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By Mikal Gilmore
This story was originally published in the 2009 special edition dedicated to Michael Jackson .
He was, in the end, precisely what he claimed and struggled to be: the biggest star in the world. If there had been any doubt, it ended on the afternoon of June 25th, 2009, when the news broke that Michael Jackson had died of apparent cardiac arrest in Los Angeles at age 50. The outpouring of first shock, then grief, was the largest, most instantaneous of its kind the world had ever known, short of the events of September 11th, 2001. Though the deaths of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. affected history more, and the deaths of Elvis Presley, John Lennon and Kurt Cobain signified the end of epochs, no single death has ever moved so fast around the globe, or to the forefront of all news, as swiftly as Michael Jackson’s.
In the days that followed, news channels, TV specials, feature magazines and front pages tried to understand what happened. Not so much the events of Jackson’s death – though there was confusion surrounding that – but rather the nature of his life and legacy. He was a man with a complicated personality, a man with a history that was both glorious and notorious. He was not a man that anybody felt nothing about. The most affecting statement I heard came from a young black man, Egberto Willies, whose self-chronicled video statement aired on CNN: “I grew up,” Willies said, and paused a beat, “on Michael Jackson. I loved … Michael Jackson. I hated … Michael Jackson. I admired … Michael Jackson. I was ashamed … of Michael Jackson. I was sorry … for Michael Jackson. I was proud … of Michael Jackson.”
What immediately became obvious in all the coverage is that despite the dishonor that had come upon him, despite the worst kinds of allegations against him, despite his extravagances, his idiosyncratic fears, his perceived megalomania (or narcissism) and his prolonged abandonment of his art, the world still respected Michael Jackson for the music he made for more than four decades. No single artist – indeed, no movement or force – has eclipsed what Jackson accomplished in the first years of his adult solo career. Clearly, many other artists have given us great art, great outrage, great invention and great rejuvenation – but Michael Jackson changed the balance in the pop world in a way that nobody has since. He forced rock & roll and the mainstream press to acknowledge that the biggest pop star in the world could be young and black, and in doing so he broke down more barriers than anybody. But he is also among the best proofs in living memory of poet William Carlos Williams’ famous verse: “The pure products of America/go crazy.” American music has had fewer pure products than Michael Jackson.
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There is no story in popular music as providential yet as tragic as the story of Michael Jackson. Both destinies ran throughout his life, more or less from the beginning: While still a child, he became the central source of support for a large family and an incalculable asset to one of the most important record labels in history. Jackson benefited from all of that – he won fame and money, and developed a self-image that set him apart from almost everybody. He lived vast lives within himself – it’s where he brooded and transformed his resentments and desires into both blissful and fierce art. It’s also where he found his strengths, and where he kept his frailties until they became lethal foibles. Given his upbringing, you can see why he had to make that life within.
Michael’s father, Joe Jackson, was a crane operator during the 1950s, in Gary, Indiana – a place in which, according to Dave Marsh’s Trapped: Michael Jackson and the Crossover Dream , quotas were imposed on how many black workers were allowed to advance into skilled trades in the city’s mills. Black workers were paid less than the white workers, and also suffered much higher rates of fatal industry-related illnesses – but Joe Jackson held hopes that music would lift his life. Michael’s mother, Katherine Scruse, was from Alabama but was living in East Chicago, Indiana, when she met Joe. She had grown up hearing country & western music, and although she entertained her own dreams of singing and playing music, a bout of polio had left her with a permanent limp. Joe and Katherine were a young couple, married in 1949, and began a large family immediately. Their first child, Maureen (Rebbie), was born in 1950, followed by Sigmund (Jackie) in 1951, Toriano (Tito) in 1953, Jermaine in 1954, La Toya in 1956 and Marlon in 1957. Michael was born on August 29th, 1958, and Randy was born in 1961. Janet, the last born, wouldn’t arrive until 1966.
500 greatest songs of all time (2004), paris jackson: life after neverland.
Michael and his siblings heard music all the time. Joe had a strong inclination toward the rowdy electric urban blues that had developed in nearby Chicago, and also for early rock & roll. Along with his brothers, Joe formed a band, the Falcons, and made some modest extra income from playing bars and college dances around Gary. “They would do some of the great early rock & roll and blues songs by Chuck Berry, Little Richard … you name it,” Michael wrote in his 1988 autobiography, Moonwalk . “All those styles were amazing and each had an influence on … us, though we were too young to know it at the time.”
When the Falcons folded, Joe retired his guitar to a bedroom closet, and he guarded it jealously, just as he did everything in his domain. Katherine, though, sometimes led her children in country-music singalongs, during which she taught them to harmonize. Tito, like his father, had a quick affinity for playing instruments, and one day after retrieving Joe’s guitar to practice with his brothers, he broke a string. As Michael later recalled, Joe whipped Tito for the infraction – “he let him have it” – then challenged his son to show him what he could play. As it turned out, Tito impressed his father. Maybe in those moments Joe Jackson saw a future hope blossom again. He bought Tito his own guitar and taught him some Ray Charles music, then he got Jermaine a bass. Soon he was working all his sons into an ensemble. Though Joe was at heart a blues man, he appreciated that contemporary R&B – Motown and soul – was the music that attracted his sons. Joe groomed Jermaine to be lead singer, but one day, Katherine saw Michael, just four at the time, singing along to a James Brown song, and Michael – in both his voice and moves – was already eclipsing his older brother. She told Joe, “I think we have another lead singer.” Katherine would later say that sometimes Michael’s precocious abilities frightened her – she probably saw that his childhood might give way to stardom – but she also recognized that there was something undeniable about his young voice, that it could communicate longings and experiences that no child could yet know. Michael was also a natural center of attention. He loved singing and dancing, and because he was so young – such an unexpected vehicle for a rousing, dead-on soulful expression – he became an obvious point of attention when he and his brothers performed. Little Michael Jackson was cute, but little Michael Jackson was also dynamite.
There is no story in popular music as providential yet as tragic as the story of Michael Jackson.
It’s clear that Joe Jackson was good at what he did. “He knew exactly what I had to do to become a professional,” Michael later said. “He taught me exactly how to hold a mike and make gestures to the crowd and how to handle an audience.” But by Joe’s own admission he was also unrelenting. “When I found out that my kids were interested in becoming entertainers, I really went to work with them,” he told Time in 1984. “I rehearsed them about three years before I turned them loose. That’s practically every day, for at least two or three hours. … They got a little upset about the whole thing in the beginning because the other kids were out having a good time. … Then I saw that after they became better, they enjoyed it more.” That isn’t always how Michael remembered it. “We’d perform for him, and he’d critique us,” he wrote in Moonwalk . “If you messed up, you got hit, sometimes with a belt, sometimes with a switch. … I’d get beaten for things that happened mostly outside rehearsal. Dad would make me so mad and hurt that I’d try to get back at him and get beaten all the more. I’d take a shoe and throw it at him, or I’d just fight back, swinging my fists. That’s why I got it more than all my brothers combined. I’d fight back, and my father would kill me, just tear me up.” Those moments – and probably many more – created a loss that Jackson never got over. He was essential to the family’s music making, but there was no other bond between father and son. Again, from Moonwalk : “One of the few things I regret most is never being able to have a real closeness with him. He built a shell around himself over the years, and once he stopped talking about our family business, he found it hard to relate to us. We’d all be together, and he’d just leave the room.”
Around 1964, Joe began entering the Jackson brothers in talent contests, many of which they handily won. A single they cut for the local Steeltown recording label, “Big Boy,” achieved local success. “At first I told myself they were just kids,” Joe said in 1971. “I soon realized they were very professional. There was nothing to wait for. The boys were ready for stage training, and I ran out of reasons to keep them from the school of hard knocks.” In 1966, he booked his sons into Gary’s black nightclubs, as well as some in Chicago. Many of the clubs served alcohol, and several featured strippers. “This is quite a life for a nine-year-old,” Katherine would remind her husband, but Joe was undaunted. “I used to stand in the wings of this one place in Chicago and watch a lady whose name was Mary Rose,” Michael recalled. “This girl would take off her clothes and her panties and throw them to the audience. The men would pick them up and sniff them and yell. My brothers and I would be watching all this, taking it in, and my father wouldn’t mind.” Sam Moore, of Sam and Dave, recalled Joe locking Michael – who was maybe 10 years old – in a dressing room while Joe went off on his own adventures. Michael sat alone for hours. He also later recalled having to go onstage even if he’d been sick in bed that day.
Michael and his brothers began to tour on what was still referred to as the “chitlin circuit” – a network of black venues throughout the U.S. (Joe made sure his sons kept their school studies up to date and maintained their grades at an acceptable level.) In these theaters and clubs, the Jacksons opened for numerous R&B artists, including the Temptations, Sam and Dave, Jackie Wilson, Jerry Butler, the O’Jays and Etta James, though no one was as important to Michael as James Brown.
