DANIEL LEADERMAN
ARTICLE (June 28 2009): He recorded the best-selling album in history. For a time, he pulled down 50 million dollars a year, with an overall worth reported at 750 million dollars.Yet when he died Thursday, Michael Jackson was deeply in debt. Three decades of extravagant living and legal fees from two high-profile scandals left the pop superstar owing as much as 500 million dollars, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Jackson, who passed suddenly at age 50, sold more than 750 million records world-wide. He generated enormous wealth from his concert tours and catalogue holdings, but didn't know how to spend wisely. "There was no planning in terms of allocations of how much he should spend," Alvin Malnik, a lawyer and former financial adviser to Jackson, told The New York Times in 2006. "Millions of dollars annually were spent on plane charters, purchases of antiques and paintings."
Jackson did make one very shrewd business decision: in 1985 he paid 47.5 million dollars to acquire ATV Music, which owned the rights to 251 songs John Lennon and Paul McCartney wrote with The Beatles. In 1995, he sold half of the catalogue ownership to Sony for 150 million dollars, but both halves remained under joint management by Sony/ATV, including Jackson's own music.
Jackson's stake in the catalogue at the time of his death was estimated at 1 billion dollars, Ivan Thornton, a private-wealth adviser who has worked with Jackson and his family, told Bloomberg financial news service.
The Sony deal had helped the King of Pop maintain financial security through the late 1990s and into the 21st century, The Wall Street Journal reported, despite an expensive lifestyle that included high-class hotel fees for the singer and his entourage, impulsive purchases of art and antiques and lavish gifts for friends like actress Elizabeth Taylor.
Diminished album sales took their toll as well.His 1982 album Thriller sold more than 100 million copies. By 2001, Invincible sold only 6 million copies, and cost Jackson 25 million dollars to produce. Jackson also incurred massive settlement and legal fees stemming from two separate accusations of child-molestation.
In 1993, a 13-year-old boy claimed Jackson molested him while he had been a guest at the singer's Neverland ranch in California. Jackson vehemently denied the accusations, but is believed to have paid a 20-million-dollar out-of-court settlement to the boy accuser to head off a criminal case against him.
In 2003, Jackson was charged with intoxicating and sexually abusing a boy who had said in a documentary that he would sometimes share a bed with Jackson. He was cleared of all charges in 2005 after a high profile four-month trial. Reports of Jackson's financial troubles began to surface in 2006. He closed the main house of Neverland ranch as a cost-cutting measure, but repeatedly failed to pay interest on the 24.5 million dollars he owed on the property. A last-minute refinancing agreement narrowly saved Neverland from public auction in 2008.
In April Jackson abruptly cancelled an auction of his personal memorabilia, including the crystal-covered glove he wore in the hit music video for Billie Jean and numerous musical awards. Auctioneers estimated that the 1,390 items could have raised between 10 and 20 million dollars to help Jackson pay down the debt on Neverland.
In March the singer announced a comeback with a series of "curtain call" shows that were to be held at the O2 Arena in London in July. Some doubted whether theaormer superstar could still draw the crowds, but enormous demand for tickets eventually extended the run from 10 shows to 50 shows. Critics claimed that Jackson would only perform in London to rebuild his battered finances. It just might have worked.
Andy Goldberg adds: Bright yellow police lines stretched across the street Friday where Michael Jackson lived, and died, a day earlier.But the hordes of fans they were meant to keep at bay were nowhere to be found. Instead, there was a handful of Jackson devotees sitting around on the grass verges of the swanky Beverly Hills neighbourhood where the pop idol lived his final days in a rented mansion.
A crushed hat and home-made sequinned glove lay next to a lamppost. Journalists hoping for a story outnumbered the Jackson fans hoping to pay him tribute. Throughout the day however a stream of sightseeing vans bussed curious tourists to see the macabre site of Jackson's demise, much to the chagrin of the millionaire residents of area.
"My friends will be really impressed," bragged Kevin Fritsche, 18, of Cologne, Germany. He was in the western US on a summer holiday with his family. But before they headed off in their rented minivan to see the excesses of America in Las Vegas they decided to "be a part of history," Fritsche said.
"I wasn't a great fan of his. I liked his music but I didn't like him too much. Still, this is something really big," Fritsche told dpa. Such sentiments seemed typical of many of the people who flocked to the landmarks associated with Jackson. At the UCLA hospital where he was pronounced dead, most of the pilgrims at the ad-hoc Jackson shrine on Friday were hospital patients in their gowns and staff in their overalls, who stopped to see what the commotion was about.
At ground zero of the Jackson memorial site, his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, hundreds of people waited in line to pay their respects. But few of them were from Los Angeles. Most seemed to be tourists who felt lucky to have their visits coincide with the demise of the greatest star in recent history.
In contrast to the scenes in London and Tokyo, where fans gathered in their hundreds to sing Jackson's songs and pay tribute to his life, most of those gathered in Los Angeles were "accidental mourners," as one local Angeleno put it. "There's no question that in his time Michael Jackson was the world's greatest superstar," said pop culture professor Cherie Paris. "But my sense is that people here became so jaded about his incessant weirdness. They were still fascinated by his personality, but the admiration was largely absent."
Even Jackson impersonator Hector Ruiz, who gave countless interviews to the press at the Hollywood pavement star and displayed a rather lame moonwalk, seemed more pathetic than respectful. Jackson would likely rather have cancelled a concert that to be seen in the cheaply-sewn black costume worn by Ruiz, not to mention the cheap plastic baubles draped all over his jacket or the plaster stuck on his nose that seemed to mock Jackson.
"I never stopped believing in him and I never will," declared Ruiz. But a moment later he contradicted himself, and revealed the distance that many Americans had come to feel from the former king of pop. "I was thinking of taking the glove off," he said, referring to his plans to stop impersonating Jackson. "People made fun of me."
Rest in peace..perhaps now will you get the respect and dignity you deserved all along.
