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Reports after his death ignoring the fact that he was accused of child molestation.

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Reports after his death ignoring the fact that he was accused of child molestation.

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"Not surprisingly the solicitous reminiscences overlooked and in effect purified his dubious private life, including his reported payment of 20 million dollars to settle out of court allegations of child molestation" (Hollander, 2010, p.147).

Most reports after his death are reminiscent and look back at how successful he was. Until the recent documentary 'Leaving Neverland'.

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In the music video of 'Black or White' , "Michael Jackson morphs into a black panther, and then returns to the human figure, howling and dancing in violent rage" (Erni, 2009, p.162). He is denoted by the audience throughout his career as a star who is a transient persona much like David Bowie. Michael was extremely expressive throughout his clothing and performances.

Erni, J.N., (1998) Queer figurations in the media: Critical reflections on the Michael Jackson sex scandal. Critical Studies in Media Communication, 15(2), p.162.

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Even to this day when searching 'Michael Jackson' there are articles from '1 day ago' in which are discussing Michael's music and from people in which he worked with in the past.

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Can we still listen to Michael Jackson - The Guardian article 

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Can we still listen to Michael Jackson - The Guardian article 

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Michael's legacy is being put under question after the recent documentary. This documentary has  had more of an impact on the legacy of Michael Jackson than the trials themselves in 2004.

This could be due to the fact that social media (specifically Twitter) has had more of an insert and opinion than at the time of the accusation. Also, the fact that Michael isn't alive to argue the points shows for more people coming forward and having opinions on Michael as a person when they knew him. People are able to say what they want without Michael actually knowing.

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All forced conversations in America about race, sex and celebrity are inevitably framed by horror and absurdity, history and the modern day. Because of this, many of my people - as in American born Blackfolk - refuse to countenance moral or legal absolutes when allegations of our stars committing sexual assault hit the news. They instead invoke a form of mathematical objectivity in pursuit of American democracy's most impossible dream: a racialised level playing field. In this accounting, Bill Cosby and R Kelly aren't defended despite victim-testimony and compelling evidence, but because not enough equally evil-ass white men have suffered enough public shaming for their crimes.

So Michael Jackson's legacy is being discussed in another judicial session and once again black folk are being asked to weigh in on the latest charges. The thing is our community recognised MJ's special kind of self-destruction decades ago. Many Blackfolk learned to compartmentalise Jackson the moment they saw the cover of Thriller; they separated the spectacular soul singer and dancing machine from his increasingly mad choices, including self-erasing skin-bleaching facelifts, chin enhancements and rhinoplasty. Would the brown-skinned, big-lipped, wide-nosed MJ who appears on the cover of Off the Wall have been allowed by white parents to have as much unsupervised time with their pre-tweens? Would he have been trusted to disappear into his mansion for hours days and nights with them?

Having seen only the trailer for Leaving Neverland, whatever confessional justice was intended by its two informants is compromised by its director's hackneyed, tabloid true-crime approach. It doesn't mean the testimony is untrue, just that it depends on the film-makers selling several racially burdened oxymorons at once: white-male innocence, white-male fragility and white-male truth-telling. Of course, MJ doesn't belong just to the court of white public opinion or to the miscreant deeds he may have perpetrated at Neverland. He got connected to something far bigger than himself way back during his Motown years: he became an inextractable and irrevocable piece of Blackfolk's story that can only be crooned, shouted, stomped, screamed and sanctified into the public record.

Alexis Petridis: 'Too many people have too much of their lives bound up with his music'

About five years ago, I interviewed a collection of diehard Gary Glitter fans, unbowed by the singer's convictions for possession of child pornography and sexual abuse. Some of them were clearly in denial about his crimes. Most weren't, though, and talked calmly about separating the artist from the art. One told me that when Glitter was first convicted, he had thrown out all his records, only to find his music exerting an allure regardless. "You don't choose music," he said. "It chooses you." Later he added: "It's not just wiping him out of history, is it? It's us, they're whitewashing us as well. They've nicked 15, 20 years of my history."

I thought about that remark when the furore around the Leaving Neverland documentary blew up. More compelling allegations that Jackson was a paedophile will undoubtedly lead to more calls for his music to be treated the way Glitter's is - unofficially banned from radio and TV, never mentioned in public (even the Glitter fans I met would only talk to me under a veil of anonymity). I can see why, but I don't think it's going to happen. You can't easily eradicate Jackson from history: too many people have too much of their lives bound up with his music. And perhaps you shouldn't. Perhaps it is all right that his music continues to be heard, so long as it comes with a caveat: that it reminds us great art can be made by terrible people, that talent can be weaponised in the most appalling way, that believing an artist automatically embodies goodness because we like their work is a dreadful mistake that can have awful consequences.

Lyndsey Winship: 'Choosing to listen to his music is a personal reckoning'

Separating man and music is difficult when that man's output amounts to a cultural phenomenon and his influence went way beyond music. Jackson brought black dance styles into the mainstream. He didn't invent steps like the moonwalk but he was responsible for bringing them to the world's attention. He inspired people to dance - especially boys, especially non-white ones - and he is cited by some of the superlative performers of their generation as the person who sparked their desire to move. From Cuban ballet star Carlos Acosta to kathak-contemporary dancer Akram Khan, from the back streets of Havana to suburban Wimbledon, Jackson's reach was immense.

But, the allegations against him are hideous. Abuse can never be excused. As a society, what we consume and what we celebrate is what forms our values. Does that mean a ban on his music? It is impossible to erase from our consciousness (and much of its brilliance was created by others - Quincy Jones, Rod Temperton - not Jackson alone), but choosing to now actively listen to, or dance to Jackson? Once people have seen the film, that will be a personal reckoning, yet it must be possible to condemn the person, even shelve the records, without being ashamed of the influence his music had on us, the good things he inspired and the careers he started.

Priya Elan: 'My initial reaction was to throw Off the Wall in the bin'

My pop allegiances were always with Prince and Madonna, but I came of age when Bad-era Michael Jackson was massive. He transcended race, he transcended gender and for me he transcended a personal connection. Being a fan of his felt like being a fan of a skyscraper or a corporation. You could admire its foundations, its height, the sheer spectacle, but it would be harder to love the bones of it. He was unlike Prince and Madonna, who seemed to let their freakish rebellion hang out with a carefree abandon.

Later in life, I couldn't resist Thriller and Off the Wall. Spurred on by Spike Lee's documentary of the making of latter, I fell in love with the magical disco grooves and the story of the child star turned spangly king of the dancefloor. Watching Leaving Neverland, I felt an allegiance with the survivors: their story of manipulation, control and parental neglect is a familiar tripartite to those who have experienced emotional or physical abuse as children. By the end of the unrelenting four hours, I was broken by the story of grown men and parents trying to examine the scars of their past. My initial reaction was to throw Off the Wall in the bin (I didn't), but the next day, listening to a 70s soul compilation whose first song was the Jacksons' Blame it on the Boogie, it was to skip that track. I couldn't go there.

Laura Snapes: 'It's a cautionary tale against idol worship'

I have never really associated Jackson with his music. I was born in 1989, and grew up in a pop landscape where he was decreasingly visible. His songs remained totemic, but so much so that it rarely occurred to me that they had been made by humans, the same way that I never wondered who designed the McDonald's logo, or what's really in a can of Coke. The first time I really became aware of Jackson the man was in the build-up to Martin Bashir's 2003 documentary, which my parents wouldn't let me watch because it was "inappropriate". Obviously, I watched it anyway. Since then, I have always associated Jackson with allegations of paedophilia, and so I never sought out his albums.

Still, the irresistibility of his music crept up on me. The irresistible power Jackson brought to his music is the same power he wielded to abuse children and hoodwink their families into letting him do so. It is the same power that afforded him a coterie of enablers with a vested financial interest in ensuring that the public perceived these allegations to be ridiculous. Jackson's greatest legacy is as an unparalleled example of how the entertainment industry prioritises profit over pain. It's a cautionary tale against idol worship, and a reminder to question figures who willingly exploit that dynamic. This is the point where, for me, the man and the music become inextricable, and for ever inadmissible.

Chuck Klosterman: 'He is too massive to cancel'

The possibility of separating an artist's work from the artist's life isn't a practical question right now. We are at a point (either temporarily or in perpetuity) when people don't want to engage with that debate. The conflict still exists and the philosophical puzzle hasn't changed, but the public argument is pretty much over. What is specifically complicated about the Michael Jackson scenario is the sheer magnitude of his footprint. Even if every worldwide streaming service removed his songs and Apple Music terminated his catalogue, there are still at least 60m physical copies of Thriller scattered around the globe. He is too massive to cancel.

What will happen, I suspect, is that the ever-increasing population of transgressive musicians (both living and dead) who find themselves recast as irredeemably problematic will eventually be lumped into a separate silo of cultural history. The unspoken rule will be that their work can be consumed and analysed, but not without overtly recognising that they are members of this exiled fraternity. It will be somewhat similar to how a film student can still reference the cinematography of Leni Riefenstahl, but only after first noting her political relationships. Jackson's work is brilliant and unusually ubiquitous, so people will always want to talk about it. They just won't be able to talk about that music to the exclusion of non-musical events, which will incrementally change its musical meaning.

Simran Hans: 'I'm no longer able to square the art with the artist'

I watched Leaving Neverland on my birthday, a bruising 9am screening at the Sundance film festival. The experience was, as you might imagine, somewhat of a downer. Yet, what's both fascinating and illuminating about this film is the precision with which its two central survivors, James Safechuck and Wade Robson, describe the doublethink of abuse. Survivors can hold two contradictory thoughts in their heads; Michael Jackson was "one of the kindest, most gentle, caring, loving people I knew", says Safechuck matter of factly. He was also a paedophile, and an abuser. If you weren't convinced of Jackson's guilt before (and many of us were), it is near impossible to turn a blind eye to it now, so powerful and incriminating are the testimonies the director, Dan Reed, presents.

There is also a contradiction, or at least a tension present for Jackson fans such as myself when revisiting his art. To detach Jackson's tarnished celebrity persona from his music and reappraise it as pure and faceless pop commerce because it is more comfortable doesn't feel right. Listening to him doesn't feel right, either. I'm not calling for him to be "cancelled" but personally I'm no longer able to square the art with the artist; it doesn't exist in a vacuum. Jackson made brilliant, titanic pop, and he sexually abused children. People have known both of these things for years. Nothing has changed except the times in which the work is being received.

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'Too big to cancel': can we still listen to Michael Jackson?

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All forced conversations in America about race, sex and celebrity are inevitably framed by horror and absurdity, history and the modern day. Because of this, many of my people - as in American born Blackfolk - refuse to countenance moral or legal absolutes when allegations of our stars committing sexual assault hit the news.

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Michael's death of cardiac arrest 25th of June 2009

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Michael's death of cardiac arrest 25th of June 2009

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Below is an article from the time of his death by The Guardian newspaper that was released the day after his death.

The article initially is stating the circumstances of his death but it then goes on to discuss Michael's achievements and his contributions to the music industry over the years.

They do mention how in his later years he then became more recluse into himself after the two accusations of child molesation. Overall, the article is looking back at Michael's life in a light-hearted manner.

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Michael Jackson, the American pop legend, died of a heart attack in a Los Angeles hospital last night, just weeks before he hoped to resurrect his four-decade long career with a series of sold-out shows in London.

Jackson was taken to the University of California at Los Angeles medical centre last night, and paramedics administered cardiopulmonary resuscitation in the ambulance. He did not regain consciousness and was reported dead about three hours later.

Earlier his father, Joe Jackson, had told the TMZ.com website: "He is not doing well."

The site reported that a 911 call came in to emergency services at 12.21pm local time from his Holmby Hills home in Los Angeles. Once at the hospital, staff tried to resuscitate him but Jackson did not respond, the website said.

The website said his sister, La Toya, was seen running into the hospital sobbing.

Jackson's close friend Uri Geller told Sky News last night he was hoping desperately that the reports of Jackson's death were not true: "I must hear it from a doctor. I cannot believe everything I see and read and hear at the moment. I hope its not true, I'm waiting like you are, like the whole planet is waiting to hear it from the mouth of the doctor taking care of him.

"I'm absolutely devastated and shocked. He was a young man terribly fit and basically in good shape."

Last night fans paid tribute to Jackson. El Toro Diablo posted on TMZ: "God bless you Michael, heaven just got another beautiful angel."

Kimbers wrote: "What a sad day. I hope Michael Jackson finds the peace that eluded him in life."

Another fan, Sineen, wrote on website MJSite.com: "I never thought that one day would come and i'll have to write this down, Michael Jackson is no longer with us. May your warm soul rest in peace. I'll always love you Michael."

Rulintheroost posted on political website The Huffington Post: "RIP Michael. Your music was a joy to many people around the world."

The world famous entertainer had planned a series of 50 concerts in the O2 arena beginning 12 July. Although in the last two decades his reputation was sullied by accusations of child molestation and his bizarre public behaviour, 1m tickets were sold within hours, proving the King of Pop had enduring appeal, even among fans who were not yet born when he released the Thriller album in 1982.

Jackson's impact on American pop music cannot be overstated. His signature vocal style, dance moves and military-inspired fashion sense also influenced pop culture worldwide. He earned worldwide acclaim for his 1982 Thriller album, produced by Quincy Jones. His subsequent efforts, including his Bad album of 1987 and a collaboration with sister Janet, were also well received. His Thriller video, with its occult imagery and choreographed ensemble dance, helped launch the music video genre.

He ultimately sold more than 750m albums worldwide and won 13 Grammy awards. But he had withdrawn from the public eye, taking his last tour in 1997 and releasing his last album of new material in 2001. Raised in the Motown tradition, Jackson's worldwide popularity broke racial barriers.

For a time Jackson was the best-selling and most famous pop star in the world. But his increasingly odd public behaviour and two accusations of child molestation led the public to sour on him. The cost of his lavish lifestyle took a tremendous toll on his earnings. In 2008 he was forced to give up the deed to the Neverland Ranch in order to pay down what he owed. In April he stopped a public auction of his belongings including jewel encrusted concert tickets, stage-wear and music memorabilia. He was, at the time, thought to be as much as $24m in debt.

Jackson was born in Gary, Indiana, a gritty industrial city near Chicago. He became renowned in the 1970s as the lead singer of the Jackson 5, astonishing audiences with his charming looks, his crisp playful voice and his smooth dance moves. He broke through as a solo artist in 1979 with Off the Wall, produced by Quincy Jones. The two had a long and fruitful collaboration, producing the albums Thriller and Bad.

In 1993 Jackson was first accused of child molestation by a 13-year-old boy and his father. Authorities searched his ranch and Jackson agreed to a strip search. The case was eventually settled out of court and Jackson was never charged.

In 2003 he was the subject of a documentary by British filmmaker Martin Bashir, in which he admitted to sleeping in the same room as children at his Neverland Ranch. Prosecutors had been investigating him for years, and soon after, he faced new charges that he molested a 13-year-old cancer survivor. In 2005 a jury acquitted him of the charge.

Jackson married twice, the first time to Lisa Marie Presley, daughter of Elvis Presley, in an unusual union of pop music dynasties. He later married an Australian nurse and fathered two children with her. The mother of his third child is not known.

In recent years he has frequently been seen in public wearing a mask, as have his children. In 2002 he was seen dangling his infant from the balcony of a hotel room, as legions of photographers watched in horror below.

Jackson suffered from vitiligo, a condition that causes the skin to lose its pigment. In May the Sun reported he had been diagnosed with skin cancer, a rumour his camp denied.

Jackson had been engineering a comeback tour, an effort to rehabilitate his public image and bolster his tottering finances. The warp-speed sales of the tickets to his O2 shows indicated he is still beloved among his fans. A staggering 1m tickets sold out within a matter of hours after going on sale in March.
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Michael Jackson, the American pop legend, died of a heart attack in a Los Angeles hospital last night, just weeks before he hoped to resurrect his four-decade long career with a series of sold-out shows in London. Jackson was taken to the University of California at Los Angeles medical centre last night, and paramedics administered cardiopulmonary resuscitation in the ambulance.

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This was Michael's last appearance on a cover or in an interview of any kind before his death in 2009 and how he ended up becoming what some might call a 'recluse' in his last year of life, staying out of the limelight.

He is on the cover of the African-American magazine celebrating 25 years of his album 'Thriller'.

In this interview (after years of silence) his discusses how he has been in the studio, but did not classify new albums. This article is very mundane and is factual about Michael; there is little about his personal life and opinions; more simply about the fact that he has even made an appearance at all.

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This article written in 2006 at the time of Michael's financial demise. In which the article is stating 'What happened to the fortune Michael Jackson made?'.

Throughout this newspaper report there are quotes from Michael's financial advisor in which he states that Michael never really had any idea about money or the value of it due to people working everything out for him his whole life. Therefore, when his professional career started to plateau but his spending stay at a high; money eventually ran out for the star.

This article includes specific numbers in Michael's spendings on his architecture of his house and the recent lawsuits in which he had to pay off at the time. With the use of facts and figures, this makes the article feel accurate and believable. The article is not bias towards or against Michael as an artist or a person but is essentially giving the facts that inform the reader on his current financial status of the time.

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SEATED in a $9,000-a-night luxury suite in the sail-shaped Burj Al Arab hotel in Dubai, Michael Jackson played the role of a wealthy pop star as he met with two senior executives of the Sony Corporation last December. From the opulent setting to Mr. Jackson's retinue of advisers, there was little indication that Sony's troops were paying a visit because they were concerned that he was teetering on the brink of bankruptcy proceedings.

Sony was worried because Mr. Jackson was the company's partner in a lucrative music publishing business that included songs by the Beatles and other musicians. If Mr. Jackson became insolvent, his 50 percent share of that $1 billion business would be up for grabs to the highest bidder, leaving Sony to confront the uncomfortable possibility that it would be forced into a new, unpredictable partnership not of its own choosing.

With the waters of the Persian Gulf and a teeming, prosperous emirate splayed out far beneath them, the group got down to business. According to those who attended the meeting and requested anonymity because confidential financial matters were discussed, Mr. Jackson was pensive and cooperative, seemingly well aware of the gravity of his situation despite the grandeur of his surroundings. He only chirped up occasionally to remark on what a wonderful investment the catalog had been.

After listening to Mr. Jackson, Robert S. Wiesenthal, a senior Sony executive, eventually proposed that Sony would help the singer find a bank to lend him more than $300 million to pay off his debts. In exchange, Mr. Jackson would possibly forfeit a portion of his half of the Beatles catalog.

Just last month, Mr. Jackson - still swamped in debt, with his musical career in stasis and his personal life limned by scandal - agreed to that financial overhaul. It is likely to strip him of about half of his remaining stake in the catalog, which he has relied on as a financial lifeline for about a decade. According to executives involved in the restructuring talks, Mr. Jackson used the catalog, as well as copyrights to his own songs, as collateral for roughly $270 million in bank loans he took out to fund a spending spree that includes upkeep for his sprawling California ranch, Neverland, and other exotic luxuries.

Given how precarious Mr. Jackson's financial situation appears to be, it is unclear how long he will be able to retain his remaining stake in his prized music catalog. A reckoning appears near, and Mr. Jackson's ability to hold onto his fortune has proven to be as fleeting as stardom itself.

The arc of Mr. Jackson's career, and his management of his business and financial affairs, tracks some of the timeworn truisms about the realities of the entertainment industry and those who inhabit its upper tiers: a child star unwittingly beholden to others who control his bank account; a more mature adult who is savvy about packaging and marketing himself but who grows increasingly undisciplined about his spending; and, finally, a reclusive caricature locked inside a financial and emotional fantasyland of his own making.

For those without access to Mr. Jackson's personal accounts, assessing exactly how much money has passed through his hands over a career that spans decades is impossible. Sales of his recordings through Sony's music unit have generated more than $300 million in royalties for Mr. Jackson since the early 1980's, according to three individuals with direct knowledge of the singer's business affairs. Revenues from concerts and music publishing - including the creation of a venture with Sony that controls the Beatles catalog - as well as from endorsements, merchandising and music videos added, perhaps, $400 million more to that amount, these people believe.