“I knew every step, every grunt, every spin and turn,” he recalled. “He would give a performance that would exhaust you, just wear you out emotionally. His whole physical presence, the fire coming out of his pores, would be phenomenal. You’d feel every bead of sweat on his face, and you’d know what he was going through….You couldn’t teach a person what I’ve learned just standing and watching.”
The most famous site on these tours was the Apollo in New York, where the Jackson 5 won an Amateur Night show in 1967. Joe had invested everything he had in his sons’ success, though of course any real recognition or profit would be his success as well. While on the circuit, Joe had come to know Gladys Knight, who was enjoying a string of small successes with Motown, America’s pre-eminent black pop label. With the encouragement of both Knight and Motown R&B star Bobby Taylor, Joe took his sons to Detroit to audition for the label. In 1969, Motown moved the Jackson family to Los Angeles, set them up at the homes of Diana Ross and the label’s owner, Berry Gordy, and began grooming them. Michael remembered Gordy telling them, “I’m gonna make you the biggest thing in the world. … Your first record will be a number one, your second record will be a number one, and so will your third record. Three number-one records in a row.”
In 1959, Gordy founded Tamla Records – which soon became known as Motown – in Detroit. By the time he signed the Jackson 5 , Motown had long enjoyed its status as the most important black-owned and -operated record label in America, spawning the successes of Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, the Temptations, Mary Wells, the Four Tops, and Diana Ross and the Supremes, among others. In contrast to Stax and Atlantic, Motown’s soul wasn’t especially bluesy or gritty, nor was it a music that spoke explicitly to social matters or to the black struggle in the U.S. By its nature the label exemplified black achievement, but its music was calibrated for assimilation by the pop mainstream – which of course meant a white audience as much as a black one (the label’s early records bore the legend “The Sound of Young America”). At the time, rock music was increasingly becoming a medium for album-length works. By contrast, Motown maintained its identity as a factory that manufactured hit singles, despite groundbreaking albums by Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye. Gordy was looking for a singles-oriented group that would not only deliver hits for young people, but would also give them somebody to seize as their own, to identify with and to adore. The Jackson 5, Gordy said, would exemplify “bubblegum soul.”
The Jackson 5’s first three singles – “I Want You Back,” “ABC” and “The Love You Save” – became Number One hits as Gordy had promised, and so did a fourth, “I’ll Be There.” The group was established as the breakout sensation of 1970. Fred Rice, who would create Jackson 5 merchandise for Motown, said, “I call ’em the black Beatles. … It’s unbelievable.” And he was right. The Jackson 5 defined the transition from 1960s soul to 1970s pop as much as Sly and the Family Stone did, and at a time when many Americans were uneasy about minority aspirations to power, the Jackson 5 conveyed an agreeable ideal of black pride, one that reflected kinship and aspiration rather than opposition. They represented a realization that the civil rights movement made possible, and that couldn’t have happened even five or six years earlier. Moreover, the Jackson 5 earned critical respectability. Reviewing “I Want You Back” in Rolling Stone , Jon Landau wrote , “The arrangement, energy and simple spacing of the rhythm all contribute to the record’s spellbinding impact.” And though they functioned as a group, there was no question who the Jackson 5’s true star was, and who they depended on. Michael’s voice also worked beyond conventional notions of male-soul vocals – even worked beyond gender. Cultural critic and musician Jason King, in an outstanding essay, recently wrote, “It is not an exaggeration to say that he was the most advanced popular singer of his age in the history of recorded music. His untrained tenor was uncanny. By all rights, he shouldn’t have had as much vocal authority as he did at such a young age.”
Fred Rice, who would create Jackson 5 merchandise for Motown, said, “I call ’em the black Beatles. … It’s unbelievable.”
For at least the first few years, Michael and his brothers seemed omnipresent and enjoyed universal praise. But soon they experienced some hard limitations. The music they were making wasn’t really of invention – they didn’t write or produce it – and after Michael was relegated to recording throwback fare like “Rockin’ Robin,” in 1972, he worried that the Jackson 5 would become an “oldies act” before he left adolescence. The Jackson 5 began pushing to produce themselves and to create their own sound. Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye had demonstrated an ability to grow and change – and sell records – when given creative leeway, and with 1974’s “Dancing Machine,” the Jacksons proved they could thrive when they seized a funk groove. Motown, however, wouldn’t consider it. “They not only refused to grant our requests,” Michael said in Moonwalk , “they told us it was taboo to even mention that we wanted to do our own music.” Michael understood what this meant: Not only would Motown not let the Jackson 5 grow, they also wouldn’t let him grow. Michael bided his time, studying the producers he and his brothers worked with. “I was like a hawk preying in the night,” he said. “I’d watch everything. They didn’t get away with nothing without me seeing. I really wanted to get into it.”
In 1975, Joe Jackson negotiated a new deal for his sons – this time with Epic Records, for a 500 percent royalty-rate increase. The contract also stipulated solo albums from the Jacksons (though the arrangement did not include Jermaine, who married Gordy’s daughter Hazel and stayed with Motown, creating a rift with the family that lasted for several years). Motown tried to block the deal, and in the end stopped the brothers from using the Jackson 5 name; the group would now be known as the Jacksons. Epic initially placed them with Philadelphia producers Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff, but it wouldn’t be until 1978’s Destiny that the Jacksons finally seized control over their own music and recast their sound – sexy and smooth in the dance-floor hits “Blame It on the Boogie” and the momentous “Shake Your Body (Down to the Ground),” and reflecting a new depth and emotional complexity in songs like “Push Me Away” and “Bless His Soul.”
Destiny , though, was merely a prelude: By the time the album was finished, Michael was ready to make crucial changes that would establish his ascendancy as a solo artist. He fired his father as his manager and in effect found himself a new father, producer Quincy Jones, whom Michael connected with while filming The Wiz (a reworking of The Wizard of Oz ). Jones was a respected jazz musician, bandleader, composer and arranger who had worked with Clifford Brown, Frank Sinatra, Lesley Gore, Count Basie, Aretha Franklin and Paul Simon, and he had written the film scores for The Pawnbroker , In Cold Blood and In the Heat of the Night . Jackson liked the arranger’s ear for mixing complex hard beats with soft overlayers. “It was the first time that I fully wrote and produced my songs,” Jackson said later, “and I was looking for somebody who would give me that freedom, plus somebody who’s unlimited musically.” Specifically, Jackson said his solo album had to sound different than the Jacksons; he wanted a cleaner and funkier sound. The pairing proved as fortuitous as any collaboration in history. Jones brought an ethereal buoyancy to Jackson’s soft erotic fever on songs like “Rock With You” and “Don’t Stop ’Til You Get Enough,” and in a stunning moment like “She’s Out of My Life,” Jones had the good sense to let nothing obscure the magnificent heartbreak in the singer’s voice. The resulting album, Off the Wall – which established Jackson as a mature artistic force in his own right – has the most unified feel of any of his works. It was also a massive hit, selling more than 5 million copies in the U.S. alone by 1985.
Michael Jackson had in effect become one of the biggest black artists America had ever produced, and he expected Off the Wall to win top honors during the 1980 Grammy Awards ceremony. Instead, it received only one honor, for Best Male R&B vocal. The Doobie Brothers’ “What a Fool Believes” won for Record of the Year, and Billy Joel’s 52nd Street won Album of the Year. Jackson was stunned and bitter. “My family thought I was going crazy because I was weeping so much about it,” he recalled. “I felt ignored and it hurt. I said to myself, ‘Wait until next time’ – they won’t be able to ignore the next album. … That experience lit a fire in my soul.”
Jackson told Jones – and apparently others as well – that his next album wouldn’t simply be bigger than Off the Wall , it would be the biggest album ever. When Thriller was released in November 1982, it didn’t seem to have any overarching theme or even a cohesive style. Instead, it sounded like an assembly of singles – like a greatest-hits album, before the fact. But it became evident fast that this was exactly what Jackson intended Thriller to be: a brilliant collection of songs intended as hits, each one designed with mass crossover audiences in mind. Jackson put out “Billie Jean” for the dance crowd, “Beat It” for the white rockers, and then followed each crossover with crafty videos designed to enhance both his allure and his inaccessibility. Yet after hearing these songs find their natural life on radio, it was obvious that they were something more than exceptional highlights. They were a well-conceived body of passion, rhythm and structure that defined the sensibility – if not the inner life – of the artist behind them. These were instantly compelling songs about emotional and sexual claustrophobia, about hard-earned adulthood and about a newfound brand of resolution that worked as an arbiter between the artist’s fears and the inescapable fact of his fame. “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’ ” had the sense of a vitalizing nightmare in its best lines (“You’re stuck in the middle/And the pain is thunder. … Still they hate you, you’re a vegetable. … They eat off you, you’re a vegetable”). “Billie Jean,” in the meantime, exposed the ways in which the interaction between the artist’s fame and the outside world might invoke soul-killing dishonor (“People always told me, be careful of what you do. … ‘Cause the lie becomes the truth,” Jackson sings, possibly thinking of a paternity charge from a while back). And “Beat It” was pure anger – a rousing depiction of violence as a male stance, as a social inheritance that might be overcome. In sum, Thriller’s parts added up to the most improbable kind of art – a work of personal revelation that was also a mass-market masterpiece. It’s an achievement that will likely never be topped.
