“One of my friends said, ‘No matter how tough you are, Michael Jackson will have the biggest gangster in the front row screaming like a bitch at his concert.’ That’s about the best compliment you can give”.~ ICE-T
Jag älskar hur alla Michaels albumtitlar beskriver så bra varje period i hans liv när de släpptes.
Off the wall var liksom hans första egna album, som han skulle vara soloartist på och samtidigt få ha full kontroll över. Han var redo att ta sig an världen och vara helt enkelt off the wall, skapa extraordinär musik och vara en pionjär. Han tog det steget här.
På grund av Thriller blev han en sensation världen över, alla visste helt plötsligt hans namn i varje hörn och tyckte att han var spännande. Här blev namnet Michael Jackson en thrill.
Efter att ha blivit utnämnd till att ha världen bäst sålda skiva och efter att ha vunnit så många priser och tillförlitlighet i branschen var han BAD. Och han drog ett understreck för att stärka detta när albumet släpptes 1987.
Det är långt ifrån bara jag som har sagt detta: 1980-talet tillhörde Michael Jackson. Han var Dangerous. Behöver jag säga mer?
Han var en artist som 5-åring och hade mycket musikhistoria bakom sig - han ville minnas och hedra detta samtidigt som han ville säga att han hade mycket mer att ge genom att också släppa mycket ny musik på dubbelalbumet HIStory.
Blood on the dancefloor må vara ett undantag för min poäng i det här inlägget. Excuse me. Haha.
Så mycket negativitet och falska anklagelser, och falska rykten skulle komma åt vem som helst. Det sårade honom, men det krossade honom inte. Han ville meddela världen, till både de som brydde sig om honom och till de som av ingen anledning som helst ogillade honom, att han var Invincible.
Dangerous is my fave era but to everyone I’ve talked to, I always tell them that the era of MJ’s where I’d want to befriend him and get to know him in the most is the period where he was in his mid to late 40s. I just feel like he was more chill, more mature and less worried about media bullshit. He just seemed more laid back and at ease with everything. Not to mention that he killed the game in those sexy and sophisticated suits and shit he always wore. I love Older Mike and I REALLY love older mike love songs *__*
Publicerat det: 2014-12-27 | Klockan: 20:17:00
| Kategori: The fans 0 Kommentarer | Kommentera här!
“Invincible’ is just as good or better than ‘Thriller’, in my true, humble opinion. It has more to offer. Music is what lives and lasts. ‘Invincible’ has been a great success. When ‘The Nutcracker Suite’ was first introduced to the world, it totally bombed. What’s important is how the story ends.”
Alltsåååå jag älskar dig Chris Tucker! Tack för att du var en suverän vän, som till och med vittnade för hans försvar i rättegången 2005, trots att din manager och advokat rådde dig att inte beblanda dig i det... Du var en av de få kändisar som offentligt vågade säga att du trodde på hans oskuld.
Anonym: Aj, det där skar i hjärtat av att läsa. Särskilt det sista.. :( Jag förstår inte riktigt hur han blev av med alla sina pengar – berodde det enbart på för mycket spenderade pengar på shopping? :S
Nej, det berodde inte enbart på shopping. Efter vad jag förstod av boken så var Michael så nedslagen efter rättegången 2005 att han inte längre själv tog hand om sina affärer. Enligt livvakterna berättade Grace att Michael var i total kontroll innan och ordnade allting själv och ekonomin gick hur bra som helst (han är ju välkänd att ha varit en proffsig businessman). Ansvaret föll på andra människor som jobbade för honom och som inte var kapabla till det. Det var kaos. Livvakterna visste inte vad som pågick – inte ens Michael.
Det berodde dels på att Michael blev stämd hela tiden. När han litade på andra människor att ta hand om hans affärer blev det fel. Och för att till varje pris undvika att genomgå ytterligare en rättegång valde han att betala de som stämde honom för att få dem att ge sig iväg. Detta resulterade i att han förlorade massvis med pengar. Thomas Meserau, Michaels advokat under rättegången, har ju sagt: "Why work when you can sue Michael Jackson?", vilket beskriver situationen fullkomligt.
