Mike stepped to his brother and made him fall back
I had signed Jermaine Jackson to Arista and, like L.A. and Babyface, he had also worked with Whitney Houston. We had some success with his three albums for the label, but as we were getting started on his fourth, I thought he might be an ideal fit for LaFace. As Michael Jackson’s older brother, Jermaine was now in his late thirties and, beginning with the Jackson 5, had been making records for more than two decades. I thought that working with L.A. and Babyface would give him a new sound, expose him to a younger audience, and bring him success on the scale that he so badly wanted. Jermaine loved the idea, and L.A. and Babyface, who had grown up with the family mystique of the Jacksons, were excited as well. It seemed like a well-made match.
As the three of them began working on Jermaine’s first album for LaFace, which would be titled You Said, Jermaine was startled to learn that his brother Michael had approached L.A. and Babyface and offered them very substantial amounts of money to work on songs for his new album, and surprisingly they had agreed to do it. Everything they wrote during this immediate, well-defined period of a couple of weeks would be for Michael to use. Jermaine couldn’t believe that Michael, his close brother, would hijack his producers’ material this way.
Consequently, he regarded Michael’s hiring L.A. and Babyface as a profound betrayal, and he was shaken to his core.
I had dinner with Jermaine in Paris around this time, and he was totally disconsolate throughout the entire meal. He was crying, indeed sobbing at times, so deeply hurt that his brother would do this to him. Unfortunately, that hurt turned to anger, and Jermaine recorded a song called “Word to the Badd” that was a bitter excoriation of Michael. It was leaked to radio and instantly created a sensation. In the song, Jermaine vilified Michael for lightening his skin; for being “a child,” not “a man”; and for “takin’ my pie,” a seeming reference to the situation with L.A. and Babyface.
“Word to the Badd” was set to go on You Said lp by Jermaine , and there wasn’t much I could do about that, even after Michael Jackson personally called me to complain.
It was in this spirit that Michael called me to pull “Word to the Badd” off Jermaine’s forthcoming album. He said, “I know you have respect for me, and I have respect for you. How could you let my brother do this? I don’t want you to release that record.”
I told him, “Look, Michael, Jermaine is an artist on a label in which I have an interest. I do have great respect for you, but this really is a problem between the two of you. You’ve got to deal with him directly.”
As uncomfortable as I was with what Jermaine had done, I felt it would be wrong for me to tell an artist to take a song off his album. This was a family and personal matter that they needed to resolve themselves.
Michael said that Jermaine was avoiding him and he couldn’t find him anywhere.
I told him, “He’s just gotten to your parents’ house. I spoke to him ten minutes ago.”
A few hours later, Jermaine called me. “You’ll never guess what happened,” he said. “I’m at my parents’ house, and Michael went around to the back, climbed up and went through a window, and came down the stairs and confronted me with the problem.
We really had it out.” Jermaine stuck to his guns and kept the song out there, but eventually he and Michael came to some sort of understanding. Jermaine softened the lyrics to the song and changed its focus.
http://books.google.com/books/about/The_Soundtrack_of_My_Life.html?id=tEd9WlOARLUC
thread but this is actually real..
