MICHAEL
JACKSON
MOONWALK
Chapter One
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I've always wanted to be able to tell stories, you know, stories that came from my soul. I'd like to sit by a fire and tell people stories - make them see pictures, make them cry and laugh, take them anywhere emotionally with something
as deceptively simple as words. I'd like to tell tales to move their souls and transform them. I've always wanted to be
able to do that. Imagine how the great writers must feel, knowing they have that power. I sometimes feel I could do
it. It's something I'd like to develop. In a way, songwriting uses the same skills, creates the emotional highs and lows,
but the story is a sketch. It's quicksilver. There are very few books written on the art of storytelling, how to grip
listeners, how to get a group of people together and amuse them. No costumes, no makeup, no nothing, just you and
your voice, and your powerful ability to take them anywhere, to transform their lives, if only for minutes.
As I begin to tell my story, I want to repeat what I usually say to people when they ask me about my earliest days
with the Jackson 5: I was so little when we began to work on our music that I really don't remember much about it.
Most people have the luxury of careers that start when they're old enough to know exactly what they're doing and
why, but, of course, that wasn't true of me. They remember everything that happened to them, but I was only five
years old. When you're a show business child, you really don't have the maturity to understand a great deal of what is
going on around you. People make a lot of decisions concerning your life when you're out of the room. So here's
what I remember. I remember singing at the top of my voice and dancing with real joy and working too hard for a
child. Of course, there are many details I don't remember at all. I do remember the Jackson 5 really taking off when I
was only eight or nine.
I was born in Gary, Indiana, on a late summer night in 1958, the seventh of my parents' nine children. My father, Joe
Jackson, was born in Arkansas, and in 1949 he married my mother, Katherine Scruse, whose people came from
Alabama. My sister Maureen was born the following year and had the tough job of being the oldest. Jackie, Tito,
Jermaine, LaToya, and Marlon were all next in line. Randy and Janet came after me.
A part of my earliest memories is my father's job working in the steel mill. It was tough, mind-numbing work and he
played music for escape. At the same time, my mother was working in a department store. Because of my father, and
because of my mother's own love of music, we heard it all the time at home. My father and his brother had a group
called the Falcons who were the local R&B band. My father played the guitar, as did his brother. They would do
some of the great early rock ‘n' roll and blues songs by Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Otis Redding, you name it. All
those styles were amazing and each had an influence on Joe and on us, although we were too young to know it at the
time. The Falcons practiced in the living room of our house in Gary, so I was raised on R&B. Since we were nine
kids and my father's brother had eight of his own, our combined numbers made for a huge family. Music was what
we did for entertainment and those times helped keep us together and kind of encouraged my father to be a family-
oriented man. The Jackson 5 were born out of this tradition - we later became the Jacksons - and because of this
training and musical tradition, I moved out on my own and established a sound that is mine.
I remember my childhood as mostly work, even though I loved to sing. I wasn't forced into this business by stage
parents the way Judy Garland was. I did it because I enjoyed it and because it was as natural to me as drawing a
breath and exhaling it. I did it because I was compelled to do it, not my parents or family, but by my own inner life in
the world of music.
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There were times, let me make that clear, when I'd come home from school and I'd only have time to put my books
down and get ready for the studio. Once there, I'd sing until late at night, until it was past my bedtime, really. There
was a park across the street from the Motown studio, and I can remember looking at those kids playing games. I'd
just stare at them in wonder - I couldn't imagine such freedom, such a carefree life - and wish more than anything
that I had that kind of freedom, that I could walk away and be like them. So there were sad moments in my
childhood. It's true for any child star. Elizabeth Taylor told me she felt the same way. When you're young and you're
working, the world can seem awfully unfair. I wasn't forced to be little Michael the lead singer - I did it and I loved it
- but it was hard work. If we were doing an album, for example, we'd go off to the studio after school and I might or
might not get a snack. Sometimes there just wasn't time. I'd come home, exhausted, and it'd be eleven or twelve and
past time to go to bed.
So I very much identify with anyone who worked as a child. I know how they struggled, I know what they sacrificed.
I also know what they learned. I've learned that it becomes more of a challenge as one gets older. I feel old for some
reason. I really feel like an old soul, someone who's seen a lot and experienced a lot. Because of all the years I've
clocked in, it's hard for me to accept that I am only twenty-nine. I've been in the business for twenty-four years.
Sometimes I feel like I should be near the end of my life, turning eighty, with people patting me on the back. That's
what comes from starting so young.
When I first performed with my brothers, we were known as the Jacksons. We would later become the Jackson 5.
Still later, after we left Motown, we would reclaim the Jacksons name again.
Every one of my albums or the group's albums has been dedicated to our mother, Katherine Jackson, since we took
over our own careers and began to produce our own music. My first memories are of her holding me and singing
songs like "You Are My Sunshine" and "Cotton Fields." She sang to me and to my brothers and sisters often. Even though she had lived in Indiana for some time, my mother grew up in Alabama, and in that part of the country it was
just as common for black people to be raised with country and western music on the radio as it was for them to hear
spirituals in church. She likes Willie Nelson to this day. She has always had a beautiful voice and I suppose I got my
singing ability from my mother and, of course, from God.
Mom played the clarinet and the piano, which she taught my oldest sister, Maureen, whom we call Rebbie, to play,
just as she'd teach my other older sister, LaToya. My mother knew, from an early age, that she would never perform
the music she loved in front of others, not because she didn't have the talent and the ability, but because she was
crippled by polio as a child. She got over the disease, but not without a permanent limp in her walk. She had to miss
a great deal of school as a child, but she told us that she was lucky to recover at a time when many died from the
disease. I remember how important it was to her that we got the sugar-cube vaccine. She even made us miss a youth
club show one Saturday afternoon - that's how important it was in our family.
My mother knew her polio was not a curse but a test that God gave her to triumph over, and she instilled in me a love
of Him that I will always have. She taught me that my talent for singing and dancing was as much God's work as a
beautiful sunset or a storm that left snow for children to play in. Despite all the time we spent rehearsing and
traveling, Mom would find time to take me to the Kingdom Hall of the Jehovah's Witnesses, usually with Rebbie and