Julie Felix: The brilliant Black ballerina who was forced to leave Britain

 She was told there was no room for a ‘brown swan’ in the London Festival Ballet, so she went to the US. There she found enormous success, dancing for everyone from Michael Jackson to Prince

The turning point in Julie Felix’s career came in 1975. A student at Rambert ballet school in London, she was selected to dance in Rudolf Nureyev’s production of Sleeping Beauty with the London Festival Ballet (now the English National Ballet). Nureyev was the god of British ballet – and he lived up to his reputation on the first day of rehearsal, Felix recalls. “He was late, but everybody said he was always late. All of a sudden, the doors flew open and in he came. He was well renowned for these big boots he used to wear, and a big fur coat. He took the coat off like a matador and threw it so it slid across the dance studio floor. Everybody jumped up and stood to attention. He was there for probably about half an hour.” At the time, 17-year-old Felix was awestruck. In hindsight, half a century later, she is less impressed: “Talk about unprofessional.”

‘My feet would be bleeding. I’d have blisters all over my toes. And I didn’t care’ ... Julie Felix near her home in Cornwall. Photograph: Emli Bendixen/The Guardian

In the fairytale version of Felix’s life, having acquitted herself on stage with Nureyev, she would have joined the London Festival Ballet and become the first Black British dancer to begin her ascent through the ranks of a British ballet company. Instead, she was told she was a “lovely dancer”, but was not going to be given a contract, “because of the colour of my skin. I would mess up the line of the corps de ballet, because you can’t have a whole row of white swans and then there’s a brown one at the end.”

Felix was stunned: “It hit me like a thunderbolt.” Her mother was white British and her father African-Caribbean, from Saint Lucia. She had never thought of the refined world of ballet as being what we might now describe as institutionally racist. “It sounds ridiculous, but because I didn’t experience any racial issues or difficulties before that, I didn’t think there was anything wrong with the colour of my skin. I thought that I was talented and that would be enough.”

Having grown up in Ealing, west London, in the 60s, Felix certainly knew about racial difference. She rarely saw any faces that were not white in the neighbourhood or at school, she says. After her parents had met on a bench in Hyde Park, her mother’s family disapproved. “They said: ‘If you marry that man, we’re going to disown you.’ And my mum just said: ‘Well, fair enough, I still want to marry him.’”

Her father, who worked as a foreman at the Hoover factory, was quite the charmer, says Felix. “He was the proudest man. He would paint the front door a different colour every year. He was always up the ladder washing his windows. He would grow fruits and vegetables in the back garden. But I would say my dad had a big chip on his shoulder.”

Julie Felix. Photograph: Courtesy of Julie Felix

She describes how he would dress like a dandy, in 40s suits and spats, even if he was just going to do the shopping. “He would always berate the grocers and say: ‘You’re picking the bruised fruit and vegetables because I’m Black. You think I can’t see this?’” She laughs. “Why would you move somewhere if you’re going to spend your life being concerned about the way other people look at you and your colour?”

There was an incident when she was eight or nine, when her father returned from work very late, his shirt ripped and covered in blood. A colleague had attacked him outside the factory gates with a meat cleaver on a chain. “He didn’t like, one, the way my dad spoke to him and, two, because my dad was Black,” she says.

Culturally, the Felix household was “100% British”, she says. She had no connection to her Saint Lucian family, although she would see her British grandparents in Essex regularly (relations had thawed when Felix’s elder sister and she were born). Musically, her father liked American crooners such as Frank Sinatra and Nat King Cole; her mother preferred classical music and had once aspired to be an opera singer. “So, when it came to my wanting to dance, there was a local ballet school around the corner in Ealing that I would go to, and Mum said: ‘Well, as long as you keep working hard and you’re enjoying it, I will fund it for you.’ She wasn’t a pushy, stereotypical ballet mother, but she knew that I loved it. And because she’d been stopped doing what she wanted to do, she was there 100% for me.” When she passed the audition for the Rambert, her parents could not afford the fees; Felix won a grant from the Inner London Education Authority, which paid 75%.

Felix says no one is “born to dance”, but, as a student, her passion for ballet was boundless. “I can remember the feeling of waking up in the morning, earlier than I needed to, getting on the underground and going into Notting Hill Gate, where the school was. I was the first one in the door. The cleaner was still there.

“I could not get enough of it. My friend and me would stretch and practise our fouettés in the lunch break. We’d be the last ones out of the building. Get back on the train, go home. My feet would be bleeding. I’d have blisters all over my toes. And I didn’t care. I just knew this was what was required. I soaked my feet in salt water, dabbed surgical spirit on them to get the skin to heal and get them dried out so that I could get up the next morning and get on that train again.”

Felix in New York in 1983. Photograph: Courtesy of Julie Felix

After all her dedication, being rejected for her colour was devastating. “It didn’t last long, mind you,” she says. “Part of my personality is: sink or swim. And I thought: ‘I am not going to sink here.’ So I just flipped it around and just said: ‘Watch me. I’m going to show you I can do it.’”

She didn’t have to wait too long. The previous summer, the Dance Theatre of Harlem (DTH) had come to perform in London. This was a pioneering Black ballet company founded in 1969 by Arthur Mitchell, the first top-flight Black dancer in US ballet. While they were in town, Felix went along, auditioned for Mitchell and was immediately offered a contract. She declined. When her teacher at Rambert found out, “she absolutely hit the roof”, Felix recalls. “She said: ‘You can’t pick and choose. You’ve been offered a job!’” Fortunately, the DTH returned to London a few months after her Nureyev experience. Felix auditioned and was offered a job a second time. She did not turn it down.

This time, Felix’s skin colour was to her advantage, although working with an all-Black company in the US was a curious reversal: “I’d gone from all of my ballet training, and growing up not really being aware of anything to do with Black people, to going to New York and there’s no white people.” Before relocating to New York, Felix had never had a passport, left the UK or flown in an aeroplane.

