2004-12-18 / Vancouver Sun
Interview With Stuart Backerman
When news broke that Michael Jackson's Neverland Ranch was raided and the singer was facing child-molestation charges last year, the media world hyperventilated with the need for information. And as Jackson's official worldwide spokesman, it was Vancouver man-of-many-hats Stuart Backerman who was in charge of dispensing it.
As liaison between Jackson and the world, Backerman for a while held one of the weirdest, most high-profile jobs on the planet. And even now, seated in a restaurant in downtown Vancouver, he shakes his head and marvels in disbelief at his proximity to the chaos that is Jackson's life.
"Listen, I didn't think that he was 100-per-cent totally without problems," Backerman says. "But part of the job I was brought in to do, which was maybe a challenge -- and maybe a risk, though not a big risk at that point -- was to do something exciting. To reanimate Michael Jackson's career, that if successful, I could say, 'Wow. I could name my price and do whatever I wanted in life.' "
Backerman, a former theatre producer, had been brought in to repackage Jackson into a multi-media artist with interests in animation and theatre.
But Backerman had signed on immediately prior to the explosive airing of the sensational Martin Bashir documentary, Living With Michael Jackson.
In the documentary, Bashir clearly condemns Jackson's lifestyle, and Jackson doesn't help his own case as he defends the sharing of his bedroom with overnight child guests. The worldwide response was huge. Backerman was instrumental in setting up the rebuttal program, The Michael Jackson Interview: The Footage You Were Never Meant to See, in which a duplicitous sounding Bashir is heard lavishing praise on Jackson while being filmed by Jackson's personal cameraman.
But within months, the singer's Neverland Ranch was being publicly searched, he stood accused of his second alleged child molestation, and his career was taking another, major, if not entirely fatal, strike.
And Backerman was the official face in charge of damage control, and he's no stranger to adapting. Backerman's own career touches on characters as diverse as gymnast-actress Cathy Rigby and former Vancouver mayor and B.C. premier Mike Harcourt. But most prominently, it's his association with Jackson that has given him a measure of celebrity, and landed him an ongoing correspondent job with Entertainment Tonight.
In the 16 months he represented Jackson, Backerman's name became familiar to worldwide media. America's biggest talking heads, including Larry King, Dr. Phil and Diane Sawyer, interviewed him at length. He flew between his Kerrisdale home and either the homes of the Jackson team or Jackson headquarters at Neverland Ranch in the hills above Santa Barbara, firing off press releases to the media and Jackson's international fan clubs.
Before the charges and the chaos, he recalls waking up early in his guest bungalow at the ranch, hearing the piped-in Fantasia music, and taking a walk around the park-like grounds while Jackson slept inside.
"I felt like I had died and gone to heaven," he says.
He brought his family to the 2,700 acre ranch, and he befriended or at least came to know Jackson's inside cabal of friends and associates. He got to know the elusive Jackson, and he came away with a few opinions on the 46-year-old artist, whose album sales are estimated at more than 300 million worldwide, who has won 18 Grammys, and whose Thriller video is widely considered to be the greatest video of all time.
Backerman signed the standard confidentiality agreement that all visiting guests to Neverland sign, but he says he never signed an employment confidentiality agreement. He paints a picture of an intensely isolated, lonely man who feels powerful and worshipped by his fans, but who hates himself. Jackson is vulnerable and susceptible to anyone who says all the right things.
"Michael doesn't have great judgment when it comes to who he should associate with," he says. "He's very childlike and immature, he doesn't do his homework, and he basically listens to the last person who says something.
"There's a part of me that still has a sensitivity and a liking for Michael Jackson. . . but his sense of things is sometimes off. You know, you're walking on eggshells sometimes, with regards to how to put things," says Backerman. "Because Michael likes good news. 'Bring me good news!' is often the catch phrase for Michael when he gets on the phone with management people. He doesn't want to hear bad stuff.
"My sense is he doesn't know exactly what's going on, and why he has got himself into a lot of problems. Because he keeps himself extremely isolated and thus he's not attuned and astute to what's going out there as much as he should be."
