Okay, so we had planned to do this a little bit earlier because we were trying to match it with the new movie that came out, but it’s about Michael Jackson. I still haven’t seen the movie. My son went and just won’t shut up about it. He loves it. I heard it was good though. Didn’t they have his nephew play him? Yes, his name is Jafar Jackson.

What a name. Jafar? They sent that kid off for failure. He’s also the evil wizard in Aladdin. There’s just only one person I know named Jafar. I’ve never even heard that name except for in Aladdin. So this is Michael Jackson, and before we jump into it I’m a little bit biased because my kids love him. I love him too.

No, but like he’s their god. He’s their favorite. I’m surprised those boys even know about him. My kids are 15 and 13 and they’re really not into any other music other than Michael Jackson. Well, hey, that’s good music to be into. It is timeless. So, before we get in, the reason why I was bringing it up is because I’m a little biased because I love him. I’m super biased. There’s no, I’m not even going to sugarcoat it. I’m ultra biased.

All right, so when we were putting this together, I had to watch the bad documentary. And what’s really crazy is the really, really bad documentary. It’s called Leaving Neverland. It’s been banned. I couldn’t watch it. I couldn’t find it. I had to VPN to Japan. In Japan they’re like, fuck it, you can watch whatever you want. So I think the estate of Michael Jackson probably filed an injunction. Like, yo, stop it.

It’s like at that point, if it’s not true, it’s either slander or libel. And it was a dark documentary apparently. I got a summary of it. It was the worst possible thing imaginable. But just to say on the upfront, I truly don’t believe it. I just don’t believe it. We’ll see after today. There wasn’t a lot of evidence. That’s really how this episode came about. There were some documentaries debunking the bad ones, and then there were the bad ones. I kind of watched both, but anyways, we’ll get in there.

Michael Jackson. The story starts before the moonwalk, before the glove, before Thriller or Neverland or all the tabloids about Wacko Jacko. It starts in a two-bedroom house on the corner of Jackson Street and 23rd Ave in Gary, Indiana, a steel town 25 miles south of Chicago. The air was thick with mill smoke, the streets full of kids who were already learning that getting out was the only plan worth having. Yeah, you’re not going to work at the mill. Get the fuck out of Gary. No offense, Gary.

Dude, kids say that now. Get the fuck out of here. Is it still like that? Have you ever been to Indiana? I have, yeah, many times. I’m from the tri-state. Cincinnati is right on the border of Kentucky and Indiana. I grew up in a small little trash town like that. Well, there’s either you get out or you’re part of the narcos. What’s the vibe of Indiana? Midwestern vibe. It’s very slow.

It’s a slow Midwestern kind of vibe. A lot of those Midwestern states like Indiana and Ohio, like if you go up to Cleveland, it’s just run down. Most of the factories have shut down and it’s kind of dead. Like it’d look cool in the ’50s, when it was bustling it was probably awesome, but now it’s just kind of abandoned. There’s also a lot of farmland and there’s a lot of space. The places I’ve been to in Indiana, I’ve never been to Indianapolis. There’s hills for sure. Eric thinks there’s just cornfields everywhere. No, that’s like Iowa.

In the Jackson home, 11 people lived in the house. In a two-bedroom? Joe Jackson was the dad. He was a crane operator at US Steel, a failed boxer, and he just never really made it as a musician. He’s described as a furious person. A prick. And Katherine, his wife, was a devout Jehovah’s Witness who played piano, sang, and tried to keep the peace. Nine children crowded into two small bedrooms. That’s wild. Nine kids, bro. Almost every month you have a birthday.

They never really had Christmas trees, no birthday parties that any record of. Jermaine Jackson once wrote about watching the decorated houses across the street light up in December while their own home was dark because they couldn’t afford lights. Katherine telling them it was fine, that the other Jehovah’s Witnesses did the same, where they didn’t celebrate it. Yeah, they don’t. If you think of the origins of Christmas, too, it’s not actually about Christ. If you trace it back, it was old Roman pagan stuff that took over. Coca-Cola made it, baby.

