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“Melody Maker” Magazine Interview

Interview given ~January 1980 / Published March 1, 1980

Date of interview given is assessed by the fact that Michael’s inclusion of Janet in the interview process was also done in the John Pidgeon interview, which also occurred in January 1980; this is also confirmed to be within the range given by Steve Demorest in “Lid” magazine (winter of 1980)

“Melody Maker” magazine (March 1, 1980) (archived)

Steve Demorest gets to talk to him via Janet Jackson, the 13-year-old sister.

The voice wafting in from the Coast was as feather-soft as a child’s. It was Michael Jackson, calling with the ground-rules for our interview.

CBS International had already cautioned me against asking questions comparing the Jacksons to similar family entertainment empires with lots of white teeth and television specials… say, of the Mormon persuasion… say, from Utah.

Sure, I’d caved in and I won’t ask him what he thinks of Baudelaire or Afghanistan either. Anything else? Yeah, I was told to expect a personal call from Michael, and here he was – live in Bell Telephone mono. With a pip of a condition.

He wanted me to ask my questions to his sister. Then she’d repeat the questions to him. He said it had to do “something I believe in”.

Oh, You mean I drop off the questions and pick up the tape later, but I’m not there during the actual interview?

No, he said, I could be there and he’d answer to me.

Hmm, I thought, this round-robin twist is a new one on me. What can he possibly be afraid of?

Sure, I said at last, whatever makes you feel comfortable.

Weird.

Scheduling an interview with Michael Jackson is a tricky business, especially just after he’s been misquoted by a major American trade publication, Only a good deal of polite patience all round the globe had pulled this one off. They say the Jacksons have sold more records than anyone except the Beatles, but it was always Michael who had the most charisma. In 1970, when he was a precocious 11-years-old mini-superfly, strutting and spinning and singing with a sophistication beyond his years, Michael had a natural cool that girls ten years his senior couldn’t find in their own boyfriends. Plus, at an adorable 4ft 6in, he was pretty non-threatening. At the end of the Sixties Black was Beautiful, but also a bit scary for the whites.

With Michael, however, Black could be Cute, too, perhaps the first time in a decade.

In 1979, the family’s “Destiny” album went double platinum, and they claim to turn away 10.000 people every night they pack one of America’s huge stadiums. Michael, however, is over three million in sales with “Off The Wall” all by himself. At the American Music Awards in January he tied Donna Summer for most prizes by winning Best Male Soul Vocalist, Best Soul Album, and Best Soul Single (for his self-penned “Don’t Stop Till You Get Enough”).

Now he’s up for the Best Disco Recording and Best R&B Vocal Performance awards at the Grammys. “Off The Wall” also scored well enough with the critics to draw praise from stuffy Rolling Stone and place in the ultra-discriminating Village Voice’s year-end Top 20. Nobody, it seems, doesn’t like Michael Jackson.

Now 21, Michael has grown out of “cute” and become downright handsome. You catch him on camera coming out of an eerie smoke, flanked by green lasers, with his black spangled body-suit sparkling like modern chain-mail, and suddenly the little urchin of old is a full-grown prince. The stage presence is fabulous – each gesture snapping with crisp authority, eyes flashing under long lashes, and a radiant smile not of this world – and you understand why they’re beginning to call him the “black Sinatra for the Nineties”.

It’s natural to wonder how much of this emotional fire comes from the heart and how much is time-honed mimicry. One hears Michael is very family-oriented, very religious, and very straight. Some even say that, cosseted by his work and family, he’s as antiseptically insulated as a boy in a plastic bubble.

“I don’t buy it,” crabs one cynical fanzine editor halfway through her fourth scotch. “How could he avoid all the girls who chase after him?”

Vulgar curiosities aside, the guy gets lot of attention – and yet he seems to have preserved a great charm. Ultimately I’ll come away figuring it like this: Michael Jackson appears to have escaped the usual tortures of adolescence with a rare virginity of soul not only intact, but growing.

Our gray Cadillac dreadnought has climbed out of Hollywood, floated over the hills, and glided down into the flats of San Fernando Valley.

