Our EXCLUSIVE interview with Mark Bego begins today ...
As Mark recalls what can only be described as his MICHAEL JACKSON ADVENTURE for all our readers to enjoy!
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As recapped yesterday, Mark Bego had recently published a book on Michael Jackson (titled simply "Michael") which immediately went to the top of The New York Times Best Sellers List. Once it was announced that Michael was reteaming with his brothers for what would become known as The VICTORY Tour, the next logical step was for Bego to hit the road with The Jacksons and cover the tour for his next book follow-up, "On The Road With Michael."
Our story starts here, with a little background on how things got to this point ... and then the roller-coaster ride of Keeping Up With The Jacksons! (kk)
Kent Kotal / Forgotten Hits: DID THE JACKSONS KNOW IN ADVANCE THAT YOU WOULD BE DOCUMENTING THEIR ENTIRE TOUR?
MARK BEGO: The short answer is “no.”
Let me tell you how my whole Michael Jackson association came about.
Up to this point, I was already a published author, having written paperback books profiling the careers of Barry Manilow, The Captain & Tennille, and The Doobie Brothers. I loved doing those first three books, and I was very proud of having those three books turning me into a “published author” beginning when I was only 25 years old. I received some nice publicity, but they never really sold all that well. The “advance” payment to me was the only money I saw. When I landed the book contract to write a biography of Michael Jackson, I anticipated that it to do well on the marketplace, but I didn’t have any grand expectations for it.
The reason that I had wanted to do a book on Michael Jackson at that time, was because I was working for CBS Records and I could see the amount of money that the company was putting into promoting his Thriller album. Not everyone shared my vision for the success potential that a book on Jackson could yield. I could see what was happening to Michael’s career, and I wanted to be part of it. Was this book in any way, shape or form an authorized autobiography of Michael? No way, it was just me, as a rock & roll journalist writing my “take” on his impressive career.
I had worked as a copy writer for CBS Records from 1981 to 1983. I wrote the Michael! book for Pinnacle Books in July and August of 1983. Since I did not have access to Michael Jackson, or his famous brothers, I did my “journalist thing,” and started interviewing people who had known and worked with him. I spoke to musicians who had worked with him, disc jockey Frankie Crocker, people who remixed his records like John “Jellybean” Benitez, and I got my lifelong best friend Mary Wilson of The Supremes to write the “Introduction” to the book.
In September of 1983, I left my job at CBS Records and moved on to become the Editor-in-Chief of Modern Screen magazine. This changed my career and gave me a position in the media spotlight. Fortunately for me, at this point Modern Screen had gone from being one of the top 1930s / 1940s movie fan magazines, to becoming an entertainment magazine filled with the latest news about the stars of TV shows like Dallas and Dynasty, and featuring the stars of MTV … like Michael Jackson, Prince, and Cyndi Lauper.
You know how the stars just sort of line up correctly, and things can go amazingly well, or amazingly NOT well? For me, the beginning of 1984 was the perfect storm for the success of my book on Michael Jackson. On January 27, 1984, Michael and his brothers were filming the famous Pepsi commercial, and amidst the filming, Michael caught his hair on fire, and he was all over the news media non-stop. The following week, my book Michael! was released, and instantly it began selling millions and millions of copies. I had no idea that I was going to be hit with a tidal wave of success.
I was also personally invited to attend a special “Thriller” evening on February 7, 1984, at The Museum of Natural History in New York City, where Michael was presented with Gold Record certifications. The invitation itself was printed on a white glove. This was also the party where Michael showed up with Brooke Shields as his date. It was an outrageous evening.
MB: Yes, there were other books written about Michael Jackson at that same time, but it was mine that was the biggest success. This was largely because of Scholastic Book Club, and its sales network, which reached millions of students across the country. They bought millions of copies of my book from Pinnacle, and all of a sudden I was on The New York Times best-seller list.
I tell you all of this, because you have to appreciate the position I suddenly found myself in — circa February, 1984. In the matter of less than six months I had gone from being a semi-anonymous copywriter at CBS Records, to suddenly being the Editor-In-Chief for an internationally distributed magazine, and a New York Times best-selling author!
kk: If you don’t owe your career to Michael Jackson, then certainly this connection was the catalyst to allowing Mark Bego to become very quickly known as “the biographer of the music stars!”
MB: To top all of that off, I also became a sought-after TV talk show guest as well. In another “perfect storm” something miraculous happened. Michael Jackson refused to do any press interviews … period. Here were all of these local and national and international TV shows hungry to produce Michael Jackson segments on their shows, and they could not get Michael himself.
So, who did they want to book on TV to “talk about” Michael Jackson? Well, of course: his camera-ready, eager-for-stardom, and happy-to-oblige best selling biographer: me! All of a sudden I was on Entertainment Tonight, I was on Live at Five in New York City, I was on Live On Five in Cleveland,” I was on Kelly & Company in Detroit, and so-on and so-on. Now I was on TV as the world’s top “Michael Jackson expert.”
The true frosting-on-the-cake came when the nationally broadcast late-night TV show Thicke Of The Night, starring Alan Thicke, invited me to star in a four-part-series of Michael Jackson interviews. Although it sounds like I was on an incredible ego-trip telling you all of this, no one was more stunned, thankful, and grateful than me. I had discovered the “Goose Who Laid The Golden Egg” — and I knew it!