Backstage at Sadler’s Wells theatre in 1980 on Felix’s first tour back in the UK. Photograph: Courtesy of Julie Felix

“Within two weeks of being there, Arthur Mitchell said to me: ‘We’ve got to knock the British out of you.’ And I took umbrage, because I’m really proud of being British,” Felix says. In retrospect, she knows what he meant: “It was the wishy-washy way I approached my technique and my ballet training. But it wasn’t just about that; it was everything that Arthur Mitchell taught and portrayed and wanted us to portray within our work. He wanted to show that Black people really can do this.”

DTH’s sense of purpose aligned with Felix’s own. She stayed with the company for 10 years, earning her place as a soloist and touring the US and beyond (including a satisfying return to the Royal Opera House). Life in the US put British racism into perspective, says Felix. In her first week in New York, she witnessed a young Black man being shot dead in the street by two white police officers for shoplifting. A touring performance in Mississippi in 1978 had to be cancelled because the Ku Klux Klan staged a protest outside the theatre, in white hoods, burning cross and all. “No words can describe that feeling,” she says.

There were more good times than bad, though. Felix shared the stage with, and danced for, luminaries from Ronald Reagan to her hero, Luciano Pavarotti. She danced with Lionel Richie to All Night Long at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics closing ceremony; visitors to her shows included Michael Jackson and Prince. Jackson wanted to cast the dancers in his ill-fated Peter Pan movie, she says. He came to a matinee in Pasadena, California, supposedly incognito, but in full Jackson regalia: black sunglasses, Jheri curl and military-style outfit, with a complement of bodyguards. “I was annoyed, because I was there to deliver the performance, but you had all these girls screaming in the audience,” says Felix. “Anyway, after it finished, he came backstage and said to us, very, very quietly: ‘I really enjoyed your performance. I just think you’re fantastic.’ What a humble man.”

A year later, Prince came to a show, by coincidence at the same theatre. He was similarly “incognito”, in a sequined, hooded purple cape. He never took the hood down. “At the end of the performance, he got back in his limo and left and didn’t say thank you, hello, anything. Really quite rude.”

Felix on a poster for the Dance Theatre of Harlem. Photograph: Courtesy of Julie Felix

By 1986, aged 30, Felix was beginning to feel the physical toll of ballet life. She also missed home. She returned to the UK and became a teacher and remedial coach for Sadler’s Wells Royal Ballet, first in London, then in Birmingham, where the company relocated when it became Birmingham Royal Ballet, in 1990. She married and had three daughters (none of whom followed in their mother’s footsteps).

She then became head of dance at a local school. Now it was her turn to “knock the British out” of her students. “They don’t seem to know how to really push themselves,” she says. “Ballet is really painful. If you don’t feel that, then you’re not doing it properly.” 

Ballet has also always required a highly specific form of physicality, Felix points out. “It needs very arched feet, it requires good natural rotation of your hip sockets, a slender body, long, lithe muscles, long neck, small head.” Regardless of talent or musicality, she says, dancers who do not conform to this body type will struggle. Perhaps it is this inherent discrimination that has made other forms of prejudice easier to disguise.

British ballet has made some progress since the 70s, but it could do more. Birmingham Royal Ballet, for example, had a successful workshop programme with local schools, whose pupils were often from Black, Asian or minority ethnic backgrounds, but such programmes seem to have “fizzled out” as a result of local authority budget cuts, Felix says. On the other hand, there are institutions such as Ballet Black, which advocates for diversity in professional ballet. At the time of its founding in 2001, there were still no women of colour performing in any British company. The Royal Ballet recruited its first Black, British-born male dancer, Solomon Golding, only in 2013.

Julie Felix: ‘Ballet is really painful. If you don’t feel that, then you’re not doing it properly.’ Photograph: Emli Bendixen/The Guardian

Felix is not convinced British ballet has turned the corner: “I still believe that we’ve got ballet companies who will take a few people of colour just to be politically correct.” However, she was heartened by the appointment of the Cuban-British dancer Carlos Acosta as director of Birmingham Royal Ballet in 2020, although the pandemic has so far curtailed its activities. While all British arts are vulnerable at the moment, ballet – with its high demands for time, labour, space and personnel – is especially so. Now based in Cornwall, Felix has made do teaching over Zoom for the past year. She is not complaining: “It really is a lovely place to be locked down.”

Felix’s skin colour began as a factor that counted against her, but it became an animating force in her career and led to a wealth of experiences and successes she might otherwise not have had. With that satisfaction, the anger she feels for her 17-year-old self being told her brownness would “mess up the line” has mellowed a little. “Their choice of not accepting me enabled me to find something within myself that I probably would never have known was there,” she says. “And then to open up this whole world for me. So I can say that hatred was turned to gratitude.”

(Source: The Guardian)

Michael Jackson: Chilling film forces America to confront singer's legacy

Jackson is accused of sexually abusing boys, prompting fresh soul-searching in what could be a national reckoning

In 1993, Oprah Winfrey visited Michael Jackson at his Neverland ranch for a television special – Jackson’s first interview in 14 years, watched by more than 90 million people worldwide.

This week, Winfrey hosted an hour-long show about the King of Pop with a very different tone, in front of a studio audience of sexual abuse survivors.

The show aired on US screens on Monday following the concluding episode of the two-part HBO documentary, Leaving Neverland, which has hurled America into a fresh bout of soul-searching over Jackson’s cultural legacy, his estate’s financial future and whether his music is too good to be muted. More broadly, it is also the latest test for the nation’s attitude towards stars accused of sex crimes.

“For me, this moment transcends Michael Jackson,” said Winfrey, who has said she was sexually abused as a child. “It is much bigger than any one person. This is a moment in time that allows us to see this societal corruption. It’s like a scourge on humanity and it’s happening right now.”

