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I just got home from seeing Thriller Live and I bought a programme. Inside is this interview from around 1997 that MJ did with Adrian Grant. I could not believe the part below about touring. HOW relevant is that to what is happening now - VERY!
Throughout your career you have constantly taken your art form to another level. How do you see your live performances taking place in the future?
Michael Jackson: I don’t want to do any more world tours, or at least I don’t think I will. I want to spend the rest of my life doing records and films. I’ll do some special shows here and there, because I do love performing, but I’ve been doing it since I was five. Now I want to create something memorable for the next 100 years, and that’s in the movies.
You broke many records during your successful ‘HIStory Tour’. Is it hard to get motivated for each show, after more than 30 years of performing?
Michael Jackson: I usually come to the show not feeling like I really want to do it because of being overworked, but once I get there I feel the spirit of the entire audience before I even get on stage. And then the magic takes place – no matter how you feel, even dead sick and weary – suddenly you just go out and do it. The energy comes out of nowhere. It’s like the Gods are blessing you.
What personal satisfaction did you gain from the tour?
Michael Jackson: Seeing all the races together, which I love so much. All the colours in the audience loving one another, getting on with each other and enjoying the music – a unified field!
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*REST OF THE INTERVIEW*
You have travelled to many countries all over the world. Can you tell me about your admiration for Brazil, and the experience that you had whilst filming the video ‘They Don’t Care About Us’?
Michael Jackson: I love the Brazilian people, I feel for them in the same way I feel for the Indians and Africans. There’s a lot of poverty in Brazil, and I remember leaving a part of my heart with them the first time that I went. The people are so sweet, they were so happy to see me. You know they were overwhelmed with excitement, and I was happy to be there for them. I wish I could do more – I just feel so bad that I don’t do enough, I really do.
Why did you choose Spike Lee to direct that video?
Michael Jackson: ‘They Don’t Care About Us’ has an edge, and Spike Lee had approached me. It’s a public awareness song, and that’s what he is all about. It’s a protest kind of song – it’s not a r@#%$ song, it’s an anti-r@#%$ song and I thought he was perfect for it.
You wrote a song called ‘Money’. Having been a millionaire sing you were a boy, how important is money to you?
Michael Jackson: I guess it gets things done...to fulfil some dreams you need to have financial backing. However I think everything starts with a thought, like if you plant a seed which then cultivates itself, everything comes out of that. I never really thought about it when I was little, I always felt that I was compelled to do the things I did.
Do you not find it difficult to relate to the needs and the pain of the suffering when you seemingly have everything you could desire?
Michael Jackson: No. No, not at all. Being a world traveller I’m touched and moved by everything that happens, especially to children. It gets me emotionally sick, and I go through a lot of pain when I see that type of thing. I can’t pretend as if I don’t see it. It affects me very much. For some reason there’s a certain part of my concert where I break down in every show and in that spot I get a certain thought – I think of the plight of the children and it gets me every time. I don’t know why in that place, it’s during ‘I’ll Be There’, the thoughts just come to me and I try hard to contain myself.
What is your favourite song on the HIStory album and why?
Michael Jackson: My favourite songs are ‘Earth Song’, ‘Childhood’ and ‘You Are Not Alone’ because I like songs with emotions and a message, and a sense of immortality. I like there to be some depth in the lyrics as well as a melodic simplicity that the whole world can sing along with them. That was my goal, to capture that on those songs and I think I came pretty close. Wherever we went on a tour, people just loved them, and I was pleased to have done that.
Would you say there is a concurrent theme running throughout the HIStory album?
Michael Jackson: It’s about people looking at their lives, and making something of themselves – creating a legacy so you can look back at what you have done. I always wanted that, and that’s why I like working very hard.
How did your collaboration with R. Kelly on ‘You Are Not Alone’ arise?
Michael Jackson: R. Kelly sent me this tape of the song and I liked what I heard. It had no harmonies or modulations, but I told him that he had written a great song, and was it OK if I just go in and add what I think it should have? He said ‘sure’, so I went in and produced it. I put a choir at the end and did a great modulation so the song had a sense of climax and structure.
Why did you include your cover of the Beatles song ‘Come Together’ on the HIStory album?
