Xscape Origins: Book Review

Earlier this week I posted the world exclusive first review of new book Xscape Origins. The book, by Australian journalist Damien Shields, tells the story of the eight Michael Jackson tracks which were remixed and released on the posthumous album Xscape.

Damien wrote the book after feeling aggrieved by the way Sony and the Michael Jackson Estate treated the artist's unreleased work. Instead of putting the songs out as Jackson created them, the companies hired outside producers to 'contemporise' them first. Then they prominently released the remixes and relegated Jackson's own work to a more expensive, expanded version of the album.

When it came time to promote the album, a lengthy documentary was created about how the outside producers had altered Jackson's compositions. Shields felt the album was presented as theirs, while Jackson's own creative process and visions for each song were barely discussed at all - a particular insult given that Jackson's own versions were universally superior to the remixes.

So Shields traveled to America to interview as many of Jackson's collaborators on the original songs as he could track down. In his introduction he makes clear that this is not a book about the Xscape album. It is a book about eight disparate songs from all different eras in Michael Jackson's career, which happened to be gathered together after he died and released on the same CD.

Upon the album's release last year I published an article on the Huffington Post, in which I drew on Jackson's own interviews and writings to present an argument as to why he would not have endorsed such a release.

Some fans who took issue with Jackson's philosophies, claiming he must have accidentally said the exact opposite of what he actually meant in each instance I referred to, have seized upon my book review as evidence of 'hypocrisy', saying I appear to now like the Xscape album. Perhaps they should have read the review before critiquing it. In it, I refer to Xscape as 'muddled' and 'uninspired'. I describe the remixing of Jackson's work as 'vandalism' and say the album was 'irredeemable'.

For those who do not understand my review - although I believe that their misinterpretation is largely willful - let me summarise: The album was bad; the book about Michael Jackson's creative process is good.

To read the full review, click here.

Another Tom Mesereau Endorsement!

Randall Sullivan's new Michael Jackson biography is causing a lot of controversy. It's not hard to see why. Last weekend I spotted a feature in the Mail on Sunday, taken from Sullivan's book. It included an allegation that Jackson's years of plastic surgery had left him with no nose and he had to wear a prosthesis. The story said Jackson kept a jar of fake noses and a tube of glue beside his bed.

The story is absurd, of course. Jackson's full autopsy report leaked after his death. Autopsy reports contain anything and everything about a body which is considered to be unusual. Jackson's mentioned scars behind his ears caused by his plastic surgery. It mentioned black tattooing on his head to disguise his baldness. It mentioned his dental work. What it didn't mention, though, was anything about Jackson not having a nose or anything about him wearing a prosthesis. Ergo, story is demonstrably false.

I haven't read Randall Sullivan's book yet so I won't comment on it as a whole, but the Mail on Sunday article was a travesty of journalism. At first I found it disappointing, but when I realised that it was not only Sullivan who had let the prosthetic nose nonsense into print but also his publishers', their legal team and subsequently the Mail on Sunday's editorial and legal staff, I thought it stopped being disappointing and started being sinister.

There is no way the story could go through to many legal checks without somebody realising it was deranged. It was clearly sent to print in the knowledge that it was false. And if it wasn't, every staff member who checked it before it went to print should be sacked with immediate effect because they are incompetent. On the other hand, if they sent it to print in the knowledge it was false then they should still be sacked. Either way, they are unfit to do their jobs.

Anyway, I digress. I got an email the other day to tell me that I am repeatedly referenced in Randall Sullivan's book. In his acknowledgements section he describes my Huffington Post articles about Michael Jackson as 'excellent' and I am told he references them several times.

Even more excitingly, Mr Sullivan writes in the acknowledgements that he was introduced to my work by none other than Thomas Mesereau, the magnificent civil rights attorney who secured Jackson's acquittal in his 2005 trial.

 Thomas Mesereau endorses my work to Randall Sullivan.

