Maria Puente
USA TODAY
Published 8:33 p.m. UTC Jun 22, 2018
Joe Jackson, the iron-willed father/manager of the late Michael Jackson and the Jackson 5, is hospitalized in Las Vegas with terminal cancer, according to media reports.
Variety and TMZ, citing unnamed sources, reported Jackson, 89, is dying and that some members of his family — he’s the father of 10 surviving children — have visited him at the hospital, including wife Katherine, 88, two daughters and one grandchild.
USA TODAY reached out to Jackson’s personal assistant, Charles Coupet, and to various lawyers and publicists who have represented members of the Jackson family over the years.
Only publicist Ken Sunshine, who represents superstar daughter Janet Jackson, 52, responded, saying she declined to comment.
Meanwhile, Britain’s The Daily Mail reported that Jackson has Stage 4 pancreatic cancer. The paper said Jackson’s son Jermaine Jackson, 63, confirmed that his father was dying but complained that his wife and children were barred from seeing him until they pleaded with Coupet and were granted access Tuesday night.
“He’s very, very frail, he doesn’t have long,” Jermaine told the Mail. “The family needs to be by his bedside — that’s our only intention in his final days…We shouldn’t have to beg, plead, and argue to see our own father, especially at a time like this. We have been hurting…My mother was worried sick.”
Jackson, who was injured in a car accident in Las Vegas a year ago, has suffered various medical problems in recent years, including dementia, strokes, and a heart attack.
Jackson, who has lived in Las Vegas for years, is the father of nine surviving children with wife Katherine, whom he married in 1949.
Their most famous son, Michael Jackson, lead singer as a boy of 11 of the Jackson 5, died in 2009 of an accidental drug overdose at the age of 50, years after he broke free of his father’s overbearing management and blossomed as the “King of Pop.”
Decades before, Joe Jackson guided his five talented sons from poverty in Gary, Indiana, to international pop stars as The Jackson 5, who dominated the pop charts from the late 1960s into the 1970s. In 1969, they were the first American group to see their first four singles go to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.
But Jackson’s management style was abrasive at best, abusive at worst, according to Michael and other children, who complained of constant work and the loss of normal childhoods. Yet their success allowed Jackson to move his family out of Gary and into a mansion in Encino, California.
By 1979, Michael had enough of his father, and fired him as his manager. His career went supernova, especially with his breakthrough 1979 album “Off the Wall” and its blockbuster 1982 follow-up “Thriller.”
By 1983, all the rest of the original Jackson 5 also broke with their father.
Despite retirement in Las Vegas, Jackson has been active, including on his Twitter page.
On June 6, a video of Jackson appeared showing him at a Jamba Juice in Las Vegas trying to decide what to drink while Michael’s music played in the background.
As the patriarch of the “First Family of Music,” he had just published in March a picture book recalling his life and 60 years in show business, “Precious Moments,” and was enthusiastically promoting it, according to his Twitter page.
His most recent public appearance was in 2015 when he attended the BET Awards when his daughter Janet Jackson accepted an Ultimate Icon Award.
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