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Molly Meldrum

Molly Meldrum, interviewer, autobiography written by Molly Meldrum and Jeff Jenkins, “The Never, Um, Ever Ending Story: Life, Countdown and Everything in Between” (translated Spanish excerpts) (archived)

"I was in the bathroom brushing my teeth when I first heard Michael Jackson. It was the end of 1969 and I was in London... The Andy Williams show was on TV and the music played throughout the apartment. Suddenly, I heard that fantastic song. I went into the living room and could not believe what I was seeing and hearing. The song was "I Want You Back" and the American group was The Jackson 5, five brothers born and raised in Gary, Indiana.

...4 years after this moment, the J5 went on tour in Australia and appeared in the headlines of my report for Go-Set.

My assistant Glenys and I went to interview them at their hotel, where they were with their tutor Rose Fine, and this is what I wrote in Go-Set:

'One of the easiest interviews I've ever done, without ego or arrogance anywhere. Interviewing this group has been one of the greatest pleasures and the easiest task that they have ever given me. '

...While Michael Jackson was working on The Wiz, I was in America traveling with Countdown. After much persuasion and perseverance, I was able to arrange an interview with Michael Jackson at Studio 54. It was scheduled at 5pm and it was a cold, wet and windy day in New York. And as usual, we were late for the appointment. Grant Rule and I arrived almost an hour late and said, 'He will probably be gone by now and I do not blame him for that.'

But to my surprise, when we pushed the door of Studio 54, we saw a small figure huddled in the doorway. Michael was there alone, with no security or record label, ice cream cold but very cheerful.

We went inside and started preparing everything for the interview. Michael even helped the kids with the lighting and set the microphones.

The interview lasted about fifteen minutes. He was shy, but I'll never forget the way he laughed when I asked him about his 'funky little sister', Janet. 'Yes it's funky,' he said laughing. We ended our talk by thanking him for his patience and wishing him the best for his film and his new album, on which he planned to work in 1978.

The album would be Off The Wall and Michael became a superstar.

Looking back, I consider this meeting with Michael as one of the most important interviews I have ever done. And I wonder what would have become of the CBS employee who said that Michael was not a priority issue.

The next time Michael went to Australia he was already the biggest star in the world. I will never forget the Countdown meeting where we first saw the video 'Billie Jean'. We repeat it again and again. Michael Jackson was the Fred Astaire of the 80s and with his album Thriller he had created pure magic.

In 1984, I went to Los Angeles to present him with a special Countdown Award for his contribution to the world of music. I was quickly taken to the CBS offices under a cloud of secrecy and introduced to a lady named Shirley Brooks, someone she trusted completely for Michael and a friend of her family. She took me to another part of the building and introduced me to Michael, who arrived surrounded by people, although he was surprisingly welcoming and kind, as he was recovering from the injuries of the burn caused in his head by an accident while recording a Ad for Pepsi.

What also surprised me was that, despite having received so many awards already - including eight Grammys in a single night - he seemed genuinely happy with ours. We took some photos, but Shirley told us that it would take a while for them to reach us, because Michael had to approve them first. 'But we desperately need them to take them to the Countdown Awards,' I begged. And Shirley did not disappoint me.

The next time that Molly had the opportunity to coincide with MJ was during the recording of 'We Are The World', for which she had a special pass.

Stevie Wonder said that if they did not do the song in one shot, he and Ray Charles would lead them all back home. Cindy Lauper was asking everyone to sign her sheet as a souvenir and Bette Midler seemed a bit sad and depressed but, of all the experiences in one studio, "We Are The World was hard to beat. A night that I will never forget. "

"At the end of that same year, I received a strange call from Perth Channel 7, a gentleman told me that the television marathon that year had as a special guest Michael Jackson, could I fly to Perth to take care of Michael? At first I thought it was a joke and I ignored it, but after two more calls, I agreed to go."

In principle, Michael did not want to be in the program, he thought that his appearance on stage the previous day was enough, but the wife of the millionaire Robert Holmes à Court, Janet, had the idea of ​​teaching him some tapes in which Sammy Davis Jr. acted in previous marathons, and that convinced him.

Finally he appeared very nervous and whispering: "this is very embarrassing", as he squeezed Janet's hand, and sat next to Molly and the presenter, Peter Waltham.

Upon his return to Melbourne, Molly discovered the reason why Michael had attended the telethon: He was part of the deal for the purchase of the ATV Music Publishing catalog from the millionaire Robert Holmes à Court.

