Diving Deep Into the Making of Jackson’s ‘HIStory’ (Book Excerpt)

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For more than 20 years, Dan Beck worked hand-in-hand with the Epic Records’ artists roster, first as a publicity executive, product manager and then senior vp of marketing and sales. It was a golden time at the label — and among the bold-faced names he collaborated with were Sade, Cyndi Lauper, Cheap Trick, Pearl Jam, Gloria Estefan and Luther Vandross.

But one of the artists he worked closest with was the King of Pop, Michael Jackson. He worked intimately with Jackson during both the “Dangerous” and “HIStory” era, but especially on the latter, for which he served as product manager.

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In his book, “You’ve Got Michael: Living Through HIStory,” out tomorrow (Oct. 15) on Trouser Press Books, Beck gives an insider’s view of what it was like to work extremely closely with Jackson from going to his house to hanging with him in the studio to helping coordinate booking Michael Jordan — another famous MJ — for the “Jam” video.

In this exclusive excerpt, Beck takes readers inside Jackson’s Trump Towers’ apartment as they worked on the CD booklet for” HIStory” in 1994 and pulled an all-nighter. (Excerpted from “You’ve Got Michael: Living Through HIStory” by Dan Beck © 2025 and reprinted by permission of Trouser Press Books.)

“You’ve Got Michael” by Dan Beck

In 1994, Michael Jackson left California and moved his team to New York.

In all my years in the music business, an artist never lived as close to my office as Michael Jackson did for a good part of that year. While recording at the Hit Factory on West 54th Street, he rented a multi-level apartment in Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue. Residents used an entrance on East 56th Street, literally fifty yards from the entrance to the Sony building. My office on the 21st floor looked out onto 56th Street; I could almost see into the window of Michael’s apartment.

Given Trump Tower’s glitzy reputation, I was surprised at how modest the apartment appeared when you first walked in. The hallway from the elevator was unadorned. The door opened into a kitchen area, which was small enough to be called a kitchenette. The lower floor, which had two adjoining living rooms, seemed like a basic corporate condo, right down to the decorations (or lack of them). Lacking any of Michael’s personal effects, it felt like a large hotel suite.

Most of my meetings with Michael at his Trump Tower digs were quick and casual. I would drop off research information he requested or meet him for a brief discussion on our preparations for the HIStory release. But one that occurred there in early 1995 was a much bigger deal.

One of the biggest issues was what photos to include in the package. We had priced out the additional unit cost of a fifty-two-page booklet for the CD and a comparable one for the vinyl package. Designing it for the 12-inch vinyl release was easy; the images would be large and beautiful. But the booklets for the cassette and the double-CD package had to be made to work on a much smaller scale.

Narrowing down the selection of photos was difficult. For an artist whose career spanned decades, how could two pages from each year cover it? After I addressed this with Michael, he said his assistant would collect a set of photos for us to consider. Epic art director Nancy Donald would fly to New York so that she, Michael and I could finalize the selections. Miraculously, a meeting at Trump Tower was set within a week or two.

Early that Friday evening, Nancy and I went across the street to Michael’s place. His cook greeted us at the door and ushered us into the living room, which now contained a skid of boxes. A skid! A stack of boxes easily five feet tall, four feet wide and six feet long on a wooden platform, ready for a forklift to pick them up. Each box was neatly packed full of 8×10 photos spanning Michael’s life. There were thousands: Michael with Hollywood royalty like Elizabeth Taylor and nearly every living president from the last half-century. Desmond Tutu and Queen Elizabeth. Emperors. The Beatles. Photos of him with tribal kings at formal ceremonies in Africa. Michael captured in every second of performance; shots of massive audiences; countless pictures of Michael in hospitals with sick children, with armies of police and in moments of solitary reflection. There was Oprah, The Wiz, headshots, iconic body shots of his gloved hand and toes en pointe and every dimension of his phenomenal music video experiences.

Nancy and I feebly looked through a handful as we waited for Michael to join us. How in the world were we going to narrow this down to a CD booklet?

In a few minutes, Michael bounded down the stairs from the upper floor bedroom. As he sat on the stairway landing just a couple of steps up, Nancy and I settled in cross-legged on the floor. We opened the first box and began the staggering process of reviewing each photo. Nancy and I took turns holding up 8x10s like flashcards and, for the next several hours, Michael responded to each picture, occasionally surprising us with a memory of the place and time. It was an extraordinary experience to see Michael’s eyes light up as he rediscovered countless magical moments from his phenomenal life.

To eliminate a photo, he simply gave a soft “okay.” But when he wanted a picture, he would get excited and with a joyful smile say, “Must have … or will die!” He said this over and over, and we laughed through this repetitive process well past midnight, never even stopping to eat. It was an exhilarating marathon to review Michael’s photographic life with Michael himself!

By early morning, we were down to about two-hundred photos. It was still far too many for a fifty-two-page booklet. After being at it for seven or eight hours, Nancy and I were both tired. But we knew if we didn’t finish this now, we might not get another opportunity for weeks, even months. We had to keep going as long as we could keep Michael on task. By the second or third pass of those still in contention. Michael’s insistence on keeping certain shots was becoming more pronounced. I couldn’t blame him; these were all magical moments of his life.

Although it was a marathon, the night flew by, and I never realized how exhausted I was until the muted light of daybreak filtered through the curtains in the far room. Michael was a trouper. Not many artists of any stature would have collaborated the way he did that night. We had truly pulled an all-nighter and got the CD booklet down to fifty-two pages.