My Family, The Jacksons
 
 
     Of my boys’ marriages, the one that caused the biggest stir in the media was Jermaine’s.

     To many, his marriage to Berry Gordy’s daughter, Hazel, in December 1973 symbolized the marriage of two pop families, underscoring the strength of the Jackson Fives-Motown bond.

     The wedding, held at the Beverly Hills Hotel, was spectacular. Among the two hundred guests were a Who’s Who of Motown artists and such friends of the Gordy family as Coretta Scott King.

     The theme was Winter Wonderland. There were one hundred seventy-five white doves in cages, seven thousand white camelias, and mounds of artificial snow. Jermaine wore a white tuxedo, and Hazel wore a white gown covered with pearls and trimmed in whit mink.

     Rebbie, LaToya, and Janet were bridesmaids; Tito, Marlon, and Michael served as ushers.

     The highlight of the ceremony was Smokey Robinson’s performance of a ballad he’d written especially for the bride and groom.

     However, little did the public know that while Jermaine and Hazel were saying their “I do’s,” Joe and some of the boys were considering a “divorce” with Motown records.

     At issue was just how much creative freedom Motown was willing to allow the boys. Motown didn’t want to yield any control whatsoever in the studio, while the boys wanted to exercise some say over the selection of songs they recorded, as well as how the songs should be produced. By then they had begun writing their own songs, and recording them in our home studio. Their role model was fellow Motown artist Stevie Wonder, who’d succeeded in winning artistic control from Motown several years earlier, and who’d continued to score Top Ten hits for the label.

     Joe and I discussed the Motown situation frequently; it weighed on his mind. But whenever he broached the subject of artistic control with Berry Gordy, he was rebuffed. Mr. Gordy didn’t feel that the boys were ready to write and produce their own records. One day Joe got fed up.

     “I have to start working on getting the boys to another label,” he confided to me. “Motown is stunting their growth. I want them to be able to develop and exercise all of their talents.

     There was a special event in the Jackson Five’s career that Joe and the boys did have complete control over in 1974: the group’s Las Vegas debut. Joe booked the two-week engagement at the MGM Grand to show the world that the Jackson Five were more than a Motown recording group.

     “Now we’ve got to put a real show together,” the boys agreed. They and Joe knew that their rock show wouldn’t play to an older, sit-down crowd.

     Among their ideas was a pop-hits medley in which the brothers, each seated on a stool, would take turns soloing on the likes of “By the Time I Get to Phoenix” and “Killing Me Softly (With His Song).”

     The single best idea they had was to involve their sisters and Randy in the show, giving them their first taste of the stage, while letting the audience in on the fact that Jackie, Tito, Jermaine, Marlon, and Michael weren’t the only talented Jackson children.

     For Randy, the chance to perform with his older brothers was a dream come true.

     REBBIE: When his brothers would go out on the road in the Gary days, Randy was always the boy left behind. And he didn’t like it. He took up the bongos, my father told him that when he mastered them he would allow him to join the group.

     That was all that Randy needed to hear. He banged on those bongos night and day. “Can I join now?” He’d ask dad almost daily. But he wasn’t ready yet. Each time that my father would shake his head no, Randy would act as if his wings had fallen off.

     RANDY: At the time I did feel left out being the youngest boys. But I don’t feel negative about it; I think God has His special way of dealing with us.

     Being the only boy at home many times gave me the chance to get into myself a little bit. The family considers me the most individualistic of the children, and that’s the reason why.

     While I was without my brothers a lot I wasn’t really “alone.” I had a house full of instruments. Beginning at the age of eight, I taught myself how to play them. I started with the piano. Then I worked my way to the guitar, the bass, and the drums.

     More than once I woke up in the middle of the night and decided to get up to check on the children, only to find Randy missing from his bedroom. Each time I finally located him in the recording studio, practising.