Commentators are again grappling with the question of whether it is acceptable to enjoy
art regardless of its creator’s conduct. Photograph: Michael Caulfield Archive/WireImage

Winfrey interviewed the film’s central figures: James Safechuck and Wade Robson, who accuse Jackson of sexually abusing them when they were both boys, and the documentary’s British director, Dan Reed.

“It takes days to recover from this documentary,” the film-maker Judd Apatow said on Twitter. “Five minutes in, you will think to yourself, ‘Oh my God, every word they are saying is true.’”

After years of defending Jackson, actor Corey Feldman, who was a friend of his as a boy, shifted his stance following the release of the documentaries.

“I don’t want to be perceived as I’m here to defend Michael Jackson, because I can no longer do that. I cannot in good [conscience] defend anyone who’s being accused of such horrendous things,” he said.

Leaving Neverland, which aired in the UK on Channel 4 on Wednesday and Thursday, focuses on interviews with Safechuck, Robson and their families. The men claim that Jackson groomed them as children, invited them to Neverland, contrived to separate them from their parents, initiated sexual contact, convinced them it was a normal loving relationship, and brainwashed them into secrecy.

 Five minutes in, you'll think to yourself, ‘Oh my God, every word they are saying is true'
Judd Apatow
Reed has suggested the film could prompt “America’s [Jimmy] Savile moment”. Savile, a longtime BBC DJ and presenter who died in 2011, was found to have serially preyed on children years after accusers were brushed aside, prompting a national reckoning in Britain.

The Jackson-Savile comparison comes with contrasts, not least the level of the subject’s fame. Leaving Neverland also lands less than 18 months after the New York Times published an article detailing allegations against the Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein which catalysed the #MeToo movement that has torn down dozens of powerful men in showbusiness, politics and the media who appeared to act with impunity.

Abuse victims Wade Robson and James Safechuck with the Leaving
Neverland director Dan Reed. Photograph: Taylor Jewell/Invision/AP

That one-time symbol of wholesome family values, Bill Cosby, was convicted last year of sexual assault, while, in the wake of January’s broadcast of a six-part television documentary, the singer R Kelly was charged in Chicago last month with 10 counts of sexual abuse, including against three minors, which he denies.

Among these figures, none have had more influence over American popular culture than Jackson, whose legacy is also worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

“Michael Jackson’s legacy is bigger than Michael Jackson, right?” said New York Times critic-at-large Wesley Morris on the Daily podcast. “We can’t cancel Michael Jackson because cancelling Michael Jackson means cancelling America in some way. Not just our love of [the] music, but our sense of who we are as a people.”

Jackson family members issued a statement calling Leaving Neverland a “public lynching” and a “tabloid character assassination” that revisits previously rejected claims. Jackson was cleared of child molestation charges by a California jury in 2005. The Jackson estate is now suing HBO for $100m for allegedly violating a non-disparagement clause related to a contract the network signed in 1992.

Meanwhile, a vast global army of fans have mounted defences on social media. Jackson supporters have flooded the internet with rebuttals to the documentary, questioning the credibility and motives of Robson and Safechuck.

Commentators are again grappling with the question of whether it is acceptable to enjoy art regardless of its creator’s conduct. Yet while radio stations in the UK, Australia and New Zealand dropped Jackson’s songs from their playlists this week, no major American network or streaming platforms have announced bans.

According to figures provided to the Guardian by the Nielsen analytics company, radio airplay in the US dipped by 20% on Tuesday and Wednesday compared with the same days a week earlier. But US sales and on-demand streams of Jackson’s music were not significantly affected.

A Chicago run of a new musical featuring Jackson’s songs, Don’t Stop ’Til You Get Enough, was cancelled last month with the producers citing scheduling problems, but a Broadway stint is still planned for next year.

The biggest of the Jackson-themed shows playing in Las Vegas is a Cirque du Soleil spectacle, one of several lucrative official ventures to surf a wave of public sympathy in the years after his death aged 50 in 2009.

With tickets that cost between $75 and $250 in a 1,085-capacity theatre, few seats remained available for either performance on Saturday. A Cirque du Soleil spokesperson declined to comment on sales or the future of the show.

A 1991 episode of The Simpsons featuring Jackson’s voice is being removed from streaming services and TV broadcasts, the show’s executive producer told the Wall Street Journal on Friday.

“This was a treasured episode,” James L Brooks said. “There are a lot of great memories we have wrapped up in that one, and this certainly doesn’t allow them to remain.”

He added: “I’m against book burning of any kind. But this is our book, and we’re allowed to take out a chapter.”

(Source: The Guardian)

Believe the victims of child sexual abuse? If only we did

It’s taken years for people to see Michael Jackson for what he was. With abuse, the world prefers to look the other way

Here are some things I don’t really want to think about but have had to over the years: Jimmy Savile’s penchant for tracksuits, as the bottoms can be pulled up and down so easily; vulnerable 13-year-old girls in Rochdale ignored by local police; seven-year-old boys sleeping in the bed of a pop star and being introduced to masturbation; or the day long ago when I was teaching film studies and a film I showed (Terence Davies’ Distant Voices, Still Lives) produced extreme distress for one of my mature students.

Something in that film, a shot of a sofa I think, had caused a rush of terrible memories. In those days there were groups for survivors of sexual abuse and I was able to find some kind of help for them. Never for one moment did I disbelieve the distress I saw in front of me. Nor did I find it strange that sometimes people did not clearly remember what happened to them as children and that they could not talk about it till many years later.

What I find shocking at the moment is that we all know about the sexual abuse of children but we still remain in such a deep state of denial about it. The NSPCC estimates that one in 20 children in this country has been sexually abused. The police say that if they were to prosecute every case there would be no time to do anything else. Everyone who works in mental health services, or with addiction, or with the homeless, will tell you how sexual abuse is a factor in the background of so many people they deal with. The detritus of abuse is all around us. We turn a blind eye to that which disturbs us in order to protect ourselves.

