After a chance meeting as a young fan, Stacy Brown became friends with the bizarre family of Michael Jackson. For 25 years, he hung out at their Hayvenhurst estate in Encino, Calif., and even ghostwrote their memoirs. He previously wrote about Katherine Jackson’s letters to her son, in which she called Michael a homophobic slur. Here, in Part Two of his memories of life among the Jacksons, he talks about the family member he knows best — Jermaine, the jealous older brother of Michael.
“That was supposed to be me,” Jermaine Jackson said, for the 100th time, talking about the superstardom his younger brother enjoyed.
“That’s why I stayed at Motown. We had plans. But once Michael beat me to it, he made sure it would only be him.”
Of all the Jacksons, none was more tortured by the cult of Michael than Jermaine. He’d spend an entire day ranting against him. The next, he’d go on a talk show and defend him.
All the while was the subtext — it should have been me.
“I still say his timing was what made him the King of Pop,” Jermaine once said. Then he asked to borrow $500 to change the tires on his Mercedes.
Thy Brother’s ‘Wife’
If there’s one best example of how dysfunctional the Jackson family is, know this — Jermaine stole away, then married, the mother of his younger brother Randy’s children.
Randy met Alejandra Oaziaza in 1986, when she was about 17 and he was 24. Randy, seven years younger than Jermaine and three years younger than Michael, missed out on the heyday of the Jacksons’ Motown fame. Too young to appear in the Jackson 5, he nonetheless was enlisted in the family business and would tour with his brothers as he got older (as Michael went solo).
Randy and Alejandra dated for a long time, but never married, having two children — Genevieve and Randy Jr. But Randy proved a bit too immature for Alejandra, and while he was away from home, Jermaine moved in.
“Randy didn’t treat me like I was the one,” Alejandra told me. “I just thought that Jermaine was different, that he was more family oriented.”
In 1995, Jermaine and Alejandra secretly married, later having children of their own — Jaafar, Donte and Jermajesty.
Randy, of course, was devastated.
“Joe Blow down the street, but my brother? In the same house?” Randy seethed about the betrayal. “She’s a pig and my brother is a fool.”
Katherine, their mother, was not amused either and treated Alejandra like the help. Randy, meanwhile, withheld child-support payments, which Jermaine said he just couldn’t understand.
“He’s an a-hole,” Jermaine said of Randy. “He shouldn’t let his feelings for me or Alejandra come between taking care of his kids.”
Jermaine didn’t understand Randy’s anger in general.
“He needs to get over it and leave all the petty stuff behind and act like a man,” Jermaine said to me. This conversation lasted more than four hours and I had to reason with him that, “You not only took his woman, but you had children with her and you married her. There’s nothing petty about that.”
Jermaine just shrugged.
Things broke down so badly between the brothers that they refused to speak to one another. In 1997, I was in the kitchen with Jackie, Tito and Jermaine, who was feeling tortured over the thought of having to fly with and go on stage alongside Randy to accept their introduction as The Jackson 5 into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
“I just don’t want to do anything with Randy,” Jermaine said.
After about 15 minutes discussing how Jermaine should handle Randy at the awards presentation, I just had to speak up. “Dudes, this isn’t as much of a problem that you all are making it out to be,” I said. “Randy isn’t a member of The Jackson 5; he joined the group when you were called The Jacksons. The J-5 is being inducted.”
They stared incredulously and then whooped with joy.
Still, Randy didn’t let it go. He would always say to me, “Stacy, watch your women around my brother, you’re around him an awful lot, look what he did to me.”
Indeed, Jermaine’s mind had one track. On one visit to New York, where he was crashing with a friend, Jermaine was interviewed by the Fox News anchor Rita Cosby — then spent the rest of the weekend talking about how it was his mission to “do” her in a hotel bedroom.
Broke Casanova
Naturally, Cosby would have to pay for the room if it were to happen. Jermaine had absolutely no cash, as usual.
Later on, he told me he was hungry for some Burger King. Fine, I thought, we could do that. He said he’d pay this time. Of course, I doubted that but was certainly prepared to take him up on his offer. I ordered a Whopper meal while Jermaine simply ordered an apple pie.
“You got a coupon for that?” he asked me with a laugh. I told him to order what he wanted, that I’d pay. So he returned to the counter and asked for large fries and an iced tea to go with the pie.
The next time we spoke of Cosby, Jermaine shocked me by adding that he wanted to “bang Nancy Grace,” who is viewed as a family nemesis.
“Just one time with that heifer,” he said. “I bet she won’t say anything bad about Michael anymore. She’ll just be thinking about her one night with the man! Jermaine.”
That didn’t happen (as far as I know). But Jermaine did have many a conquest. In New York in 2001, for Michael’s 30th Anniversary Special concerts, Jermaine’s cellphone rang. Someone on the line told him Whitney Houston, a former lover of his, needed help.
