Michael Jackson, King of Pop, Dies!!!

[raagadevan]

Deepak Chopra Says Drug Abuse Killed Michael Jackson - He's Willing to Name Doctors Who Prescribed Pills

The official cause of Michael Jackson's death has yet to be determined, but Deepak Chopra, who was a long-time confidant and friend for 21 years, said the singer was killed by his abuse of prescription drugs.

Chopra said Michael had lupus and vitiligo, but insists he knows it was drugs that was "responsible" for Michael's death. Not just contributing, he said, it was "the thing".

"I think that drugs killed him," he told CNN's Wolf Blitzer moments ago. The same claim was made by family attorney Brian Oxman.

"There are a plethora of doctors in Hollywood. They're drug peddlers, they're drug pushers, they just happen to have a medical license," Chopra said. "I hope this episode today. this tragic death of a great human being will bring to light the huge problem we have in Hollywood with some of the medical establishment. The celebrity doctors who not only imitate people into the drug experience, but then they perpetuate it so that the people become dependent on it. I will be bold enough to identify these people at a certain time, but I think the police should do their own investigation. I think this is something that really should be investigated because it's a disease. The number one cause of drug addiction in the world - and particularly in the United States - is not street drugs, but medical prescriptions given legally by physicians."

Chopra said Michael, who was living at his home for a week after the 2005 child molestation trial, asked him for a prescription for a narcotic; Michael claimed to have back pain. Chopra scolded Michael and did not give him the prescription.

When Wolf asked if Michael was addicted to prescription drugs, Chopra said: "In my belief, and from what I know, he was."

Chopra said he knew Michael was taking Oxycontin, Demerol shots and "other narcotics."

[raagadevan]

Jackson was pure, childlike: Deepak Chopra

26 Jun 2009, 2240 hrs IST, Deepak Chopra

His mixture of mystery, isolation, indulgence, overwhelming global fame, and personal loneliness was intimately known to me. For twenty years I observed every aspect, and as easy as it was to love Michael -- and to want to protect him -- his sudden death yesterday seemed almost fated.

Two days previously he had called me in an upbeat, excited mood. The voice message said, "I've got some really good news to share with you." He was writing a song about the environment, and he wanted me to help informally with the lyrics, as we had done several times before. When I tried to return his call, however, the number was disconnected. (Terminally spooked by his treatment in the press, he changed his phone number often.) So I never got to talk to him, and the music demo he sent me lies on my bedside table as a poignant symbol of an unfinished life.

When we first met, around 1988, I was struck by the combination of charisma and woundedness that surrounded Michael. He would be swarmed by crowds at an airport, perform an exhausting show for three hours, and then sit backstage afterward, as we did one night in Bucharest, drinking bottled water, glancing over some Sufi poetry as I walked into the room, and wanting to meditate.

That person, whom I considered (at the risk of ridicule) very pure, still survived -- he was reading the poems of Rabindranath Tagore when we talked the last time, two weeks ago. Michael exemplified the paradox of many famous performers, being essentially shy, an introvert who would come to my house and spend most of the evening sitting by himself in a corner with his small children. I never saw less than a loving father when they were together (and wonder now, as anyone close to him would, what will happen to them in the aftermath).

Michael's reluctance to grow up was another part of the paradox. My children adored him, and in return he responded in a childlike way. He declared often, as former child stars do, that he was robbed of his childhood. Considering the monstrously exaggerated value our society places on celebrity, which was showered on Michael without stint, the public was callous to his very real personal pain. It became another tawdry piece of the tabloid Jacko, pictured as a weird changeling and as something far more sinister.

It's not my place to comment on the troubles Michael fell heir to from the past and then amplified by his misguided choices in life. He was surrounded by enablers, including a shameful plethora of M.D.s in Los Angeles and elsewhere who supplied him with prescription drugs. As many times as he would candidly confess that he had a problem, the conversation always ended with a deflection and denial. As I write this paragraph, the reports of drug abuse are spreading across the cable news channels. The instant I heard of his death this afternoon, I had a sinking feeling that prescription drugs would play a key part.

The closest we ever became, perhaps, was when Michael needed a book to sell primarily as a concert souvenir. It would contain pictures for his fans but there would also be a text consisting of short fables. I sat with him for hours while he dreamily wove Aesop-like tales about animals, mixed with words about music and his love of all things musical. This project became Dancing the Dream after I pulled the text together for him, acting strictly as a friend. It was this time together that convinced me of the modus vivendi Michael had devised for himself: to counter the tidal wave of stress that accompanies mega-stardom, he built a private retreat in a fantasy world where pink clouds veiled inner anguish and Peter Pan was a hero, not a pathology.

This compromise with reality gradually became unsustainable. He went to strange lengths to preserve it. Unbounded privilege became another toxic force in his undoing. What began as idiosyncrasy, shyness, and vulnerability was ravaged by obsessions over health, paranoia over security, and an isolation that grew more and more unhealthy. When Michael passed me the music for that last song, the one sitting by my bedside waiting for the right words, the procedure for getting the CD to me rivaled a CIA covert operation in its secrecy.

My memory of Michael Jackson will be as complex and confused as anyone's. His closest friends will close ranks and try to do everything in their power to insure that the good lives after him. Will we be successful in rescuing him after so many years of media distortion? No one can say. I only wanted to put some details on the record in his behalf. My son Gotham traveled with Michael as a roadie on his "Dangerous" tour when he was seventeen. Will it matter that Michael behaved with discipline and impeccable manners around my son? (It sends a shiver to recall something he told Gotham: "I don't want to go out like Marlon Brando. I want to go out like Elvis." Both icons were obsessions of this icon.)