Except, in a sense, Jackson did top it, and he did it within months after Thriller ’s release. It came during a May 16th, 1983, TV special celebrating Motown’s 25th anniversary. Jackson had just performed a medley of greatest hits with his brothers. It was exciting stuff, but for Michael it wasn’t enough. As his brothers said their goodbyes and left the stage, Michael remained. He seemed shy for a moment, trying to find words to say. “Yeah,” he almost whispered, “those were good old days. … I like those songs a lot. But especially—” and then he placed the microphone into the stand with a commanding look and said, “I like the new songs.” He swooped down, picked up a fedora, put it on his head with confidence, and vaulted into “Billie Jean.” This was one of Michael Jackson’s first public acts as a star outside and beyond the Jacksons, and it was startlingly clear that he was not only one of the most thrilling live performers in pop music, but that he was perhaps more capable of inspiring an audience’s imagination than any single pop artist since Elvis Presley. There are times when you know you are hearing or seeing something extraordinary, something that captures the hopes and dreams popular music might aspire to, and that might unite and inflame a new audience. That time came that night, on TV screens across the nation – the sight of a young man staking out his territory, and just starting to lay claim to his rightful pop legend. “Almost 50 million people saw that show,” Jackson wrote in Moonwalk . “After that, many things changed.”
He was right. That was the last truly blessed moment in Michael Jackson’s life. After that, everything became argument and recrimination. And in time, decay.
Before going into that area – where the story breaks in two – it’s probably worth asking, What kind of person was Michael Jackson at that time? What were his hopes and his problems? What did he want his music to say or accomplish? How did he relate to the audience who loved him, and how did he relate to himself? Up to this point, these questions haven’t really figured; Michael Jackson was an immensely talented young man – he seemed shy but ambitious, and he certainly seemed enigmatic. Nobody knew much about his beliefs or his sex life; he rarely gave interviews, but he also didn’t land himself in scandals. He did, however, describe himself as a lonely person – particularly around the time he made Off the Wall . Former Los Angeles Times music critic Robert Hilburn recently wrote of meeting Jackson in 1981 , when the singer was 23, that Jackson struck him as “one of the most fragile and lonely people I’ve ever met … almost abandoned. When I asked why he didn’t live on his own like his brothers, instead remaining at his parents’ house, he said, ‘Oh, no, I think I’d die on my own. I’d be so lonely. Even at home, I’m lonely. I sit in my room and sometimes cry. It is so hard to make friends, and there are some things you can’t talk to your parents or family about. I sometimes walk around the neighborhood at night, just hoping to find someone to talk to. But I just end up coming home.’ ”
Jackson’s social uneasiness was probably formed by the wounds in his history; the children were insulated from others their age, and Jackson’s status as a lifelong star may have left him feeling not just cut off from most people, but also alien from them – as if his experience or his vocation made him extraordinary. “I hate to admit it,” he once said, “but I feel strange around everyday people.” Not exactly an unusual sentiment for some cloistered celebrities, especially former child stars. At the same time, it’s a statement full of signals: Jackson didn’t enjoy the sort of company that might guide him in positive ways. He probably never did, throughout his life. Maybe the most troubling passage in Moonwalk is when he talks about children in the entertainment world who eventually fell prey to drugs: “I can understand … considering the enormous stresses put upon them at a young age. It’s a difficult life.”
In any event, Michael Jackson seemed clearly reputable – eminent though not heroic, not yet messianic, and certainly not contemptible. Thriller placed seven singles in Billboard’s Top 10 and also became the biggest-selling album in history (presently around 50 million copies or more), and at the 1984 Grammy Awards, Jackson finally claimed his due, capturing eight awards, including Album of the Year and Record of the Year. Then, months later, it was announced that Michael would be setting out on a nationwide tour with the Jacksons. He hadn’t wanted to undertake the venture but felt obliged (“Those were slim shoulders on which to place such burdens,” he wrote of his lifelong family pressures). Clearly, his talents and aspirations went beyond the limitations that his family act imposed on him. By all rights, he should have been taking the stage alone at that point in his career.
Jackson’s aversion to the Victory Tour was apparent when he sat looking miserable at press conferences or when he had to denounce statements by his father that he interpreted as casting aspersions on the Jacksons’ management team of Ron Weisner and Freddy DeMann. “There was a time,” Joe said, “when I felt I needed white help in dealing with the corporate power structure at CBS. … And I thought [Weisner-DeMann] would be able to help.” Michael fired back furiously in a written comment to Billboard : “To hear him talk like that turns my stomach. I don’t know where he gets that from. I happen to be colorblind. I don’t hire color; I hire competence. … I am president of my organization and I have the final word on every decision. Racism is not my motto.” It was the end of any lingering business relationship between Michael and his father.
It was during this period that a backlash first set in against Jackson, though from the press more than from the public. Actually, it began before the tour, as it became apparent that Thriller was headed for unprecedented sales at a blinding rate. The mid-1980s was a time when many in the music press had misgivings about mass popularity – especially if it seemed to represent a homogenized or acquiescent culture. Michael Jackson, after all, wasn’t an artist with a message of sociopolitical revolution, nor did his lyrics reflect literary aspirations. To some then – and to some now – he represented little more than an ambition for personal fame. He wasn’t, it seemed, an artist who would accomplish for his audience what Elvis Presley and the Beatles accomplished for theirs: the sort of event or disruption that changed both youth culture and the world. In my mind, Michael Jackson, Presley and the Beatles all shared one virtue: They bound together millions of otherwise dissimilar people in not just a quirk of shared taste, but also a forceful, heartfelt consensus that spoke to common dreams and values.
But there was a trickier concern at play. The racial dimensions of Jackson’s image proved complex beyond any easy answers at that time, or even since. Some of that was attributable to charges that Jackson seemed willing to trade his former black constituency for an overwhelmingly white audience – otherwise how could he have achieved such staggering sales figures in the U.S.? But what probably inspired these race-related arguments most – the terrain where they all seemed to play out – was the topography of Jackson’s face. With the exception of later accusations about his sexual behavior, nothing inspired more argument or ridicule about Michael Jackson than that face.
In his childhood, Jackson had a sweet, dark-skinned countenance; many early Jackson 5 fans regarded him as the cutest of the brothers. J. Randy Taraborrelli, author of Michael Jackson: The Magic and the Madness , has written, “[Michael] believed his skin…‘messed up my whole personality.’ He no longer looked at people as he talked to them. His playful personality changed and he became quieter and more serious. He thought he was ugly – his skin was too dark, he decided, and his nose too wide. It was no help that his insensitive father and brothers called him ‘Big Nose.’” Also, as Jackson became an adolescent, he was horribly self-conscious about acne. Hilburn recalled going through a stack of photos with Jackson one night and coming across a picture of him as a teenager: “‘Ohh, that’s horrible,’ [Jackson] said, recoiling from the picture.”
The face Jackson displayed on the cover of Thriller had changed; the skin tone seemed lighter and his nose thinner and straighter. In Moonwalk , Jackson claimed that much of the apparent renovation was due to a change in his diet; he admitted to altering his nose and his chin, but he denied he’d done anything to his skin. Still, the changes didn’t end there. Over the years, Jackson’s skin grew lighter and lighter, his nose tapered more and more and his cheekbones seemed to gain prominence. To some, this all became fair game for derision; to others, it seemed a grotesque mutilation – not just because it might have been an act of conceit, aimed to keep his face forever child-like, but more troublingly because some believed Jackson wanted to transform himself into a white person. Or an androgyne – somebody with both male and female traits. The film Three Kings has a famous scene where an Iraqi interrogator asks a captured American soldier, “What is the problem with Michael Jackson? Your country make him chop up his face. … Michael Jackson is pop king of sick fucking country.” The soldier replies, “It’s bullshit – he did it to himself,” and the Iraqi smacks him on the head with a clipboard. “It is so obvious. A black man make the skin white and the hair straight, and you know why? … Your sick fucking country make the black man hate hisself.”