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Credit... Wayne Harris

WHATEVER portion of those earnings actually ended up in Mr. Jackson's wallet is also difficult to assess because it would have to account for hefty costs like recording and production expenses, taxes and the like that would have reduced income from his business endeavors. Mr. Jackson could not be reached for comment.

"I think that Michael never had any concept of fiscal responsibility, or logical fiscal responsibility. He was an individual that had been overindulged by those that represented him or worked for him for all of his life," said Alvin Malnik, a former financial adviser to Mr. Jackson and a former lawyer for Meyer Lansky, the late mob kingpin. "There was no planning in terms of allocations of how much he should spend. As a businessman, you can forecast your spending for the next six months to a year. For Michael, it was whatever he wanted at the time he wanted.

"Millions of dollars annually were spent on plane charters, purchases of antiques and paintings," Mr. Malnik continued. "If you want to take a trip to London, that's one thing. If you want to continue that trip and have your entourage of 15 or 20 people go with you, it gets expensive."

Others close to Mr. Jackson say that the performer's finances have not deteriorated simply because he is a big spender. They say that until the early 1990's, he paid relatively close attention to his accounting and kept an eye on the cash that flowed through his business and creative ventures. After that, they say, Mr. Jackson became overly enamored of something that ensnares wealthy people of all stripes: bad advice.

"Some people can go to a person like Michael and say, 'Listen, this is out of hand.' Other people would much rather say, 'Whatever you want,' and they don't care," said Frank Dileo, who was Mr. Jackson's manager from 1984 to 1989. "I think after me, there were a lot of people that didn't care. All they were interested in was what they were getting. And they killed the golden goose."

Michael Jackson has spent a lifetime surprising people, in recent years largely because of a surreal personal life, lurid legal scandals, serial plastic surgeries and erratic public behavior that have turned him - on his very best days - into the butt of late-night talk-show jokes and tabloid headlines. But when his career began to take off nearly four decades ago as a member of the pop group the Jackson 5, fans and entertainment industry veterans recognized something else about the pint-size musical dynamo that was unusual: He was in possession of an outsize, mesmerizing talent.

Deke Richards, a writer and producer who worked closely with Berry Gordy, the founder of Motown Records, in shaping the earliest stages of Mr. Jackson's career, recalls watching the singer in one of his earliest performances in Los Angeles. It was 1969 at the Daisy Club, a Beverly Hills venue located on Rodeo Drive, and while the entire Jackson entourage impressed Mr. Richards, Michael was the star.

"It was almost evident that it was something special, it was like the reincarnation of Frankie Lyman," said Mr. Richards, referring to the 1950's teenage vocalist who turned "Why Do Fools Fall in Love" into a hit. "Nobody had seen anything like that since Frankie, a kid with chops like that who could sing like that. It was like a 30-year-old man was inside this little boy."

Although Mr. Gordy promoted Mr. Jackson as an 8-year-old wunderkind in advance of the Daisy Club appearance, the singer was just weeks shy of his 11th birthday when he performed there. Even so, he had already spent years in talent shows and performing in seedy Midwestern clubs under the aegis of Joe Jackson, his dictatorial and ambitious father. Joe Jackson and Mr. Gordy were the singer's twin mentors during Michael's early career; neither of them could be reached to comment for this article.

Despite Michael Jackson's youth, Mr. Gordy and others recognized that in addition to the singer's talent he also was an observant, diligent understudy keen to learn all that he could about the workings of the music business.

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The Jackson 5 was paid royalty rates from Motown in the 60's that were much lower than what Mr. Jackson earned as a solo artist during his heyday in the 80's. Credit... Motown Records

"Michael had a knowingness about him," Mr. Gordy recalled in a 1994 interview with Billboard magazine. "He paid close attention to every single thing I said. Even when my back was turned, I knew he'd be watching me like a hawk. The other kids might have been playing or doing whatever they were doing, but Michael was dead serious. And he stayed that way."

Mr. Jackson had his own recollections of those years. "When you're a show-business child, you really don't have the maturity to understand a great deal of what is going on around you. People make a lot of decisions concerning your life when you're out of the room," he wrote in "Moon Walk," his 1988 autobiography. "Berry insisted on perfection and attention to detail. I'll never forget his persistence. This was his genius. Then and later, I observed every moment of the sessions where Berry was present and never forgot what I learned. To this day, I use the same principles."

Mr. Gordy paid many of Motown's most successful acts, including the Jackson 5, far stingier royalty rates on their albums than they might have earned in a later era, and certainly lower than what Mr. Jackson himself earned during his heyday in the mid-to-late 1980's. According to J. Randy Taraborrelli's 1991 biography, "Michael Jackson: The Magic and the Madness," Motown paid the Jackson 5 a royalty rate that was just a fraction of what Mr. Jackson secured for himself later in his career.

"There was a lot of pressure on Michael as a youngster to perform for the family," said Shelly Finkel, a former rock 'n' roll promoter who currently manages professional boxers and who periodically intersected with the Jackson family when Mr. Jackson was a child. "You get a kid like Michael Jackson and he's unsophisticated with his money and people take advantage. It's not a real upbringing. He didn't mature as a human in all directions."

The Jackson 5 jumped from Motown to CBS Records in 1975, and the company rewarded them with better contracts. They also received guaranteed fees of at least $350,000 per album, according to Mr. Taraborrelli's book, well above their Motown fees but still not approaching the stratospheric, multimillion-dollar guarantees Mr. Jackson would begin getting in the 1980's. Concerts offered another source of income, but it was still income that Mr. Jackson shared with his siblings and upon which his father kept a tight rein.

Mr. Jackson eventually broke with his father and the Jackson 5, a move toward creative and financial independence marked by his collaborations with Quincy Jones on a trio of albums. The most memorable of those is 1982's "Thriller," which eventually racked up sales of 51 million copies globally, according to the Guinness World Records, making it the best-selling album in history. Yet "Thriller" took a heavy toll, Mr. Jackson's associates say, setting a benchmark of success that the entertainer never stopped chasing.

Mr. Jackson's pre-expense share of the "Thriller" bounty - including the album, singles and a popular video - surpassed $125 million, according to a former adviser who requested anonymity because of the confidential nature of Mr. Jackson's finances. Those who counseled him in the "Thriller" era credit the pop star with financial acumen and astute business judgment, evidenced by his $47.5 million purchase of the Beatles catalog in 1985 (a move that served to alienate him from Paul McCartney, the Beatles legend who imparted the financial wisdom of buying catalogs to Mr. Jackson during a casual chat, only to see Mr. Jackson then turn around and buy rights to many of Mr. McCartney's own songs).

John Branca, an attorney who structured the purchase for Mr. Jackson and represented him from 1980 to 1990 and periodically after 1993, said he saw no signs of wayward financial behavior in the years straddling the release of "Thriller." "I think Michael was brilliant for a good part of his career - savvy, involved, on top of everything," Mr. Branca said. "I also think he was a marketing genius."

In the midst of the "Thriller" phenomenon, Mr. Jackson's appetites were still relatively modest by celebrity standards, and he had just begun to experience the possibilities of riches he had never known in his childhood. Acquaintances from that period say that he would occasionally borrow gas money, and he still lived in the Jackson family home in the suburban Encino section of Los Angeles.

Although he made an unsuccessful attempt in 1987 to buy the bones of Joseph Merrick, more famously known as "The Elephant Man," for $1 million, it wasn't until the end of the 1980's that he began to exhibit more baronial tendencies. In 1988, he made his $17 million purchase of property near Santa Ynez, Calif., that became Neverland.

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Mr. Jackson performing solo in the 80's. Credit... Associated Press

At the same time, Mr. Jackson was redefining the concept of spectacle in pop music. He hired Martin Scorsese, the film director, to direct a video for his album "Bad," a clip that one adviser with direct knowledge of the production budget said cost more than $1 million. The same adviser said that Mr. Jackson netted "way north" of $35 million from a yearlong "Bad" tour that began in 1987, and that heading into the 1990's Mr. Jackson was in sound shape financially.

While Mr. Jackson began to routinely rotate through different teams of advisers in the 90's, and pour more of his own money into pricey projects like videos, at least one of his advisers from the period contends that Mr. Jackson kept a lid on his spending until even the late 1990's.

"I didn't ever see him take all kinds of people all around the world," said James Morey, who served as one of Mr. Jackson's personal managers from 1990 to 1997 (when Mr. Jackson fired him and turned for advice instead to the Saudi sheik Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal). "Michael is very bright, and Michael pretty much knew - even when he was advised something was too expensive - if he felt it was right for the art, he had the means to pay for it. He wasn't oblivious to what budgets were."

Other events, however, suggest that Mr. Jackson's finances were already under strain by the mid-90's. He retreated from working regularly after the release of "Dangerous" in 1991 and settled a child-molestation lawsuit for about $20 million. More significantly in terms of his finances, he had to sell Sony a 50 percent stake in the Beatles catalog in 1995 for more than $100 million, which one adviser said helped shore up the singer's wobbling accounts.

Mr. Jackson wouldn't produce another studio album of completely new material until 2001, yet whenever he surfaced with other works that were compilations of previously released material he still expected promotions and spectacles beyond anything done before. For his 1995 album, "HIStory," for example, he sought to shoot an extravagant "teaser" video to promote it. He shot the video in Hungary for millions of dollars and hired Hungarian soldiers to march in it.

"When they were shooting this thing in Hungary, the production company would call me in the middle of the night and say, 'Michael wants more troops,' " said Dan Beck, a senior marketing executive who worked on the video. "He dreamed the big dream. It was P. T. Barnum."

MR. JACKSON indulged in other pricey vanity projects, including what one adviser believes to be the most expensive - a 35-minute film called "Ghosts" that he co-wrote with the novelist Stephen King and shot in 1997 with Stan Winston, a special-effects whiz that cost well above $15 million. One person with direct knowledge of Mr. Jackson's spending said that the star paid a substantial portion of as much as $65 million on video projects in the mid-90's - outlays that contributed significantly to his financial problems.

Mr. Jackson also came under the sway of an assorted rotation of new advisers who apparently convinced him to make heavy bets on risky investments that never panned out. In late 1996, according to court papers, he met Myung Ho Lee, a Korean adviser who emerged as a central figure in the performer's debt binge.

Documents indicate that by late 1998, Mr. Jackson had already taken out and depleted a $90 million bank loan and Mr. Lee arranged a new, $140 million loan from Bank of America that was collateralized by the Beatles catalog and used to pay off earlier debts. Just several months later, the $140 million had evaporated and Mr. Jackson, fresh off of his divorce settlement with Lisa Marie Presley, obtained another $30 million line of credit from Bank of America. Mr. Lee said in court papers that in late 2000 he raised the original $140 million bank loan to $200 million, using part of that loan to pay down the $30 million credit line, which had been entirely tapped.

Although documents indicate that Mr. Lee brought at least two risky investment opportunities to Mr. Jackson, Mr. Lee still managed to castigate the performer in court papers for a lack of financial discipline in 1999 and 2000. "Jackson became fixated on obtaining expensive possessions and feeding his ego by listening to the advice of hucksters and imposters," Mr. Lee noted.

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Michael Jackson, left, and one of his children and a security guard in Bahrain. Mr. Jackson recently agreed to an overhaul of his finances. Credit... Hasan Jamaili/Associated Press

All the while, Mr. Jackson's spending ramped up. As described by several of Mr. Jackson's former associates, he routinely borrowed large sums of cash to pay for things he may not have been able to afford. Marc Schaffel, who formerly served as an adviser on Mr. Jackson's television projects, alleges in a lawsuit scheduled for trial next month that Mr. Jackson failed to reimburse him for outlays of more than $2.2 million, much of it in cash.

THESE expenses included $46,075 in August 2001 for appraisals and architectural work done as Mr. Jackson considered buying a home in Beverly Hills; a $1 million fee paid to Marlon Brando in September 2001 so that the film star would appear at a Madison Square Garden event and in a video honoring Mr. Jackson; more than $380,000 for the purchase of a Bentley Arnage sport sedan and a custom Lincoln Navigator sport-utility vehicle; and $250,000 in June 2003 for antique shopping in Beverly Hills.

Mr. Malnik, who began advising Mr. Jackson a few years ago, said in an interview that the entertainer had spent about $8 million annually on plane charters, antiques, paintings, hotel rooms, travel and other personal expenses, and that the annual upkeep for Neverland and its staff was about $4 million. A forensic accountant who testified in Mr. Jackson's criminal trial last year said that the singer's annual budget in 1999 included about $7.5 million for personal expenses and $5 million to maintain Neverland. None of this explains the scale of Mr. Jackson's borrowing, however, or the rapidity with which he burned through those funds.

The leading drain on Mr. Jackson's ample resources may have been monumentally unwise investments that apparently produced equally colossal losses. Mr. Malnik estimates that some of Mr. Jackson's advisers squandered $50 million on deals that never panned out - what he describes as amusement-park ideas and "bizarre, global kinds of computerized Marvel comic-book characters bigger than life." Mr. Malnik said that he had loaned Mr. Jackson $7 million, part of which was used to settle various lawsuits related to deals gone awry.

It's possible that Mr. Jackson's biggest costs may have shifted in early 2000 away from his shopping sprees to simply shouldering enormous monthly interest payments on his debt. According to one executive involved in his affairs, Mr. Jackson was making monthly payments of about $4.5 million in 2005 on $270 million in debt. That works out to an annual interest rate of about 20 percent, a toll more familiar in the worlds of credit cards, subprime lending and loan sharks and not commonly encountered by wealthy people with substantial assets. But Mr. Jackson's wildly errant spending had forced him to confront harsher realities.

By the time Mr. Jackson finally met with the Sony executives in Dubai last December, his onerous interest payments had left him in a bind. Fortress Investment Group, a New York-based investment group that specializes in distressed debt, bought Mr. Jackson's loans from Bank of America in 2003 after the singer missed some payments. It then began levying high interest rates. Fortress, which did not respond to an interview request, threatened to call its loan on Dec. 20 last year because of Mr. Jackson's delinquency. What especially concerned Mr. Jackson about that, said one person familiar with the talks, was that it was just five days before Christmas.

TO keep Mr. Jackson afloat, Sony arranged an extension with Fortress and brought in Citigroup and other potential lenders to arrange new financing at a lower rate. At a meeting in London on Valentine's Day earlier this year, Citigroup offered Mr. Jackson a new loan with a 6 percent rate. Citigroup struck a deal because Mr. Jackson agreed to give Sony the right to buy half of Mr. Jackson's 50 percent stake in the Beatles catalog at a future date for about $250 million, providing a backstop for Citigroup if Mr. Jackson defaulted.

To the amazement of others involved in the talks, Fortress then offered Mr. Jackson the same terms - a measure of how desirable the Beatles catalog has been and continues to be to the various financiers and advisers who have hovered around Mr. Jackson since he bought it two decades ago. By April, a final deal was in place. Citigroup ended up providing a $25 million mortgage on Neverland, most of which Mr. Jackson used to buy back a 5 percent stake in the catalog held by one of his early advisers, Mr. Branca.

For his part, Mr. Malnik said he thought Mr. Jackson might have been able to continue to afford his lifestyle and errant spending if he had continued to work, but, of course, Mr. Jackson chose to work less and less. "For Michael, it was, whatever he wanted at the time he wanted," Mr. Malnik said. "This was perpetuated over a great number of years. Ultimately, if you don't change the course of things, you get to the end of the day."

Even at the end of the day, however, some people still remember the beginning. When put on hold, telephone callers to Mr. Gordy's office are treated to the 1971 ballad "Got to Be There," Mr. Jackson's hit on his first album as a solo artist for Motown.

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What Happened to the Fortune Michael Jackson Made?

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SEATED in a $9,000-a-night luxury suite in the sail-shaped Burj Al Arab hotel in Dubai, Michael Jackson played the role of a wealthy pop star as he met with two senior executives of the Sony Corporation last December.

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Michael's death and Twitter - Sanderson and Cheong

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Michael's death and Twitter - Sanderson and Cheong

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Sanderson and Cheong conducted research on the basis of the reaction to Michael's death on Twitter.

In which they state that the use of social media increased the emotion of grief for the fans due to them all collectively coming together and communicating. "Creating content that memorialises a celebrity" (p.338).

Sanderson J, Hope Cheong P. Tweeting prayers and communicating grief over Michael Jackson online. Bulletin of science, technology & society. 2010 Oct;30(5), p.338.

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After the drama of the accusations of child molestation Michael then had issues with his finances that were leaked to the public and his private world came crashing down into the public eye and the public sphere.

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Tweets and social media on the death of Michael Jackson

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Tweets and social media on the death of Michael Jackson

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Tweets surrounding the death of Michael Jackson were fast paced and constant, to the extent in which is caused a temporary shut down of the site.

Although this article is from a tabloid newspaper, it is stating at the time of his death in 2009, the website Twitter, had to be temporarily shut down. There is a timeline of Jackson's death which makes it easier for readers to comprehend how the website went down down. Tabloids often make reading easier for their audiences to generate a larger scope.

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How Michael Jackson's death shut down Twitter, brought chaos to Google... and 'killed off' Jeff Goldblum

The internet came alive like never before as people around the world logged on to follow the stunning news of Michael Jackson's death.

The story created such a surge in online traffic that Google returned an 'error message' for searches of the singer's name as it assumed it was under attack.

And just seconds after the story broke on the American entertainment website TMZ.com, messages or 'Tweets' about the singer on the micro-blogging site Twitter doubled, leading to a temporary shutdown of the site.

TMZ.com stole a march on traditional media outlets with its scoop that Jackson had died from a heart attack two hours before it was confirmed by the more 'reputed' sources of The LA Times and Associated Press.

Confusion reigned for several hours in newsrooms about whether Michael Jackson was in a coma or perhaps had already passed away - although some bloggers suggested the story was a hoax.

The 24-hour news services provided by Sky and BBC were forced to credit TMZ for their most up-to-date information.

American gossip blogger Perez Hilton wrote: '(Jackson) pulled a similar stunt when he was getting ready for his big HBO special in '95 when he collapsed at the rehearsal!

'Either he's lying or making himself sick, but we're curious to see if he's able to go on. Get your money back, ticket holders!'

How news of Jackson's death spread around the Internet:

Scroll down for a timeline of events...

Rumours abounded as major news channels were reluctant to run the story with TMZ.com as the only source.

Despite breaking stories such as Mel Gibson's anti-Semitic rant during a drunk driving arrest, the website is viewed by many as salacious and lacking credibility.

CNN waited for the coroner's confirmation before it stated Michael Jackson was dead, despite being owned by Time Warner, the same company as TMZ.

Harvey Levin, managing director of TMZ said: 'No matter what they say, people know we broke the story. That's how competitors handle it. There's no issue about our credibility.

'We were getting calls from everyone under the sun, established news operations, asking, "Are you sure?" That's such an odd question. We would not have published it if it were not true.'

Internet users however had no such qualms with the news source and turned to Twitter to spread the story.

By 10.30pm, Jackson-based Twitter traffic had risen to 12.26 per cent and peaked at 11.30pm with 22.61 per cent of all messages dedicated to the star. Nine of the ten most popular topics on Twitter were dedicated to the tragic king of pop by this time.

Twitter co-founder Biz Stone said: 'We saw an instant doubling of tweets per second the moment the story broke.

'It is the biggest jump in tweets per second since the U.S. presidential election.'

The Mail Online saw traffic double between 10pm and 12pm.

Meanwhile, computers running Google's news section interpreted the fusillade of 'Michael Jackson' requests as an automated attack.

As a defence mechanism, it responded to requests for information about Michael Jackson with squiggly letters known as a 'captcha.'

Just as online ticket buyers regularly do to complete their purchases, the Michael Jackson searchers had to enter the letters correctly to see Google's new results.

On YouTube, traffic flowed to music videos of Jackson, while thousands posted videos of themselves sharing their thoughts on the legendary pop star.

