Growing up in Beverly Hills, California, Derek Emerson lead a charmed life.
Derek with Michael in 1984 | Image: Sam Emerson
“It was nice to always have an all-access pass,” he laughs.
His father, photographer Sam Emerson, worked the rock music scene where Derek met the likes of Stevie Ray Vaughn, Cheap Trick, Fleetwood Mac, The Police, Billy Idol and Elton John. The list, he says, “Goes on and on.”
But there was that one performer, one icon, that Derek fondly recalls. On the fifth anniversary of his untimely death, Derek reminisces about Michael Jackson.
Derek’s dad was Michael’s personal still photographer from 1980 to 1993. He shot the album cover for Bad, worked on the ‘Beat It,’ ‘Billie Jean,’ ‘Bad’ and ‘Smooth Criminal’ videos and traveled the world – three times over – with the King of Pop. “Any photos released from ’82 to ’94 were mostly my dad’s,” Derek explains.
At the age of 12, Derek met a then 24 year-old Michael for the first time. It was in Michael’s house on Hazlehurst – before Neverland Ranch – that Sam was shooting photos of Michael’s gloves, nearly a dozen of them. “I was playing Frogger and, all of a sudden, I felt this weight on my back,” Derek recounts. “It was Michael’s pet snake, Muscles. He set it there and just started laughing. He was a little prankster.” That was the same day he says Michael took him and Quincy Jones’ daughter for a golf cart ride.
When Sam was working, Derek was always welcome to hang out. He’d play video games and Michael would join him on breaks. “I remember going to Neverland, to the candy shop, riding rides and talking about my cycling or school,” Derek says. “There was a train around the property and big forts with water cannons. I’d be playing and he’d come play, too. It really was like hanging out with another kid who just didn’t want to grow up.”
Derek recalls Michael’s sense of humor. “I remember one time in New Orleans, probably in ’84, where we were in the hotel after a show. Sugar Ray Leonard and Stevie Wonder were hanging out and we wanted to pick up something to eat. Stevie said, ‘Give me the keys and I’ll drive.’ Michael thought that was so funny.”
Thanks to his dad’s job and Michael’s tours, Derek saw the world. As Sam’s assistant at 18, Derek would set up lights and sort slides. “My dad was shooting forty rolls of film over a two-hour period,” he recalls. “That was in Tel Aviv, Turkey – and Europe twice, for months at a time. I went to something like 40 plus shows one summer! And I was on the Victory tour with the (Jackson) brothers in 1984.”
“It was a good time to be around, that ten-year time period from ’82 to ’92, when he was the hottest thing in the world,” Derek says. “You’re talking about selling out Wembley Stadium, 70,000 people in seven shows back to back?” Derek chuckles reminiscing about those days. “Not everyone can say that, I guess.”
When news came, just five years ago today, that the King of Pop had died, Derek was water skiing in South Carolina. “I called my dad and just couldn’t believe it,” he says. “I can still see it in my dad’s eyes when you talk about it. That was someone he spent a very long part of his life with. It still chokes him up.”
Derek says it’s still hard to believe Michael is gone. “He was the biggest performer in the world and a super nice guy who treated me well – and respected me enough to know who I was. He always asked about what I had going on in my life. He always remembered me.”
Here’s to remembering Michael…
SOURCE: Fondren
