Lisa Marie Michael Jackson 1995

Michael Jackson and wife Lisa Marie Presley reveal intimate side as lovers, parents and best friends in this 1995 interview.

The questions were insensitive or perhaps, indelicate. But they were enough to transform the voices of a delightful duo into a defiant duet.

The King of Pop Michael Jackson and his wife Lisa Marie Presley-Jackson were not trying to mimic Michael's single, Scream, a duet with his sister, Janet, when questions laced with "perverse curiosity" were asked them in a live interview by Diane Sawyer recently on ABC-TV's "Prime Time Live" one-hour broadcast.

"Do we have sex?" Jackson's wife Lisa Marie asked with defiance and disgust as a hesitant Diane Sawyer edged up to the question, saying, "I didn't spend my life as a serious journalist to ask these kinds of questions, but I'm not oblivious to the fact that your fans have one question they most wanted to ask…

"Do we have sex?… Okay. Go ahead," the furious young wife iterrupted. "Is that what you were going to ask?"

"Yes! YES! Yes!" exclaimed Mrs. Presley-Jackson, the sultry 27-year-old daughter of the late rock `n roll idol Elvis Presley, who introduced her to Michael when she was 7 and he was 17. "This was in Las Vegas," Jackson told Sawyer. "She used to come and see my show all the time. We had the only family show on the strip. It was The Jackson Five and she used to come as a little girl and sit right up front," he explained. "She came quite often. And then she'd come back stage and I'd come out and say, `Hi' and then she'd come again."

Both Michael and Lisa Marie pounced upon the opportunity to shift the interview away from Sawyer's probing questions which had been similar to what the interviewer described as stories that provoked a "tabloid feeding frenzy, as people who worked for Jackson shopped stories, all claiming titillating knowledge from what they call his special friends even when some of Jackson's young friends tried to defend him."

Despite other troubling questions that could tarnish the reputation of the world's greatest recording artist, he and his wife met the interviewer head on and didn't blink. It was Mrs. Presley-Jackson, who was quick to defend her husband against every negative, image-damaging question Sawyer implied that inquiring minds wanted answered.

What Michael and Lisa wanted the "Prime Time Live" viewers to know was something about their intimate side as lovers, parents and best friends. They had a good reason for wanting to tell their story to ABC-TV's estimated 60 million viewers-the largest audience in the ABC newsmagazine's history. (The exclusive live broadcast almost doubled the audience of the NBA finals between the Houston Rockets and Orlando Magic).

As lovers, Jackson revealed that Lisa was always on his mind since her backstage visit with her father Elvis, who was the top attraction in Las Vegas at that time. "When she was 18, I used to tell my lawyer, John Branca, to find her … cause I think that she is really cute." When the megastar finally got in touch with her, he learned that she was married and mother of two children. But the meeting turned out to be a countdown until they got married.

"We were dating for four months," Lisa Marie told the TV interviewer. "…We were spending lots of time together … I don't know how it didn't manage to get in the press because we weren't hiding it … I was separated for four months," Lisa Marie added. It was during this time that Michael proposed marriage to her.

When asked by Sawyer whether they were involved in a prenuptial agreement, Lisa Marie, whose fortune is estimated at over $150 million, said she has an agreement with Michael, whose worth is estimated to be over $200 million. "We've worked out things and signed certain things but of course that is very confidential", Michael told Sawyer in the no-questions-barred interview.

Sawyer sought to steer the interview back to Michael's alleged sexual involvement with children, the impact of his marriage to Lisa Marie, the parenting of her children with Michael as step-father and plans for Michael to father their first child. Michael turned testy when Sawyer tried to grill him with specific questions about the sex charges which were robed and dismissed by the police departments of Los Angeles and Santa Monica.

Children will continue to play a role in his life because both of them love children. Lisa Marie made it clear to Sawyer that she is comfortable with Michael helping her in parenting her children by a previous marriage.

"I happen to know who he (Michael) is and what he is," she emphasized.

If children want to sleep over with their family, Lisa Marie's answer is "yes." And Michael's response to Sawyer was: "Of course, if they want. It's on a level of purity and love and just innocence, complete innocence. If you are talking about sex, then that's a nut. It's not me. Go to the guy down the street, cause it's not Michael Jackson. It's not what I'm interested in."

Both are interested in having their first child. "We will be expecting a child. Now, when I'm not going to say … It's personal," Mrs. Presley-Jackson told Sawyer. "It's in the hands of the heavens," Michael added.

Responding to the interviewer's questions about the impact of their marriage, both Jackson and his wife were livid with rage. "Did you marry out of convenience?" Lisa Marie repeated the question and then replied: "That's really interesting."

"That's ridiculous," Michael said. "That's like we're faking this. That's the most ridiculous thing in the world"'

Mrs. Presley-Jackson allowed: "But you can't live with somebody day to day. We're together all the time, first of all. Second thing, how can you fake the 24 hours a day with somebody, sleeping with somebody, waking up with somebody…

"He's running around the house. You were in our house," she reminded Sawyer. "We have a normal house. We have a nanny, we have a maid and we walk around and he's either in the studio, I'm in the kitchen. We're running around like normal. I know it's hard to believe."

As the interview was winding down at Sony's Culver City studios, where it was broadcast, the couple emphasized that they were not only married lovers, but they were best friends.

"I just want people to know what they're dealing with … and understand that we are not jokes. The degrading comments and all that kind of stuff, it's really irritating," Mrs. Presley-Jackson told Sawyer as she concluded the interview. Michael's parting salvo was delivered to Sawyer's TV audience with subdued anger.

"Don't believe the garbage, all the tabloid junk. Don't read it, don't listen to it. It's garbage, it's junk. It's stupid. Enough of it."

Bibliography for: "Michael Jackson and wife Lisa Marie Presley reveal intimate side as lovers, parents and best friends"

"Michael Jackson and wife Lisa Marie Presley reveal intimate side as lovers, parents and best friends". Jet. FindArticles.com. 21 Jul, 2009. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1355/is_n8_v88/ai_17160262/