You Are Not Alone: Michael, Through a Brother’s Eyes. Jermaine Jackson

handed him a pair of bongos, he practised day and night. ‘Listen, Joseph! Listen to this,’ he said, whenever we arrived home.

      ‘You keep at it,’ Joseph said, ‘and when you’re ready, I’ll let you know.’

      Randy never stopped thinking he was ready. At school, he started learning the guitar and the piano. One day, he told himself, he, too, would become a member of the Jackson 5. Janet was three years old, as cute and doe-eyed as Michael; she always wore a braided pigtail and played hopscotch in the alley, or sat cross-legged and clapped ‘patty-cakes’ with Randy. But that’s the extent of my memories of my little sister from our days in Indiana: she would make her presence felt when life eventually moved us to new pastures in southern California.

      After Motown contracts were finally resolved and a new recording contract signed, the long-awaited call came from Mr Gordy, asking us to move to Los Angeles. It was time to claim our dream ticket out of Gary and truly enter the business for which we were destined.

      Mother, Randy, La Toya and Janet stayed in Gary, packing boxes and preparing to rent out our home to a relative. But we headed west. Leaving our home-town wasn’t hard because we were leaving it for our dream. The only hard part was leaving Mother behind, but we knew she’d be following two months later so we felt okay to go.

      JOSEPH TREATED US TO OUR FIRST colour television in 1969. I think he felt we had earned it this time. And that was how the move out West felt – like someone had turned the contrast dial, taking us from the bleak black-and-white of Gary to the vivid, vibrant colour of California. The drive from Los Angeles airport to Hollywood was a discovery in itself. For the first time we saw the towering, verdant palm trees, a cloudless blue sky, the bronzed people in tight T-shirts and flared jeans, and we smelt pines and freshness. It contrasted sharply with Gary. All we had ever known was the foul air of steel mill smoke with its smell of sulphur dioxide and polluting red-hazes.

      At street level, Los Angeles felt alive. We had arrived in the land of milk and honey, and Michael and I hung out of the car windows either side, a cooling breeze in our Afros. We drove around Hollywood and saw homes barely hanging on to hills, and mountain ranges in the distance.

      In those first few days of July 1969, we watched sunsets and went to the beach – all Michael wanted to do was ride the Hippodrome carousel on Santa Monica Pier – and we toured inland to find the best spot to see the Hollywood sign. We visited Disneyland and LA Zoo, and Michael fell in love with Mickey Mouse and the animals. We even managed a road trip to San Francisco.

      Our first base was a playground for the music industry – the Tropicana Motel in West Hollywood. In those days, if you were music royalty, you checked into Chateau Marmont but if you were new in town, you stayed at the Tropicana – a white-painted, two-storey motor lodge built into a squared horseshoe, off Santa Monica Boulevard. It had a few bungalows in its grounds and a swimming pool, and the T on its front sign was a palm tree. We got excited about that. Palm trees were everywhere: there were almost as many palm trees as there were hippies.

      We had a view of the Hollywood Hills from our room and all we did was swim. The motel was built into a slope, which meant the roof was only about 10 feet higher than the pool deck out back. Johnny Jackson fancied himself as an Olympic diver and was the first to climb up on to the tiles and show off: ‘Watch me! Watch me! I’m going to do a double somersault!’ We watched as – smack! – he belly-flopped with a splash. Johnny’s humiliation was our signal to join in and we took running jumps from the roof and dive-bombed, ass first.