'King of Pop's' death at 50 stuns family, fans

HE WAS SO many things to so many people, a man of many nicknames - from the "King of Pop" to "Wacko Jacko" - and even more faces.

A child star, a fashion icon, a spell-binding entertainer who seemed to walk on the Moon and finally a bizarro-world Elvis who finally spun his own disturbing version of the time-worn story of superstar decline - Michael Jackson was all of these and more.

But to a generation of millions at the end of the great American Baby Boom, born just a tad too late to experience the upheaval of the 1960s, he was not just any rock star but the first pop icon that truly belonged to them, one whose youthful energy once mirrored their own.

Which is why the news of Jackson's sudden death at age 50 yesterday hit so many people with all the pop-cultural impact of one of the singer's trademark mid-song shrieks.

"I think we'll mourn his loss as well as the loss of ourselves as children listening to 'Thriller' on the record player," the rock star John Mayer wrote on the social networking site Twitter, which erupted with reactions amid the first sketchy reports that Jackson had collapsed midday at his mansion in the Bel-Air section of Los Angeles, near Sunset Boulevard.

Jackson was not breathing when Los Angeles Fire Department paramedics responded to a call there at 12:30 p.m. Pacific time, Capt. Steve Ruda told the Los Angeles Times. He was apparently in cardiac arrest, and the paramedics performed CPR and took him to UCLA Medical Center, Ruda told the newspaper.

According to CBS News, the paramedics tried to resuscitate Jackson - described in an initial bulletin as a "50 year old male, not breathing at all" - for 42 minutes.

A large crowd gathered outside the medical center on the western side of Los Angeles, where fans reportedly shouted, "You've got to save him! You've got to save him!"

Jackson - whose frequent rounds of plastic surgery, some of which were linked to later health problems, were a keystone of his increasingly bizarre persona - had been dogged by recent rumors of illness and frailty.

But, at the same time, he also seemed poised for a long-awaited comeback: Some 800,000 tickets were snapped up in minutes for a series of 50 concerts that he had planned beginning in July at London's O2 Arena, even as some doubted the 50-year-old icon would be healthy enough to perform. According to the Hollywood Reporter, Jackson had rehearsed his show at a Los Angeles arena on Wednesday night.

Today, the London tickets are collectors' items.