"News of the World: Врач Джексона хочет опеки над его детьми

Голливудский дерматолог Майка Джексона Арнольд Клейн намерен добиваться права на свидания с его тремя детьми, пишет The News of the World.
В прессе ранее сообщалось, что Клейн является биологическим отцом двух старших детей скончавшегося в конце июня певца.
Издание отмечает, что дерматолог озабочен влиянием, которое может оказать на детей Джо Джексон. Майкл Джексон несколько лет назад утверждал, что страдал от насилия в семье. «Газета.Ru»"

http://www.zavtra.com.ua/news/socium/135384

http://www.rian.ru/culture/20090804/179649349.html

"Мать Джексона намерена добиваться права на управление состоянием певца

ВАШИНГТОН, 4 авг - РИА Новости
Мария Табак.

Мать Майкла Джексона Кэтрин Джексон намерена отстаивать свое право на управление состоянием певца, говорится в сообщении Верховного суда Лос-Анджелеса.

На судебном заседании в понедельник судья Митчелл Бэклофф, предоставив Джексон право опеки над тремя детьми знаменитости, продлил до 2 октября право временной опеки над 500-миллионным состоянием "короля поп-музыки" адвокату Джону Бранке и музыкальному продюсеру Джону Маклейну.

Причина отрицательного ответа суда на поданное Кэтрин Джексон прошение об опеке кроется в обнаруженном завещании самого Джексона, датированном 2002 годом.

Между тем, Кэтрин Джексон через адвокатов настаивает на том, что налицо конфликт интересов, и выражает сомнения в существовании каких-либо отношений между Джексоном и Бранкой на момент кончины певца.

Бэклофф дал матери Майкла Джексона возможность найти до 2 октября какие-либо дополнительные аргументы в пользу того, что именно она должна определять судьбу состояния певца до совершеннолетия его детей."

Первое интервью матери покойного Джексона

17:49 / 03.08.2009

Мать короля поп-музыки Майкла Джексона, который скоропостижно скончался 25 июня, впервые заговорила о смерти сына.

3 августа прошло ровно 40 дней со дня смерти легендарного певца. Майкл считал себя гражданином мира и уважал все религии, поэтому поклонники из России собираются в своих городах на вечера памяти Джексона.

Кэтрин Джексон, мать певца, накануне впервые заговорила о смерти сына. Конечно же, ее слова касались причин его неожиданной кончины, которые до сих пор точно не установлены. "Мой сын мертв, и я не думаю, что он умер только естественной смертью. Он был слишком молод. Что-то случилось…" – сказала она в интервью TMZ.

В ближайшее время состоится заседание суда, на котором Кэтрин Джексон, как ожидается, получит права на постоянную опеку над детьми поп-короля, что соответствует его последней воле, а также будет поднят вопрос о частичном распоряжении имуществом Майкла Джексона.

Как сообщает The Telegraph, появился новый поворот в деле о смерти Майкла Джексона. Предполагается, что смертельный укол обезболивающего препарата "Димерола" певцу мог сделать помощник Конрада Мюррея, лечащего врача Джексона. По сообщению источника издания, помощник ввел сильнодействующее средство по просьбе самого певца, в то время как доктор Мюррей спал.

Вокруг фигуры короля поп-музыки до сих пор царит ажиотаж. Стало известно, что портрет Майкла Джексона, сделанный мастером поп-арта Энди Уорхолом, на котором Джексон изображен в красном пиджаке, в котором он снимался в видеоклипе Thriller, будет выставлен на аукцион.

Картину размером 76 на 66 сантиметров будут выставлять в галерее British Music Experience в Лондоне в течение трех дней, чтобы предложить портрет максимальному числу потенциальных покупателей. Первоначальная цена его составляет 500 тысяч фунтов, однако организаторы рассчитывают продать его за несколько миллионов."

http://www.dni.ru/showbiz/2009/8/3/171957.html

http://www.muzobzor.ru/news/michael-jac … -revealed/

"Результаты освидетельствования тела Майкла Джексона не будут опубликованы

03.08.2009 15:40

Полицейское управление Лос-Анджелеса приняло решение не публиковать результаты судебно-медецинского освидетельствования тела Майкла Джексона. Как говорится в официальном заявлении, данная информация будет обнародована через «неопределенное время». Это значит, что полиция до сих пор не может назвать причину смерти Майкла Джексона, и затрудняется сказать, когда закончится следствие.

Первое освидетельствование было проведено еще 26 июня – на следующий день после смерти Майкла Джексона – однако полиция решила дождаться результатов токсиголоческой экспертизы. 25 июня новостной сайт TMZ сообщил, что следователи получили результаты обследования, и что данные доказывают – гибель музыканта «почти наверняка была убийством».

Ссылаясь на свой источник внутри полиции, TMZ сообщил о том, что детективы подозревают в убийстве бывшего врача Джексона, доктора Конрада Мюррея. У следствия якобы были доказательства того, что доктор Мюррей давал Джексону пропофол (это лекарство, также известное как дирпиван, обычно используют для наркоза перед операцией).

Позже врач Майкла Джексона признался, что дал певцу сильнодействующее лекарство всего за несколько часов до его смерти. Доктор Конрад Мюррей сообщил полиции, что дал исполнителю большую дозу пропофола, что могло стать причиной сердечного приступа. Следствие также объявило, что Мюррей не является подозреваемым, а смерть Майкла Джексона все же рассматривается как несчастный случай, а не как спланированное убийство. «Доктор Мюррей не прописывал и не давал Майклу Джексону лекарств, которые должны были убить его», - заявил адвокат Мюррея."

http://www.thehollywoodgossip.com/2009/ … d-for-60m/
про фильм

http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainmen … _kids.html

про папу Джо, кторый не будет детишками заниматься и про Ла Тойю, которая диск с компа сперла

Найден настоящий отец детей Майкла Джексона.

http://www.topnews.ru/news_id_29839.html

Неожиданное заявление в ходе судебного заседания по делу оназначении опекуна троих детей скончавшегося Майкла Джексона сделал его бывший дерматолог.

Врач Арнольд Клейн (на фото справа) обжаловал постановление, назначающее опекуном бабушку детей 79-летнюю Кэтрин Джексон, заявив, что является настоящим отцом детей Джексона.

