19. Groupies 
 
Young Tito Jackson may have been off the open market, but Jackie 
and Jermaine were young, single and ready to explore whatever 
fame might bring their way in terms of female companionship. 

 
Joseph had been a terrible example to them in the past, and he 
didn't improve with time. In fact, when the boys became famous, 
he starting having liaisons with their fans! With him as their guide, 
was there any reason to think the brothers would act in a 
responsible manner? By 1972, the older Jacksons had left a long 
trail of broken hearts as they toured the country, city by city. Then, 
they rented an apartment near their house in Encino, where they 
could hang out with their female conquests away from Katherine's 
scrutiny. 

 
Rhonda Phillips was one of ‘those’ girls. Today, she is a forty-
nine-year-old divorcee who lives with her three children in Long 
Beach, California. Back in August 1972, she was eighteen when 
she met her idol, Jackie, who was twenty-one. She had been 
selected from the audience by one of the group's road managers 
when the brothers were on stage at the Forum in Inglewood, 
California. Backstage, Jackie gave Rhonda a slip of paper with an 
address on it and told her to meet him at that location in an hour. 

 
As she mulled over his offer, she sensed someone behind her, and 
turned around. It was Michael. ‘He was just a cute little guy,’ she 
said. ‘He had big teeth, a flat, wide nose, a perfectly combed 
natural; he looked like any pretty fourteen-year-old black boy 
you'd find in the neighbourhood. He noticed the slip of paper in 
my hand.’ 

 
‘Did Jermaine give you that?’ he asked. 
‘No, Jackie.’ 
‘He wants you to meet him, doesn't he?’ he asked. 
‘Yes,’ Rhonda said. ‘I don't know if I should – ’ 

Michael cut her off. ‘Don't,’ he said. ‘I don't think you should 
meet him.’ 
Rhonda asked Michael why she shouldn't go. She remembered 
his answer: ‘My brothers don't treat girls too good. They can be 
mean. Please, don't go.’ 

 
Rhonda remembered thinking that Michael was only fourteen; 
what could he know? She changed the subject and asked him for 
his autograph. She thrust forward the piece of paper Jackie had 
given her, he scribbled on it and handed it back to her. 
The group's representative had arranged the cab fare for 
Rhonda to meet Jackie. She was taken to the Jacksons' apartment 
in Encino. As the car pulled up to the curb, she happened to turn 
over the slip of paper in her hand and realized that Michael had 
written more than just his name on the back of it. There was a 
message: ‘I hope you don't go.’ It was signed ‘Michael Jackson’. 
She went inside the apartment complex, found the Jacksons' 
and had sex with Jackie. ‘I won't be able to see you after this,’ he 
told her when they were finished. She began to cry. 
‘Suddenly, I was ashamed,’ she recalled many years later. ‘He 
held me for a little while and then told me that someone from 
Motown would be waiting outside to take me home. He kissed me, 
and I left. The whole thing took less than half an hour.’ 
As Rhonda was walking down to the street, a white Rolls-
Royce pulled up. Michael and Marlon were sitting in the back seat. 
The car pulled up to the curb. The boys got out and Marlon ran 
past Rhonda up to the apartment. Michael came over to her. 

 
‘What are you doing here?’ he asked, his tone accusatory. 
‘Were you up there with Jackie?’ 
‘Yeah, I was,’ she answered. 
‘Did you have sex?’ Michael wanted to know. 
Rhonda began to cry. 
Michael shook his head sadly. ‘I'm sorry,’ he said. ‘Did he 
make you do it?’ 
‘No, of course not. I wanted to.’ 
‘You  wanted  to?’ Michael asked, seeming astonished. ‘But 
why would you want to?’ 

 
Rhonda got into the car. She rolled down the window. Michael 
was still standing at the curb. ‘Are you gonna be all right?’ he 
asked. 

‘Yeah, I will be,’ she answered. 
‘By now, I was sobbing,’ Rhonda recalled. ‘I rolled up the 
window and the car pulled off. I looked out the back window and 
the last thing I saw was Michael Jackson standing there waving 
goodbye to me.’ 

 
During these salad days, Michael, fourteen, often shared a 
room with his brother, Marlon, fifteen and Jermaine, seventeen. 
Jermaine would wait for their security man, Bill Bray, to go to 
sleep before sneaking down to the lobby to pick up girls. Often, he 
would bring them back to the room and then instruct Michael and 
Marlon to, as Marlon recalled it, ‘play sleep’. 

