La Toya: Growing Up in the Jackson Family

CHAPTER TWO: A NEW LIFE IN CALIFORNIA (Part I)

At home in Gary, one of our favorite toys was the View-Master, a stereoscopic viewer that looked like a flat pair of binoculars. You inserted a cardboard disk with tiny square transparencies around the circumference, then changed scenes by pressing a plastic lever. Click! Michael, Rebbie, and I used to play with it for hours, oohing and ahhing over colorful panoramas of Paris, New York, London, Africa, and other exotic, faraway places. Most magical of all was Hollywood, its palm trees and pastel buildings seeming to beckon.

“Imagine all that sunshine!” I exclaimed.

“Yeah,” said Michael, “and the ocean! Wouldn’t it be great to live there?”

“I can’t wait to go there. I wish we could fly there tomorrow.”

With characteristic certainty, Michael said, “You can always dream, La Toya, and your dreams will come true. But you have to make them come true.” After the Jackson 5 auditioned for Motown, things began happening so quickly we barely had time to absorb it all. First Berry Gordy invited them to perform at an exclusive party in their honor at his spectacular European-style mansion in Detroit. Its three floors were filled with marble, frescoes, and statues, the likes of which my brothers had never seen. Even more incredible, their "audience" included many of the stars whose records they studied and loved. Afterward Diana Ross gave Jackie, Tito, Jermaine, Marlon, and Michael each a kiss on the cheek. Motown's brightest would be leaving the Supremes for a solo career at year's end, and the label—wise in the ways of public relations—knew that linking her name with the Jackson 5 would draw attention to both.

The most enthusiastic member of the audience was none other than Berry himself. A Detroit songwriter with an uncanny ear for hits, he'd built one of America's largest black-owned companies from an $800 family loan and was a self-made millionaire by the early sixties. Like our father, Berry believed in hard work, discipline, loyalty, and the value of family, regarding his artists, producers, and writers more as his charges than as employees. It's a funny coincidence that the Jackson 5, a family who became an act, wound up with Motown, a business that acted like a family.

By early 1969 when the guys signed, however, much of the label's close-knit feeling was dying amid intragroup hostilities, financial inequities, and the personal problems that seem to especially afflict entertainers. In this atmosphere the guys—young, innocent, enthusiastic—were warmly welcomed. Perhaps they reminded Berry of how things used to be in the late 1950s and early 1960s, when he'd discovered and helped develop Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, Marvin Gaye, the Supremes, the Temptations, Stevie Wonder, Martha Reeves and the Vandellas, and countless other future legends. As it turned out, the Jackson 5 would be the last stars to emerge from the old Motown system.

Berry's secret of success was following his instincts passionately, with remarkable results. He too a personal, active interest in my brothers, vowing, "I'm going to make you the biggest thing in the world. You're going to be written about in history books." Berry also predicted they'd have three Number One records in a row and outlined his grand plans for making that happen. The first step was moving the guys to Los Angeles, where Motown was in the process of shifting its headquarters from Detroit. They alternated between living at Berry's and Diana's Beverly Hills homes, which were practically next door to each other. I'm not sure where our father stayed.

Mother, so used to having us all within arm's reach, was naturally worried, asking Joseph via long distance, "What are they doing? Who are they staying with? How do I know whether these people are nice or not?"

"They're okay," he reassured her. "They're not into anything bad."

That eased her anxiety for a while, but she was never completely calm until we were all under one roof again. She still can't stand the idea of any of us living too far away from her.