Afterlives of the Rich and Famous Read online

  Unfortunately, Albert’s growing worldwide renown and immersion in his work had a fatal impact on his marriage. He and Mileva were divorced in 1919, and he later married a distant cousin, Elsa Lowenthal.

  An intense backlash against Albert by the growing Nazi movement finally compelled him to leave Germany, and in 1932 he moved to the United States and relocated his work to the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, prompting physicists from around the world to flock there to study with him. His brilliant successes were counterbalanced by a series of personal tragedies in the 1930s—his son Eduard was diagnosed with schizophrenia and was institutionalized for the rest of his life; his close friend Paul Ehrenfest committed suicide; and in 1936 his wife, Elsa, passed away from a combination of heart and liver problems.

  It’s no surprise that a genius so fascinated with “invisible forces” put a great deal of thought into his own religious beliefs, and his writings expressed his faith in a God of harmony and beauty, an “old one” who was the ultimate lawmaker, but not a God who intervened in each of our personal human affairs. He’s quoted as saying: “I’m not an atheist, and I don’t think I can call myself a pantheist. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many different languages. . . . The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books, but doesn’t know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God.”

  The impact of Albert Einstein’s work is impossible to calculate; his celebrated theory of relativity barely scratches the surface of his accomplishments. He spent his later years in solitude, relying on music for relaxation, and on April 18, 1955, in Princeton, he died of an aneurysm. More than half a century later the results of his genius are still as inspiring, compelling, and motivating as they were during his extraordinary lifetime.

  From Francine

  The look of blissful awe on Albert’s face when he emerged from the tunnel reminded all who saw it of that “little child” he referred to when he described his belief in God. He wept with joy as he rushed first into his mother’s open arms and then into the arms of his beloved friend Paul Ehrenfest. (Both his father and his second wife had reincarnated by the time Albert returned Home.) His mentor, Isaac Newton, was there as well, to shake his hand and, with a smile filled with pride, ask Albert if he would please mentor him now, “until we’re back on a level playing field again”—Albert had far exceeded Isaac’s expectations during his lifetime. Albert is said to have replied, “I simply stood on the shoulders of a giant,” a reference to a quotation of Isaac’s. He then bowed deeply to the teacher and friend who was so influential in preparing him for this incarnation, which is his third and last. He remarked, “I do much better work here, without the weight of sadness.”

  As often happens with physicists and other scientists, Albert was almost as mesmerized by the Scanning Machine itself as he was with the lifetime that played out inside it. He continues to visit it regularly, taking full advantage of another of its uses: just as all of us here have unlimited access to the life charts in the Hall of Records, we can also review anyone’s lifetime we choose at the Scanning Machine, from the first pharaohs of Egypt or Jesus’s disciples to Mozart, Thomas Jefferson, or the doomed residents of Atlantis. For a mind like Albert’s, the “mechanics” of what you might think of as the ultimate time machine are irresistible, especially since one of his greatest passions here is to unlock the secrets of time travel for you on earth. He believes that by the 2040s in your years, time travel will be common through what he calls such global “flues” as the Bermuda Triangle, through the infused work of a team that includes Albert, Nikola Tesla, Galileo, and George Hale. One of the recipients of these infusions, beginning in approximately 2018, will be a young man at Duke University whose name is Bernard or Bernhard.

  Albert was especially moved by the arrival of his son Eduard, whose exceptional mind was clouded by schizophrenia during his lifetime. After being cocooned, Eduard rejoined his father as a coprofessor at physics and astrophysics seminars designed specifically for spirits who will be incarnating and have charted those sciences as their specialties—“our hands on earth,” as Albert calls them. Albert and Eduard live in a Cape Cod cottage in what corresponds to your Provincetown, Massachusetts, and they’re avid sailors on their ship called Yanqin, an Aramaic word for “children.” Albert has also reunited with his friend Johann Brahms, whose music he adores, and the two of them enjoy performing Brahms’s compositions and other great classical works at small salons throughout the Other Side, with Johann on the harpsichord and Albert on his beloved violin.