 
Yolanda Lewis is, today, forty-six, married, and living in St 
Louis. In an interview, she recalled an experience she had with 
Jermaine Jackson in 1972 when she was sixteen. ‘I was a real 
groupie,’ she remembered, ‘and the boys did a concert in 
Cleveland, where I was living at the time. Afterwards, a group of 
us girls went to the hotel where we knew they were staying. We 
had our J-5 buttons and posters, just wanting autographs, hoping to 
see the guys, maybe get a picture with them. Jermaine came down 
and struck up a conversation with a few of us. He was sweet, shy. 
He pulled me off to the side and asked me if I would like to come 
up to his room. Of course, I said yes. He was so handsome, with 
his big natural and white teeth. 

 
‘We got up to the room, and I walked in behind Jermaine. It 
was pitch-black, with just a night light on in a corner.’ 
"Michael and Marlon are sleeping,_ he whispered to me. "o 
we have to be quiet. Take off your clothes. Quick."_ He wasn't 
exactly romantic. I jumped into bed with him and he climbed on 
top of me. As he climaxed, he shuddered so loudly I was afraid he 
would wake up Michael and Marlon, who were sleeping three feet 
away in the next bed. Or at least I thought they were sleeping. As I 
was slipping out of the room, I heard Michael say to Jermaine, 

 
"Nice job. Now, can we please get some sleep?”’ 
It would be a couple of years before Marlon began playing 
around with groupies. However, Michael was never a player; he 
simply wasn't interested, and thought his brothers' behaviour 
towards their female fans was deplorable. After years of 
traumatizing overexposure, it was as if the very idea of sex had 
become abhorrent to him. 

A person who has known Michael since 1974, once told me, ‘I 
was having a conversation with Rebbie when she said, "Michael 
doesn't have time for girls._ I asked, "What kind of guy doesn't 
have time for girls?_ She said that there were special 
circumstances with Michael. When I asked her what she was 
talking about, she told me a horrible story. 

 
‘She said that when Michael was fifteen years old, a certain 
member of his family, someone he trusted – I won't say who, even 
though Rebbie did – decided he was old enough to have sex, and 
that he had to have it. This person then arranged the services of 
two hookers for Michael. He told them to work him over, and then 
locked Michael up in a room with them. Rebbie said that this 
incident absolutely traumatized her brother. I don't know whether 
or not Michael actually had sex with the hookers. Rebbie didn't 
say.’ 

 
Certainly, if this story is true, such a scenario must have had a 
deep psychological impact on Michael, as it would on any 
youngster going through puberty. After that happened, it's been 
said, Michael turned to prostitutes, not for sex – but for 
conversation. It was as if Michael had retaliated against his 
brothers' actions with groupies by trying to reassure himself that 
women were good for more than just fun times in bed. James 
McField, the group's former pianist and band director, recalled, 
‘Sometimes – maybe once, maybe twice – Michael just needed to 
have someone to talk to and – maybe once, maybe twice – a 
woman would be introduced to him as someone very nice that he 
could be with, to have the company of a female. But he wouldn't 
have sex with her, to my knowledge. As far as I know, nothing 
intimate would ever happen. He liked nice girls, pure girls who 
appeared to have no street background.’ 

 
One such ‘date’ remembered meeting Michael after a concert 
in New York. ‘I was hanging around backstage, working Madison 
Square Garden's dressing area,’ said Lillias Harris, ‘when someone 
who introduced himself as an employee of the Jacksons came over 
to me and asked me if I wanted to spend an evening with Michael. 

 
"Well, yeah,"_ I said. He asked me how much, and I told him I would do it for free. I wanted to have sex with Michael Jackson. 
Who wouldn't? 


‘He brought me back to the dressing room. Michael was there, alone. I walked in, and he told me to close the door. The first thing 
out of his mouth was, "Why are you a prostitute?" I answered, "Because I need the money." He said to me, "Would you like to have sex with me?_ and I said, "Yes, of course I would._ " He asked 
me how much it would cost. I told him, "No charge._"  He seemed 
interested. So, I undid my blouse and showed him my breasts. He 
then turned his head, repulsed. "Stop. I can't have sex with you," he said. "Please put them back," he added, referring to my breasts. 

 
‘When I asked him why, he told me, "Because I just can't." I 
thought he meant he couldn't get an erection, he looked so sad. Then, he said, "Can we talk about you and your life?" I didn't want to talk, that's not why I went there. So I gave him my telephone number.’ 

 
"Anytime you want to get off, you call me," I said. Michael 
looked at me and asked, "What does that mean, get off?_ He was 
totally sincere. "It means screw, Michael," I told him."Anytime 
you want to screw, call me. Get it?_ 
‘He said, "Oh, okay. Maybe I'll call you someday. I doubt it, 
though."And then I left. 

 
‘He struck me as lonely and naive,’ Lillias Harris concluded. 
‘He was a nice, mixed-up, good-looking guy who wanted female 
companionship. No way was he about to have sex that night, 
though. He was scared to death. I wondered if he would ever call 
me. He never did.’