Re: Weekend News Bytes for March 14-16, 2008 (updated on post #37 for March 15)
I am going to post this here as well as in the "Reserection of Michael Jackson THread" since I am not sure if this is that article:
Warning... this is maybe the last third of the article, don't follow the link and read the rest (first part) of the article. Is is pure crap.
http://music.guardian.co.uk/omm/story/0,,2264343,00.html
In December 2006, he resurfaced in Las Vegas, renting a modest, single-floor house in the suburbs, where he is still partly based. 'He was in talks with a major casino in Vegas about putting on a live show,' says Matt Fiddes, a close personal friend and former bodyguard. 'He's not short of offers, I know that.'
But the show never came off. Last March, Jackson was spotted in Japan, signing autographs for £600 a throw. In August, he moved his travelling troupe into the modest family home of his long-time friends, Dominick and Connie Cascio, in Franklin Lakes, New Jersey where he was seen two months later buying Hallowe'en costumes.
His friends say that he has assumed the role of globe-hopping house-guest in order to escape unwanted press attention and that he has to wear these improbable disguises as a matter of necessity. 'Mikey can never stay in one place for too long because he will be mobbed,' says Fiddes. 'He has to swap hotels week after week. I've known him to get to one city where he's booked two hotels for a week just in case he's spotted in one and needs to move to the other. He changes telephone numbers almost weekly. It's not a good life, it's very lonely.' Another source says that of his three children, Jackson appears closest to his youngest, Prince Michael Jackson II, aka 'Blanket', who often accompanies him to meetings.
Not even Jackson can keep moonwalking away from his problems for ever. With the threat of his home being sold from under him, he seems finally to have accepted the need to develop a financial rescue plan - and fast.
Since the tail end of last year, there has been an incremental public relations drive to refocus Jackson's core fanbase and to cement his position as a global superstar. It has been pushed largely by Raymone Bain, Jackson's spokeswoman, a razor-sharp, micro-miniskirt-wearing partner at a Washington-based PR firm.
In December, she negotiated Jackson's first press interview since the trial with Ebony magazine, the biggest-selling African-American glossy. In it, Jackson portrayed himself as a civil rights pioneer, opening the door for other black artists to have their songs played on MTV: 'They [black artists] came to me so many times and said, "Michael, if it wasn't for you, there would be no MTV." They told me that, over and over, personally.' Ironically, the photographs depicted Jackson with an almost entirely white skin-tone, the airbrushed smoothness of his face broken only by a pronounced Travolta-esque chin cleft.
But the 19-page interview and Jackson's highly publicised return from exile proved so successful that one American TV pundit was moved to exclaim it was 'the biggest comeback since Lazarus'. Rumours started to seep out from the Jackson camp that, for the first time in almost 10 years, he was working again. 'He's back in the studio, working his guts out on new material,' confirms Fiddes. 'He's his own competition. He wants to beat the Thriller album and that's what he's working on now.'
His management is said to be in weekly negotiations with the O2 arena in London to stage a series of concerts later this year - the last offer from AEG Live, the consortium that owns the Millennium Dome, was believed to be a £5m guarantee for 10 nights, with a maximum of 30 nights adding up to £15m. The involvement of Kevin Wall, the Emmy award-winning producer who created the Live Earth music concert and who produced the spectacular 'Michael Jackson: Live from Bucharest' in 1992 - a television special that gave the HBO network its highest ever ratings - is apparently also likely. But Jackson is said to be wary of returning to do live shows without having new material to perform. Despite being hotly tipped to appear at the Grammys last month, negotiations floundered at the final hurdle (amid rumours that Jackson demanded to be referred to as the King of Pop throughout the show).
One of the reasons for his no-show is said to be that Jackson has been discussing his future with pop impresario Simon Fuller, the chief executive of 19 Entertainment and creator of Pop Idol, who recently flew to Jackson's semi-permanent base in Las Vegas. Fuller is understood to be hesitant for Jackson to sign up to any public performance that simply re-hashes old hits, instead looking for more novel ways to return to the public arena. Jackson himself may well want to produce some substantial new material before staging a complete comeback some way down the line.
