He put his own unique stamp on everything he did

Louis Walsh

"I made a point of not going on the radio or TV the day after Michael Jackson died because I didn’t want to be one of the so-called ‘experts’ on his life who’d never met him.

In fact I did meet Michael, but it was only for a minute at the RDS, where he was playing in 1997. Stephen Gately of Boyzone is one of his biggest fans, so I managed to blag us in and get a photo of the two of them together. 
There was definitely an aura about him. He was a real star – but what struck me more that day was the size of the entourage. I’ve been around a lot of major pop stars, and none of them had the number of people on the payroll that he did.
I don’t know if all the singing at the RDS or indeed at any of his concerts was live, but the moves were incredible. So was the overall showmanship. He was enormously talented, a real entertainer.
I was a massive Motown fan and grew up with the label, so The Jackson Five were on my radar from the get-go. Some people say Michael’s moves came from James Brown and Joe Tex – maybe they did but right from the start he put his own unique stamp on everything he did.
He was fortunate enough to have three great musical people, Berry Gordy, Quincy Jones and Rod Temperton – the songwriter who wrote ‘Thriller’ – in his life. You can argue whether it’s Quincy who made Michael or Michael who made Quincy, but that was probably the single greatest musical alliance of all-time. It gave us Off The Wall, Thriller and Bad.
Even though the other four didn’t do much, The Jackson 5 were amazing visually. The best moment of all, for me, was at the Motown 25th anniversary show, when Michael did a medley with them, followed by a thing on his own. He was sensational: that’s the yardstick against which all other pop acts should be measured.
I’d heard from a reliable source that The Jackson 5 were planning to do Vegas over the next year – which would have been box-office dynamite – because they all needed the money. That was the thing about the O2 shows – in truth I don’t think that Michael could face up to this tour either mentally or physically, but he had to get the creditors off his back.
I know there was talk of a new album, but my instinct was that he wasn’t ever going to record properly again. I just think he had no confidence, no voice. Mentally and physically, the man was fucked. I said to people when the tickets went on sale, “This isn’t going to happen. He hasn’t sung properly for 20 years.” It turned out I was right.
It’s a cliché, but it was a fantastic career move for him to die – because this tour was going to flop visually and musically. He’d sold no records in America for years and years and years, which is why he chose London.
This way he’s a hero. There were questions about his private life a few years ago, which overnight have been forgotten.
I don’t mean to be callous about it, but his family can get on with their lives now and look after the kids.
I always felt sorry for his mother. She was there the day Stephen and me went to see him in the RDS and she looked very weary of the world. It must have been incredibly hard for her, seeing what was happening to her son and not really being able to do anything about it. 
I was at a party at Elton John’s on the Thursday when the news came through that he had died, and the person who I think was most devastated of all was Shirley Bassey or, as I call her, The Dame. She thought he was so talented.
Justin Timberlake wasn’t there, but was onto Elton to talk about it – Justin has borrowed so much from Jackson, as have Usher and Pharrell and, well, just about everybody. He was such a huge influence on contemporary pop.
It’s inevitable that a lot of stuff about Michael will come out over the next few months – some of it true, most of it not. As for me, I liked him when he was black. I didn’t like it when he became white. He ruined himself.
Which is why I’m going to try and remember him as the one-off who had ‘I Want You Back’, ‘Who’s Loving You’, ‘Got To Be There’, ‘Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough’, ‘Beat It’, ‘Billy Jean’, ‘Smooth Criminal’, ‘Blood On The Dance Floor’ and hundreds of other great, great songs. I think that’s the way we’ll all remember him in the long run."

Paddy Dunning (Grouse Lodge Studios
“Michael Jackson booked into Grouse Lodge for one month and stayed for five. He recorded a lot of songs down here with Will.I.Am, Rodney Jerkins, various different producers from New York and LA arrived over. They’ll be released, I don’t know when, but they will be released at some point. His managers in America were really, really happy that he wanted to go back into the studio after years of not doing anything, and he found it a great environment to work and write in, loved the local countryside, loved going to Mullingar and Tullamore. He was much appreciative of the locals leaving him alone and respecting his privacy.
“He was a gentleman, very intelligent, with a great sense of humour – but very cautious of people because they’d ripped him off, everybody was always out for the take. When he came here I think he felt safe and comfortable, he was amongst musicians and people in the music business, his kids went to school here and hung out with my kids. We’ve got very fond memories of him. It was mad when you’d look out in your back garden and see Michael Jackson tramping across with cornflakes or porridge, or going for walks with him and driving him up to Dublin. I sang with him on ‘The Girl Is Mine’, I was doing Michael Jackson and he was doing Paul McCartney, very surreal. On stormy nights just sitting down talking and chatting. He got on very well with my wife and the kids were happy here. He was doing a course in photography and film, he was taking care of his business affairs, his properties and music publishing empire. There was an awful lot of work. He was a big worker. We’d asked him to launch the wax museum, and he was very interested in that. It was sad: we were looking forward to meeting him in July or August to go and see his concerts.”