Jun 25, 2009 9:07 pm US/Central
Rev. Jackson, Others Remember King Of Pop
CHICAGO (CBS) ―
Michael Jackson moon-walked to meteoric fame. But his star fell with strange behavior, and the king of pop soon became "Wacko Jacko."
CBS 2 Chief Correspondent Jay Levine joins offers insights about those highs and lows from Chicagoans who knew him.
The Marvin Gaye song "Aint No Mountain High Enough" comes to mind to describe the triumph and tragedy that was Michael Jackson. The ups and down continued to the very end with his death just days before he was supposed to begin a comeback concert tour in London.
Standing alone outside Operation PUSH tonight, the memories brought tears to Rev. Jesse Jackson's eyes.
"He tried so hard to get back, and he was ready," he said.
He had tried to help the troubled superstar exorcise the demons that tormented him, having known Michael Jackson from the time the Jackson 5 started out, begging to perform here in Chicago.
"They were in a station wagon and U-Haul attached to it," Jackson recalled Thursday.
The rise was meteoric, so much so that when Michael proclaimed himself the King of Pop, he got no argument.
Jackson was "like a basketball player at the top of their game and they say 'Nobody can guard me, I can do what I want,' and that was Michael," Chicago band member Lee Loughnane said.
But the bigger he got, the stranger Michael Jackson became. His personal life: bizarre, reclusive.
There was the quickie marriage to Elvis' daughter and then to his nurse. Court battles over business dealings and cancelled concert dates.
Plastic surgery that completely altered his appearance, and the video that went viral before we knew what viral was -- dangling his third child over a balcony, followed quickly by Jackson's arrest on charges of molesting a 12-year-old cancer patient.
"Before I would hurt a child, I would slit my wrists. I would never hurt a child," the singer said.
Jesse Jackson described the Michael Jackson he counseled at his fairy tale ranch, Neverland, in southern California.
"We've lost our joy, he's lost his pain," he said. "And he was so frightened by it and so fragile."
Through it all, his music and videos remained the standard by which all others were judged. Dick Biondi, the legendary Chicago DJ who played his music during good times and bad, is among those mourning.
"Those that put him down will just realize that he was human being, like we all are," Biondi said.
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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