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"Teen Bag" Magazine Interview

Date range assessed by the fact that when he was flying back to LA, they were “headed for Venezuela”, which occurred on February 25, 1977.

"Teen Bag" magazine (1977)

If you often feel confused about who you are or what you want to be, maybe you were born into too SMALL a family. Oddly enough, it seems kids who are part of a big family group all dedicated to one endeavor, have less questions as to who and what they are.

For example, who ever heard of one of the Osmonds facing an identity crisis? Or, as a more specific case in point, take Michael Jackson of the Jacksons. But don’t try taking him far!

Michael, who greets you with a hesitant handshake and a warm and open smile isn’t that easy to get hold of, anyway. During an interview he has a cool way of turning aside questions he’d rather not answer.

There’s a shyness to the young man, true. It’s not so much shyness, however, as a strong sense of what is strictly personal and not for worldwide sharing. It censors his responses in the cutest way.

Stick to the regular questions and you get brief, to the point, almost mechanical answers. But go off on an unexpected personal tangent and Michael will plead he can’t answer for one solid reason or another.

For example, talking of his childhood (he’s been singing with the Jacksonville 5 since HE was only five years old, so it sure isn’t your common, everyday kind of childhood!) Michael said he couldn’t recall any special incident from when he was a kid. “There were lots of good times. So many things happened in my childhood. A lot of it’s special but nothing separates from the others.” Asked to give us a couple of examples of special times, he just shook his handsome head slowly and smiled in innocent inability to comply. On a less personal level he could recall highlights of his eighteen years – career highlights such as, “We played for the Queen of England… a command performance. That was nice!”

“Nice” is one of the words he uses most often about the things he cares most about. He found the snow whirling outside the window of his Plaza Hotel suite in New York, where we had the interview, “nice,” too, except he had to go flying off into it in a little while to return to Los Angeles.

What exactly was waiting to be done in L.A.?

“I don’t know – we got so many things, I can’t keep the schedule straight,” Michael replied, again with that grin that lights up his face while it closes down your source’s information.

It takes a guy pretty sure of himself to be able to say no, politely but firmly. To indicate, “this is a part of me, of my life that we are not going to get into.”

Rarely does anyone have that technique at so early an age, but Michael has it down pat, and I don’t think he even thinks of it as a technique. It's just a natural reticence that keeps him from rattling on about things he feels are private.

From L.A., the Jacksons are headed for Venezuela. I learned that from the reporter and photographer who were in Mike’s suite when I arrived. They represented a Venezuela paper and were posing young Mr. Jackson hither and yon to take a number of head shots.

“To prove we were here,” the reporter remarked, as he placed Michael in front of the wide window of whirling snow. That was such a good shot, we took one, too.

Michael was very obliging about posing – smiling when asked, looking serious when desired, answering in monosyllables if spoken to while posing.

He was kind and gentle and polite throughout the morning, and laughed appreciatively when it was mentioned he could be making a lot of bread for posing so much if he were a model!

In short, Michael was “nice.”

He used the word again when he smirked with joy rather than pride and said, “It was nice when we got our first million seller record.”

“It was first all over the country…’I Want You Back.’ The top of the charts! Plus, when we go on tour, y’know, all the fans are screaming and they’re singing the songs and that’s a good feeling.”

I asked if he got a special letter or phone call telling the Jacksons that their song was selling over a million records. He looked at me as if he hadn’t understood my question.

“No, you know because it’s number one on the charts,” he explained.

How does a guy who has been a professional singer handle things like school? He doesn’t. I mean, not some sort of public school.

Michael was tutored. “Three hours a day, It’s not that hard," he said at first and then, smiling that special smile of his, “Well, sometimes it’s hard,” he admitted.

He agreed there was no way of faking it on that kind of one to one basis. Not like being in a big classroom where you can pray you won’t get called on for the questions you can’t answer. With a tutor, you KNOW you’re gonna get called on and on and on.

Two subjects Michael always liked were Art and English. In fact, drawing is something he genuinely enjoys. It relaxes him. Not fancy painting – just sketching.

“Charcoal – pencil – I do people, animals. I never sketch the family,” he said.

Does it bother Michael being part of a group? Far from it.

“We started as a group so I’m used to it, in a way. We usually give interviews as a group. Sometimes alone – it depends who they want to do.”

And what had Michael been doing in New York for the past three days?

“Interviews. All yesterday and the day before, interviews,” he said wearily. You could tell that was not exactly his favorite sport in the world. Not how he’d have liked to have spent three days in the Big Apple.

One of the 8 specials the Jacksons were airing this season had been on the evening before. I asked if he’d been doing an interview or if he’d gotten a chance to watch his own show.

He shook his head slowly, with that very familiar smile.

“I was at the theatre.”

“What did you see?”

“THE WIZ”

Turns out Michael has been to the show four times, and thinks it's great.

Naturally, that brought up the subject of stage shows, and whether or not Michael would like to do one… maybe even do THE WIZ?

“Not really – not unless it was a movie. But not on Broadway!” he said decisively.

Getting back to our initial approach, as to knowing who you were and what you wanted, I asked Michael when he first knew he wanted to sing.

“I didn’t really decide, it just came – it happened,” he replied, his voice sounding almost a bit bewildered that I’d even ask that, knowing he’d been singing since he was five years old.

Over the last months, there’d been lots of speculating about what it would mean when the group began recording with a new record company, leaving their brother Jermaine who stayed with Motown. Jermaine’s wife Hazel, as you probably remember, is the daughter of the owner of Motown Records.

Was it making a rift in the Jackson clan?

“Not as a family, no. We see each other every day. The business part can come later. The family is still together,” Michael assured me, then went on to explain they’d decided to leave Motown because, “certain things weren’t going right with the other one so we moved to make it better.

“We call ourselves the Jacksons now because the Motown claim they own the name ‘Jackson 5.’ So we’re just being safe till court time, so we’re not using the five. But we’re still five. And the sisters are on the show and they’re in Las Vegas or wherever we go to do shows.”

And where have they done shows?

“We been all over!” Michael exclaimed with breathless pleasure, his eyes sparkling. His favorite places included, “The Philippines, and Africa, and probably London,” he said.

Later, when his manager Steve Manning joined us, Steve mentioned that England was one of Michael’s favorite places.

Well, if you’re gonna be doing command performances for the Queen of England, it ought to be. I mean, let’s face it, that’s what I’d call a lot more than “nice!”