By Roger Friedman

Michael Jackson is moving from Bahrain to “Europe,” as his press release and publicity advised yesterday. But I am told that Jackson is likely going to settle in Paris if he can find the money to buy a suitable home. He’s already nixed moves to London and to Germany, two places where he at least has constituencies. Paris is the likely choice for Jackson.

“He wants to be in a place where people can meet with him easily,” says a source. “Bahrain was not that place.”

Yesterday was a big day for Jackson. He fired his Bahraini lawyers, Los Angeles accountant Alan Whitman, recently hired manager Guy Holmes, and severed ties with the people who’ve generously paid his way for the last year. He’s said to be in Ireland right now, and I am told that Jackson is likely meeting with Dublin rock promoter and manager Louie Walsh, who counts among his clients U2, Madonna and the Rolling Stones. If Jackson is planning to go to work, Walsh is probably the one manager in the world who would love the challenge of putting him back on top.

Of course, the one monkey wrench in this plan is a piece of paper clutched by Jackson’s former European promoter, Marcel Avram, who thinks he has the rights to Jackson’s next world tour.

The architects of Jackson’s latest management shuffle appear to be P.R. aide, Raymone Bain, and his children’s nanny, Grace Rwaramba. About a week ago this column received a phone call that this pair had supplanted all of Jackson’s current advisers. Now it has been confirmed. Bain, you may recall, was unceremoniously fired by Jackson last year on the eve of his acquittal on charges of child molestation and conspiracy. She was rehired later in the summer, and now she’s worked her way up to the top of the ladder in the Jacko hierarchy.

Rwaramba started out handling insurance claims at Jackson’s office in 1991, and is now the surrogate mother to his three children. This column revealed last week for the first time that Rwaramba, who is said to have dated Jackson’s brothers Jermaine and Randy, has been married since 1995 although she does not live with her husband.

Bain, I am told, was instrumental in this coup. She is credited with bringing Londell McMillan—the man who manages and counts as clients Stevie Wonder, Prince, and Chaka Khan—to be Jackson’s new attorney. A rising star in the music biz and generally respected, McMillan is the first legit adviser Jackson has had in years. But McMillan also comes into Jackson’s life as his personal soap opera continues: today, for example, a jury is being selected in Santa Monica for a court case brought by Marc Schaffel, Jackson’s former partner, for $4 million. The Schaffel case is just the beginning. Jackson is being sued for $48 million by Darien Dash, cousin of hip hop entrepreneur Damon Dash.

When I caught McMillan for a few minutes yesterday on the phone from Los Angeles, he said, “I think it would be a good practice for Michael to stop being a defendant all the time.” McMillan, it should be noted, is credited for turning around the career of Prince after his whole Warner Bros.-slave episode including the changing of his name to a symbol.

For Jackson, there are also outstanding matters at Neverland, which, contrary to reports, is neither open nor functional. After Jackson paid government fines totaling $100,000 and restitution to former employees of $49,000, the ranch was closed. Jackson has never secured the proper insurance to run it. Since then, most of the animals have been removed from the zoo. A private security force watches for intruders, but otherwise Neverland is shut down. There is also a $25 million lien against it held by Fortress Investments, created so Jackson could buy out his former attorney, John Branca, from a fie percent interest in Sony/ATV Music Publishing.

Choosing McMillan was a sound idea, however, for many reasons. With his close ties to the record business, the New York based attorney could secure Jackson a deal with his close friend, L.A. Reid of Island/Def Jam Records. Reid has talked to Jackson in the last year about distributing his 2 Seas label in partnership with Prince Abdullah. The talks had come to no result, however. McMillan also represents or has relationships with a number of contemporary artists with whom Jackson could collaborate including Kanye West and John Legend.

Yesterday’s announcement, meanwhile, says that Jackson will continue to have “ties” to Bahrain. But one insider says of the 2 Seas deal, “Michael’s ties are cut now.” Jackson’s biggest relocation problem is that he feels, perhaps rightly, that he can’t return to the United States, California in particular, because he fears harassment or arrest on a variety of potential charges including allegedly faking police brutality. For the moment, he remains a man without a country, quite literally, and perhaps one without the cash for a new down payment either.

Source: FOX News

Category: General