"In 1987, I received another unexpected call from Gerald Stone, from the 60 Minutes program, asking if he wanted to fly to Tokyo to do a week-long report for his show and interview Michael Jackson.

It was Michael's first solo tour of Australia as part of his Bad Tour, but the tickets were not selling as expected due to the strange stories and rumors in the press. To answer these rumors, promoter Kevin Jacobsen, Sony executive Denis Handlin and Michael's manager, Frank DiLeo, planned the 60 Minute interview. And that's where I came into the story. Michael knew me from previous interviews and I knew he was a good friend of his brother Jermaine. "

Molly went to Tokyo with several people from the program team, they settled in the same hotel as Michael and attended the concert that night.

"The concert was spectacular. It left me breathless. I could understand why he had received so much praise all over the world.

The next day was the appointment. First an interview with Quincy and then another with Michael.

Five minutes before starting, Frank DiLeo entered the room and announced that he wanted to be in the interview. 'Do you want to be in the room?' 'Do not. I want to be sitting next to Michael in the interview. '

Our camera whispered in my ear: 'Do not even think about it. We would have to change all the lighting. ' But we had no choice. 'Give us fifteen minutes to change the lights,' I said to Frank.

Finally, Michael and Frank arrived with all their equipment. Frank took me aside. Another problem. His sidewalk was very high. Frank was a big guy but very short, something like a cantankerous version of Danny De Vito. I had to contain the laughter because his feet did not reach the ground, he looked like Humpty Dumpty.

Without a doubt, this is one of the weirdest interviews I've ever done. I did not know whether to look at Michael or Frank. When I was going to ask a question about plastic surgery and all the strange and hurtful stories, Michael was about to answer, when Frank got in and said, 'I'll answer that question, if it does not bother you.' 'It bothers me, and if it bothers me, it also bothers Michael,' Frank said. 'I find some of the things that have been written terrible, particularly about plastic surgery. Most - not most, all - are garbage and bullshit.

This did not help much to quell the rumors.

During the trip to Japan I could see the good and bad side of the Australian media. The story of Peter Wilmoth in The Age was very honest, and the people on the radio that Sony sent to cover the concert loved the show so much that they insisted on ordering tickets for the second one. But can you believe that when they returned to Australia they did nothing but keep all of Michael's material and the concert? In 1987 it was not cool to put Michael Jackson in the clouds, and they, of course, were cool people ... not at all.

Now I know that Michael had a lot to do with all this because of his introversion, but the press reports angered me extremely because as an artist, he was a genius. All those extravagant stories prevented many people in Australia from seeing a great artist. The Bad Tour broke all audience records everywhere except in Australia.

...Shortly after the “60 Minutes” special debuted, Michael arrived in Australia. During the tour, the most surreal thing happened to me on a cruise.

Sony organized a meal in the bay of Sydney for Michael, and a boat cruise where there was no press, apart from me, and Michael asked that they be family members of the company's staff.

After presenting him with a platinum disc, I thought everything would be calm and relax, but Michael's publicist told me that he wanted to talk to me in private. I went to the front of the boat, where Michael was, and I thought we would go on deck, but Michael said: 'No, let's go down the stairs'.

To my surprise, the stairs led to the men's restrooms, with two stalls and a urinal. Michael entered one of them, obviously looking for privacy, and said: “Molly, why is the press so horrible to me? I have not done anything to them!" And he burst into tears.

I did not know what to do, just be there, thrown against the door trying to comfort him. At that time, one of the guests entered the bathroom. He stepped in front of me, said 'Hello Molly', and went to the potty, unzipped his pants and... Then he saw Michael inside the cubicle, crying in the seas. The poor man was stunned, not knowing what to do, and in the end he could not even pee. He mumbled something, closed the zipper and stumbled up the stairs. I was totally stunned at that moment.

We went back up and, to my horror, everyone was watching us. “I have not done anything!” I declared. “I have not done anything to him!”

The Australian tour of Michael took me to a fun meeting years later in New York. I was walking through Central Park and a smiling woman asked me: 'You're Molly, right?'

'Correct', I answered without having any idea who she was.

'I met you in Melbourne, at a Michael Jackson concert.'

'Oh yes of course'. And then we talked about how great it had been.

'And you're still working on Sony ?, I asked.

The woman looked at me perplexed. 'I do not work for Sony,' he explained. 'I'm Meryl Streep.'

Oh my God. Meryl Streep, one of the greatest actresses of all time. We had sat together at Michael's concert in Melbourne. Meryl was in Australia starring Lindy Chamberlain in the movie Evil Angel. In it, a dingo had taken his baby, but who knows who had taken my brain.

