“The King of Pop”, “Wacko Jacko” . . . whatever you want to call him, the fact remains that Michael Jackson was one of the biggest pop superstars of the twentieth century. A dancer, singer, actor and all-round performer, he dazzled audiences across the globe with hits such as “Thriller”, “Bad” and “The Way You Make Me Feel”. However, it cannot be denied that away from the thrills of his music and stage presence, it was his personal life and death that caused the most sensation – and the circumstances of both are still furiously discussed and argued by fans today.
Born on 29 August 1958, Jackson was the eighth of ten children born to Katherine and Joe Jackson. The family was raised in a small house in Indiana, where Michael’s father – who played in a band – had dreams of his children following in his footsteps. He got his wish, and in 1964 some of the brothers (including Michael) began performing together and eventually the Jackson Five (later the Jacksons) was born. The band was a huge success, signing to Motown and performing such hits as “I Want You Back” and “ABC”. But in spite of the success of the band itself, it was “Little Michael” that got the most attention, and ultimately, while still young, he ended up releasing several albums and singles as a solo artist, including “Ben” and “Rockin’ Robin”.
Michael’s childhood was traumatic and he was constantly bothered by the fact that he was unable to have the regular upbringing enjoyed by other children. There was little – if any – time for playing with friends, visiting the park or riding his bike in the street. Instead, the children were all expected to practise their dance routines day and night, under the everwatchful eye of their father Joseph.
In several later interviews Michael claimed that his father would become emotionally and physically abusive while supervising rehearsals. He also said that as a child he was exceptionally lonely and often watched other children playing outside the building where he was working, unable to go down and take part because he had to record his latest single or album. Added to that, it is also said that the child was told on numerous occasions that he had a big nose and spots; a result of which – it would seem – was the obsession Jackson developed with undertaking plastic surgery procedures during the latter part of his life.
By the time he was a fully grown adult, Michael Jackson had the world of pop at his feet. A phenomenal superstar, his albums with the Jacksons were still huge hits, but he was ready to branch off on his own. He made a film – a box-office disaster – called The Wiz (1978) and then in 1979 he released his own album, Off the Wall, which went on to sell a staggering twenty million copies and introduced the world to a more mature Michael Jackson. More albums followed, including the astronomically successful Thriller in 1982 and Bad in 1987. He also toured the world extremely successfully, but while his professional life was nothing short of amazing, his personal life was heading towards disaster.
In January 1984 Jackson had been filming an advert for Pepsi Cola, when some pyrotechnics set his hair on fire. Footage of the episode shows Jackson dancing without realizing that his head is ablaze, and finding out too late to prevent second-degree burns to his scalp. This seems to have been a real turning point for the singer, and as a result he undertook various plastic surgery procedures and began taking tablets to ease the pain. Unfortunately, it would seem that this was to be his undoing, and Michael Jackson never truly recovered from the trauma inflicted that day.
After that tragic episode, certain elements of Jackson’s life began to develop in ways that outsiders may describe as somewhat odd. He owned a chimpanzee – Bubbles – which slept in a crib by his bed and travelled the world with him on a private jet. Not only that, but it was also reported that it did everything with the singer – from watching movies in a private cinema to sitting at the table to eat his dinner. This seems to have been the start of the “Wacko Jacko” era; the media absolutely loved the Bubbles stories and rumours, and photographed the pair together at every opportunity.
It was not just fun stories being reported in the media, though. By summer 1993, rumours of a very different kind were circulating that involved Jackson being accused of the sexual abuse of a thirteen-year-old boy named Jordan Chandler. Money was said to have been demanded by the family of the boy, which Jackson refused to give, and then the matter of the alleged abuse was reported to the police. By Christmas 1993 Jackson’s home had been investigated and the singer had been strip-searched. Jackson released a video statement, protesting his innocence. “Don’t treat me like a criminal,” he begged, and asked the media to wait for the truth before labelling him. “I am innocent,” he said.
In January 1994 the matter was settled out of court with Michael still protesting his innocence and a rumoured $22 million being paid to the Chandler family. Then in early summer the entire matter was dropped by the police and Jackson was able to continue with his life, which – in May 1994 – included marrying Lisa Marie Presley, the daughter of Elvis Presley.