Not far from the bustle of Encino we pull up to an open iron gate, ring the intercom for the inhabitants to clear the Doberman out of the yard, and then swing into the driveway of a sprawling one-storey house. There’s a Rolls and couple of Mercedes scattered about, but the tan camper parked under the basketball hoops lends a family touch. This is very comfortable upper-middle-class spread all right, but certainly not the overwrought palace they could afford if they wanted.

Thirteen-year-old Janet – herself a child-star on the TV sitcom “Good Times” – answers the door like dutiful youngest child, small golden beads clacking at the ends of her thin Bo Derek braids. There are no parents about, no manager, and no bodyguard. In fact, myself and Shirley Brooks from CBS (who politely retires to the den to watch “Rockford Files” for the next two hours) are the nearest excuses for “grownups” in sight.

And heeeeere’s Michael! Quietly padding into the carpeted hall to shake hands, the charismatic Michael Jackson appears to be simply a nice, sweet, rather low-key youth. He’s wearing an orange knit pullover shirt, dark slacks and large, gleaming black shoes that give the impression of a puppy or a colt not yet fully grown into his feet.

Michael reminds me I’ve agreed to operate with his sister acting as our interpreter and the three of us adjourn into the unpretentious, bright yellow and lime living room. I’ve already decided to open with the blandest possible questions so he’ll have time to check on my humanity, but Michael doesn’t know that. He’s cracking his knuckles while I set up the tape machine, until Janet – sitting between us – chastises him mildly. He smiles and relaxes. Throughout our talk she’ll reach over to pluck at his hair or brush his arm reassuringly.

So let’s start with Quincy Jones – everybody loves his production of “Off The Wall”. Quincy remembers meeting Michael at Sammy Davis house when the boy was ten, and Michael’s first recollection of Quincy dates from backstage at a Muhammad Ali benefit, but their “real” meeting came when they worked together on “The Wiz” in 1978.

Er, I’d like to know how Michael decided that Quincy would be the best producer for his album.

“How did you decide to have Quincy?” Janet echoes.

Michael smiles. Good start.

“One day I called Quincy up to ask if he could suggest some great people who might want to do my album. It was the first time that I fully wrote and produced my songs, and I was looking for somebody who would give me that freedom, plus somebody who’s unlimited musically. Quincy calls me ‘Smelly’, and he said, ‘Well, Smelly, why don’t you let me do it?’ I said, ‘That’s a great idea!’”

Michael laughs as though he still can’t believe he’d been so ingenious.

“It sounded so phony – like I was trying to hint to that – but I wasn’t. I didn’t even think of that. But Quincy does jazz, he does movie scores, rock n’ roll, funk, pop – he’s all colours, and that’s the kind of people I like to work with. I went over to his house just about every other day, and we just put it together.”

Michael is proud of this “all colors” approach, and rumor has it he’s considering boycotting the Grammy Awards, despite his two nominations, to protest being slotted into the narrow Disco/R&B categories. Now he ticks off the variety of music he likes listening to: Supertramp, folk music, classical music, old Spanish music.

“I have all kinds of tapes and albums people would probably never think were mine. I love ‘Some Girls’. Of course he [Jagger] got into trouble with that one thing, he said. I don’t like vulgar at all. Really, at all.”

More to Michael’s liking is the work of Rod Temperton, who quit travelling with Heatwave to write the soaring tension/release effects of “Rock With You”, “Off The Wall”, and “Burn This Disco Out”.

Did Quincy have a lot of good ideas for Michael?

“Did Quincy have good ideas for you?” Janet whispers.

“There’s a great coincidence that happened on that album. You know, the Paul McCartney song I did, ‘Girlfriend’? The first time I met Paul McCartney was on the Queen Mary, and then I met again at a party he throw at Harold Lloyd’s estate here in L.A. Him and Linda came up to me and said, ‘We wrote you a song’ and they started singing, “Girlfriend, da-da-dee-dee-dee-dee.” I said, ‘Oh, I really like it, when can we get together?’ So he gave me his Scotland number and the number in London, but we never got together on the whole thing. The next I noticed it he had the song on his “London Town” album. Then one day I went to Quincy’s house and he said, ‘You know what’s great a song for you? This McCartney song called “Girlfriend”.’ I just flipped out.”

Michael giggles at the symmetry of success.