Others were using Facebook to organise vigils and celebrations of Jackson. One in San Francisco with nearly 50 confirmed guests hoped to recreate the Thriller dance.

Within a few hours of the news of Jackson's death, his 1982 album Thriller was the No. 1 album on iTunes. Several of his discs were also in the top 10 of the digital store.

Celebrities and fans alike posted a deluge of tributes on Twitter - significantly most of these came after the LA Times and the Associated Press had confirmed Michael Jackson's passing.

Well-known Twitter fan Demi Moore wrote: 'I am greatly saddened for the loss of both Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson. Especially for their children.'

Meanwhile another web hoax triggered false reports that American actor Jeff Goldblum had also died in a tragic fall while filming a movie in New Zealand.

It was suggested that Harrison Ford, who was working with Goldblum on a movie called Morning Glory, may have also met an untimely demise.

Unfortunately, an Australian entertainment reporter Richard Wilkins relayed the news of Goldblum's supposed death on Channel Nine's Today show.

This caused a flurry of calls to New Zealand police forcing Inspector Kerry Watson to issue a statement: 'Police at Kerikeri are receiving phone calls regarding a person falling from a cliff at Kauri Cliff,' she said.

'There is no such incident and police have no information to provide'.

Despite this, the viral was picked up by Twitter and spread like wildfire. The internet rumour became so popular that actor Kevin Spacey felt obliged to check if it was true.

He wrote on his Twitter page: 'Jeff Goldblum is alive and well. I just spoke to his manager. Stop these stupid rumors.'

How the news of Michael Jackson's final hours broke...

12.21pm (local LA time) (8.21pm BST) - Paramedics respond to a call at 's home. He was not breathing when they arrived but had a personal physician with him. The paramedics performed CPR.

As this was happening: TMZ.com report , 50, suffered a heart attack and paramedics were unable to revive him

1pm (9pm) - Star's father Joe Jackson tells E! News 'he is not doing well.'

1.14pm (9.14pm) - arrives at hospital. A team of doctors attempt to resuscitate him for more than an hour.

1.35pm (9.35pm) - is in a coma and his family arrive at his bedside. Sister LaToya Jackson runs into the hospital sobbing.

1.45pm (9.45pm) - Hundreds of fans gather outside the hospital, anxiously waiting for news.

1.50pm (9.50pm) - 'He had a heart attack,' father Joe Jacksontells E! News by phone from Las Vegas. 'He is not OK.'

2.26pm (10.26pm) - is officially pronounced dead.

2.35pm (10.35pm) - Fire official tells LA Times that is in hospital. This is then reported by Associated Press

2.44pm (10.44pm) - TMZ.com breaks news has died, leading Google to crash.

3.27pm (11.27pm) - AP reports that a person with knowledge of the situation says Michael Jackson has died

4.25pm (12.25am) - CNN reports Jackson has died after confirmation from coroner's ofifice

Jermaine Jackson holds a press conference at the hospital and confirms Michael died after having a heart attack

In the early hours Jackson 's body is transferred to L.A County Coroner's Office.

The Channel 9 report on Jeff Goldblum's 'death'...

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How Michael Jackson's death shut down Twitter, brought chaos to Google... and 'killed off' Jeff Goldblum

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The internet came alive like never before as people around the world logged on to follow the stunning news of Michael Jackson's death. The story created such a surge in online traffic that Google returned an 'error message' for searches of the singer's name as it assumed it was under attack.

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A common theme from looking at article's often they are reminiscent about Michael and his success' and how much he went through as a child 

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A common theme from looking at article's often they are reminiscent about Michael and his success' and how much he went through as a child 

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Below is the trailer to the documentary in which involves several interviews and accounts of men (who were children at the time) who are accused Michael of child molesation.

Although an in depth documentary about Michael's life and the mental tribunes that he went through; a lot of this documentary is interview based and from personal accounts in which it is his word against Michael's. However, because this was filmed after rush death Michael cannot defend himself; therefore it lacks clarity and justification. Therefore, all the accounts cannot be held as completely true.

This documentary bough Michael and his life back into the public eye even after his death. There are still reports and articles being written about the artist to this day; over ten years after his death.

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LEAVING NEVERLAND Official Trailer (HD) Michael Jackson Documentary Series

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Documentary 'Living with Michael Jackson' released in 2003 

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Documentary 'Living with Michael Jackson' released in 2003 

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This was a British documentary that was filmed before the accusations of sexual abuse.

In the documentary Michael states that he did have relations and shared beds with young children when they were staying at Neverland.

This then led to the later years of his life being surrounded with feelings that he liked young children too much and questioning him as a person not just an artist.

The documentary really focuses in (at 12 minutes) on the fact that Jackson himself is really just gone back to being a child mentally. The audience can denote that he is climbing a tree and he prefers climbing trees and balloon fights to anything else. Discussed is the fact that Michael has been in the spotlight since the age of six years old. He really never had a childhood himself.

This documentary is extremely contradictory to how he was being perceived in the real world at the time of this documentary's release with the public seeing him as a child molester. It is also extremely in contradiction to the most recent documentary that has been filmed in 2018 after his death in which is heavily based around the accusations of child abuse. This documentary however, has been criticised due to the fact Michael is not alive to defend himself.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-z34BKlCr9o

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Newspaper article on Michael being acquitted in 2005 

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Newspaper article on Michael being acquitted in 2005 

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Throughout the article it states that Michael walked clear of charges that could have put him in jail for 20 years.

There is also mention of his declining career in which was key factor and theme in the press at the time of this court case. As in this it states his career had been in decline for the past decade.

The article also mentions how the jury states that they denoted and heard two extremely different sides of Michael as a persona in the celebrity life. The side of the successful child star in the Jackson 5 and also the star that 'lures' children to his Neverland theme park.

This is a connection to the articled in which states that the world often always saw Jackson as having two personalities and sides; often of which he tried to hide behind the sunglasses, masks and in the end, plastic surgery. Gradually we see Michael creating a boundary between these two characters he has always had. Bringing the difference between the professional and personal life a celebrity has to new means.

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THE JACKSON VERDICT: THE OVERVIEW

SANTA MARIA, Calif., June 13 - Michael Jackson was acquitted on Monday of all charges against him by a jury that absorbed three months of often lurid testimony about his life and relationships with young boys but rejected a teenager's claim that Mr. Jackson plied him with liquor and sexually molested him.

Mr. Jackson walked free after a Santa Maria jury found him not guilty of four charges of child molesting, one charge of attempted child molesting, one conspiracy charge and eight possible counts of providing alcohol to minors.

Together, the charges could have brought 20 years in prison. Instead, Mr. Jackson is free to try to reclaim a career that has been in decline for a decade as he seemed to retreat more into his own private world with each passing year.

The eight women and four men of the jury deliberated for about 30 hours over seven days before saying shortly after noon that they had reached a decision.

The courtroom was silent and tense as the court clerk began to read the verdicts at 2:13 p.m. When it became clear that the jury had found that prosecutors had not proved their case against him, Mr. Jackson dabbed at his eyes with a tissue, and one of his lawyers, Susan C. Yu, began sobbing quietly.

Mr. Jackson's parents, Katherine and Joe, who had sat through almost every day of the 14-week trial, showed no emotion. Nor did his brothers Randy and Jermaine and his sisters LaToya and Rebbie, who were seated directly behind him. Another sister, Janet, waited outside because there were only six seats for family inside.

The family left the courtroom without speaking to the hundreds of reporters from around the world who had converged on this small Central Coast city to cover the latest of California's celebrity trials.

When word of the verdict spread, several hundred Jackson fans who were gathered outside the courthouse screamed in approval, embraced one another and threw confetti. A woman released one white dove for each count on which Mr. Jackson was acquitted. When Mr. Jackson emerged a half hour later, he quietly blew kisses to the fans and then disappeared into a black S.U.V. for the trip to his storybook Neverland estate.

Across the country, people paused to hear the outcome of the trial. Hundreds gathered in Times Square, where a giant screen heralded Mr. Jackson's acquittal, and a pilot broke in on a New York-to-California flight shortly before landing to relay the news to passengers.

The courtroom drama had profound implications for Mr. Jackson's life and career but did not rise to the level of legal spectacle offered by the O.J. Simpson double-murder trial a decade ago. The nature of the crime was different, Mr. Jackson's career was already in decline and the judge in this case, Rodney S. Melville, barred cameras from the courtroom and imposed a gag order on all participants.

The verdict was a devastating disappointment for Thomas W. Sneddon Jr., the Santa Barbara County district attorney, who has pursued Mr. Jackson for 12 years, since the time another boy made similar accusation.

Mr. Sneddon tried to bring a criminal case involving that boy, but was thwarted when the witness and his family reached a $20 million civil settlement with Mr. Jackson and refused to cooperate in a criminal investigation.

When Mr. Sneddon brought the new charges in late 2003, Mr. Jackson and his supporters accused him of pursuing a vendetta and a trophy case to cap his long career. Mr. Sneddon adamantly denied that at a news conference Monday afternoon.

"My past history with Mr. Jackson absolutely, unequivocally has nothing to do with this case," he said. "I thought we had a good case this time."

Asked if he thought a child molester had gone free, Mr. Sneddon snapped, "No comment."

The 12 members of the jury and 8 alternates appeared at a news conference after the verdict and said they had tried to weigh the evidence as if Mr. Jackson were not a global superstar. None of the jurors gave their names, and Judge Melville ordered their files sealed indefinitely.

The jury foreman, a 63-year-old retired high school guidance counselor, said, "We looked at all the evidence and we looked at Michael Jackson, and one of the first things we decided was we had to look at him just as another person and not a celebrity." In a later interview on CNN, the foreman identified himself as Paul Rodriguez.

Another juror, a 62-year-old civil engineer, said there was no defining moment in the trial, but rather an accumulation of evidence that undercut the prosecution's case.

"We considered all the evidence," he said "and since this was a criminal trial, it had to be beyond a reasonable doubt. And looking at all the evidence this was the conclusion we all came to."

The case ultimately turned on the credibility of Mr. Jackson's accuser, a 15-year-old cancer survivor who said the defendant had gotten him drunk and molested him several times two years ago. The boy's younger brother testified that he had seen Mr. Jackson fondling his brother on two other occasions.

Their mother, a difficult witness for the prosecution, testified that Mr. Jackson had held the family captive and that he had forced them to make a video testimonial to rebut a documentary in which he had acknowledged sleeping with young boys.

The mother appeared to lose the jury with her rambling, incoherent and at times combative testimony. She argued with Mr. Jackson's lawyer and delivered lectures to the jury, even as she wove a tale of mistreatment at the hands of Mr. Jackson's minions.

"I disliked it intensely when she snapped her fingers at us," one female juror said. "I thought, 'Don't snap your fingers at me, lady."'

From the opening statements in late February to the closing arguments two weeks ago, the jury heard two sharply different descriptions of an entertainer who once reigned over the world of pop music and who made hundreds of millions of dollars in a career that began when he was a 6-year-old singing phenomenon in the family group, the Jackson Five.

Prosecutors painted him as a serial pedophile who got young boys into his bed using Neverland as a lure. They portrayed the singer's estate near here as a no-rules fantasy kingdom that lowered children's inhibitions and made them ready for Mr. Jackson's sexual advances. The accuser in the case was just the latest in a long list of Mr. Jackson's "special friends," they said, at least two of whom were silenced with large payments.

The defense responded that the boy at the heart of this case was a cunning liar who had begged money from numerous celebrities by playing off his serious bout with cancer when he was 10. Thomas A. Mesereau Jr., Mr. Jackson's lead lawyer, called the family "con artists, actors and liars" repeatedly in his closing statement.

Another juror said she believed the mother had taught her children to lie to gain money or favors from celebrities.

"As a mother, the values she has taught them, it's hard for me to comprehend," the juror said. "I wouldn't want any of my children to lie for their own gain."

The current case against Mr. Jackson erupted in February 2003, with the broadcast of "Living With Michael Jackson," a British documentary in which Mr. Jackson talked about sharing his bed with young boys, calling it a loving act and insisting it had nothing to do with sex. The accuser in this case, then 13, was shown holding hands with the singer and resting his head affectionately on his shoulder.

The documentary provoked an international sensation, seeming to confirm years of rumors that Mr. Jackson was overly fond of young boys. Mr. Sneddon, hearing what he had long suspected, immediately began a criminal investigation.

The charges led to 20 months of bizarre spectacle that included Mr. Jackson dancing to his own music atop an S.U.V. just after his arraignment in January 2004, as hundreds of fans screamed in the street outside the courthouse. (Over the course of the trial, however, Mr. Jackson appeared more pale and gaunt with each passing week and was briefly hospitalized several times.)The prosecutor's case had problems from the beginning. The timeline of the accusations, for example, was problematic, because the molesting was said to have taken place after the broadcast of the documentary, when the world's attention was focused on Mr. Jackson and the boy.

In the end, jurors found the prosecution's case had come up short. They were not willing to put Mr. Jackson in jail on the basis of testimony from the accuser's family. One juror, asked if she thought the mother was a scam artist, replied, "The thought was definitely there."

Another juror said: "In a case like this, you're hoping that maybe you can find a smoking gun or something that you can grab onto that says absolutely one way or another. In this case, we had difficulty in finding that."

The prosecutor, Mr. Sneddon, tried to put a brave face on defeat.

"I'm not going to look back and apologize for anything we've done," he said. "You never have a case where you don't have some surprises."

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Michael Jackson Cleared After 14-Week Child Molesting Trial

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Michael Jackson is acquitted of all charges against him; jury that heard three months of often lurid testimony about his life and relationships with young boys rejects teenager's claim that Jackson plied him with liquor and sexually molested him; Jackson faced charges that could have brought 20 years in prison;

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When it comes to Michael's later life, his personal life over rules his professional success'; for example, the trial of 2003 in which he was accused of several accounts of sexual assault on Gavin Arvizo.

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Deterioration of Michael's celebrity status 

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Deterioration of Michael's celebrity status 

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This image is known to all to this day. It represents how Michael gradually was losing his star image as one of the all time greats due to the press and gossip magazines and also there were speculations over drug use at this point in his life.

The image of him putting his own child's life in danger caused many questions that continued throughout the rest of his life.

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Michael holding his son off a balcony in 2002 

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Michael holding his son off a balcony in 2002 

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Famous images released by many magazines at the time in which show Michael endangering his son by holding him off a balcony so fans can see the child.

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Michael as a child molester and articles after his death 

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Michael as a child molester and articles after his death 

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Michael's death and his reputation after his death 

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Michael's death and his reputation after his death 

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2002 Award for the American Music awards - Artist of the century 

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2002 Award for the American Music awards - Artist of the century 

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Here is the speech by Michael at the 2002 American awards show in which he thanking a large list of people after being introduced.

Here even after his worst album release and his sexual molestation allegations; Michael has still be awarded artist of the century and is a respected artist.

Hence, although he was getting slammed in the media about his personal life his professional persona and his music (more than anything) were still thriving, which is highly contradictory.

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Michael Jackson wins Century Award-AMA 2002

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Shift to the focus on Michael's private life over his career 

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Shift to the focus on Michael's private life over his career 

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Article written about Michael's life from 2000-2009 

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Article written about Michael's life from 2000-2009 

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This article (MTV, Eric Dizien) was written in 2009 after the death of the star; therefore, when reading the audience can connote that it is a reflective article that is looking at Michael later life and the trials and tribunes he went through.

Again, within the first paragraph of reading the reader is able to denote that the article talks about his child molestation and financial troubles that 'conspired to weaken the singer's commercial prospects'. That of which they did and we are able to see the downward spiral of his professional and public career that happened in the eyes of the press.

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Invincible - the album title was part stone-cold defiance, part self-conscious bravado. [artist id="1102"]Michael Jackson[/artist]'s 10th and, as it would turn out, final studio record dropped in October 2001. The King of Pop was attempting to move forward after a sordid period in the mid-to-late '90s, as news of financial troubles and child-molestation accusations conspired to weaken the singer's commercial prospects.

And though Invincible debuted atop the Billboard albums chart, staying on the list for 28 straight weeks and going double platinum, the scandals continued, right up until the singer's death on June 25.

For a period, though, it seemed as if the new millennium might indeed grant Jackson his elusive comeback. In early September of that year - just days before the September 11 terrorist attacks - Jackson staged two concerts at New York's Madison Square Garden to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the beginning of his career as a solo artist. Reuniting onstage with his brothers, MJ performed Jackson 5 classics and then rocked out alongside Usher, Slash and Britney Spears. On Halloween, Invincible began its ascent to #1, and Jackson seemed on the verge of being welcomed back into the pop mainstream.

A true comeback, though, was not be. Jackson's album sales were a fraction of the sales of earlier albums, like Bad and Dangerous, and his singles failed to perform up to expectations. He also began feuding with his label, Sony, and accused then-chairman Tommy Mottola of using racist language and refusing to promote black artists adequately. Then Jackson's erratic behavior - on display in an awkward "artist of the millenium" acceptance speech at the 2002 MTV Video Music Awards - took a turn for the frightening as he dangled 11-month-old son "Blanket" from a fifth-floor hotel window in Berlin.

At that time, from May 2002 to January 2003, Jackson sat down with British journalist Martin Bashir for a series of lengthy interviews that would become the documentary, "Living With Michael Jackson." If the pop singer was hoping that showing an intimate, televised portrait of himself to the world would help rehabilitate his image, he was mistaken.

"Why can't you share your bed?" Jackson said in response to Bashir's question about sleeping in a bedroom with children. "That's the most loving thing to do, is to share your bed with someone."

"I have slept in the bed with many children," he admitted at another point. "I sleep in the bed with all of them."

It was just such objectionable quotes, however sympathetic Bashir's documentary seemed overall, that captured the public's attention and, ultimately, proved to be the King of Pop's undoing.

Soon after the U.S. airing of the documentary, which contained interview footage of a young cancer patient who had stayed in Jackson's bedroom, the singer was arrested and eventually charged with several counts of child-molestation based on the boy's accusations. The resulting trial - and frenetic media and fan circus - lasted five months, ending a year-and-a-half after his initial arrest, when the singer was acquitted on all 10 felony charges.

Following the verdict in June 2005, Jackson fled to the Persian Gulf nation of Bahrain, where he stayed as the guest of the king's son. Meanwhile, his personal finances continued to deteriorate, as crippling debt from loans negotiated over the years mounted and sales of newly issued greatest hits albums faltered. After failing to pay staff salaries and renew insurance policies at his lavish Neverland estate in Los Olivos, California, authorities ordered the compound's closure.

The singer eventually returned to U.S. soil but never again lived at Neverland. Rumors of potential comeback tours and albums cropped up occasionally but never moved forward. Late last year, after missing payments on a $24.5 million loan and risking foreclosure on the massive property, the singer struck a last minute deal with an investment firm to maintain partial ownership of the ranch.

Jackson's decade began to wrap up much as it had begun: with real plans for a comeback. He sold out 50 shows at London's O2 Arena - over 1 million tickets in 24 hours, the fastest-selling event in history - and it was hoped that the concert series would jumpstart a world tour and a new album, which would provide Jackson with much-needed revenue. The singer had collaborated with producers like Akon and Will.I.Am for the album and had plunged into rehearsals in Los Angeles. The first concerts were expected to begin in mid-July.

On the afternoon of June 25, however, news broke that the singer was being rushed from his rented home in the Holmby Hills neighborhood of Los Angeles to UCLA Medical Center. The King of Pop was pronounced dead at 2:26 p.m. PT.

Beginning with the Jackson 5 and stretching until his death at the age of 50, Jackson sold more than 750 million records worldwide. He scored eight platinum or multiplatinum albums, 13 #1 singles and 13 Grammy Awards. Thriller is the biggest-selling non-compilation album of all time. And as tributes from contemporary artists and his legions of fans poured forth in the hours and days following his passing, it became clear that Michael Jackson was, and always will be, the King of Pop.
MTV's live coverage of the Michael Jackson public memorial service at the Staples Center in Los Angeles will begin on Tuesday at 12 p.m. ET / 9 a.m. PT. For complete coverage of the life, career and passing of the legendary entertainer, visit "Michael Jackson Remembered."
Share your Michael Jackson memories by uploading video and comments to Your.MTV.com or joining the discussion below.