Напомним, что решение передать опеку над детьми поп-короля - 12-летним Принцем Майклом, 10-летней Пэрис Майкл и 7-летним Принцем Майклом ІІ - их бабушке было предварительно согласовано с биологической матерью двух детей, Дебби Роу. Кто является настоящим отцом каждого из детей поп-короля, до сих пор неизвестно. Кто является биологической матерью Принца Майкла ІІ, также не раскрывается.

Адвокат Клейна заявил, что его клиент не настаивает на родительских правах, но, тем не менее, заботится об образовании и ежедневных нуждах детей. Протест был отклонен, но доктор Клейн, который раньше не заявлял, что является отцом кого-то из потомков Джексона, может подать его снова, сообщает Mignews.com.ua.

50-летняя Роу, которая была женой Джексона в 1990-х, отказалась от претензий на опекунство в обмен на право посещать детей, $4 млн. и дом стоимостью в $900 тыс.

Если статья уже была, то сорри)
http://www.counterpunch.org/block08032009.html
Автор называет Майкла "an anesthesia fetishist"   Не подумайте плохо, но меня это рассмешило)

Michael Jackson's family planned to pay hundreds of pounds to get people to follow the singer on Twitter, it has been claimed.

A company that sells "packs" of Twitter followers to corporate clients says it has been working with the family in relation to a media campaign for the deceased star.
Australian web promotions firm uSocial said it had not dealt with Jackson himself, but had been in contact with an unnamed relative regarding the purchase of 25,000 followers.
Chief executive Leon Hill said: "I can't admit that we dealt with Michael Jackson directly."
But he added: "We were in touch with someone in his family recently who tasked us with conducting a Twitter campaign on an account relating to him.
"It was exciting to say the very least to conduct work with such a big name."
uSocial said 25,000 followers were bought to be delivered to Jackson's account and they are still working on fulfilling the order.
Mr Hill added: "For obvious reasons we'll be dealing with his family from here on in, though it would have been great to conduct services for Michael Jackson in a different time, under different circumstances."
On the company's website, uSocial says 25,000 followers will cost $869.75 (£522).
The service being delivered to Jackson's account has caused a lot of controversy over the last few months as many users debate the ethics of being able to purchase followers. (sky news august 10)

Журнал "Имена"  август 2009
Все старо, как мир. Но посмотреть и почитать можно.

http://www.vesti.ru/doc.html?id=310204

18 августа 2009 г.  03:49

Отец Майкла Джексона назвал дату похорон сына

Отец Майкла Джексона сообщил, что похороны его сына пройдут на кладбище "Форест-лаун" в Лос-Анджелесе 29 августа     

Отец скончавшегося 25 июня текущего года Майкла Джексона (ФОТО) в интервью, которое в понедельник разместила на своем интернет-сайте газета The New York Daily News, сообщил, что похороны его сына пройдут на кладбище "Форест-лаун" в Лос-Анджелесе (штат Калифорния) 29 августа, в 51-й день рождения "короля поп-музыки".

По словам Джо Джексона, планы похорон были окончательно утверждены лишь несколько дней назад. Отец музыканта также сказал, что одобряет планы полиции по временному сохранению в тайне результатов патологоанатомической экспертизы тела его сына. Смерть певца наступила от остановки сердца, однако то, что стало ее причиной, официально пока не сообщается.

На минувшей неделе некоторые СМИ опубликовали сообщения о том, что Майкл Джексон был похоронен в начале августа в ходе закрытой частной траурной церемонии. Члены семьи певца эти слухи не подтвердили, сообщает ИТАР-ТАСС

Статья от 23 августа 2009 года. Очень интересно!

The last days of Michael Jackson

While the singer was frail, deeply in debt and addicted to drugs towards the end of his life, according to some of those working with him he was better than he'd ever been. Engaged with politics and the environment, even writing new music, Michael Jackson was consumed by a single dream, says Claire Hoffman - to blow people's minds with the greatest concerts ever, in the comeback that almost was

Celebrity News & Gossip Home

Sunday August 23 2009

Michael Jackson's body lay on a metal gurney in the county morgue in downtown Los Angeles. He was dressed in shiny black trousers, a thin hospital gown and nothing else. His feet were bare, his left arm scored with needle marks. His pale, narrow chest was covered in bruises -- evidence of the medical efforts over the past few hours to save his life. Doctors and security guards milled in and out of the little room containing the gurney, eager to catch a glimpse of Jackson's body.

It had started that Thursday morning, when Jackson's own live-in doctor had tried frantically to revive him. By the time the medics arrived, responding to a desperate call to 911 at 12.21pm, they wanted to pronounce him dead on the spot.

But Michael Jackson couldn't be dead. His body was lifted into the back of an ambulance and rushed to UCLA Medical Center, where a team of doctors worked for another hour, pounding a defibrillator on Jackson's chest, all of them hoping that they could keep one of music's greatest entertainers from ending up in this morgue.

Jackson's face, which he had so painfully reworked and concealed from the public for decades, now lay out in the open, undisguised under the morgue's harsh lights. The prosthesis he normally attached to his damaged nose was missing, revealing bits of cartilage surrounding a small, dark hole. But to those who passed through the room, Jackson's face looked porcelain, impeccable. After years of torment, Michael was finally at rest. "Seeing him lying there," recalls one eyewitness, "he looked peaceful."

It was still a day before the autopsy, when pathologists would open him up and try to understand why a thin, 50-year-old man who had danced for hours the night before would die so suddenly. But, as Jackson lay in the morgue on the afternoon of June 25, detectives were already inside the singer's rented chateau in Bel-Air, gathering up the mother lode of prescription drugs that he kept on hand. Most frightening were numerous reports that the two large bags of medication that investigators removed contained vials of Diprivan, a powerful anaesthetic used to put patients under before surgery. Jackson had reportedly been using Diprivan for years to help him sleep, and LA police were soon looking into whether his death should be considered a homicide, making it clear that they wanted to question Jackson's physician, Dr Conrad Murray. Murray had demanded $1m a month to work for Jackson -- and had vanished after his client was pronounced dead in the UCLA emergency room.

