Boyhood and the father he feared
THE little boy scurries under the kitchen table in terror.
Inches away his father's belt whistles past . . . Joe Jackson's eyes are bulging with rage.
He is shouting wildly for his second youngest son to stand still. There is no hiding for long as blow after blow rains down.
Eight-year-old Michael Jackson takes the pain.
"I got it more than all my brothers combined," Jackson later recalled. "I would fight back and my father would kill me, just tear me up."
Such brutal scenes were common at the two-bedroom house in Gary, Indiana, that Joe, wife Katherine and their nine children called home.
The boys of the house - Jackie, Tito, Jermaine, Marlon, Randy and Michael - were often tripped or pushed into walls as the bullying continued.
It set the tone for a turbulent father-son relationship that not only moulded Michael Jackson into the King of Pop, but also sewed the seeds of his personal destruction - ending with his untimely death on Thursday at just 50.
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Things couldn't have been more different years earlier, as Katherine gazed into her baby boy's big brown eyes for the first time on a warm night in August 1958.
As with every one of her kids, she lavished him with love. But if Katherine doted, Joe's capacity for nastiness was its equal.
One night while Michael slept, Joe decided to teach the children a lesson because they kept leaving the bedroom window open.
I'd stare at kids playing. I couldn't imagine freedom
He climbed in, wearing a frightening mask, and started screaming and shouting.
It was an episode that left Michael with nightmares about being kidnapped from his bedroom.
And, scarred by his brutal childhood, he later spoke candidly about his strict upbringing - even blaming Joe for passing on the skin-whitening disease vitiligo, one of the catalysts for his obsession with his looks.
Jackson confessed in a tearful 1993 TV interview: "My mother is wonderful but I don't understand Joseph.
"My father beat me. I don't know whether he wanted a golden child. He was very strict, very hard and stern. Just a look would terrify me.
"I was scared of him as a kid and when I was older.
"There were times when he would come to see me and I would feel sick. And I would say: 'Please don't get mad Joseph. I am sorry Joseph.'"
But then there was nothing conventional about the upbringing of the most famous man on the planet.
Joe planned his musical creation meticulously, and from early childhood, Michael got used to hard work.
"I remember singing at the top of my voice and dancing with real joy and working too hard for a child," he once said.
"There were times when I'd come home from school and only have time to put my books down and get ready for the studio."
It was an ethic learned from his parents - Joe earned the weekly crust driving a crane at a steel mill while Katherine worked in a department store. Both were music lovers, passing on their passion to their son.
Michael's talent for singing undoubtedly came from Katherine. His first memories were hearing the soft strains of her rendition of You Are My Sunshine.
She also brought him up into the Jehovah's Witness religion, which gave him the faith that his talent and path were the work of God.
It was a message underlined in 1970 when Michael ran into Sunday night TV legend Ed Sullivan. "Never forget where your talent came from," said the host. "It's a gift from God."
It wasn't long before Michael's unrivalled qualities on stage started to shine as he joined brothers Jackie, Tito, Jermaine and Marlon in The Jackson 5 - with manager dad Joe as the driving force.
Joe's time playing R&B guitar with local band The Falcons had given him the know-how to make the family band a success.
For Michael, performing was second nature. But honing his skills was the result of Joe's fearsome tutoring. The hours he forced his children to put in were punishing, and that hunger for success had a devastating toll on Michael's early years.
The singer sighed: "There was a park across the road from the Motown studio, and I can remember staring at those kids playing games.
"I couldn't imagine such freedom, such a carefree life - and I'd wish that I had that kind of freedom."
Having a father as manager and professional mentor deprived Michael of the paternal love he craved. In his 1988 book Moonwalk, he said: "One of the things I regret most is never being able to have a real closeness with him.
"He built a shell around himself over the years and, once he stopped talking about our family business, he found it hard to relate to us.
"I still don't know him, and that's sad for a son who hungers to understand his own father. He's a mystery man to me."
