Michael was staying at my place on Dohney and was happy to come along. He really respected Burt (Bacharach) but wondered, as we all did, what made him tick.
Burt had ordered a bottle of expensive French red wine, which he, Carole (Bayer Sager) and I were drinking. Michael never drank but that night he got interested in wine. Unbelievably; he didn’t even know what wine was.
‘What’s it made of?’ he asked me.
‘Grapes’, I said.
‘I like grapes,’ Michael said. ‘I think I’ll try some.’
So we poured Michael a glass and he drank it. He obviously liked it because he drank another one. We were drinking a 1982 Pomerol that tasted like candy, so he was bound to like it.
By this time, we all had a glass or two and the bottle was finished. So Burt ordered a second bottle. This time, Michael drank virtually the whole bottle. He had really acquired a taste for wine, fine wine at that, and was guzzling the stuff down.
So we ordered a third bottle and Michael drank most of that as well. That’s when I knew we were going to have a problem that night.
The evening came to an end and I drove Michael back to my place. He was, understandably, happy. In fact, he was flying high, very high. In the car he was talking and laughing. He was singing ‘I Want To Be Where You Are’ and ‘Never Can Say Goodbye’.
Then he started singing more of his hit songs like ‘Ben’. He was giggling away all the time.
‘You’re going to be in trouble,’ he said. ‘I’m going to tell Joesph what you did.’
I wasn’t taking the bait. ‘I didn’t do it, you did,’ I said.
It took us a few minutes to get back to my place. The minute I parked the car and opened the door for him, Michael leaned out and threw up all over the place. He spent the rest of the night hanging over the toilet. He was as sick as a dog. I was up all night with him.
He kept saying, ‘I’m going to tell Joe you corrupted me,’ I was kinda worried he would but he never did.
It was his first taste of wine, something he would come to love a little too much in later years. I always felt bad about that night but it sure was funny!
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We would go to Disneyland. We both loved roller coasters. Sometimes we would go on them twenty times in a row.
Often, Michael would wear disguises. Once, he was a sheikh and I was his translator. We would go into a place called Carnation Restaurant in Disneyland where they served great tuna salad and sandwiches. Michael was eating organic food only, although, at that time, he had a rather strange idea of what organic was. We would go to KFC, Michael reckoned if you took off the skin it became organic.
Anyhow, at Carnation on this particular day, there were two elderly women and a gentleman in their eighties from Croydon. We started talking in our mock Arabic to each other.
When the two ladies looked over, I turned to one of them and explained, “The Sheikh Majolini wanted me to tell you that you are a beautiful woman and so is your friend,” I said.
These two ladies probably hadn’t been paid a compliment like that in the last couple of decades so they started smiling. We then got talking. They asked what the Sheikh was doing here and I said he had just got divorced from his 97th wife and was now on his 154th child.
“He has 154 children?” they asked, looking shocked.
“That he knows of,” I said. “He has had 97 wives…” and I started naming them, “Jada, Jami, Shakira, Vera…” with Michael saying them in mock Arabic.
There was nothing malicious in it. In fact, Michael picked up their bill. He was like that, always pulling practical jokes on people.
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Sometimes though, the joke would be on us. The funniest thing that ever happened to us was when we went for pancakes one night. It was after 1am and our regular haunt, Dupars, was closed, so we went to another pancake house that we knew on Ventura Boulevard. There was only one couple in there; normally it held 150 people.
The waitress who served us was in her late sixties or early seventies. This was around 1979, when Off The Wall came out. Michael was the no. 1 artist in the world. She didn’t recognize him at all.
We got to the table and she come over and asked us what we wanted to order. I put on a Saudi accent and went “Yamaka fallesh.”
Michael started laughing. The waitress slapped him across the face with the back of her hand. She said, “This is not funny. Your friend is from a foreign country and you have respect for people from foreign countries.”
Michael got nervous. He wasn’t used to being treated like that in public. He slid further inside the booth so he couldn’t get slapped again.
I asked, “What is pancake? Explain please.”
The waitress started miming a pressing motion. She said, “It’s like a cake that you press down.”
Michael started to laugh again and she started to put her hand up again, so he slid further away.
She then said, “Ok, I’m going to take you back to the kitchen.” She and the cook showed us how to make pancakes. I ordered some.
When the pancakes came to our table, I took the syrup bottle and emptied the whole bottle all over the pancakes. She immediately slapped me across the face. It hurt.
“Not funny,” she said. Michael was laughing again.
She brought me a new batch and I ate them. When we left, Michael left her a $200 tip.
We were in the car park, heading back to Michael’s Rolls Royce, when the waitress came running after us.
“I’m not taking this. You boys are probably working your way through college and you need the money,” she said, not even noticing the car he was driving.
Michael insisted but she said, “No, I’m not taking it.” We couldn’t believe it.
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We’d get in the car and sing songs together. He used to tell me I was the worst singer he’d ever heard! He always made me laugh. Michael had a great sense of humor which most people never saw. We loved to go antiquing for furniture and paintings as well as memorabilia. Our favorite thing to do was walk into a store and go, “Do you have any John LeCockah paintings?”
The antique dealer would respond, “We’ve just sold the last one for $100,000.” I’d say to Michael, “Oh no, he’s just sold the last John LeCockah painting.” We would plead for him to get another in and he’d respond, “They are just too hard to find.” We’d walk out and go, “We’ll never buy from that dealer because there’s no such painter!” Michael would be laughing so hard. He had a laugh that was like a cackle: Hhk hhk hhk hhk hhk.
We’d do very normal things. We’d go out for pancakes and French toast and I’d drive his Rolls-Royce. When we stopped for gas, I’d ask him to fill the tank. He’d say, “I’m the star here. I can’t believe you’re making me put gas in the car.” And I’d tell him, “When we’re together, there’s only one star.” That was the reason our friendship was so good. I never treated him like he was a big deal.
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David also revealed that Michael was a voracious reader with a passion for classic literature.
“What a lot of people don’t know about Michael is that he was always reading. He was an intelligent man. His favorite poet was Robert Burns and he was obsessed with the novels of Charles Dickens.
He would scour antique bookstores looking for first editions of his work.
He loved Shakespeare and got me into the plays too. He was also fascinated by English history, especially Henry VIII, and loved collecting costumes from that period.”
David told how Michael passed this love of books on to his own children Prince Michael Jr., 12, Paris, 11, and seven-year-old Prince Michael II.
“He home-schooled the children and always had them reading the right books. He was a great father, but he was strict. He believed in manners and showing respect to adults and behaving properly. Michael loved being a dad, he should have done it years before he did.
The Michael Jackson I will remember was smart, articulate and made me laugh. His death was a huge shock but it brought back so many happy memories.
Michael famously acted as best man when David wed his now ex-wife, the singer Liza Minnelli.
“Michael, Liza, Elizabeth Taylor and I looked like the friggin’ Adams Family in those wedding pictures. They are really scary to look at, but Michael made a very touching speech.”