In the documentary Leaving Neverland, Wade Robson (left) and
James Safechuck talk sometimes blankly, sometimes shakily, about what
Michael Jackson did to them.’ Photograph: Joshua Bright/The Guardian

Yet as the documentary Leaving Neverland airs, as Wade Robson and James Safechuck talk sometimes blankly, sometimes shakily, about what Michael Jackson did to them, it is hard to say that our understanding of child sexual abuse has grown much over the years.

Sure, at particular moments we may be more attuned to it. Anyone who watched David Nicholls’ brilliant adaptation of the Patrick Melrose novels glimpsed the dissociative states that many who were abused as children enter into. Here the abusive father is unspeakably monstrous.

In Jackson’s case we saw this child-man, whose timbre of voice varied according to who he was talking to, taking his pick of young boys: taking them to his room, sleeping in the same bed with them because – as all the world knew – he just loved children. He told us that. All he ever wanted to do was buy them stuff and make them happy, this incredibly talented man who we believed had been robbed of his own childhood. We understood he had been abused himself (not sexually but in other ways). In allowing him to reclaim his own childhood, did we turn a blind eye to his robbing small boys of theirs?

If there is one thing we should have learned from all the recent child abuse scandals it is simply this: listen to the victims. Believe them. Yes I believed the men in this documentary, just as I believed Jordy Chandler when he accurately described the underside of Jackson’s penis. That case was settled out of court for millions of dollars. Chandler’s father later killed himself. Robson’s father would also kill himself. There are many victims here.

We know by now how grooming works, don’t we? How it makes victims feel special and loved and confused about keeping the secret. This was apparent in the testimonies of both Robson and Safechuck. When the line between love and sex and care becomes blurred for children, it is hard ever to trust or even know what these boundaries are as adults. This is why abuse wreaks such psychic chaos. Not only were these boys told they were special as they were assaulted, they were then dismissed when the next boy came along and became the favourite.

All of this is obviously being denied by the corporate machine that is the Jackson estate. He was a total angel, his true fans say, we are smearing a good man. Believing Jackson is innocent is now some sort of article of faith. It is certainly easier to submerge oneself in a vat of saccharine denial. Look at how long parts of the Catholic church did that. Look at how long it has taken them to accept what damaged adults have said was done to them.

Yet sexual abuse doesn’t usually involve superstars. It is sadly ordinary. Too, too ordinary.

Every time I talk about this subject – and I have done for years – I get emails and messages from both men and women saying that this has happened to them and they have never told a soul. I never know quite what to do beyond letting them know that they have been heard and that they have been believed.

I hope right now that this message is louder than the voices of those who “know” the “so-called victims” are lying and the denials of the Jackson estate. But I am sadly not sure.

The grooming continues to this day. And why wouldn’t it? It works, after all.

(Source: The Guardian)

Enough is enough: Michael Jackson's music is dead to me now

I accept that great art is often made by terrible people – but sometimes it is necessary to draw a line

Nothing should interfere with my personal listening pleasure. Nothing at all. Great art is often made by terrible people. These truths I have held to be self-evident. Certainly, as a woman, you have to get over yourself a lot of the time because the canon of literature, of cinema, of art, is the canon of lauded misogyny and in order to function critically, you have to inhabit it.

Hannah Gadsby’s wonderful comedy show Nanette includes a takedown of Picasso, but it doesn’t work for me. I like Picasso too much. I can’t not look at his paintings. Just as I can’t not wonder at the words of William Burroughs, who killed his wife (accidentally, we are meant to believe).

Hey, look at me and my wonderful ability to compartmentalise! Then I find myself in a minicab and Billie Jean comes on. Everyone still plays Michael Jackson and the songs he sung about being wronged, and my heart starts to beat a little too fast.

 ‘Jackson turned himself into a monster in front of us in Thriller,
yet he was also always the victim.’
Photograph: Allstar Collection//Sportsphoto Ltd

The idea of Jackson as an abuser is not new. In 1994, he made a financial settlement of $23m with the family of Jordan Chandler. Everyone knew he had young boys sleeping in his bed. This was not normal, we said – but we had decided it was not sex. Oh no. When every big case of predatory paedophilia breaks, we rush to say it was obvious all along, but somehow we looked away.

Jackson turned himself into a monster in front of us in Thriller, yet he was also always the victim. As more and more awful, awful details emerge of boys who claim he abused them from the age of seven, I don’t know what box to put his music in any more. It doesn’t matter. Sometimes we draw lines and it is way too late, but it has to be done. That is how cultural shifts happen. They happen when we say: no more. Enough.

How sad is it that I might not listen to Jackson any more, that this investment in my own past is so morally rotten? In the scheme of things, not so sad. There is so much magnificent music in the world; I won’t go without. He is properly dead to me now.

(Source: The Guardian)

The Michael Jackson accusers: ‘The abuse didn't feel strange because he was like a god’

Wade Robson and James Safechuck speak about their childhood experiences with the pop superstar – and Dan Reed explains why he felt he had to expose their allegations in his film Leaving Neverland

“Michael Jackson was one of the kindest, most loving people I knew. He helped me tremendously with my career and my creativity,” Wade Robson says. “He also sexually abused me for seven years.”

I am talking to Robson, 36, and James Safechuck, 41, the subjects of Dan Reed’s definitive documentary Leaving Neverland, in which they describe, in heartbreaking detail, how Jackson sexually abused them for years, from their childhood to teenage years. Even though Safechuck and I are both in Los Angeles, it was decided that instead of meeting in person, it would be better for me to speak to him on a multiway call with Robson, from his home in Maui. The more we talk, the more obvious it becomes how much comfort the two men find in talking together and listening to each other, in particular the slightly more fragile Safechuck.

‘I find it hard to be angry at other people’ ...
James Safechuck, left and Wade Robson. Photograph: Joshua Bright/The Guardian

It is impossible to pick out the most devastating moment from the four-hour documentary: Safechuck describing the mock wedding Jackson staged for them when he was about 11, including an exchange of vows and giving him a ring? (Safechuck’s hand shakes violently as he shows the ring to the camera.) Robson recalling how it felt to be forced to give oral sex to a grown man when he was seven years old? Hearing how Jackson literally bought off their parents with first-class plane tickets, fancy hotels and, in Safechuck’s case, a family home? Really, take your pick.