Music filled the gaps where childhood should have been. Katherine sang and played the piano. The furniture in the living room got pushed aside to make space for rehearsals. And I quote, “We would take the furniture out of the living room and just dance,” Michael said. “We would have a songwriting competition while we washed the dishes. While we were cleaning, music was our destiny.” That’s from Michael himself. Joe had kept one thing from his own musical days, a guitar. His children were not permitted to touch it.

But one day he came home from a shift and caught Tito, his third oldest, playing it behind his back. His first instinct was rage. Yet his second instinct was to look at his son’s hands and realize he was talented. Those boys were gifted. He called the other brothers in and he watched them, and something shifted behind his eyes. Joe Jackson, the frustrated man, became the manager. Oh yeah, he saw dollar signs.

Joe Jackson, the manager. And whatever childhood his children still had quietly ended because he started running them on rehearsals. Like hard. Hours every day. Belt across the chair back. Joe watched like a drill sergeant, stopping every mistake, almost like that movie Whiplash. Yeah, with Miles Teller. And then J.K. Simmons is the ruthless tyrant. He got the award for that. Dude, he’s so good.

He was stopping them every mistake and correcting every misstep. And he said, this is from Michael, “If you didn’t do it the right way, he would tear you up and he would really get you.” Joe held Michael upside down by one leg one time and pummeled him repeatedly with his open hand. Jesus. It’s also like, how does a failed guy know the right way? That’s a good point. How do you know the right way?

Michael once told Oprah Winfrey in 1993 that just the sight of his father walking into a room would make him feel physically ill. That he would vomit or he would begin to tremble. That’s almost like a dog that’s been beaten. It’s like a survival response. Joe, for his part, said years later that he was glad he was tough on them. Tough is an understatement, my guy. And he pointed out that their fame is proof that he did right by them. This is what we call a justification. Clearly I’m right, look, they’re famous.

Joe also mocked his nose. He called it fat and wide. Whether it came primarily from Joe’s mouth or from his brothers doing what brothers sometimes do, he then got a nickname called Big Nose. And no wonder why he strangely enough shaved it all off. Something about that lodged itself in him, planted there by the man whose love and respect he most wanted, your dad. And it would quietly explain a great deal about Michael Jackson later in what he did to his face.

The neighborhood outside wasn’t gentle either. A boy had been recently stabbed in a bathroom at the local high school. Tito, walking home from lunch one day with a single dime in his pocket, had a gun pulled on him to be robbed. Gary was the kind of place where a family of talented children needed to either get the fuck out or get swallowed up by the area. So Joe, the head of the family, decided to get the fuck out. That was his choice, instead of being swallowed up. And that’s what created the group, the Jackson 5. It’s such a good name, too. It has such a hot ring to it.

This was 1963. Jackie, Tito, and Jermaine played local functions and talent shows. Then Joe added Marlon and Michael in ’64. Originally it was called the Jackson Brothers, and then in ’64 he changed the name to Jackson 5. Great decision. Excellent decision. And Michael was 6 years old. Six. What a talent. It’s pretty much him putting her to work, basically. So my name is Michael.

By 1966 they were entering every competition they could find. Michael sang the lead. He was eight at this time now and he sounded somehow like a man twice his age. He could mimic James Brown’s footwork after seeing him perform once. He watched Jackie Wilson and absorbed the showmanship. He studied the Temptations, Sammy Davis Jr., anyone who moved on stage. Where the other brothers learned the music, Michael seemed to learn the style and how to become it.

Like how to engage the audience. Showmanship. Like that thing where you suck them in. You could have a great voice, but if you don’t get the audience in there, it’s not going to be the same. In August 1967 they won amateur night at the Apollo Theater in Harlem, perhaps the most legendary and unforgiving talent competition in the history of American music. In the crowd that night was Gladys Knight, who watched this child with an enormous voice and what she called the liquid feet.

And she went back to Motown to tell founder Berry Gordy he had seen one of these kids. Gordy eventually met them when musician Bobby Taylor, who had seen the Jackson 5 open for him at Chicago’s Regal Theater, physically brought them to Hitsville USA in Detroit. Gordy watched them for two minutes and said, this is it. He was like, what do I need to give you? On March 11th, 1969, the Jackson 5 signed a 7-year contract with Motown Records. They were 10, 11, 12 years old. The family packed up Gary forever and relocated to LA.