Increasingly, Jackson's inner circle is shrinking down to a core group of key advisers. Mindful of having taken bad advice in the past, he now relies on the select counsel of a handful of eminences grises. One of them is the suave Peter Lopez, a highly-regarded entertainment lawyer with excellent Hollywood credentials - he is married to Catherine Bach, the actress best known for playing Daisy Duke in the television series Dukes of Hazzard. Lopez confirms that Jackson is in 'continued dialogue' with AEG Live and that there have been a number of 'informal conversations' with both Fuller and Wall over the course of the past year. 'All of these I would categorise as preliminary, ongoing discussions,' he says, over the phone from his office in Los Angeles. 'Michael is very excited to be moving forward.'
Lopez also insists that talk of a financial crisis is 'hogwash'. 'Neverland is not being auctioned off, it's simply that Michael has changed lenders. This talk emerges from several journalists in the US who love to spin things in the most negative way possible. The facts are the facts and he's had some cash flow issues in the past, but it's all under control now.'
With the financial situation on a comparatively stable footing, Jackson has been able to concentrate on recording new songs, many of them executive produced by Will.i.am, Rodney Jerkins and Teddy Riley. According to those who have heard them, the tracks are near pitch-perfect pop songs for a new generation.
Certainly, it seems that in spite of his advancing years, Jackson's marketing operation is keen to target a younger fanbase. Official Michael Jackson profile pages have popped up on social networking sites such as Bebo and MySpace and ringtones of all the original Thriller tracks have been created for download. Pepsi are using 'Thriller' as the backing song for a new advertising campaign for the SoBe Life Water drink and there is even talk of the Jackson 5 reforming to take part in an autobiographical stage musical.
A 25th anniversary edition of Thriller released last month showcased new collaborations with Kanye West and Akon. Speaking recently, Akon said: 'Just to be in the same room [with him], I felt everything I wanted to accomplish in life has been achieved. Some artists think regional, some think national, I was thinking international. He thinks planets. It's on another level.'
Would a comeback be an assured success? Interest in the King of Pop has declined sharply - when a Los Angeles casino auctioned off 1,100 lots of Jackson memorabilia last May, there were barely any takers. His last live performance was at the World Music Awards in November 2006 when he disappointed fans by singing just a few lines of 'We Are the World'. But given that the Spice Girls grossed £100m on their recent comeback tour, it's not surprising that one insider privy to Jackson's deal-making says 'we're sure he could dwarf that'. That same source is confident that Jackson would be physically robust enough to tackle a world tour. 'I met him recently, and while he is very skinny, he's not frail - he's not the zonked-out, doddery character you might imagine by any stretch of imagination.'
In spite of the obvious risks, it is hard not to be caught up in the fairytale that Jackson has spent his life creating. Whatever his dissenters might say, he remains one of the greatest icons in pop history, a man touched with musical genius, who revels in the razzle dazzle of his self-created pageantry. If his life so far has been an unforgettable performance, the finale promises to be show-stopping. There is no one who could stage a comeback quite like Michael Jackson. After all, not even Lazarus knew how to moonwalk.
*****'s greatest hits
Michael Jackson's 1982 album
Thriller remains the bestselling LP of all time, with more than 3.7 million sales in the UK alone (over 50 million worldwide). The follow-up, 1987's
Bad, is actually only 130,000 sales behind in the UK, with 3.57 million. 1991's
Dangerous managed just under 2 million and 1995's
HIStory: Past, Present and Future, Book 1 sold 1.5 million.
The several compilations released since his last studio album, 2001's
Invincible, have had mixed fortunes. 2001's
Greatest Hits History: Vol. 1 sold 245,000 and only reached number 15 in the charts; 2003's
Number Ones sold 1.5 million and, appropriately, went to No.1; while 2005's
The Essential sold 275,000 and reached number two.
· All figures for UK sales unless otherwise stated. Information supplied by the Official UK Charts Company