(Click to enlarge)

I met Mr Mesereau and his co-counsel Susan Yu at the London premiere of David Gest's Michael Jackson documentary 'Life of an Icon' last year. They were both very complimentary about my work. I had appeared on the radio with Mr Mesereau a few weeks earlier where he had also praised my work. However, I was unsure if he was just being polite. He seems like a very nice man.

To learn that Mr Mesereau privately refers people to my work when they ask him questions about the Michael Jackson trial is extremely humbling. I was a journalism student when Jackson's trial was going on. I remember following it every day - reading the transcripts and the media coverage. I remember watching the verdicts live on BBC News with my mother and my brother. I could never have even conceived at that time that one day Tom Mesereau would be pointing to me as an authority on the trial he worked so hard to win.

So anyway, a big thank you to Tom Mesereau - a hero not only for his valiant work in 2005 but for his catalogue of pro bono work in the Deep South. He is a conscientious and valiant man who excels in his profession. As Mr Sullivan writes in his acknowledgements - Mr Mesereau is just about the only prominent figure in Jackson's life who has escaped significant criticism from his fans. It is an honour to have his endorsement.

 Thomas Mesereau and Susan Yu at the London premiere of 'Life of an Icon'. Picture by Angela Kande.
(Click to enlarge)

Jermaine Jackson Interview

On Saturday 10th September, Jermaine Jackson unwittingly provoked a media storm. He was on the promotional trail for his new book when a news story misquoting a section of the prologue was duplicated hundreds of times around the world, sparking a huge backlash against the memoir.

The story wrongly claimed that had Michael Jackson been convicted of child molestation in 2005, his family had an escape plan in place to whisk him to Bahrain, where he couldn't be extradited. The story was controversial and nonsensical. It was also untrue.

Wherever the story originated, the journalist responsible was apparently too lazy even to read Jermaine's eight-and-a-half page prologue in full before they wrote it up. Then, several hundred more journalists replicated that story without making any attempt to fact-check it. The furore was such that Michael Jackson's 2005 lawyer Thomas Mesereau publicly spoke out against the claims.

For Jermaine Jackson, watching his book misquoted on a global scale and seeing himself criticised over a story he never wrote was a disaster. He was marketing his book as an honest firsthand account of his brother's life, but it had scarcely hit shelves before it was made to look like a work of fiction.

It was amidst this controversy that Jermaine Jackson flew to London to promote the book - a trip I didn't find out about until he was already on his way here.

Arranging an interview slot involved three days of negotiation between Jermaine, his publicist and representatives of his publishing house on both sides of the Atlantic. In the meantime, though, I got a brief private introduction 'backstage' at his London book signing on Tuesday 13th September.


During our meeting, Jermaine thanked me for my work on his brother's trial and we spoke about his trip to the UK so far. He also reminisced about the Victory album when my friend Angela (above, left) handed him a copy to sign.


On the Wednesday evening, waiting to hear confirmation of my interview slot, I tripped over in my local park and landed with my hand in a patch of broken glass. On route to A&E, I learned that I would interview Jermaine Jackson the following day at the BBC studios.

On the afternoon of Thursday 15th, Jermaine's car picked me up in Wood Lane and delivered us all to the BBC studios. Now on his fourth consecutive day of back-to-back interviews in London, he'd just finished recording Loose Women and was at the BBC studios to be interviewed by Richard Bacon.

We were taken to an empty radio studio where Jermaine and I spoke for over half an hour about the backlash against his book, his family's struggle against biased reporting, how they coped with his brother's child molestation trial, and how racism affected the family both during the Jackson 5 days and in later life.

We discussed how he felt about the decision to put his brother's children onstage at the upcoming tribute concert in Cardiff (which happened on Oct 8th), his annoyance at the Los Angeles justice system's obsession with holidays, and the shocking content in chapter 22 of his book, which recounts his sources' recollections of the 'This Is It' rehearsals.

And we discussed a whole lot more, too.

