There is a showdown brewing over the pop icon's death, writes CHRIS MCGREALin Washington and ANDREW GUMBEL
THE REVEREND Al Sharpton was quickest off the mark. No sooner was Michael Jackson’s death announced than the renowned political rabble rouser was on the streets of Harlem, waving an old black and white photograph of himself with the singer he had known for more than three decades.
Yesterday, Sharpton was on an aircraft to Los Angeles to consult the Jackson family about plans for simultaneous worldwide commemorations for the superstar, and the hugely profitable television rights that are likely to be sold with it.
Others were also swiftly at the side of the singer’s family as it moved to take control of his complicated legacy, including vast assets and debts, as well as the prospect of a final bonanza from the global outpouring of grief over his death.
The civil rights leader Jesse Jackson was on hand to claim to speak for the family, as was Tohme Tohme, a self-styled doctor and former manager of the singer. But it was Sharpton who thrust himself to the fore, aligning with Michael Jackson’s family as the finger-pointing over the death and the grappling over money begins. At stake is not only the cash, but the future of two of Jackson’s children with a potential custody battle looming between their mother and their grandparents.
A showdown is brewing over the circumstances of Jackson’s demise and who was influencing him in his final weeks.
“He was surrounded by enablers, including a shameful plethora of MDs [doctors] in Los Angeles and elsewhere who supplied him with prescription drugs,” Deepak Chopra, a friend of the star for 20 years, wrote on his website.
Grace Rwaramba, the nanny to Jackson’s three children, told the Sunday Times she regularly pumped the singer’s stomach of a toxic cocktail of drugs to which he had become addicted. “There was one period that it was so bad that I didn’t let the children see him . . . He always ate too little and mixed too much,” she said.
Rwaramba described how she had asked the star’s sister Janet and mother Katherine to try and persuade him to confront his addiction.
It cost Rwaramba her job after Jackson accused her of betraying him, but his children needed the woman who had become their de facto mother and he took her back.
The addiction continued though and with his death attention has fallen on Conrad Murray, the doctor who attended Jackson when he went into cardiac arrest, and who police have questioned about how the star obtained the cocktail of drugs on which he apparently became dependent.
Murray had been Jackson’s personal doctor for about a year. In recent weeks he moved into the singer’s rented home and was signed up to travel with him on the comeback tour to London.
Murray, who insists he has done nothing wrong, has now hired a lawyer to go after AEG Live, the promoter of Jackson’s promised concert cycle at the O2 Arena, for $300,000 (€213,000) he says he is owed for his services to the pop star.
The money, his lawyer Matt Alford said, was the amount the doctor was expecting to receive for working exclusively for Jackson from now until the projected end of the concert series next March.
AEG Live’s chief executive, Randy Phillips, denied any deal had been finalised at the time of Jackson’s death.
Jesse Jackson has also raised questions about Murray’s role, saying the family did not know him and wants him to account for his actions after the singer’s collapse, including what he was injected with.
The politician said the family told him the singer was training “almost like a boxer” in preparation for the London concerts. Rwaramba and others have suggested that the physical demands on the singer were too great.
Another power struggle that may now be played out pits the star’s manager at the time of his death, Frank DiLeo, against the man who handled all his business and publicity affairs before that, Tohme.
DiLeo, who managed Jackson during the 1980s, returned to managerial duties just as rehearsals for the London series were getting under way, leaving Tohme without any formal role, although he continued to work out of the Los Angeles offices of MJJ Productions, the pop singer’s production company. Tohme responded sharply to unconfirmed reports over the weekend that the police wanted to talk to him about his possible knowledge of Jackson’s prescription drugs, saying he had played no role in Jackson’s medical treatment.
“This is BS,” he told the celebrity gossip website TMZ. “Why should I talk to police?”
Tohme is closely associated with the anti-Semitic Nation of Islam, which came to have an increasing influence on Jackson’s life. It provided the singer with bodyguards, allegedly fleeced him on property rentals and increasingly influenced his business deals.
Earlier this year Tohme was named in a lawsuit, alleging that he threatened an auctioneer selling Jackson memorabilia by invoking the Nation of Islam’s interest in the singer’s life and warned the auctioneer to do as he demanded because “lives are at stake and there will be bloodshed”.
Even after the issues around Jackson’s death are resolved, there is still likely to be a long wrangle over money.
There is plenty of it, and the pot is swelling since his death. But there is also plenty of debt and Jackson long had a cash flow problem that saw him lose ownership of some of his most prized properties.
Jackson has an estimated £500 million stake in the company that holds the rights to the Beatles songs. Then there is the memorabilia and the surging sales in his own records in recent days. But the web of debt will be complex to untangle and no one is certain how much of the estate it will eat up.
There is another potential battle with consequences beyond the distribution of money, Jackson has three children. Michael jnr and Paris are from his brief marriage to Debbie Rowe. The third was born to an unidentified surrogate mother.
Rowe’s lawyer Iris Finsilver has said she will seek to recover the children. With them would come a sizeable part of what remains of Jackson’s estate.
– ( Guardianservice)
Beat it: hits album tops charts
LONDON – Pop star Michael Jackson's greatest hits album, Number Ones, became Britain's top-selling album this week, after his death on Thursday spurred interest in his back catalogue, lifting five albums into the top 20.
Britain's Official Charts Company said yesterday that Number Onesshot up to the top spot from 121st last week, knocking electronica-infused rock group Kasabian's West Ryder Pauper Lunatic Asyluminto second place.
Jacksons albums Thriller, King of Pop, Off the Walland The Essentialalso re-entered the top 20.
The singer fared less well in the singles charts, where Man in the Mirrorwas his highest entry at number 11, though Thriller, Billie Jean, Smooth Criminal, Beat Itand Earth Songalso entered the top 40.
In total, Jackson’s music accounted for more than 300,000 album and single sales in the space of just two days.
Synthpop duo La Roux's single Bulletproofwas the new entry at number one, pushing French house DJ David Guetta's anthem When Love Takes Over, featuring vocals by Kelly Rowland, down to number two.
– (Reuters)