His children's nanny and surrogate mother, Grace Rwaramba , is like another daughter to me. I introduced her to Michael when she was eighteen, a beautiful, heartwarming girl from Rwanda who is now grown up. She kept an eye on him for me and would call me whenever he was down or running too close to the edge. How heartbreaking for Grace that no one's protective instincts and genuine love could avert this tragic day. An hour ago she was sobbing on the telephone from London. As a result, I couldn't help but write this brief remembrance in sadness. But when the shock subsides and a thousand public voices recount Michael's brilliant, joyous, embattled, enigmatic, bizarre trajectory, I hope the word "joyous" is the one that will rise from the ashes and shine as he once did.


[From The Times of India]

[Vivasaayi]

one of the most famous performances of michael jackson

[karthik_sa2]

wanna know y there cannot be another mic?!!!!! watch this unbelievable video

[raagadevan]

I was working with Michael Jackson: Adnan Sami

Mumbai (IANS): Singer Adnan Sami is crestfallen following Michael Jackson's death not only because the world has lost its King of Pop but also because he was working with the superstar and his sister Janet Jackson on an album.

"I was working on an album with Janet and Michael Jackson. I'm producing and composing the album. But now I wonder what happens to it!" said Adnan.

Describing Michael, whom Adnan met a number of times for the album as a childlike genius, the Pakistani origin singer said: "His life was troubled. But his music was his solace. Artists who suffer always seek an escape route in their art. Ask me, I should know."

When Adnan first received a phone call from Michael and the Jackson brothers they discussed Adnan's music in detail.

"The Jacksons knew every detail about my songs. They had studied my music in detail. I listened quietly to them talk about my music. These were the same guys whose music I grew up (with)."

How did the collaboration with the Jacksons happen?

"Michael's brother Jermaine's wife Halima is from Afghanistan. For some time she lived in Chandigarh. She got acquainted with my music while in India and she took my music to LA and introduced her husband to it. And then Jermaine introduced Michael and Janet to my music," Adnan said.

Adnan had three meetings with the Jacksons in Los Angeles.

"It was progressing slowly. They like to work at their own pace. No hurry. The album is like Motown music-meets-world music-meets-Indian music. I've brought the Sarangi and the tabla-dholak into their music," he revealed.

Speaking of the Jacksons, Adnan said: "They're very humble people. Always attentive to what I say, always open to innovations and suggestions. They recognised a component in my musical style, and that is this - I really like strong base lines in my songs. What they don't know is that's something I learnt from the music of the Jacksons."

"I can't believe I'm actually working with the Jacksons. Without Michael it won't be the same. We've completed four songs…I'm really enjoying this. I realise I enjoy playback singing. But the independent albums are where I'm totally able to express myself," he added.

[From The Hindu]

[karthik_sa2]

[crajkumar_be]

http://www.hindu.com/2009/06/27/stor...2754360800.htm

Pop’s most spectacular act

“In the world of pop music,” an American newspaper once proclaimed, “there is Michael Jackson and then there is everyone else.” He was probably (as the Guinness Book of World Records claimed) the world’s most successful entertainer of all time. When related by number, his achievements are unparalleled: an estimated 750 million albums sold worldwide; 13 Grammy Awards; another 13 number one singles; two inductions into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In assessing his place in the history of pop, it is important to remember that Jackson was not just a musician. He was a spectacular act. Viewed in isolation, his music was not path-breaking; he did not invent or even heavily influence a musical genre as Chuck Berry or Led Zeppelin or Bob Dylan did. In 2004, when Rolling Stone magazine compiled a list of the 500 greatest songs of all time, Jackson had only one listing. But with his stunningly syncopated dance moves, signature moonwalk, androgynous allure, white fedora, and crystal gloves, he transformed his music, including runaway hits such as Billie Jean and Beat It, into iconic pieces of pop art. The magnetism he brought in changed the shape of the music industry. He lent an altogether different dimension to music videos, influenced the way people danced, and gave a whole new meaning to the term ‘live performance.’ Michael Jackson was not someone you merely listened to; he was someone you experienced.

Even as a child star performing with his siblings as the Jackson Five, which earned a name for its rendition of classic Motown hits, Michael showed he was exceptionally blessed. His big break came in the early 1980s when Thriller — the biggest selling album of all time — launched him as the King of Pop. Superstardom brought with it a slow descent into eccentricity, bizarre behaviour, and scandal. His reclusive private life in Neverland, his California ranch where he surrounded himself with children, became the subject of feverish media interest. A string of plastic surgeries on his nose and his strangely lightening skin tone (which he attributed to the disease vitiligo, not to bleaching) led to allegations of ethnic self-hatred. Charges of child sex abuse, which were never proved, left a stain on his reputation. He got into big financial problems. The end was as poignant as the humble beginning. The 50-year-old was rehearsing for a huge musical comeback when he collapsed. The 50 shows scheduled at the O2 arena in London, which were to start next month, had sold out within hours. Now we will never know what might have been but we can celebrate and enjoy what Michael Jackson’s flawed genius has given the world.

[crajkumar_be]

[app_engine]

http://www.reuters.com/article/enter...55R04120090628

செத்தும் கொடுத்தான் சீதக்காதி

[Dinesh84]

RIP