“Paul McCartney sent me a telegram not too long ago raving over how much he loved mine better than his, and now I’m going to be doing some things on his next album. We’ll write a couple of songs together as a team – that’s one of my next projects after the Jacksons album in March. If I sing, that’ll be nice, but that’s up to him because it’s his album.”

Is Michael really working day and night, like he wrote in his song? Janet passes the question along.

“I enjoy it a lot,” he nods.

“’Working Day And Night’ is very autobiographical in a lot of ways, though I did stretch the point to playing the part like I was married to this person and she’s got me moving. But it’s not work like slavery. I love it, or I couldn't have survived it this long.”

“Long” is right. Michael began entertaining locally in Gary, Indiana, when he was six years old, and after 15 years he’s probably the most durable child-star since Shirley Temple. Groomed in the spotlight, this guy grew up on magic. Performers don’t come any more “natural” than Michael Jackson.

Is most of his stage work pretty spontaneous?

“I’ll tell you the honest-to-God-truth,” he says, forgetting to wait for Janet’s turn. “I never knew what I was doing in the early days – I just did it. I never knew how I sang, I didn’t really control it, it just formed myself. I loved it a lot, though. And I loved watching other people do it.

“My dancing just comes about spontaneously, Some things I’ve done for years until people have marked them as my style, but it’s all spontaneous reactions. People have named certain dances after me, like the spin I do, but I can’t even remember how I started the spin – it just came about.

“There’s nothing where I get in a room and try to think hard, I have learned a lot by just fooling around in private though, mostly around the house messing up the floors. I think it’s great to get up in the morning and have a big mirror in your room and cut up.”

Obviously this isn’t the background of a street-fighting rebel. What’s to rebel against?

"I love the whole world of dance, because dancing is really the emotions through bodily movement. And however you feel, you just bring out that inner feeling through your mood. A lot of people don’t think about the importance of it, but there’s a whole psychological thing to just letting everything loose. Dancing is important, like laughing, to back off tension. Escapism it’s great.

“I really believe that each person has a destiny from the day he’s born, and certain people have a thing that they’re meant to do. There’s a reason why the Japanese are better at technology, and a reason why the Negro race are more into music – you go back to Africa and the tribes and the beating of the drums.

“I like to think about where things started and learn from it. I love Bill Robinson and all the early vaudeville people who really are origins of that dancing. And I adore Fred Astaire. He’s a friend of mine, and he’s said some wonderful compliments. He said, ‘I know a lot about you, young man.’ We didn’t live too far from him in Beverly Hills, and he tells me he used to see me every day riding around on my motorbike. He told me he loves my work and I’m doing a lot of things that he wasn’t even doing when he first started.

“Just think, when he first went to the movie studios they said, ‘Can’t act, not good-looking, and can dance a little.’ They said he was ugly because he went bald in his twenties. All those movies you see are not his hair, you know, he had a transplant. But he just stayed with it, and finally he got into a project with Joan Crawford, and he tore it up.

“He wouldn’t let anything go unless it was perfect. He would do one bar of a song for a whole week, and he told me him and Ginger Rogers would do a whole dance number for three months. Who practises like that today? Nobody. And they should. You can tell perfection by looking at it.

“The things I hate with TV and tours is you’re always rushed for time. In the future I’ll be acting and dancing in films the way it should be done, not the silly, crazy way you have to do three dance numbers in a couple of hours. On our couple of specials I would scream about that. I’d say, ‘This whole system is very ignorant! It’s wrong, totally wrong!’”

Michael Jackson screams? Well, perhaps it’s not unreasonable, given that he’s been raised as a special breed of stage creature. Let’s just say he's nice, but pretty faits for a soprano.

“I have no ego at all,” he claims. “I mean, everybody has ego, but it's not in thinking I’m great and I’m better than this or that person because of what I do. I feel totally sorry for people who have that feeling. I just love what I’m doing, and I believe in training and getting better. It’s like a church type of thing when the spirit gets inside somebody and they lose self-control. I’m totally a different person when I’m dancing.”

In fact, that “totally different person” causes the “real” Michael Jackson to feel so vulnerable that he often wants to make himself invisible in civilian life. Michael doesn’t get stage fright he gets offstage-fright.