Within hours of Michael's death, La Toya Jackson reportedly descended upon her brother's home, frantically searching for the bags of cash she knew he kept there, and in a matter of days, their mother raced to court to fight for control of Michael's estate and custody of his three children. The kids had followed Jackson to the hospital in a blue Escalade, and the job of telling them that their father was dead fell to Michael's manager, Frank DiLeo, who had nearly fainted when a nurse broke the news to him. This was the Michael Jackson that the world knew and mocked: the crazy family, the botched plastic surgeries, the two divorces, the charges of child molestation, the financial woes that had left him an estimated $500m in debt.

But Michael had a different view. In his final days, he not only dreamed of a comeback, he worked as hard as he could to pull it off, maybe as hard as he ever had in his life. He wrote new songs, rehearsed hour after gruelling hour to perfect the shows that would pay off his debts and mark his return to greatness, and planned every detail of his comeback tour -- a massive spectacle that had already cost at least $25m in pre-production alone. Jackson gave the tour its title, and the name said it all: This Is It. Jackson knew what people thought of him, and he was going to change their perceptions, just as he had so many times before.

In the final months of his life, Jackson thought of nothing but the tour. And those whom he loved and trusted the most were sure that this was the moment he had been waiting for. "This is real?" asked his friend Deepak Chopra, who spoke with Jackson often in the weeks before his death. "You're coming back for real?"

"For real," said Michael, laughing.

The night before he died, Jackson ran through a six-hour dress rehearsal of his concert at the Staples Center in Los Angeles. More than a dozen people who witnessed the final rehearsal -- from his promoter to his choreographer to his musicians -- all agree on one thing: Jackson was better than he'd ever been. He popped, just like he had in his glory days, singing and out-dancing the young pros that surrounded him. "He was so brilliant onstage," recalls his tour director, Kenny Ortega. "I had goose bumps."

Ken Ehrlich, who has produced the Grammy Awards for three decades, sat in the audience, awed. "I turned to somebody and said, 'This is amazing!' For so many years I have watched Chris Brown and Justin Timberlake and Usher and the Backstreet Boys and En Vogue all imitate Michael Jackson -- and now here we were this many years later, and he was going to do it again. I got chills, literally. The hairs on the back of my neck were raised. Those are the moments you hope for."

This Is It was to be the biggest comeback ever. "Frank," Jackson told his manager, "we've got to put on the greatest show on earth."

The tragedy is, he almost pulled it off.

One day near the end of February, Kenny Ortega answered the phone in his home office in Sherman Oaks, California, and heard a soft, familiar falsetto on the other end of the line. "Kenny," the caller said, "it's Michael."

Right away, Ortega heard something in Jackson's voice that had been missing for a long time: excitement. The two had become friends in the early Nineties, when Ortega choreographed Michael's Dangerous tour, and they worked together again on the HIStory tour. Following his acquittal on child-molestation charges in 2005, Jackson had largely dropped out of touch with his friends in the music business. But now, as Jackson described the comeback tour he was putting together, Ortega heard a focus in the star that had been absent for years. Michael sounded sharp and clear as he told Ortega that he wanted this to be the most spectacular show in music history. "This is it," Jackson said, echoing what would eventually become the tour's title.

Only the summer before, Michael had seemed a broken man. Photographers had captured him as he was pushed around in the baking Las Vegas sun in a wheelchair, wearing a surgical mask and pyjamas. It was hard not to look at those photos and wonder what happened to the man who had once danced in his sparkly socks and gloves as if he controlled gravity. These days he looked like a creature from some other world, ungoverned by logic and vulnerable to everything.

Jackson had moved to Vegas after returning from the Middle East in 2006, taking up residence with his children in a 10-bedroom mansion west of the Strip. Jack Wishna, a wheeler and dealer in the gaming industry who had lobbied Donald Trump to open a resort in town, was trying to help Michael to land a series of shows in Vegas that could pay off his mounting debts, but the deal wasn't going well. Wishna would later tell CNN that the singer seemed "drugged up" and "incoherent" and was often so weak that he needed a wheelchair to get around. Jackson and his children rarely left the mansion, except for shopping excursions. When they did go out, the kids wore feather-and-mesh masks to shield them from photographers, their father by their side in his odd uniforms from some imaginary army, replete with epaulettes and armbands. The Vegas shows were eventually cancelled because of Jackson's condition, Wishna said. Around that same time, Jackson's sister Janet reportedly tried to stage an intervention with Michael to curb his drug use, but failed.

By that point, Jackson had been spiralling downward for years. The breaking point had come as he was driven home in a motorcade on June 13, 2005, just after his acquittal on 10 counts of child molestation and related claims. The mood in the car was subdued. Arriving at Neverland Ranch, Jackson went upstairs and turned to Dick Gregory, a comedian and family friend who had known Michael since he starred in The Wiz. Jackson grabbed Gregory and clutched him tightly. "Don't leave me," he begged. "They're trying to kill me."

Gregory had the feeling that Jackson was referring to the whole world. Michael seemed paranoid and dehydrated. "Have you eaten?" Gregory asked him, knowing that Jackson often went without food for days.

"I can't eat," Jackson responded. "They're trying to poison me."

"Do me a favour," Gregory told him. "Get out of here. All of these people have double-crossed you."

As melodramatic as it sounds, Gregory may have been right. Jackson had long lived in an alternate world of yes men who seemed to come and go, alternately bilking the singer or accusing Michael of bilking them. Not even his family seemed to be able to get past this world of opportunism. By the time of his molestation trial, this circle had grown increasingly shady. There was Marc Schaffel, a former gay-porn producer who advised Jackson for years, and Al Malnik, a lawyer who reportedly once represented mobster Meyer Lansky. There were two German 'entrepreneurs' who managed to get Jackson to endorse a sports cola, known only as 'Mystery Drink', which was briefly sold during the HIStory tour. And there was his security detail from the Nation of Islam, which was rumoured to have come to blows with several of Jackson's brothers who had expressed concern over the Nation's growing sway over Michael's life.