I thought they had already left Gary. I think they were kind of on the road, traveling, doing talent shows. So Gordy, never shy of a good story, decided the group would be introduced to America not by Bobby Taylor, who had discovered them, not by Gladys Knight, who also pushed for their discovery, but by Diana Ross. It was a marketing ploy, pure and simple, but it worked phenomenally. So Diana Ross presented the Jackson 5, and it dropped in December of ’69.

The lead single, I Want You Back, hit number one before the year was out. Then they came out with ABC. That song’s fire, dude. I love that song. Then they had The Love You Save, then I’ll Be There. So they had four consecutive number ones, non-stop. The first act in Billboard history to achieve four straight out the gate. Michael was 11. Can you imagine being 11 and you already have four number one hits, and you’re the lead singer?

What’s strange about the story too is that at the time Michael was billed as being eight or nine years old. Probably just to make it even more sensational. Like a savant, like literally like a Mozart. Rolling Stone called the young Michael a prodigy with overwhelming musical gifts. Ed Sullivan watched Michael perform Smokey Robinson’s Who’s Loving You on his variety show, a grown man’s heartbreak song, and turned to the audience and said, “The little fella in front is incredible.” I mean, he was incredible.

Jacksonmania swept the country. There was a Saturday morning cartoon about the Jackson 5. There were lunch boxes, fan clubs. Dude, they were maximizing profits. And through all of it Michael, the prodigy, the engine, the star, was not at home watching cartoons like a normal kid. He was literally watching dancers change. In 2002 he told Gold magazine, “I grew up in nightclubs. When I was 7, 8 years old, I was in nightclubs. I saw striptease girls take off all their clothes, and then I saw fights break out.”

“I saw people throw up on each other from being drunk. I saw adults acting like pigs.” And that’s from Michael. He could not go to school. The fans would have mobbed him. He was taught by private tutors arranged by his dad, between rehearsals and tours. He didn’t really have any friends. There’s no time. He had brothers who were also his colleagues, and a father who was also his boss, and a mother who loved him, but it’s not the same.

And his dad and his brothers, they were all super womanized. He’s 10, 11. The closest people in his life, the only people he hangs out with, they’re all just doing their thing. Later at the 1993 Grammy Legend Awards ceremony, Michael would say of those years, and I quote, “My childhood was taken away from me. There was no Christmas. There were no birthdays. It was not a normal childhood, nor the normal pleasures of a childhood. Those were exchanged for hard work, struggle, and pain. And at an awful price, I cannot recreate that part of my life.”

Damn, that sucks. It’s like, was it even worth it? Is it worth losing the joy? What a great question. I mean, look at Tiger Woods. That kid didn’t have a normal childhood. His dad was a green beret, pretty ruthless. Same style of just drilling, drilling. From the time he was 5 years old it was like, no, again, more. Crack of 5:00 a.m. having your little boy out there ripping it. But you look at it and maybe it’s like, is it worth it in the grand scheme, to be the greatest of all time at a thing, is it worth it to lose those fundamental years?

But isn’t the question, would he have been that great without it? Cuz it’s a great question. Was it worth it? But would he have been Michael without it? He wouldn’t have been Michael. Did he have the talent and ability? Yes. But what made him Michael is that he was so young. That attention was in part because he was so young, like look what this kid can do. If he would have been 18, 20, maybe not the same talent, but the attention wouldn’t have been the same.

My question of is it worth it is not from the third-party aspect. It’s easy for me to look in and be like, of course it’d be worth it, it’d be the greatest, we got Thriller out of it, why didn’t my parents grind me like that? But from his perspective, I had to be miserable to achieve this thing, and then in some way still miserable cuz you don’t have a life. Imagine growing up without any real strong interpersonal relationships with other people, friendship and trust, and then trying to do that now that you’re the most famous human on Earth. It’s impossible.

But you know what’s interesting about that quote about his childhood? Later on, maybe that’s why he did the Neverland. He was trying to build a childhood that he never had. That’s why I was like, after learning more about Michael, I’ll tell you the theories at the end. But you’re on the right path. Now I got unlimited money, what can I do to try to go back in time?