In 1985, James Baldwin wrote in an essay for Playboy , “The Michael Jackson cacophony is fascinating in that it is not about Jackson at all. I hope he has the good sense to know it and the good fortune to snatch his life out of the jaws of a carnivorous success. He will not swiftly be forgiven for having turned so many tables, for he damn sure grabbed the brass ring, and the man who broke the bank at Monte Carlo has nothing on Michael. All that noise is about America, as the dishonest custodian of black life and wealth; and blacks, especially males, in America, and the burning, buried American guilt; and sex and sexual roles and sexual panic; money, success and despair… ”
Baldwin’s paragraph was sympathetic and unflinching, but it was also prescient. Michael Jackson certainly wanted to seize the ring twice: He wanted his next album to be bigger than Thriller , which was of course too much to ask. An associate of his told me in 1988, “Michael still wants the world to acknowledge him.” Maybe just as important, Jackson was also seeking vindication. He felt misjudged and maligned by much of the criticism heaped on him after the 1984 Victory Tour. He had long been taught, by both his father and Motown, that the press was a vindictive force when it came to entertainers, that it reveled in the rhythm of building a celebrity’s image, only to turn around and undermine that same person. In his case, Jackson wasn’t half wrong. Some of the scrutiny he received about his “freakishness” – his devotion to his animals as if they were his friends, his ongoing facial reconstruction, scornful charges that he slept in a hyperbaric oxygen chamber to maintain his youthfulness – was judgmental, even moralistic. Worse, too much of it came from reporters and gossip columnists, even political commentators, who displayed little if any real appreciation for Jackson’s music and little respect for the sheer genius of his work.
At that time, Jackson’s art was still his best way of making a case for himself. In 1987, he released Bad , his much-anticipated successor to Thriller . If not as eventful and ingenious as Off the Wall and Thriller , Bad was as good as any album he ever made. It was taut and funky, it had snap and fever, it radiated rage and self-pity but also yearning for grace and transcendence – particularly in “Man in the Mirror,” a song about accepting social and political responsibility, and about the artist negotiating his way back into the world. Bad sold millions and launched five Number One singles, three more than Thriller , but because it couldn’t match the accomplishments of Thriller , it was viewed as a flop.
Jackson then staged his first solo tour later that year. On several nights, I saw him turn in inspiring performances that also served as timely reminders of a sometimes overlooked truth about him: Namely that whatever his eccentricities, Michael Jackson acquired his fame primarily because of his remarkably intuitive talents as a singer and dancer – talents that were genuine and matchless and not the constructions of mere ambition or hype. Though he had the lithe frame of Fred Astaire, the mad inventiveness of Gene Kelly, the sexy agony of Jackie Wilson, the rhythmic mastery of James Brown – or of Sammy Davis Jr., for that matter – nobody else moved like Michael Jackson. Certainly nobody else broke open their moment in one daring physical display like Jackson. He didn’t invent the moonwalk – that famous and impossible backward gliding movement from his Motown 25 performance of “Billie Jean” – but it didn’t matter. He had defined himself in that moment and dared anybody else to match it, and nobody ever did. During the Bad tour his moves were breathtaking, sometimes unexpected. In the opening parts of songs like “Bad” and “The Way You Make Me Feel,” he seemed self-conscious and strained pulling off the songs’ cartoonish notion of streetwise sexuality, and his overstated hip pops and crotch snatching came off as more forced than felt. And yet when the music revved up, all the artifice was instantly dispelled. Jackson became suddenly confident and pulled off startling, robotic hip-and-torso thrusts alongside slow-motion, sliding-mime moves that left the audience gasping. Watching those quirky moves, you realized that all that came from somewhere within. You realized Jackson’s exceptional talent could not be completely separable from his eccentricity.
In 1988, he was again nominated for key Grammy Awards including Album of the Year, but he was up against hard competition. Artists like U2 and Prince had fashioned the most ambitious and visionary music of their careers – music that reflected the state of pop and the world in enlivening ways. More to the point, in 1988 there was suspicion among many observers that Jackson’s season as pop’s favorite son had passed. He would win no Grammys that year. In the Rolling Stone Readers’ poll, Jackson placed first in six of the readers’ “worst of the year” categories (including “worst male singer”); in addition, The Village Voice Critics’ Poll failed to mention Jackson’s Bad in its selection of 1987’s 40 best albums. This was a startling turnaround from four years before, when Jackson and his work topped the same polls in both publications.
Michael jackson never really regained momentum or ambition after the negative reaction to Bad . He had finally left the family home in Encino and built his own fortress estate known as Neverland, about 100 miles north of L.A., with an amusement park and train rides redolent of Disneyland. It became a place where he brought the world to him, or at least that part of the world he seemed to care about, which mainly included children – the people, he said, he felt most at home with, since part of him wanted to experience and share the childhood he felt his father and entertainment career had deprived him of. But it was also Michael’s appetite for the company of children that would create the most lamentable troubles in his life. In 1993, a story broke that Jackson was accused of molesting a 13-year-old boy with whom he had kept frequent company. It was a terribly serious accusation, and given his fondness for the company of children, the charges seemed all too credible to some observers. The story played big in not just tabloid newspapers but in some mainstream media as well. No criminal charges were filed, but in 1994 Jackson settled the matter out of court (reportedly for something in the vicinity of $20 million), which struck many as a tacit admission to the allegations. Jackson, though, categorically denied the claim. He later told British journalist Martin Bashir that he simply wanted to put the issue behind him.
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The episode did enormous damage to Jackson’s image, and perhaps to his psychology as well. It was during that time that, according to some, he developed a dependency on medications that stayed with him through the rest of his life. (Jackson’s need for drugs may also have stemmed from pains attributable to various surgeries.) That same year he unexpectedly married Lisa Marie Presley, the daughter of rock & roll’s most eminent pioneer, Elvis Presley. Some saw it as an effort to both rehabilitate and bolster his image by asserting a heterosexual authenticity, and by linking his name to even greater fame. The marriage lasted 18 months. Presley has never spoken negatively of Jackson, only affectionately, saying in the days after her ex-husband’s death that she left him only because she felt she couldn’t save him from himself. Jackson married again in 1996, this time to a nurse from his dermatologist’s office, Debbie Rowe. The couple had two children, son Prince Michael Jackson and daughter Paris Michael Katherine Jackson. Apparently, the children were the true objective of the marriage for Jackson; the couple divorced in 1999 and Rowe gave up custody of the children. (Rowe has admitted in the past that Jackson wasn’t the children’s biological father, but rather that they were conceived by artificial insemination.)
Through the course of all this, sadly, Jackson’s musical drive fell off, and the music that did emerge was only sporadically successful. His new music was often a testament of self-justification. In “Childhood,” a song from 1995’s HIStory: Past, Present and Future , he put forth his case for his otherness: “No one understands me/They view it as such strange eccentricities. … It’s been my fate to compensate/For the childhood I’ve never known/ Before you judge me, try hard to love me/ Look within your heart, then ask/Have you seen my childhood?” Two years later, still dismayed at how the media continued to judge him, Jackson lashed out in “Is It Scary,” a song from his 1997 remix album, Blood on the Dance Floor : “Am I the beast you visualized/And if you wanna see/Eccentric oddities/I’ll be grotesque before your eyes….So tell me….Am I scary for you?” His hurt and anger also began to come out more in his body over the years. Sometimes his expression looked terrified, his eyes peering over surgical masks or from behind the cover of a burqa. Other times he moved with an explosive fury, as in those moments at the end of his infamous but incredibly successful 1991 video for the song “Black or White.” Those movements seemed so different from the joyful ones of years before.
But despite good moments – and too many treacly and self-aggrandizing ones – Michael Jackson’s 1990s music had no real presence in the ongoing current of popular culture. His final album, Invincible , from 2001, yielded a few adventurous tracks – Jackson was finally accommodating the stylistic and cultural innovations made by hip-hop and other urban music forms – but overall it wasn’t enough to live up to its title. This isn’t to say that Michael Jackson was no longer a huge star but rather that his legend had transmuted: He was now known for his excesses and bad choices. He lived in a castle; he contracted another baby, Prince Michael II (whose mother has never been identified); and he then recklessly dangled the baby over a balcony in Berlin. Sometimes you had to wonder whether Jackson had any real idea how his actions struck the world – which is perhaps OK, unless you expect the world to love you unconditionally.
Jackson’s most egregious lapse of judgment became evident in a notorious 2003 interview with Martin Bashir, in which the singer professed that he still shared his bed at Neverland with children who were not his own. During one point in the broadcast, Jackson sat holding the hand of a 13-year-old boy, a cancer survivor, and explained what he saw as the innocent and loving nature of that behavior. The public response was swift and hypercritical; many thought that despite the accusations he had faced in 1993, Jackson could still act as he wanted with impunity. The reaction was so devastating to Jackson that, according to some rumors, later that year he attempted a morphine overdose; at the very least, some observers declared Jackson had committed career suicide. The controversy became as serious as possible when the boy in the video accused Jackson of fondling him. This time, the matter went to trial. The horrible drama that Jackson had landed in was in keeping with the dominant themes of his life and art: his obsessions with stardom, mystery, hubris, fear and despoiled childhood. If the charges were true, one had to wonder what Jackson truly saw when he looked at the childhoods of others. Was he capable of disrespecting their innocence, just as his own was once ruined? But if the charges weren’t true, then one had to ask what measure of satisfaction could be won in his ruin?
