"He Hasn't Gone Crazy over Success"

Inside his world: swans, a soda fountain and a very private wonderland

Michael Jackson stays in his fantasy kingdom, away from public and press alike. His parents also avoid the press, but TIME Correspondent Denise Worrell was able to talk at length with them and be taken through the family's Encino home. Joseph and Katherine Jackson offered a unique look into their son's childhood, his talent and his inner world.

Until the last minute, there was no assurance I would see Joseph Jackson, Michael's father. I doubted I would. The meeting place had already been changed from his home in Encino, a wealthy Los Angeles suburb, to his office, on the seventh floor of the Motown Building in Hollywood. At 1:30 p.m. my contact put in a call to the elder Jackson's office to remind him we were on our way. He wasn't there. We waited and waited. Finally Jackson's office returned the call. We got there at around 4 o'clock.

Jackson stands up when we enter the room. He is wearing black pants, a black short-sleeved shirt, a maroon tie decorated with the official Olympic seal. He is not quite 6 ft. tall, with thin legs and a slight paunch. On one wrist is a gold watch, on the other a gold chain bracelet with colored stones. He wears a gold-and-diamond ring on the fourth finger of his left hand. His hair falls over his ears, the thin corkscrew curls shiny. His eyes are green, his mustache a pencil line over his lip. His nose looks as if it might have been broken once. There is a black mole the size of a nickel on his right cheek.

The office is unimpressive: regulation furniture, except for a rectangular brown marble desk that sits like a sarcophagus on a chrome stand. There is a glass-and-metal etagere with a stereo and records. An ink sketch of a lion's face with blue eyes hangs on the wall, and there is a small bronze lion on the desk. Jackson tells me he is a Leo. A picture of Michael onstage in a silvery costume hangs above a small table along with two ivory elephant tusks carved into totems. Jackson is nervous, wary. He talks very gently. I get the sense that he is used to trying to protect himself. He seems to think that people are out to get him, and they probably are. He is not sophisticated, but he is canny. Instinct is definitely the light in his eyes.

At first the conversation is strained. He warms up after about 20 minutes, talking about his boys and how he trained them, and especially about Michael: ".I remember when Michael was a little kid. We used to do personal appearances on Friday and Saturday nights. I'd take the children out all over the city and into other cities. Michael would get his allowance every week from the tours. I gave him $20, and he would buy a lot of candy. He would call all his friends in the neighborhood and Michael would give them candy, and he would enjoy them eating candy. That was the main thing he liked to do, and he loved to sing and dance. Michael's got the gift all right. It's in the record sales and it's in his voice. When he was only about five years old he sang songs like Tobacco Road and Cloud Nine by the Temptations, some of the other songs from Motown. We had a record player and we had our records. We had to learn those types of songs to be able to go out on Saturday night and sing to people.

"When he was younger he liked animals, and he still does. At home now we have a llama, two fawns, though they're big ones now, and we have a ram and a boa constrictor. Michael has three parrots, two pairs of swans, one's a black pair, one's white. Sometimes those swans get to fighting out there, plopping around in the water out there, and it wakes you up. He has some peacocks. I like animals, but I can be tired of them after a while.

"Michael never gets tired of an animal. He is like a child. In other words, he is still growing up. He still looks for advice from Katherine and me, and we give it to him. He is very shy. I say that he's shy around a few people, but onstage in front of thousands and thousands of people, he really comes across. If he was here with you and me, he would be shy. He seems to be doing pretty well; he hasn't gone crazy over all his success. It's very hard. He's got a lot of people trying to get to him and bother him and he has to smile when he wants to cry. It can be rough sometimes. But that's show biz. You either have to deal with it or get out of it.

"I guess we were able to protect him when he was little by reading the Bible and all that. Michael is religious, more so than his brothers. He is a devoted Jehovah's Witness. They were all brought up studying the Bible. My boys are very good. They're not into drugs. I'm not just saying it. Other people can tell you that too. There's nothing wrong with having a little drink once in a while, but they don't even do that. They don't smoke. They're in good health. Michael is thin as a razor. He goes into that studio sometimes and he dances two hours without even stopping, and that tells me that he's in great shape. Michael always could dance, and he was good at choreography, makes his own steps up. Most of the choreography you see the Jacksons do, they have some input, but Michael does a lot of it.

