For his legions of fans, he was the Peter Pan of pop music: the little boy who refused to grow up. But now he is gone.
Michael Jackson, whose quintessentially American tale of celebrity and excess took him from musical boy wonder to global pop superstar to sad figure haunted by lawsuits and failed plastic surgery, died on Thursday afternoon at UCLA Medical Center after arriving in a coma, according to a city official. He was 50 years old.
At Jackson’s peak, he was the biggest star in the world and has sold more than 750 million albums.
Fom his days as the youngest brother in the Jackson Five to his solo career in the 1980s and early 1990s, Jackson was responsible for a string of hits like Want You Back, I’ll Be There, Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough, Billie Jean and Black and White that exploited his high voice, infectious energy and ear for irresistible hooks.
As a solo performer, Jackson ushered in the age of pop as a global product — not to mention an age of spectacle and pop culture celebrity. His early career with his brothers gave way to a solo act in which he became more character than singer: his sequined glove, his whitened face, his Moonwalk dance move became embedded in the cultural firmament.
But after his entertainment career hit high-water marks, it started a bizarre disintegration. His darkest moment came in 2003, when he was indicted on child molesting charges. A young cancer patient claimed the singer had befriended him and then sexually fondled him at his Neverland estate near Santa Barbara, California, but Jackson was acquitted on all charges.
Jackson is survived by three children: Michael Joseph Jackson, Jr, Paris Michael Katherine Jackson and Prince “Blanket” Michael Jackson II.
Michael Joseph Jackson was born in Gary, Indiana, on Aug. 29, 1958. The second youngest of six brothers, he began performing professionally with four of them at the age of 5 in a group that their father, Joe, had organized the previous year. In 1968 the group, originally called the Jackson Brothers but now known as the Jackson 5, was signed by Motown Records.
The Jackson 5 was an instant phenomenon. The group’s first four singles — I Want You Back, ABC, The Love You Save and I’ll Be There — all reached No. 1 on the pop charts in 1970. And Michael was the center of attention: He handled virtually all the lead vocals, danced with energy and finesse, and displayed a degree of showmanship rare in a performer of any age. The Jackson brothers were soon a fixture on television variety shows.
In 1971 Jackson began recording under his own name, while also continuing to perform and record with his brothers. His recording of Ben, the title song from a movie about a boy and his homicidal pet rat, was a No. 1 hit in 1972.
The brothers left Motown in 1975 and, rechristened the Jacksons, signed to Epic, a unit of CBS Records. Three years later Michael made his movie debut as the Scarecrow in the screen version of the hit Broadway musical The Wiz.
Jackson’s first solo album for Epic, Off the Wall, released in 1979, yielded four No. 1 singles and sold 7 million copies. Thriller, released in 1982, became the best-selling album of all time and helped usher in the music video age. The video for the album’s title track, directed by John Landis, was a horror-movie pastiche that was more of a mini-movie than a promotional clip and helped make MTV a household name.
Jackson’s next album, Bad, released in 1987, sold 8 million copies and produced five No. 1 singles and another state-of-the-art video, this one directed by Martin Scorsese. It was a huge hit by almost anyone else’s standards, but an inevitable letdown after Thriller.
It was at this point that Jackson’s bizarre private life began to overshadow his music. He would release several more albums and occasionally stage elaborate concert tours. And he would never be too far from the public eye. But it would never again be his music that kept him there.
Even with the millions Jackson earned, his eccentric lifestyle took a severe financial toll. In 1987 Jackson paid about US$17 million for a 1,052-hectare ranch in Los Olivos, 200km northwest of Los Angeles. Calling it Neverland after the mythical island of Peter Pan, he outfitted the property with amusement-park rides, a zoo and a 50-seat theater, at a cost of US$35 million, according to reports, and the ranch became his sanctum.
But Neverland, and Jackson’s lifestyle, were expensive to maintain. A forensic accountant who testified at Jackson’s molestation trial in 2005 said that Jackson’s annual budget in 1999 included US$7.5 million for personal expenses and US$5 million to maintain Neverland. By at least the late 1990s, he began to take out huge loans to support himself and pay debts.
Last year Neverland narrowly escaped foreclosure after Jackson defaulted on US$24.5 million he owed on the property. A real estate investment company bought the note and put the title for the property into a joint venture with Jackson.
The child molestation trial attracted media from around the world to watch as Jackson, wearing a different costume each day, appeared in a small courtroom in Santa Maria, California, to listen as a parade of witnesses spun a sometimes-incredible tale.
The case ultimately turned on the credibility of Jackson’s accuser, a 15-year-old who said the defendant had gotten him drunk and molested him several times. The boy’s younger brother testified that he had seen Jackson fondling his brother on two other occasions.
After weeks of testimony, the jury returned not-guilty verdicts on all 14 counts against Jackson: four charges of child molesting, one charge of attempted child molesting, one conspiracy charge and eight possible counts of providing alcohol to minors.
After his trial, Jackson largely left America for Bahrain, where he was the guest of a royal family member. He remained in Bahrain, Dubai and Ireland for the next several years, managing his increasingly unstable finances.
By early this year, Jackson was living in a US$100,000-a-month mansion in Bel Air, to be closer to “where all the action is” in the entertainment business, his manager at the time, Tohme Tohme, told the Los Angeles Times.
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