“I find it hard to be angry at other people. I’d almost be excited to be angry at anyone else because that would feel healthy. But I still feel like it was my fault,” says Safechuck.

Robson met Jackson when he was five, after winning a dance competition in Australia. His prize, to the sensitive, Thriller-obsessed little boy’s delight, was to meet Jackson himself, then on the Bad tour. Footage from the concert shows Jackson – surrounded by other children on stage, a rock’n’roll Pied Piper – singling out Robson to dance for the audience, which he does with astonishing precocity. In TV interviews from the time, Robson describes his excitement at meeting Jackson – he was so young his enunciation of the singer’s name was still babyish (“Mi-ko Ja-son”).

Two years later, Robson and his family went to California and his mother made contact with Jackson, who invited the Robsons to Neverland. Robson and his sister slept with Jackson in his bedroom while the adults slept in the guest house. In the documentary, Robson says, yes, it was strange that he and his sister were sharing a bedroom with a man they barely knew, “but it felt like I’d known him for years. His posters were in my living room, his music in my ears. I’d known him, I thought.” When his parents announced it was time to leave, Jackson convinced them to leave their son with him, on his own. They agreed, and the abuse started as soon as his parents left Neverland’s driveway. In a queasy echo of Jackson’s 1982 ballad Human Nature (“If they say why, why, tell them that it’s human nature / Why, why does he do me that way?”), Jackson assured the seven year old: “This is how to show love,” but said he should never tell anyone. This would continue for seven years.

 Michael Jackson with the Robsons in 1990.
Photograph: Wade Robson Archive/AMOS Pictures

“He made me feel complicit, that I wanted it at least as much, if not more than him. And the thing is, the abuse didn’t feel strange because it was being done by this man that was like a god to me. So much of it was validation for me. But what does that mean, that I liked it? Like, I’m a freak too,” Robson says, his voice cracking.

Safechuck met Jackson when he was 10 – a happy, outgoing boy who was picked to appear with the singer in a Pepsi commercial. Jackson invited him along on the Bad tour with him, and they were soon sharing a hotel room while his parents slept down the hall. “For him to want to be our friend, we’re like, oh my God, how lucky are we? He flies you first class, he has a limo waiting at the airport, amazing! It’s a life of the rich and famous,” Safechuck’s mother, Stephanie, recalls in the film. Meanwhile, Jackson was sexually abusing Safechuck and telling him that if anyone found out they would both go to jail.

Reed is an acclaimed director of documentaries, largely focusing on terrorism, but he decided to make Leaving Neverland because: “Michael Jackson felt like one of the big unresolved stories out there,” he says when we meet in London. “It felt like Jackson, the abuser, was something people knew, but didn’t really know.”

Yet the unavoidable question that recurs throughout the film is, why on earth didn’t we? Jackson was publicly accused twice of child sexual abuse – first in 1993 by Jordy Chandler, then again by child cancer survivor Gavin Arvizo in 2003. In neither case was Jackson convicted – he settled with the Chandlers and he was acquitted in the Arvizo case – but it’s not as if the clues weren’t there. As the film makes clear, Jackson was even more blatant about what he was doing than Jimmy Savile, rarely photographed without holding a little boy’s hand, openly admitting he slept with boys in his bed. While watching the movie I realised with a jolt that even my favourite Jackson video, Smooth Criminal, features little children as, in fact, do many of Jackson’s videos, and he used this as bait.

Robson was devastated when he found out that Jackson had broken his promise that he would appear with him in the video for Black or White, giving the part instead to Macaulay Culkin. “I realised every 12 months there was a new boy in [Jackson’s] life,” Robson’s mother, Joy, says. At Neverland, Reed points out, “nearly every room had a bedroom attached” and Jackson’s maid, Adrian McManus, said last month that there was Vaseline and children’s underwear “all over the house”. The man who so often sang about being the helpless victim of sexually predatory women (Billie Jean, Dirty Diana) was astonishingly flagrant in suggesting his own predatoriness.

“When I set out to make the film, Savile was quite recent, and the more I looked into it I thought, ‘This really could be America’s Savile moment,’” Reed says. And, as with Savile, the public is left wondering how on earth this was allowed to happen.

Dan Reed. Photograph: Joshua Bright/The Guardian

Leaving Neverland does a lot to answer that question, particularly through the interviews with Robson and Safechuck’s mothers. Both freely admit they were dazzled by Jackson’s celebrity and money. More specific to Jackson’s story is how he, effectively, groomed people with his bizarre public image: oh no, this man – who surrounds himself with children and built himself a children’s amusement park in the middle of nowhere – isn’t an abuser. He’s just a simple childlike weirdo! Jackson knew on some level that what he was doing was wrong – otherwise he wouldn’t have coached the boys to keep quiet about it. And yet he repeatedly sang about how unfair it was that he was so misunderstood and persecuted in songs such as Scream, Leave Me Alone and Why You Wanna Trip on Me. When Stephanie Safechuck initially expressed reservations about letting her son go into Jackson’s trailer on his own when they were shooting the Pepsi commercial, Jackson’s hairstylist reassured her: “It’s OK, he’s like a nine-year-old boy.”

When I ask if they are angry at their parents for leaving them so unprotected as children, Robson says: “I’ve definitely gone through multiple stages of anger at my parents and maybe it’s done now, but I really can’t say.” Safechuck says simply: “I’m working on it.”

Jackson abused Robson and Safechuck hundreds of times, and watching the film it is impossible to believe they were the only victims. Robson, for instance, went to sleepovers at Neverland where Jordy Chandler and Macaulay Culkin were also present. Safechuck was heartbroken when he found out Jackson chose to take Brett Barnes on the Dangerous tour instead of him. Barnes later said he shared Jackson’s bed for nine years, but both he and Culkin deny Jackson ever abused them.

