Real Michael
Rare – LaToya, Janet, MJ, David Gest, Carol Jackson (late 1970s). Photograph: David Gest Private Archives.
She said Michael sits around, drinks and curses, and talks in a normal voice. And
Arthur Jafa about LMP, NYPL ‘After the Dance’ Panel, 2010
she said she kept telling him why are you doing this, why you keep using this thing.
Because this thing, this strategy, it’s like the fortress that becomes
a prison you know what I mean. It’s not working for you anymore.
Disclaimer: This is just a subjective choice based on a lot of research. We don’t claim to know what is or isn’t real. This is a work in progress.
HIStory tour (ca. 1997)
I’m looking for everything that is real, authentic, unmanipulated – and not meant for public or PR purposes.
Basically I’m trying to find the reality behind the mask.
For example: listen to the Ralphige Prank call, the Glenda Tapes, the Westhaven Ranch home video and the home video you can see below with his kids making a movie.
I can’t unsee (or unhear) those. To me the person that emerges from that is so much more compelling than the carefully curated public persona. [JS]
What do you think?
2nd Take Molly Meldrum Interview (Nov 2, 1977)
Context: 8 weeks into filming ‘The Wiz’. He writes he wants to be a
totally different character in his image manifest in 1978.
Source: Youtube
Private Singapore Tape #1 (1993)
Context: Rare – in Singapore during ‘Dangerous’ tour in 1993
Source: Youtube, GMJHD| Edit: JS
‘Ghosts’ motion capture MO (April to May 1996)
Context: Amid divorce proceedings, in May Debbie Rowe
announces that she’s pregnant, later HIStory tour announcement.
Source: Youtube, MJ VideoArchive| Edit: JS
Private Live Tape (sometime between Mar-Jun 2000)
Source: Youtube, Elena Orlovskaya
‘The Footage You Were Never Meant to See’ (2003)
Getting him to open up by pressuring him: Know your audience!
Source: Youtube, ASparkOfLegend| Edit: JS
‘This Is It’ meeting (2009)
Source: Youtube, GamesPro BG
Sleep
Karen Faye, June 25, 2010
His adrenaline was so intense sometimes it would take him two days to go to sleep for his adrenaline just to come down from one show.
Source: ABC 20/20 Youtube
MJ live – ‘Dangerous’ tour, Monza (July 6, 1992)
Photograph: Daniele Dalledonne/CC.
Howard Hughes thing – (not real) newsletter collage. Edit: JS
Howard Hughes thing
Lisa Marie Presley Interview, 2003
I fell into that ‘You have this whole Howard Hughes thing that goes on in the press, and you’re not anything like that.’ […]
I think it worked for him to manipulate that image for a little while. The hyperbaric chamber thing and all that monkey shit and the elephant shit. It made him mysterious, and I think he thought that was cool. But then it backfired
Source: Rolling Stone
icing out
Lisa Marie Presley, 2024 (posthumously)
I can get really mean and really angry and I freak people out when I get like that. It comes from trying to protect myself from pain. I just push people the fuck away. It’s the fear of being hurt. I know people can hurt me, so I’ll shut them out.
I learned from the best: Michael Jackson. He did it really well.
Source: Lisa Marie Presley & Riley Keough: ‘From Here To The Great Unknown’
MJ (1998)
Blaming
Karen faye
Michael would always blame others for the bad things that happened around him. It drove me crazy…
Facebook Post
‘Disciple’ Lyrics
Lisa Marie Presley, 2003
You flourish in your disciples bringing you pleasure in so many masturbative ways
Until you’ve simply no use for them anymore, and then they will remain and suffer in your concentrated haze
Devotion you seek from them is the starvation and abolishment of their little souls
But you escape all responsibility in that because of course you were the one (yeah, of course) who was hurt more
The reference to ‘little souls’ doesn’t mean this is about children, since LMP later goes on to say she is a disciple herself.
I absolutely love these lyrics. Lisa had a real knack for writing. Most prominently displayed in her blog post from June 26, 2009.
Source / Source1“I’m not into Michael-bashing at all’, she says, when I discuss the song with her. ‘I have no interest in doing that. He is who he is. I know people want to know what that was about, and I’m trying to say it without making him a bad guy, you know. . . . It’s hard to do, because it was such a bad situation and it was so fucked up”