In 2006, Michael Jackson did something that surprised a lot of people. He packed up his three children and moved to a quiet corner of Ireland for several months.
They didn’t stay in a fancy city hotel. They stayed at Grouse Lodge, a live-in recording studio out in the countryside near the town of Moate, in County Westmeath. It’s the kind of place where musicians can live and record under one roof, far away from cameras.
The man who ran it was Paddy Dunning. He got to know Michael and the kids, Prince, Paris and Bigi (then called Blanket), about as well as anyone could. A few years later, in 2010, he talked about those months with the Irish music magazine Hot Press.
What stands out most in his memories is how much Michael trusted them. “He asked us to mind his kids all the time, trusting us,” Dunning said. In Ireland, to “mind” kids means to look after them.
It went both ways, too. “We took him into our family as did he with us,” he said. Dunning’s own children got to know Michael’s children, and he said, “My kids were in contact with him and his kids.”
Michael’s driver in Ireland, Ray O’Hara, noticed the same down-to-earth family life. “He didn’t spoil the kids rotten. They did their schooling,” he told Dublin People in 2011.
There isn’t much video of Michael and his kids in Ireland that year, so this clip is worth a look just to see the family there together.
Michael and his children in Ireland in 2006
Now for the picture Dunning still carries around in his head.
On stage, the King of Pop dressed like nobody else on earth. At Grouse Lodge, he wore something else entirely.
“He’d walk around Grouse Lodge in a pair of my wellies with his kids on my horse,” Dunning said.
Wellies, short for Wellington boots, are what the Irish and British call tall rubber boots, the kind farmers pull on to walk through mud and wet grass. So there was Michael Jackson, in a pair of borrowed rubber boots, leading his children around the grounds on Paddy’s horse.
It’s hard to think of a more ordinary picture of a famous man. He was a dad in borrowed boots, walking beside a horse while his kids rode.
The studio has posted its own video tour. If you want to see the house and the grounds where Michael walked in those boots, this walkthrough gives you a good look around.
A walk through Grouse Lodge, the studio where Michael stayed
Dunning had one more memory that any musician would envy.
Michael worked in the studio while he was there. And at least once, the two of them made some music together just for fun. “I even jammed with Michael while he played drums,” Dunning said.
Michael Jackson on the drums, in the Irish countryside, with the studio owner playing along. Not many people can say that.
For a few months, Michael got to live like one of the family out in Westmeath. Years later, the man who lent him those wellies was still happy to talk about it.