ТОП просматриваемых книг сайта:
Michael Jackson – Legend, Hero, Icon: A Tribute to the King of Pop. James Aldis
Читать онлайн.Название Michael Jackson – Legend, Hero, Icon: A Tribute to the King of Pop
Год выпуска 0
isbn 9780007341450
Автор произведения James Aldis
Жанр Биографии и Мемуары
Издательство HarperCollins
Jackson moves into his new California home, the Neverland Ranch, and publishes his autobiography, Moonwalk.
26 November 1991
Michael’s Dangerous album is released, with single ‘Black or White’ debuting at number 1.
31 January 1993
Michael’s half-time performance at Super Bowl XXVII gains the highest viewing figures in the history of US television.
26 May 1994
Michael marries Lisa Marie Presley, daughter of Elvis Presley. The marriage ends amicably two years later.
20 June 1995
Jackson releases HIStory: Past, Present and Future, Book I, a two-CD album including 15 of his greatest hits and 15 new songs.
14 November 1996
Michael marries Debbie Rowe. Together they have two children, Prince Michael Jackson, Jr. and Paris Michael Katherine Jackson. The couple divorce in October 2000.
19 March 2001
Michael is inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Later that year he holds a concert at Madison Square Garden to celebrate his 30 years as a solo artist. Also that year, Michael releases his album Invincible.
21 February 2002
Prince Michael II (‘Blanket’) born.
5 March 2009
Michael announces a return to the public arena with a series of concerts at London’s O2 Arena.
25 June 2009
Michael Jackson dies following a heart attack at his home in California.
CONTENTS
Chapter 1 - From the Steelworks to Hitsville
Chapter 2 - From the Prince of Pop to the King of Pop
Chapter 3 - Fall from Grace — the Wilderness Years
Chapter 4 - The Death of a King
Chapter 5 - Remembering Michael
Michael Jackson was without doubt the greatest performer ever to have lived. In his own lifetime he became a legend, transcending the boundaries that separated white and black audiences, creating sounds that had never before been heard, and writing music that will remain in the hearts of listeners for generations and generations to come. Never before or since has a recording artist achieved so much —from record-setting albums to astonishing acts of charity — and his impact on the domain of not only popular music but world culture itself will be felt down the ages. As a man and a performer Michael Jackson was totally unique. Influenced by the ghosts of an extraordinary childhood, he also faced unflagging public scrutiny. The media frenzy which surrounded his untimely death was already a constant presence in a life that seemed to hold so little privacy but to offer so many intriguing questions. Yet whatever the doubts and blame generated by his death, his legacy to the world will live on untarnished: as a man who wrote songs for the whole world to sing.
1 From the Steelworks to Hitsville
Michael Jackson’s career as a performer began incredibly early. Although fellow musicians Stevie Wonder and Donny Osmond had been child stars, Michael was different: he immediately exploded onto the popular music scene and caught the public’s attention in a way that had never been seen before, thanks to his unmatched vocal gifts and performing skills. The intense focus on his career that characterized his childhood and adolescence later took a toll on him, it being at once both the making and—in the view of many—the breaking of him. Deprived of a normal childhood and subject to the exhausting demands of constant practice and the ambitions of his family, Michael was catapulted into the limelight at an age when most kids would be playing in the street or at school.
MICHAEL’S EARLY LIFE AND THE HISTORY OF THE JACKSON FIVE
‘When you’re a show business child, you really don’t have the maturity to understand a great deal of what is going on around you. People make a lot of decisions concerning your life when you’re out of the room. So here’s what I remember. I remember singing at the top of my voice and dancing with real joy and working too hard for a child.’
—Michael Jackson
The Jackson children, with the exception of Jermaine, pose together. Left to right: (back row) Rebbie, Jackie, Marlon, Tito, (front row) Michael, Janet, Randy and La Toya.
‘If you enter this world knowing you are loved and you leave this world knowing the same, then everything that happens in between can be dealt with.’
—Michael Jackson
A HUMBLE BACKGROUND
The four boys who made up the band were amongst the eldest of a family of nine, born to Joe and Katherine Jackson. Joe’s background as a steel-worker in Gary, Indiana, offered the children a humble start in life, with the entire family squeezed into a house of just three rooms, but his passion for developing the unique set of gifts his children possessed was to be the catalyst that raised the family above and beyond their surroundings in a way that no-one could ever have foreseen.
Joe played guitar in a band called The Falcons with his brother. Their rock ‘n’ roll covers of Otis Redding, Little Richard and Chuck Berry could be heard in the house at weekends when the band came over to rehearse and must have had an impressive influence on the young Jackson flock; meanwhile, mother Katherine played clarinet and piano, evidence of a shared musical gift that ran through the family.
The small family home on Jackson street.
Michael aged three.
‘I remember going to the record studio and there was a park across the street and I’d see all the children playing and I would cry because it would make me sad that I would