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.”

~ Derek Emerson