  Ray Charles

  Brother Ray” Charles, the genius pianist, singer, composer, and bandleader who left an indelible imprint on music, was born Ray Charles Robinson on September 23, 1930, in Albany, Georgia. His father, Bailey Robinson, pieced together what income he could as a railroad repairman, a mechanic, and a handyman, while his mother, Aretha Williams, worked at a local sawmill. Ray was still an infant when the family moved to Greenville, Florida.

  The Robinsons were poor, even compared to other black families in the South during the Great Depression, and they were also given more than their share of tragedy early in Ray’s life. He was only five when he saw his four-year-old brother, George, drown in a washtub. And he was only seven when, possibly due to glaucoma or an untreated infection, his failing eyesight deteriorated to total blindness.

  With Aretha’s support, he quickly learned to be capable and independent rather than disabled, and he was promptly enrolled in the Florida School for the Deaf and the Blind in St. Augustine, which he attended from the age of seven until he was fifteen. It was there that his musical gifts were nourished. He was taught composing and reading in Braille. He learned to play the piano, the saxophone, and every other instrument the school had to offer. His young life revolved around studying, practicing, and exploring all the music that moved him, from jazz and the blues to country and gospel.

  Ray’s mother died in 1945, when he was fifteen. He left school and moved to Jacksonville, where he played piano at the Ritz Theater for over a year before heading on to Orlando, then Tampa, and finally Seattle in 1947. In Seattle, in addition to meeting his lifelong friend and frequent collaborator Quincy Jones, he started recording for the Down Beat label, forming the Maxin Trio with guitarist G. D. McKee and bassist Milton Garrett, and in 1949 their “Confession Blues” reached number two on the R&B charts. Calling himself Ray Charles for the first time, he then joined Swing Time Records and recorded two more hits, which led to a contract with Atlantic Records. His first major hit singles were recorded for Atlantic, including 1954’s “I Got a Woman,” which he wrote with Renald Richard.

  From 1955 until 1959 he had an amazing string of R&B hit singles and albums, with a girl group he recruited and named the Raelettes singing back-up on such classics as “A Fool for You,” “Drown in My Own Tears,” and “The Night Time (Is the Right Time).” In 1959 he achieved his first “crossover” hit when “What’d I Say” reached number one on the R&B charts, but soared into the top ten on the pop music charts as well. He continued his crossover success when he signed with ABC Records in 1960, releasing hit after hit with such legendary recordings as “Georgia on My Mind,” “Hit the Road, Jack,” and “Unchain My Heart.”

  In 1962 Ray crossed over again and helped popularize country music among mainstream listeners with a two-album series called Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music. Its first single, a spectacular arrangement of Don Gibson’s “I Can’t Stop Loving You,” not only achieved the number-one spot on both the pop and R&B charts in America, but it also became the number-one record in England.

  The “British Invasion,” as the 1964 arrival of the Beatles and a stream of other bands from England has come to be known, seriously disrupted the momentum of a lot of American recording artists for several years, and Ray was among them, with a long string of only moderately successful releases t
hrough the late 1960s and well into the 1970s. He recorded a breathtaking signature version of “America the Beautiful” in 1972, popularizing the beloved national standard when it was broadcast internationally at the 1980 Olympics. In 1979, Ray Charles’s recording of “Georgia on My Mind” was officially proclaimed the state song of Georgia. And in 1985 he was a featured part of an all-star chorus who performed the Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie song “We Are the World” for the USA for Africa charity. He performed at the inaugurations of Ronald Reagan in 1985 and Bill Clinton in 1993, kicking off more than a decade of television and worldwide appearances from Venezuela to France to Italy. And between the years of 1981 and 2004 he received, among other honors, a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame; induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the Rhythm and Blues Foundation, and the Jazz Hall of Fame; the Kennedy Center Honor and a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, all in addition to the seventeen Grammy Awards he won throughout his career, five of them presented posthumously.

