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American Morning

Michael Jackson's Attacks on Sony Music Chief Hitting Sour Note in Music Industry

Aired July 10, 2002 - 07:38   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: Michael Jackson's attacks on Sony Music chief Tally Mottola are hitting a sour note in the music industry and Sony executives have come out swinging.

During a series of appearances with the Reverend Al Sharpton on Saturday, Jackson accused Mottola of racism, calling him a devilish exploiter of black talent.

Well, the bad blood appears to stem from the failure of Jackson's last album, "Invincible."

And joining us now to sort through it is Toure, a contributing editor at "Rolling Stone" magazine.

Good morning.

TOURE, "ROLLING STONE" MAGAZINE: How are you?

ZAHN: Nice to have you with us this morning.

TOURE: Good. Thank you.

ZAHN: I'm fine, thanks.

I wanted to start off our conversation this morning by sort of quickly replaying what happened over the weekend.

TOURE: Yes.

ZAHN: So, Michael Jackson comes out. He accuses Tommy Mottola, the big guy at Sony Music, of being a racist and then an unnamed Sony Music executive goes on the record with the "Daily News" yesterday and says this: "Charges of pedophile have really spooked a lot of American record buyers. There are a lot of parents who don't think he is a wholesome entertainer. It has shadowed him."

Is there any truth to that statement?

TOURE: You know, really, I don't know. I don't think so, actually. He got a fair hearing from the American buying public. When the record came out, Sony put a lot of press behind it. BET got behind it. MTV played the record endlessly. Radio stations played it. Over the last five years, the image makeover was amazing. We didn't think about the llamas anymore, the chimp, the boys and the face weirdness and all this stuff. We suddenly were like let's listen to Michael Jackson's music again. And he had one great single. He had another great song on the album. And that was it. And the American buying public was not bamboozled by this, the promotion and all this. It's a bad album and we didn't want it.

ZAHN: So what do you make of the kid gloves coming off here? I mean take a look at this political cartoon in the "New York Post" yesterday, where you see a Michael Jackson lying in bed with a young guy and it says, "Don't Tommy Mottola have any morals?" Now, this stuff was kind of off limits to political cartoonists...

TOURE: Sure, sure.

ZAHN: ... to writers.

TOURE: Sure.

ZAHN: Now people are openly talking about these pedophile charges once again.

TOURE: And people have been talking about this for years and years. I mean this is Leno fodder, Letterman fodder. I mean the problem is not Tommy Mottola. It's not the boys. It's the man in the mirror.

ZAHN: And the man in the mirror who says when he looks in the mirror now, he sees himself as black.

TOURE: Yes. Suddenly he's black. He's been trying to become a white woman for years and years and years and now he wants to be black.

ZAHN: Is there any grievance that Michael Jackson is issuing now that has some merit? I mean there have been stories for years that African-American artists have not been treated the same way as white artists by music companies.

TOURE: The cause may be good. I mean there's racism throughout America. But the problem here is a bad album. That's what's going on. He put out a bad -- he made a bad album and it didn't sell. We weren't bamboozled.

ZAHN: So you're basically saying this guy is a cry baby?

TOURE: Yes. Absolutely, a cry -- like if you were famous and successful in everything you did from the age of six and suddenly you got to be, you know, whatever age he is -- I don't even know what age he is anymore, because you can't see it anymore -- then, you know, suddenly you weren't successful, suddenly you didn't have the Midas touch anymore, you might be shocked, as well. And you would lash out.

ZAHN: What is this going to cost him professionally?

TOURE: Oh, well...

ZAHN: To take on the head of a major music company, who he still has a deal with?

TOURE: Yes, yes, I mean, the thing is that this is just the next circus sideshow for Michael Jackson. He showed me that he doesn't have any ability to make hit records anymore. I mean I think he's got a fork in him about the size of the Empire State Building.

ZAHN: And that hurts.

TOURE: Yes.

ZAHN: So in the end, as a result of his appearance with Al Sharpton, taking on the music industry, does, do any of the recording procedures change?

TOURE: You know, I don't know. I mean just...

ZAHN: I mean some of the unnamed, the lesser known people who've gone into these deals say they were not cut fairly.

TOURE: I mean, you know, these record business deals are never fair to the artist. You come up from nowhere, you just want to make some music and get on stage and get some girls and you'll sign anything, you know?

But I mean for this guy to have made hundreds of millions of dollars, perhaps more money in the record business than anybody ever, to come out and charge racism defames the word racism when we have boys in Inglewood being practically lynched by their chain. It's insulting.

ZAHN: That's another story we have been following, of course, the case of the Inglewood cops pulling over a guy and allegedly beating him.

TOURE: Yes.

ZAHN: We're going to be addressing that a little bit later on this morning.

Toure, thanks for dropping by.

Do you have a last name, by the way?

TOURE: No, ma'am.

ZAHN: No, you don't. You and Madonna. A special little pair there.

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