Michael Jackson Photos

Today in 1991, Michael Jackson’s Dangerous album was released. #Happy20thBirthdayDangerous

A few record stores in the US opened at midnight to begin selling the album as soon as possible. Tower Records in West Hollywood had a 20 foot by 150 foot replica of the album cover on the roof along with other over-sized displays from the album cover. Tower Records had an impromptu midnight opening and sold over 300 copies in 2 hours.

CBS Records initially shipped out 4 million copies of Dangerous, a new record. Dangerous is the first album to achieve advance orders of 50,000 units in the former Communist part of Germany. A spokesman for France’s Virgin megastore said Dangerous was the quickest selling album the store has ever handled.

The cost to produce Dangerous probably also set new records, with an estimated cost of over $10 million. Seven recording studios were used to record the tracks. Michael had 24 hour a day access for 2 years to Record One in Sherman Oaks, California at a cost of $4,000 per day. Three rooms at Larabee Sound Studios in Los Angeles were reserved at $3000-$4000 per day.

The expense seems to payoff when Dangerous debuted on Billboard’s top album chart at #1, with 326,500 copies sold in its first week. It held the position for four weeks. With record-breaking sales of 7 million in under two months, Dangerous become Michael’s fastest-selling album ever in the US, breaking the sales record for Bad. Dangerous spent 117 weeks in the Billboard 200, 30 more than Bad. The RIAA certified Dangerous 7 times platinum (7 million copies).

Dangerous also debuted at #1 on the UK albums charts, the first album to do so on the strength of just 3 days of sales; it surpassed U2’s new release, Achtung Baby which had a full week of sales. Dangerous spent 23 weeks in the Top 10, and a total of 96 weeks on the Top 75 chart.

Michael’s new album didn’t do too shaby throughout the rest of the world either, debuting at #1 in Australia, Spani, Switzerland, and Finland. The album entered the charts at #2 in Sweden and Germany, and at #3 in Italy. In Japan and the Netherlands, Dangerous debuted at #35 on the albums charts.

source: http://mjjtime.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2010-12-03T00:21:00-08:00&max-results=7&reverse-paginate=true

FEEL BELIEVE by: Michael Jackson

(Michael Jackson write this in the late 1970’s about writing and composing a song)

LET THE SONG WRITE ITSELF 

LET IT TELL YOU WHAT TO WRITE

WHAT INSTRUMENT TO USE 

WHAT MELODY SHOULD BE USE 

LET THE FEELING BE YOUR GUIDE

FEEL, FEEL, FEEL 

AS THOUGH A PROPHET 

WRITING THROUGH THE THOUGHTS OF GOD

HIS PENMANSHIP, HIS THOUGHTS 

FEEL, FEEL, FEEL

FEEL, FEEL, FEEL “BELIEVE”

THE FORCE,

MJ

________________________________________________________________

Michael never really give credits to himself when he was writing his songs. In most of his interview he always tell that his songs just pops into his head and like it was created somewhere in the universe. It was God whom he always give credits to all his artistic works. A true genius, Michael our inspiration.

@MJJHero as you requested. :)

Photographer Harry Benson’s first-person account of his visits with Michael Jackson at Neverland.

I first met Michael on a hillside in Colorado in 1984. He was on the famous Victory Tour with his brothers.

Michael was the first to come running over to help when I slipped going up a steep muddy hill. I was fine, but a couple of lenses got covered in mud. That was the first time Michael took a liking to one of my brown Scottish tweed sports jackets, so I took it off and gave it to him. He seemed pleased by my gesture and immediately put it on, put both arms out and twirled around in the bright sunlight while I photographed him running and jumping. On stage that night he glittered in sequins. I flew back to New York with the photographs.

The momentum of the Victory Tour kept building, so I joined Michael in Philadelphia for more photos. The same thing happened again. This time it was a gray Harris tweed jacket. I saw him looking closely at the colors in the tweed. They seemed to fascinate him, so again I gave him my jacket. Sometime later I was amused to see a news clip of Michael actually wearing the jacket, running into a limo, mobbed by fans.

In 1985 I photographed Michael at the “We Are the World” all-night recording session in Los Angeles, conceived to raise money for the starving children of Africa. Quincy Jones posted a sign that said, “Leave your egos at the door,” and the 45 stars who participated did just that. The artist known as Prince kept telephoning to say he was thinking of coming. Quincy told him to hurry, as they had begun working. I overheard Michael say, “Prince will never come while I am here.” When Prince called again, Quincy told him not to bother; it was all over.

