Michael Jackson: The Life of an Icon

Michael Jackson's LA Residence

June 25, 2009

(FIRE PARAMEDIC SPEAKING)

(ALBERTO ALVAREZ SPEAKING)

I arrived at the hospital.

Frank Dileo

JACKSON'S MANAGER 1984-89, 2009

and the lady came out

maybe 20 minutes later, a nurse.

I stood up. She said, Who are you?

"I'm Frank Dileo, I manage Michael.

"Is he okay?"

She hesitated, and I knew.

She looked me in the eye and said,

"No, he didn't make it."

I had them put him in a special room

and clean him up.

And that was the one nice thing,

is I got to be alone with him.

And I got to kiss him on the forehead

and, you know, tell him what I felt.

(BALLAD PLAYING)

When I started seeing the news clips.

David G-est

MICHAEL'S CLOSE FRIEND

the day he died,

my heart sank.

Michael was the most exciting performer

I had ever seen in my life.

He was the ultimate pop superstar.

He wanted, more than anything,

for his legacy to be

he is the greatest performer of all time.

And that's what he became.

(SMOKEY ROBINSON SPEAKING)

(TITO JACKSON SPEAKING)

(FRANK CASCIO SPEAKING)

(KATHERINE JACKSON SPEAKING)

(MARTHA REEVES SPEAKING)

(BOBBY TAYLOR SPEAKING)

(J. RANDY TARABORRELLI SPEAKING)

(THOMAS A. MESEREAU, JR SPEAKING)

(WHITNEY HOUSTON SPEAKING)

(MICKEY ROONEY SPEAKING)

I grew up in East Chicago, Indiana.

Katherine Jackson MICHAEL'S MOTHER.

My mother and father divorced when

I was at a young age, about six years old.

My mother was Baptist.

And my sister and I sang

in the Baptist choir.

It made us have a love for music.

My father used to listen

to the country music all the time,

and out of Chicago came a show,

on the radio, called Suppertime Frolic.

And then on Saturdays,

he would listen to the Grand Ole Opry

that came out of Nashville.

Some of the people were Ernest Tubb,

that's ancient.

Let me... Let the people know how old I am.

(LAUGHS)

(COUNTRY SONG PLAYING)

We had a club called the Sub-Debs.

We used to give teenage parties

for all the kids around there,

and that's where I met Joe.

I think I was around 17 years old.

He would always ask me for a dance

when the music was slow. (LAUGHS)

He seemed very kind, very sweet.

Joseph was in a group.

Besides me leaving singing with my sister,

I started singing with him.

And we would sing

and harmonise together a lot.

Then the children came along,

and I kept singing.

Rebbie Jackson MICHAEL'S SISTER

2300 Jackson St, in that little house.

I was the only one born in that house.

We had two bedrooms in our home.

And I and my sisters, Janet and La Toya,

slept in the living room.

Living Room Gary, Indiana 2010.

We had a couch that let out into a bed.

My brothers slept in one room.

Boy's Bedroom Gary, Indiana 2010.

And that room had triple bunk beds.

And they slept on the bunk beds.

And then my parents slept in the other room.

Parents' Bedroom GARY, INDIANA 2010.

KATHERINE:
I don 't know how I squeezed

all of us in that little house.

Jackson Family Kitchen

Gary, Indiana 1960's.

Having all my children when I was young

and having them so close together;

Every time I would get pregnant,

I was afraid to tell Joe. (CHUCKLES)

We didn't believe in abortion,

so that's why we got so many children.

The children around our neighbourhood,

especially the boys,

they were kind of bad, some of them.

They would break in people's cars

and do things.

And our children were never allowed

to go out at night or play with those kids.

J. Randy Taraborrelli

JACKSON'S FRIEND AND BIOGRAPHER.

They weren't really social

with the rest of the neighbourhood.

They clung to each other,

and that's how the Jacksons were raised.

Poor? I mean, that was a way of life.

We had plenty of food to eat.

We were like all the other kids in the area.

DAVID GEST:
Michael never thought

he was poor when he was young,

because he did not know what poor was.

David G-est

MICHAEL'S CLOSE FRIEND.

He thought

everyone lived the way his family did.

KATHERINE:
We had

a rickety washing machine.

We weren't able to buy a new one.

Whenever it washed, it would creek.

You Know, make noises...

(IMITATES CREAKING NOISES)

Something like that.

And Michael, I guess,

was about 11 or 12 months old.

He was just dancing

to the rhythm of the washing machine.

And I knew then that he had a lot of rhythm.

Michael would always do funny things,

anything for a laugh.

Anything for a laugh.

La Toya was always very persnickety

about the way she kept her room.

And she had this beautiful...

I think it was a white satin bedspread

that she had just gotten.

Michael took some invisible ink

and he spread it all over the bedspread,

squirted it all over.

And then he had her come in

and look at it. She was livid.

Michael used to love telling me stories

about Gary, Indiana,

especially how he would have a candy store,

and he would sell candy

to all the neighbours,

and to his brothers.

And he never made any money doing it,

but he showed signs of being

an entrepreneur at a very young age.

As kids, we had a lot of fun.

Tito Jackson MICHAEL'S BROTHER.

You know, just playing around

in the neighbourhood.

Playing practical jokes, throwing balloons

out the oar windows at bus stops,

singing and dancing to every song

that came on the radio.

Michael would use

some of the money from his candy store

to go and buy 45s,

because in those days,

that's what kids bought, 45s.

And if you were lucky, you'd buy an LP.

But he started listening strongly

to James Brown

from the time he was about five years old.

He had a great taste for real R&B,

gritty R&B, like Wilson Pickett,

the Dells,

great singers like Levi Stubbs.

We sang country songs

and we sang folk songs.

And then

they started singing the Temptations

when we got a television.

My father had a guitar

that he Kept locked in the closet.

One day, he didn't lock the closet

and I started playing that thing.

I learnt every song on the radio

and made my brothers sing with me.

KATHERINE:
Joseph had warned them,

"Don't play my guitar; now. .

And so, Tito took it out and played it,

and a string broke.

There was no way of hiding

that he hadn't had his guitar.

He punished him for it.

Then he said, "Let me hear you play."

And Tito played for him.

Joe just said nothing else to him,

"You can play it if you want to."

Tito had been watching his father

play guitar;

But he would come to my house

and he and I would play.

Reynaud Jones

NEIGHBOUR - GARY, INDIANA.

And I would play a little something

on my guitar, and then show him,

and then give my guitar to him.

And then he'd try to play it.

And so we went back and forth like that.

There was a guy across the street

who had one snare drum,

and his name was Milford Hite.

Milford Hite

NEIGHBOUR - GARY, INDIANA.

Reynaud said,

"Milford, come over with your drum

"and let's see if we can, you know,

start a little group together."

We played for a while

and then Jackie Jackson came oven.

Okay.

Then after Jackie came in, Jermaine came.

TITO:
Michael and Marlon were just little kids.

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