In this March 5, 2009 file photo, Michael Jackson speaks at a news conference in London. (AP Photo/Joel Ryan, File)
by Alan Duke
LOS ANGELES (CNN) — AEG Live’s CEO said he “slapped” and “screamed” at Michael Jackson because the promoter was “nerve-racked” before the public announcement of Jackson’s comeback concerts.
Randy Phillips, testifying in the Jackson wrongful death trial, recounted that it was “a miracle” that a “drunk and despondent” Jackson finally appeared at the London event.
Phillips, who began his testimony on Tuesday, faces more questioning Monday as the trial enters its seventh week.
Michael Jackson’s mother and children accuse concert promoter AEG Live of liability in Jackson’s drug overdose death, claiming the agency negligently hired, retained or supervised Dr. Conrad Murray, the physician who was convicted of involuntary manslaughter.
Phillips and other AEG Live executives ignored “red flags” that should have alerted them that Jackson’s health was at risk as they pressured him and his doctor to stop missing rehearsals as the “This Is It” tour premiere approached in the summer of 2009, Jackson lawyers argue.
Jackson, not AEG Live, chose and controlled Murray, company lawyers argue. Although they negotiated a contract to pay Murray $150,000 a month to attend to Jackson, it was never fully executed since Jackson died before they signed, they contend.
AEG executives — including Co-CEO Paul Gongaware, who managed Jackson’s last two tours — had no way of knowing that Jackson was abusing drugs, especially the surgical anesthetic propofol that the coroner ruled played the largest role in his death, AEG Live lawyers argue.
Promoter: Learned MJ went to rehab “just now”
Jackson made a highly publicized announcement in 1993 that he was ending his “Dangerous” tour early to enter a substance abuse rehab program because of an addiction to painkillers.
“I don’t remember hearing it,” Phillips testified.
“When’s the first time you heard?” Jackson lawyer Brian Panish asked.
“Just now,” Phillips responded.
Phillips said he didn’t learned about it from a December 2008 news story focusing on Jackson’s drug abuse and rehab, even though he sent it in an e-mail to Jackson’s manager saying: “Have you read these stories? This reporter did a lot of research.”
“I don’t remember reading it,” Phillips testified.
“Slapped him and screamed at him”
Phillips began worrying about Jackson backing out of the concert tour just a month after he signed the contract with AEG Live to promote and produce it and more than a week before the announcement.
“I was worried that we would have a mess, his career would be over,” Phillips testified. “There were a lot of things I was worried about.”
But instead of pulling the plug then, before millions of dollars were spent, AEG LIve chose to force Jackson ahead.
“Once we go on sale, which we have the right to do, he is locked,” Gongaware wrote to Phillips.
Jackson, his children and manager Tohme Tohme boarded a private jet for the London announcement, but he was not ready when Phillips went to his hotel suite to escort him to the O2 Arena.
“MJ is locked in his room drunk and despondent. Tohme and I are trying to sober him up and get him to the press conference with his hair/makeup artist,” Phillips told parent-company AEG CEO Tim Leiweke in an e-mail.
Phillips testified it was “a very tense situation” and “frankly, I created the tension in that room. Because I was so nerve-racked, OK, the time slipping away, and his career slipping away.”
AEG was hosting thousands of Jackson fans and hundreds of journalists for the anticipated announcement, which would be seen live around the world.
“I screamed at him so loud the walls were shaking,” Phillips wrote to Leiweke. “Tohme and I have dressed him, and they are finishing his hair, and then we are rushing to the O2. This is the scariest thing I have ever seen. He’s an emotionally paralyzed mess, filled with self-loathing and doubt now that it is show time. He is scared to death. Right now I just want to get through this press conference.”
Phillips e-mailed a man who was waited outside the hotel with a convoy of vehicles that he put Jackson in a cold shower and “just slapped him and screamed at him.”
In court, Phillips downplayed his words as “an exaggeration.”
“I slapped him on the butt,” he testified, comparing it to what a football coach would do to a player.
Jackson arrived at the 02 more than two hours late to announce: “This is it. This is really it. This is the final curtain call. OK, I’ll see you in July.”
“An intervention”
“Now I have to get him on the stage. Scary!” Phillips wrote in an e-mail to another promoter.
About Post Author
