Kobe Bryant
Los Angeles Lakers guard Kobe Bryant is the 2009 NBA Finals MVP.
One of the things he always told me was, Don't be afraid to be different. In other words, when you have that desire, that drive, people are going to try to pull you away from that, and pull you closer to the pack to be "normal." And he was saying, It's O.K. to be that driven; it's O.K. to be obsessed with what you want to do. That's perfectly fine. Don't be afraid to not deviate from that. One of the books that he gave me that helped him communicate with me wasJonathan Livingston Seagull, which was about that.
Beyond the genius of what he was, he was just a genuinely, genuinely nice person. He got me hooked on movies that I would normally never watch. Fred Astaire movies. All the old classics. I would never, never watch those. I remember my fiancée and I telling him we were getting married, and him just being really excited and actually just offering up the ranch to have our wedding there, because privacy was going to be an issue. We wanted to get married in a church, so that's what we wound up doing. But he made the offer. He was just a genuinely nice person who was exceptionally bright, exceptionally bright, and driven and talented. You mix those things together, man, you have Michael Jackson.
Kim Carnes
Kim Carnes recorded the song "Bette Davis Eyes," which reached No. 1 in 1981, and sang with Michael Jackson on "We Are the World."
His music, in particular the Thriller album and on MTV, let the world finally see how gifted he really, truly was as a performer, not just on a record. The dancing, when you saw the whole package, was just brilliant. The way he danced and sang — I've never seen anything like it. He was so incredibly gifted.
I did try to moonwalk. I tried several times. Not recently, but everyone was so intrigued with that motion. As I watched, I would just sit there and say, How is a human being able do that? How is he capable of moving like that? It was mind-boggling.
When we did the "We Are the World" video, I was standing right beside him that entire evening. Most of the time we were singing, but in between, when we had breaks, he was charming and very gracious, and at the same time seemed so vulnerable. I'd never met him before and was very much in awe of his talent. He was very shy — except turn the camera on him and start the music, and suddenly there was this great transformation that blew everybody away. How could this human being in his personal life be so shy, and then be so completely the opposite, being the greatest performer ever? It's almost like he was two people.
JC Chasez
JC Chasez performed with Michael Jackson three times as a member of 'N Sync.
You were always used to seeing Michael Jackson onstage and performing; it was a very different experience to be sitting on a couch, having a relaxed conversation [with him]. The guy was incredibly nice, gracious, wanted to make sure everyone had everything they wanted or needed. A wonderful host. People didn't necessarily look at him as a person; they looked at him as an action figure. We talked about music, because that was our common ground, but he was more interested about how we felt about what we were going through. Being popular and carrying a heavy workload — you get to the point where you're doing shows five and six days a week with travel and press between that. It's a lot, and nobody knew that better than him, because he had been doing it since he was 6 years old.
It's always chaos outside, but backstage, he was so gracious. He was happy that we were there and able to perform with him. [Backstage, 'N Sync could hear Jackson doing vocal drills in the dressing room next door.] They sounded ridiculous. They were like, "Gee gee gee gee gee gee." To hear that but with Michael Jackson's tone on, that quick vibrato at the end of every note, that was so crazy. It was great for me, as an artist, to see that. He was doing vocal drills for an hour before he went out. [His voice was] not something that magically appeared out of him; the guy worked hard for it. Forty years old, and the guy is warming up for an hour before every show. He wanted to give that audience the best he had. There are plenty of people who just go out and sing and let the first two songs warm them up. But he cared. He cared about every note that came out of his mouth when he was onstage. That's saying something.