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Michael Jackson's Life & Legacy: The Final Years (2000-2009)

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Invincible - the album title was part stone-cold defiance, part self-conscious bravado. [artist id="1102"]Michael Jackson[/artist]'s 10th and, as it would turn out, final studio record dropped in October 2001. The King of Pop was attempting to move forward after a sordid period in the mid-to-late '90s, as news of financial troubles and child-molestation accusations conspired to weaken the singer's commercial prospects.

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In 2001 the album 'Invincible' is released 

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In 2001 the album 'Invincible' is released 

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This album is one of Michael's worst selling albums that was slammed by critics and did not sell well.

Invincible was his last album he released before his death in 2009 and the slow mental decline in his mental health (as portrayed in the media and gossip columns throughout his later years).

On this webpage 'AllMusic' as I have used previously when discussing the Jackson 5; immediately the reader can denote there is an article review written by Stephan Thomas Erelwine; in which from the get go the reader is able to infer it is not a positive review of the album.

Throughout this specific review that you first come across; it states that, in reality, this album was really just wishful thinking in Michael being 'Invincible' as he had not had a hit in over 10 years by this point and the demise of (not only Michael as a persona in the media) Michael's career.

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AllMusic | Music Search, Recommendations, Videos and Reviews

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AllMusic provides comprehensive music info including reviews and biographies. Get recommendations for new music to listen to, stream or own.

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1995 Sony release his ninth album 'HIStory: Past, Present and Future Book 1' 

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1995 Sony release his ninth album 'HIStory: Past, Present and Future Book 1' 

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The album in which included songs such as; 'Billie Jean' and 'The Way You Make Me Feel'.

Being released a year after the trial and accusations of Michael molestation and how successful this album was; shows how the accusations towards Michael were being brushed over and ignored by conglomerates (Sony) investing in him and his music. However, whether the public and audience were still behind him were in question.

Below is a website in which states the details about the album; including, the track list and the genre of music et.

The website also states the fact that the album sol 40 million copies worldwide which made it less successful than 'Dangerous'; hence the beginning of the downfall of Michael Jackson.

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"HIStory - Past, Present And Future - Book I" was Michael Jackson's 9th studio album and first published in June 1995. It also included the first officially-called greatest hits compilation on Epic Records. It sold over 40 million copies worldwide and was therefore commercially less successful than his predecessor "Dangerous".

Source of Tracks (HIStory Begins):
- Off The Wall [Tracks 4, 5 & 13]
- Thriller [Tracks 1, 9, 10, 11 & 14]
- Bad [Tracks 2, 6, 7 and 8]
- Dangerous [Tracks 3, 12 & 15]

Singles from the Album: (HIStory Continues):
[Main]
- Scream/Childhood
- They Don't Care About Us
- Stranger In Moscow
- Earth Song
- You Are Not Alone
[Miscellaneous]
- This Time Around (Promo-Only)
- Smile (Recalled)

HIStory Begins and HIStory Continues were also released separately.

Re-issues of HIStory feature a number of changes when compared to the original 1995 release:
⇒ "Scream" - The future release of the album censor some parts of the chorus as it feature Michael and Janet cursing.
⇒ "They Don't Care About Us" - As this song became controversial for its jewish lyrics, same with Scream it censor those parts.
⇒ "HIStory" omits it's original intro and got replaced with a new intro with a little similarity as the original.
⇒ "Come Together" is shortened in the abum release but the original full version was released in 1992 included in the Remember The Time single.
⇒ "Smile" went through few changes on the album. It was released with the original mix, then re-issued with the single edit, which only have few instrumentation changes. Then shortened down, shorter than the single edit, but having the same instrumentaion. But other re-issues feature the original release mix.

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Michael Jackson - HIStory - Past, Present And Future - Book I

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"HIStory - Past, Present And Future - Book I" was Michael Jackson's 9th studio album and first published in June 1995. It also included the first officially-called greatest hits compilation on Epic Records. It sold over 40 million copies worldwide and was therefore commercially less successful than his predecessor "Dangerous".

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Michael being found not guilty of the accusations of molestation 

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Michael being found not guilty of the accusations of molestation 

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The boy was paid a sum of over $15 million during the court case.

The case and Michael were acquitted.

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A year after the accusations were confirmed untrue, Michael married and proceeded to have three children out of his three year marriage with Debbie Rowe.

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In the book Michael (or someone else) writes about his business, but also the beatings he took as a child when in the Jackson 5.

In a later statement Jackson apologised to his father lovingly but still admitted that these beatings did indeed take place

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1988 release of his autobiography 'Moonwalk'

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1988 release of his autobiography 'Moonwalk'

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Michael wrote an autobiography about his life revealing personal details about his life in the limelight from a young age.

A lot of which he refers to during his interview with Oprah stating 'go read my book' to answer some of the pressing questions she was presenting him with about his past.

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Career during the sexual molestation accusations 

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Career during the sexual molestation accusations 

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Although during these period of accusations towards Michael and court cases; his career really didn't take a hit as his songs continued to make the charts and in later years (2000) Billboard 100 named three of his songs the best of all time.

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During the mid-90s Michael was accused of molesting a child in his 'Neverland' theme park.

There were court cases (1993) and the trail came to the verdict that Michael was indeed innocent of the charges against him. However, these charges and accusations sent the press wild and once an accusation of this nature has been exposed to the general public it tends to stick with an artist persona and how people view them as a person, not effecting their professional career as much; but their personal lives and family.

Attached is a news article that was written in 2004 (when which Michael was still alive) about the 1993 case in which he was accused; the new facts that had come to light. The news article was released by NBC an trusted American news agent that often (supposedly) remains unbiased).

The article involves an interview with a man named 'Rizzo' in which was involved at looking into the evidence of the case in 1993.

The article talks the reader through (step by step) what happened from his perspective of the evidence during the trial in 1993. It is from the personal perspective of 'Rizzo', however, it is based in factual comments and is less like other 'gossip' columns of the time that were written about Michael and the case.

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The year was 1993, and the biggest star in the world was Michael Jackson. The hit song was "Black or White," his universal appeal so powerful that at the Super Bowl, he was the halftime show, his message that children can heal the world beamed to millions.

But that year, Jackson's wholesome, Peter Pan image would be tarnished by lurid accusations of child molestation -- and a huge civil settlement with his accuser would keep many of the details of the case secret.

But Dateline NBC has learned just what evidence authorities had against Michael Jackson, as well as details about the civil case against him that have remained sealed in the basement of the Los Angeles county courthouse for more than a decade.

Dateline NBC also heard from those who've never spoken publicly before, and has information about a second boy who received a multimillion-dollar payout, keeping the case out of a courtroom and off the front pages.

The allegations from 1993 are suddenly relevant today because witnesses from that case may now finally testify, and because it was a sort of dress rehearsal for the current case, showing authorities just how difficult it can be to accuse a wealthy celebrity.

It all began with a chance meeting in 1992, Jackson's car broke down in Los Angeles and he showed up at a rental car agency. The owner's step-son, a huge Jackson fan, got to meet his idol. Before long, Jackson's chauffeur was driving him to the boy's mother's modest Los Angeles home.

Ernie Rizzo is a Chicago private eye who had access to some of the early evidence in 1993.

Ernie Rizzo: "Michael Jackson started spending a lot of time at the boy's house... At 3:15 when the boy got home from school he'd get on the phone and call him and it went on for weeks, but it got worse and worse where the kid was up all night making phone calls back and forth."

In February '93 the boy and his mother were weekend guests at Jackson's Neverland Ranch, a child's paradise with its own amusement park and a video arcade that never closes. And for the next five months they appeared to be at Jackson's side everywhere, prompting the tabloids to call them his "secret family."

Sleepovers begin
The boy's mother initially believed her son's relationship Jackson was innocent. Then, in March, '93 during a trip to Las Vegas, the boy says he and Jackson began sleeping together in the same bed.

It happened after they watched the movie, "The Exorcist," according to this sworn statement by the boy filed in court months later.
"When the movie was over, I was scared. Michael Jackson suggested that I spend the night with him, which I did. There was no physical contact."
And that's what both the boy and Jackson told the mother when she asked about the sleeping arrangement.
"From that time, whenever Michael Jackson and I were together, we slept in the same bed."
Both parents even played host inviting the superstar into their homes for sleepovers with their 13-year-old son.

A polaroid photo the boy took of Jackson, wearing pajamas just before bedtime at his mother's house made it onto a cover of a book about Jackson by a South American journalist. It was at the least a highly unusual relationship for any parent to tolerate.

Josh Mankiewicz: "You think Jackson sort of deliberately turned the mother's head back in '93?"

Rizzo: "Sure. Jackson gave her tens of thousands of dollars, he flew her on his private jets all around the world. He gave her credit cards, shop, buy anything you want. Why would you do that to the mother of a little boy unless you wanted something in return?"

In May of '93, Michael Jackson was in Monte Carlo meeting real royalty, being honored at the World Music Awards.

Rizzo: "Jackson files to Monaco, gets a suite in Monte Carlo -- two suites, one for the mother and her daughter and one for him and the little boy. Two suites."

It was on that trip to Monaco, according to the Boy, that sleeping together turned sexual.

The boy swore in a declaration filed in the civil suit against Jackson:
"After that, Michael Jackson masturbated me many times both with his hand and with his mouth... Michael Jackson told me that I should not tell anyone what happened. He said this was a secret."
After she returned to Los Angeles, the boy's father maintains his ex-wife told him she suspected things between her son and Jackson weren't so innocent. He says he confronted the singer.

The father says he asked Jackson in a chronology he wrote for his lawyers. The star responded:
'It's cosmic. I don't understand it myself. I just know we were meant to be together."
Fearing that he was losing his son to Jackson, the boy's father began a custody battle with his ex-wife and by the end of May, the boy moved in with his father. But the boy's relationship with Jackson wasn't over. In fact, the father who had just confronted Jackson now invited the star into his house for a sleepover with his son.

It was Memorial Day weekend, 1993. It would be a pivotal weekend for the case. Since then, no one who had a first person account of what happened inside the boy's home has ever spoken -- until now.

Caretaker speaks out for the first time
Norma Salinas worked for the boy's father and step-mother, cleaning house and caring for their two younger children in their comfortable Brentwood home. She says she was surprised when the boy came to live with his father because the teenager was rarely more than a weekend visitor who spent his time alone. The father usually too preoccupied with work, until that weekend.

Norma Salinas: "Much later I started to understand everything. At first, they didn't want this boy in the house and later when the relationship started with Michael, the boy came here to live. From then on there were strange things going on in this house."

The story about what happened that weekend changes, depending upon who's telling it. Jackson says it was the beginning of a plot to extort money from him. The boy's father wrote in a letter to his lawyers that he was simply trying to protect his son, re-establish a relationship that had been damaged by his son's involvement with Michael Jackson, and get to the bottom of what was really going on between a 13-year-old boy, and a 35-year-old man.

Salinas: "It was a big impression on me because the father brought him home for an entire weekend. I was very surprised because he is a big star and to arrive like that without bodyguards without anything I was a bit astonished."

The boy introduced Jackson to Salinas as his best friend. A moment both thrilling, says Salinas, and disturbing.

Salinas: "They were hugging, laughing. They looked very happy, like a couple."

She says the boy's father and step-mother acted as though there was nothing unusual about the visit, except when they instructed Salinas to keep the drapes pulled shut the entire weekend while Jackson was visiting.

Salinas: "The boy's step-mother told me to pull out the trundle bed that goes next to the boy's bed because that's where Mr. Michael was going to sleep."

It was in this spartan room, a room without a TV set Salinas says, that Michael Jackson and the 13-year-old boy spent virtually an entire weekend -- all with the father's full knowledge and consent.

Salinas: "I entered the room the next day to do the housekeeping as I always do. I noticed that no one slept on the bed because there were no signs of anybody having slept there... I suspect that he slept on the bed because there was no other bed."

An undocumented worker who doesn't speak English, Salinas says she never went to police. She admits she didn't always get along with the father, whom she holds partly responsible for what happened.

Salinas: "In few words, you can say that he sold his son to Michael... They should both be in jail together. Michael, for what he did to the boy and the boy's father for what he did to his son."

Ernie Rizzo says the father used that weekend as a sort of fact-finding mission.

Mankiewicz: "Was there any surreptitious recording done of Michael Jackson and the boy during the time that Jackson was at that house?"

Ernie Rizzo: "Well yeah. Let me say this, the father had related some conversations to me. There were things that I don't think anybody could have heard through that bedroom door. My gut feeling would have been that there may have been a tape recorder in that bedroom."

Rizzo says the father knew he would need powerful evidence, like an audio tape, before he could take on the extremely powerful Jackson.

Rizzo: "It takes a lot of guts to accuse Michael Jackson of molesting. I think before he made his move he wanted to make sure, and I think he made sure."

Mankiewicz: "Even though that would mean exposing his child to someone who he suspected might be molesting him?"

Rizzo: "I mean, I wouldn't do it."

Salinas also suspects that the boy's father rigged the room with a recording device, but she has no evidence of that either. But she says after that Memorial Day visit, everything changed.

Salinas: "After that weekend, the boy's father stopped going to work."

Salinas says that from then on, to say that Jackson was unwelcome in the home would be an understatement.

Salinas: "Michael's name was never mentioned again in the house. That name was prohibited in the house."

The father has refused to talk to Dateline. He did tell a family member that although he told both his son and to others that he'd secretly recorded his boy and Jackson together, he was in fact bluffing, hoping to get his son to confirm or deny his suspicions. And the family member also quotes the father as saying he wishes he had acted on those suspicions much sooner.

Molestation charge first surfaces
Two months later, the boy told a psychiatrist that Jackson had molested him. The psychiatrist believed him and by law had to tell authorities. That triggered a joint investigation involving both Los Angeles police and the Santa Barbara sheriff's department which has Jurisdiction over Jackson's Neverland Ranch.

Jim Thomas was the sheriff in Santa Barbara county. He's now an NBC News consultant.

Thomas: "The case still depended, like this current one does, on whether the people believe the young boy that said he was molested."

Mankiewicz: "On the strength of the complaining witness."

Thomas: "On the strength of the complaining witness."

Thomas says the boy was believable, and they had a strong case. But this wasn't a typical investigation.

Michael Jackson: "There have been many disgusting statements made recently concerning allegations of improper conduct on my part. These statements about me are totally false."

In August 1993, the scandal hit the press, and with a global audience watching, Jackson and his advisors called the molestation allegations an extortion attempt, which the father has denied. In fact, police investigated and never brought any extortion charges. Still, the father's actions played into that argument because within weeks, the father filed suit asking for $20 million from Michael Jackson.

Jackson: "I am hoping for a speedy end to this horrifying experience to which I have been subjected."

Meanwhile, authorities continued to gather evidence, including letters from Jackson to the boy, letters private eye Ernie Rizzo says he saw back in 1993.

Mankiewicz: "You saw love notes in the 1993 case?"

Rizzo: "In 1993 all he did was write love notes to the kid."

Mankiewicz: "How many are we talking about?"

Rizzo: "The kid had a handful of them, that Jackson would write him. Telling him how much he loved him, can't wait 'til he sees him again. We're going play on the floor. A little game he used to call, 'ruba,' with these little boys. It means you rub me, I rub you."

And perhaps even more revealing, the boy was able to describe marks on Michael Jackson's genitals. When police obtained a search warrant in December allowing them to photograph Jackson's naked body, investigators say the photos matched exactly with what the boy had told them. But despite the evidence they had, authorities didn't file any charges and didn't arrest Jackson.

In January 1994, lawyers for Jackson and for the boy announced they'd settled the civil lawsuit that paid the boy's family an undisclosed sum of money, a figure we now know to be nearly $25 million.

Six months later, frustrated that prosecutors still hadn't charged Jackson with a crime and citing anonymous death threats, the boy's family backed out of the criminal case. The boy would no longer cooperate.

Thomas: "That was a surprise. From the standpoint of what the actual outcome was of our victim not testifying was a blow."

Jackson has said he paid the settlement so he could get on with his career and his life, and that money, which he had plenty of at the time, was no admission of guilt. Also, that he was the victim of a shakedown by a greedy father.

But unlike his hit song of that time, things weren't so black and white.

Mankiewicz: "Back in 1993, Jackson's legal team, his representatives, were repeatedly saying that there was nothing to the charges because this was just a shake down for money, but in fact those two things aren't mutually exclusive. I mean, it could have been a shake down, and it could have been true."

Thomas: "Yeah. I suppose it could. I think you could advance the argument of who would pay that kind of money if they were innocent?"

A second boy?
It turns out there was more to the story. Dateline has learned that the now famous 13-year-old accuser wasn't the only boy investigators talked to, and he wasn't the only one who came away a millionaire.

A primary focus of the 1993 criminal investigation by L.A. police and the Santa Barbara sheriff's department was to find other boys who authorities suspected might have also been abused by Michael Jackson and who would back up the accusations of the original 13-year-old accuser.

Former Santa Barbara sheriff Jim Thomas says Michael Jackson didn't make it easy for investigators.

Mankiewicz: "I'm guessing in your average case, you call in the person who's accused and you question them."

Thomas: "Sure."

Mankiewicz: "Did that happen in this case?"

Thomas: "No. The attorney's would not allow that to occur."

Mankiewicz: "Jackson's attorneys."

Thomas: "Correct."

If the suspect wasn't talking, Thomas says witnesses were. And based on those interviews, investigators thought there might be more than one victim.

Thomas: "We always believed there were eight to 10 other children out there."

Eight to 10 other children molested by Michael Jackson? Jackson has maintained through the years that his interest in children is entirely non-sexual, but in 1993, it was certainly true that a huge number of children had spent the night at Jackson's Neverland Ranch.

Paper trail... destroyed?
And there was paperwork to show it. Dateline has obtained this copy of the visitor contract every guest to Neverland was required to sign before entering Jackson's private domain. Guests promise not to photograph Jackson or "make any disparaging remarks concerning Michael Jackson" to the outside world.

Its purpose is to protect the reclusive star's privacy and those signed contracts are a record of every visitor to Neverland -- including the kids who were sleeping in Michael Jackson's bedroom.

In 1993, as chief of security at Neverland Ranch, Robert Wegner was keeper of those records.

Robert Wegner: "It was our place to list on a chalkboard in the security office where everybody was sleeping in case there was an emergency the fire department could evacuate."

Mankiewicz: "So you'd know where to find everybody?"

Wegner: "Right, there's no names, just numbers. Like for instance if it's Michael's bedroom, it would be one, which was Michael. And then plus one or plus two that was staying in his room."

But Wegner, who has since published his own book about life at Neverland, says while inappropriate, Jackson's habit of inviting children to share his bedroom wasn't illegal. So he says he never brought his suspicions to the attention of police. Wegner simply continued to work and collect information.

Mankiewicz: "During the three years that you worked for Michael Jackson, how many children spent the night in his bedroom?"

Wegner: "I can't tell you how many children. I can tell you how many times. Now it's in excess of this and I'm being conservative, it was a hundred. Now that doesn't mean 100 children-"

Mankiewicz: "Could have been the same child a number of times."

Wegner: "Right."

Mankiewicz: "Of those children how many were boys and how many were girls?"

Wegner: "To my knowledge I think he had one female girl in there one time, the rest were all boys."

Those records of who'd been sleeping overnight at Neverland and how many times they'd been there might have been useful in a police investigation looking into exactly that. But police never saw those records.

Because at the same time that investigators were executing a search warrant, Wegner says he was on the phone with Anthony Pellicano, Michael Jackson's private investigator, who told Wegner to get the records of who had been at Neverland, and deliver them to Pellicano in Los Angeles.

Wegner: "In fact he called me while I was in Michael's bedroom when LAPD was searching his bedroom he called and told me to do this, because he wanted them out of there before LAPD saw -- figured that they should subpoena those."