  Everyone he worked with would agree that perfectionism drove every note of every Ray Charles recording session, to the point where he literally let nothing stand in his way. Singer, songwriter, and producer Billy Vera tells the story of delivering the twenty-four-track tape of a $10,000 instrumental session to Ray’s Los Angeles studio for Ray to add his vocals. Ray listened and liked what he heard for the most part, but he was sure the saxophone solo should happen eight bars later than it was recorded. While Billy watched in amazement, Ray threaded the tape and cued up the solo. And then, in Billy’s words, “I see this blind man take a razor blade to a $10,000 recording, splice in the solo where he thinks it belongs, and sure enough, he was right, it was perfect. And believe me, we all knew Ray too well to try to stop him.”

  Behind the scenes, Ray Charles’s life was as dramatic as his genius. There were two marriages, first to Eileen Williams from 1951 to 1952 and then to Della Howard from 1955 to 1977. From 1950 through 1987 he fathered twelve children by nine different women, including three by his wife Della. It’s said that at a family lunch in 2002, Ray presented each of his children with a tax-free check for $1 million.

  In 1965 Ray was arrested for a third time for heroin possession. He’d reportedly been addicted to heroin since the mid to late 1950s, and in lieu of serving jail time after the arrest, he checked himself into a rehab clinic in Los Angeles and, by all accounts, emerged free of his addiction. It was during his year on parole in 1966 that his hit single “Cryin’ Time” was released.

  On April 30, 2004, Ray made his final public appearance, when he was honored by having his Los Angeles music studio dedicated as a historic landmark. Less than two months later, on June 10, 2004, at 11:35 a.m., Ray Charles died of liver cancer at his Beverly Hills, California, home, surrounded by family and friends, including his longtime partner Norma Pinella. His body was interred in the Inglewood Park Cemetery in Inglewood, California. At the time of his death he was survived by his twelve children, twenty-one grandchildren, and five great-grandchildren.

  From Francine

  Ray regained his eyesight the instant he entered the tunnel, and a huge crowd gathered to greet him when he arrived Home, led by his brother, George, and his mother. It was an especially ecstatic reunion—imagine your first sights after decades of blindness being faces you’ve longed to see, with the exquisite beauty of Home all around you. And everyone who witnessed it commented on the fact that Ray’s tears when he arrived were tears of pure joy, devoid of surprise or relief. While he never made an issue of his faith throughout his lifetime, he always knew with unwavering certainty where he was going when his body died and how much he had to look forward to when he resumed his life on the Other Side. He says it was that certainty that allowed him to make the most of his time on earth. Never fearing what came next, he was able to focus on every moment he lived, often to the point of indulgence, willfulness, and potential self-destruction, he admits, but he’s unique in having returned Home with no feeling of having left unfinished business behind.

  It was during his time at the Scanning Machine that he recalled all his past lives, both here and on earth, with complete clarity and recognized the extent to which music has always been essential to his spirit; he spent three incarnations as a classical composer and musician and one as an accomplished opera singer in Prague. His lifetime as Ray Charles was his way of influencing other musicians, present and future, as so many historically influenced him along the path of his soul, filling him so completely with creativity, freedom, innovation, passion, and discipline that not even the onset of blindness would discourage him.

  He performs here at Home in thrilling concerts with other singers and musicians who are old friends from here and from past incarnations. He continues to “pay it forward,” as you put it, by being one of our most prolific composers. He’s begun infusing his compositions to a young boy, a musical prodigy. The boy is currently eleven years old, his first or last name is Martin, and he lives in the Macon, Georgia, area. He’s already being recognized for his talent as a singer and guitarist. By the time he’s in his mid-teens he’ll be writing “Ray Charles songs” without knowing where they came from, and four of those songs will be successfully recorded by the time he’s twenty-five.

