Michael Jackson Story

Michael Joseph Jackson's story was a quintessentially American tale of celebrity and excess that took him from musical boy wonder to global pop superstar to sad figure haunted by lawsuits, paparazzi and failed plastic surgery.


At the height of his career, he was indisputably the biggest star in the world; he has sold more than 750 million albums. He 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. He died at age 50 in Los Angeles on June 25, 2009.

Mr. Jackson's death itself became an enormous spectacle. On television and on the Internet, tens of millions of people worldwide watched a memorial service at the Staples Center in Los Angeles.

The cause of Mr. Jackson's death was a mixture of the powerful anesthetic propofol and the anti-anxiety drug lorazepam, according to the Los Angeles County Coroner office. The manner of death was determined to be homicide. Mr. Jackson's personal doctor, Conrad Murray, who tried to revive Mr. Jackson on the day he died, is the focus of a manslaughter investigation by the Los Angeles Police Department.

The introduction to Mr. Jackson's Rock and Roll Hall of Fame entry seemed apt as a global audience followed reports of his hospitalization and then death:

"Michael Jackson is a singer, songwriter, dancer and celebrity icon with a vast catalog of hit records and countless awards to his credit. Beyond that, he has transfixed the world like few entertainers before or since. As a solo performer, he has enjoyed a level of superstardom previously known only to Elvis Presley, the Beatles and Frank Sinatra."

John Rockwell, the music critic of The Times, cited Mr. Jackson's musical and cultural influence in a 1982 review of the album "Thriller," calling it "a wonderful pop record, the latest statement by one of the great singers in popular music today." But it was more than that, he contended: "It is as hopeful a sign as we have had yet that the destructive barriers that spring up regularly between white and black music -- and between whites and blacks -- in this culture may be breached once again. Most important of all, it is another signpost on the road to Michael Jackson's own artistic fulfillment."