This week YOU joins the rest of the world in mourning the loss of a musical legend and celebrating the life of MICHAEL JACKSON with 11 pages of photos, a poster, and autographed picture and facts about the man behind the hits.
Our cover picture of Michael performing on stage reveals nothing of the tragedy that would unfold barely 48 hours later and leave the world shocked and dumbfounded.
Taken at a rehearsal for what would have been his last concert tour the picture proved he was still the king of pop and thankfully back to his flamboyant best. Or so it seemed. Photographs can be misleading.
“There was no indication at our last rehearsal that he’d be dead within 15 hours,” says Ed Alonzo, the illusions consultant for the concerts.
Then on the afternoon of 25 June TV news cameras capture a very different picture. Michael Jackson, who hours earlier had set the stage alight with his blistering dance routine, is wheeled to an ambulance from his rented Los Angeles mansion, an oxygen mask over his face although he’s presumably already dead.
We will never see him moonwalk live on stage again. The man who apparently slept in an oxygen tank so he could live to 150 died of a heart attack. The postmortem tells a heartbreaking story: there was no food in his stomach, only half-digested pills. The 1,78 m tall singer weighed little more than 51 kg. And under the black wig he was wearing when he died he was bald, his scalp covered only with fine down.
This isn’t how his fans want to remember him. They’d rather keep alive the image of a loving dad and superstar who would have staged the mother of all comebacks in London later this month.
When he emerged from his reclusive lifestyle in March to announce the London concerts from behind a pair of huge dark glasses and said, “This is it - it will be my curtain call,” his fans took heart.
Could the king of pop rise from the ashes? We’ll never know now. May his soul rest in peace.
GIVEAWAY
We have 1 000 Michael Jackson Thriller CDs to give away! To stand a chance of winning the biggest-selling album of all time SMS the words YOU MICHAEL, your name and address to 36196 by 5 pm on 16 July. Each SMS costs R5.
