"You've Got Michael": Living Through HIStory

"You've Got Michael": Living Through HIStory

“You’ve Got Michael” is the inside story of the battle to save Michael Jackson's career and market his 1995 greatest hits album, HIStory , as told by the record company executive closest to him. In 1991, Dan Beck was a senior product manager at Epic Records when he became Michael Jackson’s primary marketing contact at the label. That led to five rollercoaster years immersed in a world of unequalled stardom, dealing with the outsized ambitions, whims and idiosyncrasies of the world’s most famous entertainer. Faced with growing press antagonism and erosion of his core audience, Michael Jackson was at a crossroads. Rather than rehash a controversial career, “You’ve Got Michael ” is an intimate memoir about the inner workings of the music business at its multi-platinum height and at the dawn of music video. Anthony DeCurtis , author of Lou Reed: A Life , says, "If you thought there was nothing more to learn about Michael Jackson, Dan Beck has news for you. Beck worked as a product manager for Jackson's HIStory project and has gripping tales to tell. Not the sordid revelations you already know, but the day-to-day agonies and occasional ecstasies of being on the front lines as the career of the biggest pop star in the world goes up in flames. His torn professional and personal loyalties are so easy to relate to -- uncomfortably so. Beck writes with honesty, clarity and force; the only sensationalism comes from your own memories of Jackson's highly public self-incineration." Pez Jax of MJVibe.com: "Celebrated by fans but dismissed by critics, HIStory was Jackson's answer to a world waiting, watching and demanding more from him. Beck cuts through the frenzy to reveal the careful orchestration required to balance artistic ambition, media scrutiny, business pressures and the hopes of fans. "You've Got Michael" deepens our understanding of Jackson's legacy — and belongs on every fan's shelf." Journalist Carol Cooper, Ph.D : “The goal of Dan Beck’s nuanced memoir is threefold. First, he makes clear how profoundly digital technologies have changed the ways pop music stars are made and marketed. Then he stresses how impossible replicating the peaks of Michael Jackson's solo career would be under today's streamlined business model(s). Third, he underscores how he still respects Jackson's creative achievements even as he reveals how the increasing pressures of fame, market competition, hostile publicity and Jackson’s unrestrained ambition, inevitably destabilized the artist's health, reputation and finances. (Beck even reminds us that record labels seldom try to protect their superstars from such predictable hazards.) No family member or label president could have told this story so well, because only a veteran interdepartmental product manager like Dan Beck really knows how the pop song sausage gets made — and has the moral strength to tell the hard truths about it.” Dan Beck spent twenty years at Epic Records as head of publicity, product manager and Senior Vice President of Marketing and Sales. He spearheaded marketing and media strategies for the Clash, Michael Jackson, Cyndi Lauper, Gloria Estefan, Sade, Luther Vandross, Pearl Jam, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Tammy Wynette, Charlie Rich, Cheap Trick, Ted Nugent and Boston, among many others. He then launched V2 Records for Virgin and later formed an entertainment marketing company, Big Honcho Media. His hearing-conservation film Listen Smart won the CINE Golden Eagle Award. He has also written songs with Dion DiMucci and Felix Cavaliere