Untouchable - The Strange Life & Tragic Death Of Michael Jackson by Randall Sullivan

Author:Randall Sullivan [Sullivan, Randall]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography / memoirs / journals
Publisher: Atlantic Books Ltd
Published: 2012-11-07T23:00:00+00:00

The O2 Arena concerts were “a do or die moment” for Michael Jackson, Randy Phillips observed in a May 30 interview with the Los Angeles Times: “If it doesn’t happen, it would be a major problem for him, career-wise, in a way that it hasn’t been in the past.”

Sending a warning through the media was not, in general, an effective tactic for dealing with Michael Jackson. Phillips was smart enough to know that, but the AEG Live boss was beginning to feel the stress of a highly leveraged and increasingly exposed position. As costs quickly consumed the $12 million budgeted for preproduction, then more than doubled that figure, the joke Phillips had cracked to the London Telegraph back in March about making Phil Anschutz “into a millionaire from a billionaire” did not sound nearly so amusing. Michael’s absences from the CenterStaging rehearsals continued and what the Los Angeles Times referred to as Jackson’s “track record of missed performances and canceled dates” began to loom larger by the day.

“We finally made Mohammed come to the mountain,” an exuberant Phillips had told the London newspapers at the announcement of the O2 shows back in March. Making Mohammed climb that mountain, though, was another task entirely. “In this business, if you don’t take risks, you don’t achieve greatness,” Phillips had gamely asserted in the Los Angeles Times. By the end of May, though, AEG Live’s head man was looking to cut corners and tie up loose ends. He refused his star’s request to shoot Victoria Falls from a helicopter equipped with an IMAX camera as part of the environmental theme that Jackson wanted for the O2 shows, insisting that it was an expense the company couldn’t afford. And when Michael proposed arriving onstage for the jungle section of the show by riding with three live monkeys on the back of an elephant, accompanied by panthers led on gold chains while a flock of parrots and other exotic birds flapped in the air around him, Phillips was grateful for the objections of animal rights activists from both sides of the Atlantic.

Phillips and AEG Live had begun reminding Jackson that he had put up his own assets as collateral on the $6.2 million they had already advanced to him, and that he would be on the hook for a lot more if the O2 concerts were canceled because of his failure to perform. When a promoter involved with the O2 concerts questioned Jackson’s ability to deliver on his promise of fifty concerts, Phillips wrote back, “He has to or financial disaster awaits.”

“We [need to] let Mikey know just what this will cost him in terms of him making money,” Gongaware wrote to Phillips. “We cannot be forced into stopping this, which MJ will try to do because he is lazy and constantly changes his mind to fit his immediate wants.” The performer needed to be reminded regularly that, “He is locked,” Gongaware added. “He has no choice . . . he signed a contract.”

Michael understood

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