it became clear that Michael might take the stage again, the family—and promoters claiming to represent them—came running.
On March 17, 2009, as Michael prepares to return to the office of Dr. Arnold Klein for more dermatological treatments and more Demerol, the battle for Michael’s divided heart and troubled soul is growing uglier, day by day.