Backerman says Jackson agreed to the Bashir interview, for example, on the advice of psychic and spoon-bender Uri Geller.
"We wanted as much to be his friend, and to help give him a wake-up call in a way," says Backerman. "He needs people who do love him and care for him, not out to get his money like [certain members of] his family."
Backerman says this is his first and only print interview, and it's no coincidence that he's also currently shopping for a publisher for a tell-all Michael Jackson book. The book is co-written with Jackson's former advisor and friend, and one-time gay porn producer, Marc Schaffel. Clearly, Jackson's friends are turning on him, but, says Backerman, the singer has never been big on reciprocating loyalty.
With Jackson's trial set to begin Jan. 31, the book is already a hot property with publishers. Backerman promises that it will contain bombshells, mostly dropped by Schaffel, who spent a lot of time at Neverland, and who's recently filed a lawsuit against the singer claiming damages. Not surprisingly, the authors are currently fielding offers.
"It will be a fully 100-per-cent verifiable inside story, and the only book about Michael Jackson, and who he is, and about the case, and not just the evidence, but much more than that," promises Backerman.
So who is Stuart Backerman, anyway?
Backerman is New York born and raised, but at 20, he came here to do his masters degree at UBC, and he stuck around. He is a former urban planner and one-time director of Vancouver City's arts and cultural affairs for then-mayor Mike Harcourt, and a former advisor for Harcourt during his years as premier. He has produced theatre and performed on stage. In fact, it was his involvement in the late '80s with Peter Pan: The Musical, starring Cathy Rigby, that led to him receiving a phone call from Jackson one Friday night at his home in Kerrisdale. A mutual friend, also based in Vancouver, introduced them.
"The serendipity is that he heard about me -- and within a few months, I was working with Michael Jackson."
Wanting to branch out, and long fascinated with the character of Peter Pan (Neverland is a Peter Pan reference), Jackson was interested in playing the lead role. Backerman prepared a video tape of himself by way of an introduction. But the plans were kiboshed when Jackson dangled his baby son Prince Michael II over a hotel railing in Germany, generating backlash, and making his turn as Peter Pan unlikely.
But Jackson liked what he saw in Backerman, which was a non-Hollywood type of representative who could devote his time exclusively to the re-branding of Jackson's image. With the disappointing sales of his Invincible album, Jackson felt that he was in a professional rut. He'd recently dismissed his management team and was looking to assemble a new team of advisors, says Backerman.
"He really wanted the world to know that he had a head on his shoulders. He was very computer and technologically literate, he really had an interest in film, he wanted to do animation, he wanted to do some stage work -- he really wanted to outgrow little Michael Jackson just recording.
"So he wanted to have a new team, he wanted to have a new vision, different people."
Although this fast-talking show biz style character is incongruous with the laidback West Coast, Backerman, who is 52, is a big fan of this province, and he's interested in drumming up public relations work as a sort of goodwill ambassador who'll pave the way for the Olympics. But it's his odd, eccentric past that makes Backerman a mover and shaker who almost physically vibrates with the energy of someone who gets off on making things happen.
Backerman's cell phone trills constantly with inquiries from American media wanting a quote on the latest Jackson item, such as the investigators' recent request for his DNA.
While visiting in the Vancouver Sun newsroom, Backerman takes such a call, speaking in the clipped, direct dialect of an impatient urban New Yorker. He vaguely resembles a younger Paul Simon, he is sharp, articulate, and capable of being as warm and personable as he is hard nosed. Of the team of advisors who took over following his departure, Backerman says: "They have his largesse and his money as a priority interest. From a public relations and communications and legal standpoint, they have killed Michael.
"I am no great shakes, but I had a feeling for the guy. . . . I wasn't making a huge salary, either. I was making like normal people make, like $100,000 plus. I was happy because I felt I was on the upside of the future."
