Welcome to a breath of fresh air with Sandy Kaye. Hello and a very big welcome to you, thanks so much for being here today. When Michael Jackson joined his brothers in the Jackson 5, we all knew that a star was born.
As a solo artist, Michael went on to become one of the world’s most recognisable performers and the undisputed king of pop before controversy derailed his career and tragedy eventually struck. Before it did, Michael Jackson had released 10 solo albums, most of them selling many millions of copies. Michael revolutionised video too with his short films for Thriller and Smooth Criminal.
He made dance hip again with his robot and moonwalk routines and he earned a reputation as the greatest live performer of his generation. Today there are more than 1,000 books written about Michael Jackson. One of the most recent is called You’ve Got Michael by music executive, strategist and New York City author Dan Beck.
Dan served as Senior Vice President of Marketing at Epic Records during the height of Michael Jackson’s career. He played a key role in shaping the marketing campaigns for Bad, Dangerous and History and was instrumental in bringing Michael Jackson’s visionary concepts to life. Dan joins us today to share some of his insights.
Hi Sandy. Hello Dan, congratulations on this sensational new book. A lot of people would have thought they’d heard everything there was to hear about Michael Jackson but once you read your book you realise that there’s a whole lot that hasn’t been told.
Yeah you know that was in part my reasoning for writing the book was that it’s so easy to make things simple. Okay you know he had this phenomenal career and then you know there were charges against him and then his career went south and that’s too easy of an explanation you know. So there was a lot to be told, a lot about the differences between the business today and the music business when it was a physical product.
Let’s start with getting to know a little bit about Michael Jackson as you did. Tell us what you knew of him, what was he like and let’s state at the outset that you believe in his innocence. Yes I do and you know just from my own observations you know I worked with him on the business side so you know obviously I didn’t see all of his personal life or anything like that but from the people that I knew that knew him and from my own experience of being around him it just didn’t really make sense and I also felt that there were different people around him.
Number one there were a lot of people around him you know the ranch there were I think 80 employees it was not some isolated place you know so there were those things and of course through all these years nothing’s ever been confirmed I don’t think it ever will be one way or the other. Michael worked with you know the best of the best whether it was musicians or producers or choreographers or fashion people he just gravitated to great people he worked very very hard really dedicated to every aspect of his career. What stage of his career was he up to when you first got involved with him? Well when I first met him I was head of publicity and this is back at Epic and this is back in 75-76 so Michael was still a teen at that point they hadn’t made an album yet for Epic.
I could go down and just be there and just get to know him a little bit you know so after this amazing concert we jumped in the limos and raced back to the hotel and the hotel was completely blocked off and Michael and I were just standing in the lobby of the hotel talking and Michael kept saying I want to go to the zoo tomorrow so he’s all excited so we went to the zoo the next day and Michael sat down at this outside aviary and watched the birds for like three or four hours and I thought it was great. What did that episode say to you about him? The peacefulness that he sought the gentleness you know and I always saw that Michael it was years later that I really got involved with him during the thriller era I remember Larry Stessel bringing Billie Jean the video in and we went in the conference room there were about four or five of us and looked at it for the first time and it was like oh my god everybody was so excited you know and of course that continued to happen all through the thriller process. Later I got involved in the 90s when I was asked to be Michael’s product manager that’s really where we really connected to describe who he was to me I mean really there were two entities there was Michael the person and then there was Michael the persona the image I think Michael kind of really saw that it was a persona it was him because he enjoyed performing and everything but he saw it as this big thing you know and I think you know he wanted to feed that big thing he always liked big ideas you know and get very excited but as a person I really enjoyed knowing him you know he was always I think the best word to describe Michael professionally was a collaborator he worked with great people and great people loved working with him because he gave people room to bring their expertise to him and to do things that got very excited about people’s ideas it always struck me that his ego never really ran riot was that the case well yeah and and again I think it’s the two personas because you know a lot of people thought there were certain things that were megalomaniac I think that was born out of little ideas that Michael had personally that were fine when he inserted them into the persona that’s when they exploded as over the top big things you know but if there was an idea of his own or an idea of somebody else’s that he got really excited about I mean he got really excited and the fact is is that you know once he had something or a bee in his bonnet it was really tough to get him off of it you had to get there really early sometimes he’d have an idea that we at the record company or even me personally thought might be perceived negatively by the media I found that if he was so married to an idea it was very hard to convince him otherwise but if he got there early before it really cemented in with him he was totally into input so I learned get there fast you know you were with him through the bad year too right again from a kind of a church level you know we had a big lunch dinner in the backyard at the Havenhurst house you know we had all the heads of the retail chains there but I wasn’t that involved directly with him at the time you know so it was really undangerous where I got directly involved and then the first thing was my concern that one of your responsibilities as a product manager is to keep everything on a timetable so that the records were in the store when it went on the radio you know if you were in there too soon for an act sometimes the retailer would say oh I’m gonna send them back to you because I couldn’t sell them so there’s always pressure that what’s the next single and sometimes you know you couldn’t get that out of the promotion department and sometimes you know it was very last minute on the you are not alone single on the second single from the history album I got that photo literally in the middle of the night and drove it to the office to give it to the art department to get the artwork done at the time I was product managing other artists Luther Vandross, Gloria Estefan, Sade, Pearl Jam and the Indigo Girls.