Deepak Chopra
Deepak Chopra is a medical doctor and author of several best-selling books on spirituality. I met Michael more than 20 years ago; I went to teach him meditation at Neverland. He was very shy, very introverted, but very curious about consciousness and spirituality. You know, while the world called him weird, he wondered why the world was so weird. He'd ask me, Why do people go to war? Why is there genocide? What's happening in Sudan? Why have we killed the environment? Why is there racism and bigotry and hatred and prejudice? We talked about starving children in Mumbai, and he would start to cry. Or we'd start to talk about the trophy-hunting in Canada of the grizzly bear, and he would start to cry. In his mind, the world was psychotic. Michael had a skin disease called leukoderma, which created huge patches of white. He had, as a result, a very, very poor image of his body. He was almost ashamed of it. That's why he would cover it up. Why do you think he wore a glove and all that stuff? He would not go into his swimming pool in his own house with his clothes off. He would just jump into the pool at the last moment, you know, take his robe off, but he was ashamed that people would look at all the blotches on his skin. After his trial, he started getting these medical prescriptions from doctors and they were all for narcotics, and he asked me for a prescription, and that's when I became suspicious of what was going on. It was the drugs. Totally enabled by these Hollywood mafia drug-dealer doctors who have medical licenses and should be brought to justice. The same thing happened with Anna Nicole Smith, the same thing has happened over the years with — and I'm not going to mince my words — Elizabeth Taylor. I know these guys, and they should be in jail. Don Cornelius The word got around that these kids from Gary, Ind. — next door to Chicago, where I was working as an announcer — were amazing. A lot of the local recording artists were being told, "If these Jackson 5 kids are on the show that you're contemplating [doing], don't book the show because they will kick your ass." That's when Michael was 6 or 7. I got to know their father Joe Jackson accidentally — or I sought him out, I can't remember; it's been a long time. Most of the guys I worked with at the radio station did some moonlighting as stage-show promoters, and I found a venue and decided to do one. Joe was nice enough to give me the group. That's how I met them and first got to know Michael. He was about 8. Michael epitomized the incredible lead singer that most major groups tend to have: the Miracles with Smokey Robinson, the Commodores with Lionel Richie, the Temptations with Eddie and Dennis. Joe Jackson had figured out that that was the formula: he had the spectacular lead singer who could do every step that James Brown ever demonstrated. Michael was just a killer onstage. That's the first thing you noticed. He knew his way around a stage; he commanded the whole operation. He had a star quality, even as an 8-year-old. He was such a lovable individual. If you were backstage, you saw the women who happened to be on the same show, and they just kind of adopted Michael. They were always hugging and kissing and rubbing him — it went on and on, more than almost any other kid could possibly bear. I'm sure Michael got tired of it, but he never complained. They were all over him. As time went on, he sort of fell in love with Diana Ross —her music and her singing — and I think it was mutual. She fell in love with him also. He was still only 9 or 10. With a guy who's that young, you don't try to project how good he's gonna be 'cause he's only 4 ft. tall. You're looking at a small person who can do anything he wants to do onstage — with his feet or his voice. To get to the level of people who can do that, you're talking about James Brown as a performer. You're talking about Aretha Franklin as a singer. Or Stevie Wonder or Donny Hathaway — people who were renowned for being able to do whatever they wanted to do with their voices. Michael was like that as a kid. As he began to evolve, you could hear Diana in his singing. You could hear Stevie Wonder. You could hear Marvin Gaye. You could hear Smokey. Once he put it all together, you wouldn't hear anybody imitating him, because he just had too much going for him as a singer. He was the man. The younger guys coming up used him as the standard. If there's anyone to use as the standard, to shoot at, to compare yourself with, it's Michael Jackson. Sheryl Crow Crow was a backup singer for Jackson during his first solo tour, Bad, in 1987. I have so many memories of him pranking me onstage. Our quick-change tents shared a side, and as we were rushing to change our wardrobe in between songs, invariably, a grape or a carrot would come rocketing over the top at me. I could always hear him giggling through the wall. He rented out amusement parks a lot. I remember riding a swinging-pirate-ship ride with him somewhere in Germany, and because we were the only ones on the ride, he wouldn't let the operator stop the ride, as I got sicker and sicker. He thought it was hilarious! When we were in Tokyo, I got a call from him at night inviting me to come to his hotel, where we watched Amos 'n' Andy shows. He laughed and threw popcorn the whole time. My most beloved memory, however, was watching him perform "Human Nature" every night from the side of the stage. There was something so genuinely vulnerable in his voice on that song, and watching the freedom with which he danced, doing the moves he invented only made me more keenly aware of the greatness I was blessed to be witnessing. Carson Daly Carson Daly is the host of NBC's Late Night with Carson Daly. He was the host of MTV's Total Request Live