His hits were the soundtrack for a generation and, like Elvis and John Lennon, he will be long remembered. Which Michael Jackson will be remembered? The unsurpassed entertainer, the gifted and driven song-and-dance man who wielded rhythm, melody, texture and image to create and promote the best-selling album in history, Thriller in 1982? Or the bizarre figure he became after he failed in his stated ambition to outsell Thriller, and after the gleaming fantasy gave way to tabloid revelations, bitter rejoinders and the long public silence he was scheduled to break next month? In the end, the superstar and the recluse were not so far apart. Jackson built his stardom on paradox. As a child star he was precocious; as an adult he was childlike. His only competition was himself. Within the razzle-dazzle of his music, he sang about fears and uncertainties in that high, vulnerable voice: flinching from monsters in Thriller, wishing he could Beat It when trouble began. He was a racial paradox, too: an African-American whose audience was never segregated, but whose features grew more Caucasian and whose skin grew lighter through his career, to discomfiting effect. All Jackson's show-business skills - ones learned under his father's sometimes brutal instruction and then within the Motown Records hit-making assembly line - were at once a way to please the broadest possible audience and to shield himself from them, safe within his own spectacle. There was no denying his talent. His voice leaped out in Jackson Five songs such as I Want You Back. He internalised Motown's philosophy of making music for a broad audience, not just a black or white audience, as pop grew increasingly segmented in the 1970s and when he took over his own career, with Off the Wall in 1979, he applied that philosophy to the newest sounds he could find. He offered something to everybody on Thriller, which may have been the most strategic crossover album to date: a duet with a Beatle in The Girl Is Mine, dizzying electronic beats in Wanna Be Startin' Somethin', rock guitar in Beat It. His established stardom helped get an African-American face onto MTV, breaking what seemed like a colour line, in a hugely beneficial step for both. Jackson wasn't just an old-school, show-business expert who could sing and dance onstage in real time; he was also more than ready for the music-video era, turning his songs into high-concept video clips that fitted the chorus-line production of old Hollywood musicals into television-sized nuggets. He was poised, handsome, confident, slick - and still, within that musical shell, vulnerable. Michael Joseph Jackson was born in Indiana on August 29, 1958. He died on Thursday afternoon, US time, at UCLA Medical Centre after arriving in a coma, a city official said. He was 50 years old and had spent 39 of those years in the public eye. Jackson's life of celebrity and excess took him from musical boy wonder, to global pop superstar, to sad figure haunted by lawsuits and failed plastic surgery. In many ways, he never recovered from his trial in 2003 for child molestation. It was a lurid affair that attracted media from around the world to watch as Jackson, wearing a different costume each day, appeared in a small courtroom in Santa Maria, California, to listen as a parade of witnesses spun a sometimes incredible tale. The case ultimately turned on the credibility of Jackson's accuser, a 15-year-old cancer survivor who said the defendant had got him drunk and molested him several times. The boy's younger brother testified that he had seen Jackson fondling his brother on two other occasions. After 14 weeks of such testimony and seven days of deliberations, the jury returned not-guilty verdicts on all 14 counts against Jackson: four charges of child molesting, one charge of attempted child molesting, one conspiracy charge and eight possible counts of providing alcohol to minors. Conviction could have led to 20 years in prison. Instead, Jackson walked away a free man to try to reclaim a career that had been in decline for years. After his trial, Jackson left the US and largely lived in Bahrain. He stayed there and in Dubai and Ireland for several years, managing his increasingly unstable finances. He was an avid shopper and was spotted at malls in the black robes and veils traditionally worn by Bahraini women. He was often accompanied by his children, whose faces he covered to hide them from the tabloid press. As with Elvis Presley or the Beatles, it is impossible to calculate the full effect Jackson had on the world of music. At his peak, he was the biggest star in the world. He sold more than 750 million albums. Radio stations across the US reacted to his death with marathon sessions of his songs. MTV, which was born in part as a result of his groundbreaking videos, played his biggest hits. Jackson had been scheduled to perform 50 concerts in London from next month and continuing into 2010. The shows had the potential to earn him up to $US50 million ($63 million). He was the second-youngest of six brothers and began performing professionally with four of them, at five years of age. In 1968 the group, originally called the Jackson Brothers but by then known as the Jackson Five, was signed by Motown Records. The group's first four singles - I Want You Back, ABC, The Love You Save and I'll Be There - all reached No.1 on the pop charts in 1970, a feat that no other group had accomplished. Young Michael was the centre of attention: he handled most of the lead vocals, danced with energy and finesse and displayed showmanship rare in a performer of any age. The brothers were soon a fixture on television variety shows and briefly had a Saturday-morning cartoon series. In 1971 Jackson began recording under his own name but still performed and recorded with his brothers. The success of Thriller was Jackson's triumph and burden. He had the sales, the Grammy awards and screaming audiences in every country he toured. And he would spend the rest of his career trying to repeat the experience.