Jackson knew he had to get out -- but his choice of a saviour only made things weirder. That June, to help him resolve his finances and escape the glare of the media spotlight, Jackson turned to a man he had never met: Sheik Abdullah bin Hamad bin Isa Al-Khalifa, a prince of Bahrain. The sheik had befriended Michael's brother Jermaine, who had converted to Islam and spent four months living in Bahrain. Now Abdullah helped pay off some $2.2m in legal fees for Michael, and by the end of the month, Jackson -- with his three young children and staff in tow -- went to live with the prince. There were rumours of private shows for the sheik. Abdullah, who had musical aspirations of his own, later said that he and Michael were working on a record together.

Even then, Jackson was dreaming of a comeback. "A tour was always in the works," says Miko Brando, the son of legendary actor Marlon Brando, who spoke to Michael on the phone during the singer's time in Bahrain. "It was just to get himself ready to go back to work and be productive. Michael is too much of a perfectionist just to sit around and not do anything. He was always creating music, creating ideas. He knew how to put things together, what worked, what the public was hungry for."

As always, though, things seemed to go wrong quickly. After Jackson left Bahrain in 2006, Abdullah filed suit against the singer, claiming that he had spent enormous sums on Jackson -- from renting a palatial home to buying him body lotions and a Ferrari -- in the expectation that Michael would record an album of songs he had written. Jackson fled to Ireland, where he continued to work on music. But he never released any songs.

In the summer of 2007, Jackson was contacted by AEG, one of the world's leading concert presenters. The company was about to open the O2, an 18,000-seat arena on the banks of the Thames in eastern London, and it needed someone with star power to fill it. Randy Phillips, the CEO of AEG Live, was friendly with Jackson from the Eighties, when they had worked together on a deal for the sneaker company LA Gear. Phillips flew to Las Vegas to meet Jackson and his advisers, and they sat down for dinner in the private wine cellar of a luxury condo complex.

Jackson arrived in sunglasses and a hat, but he seemed disengaged as Phillips made his pitch for a series of shows at the O2 arena. "He was listening," recalls Phillips. "He wasn't excited." Jackson said he loved the long-running show that Celine Dion had been doing in Vegas, and he was interested in doing something similar. But not long after the meeting, Phillips got a call from Raymone Bain, one of Jackson's advisers at the time, who said the star wasn't ready to perform again, let alone commit to an arduous, ongoing series of concerts.

Then, in October 2007, creditors began foreclosure proceedings on Jackson's beloved Neverland. "He didn't think about money -- it wasn't his motivator," says Phillips. "Which may have been why he spent so much."

Last year, with the concerts off the table, Jackson turned to Wall Street to bail him out. Given a spending habit that some said had hit $35m a year, Jackson had sustained his lavish lifestyle by taking out a reported $270m in loans from Bank of America, much of it secured by his Neverland Ranch and his stake in the Sony/ATV publishing catalogue, which includes the music of the Beatles and the Jonas Brothers. But Bank of America had sold the loan package to Fortress Investments, a New York firm that specialises in distressed debt. Fortress was well-connected, and it knew how to take advantage of other people's misfortune. In 2007, presidential candidate John Edwards, who worked as a consultant for the firm, was forced to withdraw $16m he had invested in Fortress after news reports revealed that it was buying up distressed properties in New Orleans and foreclosing on families hard hit by Hurricane Katrina.

In March 2008, Jackson announced that he had made a deal with Fortress -- which at one point was reportedly charging him 20 per cent interest on his old loans -- to stop the firm's foreclosure proceedings on Neverland. But the deal never materialised. Instead, Michael took the advice of someone he had just met: Tohme Tohme, a Lebanese financier from Los Angeles. According to Tohme, he was contacted last year by Michael's brother Jermaine, who asked if he could help save Neverland from foreclosure. The two flew to Las Vegas and met Michael, who put his trust in Tohme. The financier quickly persuaded his friend Tom Barrack, the billionaire CEO of Colony Capital, to meet with Jackson.

Barrack, whose investment fund owns the Las Vegas Hilton and dozens of other resorts and casinos, prides himself on his "cautious contrarianism", which he defines as "investing in out-of-favour sectors or markets to exploit capital or product misalignments". If ever a sector was out of favour or misaligned, it was Michael Jackson -- and Barrack had the resources to rescue him from Fortress.

In May 2008, Colony and Jackson staved off foreclosure on Neverland by forming a holding company to own the property jointly, with the two as partners. They reverted to calling it by its pre-Jackson name, Sycamore Valley Ranch, and immediately started renovation work, most likely with an eye toward selling it. Tohme, seeming to think he could turn the chaos of Jackson's life into a sound investment, also made a deal with Julien's auction house in Los Angeles to sell off the contents of Neverland. Darren Julien, the auctioneer, spent months working with the Jackson camp, carefully cataloguing the immense contents of the 2,700-acre ranch. "It was like Disneyland collides with the Louvre," says Julien. "Only in Neverland could you see an 18th-century statue next to a monumental castle next to a statue of butlers and maids." But this spring, the auction came to an abrupt halt when one of Jackson's own companies filed suit against Julien's, claiming it had not consented to the sale. The sudden reversal underscored what many in Jackson's world had long known: that Jackson was surrounded by competing advisers, and that who was in or out of favour seemed to change on a whim.

If Jackson wasn't going to sell off his stuff from Neverland, he would have to find another way to raise money. Last autumn, Barrack sat down with Phillips and described Colony's plans for restructuring the mess that was Jackson's money. In November, Jackson flew to Los Angeles from his home in Vegas and met with Phillips at the Bel-Air Hotel. Once again, they spoke about the possibility of a comeback -- but this time, Michael seemed keenly interested.

As he and Phillips spoke for hours, Jackson opened up about everything he wanted. He talked about making movies that he would star in and direct. He had already spent millions on one -- Ghosts, a short, family-friendly horror film starring himself and based on a screenplay he had commissioned from Stephen King. He wanted to make another album. And he wanted to tour. But more than anything, Phillips recalls, Jackson wanted to be able to show his kids what he did, what made people on the street mob him when he left the house.

"He wanted people to see his work and not just talk about his lifestyle," says Phillips. "Michael was a very smart marketing person. People say he was feeble and manipulated, but he was powerful and a manipulator. He was ready. He wanted to clean up his finances." Jackson told the promoter that he wanted to pay off his debts so he could buy a house in Las Vegas that he had fallen in love with, one that belonged to the Sultan of Brunei. It would be his new Neverland. "He was ready to stop living like a vagabond and settle down and earn money again," says Phillips. "He wasn't stupid -- he knew there wasn't a fairy godmother coming. The house and making movies were huge to him."

