News 13's Emily Lampa spoke with Hugh Darley, who designed the rides for Michael Jackson's Neverland Ranch.
Lampa: Let's just start by talking about your relationship with Michael. How did you two meet?
Darley: I met Michael, actually, when I was working with the Walt Disney World in Florida. He had visited Walt Disney World and wanted to come over to the Imagineering offices and see what we were doing while it was in the creative stage. I believe that was September, October 1982.
Lampa: About how old was he when you first met him?
Darley: I guess he was -- well, he's my age. I was born in 1958. I would assume he was in his mid-20s -- 25, 26 years old.
Lampa: What was he like?
Darley: Well, he was so unassuming. He was very quiet and very kind-natured. He was very soft-spoken and, you know, when you met him, he didn't appear to be that entertainer that you see on stage. Later in life, as I got to know him, as I got to know him better and better, you know, you'd see him before a show, he's very quiet and somewhat bashful. When you see him step on stage, the transformation that took place, he was just the consummate entertainer.
Lampa: You say it started out as a business relationship, but then you grew to be his friend. Tell me about that.
Darley: Well, Michael, I think, in the world that he worked in, it was so rare for him to get the opportunity just to speak to people casually. Although we did some consulting work, and really one of his best friends was Art Millican, who also worked with us at Disney, again to travel with him, and spend a great deal of personal time. It was just nice to meet Michael as the person, not Michael, the entertainer. He was very smart, very business-like, but in his personal time, he really liked to talk about everyday things. I spent time talking with him about how I grew up, because, I think one of the things you hear is Michael's childhood was very business-like, and he still saw the world as a 12-year-old. He loved looking at the world as a kid.
Lampa: That is, obviously, how he looked at a lot of the designs for his Neverland Ranch. You worked with him on that, too, right?
Darley: We did, and the thing that Michael likes -- he wanted the whole world to be perfect. If anything, he wanted the whole world to be seen as kids see it, kind of through those innocent eyes. And the thing I liked about Michael is he approached everything in life that way -- just from an innocent point of view, and just wanted the world to be perfect, and for him, unfortunately, he never seemed to achieve that. He really wanted that desire and for all the kids to have that wonderful world.
Lampa: Did you actually visit him at his house?
Darley: I did. We spent some time with him out at Neverland, and it was just a fantastic experience to walk around with him and have that time away from all the fans and the crowds and you just got to know him personally.
Lampa: The one thing that we had heard was that his house was like a museum, and that in his closet was a framed check signed by Walt Disney. Have you seen that yourself?
Darley: There is. I have seen that. I have been in his closet. He was just a great host. When you went to the house, he would take you out and get candies and cookies at his train station, where he has the train at Neverland. He would walk around the house with you, and it was full of museum pieces and Grammy awards, and all types of awards that he had from all over the world. Michael Eisner gave him the check Walt Disney signed for purchasing the land for Disneyland. That was really one of Michael's most favorite places in the world to go -- to spend as much time as he could at the park.
Lampa: Tell us about that. What did he tell you about Disney?
Darley: Well, he loved the way Disney looked at the world as a child. He always felt like Main Street and the Disneyland park really, for him, brought back the memories of a childhood he seems to have lost, and he felt like when he went there, he always brought a big group of people with him. I remember I met Michael once at Disneyland and he was with Julian Lennon, John Lennon's son, and he had several other kids and adults with him in a large group, and it was so hard for him to go to the park when it was open, that a lot of times he would have to come early in the morning and ride a few rides before the park opened to the public.
Lampa: There was something you spoke about before about the Shooting Gallery at Disney inspiring the "Thriller" video?
Darley: He had come out with the album about the time we had met, and we were in Walt Disney World, and we had some storyboards that showed, and actually the tombstone is out at the Shooting Gallery at Walt Disney World and Disneyland where a skeleton hand reaches out of the ground and tries to grab a bottle off the top of the tombstone, and Michael had commented when Art and I were working with him that our approach to telling the story of the tombstone Shooting Gallery at Disney was his inspiration for the video, which I think came out a year later.
Lampa: You had said Michael was a lot like other legends, like Elvis. Why exactly is that?
Darley: They really looked at the world through a different set of eyes. They really saw the world as a place that they could have a huge impact on and he wanted to make it better. Much like Elvis, they gave everything away. Be careful what you ask for, they'd probably give it to you. I think they also had to be very careful about who they knew. Michael couldn't confide in a lot of people, and sometimes he just enjoyed -- we stood out by the giraffes one day at his house in California, and he just talked about everyday things, things you could tell he didn't get to do a lot.
Lampa: You say you have a funny story about something that Michael was willing to give to you?
Darley: He gave me a Grammy several times and I kept setting it back on the mantelpiece, and then later in the afternoon Art told me that I had hurt his feelings because I kept putting it back on the mantelpiece, that he said to me, "I've got, like, 13," and we all laughed about it, we thought, like, "Yeah, that's great" but I just couldn't take it from him. I look back now and think maybe I should have, but he was just a great host and just a kind, gentle person that I really enjoyed meeting.
Lampa: Is there anything else you would like to add in closing?
Darley: I think the one thing is, I wish more of the world could have known him the way a few of us and close friends knew him. He was such a different person than what you hear portrayed. He was just a kind, gentle person, and if he could have had more personal time to deal with people, he would have certainly done it. He shared his life very openly with people, and, unfortunately, too many things -- he was such a big star, too many times the real Michael Jackson wasn't able to come out, but he was somebody everybody would have wanted to meet and someone you really would have wanted to spend time with.