The 2005 trial was the spectacle everybody expected it to be – a drama about justice and celebrity, sex and outrage, morality and race. Even though it dragged on, it was clear the prosecution didn’t have a case so much as it had umbrage. The trial was a farce – it’s dismaying the case ever made it to trial – and Jackson was acquitted on all charges. But the damage done seemed, in many ways, final. Jackson walked out of the courtroom that day a shaken, listless man. His finances were also coming undone; he had been spending ludicrous sums and he’d mismanaged his money – which took some doing, since he had made such a vast fortune. The biggest star in the world had fallen from the tallest height. He left the country and moved to Bahrain; he was only occasionally seen or heard from. Nobody knew whether he could recover his name, or even preserve his considerable music legacy, until earlier this year, when he announced an incredibly ambitious series of 50 concerts – which he described as the “final curtain call” – to take place at London’s O2 arena, beginning July 13th.
It’s hard to believe that Jackson, who was so proud of his public performances and so peerless at delivering them, would have committed himself to a project in which he might fail so tremendously. At the same time, it is not inconceivable that Michael Jackson could have been a man half-hungry and broken in the past few years. All that is certain is that on June 25th, in Los Angeles, Michael Jackson met the only sure redemption he might know, in the most famous unexpected and mysterious death in current history. That redemption didn’t come because he died, but because his death forced us to reconsider what his life added up to.
What killed Michael Jackson? His life-long pursuit of fame and vindication? No doubt, in part. He pushed too hard, wanted too much; he didn’t recognize limitations. In addition, the pain of achieving so much yet being derided and dismissed time and again had to be considerable. It’s also clear that all the hatred and judgment directed his way for his peculiarities and for his rumored sexual behavior had to debilitate his spirit, if not his body. That subject of child molestation will always, of course, be a crux concern about his life, one that, for many people, clearly – and understandably – trumps his art. We will likely never know what the truth was, which is one more awful aspect of the whole nightmare. The accusation will always stay attached to his name.
What, then, saved Michael Jackson – that is, after his death? At the least, his art and his accomplishments. When somebody makes as much great music as Jackson did, our collective pleasures are enriched and our history is made more intense and complex. In his ambitions, in his setbacks and most important, in his sounds, he embodied black music history in America. But he did more: The barriers he broke helped make the modern pop world a more inclusive scene than it once was before. That is, he staked out new territory. It is always a good thing to see somebody transforming the world of known possibilities. I remember, as a kid, watching Elvis Presley do it on the Dorsey brothers’ Stage Show and The Ed Sullivan Show. I remember, as an adolescent, watching the Beatles open up whole new artistic and historic possibilities in their first U.S. appearances, live on Ed Sullivan. I remember, in my first year as a writer on the staff of Rolling Stone, watching the Sex Pistols crack old surfaces and yield a new future – even as they sang of “no future” onstage at San Francisco’s Winterland, during their last 1970s performance.
Still, I’ll never forget that night back in early 1983, when onstage in Pasadena, California, at the Motown 25th anniversary show, Michael Jackson gave his first public performance as a mature artist staking his own claim, vaulting into that astonishingly graceful, electrifying version of “Billie Jean.” Dancing, spinning, sending out impassioned, fierce glares at the overcome audience, Jackson did a powerful job of animating and mythologizing his own blend of mystery and sexuality. I’d never seen anything quite like it before. Maybe I never will again. Michael Jackson didn’t just grab the gold ring: He hooked it to a new bar and set it even higher, and nobody has yet snatched it with quite the same flair or results.
Chloe weir on photographing her dad and dead & company at the sphere.
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Full Name | Michael Joseph Jackson |
Nickname | MJ, King of Pop |
Profession | Singer, Songwriter, Dancer, Actor, Record Producer, Businessman and Philanthropist |
Famous For | 'Thriller', 'Bad', 'Dangerous' |
Height (approx.) | in centimeters- in meters- in Feet Inches- |
Weight (approx.) | in Kilograms- in Pounds- |
Body Measurements (approx.) | - Chest: 38 Inches - Waist: 28 Inches - Biceps: 13 Inches |
Eye Colour | Black |
Hair Colour | Black |
Date of Birth | August 29, 1958 |
Age (at the time of death) | |
Cause of death | Cardiac arrest due to intoxication with propofol and benzodiazepine. |
Birth Place | Gary, Indiana, US. |
Zodiac sign | Virgo |
Nationality | American |
Hometown | Gary, Indiana, USA |
School | Home-schooled |
College | Did not attend |
Education Qualification | High School |
Debut | - Got to be there (1972) - The Wiz (1978) |
Family | - Joe Jackson (Ex-boxer, worked in US Steel) - Katherine Jackson (Worked at Sears) - Jackie, Tito, Jermaine, Marlon and Randy. - Rebbie, La Toya and Janet. |
Religion | Christian |
Ethnicity | African-American |
Hobbies | Basketball, Reading |
Controversies | • Michael Jackson was charged with child sexual abuse in 1993. The case was settled out of court and the settling amount was not disclosed. No charges were pressed against him. • He was accused for the same cause again in 2005, in addition to several other charges. The court pronounced him innocent on all counts. • MJ cancelled a number of concerts and he was sued by his event organizer Marcel Avram for cancelling his Munich concert in 1999. He was also his friend and they both mutually came to an agreement after Michael reciprocated the charges on him. • Michael Jackson made the loop, rags to riches and then back to rags because he had to spend a lot of money in defending himself in the alleged lawsuits. It became hard for him to pay back the $270 million loan that he had taken against his music publications. • MJ's death in itself has invigorated a lot of controversies. His family believes he was murdered. The doctor, Conrad Murray, who prescribed the drugs to Michael, was put in jail and released after two years. Michael's sister LaToya Jackson claims that he was just a scapegoat. His last call with his manager went like: There are conspiracies that the group "Illuminati" was the mastermind behind Dr. Conrad. Also, that there is a group called "Star Whackers", that is involved in such operations. A Federal Agent Robert Connors blew the whistle on the involvement of government with it and stated that the Operation Sedgwick of the project MK ULTRA aimed at brainwashing and controlling the youth and the population through "music" by controlling the subject matter and adding subliminal messages to it. Michael probably broke out of it and broke it to the public that Illuminati and higher powers have an ulterior motive. This fact is also said to be responsible for Michael's financial misery and child molestation accusations. "They want to get rid of me.", Michael said. |
Food | Mexican (Taco and Burrito), Sushi, pizza, chicken, fish, fresh fruits, popcorn, vanilla ice with cookie pieces, sunflower seeds, glazed doughnuts, frosted flakes with milk, M&Ms |
Color | Red, Black, White and Golden |
Singers | James Brown, Jackie Wilson, Smokey Robinson, Sammy Davis Jr., The Temptations, Diana Ross |
Movies | ‘Peter Pan’, ‘E.T.’, ‘Star Wars’ |
Songs | ‘Tobacco Road’, ‘You Are My Sunshine’, ‘Cloud Nine’ by The Temptation |
Books | ‘Peter Pan’ by James Matthew Barrie, ‘Jonathan Livingstone Seagull’ by Richard Bach, ‘The Old Man And The Sea’ by Ernest Hemingway |
TV show | The Three Stooges, Flip Wilson Show, Brady Bunch, Road Runner Show, The Simpsons |
Actresses | Shirley Temple, Elizabeth Taylor, Katherine Hepburn |
Actors | Morgan Freeman, Marlon Brando |
Drink | Almond Milk, Fruit Smoothie, Orange and Carrot Juice |
Artists | Michaelangelo, Leonardo Da Vinci |
Game | Monopoly |
Composer | Claude Debussy (‘Afternoon of the Fawn’), Pjotr Iljitsch Tschaikowsky, Sergei Sergejewitsch Prokofjew |
Marital Status | Divorced (13 years before death) |
Affairs/Girlfriends | Whitney Houston Madonna Broke Shields Lisa Marie Presley Debbie Row |
Wife/Spouse | Lisa Marie Presley (m. 1994–96; divorced) Debbie Rowe (m. 1996–99; divorced) |
Children | - Michael Joseph Jackson Jr. - Paris-Michael Katherine Jackson, Prince Michael Jackson II |
Net Worth | $1 billion (Debt - $500 million) |
House | Neverland Ranch, Santa Barbara County, California, l (2676 avres) French Chateau Home |
Car | Rolls Royce Limousine, Sedan Barret, Ferrari, Super Hot Car, Ford Explorer, GMC Yukon, Cadalac Escalade, Lincoln Town Car, Ford Econoline E 150, Cadillac Fleetwood, GMC V Jimmy, Neolann Coaching Tour, Mercedes Benz, Chevys |
References/Sources: [ + ]
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Entertainism
Polarizing, controversial, but legendary, the King of Pop Michael Jackson was one of the greatest entertainers ever, and completely redefined pop culture. This biography showcases the moments and events that truly changed his life. Read on to know more in this Entertainism post.
