I have a number of e-mails asking me what I think of the new documentary and charges against Michael Jackson. They're asking me because they know I worked with the man (boy?) for a while on a never-happened Michael Jackson cartoon series. My first response is that I haven't seen the doc yet. It waits on my TiVo until such time as I can work up any enthusiasm to delve into that topic.
And the second response is that I didn't know the boy (man?) that well. I met with him at his Encino home about six times and in all those times taken together, I was alone with him for under three minutes. I was not even supposed to be allowed that but his various associates were occasionally called away briefly from their bubble-minding duties.
With or without them in the room, it was like being allowed in to see the Young Prince in his castle where he was carefully guarded by these folks who made a lot of money from their association with him. I did not feel like he was a prisoner…or if he was, it was clearly a self-imprisonment. Before I met with him each time, someone briefed me on topics I was not to mention.
In one case, he'd gotten a bad review in the L.A. Times and he was not to know of it. Another time, I was not to bring up Johnny Carson's name and if Michael did, I was to reply, "Oh, I never watch him." There was no explanation what that was about. A general caution was that if Michael suddenly got the urge to work on a song for the next album, my meeting was over and I was to be off the premises within seconds to allow him to go write.
In a way, it reminded me of books I'd read about Howard Hughes, who had built walls around himself and then had what insiders called "The Mormon Mafia" keeping him voluntarily penned within them. In the long run, it was to his own detriment. When you have your very own reality plus that kind of money, you can do that to yourself.
As Michael said and did things that caused some to think he was a child molester, I found myself wondering if he'd allowed anyone at all into his world who could tell him how many potential legal problems he was creating for himself and how bad he was making himself look. Even if you gave him the benefit of every doubt and assumed he was innocent of all the pedophilic charges made against him, he was still doing something very self-destructive.
As I said, I haven't been in the mood yet to watch the documentary. What I've been hearing about it though makes me feel it makes that self-destruction pretty complete.