http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/...vis-smiley-before-you-judge-me-book/86045470/
Tavis Smiley imagines Michael Jackson's final days in new book
Tavis Smiley had his plane ticket and hotel reservation and was thrilled that he was going to see Michael Jackson's comeback performance at London’s O2 Arena in July 2009.
Smiley, a Jackson fan since childhood, had never before asked a favor of “Miss Katherine,” Jackson’s mother, with whom he was friendly. But the PBS talk-show host simply had to see the singer's final "This Is It" concert series. Mrs. Jackson said she’d make certain he got good seats.
Then, as Smiley writes in his new book, “came June 25.”
“It hit me so hard,” Smiley says by phone from Los Angeles, describing how he felt when he heard of Jackson’s shocking death at age 50. “I was just undone. It came out of nowhere.”
He wanted to understand how it happened, to literally “get inside Jackson’s head.” And that’s what he and co-author David Ritz attempt in Before You Judge Me: The Triumph and Tragedy of Michael Jackson’s Last Days (Little, Brown), which arrives just days before the seventh anniversary of the superstar’s death.
The non-fiction book takes a novelistic approach, speculating on how Jackson feels, what he's thinking, and most pointedly, how he cannot sleep in the 16 weeks leading up to his death.
“Sometimes we lose sight of people’s humanity,” Smiley, 51, says. While the book makes clear that Jackson suffered "any number of self-inflicted wounds,” Smiley says he hopes “it allows us to see him through a different prism. Allows us to revel not just his artistic genius, but in his humanity.”
The co-authors interviewed people close to Jackson such as Quincy Jones, Berry Gordy and Janet Jackson, and called on trial transcripts and other documents, including the case against Jackson's personal physician, Dr. Conrad Murray. (Jackson died of acute propofol intoxication. Another new book also publishing on Tuesday — 83 Minutes: The Doctor, the Damage, and the Shocking Death of Michael Jackson by Matt Richards and Mark Langthorne — closely examines the case.)
Smiley, who wrote a remembrance for USA TODAY after his friend Prince's untimely death, says Gordy said it best in trying to understand why some celebrities succumb to drugs: “Berry said to me, ‘There are moments in the lives of certain iconic figures where, if they're not careful, they become rudderless.’”
Jackson was dealing with many pressures in the final months of his life, as he agreed to increase the number of London shows from 10 to 50.
Author Tavis Smiley looks at Michael Jackson's last days in his new book. (Photo: Kevin Foley)
Smiley says he ended up wondering “how Jackson survived as long as he did. In the last 16 weeks of his life, he’s self-medicating, he’s changing managers like he’s changing underwear, his father is on his case to do a reunion tour with his brothers, he's got creditors coming at him.”
Before You Judge Me does not directly address the child molestation allegations that shadowed Jackson for years. “I wasn’t there, and I will never know,” Smiley says.
Smiley, author of numerous books, remains a dedicated fan of Jackson’s music and artistry. He says he’s often wondered what that London show would have been like.
“I like to think he would have put on a great opening night,” says Smiley, who believes there would have been subsequent cancellations. “How long he could have sustained that, I do not know. Not with the condition he was in.”
