Read Online The Michael Jackson Tapes by Shmuley Boteach - Free Book Online

energetic, and visible, those who had written him off suddenly started showing up again. You could see them saying to themselves: He’s going places again. People who had been at their wits ends with his lack of productivity were ready to start making things happen. Managers and producers whom he had not heard from in quite a while were now visiting him in his hotel suite. The direct result was that my influence with Michael was now waning and he was slipping—missing meetings, not keeping regular hours, not showing his commitment, cringing and sinking into himself if I asked him about something to do with advancing our project to prioritize kids in the lives of parents. There was a growing tension between us. He started to disregard my advice to stay the course of the program we had
devised on his birthday. And rather than being supported, I was being undermined by the people around him who accused me of diminishing Michael’s star power.
    I heard later that Michael had been introduced to concert promoter David Guest (best known for marrying Liza Minelli and the messy lawsuits that followed) on a trip to meet Shirley Temple Black. David started saying to Michael that they should do a concert together to mark his thirtieth year as a performer. Michael was afraid to tell me because he knew I would oppose the idea until he’d found a sense of spiritual renewal. I’d tell him: Don’t go back half-baked. It killed you the first time; don’t do it the second time.
    Of course I knew some meetings were going on, but what I didn’t know, and learned a few months later from Michael’s parents at their home in Encino, was that some in Michael’s professional team had started telling Michael that I was demystifying him and making him too available. The attitude was that the rabbi is well-intentioned, but he is cheapening your brand by getting you to do free lectures at places like universities when your real place is in front of hundreds of thousands of paying fans in stadiums.
    During this time the British journalist Martin Bashir had his office call me as an intermediary about a possible documentary on Michael because one of the producers he worked with knew me from my years as rabbi at Oxford University. I told Michael it would be a disastrous mistake. “Don’t even think of doing this documentary,” I warned. “First, your life is not yet ready to be opened to scrutiny. Second, you don’t need to be more famous and invite cameras into your life. You need to heal and to become more credible.”
    I didn’t even bother calling Bashir’s people back and thought the project was dead. Two years later, our mutual friend Uri Geller would persuade Michael to do the Bashir project, which would be aired in 2003 under the title Living with Michael Jackson. It would prove to be one of the single greatest catastrophes ever to befall him. Michael’s comments about “sleeping with children” would be seen by millions worldwide and would lead directly to his arrest on charges of child molestation.
    Uri and I remain good friends and I know he cared for Michael deeply. I never would have met Michael if it weren’t for Uri. And it was
for this reason that I made a point of showing constant gratitude by including Uri in everything that Michael and I did together, including and especially our trip to the UK for the Oxford lecture, where Uri joined Michael and me on the stage at the Oxford Union. I honored Uri’s request to bring Michael to Uri’s wedding as best man, and as Uri’s rabbi I myself was honored to be asked to perform the wedding. Uri is one of the warmest and most loving people I know. But even with the best of intentions, his arranging for Michael to do the Bashir documentary was tragically misguided and catastrophic.
    Michael’s life was a complete mess. He was a celebrity spendthrift who had an as-yet unexplained relationship to children.