Jackson: we shall not see his like again

Eddy Cochran, Jimi Hendrix, Lennon – death has only sanctified their contribution to rock music. Now Michael Jackson, presumably the most commercially successful musician of all time. Great far beyond his exuberant, mesmeric performance, but in his composition too.

And weird. But then, aren’t we all? Who amongst us from the age of eight could have withstood the tsunami of attention, adulation, adoration, mystification, and emotion? Others know the detail. I only know the music and the effect it had on me and my generation. I was the statutory 18 when he was eight. We got his rhythm.

But in later life I retreated, if not from his music, at least from publicly talking about it. The weird seriously assaulted the memory of the music and its impact. As with R Kelly’s I Believe I Can Fly, I kept quiet about how much I loved it after his court case, never confessing that should Desert Island Discs call, R Kelly would have to be there.

But so would Jacko. Reconciling the strange surgery and the even stranger, even sinister, delight in the menagerie of young children with whom he consorted in his home, undermined my total appreciation of what he achieved, perhaps the greatest recording artist of all time.

And the manner of his passing, matching his life: sudden. From birth to performance, from performance to death – sudden – leaving hundreds of thousands ticketed for the greatest come back never made.

This was an individual of whom, for an absolute certainty we can say, we shall not see his like again.