Before I left, we snapped a picture - me sporting a hospital dressing on my right hand. Here we are in the empty radio studio:


Shortly after our BBC studios interview, Jermaine was generous enough to answer several more questions via email correspondence. I have woven those quotes into my article alongside the quotes from our in-person encounter, because it is too jarring and wastes too many words to keep differentiating between the two. My interview with Jermaine will be serialised on the Huffington Post. Part one is now online (link below). Keep checking the blog and my twitter page for updates on future installations.

--Click here to read Part One of my
Exclusive Interview with Jermaine Jackson--

My Interview with Lorette Luzajic

It was four months ago today that Lorette Luzajic first asked to interview me for her website. After many technical setbacks, our conversation has finally gone online.

To read it, click here.

With a decade's experience in the publishing industry, Lorette has three books under her belt. Her latest, 'Goodbye Billie Jean: The Meaning of Michael Jackson', is an exploration of the man dubbed the King of Pop and what he meant to the world.

The book comprises 51 chapters by 51 authors, each explaining what Michael Jackson meant to them and how he impacted their lives. Contributors include Pulitzer-winning journalist Chris Hedges, writer and Jackson friend Jonathan Margolis, playwright Kevin Craig and political activist Ralph Remington.

To find out more about Lorette Luzajic, visit http://www.thegirlcanwrite.net/


See below for an edited extract from 'Goodbye Billie Jean: The Meaning of Michael Jackson'.

Extract

It was a rainy summer in Toronto. Michael Jackson was everywhere. Fans, foes, neutrals - we'll all look back at this later and remember the summer of Michael Jackson.

The men at the ginseng and spice store seemed to love 'Jam'. It was pumping out of the shop every time my streetcar transferred on that corner of Chinatown.

'Heaven Can Wait' was playing at Wazema, where Ethiopian food lovers gather for amazing grub. Car stereos pumped 'Beat It' up and down the main drag of summer in the city. The Turkish-owned convenience store aroud the corner played nothing but 'The Way You Make Me Feel'. Vigils took place in Dundas Square and at MuchMusic. A 36-week special MJ film festival kicked off at Reg Hartt's Cineforum.

That's just my city, Toronto. Michael Jackson rocked the whole damn planet. There were millions of people playing his music all at once, all summer long and likely for years to come...

Who knew Michael had a fan club in Cameroon? Who knew that thousands of hardened criminals in hardcore prisons for hard time for hard crime would start gyrating in sync to falsetto 'hoo hoos'?

Who knew that butter sculptures and sand drawings and shrines would form from Iowa to Russia?

Fan club head Gary Taylor reminded suicidal fans that Michael would have wanted you to live. Suicide hotlines were getting distress calls after the funeral. Astonishingly, some fans did commit suicide...

A Russian Jackson impersonator named Pavel Talalayev slit his wrists but he was rescued. He was very perturbed about this. "I don't know why the doctors saved me," he said. "I want to be with Michael, and I will kill myself anyway."

The internet crashed under the gargantuan volume of information exchangers searching for, finding and creating information about Michael Jackson.

A two-day ritual ceremonial funeral took place in the Ivory Coast, where Michael was their prince.

Lorette Luzajic

Best-selling author to prove Jackson's innocence in TV documentary

In 2005 Aphrodite Jones was one of only two authors granted access to every day of the Michael Jackson trial. With seven New York Times bestsellers under her belt, her book looked set to fly off of shelves when it hit stores.

But when Jones came to write her book she hit wall after her wall. As one of the only journalists willing to admit that Jackson's 2005 trial had proven his innocence once and for all, Jones found that publishing houses were unwilling to give her a deal.

Thomas Mesereau, Jackson's defence lawyer, encountered the same problem. After the trial almost every major publishing house in the US approached him with lucrative book deals. When he maintained that Jackson was truly innocent and he wouldn't write anything to the contrary, every publishing house retracted its offer.

Jurors were offered book deals too. Two jurors claimed after the trial that they really thought Jackson was guilty, but only after they had signed six figure book deals. Other jurors claimed that they had been offered identical deals by the same publishing companies - but only if they too would change their opinion from innocent to guilty, casting enormous doubt over the sincerity of both rogue jurors' u-turns.