"Michael is a vegetarian. I mean really a vegetarian. He's the type of vegetarian that hardly eats anything. No fish. No meat. Nuts and grapes and things of that sort and dishes that we have a cook come in to fix. For fun Michael sometimes plays with the llama he has here and he invites all the relatives, the kids. He has a popcorn machine--you've seen those oldtime popcorn wagons on wheels you can walk up to and pop corn. That's what he does. He pops the corn for the kids. He has an ice-cream machine that makes this frozen custard and he gives all the kids custard. He likes to dress casual all the time. When you see Michael dress, it's a statement for just that purpose.

"When I found out that my kids were interested in becoming entertainers, I really went to work with them. I rehearsed them about three years before I turned them loose. That's practically every day for at least two or three hours. When the other kids would be out on the street playing games, my boys were in the house working -- trying to learn how to be something in life. They got a little upset about the whole thing in the beginning because the other kids were out there having a good time. I noticed though that they were getting better and better. Then I saw that after they became better they enjoyed it more. Then it was time to go out and do talent shows. We won the highest talent show in Indiana, and then we went over to Illinois and won there. It got so we could play nightclubs in Chicago like the High Chaparral and the Guys and Gals Club. This was on the weekends. I had a Volkswagen bus and I bought a big luggage rack and put it on top and had everybody on the inside of the bus. One day I noticed when I was coming out of the yard that the instruments on top of the bus were taller than the bus.

"A lot of people like to take credit for bringing the Jacksons to Motown. Diana Ross had a special, and she put us on it. She opened the doors for us. Gladys Knight was the first one who tried to get me to come to Motown. But Joe Jackson brought the Jacksons to Motown. About two years before we actually got there, I sent Berry Gordy a tape. They kept it about three months and then sent it back. But I knew the kids had something.

"We had some hard times, really hard times. But it looks like to me it's gotten harder. They're No. 1 all around the world and looks like everybody's taking potshots at them, or taking a piece of this from them or a piece of that. People are trying to break up the family, and I'm trying to hold it together. The greed for money is what it is. I'm not about that at all. What I'm speaking about is outsiders who see money possibilities and try to separate the boys for their own purposes. I'm not talking about each of the boys going off and making their own albums. Michael hasn't gone off, he just made an album that became very, very successful.

"People have called me a racist. I'm not a racist. If I were, I wouldn't be sitting here talking to you right now. If I were a racist, I wouldn't have hired a lot of people that aren't black to work for me. If I were a racist, I would be somewhere else trying to start a lot of trouble. That's what racists are doing. They are out there trying to put blacks against whites and whites against blacks. I'm not that. The reason there haven't been any magazine stories before now about this is that I was afraid of being misquoted. Michael has been misquoted several times. Set my record straight. I am not a racist. I am just the opposite. I wasn't raised that way. I'm an American. I gave my children 100% of my know-how, knowledge and my time in trying to develop them to be what they are today, and it has paid off and is still paying off.

"The Jackson music is a type of music that the young kids like, and as you know, the older people Like too. It's music to send a message to all the people whether they're black or white. It's music for rejoicing, whether you're black or white. It's for the whole world. You can tell the music is for the whole world because the whole world is listening and the whole world buys and the whole world dances."