Joe's brutality came to the fore most when the brothers lined up to rehearse every day after school. But the sessions were fraught with tension as quick-tempered Joe was quick to lash out - with Michael bearing the brunt.
Punishments were meted out for missing an intro, dropping a beat, or screwing up a dance step.
Michael once said: "My father was real strict. If you messed up, you got hit, sometimes with a belt, sometimes with a switch (cane).
"Dad would make me so mad and hurt that I'd try to get back at him and get beaten all the more.
"I'd take my shoe and throw it at him, or I'd just fight back, swinging my fists. That's why I got it more than all my brothers combined.
"I would fight back and my father would tear me up. I do remember running under tables to get away from him, and making him angrier.
"We had a turbulent relationship."
That intensity, however, translated into huge success for the fledgling The Jackson 5.
At talent shows, their professionalism put them head-and-shoulders above the rest and soon they were regulars on the club circuit. It was then - aged nine - that Michael first encountered women as they got gigs in strip clubs.
He said: "I used to stand in the wings of one place in Chicago and watch a lady whose name was Mary Rose.
"She'd take off her clothes and panties and throw them to the audience.
"My brothers and I would be watching this and my father wouldn't mind. We were exposed to a lot doing that kind of circuit."
In another club a small hole had been cut though the dressing room wall into the women's toilets. Michael said: "You could peek through this hole, and I saw stuff that I've never forgotten."
As the group's fame grew, the spotlight increasingly fell on young Michael - and his amazing talent for singing and dancing which would one day make him the world's greatest performer.
Jacko blossomed. He also had the opportunity to study music world icons of his time close up - and he lapped up this opportunity to hone his stage craft. Few youngsters dreaming of a life performing could lay claim to watching masters such as James Brown from the wings.
Michael recalled: "Some musicians may feel they got their education from the streets.
"I'm a performer at heart. I got mine from the stage."
By 1969 The Jackson 5 were enjoying radio airtime and even had an offer of a first TV slot on The David Frost Show in New York.
But before they could make the trip to the Big Apple, Motown Records came knocking.
Such was the talent and graft the brothers had put in, the audition was a resounding success - and as soon as the band signed it was clear that the massive Motown machine had a phenomenon on its hands.
I Want You Back was released in October 1969 and sold two million copies in six weeks, sending The Jackson 5 straight to Number One.
The legend was beginning and they went on to record four studio albums with Motown.
But as Michael quickly learnt, fame had its drawbacks.
"It hurts to be mobbed," he admitted, belying a lifelong discomfort with his megastar status.
"You feel as if you're going to suffocate or be dismembered. There are a thousand hands grabbing at you.
"One girl is twisting your wrist this way while another is pulling your watch off.
"They grab your hair and pull it hard, and you fall against things and the scrapes are horrible."
I didn't look in the mirror as my father told me I was ugly
More heartache stretched ahead though as as he got older. Growing up in the limelight, teenage Michael became acutely self- conscious of his changing looks.
Aged 14 his appearance altered dramatically as he left his boyhood behind him and shot up in height to 5ft 10in. The cute little kid of the group became a gangly adolescent.
It wasn't a happy time for Michael. He recalled: "My skin broke out in acne. I got very shy and was embarrassed to meet people because my complexion was so bad."
In a tearful 1993 interview with Oprah Winfrey, Michael admitted: "I was so shy I would wash my face in the dark. I wouldn't look in the mirror because my father would tease me about being so ugly."
So was to start an obsession with appearance that never left the star, his broad Afro - American features and hair being a constant reminder of Joe's jibes.
But despite struggling through enormous personal challenges, nothing was slowing the Michael Jackson pop juggernaut.
In Autumn 1971 he cut his first solo record Got To Be There, followed in 1972 by Ben, and The Jackson 5 performed their first world tour the same year.
But problems with Motown weren't far away. By 1974 the band were calling for more creative control and after a dramatic showdow they left the label and signed with Epic/CBS. From then on they were known simply as The Jacksons.
Yet Michael's runaway success was soon to take on a whole new dimension as he forged a solo career which would see him cemented as a global superstar . . .
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