Did Porn, Sony Or McDonald's Sink Jackson Charity Single?
Michael Jackson's list of grievances with Sony Music has grown from
complaints about the promotion of his Invincible album to include
accusations that the label blocked the release of his "What More Can I Give"
charity single.
Jackson predicted last fall that the "We Are the World"-type song —
recorded with a sizable list of participants including Mariah Carey, Ricky
Martin, Usher, Beyoncé Knowles, Shakira and Nick Carter — would
raise $50 million for victims of September 11.
Eight months after Jackson announced he was ready to release it, the issues
surrounding why the song never came out are starting to come to light. What
was seemingly just one portion of Jackson's larger issue with Sony seems to
have caused a fair amount of turmoil. The Los Angeles Times reported
on Friday that the project was abandoned after it was discovered that the
song's executive producer had a background in porn.
According to the Times, the porn connection caused McDonald's to back
out of an agreement to sell the single in its restaurants. Sources in
Jackson's camp, for the most part, tell a similar story, but the man at the
center of the dispute said that there are other factors involved.
Jackson hired Marc Schaffel to executive produce the song and included him
in plans to shoot its video, which was to be styled after Bono's "What's
Going On" charity project. Jackson's vision, according to the video company
hired to realize it, was to depict artists in the studio as well as at the
Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. Though Jackson was originally slated to
direct, Schaffel handled most of the arrangements and was Jackson's point
person, representing the singer in conference calls and meetings, according
to sources close to the project.
But when it was discovered that Schaffel had directed and produced porn,
Jackson's camp wanted him out. Jackson's legal and management team sought to
terminate the singer's business relationship with Schaffel in a November 15
letter sent to Schaffel's lawyers and obtained by MTV News.
While the Times and Jackson insiders said Schaffel was involved in
gay porn, the producer said his past work has depicted heterosexuality just
as much as bisexuality and homosexuality, and he characterized his style as
softcore "Spice Channel stuff." He acknowledged that his background ruffled
some feathers, but insisted he wasn't terminated.
"How can I be fired when my company owns the rights to the song?" he asked. (Jackson's camp disputes Schaffel's ownership of the song but admits that he has possession of the master tapes as well as the video footage.)
Instead, Schaffel maintained that Sony is using his porn background to hide
its real reason for not putting out "What More Can I Give," which he said
was delayed due to the marketing plan for Invincible.
"Sony didn't want the single to take away from the record," he said. "So
they wanted to make sure it didn't come out at the same time. After that,
they had other excuses. I don't think the porn was a legit excuse. But let's
say that it is. No one picketed, and I still get hundreds of e-mails from
fans wanting to know what the problem is. No one cares what I did before."
Sources close to the project disagree and said that having Jackson linked
with porn would have been disastrous for his already troubled image.
"One press organization, an entertainment television show, found out about
it," a source close to Jackson said. "And they threatened to expose it. It
got stopped because it was made clear that they would never get to work with
Jackson again. But then it was like, ugh, we don't want to work with it
anymore, because it would be an uphill battle and it was not part of the
bargain."
The extent of Sony's involvement with the single's release remains unclear,
as some sources at the label said Sony was only in talks and never actually
agreed to release it. Jive, by some accounts, had also expressed interest in
putting out "What More Can I Give," indicating that Jackson might have
shopped the song around. Schaffel maintained that despite the lack of a
formal agreement, Sony was involved, since many of the artists participating
were signed to Sony subsidiaries Columbia and Epic.
"Do you think any of these major artists would have stopped what they were
doing and recorded their parts without Sony authorization?" Schaffel asked.
"They can't do anything without an OK from Tommy [Mottola]."
For its part, a spokesperson for McDonald's said that the fast food chain
never had an agreement to sell the single in its restaurants. "We did have
discussion about a potential deal," spokesperson Lisa Howard said, "but it
fell apart [late last year] based on strict business prospects, in this
case, timing, distribution and cost."
Sony had no official comment.