“A lot of people can’t deal with the fact that you’re another person onstage. They just don’t understand. They’ll come up to me and say, ‘Sing us a couple of bars of “Rock With You”’ or ‘Do that spin that you do on TV’. And I’m really embarrassed. If two people come up to me on the street then – oooh – it’s hard. It’s so hard.

“I don’t really go out to clubs and discos at all. Sometimes you think you’re going to sneak into a movie and nobody’s going to see you, but as soon as you hit the door the pen and paper and pictures are there.”

There’s one place that he does go, though. The only place he enjoys is Studio 54 in New York.

“It’s so theatrical and dramatic," he says. “People come there as characters, and it’s like going to a play. I think that’s the psychological reason for the whole disco craze: you get to be the dream you want to be. You make yourself up to be this thing and just go crazy with the lights and the music, and you’re in another world. It’s very escapist.

“But I don’t get involved. I just get up high in the balcony and look down on all the craziness and get all kinds of ideas. It’s important to know how to be and feel a good audience, to know what an audience wants.

“The people who see me there don’t act crazy or anything – they’ll just say ‘Hi’ or nod at you and keep going – and that’s why a lot of entertainers go there. It’s the place where they can be like everybody else. Everybody’s on the same level.”

“The only time I’ve danced somewhere like that is when Liza Minnelli will come in and she’ll just pull me on the floor. She’s so aggressive. We’ll start dancing, and once you get started – ohh! – it’s so hard to get off the floor. Once I get going it’s hard to cool down. It’s like you’re addicted.”

A parrot in another room is squawking “Michael!....Michael!” Janet is a spectator now, sitting quietly. I wonder if most of Michael’s friends are entertainers, and he agrees.

“Most of the time you understand easier. Tatum [O’Neal] will call me up and say, ’Hey, you wanna go somewhere?’. Or when Stevie [Wonder] wants to go out he’ll call me up. When the big King Tut exhibit was around he wanted to go. Of course, he can’t see, but he feels, and he loves going to museums.

“Very seldom do I go out, but every once in a while I will if someone wants to call me out. I love to roller-skate, but I don’t do any crazy sports. I didn’t drive for a long time. I do now, but I’m still thinking about giving that up. I don’t drive on the freeway at all, I stay in a certain area and I try to be extra careful. It’s like a haemophiliac who can’t afford to be scratched in any way.”

Apparently, then, this guy is not swinging like Errol Flynn, despite the untrue rumours he’ll voluntarily relate to you. Somehow, juicy items seem laughably out of character for this mild-mannered host in his family’s living room.

“I still get so many letters asking if I had a sex-change, or if I go with guys, or thinking I’m married to Clifton Davis.”

Janet cuts in: “This one girl got so upset when her friend told her that rumour that she jumped out of the window. I think she died.”

Some of Michael’s fans have such creative imaginations they’ve even made him neuter – as in Do You Really Have To Go To The Bathroom?

Not that the issue appears to concern Michael much. When he speaks of having a family – “in the far future” – he speaks of adopting children, not procreating them. (“I don’t have to bring my own into the world.”)

“Who says at a certain age you have to get married? Who says at 18 you have to leave the house? Who says at 16 you have to drive? I didn’t drive until I was 20, and I still don’t want to. Quincy doesn’t know how to drive, he doesn’t know his way around at all. That doesn’t make him dumb, that just makes him not want to drive.”

Michael laughs. Listen, if you had this guy’s childhood maybe you’d want to stay forever young yourself.

“One of my favourite pastimes is being with children – talking to them, playing with them, wattlin’ in the grass. They’re one of the main reasons why I do what I do. Children are more than adults. They know everything that people are trying to find out – they know so many secrets – but it’s hard for them to get it out. I can recognise that and learn from it.

“They say some things that’ll just astound you. They go through brilliant, genius stages, but when they become a certain age they lose it. So many people think certain things are child-like, but grown-ups are really nothing but children who have lost all that real magic by not noticing and digging and finding out. I believe in that deeply.

“That’s why I’ve never taken drugs or had alcohol. I’ve never been high. I’ve tasted champagne, but I don’t drink it. When people do toasts, I just pick up the glass. Because I enjoy nature too much – like her.”

He points to Janet, who smiles.