from 1998 to 2002. I interviewed him once, when Invincible came out. It was crazy. I remember staying up late to write my questions like I always did, and I wrote a bunch of questions for Michael Jackson. I had to turn them in to the record company, and then the day of the interview, they basically regurgitated one question and gave it back to me and said, "Here — just ask him this." It was very well crafted, well worded. Something to the effect of: How does it feel to have a No. 1 album again in 13 countries? That just spoke to the team that was around him. I walked over across the street maybe an hour before we went live. It reminded me of a presidential process in the sense of the handlers and the route I was to walk: across Times Square and through Virgin Megastore, through the back door. I finally got in. I remember coming down the huge escalator at Virgin Megastore, and it was empty. And Michael was sitting in an aisle, flipping through records. The last handler sort of took me maybe 50 feet away, and I started walking down this aisle toward one of the greatest men ever. The first thing that struck me was how tall he was. Everybody I had met in Hollywood up until that point was disappointingly short and sort of underwhelming. I remember he made a bunch of very humble social gestures that just made me take a great liking to him. He took his glasses off — he was wearing gloves — he took his glove off, and I shook his hand. And he was gracious and, of course, famously soft-spoken. He said, "Very nice to meet you, Carson," and then we just sort of sat there for a minute and flipped through vinyl. We talked about music and how much he loved vinyl. It was just a very bizarre, amazing 20 minutes with Michael Jackson in the aisle of a record store talking about music. Jeffrey Daniel Dancer and singer Jeffrey Daniel was a member of the R&B group Shalamar and pioneered the dance move the backslide — which, after he taught it to Michael Jackson, became known as the moonwalk. He would religiously work on dances every Sunday. And it was over a period of, I don't know, a few weeks because you're doing it just once a week for a couple of hours or so. It wasn't so regimented, like, O.K., here's this step and this step. It was like some of it was having fun, some of it was acting goofy, moving around like Charlie Chaplin and poking faces at each other. Some of it was, we were just gelling, you know, with the dances. And some of it was concentrating on a particular move, but a lot of it was two guys just having fun and showing dances. And then watching Fred Astaire films, watching Gene Kelly, watching the Nicholas Brothers, watching Sammy Davis Jr., getting inspiration. He could eat popcorn like nobody I knew, 'cause I could eat some popcorn. And we're sitting watching movies together and you can hear him scraping the bottom, and I'm just cracking up laughing. And he breaks out singing along with the movie. I was like, My God, he's just like anybody else you know. We first worked with him in 1980, but he did not do the moonwalk publicly until 1983 [on Motown's 25th-anniversary TV special]. And after he did it, he asked, "How was it?" And I said, "Why did you wait so long?" He said, "Well, it still didn't come out right." I'm like, Huh? This is the performance that totally blew everyone away — and he said something didn't come out right. Whatever was going on in his mind, we would never know it. We all know that it was a mind-blowing performance, and it just took him to another level. Clive Davis Grammy-winning producer Clive Davis would throw a party every year before the Grammys at the Beverly Hilton — and every year, Michael Jackson would be unable to come. He would call and say, "I think I can come. I want to come this year; I know it's such a great night." He would call me and ask, "Who's coming this year?" And I'd tell him, you know, that I was going to bring on the O'Jays, because they were part of my earlier career. And he'd say, "Oh, you gotta make them sing 'Love Train,' " or "You gotta make them sing 'Back Stabbers'!" His enthusiasm for music was so palpable, and his familiarity with the music. Whether I was bringing on the younger generation or Johnny Mathis, he would say things like, "Oh God, what he did with 'Chances Are' " or "The Twelfth of Never." Those moments are very special to me. He never failed to immerse himself in the beauty and power of music. We'd speak for an hour, two hours. We were both convinced we'd have such a great night, but then, of course, it never did occur. Frank Gaston Jr. Director and choreographer Frank Gaston Jr. has worked with En Vogue, Toni Braxton and Destiny's Child. He currently coordinates routines for Beyoncé. The first time I met Michael was when I danced in the video for "Smooth Criminal," and for some reason I remember his fingernails, because they were so well manicured. That was my first job in L.A. as a dancer. And it was the most amazing job — I made $10,000 because the job was for three months. Just the dance section. Isn't that something? There were, like, 40 dancers on the job. You know the scene in "Smooth Criminal" when he gets on the table? I'm standing right there because they wanted me to spot him, so if he fell, I would catch him. And he would never fall. I had gone to see his show in Europe, where it was, like, 100,000 people and they don't have seats on the main floor of the stadium. They just stand up and they're like cattle shoulder to shoulder. And that was just amazing, seeing all the medics come in and out because people were fainting, people were crying. I can't explain it. It was like the Holy Ghost: if you ever go to a black Baptist church, people shout, ladies faint. That's the only thing I can describe that's like how it