Tito's concerts in memory of Michael
HE has got the inside line on one of the most fascinating lives and intriguing deaths of modern times.
He grew up with the man whose commercial clout, devotional fan following and strange lifestyle earned him the contradictory nicknames of King of Pop and Wacko Jacko.
But to Tito Jackson, Michael was just a little brother, who lived to sing and dance.
“Michael was a loving person,” says Tito, aged 55. “He loved what he did and he loved helping people. He felt most comfortable on stage and he enjoyed performing as a kid just as much as he loved it as an adult. He was fascinated by the whole excitement of showbusiness.”
Tito had been driving to the Los Angeles hospital where Michael had been taken with a heart attack following a powerful concoction of prescription drugs when the news of his death was broken to Tito in a phone call from by sister Janet.
In interviews days after Michael’s death in June, Tito spoke of knowing that Michael had a problem with painkillers as long ago as 1993, and how he, sisters Janet, Rebbie and LaToya and brothers Jackie and Randy once forced their way past minders at Michael’s Neverland home to confront Michael about the problem.
Weeks later, I’m told Tito will not now discuss ‘issues surrounding Michael’s personal life and untimely death’.
When I ask about those reports of the family’s intervention attempt, he says: “No, it wasn’t so much an intervention. It was just checking on him and seeing where his head was. That’s what family members do when they love each other.
“We were very close as brothers and always have been, regardless of whether we saw each other every day.”
So Tito was close to the man about which so many millions of column inches were written, about his changing face and skin colour, funfair-style home, the veiled, motherless offspring and the Peter Pan-like friendship with other children which led to sex abuse allegations of which Michael was acquitted in 2005.
Asked how much of all this blizzard of publicity is true, Tito wearily replies: “I would say it’s 60 to 70 per cent right. But there’s lots of shadiness in there, and there’s a lot of things not totally accurate, or they twist it a little bit.”
One of the common perceptions is that as a child star, driven by father Joe, Michael missed out on childhood, and spent his adult life trying to recapture that lost childhood. Tito, born five years before Michael, begs to differ.
“We started as little boys in a small house in on 2300 Jackson Street, Gary, Indiana, and a band which began with me listening to my father playing blues with my uncle Luther. Playing the guitar was the thing he loved dearly.
Jermaine and Jackie
“I was hearing songs on the radio and having my brother harmonise with me. I started out at about seven years old. The group started with myself, Jermaine and Jackie. Marlon and Michael were our little bitty baby brothers and we wouldn’t let them be a part of it because they were still sucking their fingers and playing with toys.”
But when Michael was five, he became a part of the act, and the brother were soon playing venues such as the prestigious Apollo Theatre in Harlem, opening for James Brown.
Joe Jackson ‘had a vision’, says Tito, and Michael was ‘just a natural at everything he did’.
But was it a childhood lost to showbiz, driven by a hard taskmaster of a dad?
“It was a good experience,” says Tito. “All the friends I had in Gary when I was young, well, a lot of them are doing terrible, you know. A lot of them are not with us any longer.
“Gary at that time was the crime capital of America. There were a lot of gangs around and my father made sure he kept his sons busy not just with the chores but music as well.
"That curbed our appetites to be like the rest of the kids we knew. We knew from a very young age that we had something and knew what we wanted to do and be. And we enjoyed what we were doing.
“We all had a childhood, it was just different. I believe Michael enjoyed being an entertainer at a very young ageI can’t think of any kids today who wouldn’t want to be working with their heroes.”
Tito followed the family tradition himself. In the 1990s his three sons formed a band, 3T, guided by Tito in the same way Joe had guided the Jacksons. Now those sons are helping Tito produce his first solo album.
Tito will be singing many of the old Jacksons’ songs and reminiscing about the good times when he plays support to Gladys Knight on her farewell tour of Britainthe UK, beginning in Manchester.
You can tell from Tito’s choice of headgear – a bowler hat bought in London in the 1990s – that he is an Anglophile. He was a judge on TV show Just The Two Of Us, and starred in the reality TV show The Jacksons Are Coming, which Tito says was a sincere bid to see if he could make a second home for himself in Appledore, Devon.
“I want to come here and be a part of the UK market. The UK is a home to me, like America,” he says. “I have a dear friend who has done everything that I wanted to do as far as moving here and being part of the community. David Gest has done that.”
Tito Jackson and his 14-piece band plays support on Gladys Knight’s farewell tour which with Dionne Warwick also as special guest, comes to the M.E.N. Arena on Tuesday, October 6. Call 0844 847 8000.
Published: Thu, 17 September, 2009
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