Mankiewicz: "Wait a minute. So while the LAPD was searching the ranch back in '93, Anthony Pellicano, Mr. Jackson's private investigator called you and said 'bring me the sign-in sheets of all the people who spent the night at Neverland.'"

Wegner: "That's right. And he identified himself by name."

Mankiewicz: "And you did that? You brought them, you brought him the records?

Wegner: "Yes."

Mankiewicz: "Those records were also backed up on computer?"

Wegner: "Yes."

Mankiewicz: "And you deleted those files?"

Wegner: "I was told to delete them."

Mankiewicz: "Sort of effectively wiping a record of who had spent the night at Neverland?"

Wegner: "That's correct, or who was there."

Mankiewicz: "I can almost hear Mr. Jackson's representatives now in response to what you're saying, which is 'This guy wrote a book, this guy wants to make money off Mr. Jackson just like all those other people did.'"

Wegner: "This was a self-published book. I have not hardly made any money. All I wanted to get out was the information."

Former Santa Barbara sheriff Jim Thomas confirms that when they served that search warrant back in 1993, investigators didn't find everything they were looking for.

Thomas: "Well, there were some things that were missing."

Mankiewicz: "Was it your sense or the sense of other investigators that Neverland had been gone over, sanitized before the search warrant was actually served?"

Thomas: "That was an opinion that I received from some investigators that were there."

Mankiewicz: "Somebody had tipped off Jackson and his people."

Thomas: "Apparently so."

Robert Wegner says the sign-in sheets and other visitor records were never specifically asked for in the search warrant, and so therefore it was no crime to give them to Anthony Pellicano.

Mankiewicz: But did you feel like you were destroying evidence?"

Wegner: "I still felt a certain loyalty to my employer. And I was ordered to take them. So I did."

Both Antohony Pellicano and his former employer, Michael Jackson, turned down Dateline's request for comment about the visitor records at Neverland. After talking to witnesses, investigators ultimately did turn up those eight to 10 names of children they suspected might help corroborate the 13-year-old boy's story. But Thomas says most did not help authorities.

Thomas: "Many of them said that they had spent time with Michael Jackson. They had spent time in his bedroom, but that nothing had happened. Some wouldn't talk to us at all."

Thomas says almost all of the children denied they had been molested.

Thomas: "Of everyone that was talked to, two said yes."

That's right. Back in 1993 besides the original accuser, a second boy told police Jackson touched him intimately. Thomas says that second boy was willing to testify against Michael Jackson, but only if the first boy did as well. The second boy was 12 years old, the son of one of Jackson's employees at Neverland. Thomas says the boy accused Jackson of fondling him through his clothes, no sex.

Thomas: "Primarily, what he would admit to was inappropriate touching, something which in California would be a misdemeanor kind of a crime. But what it did do is that also helped corroborate the other victim. Because you had two boys who we don't believe had ever met giving us the same kinds of statements, saying the same things had happened."

Mankiewicz: "That had to make you think, we've got our man here."

Thomas: "I always felt that way."

But remember, in January 1994 the original 13-year-old boy refused to testify and dropped out of the case, citing concerns about safety after receiving anonymous threats.

Mankiewicz: "Would they have been good witnesses?"

Thomas: "The DA thought so, especially the primary, because he had so much detail. And the secondary boy, it had been a number of years since his molestation occurred. And again, it wasn't to the same degree. But there was a lot of promise in the primary victim's testimony."

Mankiewicz: "Even though the primary victim in the 1993 case dropped out and stopped cooperating, you couldn't go forward with the other victim because what he was alleging was not enough of a crime?"

Thomas: "No. He wouldn't do it if the other one didn't. He was ashamed. He was afraid people would question is sexual orientation."

But shame may not have been the only thing influencing the alleged second victim. Dateline has learned that Michael Jackson paid that boy more than $2 million and the money came with a now familiar agreement: The terms of the settlement could never be discussed publicly.

Thomas: "That's what was so disappointing about not being able to go forward with the 1993 case. It was a tremendous amount of frustration. Because we knew there would be other boys."

Because Jackson's settlements came with that secrecy clause, neither the boys, their parents, or even Jackson himself will comment. But Norma Salinas, who was in the boy's home, has no such restriction. And she says no money could repair the damage done to the boy.

Salinas: "Money doesn't buy everything. And that's what I saw in the boy, even though he had money, he didn't look so happy."

Salinas says the $25 million settlement has financed what has essentially become an underground life for the boy and his family. Dateline obtained an exclusive video shot just before he turned 18 in 1998. It's the last time the boy has been photographed in public. Salinas says the money from the settlement has bought him both privacy and isolation.

He's 24 now, just graduated from college, and still hunted by the tabloids. One Los Angeles photo agency estimates that a picture of him today would fetch a photographer $250,000

Jackson has repeatedly said he could never harm any child. He has pleaded not guilty to the charges in the current case, and although the accusations are 10 years apart, Jackson's defense involves the same assertion today, that he's being accused so that his accusers can sue him for part of his fortune.

Dateline offered Michael Jackson and his representatives a chance to comment on the details in our report. Jackson declined our request.

Ten years passed from the first case to the second, 10 years of charges, counter-charges, 10 years of certainty for some, 10 years of doubt for others and 10 years of questions.

If law enforcement and prosecutors had acted faster, would the case have ended differently? What if a civil suit hadn't been brought? Whatever the answers, a decade ago, sheriff Thomas says investigators were more than just frustrated when their case fell apart.

Mankiewicz: "Because you thought it was going to happen again?"

Thomas: "Yeah. There'd be more boys."

Mankiewicz: "And you think the current case proves you correct?"

Thomas: "I've always felt we were correct. I think the current case may show the rest of the world that we were correct."

Details from the 1993 investigation finally may be heard in court. Dateline has learned that Jackson's original accuser is willing to testify in the upcoming criminal trial against Jackson. Prosecutors have contacted the young man, and might call him as a witness. The trial is set to begin January 31.

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The year was 1993, and the biggest star in the world was Michael Jackson. The hit song was "Black or White," his universal appeal so powerful that at the Super Bowl, he was the halftime show, his message that children can heal the world beamed to millions.

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1992 he states in an interview with Oprah Winfrey that he has the skin condition 'vitiligo' in which answered some of the speculation of him whitening his skin that had been in circulation at the time.

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1992 he states in an interview with Oprah Winfrey that he has the skin condition 'vitiligo' in which answered some of the speculation of him whitening his skin that had been in circulation at the time.

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Skipping to 18:30 in this interview, discussed is the colour change of Michael Jackson's skin tone and his personal opinion and feelings towards the stories written about him.

He states that is he proud of his African American heritage and that he has a skin condition and uses makeup to cover it. Then moves on to discuss his plastic surgery and why as a celebrity he is more interested in an artist or celebrity's work instead of personal life and as a member of the audience we are able to denote that Michael doesn't want to talk about his appearance and his personal life. He is projecting on other celebrities and how much plastic surgery they have had.

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1991 the album 'Dangerous' review by Pitchfork 2016

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1991 the album 'Dangerous' review by Pitchfork 2016

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Moving on to Michael in the 90s and his career started of with the release of the album 'Dangerous'.

In August 2016 Pitchfork reviewed Michael's album 'Dangerous'.

Throughout this review of the album, overall they chose to give it an 8.6 out of 10, which considerably is pretty high.

The first sentence the reader comes across says it all: "At the time of Dangerous, Michael Jackson's universal popularity was on par with pizza and the polio vaccine. It was the last time that Michael Jackson was Michael Jackson".

He was in his prime when this album was released. From then on it was a downward spiral for Michael's personal life but upwards for his professional.

Within this album was the song 'Black or White' in which spent seven weeks at number one in the Billboard top 100.

Although this is meant to be a review of the album 'Dangerous' this article seems to be more of a review of his life and the author seems to be sidetracked by Michael's personal state of mind in which is a common theme in reviews and articles about Michael after his death.

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On the night of November 14, 1991, 500 million people scattered across 27 nations simultaneously watched Michael Jackson grab his crotch 17 times. He simulated masturbation, shattered car windows with crowbars, and unleashed the primal screams expected from a man who owned publishing rights to the Beatles catalogue. Then he turned into a black panther. The video ends with Bart Simpson striking a B-Boy pose in a Michael Jackson shirt, and ordering Homer to "chill out, homeboy." It shattered all previous viewing records on Fox.

The $4 million, 11-minute unedited telecast of "Black or White" ranks among the Smithsonian-worthy artifacts of '90s pop monoculture-up there with Nirvana trashing their instruments at the '92 VMAs, the premiere of "Summertime" after The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, and Hillary Clinton hitting the Macarena at the '96 DNC. No one ever had more juice than Jackson did at the time, and it's difficult to imagine that anyone ever will again.

This was right around the time when they named him an official king of the Ivory Coast. In Gabon, 100,000 greeted him with signs reading "Welcome Home, Michael." His universal popularity was on par with pizza and the polio vaccine. Safe enough to be Captain EO at Disneyland, hood-certified enough to throw up the set with the Crips.

The 33-year-old had recently signed the most lucrative contract in recording history, worth hundreds of millions, giving him his own label and the highest royalty rate in the industry. What's more, no one thought it was out of line for someone who had sold close to 70 million records in the previous decade. In the press, Sony claimed the deal would reap them billions.

So when he released the first single from Dangerous, his first album in four years, fanatical interest led MTV, VH1, BET, and Fox to televise it at the same time-offering the greatest strategic victory since the Berlin Wall tumbled two years prior. And even though Jackson technically didn't cause the collapse of East German Communism, his star wattage was so supreme that the Stasi secret police spied on him during his 1988 Berlin concert, fearing that obsessive MJ fans would accomplish what Reagan couldn't.

With "Black or White," Jackson lashed out at his public perception. In the interim since 1987's Bad, he'd grappled with both outlandish rumors (buying the Elephant Man's bones, sleeping in a hyperbaric chamber) and some that drew blood (allegations of bleaching his skin). The innocent popcorn-eating Michael of was gone, but calling him "Wacko Jacko" was slander. He wanted us to know he was a man, an eccentric sure, but an adult with deeply rooted beliefs.

Released only five months before the LA Riots, the Rodney King beating and murder of Latasha Harlins almost certainly factored into Jackson's increasingly political slant. "Black or White" articulated a utopian vision of a post-racial future while acknowledging the sins of contemporary bigotry. He demands equality, shouting that he "ain't second to none." He growls, "I ain't scared of no sheets" (presumably Klansmen). Its hook offers his dream of a color-blind society, echoing Martin Luther King.

But this was Michael Jackson, not O' Shea. Being King of Pop meant the need for mass appeal. The "Black or White" video exists as a microcosm of Dangerous itself. It potently affirms Jackson's manhood, offers passionate screeds against racial strife, gang violence, and a parasitic American media. This is the album as multi-media spectacle, a precursor to , with accusations of infidelity substituted for videos of Macaulay Culkin doing air guitar windmills to a Slash guitar solo and lip sync rapping about turf wars.

The lone #1 single from the 32-million selling Dangerous, "Black or White" spent seven weeks atop the Billboard charts. Directed by John Landis ("Thriller," National Lampoon's Animal House) the first quarter of its video reveals Jackson's mischievous child-like streak, with Culkin towing out Spinal Tap-sized speakers, amplifying the volume to "ARE YOU NUTS!?!," and shredding so hard that George Wendt gets ejected into the stratosphere screaming "Da Bears."

It blends into his idealistic visionary side that wanted to heal the world through philanthropy and moonwalking. There is pop locking with Balinese dancers, rain dances with Native Americans, folk dances in front of the Kremlin, and the serenade of a Hindu goddess on a freeway. This is the magical Michael Jackson of our early memories-the man with the graceful dance moves and lithe falsetto that seemed celestially ordained (masking a notoriously intense perfectionist streak). Faces of all races harmoniously morph into one another, the most cutting edge FX that 1991 had to offer.

In the third section, boy becomes man: Jackson struts through a wall of flames, Henley shirt open, screaming at his enemies like a mad king. It gives way to Culkin rapping in shades and oversized gold chains, which is just as well considering that this is the man who actually spit the bars. Jackson's embrace of hip-hop not only aligned him with the popular sound of black (and white) youth culture, it adds an aggressive masculinity unseen in his catalogue, and ultimately paved the way for the late period Biggie therapy session.

Of course, in the final section, Jackson turns into a black panther. You understand that meaning. So did millions of parents in Tipper Gore America, who flooded Fox and its local affiliates with phone calls, forcing Jackson's team to re-cut and sanitize the video.

A quarter century later, it seems absurd that Michael Jackson smashing a few windows before turning into a Jungle Book character could be cause for mass protest, but you have to remember how adored and family-friendly Michael Jackson was. My parents only owned two records: Thriller and *Bad. *So until I was 9 years old, I listened to those two almost every single day of my life, and honestly I didn't really need anything else. Michael Jackson was my entire conception of music. Millions more could say the same thing.

So when he dropped "Black or White," it was shocking. If he was previously pop's Peter Pan figure, Jackson had suddenly adopted a more carnal streak, but even here it was cartoonish. If the adult world looked dull and stifling, Jackson's imagination offered a hope that it was possible not to wind up like George Wendt, bloated on a couch with a bored housewife. You could hang out with Macaulay Culkin, dance on top of the Statue of Liberty, and if all else failed, you could transform into a panther and bounce.

Imagine being Teddy Riley in 1991. You've gone from humble origins in Harlem to inventing New Jack Swing; you've produced multiple hits for your own band Guy, Bobby Brown, and Keith Sweat ("I Want Her"). Then late one night, you get a phone call from Michael Jackson telling you that he needs you to produce his new album-in effect making you the new Quincy Jones. All before your 24th birthday.

Before Riley headed west, Jackson had labored on* Dangerous* for over a year to varying degrees of success. Something always seemed off. Bad might have been the last album before hip-hop became the de facto soundtrack of urban culture. 1988 changed everything. Public Enemy, Rakim, and Big Daddy Kane left the competition sounding effete and timid. Gang wars and the crack epidemic continued to inflame inner cities. Songs like "Smooth Criminal" seemed obsolete.

Meanwhile Jackson's sister Janet had recently delivered a hard-stomping R&B-pop classic in 1989's Rhythm Nation 1814. Its influence on her older brother was so great that he even asked Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis to produce Dangerous. Out of loyalty to Janet, they turned him down. According to his engineer, Bruce Swedien, Michael was searching for something "very street that young people would be able to identify with."

He wasn't alone. His longtime competition Prince sought to re-connect in a similar fashion, forming the New Power Generation with rapper, Tony M. Released just one month before* Dangerous*, the purple one's Diamonds and Pearls* *exists as a companion piece, documents of blurring eras. As '80s pop gave way to '90s hip-hop, they sought to find their place in the re-configured landscape. Except while Prince predictably constructed his own insular unit, Jackson looked outwards to Riley, the hottest producer of the moment.

If that seems obvious today, it wasn't at the start of 1991. Many mainstream artists still saw hip-hop as a passing fad or stereotyped it as nihilistic and violent. Jackson needed to walk the fine line between disposable bubblegum rap like Vanilla Ice and MC Hammer, and alienating longtime disciples with something too radical.

After preparing grooves in Q-Tip's Soundtrack Studio in Queens, Riley flew out to the Neverland Ranch to meet the master. There was a tour of the trophy room, the carousel, and the zoo, and then after they talked late into the night, Jackson put Riley on his personal helicopter and had him flown to the Universal City Hilton, a short distance from the San Fernando Valley studios where they recorded Dangerous. Riley began work the next day.

Jackson established nerve centers at Record One and Larrabee Studios, just a few miles down Ventura Blvd. The latter had the SSL mixing console that Riley needed to make the tracks slap, and despite his pop reputation, Jackson wanted his new songs as hard as humanly possible. Engineers remember Jackson demanding that they play the New Jack Swing songs so loud that your ears bled. He invariably blew up a pair of headphones each session.

As you'd expect, the recording process boasted its requisite share of idiosyncrasy. Nancy Reagan visited the studio once, requiring the Secret Service to search the place for hours prior to her visit. Brooke Shields called frequently to talk to Michael, who materialized every day in the same black dress pants and red button-down shirt (he had a clothing rack of just two items).

One night, he left early to go to Tower Records, which had been shut down just for him to spend $1,500 on CDs. Another afternoon, he ordered several $900 remote controlled motorcycles brought to the studio. Despite usually eating meals prepared by a personal chef, Jackson requested McDonald's for lunch on one occasion. He'd never actually eaten there before, but someone told him it was good, so he ordered one of everything on the menu and took a small bite of each. (The fish sandwich particularly wowed him.)

Then there was Madonna. During March and April of 1991, Jackson and Madonna went out to dinner at least three times, which led tabloids to immediately report that they were dating. During these conversations, Jackson reportedly asked her to duet on the unfinished version of what became, "In the Closet."

"I think all he wanted was a provocative title, and ultimately he didn't want the content of the song to live up to the title," Madonna said at the time. "I said, 'Look, Michael, if you want to do something with me, you have to be willing to go all the way or I'm not going to do it.'"

His engineers remember her visiting him once at the studio, where they spent a little time in his private room in the back. "When I asked Michael later about her visit he said that she 'scared' him," his engineer Rob Disner later said. "I think we all speculated that she tried to make a 'move' on him but Michael never said. In any event, we never saw her again."

The creative union most likely fizzled due to major stylistic divergences. Madonna imagined an extreme makeover: giving him a Caesar haircut, getting him out of his bedazzled military uniforms, taking him to New York and hanging out with the voguers, House of Xtravaganza. Michael wanted to go hip-hop and ultimately enlisted rappers Heavy D and Aqil Davidson of Wreckx N' Effect as the principal guest vocalists.

During the summer of '91, competition broke out within the two studios and three rooms dedicated to *Dangerous. At Record One, *Bill Bottrell and Bruce Swedien worked on the album's softer more adult contemporary material (and "Black or White"). At Larrabee, Riley handled the New Jack Swing half. Even though engineers remember the sessions as "giggly, innocent, and so much fun," Jackson did his part to foster a friendly rivalry-bouncing back and forth between studios and taunting his teams, "Oh boy, they got some smelly jelly going on in there."

As Sony's deadlines kept getting blown, Riley's beats began forming the spine of the record. After being initially awestruck, Riley asserted more and more control at Jackson's behest. "It worked itself out when he shook me," Riley told HipHopWired in 2009. "[He was like] listen, you're going to have to really produce me like you've produced a new artist. I need you to talk to me, I need you to criticize me, I need you to comment, I need you to give me all of you. I want the Teddy Riley that got that record out of Guy and the records out of your previous artists."

If Michael danced in the studio, it meant that a track sounded right. No matter what, Jackson ensured that the melodies were his own, while Riley sought to merge his trademark New Jack Swing with Quincy Jones' baroque pop. At one point, L.A. Reid and Babyface were brought in to help produce, but none of their contributions made the final cut. Over 60 songs wound up being written over a period of 18 months. It cost $10 million in total, not counting video costs.

When Jackson revealed the final tracklist to Riley, the latter expected to see his name once or twice. Instead, Riley produced six of the 14 songs-arguably all the material that has aged the best. As a result of his contributions, you can convincingly argue that Dangerous is Jackson's final classic album and the best full-length of the New Jack Swing era.

As soon as you pressed play on the tape, Riley's drums attacked with Scud-era force. "Jam." The sound of glass breaking, bells reminiscent of LL Cool J 's "Jingling Baby," funky drums that knock like Clyde Stubblefield was behind the kit, and roaring saxophone licks. The words "you want to get up and jam" are initially buried in the mix, but the vocals are as acrobatic as a highlight reel, so it only made sense that the Chicago Bulls used it in their 1992 championship video. Starring Michael Jordan and Kris Kross, the "Jam" clip became almost as iconic as "Black or White." Filmed in an abandoned rat-infested armory on the South Side of Chicago, it finds Michael Jackson teaching Jordan how to dance and the other MJ teaching him to hoop. Through the wonders of special effects, Jackson ultimately swishes shots that not even Steph Curry can hit; but not even the greatest dancer of the last half-century can teach Jordan how to dance. Point Jackson.