If the media had enjoyed a field day with the Bubbles stories and then the sexual abuse rumours, they really went to town on the marriage between Michael and Lisa Marie. How on earth had this come about, they wondered? And why were they suddenly so close? Actually, the pair had met in 1975 at a concert, and had reconnected in 1992 when they became friends after meeting to discuss a demo tape that Lisa Marie had recently recorded. Unknown to the media, the two then became friends. Michael took to phoning Elvis’s daughter at every opportunity and was in constant contact with her throughout the child abuse accusations.
Lisa apparently believed she could somehow “save him” and fell in love with the singer to such a degree that when the possibility of marriage was brought to the table, she ultimately said yes. The two waited until the child abuse scandal passed, and then without making a big deal of it to anyone, decided to make their relationship official by marrying in the Dominican Republic. Unfortunately this did not sit well with Lisa Marie’s mother, Priscilla, who knew nothing about the relationship at all; the first she heard of the marriage was when helicopters were buzzing around her house and she saw a news report on television. Priscilla was understandably suspicious and extremely confused by what was going on with her daughter and the King of Pop, and later said that at that particular time she was deeply worried that Lisa Marie was somehow being used.
Reports about the marriage of Jackson and Elvis’s daughter were fuelled with rumour and gossip from the very first day. Once the story got out, the media wanted to know if the whole thing was a carefully manipulated scenario designed to rebuild Michael’s reputation, and felt that maybe he was marrying in order to get closer to the Elvis back catalogue, since he was a huge fan himself. Members of the public, meanwhile, had other things on their mind and became obsessed with whether or not Michael and Lisa Marie were husband and wife in every sense of the word, or were they merely platonic friends? It seemed that everyone had their own ideas as to the basis of the relationship, and things were made no better after an embarrassing appearance at the MTV awards, where the pair stood on the stage with virtually nothing to say, before finally sharing an awkward kiss and leaving.
It is fair to say that in light of the way the media reported on it, everything about the relationship seemed a little contrived, but Lisa Marie laughed off the allegations and assured everyone that they were just like every other married couple out there – physically and otherwise. Yet people continued to remain doubtful that Michael had ever been intimate with anyone, though in all honesty, without knowing the man personally, this seems to be an unfair assumption.
It was not long before rumours began to surface that the marriage was on the rocks; that the couple were arguing and would no doubt separate soon. Of course, this meant that reporters crowded around the couple’s home, spoke to their friends and tried to dig the dirt in order to find anything they could. However, because of the heavy secrecy surrounding Jackson’s life, no one could really give much of an insight at all. Michael later shed some light on it when he explained to an interviewer that he and his fiancée had agreed to have children as soon as they got married, but after the wedding his new wife had changed her mind. Michael declared himself to be “broken-hearted” and gave this as the reason why the marriage started to break down.
Of course, as often happens, the other party – in this case, Lisa Marie – had a different version of the reasons why the marriage ended when she spoke to Oprah Winfrey some years after the divorce. In several recorded interviews the singer described that she had indeed planned to have children but wanted to make sure that everything was strong between the couple, as she had no intention of getting into a custody battle with Michael Jackson.
She also described the time she was married as “insane” and explained that during their relationship she was blindsided and naive. Finally – after enduring times when Michael would disappear for weeks on end and collapsed mysteriously during the making of an HBO special – she decided that she’d had enough. Added to that, Jackson was surrounded by a number of people whom she felt were sucking the life from him, and yet he seemed to choose them over her in his life. Eventually the young woman woke up and knew that in circumstances such as these, she was not able to carry on trying to “save” him and just wanted out.
The couple eventually went their separate ways in 1996, though they apparently stayed in touch and got back together several times. But when the affair finally breathed its last breath, Jackson began another relationship, this time with a nurse called Debbie Rowe, whom he married in November 1996. Not surprisingly, from the very start it seemed like a complicated relationship. Rowe had apparently met the singer during a dermatology appointment at the surgery where she worked. She felt sorry for him and the two became friendly. The story goes that during their friendship, Jackson shared his concerns over the break-up of his marriage to Lisa Marie and confided that he believed he would never have children – a revelation which prompted Rowe to suggest that she might be able to give him a child herself.