“I definitely think there are more kids. But it’s such a traumatic experience some people may never deal with it,” says Safechuck. “I didn’t see any abuse in front of me, but I saw hugging, kissing and Jackson disappearing with other children [at Neverland], things that happened with me,” says Robson.

How big a part might shame play in other victims’ reluctance to acknowledge what happened to them? “I don’t want to take anything away from the pain of girls who are sexually abused, but I do think [sexual abuse of boys] is maybe harder for society to acknowledge. And maybe for the victims it’s harder to admit because there are all these ideas that you’re not masculine because of what happened to you,” says Safechuck.

“The stories many of us are taught – what it means to be a man, to be strong at all times, not crying – it definitely made it more difficult for me to question what happened between Michael and me,” agrees Robson.

Did Jackson ever tell them that he himself had been abused? “He never spoke of any sexual abuse, but he spoke of physical and emotional abuse from his father, and how terrified he was of his father, even as an adult,” says Robson.

For years, Robson and Safechuck denied they had been abused. While Jackson was alive, and allegedly at his urging, they both testified under oath that he had never touched them. As adults, they attempted to forge independent lives: getting married, getting jobs. Safechuck worked in tech, Robson became a choreographer to, among others, Britney Spears and ‘NSync. But cracks were starting to show – depression, anxiety. Robson even stopped dancing for a few years because he associated it with Jackson. The catalyst for both men finally telling the truth to their therapists and families was when they had children and understood how vulnerable they had been. When the film premiered at the Sundance festival, the two men talked and realised they had shared identical anxieties about their boys reaching the ages they were when the abuse started, and seeing how young they had been.

“But when my boy turned seven there was this actual incredible feeling of love and a relief, knowing he was so much safer than I ever was,” says Robson.

The Jackson family, his estate and the superfans (Reed calls them “the cultists”) have all reacted true to form to Leaving Neverland, vilifying Safechuck and, in particular, Robson. That Robson testified in Jackson’s defence has been used against him, even though other witnesses at the 2005 trial testified they had seen Jackson molest him. Even more ironically, that Robson sued Jackson for sex abuse in 2013 is seen as further evidence by the Jackson defenders that this is just about money. (One judge ruled in 2015 that Robson’s claim was too late; another in 2017 that the Jackson corporations were not liable for Jackson’s activities. Neither commented on the credibility of the allegations.)

James Safechuck’s photograph of Michael Jackson at Disneyland in 1988.
Photograph: James Safechuck Archive/AMOS Pictures

“For Wade, the court case was about getting his story out there and I think he also felt: ‘Here is an organisation, the Michael Jackson Estate, for which Jackson made a huge amount of money and all the people involved in this business looked the other way while I was being raped, and that’s not right,’” says Reed. “But the Jackson camp’s response to the film has come out of their 1993 playbook: attack the victim. And I don’t think that’s going to play well in 2019.” Judging from the largely positive reaction to the film so far, he’s right.

“I was trying to prepare for a negative backlash, so it’s been a surprise that so many people are supportive, but that in itself has been hard to take in,” says Safechuck. “There was a big crash post-Sundance, so I’ve been trying to find a healthy way to process it. I don’t want to go high and then have these depressive lows.”

Since the revelations from the film have started to leak into the press, a lot of the conversation has been what to do about Jackson’s music: should it be shunned, like Gary Glitter’s? Or is he just too huge to banish? For Robson and Safechuck, the issue is both more personal and bigger than that.

“I don’t care what people do in relation to Michael Jackson and his music,” says Robson. “What I’m interested in is continuing the conversation of who are we worshipping and why, and making people look at the whole story. Michael Jackson was incredibly talented, there’s no questioning that. But just because someone is talented doesn’t mean they’re not a predator.”

(Source: The Guardian)

Quincy Jones: 'The Beatles were the worst musicians in the world'

Record producer takes swipes at the Beatles, the ‘machiavellian’ Michael Jackson, U2 and more

Legendary record producer Quincy Jones has described the Beatles as “the worst musicians in the world” as he recalled meeting the band for the first time during an interview to promote a new Netflix documentary and US television special.

Michael Jackson and Quincy Jones at the 1984 Grammy awards. Photograph: William Nation/Sygma via Getty Images

In the new interview with New York Magazine, he discussed his first impressions of the Beatles in unsparing terms. “They were the worst musicians in the world,” he told interviewer David Marchese. “They were no-playing motherfuckers. Paul [McCartney] was the worst bass player I ever heard.”

Drummer Ringo Starr came in for particular opprobrium: “And Ringo? Don’t even talk about it.”

Jones recalled arranging Love Is a Many Splendoured Thing for Starr’s 1970 debut solo album Sentimental Journey.

“Ringo had taken three hours for a four-bar thing he was trying to fix on a song. He couldn’t get it. We said: ‘Mate, why don’t you get some lager and lime, some shepherd’s pie, and take an hour-and-a-half and relax a little bit.’”

The Beatles in 1964. From left: Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Ringo Starr and John Lennon. Photograph: CBS Photo Archive via Getty Images

In the interim, Jones called English jazz drummer Ronnie Verrell into the studio.

“Ronnie came in for 15 minutes and tore it up. Ringo comes back and says: ‘George [Martin], can you play it back for me one more time?’

“So George did, and Ringo says: ‘That didn’t sound so bad.’ And I said: ‘Yeah, motherfucker because it ain’t you.’ Great guy, though.”

Jones, 84, reserved praise for Eric Clapton’s Cream, the guitar skills of Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen and Tropicália artists Gilberto Gil and Caetano Veloso, but lamented U2’s latterday output. “I love Bono with all my heart, but there’s too much pressure on the band,” Jones said.

In the enjoyably unguarded Q&A, Jones chastised his most famous charge, the late Michael Jackson, for stealing “a lot of stuff” from other artists without paying them.

