Ongoing thoughts on Michael Jackson

(updated as the day goes on)

4) Quincy Jones interviewed: Did he worry about the child sex allegations against Jackson? “Yes, but I could never put my finger on it.”

3) From the “It-couldn’t-happen-to-a-nicer-group-of-people desk”; a Reuters story about the exposure of AEG, the promoter of Jackson’s 50 scheduled London shows:
Paying back the face value of some of the estimated 750,000 tickets sold is unlikely to be AEG Live’s only headache.
The company is reported to have invested $20-30 million on the production already, not including any advance to Jackson.
And the O2 Arena, which appears on AEG’s list of sites it owns or operates, is now faced with 50 empty nights, some of which it will struggle to fill at such short notice.

2) The media is reporting all sorts of things that make no sense. The NYT wrote last night, and I just heard someone on MSNBC report, that Jackson sold 750 million albums. Are they crazy?
Let’s give him his 100 million for Thriller, which I don’t believe for a minute.
The Jackson Five were a singles band; Jackson recorded six albums as an adult. Do people think he sold 150 million copies of each on average? Does anyone know how to do math? Even if you take singles into account and accept uncheckable sales figures from around the world it’s hard to see how he sold more than 250 million records, or a third of that total.

Then the MSNBC reporter said, without sourcing the info, that he may have been “a half billion dollars in debt.” That seems a little extreme! (Update: But see this attempt to do the math.) And then in the next breath she quoted his attorney saying that Jackson was “still generating great cash flow.” But of course, that was his problem: he wasn’t generating cash flow. Duh! That’s how you go into debt. He hadn’t released any new albums, and he hadn’t made any concert appearance. Where was the money coming from?

1) Get ready for the mother of all legal battles. Jackson undoubtedly left a legal and financial mess behind. It’s obvious that he was deeply in debt, by the simple expedient of having no income and spending money like a sheik; that his death will set off a feeding frenzy as his many creditors fight like jackals for the remains; and that the dozens of lawsuits he had going will grow enormously.

You can already see the more buffoonish members of his family posturing for the cameras, notably Jermaine:

My brother, the legendary King of Pop Michael Jackson, passed away… Our family requests that the media can respect our privacy during this tough time. And may Allah be with you, Michael, always.