Cover Story: Michael Jackson: Life in the Magical Kingdom

At twenty-four, Michael Jackson has one foot planted firmly on either side of the Eighties. His childhood hits are golden oldies, and his boyhood idols have become his peers. Michael was just ten when he moved into Diana Ross' Hollywood home. Now he produces her. He was five when the Beatles crossed over; now he and McCartney wrangle over the same girl on Michael's single "The Girl Is Mine." His showbiz friends span generations as well. He hangs out with the likes of such other kid stars as Tatum O'Neal and Kristy McNichol, and ex-kid star Stevie Wonder. He gossips long distance with-Adam Ant and Liza Minnelli, and has heart-to-hearts with octogenarian Fred Astaire. When he visited the set of On Golden Pond. Henry Fonda baited fishhooks for him. Jane Fonda is helping him learn acting. Pen pal Katharine Hepburn broke a lifelong habit of avoiding rock by attending a 1981 Jacksons concert at Madison Square Garden.

Even E.T would be attracted to such a gentle spirit, according to Steven Spielberg, who says he told Michael, "If E.T. didn't come to Elliott, he would have come to your house." Spielberg also says he thought of no one else to narrate the saga of his timorous alien. "Michael is one of the last living innocents who is in complete control of his life. I've never seen anybody like Michael. He's an emotional star child."

Cartoons are flashing silently across the giant screen that glows in the darkened den. Michael mentions that he loves cartoons. In fact, he loves all things "magic." This definition is wide enough to include everything from Bambi to James Brown.

"He's so magic," Michael says of Brown, admitting that he patterned his own quicksilver choreography on the Godfather's classic bag of stage moves. "I'd be in the wings when I was like six or seven. I'd sit there and watch him."

Michael's kindergarten was the basement of the Apollo Theater in Harlem. He was too shy to actually approach the performers the Jackson Five opened for — everyone from Jackie Wilson to Gladys Knight, the Temptations and Etta James. But he says he had to know everything they did — how James Brown could do a slide, a spin and a split and still make it back before the mike hit the floor. How the mike itself disappeared through the Apollo stage floor. He crept downstairs, along passageways and walls and hid there, peering from behind the dusty flanks of old vaudeville sets while musicians tuned, smoked, played cards and divvied barbecue. Climbing back to the wings, he stood in the protective folds of the musty maroon curtain, watching his favorite acts, committing every double dip and every bump, snap, whip-it-back mike toss to his inventory of night moves. Recently, for a refresher course, Michael went to see James Brown perform at an L.A. club. "He's the most electrifying. He can take an audience anywhere he wants to. The audience just went bananas. He went wild?and at his age. He gets so out of himself."

Getting out of oneself is a recurrent theme in Michael's life, whether the subject is dancing, singing or acting. As a Jehovah's Witness, Michael believes in an impending holocaust, which will be followed by the second coming of Christ. Religion is a large part of his life, requiring intense Bible study and thrice-weekly meetings at a nearby Kingdom Hall. He has never touched drugs and rarely goes near alcohol. Still, despite the prophesied Armageddon, the spirit is not so dour as to rule out frequent hops on the fantasy shuttle.

"I'm a collector of cartoons," he says. "All the Disney stuff, Bugs Bunny, the old MGM ones. I've only met one person who has a bigger collection than I do, and I was surprised — Paul McCartney. He's a cartoon fanatic. Whenever I go to his house, we watch cartoons. When we came here to work on my album, we rented all these cartoons from the studio, Dumbo and some other stuff. It's real escapism. It's like everything's all right. It's like the world is happening now in a faraway city. Everything's fine.

"The first time I saw E.T., I melted through the whole thing," he says. "The second time, I cried like crazy. And then, in doing the narration, I felt like I was there with them, like behind a tree or something, watching everything that happened."

So great was Michael's emotional involvement that Steven Spielberg found his narrator crying in the darkened studio when he got to the part where E.T. is dying. Finally, Spielberg and producer Quincy Jones decided to run with it and let Michael's voice break. Fighting those feelings would be counterproductive — something Jones had already learned while producing Off the Wall.

"I had a song I'd been saving for Michael called "She's Out of My Life," he remembers. "Michael heard it, and it clicked. But when he sang it, he would cry. Every time we did it, I'd look up at the end and Michael would be crying. I said, 'We'll come back in two weeks and do it again, and maybe it won't tear you up so much. 'Came back and he started to get teary. So we left it in."

This tug of war between the controlled professional and the vulnerable, private Michael surfaces in the lyrics he has written for himself. In "Bless His Soul," a song on the Jacksons' Destiny LP that Michael says is definitely about him, he sings:

Sometimes I cry cause I'm confused

Is this a fact of being used?

There is no life for me at all

Cause I give myself at beck and call.