Sheryl Crow has opened up on accusations she was sexually harassed by Michael Jackson’s then-manager Frank DiLeo during her time as the pop star’s backing singer.
The star performed 123 concerts over 16 months on the road with Jackson – who died in 2009 – and while she said it was ‘incredible’ to work alongside the pop star, she added she ‘got a crash course in the music industry’.
Speaking further about the experience now, Crow accused the star’s manager of ‘sustained sexual harassment’ and threatening to ruin her career if she told anyone.
DiLeo – who died in August 2011 following heart surgery at the age of 63 – had managed Jackson in the late 1980s as well as in 2009 before the star’s death.
Crow had previously revealed her experience with him in her memoir Words + Music, alleging DiLeo had planted tabloid stories about her and Jackson, including one that alleged she’d been offered $2million (£1.4m) to have his baby, ‘to make Mike look like he was interested in women’.
She opened up more in an interview with the Independent over the weekend, saying: ‘It’s really interesting to go back and revisit some of this old stuff and the experiences that went along with it, and then to compare it with where we are now.
‘To be able to play that stuff about the long bout of sexual harassment I endured during the Michael Jackson tour and to talk about it in the midst of the #MeToo movement … it feels like we’ve come a long way, but it doesn’t feel like we’re quite there yet.’
The All I Wanna Do singer added: ‘Naiveté is such a beautiful thing. It was incredible in every way, shape and form for a young person from a really small town to see the world and to work with arguably the greatest pop star. But I also got a crash course in the music industry.’
Speaking about her decision to speak about the tour in her memoir, she said it ‘was the first time I’ve ever talked about it and it felt really uncomfortable, but it felt, to me, so much more empowering to be able to talk about it and then play the music that was inspired by it’.
Following her time as Jackson’s backing singer, Crow went on to forge a successful solo career with her first album, 1993’s Tuesday Night Music Club, going on to sell eight million copies worldwide. The third single, All I Wanna Do, hit number two on the Billboard Hot 100 while Crow won three Grammy Awards in 1995 for record of the year, best new artist, and best female pop vocal performance.
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