  Ray is involved in developing something to do with advancements in computer software that involve composing and transcribing music in Braille, and he is also part of a team of researchers who are exploring the use of stem cells in reversing blindness and diseases of the eye. His primary residence is on the cliffs above what corresponds to the place on earth you call Big Sur. He is always surrounded by a large group of friends with whom he loves playing music, chess, and soccer.

  His greatest regret is that he didn’t say “no” more often, particularly when it came to heroin. He remembers that when he got involved with drugs, he thought he was simply indulging in the freedom of being able to do anything he pleased, but now he looks back at his addiction as “just another form of slavery.”

  And he wants Willie Nelson to know that he never heard “Georgia on My Mind” “sung prettier” than when Willie sang it at his memorial service. His incarnation as Ray Charles will be his last.

  Michael Jackson

  According to Guinness World Records, Michael Jackson is the “most successful entertainer of all time.” He was inducted twice into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He won fifteen Grammy Awards and twenty-six American Music Awards, including “Artist of the Century,” was one of the bestselling recording artists in history, and, through his own efforts and donations, raised more than $300 million for charity. In his brilliant, controversial, and occasionally bizarre time on earth, Michael Jackson became a legend.

  Michael Joseph Jackson was born in Gary, Indiana, on August 29, 1958. He was the eighth of Joe and Katherine Jackson’s ten children. When Michael was eight years old he and his brother Marlon began singing lead vocals with the family band originally formed by Jermaine, Jackie, and Tito, a band that evolved from the Jackson Brothers into the Jackson Five.

  The young singers were signed with Motown Records from 1968 until 1975, then moved to CBS/Epic Records, where they renamed themselves the Jacksons. Michael was the group’s lead singer and songwriter by then, and he was also cast in the role of the Scarecrow in the 1978 film The Wiz, where he first worked with the renowned Quincy Jones, who arranged the score. Jones and Michael subsequently coproduced Michael’s massively successful solo album Off the Wall in 1979, and it was also in 1979 that Michael broke his nose and required the first of a highly publicized and often bewildering series of rhinoplasties.

  In 1982 Michael’s second Epic Records album, Thriller, was released. Almost thirty years later it remains the bestselling album in the history of the recording industry. And his utterly mesmerizing live performance on 1983’s Motown 25 special with the rest of the Jackson Five, witnessed by forty-seven million viewers around the world, confirmed his status as an international superstar, one known for his single sequined glove, his haunt
ing, crystal clear voice, and his signature “moonwalk” dance move.

  It was during the filming of a Pepsi Cola commercial in 1984 that, due to some mishandled pyrotechnics, Michael’s hair was accidentally set on fire, causing second-degree burns and, some believe, the real beginning of addictions to plastic surgery and prescription medications that would plague him for the rest of his life. Unfairly underpublicized was the fact that he donated his entire $1.5 million court settlement with Pepsi to what is now known as the Michael Jackson Burn Center at the Brotman Medical Center in Culver City, California.

  While Michael’s brilliant recording career continued, his health and his behavior became increasing concerns as the mid-1980s passed into the 1990s. He was diagnosed with vitiligo, which caused blotches of light skin on his body, and the treatments lightened his skin in general, triggering rumors that he was going through a deliberate bleaching process. He was also diagnosed with lupus; his gauntness triggered rumors of anorexia; his dramatically changing facial structure suggested an ongoing series of plastic surgeries, which he denied to the public; and he’d become increasingly introverted and androgynous by the time he bought the 2700-acre Neverland Ranch, his home, zoo, and theme park, near Santa Barbara, California, in 1988. The tabloids seemed to report every bizarre detail of his life without mentioning his almost unprecedented charitable donations, which included millions of dollars to the Heal the World Foundation, which he created to provide food, housing, and medical care to underprivileged children.

  In 1993 Michael Jackson was accused of sexually abusing a thirteen-year-old boy. He denied the accusations, the boy and his father settled out of court for a reported $22 million, and the investigation into possible criminal charges was closed due to a lack of evidence. Michael never recovered psychologically or emotionally from the embarrassment and the worldwide sensation the allegations caused in the press.