bboy87 said:
Roger twisted the story in his own little way. Here's the full quote from the book
Full quote from Clive Davis book about Michael and Jermaine -
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. The tensions that existed within the Jackson family are no longer a mystery to anyone, and the sibling rivalry between Michael and Jermaine was certainly one element of them. Jermaine spent his professional life very much in his younger brother’s shadow, and, as brothers will, he saw himself as every bit Michael’s equal in terms of talent. That was not the case, of course. Really, it’s hard to think of any artist who could be compared to Michael Jackson, but Jermaine could not accept that. 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. The tabloid media covered the song intensely. Jermaine was accused of leaking the song himself to piggyback on the media attention Michael was getting for his album Dangerous, which had come out not long before, and to call attention to his own album You Said. I have no idea if Jermaine did that or not, but the publicity backfired. He came off as petty and desperate. Of course, no one knew about the dramatic situation that had triggered his anger and generated the song in the first place.
“Word to the Badd” was set to go on You Said, and there wasn’t much I could do about that, even after Michael Jackson personally called me to complain. Michael and I had always been on good terms. We would often run into each other during the glory years of Studio 54. Both of us would be taking all of it in, and he always felt comfortable being next to me. He was a huge early fan of Whitney’s, and loved her music. In later years I would regularly invite him to my pre-Grammy party. He never ended up coming; his legal problems had already started, and I’m sure his lawyers advised him that it would not be a good idea while litigation was ongoing. But in the week before the show, he would call me every day and insist that he would be there. His security and publicity people would visit the venue, and he would want to know what table he’d be seated at and with whom he’d be sitting. He’d also want to know who would be performing. I never reveal that in advance, but in his case I knew he wouldn’t tell anyone. When the O’Jays were going to be there, he was so enthusiastic: “They’ve got to play ‘Back Stabbers’!” he declaimed. “Tell them I insist they perform ‘Back Stabbers’!” We would take turns singing songs together on the phone as we talked about the various artists who would be performing and his favorite hits of theirs.
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. It stayed on You Said, but much of the sting had been taken out of it. Still, even recast as a lovers’ quarrel, the song says a great deal about the hurt Jermaine felt about what Michael had done: “You never think about who you love / You only think about number one / You forgot about where we started from / You only think about what you want / You don’t care about how it’s done.” Ultimately, the album didn’t make much impact, so the song is most interesting for the personal story it tells.
Jermaine signed with Arista in 1984. Dynamite and Do What You Do were the only songs that reached the top 20 on the Hot 100. He had better success on the R&B chart where he got 4 top 20 singles
if TELL ME I'M NOT DREAMIN would have been allowed to be released as an official single, it had #1 written all over it, but somebody exercising power and authority and kept that from happening? Somebody made a call and issued an order
I was waiting for someone to discuss this because quite honestly, I didn't think it would be posted.
regarding this situation, after 23 years, now the real truth is coming out about the motivation behind this song......
you see, JERMAINE didn't just write this song in regards to the situation about Mike hijacking his producers, it was just as much in response as to what happened 2 years before, the hijack just happened to be the final straw....
See that part I highlighted below....
Jermaine was accused of leaking the song himself to piggyback on the media attention Michael was getting for his album Dangerous, which had come out not long before, and to call attention to his own album
Jermaine never piggyback after the DANGEROUS ALBUM
wanna know why?.......this is why I'm thankful that I followed this entire dynamic over the past 30 years, that why it's possible to discern fact from fiction
Jermaine's album YOU SAID was released in October of 1991
Michael's Dangerous album wasn't released until November of 1991, late November at that...
so there was no piggybacking going on.....and ANYONE can verify this information for themselves...Jermaine's album came out before Michael's did
he didn't call it WORD TO THE DANGEROUS, he called it WORD TO THE BADD...
let me take it back to 1989....
as I was 17 years old, and just finished my senior year in high school
this was 2 years after MARLON JACKSON had just earned the #1 r&b single in the united states, where his debut album went double platinum, and the self title track to his album supplanted Michael's Bad single from the top of the r&b chars and the video charts (VIDEO SOUL ON BET..when BET was worthy)...that means for that stretch of time, Marlon was the top r&b performer in the country....proof that he was just as driven for musical success as anyone in the family..so that mean's he wasn't lazy
but during that summer of 1989, urban radio supported the Jackson brothers album 2300 JACKSON STREET to the point where the title track was the top requested song by listeners from earlier springtime up until that point, later that summer, Randy Jackson had started his own band RANDY AND THE GYPSIES, and soon released his debut single "Perpetrators" which became the new #1 requested song on urban radio..this was before the album came out, so that means Randy wasn't lazy either...