Jag bläddrade lite i boken för att finna en beskrivning om detta, och så här berättade livvakterna om Michaels brist på kontroll över sina pengar:
Javon: He started to see that our morale was down. We were driving one day and he said, "Guys, is there anything you want to tell me? You don't seem like yourselves right now."
We opened up to him completely. We said, "Mr. Jackson, we've got bills stacking up. We're loyal to you, we're here for you, but this is taking a toll on our families back home."
He said, "What? You guys still haven't been paid?!"
"No, sir."
"But I told Raymone to pay you. I told her! Bill, would you please get Raymone on the phone?"
He called her right there in front of us, put her on the speakerphone. She answered, and he said, "Raymone, my guys' morale is down. What's going on with their paychecks? When are you going to pay these guys?
He really tore into her. She started getting all flustered, stammering her way through the same old excuses. "I'll take care of it. We're just waiting for some things to come through. I'll take care of it."
He started shouting over her. "Raymone... Raymone... Raymone! You have to pay these guys. These guys are protecting me and my family. Without me, this machine doesn't run."
She said, "I'm gonna pay 'em. I'm gonna pay 'em this week."
"When this week? I have my guys right here, Raymone. They're on speakerphone. When this week?"
This was on a Tuesday. She said, "I'll pay 'em Thursday."
Thursday came and no pay. We were like, Wow. Are you kidding me? That's when we knew that Mr. Jackson really had no control over his own money. He was giving her direct orders and she was blowing him off. He'd apologize for it all the time. He'd say, "Guys, you know it's not my fault."
"Yes, Mr. Jackson. We know."
"I told her to pay you. She says she's going to pay you real soon. But you know it's not my fault, right?"
Bill: He really meant it, that it wasn't his fault. But on the flip side, I don't think he understood the depth of the problem, what happens when people like us don't get paid, the lights getting turned off, the phone getting turned off. He didn't understand that.
Javon: You can tell when somebody's bullshitting you and when they're being sincere, and he was being sincere in that it really was out of his control. But we were still upset. We wanted to grab him and say, "But it could be in your control. Why don't you take control? Why aren't you in charge of your own people?"
Bill: At one point, he said to me, "It's done. They're closing a big deal, and you guys are getting paid this week." That deal came and went. No paycheck. He called me and said, "Bill, I'm sorry. You guys would have gotten paid, but there's something about my balance with Greg's firm was bigger than I thought it was, so it applied all the money to the bill."
I thought, What the fuck? The lawyers work for you. How does that money not come to you first for you to make the decision about how you want to use those funds? Greg did a job and he expected to be paid. I understood that. But we were in the same position, and we were flat broke.
Michael Jackson was a billion-dollar enterprise, running 24/7, and there's nobody in charge. There was no organization, no actual company, just different people in different pockets all jockeying for different agendas. He didn't even have an office. His office was wherever he stood at. His business phone was whatever phone you put in his hand. Didn't have an email address. Most of his correspondence would go to Raymone. People would send her stuff and she'd overnight it to me wherever we were. Fans who knew who I was would even send mail to my house.
Mr. Jackson thought that Raymone was running an official office for his company in D.C. One day when I had to go and pick up a package from her and I pulled up in front of her address. It was a house. She was running his business out of her house. I heard him talking one day about how Raymone managed his office for him. I said, "Sir, Raymone doesn't have an office."
"Yes, she does. She runs my office in D.C."
"No, Mr. Jackson. She lives in D.C. She works out of her house."
"You mean I don't have an office?"
Not only did he not have an office, he didn't know that he didn't have an office. That's how disengaged he was from his own affairs.
Greg and Raymone were the two people that I had the most interaction with, but there were lots of other people: lawyers, accountants, flunkies, assistants. Some of these people had the authority to write and sign checks. There were people out the entering into agreements and signing contracts on his behalf. But who reported to whom, who was accountable for what, it was never clear. It never made any sense.
Part of it, I think, was misplaced trust. He trusted the wrong people, and he wanted to believe in them and they took advantage of him. But part of it was apathy. He was so beaten up by that point. He wanted to be with his kids, do his creative projects, and beyond that, he'd checked out of a lot of it. I'd been handling his correspondence for months at that point. So I know for a fact he wasn't getting any monthly statements or financial reports or anything like that. He didn't have a checkbook. He wasn't sitting down with his accountants on any regular basis, keepings tabs on what was being done.