was. And Michael told me one thing too: When people would grab him when he was walking through from backstage, and they could grab him or something, he said it was like fire — because they would grab him and they would pull him. They didn't want to hurt him; it was that they just wanted a piece of him. Most people, when they're rehearsing a dance movement, they don't do it full-out. Michael would always do everything to the fullest in rehearsal. He would do it like he was onstage, every time. And as a dancer, you would be like, Why is he doing it that hard? Every chromosome worked, the minute he moved. I don't know if you've ever seen when he was going to court [in 2005], he got on top of his car. Even in that moment, he didn't dance like he was on top of his car, he danced like he was onstage. He danced like every chromosome was working, right there, on top of a car. And when you really look at that tape, when he jumps on top of the car, he hurts his knees. He has to land on his knees when he jumps on the car from the ground. But even though his knees were in pain, he still gave everything he had. If you rewind it and look at it one day, you'll know what I mean. Bob Geldof Bob Geldof appeared with Michael Jackson on "We Are the World." I remember when I presented him with an award at the Brits in London, and I was reading the script, and I just couldn't get through all the encomiums, so I stopped. And then he performed "Earth Song" and Jarvis Cocker got up and did his thing. Michael didn't understand why people had been laughing. He rang me at 3 in the morning to ask about it. I just told him "Go to bed; don't worry." "Earth Song" was a little hubristic, but it was still a cool song. He was a pop singer; he hadn't invented penicillin. But what do you expect when you have a kid who never went to school, and then he was thrust into this mad existence? My favorite track is "Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough," but the most important is "We Are the World." I was never that crazy about the song, but at the time most Americans didn't know where Africa was. I don't think Michael understood the issues, the politics and economics; it didn't interest him, but when he was asked to help, he did. Berry Gordy Berry Gordy is the founder of Motown Records. He signed the Jackson 5 to his label in 1968. I did not want any more kids' groups. I just wanted to concentrate on all of the other stars that we had. I had Stevie Wonder as a kids' group, and he had to have an entourage and tutors, and he could only work so many hours and there were so many restrictions. And that was enough. But my creative assistant, she insisted [on the Jackson 5]. And when I saw them come out and start performing, I was blown away, frankly. They did a Smokey song called "Who's Loving You" — I'm not sure if it was at the first audition or some subsequent day. But when Michael sang that song — it's a very passionate love song — he sang it like he had been living that song for 50 years. I remember the other members had the instruments and the guitars and stuff, and they would sing a song and it'd be great and have great precision. And once the song was over, everybody would relax, and I remember Michael staring at me to see what I was going to say, whether I liked it, whether I didn't. He was very serious. He was never out of focus with what I or other people around me were thinking and doing. When you see someone with great precision like what Michael and his brothers had, you know a lot of work has to go into it. So we moved them from Gary, Ind., to Los Angeles with us. That's how important I thought they were. And we ended up having them live with us because where we were renting the place for them, they made too much noise in their rehearsals, and so they were sort of kicked out, so to speak. They moved in with me, and we then had all day and night to rehearse. There are a lot of debates about the early part of his life and his suffering, and I know that it wasn't a kid's life, but I disagree with most people, because he lived with me and I didn't see so much trauma in his life. I'm not saying he didn't have any. But I know when he lived with me, he was very normal. Anjelica Huston I met Michael on the first day of rehearsal, and I was stunned — even though, obviously, I knew his image very well — at how incredibly sweet and how modest and how innocent he was. And fragile too. In person you felt he was almost breakable. But then this thing happened when he would start to work: your heart would beat faster and the hair on your arms and the back of your neck would stick up as he literally took your breath away. I think he was the most electrifying performer I've ever seen. I think it was very hard for Michael to express anger. He was, I have to say, one of the most polite people I have ever met in my life. I never heard Michael say a swear word, even when he was upset. He had the most beautiful manners. And I think music was really the only way in which his passion could come through unguarded. It was immense. He was on fire as a performer — I've never seen a talent like it. I think, actually, there was a lot of the otherworldly in Michael. He had this talent that I've never encountered before, and I've seen a lot of extraordinary people perform. He was, I think, very misunderstood. I never believed any of the allegations or insinuations against him. We had lunch together about a month ago, and he talked about his ordeal. He felt like he had really been put through the ringer. He said they wanted blood. I felt so bad for him, and I felt that he was really broken-hearted from what had been done. He was a meteor: his flame burned incredibly bright, and not for long but mightily. Ice-T I met him once. He was