After the meeting, Phillips debriefed the owner of AEG, Phil Anschutz. "I believe Michael needs to do this financially," Phillips told his boss. "And he's ready to do this emotionally. He's ready to get back on the horse." Jackson agreed to kick off a worldwide comeback tour with 31 performances at the O2 arena, beginning on July 8. According to Phillips, the number of shows wasn't arbitrary -- Jackson chose it so he would have 10 more shows than Prince, who had opened the arena with a series of spectacular concerts in 2007. Michael, it seems, had been engaged in his own private competition with Prince since 1987, when Prince refused to perform a duet with him on Bad. Two decades later, Jackson was still eager to upstage his rival and remind the world who was King.

In February of this year, after reaching a deal with AEG, Jackson made a number of calls to old friends and associates whom he had let go or fired over the years. "It was the old team," says Ortega. Frank DiLeo, who had been pushed out of Jackson's inner circle two decades earlier, was brought back as manager, along with choreographer Travis Payne and longtime lawyer John Branca, who had helped Jackson buy his stake in the Sony/ATV catalogue and the rights to all his masters. "He understood that he would be working toward financial freedom, and he was very excited about that," says DiLeo. "It encouraged him -- he knew he was working toward something."

For AEG, booking Jackson for a series of concerts at the O2 arena was a huge gamble. The insurance costs alone were monumental, and everyone knew that Jackson did nothing on the cheap. As part of the deal, AEG set up a million-dollar development fund for creating a movie version of Thriller, which Michael was eager to produce. But despite the costs, the potential upside was huge: What if AEG could do the impossible and bring Michael Jackson back to the world? "People told me I was crazy, that I would get my heart broken by him," says Phillips. "But I just believed in him. How many times in your career do you get to touch greatness? I thought it was worth the risk."

In March, within hours of Jackson telling a screaming mass of fans in London that he was preparing for what he called his "final curtain call", more than 1.6 million people signed up to buy tickets. Given the numbers, Phillips called Tohme, who over the past year had become Jackson's principal spokesman, and asked if the pop star might consider adding more shows to the schedule. How could they limit themselves to 31, Phillips asked, when there was so much money waiting to be made?

Jackson called back 20 minutes later and told Phillips he would do 50 shows -- as long as AEG did two things for him. First, he wanted to be provided with an English country estate with rolling hills, greenery and horses for the kids. Second, he wanted a ceremony held at the end of the tour to commemorate some as-yet-to-be-defined accomplishment by Jackson for the Guinness Book of World Records. It was the two, seemingly contradictory things that he had striven for his entire life: to live in seclusion, surrounded by children and animals, and to be recognised as the greatest performer in history. By that point, Jackson had moved his family to Los Angeles, renting a seven-bedroom, $38m chateau in the Holmby Hills from Hubert Guez, the CEO of luxury T-shirt maker Ed Hardy. After signing a lease for $100,000 a month, Jackson settled into a routine of sorts, going out mainly at night.

But it didn't take long before the fans and paparazzi tracked him down and set up vigil outside his new home. Every day a dozen or so people waited outside, some who had come from as far away as Switzerland and Sweden just to catch a glimpse of Jackson, even if it was only a hand waved through the window of one of his two blue Escalades. Some of them would tail Jackson to Beverly Hills, where he regularly visited his longtime dermatologist, Dr Arnold Klein.

Klein's office is where, in the mid-Eighties, Jackson met Debbie Rowe, his second wife and the mother of his two older children, Prince Michael and Paris. Klein, who declined to comment for this story, has said that he was treating Jackson for vitiligo, a skin condition that causes pigmentation loss, and working to help rebuild his damaged nose. Klein has insisted that he did not over-medicate Jackson, saying he sedated the singer only during painful medical procedures.

Some days when Jackson left Klein's office, he seemed drowsy and out of it. "It's not a good day for him," his security guards would tell the assembled well-wishers. "He's tired." But some longtime fans weren't buying it. "Sometimes the guards would say that he just went to the doctor and he's on medication," says one die-hard fan. The fan says Jackson visited Klein the Monday before he died, when Michael's security detail brought him to the dermatologist's office at 9am -- an early-morning mission seemingly scheduled to avoid detection by fans and paparazzi.

According to one source, Jackson also had a rampant eBay addiction, staying up late at night to make purchases on one of the numerous accounts he maintained. He also went on secretive shopping expeditions in LA, taking his kids to the Ed Hardy store in West Hollywood to check out the clothing maker's wares, or to an antique shop he loved called Off the Wall. Sometimes he would just take the kids out with his security detail and drive. Despite being a purported health nut, he would sometimes stop for Kentucky Fried Chicken along the way.

But for the first time in years, Jackson had a show to focus on. In March, auditions for the comeback tour began at CenterStaging, one of the primary rehearsal spaces in Los Angeles. From the start, Michael took a hands-on role in shaping the show, urging those around him to conduct a sort of intergalactic talent search. "Think about the greatest artists and dancers in the world," he told Ortega. "Let's find them."

More than 5,000 dancers applied, and Ortega and his team narrowed it down to 700. The final auditions were held at the Nokia Theater in Hollywood, where the Academy Awards take place. Jackson was there, sitting next to Ortega, fully focused. "Let's get closer," he told the choreographer. "I want to see their eyes." When he spotted a promising dancer, he'd say, "That one there, the girl on the end -- she's so beautiful."

At the end of March, just three months before the first concert was scheduled to kick off, a crew of dozens of musicians and dancers and technicians began showing up for daily rehearsals at CenterStaging -- putting in long days, seven days a week. In the beginning, Jackson would show up only a few times a week, sitting with Ortega for several hours and going through his huge archive of material -- old photographs, videos, records. They were hoping to capture that essence, that special something that made him the King of Pop.

Jackson was determined to give the fans everything they wanted. He had ordered a website set up so fans could vote for which songs he would perform, and it was from that forum that he and Ortega began compiling a 30-song session list. Jackson, who had a lifelong interest in magic, seemed eager to blow people's minds.