Michael Jackson has won 15 Grammy awards, including the Legend and the Lifetime Achievement Awards, and 26 American Music Awards. He also had 13 #1 singles in the US. The first two are still-intact records, while the latter is a record for male artists. Jackson is the most awarded musician in history, with more than 200 awards. He also holds the record of having supported 39 charities, with the Guinness Book of Records recognizing his extensive humanitarian work in 2000.
A child prodigy, Jackson, or MJ, as he is more commonly known, continued his progress into adulthood, going on to become a pop culture phenomenon and one of the most iconic dancers in living history. His songs are the stuff of legends, and his various dance moves are ingrained into pop culture. He is also known for his humanitarian efforts, but is, conversely, equally infamous for the various scandals in his life.
Let’s take a deeper look into this legend’s life.
Michael Joseph Jackson was born on August 29, 1958 , in Gary, Indiana. The 8th of 10 children, Michael had his first tryst with music as a singer in the Jackson family band, Jackson 5, in 1964, at the tender age of five. Jackson 5 played at local nightclubs and also participated in competitions. Despite his young age, he soon carved a niche for himself as a singer and dancer of exceptional ability. Jackson 5 ruled the charts in the late ’60s and the early ’70s. After signing a contract with Motown, Jackson 5 had to shift their base to California. This was followed by chart busters like ‘I Want You Back,’, ‘Dancing Machine’, ‘The Love You Save’ and ‘I’ll Be There’ in 1970. Jackson 5 remained with Motown till 1975, while Jackson’s solo career started in 1972. In 1976, Jackson 5, now re-branded as the Jacksons, switched to Epic Records.
Jackson’s childhood was difficult, and had a heavy influence on his life. His father was a very strict disciplinarian, and though Michael later attributed his success to the strict singing practice conducted by his father, it also had a demoralizing effect on the budding entertainer’s mindset. He suffered from various psychological issues, including chronic and persistent sleep problems, due to his childhood.
Collaboration with quincy jones.
Michael first met his future producer, Quincy Jones, on the sets of The Wiz , a musical version of The WIzard of Oz starring an all-African American cast. Despite his later success as a musician, Jackson was an actor in this film; he played Scarecrow.
Jones was influential in Jackson’s most famous release, Thriller , in 1982. This record-busting album is reputed to have sold more than 60 million copies, though certified sales only indicate about 42.4 million. It is the highest-selling album in music history, and established Michael as the King of Pop, a moniker that has now very much become his own. 7 singles from the album reached the top 10 in the Billboard Top 100 chart, which is a joint record. The music video of ‘Billie Jean’ is among the most watched music videos of all time, and received regular airtime, consolidating the reputation of the nascent MTV in the process. It was also one of the very first music videos by a black artist to receive such consistent airtime, and one of the first to become equally popular across the racial divide. His success, aided by the furious efforts of CBS Music directors to get MTV to broadcast a black artist’s song, paved the way for future African American artists to receive as much airtime as white artists.
Quincy Jones first collaborated with Michael in 1979 on the album Off the Wall , a legendary production in its own right. Selling more than 20 million copies, it is also one of the best-selling albums of all time. With the success of Off the Wall , Jackson was able to secure the highest royalty rate in the music world: a whopping 37% of the album’s profits, which later equated to almost USD 2 for each copy!
Five years after Thriller , Jackson released his final album with Jones, Bad , in 1987. It was hugely popular, reputedly selling more than 30 million copies. Though it didn’t outsell Thriller , it bested it in one important aspect: five singles from Bad reached the top spot in the Billboard Top 100, which was the first time this feat had been achieved by a single album. It also became the first album to reach the top spot in 25 countries. The Bad world tour, held from September 1988-January 1989, broke multiple records of attendance in various countries; the 570,000-strong people that watched him in Japan were almost three times the previous record in the country, and his seven sellout shows in Wembley Stadium London, totaling a crowd of 504,000 people, broke a Guinness World Record. In total, he performed 123 shows on this world tour, reaching out to 4.4 million people in the process.
One of the most famous images in the world, and the one most associated with Michael Jackson, is the fantastic ‘moonwalk’. It was first performed by him in public on Motown 25: Yesterday, Today, Forever , a 1983 TV special commemorating the 25 th year of the popular music production company, Motown Records.
Michael at first declined the invitation, due to his reluctance to rejoin his brothers for a mini-reunion of the Jacksons, but was persuaded by Berry Gordy, the founder of Motown, on the condition that Michael be allotted a solo slot in addition to the group gig.
According to some, Jackson only practiced the moonwalk once at his home before brandishing it on air. The iconic movement, where the performer appears to slide backwards while apparently walking forward, was not created by Jackson, but spread like wildfire after it was popularized by one of the premier artists of the time. It was performed during the song ‘Billie Jean’, and became a staple in Jackson’s subsequent live performances. This performance rocketed Jackson onto new heights of fame. In the words of Berry Gordy himself,
From the first beat of Billie Jean, I was mesmerized, and when he did his iconic moonwalk, I was shocked, it was magic, Michael Jackson went into orbit, and never came down.
In 1985, Jackson co-wrote We Are The World with Lionel Richie, for humanitarian purposes primarily in Africa. The song became one of the bestselling singles of all time.
Jackson didn’t relent his pursuit of musical innovation and success, with his album Dangerous selling more than 20 million certified copies. The album contained one of Jackson’s most famous songs, Black or White . This album was notable as the first Jackson album to feature a rapper, as well as one of the pioneering works in the new jack swing genre.
The Dangerous world tour, starting in June 1992 and ending 17 months later in November 1993, drew 3.5 million listeners in 70 concerts. HBO bagged the broadcast rights of the world tour for USD 20 million―a still-intact record.
In January 1993, Jackson also performed at the halftime show at Super Bowl XXVII. His performance, where he sang four songs, was the first halftime show to have more viewers than the match in progress!
HIStory: Past, Present and Future , released in 1995, went straight to the number one slot in several countries. It contained a compilation of MJ’s hit singles, and also featured the lavishly made science-fiction video ‘Scream’. The second single, ‘You Are Not Alone’, surpassed the success of ‘Scream’ by becoming the first ever song to debut at the top spot in the Billboard Top 100. ‘Earth Song’, the third single released from this album, reached the top position and became MJ’s most successful single in the UK. ‘Earth Song’ gave a strong message to the viewers, as it addressed issues related to the environment and poverty. This album was reissued in 2001 as Greatest Hits: HIStory Volume I along with a second installment, HIStory Continues , and became the best-selling double album in history, with more than 20 million copies sold. The HIStory world tour, conducted between September 1996 and October 1997, included 82 concerts for a total audience of 4.5 million.
By Jackson’s astronomical standards, his only original album in the 2000s, Invincible , was not extremely popular. Having said that, it still managed to sell 13 million copies, in spite of being released at a time of a general slump in the music industry, without an accompanying world tour, and with very little promotion.
Got to Be There (1972) Ben (1972) Music & Me (1973) Forever, Michael (1975) Off the Wall (1979) Thriller (1982) Bad (1987) Dangerous (1991) HIStory: Past, Present and Future, Book I (1995) Invincible (2001)
Due to his fame, Michael Jackson’s life was always under the microscope. His complicated personality and various long-standing psychological issues meant that he was never far from a controversy. He faced multiple child sexual abuse allegations, as well as general rumors about his mental health. His close association with his pet chimpanzee, Bubbles, in particular, spawned worldwide mocking and parody.
Despite his success and influential role as a black musician, Jackson faced widespread rumors that he had repeatedly bleached his skin in order to achieve a lighter complexion―an action that was criticized roundly. He stated that he had vitiligo, an idiopathic condition that brings about a lighter skin, but can also be caused due to chemical bleaching of the skin.
He also underwent two rhinoplasty operations in order to make his nose successively thinner. One of the procedures did not pan out as hoped, and he suffered from breathing issues as a result.
Around the time of the release of Thriller , Jackson suffered from anorexia nervosa, and lost a considerable amount of weight in order to gain a “dancer’s body”.
Michael faced allegations of child sexual abuse twice in his life. The first time was in 1993, when 13-year-old Jordan Chandler accused him of sexual abuse at Michael’s estate, Neverland. Despite conflicting evidence and doubts over Jordan’s father’s intentions in pursuing the case (there was some evidence which hinted that the boy’s father was primarily interested in blackmailing Jackson, rather than fighting for justice for his son), the case was settled out of court by Michael’s insurance company, without having notified him.
Following the depiction of certain encounters in Martin Bashir’s controversial documentary Living with Michael Jackson , Jackson was arrested on charges of child molestation. He was acquitted on all counts on June 13, 2005, and subsequently relocated to Bahrain as a guest of Sheikh Abdulla, son of the King of Bahrain. Jackson, asserting his innocence, later claimed that Bashir had deliberately portrayed him in a negative light.