He'd been so rich his whole life that I don't think he really grasped the idea that he could go broke. He just thought there would always be more. He always had cash on him. He had hundreds of thousands of dollars stashed away in that house in Vegas, in little hiding spots, and I knew he had some of that cash with him in Virginia. To him, that was real money, money he could put his hands on to get whatever he needed right then. And as long as he had that, it was like he didn't think about the rest of it, all his investments and publishing rights, none of it. And I got the impression that his handlers knew that, that if they kept a couple hundred grand in easy reach for him, he would never pay too much mind to what was going on with the rest. And he didn't.
I was driving him in D.C. one day, and he was on the phone with Peter Lopez. I could hear parts of their conversation, and I heard Mr. Jackson say, "Peter, I don't know where my money is. Or how much money I have. Can you help me?"
The fact that those words could even come out of his mouth was terrifying to me. And by ignoring his financial problems and trusting others to handle them, he'd created all sorts of legal problems for himself, too. Michael Jackson was like a flypaper for lawsuits. At any given time, there were hundreds of lawsuits pending against him, literally. Some of them were frivolous. Paternity suits from stalkers, that sort of thing. But a lot of these suits were serious, multimillion-dollar claims. With his business coming apart and nobody in charge, people weren't getting paid. Deals were being reneged on.
There was a whole cast of characters. Former managers and associates who claimed they were part of this or that and they hadn't been paid or they were owed a piece of something. People who'd worked on his album and music videos, claiming they weren't getting their royalty payments. It was one problem rolling over into the next. I'd get these legal documents from FedExed to me for his signature, so I saw how much money was going out the door. He'd settle for a quarter million dollars, half a million dollars, whatever it took. People usually sue when they think they can get something. And everybody knew that if you sued Michael Jackson, you'd get a settlement. He'd challange the frivolous ones, like the paternity nonsense. He'd get those thrown out. But if you had any kind of claim that could justify to trial? He'd just pay you to go away, because after what he went through in 2005, he was never going to set foot in a courtroom again.
Javon: While we were in Virginia, we took him to depositions at Greg Cross's office in D.C. We'd done several of them back in Vegas, and there were a coupld he had to do there. He dreaded going.
These depositions were all-day marathons. They'd put him in the chair, and the opposing attorneys would grill him for hours. There'd be a team of Mr. Jackson's guys in that room too, all of them billing him at hundreds of dollars an hour for hours on end. Usually they'd provide lunch at these things, because they kept you there for so long. They'd take a conference room and lay out bunch of sandwitches and snacks and fruits. At one point, Greg came out and offered us some food, and me and Bill went up to this room to grab something to eat. We were going through, making our sandwitches and talking. "Man, how long is this going to be? I'm ready to get the hell up out of here." Then we heard a sound from the back of the room. We looked over and it was Mr. Jackson. He said, "Hey, guys."
"Oh, hey! Mr. Jackson!"
I was caught off guard. They'd just left him in this room, sitting by himself, like a little kid off in the corner. It was like he was on a time-out. I swear that's exactly how it looked, like his lawyers had put him in the corner for a time-out. Then, once lunch was over, they took him back to the conference room, put him back in the chair, and grilled him some more.
When we got in the car to go home, he just went off. He vented to us the whole way home. "I'm so tired of all of this shit. I'm tired of it. I'm tired of giving depositions. These guys are asking me the same stupid questions over and over again. I just wanna go home to my kids."
Hur länge som helst, känns det som, har jag suttit och skrivit av detta från Bill och Javons, livvakternas, bok "Protecting Michael Jackson in his final days", helt enkelt därför att det är så viktigt. Anledningen till varför jag skrev från så tidigt som 2003, det beror på att jag tycker Martin Bashirs intervju förstörde Michaels image något så fruktansvärt, och anledningen till att jag skrev "till 25/6 2009", ja, det beror på att efter den dagen brakade tystnaden ner och röster från kändisars yttrande ord, som Michael hade desperat behövt höra i livet, hördes till slut (ni kan youtuba i princip vilken kändis som helst för att höra deras kärlek och respekt för honom efter hans bortgång) och även media började spegla Michael i avsevärt bättre och rättvisare ljus. Så tyst till alla som ljudligt tycker eller ens någon gång tänkt tanken att Michael "överrepresenteras" idag på musikgalor, eller av kändisar och media. För övrigt behöver ni läsa den här boken om ni inte har gjort det.