“I know a tree feels it when the wind blows through it. It probably goes, ‘Ohhhhh, this is wonderful.’ And that’s how I feel when I’m singing some songs. It’s wonderful.

“Plus I’m crazy for birds and animals and puppies. And I love exotic things. I’ve had llamas, peacocks, a rhea, which is the second largest bird in the world, a macaw, which is the largest parrot from South America, pheasants, raccoons, chickens… everything. Now I’m gonna get a fawn. And a flamingo. I don’t think I want a cougar, but I want a chimpanzee – they’re so sweet. Oooooh, I have such a good time with the animals.”

This guy is serious, folks. Michael is bubbling now as he continues.

“I have a wonderful relationship with animals, they really understand me. When I got my llamas, I would make this certain crazy vocabulary and they would understand and they’d come running.

“I’d like to get into the whole veterinarian thing and learn the behavior of animals. Dogs may see in black and white. Dogs might even see the wind. And what about the king cobra – what makes him come up when they play that pipe?”

Michael Jackson’s angelic smile is spreading out like a sunset, like he’s seeing visions.

“And the whales. From the top of my brother’s beach-house we look out and see them spouting.”

Michael runs his hand across his eyebrows, shielding the rapture in his face.

“The whole godly instinct thing is just so incredible. I can never get over it."

His voice wavers and his hand squeezes his brow tighter. Omigod... I think this lamb is so overcome he's really on the verge of weeping. What can I say now?

Silence settles in the room. Janet reaches over and gently pats her older brother’s arm.

Finally I mumble something about his album being dedicated to the Year Of The Child, and the soft-hearted superstar gathers himself back to earth.

“I get frightened and hurt easily, and the news frightens me very much, even if I’m not involved somebody else’s problem. At Big Bear Lake I heard on the news that little boy had his Christmas a month ahead of time, and Santa Claus was at his house, because he only had a week to live. Sure enough, in that week he died – and that just got me so bad.

“I meet children like that all the time when we visit the hospitals. The doctors and nurses ask them, ‘You can go anywhere you want or do or see anything – what do you want?’ And these kids request to meet the Jacksons. They say, “You’ve got to meet this girl, she’s going to die tomorrow and ever since she’s been out of surgery she’s been calling your name.’ And, God, I just feel so wonderful to be a part of somebody’s ultimate dream. All my lifetime of work is rewarded.”

I’ve been told that Michael Jackson doesn’t jive people, that when he says something impossibly corny he’s being sincere, and I’m swallowing this particular rap hook, line, and sinker. You have to, once you begin to understand this kid’s concept of his position in the world, his sense of responsibility for the ministering of celebrity immortality.

“I tell the kids ‘I’ll see you next year’ and sometimes the thought that I’ll be back next year makes them hang on. That’s happened several times. People told me this girl was about to die, but I kept running into her three years in a row – and the fourth year she died. The doctors couldn’t do anything, and for me to come in and help give her the gift of life really makes me feel good.

“Some people are chosen to do these things. These children will be drowsy, but Danny Kaye will come in and tell stories and make faces, and these kids will become so cheerful. Bill Cosby is known for his ways with children, too. Nurses and doctors are totally amazed at the power of these people.

“I get a taste of poverty, too. When I go to a country – like in the Philippines and Trinidad and in Africa – I really get out and go to the poor sections and talk to the people. I sit in their little huts, their cardboard houses, and I make myself at home. I think it’s important to know how different people feel especially in my field of endeavour.

“The head of the poor section will call all the people out and tell them who’s here to see them, and it feels good to know that they know who you are. I don’t think, I’m better than other people, I think I’m different from other people because I do different things.

“I shake all their hands, and they follow me wherever I go. Then they see me camera around my neck, and they’ll start touching it and begging me to take their picture. When we first went to Africa, we took of kind a camera that has instant pictures, and they’d never seen anything like that. They were jumping up and down and screaming.”

Evidently, then, Michael Jackson is not ignorant of the world surrounding his charmed life. He does seem, however, consciously poised to escape into the world of illusion at any moment – especially the world of movies. Perhaps this makes sense, if protecting his own joy maintains his ability to project the freshness which makes him such an attractive performer.

“The whole thing of being in front of the camera and escaping into a whole other world is just wonderful. I have no words to describe the feeling that I had out of filming ‘The Wiz’. I’ll never get over it.

