Wow. I was JUST about to start a thread on this.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIb9PFrmCT4&feature=player_embedded
The last time that I tried to watch this tape, it wouldn't run because so many people were trying to watch this right after MJ's death.
Someone wrote this in a blog days after MJ died:
Michael Jackson lived his whole life surrounded by vipers. They would set him up in compromising positions, have a series of families of 'victims' sue him, portray him in the mass media as a serial pedophile thus denying him any defense (of course, even with all the negative publicity, the families kept sending the children over), force him to settle the lawsuits, and then lend him the money to pay them, all on the security of his once considerable assets. This process of stealing his money went on for years, until there was nothing left to steal. They then came up with the idea of having the frail Jackson pay everything off with a huge concert tour, one that neither they nor Jackson thought he could physically survive. If he didn't do it, they would seize all his assets and ruin him. Essentially, they decided to go for the age-old solution, the pound of flesh. Jackson would pay them off with his life.
Due to his many health scares, it became impossible to insure Jackson for the tour, particularly when the shysters got greedy and vastly extended the tour, so the promoters had to 'self-insure', meaning they would take all the risk if Jackson in fact couldn't finish the tour. As everybody knew he wouldn't be able to survive the tour, this was unacceptable, and Jackson became more valuable dead than alive. Alive, he would just create more debt to be shared amongst the creditors, with no more assets to pay them off. Dead before the tour, the banksters could divvy up his tangible assets and use his preexisting insurance to cover the rest (they almost certainly had insurance on his life as security for their loans).
I was told once, a long time ago, that MJ stopped touring on the 1988 Bad Tour because he found out that he was being robbed blind. I don't know how true that is. But if you look at this tape on MJ, he makes some compelling points:
- That one of the things James Brown, Jackie Wilson, Gene Kelly, Fred Astaire and others had in common was their passion for their craft, but in the end, each didn't have much to show for it;
- That he had made several BILLIONS of dollars for Sony over the years;
- That they, Sony, thought that he was just an artist who only paid attention to his art, but that they were wrong. They didn't count on him being able to THINK.
In the grand scheme of things, thinking at such a high profile level can be rather dangerous. For years, Dick Gregory has always said that MJ's troubles began and ended with that damn catalog. MJ made a point in that tape back in 2002 of saying that he was a free agent and that he was taking half of Sony [ATV/Sony publishing] with him.
That was in 2002.
In 2003, the Martin Bashir interview came out that was the beginning of a downward spiral that MJ never seemed to recover from.
Prior to the 1993 allegations breaking, MJ sat down and opened his secret NLVR world up to Oprah Winfrey to a 30 ratings point share for ABC. As many people watched that interview as they do the Super Bowl in the United States.
As depicted in the Malcolm X movie "That's too much power for one man to have"...
If Michael Jackson had ever chosen to speak out on global warming beyond the artistry of the 'Earth Song', or the Middle East war, think of just how much of a threat he would have been to other interests.
Instead, he spoke up and spoke out about the not so pretty under workings of the recording industry.
And unlike Prince, who once wrote 'Slave' on the side of his face during his battles with Warner Bros. Records (Londell McMillan was his lawyer during those days) or Mariah Carey who had a nerve breakdown dealing with the likes of her ex -- Tommy Mottola, MJ had a big chip in Sony's game.
He owned something that usually only corporations own and that's a major music publishing empire.
And like the days when he would stand against Papa Joe and threaten not to perform when Joe was being mean -- he said 'no more' to Sony and threatened to walk out of the door.
As he prepared to show his stuff as a new free agent, DA Tom Sneddon raided his NLVR home yet again (in 2003) and this time, he was armed with a change in California's state law to ensure that MJ stands trial.
Arrested and booked in 2003 with a 3 million dollar bond (3x higher than they give to someone charged with murder), and the surrender of his passport, MJ's business world came to an abrupt halt. He wasn't even able to travel overseas to make money if he could.
He couldn't go anywhere or do anything. No one would touch him and no one was even trying to work with him. It's enough to break the strongest of people who have been thru the dance once before.
During the 2005 trial, interesting tidbits emerged about some of the players in MJ's world:
Testimony of LeGrand, cross examination by Thomas Meseareau:
1 Q. BY MR. MESEREAU: And at times Mr. Jackson
2 and Sony would have business discussions about their
3 respective ownership interests in the catalog,
4 right?
5 A. I was never privy to those discussions. It
6 would certainly seem that they would occur, but I
7 don’t have actual knowledge of that.
8 Q. But you were aware that negotiations went on
9 from time to time between representatives of Michael
10 Jackson and representatives of Sony about their
11 respective interests in that music catalog, right?
12 A. Well, absolutely, yes, because I obtained
13 files from the Ziffren law firm evidencing the
14 Ziffren law firm and Mr. Branca’s representing Mr.
15 Jackson in just such discussions over a period of
16 time.
17 Q. And just to clarify, Mr. Branca was a
18 partner at the Ziffren law firm in Los Angeles,
19 correct?