Michael agreed, but not before telling Lisa Marie that if she wasn’t interested in having his baby then Rowe was more than willing. His ex-wife could not be swayed, however, and eventually a baby was conceived with Rowe (some claim by artificial insemination) and a son, Michael Joseph Jackson (known as Prince Michael), was born on 13 February 1997. Another child followed a year later when Paris Michael Katherine was born, and Jackson caused controversy by later claiming that he had literally taken the baby straight from the delivery room back to his home.
It was statements like this that led people to believe that Debbie Rowe had merely acted as a surrogate to Jackson, especially when she was said to have given up her rights to the children when the couple divorced in 1999. This supposed decision was later revoked, however, and it is said that as of 2012, Rowe does have visitation rights with her teenage children and is frequently quoted in newspapers as being concerned over their current welfare.
Jackson’s next child was not conceived with Rowe, and instead an unknown woman gave the singer a child in 2002. Named Prince Michael Jackson II (but known to everyone as Blanket), the child became famous when his father took him out on to the balcony of his Berlin hotel room when he was just a few months old, in order to greet shouting fans. What he was thinking is not clear, but he ended up dangling the blanket-covered baby over the balcony for a split second before coming to his senses and taking the child back inside. Although Jackson later apologized for what he described as a mistake, the action of putting his son in danger caused controversy in the media and people wondered about the state of his mental health.
Added to that, Jackson’s reputation took a nosedive once again when he insisted that his children went out in public wearing elaborate masks and veils to hide their faces; they were home-schooled, apparently to avoid them socializing with other children their age. Bizarre rumours also began to appear that suggested the children had to throw away their toys every night for fear that they would catch germs from their “used” play things. Since their father had long since been rumoured to sleep in an oxygen tent and was often seen wearing a surgical mask in public, the idea of his germ phobia did not seem too far-fetched, though a look through home movies, which were later released, seems to show this particular rumour to be false. In one revealing snippet, the small children can quite clearly be seen sitting on a wooden floor and playing with a jigsaw that has certainly seen better days, with the box collapsing with age – it certainly had not just been opened that day.
Of the masks and home-schooling, both Debbie Rowe and Michael Jackson said that it was for the children’s safety and to protect their identity from the masses. That was fair enough, but given that other huge stars such as Madonna and Whitney Houston were raising their children without the aid of veils in public, this seemed a rather moot point. Further confusion was added when he told At Large with Geraldo Rivera that he would soon bring his children on stage with him, which would surely rule out any possibility of keeping them incognito for security’s sake. It would seem that by this time, whether he liked it or not, Michael’s “Wacko Jacko” persona seemed very much set in stone as far as the media were concerned.
From 2002 to 2003 Michael Jackson made the ill-fated decision to allow the filming of an in-depth television special with investigative journalist Martin Bashir. During the featurelength presentation, the singer was seen travelling around the world with his veil-covered children; going on huge shopping sprees to buy elaborate vases; and shaking wildly when trying to bottle-feed his youngest son. Unfortunately it did not stop there, and towards the end of the programme Jackson was seen holding hands with a teenage boy who he said had been very ill and had stayed at his Neverland ranch on several occasions. The singer explained that they had sleepovers at his home, and given the child molestation claims of just a few years before, this statement caused a riot in the newspapers.
Of course, the claims of having children stay overnight was not only of interest to the media and public, but to the authorities too. After an investigation into the matter, Jackson was arrested in November 2003 and charged with a number of offences, including child molestation and giving alcohol to a minor. Jackson, of course, denied the charges and called his ex-wife Lisa Marie, and as she had never seen any wrongdoing during their marriage, she encouraged her former husband to stay strong.
The trial of Michael Jackson began on 31 January 2005 in Santa Maria, California. It was extremely long-winded – as one might expect – and seemed to involve interviews with almost everyone who had known Michael Jackson over the years. The child at the centre of the case was called to testify, along with his brother and interviewer Martin Bashir. Then Macaulay Culkin, the former child star of the Home Alone films spoke of his friendship with the star but denied being molested himself and described the allegations as “absolutely ridiculous”.