Do you remember when we did Kurt Cobain? You play a similar question, like was it worth it for the art that was released? I don’t know. I might think it’s not worth it that much more to Kurt than Michael. The question is not for us. It doesn’t matter if I think it’s worth it. It’s not my life. What’s worth it is, would I personally rather be rich and famous, or have a great childhood in a loving family? I would rather have my life, honestly. I think being that famous has got to be such a hassle. I can’t go to Chipotle without getting recognized. It sounds terrible.

I recently watched, you know Martin Short, the famous comedian, always with Steve Martin? He’s kind of had a resurgence. New TV show, Murder in the Building or whatever. He’s on those credit card commercials. He came out with a documentary called Life is Short. What was very interesting about it was that he was like, I had a phenomenal childhood, full of love and laughter, and I don’t subscribe to that it takes heartache to create art.

It was one of the only documentaries where I was like, oh. You watch those documentaries and they’re like, the heartache and tragedy caused the art. I thought his was refreshing because it was like, I had a loving childhood, full of laughter. And that’s why I don’t like that the narrative is typically the parents are the ones pushing them and grinding. For example, I love sports. For sports guys, I like it when it’s the kid who’s the one saying, I want to do this.

It’s like, for example, Christian McCaffrey. His dad was in the NFL. And Christian McCaffrey told his dad, I want to play in the NFL. He’s like, are you willing to do what it takes? And he was like, yeah. So his dad ran him through the gauntlet, but he didn’t do it to him out of spite. He wanted it. His dad wouldn’t let him wear tight jeans on game days cuz it would restrict him. Obviously Christian McCaffrey is one of the greatest athletes in the universe. For those who don’t know, he’s the running back for the Niners.

His dad was like, if you really want to do this, we can do this, but it wasn’t, I’m going to push this on you because this is what I think you should do. If your child really wants to pursue a dream and wants to go for it, yeah, let’s go for it. Let’s get the discipline in. Let’s push it. But it wasn’t like Michael Jackson saying, Dad, I will do anything to be famous. His dad was like, I’m sick of being a crane operator, I see dollar signs.

Also, this is a grown-ass man later on in life saying I’m terrified to this day of my father. So we don’t even know what he did. Oh dude, he beat all those kids. I think he beat his wife, too. He was a piece of shit. How bad it was was probably terrible. During those Motown years, Michael met Diana Ross when he was nine, and she became, by his own words in his autobiography, something close to everything. And he said, quote, “She was my mother, my sister, and my lover all combined into one.”

Whoa. Okay. At the mother and sister, I’m like, this is really intense. The age difference is palpable. So I’ll do the quote one more time. She was my mother, my sister, and my lover all combined into one. Ross mentored him, shaped his sense of presence, showed him what it meant to walk into a room and have the air change. Their commonality was real and specific. They had both lost their childhoods to their careers before they were old enough to understand what that even meant.

In 1975, the Jacksons left Motown for Epic Records, a contract dispute, creative frustration, and the sense that Berry Gordy’s machine had gotten all it wanted from them as the Jackson 5. Jermaine married Gordy’s daughter and stayed behind. The remaining brothers kept recording, kept touring. Michael, restless and increasingly separate from the group in ambition if not in duty, began pushing towards something no one had quite named yet, like his own solo. Yeah, it’s like NSYNC and JT. I got to do my thing. Don’t hold me back.

It was during the filming of The Wiz in 1977, a sprawling, expensive box office disaster musical, in which Michael played the Scarecrow, that everything changed. The film flopped extremely badly, but it introduced Michael to the musical director, Quincy Jones. Jones was one of the great producers who had ever lived. He looked at Michael Jackson and saw something the world had yet to be shown.

Off the Wall came out in August of ’79. Sleek, adult, sensual, miles beyond the bubblegum of the Jackson 5. It became the first solo album in history to produce four top 10 Billboard singles from a single release. Michael was 20. Crushing it. The Grammys gave him one award from that. Only one. Classic Grammys. Beyoncé got the other three, even though she was zero years old. In 1979, Beyoncé got the other three.