At about 6 o'clock, Jackson stands up and puts on a brown leather jacket. We get ready to leave. Jackson says, "You hungry? You Like Chinese?" We drive down Hollywood Boulevard in a big blue Mercedes convertible to his favorite Chinese restaurant, Ting Ho, in Hollywood. Two plainclothes policemen are frisking a white punk in the parking lot. We eat steaming platefuls of shrimp and chicken with Chinese pea pods. "No one cooks at home," he says. "I'm the only one who eats meat. The rest eat only vegetables." Jackson is very shy. He has no idea what to talk about. "I want you to eat," he says, "Like you're at home. Enjoyin' it?" he asks. Walking back to the car, he says, "You cold?" He gets black leather jacket out of the trunk. In the car I say I had hoped to meet his wife and interview her. He says, "I don't know." He is quiet. "I don't know. We're going to New York tomorrow." What about tonight? And he says, "I don't know. I don't even know if anyone's home. If I call, they'll say no for sure." He laughs, then is silent. "You game?" he asks.

On the freeway to Encino we talk about cars and boats and nothing. We take the Havenhurst exit, and Jackson says, "This is our neighborhood." We cross Ventura and almost immediately turn into a driveway with an iron gate that swings slowly open. A TV camera stares into the car. "Everybody knows who's comin' now," Jackson says. The gate shuts and we pass a guard station. A uniformed man nods his head to Jackson. We start down a driveway Lined with well-trimmed shrubs. At the end, on the right, stands a four-car Tudor-style garage. Above the doors is the word WELCOME. An oversize clock with Roman numerals marks the center of the building. Opposite the garage is a huge mock-Tudor house. We walk in a back door and through what Jackson calls the "game room." It is completely Lined with arcade video games Like Frogger, Space Invaders and Pac-Man. Nothing else is in it. The next room is empty except for piles of boxes. Michael is going to build a miniature of the Disneyland ride Pirates of the Caribbean here. It is pretty dark and I cannot see well. We walk into the kitchen. It is gleaming: white tile floors, chrome-and-black ovens, stove and appliances. The foyer of the house is Lighted by a chandelier dangling from the ceiling two floors above. The circular staircase leading to the second floor is carpeted in green, the floor is white marble. A square gold-leaf table holds a vase with an armful of flowers. There is a grandfather clock in the corner ornamented with gold filigree. Everything seems to have been splashed with gold. Bronze statuary peoples the room.

The "trophy room" is off the foyer. The walls are covered with gold and platinum albums and singles. Mahogany cases, the kind museums use for displaying rare manuscripts, glint with gold and platinum. Jackson walks me to the screening room. The walls and the curtain drawn across the screen are teal blue. The 32 seats are upholstered in red velvet. In the den is a horseshoe-shaped viewing area, with a couch facing a fireplace and a builtin television set. Another large clock with Roman numerals hangs above the mantelpiece. Off the den is a mahogany bar under a leaded stained-glass window with a knight in armor looking up at a black castle on a hill. The bar is really an old-fashioned soda fountain: you can have whatever you want, ice cream, milkshakes, sodas. The living room is like a garden, with hundreds of flowers printed on the couches and rugs. The dining room is more of the same: mahogany and gilt with rococo flourishes.

Jackson takes me outside to the back. The patio is made of perfectly placed brown bricks. A tree is strung, with tiny white lights. We turn to look at the house. It too is outlined with tiny white lights, which trace squares along the Tudor lines. "The Tivoli lights," says Jackson. In the back courtyard there is an old-fashioned red popcorn cart, the kind you see at country fairs with pretty gold lettering on the sides. Jackson wants to show me the swimming pool. A wall behind it has four fountainheads carved like bearded Neptunes spouting water from puckered lips. A large mosaic of a parrot fills the wall behind the fountains. There is also a Jacuzzi bath. We walk along a brick path, lined with clusters of flowers, that leads to a bridge over a pond. The moonlight shines down on the two pairs of swans gliding on the water. One of the black swans lifts its head and makes a long, low sound.' Jackson imitates the sound and laughs: "It's like a little dog barking."

On the other side of the pond are a white gazebo and two large bird cages, nestled in trees by the water. In one cage is a pair of peacocks, the female mud-colored, the male electric blue even in the dark. Jackson walks over to a stable, where a ram named Mr. Tibbs and a llama named Louie stick their heads out to nuzzle. We go to the garage and climb the stairs to the second story. It is a picture gallery. The walls and ceilings are papered with hundreds and hundreds of pictures of the Jackson family. It is like a cave whose walls map out history. The Jacksons grow up on these walls. A corner of the room is filled with boxes of the get-well cards and gifts Michael received after his hair caught on fire.