Javon: I was fine with the people who just said, "Well, he was a great entertainer and we'll never forget his music." That didn't bother me. But I couldn't stand all the celebrities coming out of the woodwork, trying to act like they were his best friend, like they were talking to him on a daily basis. People would say stuff like, "Yeah, I was chilling with Michael about a year ago..." And I'd just stare at the TV like, No, you weren't. I was with him the whole time, and you weren't there.
I knew this funeral would be fake. I didn't want to be around the fakeness. I knew I wouldn't be able to keep my composure. I told Bill, "If I go, I'll hurt somebody. For real." I wanted to pay my respects and have my one-on-one time with Mr. Jackson, but I knew it wasn't going to be like that.
Bill: Part of me didn't want to go, either, for the same reasons, but I was more torn about it than Javon. I felt like it was important to attend.
The morning of the memorial, I headed over to the SLS Hotel in Beverly Hill, where they were distributing the tickets. I saw a bunch of people who'd won tickets on the radio – they were doing giveaways. You could win a spot at Michael Jackson's memorial. That really bothered me.
Outside the Staples Center, it was crazy. Police everywhere. Blocks and blocks cordoned off. I parked in a garage, must have been about ten blocks away, and I walked. His fans were lining the streets behind the police barricades, holding up signs and flowers. People were dressed like him, with the mirrored sunglasses and the fedora. Just thousands of people.
Once I got inside and got to my seat, I could tell right away that this was going to exactly what we thought it was going to be. This wasn't going to be a real, genuine thing. It was going to be Hollywood, a place to be seen, a who's who. I looked around and saw all of these celebrities. People were talking, laughing socializing. Even the Kardashians were there. Really? Javon would have lost his mind if he'd seen that.
There were about 1,500 people in the section I was in, and I only saw about fourty, fifty people who were actually, genuinely, in mourning. I saw the girl with the red car who used to always park outside the Monte Cristo house. She was there. When I saw her, I said to myself, that's who should be in here. They should take all these fake-ass people and put them out in the streets, open up the doors, and let his fans in. They're the ones who deserve to be here for this. His fans were the only ones who never deserted him. Whenever the fans said, "We love you, Michael," he'd always say, "I love you more." And he meant it. They meant more to him than he did to them. He cared for them so deeply that in some ways they constituted the only sustained, committed relationship in his life – the only real love affair."
Once the program started, I really didn't pay too much attention to what was going on onstage. I was more lost in my own thoughts. I felt like the people up there were all saying good-bye to a different person than I was. All the artists that were performing – Usher, Mariah Carey, John Mayer – I didn't pay them no mind. I really didn't. This wasn't a memorial. It was a show. That's exactly what it was.
At the end, they brought the Jackson family onstage. Some of the brothers said a few words, and then someone said, "Paris wants to say something." When I heard that? I went straight for my coat pocket and pulled up my sunglasses and put them on. I knew I was going to water up the minute she started to speak. She stepped up and they brought the microphone down for her. She started talking and when she said, "Daddy was the best father you could ever imagine," I just lost it. I completely lost it. I didn't even hear the rest of what she was saying. It was too painful. It was words I didn't want to hear.
Then she started to cry, and the moment she did that, I realized I'd never seen her cry before. I'd only ever seen that little girl cheerful and smiling and laughing. Prince and Blanket too. Prince cried when he had to leave his dog in New Jersey, but that was the only time. Other than that, I'd never seen those children crying or hurt or upset. They were just the happiest kids. They loved their daddy and loved each other. They were the happiest family, always.
