The gifted child singer and dancer morphed into the biggest star on the planet, and then into a side-show freak of scandal, illnesses, plastic surgery and odd parenting. Despite an embattled life where he was often the target of ridicule, Michael Jackson became a legend who, even after over a decade off the radar, still had legions of fans scrambling to secure tickets to his final, ill-fated tour. He passed away in 2009, and yet he still makes more money than a vast majority of the population.

CHILDHOOD LOST

 

Michael Joseph Jackson, born August 29, 1958, to Joseph Walter ("Joe") and Katherine Scruse-Jackson, lived in a modest two-room house in a working-class neighborhood of Gary, Indiana with his parents and eight siblings. Michael officially joined older brothers Jackie, Tito, Jermaine and Marlon in the family band as a young child. Father Joe Jackson had a strict work ethic, coupled with a yen for even stricter discipline (likely driven by both his regrets about his own lagging career as an R&B guitarist and perhaps the cramped living quarters). But Joe was responsible for both the early successes of the family singing and dancing sensation The Jackson 5, and the frequent and brutal whippings Michael endured at his hand.

FROM QUINTET TO SOLO

The Jackson 5 signed with Motown Records in 1968 and for the next six years enjoyed a string of Billboard Hot 100 and R&B chart hits. Michael's talents eclipsed those of his siblings early on, with Rolling Stone calling the young, silver-voiced dancing machine a prodigy with "overwhelming musical gifts" who "quickly emerged as the main draw and lead singer."

 

Throughout the 1970s, Michael released a string of well-received solo albums and appeared in The Wiz with friend Diana Ross. Jackson solidified his superstar talents with the financial and creative successes of the album Thriller. To date, Thriller's sales have topped more than 110 millions copies worldwide, making it the most popular album of all time.

Can an individual this talented and driven enjoy a semblance of a 'normal' life? Maybe not. Jackson's last 25 years on earth were punctuated by a string of bad luck and bad choices—both comedic and tragic—that painted Jackson as capricious, eccentric, emotionally stunted, and, perhaps, exploitative.

By the time that Michael's hair caught on fire during the filming of a Pepsi commercial, he had already undergone (at least) three nose jobs. Despite his vehement denials to the contrary, it appeared that Michael also surgically reshaped his face while he was at it. Starting in the mid-1980s, his skin pigment grew progressively lighter—the result, he claimed, of a topical treatment used to combat lupus and vitiligo. He liberally applied pancake makeup to even out his skin tone to the point of ridicule, replacing a young African-American man with a Kabuki drag queen.

 

 

Jackson was enthralled by symbols of youth—toys, Ferris wheels, animals, children—and spent prodigious amount of his fortune to furnish The Neverland Ranch, his home outside Santa Ynes, California complete with a movie theatre, a personal menagerie and even Ferris wheels on the 2,700-acre property. An innocent sleepover could so easily be misconstrued by the public, especially when they also believed you bought the Elephant Man's bones and were trying to turn yourself into Diana Ross. In 1993, Jackson was sued for sexual assault by a 13-year-old boy and his father; the case was later settled out of court, but Jackson's friends say he never recovered from that humiliation.

 

From 1994 to 1996, Jackson was married to Lisa Marie Presley, the daughter of Elvis Presley, yet questions persisted whether the marriage was intended to prove once and for all that Michael's love for little boys was strictly platonic.

 

In 1997, Michael married Deborah Rowe, better known as his plastic surgeon's associate, in an impromptu ceremony in Australia. This three-year marriage resulted in two children, but Rowe later revealed that the pair never had sex or acted like a couple during their relationship, and the children were conceived via artificial insemination from an anonymous sperm donor. As if that family dynamic wasn’t already bizarre enough, Jackson welcomed a third child, Prince Michael II ("Blanket"), in 2002 through a surrogate mother, but promptly caused a media firestorm when he dangled him over the edge of a hotel balcony for reporters in Berlin.

 

In 2003, the documentary Living with Michael Jackson debuted. Journalist Martin Bashir hoped to debunk some of the myths about Michael’s odd behavior during the eight months he spent with him. Instead, it ended up being a somewhat negative portrayal of his life.

 

Things only got worse when, soon after, Santa Barbara County prosecutors charged Jackson with child molestation for the second time. Again, Jackson was acquitted on all counts, but the negative press and the stress that followed made him a virtual recluse. He relocated to the country of Bahrain in the Persian Gulf to lick his wounds.

 

 

On June 25, 2009, in the midst of preparing for a series of high-profile comeback concerts, Jackson died of cardiac arrest. The death was eventually ruled a homicide, brought on by lethal doses of sedatives administered by his personal physician. Fans learned after his death that the star was addicted to painkillers and sleep aids for a long time.

 

But even in death, Michael triumphs over the competition: he was the #1 selling artist of 2009, selling more than 8 million albums, and This is It, a documentary of Jackson preparing for his final tour, has made more than $250 million. He continues to make headlines through his family and releases of old tracks that never saw the light of day.  ~ozenk potgieter