Dan were you intimidated by his presence by his superstardom I mean you’ve reeled off a list of artists that you worked with that were all pretty big in their own right but Michael of course the biggest of all of them what was it like for you to work directly with him during those times? Well number one you’re constantly aware that you are working with the biggest artist on the planet you know but Michael was never intimidating in many ways he was a very easy artist to work with he listened a lot he wanted to listen he wanted to know he would have questions and part of his questioning I thought was really his brilliance as an artist understanding the process Michael sometimes would call me in the middle of the night Michael’s clock wasn’t exactly like anybody else’s call me at 3 30 in the morning on a Saturday night you know and it’s like I’d say do you think we have the right single but a lot of times he just needed reconfirmation of our plan he would ask me the same question multiple times over the course of few weeks because he wanted to hear the same exact story if he didn’t hear that that would put his antenna up a bit like the way you’ve got to deal with a child yeah a child wants reconfirmation they want consistency and Michael wanted to know consistency yes you know my name was Michael quite childlike all his life yes and no yes it on the basis of he wanted to maintain that childlike persona he did it in interviews he he did it in private conversations with me of talking about that you know as people get older they lose their creativity because they learn too many no’s in their life you know we’re not allowed to think like we did as a child he felt that creativity came from childlike curiosity
This is a breath of fresh air with Sandy Kaye. It’s a beautiful day. Michael’s love for children, his love for animals, I always felt came from this, and that is that they didn’t ask him for things.
A puppy or a kitten, you know, there’s no hidden agenda. Michael, from the time he was five years old, had adults asking him for things, whether it was a politician. I watched at a Congressional Black Caucus dinner in Washington, D.C. with Michael, and he was on the dais, and Jesse Jackson was on the dais.
And Jesse was sitting beside Michael, and he was in Michael’s ear, you know. I could tell he was asking Michael for something, to do something, to give something, to be someplace, to say something, you know. And that, I think, Michael had to deal with his entire life, you know.
Everyone wanted something from him all the time. And usually it was powerful people. It might be the head of Sony, or it might be the promoters or the booking people, maybe a charity.
And, of course, Michael was way into supporting any charity that was supporting children or peace or the environment. If you look around, the whole world’s coming together now. Feeling in the air, the wind is taking you everywhere.
Can you feel it? Can you feel it? It was around that time that you were describing that all the accusations were alleged against him. How did he handle those? And why are you so convinced that he was innocent? One, you know, when we had finished the Dangerous campaign, fundamentally in the US by March of 1993, and we had just completed the Super Bowl, and he did the Oprah special, the Grammy Awards, and, you know, just everything was going great. One of those things was that I spearheaded a Make-A-Wish shoot at Neverland.
And that day, I saw Michael really as the superstar off the stage that he was on the stage. And that was how he was such an adult with 13 terminally ill children. And there were 100 members of their family there.
And Michael spent easily as much time with the other members of the family as he did with those children. We had four cameras there, all handheld with a sound package on every camera. So we knew everything that was said that day.
And, you know, his conversations with the parents were, you know, how did you get here? And how are you, you know, prepared for after today? But, you know, that day only lasted hours. And then, you know, they were gonna have to go back and face the reality that their child faced. And I just thought that day was the adult in the room.
He was showing everybody around. He was doing all the things with the kids. You could tell he knew what he needed to do with the children, but he knew the adults needed him.
And I really saw that. Everyone that I knew, and there’s probably, you know, 20, 25 people that all felt the same way as me. Top-level professional people.
After we finished the Dangerous campaign that March, I was feeling like, wow, we’re back. Everything’s more about music again. And he went away on the Dangerous tour internationally.
So I didn’t see him for months, really. But that August, the charges came out. And I thought, I’ll never see him again.
It’s over. This is so devastating, true or untrue. I don’t know how you rebound from this, you know.