"When the show opens, I don't want to hold anything back," he told Ortega. "I want this to be the most spectacular opening the audience has ever seen. They have to ask themselves, 'How are they going to top that?' I don't even care if they're applauding. I want their jaws on the ground. I want them to not be able to sleep, because they are so amped up from what they saw."

To get in shape for the gruelling tour, Jackson started working out a few times a week with Lou Ferrigno, from the TV show The Incredible Hulk. The two had met years earlier at a party, when Ferrigno noticed Jackson staring at him from across the room, recognising him as the Hulk. "He was like a kid," says Ferrigno, who would arrive in the morning to be greeted by Jackson's children racing around the house, playing games.

Jackson was painfully thin -- although pushing six foot, he weighed only 127 pounds -- and he'd suffered several injuries over the years. He and Ferrigno would go to a backroom that was equipped with a treadmill. Jackson didn't want to build muscle, so they worked out gently, stretching with a rubber band and an exercise ball. Jackson wore black tuxedo pants, a black T-shirt, black shoes and black socks while he worked out, so he wouldn't have to change when he went to rehearsals afterward. "He was a hoot," says Ferrigno. "Many years ago he told me he was extremely lonely. But when I was with him he looked very fulfilled and happy. He was like Mr Mom."

Jackson clearly loved being at home with his children, and he often engaged in his own childlike antics. "He was a jokester," says Ferrigno. "He'd call my phone, sometimes disguising his voice. I was thinking I had a stalker. He would say his name was Omar and that he was looking for me."

But 'Omar' did more than play pranks on his friends. According to celebrity gossip website TMZ, Jackson also used the name to fill prescriptions for the cornucopia of painkillers and sedatives he was taking. In 2007, a Beverly Hills pharmacy called Mickey Fine filed a complaint against Jackson for not paying his bill for prescriptions -- a total of $101,926.66, dating back to 2005. Court documents from the investigation into child-molestation charges against Jackson included interviews with two former Neverland staffers who reported that Jackson regularly took as many as 40 Xanax a night in order to sleep.

Although Jackson was playing a central role in shaping the comeback tour, taking the stage to prepare was another matter entirely. While the crew logged long hours at CenterStaging, Jackson preferred to work from home most days. Those around him were getting nervous. According to Phillips, AEG's initial budget of $12m for pre-production had more than doubled. But when the promoter pressed Jackson on the $150,000 a month he had agreed to pay Dr Murray, Michael rebuffed him sternly. "Look," Jackson said, "my body is the mechanism that fuels this entire business. Like President Obama, I need my own personal physician attending to me 24/7."

Others began to press Jackson to rehearse more. "I had my concerns if he was ready, and I questioned him," says Ortega. "There were days when I was like, 'Are you going to show up? Are you really going to be here? You need to do this.' '' Citing the need for more set-up time in London, Ortega asked for the opening show to be pushed back five days, to July 13.

In early June, Dr Murray mediated a meeting at Michael's home between Jackson and Ortega, who felt the star needed to come to rehearsals more often. Jackson listened quietly to the tour director, but he didn't seem alarmed. "I know my schedule," he said calmly. "Just trust me."

But after that, Jackson started coming to rehearsals all day, every day. To those around him, he seemed focused and attentive to every detail. "I like to refer to Michael as a gamer," says DiLeo. "He's the quarterback. He's the star of the team, and in practice, quarterbacks are easygoing. But game day, he's turning it on."

"He was rusty in the beginning, sure, he'd miss some notes," says the show's musical director, Michael Bearden. "But he would always say, 'That's why we rehearse.' And the last two or three rehearsals, he was ready to do that show. He knew it, he had that glow, that swagger about him. MJ is the master closer. He's got amazing muscle memory. When he gets in front of his fans up on that stage, it's just magic."

At rehearsals, Jackson quickly took charge. Orianthi Panagaris, a guitarist who performed with Carrie Underwood at this year's Grammys, recalls coming in for an audition and being told to play Beat It. Jackson sat in front of her on a couch. "I was so nervous," she says. "From the couch he told me to crank up my solo. He was clapping at the end, he was really happy. He came over to me and grabbed my arm, and started walking me up and down the front of the stage area. He said: 'When you're playing the solo, I want you to chase me!'''

Still, some around Jackson were concerned about his heavy reliance on prescription drugs. "I became aware of it in 2005," says Deepak Chopra. "I brought it up with him many times. His assistant would call frequently about it, saying he was being given medication by a lot of doctors. He would go to great lengths to get it -- if one doctor didn't give it to him, he'd try another. It was an addiction that was created and perpetuated by doctors."

For the most part, nights seemed to be the biggest problem for Jackson -- he had complained of insomnia for years. But it was also the time when he felt a higher power was channelling creativity to him. "I didn't get a whole lot of sleep last night," he would tell Ortega. "I was up working on music. That's when the information is coming, and when it's coming you gotta work."

"Michael," Ortega joked with him, "why can't you make a pact with your higher power so that you could put these ideas on the shelf until after July 13?"

"No," Jackson responded. "Then he might give them to Prince."

Despite his workouts with Ferrigno, Jackson remained thin, almost emaciated. "I was concerned about his weight," says Phillips. "When I started with him, he was a little heavier -- heavy for him might have been 130 pounds. He was like the absent-minded professor -- he would get so engaged in the creation of the show that he'd forget to eat. To the point where Kenny Ortega used to cut up his chicken breast and feed him broccoli, like a kid, as they worked. I actually brought an associate of mine to just remind him to eat, stuff like that."

Part of Michael's inspiration for the tour was his concern about global warming. Three weeks before his death, Jackson sent Chopra a CD, hand-delivered to his home in Carlsbad, California. "The music is a very soft, mellow piece," says Chopra. "It's called Breed. He wanted to do a song about the environment, and he wanted me to help him with the lyrics. There were big ideas behind the lyrics -- how the trees are our lungs, the Earth is our body."