Riley recruited Jackson's favorite rapper Heavy D for four nimble bars, his baritone artfully offsetting the singer's falsetto growl. The first song wastes no time in articulating the album's leitmotif. Jackson urges the world to come together, decries false prophets crying of doom, and admits that the universe is a complicated place full of "tears for fears." He's "conditioned by the system" and doesn't want to be preached to. His ultimate realization is that you have to "live each day like it's the last," find inner peace to stay strong against the haters, and when in doubt, jam.

You can see these themes stressed on nearly every song. "Why You Wanna Trip on Me" exists as a mission statement. This is the Michael who fame has isolated and forced into retreat. There's a newfound menace in his voice, an angelic sneer, as he recites a litany of crippling ailments (world hunger, illiteracy, disease, gangs, homelessness, drug addiction, corruption, police brutality)-and yet ironically, he has somehow become the media's bullseye. Written during his 33rd year, Jackson can't help but implicitly compare himself to Jesus-a popular healer who wants to help, misinterpreted and publicly crucified.

But even though Teddy Riley had Jesus, Jesus never had Teddy Riley. These drums could turn stone walls to white sand, the vocals are meticulously layered, the multiple bridges leave just enough room for interpretative dance moves. Jackson adapts seamlessly to the new genre, funkier than Guy, more lyrically incisive than Bobby Brown.

Without Madonna, "In the Closet" received a cameo from Princess Stephanie of Monaco, mainly because Michael liked her sultry speaking voice even though she couldn't sing. Shot in the desert, the Herb Ritts video stars Naomi Campbell at her pret a porter peak. Michael wears a tank top with a plunging neckline. It's probably the most erotically charged of his career, about as far from "Thriller" as Basic Instinct is to The Mask. * *

You can trace Timbaland and the Neptunes experiments to a song like "She Drives Me Wild," in which their former mentor created the percussion tracks from automotive sounds: car horns, motorcycles idling and revving, vehicles starting and screeching. This is probably Jackson's closest attempt to match his sister's* Rhythm Nation*.

Some interpreted it as a desire to catch up, but it's more emblematic of his lust to conquer. If Off the Wall was Jackson mastering late '70s soul and disco, Thriller was his perfection of '80s pop. This is Jackson showing that he could blend hip-hop and R&B better than anyone had previously imagined. The new decade starts here, with artists like Mary J. Blige, Jodeci, TLC, R. Kelly, et al. taking cues from Jackson and Riley's alchemy. To say nothing of Kanye, Drake, and countless others still atop the charts.

Dangerous has its flaws. The ballads on the back (non-Riley) half of the album could pass for gospel renditions of Celine Dion schmaltz. Despite its noble message and Jackson's statement that it was the song he was most proud of writing, "Heal the World" is essentially "We Are The World Pt. 2." The theme from Free Willy, "Will You Be There" offers a sweet sentiment, but it's not exactly "I Believe I Can Fly." "Gone Too Soon" falls into that same category of beautifully intentioned crooning that ultimately sounds like a dentist office doxology, especially when contrasted with the brilliant funk of the first side.

If nothing else, they display the full range of his sharply targeted social consciousness, one that encompassed environmentalism, the AIDS pandemic, and every other affliction that still plagues the globe. In that sense, Dangerous might be Jackson's most complete album, spanning dance music to dark nights of the soul. It's a portrait of a persecuted genius, desperate to stay relevant, burdened with guilt and rage, lashing out at villains and offering inspiration to allies-always making it seem effortless.

My favorite song on Dangerous is "Remember the Time." Like so many others on this album, it's inextricable from its video, which also received the MJ treatment: simultaneous premieres on MTV, Fox and BET in February of 1992. Directed by John Singleton, it stars Eddie Murphy, Iman, the Pharcyde, Magic Johnson, Tiny Lister, and some adorable striped tabbies. It's probably the only song from Dangerous that can still go off in any club on any given night.

As far as I'm concerned, it's the greatest music video ever made, a New Jack Swing hybrid of Cleopatra and Indiana Jones. There are swirling hourglasses, busts of Pharaohs, hand drums, wriggling snakes, and Michael Jackson as a gilded wizard with dance moves so smooth that he can even elude the future Deebo. He's so cool that steals the Pharaoh's wife (who also happens to be David Bowie 's future wife) and then disappears into a cloud of gold dust, just as his capture seems imminent.

Being a child of the '80s and '90s meant that Magic Johnson, Eddie Murphy, and Michael Jordan were your heroes. (Maybe you liked Larry Bird or something, but I assume if that's the case, you've long stopped reading this review.) And in his videos, Michael Jackson managed to best them all, making him the undisputed King. For most of my pre-adolescence, he was a pure sorcerer, a demigod immune to the gravitational pull and perimeters that stifle the rest of us.

At 10 years old, I assumed the video was shot somewhere in Egypt, because even though I no longer believed in bullshit like Santa Claus, I still accepted Michael Jackson at face value. Besides, nothing else he did seemed like it operated under any budgetary constraint. Only about a year ago did I learn that it was shot at Mack Sennett Studios in Silver Lake, a soundstage across the street from my apartment that I'd obliviously walked past thousands of times. It was one of those depressing realizations that makes much less sense than believing that Michael Jackson built a time machine and brought the star of Beverly Hills Cop, a supermodel, and the best point guard ever, along with him to the time of Ramses the Great. Watch that video again and tell me otherwise.

In that same way, it's difficult to listen to Dangerous without considering the child molestation allegations that greeted him shortly after he came home from its marathon 69-concert tour. It's tricky not to read too much into a song like "In the Closet." How do you reconcile that someone as pure of spirit as Jackson could potentially have a monstrous streak?

Whether you believe the allegations or not, it's clear that he was never the same after Dangerous. The damage became too absolute, the vitriol aimed his way too severe for someone that sensitive. Never again could his music exist on its own merits, the illimitable genius ravaged by prescription pills, insomnia, and obliterating pressure. Dangerous is the last time that Michael Jackson was Michael Jackson.

In an interview given shortly after the release of Dangerous, Jackson said that his goal was to do "an album that was like Tchaikovsky's 'Nutcracker Suite.' In a thousand years from now, people would still be listening to it.... Something that would live forever." He's been gone for over half a decade, but I still think about this quote every time I walk past that sound stage-considering the possibilities that Michael Jackson unlocked in every song, the infinite magic that he could create out of an empty room, the orphic visions of one of our final myths.

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On the night of November 14, 1991, 500 million people scattered across 27 nations simultaneously watched Michael Jackson grab his crotch 17 times. He simulated masturbation, shattered car windows with crowbars, and unleashed the primal screams expected from a man who owned publishing rights to the Beatles catalogue.

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Here is one of Michael's appearances on at the Grammy's in 1984.

We are able to denote Michael is in him prime career moves in the sequin jacket that is embellished all over to the large glitzy sunglasses in which he chose to wear throughout his later career.

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Throughout his career the audience are able to denote Michael's change in appearance. One of the initial changes denoted was his hair. From the 70's and the large afro in which he was known for to the late 80's in which (as seen below) his hair becomes long and there is a specific piece falling in front of his face.

During an advertisement deal with Pepsi Michael suffered third degree burns on his head which contributed to his hair loss that he has discussed.

During his time in the spotlight Michael received much speculation about whether he wore wigs or not. Especially after the third degree burns and his hair growing so long; there were questions. The article states at the end that 'Michael as never truly happy with himself' which in first is a large assumption to make after his death when he has no way of disputing this. Although he changed his appearance many times and dramatically throughout his career one could analyse this is just an extension of the masks and sunglasses he used to wear to bridge a gap between him and the public.

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He may be the King of pop, but Michael Jackson's transformation from thick afro hair to smooth silky locks has always drawn attention. During the filming of an advert, an unfortunate accident meant Michael Jackson was burned. Here's a closer look at how this affected his hair loss. Read more Men's Health features.
Michael Jackson Real Hair

Michael Jackson Afro

As a young man, the Michael Jackson afro became an essential part of his identity. The thick afro hairstyle was synonymous with the distinctive 70s look of the Jackson 5. This is possibly the most natural hair Michael ever had and was before he started to alter it.

Michael Jackson Curly Hair

As he grew as a solo artist, he increased the alterations to his hair. Perhaps the most famous style was Michael Jackson's short hair. The short curls became a part of the iconic Thriller look. It is thought that he was able to control his natural afro hair with chemical straighteners to create a wet curly look.

Michael Jackson Pepsi Accident

It was in 1984 that Michael Jackson experienced a tragic accident during the filming of a Pepsi advert. The pyrotechnics used in the commercial went off at the wrong time and set Jackson's hair on fire. Although it was put out relatively quickly, he suffered second and third-degree burns on the top of his head.

Michael Jackson Bald

Other than starting his long and troubled relationship with drugs, this changed Michael Jackson's hair forever. Despite claims that he had laser treatment, the scar hair loss would most likely have left a permanent bald spot on his scalp.

Serious burns to an area that grows hair will damage the follicles and create scar tissue. This is called cicatricial and is, unfortunately, extremely difficult to treat. Other that wearing wigs or transplanting hair, there isn't a natural way to regrow hair on the affected area.

Did Michael Jackson Wear Wigs?

There has been a lot of debate around whether or not Michael Jackson began to wear wigs after his accident. It is generally accepted that in his later life he did begin to wear lace front wigs. This seems especially apparent when Michael had long hair as it's unlikely he could have grown it so long after burning his head.

Interestingly, the more plastic surgery that he got done, the more noticeable Michael Jackson's facial hair became. This may be because the change in his skin pigmentation made it more obvious.

Although there is no imagery of Michael Jackson without a wig, it is noticeable in certain pictures. If anything, this demonstrates the emotional trauma that Michael Jackson must have experienced, and that he never fully accepted his own appearance.

On That Note

While Michael Jackson changed his hair quite a lot during his life, the amount of plastic surgery made it hard to tell what was natural. Michael's constant focus on his appearance and hair seems to suggest a man who was never truly happy with himself. If there is anything to learn from Michael Jackson's hair loss, is that trying to cover up your imperfections can actually make you worse off. If you are worried about this or your current rate of hair loss then it is best to speak to a professional hair restoration doctor.

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He may be the King of pop, but Michael Jackson's transformation from thick afro hair to smooth silky locks has always drawn attention. During the filming of an advert, an unfortunate accident meant Michael Jackson was burned. Here's a closer look at how this affected his hair loss.

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Michael Jackson and the Pepsi advert in which he received burns to his head 1987

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Michael Jackson and the Pepsi advert in which he received burns to his head 1987

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Michael Jackson's Never-Before-Seen 1984 Pepsi comercial

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Forbes article from his bodyguard's perspective 

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Forbes article from his bodyguard's perspective 

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Many articles I have come across are written after the death of Michael Jackson almost as if he is still alive. Michael's persona as a celebrity is still as strong as ever in the media and press. Articles are still being written about him and his career. But they are also more personal and reflective of his life and analyse his mentality when he was in his prime during the 80s and 90s. Hyperlinked is a Forbes article that was written recently after interviewing Michael's bodyguard who discusses what Michael was like behind the curtain; his personal life in which he often did not show to the public and press.

the article discusses topics such as how Michael would love to read non-fiction books and find out about philosophers to apply it to his life.

Also quoted is "He was intelligent and clever man who was thrown in there at five years old. He was ruthless and he had the business side from his father."
Connecting his private life with his professional, this is emphasising the fact that Michael although not necessarily mentally stable he was business minded like his father.

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For a decade, Matt Fiddes had a ringside seat to watch Michael Jackson's financial decline and fall. Fiddes was a bodyguard and close friend of Jackson, right up to the time of the star's death in 2009. At that point, reports said that the King of Pop was $500 million in debt. His spiraling money problems were caused by legal cases and lavish spending on his Neverland Valley Ranch in California and elsewhere. Since then, the Michael Jackson estate's has bounced back, to show total earnings of $4 billion when adjusted for inflation, before and after the singer's death aged 50.

Fiddes is now 38 and runs the MF international martial arts brand, which operates hundreds of franchised fitness schools that he values at $45 million.

In an interview, Fiddes talks about his personal access: Michael Jackson was "a normal guy" who cultivated the eccentric image to keep himself interesting and sell records, his former bodyguard claims.

From the interview, it is also possible to draw out some business lessons from Jackson's experience. Jackson's music was bought by millions, though some of the plans simply went wrong:

Chose the right people - for the right price.

Fiddes was introduced to Jackson in 1998 by illusionist Uri Geller. "Uri knew that I had a successful business, while Michael's finances had taken a decline," Fiddes says. "It became quite apparent early on that there were some money difficulties. Uri wanted to make sure that his best friend was looked after. Michael was complaining that security companies were charging him anything up to $200,000 a month. I was already self-made so there was nothing I wanted from him. I had the adjoining room to his and the other bodyguards were standing outside the room." While Jackson kept some costs such as these under control, he had huge overheads for his other entourage, for example famously spending as much as $6 million in a single store on a shopping expedition.

Fiddes was just 20 when he started working with Jackson. He found himself mixing with Mohammed al Fayed, who then owned Harrods; as well as entertainers Geller, Britney Spears, David Blaine and Whitney Houston.

"Still, Michael was the most misunderstood man in the world and the loneliest sometimes," Fiddes says. "He was an introvert, only happy when he was performing, or when he was with his children. Everybody needs friends to advise them."

Fiddes says: "I'd see Michael reading four or five books a week - nonfiction books, and he would study all the motivational speakers. I wish sometimes that he had put that side of himself out to the public. Stevie Wonder said that Michael would drive him crazy when he was young, asking so many questions, but he would say 'Yes, but that's how you have to learn.'"

Jackson was first and foremost an artist, but he never forgot business, Fiddes says. "He was intelligent and clever man who was thrown in there at five years old. He was ruthless and he had the business side from his father." Jackson was prepared to make bold moves - the sponsorship deal with , the purchase of the Beatles' catalog - though towards the end of his life, deals were unraveling and some of the bigger risks turned bad.

"The only competition Michael had was himself, and that's why things came to a bad end," says Fiddes. "He set high goals - very good for business. But he had to try to beat the biggest album of all time, which was his own Thriller. Unfortunately, things changed when the Internet came along and Michael didn't really embrace it so when his last album came out, Invincible in 2001, he sold just six million copies of it and I saw him so upset."

Keep feeding the publicity junkies.

For all the genius of Jackson's music, he was desperate for publicity and this led to some misguided choices, Fiddes notes, based on his insider tour experience: "We would get to a city and he would have a meeting and say 'how do we make the papers tomorrow? Does anyone have any ideas? How can I keep this mystery going? I want my life to be to be the greatest show on earth.' The sticky tape on his nose and face mask and the hat, he was behind every story. Michael's newspapers would get delivered to him every day in hotel suites. Sometimes they would give him a battering and I would remove those stories. He pulled me aside one day: 'This paper goes from pages 9 to 16. I am not silly, Matt, can you show the missing pages to me please?' And I would say, 'Sorry, Michael. I threw them away.' So I had to go and get him another copy. He used to say 'you've got to be interesting for people to be interested in you.'

"Behind it all, he was just a normal guy, really, and he would actually make an effort to 'become Michael Jackson.' He would dress up and put the makeup on, it was just an act. It backfired on him a few times clearly. People thought he was weird and strange. Maybe he took it too far, but he wanted to be on the front cover of the National Inquirer because his best friend Elizabeth Taylor was there. He went to a burns center one day and saw an oxygen chamber. He jumped in there quickly for pictures then suggested he slept in an oxygen chamber every night. The story went worldwide, like all that about the monkey business with Bubbles the chimp."

As an escape from his financial problems, Jackson agreed to a series of 10 concerts at London's O2 arena which should have raised approximately £50 million.

Fiddes was with Jackson at London's Lanesborough Hotel as he prepared to announce the shows. He recalls the star was intoxicated after drinking whisky and was very unhappy about the demands of the concerts.

"The 10 shows sold out in minutes and the number was upped to 50," Fiddes says. "He was devastated - it was pretty much the end of it then. He was worried he was going to be shot onstage and wanted a bulletproof vest. He couldn't do one show. Even that documentary they made about him - Michael Jackson's This Is It from 2009 - is pretty much footage pieced together. He doesn't really get though one song. If you have a look at it he changes costumes about ten times in one song."

There is a commercial life after death.

Jackson's earnings were $75 million before tax in 2017, landing him the No. 1 spot on the Forbes list of highest-paid dead celebrities. Jackson's earnings were even more in 2016 at $825 million - the highest annual total for any entertainer dead or alive, mostly from the sale of his half of the /ATV catalog including the Beatles' songs.

"He is more popular than ever," Fiddes notes. "I go around schools and kids' assembles. I talk about fitness, training and bullying. But when it comes to question time with even 6-year-olds, all they want to ask you about is Michael Jackson. It shocks me. All the allegations around him have just fallen away. Michael would have loved to have seen the response these kids have how. They try to imitate him. He's got shows on Broadway and the West End. It was so hard to get a show nobody wanted to know but when he died - boom - everything changed."

Fiddes is writing a memoir with help from Simon Cowell's brother Tony, to be released before the 10 th anniversary of Jackson's death.

"We are going to chuck out all the myths, all the rubbish about this guy, about his nose falling off, all this crazy stuff, Instead it will be what he was really like behind closed doors and show people you don't become the biggest superstar in the world by accident. Even if you are a great singer and dancer you need to have a business brain behind you to build an empire."

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The Personal Story Behind 'Normal Guy' Michael Jackson's $4 Billion Turnaround, By His Bodyguard

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For a decade, Matt Fiddes had a ringside seat to watch Michael Jackson's financial decline and fall. Fiddes was a bodyguard and close friend of Jackson, right up to the time of the star's death in 2009. At that point, reports said that the King of Pop was $500 million in debt.

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This is one of Michael's few appearances on a red carpet  towards the final few years of his life in which his is being shouted at by journalists to answer questions. You are also able to denote in the background fans screaming for him just as they were back in the 80s.

Michael's appearance is frail and he is once again hiding behind the sunglasses in which many said gave him the boundary between him and the outside world.

This was one of his first appearances after he was acquitted of the sexual assault charges.

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Michael Jackson   red carpet World Music Award 2006

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Michael as the ultimate Hollywood celebrity

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Michael as the ultimate Hollywood celebrity

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Michael's interview with Jet, about his new album 'Bad' after four years of no music being released.

Michael states that it is like nothing he has really produced or written before.

The interview reveals the more personal side of Michael (he did few interviews during his single career) and how sometimes he would like to 'hide away' from all the fame. Discussed is even how sometimes it hurts when Jackson sees the crazy stories written about him. This interview is more based in his personal life than his career; even though there are references to his songs; it is the stories behind his songs that are discussed.

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“Photographs of Hollywood star homes and snippets of gossip featured alongside news of the latest film releases” (p.129)

These are common and have been common since the 1950s with Hollywood stars.
Shingler, M., (2012) Star Studies: A critical guide. Palgrave MacMilan. p.129.

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The shift from the articles about Michael in his prime to his later life are unfathomable. In the early years Michael was represented as one of the biggest and best stars of all time.

Whereas in the modern era (early 2000's) reports on Michael shifted to gossip columns and harsh articles all about his personal life more than this career.

Below is an example of a magazine (tabloid) front page from 2010 on Michael Jackson and his children even after his death in 2009.

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Globe magazine Michael Jackson Prince Charles Barack Obama Price Is Right | Michael jackson, Michelle and barack obama, Death of michael jackson

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Feb 8, 2020 - Globe magazine Michael Jackson Prince Charles Barack Obama Price Is Right

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"The accidental celebrity" (Redmond, p.6)

Michael Jackson was brought into the Jackson 5 (a family band) at the young age of 11. Little did anyone know the success that the band would achieve over the years and the talent that young Michael had on stage. Many theorists have stated how Michael 'changed' from a shy little boy to a performer once on the stage. However, with this came the lack of childhood and choice in Michael's life as he was thrown into the spotlight of the media and public.