But the end of January of 94, Chairman of Epic came into a marketing meeting and looked at me and said, we’re back on. Let’s get the greatest hits going. And I thought, how are we possibly gonna do this? And then it was like trying to understand what happened.
And initially, what I had heard was that his lawyers had told him, you’ve got to settle this, move on, get it behind you, blah, blah, blah. What I think really happened was that the insurance company simply said, we’re paying. And Michael and his attorneys really had no say in it.
Now, later, there was acrimony between the father and the mother. And the father really was the person behind that case. So there was something off there.
And it always seems like from all of this, the later case, the people involved just seemed off to me. They seemed to be out for something. You just saw all these situations where people are taking advantage.
I thought about it every day because I never knew what might come out in the media or through the investigations and all that. But it just never seemed right to me. I just never saw it, you know.
How did Michael take it? Well, the stress had to be unbelievable. He never wavered. You know, Michael said, people know me.
I’d never do that kind of thing. I mean, he had kind of a simplified look at things, I think, as the person Michael, not as the persona of Michael. And, you know, it’s like, everybody knows I wouldn’t do that.
But he wasn’t always good in an interview, handling the nuances. That wasn’t his strong suit. I took my baby boy inside of your bed By the power of little miracles And a miracle has happened tonight In the sight of the sun And it’s either you’re broke or you’re black or white Various times through Dangerous and leading up to History, I presented him with market research.
We did surveys, fan surveys. Some of them were very negative. But Michael wanted to see them.
I remember sitting with him in a lounge in a studio where for 45 minutes, neither one of us spoke a word. And he just went through these single-page surveys of really nasty things that people had to say. But he wanted to see them.
Dan Beck, what did Michael do to relieve his stress? Did he practice yoga? Did he do breath work? You described how he sat at the zoo and looked at birds from an early age to de-stress and get that peace. Was there anything that pervaded his life that helped him deal with where he was on that high wire? Well, one of the things that I saw early on, he was a real student of the business. In his teen years, he was asking Gene Kelly out to lunch so he could ask him questions about dance.
You know, and Boris Karloff. Michael was, he wanted to learn. I think a lot of what was, you know, the way he dealt with things was through his own curiosity.
I think that kind of kept him isolated enough from that outside world. He wanted to know what it was, but he really stuck to who he was. And that was one of the things that we were constantly, later on, particularly after the initial charges that we were trying to get the history album out, was to say to Michael, stay with who you are.
Let’s talk about the music. Don’t let them drag you into these things, you know. There was a time when they were all demoning him as Wacko Jacko and that greatest hits double album had come out.
Absolutely. And then it bled over into the entertainment TV shows. You know, then they’re talking about all the, you know, the negativity, you know.
What happened in the US is that after the second single on History, you know, we scream with Janet. Boom, we, you know, exploded. And then You Are Not Alone was a huge hit.
After that, we lost it. We lost radio. They left him in the US.
They didn’t leave him in the rest of the world. We didn’t have that in the US. They left him.
♪ We knew that was on the horizon. That’s why we were trying to convince him not to be pushing for the King of Pop thing. Yeah, leave it to the music.
You don’t have to do that, you know. And I think, you know, Michael bought into that name. And why not? He’s deserving of that.
And I think also Michael was beginning to think of his legacy. We were thinking short term. We got to stay on the radio.
And Michael was thinking, yeah, but at the end of the day, who am I? That was part of it. And he had a very rough time seeing how disloyal that pop radio was going to be.
This is a breath of fresh air with Sandy Kaye. It’s a beautiful day. Everything just fell.
And in the meantime, because of how U.S. radio works, we couldn’t put out a single, because at Thanksgiving time, they switched to all Christmas music. So there’s no new airplay. So that’s Mariah Carey time.
So in the midst of that, we had this collapse of the concert. In the meantime, in other parts of the world, they came out with Earth Song and had a hit. What about sunrise? What about rain? What about all the things that you said we were to gain? What about killing fears? Is there a time? What about all the things that you said were yours and mine? Did you ever stop to notice all the blood we shed before? Did you ever stop to notice this crying earth is weeping strong? We had retailers saying we’re sending back some of these records we have in the store and our sales people were just crushed.
I think at the end of February we put out They Don’t Care About Us and we made it to the 50s or the 80s or something in the chart so that was totally unlike Michael Jackson singing. At that time all that album was really Michael expressing his anger and his response to what had happened to him the past few years through those songs wasn’t it? Absolutely well and I don’t know if you know I named the the album History His Story. The way that that came about was that we’re trying to get Michael out of the studio.
