Michael Jackson (1958 - 2009) was born into a family of an ordinary worker in the God-forsaken town of Gary in Indiana and managed to rise to the very top of show business. Moreover, he thoroughly shook up the entire system of American show business, starting to shoot expensive and high-quality video clips, giving rise to the music television industry, without which the appearance of a single star is now unthinkable.
Jackson's talent was great and multifaceted. He sang, composed and arranged songs. His dancing was inimitable. Each of his concerts turned into a first-class show. The cutting of Michael's talent was facilitated by the already established system in the United States. Father, Joseph Jackson, taught his sons to sing and play different instruments, and then Jacksons picked up and carried the stream, consisting of recordings, concerts, television performances. The task of the musicians was to perform their works, all the rest was done by special people. Michael, with his equipment cargo planes and dozens of equipment trucks, has perfected this system. And it all began with the fact that the elder brothers of Michael Jermain and Marlon began to quietly play their father's guitar, which was strictly prohibited. Having caught the violators, Joseph did not punish them, but decided to create a group. A little later, the first step of Michael Jackson in show business will be called "The Jackson Five" ...
1. The tradition of singing songs together originated in the Jackson family the day the television broke down. Before that, only his father, who played the guitar in local bands, was engaged in music.
2. The first professional venue for The Jackson Five was a strip club. “Mr. Lucky’s ”in the city of Gary. Whether Joseph Jackson was involved in this or not is unknown, but the $ 6 royalties on weekdays and $ 7 on weekends were constantly being supplemented by money, which, out of habit, threw the club's visitors onto the stage as a sign of approval.
3. The first single that The Jackson Five recorded at Steeltown Records can now sell for at least $ 1,000. The song "Big Boy" even sounded on the radio, but did not become a hit.
4. Four singles from the very first album of the Jackson family, released on “Motown”, took first places in the charts. And they had to compete not with some unknown songs of the same debutants, but with the composition “The Beatles” “Let It Be” and the hit “The Shoking Blue” “Venus” (She’s Got It, aka “Shizgara”).
5. Michael Jackson had to meet the frenzy of fans already at the age of 12. Dozens of girls burst onto the stage during The Jackson Five's concert in front of an 18,000-strong audience in Los Angeles. The brothers, who earned $ 100,000 for their performance, had to flee the stage.
6. When Michael and the brothers returned to Gary, the city's main street was renamed in their honor for a week. The mayor handed them the keys to the city. On their street was a banner "Welcome home, keepers of the dreams!" And a local congressman handed them the state flag that was on the Capitol.
7. The ABC TV channel shot a whole animated series about the Jacksons. Among the easily recognizable brothers, Michael stood out, thus becoming the leader of the group not only on stage.
8. Michael Jackson's solo career began in 1979 with the album "Off the Wall". The album sold 20 million copies, and critics called it the last tribute to the era of the outgoing disco.
9. In 1980, after the release of the worldwide album “Off the Wall”, Jackson asked the Rolling Stones magazine publisher to put his photo on the cover. In response, the singer, whose debut album sold a huge circulation, heard that magazines with black faces on the cover were selling poorly.
10. Interestingly, before the release of Michael Jackson's super-successful album “Thriller”, the best-selling album in the United States was The Eagles' release “The Greatest Hits”. Hardly now anyone other than fans of this group can remember her other songs besides “Hotel California”. And the disc circulation was 30 million copies!
11. Video clip with the plot - an invention of Michael Jackson. All of his videos (by the way, he really did not like the word "clip") were filmed not on TV cameras, on 35-mm film. And the MTV premiere of the video “Thriller” on December 2, 1983 is still considered the most important event in music video history.
12. Jackson's Moonwalk debuted on May 16, 1983 at the Motown 25th Anniversary Celebration with the song “Billy Jean”. However, it is not Michael's invention - he himself said that he spied on the movements of street dancers.
