Wednesday, October 07, 2009

The Michael Jackson Tapes

(Article with video from http://today.ninemsn.com.au): 

Three months after his untimely death, an intimate look into Michael Jackson’s tortured personality has come to light through a series of interviews the popstar has done with his one-time spiritual advisor Rabbi Shmuley Boteach.

Rabbi Shmuley has over 30 hours of tape with Michael done nine years ago where the popstar talked about his need for fame, his love of children and his harsh treatment at the hands of his father.

The tapes went into a book called the Michael Jackson Diaries which Rabbi Shmuley said Jackson wanted made public but work stopped when he was arrested on child molestation charges. But now Rabbi Shmuley said he’s released them as he thinks that’s what Michael would have wanted and the Rabbi now joins us from our studios in New York.

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach

Shmuley says that by the time he met Michael in the Summer of 1999 he was already one of the most famous people in the world. But he seemed lethargic, burned-out, and purposeless. He wanted to consecrate his great fame to helping children but knew he could not due to the 1993 child molestation allegations against him. He was cut off from family and was alienated from the Jehovah’s Witnesses Church which had nurtured him. He could barely muster the energy to complete the album he was working on.

The only thing that seemed to motivate him was his children, to whom he was exceptionally devoted. In many ways his tragedy was to mistake attention for love. The Rabbi says he will never forget how when he and Michael sat down to record 40 hours of conversations where Michael would finally reveal himself for a book Boteach authored, he turned to him and said these haunting words: “I am going to say something I have never said before and this is the truth. I have no reason to lie to you and God knows I am telling the truth. I think all my success and fame, and I have wanted it, I have wanted it because I wanted to be loved. That’s all. That’s the real truth. I wanted people to love me, truly love me, because I never really felt loved. I said I know I have an ability. Maybe if I sharpened my craft, maybe people will love me more. I just wanted to be loved because I think it is very important to be loved and to tell people that you love them and to look in their eyes and say it.”

Rabbi Boteach said that “whether you loved or hated Michael Jackson, this was a tragic waste of a life. He had a mixed history, he reached many people and he may have been guilty of terrible things, but that doesn’t mean he had nothing to say. He’s never given credit for becoming very introspective about life in general, and his own life. I want people to hear him in his own voice and judge him based on the full facts.”

The main body of the book is “60,000 words of Michael” being interviewed, Rabbi Boteach said, with little commentary. It also includes an introduction by the rabbi offering an overview of their friendship, which cooled after Jackson’s 2003 arrest, and an afterward on celebrity featuring what the rabbi calls his own “mea culpa” about his personal need for attention.

Rabbi Boteach said Jackson told him that what he sought from the time he became a child star was neither wealth nor fame, but love, especially from his father. “Michael represented an extreme form of brokenness,” the rabbi said, noting that, like American culture, “he had everything but was often depressed, living in a world that was increasingly sexualized. He had the resources to take his dysfunction to a particular extreme, but we may be headed in the same direction.”

A second book of the taped interviews, focusing on why Jackson sought refuge in childhood as an adult, is scheduled to be published next year.

Key points from the book

  * Michael said he wanted success because it meant he was loved
  * He thought he looked like a lizard and never wanted to look in the mirror and see that he’d grown old
  * Disparaging about Madonna as they bickered over their social life and then she got nasty about him although was glowing about him recently
  * Says Brooke Shields was one of the loves of his live
  * Says Jackson held women in reverence but at the same time was suspicious of their motivation and use of sexuality to achieve their goals
  * He loved Lisa Marie because she wasn’t “after” anything
  * He said Princess Di was his type and he didn’t like most girls
  * Talked in detail about the beatings his father gave him (Joe denied this on Larry King)
  * Said he feared his father so much he would faint or vomit when he came in the room
  * Told Shmuley that he and Janet used to pretend Joe was dead
  * On the other side, Jackson gave his father credit for his entertainment success and always hoped for a reconciliation
  * Michael thought he could have transformed Hitler if he’d had an hour with him
  * Didn’t think Britney would last because she didn’t understand the power of mystery
  * On his regard for children Jackson said I’d thrown in the towel if it weren’t for the children and the babies
  * Said it was his mission to help children enjoy their childhood
  * Said adults appreciated him artistically while children just want to have fun along with giving and receiving love
  * At times he was so lonely yet so shy he surrounded himself with mannequins because he couldn’t face real people
  * Boteach asked him about the cancer patient who later became his accuser. Jackson said he was special and everytime he spoke to the boy the boy was in better spirits
  * Despite the break in their relationship, Shmuley said he had high regard for Jackson and the lessons they both learned during the sessions
  * A spokesman for the Jackson family said in a statement they weren’t going to dignify this with a comment