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"Music Major" Magazine Interview

Date of publication confirmed on MJJCollector listing

Music Major, No. 4 (1984)

Michael Jackson's love of the unreal world of film fantasy extends to a huge collection of cartoon films and his own viewing cinema in his recently built home.

"I think the only person who has a bigger library of cartoons than me is Paul McCartney", he tells. "We found out we had this common interest when we worked on each other's albums. Now, we invite each other to screenings, and if we're not talking music, we're discussing old M.G.M. cartoons."

As would be natural for somebody so interested in this form of cinema, the place Michael likes to visit the best is Disneyland. The amusement park is the only public place Michael cannot keep away from, but as it is impossible for somebody like Michael Jackson to show his face without being mobbed, strict security measures are taken for his visits. He will be admitted through a side door, and then led through a murky maze of passages and service tunnels to the rides of his choice. Sometimes he will don a hat, false nose, and glasses as a disguise and go through the front entrance--but not very often!

His favorite rides are Sleeping Beauty's Castle and The Pirates of the Caribbean. In fact, he became so fascinated by the latter that he has had a full-scale reconstruction of it built in his new home. It has been designed and built by the same audio-animation technician who was responsible for the Disneyland set, and it is called simply The Pirate Room.

"It's not a ride like the original one, it's a full-scale pirate shootout. There's buccaneers, wenches, seadogs, cannons, guns... everything. I have lights, sound effects, and voices so they can shout and scream at each other at the flick of a switch."

The same technician is also working on another room in the house, which will contain no furniture, just a desk and a collection of mannequins, shop window display dummies. What the animation specialist is perfecting is a system that will enable the dummies to answer back when Michael speaks to them! It is a progression from the many statues that populated the flat he lived in while the house was being completed.

"All my statues have names, I talk to them and feel as if I know them. I always wanted to bring them to life, and that's what the mannequins will be.

"I think that I'm accompanying myself with the friends that I never had."

Once that is completed, there are plans to build a three million dollar merry-go-round at the back of the house!

Michael is so shy about going out that he feels his pleasures have to be brought to him--even his clothes shopping is done by a legion of secretaries.

Aside from the mechanical fantasies, the other magical kingdom Michael Jackson likes to disappear into is the world of nature. His collection of pets almost amounts to a private zoo...