in New York at the Sony studios shooting a video, and I was there with one of my groups. And I was requested — Michael wanted to meet me. I went in the back, and he was sitting between two women and he shook my hand, and it was cool. Somebody like Michael Jackson — you don't even think they know you exist. You know, you're a rapper. And the fact that he was like, "Ice-T is here. I would like to meet Ice-T." And I shook his hand and it was a very cool moment. One of my friends said, No matter how tough you are, Michael Jackson will have the biggest gangster in the front row screaming like a bitch at his concert. That's about the best compliment you can give. At the end of the day, his legacy to me is, he was original. That's one thing about Michael Jackson — you can't say any of his stuff was taken from anybody else. It was 100% original. All the new people who are going to mimic him — the little 'N Sync kid [Justin Timberlake] — they know they doing the Michael Jackson. Quincy Jones Grammy-winning producer, composer and arranger Quincy Jones produced some of Michael Jackson's biggest-selling albums, including Off the Wall andThriller. Michael's always had that intriguing and silent power inside of him, and so [while filming The Wiz] I was paying attention to him, almost out of everybody who was in the film. He'd get up four hours before everyone else to get these prosthetics on his face, and then he'd stand there, very, very diligently and disciplined. He knew everybody's lines, he knew all the songs, all the steps, everything. I mean I'd never seen so much focus in my life, and I started to watch him and I started to see things in him that I wasn't cognizant of before. And then they were rehearsing one day, and Sidney Lumet was blocking the principal characters, and Michael would pull these little pieces of paper from his chest and recite words from a powerful thinker — Socrates or Aristotle or Confucius or whatever — and then he'd say the name at the end. The last one he said, Blah blah blah — "So-crayts." And I said, "What is that?" And he said it a few times, and I realized what was going on. And because you get used to something when you're rehearsing like that, the second day I said to him, "Michael, it's Soc-ra-tees." And he said, "Really?" And the look he gave me then, it just prompted me to say, because I'd been impressed by all the things I saw in him during the rehearsal process, "I would love to take a shot at producing your album." And he went back and told the people at Epic Records, and they said, "No way — Quincy's too jazzy." Michael was persistent, and he and his managers went back and said, "Quincy's producing the album." And we proceeded to make Off the Wall. Ironically, that was one of the biggest black-selling albums at the time, and that album saved all the jobs of the people saying I was the wrong guy. That's the way it works. Lenny Kravitz Recording artist and producer Lenny Kravitz won four straight Grammy Awards for Best Male Vocal Performance from 1998-2001. I saw the Jackson 5 at Madison Square Garden, which was the first concert I'd ever seen, and they were wearing these knicker pants with these boots that came up to the knees. So I would put these galoshes on and dance around the living room and pretend that I was Michael Jackson. We got together a few years ago and we decided to go into the studio together. I had written a song for him and actually produced the track before he showed up. I played all the instruments, got it ready. We recorded at Marvin Gaye's old studio, up on Sunset Boulevard. We did his vocals for about three days. He was a lot of fun. He stayed for hours. We'd sit on these little stools and eat together and talk. That's where I really got to know him. His children were there. They were extremely well behaved. I grew up in an old-school West Indian family, where respect was paramount. And these kids were just like that, full of respect but not robotic. Really sweet. They drew pictures for me and signed them. They were making art all day while we were working. My daughter Zoe came in. We were all together. We played music, we drew, we talked, we ate, we laughed. [He was] extremely respectful toward the chef, the engineers, myself, the kids — just the same to everybody. I was in Glasgow, coming off the stage before an encore, when I heard the news. I went back on, did the last two songs. Came off and they announced he had died. Coming off the stage like that, when you're amped up and on a high, and hearing that news and having to go downstairs and digest this — it was difficult. I came off stage and went right to my computer and played the track we had done. It was about his life and where he'd been. It's quite triumphant. People don't get upset when they talk about Michael Jackson dying; they get upset when they talk about how much a part of their life he was. I mean, what are the '80s? A Rubik's Cube, 3-D glasses and Michael Jackson. And that's the giant cornerstone that's gone. He's one of the few crossover artists that would make even the most radical white supremacists say, "Well, he's not black — he's Michael Jackson." He's not black, he's Barack Obama. He's not black, he's Jimi Hendrix. He's not black, he's Tiger Woods. As a musician, the man was one of the purest substances ever in music. But it's frustrating, and somewhat pointless, to ever try and figure out how Michael Jackson arrived at an album like Thriller and how you could arrive at something like it. It's impossible. I mean, it's one of those things you actually don't want to bring up to musicians. They don't want to remember that that kind of greatness is achievable because it skews the bell curve completely.
John Mayer
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