Every day Jackson would appear at the courthouse with his family, looking weaker and weaker as time went on. He would shuffle into the building shielded by umbrellas, but in spite of the unconventional surroundings, would always find time to wave to his ever-present fans. Then one day photographs of the star were beamed around the world when he arrived at court straight from a stint in hospital, still wearing pyjama bottoms and a pair of slippers. It is fair to say that this incident did nothing for the man’s image and many media outlets used the photographs to “prove” that he was losing his sanity and finally going off the rails.
The trial rumbled on until finally, on 13 June 2005, Jackson was acquitted on all counts, and fans outside the courtroom cheered, wept and freed white doves in his honour. The visibly broken singer then made the painful decision to move from his beloved Neverland ranch in California in a bid to regain his life. For many years he had created a life behind the gates of the mansion where he would never have to leave. If he wanted to see a movie, he had a theatre in his home; if he wanted to visit a zoo there was one of those in the grounds. A theme park?Yes, that was there too. So to leave Neverland behind was a genuinely painful experience for the singer, but after the trauma and expense of the court case, it was unfortunately one that was deemed absolutely necessary.
From that moment on, the Jackson family led something of a nomadic existence and travelled the world to various places including Ireland and the Persian Gulf. Finally, they arrived back in the United States and settled into a leased, rambling mansion at 100 North Carolwood Drive, Los Angeles, which – by coincidence or not – was just steps away from the former California home of Elvis Presley, Jackson’s idol and father of his ex-wife Lisa Marie. There he hoped to live a quiet life with his family, but it was not to be.
Suffering from various health problems, including an addiction to prescription pills, the singer was short of money and needed to earn some fast. To that end he was persuaded to do a series of shows in London, which were designed to get his life and his finances back on track once again. Initially, Michael Jackson agreed to do just a handful of shows, but by early 2009 this had grown into a staggering fifty concerts, which were due to kick off in July of that year and continue until March 2010.
To announce the concerts, which were to be called the “This Is It” tour, a huge event took place at the O2 arena in London, which saw Michael Jackson himself take to the stage to speak to his fans. The crowd were kept waiting quite some time but when Jackson eventually walked on, none of that seemed to matter. Grown men and women were seen jumping up and down in the crowd, screaming and crying as the singer walked around the stage, wearing a black and silver shirt and dark glasses.
Finally, after giving the cheering crowd a peace sign, he stopped at the podium to speak, telling the audience that he planned to do a series of concerts at the O2 arena, and described the events as the “final curtain call”. “I’ll see you in July,” he cried, before leaving the stage.
The fans were beside themselves with excitement but unfortunately, as it turned out, the press conference given that day was the real “final curtain call” and he never did make it to London or anywhere else in July. On 25 June 2009 the world heard the shocking news that Michael Jackson, the King of Pop, had passed away, and a new mystery was about to begin . . .
The evening before his death, Jackson was feeling poorly but managed to do a late-night rehearsal at the Staples Center in Los Angeles for the forthcoming O2 concerts. He finished after midnight and then headed home to bed where he was unable to sleep and asked his doctor, Conrad Murray, to administer a drug called Propofol, which is an anaesthetic used in hospitals while performing surgery. To an outsider this would seem to be an absurd thing to administer, but in the world of Michael Jackson it appeared that this was just a regular occurrence. Certainly on 25 June, when Jackson was unable to sleep, Propofol was apparently administered; the singer fell into a deep sleep and he never woke up again.
That afternoon Murray is said to have found Michael Jackson in bed, not breathing and unresponsive. The doctor panicked and tried to revive him without success, before finally calling for members of the singer’s security team to come and help. Strangely, it would seem that in order to try and provoke breathing, the doctor was not performing CPR on the floor, which is standard practice, and instead was attempting the procedure on the soft bed, making it extremely difficult to administer. Michael Jackson’s bedroom was in total uproar by this time, with personal belongings and all manner of paraphernalia all over the room.