Michael Jackson: I was coming home from church and my engineer was fooling around with that song, which I hadn’t asked him to do, but when I heard it I said ‘WOW!’ This is my favourite Beatles song.’ So I just went and laid it down in one take. We kept it kind of raw and funky. It was just spontaneous , but I knew I wanted to do something with it.
You broke many records during your successful ‘HIStory Tour’. Is it hard to get motivated for each show, after more than 30 years of performing?
Michael Jackson: I usually come to the show not feeling like I really want to do it because of being overworked, but once I get there I feel the spirit of the entire audience before I even get on stage. And then the magic takes place – no matter how you feel, even dead sick and weary – suddenly you just go out and do it. The energy comes out of nowhere. It’s like the Gods are blessing you.
What personal satisfaction did you gain from the tour?
Michael Jackson: Seeing all the races together, which I love so much. All the colours in the audience loving one another, getting on with each other and enjoying the music – a unified field!
Would you say that your music is written from a more personal viewpoint now, compared to the pure disco of your earlier material?
Michael Jackson: I never categorise the music because I never sit down and say I’m going to write a disco, pop or rock song. I just write according to the emotion, according to what I’m going through in the moment. I create out of that and I almost feel guilty putting my name on the songs that I write because they are from another source. I’m just a funnel through which they come, I really do believe that. They are from above. They choose me, I don’t choose them.
Blood On The Dance Floor is a very striking title. Is the song about AIDS?
Michael Jackson: No it isn’t, not at all. Actually I didn’t create the title, my engineer (Teddy Riley) thought of the title, which I thought was cool, so I wrote the song around the title. And then I made a mistake, for which I apologised, but they didn’t show it on TV. I was hiding out in England sometime in 1993, and Elton John let me use his house. He was so sweet and kind, and I thought I had never thanked him. So I decided to dedicate ‘Blood On The Dance Floor’ to him. But after it came out I said ‘Why did I dedicate that one, of all the songs it could have been, like ‘You Are Not Alone’ or something else. So I always thought that I wanted to apologise to him for that – it was just out of him being kind. He’s a wonderful person.
Do you feel a connection with the late Princess Diana, given that many of your songs on the HIStory album talk about your personal torment and persecution from others?
Michael Jackson: Yes I do, very much. I think I understood her. In the moments that we had together, that were very intimate and personal, we talked on such subjects. I think it’s a tragic, tragic loss. I feel that people like myself and other artists should carry the torch of what her mission was and I think I have that understanding – it’s what I do. I thought she was brilliant.
Do you feel that the song ‘Tabloid Junkie’ highlights at all the tragic circumstances in which Princess Diana died?
Michael Jackson: Yes, the tabloids are a bunch of trash. It’s such an intrusion. It’s a horrible thing. The way they hunt you and invade your privacy, it’s terrible. It creates such ugliness, they never think about how the person may feel with the things that they write.
When and how did the idea for the fabulous short film, ‘Ghosts’, arise?
Michael Jackson: It started with the ‘Addam’s family’, they wanted a theme song (‘Is It Scary’) for their film, but in the end I didn’t want to do it, so we got out of it. I decided instead to make my own short film. I love films, I love movies and that’s what I want the next chapter in my life to be – movies and records. There’s no other place to go. I’ll do film, records and direct, because I love it very much.
Which people and events in world history have played a significant part in your own life and why?
Michael Jackson: I would say John F. Kennedy, because that smacks of my generation when I was little. I think he was America’s greatest President. I saw some of the civil rights movement on television but I never experienced it personally, but that affected everybody.
Throughout your career you have constantly taken your art form to another level. How do you see your live performances taking place in the future?
Michael Jackson: I don’t want to do any more world tours, or at least I don’t think I will. I want to spend the rest of my life doing records and films. I’ll do some special shows here and there, because I do love performing, but I’ve been doing it since I was five. Now I want to create something memorable for the next 100 years, and that’s in the movies.
How would you like History to portray Michael Jackson?
Michael Jackson: I think as someone who has been given the ability and talent to do what I do, to heighten the awareness of peace and love, and the plight of children worldwide on to a universal level. It’s been created through song, dance and film – I guess that’s my mission and I’m happy to have been chosen.
Interview conducted by Adrian Grant