After Paris spoke, Marlon Jackson came up to thank everyone for coming. He and the other brothers went over to the coffin to carry it offstage. 'Man in the Mirror' started playing, and people were shouting, "We love you, Michael!" Looking at all that going on, there was one memory that kept running through my mind, a conversation I'd had with Grace [the nanny] back at the Monte Cristo house when I first started working there. She and I were in the garage. I was putting together some of the security equipment, and Grace was at the little workstation she'd set up. Mr. Jackson had told her to get in touch with somebody. She was getting frustrated and she said, "The boss wants me to get in touch with this person, and I keep leaving messages, but nobody's calling me back. It's like he forgets sometimes that some people don't want anything to do with him after all this mess."
I said, "What mess? What are you talking about?"
"The trial," she said. "Since the trial, a lot of people just don't call back anymore."
She was giving me the heads up, filling me in on how things worked, like she often did. She started telling me about the days right after the trial was over. "After he was acquitted," she said, "we had a party at Neverland for him to celebrate, and nobody came."
"Nobody?"
"A few people," she said, "but not many."
She said they'd put together a guest list of all these friends and people Mr. Jackson had worked with over the years. They invited close to three hundred people. Maybe fifty showed up. And a lot of the people who did come were people that worked for him. People that worked the grounds at Neverland. People from his lawyer's office. People who were paid to be there. Everyone else called and said they couldn't make it or they had other things planned. "And he knew," Grace said. "He knew why they didn't come. People called him and told him that they loved him and that they were praying for him, but very few people would go public and say that they believed him. A lot of people act like his friends but they're not really his friends. If he's not making them money, they're not really around."
When that trial was over, Mr. Jackson really wanted to believe that his life would be like it was before. He thought the world would see his was innocent, that he'd been wrongly accused, and then everyone would come back to him and love him again. But that didn't happen. It broke his heart. We keep having all these trials and depositions, people going around and pointing fingers and asking questions, everybody suing everybody, all this bickering over who or what killed Michael Jackson. To me it's perfectly obvious what killed Michael Jackson.
As I sat there in that arena, looking at all the people packed into the seats around me, I couldn't get that conversation with Grace out of my head. I just wanted to be alone with my thoughts, to have my own moment to grieve. But I couldn't. Because all I felt was anger. That overtook everything else. I sat there with all these people getting up onstage and talking about what a great friend Michael was and how much he meant to them, and the only thing I could think was: Where were they? Where were they when days went by and the phone didn't ring? When he couldn't sleep at night and had no one in the world to talk to? Or when it was Paris's birthday and no one showed up to watch her open presents, except the nanny and a couple of security guards? Where were they when he was getting turned out of hotels and his kids were living out of suitcases and we didn't even have money to put gas in the vehicles? Where were these people then?
“[Racism] is the only thing I hate. I really do. And that’s why I try to write, put it in songs, put it in dance, put it in my art – to teach the world. If politicians can’t do it, poets should put it in poetry and writers should put it in novels. That’s what we have to do and I think it’s so important to save the world.”~ MICHAEL JACKSON, 1979
“Later, in another part of Florida, when the old tour boredom set in that I described earlier, I played a little trick on Frank. I asked him to come up to my suite and when he came in I offered him some watermelon, which was lying on a table across the room. Frank went over to pick up a piece and tripped over my boa constrictor, Muscles, who was on the road with me. Muscles is harmless, but Frank hates snakes and proceeded to scream and yell. I started chasing him around the room with the boa. Frank got the upper hand, however. He panicked, ran from the room, and grabbed the security guard’s gun. He was going to shoot Muscles, but the guard calmed him down. Later he said all he could think of was: “I’ve got to get that snake.” I’ve found that a lot of tough men are afraid of snakes.”
“Working with Michael is always a pleasure and a challenge. He is a perfectionist and demands the best. But you would expect nothing less from him. His standard of professionalism has always been of the highest level. Michael always searches for the newest most exciting sounds and qualities in recording, and yet always has patience and understands the time consuming process of exploring developing new sounds.
I have had the opportunity to work with Michael in a variety of situations, and have worked hard to find or develop new technologies to address the creative ideas he wishes to pursue.”
Brad Sundberg var snäll och delade med sig av detta intima, osläppta audioklipp av Michael på svensk radio. Det korta klippet inkluderar Michael och Bill Bottrell i studion. Det fångades precis innan inspelningen av "Give in to me".