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Michael has now in the eyes of the public reached a level of celebrity status in which he has earned; with number ones all across the billboard 100 Michael would classify for the "Achieved celebrity type" in the eyes of Redmond.

Stating that the achieved celebrity “derives from the perceived accomplishments of the individual in open competition…which would include film stars, pop stars, sports stars, leading artists, inventors, elite scientists, and grand philanthropists".
Redmond, S.., (2014) Celebrity and the media. MacMilan International Higher Education. p.6.

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"In academic terms, the term celebrity is used to define a person whose name, image, lifestyle, and opinions carry cultural and economic worth, and who are first and foremost idealised popular media constructions”
Redmond, S.., (2014) Celebrity and the media. MacMilan International Higher Education. p.5.

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This same magazine that was being sold in 1980 is now for sale on Ebay for £51 as memorabilia of Michael Jackson and Price.

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April 1980 Black Stars ~ MICHAEL JACKSON, rare PRINCE interview | eBay

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Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for April 1980 Black Stars ~ MICHAEL JACKSON, rare PRINCE interview at the best online prices at eBay! Free delivery for many products!

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"Michael Jackson and His World"

Just from the magazine cover the audience are able to denote that in April of 1980 the world (not only the music world) really was all about Michael and his lifestyle.

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Releasing his first 'make or break' album 'Off the Wall' was Michael's first step to becoming a solo artist.

Below, is an "oral history" on how Michael's new image was formed; with help from Mike Salisbury and Stephen Harvey. In which describe how they created the new image for the artist.

However, this article was written in 2017 and is a historical account of how Michael rebranded himself therefore not a personal account at the time. Putting into question whether this article really gives us an insight into the rebranding of the solo career that led Michael Jackson into the 80s and 90s.

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It was 1979 and Michael Jackson was at a crossroads. The dynamic lead singer for The Jacksons was only 21 years old, yet he was already a Motown-seasoned star with 10 years of professional recording/performing experience under his belt. But Jackson wanted more than just stardom. He thirsted for superstardom, and on his own terms at that. Toward his goal of shedding his teenybopper image, Jackson teamed with legendary producer Quincy Jones to record a make-or-break solo album, his first as an adult, titled Off the Wall. The LP would feature three original compositions that Jackson hoped would earn him entry into the pantheon of trailblazing R&B singer/songwriters, including James Brown, Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye and Sly Stone. Having charted a fresh musical direction for himself, only one thing remained unresolved - he needed an image that would signal his newfound maturity to the world.

Now celebrated as one of the greatest albums of all time, Off the Wall has sold more than 8 million copies in the United States alone. The LP made Jackson the first solo artist to have four singles from the same album peak on the top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100 chart. The single Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough nabbed the singer his first Grammy Award for best male R&B vocal performance. The black-and-white style featured on the cover of Off the Wall helped fuel Jackson's quantum leap to superstardom. The singer employed the style for his breakthrough music videos, including Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough and Billie Jean, as well as for his definitive television performance. In all, Jackson would tap the style for the entirety of his solo career, until his death in June 2009.

What follows is an oral history of how Jackson joined with branding specialist/creative director Mike Salisbury and photographer Stephen Harvey to conceive and create the album cover for Off the Wall. The tuxedoed image they devised gave Jackson an iconic look that would subliminally link the singer to swing-era legends such as Frank Sinatra and Gene Kelly, while also helping Jackson become a record-breaking artist justified in declaring himself "The King of Pop."

Mike Salisbury: Up to that point [1979], I had branded Rolling Stone, and I'd been creative director at three or four advertising agencies, as well as at Warner Bros. Records. But I had never branded a person. That changed after I saw Michael in The Wiz. I was impressed by his persona. He was a star! He outshone everyone in the movie, despite the fact that he was holding back. So I contacted his agent and said, 'Michael Jackson is going to be the biggest music star ever, and I want to help!' So his agent invited me over to his office.

Stephen Harvey: I was an independent contractor at the time. I had done quite a few album covers for artists like Earth, Wind & Fire, Dazz Band ...

MS: Michael's agent had an album cover mock-up for Off the Wall, and it was horrible. It was him sitting on a little log by a campfire with children's clothes on. It looked like an ad for Sears' children's department. So I say to the agent, 'Let me get back to you,' and I got a fashion illustrator to do a drawing of my concept for Michael. I go back to the agent, point to the fashion drawing and say, 'See! I put him in a tuxedo! It'll be his brand mark - black and white!' The agent looks at the drawings, and I could tell he didn't like them. Then, this little voice squeaks up from out of nowhere: 'I like it.' It was Michael! The whole time, he was behind these big velvet drapes, listening. He thought [the drawing] was fine. He only requested one change. He wanted white socks.

" The agent looks at the drawings, and I could tell he didn't like them. Then, this little voice squeaks up from out of nowhere: 'I like it.' It was Michael!"

SH: [Salisbury] called me up and said he had two covers I could choose from. One was a Randy Newman album, and the other was Michael Jackson's Off the Wall. I picked Randy Newman, because I was really into his historical take on L.A. But then later he calls me back and says, 'Randy wants a friend of his to shoot his album, so I'm gonna give you Michael Jackson ... '

MS: We agreed that Michael would wear loafers, like Gene Kelly wore in An American in Paris, with the white socks ... I eventually found a tuxedo that fit him, a woman's tux. My wife got it at the Yves St. Laurent store in Beverly Hills. I didn't know if it would fit, but my wife knew. She knew all that stuff.

SH: The day of the shoot, Michael drives up in a Rolls-Royce. He was by himself, no entourage or anything. He was so small behind the steering wheel, I could barely see him.

MS: It was Michael's idea to shoot at Griffith Observatory, because that's where they shot the knife fight in Rebel Without a Cause. We were under a time constraint because we had no permit to shoot there, and rangers patrolled the place. The men's room was locked, but the women's restroom was open, so Michael runs in and puts on the tux.

SH: Michael comes out with the makeup artist and the stylist, and we start shooting. The sun's going down, and it's beautiful. We stand him against this white, art deco half-wall, and I light him so that the sunset is really dark and rich in the background.

MS: It was lifeless. Michael just stood there. There was none of the entertainer, with all the energy and the performance bravado. We didn't want to give him a lot of direction, because we were afraid of how he might respond.

SH: A policeman comes up and says, 'Excuse me, where's your permit?' I call my stylist over and tell her to get the permit out of the van. So she's crawling around the van on her hands and knees, looking for this permit that's not there. The cop goes, 'You don't have a permit, you gotta get out of here!'

MS: We went to Michael's place, and there's this statue replica of Donatello's David in the foyer, and immediately I go, 'That's what we need - attitude and style!' So I say to Michael, 'Look, we gotta redo this shoot' and he was very receptive. We go to Steve's studio, and Michael gets outfitted again. We put him up against a backdrop, and again, it didn't work. He just wouldn't animate. So I run out of the studio, down the alley, and I see this brick wall with a loading dock.

The day of the shoot, Michael drives up in a Rolls-Royce. He was by himself, no entourage or anything. He was so small behind the steering wheel, I could barely see him.

SH: It was Crossley's Flowers in Los Angeles, a few doors down from my studio on Beverly Boulevard. A lot of people think that cover was shot at the Farmers Market on Fairfax, but that's not it.

MS: I grabbed Michael and got him up on that dock, because I thought it looked like a Broadway theater back door. Very theatrical.

SH: The camera was a Hasselblad hand-crank. It didn't have a motor drive, so every time that I shot, I had to stop and crank to the next exposure. It was crazy.

MS: I told Michael, 'Roll up your pants, and put your hands in your pockets! Now pull up your pants, like Gene Kelly does! Then we can see the socks!'

SH: It was two rolls of film, 12 exposures on each. I used a portable strobe on Michael, a Norman 200B. I still couldn't see very well. This was before autofocus, so somebody was holding a flashlight [on me], so I could focus on him.

MS: Then I said, 'Give me a gesture, like that David in the foyer back at your home. Now smile!' The whole thing took maybe five minutes.

SH: So we get film back, and the first thing I notice is that I cut off the top of his afro. And I'm going, 'Oh, my gosh! I can't give this to [Salisbury]. So I had my stylist take the film up to Mike for me. She later told me that he asked, 'How come you cut off the top of his head?' And my stylist replied, 'Oh, that's just one of Stephen's techniques. When you do that, you go directly to his eyes!' And that's the shot that ended up being the cover!

MS: I was presenting Michael as a major person, as you would see Frank Sinatra in a tuxedo in Vegas. He was this kid just out from under his father, so the tux was a metaphor for maturity.

SH: People still bring that cover up in conversation. I'm so glad I got that shoot instead of Randy Newman. It was a stroke of luck.

MS: A guy that taught at Harvard interviewed me once, and he said [ Off the Wall] is the No. 1 thing I did in my career. I guess I'll take his word for it.

SH: Even if I hadn't have shot it, Off the Wall would still be my favorite Michael Jackson album cover. That cover - it's his personality! It's his element, his moves. I mean, that's him! That's Michael Jackson!

Bruce Britt is an award-winning writer and essayist. He lives in Los Angeles with his three dogs and his Fender Stratocaster guitars.

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How Michael Jackson rebranded himself for his first solo album

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It was 1979 and Michael Jackson was at a crossroads. The dynamic lead singer for The Jacksons was only 21 years old, yet he was already a Motown-seasoned star with 10 years of professional recording/performing experience under his belt. But Jackson wanted more than just stardom.

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Michael as a young child celebrity represented in the media

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Michael as a young child celebrity represented in the media

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Michael transitioned from being a young boy in a band with his brothers to being 21 in 1979 he created 'Off the Wall' in which gave him his rights as a solo artist in the eyes of the audience. He was stating he was ready to record and perform his own music and career after working on 'Destiny with the Jackson 5.

By 1983 he had released his first and most successful single album "Thriller" (as stated in the Guardian article).

After their final go at staying in the Jackson 5 and releasing 'State of Shock' with McJagger, both Marlon and Michael left the Jackson 5 and went on to have solo careers (although Marlon's unsuccessful).

This article written by Steve Huey is on an All Music webpage in which has articles written about many artists over time by many authors. The article is factual and allows for the reader to gain insight on the timeline of success and failures in which led to Michael's official departure of the Jackson 5 in 1984 after the 1983 release and success of 'Thriller'.

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AllMusic | Music Search, Recommendations, Videos and Reviews

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AllMusic provides comprehensive music info including reviews and biographies. Get recommendations for new music to listen to, stream or own.

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1980's Interview with Michael and Janet 

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1980's Interview with Michael and Janet 

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The Guardian article in which we have a personal account from someone that interviewed Michael in 1980 when he was just 21 and leading up to his single career. The interviewer (John Pidgeon) states how he felt that Michael liked to create a barrier between himself and the rest of the world by using his sister (Janet, aged 13 at the time of the interview) to ask him the questions and with the use of masks and sunglasses that he often wore when in public.

Michael had then been in the spotlight of the media and music industry for 10 years and was beginning to create his own music. However, as this article states, the world could already see the demise of Michael before they even knew it.
Stating "Jackson's mollycoddled existence must have isolated him from a multitude of essential feelings".

Instead of focusing on Michael's career success' this article tends to come back to Michael's personality and his mannerisms; his personal life and personality. This tends to be a theme in articles that are written about Michael since his death and the rumours around him in 2020. Contrasting to this articles and press coverage of whilst he was alive in which often focused on his success' or mistakes made and wild behaviours.

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In January 1980, the gates of 4641 Hayvenhurst Avenue in Encino, California, were open, unguarded. The record-company PR greeted me at the door, and I waded after her through shaggy ivory carpet. Overhead, chandeliers twinkled like lights in an elfin grotto.

"One thing," she said, as if it were an insignificant point she had just remembered. "You don't mind if his sister sits in on the interview, do you?"

"Of course not. What's her name?"

"Janet. Oh, and one more thing. If you could direct your questions to Janet, she'll put them to Michael."

My mouth opened to query this extraordinary request, but the arm that had been barring my way was behind me now, launching me through a double doorway and down several steps into the presence of he-who-must-not-be-addressed-directly.

Michael Jackson stood up. I stuck out my hand and so did he. I held his flimsy fingers with unaccustomed care, suddenly fearful that I might hurt him. Jackson was stick thin, with fine skin and feeble hairs on his cheeks and chin that had never met a razor. His face was brown, haloed by an afro, and his nose was his own. The voice that welcomed me was tremulous. When I turned to say hello to Janet, she grinned as if this might all be a game. Jackson sat down again, and I perched on a hassock between brother and sister, separated by the glass top of a low table.

I found out later that I wasn't the only interviewer who had been asked to go along with the wacky ritual of using the then 13-year-old Janet as a conduit for questions. While it was happening, I was too taken aback - and too concerned that a transgression of this ridiculous rule might bring the interview to an abrupt end - to ponder Jackson's motives. In the end, I concluded that what Jackson craved was the erection of a protective barrier between himself and the rest of the world, symbolised by his habitual wearing in public of dark glasses, and later, several notches more bizarrely, a mask.

As his fame spread across the globe, his behaviour became incrementally erratic. He dressed like a foppish despot, pampered himself with the gewgaws of a princeling, raised a drawbridge between himself and the outside world, eventually completing his metamorphosis into a fairground-owning, chimp-hugging, toddler-dangling, pigmentation-denying, underage-bed-sharing, cosmetic-surgery-junkie.

I missed the media-shunning: one of the first symptoms of his unravelling. In the whole of 1982, he would grant just one interview, to Rolling Stone, and hardly any after that until his interview with Oprah in 1993. But in January 1980, with his Off the Wall album cresting the album charts and its sublime stand-out track, Rock with You, a No 1 single, he agreed to be interviewed by me for Capital radio, an excerpt of which appears in a new documentary by Spike Lee.

"Yes ... so, er, I was going to ... I mean, um ..." I began, looking from one Jackson to the other, unsure whose eyes to settle on, "... if we could sort of go back to er ... to er, you know, when you got started ... er, when the Jackson Five got started ... um, I was going to ask Michael how ... they ... fitted in to the Motown set-up?"

A pause.

"Michael, how did you fit into the Motown set-up?"

Thank you, Janet. Yes, that's what I was trying to say.

A longer pause.

"Errrrrr ..." Jackson's own hesitation was prolonged and curiously musical. If it had cropped up on a vocal track, his then-new producer Quincy Jones would, I'm sure, have left it on the record for texture. "We were doing a show at the Regal theatre in Chicago and it was like a talent show type of thing and we won, and Gladys Knight was there as well as a guy named Bobby Taylor, and they told Motown about us, and Motown was interested in seeing us audition for them. So we went to Berry Gordy's mansion in Detroit - indoor pool - and all the Motown stars were there - the Supremes, the Temptations, the Marvelettes, the Miracles - and we auditioned and they loved it, and Diana Ross came over to us special after the concert we did for them and she kissed us all and said we were marvellous and she said she wanted to play a special part in our career and that's how it started."

Gordy's mansion had made a big impression on Jackson and his brothers, the indoor pool especially. It was by far the biggest house the Jacksons had ever been invited into. Their own place in Gary, Indiana, was one storey with two bedrooms, one for parents Joe and Katherine, the other for the nine kids. Signing to Motown split the family up; several of the boys moving into Gordy's home, the rest moving in with Diana Ross, until Joe bought the house on Hayvenhurst Avenue in 1971.

What Jackson craved was the erection of a protective barrier between himself and the rest of the world

"And we did our first single, I Want You Back, it was gold, as well as ABC, The Love You Save, Never Can Say ..., on and on and on."

A tinkerbell giggle.

"That's how it started."

And that's how the interview continued: me pinging a question to Janet, she ponging it to Jackson, he pinging it back to the microphone. I almost got used to the process.Sales statistics clearly counted with Jackson. All he had to say about the wonderful I Want You Back was that it went gold. Who gave a damn how many copies it had sold? Not me. What mattered was that it was two minutes and 40 seconds of pop-soul heaven. And Destiny? Double platinum. As if that made it better than I Want You Back, which it wasn't. Come March 1984, CBS would host a party to celebrate Thriller's inclusion in the Guinness Book of Records as the biggest-selling album of all time, prompting Jackson to tell me that his entry in the annual marked the first time in his career that he felt he had accomplished something.

I was barely listening to Jackson's answers, which were consistently unilluminating. It quickly became clear that he had little understanding either of the history of black music or of his place in it. So I shouldn't have expected insights. So I didn't bother correcting Janet when my question about Destiny - "Apart from its commercial success, since the Jacksons had written and produced the album themselves, were they also pleased creatively with what the record?" - emerged from her mouth as, "D'you think your brothers could've done better?" In fact, that was exactly what I should have asked him.

"I certainly did. I'm sure my brothers did too, because I'm never satisfied with anything 'cause I do believe deeply in perfection. If you're satisfied with everything, you're just going to stay at one level and the world will move ahead." A thought that had him laughing again. "That's not good either."

The Destiny recording was the last time the Jacksons had enjoyed their brother's undivided attention. Even while they were on tour promoting the record, he was Lear-jetting back to LA as often as the schedule allowed to work on tracks for Off the Wall. This was the first record for which he had been allowed to choose his producer, and he had picked Jones.

Jackson's mollycoddled existence must have isolated him from a multitude of essential feelings

"I called Quincy up one day; I said: 'Quincy, I'm ready to do a solo album. I'm going to produce it, too, but I want somebody to work with me. Can you recommend somebody?' I wasn't trying to hint around at all" - Jackson laughed at the notion - "I didn't even think about him, and he said: 'Smelly' - he calls me Smelly he said, 'Smelly, why don't you let me do it?' I said: 'That's a great idea.'"

Whatever Jackson's mounting problems, his voice, an instrument of rare beauty and expression, was not one of them. The purity of note, the timbre, was, I suppose, an accident of nature, but in order to express feelings, a singer has to be able to feel, to have felt. Yet Jackson's mollycoddled existence must have isolated him from a multitude of essential feelings. So from where did he draw the experience which imbued that voice?

"There is no real explanation. It's nothing to do with personal experience. My singing is just - I'll say it simple as possible - it's just Godly really. It's no real personal experience or anything that make it come across, just feeling and God; I'll say, mainly God."

Jackson was 21, and he had been a star half his life. Ten years is a longer career than most in music. How did he see the next 10? "I think secretly and privately, really deep within, there's a destiny for me. I've had strong feelings for films, that something's directing me in that way for motion pictures, musicals and drama, that whole thing, to choreograph the films as well, even get into writing the pictures and doing the music."

I asked him how he felt about his music being labelled disco.

"I hate labels, because it should be just music. Call it disco, call it anything, it's music to me, it's beautiful to the ear, and that's what counts. It's like you hear a bird chirping, you don't say, 'That's a bluejay, this one is a crow.' It's a beautiful sound, that's all that counts, and that is an ugly thing about men. They categorise, they get a little bit too racial about things, when it should all be together. That's why you hear us talk about the peacock a lot, because the peacock is the only bird of all the bird family that integrates every colour into one, and that's our main goal in music, is to integrate every race to one through music, and we're doing that."

On the sleeve of the Jacksons' Triumph album, released later that year, Jackson would write, "In all the bird family, the peacock is the only species that integrates all colors into one ... We, like the peacock, try to integrate all races into one, through the love and power of music." Evidently he wanted to try the analogy out before airing it to a wider public. Just as well that I nodded approvingly. "When you go to our concerts, you see every race out there, and they're all waving hands and they're holding hands and they're smiling. You see the kids out there dancing, as well as the grown-ups and the grandparents, all colours, that's what's great" - cue one last nervous giggle - "that's what keep me going."

Jackson withdrew from me the moment the interview was over. He remained in the room, but he wasn't there for me. The publicist showed me out without offering an explanation for her extraordinary precondition. When I keyed the ignition in my car, Rock with You came on. I turned off the radio. My thoughts were a mixture of amusement and annoyance at the pantomime I had allowed myself to take part in and disappointment that I hadn't learned anything about Michael Jackson or Motown that I didn't already know. I reminded myself that I hadn't really expected to, and I had his precious voice on tape.