Indeed, Jackson's worldview seemed to have incubated and grown during his time off the stage. During rehearsals, he often talked about what was going on in the world. "He'd built up a big arsenal of things he wanted to communicate," says Ortega, who found Jackson to be surprisingly engaged in politics and the environment. "He felt time was running out, and he really wanted to dig in and participate. He'd say: 'Do you know this about the rainforest?' or 'Let's bring in Norman Lear and Deepak. Who else do you know?' "

Sometimes those ideas were expensive. Those who worked on the show say they never saw any sign of the financial pressure Jackson was under. Indeed, he seemed to enjoy spending money as much as ever. Ortega recalls he often had to keep Jackson's dreams in check. "You want us to go to Victoria Falls and shoot the waterfall from a helicopter?" he'd say to Jackson, who wanted the video for the show's closing number. "Do you know how much that costs?" But Jackson didn't seem to care. "Money was not his motivating factor," says Phillips. "It was just doing something greater than anyone else had ever done before. That's what motivated him."

On the last night of his life, Jackson arrived at the Staples Center for six hours of a full run-through. First he had a meeting with Phillips, AEG president Tim Leiweke, his manager DiLeo and Grammy producer Ken Ehrlich. They were going over ideas for a Halloween special they were putting together: the network debut of Ghosts, Jackson's short film, which would incorporate clips of a live performance of Thriller from London. Afterwards, Jackson went into another room and spent about an hour going over the 3-D effects for the show. He ate dinner -- chicken breast and broccoli. Then he went to his dressing room and came out for three hours of performance.

The closer was pencilled in as Earth Song, from HIStory, one of Jackson's favourites. An impassioned ballad about the state of the world, it ended with a repeated refrain asking about the victims of humanity's rampant and heedless development, from crying whales to ravaged forests. "What about death again?" Jackson sang at the ballad's conclusion. "Do we give a damn?"

Those who witnessed the performance -- seasoned professionals who had worked with the best in the business -- were awestruck. Standing before them was the Michael they all remembered, the artist who had grown from a child singer to forge a whole new style of pop. When Jackson walked off the stage, he hugged DiLeo. "This is our time again," he told his manager. "It's time for us to take it back."

The rehearsal was over, but no one wanted to break the spell by leaving. "He was bioluminescent," recalls Ortega. "When he finished, we all stayed there, just messing around." Michael was ready. In only 19 more days, he would take the stage in London, and the world would know, once again, that the King of Pop was back.

Finally, as the performers started to drift away, Phillips walked Jackson to his car. Michael put his arm around the promoter. "Thank you for getting me this far," he told Phillips in that whisper of a voice. "I can take it from here. I know I can do this."

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http://susanin.udm.ru/news/2009/08/27/175730

27.08.2009 21:24
Смерть Майкла Джексона – его очередное шоу?

История со смертью Майкла Джексона никак не утихнет. Король поп музыки, скончавшийся еще 25 июня, до сих пор не похоронен, а причина его смерти долгое время не оглашалась. Неоднократно обсуждалось мнение, что смерть Майкла Джексон - его очередное шоу, ведь причин "исчезнуть" у короля поп-музыки было предостаточно.
За несколько месяцев до смерти, Джексон объявил о 10 концертах в Лондоне, с которых начнется его турне. Билеты были распроданы за несколько минут, но всем было очевидно, что певец не может дать такое количество концертов. Ему 50 лет, он тяжело болен и давно не выступал. К тому же, Майкл Джексон был банкротом. Король поп-музыки увяз в долгах, ради которых он и затеял эту авантюру с грандиозным концертным туром. Исходя из этого, многие делают вывод, что Майкл, оценив свои шансы, решил разыграть историю с внезапной смертью и исчезнуть, передают Дни.ру.
Накануне в Интернете появилось видео, на котором видно, что автомобиль, на котором увозили труп Майкла Джексона 25 июня из его арендованного дома в Лос-Анджелесе, подъезжает к черному ходу какого-то здания, и из машины выходит человек, очень похожий на кумира миллионов. Его прикрывает полицейский, поэтому лица на видеозаписи не видно.
В глобальной сети почти одновременно с вышеописанным роликом появилась аудиозапись, где некий человек, называя себя Дональдом, голосом Майкла говорит, как он сожалеет по поводу смерти артиста. "Всем привет, это Дональд из Калифорнии. Надеюсь, что вы в норме после "ухода" Майкла. Это был шок для всех. Я думал сегодня по поводу музыки. Что-то больше должно произойти в мире шоу-бизнеса. Какая-то революция. Я думаю, что это - замечательно! Многие люди будут продолжать делать замечательную музыку, вдохновляясь творчеством Майкла", - сказал он.
Все поклонники в один голос твердят, что это сам Майкл. Якобы, не могут голоса двух разных людей быть настолько похожи. На одном из американских ток-шоу тоже обсудили появившуюся в Интернет видеозапись. Но отнеслись к ней с юмором, сделав свою версию продолжения того ролика, где из этой же машины вслед за Майкла Джексоном выходят Элвис Пресли и сам Иисус.

Филипп Ходсон | The Times

Детский рисунок Майкла Джексона: даже Леннон не считал себя Мессией
(в оригинале статьи по ссылке есть сами рисунки)

В своем комментарии для The Times Филипп Ходсон, научный сотрудник британской ассоциации психотерапевтов, анализирует рисунок, сделанный 13-летним Майклом Джексоном. На нем изображен некий миротворец с разведенными в стороны руками, на заднем фоне - бомбардировщики, вертолеты и пулеметы, а сверху надпись: "остановите войну" [во Вьетнаме].

По мнению специалиста, этот набросок не только свидетельствует о гражданском самосознании юного Джексона; на нем примечателен миротворец, изображенный как ангел или партизан, но скорее всего это сам Джексон - он стоит в позе искупителя, распятого Христа, как бы говоря миру, что он спасет его. Примерно в то же время, отмечает Ходосон, Джон Леннон написал знаменитую песню Imagine, также антивоенную по содержанию, но даже он никогда не пытался представить себя Мессией.