Despite the absence of a conviction in either of the cases, Jackson’s reputation has been considerably tarnished by these allegations.
Jackson married Lisa Marie Presley, the daughter of ‘The King’ Elvis Presley, in 1994. Their acquaintance went back to 1975, but they got close after the renewal of their friendship due to Michael’s ongoing struggles with the child abuse allegations. Presley, who believed steadfastly in Michael’s innocence, married him secretly in 1994.
The marriage, claimed by tabloids to have been a publicity stunt (in spite of the initial secrecy about it) to help Michael’s image as a good-natured family man, lasted less than two years, though Presley later stated that they had reconnected and broken up several times in the next few years.
Jackson married Deborah Rowe, his dermatologist’s nurse, in 1996, during the early stages of the HIStory world tour. She was about six months pregnant at the time, and gave birth to Jackson’s first child, Michael Joseph Jackson Jr., on February 13, 1997. Their second child, Paris-Michael Katherine Jackson, was born on April 3, 1998. Jackson and Rowe divorced in 1999, with Jackson getting full custody of their children.
Jackson had a third child from a surrogate mother on February 21, 2002. He was named Prince Michael Jackson II. He became the center of a controversy in his early days, when Jackson held him aloft in his room’s balcony in the Adlon Hotel in Berlin, in order to allow the gathered public to see him better. The baby dangled beyond the railing, an action which invited widespread criticism for Michael, who later apologized profusely.
This great entertainer died a controversial and mysterious death on his bed in a rented mansion in Los Angeles, on June 25, 2009. The news of his death caused a huge upsurge in internet usage, causing several prominent websites, including Google, Wikipedia, and Twitter, to crash due to user overload.
His death was mysterious, with suspicions of homicide, a drug-induced accidental death or suicide, or some malice on the part of his personal physician, who prescribed his daily medication. The physician was convicted of involuntary manslaughter, and completed a two-year sentence in 2013.
Michael Jackson’s contribution to the world of pop and dance are irreplaceable and irrevocable. This legend’s music has a strong hold on all the music lovers over the globe. It is, therefore, not a surprise that we have his records playing in clubs even today, and wannabes still trying to perfect the moonwalk.
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Michael jackson’s nephew jaafar jackson signs with caa.
Jermaine Jackson’s son will star as the pop star in director Antoine Fuqua's biopic ‘Michael,' to be released by Lionsgate and Universal Pictures in April 2025.
By Etan Vlessing
Canada Bureau Chief
Michael Jackson’s nephew, Jaafar Jackson, who will portray the pop star in the upcoming biopic about the singer’s life, has signed with CAA for representation .
Jackson is the son of Jermaine Jackson and the nephew of Michael Jackson and will make his acting debut in the role of his late uncle in Michael. Antoine Fuqua will direct and Graham King, a seasoned hand at biopics with the Oscar-winning Queen film Bohemian Rhapsody , is producing for GK Films.
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Michael is also produced by John Branca and John McClain, the co-executors of the Michael Jackson estate, and is set for a worldwide release on April 18, 2025. Lionsgate will release the film in the U.S. and Japan, while Universal Pictures has the rights for other territories.
The studio has said the biopic will cover all aspects of Michael Jackson’s life, which presumably means it will address the child sexual assault allegations that have been made against the singer, who died in 2009. John Logan, who penned Gladiator and The Aviator , wrote the script for Michael.
Besides his music and acting career, Jackson has backed organizations committed to ending human trafficking and world hunger. He continues to be represented by David Weber and Robert Offer at Sloane, Offer, Weber & Dern.
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Jackson’s Thriller has sold 66 million copies, making it the most popular selling album worldwide. But in 2009, as he prepared for his 50-show comeback tour, This Is It , at London’s newly opened O2 Arena, Jackson was battling an addiction to prescription drugs, riddled with self-doubt and deeply in debt. With his heralded return rapidly approaching, Jackson’s final days were spent rehearsing and preparing for the spotlight as he battled his inner demons.
On June 25, 2009, less than three weeks before the debut performance of This Is It , Jackson died at age 50, having suffered cardiac arrest in his rented Los Angeles home. In early 2010, an official coroner’s report revealed the cause of death as acute propofol intoxication. Propofol, often marketed as Diprivan, can be used for general anesthesia and sedation for medical procedures. Jackson had been administered the drug by his personal physician to reportedly help him sleep at night.
This Is It was designed to show the public, who had been consuming a diet of media-driven stories about Jackson’s often bizarre private life for decades, that he still had what it takes as an entertainer. And the proceeds would help him get on top of his mounting debt – reportedly about $400 million at the time – due to lavish spending habits and dwindling income.
Jackson had written new songs and was rehearsing multiple hours a day in preparation for This Is It , an arena spectacle that had reportedly incurred $25 million in pre-production costs. But as teams of workers across the globe prepped for the tour, Jackson’s erratic behavior worsened as opening night approached.
Emotionally frail and physically thin, Jackson was described by This Is It makeup and hair artist Karen Faye as paranoid, shivering from chills and repeating himself during his last days. Faye testified as a witness for Jackson’s mother, Katherine , and his children in their wrongful death suit against This Is It concert promoter AEG Live in 2013. He was “very upbeat, but he was on the thin side,” Faye said of an earlier, April 2009 meeting with Jackson. Come June, everything had changed. “He was not the man I knew,” Faye testified. “He was acting like a person I didn’t recognize.”
During a mid-June rehearsal, Jackson appeared “very stoic” but “frightened,” according to Faye. “He kept repeating, ‘why can’t I choose,’ it was one of the things he repeated over and over again,” Faye said, adding that she “had never seen him so emaciated.” At almost six feet tall, Jackson reportedly weighed close to 130 pounds prior to his death.
Faye was part of a working team gathered from Jackson’s past, trusted people from his former glory days including manager Frank DiLeo, show director Kenny Ortega, choreographer Travis Payne, and entertainment lawyer John Branca.
New to Jackson’s inner circle was personal physician Dr. Conrad Murray , whom the singer had met in 2006 when Murray treated one of Jackson’s children in Las Vegas. In May 2009, AEG Live hired Murray, via Jackson, to be the singer’s exclusive personal physician for the tour, though AEG would later claim there was never a contract with Murray. It was Murray’s job to ensure the performer was in tour-ready shape.
By the time Jackson was in rehearsals in 2009, he had been treated for ongoing pain for decades, according to Faye’s testimony. The singer had suffered head burns while filming a Pepsi commercial in 1984 and later suffered a back injury when a bridge suspended above a stage that he was standing on collapsed during a concert in Munich, Germany. Jackson also had trouble sleeping, especially following tour performances.
Jackson’s continued use of prescription drugs made headlines in 2007 when a Beverly Hills pharmacy filed a complaint against the singer for not paying a $101,926 prescription drug bill dating back to 2005. As part of an investigation into child molestation charges against the singer, of which he was acquitted in 2005, a former staffer at Jackson’s home reported the singer took 30 to 40 Xanax pills a night, according to court documents.
As the weeks wound down toward the opening of This Is It , Murray admitted to police following Jackson’s death that he had given the singer infusions of propofol in order to help the performer sleep. After a poor rehearsal on June 13, 2009, Jackson missed the following day’s rehearsal on the advice of Murray. According to Ortega’s testimony in the 2013 wrongful death suit against AEG Live, AEG put Murray in charge of getting Jackson to rehearsals. Jackson was a no-show for another week.
Ortega testified that when Jackson returned to rehearsals on June 19, he appeared “lost, cold, afraid,” and the show director believed the best thing to do would be to stop the production; but was torn because he “did not want to break Michael’s heart.” In a series of e-mails to AEG Live executives, Ortega wrote Jackson was showing “signs of paranoia, anxiety and obsessive-disorder-like behavior,” and recommended a psychiatrist be brought in to evaluate the star.
At a meeting at Jackson’s home on June 20, Ortega testified that Murray believed Jackson was “physically and emotionally capable of handling all his responsibility as a performer,” and that Murray should be the only one to make such decisions.
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Jackson returned to rehearsals on June 23 a very different man. “I was overjoyed at his energy, his state of mind, his enthusiasm,” Ortega testified. Murray later admitted to investigators he had stopped using propofol to induce sleep for Jackson for the two previous nights. A sleep expert testified during the trial that a person can recover quickly from heavy use of the drug.
On June 24 Jackson left his home around 7 p.m. and traveled to the Staples Center in downtown Los Angeles for what would be his final rehearsal. Many in attendance recalled the singer as continuing to be in good shape as he rehearsed the show, which included classics such as “Smooth Criminal,” “Billie Jean” and “Thriller.” The rehearsal ended around midnight and Jackson hugged his dancers and thanked the crew. Jackson returned home where he greeted a small group of fans gathered outside.