13. Jackson was first named “King of Pop” by Elizabeth Taylor during the singer's performance at the American Music Awards.
14. In 1983, Michael Jackson set a show business record by signing an advertising contract for $ 5 million with Pepsi. Less than a year later, the shooting in an advertisement for the drink almost ended tragically - due to technical problems, the singer received burns, subsequently which greatly affected his health. Pepsi paid substantial compensation, and the next contract cost the company $ 15 million.
15. During the concert tour in support of the "Bad" album, almost 1.5 kg of explosives were consumed at each concert. The equipment was transported by a fleet of 57 heavy vehicles. Only 160 people were engaged in transportation.
16. Jackson did not want to turn white and did not sleep in a pressure chamber to prolong life. His skin was lightened by illness. As the singer's make-up artist said, one day it turned out that it was faster to lighten dark areas of the skin than to paint over light ones. A dream in a pressure chamber was invented by journalists after Jackson was photographed in it for the advertisement of the film “Captain IO”.
17. Ranch "Neverland" with an area of 12 square meters. km, which Jackson bought in the late 1980s for $ 19.5 million, 15 years later was estimated at $ 100 million. Michael built a go-kart track, an amusement park, a railway, an Indian village and a zoo there. The maintenance of the estate and the salaries of the staff took up to 10 million a year.
18. Jackson was married twice: to Lisa-Maria Presley and Deborah Rove. Both marriages were made far away - in the Dominican Republic and Australia - and did not last long. Deborah gave birth to two children, a son and a daughter. A surrogate mother gave birth to another child to Jackson.
19. Speaking at the 1996 Brit Awards, Jackson walked on stage in the guise of Jesus Christ and sang with children on their knees. The performance was disrupted by the vocalist of “Pulp” Jarvis Cocker. In the middle of the song, he jumped onto the stage and almost threw Michael off it.
20. The first time the singer was brought to trial on charges of pedophilia in 1993. Perhaps in the course of this case, Jackson made the biggest mistake of his life. Overwhelmed by the severity of the accusations, he agreed to pre-trial settlement of the claims of the Jordan Chandler family, paying 22 million. Public opinion considered this step an admission of guilt. After 26 years, the matured Chandler admits that his father ordered him to incriminate Jackson.
21. Another scandal of Jackson's alleged pedophilia broke out in 2003. This time the king of pop went through all the stages of investigation and trial. The jury found him completely innocent. But the processes undermined Jackson's health and financial position, which was already not brilliant.
22. At the peak of his career in the late 1980s, Michael Jackson's fortune was estimated at 500 million. After a decade and a half, his debt was 350 million. It turned out that the journalistic statement that Jackson earns as a millionaire and spends as a billionaire was not an exaggeration. Until the end of his life, the singer was littered with lawsuits.
23. When Jackson announced in 2009 that he would play 10 concerts in London at a 20,000-seat complex, 750,000 entries were received in the first five hours. As a result, it was planned to hold not 10, but 50 performances. However, litigation began again, related to the singer's previous obligations, and then everything was canceled by the death of Michael Jackson.
24. The 50-year-old king of pop passed away on June 25, 2009 from a drug overdose. Death was pronounced at 14:26, but in fact Jackson had passed away two hours earlier. Michael Jackson's personal physician, Conrad Murray, prescribed 8 medications to his patient, three of which were incompatible with each other. But death came from taking too much propofol, a sedative and hypnotic. In addition, Murray unskilledly performed CPR and could not call emergency help for half an hour. After the call, the medics were there in 3.5 minutes. Murray subsequently received 4 years in prison, of which he served only half.
25. The funeral of Michael Jackson took place on September 3 at a cemetery in a suburb of Los Angeles. The farewell ceremony took place on July 7 at the Staples Center in Los Angeles. It was attended by 17,000 people. Speakers were Jackson's relatives, colleagues and friends. The TV audience of the farewell ceremony was about a billion people.
