Jackson, that is, and to have ‘got’ Michael was something of a poisoned chalice as Dan Beck, senior product manager at Epic Records in New York, would find out over the five years they worked together. What’s more, after reading his book, it somehow comes as no surprise that one of Jackson’s many managers played the role of gangster Tuddy Cicero in Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas.
This is not to say that Jackson’s entourage and wider circle of business associates were all gangsters, just that the ruthless methods they and Epic employ, as portrayed by Beck, somehow reminds me of organized crime – or how food chains and clothing manufacturers market their product.
Take how Walter Yetnikoff, boss of Columbia, Epic’s parent company, reacts when MTV decline to show Jackson’s video for ‘Billie Jean’: “Yetnikoff, who was livid, called a senior executive at MTV,” writes Beck. “‘Listen,’ he said, ‘You know those Journey and Bruce Springsteen and REO Speedwagon videos of mine that you guys like to play so much? Pack them all up. Put all the masters in a box and send them back to me. Because we are no longer in business together… unless you play [‘Billie Jean’].” We were thrilled to have the moral high ground! It was a place of integrity a major label rarely, if ever, enjoyed.”
Although Dan Beck’s book focuses on his role as Jackson’s go-to man at Epic and, primarily, his part in the marketing of HIStory, Jackson’s 1995 compilation-plus album, it’s really a memoir of his 20 years working for the company that exposes – if that’s the right word – the way in which major labels operated during a period when cash flowed into the record business like the Mississippi in flood. Beck’s in-tray features other artists besides Jackson but the revenues generated by Michael, most especially Thriller and albums either side of it, make the Jackson 5 star his number one priority.
As might be expected, dealing with those who surround Jackson means Beck must walk on tiptoes. “Most superstars had a manager, an agent, an independent PR person and perhaps an influential road manager,” he writes. “It generally didn’t take long to engage that artist’s team and learn how to work with them. As product managers, we had to understand their strengths (and often their dysfunctions) to help them succeed with the giant multinational corporation to which they were signed. When it worked, the results could be nearly unimaginably great. When it didn’t, it could be a disastrous nightmare. Michael Jackson’s world was entirely different. By 1991, still only three albums deep into his solo career, his organizational structure was a sprawling maze of powerful experts, creative collaborators, well-meaning friends and a few questionable hangers-on.”
In many respects the book is the inside story about the issues surrounding Jackson during a period when his career soared before hitting choppy waters brought about by what Beck judges to be naïveté. Thriller became – and remains – the undisputed best-selling album of all time yet at the same time its success posed an insurmountable dilemma in how to better it. Subsequent releases that sold less could, of course, be considered failures even if their sales figures exceeded 20 million, a figure 99% of acts would kill for.
Beck wrestles with this and other problems over the five-year period in which he was product manager for the self-styled King of Pop, by then the world’s most famous entertainer. His biggest problem seems to have been a reluctance on the part of those surrounding Michael to be decisive. Better make no decision at all than to make the wrong one.
“As his own CEO, he had a disregard for costs that was legendary,” Beck writes. “The immediate need, as I perceived it, was to find the decision-makers and the people who could answer questions so that we could move swiftly and decisively on Michael’s behalf… We often had critical deadlines that would require his personal attention. Since we had to be able to get approvals and quick action, I was concerned that the fiefdoms in Michael’s orbit would be inclined to hold up decisions in fear of making the wrong ones.”
Beck quit Epic in 1996, and thereafter watched sadly from the sidelines as Jackson’s career and public image plummeted. “I still couldn’t fully fathom the idea that he could commit the despicable crimes for which he was charged. I knew a Michael Jackson who was stubborn. I knew a Michael Jackson who could tell a fib if he felt it was necessary. But I also knew a Michael Jackson who had a certain core of honor. I had challenged and tested it, and he had never betrayed it. Had his naïveté led to his legal woes? Had the side of him that was socially awkward compromised him with the wrong people? Then again, how well did I know him? The magnitude of that trial emphasized just how minor my role and relationship were in his huge life… I was just a cog in the wheel for a brief time.
“I liked Michael,” Beck concludes. “He was always polite. Almost always smiling. He was so often excited and enthusiastic… And while he understood every nuance of a dance move, he did not always grasp the subtleties of public opinion. In fact, there were times when he had difficulty seeing the obvious, such as ignoring our strong advice to curtail photo ops with children. He even seemed puzzled by it.”
You’ve Got Michael is published by Trouser Press Books, has 290 pages, and is fully indexed. It includes an eight-page photo section featuring several shots of the author with Jackson and one with the manager who played that role in Goodfellas. He certainly looks the part.
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