     For Randy’s segment, Joe and the boys decided to team him with Janet and have them perform a medley of songs made popular by duos: Sonny and Cher’s “I Got You, Babe,” Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy’s “Indian Love Call,” and Mickey and Sylvia’s “Love Is Strange.”

     Michael made an inspired suggestion: “Janet’s always clowning around, doing funny impressions. Let’s work in her impression of Mae West somewhere.”

     We found just the right spot in “Love Is Strange,” where Sylvia says to Mickey, “Come here, loverboy.”

     As for LaToya and Rebbie, it was decided that each would dance, LaToya in the tap-dancing segment, Rebbie during her performance of the old Peggy Lee hit “Fever,” with Michael and Marlon.

     Unfortunately, because of a freak accident, the only appearance that Rebbie wound up making onstage at the MGM Grand came at the end of the show, when the children took their bows. The night before the engagement began, she was walking down the stairs into the hotel’s casino holding Stacee’s hand, when Stacee suddenly jumped down a couple of stairs. Rebbie had to lurch forward, and, in doing so, she wrenched her ankle. She was heartbroken that she wasn’t able to perform.

     As it turned out, that was the only disappointment with the engagement. “This is the best show I’ve ever seen in Vegas!” dozens of audience members exclaimed to Joe and me during those two weeks. Everyone knew who we were because the children made a point of introducing us from the stage, always against my objections.

     The children performed two shows a night every night, and I didn’t miss one of them. “Don’t you get tired?” my kids would ask me. “Why don’t you stay in tonight?”

     “I don’t get tired watching you,” I’d always reply. I’m reminded of the old Southern saying, “Every crow thinks her crow is the blackest.”

     Well, I think every mother who has kids onstage likes what they’re doing and wants to support them. To this day, if I’m on the road with one of my children, he or she can expect to see me in the audience every night.

     Wanting to make myself useful during the Las Vegas engagement, I began taking notes of each performance and after the show, sharing my comments with the children. “Michael, why don’t you hold this particular note longer?” I would suggest. Or: “Janet, how about changing that dance move of yours a little bit?” The kids loved hearing my feedback, so much so that my post-concert critiques are a family tradition to this day.

     As for the children’s Las Vegas show, the highest of the high points was Janet’s Mae West imitation. Night after night, she stole the show with it, the little ham. I knew then that she was destined for a career in show business, too.

     “Your life is like a ship,” Michael likes to say. “You’re the captain of it. The way you steer it is the way that it is going to go.”

     We were the captains of our ship in Las Vegas, and everything worked out beautifully. But back in Los Angeles, Motown was still steering the Jackson Five’s recording career. After the Las Vegas triumph it became even harder for Joe to accept that fact.

     However, the more Joe talked about leaving Motown when the boys’ contract ran out in 1976, the more apprehensive I got.

     “If we leave Motown, then nobody, including you, will have a job,” I pointed out.

     “Kate, that’s not true,” he replied. “I know we can get a better deal at another record company.”

     Joe began talking with other companies. Berry Gordy caught wind of what he was doing and dispatched Motown executive Ewart Abner to New York City -- where the boys were performing at the time -- to meet with Joe. The message that Mr. Abner carried with him was that Mr. Gordy “doesn’t care what it takes, he just wants the boys to stay with Motown.” But by then Joe’s mind was made up -- the Jackson Five would sign with a new label willing to allow the boys the opportunity to record some of their own songs.

     That new label turned out to be Epic Records, one of the companies owned by CBS Records.

     “Well, your decision to leave Motown wasn’t such a bad idea, after all,” I told Joe after he’d accepted Epic’s offer.

     The only problem was that Jermaine had decided that he didn’t want to leave Motown.

     Married to the daughter of the president of his label his brothers were leaving, Jermaine was in a difficult position. If he decided to go with his brothers to Epic, he would upset Hazel and Mr. Gordy. If he decided to remain at Motown as a solo artist, he would upset Joe, me, and the boys.

     In the end, Jermaine upset his family.

