I keep a list, which I look at from time to time, of famous people who died at an age I have already passed: Christ, Mozart, Shelley, John F Kennedy etc. It serves both to bolster confidence that things could be worse and to remind one of one’s own ineffectuality.
My first thought about Michael Jackson was that I wasn’t in the least surprised to be writing his name on it. Whereas the deaths of other much older people in the music business – Mick Jagger, Paul McCartney, Bruce Springsteen, would cause you to stop and think, with Jackson it seems, with hindsight, just obvious.
His many fans must hope that he will be remembered for his music, but it is his life and lifestyle which has too often been the story: the strange pallor, the children, the bankruptcy. Unlike, say, Elvis Presley or David Bowie there was nothing about Jackson’s lifestyle that anyone would have wanted.
And now the stories will run, the unauthorised biographies will be written and the money will flow in and pay off the debts. Hey-ho.
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