but wait, the plot gets thicker...Jermaine Jackson released his 1989 album DON'T TAKE IT PERSONAL where the title track, that song becamse the #1 r&b song in the country, so that means 3 brothers of the Jackson five besides Michael earned #1 distinction in their own right from the original fan support when this entire deals started.....
even JACKIE released his own solo album weeks late that summer, an album that earned gold status.
and all of this happen after MICHAEL'S album BAD completed its run by Febuary/March of 1989 and before JANET released her epic album RHYTHM NATION 1814 in the fall of 89
so not only were the brothers making viable music in their own right, but they were thriving in the process, and would have been doing so the entire time if their careers weren't in the beginning stages of being snatched from them...
but wait, it gets even thicker...
during the late summer of 1989, I went to what use to be the neighborhood record store located exactly a mile from where I live now......
and I went up in that store, and I saw the craziest thing I'd ever seen in the world if music....guess what I saw....
as I was checking on what new music was out, a store employee appeared from the back section and guess what she did.....
she walked to the aisle I was standing, and she proceeded to remove EVERY SINGLE COPY of 2300 JACKSON STREET from the shelves...EVERY COPY, where all you saw was the back of the rack.....
guess what, that was the only album of any artist that was pulled from any shelf in that store
I was flabbergasted, saying "what in the hell is going on".....so I asked the employee why 2300 JACKSON STREET was the only record being pulled from the shelf, and she told me she was instructed by her manager to do so and she had no other information to give......she was just as confused to what was going on as myself
and the moment I left that store, I said to myself "that has shade written all over it"...it didn't look right, and that was no coincidence.....
but wait, the plot thickens even more.....not only whas their album pulled, but radio stations pulled their songs from rotation...including 2300 JACKSON STREET and SOMETHING THAT COMPARES TO U, their debut single from that album
but wait, it becomes insane, because the video networks, and video shows pulled the video of 2300 JACKSON STREET from their rotation too.....and that goes for VIDEO SOUL on BET
all this happened at the same time
it was if that record was erased from the face of the earth on a dime.....that was deliberate, and I knew it at the age of 17.......it was like someone made a phone call and moves were made instantaneously, like the call was made from the godfather.......someone pulled the plug on that baby
all of this happened 18 months to 2 years before the deal with LA REID/BABYFACE even happened....
see, there's always a root to any dynamic, and a cause that leads to the effect.
built up anger for 2 years were unleased on WORD TO THE BADD......
and because of the false image MICHAEL projected to the public after he reached the pinnacle of his career with THRILLER, the world today, in 2013 believes the brothers were bums, and leeches, and moochers....all because of manipulation and maneuvers to make it appear that way....
people coming on tv, white and black, talking crap...thinking they know but they don't know and what they do know doesn't count....and it's a crying shame...
and after WORD TO THE BADD was released, MICHAEL JACKSON took matter into his own hands, and you know what happen, in late 1991, early 1992....he had all of his brothers sign on his label under MJJ PRODUCTIONS, and from that point on, their careers were shut down to the core until after 6/25/2009...and during that span, the situation was geared to the point where no other producers would work with them, because they was bogged down by a restricting contract, career stifling contract.....
he even got Rebbie too, as she signed on the MJJ/EPIC label, where all of her previous work occured when she was signed with Columbia records...
and her last album YOURS FAITHFULLY (under the MJJ/EPIC label) didn't see the light of day after it was yanked within a month after release...
and this is how you go from being the first family of music into one trying to pick up the pieces
I've seen castoffs come on these cable networks and entertainment shows throughout the years talking about the brothers being lazy but they don't know the crux of the situation.....and this is why I say, the wrong people are being placed in position to tell this story
but the ultimate, absolute, unequivocal truth will break thru this very difficult stronghold of misrespresentation, and do so in the most definitive way
and that's going to be one beautiful day.....a long time coming
[Edited 2/19/13 20:19pm]