     When Jermaine explained to Joe and me that he felt he owed his primary allegiance to Motown for giving the Jackson Five its first break, Joe was incensed.

     “It’s my blood running through your veins, not Berry Gordy’s!” he stormed.

     When Jermaine added that it was Mr. Gordy “who put steaks on our table and teeth in out mouths,” I spoke up.

     “We were already eating steaks in Gary. And while it is true Mr. Gordy loaned us the money to get caps for the teeth that Jackie and Tito had chipped, he’s recouped that money hundreds of times over.”

     But Jermaine’s decision was final, and the Jackson family suffered through its first split ever.

     MARLON: Actually, I respected Jermaine’s decision. He had to do what he thought was best for his life.

     I just didn’t like the way he went about things, and I’ll tell him that today. We had one of the family shows to do in New York, out in Westbury. On the day of the show, he informed us he wasn’t going onstage, because Berry Gordy had told him, “Don’t do the show.”

     I remember the rest of us saying, “Okay, then, if that’s the way you feel, fine. But we’re going to show up.” We recruited the best player in the orchestra to do the gig with us.

     For several months following his decision, I was the only one whom Jermaine would call. He knew that I would listen to him, and I did. I told him that I understood the tough position he was in and that I loved him just the same for the decision he had made .... even though inside I was still hurting about it.

     “Well, I hope my father and my brothers don’t have any hard feelings about what I’ve done,” he said during one conversation. I told him that they didn’t. But the fact is that six months went by before they started speaking to one another again.

     Making that period in our lives all the more difficult was Motown’s decision to sue CBS Records and the Jacksons for twenty million dollars over the group’s departure. In its suit, Motown claimed that it had been damaged insofar as Epic Records had announced the boys’ singing nine before the group’s contract with Motown was due to end, thereby hurting sales of its 1975 Jackson Five album, Moving Violations.

     Motown also won a court injunction preventing us from using the name “Jackson Five” any longer. This concerned me even more than the price tag on the suit.

     “How can Berry Gordy keep the name when he didn’t even name the boys,” I asked Joe naively.

     The answer: Motown had included a clause in the contract giving it ownership to the name. It was in the “fine print” and we missed it!

     The dispute with Motown hit a real low point when the company’s vice-chairman, Michael Roshkind, threatened to form a “new .... Jackson Five. We can do anything we want with [the name],” he said. “There are/were forty thousand Jacksons running around, and we not only made five of them stars, we put them in their own house, paid for their education -- and worked a full year with them before their first record.”

     That was hardball.

     All of the boys felt the impact of Jermaine’s departure from the group. Yet the first time the boys performed without him -- at the family show in Westbury -- they won four standing ovations. Marlon sang Jermaine’s old parts splendidly, Randy beat the tar out of his bongos, and Michael sang and danced with greater abandon than ever.

     Joe didn’t waste any time getting the boys’ into the studio to record their first album for Epic. The company selected the well-known writing-producing team of Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff to work with my children. Gamble and Huff had written hits for a number of artists, and proceeded to write one for the boys: “Enjoy Yourself.” I really liked that song as well as the entire album, entitled simply The Jacksons. Gamble and Huff’s sound was mature, and classy.

     I enjoyed Going Places, the second album the boys recorded with Gamble and Huff, even more. I particularly liked the message song, “Man of War,” a plea for peace. Motown had steered the boys away from that kind of material; the term black power” was in vogue in the early seventies, and I’m sure Mr. Gordy didn’t want my sons to be associated with any song or statement that could be misconstrued as sounding political or, worse, militant. At the time, I agreed. However, by 1977, singing message songs was, in my mind, another example of my boys’ maturation.

     Unfortunately, the public didn’t share my enthusiasm for either The Jacksons or Going Places. Sales were disappointing.

     TITO: All of a sudden people were telling us that our career was finished.

     We also heard how foolish the boys had been to leave Motown. However, Motown didn’t exactly seem to be performing wonders with Jermaine at the time.