When I met Jackson 36 years ago, although our verbal communication was indirect, at least we sat face to face, pressed flesh on flesh, breathed the same air. He was odd, but, as pop stars went, unexceptionally so. His next album, 1983's Thriller, would be so big, there was nowhere else for him to go, but down, and further away from the public gaze. Michael Jackson became a thing of the past, and in his reclusion he became something else entirely: wacko Jacko.
Off the Wall is reissued, with a new documentary by Spike Lee, Michael Jackson's Journey from Motown to Off the Wall on 26 February, on Sony. Topics

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My surreal 1980 interview with Michael Jackson: 'Direct your questions to Janet; she'll put them to Michael'

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In January 1980, the gates of 4641 Hayvenhurst Avenue in Encino, California, were open, unguarded. The record-company PR greeted me at the door, and I waded after her through shaggy ivory carpet. Overhead, chandeliers twinkled like lights in an elfin grotto. "One thing," she said, as if it were an insignificant point she had just remembered.

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The Jackson 5 were Michael's route to single success and a massive part of his career; spending his whole childhood in the limelight.

Below is a link to the webpage that is dedicated to the Jackson 5. Presented in a timeline format the reader can denote how the Jackson 5 evolved throughout time and the artists and people to guided them through to success.

The webpage features images of the Jackson 5 to enable the reader to denote visually how they grew up in the spotlight evolving alongside their music; and how Michael himself gradually became the centre of the world's attention.

This particular reference to Michael's life is a dedication to the Jackson 5; hence how it represents positive image of Michael and his career from a the very beginning even though later in his life he mentioned that his childhood wasn't as perfect as it seemed.

In this specific 1969 page it references the several dates throughout the year that were prominent such as "The Jackson 5’s first Motown album, ‘Diana Ross Presents The Jackson 5’ (LP) produced by Bobby Taylor, is released".

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The Jackson 5 become a worldwide sensation in 1969 with the release of their first Motown album, 'Diana Ross Presents The Jackson 5.' Singles 'I Want You Back' and 'Who's Loving You' go on to sell 2 million copies in 6 weeks. History is forever changed when the hit single 'I Want You Back' rises to #1 on the pop charts - the Jackson 5 franchise is born.

Diana Ross invites the media to Daisy's Disco in Beverly Hills and introduces Motown's newest act, The Jackson 5. Barry Gordy predicts that the Jackson 5's first three singles will go to #1.

The Jackson 5's first TV appearance is the 1969 Miss Black American Pageant, where they perform 'It's Your Thing.'

The Jackson 5 is featured in the September issue of Soul Magazine.

Studio recording of 'I Want You Back' is released. It rises to #1 in the pop charts.

The Jackson 5 appear on the Ed Sullivan Show and perform 'I Want You Back' and 'Who's Loving You.' Later they appear on The Johnny Carson Show and Soul Train.

The Jackson 5's first Motown album, 'Diana Ross Presents The Jackson 5' (LP) produced by Bobby Taylor, is released.

Suzanne de Passe from Motown Records begins working with The Jackson 5 to build their public image.

The Jackson 5 debut single, 'I Want You Back' / 'Who's Loving You,' is released by Motown Records and sells 2 million copies in 6 weeks. This is the group's first Gold record; however, because Motown is not a member of the RIAA, it is not certified as such.

The Jackson 5 appear on Hollywood Palace Special for their first national broadcast, performing with Diana Ross and Sammy Davis Jr.

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History 1969 | The Jacksons | The Official Website

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The Jackson 5 become a worldwide sensation in 1969 with the release of their first Motown album, 'Diana Ross Presents The Jackson 5.' Singles 'I Want You Back' and 'Who's Loving You' go on to sell 2 million copies in 6 weeks.

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Article on the secrets of the Jackson 5 

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Article on the secrets of the Jackson 5 

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Even to this day (2018) there are articles being written and time invested into the early life of Micael Jackson and the Jackson 5. How they came into fame and the supposed gruelling childhood that made them who they are.

The magazine article proceeds to state how many of children grew up and how the band became to be the Jackson 5 with Michael at the forefront due his professional-ability. Mentioned is the fact that the children have mentioned in interviews etc. that Michael and the eldest Marlon were used to the beatings more often due to the added pressure and success.

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One day in 1965, a model called Evelyn Leahy was organising a children's fashion show in Illinois' Forest Glen Park. She needed a band and recalled a group she had recently seen play at a shopping mall in Gary, Indiana. She phoned their mother, Katherine, a friend, and enlisted them to perform. Problem was, they didn't yet have a name to put on the flyers. Katherine came up with one: The Jackson Brothers Five. Too long, responded Leahy. Her suggestion? Simply, The Jackson Five.

Over the coming decade, with the help of their fearsome father, Joe, The Jackson 5, as they rebranded themselves - Jackie, Tito, Jermaine, Marlon and Michael - would release a string of hits including "ABC", "The Love You Save" and "I'll Be There" through Motown Records. Jackie was the eldest, but they had the good sense to put Michael, who was just five when he joined, up front on lead vocals. He was not only a talented singer, but also a precocious technician. It was Michael who could dance like James Brown, Michael who could learn a reworked melody on the spot. "Michael was young but he was professional," recalls Clifton Davis, who wrote "Never Can Say Goodbye". "His ear and pitch were amazing. He could take things and make them his own."

Inevitably, Michael struck out solo, one of the first artists from a Motown group to do so. His first independent track, "Got To Be There", came out in 1971, but it wasn't until the 1979 album Off The Wall that he really hit his stride. His fame from that point so eclipsed that of the band, which had transferred to Epic Records and changed their name to The Jacksons, that it's easy to forget they continued recording music. But record they did, including hits such as "Can You Feel It" from their 1980 album, Triumph. In 1984, after the release of Victory, the brothers would go on tour with Michael for one last time. Now, on the 50th anniversary of the band's debut single, "Big Boy", The Jacksons are releasing their first official book, The Jacksons: Legacy. Featuring new interviews and unseen photographs, it tells the story of pop's royal family in their own words...

Jackie on starting the band

"Tito, Jermaine and I started the group. We were just fooling around on guitar and bass and then one day Michael joined us, playing bongos on a Quaker oatmeal box. He played them so well, we thought he should be part of the group. As soon as we did that, he started dancing up in front, doing his James Brown thing. Michael always watched James Brown on television, and Jackie Wilson, too - also The Temptations and then The Four Tops. He would copy what they were doing. That's when we realised how much showmanship he had, and we thought maybe he should be singing lead."

Gladys Knight on seeing an early Jacksons show in 1967

"I was sitting in my dressing room on the second floor [of the Regal Theater in Chicago] when I heard these little voices. I could look out from the banister to the stage, so I got up from my make-up chair and saw these little kids. I couldn't see that well because the curtains were in the way, but I could see how they moved. I thought to myself, 'Oh, my god. Who is that?' As young as I was, I knew talent when I saw it. Even with their little children voices I heard their potential and knew what these guys could achieve. I went back to my dressing room and when The Pips came upstairs I asked, 'Who was that singing a few minutes ago?' They told me it was 'Joe's boys'."

Jackie and Marlon on growing up in Gary, Indiana

Jackie: "Gary wasn't the safest place to live. There were gangs and Dad had six boys. He wanted to make sure we didn't get into drugs, so he kept us busy."

Marlon: "He would have us move bricks from one side of the back yard to the other. We'd stack them up on one side of the yard and two days later he'd have us move them back. They weren't little bricks, and there were a lot of them."

Jackie on playing at Diana Ross' birthday party after signing to Motown

"We were kids from Gary, Indiana, who had never been in a big mansion. I noticed Smokey Robinson and Stevie Wonder. We had to sing their songs in front of them. My brothers were running around, having fun. They forgot that we had a show to do and that it was make it or break it for us."

Marlon on the band's leaving Motown for Epic Records in 1976

"I was too young to realise it was a big deal to leave Motown. We came to Motown with the name Jackson 5 and I thought we should walk away with it. But they kept it and that's why we changed it to The Jacksons. Emotionally, it was tough to leave. I really appreciated Motown. Berry [Gordy, the founder] gave us our start."

Jackie on writing 1980's 'Can You Feel It'

"I had been dating Kathy Avanzino [later Kathy Hilton, mother of Paris]. I was leaving her house on Mulholland Drive and the idea for the song came into my mind. I kept singing the melody, with the drums and music and everything. I had a Dictaphone in the car and put everything on that. I got to the house in Encino and went right to the piano."

Tito on watching Michael moonwalking during 'Billie Jean'

"Michael doing the moonwalk was a surprise to everyone. Michael was hot at that time, so everybody was gathered backstage around the monitors. We had seen the moonwalk many times, because we'd been around Michael his whole life. We were all able to do the moonwalk, too, but we never presented it or thought about putting it in the show like that. He used it brilliantly and it became a signature move for him."

Jackie on Michael

"There's never a day that goes by that I don't think about my brother, because he's all around us. The other day, when I was driving down the Strip, I was at a stoplight on Las Vegas Boulevard and I turned to the right and there was this big poster of him looking at me. I said, 'Hey, Mike, what's going on?' Things like that happen all the time. When I walk in a restaurant or a store, all of a sudden one of his songs will play, so he's around us 24/7 and we miss him dearly. He is always with us in spirit and it will always be that way. We just have to carry on his message, what he was about."

Jackie on collaborating with Mick Jagger for Victory's 'State Of Shock'

"We weren't in the studio at the time when they did that, just Michael. But the finished product sounded incredible and it captured Mick really well. Michael told me that when he was in the studio Mick was worried that he wasn't going to deliver like Michael wanted him to. Michael had to reassure him, 'No, man, you're doing a great job. Keep doing what you're doing.' Because Mick wanted to impress all of us."

Tito on the tour that never happened

"Although Michael was doing The O2 Arena [scheduled to run from July 2009 to March 2010], we had already been discussing the possibility of going out again with him. So that was the plan, for us to join him later at The O2 Arena, maybe do five songs with him, and then go on tour from there. But as we know, that never came to light."

**The Jacksons: Legacy by The Jacksons and Fred Bronson (Thames & Hudson, £25) is out now. ** Follow us on Vero for exclusive music content and commentary, all the latest music lifestyle news and insider access into the GQ world, from behind-the-scenes insight to recommendations from our editors and high-profile talent.

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One day in 1965, a model called Evelyn Leahy was organising a children's fashion show in Illinois' Forest Glen Park. She needed a band and recalled a group she had recently seen play at a shopping mall in Gary, Indiana. She phoned their mother, Katherine, a friend, and enlisted them to perform.

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Below, is a news broadcast in 1980 when Michael was 21 and The Jackson 5 were in their prime, as stated; they were "writing and producing music that fits any radio playlist, from contemporary to disco". This news broadcast includes interviews with Marlon Jackson and Michael himself on how they came to this fame from their childhood and the sacrifices made by their parents. Their parents include discussions about how the musical equipment was expensive with one person working in a 9 person family dynamic.

From research we are able to denote that there was more of a focus in the media specifically on Michael himself than the Jackson 5 - this was the lead to his single career as mentioned in this broadcast.

Micheal talks about him as an animal in a cage and this interview really focuses on Michael discussing how he is the most comfortable on the stage.

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20/20 Michael Jackson Interview (1980) - YouTube

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Michael Jackson   Who's Loving You With The Jackson 5 11 Year Old Michael

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In this article is written in the New Yorker; by Carvell Wallace (2015), Michael Jackson is written about in the eyes of living two lives. The article mentions Michael Jackson's first time on national television at the age of 11 years old performing 'Who's Loving You' on 'The Ed Sullivan Show'.

Quoting, "One is a child—a smart kid, to be sure, and cute, but not more special than any other child. He is subject to the same laws of life—pain, age, confusion, fear—as we all are. The other being seems to be a spirit of sorts, one who knows only the truest expression of human feeling". From this quote alone, we can denote that Michael Jackson has led two very separate lives from when he was a young child thrown into the celebrity lifestyle until his death in 2009.

Over the course of these articles it is often stated how Michael never had a childhood due to being in the limelight from the age of 11; therefore, his childlike mannerisms and behaviour as he got older and his mental stability decreased could all have a connection.

As Shingler (2012, p.121) states , “stars possess several identities and sever different kinds of identity, determined by the various aspects of their character and the various characters that they play” in which is ever relevant to Michael Jackson and the way he portrayed himself throughout his life.

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Do me a favor. Go on YouTube and find the footage of Michael Jackson singing " Who's Lovin' You " on "The Ed Sullivan Show." He is eleven years old. It is one of his first times on national television. In the intro, he looks and sounds like . . . well, like an eleven-year-old with a decent ability to ham it up. He does a jokey spoken preamble about how kids can understand the blues, too, because he once fell in love with a girl in the sandbox, toasted their love during "milk break," and broke up during finger painting. Halfway through, he forgets his lines and freezes, looking back at his older brothers for help. It's an alarmingly vulnerable moment, one only possible in the era of live television. You feel bad for him. It suddenly doesn't seem right that a kid should be made to perform live in front of an entire country. Yet he somehow finds his way back and stumbles through.

When the music starts, we see something else entirely. The first note he sings is as confident, sure, and purposeful as any adult could ever be. He transforms from nervous child at a talent show into timeless embodiment of longing. Not only does he sing exactly on key but he appears to sing from the very bottom of his heart. He stares into the camera, shakes his head, and blinks back tears in perfect imitation of a sixties soul man. And it feels, for a moment, as though there are two different beings here. One is a child-a smart kid, to be sure, and cute, but not more special than any other child. He is subject to the same laws of life-pain, age, confusion, fear-as we all are. The other being seems to be a spirit of sorts, one who knows only the truest expression of human feeling. And this spirit appears to have randomly inhabited the body of this particular mortal kid. In so doing, it has sentenced him to a lifetime of indescribable enchantment and consummate suffering.

The details of that life are well covered in Steve Knopper's new book, "MJ: The Genius of Michael Jackson." Knopper, a contributing editor at Rolling Stone, takes a journalist's approach to the story, chronicling M.J.'s journey from a working-class family, in Gary, Indiana, to unequalled fame and riches and, finally, to a deformed, reclusive, and obsessive middle age, hemmed in by leeches and ne'er-do-wells. In its broad outlines, the story doesn't deviate from the standard rock-biopic script: man with a gift becomes man with a burden. But, unlike the rags-to-riches tales of Hollywood, Jackson never finds redemption. There is no long walk down the hallway to adoring fans chanting his name at a final show. Instead, he sinks lower and lower, until death finally finds him, millions of dollars in debt, battling a crippling addiction to painkillers, attended to by a shady doctor who administered the insane doses of anesthesia that Jackson came to rely on in order to sleep.

The banality of his demise is striking. All that really happened is that he was great, and those around him became fixated on how much money he could make. Having never learned how to be a responsible adult, he made terrible choices about how to handle his otherworldly power. The bigger he got, the more people he cut out of his life, until about 1990, when, in Knopper's telling**,** everyone who genuinely cared for the young, pre-"Thriller" Jackson had been forcefully denied access to his life. "Michael began to run perilously low on people who could tell him what not to do," Knopper writes.

Perhaps this set of circumstances is what allowed some of Jackson's more dubious behaviors to continue unchecked. Everyone knows about his pathological relationship with plastic surgery, which turned him from classic man to plastic man right before our eyes. It is estimated that he underwent dozens of procedures, many of which were botched or of shoddy quality. He lightened his skin and, over the years, his public explanations for doing so varied. He claimed to suffer from vitiligo, which causes skin to lose its pigment in patches-a condition his autopsy confirmed, though that explanation had always been met with skepticism from the black community. (Vitiligo can arise spontaneously or be inherited; it can also be triggered by bleaching.) Whether or not the disease was behind the dramatic change in his skin color, Jackson surely was motivated, at least in part, by a belief common to Americans: that light skin, thin lips, small noses, and straight hair represent the most perfect example of beauty.

This is the complexity of Jackson's relationship with blackness. He had most physical evidence of it sliced out of his body-but his music and work are filled with an abiding appreciation for the music, art, and deeply powerful soul of black folks. From the "Nigeria 70"-inspired breakdown in "ABC" to his 1991 solo album, "Dangerous," on which he eschewed the jazz and melodic direction of his earlier work in favor of Teddy Riley's urban R. & B. club beats, to outright pro-Africa songs, like "Liberian Girl," Jackson's debt to African and African-American culture was always clear. "Of course he loved being black," Riley told Rolling Stone. "We'd be in sessions where we'd just vibe out and he'd say, 'We are black, and we are the most talented people on the face of the Earth.' I know this man loved his culture, he loved his race, he loved his people." Perhaps even more surprising for the casual M.J. fan is the clear-headed speech he delivered, in 2002, to a majority-black crowd, at Al Sharpton's National Action Network, in Harlem. "I know my race," he said. "I just look in the mirror-I know I'm black." The crowd erupted.

Your blackness is not a result of your skin but of the experiences that that skin brings to you. It is deepened when you watch Rodney King get beaten nearly to death on television by police officers, as Jackson must have, along with the rest of us, in March, 1991. It is awakened again when you start to think about how many of the black artists who enriched your employer died broke and forgotten (something Jackson spoke about in the Harlem speech). M.J.'s blackness was something that he couldn't escape. This may be why black people continued to accept and root for him despite what, on the surface, appeared to be his rejection of us. No matter what he became, we knew the struggle and pain that made him so. We knew the mid-century racism, and the desperate, dominating father. We knew the whoopings that were part discipline, part violent and selfish abuse, and part twisted grooming for a world that would do its best to deliver an even more savage psychological beatdown. We know that American racism creates such a vast array of insanity among its victims that even Michael Jackson, twisted, bizarre, and impossible to comprehend, makes perfect sense in its context.

But there is more about Jackson that we did not know. You can't write about him without acknowledging that he was an accused child molester-indeed, this sometimes seems to be all that people under the age of thirty know about him. Knopper does his best to examine every piece of evidence in the public record, and concludes that it is more likely that Jackson did not commit the crimes he was accused of. But Knopper's judgment is far from conclusive. No matter how it is read, this part of the story is sordid and sickening. One of the parents who levelled charges against Jackson demanded payment and a three-picture screenwriting deal by way of settlement. The mother of another child continued to encourage her son to stay with Jackson long after she claimed to have become suspicious.

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Do me a favor. Go on YouTube and find the footage of Michael Jackson singing " Who's Lovin' You " on "The Ed Sullivan Show." He is eleven years old. It is one of his first times on national television. In the intro, he looks and sounds like . .

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Michael Jackson's childhood: Day1one Interview  

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Michael Jackson's childhood: Day1one Interview  

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The Jackson family were interviewed by Day1one about Michael and the Jackson 5. Discussed is their life and how they grew up as children in the spotlight. They mention how they used to stay in hotels and how family light out of the spotlight in which Joe Jackson had an affair and had another child.

At the time of this interview (2011) many of the children were not present and there were rumours of Joe Jackson beating the children. Mentioning a 'spanking' if they were misbehaved. The eldest taking most of the beatings. Many of the children when interviewed discuss the hardships and the strict childhood they experienced, however, upon reflection they thank their father for what he ended up with. This short documentary on YouTube is often brushing over the fact that their father beat the children aggressively by stating using brief terms when referencing the daughter's comments 'recently she has been stating some harsh claims against her father'.

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The Jackson 5 song 'I want you back' hit number one on the 31st of January  1970. Linked below is the Billboard website in which states the song hit peak position on this date in time and it was in the charts for 19 weeks. This song was 1 of 4 number one hits the Jackson 5 accomplished.

As a group they had 23 top 40 and on his own Michael got 25 more in the top 40 throughout their careers.

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© 2019 Billboard. All Rights Reserved. Billboard is a subsidiary of Valence Media, LLC.

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'I want you back' was the first Jackson 5 song to reach number one on the US Billboard Hot 100. When Michael was just 12 years of age.

In the video performance you can denote that Michael (although the youngest) is at the forefront of the group and becomes a different person as soon as he opens his mouth, (as most people have analysed when watching Michael perform as a young child).

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Born August 29th 1958 in Gary, Indiana
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Jackson