But by December of last year, Backerman had abruptly resigned from his post as Jackson's spokesman. He quit in reaction to Jackson's involvement with the controversial religious black rights group Nation of Islam and its follower, Louis Farrakhan. The turning point, says Backerman, was when Farrakhan paid Jackson a visit in Las Vegas. Following that visit Backerman claims that he and the other members of the team that were advising Jackson were immediately shut out.
Backerman claims he was present during a telephone conversation when a member of the Nation of Islam said, "We have to get these Jews out of here." According to Backerman, even Debbie Rowe, the mother of Jackson's children, who is Jewish, backed away when the Nation of Islam got involved.
"As soon as the Nation of Islam came in, that was the end for Debbie," says Backerman, adding: "Michael is not in charge of his own life."
Another team member, a friend who'd visit with Jackson daily, saw him the day after the Farrakhan visit and found an agitated Jackson convinced that his room was bugged. According to Backerman's account, Jackson was shouting about the "white devils" bugging his room.
But the last straw for Backerman was the You Are Not Alone party held at Jackson's ranch, where 600 friends and family gathered to welcome Jackson home days after he was charged with seven felony counts of child molestation and two counts of giving an intoxicating agent (reportedly wine) to a child. It was a homecoming for Jackson, who'd been hiding out in places like Las Vegas since being arrested on Nov. 20 and posting $3 million U.S. bail.
Backerman had adamantly opposed such a light-hearted gathering following such serious charges, but he saw evidence that members of the Nation of Islam, who acted as security guards at the party, had different plans.
On the day of the party, Backerman held a press conference on the ranch, attempting to downplay the festive atmosphere. A couple of days later, he was informed by Jackson's then-lawyer, Mark Geragos, to stop talking to media.
"It became abundantly clear to me that there was a tremendous shift in who was running the show.
"It was also clear to me that Mark Geragos had decided to throw in his lot with the Nation Of Islam."
This summer Backerman got a call from a member of the Jackson family, telling him that family members such as Tito had attempted an intervention between Jackson and the Nation of Islam that had almost come to fisticuffs. Jackson has since allegedly extricated himself from the group.
And Backerman says he still hears from Jackson family members, even though he feels too much has happened for him to go back to working at Neverland.
When Backerman is asked if anything about Jackson ever disturbed him, it's one of the rare instances when he's at a slight loss for words.
"Yes, but there were things I loved about him too, his gentleness and sensitivity and I think I'm a reasonably perceptive person, and I saw inside that his intent is such that he wants to do good things.
"On the other hand, there were things that disturbed me about Michael in the sense that he is very temperamental. He has a side to him from my vantage point that. . ." Backerman pauses to choose a word. ". . .was a little bit soulless," he continues.
"There were times in Vegas and other instances where he kind of looked right through me, almost like he didn't know who I was. And sometimes I'd pick up that there was a real coldness there, and then, other times, a warmth.
"So there was a real moodiness that kind of disturbed me. . . I was concerned that the most negative characterizations of Michael Jackson could be true.
"But I blew that off, because . . . I was working for him and I'm loyal, and I didn't let it get into my head.
"I saw it, I understood there was a possibility, I even felt it in instances. But I blew it off to do the job that I was paid to do like a loyal spokesperson.
"I had no proof that Michael Jackson had any molestation or sexual relations with any child, so as far as I'm concerned he deserves his day in court. And I sincerely hope the charges are untrue."
As to the public's negative perception of him, Jackson is mostly immune. Jackson doesn't have a clue that the world is mocking him, says Backerman.
Jackson told a mutual friend that "he could push a button and the whole African American community would come to his aid, and they would overturn police stations and riot on his behalf."
"He's too isolated to know what's going on in terms of public or media perception."
And Jackson doesn't have anyone around him who will deliver the truth to him straight.
"He's very lonely. He has no real love in his life."
So, as Backerman enters the world of book publishing and continues his career as a Michael Jackson authority, what will come of the lonely, self-loathing Jackson?
"He can reinvent himself in a different way," considers Backerman. "But only if he is exonerated -- and more importantly, if he takes responsibility and loves himself again."
