THE ABOVE are a series of questions music industry manager Ron Weisner asks himself at the beginning of his chapter on Michael Jackson, solo performer, in Weisner’s new book, “Listen Out Loud — A Life In Music Managing McCartney, Madonna and Michael Jackson.”
![]() | ![]() | Click to order“Listen Out Loud — A Life In Music Managing McCartney, Madonna and Michael Jackson.”
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This is not a big book, size-wise, coming in at a brisk 234 pages. But that’s quite enough, considering the names he packs in. Ron also managed Gladys Knight, Steve Winwood, Curtis Mayfield, Bill Withers and that group of very strange and combative guys, Sha Na Na. And Ron has his say about everybody, much of it caustic, to say the least. (He is exceptionally close to and fond of Gladys Knight, so it’s only love there, and vice versa. She contributes an affectionate foreword and comments throughout the book.)
IT IS Weisner’s relationship with Michael Jackson, as the youngest (and by far the most talented) of the Jackson Five, and later as an increasingly isolated and strange solo artist that are the most compelling and tragic aspects of this book.
Much of it we already know — Jackson’s addiction to pills began after the accident on the set of the Pepsi commercial in 1983 ... his controlling father, Joe Jackson, whom no one wanted to deal with, or respected, or liked ... the basic use of Michael as a money machine.
![]() | ![]() | | Ron Weisner with Michael Jackson. | ![]() |
Weisner’s first hand accounts of all this, replete with scathing judgments and expletives, are fairly riveting, along with the author’s observations of super-professional Michael plunged into work, his out-of-control eccentricities, insistence on whitening his skin, the very smart man under the fey exterior (partly real, partly a self-protective performance.)
Reading it all, knowing how Michael’s life and career devolved and ended, it’s a tragic runaway train, a train that Weisner says was still more or less in control, on the rails, until “Joe Jackson got Michael to fire me.”
There’s also some pleasant revisionist history on La Toya Jackson: “A nice lady whose horrible reputation was, to me exaggerated ... the only person in the family who consistently tried to help Michael.” (Weisner and LaToya almost succeeded in placing Michael in a proper facility, but the plan fell apart at the last moment.) Well, I always thought of La Toya as the Cassandra of the Jacksons, telling the truth but never believed. Her flagrant image undermined her good intentions.
Reading the Jackson chapters, you know that this genius never had a chance. Not with that family.
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