Monetizing the Celebrity Meltdown
“You’ll see why Michael called this place Neverland,” says Tom Barrack, the newest owner of Michael Jackson’s Neverland Valley Ranch. Barrack is a 63-year-old billionaire with a gleaming shaved head, summer-in-Sardinia tan, personally trained muscles, and sockless tasseled loafers. He is sitting on the lawn beside the Tudor-style, panic-room-equipped main house, near a gnarled oak tree with steps winding up to the perch where Jackson wrote “Bad.” “You’ll feel something, which I think was what drove him. And I don’t mean that—I’m not coming from outer space—but you will actually feel it, I promise.”
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