Source: http://www.canada.com/vancouver/vancouvers...ec6069e1&page=1
Interview With Stuart Backerman
When news broke that Michael Jackson's Neverland Ranch was raided and the singer was facing child-molestation charges last year, the media world hyperventilated with the need for information. And as Jackson's official worldwide spokesman, it was Vancouver man-of-many-hats Stuart Backerman who was in charge of dispensing it.
As liaison between Jackson and the world, Backerman for a while held one of the weirdest, most high-profile jobs on the planet. And even now, seated in a restaurant in downtown Vancouver, he shakes his head and marvels in disbelief at his proximity to the chaos that is Jackson's life.
"Listen, I didn't think that he was 100-per-cent totally without problems," Backerman says. "But part of the job I was brought in to do, which was maybe a challenge -- and maybe a risk, though not a big risk at that point -- was to do something exciting. To reanimate Michael Jackson's career, that if successful, I could say, 'Wow. I could name my price and do whatever I wanted in life.' "
Backerman, a former theatre producer, had been brought in to repackage Jackson into a multi-media artist with interests in animation and theatre.
But Backerman had signed on immediately prior to the explosive airing of the sensational Martin Bashir documentary, Living With Michael Jackson.
In the documentary, Bashir clearly condemns Jackson's lifestyle, and Jackson doesn't help his own case as he defends the sharing of his bedroom with overnight child guests. The worldwide response was huge. Backerman was instrumental in setting up the rebuttal program, The Michael Jackson Interview: The Footage You Were Never Meant to See, in which a duplicitous sounding Bashir is heard lavishing praise on Jackson while being filmed by Jackson's personal cameraman.
But within months, the singer's Neverland Ranch was being publicly searched, he stood accused of his second alleged child molestation, and his career was taking another, major, if not entirely fatal, strike.
And Backerman was the official face in charge of damage control, and he's no stranger to adapting. Backerman's own career touches on characters as diverse as gymnast-actress Cathy Rigby and former Vancouver mayor and B.C. premier Mike Harcourt. But most prominently, it's his association with Jackson that has given him a measure of celebrity, and landed him an ongoing correspondent job with Entertainment Tonight.
In the 16 months he represented Jackson, Backerman's name became familiar to worldwide media. America's biggest talking heads, including Larry King, Dr. Phil and Diane Sawyer, interviewed him at length. He flew between his Kerrisdale home and either the homes of the Jackson team or Jackson headquarters at Neverland Ranch in the hills above Santa Barbara, firing off press releases to the media and Jackson's international fan clubs.
Before the charges and the chaos, he recalls waking up early in his guest bungalow at the ranch, hearing the piped-in Fantasia music, and taking a walk around the park-like grounds while Jackson slept inside.
"I felt like I had died and gone to heaven," he says.
He brought his family to the 2,700 acre ranch, and he befriended or at least came to know Jackson's inside cabal of friends and associates. He got to know the elusive Jackson, and he came away with a few opinions on the 46-year-old artist, whose album sales are estimated at more than 300 million worldwide, who has won 18 Grammys, and whose Thriller video is widely considered to be the greatest video of all time.
Backerman signed the standard confidentiality agreement that all visiting guests to Neverland sign, but he says he never signed an employment confidentiality agreement. He paints a picture of an intensely isolated, lonely man who feels powerful and worshipped by his fans, but who hates himself. Jackson is vulnerable and susceptible to anyone who says all the right things.
"Michael doesn't have great judgment when it comes to who he should associate with," he says. "He's very childlike and immature, he doesn't do his homework, and he basically listens to the last person who says something.
"There's a part of me that still has a sensitivity and a liking for Michael Jackson. . . but his sense of things is sometimes off. You know, you're walking on eggshells sometimes, with regards to how to put things," says Backerman. "Because Michael likes good news. 'Bring me good news!' is often the catch phrase for Michael when he gets on the phone with management people. He doesn't want to hear bad stuff.
"My sense is he doesn't know exactly what's going on, and why he has got himself into a lot of problems. Because he keeps himself extremely isolated and thus he's not attuned and astute to what's going out there as much as he should be."