We walk back to the house and Jackson says, "Let's see if anyone is around." His wife, it turns out, is shopping. We go up the circular staircase; I am following Jackson. He walks down the green-carpeted hallway and knocks on a door. LaToya, a striking woman who looks like Michael, comes out of her bedroom. She is warm and friendly. Jackson knocks on another door. Janet, the youngest Jackson child, also friendly, but quiet, says hello.

We turn around and walk down the hallway again, but this time to the far end of the house. I am still following Jackson. He knocks on a closed door. "Michael, I have someone I want you to meet." I can't hear what Michael says. "Can I bring her into your room?" asks Joe. He opens the door. The only light comes from a television set. The light glistens off Michael's hair. He and a young man who looks about 20 are sitting side by side on straight-backed chairs facing the television. Michael is watching it intently. They stand up. Michael is wearing a blue coat and dark pants. The friend is wearing a plain white shirt and black pants. The room is very dark. There seem to be outlines of figures against the far wall. Above the TV are shelves, and on the top one I can see what looks like dolls or mannequins about two feet tall.

Michael in a very quiet voice introduces his friend to his father, giving only one name. I cannot hear it. Jackson introduces me to Michael, saying that I am from TIME magazine. He adds, "We just had a nice long interview." Michael and I shake hands. His hand feels like a cloud. He barely says "Hi." His friend extends his hand, which is damp. He seems nervous. Michael stares with his almond eyes for a long minute and turns to the television. There is silence and I feel that Joe is uncomfortable. It is so dark I cannot see anything. We back out of the room and Joe shuts the door. We walk away and he says, "Michael has a friend over. He isn't about to give any interviews. You got pretty close, though."

I call a cab. We walk outside. Katherine Jackson pulls up in a car and gets out with several packages. We follow her in. She is about 5 ft. 4 in. and is wearing a blue pantsuit and a red blouse with a tie at the neck. She walks with a slight limp (she had polio as a baby). Her hair is black and rolls to the shoulders. Her skin is smooth and creamy brown like Michael's. Jackson tells her it would be good for her to have an interview with me. She says, "Oh, Joe, I don't want to do an interview. You know you and Michael always get misquoted." Joe says, "She says we won't be." Katherine Jackson says, "Oh, not now. I don't like interviews. Well, what do you want to ask me?" I tell her and she says, "All right, let's go." The three of us go into the living room. Katherine Jackson sits poised and serene. Michael calls her Kat. She is a devout Jehovah's Witness and is very proud, very protective of her family. She says, "Ever since Michael was very young, he seemed different to me from the rest of the children. I don't believe in reincarnation, but you know how babies move uncoordinated? He never moved that way. When he danced, it was like he was an older person." Katherine talks about her life raising nine children as if she were taking a walk over a patch of ground for the thousandth time, familiar and at ease with every bump and flower. We talk for about 20 minutes while my cab waits.

The cab pulls out, past a three-tiered white fountain at the front of the house. Michael's red-and-white scooter bike is leaning against a wall. All the windows in the house are leaded glass with beveled panes. We start out the open gate, when suddenly the guard in the security station runs and calls after us. We return to the house. Michael's parents are waiting in the foyer. Katherine Jackson calls me by name and says, "There have been a lot of rumors about Michael, that he has had operations to have his eyes widened and his cheeks changed and everything. Those things are simply not true. He had only one operation, on his nose. We were hoping you'd set the record straight and put a stop to the rumors. They also say Michael is gay. Michael isn't gay. It's against his religion. It's against God. The Bible speaks against it." Joe Jackson repeats, "Michael isn't gay."

This time the cab gets past the gate, which clicks closed behind us. On the street are two police cars and a group of teen-age girls hanging out, hoping for a glimpse of Michael.