“You know the front of ‘The Sound Of Music’, when Julie Andrews runs up on that mountain and she throws her arms out? Ohhh! I can eat that. That kills me, it’s so good. I feel it going all through my body. You feel like you’re there – that’s the whole wonder of motion pictures.

“I met Julie Andrews for the first time three days ago, and when she shook my hand it hit real hard. She said, ‘My daughter Emma has your album and we love what you’re doing so much.’ And I said, ‘You don’t know what you’ve done for me by your work.’ She’s been so influential.

“I’m going to do so much more in that whole field – musicals and heavy drama. I talked to Jane Fonda and she wants to do so many projects with me. She saw 'The Wiz' about six times, and she said there's so much more for me to do. I feel the same way.“

Michael was fortunate to have a long-time ally with him on the set of his first feature film - Diana Ross, who played the role of Dorothy to his Scarecrow.

“Every day she would stop in my room and ask me if I wanted anything. She’s a real, real mother. We met her when we auditioned for Berry Gordy at his mansion in Detroit – and it’s really a mansion. You think everything seemed big to you when you were a little kid because you were small, but we were back there on the last tour and – oooh – it’s still huge. It’s got everything – an indoor pool, a bowling alley, a golf course – and we auditioned at the poolside. All the Motown stars were there, and Diana came over and told us how much she loved us and wanted to play a big part in our career. So she introduced us to the public. Our first hit album was called ‘Diana Ross Presents The Jackson Five’.

“When we came out with ‘Destiny’, which was our first album writing all the songs and producing ourselves, she told us she’s so proud of what we’re doing. She told me: to be with Motown or not be with Motown, she’ll always be here for us when we need her.

“She checked on me today. She’s in New York and she heard I was in hospital – I don’t know what made her think so – and I got a message that she wants me to call her. She really cares.

“’The Wizard Of Oz’ has secrets that are just too much. Or ‘Peter Pan’ – the whole ‘lost boys’ thing is just incredible. They’re not child-like at all – they’re really, really deep – you can rule your life by them. Or say ‘child-like’, because children are the most brilliant people of all, that’s why they relate to those stories so well. Fairy-tales are wonderful. What more can you ask for, outside of conquering goals and believing in your ideas?

“There’s a whole psychological reason for those cartoons about good against evil. We have ‘Superman’ and all those other people so that we can go out into life and try to be something. I’ve got most of Disney’s animated movies on videotapes, and when we watch them I just take off to another planet. Oh, I could eat it, eat it.”

Janet is quiet as a mouse as her brother talks on with the respect of one celebrity for another.

“Some people come by and say, ‘Oh, you’re watching cartoons, huh?’ Well, cartoons are marvellous! Cartoons are unlimited. And when you’re unlimited it’s the ultimate. Jiminy Cricket, Pinocchio, Mickey Mouse – these are world-known characters. Some of the greatest political figures have come to the United States to meet them. Even people from Russia will not leave the country without seeing Disneyland.”

Michael says one of his biggest dreams just came true when he was invited to sing “When You Wish Upon A Star” with all 27 Disney characters surrounding him. It’s for a two-hour special, hosted by Danny Kaye, celebrating Disney’s 25th Anniversary.

“I eat that up,” he exults. “In Disneyland you forget about the outside world. When you walk down Main Street, you see the castle and then you see the times of the Twenties... and how do those two times fit? But they feel so good together. You walk down that street and you feel ‘This is it. I’m gonna have a good time.’ This is escapism.”

But, uh, Michael… don’t you think it’s possible to appreciate escapism a little too much?

“No, I don’t. There’s a reason why God made the sunset red or purple or green. It’s beautiful to look at – it’s a minute of joy. There’s a reason why we see rainbows after a rain, or a forest where the deer come out. That’s wonder, that’s escapism – it touches your heart, and there’s no danger in that.

“Escapism and wonder is influence. It makes you feel good, and that allows you to do things. You just keep on moving ahead, and you say, ‘God, is this wonderful, do I appreciate it.’

“Like when I’m 40,000 feet in the air in a jumbo jet at night and it’s dawn. Everybody on the plane is asleep, and here I am in the cockpit with the pilots because they let me come up there with them and – ooooh, it’s just incredible seeing a sunrise and being up there with it.