He’d been in the studio for literally in between tour dates and everything for a couple of years he had three studios running 24-7 and he’s happy you know so so we’re trying to convince him that putting the the album out is going to make him happy too. So I called Sandy Gallen, Michael’s manager, and I said hey does Michael have a title for the album and Sandy said to me I don’t think so why don’t you guys come up with something and I said well I said it’s a little personal you know this is it’s his greatest hits. So anyway that night going home I thought about what I had heard and I knew although we really hadn’t heard completed songs at that point I knew that the new songs were Michael addressing the issues so I thought okay the first album was his hits so that’s his history and the second one is his story.
So I wrote down capital H, capital I, capital S, small t-o-r-y on a piece of paper and faxed it to Sandy and then we never heard a word for like two months and about a month after I sent it Dave said we’ve to do something you know we we need to create some visuals. So I went to the creative service people our design people and we put this out to ad agencies so we came up with like 60, 90, 100 ideas we shipped them all out and then we took them to Sandy Gallen’s office and Michael came and Arnold Levine who is head of creative services presented the ideas. But as we were walking in carrying all this stuff we we literally rented a van to carry all this stuff over took us 45 minutes to load all this stuff but when the first load we were coming off the elevator with it into the office Sandy’s assistant leaned around the corner and said hey Dan isn’t it great Michael’s gonna use your idea history.
It was like the greatest thing in the world that could happen and it was the worst thing the world could happen because we’re sitting there we’d spent like $150,000 and Michael came in and they did this presentation of all these ideas and he just Michael just kind of chuckled through the whole thing never said a word other than he was very grateful for you know all the work and everything like that and we left without any answer you know so we flew back to New York when I flew out there two weeks later Michael already had the whole idea going and it was like this statue and my idea of what history was the nuanced stuff the the silver glove the the Ouija shoes you know a scrap of lyric and Michael had this whole other idea of history and that was you know soldiers and statues and really the stuff you learn in school you know that we were not getting them off that and it was like oh boy it’s like it’s done the idea didn’t generate from Michael saying I’ve got to be a statue you know it came from you know his interpretation of what history is he was always thinking he was always switched on considering his career I didn’t really didn’t ever realize that he was that smart or had such a long-range vision into who he was and what legacy he would leave behind he was a very impressive man on many fronts wasn’t he oh very much so so gracious and you know he loved to tease people he loved to be teased I would have a difficult time remembering seeing him that he wasn’t smiling or wasn’t saying oh thank you for doing this or what you know I was very grateful and that electrified you you know you’ve called the book you’ve got Michael why yeah that title well because my predecessor is Michael’s product manager left the company and Dave Glue who was chairman of Epic stepped in my doorway of my office Dave said you’ve got Michael and walked away and it was like okay you know it’s a double-edged sword here you know opportunity of a lifetime for you really so yeah you know and of course you know I had a great reputation of working with artists I worked with a lot of hit records and a lot of artists you know Cyndi Lauper and Luther and Sade and so Dave you must have been absolutely devastated when Michael Jackson died I really was and you know it was terrible it was really really devastating and it’s I had thought before that day I did not believe that Michael you know initially they were going to do one show with O2 you know and then it was like three and then all of a sudden it was like they were going to do 50 a 50 date tour and you know just talking to colleagues I said there’s no way it’s just too physical I said I you know I don’t think Michael could do that and I also thought that you know he was having some financial problems at that time and I thought as much as Michael loves to perform and be out there he’s a stubborn guy and he’s not going to perform dates for bankers and he’s not going to be forced to do something I told people I said I’ll bet my house he doesn’t do more than three shows and of course then the tragedy happened and you know at the late later stages of the rehearsals because they got nowhere to go look at yourself and then make a change pretending that footage that we shot at neverland of the make-a-wish day one day that that’s a film because it will show Michael in a whole different light it will dramatically change how people think of him and even if people believe the allegations they will realize that he was an absolute superstar there’s a great fan base out there and they just want to know every little thing and it’s it’s been fun talking to them you know I think some of the harder edges in the book you know I tried to be as straightforward about that as possible and some of the fans it’s a little tough on them but I think they’re you know when they get through the end they realize if it was tough on me to just imagine what it was on him I yeah I can imagine you know Michael lost his life on the 25th of June 2009 the book is called you’ve got Michael it’s a fabulous honest down-to-earth read from the guy from the record company whether you’re a Michael Jackson fan or not it’s about the life of this superstar that the world will never forget and you have immortalized him in your way it’s a fabulous tribute I thank you so much for your time with us today for all your stories and for your generosity it’s been just such a pleasure chatting with you Dan oh great Sandy I enjoyed it thank thank you so much for having me you’ve been listening to a breath of fresh air with Sandy Kaye.