In preparing to write a tribute to Michael Jackson I find that I can't.
There's just not much to be said about the shell of a man long past his career prime. A man who resembles little of what he was when he was the undisputed King of Pop.
In coming up with a tribute I can only say this. Any tribute is not to the person who died bankrupt in his rented palatial home in LA; it is for the brilliant music he produced in the early 1980s. When I think of Jackson, that's what comes to mind.
What can be said about him?
He sold a lot of albums; granted. His talent is in no doubt nor were his abilities to entertain. He leaves those aging music and video classics to his legions of fans.
Jackson made and spent over a $1bn during the past thirty years. In his death he has nothing to show for it, only a pile of debt reported in the $400 - $600 million range. No house, no special car, nothing. Neverland is gone, sinking under dust and neglect. Elvis at least left us Graceland, Cadillac's, kirsch collections of baubles. Jackson spent a billion dollars on nothing.
With such a decent source of personal income one would think that philanthropic efforts would have featured large but they didn't. Jackson has no reputation for spending money to help the less fortunate; no charitable trusts that we know of. No starving children weep in gratitude for his generosity in his passing.
With a debt of $400+ million his children are royally screwed too. His legacy to them is a one of a strange father, with a life over the past twenty years that they can will - read about as they get older in archived tabloids. He wrapped his children in an attempt to protect them from publicity but in doing so, now that he's gone, they will become the subject of the voracious gossip columnists. Indeed it's already begun.
What was left at the end of his life was a man who was nothing like the successful energetic entertainer who brought us the unique and superbly produced Thriller.' What was left was the shadow of a changeling; uncertain of who or what he was; a freak of celebrity. A person so in love with his pop status that he forgot that he too lived in the real world.
A comeback was promised.
Personally I doubt it would ever have happened, the cancellations had already started. He was burnt out, too old. He'd been there and done that.
His London concerts were to have been followed by a world tour designed, not to promote great music, but to shore up the gaping hole in his personal finances. He might have ended up in Vegas, like Liberace, old, amusing, forgotten.
People talk about the tragedy of the past years with his court dates; the accusations, the payouts to families; the trial and acquittal. Those demons go to the grave with him.
Feel sorry for him all you want. But the sorrow, if we examine it fairly, is for the passing of our own youth, of innocence lost, of seeing our own mortality in the death of a former superstar.
Michael Jackson the singer, the dancer, died a long time ago.
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