On first encounter, Michael seemed shy. He spoke in the very soft, high-pitched voice recognizable to the world, but, oddly enough, after about 10 minutes his tone deepened, although he still spoke very softly. I find that many powerful people, heads of state and such, speak very softly. They don’t have to shout to get your attention. Try to hear what they say the first time—they don’t like to repeat. Michael was like that. An hour later, when we met again, it was like starting over—again, the high-pitched, quiet voice, which morphed into something deeper after about 10 minutes.

When I saw Michael in 1995, again my tweed jacket was coveted, so again I gave it to him. He put it on for the photographs with new bride Lisa Marie Presley.

In 1997 I visited Neverland to photograph Michael with his firstborn, Prince Michael. While he was feeding Prince, the baby’s face became covered with food. Michael joked, “Oh, it’s Linda Blair time,” referring to the actress in the film The Exorcist. The baby was happy and laughing. Later, we took Prince upstairs to his room, where Michael gave him a bottle and held him until he went to sleep, singing little songs to him, something about Daddy’s baby. Michael told me Prince had inspired him to write more music than he had written at any other time in his life.

The following day Michael took me into the rehearsal studio where he had refined the moonwalk. He told me he often brought Prince there to watch him practice in front of the mirrored wall and said they would dance together someday. I was convinced that was going to be the next act. Prince sat playing with a microphone and watching his father’s every move. Michael told me the moonwalk was very easy to do. “Just do this, Harry, and pull your foot back.” Needless to say, I wasn’t stupid enough to try.

Standing outside his bedroom was a wax figure of a queen’s Household Cavalry guard. The bedroom itself was dark and quite plain, in tones of beige and brown, and, to be honest, a bit depressing. Adjacent to the bed was a huge, red, thronelike chair ornately trimmed in gilt. Above the mahogany four-poster was a painting of a blond Jesus.

Michael was easy to work with and delighted in showing me his home. All the photos were done quickly. That’s the thing people forget—you have to work quickly so that your subject doesn’t become bored. When Michael asked what I wanted him to wear, I said, “Just be yourself. Wear what you feel comfortable in.”

One could see how Neverland could take Michael’s mind off all his worries and transport him from the reality of his stressful life. He had everything he wanted there. I got the impression that in no way was Michael a recluse. He read the papers and kept up with the news. Once he asked me what I thought of the Reagans, who were in the White House at the time. He was also curious to know what the Russian author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was like, as Michael had seen my photograph of him. Michael made a point of knowing who was who, while all the time those sad eyes were searching, looking closely at me. Occasionally he would break into a laugh, but mostly he was just looking.

Although I wasn’t close to Michael, we were friendly and respectful of each other, and that’s really all you want, someone who allows you to do your job. I will miss him. We will all miss his immense talent.

MICHAEL JACKSON ON ENVIRONMENT

“I respect the secrets and magic of nature. That’s why it makes me so angry when I see these things that are happening, that every second, I hear, the size of a football field is torn down in the Amazon. I mean, that kind of stuff really bothers me. That’s why I write these kinds of songs, you know. It gives some sense of awareness and awakening and hope to people. I love the Planet, I love the trees. I have this thing for trees - the colors and changing of leaves. I love it. I respect those kind of things. I really feel that nature is trying so hard to compensate for man’s mismanagement of the planet. Because the planet is sick, like a fever. If we don’t fix it now, it’s at the point of no return. This is our last chance to fix this problem that we have, where it’s like a runway train. And the times has come, This Is It. People are always saying,’They’ll take care of it. The government’ll—Don’t worry, they’ll—’ ‘They’ who? It starts with us. It’s us. Or else it’ll never be done… We have four years to get it right. After that it would be irreversible. Let’s take care of the planet.” -MICHAEL JACKSON

WPB artist painted Michael Jackson, the King of Pop

By: Kevin D. Thompson

In his illustrious career as a top portrait artist, Ralph Cowan has painted his share of world leaders and stars.

The list reads like a Who’s Who on the World Stage: Elvis. Elizabeth Taylor. Princess Grace. John F. Kennedy. Frank Sinatra.

The Sultan of Brunei.

One name, however, stands out.

Michael Jackson.

Cowan, a 77-year-old West Palm Beach resident, painted the King of Pop four times in the early ’90s, and visited Jackson’s Neverland ranch. This 80×40 oil canvas Cowan painted in 1993 was one of Jackson’s favorites. The late singer paid $30,000 for the portrait and hung it next to his baby grand piano at Neverland. He also was interviewed in front of the painting by Oprah Winfrey.