Added to the chaos came the distressing realization that Jackson’s young daughter Paris had appeared at the door and was in total sight of the distressing events that were unfolding all around her. She was quickly taken away by staff members, though the sights already seen by the child that day were likely to stay in her mind for a great many years to come. Once she had been taken away from the room, work continued on Jackson, but by the time paramedics arrived at the property, things were not looking good at all. While they hoped to find Michael Jackson responding to treatment, they instead found that the singer was not breathing at all. They took over from the doctor and continued efforts to revive him for a full forty-two minutes before taking him by ambulance to the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center. There, Jackson was worked on for over an hour before finally being pronounced dead at 2.26 p.m.
The news of Michael Jackson being rushed to hospital spread around the world to such an extent that many search engines and social media outlets crashed under the pressure of the worldwide public trying to find out what was going on. At first it looked as though the star had suffered a heart attack but was still alive; eventually an official statement was released by the family which confirmed what people were dreading – the King of Pop had died. However, until an autopsy was performed, it could not be determined exactly why or how it had happened.
While police were investigating the circumstances surrounding the death of the world’s most famous pop singer, a memorial for Michael Jackson was held and included a mix of tributes, songs and stories from friends and colleagues. The emotional climax came when the family surprised everyone by taking to the stage themselves, along with the Jackson children minus the veils and masks they had always worn in the past. While Prince and Blanket stayed in the background, Paris, supported by Michael’s brothers and sisters, expressed her love and gratitude for the man who had raised her. Through her tears and despair, she made it clear that Michael Jackson had been a close, loving and very real father to her.
The children then went to live with their grandmother, where as of March 2013 they still remain – living a somewhat less guarded life, going to school, and attending clubs and activities like other children their age. Still, even this move into “normal” life has encountered some difficulties that have piqued media interest, including the time in summer 2012 when their grandmother apparently briefly went missing from the family home. The children took to Twitter to ask where she had gone, but it was soon revealed that she had merely been taken to a spa by several members of the Jackson family who were concerned that she was becoming too stressed over the legalities of running the Michael Jackson estate and caring for his children.
Back in 2009 the investigation into the circumstances surrounding Michael Jackson’s death continued with searches of his home and the offices of his doctor, Conrad Murray. Many rumours about Jackson’s private life flooded the newspapers, mainly regarding his children, questioning their paternity and whether or not they would be returned to their natural mothers. Several men stepped up to claim that they – not Michael Jackson – were the biological father but in the end no proof was ever forthcoming.
More than two years later, on 27 September 2011, the trial of Conrad Murray for the involuntary manslaughter of the singer began in earnest. The trial brought up all kinds of startling information, including photographs of Jackson’s dead body; pictures of his dishevelled bedroom full of medical equipment; and the revelation that the insomniac would often beg his doctor to administer drugs powerful enough to bring on sleep.
It was revealed that when other powerful sedatives did not work, the singer would often be given Propofol and it was this, in conjunction with the other drugs in his system, that had finally pushed Jackson’s body over the edge, inducing his untimely death. The trial ran until November 2011 when the jury eventually found Murray guilty of involuntary manslaughter and he was sentenced to four years in prison.
In the end, away from the tales of drugs and the trials and tribulations over what went on during that fateful day in June 2009, Michael Jackson’s death was shockingly tragic, a conclusion to a life that could hardly have been stranger. During his almost fifty-two years on earth, he dazzled audiences around the world with his songs, his dance and his energy, but finally he seemed to become a shadow of the person he had once been, apparently surrounded by a team of hangers-on and yes-men. Perhaps it can be said that if more people had dared to say no to him, then the singer might still be alive today.
But while Jackson may have gone, he has left behind not only a body of work unlike anything that anyone had ever seen and heard before, but also three children who seem determined to do their father proud and carry on his legacy. The eldest, Prince Michael, has started work as a correspondent for Entertainment Tonight, while Paris has seemingly always wanted to follow in her father’s footsteps as a performer. In a family video shot when she was very young, she was asked what she would like to be when she grew up. “Just like you, Daddy” was her reply. Now a teenager, she has already appeared in one movie and has plans to make many more in the years to come.
Finally, while they may no longer have their father around them, it is abundantly clear that in shielding the children from the paparazzi and giving them the early childhood that he himself never received, Jackson has enabled his daughter and sons to develop their own personas and be comfortable in their own skin. If only he had been given the same privilege – surely everything would have been very different for Michael Jackson, the King of Pop.