He hung up and turned to me. “She’s like Michael. She’s messed up on those drugs,” he said. “You know I used to wear her a– out. I know she’d take me back and get rid of that (expletive) Bobby Brown. Plus, I should just get with her before she loses all that money she’s made.”
Whitney appeared sickly and rail thin at the concert and Jermaine said he was concerned. He said that after the second show, which was on Sept. 10, 2001, he’d get with her and seriously discuss moving to New Jersey or Atlanta to be with her.
“I feel it’s my duty with Whitney, man,” Jermaine said. “She told me she never stopped loving me. I can get with her and I should. I just don’t know how she’d act to have me in that bed instead of Bobby. I might be too much for her. But I’d get her off the drugs. She’d be high, but only on Jermaine.”
After the first show, which took place on Friday, Sept. 7, the family and invited guests gathered at Tavern on the Green in Central Park, where Michael, looking dazed, sat in an area that was roped off from his family. Macaulay Culkin sat with Michael.
“He just told me he wasn’t doing the second show,” Jermaine told me. “He’s high as a kite, but I’m going to slap him around and get him straight.”
Secret Muslim Wedding
One extracurricular relationship was somewhat more serious than the others. Jermaine was introduced to Lawanda, a friend of one his nieces, in the mid-1990s.
By then, Jermaine had converted to Islam. In 1999, while still married to Alejandra, he and Lawanda had a “wedding” at a local mosque. Jermaine would tell me later that he did it just to make her happy. While it wasn’t legal in the eyes of the government, Lawanda felt sure — she was now Jermaine’s wife.
At Michael’s anniversary concerts, Lawanda had had enough of being Jermaine’s No. 2. She came to me, crying. “Do you know who else’s anniversary it is?” she said. “Mine and Jermaine’s and he hasn’t said a word to me.” Then, in front of Jermaine, Randy and Alejandra’s young children, Lawanda tried to attack his lawful wife.
“That’s Jermaine for you,” brother Jackie would later say.
Even with two “wives,” Jermaine couldn’t help himself. One summer night in 2003, he and I were cruising Ventura Boulevard in Katherine’s late-model Mercedes. We stopped at Starbucks in Sherman Oaks where he introduced me to a neighbor named Sandy, who was waiting for him.
We got back into the car and Sandy followed in her jeep close behind. Jermaine called Alejandra and told her that Minister Louis Farrakhan was in town and that we were going by his hotel to speak with him.
We headed up into the pitch-black darkness of the Sepulveda Pass where we parked and Sandy parked right behind us. “Here, take the car and drive, come back in like an hour or so,” Jermaine said.
He hopped out and into Sandy’s car — and before I could make a U-turn, they were like two teens, ripping their clothes off and getting it on right there.
When I picked Jermaine up, he insisted we try and see Farrakhan so that his alibi would work. An aide to Farrakhan said he wasn’t available, so we returned to Hayvenhurst. Alejandra never asked about the meeting.
Jermaine divorced Alejandra in 2004, leaving the divorce papers behind in the house as he went on tour. In 2005, he married Halima Rashid, who comes from a wealthy Mideast family. Lawanda still complains to Jackie and Tito that she has to play second fiddle.
Green with Envy
Jermaine knew plenty about playing second fiddle, though. He would go through periods of anger about his brother, then periods of remorse when he realized he would probably be broke without him.
In 1991, Jermaine released the song “Word to the Badd” that accused Michael of “changing his shade.” Michael wouldn’t speak to him for years. Jermaine then became his brother’s most vocal defender, dismissing every rumor about him on any show that would have him. Jermaine also would warn Michael of the family’s planned interventions and trips to therapy.
Still, Michael didn’t really pay Jermaine back — and kept putting off any talk of reunion concerts.
Finally, at the end of 2001, Jermaine decided to write a be-all, end-all book to pay his bills. And once his girlfriend, Lawanda, got hold of it, she was determined that Jermaine earn a $1 million advance.
The pitch was about Michael’s drug use and his penchant for keeping company with underage boys.
Michael’s assistant was frantic. “We want a retraction! We want a retraction! Call every publisher in America and tell them you made it all up and it’s not true,” she said desperately.
The Jacksons went into one of their famous family meetings and, oddly enough, several of them came away believing that Michael himself had made up the manuscript as a way to get attention.
But Jermaine said Michael obtained a copy of the manuscript. And Michael, who paid for the house at Hayvenhurst, would use it as an excuse to throw Jermaine out.
Jermaine backed off the book. He spent the next few years trying to make amends.
And I remember him sitting in an airport giddy during Michael Jackson’s trial on molestation charges in 2005.
“Michael said after the trial is over, we’re going on tour,” Jermaine said.
I told him, you’re thinking about concerts — your brother could be going to jail for life.
Jermaine just shook his head. Wasn’t going to happen, he said.
Then he started talking about the tour, what he would wear, what it would look like.
“Woo hoo, I love it.”