POP king into History
[I found this interesting article in epaper.timesofindia.com and epratidin.in. Read this and post comments if you like:
Source:
1)http://epaper.timesofindia.com/Default/Client.asp?Daily=TOIKM&showST=true&login=default&pub=TOI&Enter=true&Skin=TOINEW&GZ=T&AW=1246158548125
2) http://epratidin.in/epaperimages/2762009/2762009-md-hr-1/D28556184.JPG]
Jacko Moonwalks Into HIStory
Brooks Barnes
For his legions of fans, he was the Peter Pan of pop: the little boy who refused to grow up. But on the verge of another attempted comeback, he is suddenly gone, this time for good.
Michael Jackson, whose quintessentially American tale of celebrity and excess took him from musical boy wonder to global pop superstar to sad figure haunted by lawsuits, paparazzi and failed plastic surgery, was pronounced dead on Thursday afternoon at UCLA Medical Center
after arriving in a coma, a city official said. Jackson was 50, having spent 40 of those years in the public eye he loved.
The singer was rushed to the hospital, a six-minute drive from the rented Bel-Air home in which he was living, shortly after noon by paramedics for the Los Angeles Fire Department. A hospital spokesman would not confirm reports of cardiac arrest. He was pronounced dead at 2.26 pm.
The internet suffered a number of slowdowns as people rushed to verify accounts of Jackson’s death. According to a BBC report, search giant Google confirmed that when the news first broke, it feared it was under attack. Millions of people who searched the star’s name on Google around the time he was officially pronounced dead were greeted with an error page rather than a list of results. Microblogging service Twitter, too, crashed owing to the sheer volume of people using the service. Several other websites either slowed or crashed.
At the height of his career, Jackson was indisputably the biggest star in the world, selling over 500 million albums. Radio stations across the US reacted to his death with marathon sessions of his songs. MTV, which grew successful in part as a result of his groundbreaking videos, reprised its early days as a music channel by showing his hits.
From his days in the Jackson 5 to his solo career in the 1980s and early 1990s, Jackson gave a string of hits that exploited his high voice, energy and ear for irresistible hooks. But over the years, he became more character than singer: his sequined glove, whitened face and moonwalk move became part of the cultural firmament.
His career hit its peak with the release in 1982 of Thriller, the largest selling album of all time. But his career later disintegrated. His darkest moment came in 2003, when he was indicted on child molesting charges. NYTNS
Mystery Of The Missing Doctor
A BMW belonging to Jackson’s personal physician — who was reported to be missing — was towed from the house on Thursday night. A police spokeswoman said: “We have not been able to interview the doctor yet. His car was impounded because it may contain medications or other evidence that may assist the coroner in determining the cause of death.”
Intriguingly, family members said Jackson received a massive dose of Demerol shortly before he went into cardiac arrest. Any doctor who legally administers the drug must be certified to do so. The Los Angeles Times reported that Jackson’s physician — and also his spokesman — Dr Tohme R Tohme does not currently have a medical licence. Tohme’s website states that he is “Ambassador at Large, Senegal,” though a spokesman at Senegal’s US embassy said he’d never heard of him. Sellout arena doesn’t have player
Michael Jackson’s darkest moment came in 2003, when he was indicted on child molesting charges. A young cancer patient claimed the singer had befriended him and then groped him at his Neverland estate near California, but Jackson was acquitted on all charges.
Jackson had been scheduled to perform 50 concerts at the O2 arena in London beginning next month and continuing into 2010. The shows, which quickly sold out, were positioned as a comeback, with the potential to earn him up to $50 million, according to some reports. But there had also been worry and speculation that he was not physically ready for such an arduous run of concerts, and his postponement of the first of those shows to July 13 from July 8 fuelled new rounds of gossip about his health. Nevertheless, he was rehearsing on Wednesday night at the Staples Center in downtown Los Angeles.
“The primary reason for the concerts wasn’t so much that he was wanting to generate money as much as it was that he wanted to perform for his kids,” said J Randy Taraborrelli, whose biography, Michael Jackson: The Magic and the Madness, was first published in 1991. “They had never seen him perform before.” Michael’s brothers, Jackie, Tito, Jermaine, Marlon and Randy, have all had performing careers, with varying success, since they stopped performing together. His sisters, Rebbie, La Toya and Janet, are also singers, and Janet Jackson has been a major star in her own right for two decades. They all survive him, as do his parents, Joseph and Katherine Jackson, of Las Vegas, and three children: Michael Joseph Jackson Jr, Paris Michael Katherine Jackson (born to Jackson’s second wife, Deborah Jeanne Rowe), and Prince Michael Jackson II, the son of a surrogate mother. Jackson was also briefly married to Lisa Marie Presley, the daughter of Elvis Presley.
A spokesman for the Los Angeles police department said the department assigned its robbery and homicide division to investigate the death, but that was because of Jackson’s celebrity. “Don’t read anything into
it,” the spokesman told reporters gathered outside the Bel-Air house. He said the coroner had taken possession of the body and would conduct an investigation. At a news conference at the hospital, Jermaine Jackson spoke to reporters about his brother. “It is believed he suffered cardiac arrest at his home,” he said softly. “A personal physician first tried to resuscitate him at his home before paramedics arrived. A team of doctors then tried to resuscitate him for more than an hour,” his brother said. “May our love be with you always,” Jermaine Jackson concluded, his gaze aloft. NYT NEWS SERVICE
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