Backerman says Jackson agreed to the Bashir interview, for example, on the advice of psychic and spoon-bender Uri Geller.
"We wanted as much to be his friend, and to help give him a wake-up call in a way," says Backerman. "He needs people who do love him and care for him, not out to get his money like [certain members of] his family."
Backerman says this is his first and only print interview, and it's no coincidence that he's also currently shopping for a publisher for a tell-all Michael Jackson book. The book is co-written with Jackson's former advisor and friend, and one-time gay porn producer, Marc Schaffel. Clearly, Jackson's friends are turning on him, but, says Backerman, the singer has never been big on reciprocating loyalty.
With Jackson's trial set to begin Jan. 31, the book is already a hot property with publishers. Backerman promises that it will contain bombshells, mostly dropped by Schaffel, who spent a lot of time at Neverland, and who's recently filed a lawsuit against the singer claiming damages. Not surprisingly, the authors are currently fielding offers.
"It will be a fully 100-per-cent verifiable inside story, and the only book about Michael Jackson, and who he is, and about the case, and not just the evidence, but much more than that," promises Backerman.
So who is Stuart Backerman, anyway?
Backerman is New York born and raised, but at 20, he came here to do his masters degree at UBC, and he stuck around. He is a former urban planner and one-time director of Vancouver City's arts and cultural affairs for then-mayor Mike Harcourt, and a former advisor for Harcourt during his years as premier. He has produced theatre and performed on stage. In fact, it was his involvement in the late '80s with Peter Pan: The Musical, starring Cathy Rigby, that led to him receiving a phone call from Jackson one Friday night at his home in Kerrisdale. A mutual friend, also based in Vancouver, introduced them.
"The serendipity is that he heard about me -- and within a few months, I was working with Michael Jackson."
Wanting to branch out, and long fascinated with the character of Peter Pan (Neverland is a Peter Pan reference), Jackson was interested in playing the lead role. Backerman prepared a video tape of himself by way of an introduction. But the plans were kiboshed when Jackson dangled his baby son Prince Michael II over a hotel railing in Germany, generating backlash, and making his turn as Peter Pan unlikely.
But Jackson liked what he saw in Backerman, which was a non-Hollywood type of representative who could devote his time exclusively to the re-branding of Jackson's image. With the disappointing sales of his Invincible album, Jackson felt that he was in a professional rut. He'd recently dismissed his management team and was looking to assemble a new team of advisors, says Backerman.
"He really wanted the world to know that he had a head on his shoulders. He was very computer and technologically literate, he really had an interest in film, he wanted to do animation, he wanted to do some stage work -- he really wanted to outgrow little Michael Jackson just recording.
"So he wanted to have a new team, he wanted to have a new vision, different people."
Although this fast-talking show biz style character is incongruous with the laidback West Coast, Backerman, who is 52, is a big fan of this province, and he's interested in drumming up public relations work as a sort of goodwill ambassador who'll pave the way for the Olympics. But it's his odd, eccentric past that makes Backerman a mover and shaker who almost physically vibrates with the energy of someone who gets off on making things happen.
Backerman's cell phone trills constantly with inquiries from American media wanting a quote on the latest Jackson item, such as the investigators' recent request for his DNA.
While visiting in the Vancouver Sun newsroom, Backerman takes such a call, speaking in the clipped, direct dialect of an impatient urban New Yorker. He vaguely resembles a younger Paul Simon, he is sharp, articulate, and capable of being as warm and personable as he is hard nosed. Of the team of advisors who took over following his departure, Backerman says: "They have his largesse and his money as a priority interest. From a public relations and communications and legal standpoint, they have killed Michael.
"I am no great shakes, but I had a feeling for the guy. . . . I wasn't making a huge salary, either. I was making like normal people make, like $100,000 plus. I was happy because I felt I was on the upside of the future."