Then in 1982, Thriller dropped. It became the best-selling album in history. So much sales that still to this day nobody’s even sure how many copies were sold. They put it at 80 to 100 million, and they don’t even know. That’s not even counting the bootlegs. The retail receipts, they can’t track it. This is a wild statistic. Thriller was number one for 37 weeks. That’s almost a year. How can you be number one for almost a year? It spent 80 consecutive weeks in the top 10. So basically the whole year was Thriller.

It produced seven top 10 singles including two number ones. The 14-minute Thriller music video is amazing. I love the video. It was probably the first in history that there was a long-ass music video. It was like a short film. It was incredible. It was the first music video inducted into the US National Film Registry as a culturally significant work. Dude, it is. I might watch it tonight.

There’s no Jackson team, it’s all him. He created it. He didn’t direct it, there’s an actual director, John Landis, directed it. But it was his idea, he’s the creative mind behind it. At that time music videos were like 4 minutes. Max. It was 14 minutes. It’s like, fuck it, let’s just do the whole thing. At the 26th Grammy Awards, Michael received 12 nominations. It’s such an absurd number. He won eight. That’s more Grammys than eight in one year. He’s like, I can’t hold all of them.

On March 25th, 1983, also point of note the year Eric was born, kind of a big deal, premium year, Michael performed Billie Jean. Oh god, one of my favorites. What is your favorite actually? Thriller’s my favorite. Yeah, but Billie Jean is like, mine’s Man in the Mirror. I’m asking him to change his ways. No question. Can we ask any clearer? If you want to make the world a better place, take a look at yourself and make a change. That was pretty close. AI wouldn’t even be able to tell the difference. I love Shazam.

He’d initially refused to appear. He agreed only if he got a solo spot. He walked out in a rhinestone studded glove, a black fedora, jacket sleeves pushed up, and the song built. And then he slid backwards across the stage on his heels, weightless, almost looking like physics were being defied. And in that move he perfected what he had said for 3 years, the moonwalk. Legend. And the way he does it is so like butter. So smooth. I think his greatest move is when he leans forward and it’s like, how are you not falling over? The tilt. I fall down standing up from bed.

47 million people watched. It’s like more than watched the moon landing. The great dancer Fred Astaire called Michael the next morning and told him it was the greatest dancing that he’d ever seen. Holy. Could you imagine getting that call? Hi, this is Fred Astaire. Is this Michael Jackson? Berry Gordy said he was mesmerized. The moonwalk became the most recognized dance on the planet. It still is today.

The boy from Gary who wasn’t allowed to touch his father’s guitar, who’d watch strippers from backstage at age eight, who’d never had his own birthday party, was now the most famous human being on planet Earth. Like literally on Earth. Right? Then he followed it up with Bad. How can you have so many bangers? How can you just have non-stop bangers? 1987 Bad came out. The first album ever to produce five consecutive number one singles. Like how can he just keep on breaking his own records? Bro owned the ’80s. Like literally just dominated.

In 1985, he then purchased the Beatles songs for $47 million. What a steal. Now, the reason why I bring this up is because it’s very important for his catalog. Cuz he learned from Paul McCartney that it’s about owning music. It wasn’t about releasing music. Because if you don’t own the rights to it, you’re not getting the residuals on it. You just get a little sliver. Little taste.

So Paul McCartney, who had once explained music publishing to Michael over dinner as a kind of joke, had said, and I quote, “I own this song and this one. You see how it works?” “I think it’s dodgy to do something like that,” he said. “To be someone’s friend and then buy the rug that they’re standing on.” So he’s talking about the music industry. And how it’s super crooked. They’re like, oh, look at this nice little contract, baby. And then we give you this nice advance and we own your stuff forever.

And then moving forward, in March of 1988, Michael bought 2,700 acres in Los Olivos, California for $19 million, and he named it Neverland Ranch. And he named it Neverland after Peter Pan. The home of the boy who refused to grow up. I mean, it’s almost cliche. I wouldn’t necessarily say it’s cliche. Meaning he bought a ranch called Neverland about kids who don’t grow up.

I think it’s more like, dude, the kid never got to be a kid. He was being pimped out by his dad his whole life. And he can’t go anywhere. He can’t go to any theme parks. He can’t do anything fun. You’re going to get people are going to riot if you showed up at a Walgreens. They’re going to burn that place to the ground. What he built at Neverland Ranch was one of the most extraordinary private properties ever created on Earth. Outside of my boy Pablo.