Originally, Cowan painted two German shepherds in the lower left-hand corner. But that’s not what Jackson wanted.
“He calls me in this very sweet voice and says, ‘I don’t really like dogs, I like monkeys. Could you paint me a monkey?’” Cowan recalls. “He wasn’t demanding. He was so sweet and nice asking about it.”

Cowan remembers Jackson as very shy and great to work with.

“He was absolutely wonderful,” Cowan says. “It was very exciting hearing your own name said by one of these famous voices.”

Why painting Jackson was like working with a king:

“He lived in this fantasy world and if he didn’t like something, you felt as if he could behead you. But the way he does it is by not calling you again. And somewhere along the line he stopped calling me and I thought I had been beheaded.”

What it was like at Neverland:

“I asked him about composing music and he took me to this tree where he would write a lot of his songs. I rode around on the train and I loved all the children. The child in me could totally accept that. I have twin sons so I love to be around little kids, too.”

What struck him most about Jackson:

“He looked really good. He had gone lighter, but he wasn’t pure white. He had his nose done, but it was a marvelous-looking nose.”

His reaction to Jackson’s death:

“It was the best thing for him. All of these bad things were going on around him. I don’t think he was capable of a comeback and people are cruel now. If he had gone on and done those shows, and he didn’t dance like he was 21 years old, he would’ve been torn to bits. It was the proper time for him to go. Now everybody will remember him and think of him in his 30s forever.”

ON THE WALL:
Ralph Cowan discusses the symbols in his Jackson portrait
1. The writing: ‘It says, “I’m a multidimensional creature going thru the Earth experience to learn in slow-motion the consequence of thought.” I was learning to meditate at the time and was reading different spiritual books.’
2. The suit of armor: ‘Michael was very, very sensitive and he got upset when people said bad things about him. If he wore armor, he would’ve been protected.’
3. The red cape: ‘It means royalty. He was a king. The King of Pop.”
4. The monkeys: ‘It’s not supposed to be Bubbles (Jackson’s pet chimp). I had two dogs in the original portrait, but Michael said he didn’t like dogs. He liked monkeys.’
5. The silver urn: ‘It represents all the awards he has.’
6. The parrot: ‘It represents the many imitators of his voice and movement.’
7. The young Chinese girl: ‘He saw children as angels until they grew up, and he didn’t want to be around them (then) because they had egos.”
8. The space shuttle: ‘When he goes to dance and perform, he goes into outer space.’
9. Jesus: ‘Michael was a Jehovah’s Witness, but he liked to talk about Christ and how great Christ had been to him.’
10. The woman in the white dress: ‘He told me he was seeing this nurse about something and that something magic was going to happen. What was happening was she (Debbie Rowe) was carrying the babies or they were making the deal to do it, so I painted a nurse that looks like an angel.’

source: http://www.pbpulse.com/music/2009/07/02/west-palm-beach-artist-painted-the-michael-jackson-king-of-pop/

Michael Jackson: The Car Collector

In photos: Some of Michael’s Cars.

Among Michael’s collections are fleet of Cars.

Jackson owned at least four limousines, including a 1999 Rolls Royce Silver Seraph that was unusually decorated, to say the least.  Our friends at Jalopnik described it well, when they said, “The dark blue Seraph wears an interior which looks to have been pulled directly from the Palace of Versailles.”  Jackson was said to have designed the interior himself, which probably explains the generous use of 24-carat gold.  The vehicle was said to have a 5.4-liter V12 aluminum engine that generated up to 322 horsepower.

He also owned a 1990 RollS Royce Silver Spur II, trimmed in contrasting white leather and black fabric.  Dark, tinted windows were adorned in white curtains, and a full-service bar that was used for god-knows-what.  His white, 1988 Lincoln Town Car had a much more subdued interior that used gray leather and fabric.  The fourth limo is the same 1954 Cadillac Fleetwood used during the filming of Driving Miss Daisy.  Jackson’s collection included a 1997 Neoplan Tour Bus with individual seats and booths, and a king’s crown embroidered in the carpet.  Possibly used on the HIStory World Tour, the bus featured a bathroom lined in porcelain, gold, and granite.

A few of his other vehicles included a 1993 Ford Econoline van with leather seats, individual tv screens, and an old-school video game console, a 1986 GMC High Sierra firetruck, a 1988 GMC Jimmy, and a replica of a 1909 Detamble Model B Roadster.  Amongst the collection was an electrified horse-drawn carriage, and a 2001 Harley Davidson touring police bike.