Editorial: Unhappy life of a tortured genius

Opinion

Whatever the assessment of Michael Jackson's place in the history of popular music - and there will be many of them in the days and weeks to come - it has to be said that the claim he staked years before his untimely death this week was not significantly strengthened in his later years.

The man was variously referred to throughout a 40-year showbiz career as the King of Pop and Wacko Jacko and at different times he unquestionably deserved each title. His 1982 album Thriller is, by a margin of much more than two to one over its nearest rival, the best-selling of all time and his career showcased a dizzying stylistic versatility that took in everything from Motown to the techno-tinged disco-pop he invented.

But he was equally well-known for a bizarre personal life: brief marriages - to the daughter of Elvis Presley and to a nurse who bore him two children; obscure skin conditions which, combined with repeated cosmetic surgical procedures of questionable competence, turned him into a spookily disfigured wraith; creepily intimate relationships with young children, which gave rise to sexual abuse charges of which he was acquitted; financial problems as titanic as his former wealth; all added up to the portrait of a marooned and tortured genius.

Jackson's death came barely a fortnight before he was to have begun a 50-concert London season billed as his comeback, though it was never going to return him to the heights he once effortlessly commanded. Instead, his fans mourn the end of a life which, for all its glories, was finally a very sad one, in which childhood abuse by his father and taunting by his brothers made for an isolated, uneasy and unhappy adulthood.

Jackson was dubbed the Peter Pan of pop, because he never wanted to grow up. Now he will never have the chance.