Later that evening Jackson began complaining of fatigue. In attendance was Murray, who was concerned the singer was addicted to propofol and instead administered Valium to Jackson in order to help him sleep, according to a police affidavit. Throughout the night Murray said he gave Jackson further doses of sedatives but no propofol, even though the singer repeatedly requested it.
Murray gave in to Jackson’s demand for the drug mid-morning on June 25, when the doctor added propofol to the singer’s intravenous drip. According to Murray’s June 27 interview with the police, he remained with Jackson for 10 minutes before leaving for the bathroom. Murray returned less than two minutes later and found Jackson not breathing.
Murray attempted to resuscitate Jackson, as did paramedics who arrived shortly on the scene. A team of doctors at UCLA Medical Center, where the performer was rushed to, also attempted resuscitation to no avail and Jackson was pronounced dead. The King of Pop was gone.
Along with an unmatched musical legacy, Jackson left behind three children: Michael Joseph “Prince” Jackson Jr. , Paris-Michael Katharine Jackson and Prince Michael “Blanket Jackson II .
Dr. Conrad Murray was charged and convicted for voluntary manslaughter over Jackson’s death and served two years of a four-year jail term.
A jury found AEG Live not guilty in the wrongful death suit brought by Jackson’s mother and his children.
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Jaafar Jackson , nephew of Michael Jackson and star of Lionsgate’s upcoming biopic on the King of Pop, has signed with CAA for representation.
Colman Domingo, Nia Long, Miles Teller and Laura Harrier are among those set to appear opposite Jackson. John Logan penned the script, with Graham King producing for GK Films, along with John Branca and John McClain, the co-executors of the Michael Jackson estate. Lionsgate is distributing the film in the U.S. and Japan, while Universal Pictures has rights for all offshore territories.
Despite being part of such a rich musical family legacy, it wasn’t until he was 12-years-old that Jaafar started playing piano and singing with the intent to pursue a career in music. Outside of his artistic pursuits, he dedicates his time to organizations committed to ending human trafficking and world hunger.
Jackson continues to be represented by David Weber and Robert Offer at Sloane, Offer, Weber & Dern.
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Michael Jackson was a multitalented singer and dancer who enjoyed a chart-topping career both with the Jackson 5 and as a solo artist. By Biography.com Editors and Colin McEvoy Updated: Apr 11 ...
Michael Joseph Jackson (August 29, 1958 - June 25, 2009) was an American singer, songwriter, dancer, and philanthropist. Dubbed the "King of Pop", he is regarded as one of the most significant cultural figures of the 20th century.Over a four-decade career, his contributions to music, dance, and fashion, along with his publicized personal life, made him a global figure in popular culture.
Michael Jackson (born August 29, 1958, Gary, Indiana, U.S.—died June 25, 2009, Los Angeles, California) was an American singer, songwriter, and dancer who was the most popular entertainer in the world in the early and mid-1980s.Reared in Gary, Indiana, in one of the most acclaimed musical families of the rock era, Michael Jackson was the youngest and most talented of five brothers whom his ...
Learn about the life and career of Michael Jackson, the King of Pop, from his childhood in the Jackson Five to his solo albums and global fame. Discover his achievements, controversies, marriages, children, and death.
A comprehensive overview of the life and career of Michael Jackson, the legendary singer, dancer, and pop icon. Learn about his early years, musical achievements, family, controversies, death, and legacy.
Learn about the life and achievements of Michael Jackson, the global icon of pop music, dance, and culture. Explore his early years, rise to fame, Thriller era, controversies, and legacy.
Michael Joe Jackson was born in Gary, Indiana, on August 29, 1958, the fifth of Joe and Katherine Jackson's nine children. The house was always filled with music. Jackson's mother taught the children folk and religious songs, to which they sang along.
Michael Jackson rocketed to global stardom in the early 1980s, but his legacy as the King of Pop is based on more than the height of his career. Famous since the age of 11, he was a superstar by ...
Michael Joseph Jackson was an American singer, songwriter, dancer, and philanthropist. Dubbed the "King of Pop", he is regarded as one of the most significant cultural figures of the 20th century. Over a four-decade career, his contributions to music, dance, and fashion, along with his publicized personal life, made him a global figure in popular culture. Jackson influenced artists across many ...
Michael Jackson was a creative visionary and gifted performer who redefined what pop could—or should—sound like. The future King of Pop carried soul and R&B into the mainstream in the '70s with the Jackson 5, and then leveraged music videos and smart collaborations to become a beloved global superstar in the '80s.
On June 25, 2009, the American singer Michael Jackson died of acute propofol intoxication in Los Angeles, California, at the age of 50. His personal physician, Conrad Murray, said that he found Jackson in his bedroom at his North Carolwood Drive home in the Holmby Hills area of the city not breathing and with a weak pulse; he administered cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) to no avail, and ...
He married his long-time friend Deborah Jeanne Rowe, a dermatology nurse, in 1997. The couple was blessed with two children, Michael Joseph Jackson Jr and Paris-Michael Katherine Jackson. The two separated in 1999. He had a third child, Prince Michael Jackson II, from a surrogate mother through artificial insemination.
Michael Jackson. pop singer. Born: 8/29/1958. Birthplace: Gary, Indiana. Died: 6/25/2009. Grammy Award-winning pop singer and dancer known for his controversial behavior on- and offstage, his phenomenal commercial success and his big-budget, flashy videos. He began his career in the 1960s performing with his siblings in the Jackson Five.
Learn about the life and legacy of the King of Pop, Michael Jackson, who sold over 400 million albums and had 13 number-one singles. Explore his discography, videos, awards, controversies, and more on this comprehensive blog.
Even before the moonwalk, though, Jackson had changed the way that Americans interacted with dance. And the change came with the help of MTV, which launched in 1981. With MTV came videos that gave ...
Michael Jackson was born and raised in Gary, Ind. His birthday was Aug. 29, 1958, and his height was 5'9". He died at age 50 on June 25, 2009. The iconic artist first found fame performing with his…
Learn about the life and career of Michael Jackson, one of the most successful and influential pop recording artists of all time. From his early days with the Jackson 5 to his solo hits like "Thriller" and "Bad", discover his achievements, controversies, and legacy.
Died: 2009. Lived in: United States. American superstar Michael Jackson was born in Gary, Indiana, on August 29, 1958, and entertained audiences nearly his entire life. His father, Joe Jackson, had been a guitarist but was forced to give up his musical ambitions following his marriage to Katherine (Scruse). Together they prodded their growing ...
A comprehensive article that traces the rise and fall of the pop icon, from his childhood in a musical family to his global fame and controversies. It explores his artistic achievements, personal struggles, and the impact of his death in 2009.
Michael Jackson was a book worm. He would spend thousands of dollars in just one visit to a book-store. Once, he came across a second-hand book shop and bought it for $100,000 and had the books brought over to his home. He had two secret affairs with girls from overseas and called them Friend and Flower.
Learn about the life and achievements of the King of Pop, from his early days in Jackson 5 to his record-breaking albums and iconic dance moves. Discover his struggles with childhood abuse, plastic surgery, and allegations of child molestation.
Michael said music was always his family's 'destiny'. Only 25 miles from downtown Chicago, Gary was where Joseph "Joe" Jackson settled at age 18 and is where he met and courted future wife ...
Michael Jackson's career always came back to his family.The late "King of Pop" burst onto the scene as part of the "Jackson Five" with four of his brothers. And, while the mega-popstar went on to ...
Michael Jackson (1988) Michael Jacksons Unterschrift (2002) Michael Joseph Jackson [1] (* 29. August 1958 in Gary, Indiana; † 25. Juni 2009 in Los Angeles, Kalifornien) war ein US-amerikanischer Pop-, Soul-, R&B-, Funk-, Disco-und Rocksänger, Tänzer, Songwriter, Autor, Musik-und Filmproduzent sowie Musikmanager.. Mit über 500 Millionen verkauften Tonträgern zählt er zu den kommerziell ...
Michael is also produced by John Branca and John McClain, the co-executors of the Michael Jackson estate, and is set for a worldwide release on April 18, 2025. Lionsgate will release the film in ...
Jaafar Jackson, who will portray his late uncle Michael Jackson in the upcoming biopic "Michael," has signed with CAA for representation. Jaafar Jackson is the son of Jermaine Jackson and the ...
The Final Days of Michael Jackson. On the eve of a heralded comeback tour, a frail King of Pop was addicted to prescription drugs and deeply in debt. By Colin Bertram Updated: May 20, 2020. Photo ...
Elsewhere in the interview, Domingo praised Jaafar Jackson, Jermaine Jackson's son and Michael's nephew who stars as Michael in the movie. "Jaafar is exceptional," he said, praising him as a "once ...
Jaafar Jackson, nephew of Michael Jackson and star of Lionsgate's upcoming biopic on the King of Pop, has signed with CAA for representation.. Jackson makes his acting debut portraying his late ...