The next time I saw Michael was when I flew to New York for a preview of eight of the tracks on his new album Dangerous. In the studio, the engineer sat me in front of the console, gave me a list of tracks and clicked “play”. Through the glass I could see more people sitting in different parts of the studio, one of them was Michael, who was a little restless. I am one of those people who like to hear a song over and over again, but that time there was only one listener, and only one. Then they took us back to the limo and to the office of Sandy Gallin, Michael's manager. 'What do you think?' He asked. 'It sounds fantastic,' I said as I pulled out the list of tracks. An alarmed look was drawn on Sandy's face. 'Where the hell did you get that ?!', and he tore it out of my hands saying it was totally confidential.

...In November of 1991, the network Nine Network asked me to do a Michael special for the premiere of their video Black Or White. For the closing of the program, I had to appear seated holding a black panther. I have never been more petrified in my life, especially when her coach told me that I had not fed her to keep her happy.

During that final moment, I tried to explain my opinion about the hidden messages of the last four minutes of the clip:

I said that the panther coming out of its cage and becoming Michael represented Michael caged in his own character.

The bottle of beer crashed on the street was his opinion about driving drunk.

The wreckage in the car represented Michael's fury for breaking into pieces of the traditional family.

The rubbish bin thrown against the window meant his thinking about the press and the crap they had written about him.

I said that his obscene dance was a direct stab at Madonna, who had messed with him saying it was a little bland.

The sequence of the Royal Arms Hotel in which the clothes are torn was made in response to the nakedness of his sister LaToya, and because he was furious about his biography. What did I relate to LaToya ?, well, can you believe that I explained that you can even read LaToya in 'Royal Arms Hotel'?

Needless to say, the next day, all the press, especially the radio, put their boots on me. "

In 1992, Molly was invited to go to Germany for the first concert of the Dangerous tour. He left with his team and filmed the initial theme, like the rest of the press, but, in a carelessness of the security team, he was able to sneak into the audience and keep recording the whole concert. However, instead of selling it as a pirated record, he gave the tapes to Sony. After the concert he was able to greet Michael and take some pictures together.

He was also at the concert of the tour in Bangkok, when the scandal broke in the press of accusations of child abuse. All the interviews were canceled, but the concert was not, and he says that it was one of the strangest and saddest that he has ever witnessed in his life. When Michael canceled his Australian tour, Molly felt that he had disappointed his Australian fans and wrote a column in TV Week in which he reproached him, but at the same time he said that he could not believe that he was writing that column, because he had never before I had criticized like that.

"Michael returned to Australia in 1996 for the HIStory Tour. By then I was back on top. Before that visit, I flew to California to do a special at the Neverland Ranch, and although Michael was not present, we managed to make a great report.

When the tour began, I expected to be able to do another face-to-face interview with Michael, but nothing was confirmed.

... When I arrived at the Sheraton Hotel in Sydney, everyone was taking pictures and shouting: 'Molly, are you going to the wedding?'

'What wedding?'

'Michael Jackson's wedding'.

I laughed. I thought the press had gone completely crazy.

The next morning, November 15, when I arrived in Melbourne, the story was already known. Michael Jackson had married Debbie Rowe. My phone was smoking and CNN wanted to know details about the wedding.

Before the supposed wedding, I had asked the Daily Telegraph of Sydney to write a story about Michael Jackson. I wrote a sensitive article about how hard it was to be MJ, and how no one else could understand it. The article was published in the Saturday edition.

At 5.45 that afternoon, less than three hours before the one-hour special went on the airwaves, we received a call from Channel Nine saying that Michael had read that article, and he liked it so much that he wanted to do a live interview with me during the special. "

However, despite the fact that Michael appeared in time to record the interview, the lights went out in Sydney and by the time they could solve the problem, it was too late. A world exclusive was lost because of a fuse.

Michael was so disappointed that he agreed to do an interview in Brisbane the following Tuesday. On this occasion too, I had to stick to the previously agreed questions, but this time it was Michael who answered them, not his manager.

However, I left the script in my last question.

I could feel Michael's escorts start to get scared.

'It's a personal friend of yours ...'

I could see Michael more uncomfortable at every moment ...

'I'm a fan of Stephen King. Can I ask you what you think? '

Everyone breathed a sigh of relief.

"It strikes me that I've done more face-to-face interviews with Michael than with anyone else in the world, and it's a great honor. Sometimes I think about those first two of 1973 and 1977 and I wonder what happened to that relaxed Michael Jackson always.

However, he achieved what he told me he wanted to do.

Michael Jackson created magic.