Pop star Michael Jackson rehearses at the Staples Center in Los Angeles on Tuesday, June 23, 2009.
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Bizarre behavior was a phrase often applied to the Michael Jackson who, for the past 20 years, seemed so remote as to be extraterrestrial--the moonwalking moon child. But that was just the last of many Michaels who fascinated, seduced and troubled the world of popular music. In his first prodigious eminence, at 11, as the Cupid and Kewpie doll of the Jackson 5, he was no more complicated than he was adorable: the family singing group's star, dimpled and lithe, the young emperor of elfin cool. Five of Katherine and Joe Jackson's nine kids were in the group, which had a slew of hits for Motown Records, then went to Epic, called themselves the Jacksons, and let Michael branch out on his own.
He recorded four solo albums and co-starred with Diana Ross--who was named in his will as backup guardian of his children--in the movie of the Broadway hit The Wiz, before teaming with renowned producer Quincy Jones for the 1979 Off the Wall. A mixture of disco, funk and plaintive ballads, the album defined MJ's style and sped him toward superstardom. The first single, "Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough," went to No. 1 and came with a fresh promotional tool: a music video, in which three Michaels appear onscreen to perform some intricate steps. It was the squall of an audiovisual genre that Jackson would shape and dominate.
All that was mere throat-clearing for the 1982 Thriller, which would become the world's all-time best-selling album. Maturing as a songwriter, he turned a celebrity's denial of paternity into the whispery, groovy "Billie Jean" and a flee-don't-fight message into the unbeatable "Beat It." The videos for these songs broke an informal color barrier at MTV and made music videos a format that quickly spread around the globe. The 14-minute superproduction for Thriller was later chosen by MTV as the top video ever.
Smash CDs followed, and his collaboration with Lionel Richie on the single and video "We Are the World" sold 7.5 million copies in the U.S. and raised more than $60 million for famine relief in Africa. He wowed 'em at the Super Bowl and with spectacular concert tours whose special effects never overwhelmed the slender dude with the gentle demeanor, dervish footwork and nonpareil showmanship. If you were a star in the '80s, you'd want to be Michael Jackson.
Yet it seemed as though he didn't want to be Michael Jackson. His disastrous compact with California plastic surgeons altered his face nearly beyond recognition. His cocoa skin was gradually blanched into a geisha's pancake white--the result, doctors said, of the pigment-depleting disease vitiligo. Except when camouflaged by makeup in videos--he even wore it to bed, said ex-wife Lisa Marie--or cavorting as a speck onstage in giant arenas, he retreated to his palatial Neverland estate near Santa Barbara, Calif., and became the world's most reclusive exhibitionist.