One juror, Ray Hultman, lost his publishing deal after it was revealed that his manuscript included portions plagiarised from an inaccurate Vanity Fair article. These included allegations that the former juror couldn't possibly verify, such as claims that Jackson had a detachable nose.

The book was co-written by Stacy Brown, a serial Jackson detractor who also co-wrote a book about the star with Bob Jones, Jackson's former aide. Jones was forced to admit on the stand in 2005 that portions of his book 'The Man Behind The Mask' had been fabricated by Brown in order to boost sales.

Hultman's crediblity was further damaged when it was revealed that after the verdict he had commented to one reporter, "The evidence just wasn't there. We couldn't have gone any other way." A strange comment from a man who would later insist that Jackson had been guilty.

The second juror, Eleanor Cook, also never published her book. Cook's granddaughter caused controversy when she announced during jury deliberations that the juror had already signed a book deal - and had agreed to it in principle before the trial had even begun. Ghostwriter Ernie Cariwel admitted on June 7th 2005 - five days before the verdict was reached in Jackson's trial - that he had already begun writing the book despite never having spoken to Cook.

Fellow jurors slammed the pair two months after the verdict, calling them 'traitors' and claiming that their allegations were 'ridiculous'.

As the publishing industry set about convincing the world that Jackson was guilty - printing books such as 'Be Careful Who You Love' by Diane Dimond, an author who has claimed that her sole aim in life is to destroy Michael Jackson and who writer Ishmael Reed once described as a 'Jackson stalker' - Jones began conducting deep research. Obtaining a special court order from Judge Rodney Melville, who presided over Jackson's trial, she was given access to all of the evidence and transcripts related to the case.

It took Jones days just to photocopy all of the court transcripts and a further six months to read them. The wealth of information needed for the book forced her to invest in a second computer. She used one to store all of her research and the other to store her writing. It took her a further six months to finish the manuscript.

'Michael Jackson Conspiracy' was explosive. Not only did it reveal all of the exculpatory evidence and testimony which the media had failed to present to the public, it also exposed deliberate media bias against Jackson and explained the motives behind it. The blurb described the book as follows:

"...A scathing indictment against the media for conspiring to distort, dehumanise and destroy Michael Jackson... Jones argues convincingly that the case against Jackson amounted to nothing more than a media made, tax paid scandal, and she makes an impassioned call to the public at large to think critically about, question the integrity of and demand truth in 'the news'."

Despite its sensational contents and in spite of her seven previous bestsellers, Jones was unable to convince any major publishing house to print the book. She was forced to self publish.

When I interviewed Aphrodite Jones shortly after the book's release she told me that she intended to make a documentary about Jackson's trial, describing her vision for a 'TV version of the book.' Yesterday she emailed to tell me that the project is moving forward.

"The one hour docu-show I did on Michael Jackson will air during my new series called 'True Crime'," she said. "It will begin in April 2010 on a new Discovery channel called Investigation Discovery (ID)."

The hour-long film will cover Jackson's 2005 trial, the media falsehoods which surrounded it and why Jackson 'died with a broken heart' after being 'divorced by America'. Jones insists that the 2005 trial proved Jackson's innocence and says the documentary will show this.

Jones is otherwise tight lipped about the show, saying that she can't elaborate without network approval. However, fans will be ecstatic that a factual documentary on Jackson will for once air on television, as opposed to the conveyer belt of nonsense that is usually paraded before the public.

Jacques Peretti - sit down and take notes.

Click here to read my June 2008 interview with Aphrodite Jones.

My contribution to No.1 bestseller, 'Michael Jackson - Life of a Legend'

During my hiatus from the blog, 'Headline' published the wonderful 'Michael Jackson - Life of a Legend' - a vibrant ode to the King of Pop.





In late June I was contacted by 'Headline' to contribute a half-page condolence to Michael Jackson, which I dutifully did.

Upon release, the book became an immediate bestseller all over the world and has topped the British book chart for three consecutive weeks.

Turn to page 177 to read my tribute to Michael Jackson.


For more information, please visit http://www.mjlifeofalegend.com/