My Family, The Jacksons.
''Married to the daughter of the president of his record company that his brothers were leaving, Jermaine was in a difficult position. If he decided to go with his brothers to Epic, he would upset Hazel and Mr. Gordy.
If he decided to stay at Motown as a solo artist, he would upset Joe, me and the boys. In the end, Jermaine upset his family. When Jermaine explained to Joe and me that he felt he owed his primary loyalty to Motown for giving the Jackson Five their first chance, Joe was furious.
"It's my blood running through your veins, not Berry Gordy's," he snapped. When Jermaine added that it was Mr. Gordy "who put steaks on our table and teeth in our mouths," I said. "We were already eating steaks at Gary. And if it's true that Mr. Gordy lent us the money to buy the crowns for the teeth Jackie and Tito had broken, he's got that money back hundreds of times." But Jermaine's decision was final, and the Jackson family suffered through their split for the first time. Marlon: ''Actually, I respected Jermaine's decision. He had to do what he thought was best for his life. I just don't like the way he did things, and I'm going to tell him today. We had a family show to do in New York at Westbury. On the day of the show, he informed us that he wouldn't be going on stage because Berry Gordy had told him: Don't do the show. I remember the rest of us saying, “Okay then, if that's the way you feel, that's fine. But we're going to introduce ourselves.” We've recruited the best musician in the orchestra to do the show with us. ''For several months after his decision, I was the only one Jermaine would call. He knew I would listen to him, and I did. I told him that I understood the difficult position he was in and that I loved him despite the decision he had made....even though inside I was still grieving about it. "Well, I hope my dad and my brothers don't have any resentment about what I've done," he said during a conversation. I told him they didn't. But the fact is, six months passed before they started talking to each other again. Making this period in our lives all the more difficult was Motown's decision to sue CBS Records and the Jacksons for $20 million during the group's departure. In its suit, Motown claimed it had been hurt, as Epic Records had announced the boys before the group's contract with Motown had expired, thereby hurting sales of their 1975 Jackson Five album, Moving Violations .
Motown also won an injunction preventing us from continuing to use the Jackson Five name. This worried me even more than the stock's value. "How can Berry Gordy keep the name when he hasn't even given the boys that name?" I asked Joe, naively. The answer: Motown had included a clause in the contract giving it ownership for the name. It was in the ''fine print'' and we lost it! The dispute with Motown hit a real low point when the company's vice president, Michael Roshkind, threatened to form a new ''.... Jackson Five. We can do whatever we want with [the name]," he said. we worked with them for a whole year, before their first record.” That was tough. All the boys felt the impact of Jermaine's departure from the group. However, the first time the boys performed without him – at the family show in Westbury - they won four standing ovations, Marlon sang old Jermaine pieces superbly, Randy hit the bongos and Michael sang and danced with greater devotion than ever Joe wasted no time putting the boys in the studio to record their first album for Epic. The company selected the well-known production writing team of Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff to work with my kids.Gamble and Huff wrote hits for a number of artists, and started writing one for the boys: Enjoy Yourself. that song, as well as the entire album, simply titled The Jacksons. The Gamble and Huff sound was mellow and elegant. I liked Going Places even more, the boys' second album recorded with Gamble and Huff. I particularly liked the message of the song Man of War, a call for peace. Motown had kept the boys away from that kind of material, the term Dark Force was in vogue in the early seventies, and I'm sure Mr. Gordy didn't want my kids to be associated with any song or statement that could be interpreted as sounding political or worse, militant. At the time, I agreed. However, in 1977, singing messages in their songs was, in my mind, another example of my boys' maturity. Unfortunately, the audience didn't share my enthusiasm for The Jacksons or Going Places. Sales were disappointing. Tito: ''All the people were suddenly telling us that our career was over.'' We also heard how foolish the boys had been to leave Motown. However, Motown didn't exactly seem to be working wonders with Jermaine at the moment. My Name Is Jermaine, his first solo album since leaving his brothers, had disappointing sales despite Berry Gordy's promise to the press that Motown was going to make him a superstar. Jermaine's single Let's Be Young Tonight Flopped flopped. My boys had a long term, a longer term than I always dreamed of, I thought at the time. Is what the "experts" are saying true? What are they going through? Michael didn't doubt himself or his brothers for a second. "Don't worry mom," he told me, when I expressed my concerns to him. "We'll be back on top again." Joe and the boys had a plan. Joe and Michael revealed the plan in a one-day meeting in 1978 with Ron Alexenburg, the CBS Records executive, who signed the Jacksons to Epic. The plan was simple: the boys would come out of their record lows by writing and producing their third album themselves.
His argument to Mr. Alexenburg was fair and simple: ''Gamble and Huff gave the group their best, but things didn't work out. We can do better.” Joe and Michael weren't asking the CBS Records executive to take a full leap of faith in granting them his wish. Mr. Alexenburg could hear the boys developing as songwriters and producers of the four songs they had. contributed to the two albums they had recorded with Gamble and Huff. The boys were especially proud of Different Kind of Lady, a collaboration by the group. They had to fight for its inclusion in Going Places - despite their initial words to the contrary, Gamble and Huff never really showed much interest in the boys' songs - so the boys felt a special satisfaction when the song became a popular track in clubs. To our delight, Ron Alexenburg granted Joe and the boys a wish. : that CBS employees - Bobby Colomby and Mike Atkinson - be allowed to oversee the project as executive producers of the album. Joe and the boys con agreed. Randy: ''We, as humans, don't know our abilities. The only times we always seem to stretch is when we're being tested. During our own album it was the biggest test for my brothers and me. The boys were not lacking in material. They had been writing songs since the beginning of their career at Motown and, according to Tito, ''keeping them in our personal bank.” They also had a good deal of experience recording their songs in the studio we had at home. By then, Jackie, Tito and Marlon had also built studios in their homes.'' Marlon: ''We went into the studio with the attitude: “Let's show everyone we're not finished.” The album turned out to be a real effort Five of the eight songs were co-written by all of them. The boys also devised a clever way of "mixing" each of the songs together. Marlon: ''Two of us would be mixing a particular song. was done, the rest of us would listen with our fresh ears, making whatever changes we thought were necessary. We repeated this process for each of the songs, and it worked very well.'' The fruit of his work was Destiny, released on fall 1978. and was praised by critics as 'the Jacksons' musical coming of age'. I loved it. But from my first audition, I felt anxious. ''Will Epic promote it?'' I wondered. How would record buyers get the word that this was a great album? I got even more excited when the album's first single, Blame It on the Boogie, the only song the boys hadn't written, flopped. Randy: ''We told CBS, "No, no, no, don't put Blame It on the Boogie; put Shake Your Body (Down to the Ground), which Michael and I had written. But CBS loved Boogie too, me I think they still didn't believe us one hundred percent.'' Fortunately, Shake Your Body became the second single from the album. It did very well, hitting number seven on the Billboard pop chart. Randy: ''Actually, that song should have been number one. It sold two million copies, a high number for a single. But I don't think pop radio or the press were ready to accept our return, yet.'' But the audience was. Destiny ultimately won double platinum. As Destiny roared high on the charts in the early months of 1979, the Jacksons performed in Britain, Europe and Africa, the ''first legs'' on their world tour that year.' 'What a positive title for your album!'' I thought, as I reflected on the boys. ''Returning the pop spotlight.'' As if you see, Destiny has become a word that could also apply to Michael re-emerging as a solo talent.''
By Katherine Jackson. Co-authored by Richard Wiseman in his book My Family, The Jacksons, October 1990.
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/ Taj Jackson Interview