There was a working steam locomotive. He just had a train. Like a legit actual train. And it was named after his mother, Katherine. It just circled the property. Just cuz. Why not? It had a full fairground Ferris wheel. It had a roller coaster. A 50-foot carousel. It had 60 hand-carved animals. He had an octopus ride. He had bumper cars. What’s an octopus ride? He had a pirate ship. What do you want, bro? Captain Hook, too.

He had a private zoo. Giraffes, orangutans, elephants, tigers. He had a 50-seat movie theater. He had a swimming pool with a waterfall. But actually a 100-foot waterfall. It’s a legit waterfall. He had a master suite with a hidden safe room behind a secret door behind the closet behind the other room. It would take you 18 minutes to get to the safe room. Everywhere you look, there was something designed to make a child feel like they stepped inside a dream.

Then there was Bubbles. The chimp. Michael had acquired him as an infant from a Texas research lab in 1983, who lived in the house with him. He ate at the dinner table. I don’t agree with having it cuz primates go crazy. They’re notoriously savage. There’s a story in Ohio. These ladies had a chimp and they raised it in their house, and out of nowhere this chimp just goes tight and bit her face off. It literally bit her face off and it was killing her. And she stabbed it like 20 times and it didn’t give a fuck. Maimed her horrible. If you really get the stomach for it, look up her face. You’d barely know it’s a human. And they had to come and put it down, she couldn’t stop it. It was way stronger than her.

They just came out with a movie about these apes. The trailer where it’s like on a TV show and it goes crazy and it’s covered in blood. Dude, don’t fuck with monkeys, bro. Keep those at arm’s length. But sometimes they would sit at dinner and they would wear matching clothes. That’s a little bit sad, dude. I mean, homie can’t trust anyone. He’s got no friends. He’s got no homies. But you’re dressing up with your monkey in the same outfit. Bro, if I was a billionaire and I had no homies, maybe.

That means that at one point he said to his assistant, I need monkey clothes, give me the matching outfit for the monkey. Like, go to Brooks Brothers. Somebody had to do it, it’s a logistics thing. They’re like, but what’s his size? They’re like, figure it out. Size him up. Bring me a tailor. But we’re having dinner at 6:00. Listen, Bubbles better be ready. Bubbles only eats his filets when they’re off the grill, they need to be hot. PS, it has to have tassels. I know his hand’s a little bigger than normal, but get the glove. He needs the glove.

But Bubbles is still alive. He’s 43 years old and he’s in Florida. He’s at the Center for Great Apes in Wauchula, Florida. Maybe he wanted it cuz he wanted a friend for longer than 12 years, like dogs are. The Jackson estate pays for his care still to this day. Should we go visit him? That would be a little podcast, bro. Take a selfie, we’re all wearing matching outfits. He eats your face off. He literally snaps at them.

Michael called Neverland his giving tree. He opened it regularly to children from hospitals, charities, the Make-A-Wish Foundation. They would arrive and he would do it without press because he just wanted them to be happy. He said in 2003, I quote, “I wanted to create a place where I could recreate what I never had as a child.” It’s pretty obvious. I understand why people look at it, cuz it’s so outside of our realistic lives, it’s so hard to even fathom that. We can’t even comprehend it because we are not him.

Sometimes when I was listening to some of this stuff I was like, what would I do if I had unlimited funds? I definitely wouldn’t do that. Cuz I guess I’m too selfish. But you do like a version of that if you had no childhood and never went anywhere. No, but if me right now, cuz I had a great childhood. What would you do with unlimited funds? Eventually, after you did the initial things where you’re like, I got the beach house and the cars, eventually 10 years down the road you do some weird stuff.

I would rent out Universal for like a week and no other human beings are allowed in this place. He literally rented out Disney. I want some roller coasters, bro, Disney can suck it. But after a while it gets old. You’re going to go full game cuz there’s no barrier, you have unlimited money, you can do whatever. But see, my weird stuff is not like trying to repair your childhood trauma. My weird stuff is like, hey boys, I bought a Scud missile. So I’m going to blow up a mountain peak just because I have nothing else to do.