But by December of last year, Backerman had abruptly resigned from his post as Jackson's spokesman. He quit in reaction to Jackson's involvement with the controversial religious black rights group Nation of Islam and its follower, Louis Farrakhan. The turning point, says Backerman, was when Farrakhan paid Jackson a visit in Las Vegas. Following that visit Backerman claims that he and the other members of the team that were advising Jackson were immediately shut out.
Backerman claims he was present during a telephone conversation when a member of the Nation of Islam said, "We have to get these Jews out of here." According to Backerman, even Debbie Rowe, the mother of Jackson's children, who is Jewish, backed away when the Nation of Islam got involved.
"As soon as the Nation of Islam came in, that was the end for Debbie," says Backerman, adding: "Michael is not in charge of his own life."
Another team member, a friend who'd visit with Jackson daily, saw him the day after the Farrakhan visit and found an agitated Jackson convinced that his room was bugged. According to Backerman's account, Jackson was shouting about the "white devils" bugging his room.
But the last straw for Backerman was the You Are Not Alone party held at Jackson's ranch, where 600 friends and family gathered to welcome Jackson home days after he was charged with seven felony counts of child molestation and two counts of giving an intoxicating agent (reportedly wine) to a child. It was a homecoming for Jackson, who'd been hiding out in places like Las Vegas since being arrested on Nov. 20 and posting $3 million U.S. bail.
Backerman had adamantly opposed such a light-hearted gathering following such serious charges, but he saw evidence that members of the Nation of Islam, who acted as security guards at the party, had different plans.
On the day of the party, Backerman held a press conference on the ranch, attempting to downplay the festive atmosphere. A couple of days later, he was informed by Jackson's then-lawyer, Mark Geragos, to stop talking to media.
"It became abundantly clear to me that there was a tremendous shift in who was running the show.
"It was also clear to me that Mark Geragos had decided to throw in his lot with the Nation Of Islam."
This summer Backerman got a call from a member of the Jackson family, telling him that family members such as Tito had attempted an intervention between Jackson and the Nation of Islam that had almost come to fisticuffs. Jackson has since allegedly extricated himself from the group.
And Backerman says he still hears from Jackson family members, even though he feels too much has happened for him to go back to working at Neverland.
When Backerman is asked if anything about Jackson ever disturbed him, it's one of the rare instances when he's at a slight loss for words.
"Yes, but there were things I loved about him too, his gentleness and sensitivity and I think I'm a reasonably perceptive person, and I saw inside that his intent is such that he wants to do good things.
"On the other hand, there were things that disturbed me about Michael in the sense that he is very temperamental. He has a side to him from my vantage point that. . ." Backerman pauses to choose a word. ". . .was a little bit soulless," he continues.
"There were times in Vegas and other instances where he kind of looked right through me, almost like he didn't know who I was. And sometimes I'd pick up that there was a real coldness there, and then, other times, a warmth.
"So there was a real moodiness that kind of disturbed me. . . I was concerned that the most negative characterizations of Michael Jackson could be true.
"But I blew that off, because . . . I was working for him and I'm loyal, and I didn't let it get into my head.
"I saw it, I understood there was a possibility, I even felt it in instances. But I blew it off to do the job that I was paid to do like a loyal spokesperson.
"I had no proof that Michael Jackson had any molestation or sexual relations with any child, so as far as I'm concerned he deserves his day in court. And I sincerely hope the charges are untrue."
As to the public's negative perception of him, Jackson is mostly immune. Jackson doesn't have a clue that the world is mocking him, says Backerman.
Jackson told a mutual friend that "he could push a button and the whole African American community would come to his aid, and they would overturn police stations and riot on his behalf."
"He's too isolated to know what's going on in terms of public or media perception."
And Jackson doesn't have anyone around him who will deliver the truth to him straight.
"He's very lonely. He has no real love in his life."
So, as Backerman enters the world of book publishing and continues his career as a Michael Jackson authority, what will come of the lonely, self-loathing Jackson?
"He can reinvent himself in a different way," considers Backerman. "But only if he is exonerated -- and more importantly, if he takes responsibility and loves himself again."
Source: http://www.canada.com/vancouver/vancouvers...ec6069e1&page=1