“He was as machiavellian as they come,” he said.

Quincy Jones in 2017

Jones also claimed to know the identity of JFK’s killer (Chicago mobster Sam Giancana: “We shouldn’t talk about this publicly”) and to have briefly dated Ivanka Trump 12 years ago: “She had the most beautiful legs I ever saw in my life. Wrong father, though!” Later in the interview, Jones called Trump senior “a fucking idiot”.

Jones has won 27 Grammy awards out of 79 total nominations. Jackson’s 1982 album Thriller won eight of those awards.

Jones balked at New York Magazine’s suggestion that any of his productions had ever underperformed. “What the fuck are you talking about?” he asked Marchese. “I’ve never had that problem. They were all big.”

(Source: The Guardian)

40 little known facts about Michael Jackson

“Let us dream of tomorrow where we can truly love from the soul, and know love as the ultimate truth at the heart of all creation.” – Michael Jackson

The King of Pop touched the hearts and souls of millions. Here are our favorite 40 Michael Jackson facts!

40. To my dear friend Sir Elton John…
In 1997, Jackson released an album titled “Blood on the Dance Floor: HIStory in the Mix.” He dedicated the album to his friend Sir Elton John, who had helped him through his addiction to prescribed painkillers. It went on to sell 6 million copies worldwide, making it the best-selling remix album of all time.

39. Leave me alone, please.
Jackson announced he was considering retiring from the music industry in January 2000 because he was tired of the non-stop publicity.

38. Heal the kids.
In 2001, Michael addressed the Oxford Union about child welfare as part of his “Heal the Kids” initiative. At times, Michael almost came to tears, especially when talking about his own childhood and his relationship with his father. Those who have studied Michael’s psychology often cite the speech as providing great insight into Michael’s views on children. The central theme of the address: children all around the world should be unconditionally loved by everyone.

37. A drive with Marlon.
Michael attended the memorial service for the late Marlon Brando in August 2004, along with Jack Nicholson and Sean Penn. Three years earlier, Michael Jackson, Elizabeth Taylor, and Marlon Brando had jumped in a car together after 9/11—the three of them, no entourage—and drove to Ohio to escape New York City.

36. Thank you, Mr. President.
Michael received a Presidential Humanitarian Award from President Ronald Reagan at the White House in May 1984. Regan wanted to recognize Jackson’s contribution to the government’s campaign against drunk driving. “Beat It” was featured in the television advertisements.

35. The king and the prince.
Michael’s hit song “Bad” from 1987 was supposed to be a duet with fellow 80’s superstar Prince, but Prince opted out. Prince said in an interview that he did not wish to sing the line “Your butt is mine.”

34. First love.
Tatum O’Neal was Jackson’s first girlfriend and, allegedly, his first real love. She shocked the world when she denied this in her book, saying that he only ever kissed her.

33. One thing I can tell you is you got to be free!
His favorite The Beatles’ song is “Come Together.” In fact, you can find his version of the song on “History – Past, Present and Future.” Michael Jackson and Paul McCartney first met and became friendly in the mid-1970s, when, according to Jackson, McCartney tried to sell him a song, “Girlfriend,” for Jackson’s upcoming solo album.

32. On top of the world.
On may 1st 2001, “Thriller” was voted at #1 by VH1 on their countdown of the Top 100 Greatest Videos Of All Time.

31. Even the king gets hate sometimes.
Disappointed his fans by singing “We Are the World” (accompanied by a children’s choir) at the World Music Awards at Earls Court, London in 2006. Fans had paid up to £500 a ticket to see him perform and expected him to perform “Thriller.” Jackson left the stage to audible boos from the audience.

30. Nip and tuck.
Michael has undergone extensive plastic surgery. Plastic surgeons debate the number and scope of Michael’s surgeries, but older Michael Jackson looked drastically different than 1976 Michael. The effectiveness of his cosmetic surgery has been hotly debated.

29. Good to be bad.
He was the highest earning singer of 1988-1989, earning $125 million from his worldwide “BAD” album tour.

28. I’m talking to the man in the mirror.
Jackson was seen by a record 500,000 people during his seven day stand at Wembley Stadium in July 1988. The concert ended with his second encore, during which he performed “Man in the Mirror.”

27. A sad day.
On the day of Jackson’s death, Los Angeles Fire Department (LAFD) paramedics received a 911 call at 12:21 pm. They arrived three minutes and seventeen seconds later, at which point Jackson was reportedly not breathing. The recording of the emergency call was released by the LAFD on June 27, 2009. Paramedics are reported to have wanted to pronounce him dead at the scene, but a doctor insisted he be taken to a hospital. CPR was performed on the way to the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, where they arrived at 1:14 pm and continued for an hour. He was pronounced dead at 2:26 pm. Following his death, 20% of his estate (more than $100 million) was donated to children’s charities, part of the more than $300 million Jackson donated to charity throughout his lifetime.

26. Thanks again, Mr. President.
After Michael’s death, U.S. President Barack Obama sent a letter of condolence to the Jackson family. Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said that President Obama viewed Jackson as a “spectacular performer and a music icon.”

25. Jackson in paint.
An Andy Warhol’s head-and-shoulders portrait of Jackson made the cover of Time magazine on March 19, 1984.

24. Swag after death.
The gold coffin seen at his memorial is a rare design called the Promethean. It cost $25,000 and is made of solid bronze, plated with 14-carat gold. The coffin was hand-polished to a mirror finish and lined with velvet. It’s identical to the coffin used to bury James Brown in 2006.

23. Super Jackson.
In 1991, Sony Pictures Entertainment announced a film project called “MidKnight” that would star Jackson as a meek young man who secretly changes into a heroic singing and dancing knight at the stroke of midnight. The film was part of Jackson’s $1 billion re-up with Sony Music. The project fell apart due to contractual issues as well as the 1993 child molestation allegations.