     My Name Is Jermaine, his first solo album since leaving his brothers, was a disappointing seller, despite Berry Gordy’s pledge to the press that Motown was going to make him a superstar. Jermaine’s single, “Let’s Be Young Tonight flopped.

     My boys have had a long run, a longer run that I ever dreamed of, I thought at the time. Could it be that what the “experts” are saying is true? That they’re through?

     Michael didn’t doubt himself or his brothers for a second.

     “Don’t worry, Mother,” he told me when I voiced my concerns to him. “We’ll be back on top again .”

     Joe and the boys had a plan.

     Joe and Michael disclosed that plan at a meeting one day in 1978 with Ron Alexenburg, the CBS Records executive who signed the Jacksons to Epic. The plan was simple: The boys would work their way out of their recording slump by writing and producing their third Epic LP themselves.

     Their argument to Mr. Alexenburg was just as simple: “Gamble and Huff have given the group their best shot, but things haven’t worked out. We can do better.”

     Joe and Michael weren’t asking the CBS Records executive to make a total leap of faith in granting them their wish. Mr. Alexenburg could hear the boys’ development as songwriters and producers in the four songs they had contributed to the two albums they had recorded with Gamble and Huff. The boys were especially proud of “Different Kind of Lady,” a group collaboration. They had to fight for its inclusion on Going Places -- despite their initial words to the contrary, Gamble and Huff never really showed much interest in the boys’ songs -- so the boys felt a special satisfaction when the song became a popular track in discos.

     To our delight, Ron Alexenburg granted Joe’s and the boys’ wish. He made only one request: that CBS staffers Bobby Colomby and Mike Atkinson be allowed to oversee the project as the album’s executive producers. Joe and the boys agreed.

     RANDY: We as humans don’t know our abilities. The only times that we ever seem to stretch ourselves is when we’re tested. During our own album was the greatest test for my brothers and me.

     The boys didn’t lack for material. They’d been writing songs since early in their Motown career and, according to Tito, “storing them in our personal bank.” They had also a good deal of hands-on experience recording demons of their tunes at the studio we had at the house. By then, Jackie, Tito, and Marlon had also built studios in their homes.

     MARLON: We went into the studio with attitude, “We’ll show everybody that we’re not washed up.”

     The album turned out to be true group effort. Five of the eight songs were co-written by all of them. The boys also developed a clever way to “mix down” each of the songs together.

     MARLON: A couple of us would get first shot at mixing a certain song. When the mix was done the rest of us would listen to it with our fresh ears, making whatever changes that we felt were needed. We repeated that process for each of the songs, and it worked out great.

     The fruit of their labor was Destiny, released in the fall of 1978. It was praised by critics as the Jackson’ musical coming-of-age.

     I loved it. But from my first listening, I felt anxious. Will Epic promote it? I wondered. How will the record buyers get the word that this is a great album? I grew even more anxious when the album’s first single, “Blame It on the Boogie,” the only song the boys hadn’t written flopped.

     RANDY: We told CBS, “No, no, no, don’t put out ‘Blame It on the Boogie’; put out ‘Shake Your Body own to the Ground),’” which Michael and I had written. But CBS loved “Boogie”; also, I think they still didn’t believe in us one hundred percent.

     Happily, “Shake Your Body” became the album’s second single. It did very well, peaking at number seven on Billboard’s pop chart.

     RANDY: Actually, that song should have been number one. It sold two million copies, a great figure for a single. But I don’t think pop radio or the press was ready to accept our return just yet.

     But the public was. Destiny, in the end, sold “double platinum.”

     As Destiny rode high on the charts in the first months of 1979, the Jacksons performed in Great Britain, Europe, and Africa, the first legs on their world tour that year.

     What an apt, positive title for their album, I thought as I reflected on the boys’ return to the pop limelight.

     As it turned out, Destiny happened to be a word that could also apply to Michael’s re-emergence as a solo talent.