So I bought a small country and we’re going to do some weird shit. I would literally buy weird Egyptian statues and have a sarcophagus in your living room? Yeah, the greatest museum, I would rebuild the Library of Alexandria. I feel like Eric would actually start a revolutionary war cosplay group. Like a reenactment group. All right, you’re Custer, you’re surrounded. No, Eric would buy George Washington’s teeth, and they’d be displayed on his mantel. These are G Dubs’ teeth, my man. I’d have a pillow from the Titanic. Weird-ass stuff. Eric’s buying the Jack the Ripper shawl, 100%. So I kind of understand. Yeah, he’d do weird stuff.

He also had Elizabeth Taylor, his closest adult friend, the woman he called his greatest confidant. Taylor, a child star herself, understood the specific damage of being famous before you’re fully formed. She gave him a Shar Pei puppy. He was terrified of it. She reportedly talked him through a 3:00 a.m. phone call when the darkness got too heavy. Whatever that means. I don’t know what that means. Probably like, on the dark side. They understood each other in the wordless way of people shaped by the same world and the same wounds.

Also, he kept giving money away. Earlier in his life, and most people don’t know this story, as a young Jackson 5 lead singer, he spent his early paychecks buying ice cream and chewing gum and passing them out to the neighborhood. So he was always buying candy. By the time he was a man at the Hayvenhurst family mansion that Joe Jackson now had, that impulse had become an entire candy room that he built inside the house.

Later, when he was the most famous person alive, staff at Godiva, the chocolate company, would unlock the doors after closing to let him in secretly. The next morning, a clipboard with a few items listed, a stack of $100 bills on the counter. He was giving out the candy. But the concept was that he didn’t understand money like we know money. It’s so irrelevant at that point. He would try to secretly go into stores after hours, buy them, and then just leave things for other kids anonymously. I never heard that story. That’s pretty cool.

So it came out later that Michael had vitiligo. It’s an autoimmune condition that attacks pigment cells, leaving expanded patches of depigmented skin. And in fact, if you thought it was just him making stuff up, after his autopsy it was confirmed. So he did in fact have it. It wasn’t a fake disease. But usually you see that in patches and he didn’t really have patches. He’s saying you usually see it in patches, but you didn’t see patches. You can assume that even if he had patches, it’s Michael Jackson, so it’s the best makeup artist in the history of the universe. They’re like, make me look normal, like singular pigment.

So fast forwarding to after his autopsy, he had patches across the chest, abdomen, face, and arms. Also found in Neverland Ranch was a prescription for depigmentation creams. Meaning there was evidence of him trying, having creams, to go, I actually have this affliction. His son, Prince, later said on a podcast that Michael had a lot of insecurity about his skin color because people said he was trying to not be black. But in reality he had a disease. It wasn’t on purpose. It’s kind of fucked up, you know? Like if Michael Jackson came to the 2020s, you could never say anything about that.

But vitiligo didn’t explain everything. The nose. He got that nickname of fat nose or big nose from his dad abusing him. He did in fact alter it again and again, constantly, numerous times. The world looked at Michael’s changing face and assumed a self-hating black man trying to erase blackness. But he was really just trying to erase the criticism of his skin. Well, the skin condition and the criticism of his family. Trauma from his dad abusing him.

And what they may actually have been watching was something more specific and more painful, which was a boy erasing the face that his father ridiculed and gave him a fucked up name and a skin condition. So you kind of see it as almost logical of trying to go, I have infinite funds now, so maybe I should handle the things I’m insecure about because I have been ridiculed about it since I was a child.

So there’s a lot more to go into, and this is going to turn into a multi-part series. Going forward, we have the rough conversations, the lawsuits of pedophilia, and how he won those lawsuits. And he was actually never charged. So all these things we’re going to go into, and then also his death, which has a lot of inconsistencies around that. And I’ve been also reading a lot about Matthew Perry’s death. And honestly, I’m of the page of drug pushers. They’re doctors kind of pretending, and they’re independent. Like the concierge doctor. It’s like, yeah, I’m an MD. Of course I am. We’re going to go into the next episode on Michael Jackson.