На другом рисунке Джексона, продолжает Ходсон, изображен мальчик, помесь юнги и певчего эпохи Возрождения. Особенно выразительны на этом наброске глаза, опять-таки напоминающее глаза самого поп-идола. Эта картина, озаглавленная "Отрочество" (Boyhood), отражает ту же идею, что и герой Питера Пэна в массовой культуре - нежелание взрослеть, стремление остаться навсегда в том юном возрасте, когда ты впервые знакомишься с красотой музыки, стирающей грань между пространством и временем. Может быть, предполагает автор, именно этим и объясняется зависимость Джексона от наркотиков, позволявших ему поддерживать вечно эту фантазию.

http://www.inopressa.ru/article/28Aug20 … ckson.html

Источник: The Times 
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/ … 812942.ece

http://larrykinglive.blogs.cnn.com/2009 … son-drugs/

Feds Begin Probe into Jackson Drugs

LOS ANGELES, California (CNN) — Federal agents have launched “their own independent investigations into matters” uncovered by Los Angeles police while looking into Michael Jackson’s death, the Drug Enforcement Administration says.
Drug Enforcement agents have assisted Los Angeles detectives in searches relating to their criminal probe, but the police department requested at a meeting last week that the federal agents pursue their own investigation, the agency said Friday.

“Based on that meeting and at the request of the LAPD, the DEA and Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement (BNE) have initiated their own independent investigations into matters that the LAPD’s investigation uncovered that may not be directly related to the cause of death,” the Drug Enforcement Administration said.

Last Friday — a day after the meeting — Drug Enforcement agents executed a federal administrative search warrant at the Mickey Fine Pharmacy in Beverly Hills, looking for prescription records relating to Jackson, an agency spokesman said.

The pharmacy sits directly below the offices of Jackson’s dermatologist, Dr. Arnold Klein. Shortly before his death, Jackson visited the building several times to see Klein.

Klein, who treated Jackson for decades, denied in a CNN interview last month that he had given Jackson dangerous drugs.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tamara-co … 72174.html

We Killed Michael Jackson

Tamara Conniff

Where were all the weeping fans, the artists who hail him as their hero, the radio DJs who can't stop playing his music? Where were they 10 years ago? Oh right. Everyone thought Michael Jackson was a freak - a plastic surgery addicted child molester. His last studio album "Invincible," released 2001, failed to garner true hit single because radio stations refused to play the songs. Music critics tore him to shreds. He was blackballed. People made fun of him, he was considered a washed-up, has-been, crazy person.
The success of "Thriller," which as sold over 110 million copies worldwide and counting, can never be matched. ("Invincible," for the record managed to sell respectful 13 million copies worldwide to date. No artist can keep up that kind of string of hits. But, he put his heart and soul into every new recording he did, but judgment had already been cast before anyone heard the music.

He was a desperate man in pain and everyone threw stones at him. Now it's fashionable to be a Michael Jackson fan. Radio stations now play his music on heavy rotation. His albums are flying off the shelves. Urban Outfitters even carries a commemorative vinyl collection that hipsters can frame and put on their walls. Suddenly the entire world has rediscovered Michael Jackson. He's dead damn it. Imagine what this kind of love would have done for him while he was living? Maybe then he wouldn't need drugs to sleep.
Michael's body was still warm when celebrities, music execs, family members and even his personal staffed whored themselves to TV news programs professing to be Michaels' best friends. People who didn't even know him were releasing statements. Where were these so called best friends when Michael needed an intervention? Needed help? Nowhere. Yes, some tried, and Michael would not listen -- so keep trying!!!
Things had gotten so strange in Michael's world, that before he signed with AEG to do a string of concerts, one management company was trying to convince him to be 'virtual Michael.' No joke - they were going to set up a 3D Internet portal so Michael could interact with the world without leaving his house. That's enough to make anyone feel nuts.
The AEG deal gave him new life. It brought him back to what he does best - perform, be in front of fans, be around humans. Only the inner sanctum at AEG believed in him. The public and the pundits were waiting for him to fail. Many fans who bought tickets to the sold out concerts just wanted to go to see a historic spectacle, hoping they would witness a car crash.
We killed Michael Jackson. We helped create his gilded cage and then we rejected him. Death serves you well Michael, the world is finally acknowledging the amazing force of nature you were. You changed the face of music. Rest in peace.

Хорошая статья и комментарии под ней - хорошие.

http://perezhilton.com/2009-08-29-diana … er-own-way

"Своеобразный трибьют Майклу Джексону"

29.08.2009

Эван Росс, 22 летний сын экстраординароной дивы Дайяны Росс отмечал свой день рождения в пятницу в Guys and Dolls в El Lay, но праздник превратился в своеобразный трибьют Майклу Джексону!
Эван решил, что хочет отметить свой день рождения совместно с днем рождения Майкла Джексона, все собравшиеся спели  "С Днем Рождения, Майкл!", после того как поздравили Росс! Затем, по некоторым данным, Росс спела несколько своих любимых песен с альбома Off The Wall. Так же сообщается, что кетрин Джексон позвонила Росс и поблагодарила Эвана, за то, что включил Майкла в свой праздник.

Если учесть, что статья вышла 29 августа, а праздник был в пятницу, то имеется ввиду пятница - 28 августа. Може это имеет какое-нибудь отношение к "трону"?  Почему же Дайяна Росс не сочла нужным прийти на мероприятие 03.09.09. Может у нее была более отвественная миссия?

http://www.day.az/print/news/world/167109.html

2 августа, 2009

У Майкла Джексона отняли титул «короля поп-музыки»

Американский рэппер Канье Уэст (Kanye West) претендует на звание «короля поп-музыки», он без особых церемоний решил присвоить себе корону умершего в июне Майкла Джексона.
Скандально известный исполнитель заявил: «Нет никого, кто может сравниться со мной по продажам, и поэтому имеет смысл только мне надеть на себя корону Майкла и стать новым королем».

«Первым был Элвис, а затем был Майкл. Теперь XXI век – время править Канье», - приводит слова артиста MTV.

Канье Уэст (Kanye Omari West) — американский музыкальный продюсер и рэпер, многократный обладатель наград «Грэмми», сообщает «Википедия». Он выпустил дебютный альбом The College Dropout в 2004 году, второй альбом Late Registration в 2005-м, третий альбом Graduation в 2007-м и четвертый — 808s & Heartbreak в 2008-м. Его первые три альбома получили множество наград (в том числе девять «Грэмми»), положительные критические отзывы и коммерческий успех. Уэст также запустил собственный лейбл GOOD Music. Талисманом и торговой маркой Уэста является плюшевый медведь, изображения которого появлялись на обложках его трех альбомов, так же, как и на обложке сингла Stronger.