“I’ve seen illusions in the air that man has never seen. We went over the North Pole and it was total dark, and you saw these big icebergs that were glowing in the night. And then I looked far out into the sky and saw purple, green, and blue crystals sparkling and turning in the air. I said, ‘What is that?’, and the pilot said he didn’t know, they’d only seen that once before. I said, ‘My God, I’ll never forget this.’”

He pauses to hold onto the memory just a moment longer.

“Once, when we were coming back from Africa in total darkness, we were way up, and there were so many shooting stars I thought they were going to hit the plane – it was incredible. When you’re up there where there’s no smog, you almost don’t see any darkness. You almost don’t see any black for all the stars. You see every star in the sky.

“Pilots tell me, “I wish there were no such thing as having to go down and reload with fuel. I wish I could stay up here forever. Forever. This is the safest place in the world for me.’ And I totally understand what they mean. When I’m into 40,000 people, it’s so easy. Nothing can harm me when I’m on stage – nothing. That’s really me. That’s what I’m here to do.”

That’s it, all right. Raised on wonder and nurtured in the dreams of millions of fans, this guy is escaping all the way to heaven and he doesn’t want to come down. Michael Jackson is way up there with the angels, up where you almost don’t see any darkness for all the stars.

“I’m totally at home onstage,” he’s beaming softly. “That’s where I live… that’s where I was born…

“That’s where I’m safe.”

Steve Demorest, “Melody Maker” writer, “Lid” magazine (2010)

Kate Simon and I were the New York correspondents of the British music paper "Melody Maker" in the late 1970s. Usually, this meant prowling Manhattan's clubs and lofts at will and filing whatever reports and photos amused us. In the winter of 1980, however, our editor asked us to fly to L.A., courtesy of Epic Records PR chief Susan Blond. Our mission to update the world on what had become of Michael Jackson, who most had not seen on TV since he was the cute 11-year-old mini-superfly of The Jackson 5. The Jacksons were waning, but Michael had recently come out with "Off the Wall", his first solo LP since leaving Motown.

The first clue that this would be like no other story came when my phone rang and the feather-soft voice of Jackson surprised me. Michael had ground-rules for our interview. He wanted his 13-year-old little sister Janet--then starring in the TV sitcom "Good Times"--to join us. He wanted me to direct my questions to her, and wait while she repeated them to him. And only then would he answer me. This odd combination of extreme shyness and rigid control was to play out further in Hollywood.

Kate and I checked into the Tropicana, rather than the cushier Beverly Hills Hotel we'd been offered, because, typical of her, Kate was on the lookout for breaking bands rather than broken down TV stars. Unfortunately, the Jackson ground-rule the following morning was a shocker: Kate was asked not to come to the interview. I'm sure this was nothing personal against Kate, just more image control. They wanted dramatic shots of Michael performing, not sitting on his sofa dressed like Mr. Rogers. But shooting an artist in his own milieu is everything to a photographer, and it killed her to be left behind when I was whisked off to the family compound in the San Fernando Valley.

We pulled up to an iron gate and rang the intercom for the inhabitants to clear the doberman out of the yard. In the driveway of the sprawling one-story house were a Rolls and a couple of Mercedes scattered around, but a tan camper parked under the basketball hoop was all about family. (I don't think Michael owned his own house yet.) Little Janet answered the door with a big friendly smile, the small gold beads on her Bo Derek cornrows clacking as she led us into a bright, unpretentious, lemon-and-lime living room. The house seemed a comfortable, upper-middle class spread, but not the over-wrought palace they certainly could have plunged for.

Michael joined us promptly, appearing to be a nice, sweet, low-key youth whose large, gleaming black shoes reminded me of a puppy who had not yet grown into his feet. The first thing he did after shaking hands was remind me that Janet was going to be our interpreter, and we settled in for a two-hour interview. I began by asking about Quincy Jones (producer of "Off the Wall") which was right in Michael's comfort zone. Janet was adorable (when Michael nervously cracked his knuckles, she'd chastise him mildly like a little mother), and blessedly after about fifteen minutes, he began to enjoy our conversation so much that he forgot his own ground rules and started making eye contact and answering me directly.