22. First on-screen kiss.
In 1992, Jackson received his very first screen kiss in the John Singleton-directed music video “Remember the Time.”

21. Mourning the loss.
After Michael’s sudden death, Madonna and Diana Ross said they could not stop crying. Jackson’s former wife, Lisa Marie Presley, said Michael had told her he was afraid he would end up like Elvis Presley, her father. Elizabeth Taylor, a long-time friend, said she, “can’t imagine life without him.” Liza Minnelli told CBS, “When the autopsy comes, all hell’s going to break loose, so thank God we’re ­celebrating him now.” Jamie Foxx, stated: “We want to celebrate this black man. He belongs to us and we shared him with everybody else.

20. This is It.
The film This is It is about Jackson’s 50 performances in the O2 Arena in London (never performed due to his death). It’s the highest grossing documentary and concert movie of all time.

19. Remember this?
He had an incredible memory. In fact, many people even claimed he had a photographic memory. He could remember names, stories, and information relating to encounters with people many years before.

18. Getting deep.
Wesley Snipes, who got to know him while making the ”Bad” music video, was surprised at Michael’s ability to hold long and detailed conversations about topics such as psychology, metaphysics and social issues.

17. Jackson and the Lost Boys.
It has been implied that much of his self-described Peter Pan persona as an eccentric and somewhat childlike man was created and imposed by his managers. In later years, friends described his desire to be Peter Pan as a major peace of who he was. In an interview, he was asked:

Q: You don’t want to grow up?
A: No, I am Peter Pan.

Q: No you’re not, your Michael Jackson.
A: I’m Peter Pan in my heart.

16. Impersonating himself.
In 2008 while at a Halloween party with his kids, people thought he was a Michael Jackson impersonator.

15. Thank you for your service.
Jackson greeted thousands of American troops in a US army base south of Tokyo in 2007. About 3,000 troops and their family members gathered in a fitness center at Camp Zama. Jackson, after shaking hands with and thanking the troops for their service, spoke to the crowd and said, “Those of you in here today are some of the most special people in the world. It is because of you in here today, and others who so valiantly have given their lives to protect us, that we enjoy our freedom.”

14. The longest video.
The music video for his song “Thriller” ran 13 minutes and 33 seconds, the longest music video ever at its time. This record was broken by Mike Skinner with the video for the song “When You Wasn’t Famous.”

13. Kind to those in need.
In June of 2003, the day after his neighbor and friend of 25 years Gregory Peck died, Jackson went to Peck’s house to help his widow plan the memorial service. Peck had once publicly praised the singer as a model parent.

12. The spirit of childhood.
Some of his favorite pastimes were water balloon fights and climbing trees. He wrote several songs sitting in his favorite tree at Neverland, which he called Giving Tree, because it was so inspiring.

11. All hail the King of Pop.
Michael was presented with an “Artist of the decade” award by Elizabeth Taylor in 1989, proclaiming him “the true king of pop, rock and soul.”

10. Goodbye to Neverland.
In March of 2006, California state authorities ordered Jackson to close the Neverland Ranch and fined him more than $100,000 for failing to pay the staff there or maintain proper insurance.

9. Change and controversy.
Jackson hired Martin Scorsese to direct the “Bad” music video. When the video aired on television, it sparked controversy because Jackson’s appearance had changed dramatically. Jackson’s skin color had been a medium-brown for the duration of his youth, but his skin had gradually become paler since 1982. This was now so noticeable in the video that the entire press took out widespread coverage and claimed that Jackson had bleached his own skin. In 1993, Jackson claimed that his changing skin color was due to a skin disorder.

8. Jackson on surgery.
Despite a number of surgeons that claimed that Jackson has undergone multiple facial surgeries, Jackson wrote in his 1988 autobiography “Moon Walk” that he only had two rhinoplastic surgeries. Michael attributed puberty and diet to the noticeable change in the structure of his face.

7. The Jackson Estate.
Katherine Jackson’s 50% share of the Jackson Estate is to be held in a lifetime trust for her benefit. Upon Katherine Jackson’s death, the balance of her trust is to be divided equally among Prince, Paris and Blanket.

6. Finding Neverland.
The name of his 2700-acre ranch near Santa Ynez, California, is Neverland Valley Ranch. It contains Jackson’s house, an amusement park co-designed by Macaulay Culkin, a private theater, a dance stage, and exotic animals.

5. Healing the world.
Through his “Heal the World” Foundation, Jackson spearheaded airlifts of food and medical supplies to war-torn Sarajevo, instituted mentoring, immunization and drug-abuse education programs and paid for a Hungarian child’s liver transplant.

4. The Beatles catalogue.
Despite rumors, Michael’s estate does not own the right to the entire Beatles catalogue. For example, the family of the late George Harrison own songs he wrote, including “Something,” and Sony music owns 50% of the catalogue after Jackson sold it to them because he needed the money.

3. A terrible mistake.
Jackson shocked his fans when he dangled his third child, infant Prince Michael II, over a balcony on the fourth floor of a Berlin hotel for all hovering fans to see. He later stated that he made “a terrible mistake.”

2. Staying on top.
His greatest hits compilation “Michael Jackson: Number Ones” sold 6 million copies worldwide following its release in November 2003, peaking at Number 1 in most countries.

1. Until death do us part.
Soon after Jackson’s death, a man who accused him of child abuse was found dead in his own New Jersey apartment. That man was Evan Chandler. He had commit suicide.

In the summer of 1993, Evan Chandler accused Michael Jackson of sexually abusing his 13-year-old son, Jordan. Evan confronted his ex-wife June, who had custody of Jordan, with suspicions that their son had been in an inappropriate relationship with Jackson, but June dismissed his worries. Eventually, Michael made an out-of-court settlement over the matter for an estimated $15 million.

Michael Jackson touched the hearts and souls of millions of people worldwide. We’ll always miss our King of Pop. People will always celebrate his incredible contribution to the world!

(Source: Factinate)