In this Dec. 1, 1984, file photo, Michael Jackson is shown onstage at opening night of his Victory Tour at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles.LENNOX MCLENDON
Of all modern pop legends, Michael Jackson has been the most present, and the most elusive. His final press conference, to announce the concert dates in London that were to bring him back to respectability and erase his debts, was no different.
Hundreds of journalists and fans - many of them not born at the time of his greatest success, 1982's Thriller - milled about the 02 Centre while the King of Pop kept them waiting for hours.
When he finally did appear, in trademark black wig and shades, and a military-style sequined shirt, he seemed energized and healthy, contrary to reports that had said he was wasting away, or that he needed the help of a wheelchair.
In fact, he seemed so healthy as he spoke his few lines - "I love you all so much … I'll be singing the songs my fans want to hear" - that a rumour went around that this was not in fact Mr. Jackson but an impersonator he used for public appearances.
A rumour that bizarre would quickly have been batted away if anyone else were involved.
But really, this was Michael Jackson, whose nose no longer looked human, whose best friend was a chimpanzee, who slept in an oxygen tent, who made his children wear masks in public.
Who knew any more what was reality, and what was invention? One thing was clear: Mr. Jackson, for good or ill, was his own invention, and he was responsible if the experiment had gone a little awry.
With the London concerts he looked set to move from the sideshow back into the main ring, to reclaim his place at the centre of pop culture.
Initially only 13 shows were announced, but demand for tickets was so huge - with the website crashing during pre-registry - that the number quickly grew to 50, with the tantalizing dangling prospect of a world tour after. Every ticket for every show was snapped up within minutes of going on sale. The concert promoter, AEG Live, denied reports of Mr. Jackson's physical frailty, and said he'd passed a barrage of medical tests for the insurers.
Who wouldn't want to see him live? Anybody who'd tuned in when he moonwalked across the stage during Motown 25th anniversary special in 1983 can still remember the electric thrill of excitement at seeing something radically new and different (even if he had borrowed the moves from street dancers and his friend Liza Minnelli).
If the intervening years contained enough strangeness to fill Ripley's Believe it or Not - from Mr. Jackson's hair catching fire during the filming of a Pepsi commercial to the baby-dangling episode at a Berlin hotel - you could still hope the ghost of genius lurked inside, waiting to come to life when the music started.
Now the people who saw any of Mr. Jackson's concerts before his final tour ended in October, 1997, are the sole remaining witnesses to his genius. Everyone else will have to content themselves with old music clips, where Mr. Jackson's transformation from boy genius to 50-year-old enigma is most evident not in his shape-shifting face, but in the increasing artificiality of his hair. There's the great afro of his boyhood with the Jackson Five (a boyhood that was wonderful for listeners, but not, as we know now, so wonderful for him, thanks to a tyrannical father). That was followed by the years of Jheri-curl success, with Thriller and Bad , and finally ends in the extreme oddity of the dense pageboy wig of the past decade.
The 1997 concert tour was the last time he was fully present in public life. After that, the man who'd been ubiquitous - on every radio station, at every school dance, singing with Stevie Wonder, buying himself an hour of prime-time TV here, a Beatles catalogue there - was suddenly gone. It was as if the wizard who'd given him his scarecrow's brain in The Wiz - the 1978 musical where he urged everyone to "ease on down the road" - had arranged for him to disappear. But really what had vanished was the early incarnation Michael, with the cheeky smile and the angel's voice.
He retreated to his Neverland Ranch after being cleared of child sex-abuse charges in 2005 and more recently led the life of the world's most glamorous couch-surfer, spending much of the past couple of years as a guest of Bahrain's ruling family. (This episode ended in court, as so many of Jackson's adventures did, when a member of the royal family sued him for breach of contract, over Jackson's apparent failure to produce a record with him. The matter was settled out of court. The ranch is under the control of creditors.) The singer made one attempt to get back on stage, at the 2006 World Music Awards in London, singing We Are the World with a group of schoolchildren, but it quickly descended into chaos and Mr. Jackson's microphone was cut part way through the song.
No matter how long he was out of the public eye, the public always kept an eye on him, transfixed by his combination of talent and epic bad decisions. With the 50 concerts beginning in July and stretching into 2010, Mr. Jackson was set to be present in public life - that is, until he slipped away again. An announcement arrived from AEG Live last month stating that the first four shows needed to be delayed, in order to better prepare for "a massive and technically complex show."
There were reports at the time that, facing the prospect of months on stage, Mr. Jackson was having second thoughts, and complained to fans after a rehearsal in Los Angeles, "I don't know how I'm going to do 50 shows."
It's unlikely that he hadn't thought the shows through in every detail: Mr. Jackson was known to be a hard-driving businessman, despite having squandered a fortune on tchochkes and carnival rides over the years. He outbid Paul McCartney to buy the Beatles' songbook, willing to sacrifice their friendship for such a lucrative prize - much of which has been chipped away to pay off debts.
Last night, another friend, Jonathan Margolis, told the BBC that Mr. Jackson's public act was often just that - an act. "He was a showman," Mr. Margolis said, adding that he never saw the singer wearing his famous face mask unless he knew there would be people around. If he was going to be photographed, he'd put it on.
The fans who showed up at Mr. Jackson's press conference in London in March were hoping for a rare glimpse of the pop star outside his usual habitat - airports, or late-night visits to toy stores that had been closed for his shopping pleasure. They hoped he'd finally become less elusive, but they were wrong.