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Mark Bego and Alan Thicke on the set of Thicke of the Night TV show where Mark talking about Michael Jackson was part of a 4-episode special (Photo by Josh Touster)
I was on the East Side of Manhattan, at the offices of Modern Screen magazine — Sterlings Publications — when the phone rang. It was my Michael! book editor, Sara Uman, calling me to ask me to come to a special meeting at Pinnacle Books to discuss my book Michael! and how we were going to follow it up.
I went to the meeting, held in the headquarters of Pinnacle Books, in the Times Square area. We were in the office of the Editor-In-Chief of that publishing house, Sondra Ordover. Sara Uman, and the publishing company’s Editorial Director, Tony Seidl, were there, too.
Opening a wet-bar up, and placing ice cubes in a glass Sondra asked me, “Would you like a drink?”
“No thank you,” I politely said. I wanted to appear as professional as possible, so I declined.
“Well, young man,” Tony Seidl said to me, “You have sold over four million copies of your Michael Jackson book so far, and up to this point we owe you approximately half a million dollars.”
I looked over at Sondra Ordover and said, “I will have a vodka on the rocks, please.” I didn’t just have one straight vodka, I had two. Needless to say, I was even more stunned, proud, happy, grateful, and in total awe. It was like I had just been hit with a tidal wave of overwhelming success.
I was thrilled to discover that my book on Michael Jackson had become Pinnacle Books’ biggest selling title in years, and I was now the company’s “star author.” That was the meeting in which we discussed the all-important issue, “How are we going to follow this book up?” / “What are we going to have Mark Bego write next?” / and “How quick can you do it?”
At this point it had been announced that Michael and his famous brothers — The Jacksons (formerly The Jackson Five) — were going to launch the biggest, glitziest, most phenomenally anticipated series of rock concerts in the world. By now, Michael and The Jacksons were no longer simple soul or pop stars, they were full-on rock stars. Michael’s records were now produced by the stunningly talented Quincy Jones, and featured rockers like Eddie Van Halen, Slash, and even Paul McCartney. When that year’s new Jackson’s Victory album was released, it featured Mick Jagger singing a duet with Michael and his brothers.
The upcoming concert tour that was fashioned for Michael and The Jacksons wasn’t just going to be “big” … it was going to be “huge.” Because of my job at Modern Screen, when the tour was officially announced I had received a personal invitation to the press conference for The Victory Tour, as it was entitled. When it had been announced in November of 1983, there I was at Tavern On The Green restaurant, in Central Park, chatting with and posing for photos with my two biggest artistic heroes, Andy Warhol, and Peter Max. There I was when the entire Jackson family and entourage arrived and laid out the plans for this amazing series of concerts. It was projected to become the biggest and most successful rock & roll tour ever mounted.
Once all of this fell into place, the path to my next book contract became an obvious one. As that meeting at Pinnacle Books — complete with vodka — came around, it was unanimously decided upon that the cleverest thing that we could do, was to send me out on the road to follow the first three months of The Victory Tour, accompanied with my own photographer. Along the way I would write the book which ultimately became my next million-selling book: On The Road With Michael!
Mark Bego's Michael Jackson Victory Tour million-selling book, On The Road With Michael! (photo courtesy of Mark Bego)
It just so happened that Sondra Ordover’s son, Josh Touster, was an accomplished photographer, so he was going to join me on this adventure. As I sipped on another vodka-on-the-rocks, Sondra, Tony Seidl, and Sara Uman and I proceeded to concoct the plans that became On The Road With Michael!
My assignment — if I chose to accept it — was to attend and write about the concerts, the crowds, the critics, the music, and the spectacle of 30 separate concerts on The Victory Tour, and wrap up the book while the tour was still underway. I sat there drinking my vodka-on-the-rocks, and I watched and listened to everything that the executive board at Pinnacle Books was proposing to me. Was I amenable to this plan? You bet I was! I was going to have the rock & roll adventure of a lifetime, and my publisher was going to pay for it. I felt like I had just fallen into a pot of gold.
Since I was also holding my job as the Editor-In-Chief of Modern Screen magazine, how were they going to view this series of events? When I told my boss, Bob Schartoff, about what Pinnacle Books was proposing, he and the rest of the company were thrilled. I could continue to do my work of writing and laying out the monthly magazine, while at the same time I was delivering firsthand Michael Jackson news to my assistant, John Moreno, from the road of the concert tour. And, Bob Schartoff was especially thrilled that I would be “on assignment” with The Victory Tour, and Pinnacle was going to be paying all of the bills.
In addition to all of this exposure, Pinnacle Books publicity department was at every city I went into. For me, this was shaping up to be the most exciting summer, the most exciting assignment, and the most exciting year of my life.
Now, to again answer your first question, “Was my traveling on The Victory Tour in any way, shape, or form authorized by either The Jacksons, or Pepsi-Cola, or the tour promoters?” No. I simply showed up, and talked my way into everything. Naturally, Pinnacle was paying for me and Josh Touster to fly from city-to-city, paying for all of the hotels and rental cars, and buying us “primo” seats for every one of 30 consecutive concerts. The seats we got were consistently amazing ones, as Pinnacle wanted Josh to be able to photograph the shows clearly from his seat.
MUCH MORE TOMORROW ...
EXCLUSIVELY IN FORGOTTEN HITS!
60 YEARS AGO TODAY:
8/27/66 – Forgotten Hits Founder Kent Kotal becomes a teenager, turning 13 years old today!
(I couldn't find a pic from 1966 ...
But here I am a year later, dressed for my grade school graduation ...
Can you tell who my hero was???)