Michael wore the uniform [the gold suit] during his opening number of the Dangerous Tour. Americans were upset about the “tail” that was caused by the adjustable strap on the back of Michael’s fencing shirt. Fencing shirts buckle at the bottom beneath the tailbone, so the tighter the strap fastened, the longer the tail hung. “It stuck out”, or it “looked like a mistake” and were “distracting”.
But nothing we did for Michael was a mistake. That is how the traditional fencing uniform is worn. In fact, that “tail” was Michael’s favorite part of this outfit. It moved like crazy when he danced and became an extention of him, but most of all, it was the detail he wondered if anyone would notice. And to his pleasure, they did.
“You know how you either grow up in a Michael Jackson house or a Prince house? For me it was Michael Jackson. I could never decide whether I wanted to be Michael Jackson or marry him. I don’t care what people say about him now because he’s a fucking genius. That’s it – the end! He was robbed of his childhood, which is why he surrounds himself with children. When you’re around kids you can be a little kid yourself and pretend that life is magic and you don’t have to be one of those sweaty people going to work every day. I completely see what he’s doing.” ~ AMY WINEHOUSE
We older brothers had a way of describing how far we got with a girl: from “first base” (the kiss) to “second base” (touching/clothes off) to “third base” (the sex) and, in my hotel room that night, I was an L.A. Dodger running wild; eyes closed, on top of this girl, kissing and touching with a freedom I didn’t think possible. “That feels really good…” she said. I was getting serious, she was groaning. Third base was in sight. I had one hand stroking her face, and the other on the mattress beside her head.
"I love how you stroke my thighs," she continued, "…you’re real gentle…" I’m not stroking your thighs. “…it feels good,” she whispered. I peeked open my eyes and maneuvered my head to take a sly look down the bed, and that’s when I saw it—Michael’s arm, reaching up and over from underneath the bed, his hand circling her thigh.
"MICHAEL!" I jumped up, the poor girl was mortified and Michael, chuckling, was already scrambling for the door. I could have killed him, not only because he was hiding there the whole time, but because he heard me whispering all these sensual, sweet nothings that he would tease me with for weeks after. I refused to speak to him that night. When we turned out the lights and he wished me goodnight, I said nothing. He waited a few minutes in the dark and then brokered the peace.
"There is no one like Michael Jackson, People make music from left and right. That is wonderful but there is nothing like him. There is no other voice like him, There is only one, and there will be only one. And his music will be forever." ~ MR. BRAINWASH
Michael har blivit nominerad inom två kategorier i NAACP Image Awards! Inom Outstanding Male Artist och Outstanding Music Video (för "Love never felt so good" med Justin Timberlake). Galan kommer hållas 16 februari 2015. Det är så häftigt att han fortfarande nomineras till priser!
“I can’t answer whether or not I like being famous but I do love achieving goals. I love not only reaching a mark I’ve set for myself but exceeding it. Doing more than I thought I could, that’s a great feeling.”
“That’s what makes greatness. You have to have that tragedy, that pain to pull from. That’s what makes a clown great. You can see he’s hurting behind the masquerade. He’s something else externally.”
Dessa bekännelser av olika fans var ett tag sedan. Ni får gärna säga vad ni vill ha mer uppdatering om. Själv gillar jag dessa bekännelser, för det är roligt att känna igen sig.
"In their innocence, very young children know themselves to be light and love. If we will allow them, they can teach us to see ourselves the same way."
Alltså jag har suttit här i datorstolen och skrattat och dansat med honom. Han är så söt. Det bästa är när han verkligen känner dansen och publiken börjar ropa "Go, Michael" om och om igen. Han hade skadat sin ankel så han kunde inte dansa, men han regerade i sin tron.
Publicerat det: 2014-12-05 | Klockan: 03:51:47
| Kategori: On stage 0 Kommentarer | Kommentera här!
“Well, let’s face it, who wants mortality? Everybody wants immortality. You want what you create to live; be it a sculpture or painting or music, a composition. Like Michelangelo, he said; ‘I know the creator will go, but his work survives. That is why to escape death, I attempt to bind my soul to my work’” - Michael Jackson
Mitt hjärta smälter varje gång jag ser den svartvita bilden som de visar upp i bakgrunden. Kramen Michael ger Liza och leendet... Det är så fint, alltihopa. Han var fantastisk, okej?