20 A. Yes.
21 Q. That firm also represented Sony, correct?
22 A. I believe the answer is correct. Yes.
LeGrand went on to testify that during his employ under MJ that a PI was hired to investigate a number of individuals who were around MJ at that time and that while some evidence was uncovered that Sony may have been sending money to an off-shore account to John Branca, it was never verified.
MJ once told the Rev. Jessie Jackson (3/27/05) that there was a conspiracy all around him:
JJ: Good. Good. But you know Michael, in this life, they say some rain must fall and you’ve had these seasons of just ahem, tailwinds like pushing you forward. But life is of such that’s not a straight line, ah, some argue you either in a storm, or you are just leaving a storm, and going to a storm and it’s not difficult to handle the sunshine of bright skies, tailwinds days, but then these headwinds come that kind of uh, test what you really are made of, the kind of test your metal, your true grit. And so you’ve had these high points. What do you consider to be the low point?
MJ: Probably the low point, the lowest point, emotionally and experience, is probably what I’m going through (clears throat).
JJ: In the sense – what, what about it has kind of stung you?
MJ: What about it … has what?
JJ: Has stung you, so to speak.
MJ: Has, …. Use the word again…
JJ: STUNG. You said it’s kind of hurt you, you said the low point.
MJ: Yeah, just the pain of what I’m going through, where I’m being accused of something, where I know in my heart and in my experiences in life I’m totally innocent, and it’s very painful. But this has been kind of, ah, a pattern among Black luminaries in this country.
JJ: And so since, you-you have been going through this and you feel the pain, you think it’s a kind of pattern? How are you handling it spiritually? Because you go from being held so high and now your very character, your very integrity is under attack. How your handling it?
MJ: I’m handling it by using other people in the past who have gone through this sort of thing. Mandela’s story is giving me a lot of strength, what he’s gone through and the Jack Johnson story was on PBS ~~ it’s on DVD now. It’s called ‘Unforgivable Blackness’. It’s an amazing story about this man from 1910 who was the heavyweight champion of the world and bust into a society that didn’t want to accept his position and his lifestyle, and what they put him through, and how they changed laws to imprison the man. They put him away behind bars just to get him some kind of way. And-and Muhammad Ali’s story. All these stories. The Jesse Owens story. All these stories that I can go back in history and read about gives me strength Jessie. Your story gives me strength, what you went through. Because I didn’t, I came in at the tail end of the Civil Rights Movement ~~ I’m a, ah – I-I didn’t get the really, I’m a 70’s child, really, but I got in on the tail end of the Civil Rights Movement and I got to see it, you know?
......
JJ: You and I were watching, you know you and I were talking last week on the phone and – and there was this rhythm of the trial, which we will not get into at all today, but then they shifted from the focus of the trial to say you are broke. And last week, people are calling in, all around the nation saying, “Is Michael broke”? Michael, are you broke???
MJ: That’s not true at all. It’s one of their many schemes to embarrass me and to just drag me through mud. And it’s the same pattern, like I told you before with these other people in the past. Same pattern. Don’t believe, you know, this is tabloid, sensationalized kind of gossip.
JJ: Well, how did the money issue get in it in the first place? Some people called and they thought it was about the Sony catalog. What’s- what’s in that catalog?
MJ: In my Sony Catalog, is all the Beatles music, ahem, all of the music I own – I own Sly and the Family Stone, I-I own such a volume of so many, I own Elvis – so many Elvis songs and it’s a huge catalog, very valuable, it’s worth a lot of money. And there is a big fight going on right now, as we speak about that. Now, I can’t say whether or not – I can’t comment on it, but there’s a lot of conspiracy, I’ll say that – conspiracy going on as we speak.
JJ: It was suggested by a number of your friends and family members was that this fight was really more about this catalog issue than it is any thing else. Do you believe that?
MJ: Well, you know, I don’t want to comment. I don’t want to make a comment, Jessie ah—it’s a real delicate issue and uh, I’ll let you, I’ll let you make the comment on that one.
Now people have to draw their own conclusions on what all this mean, if anything. But in my humble opinion, there was this pattern:
--Success (Thriller, Bad, Dangerous CDs, Bad and Dangerous world tours, Beatles cat. acquisition and NLVR acquisition and build-out)
--Mass Exposure and Adulation (Oprah interview prime time ABC -- 30 million viewers on a week night early 1993)
--Scandal (Chandler accusations mid 1993)
--Debt (settlement; loss of income and earnings potential)
--Borrowing (against assets -- 1998 loan with BOA at around $150 million)
--Success (resumes touring, HIStory compilation, HIStory tour)
--Mass Exposure and Adulation (Invincible project; 30th Anniversary Shows)
--Scandal (MJ accuses Sony of undermining Invinicible project; MJ ends contract with Sony)
--Mass Exposure/Scandal Set Up (LWMJ Martin Bashir documentary)
--Scandal (Arvizo allegations, arrest, trial and acquittal)
By this time, MJ's finances are truly a mess and he leaves the U.S. for 2 years.
In 2008, Tom Barrack's Colony Capital saves NLVR from foreclosure. MJ agrees to tour again.
June 25, 2009. You know the rest of the story.
Make of this as you will.