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Fans from Sydney to Rio mourn Jackson
(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-06-26 14:58
"Hopefully he will always be remembered like Princess Diana," said Noh Yusof, 29, a legal adviser. But IT specialist Ivan Ho, 48, said Jackson's success went to his head. "He is a weirdo," he said. "With the kind of money he has, he could have done much more for charity" rather than have cosmetic surgery. In Bogota, Colombia, a 24-year-old tattoo artist named Michael Tarquino, said his parents named him after Jackson. "When I was young and there was electricity rationing and we'd go two or three hours at a time without music, without television, when the light came back on I would play my Michael Jackson LP, and I'd stand at the window and sing along," he said. Japanese fans were always among Jackson's most passionate supporters, and news of his death came as a huge shock. Michiko Suzuki, a music critic who met Jackson several times in the 1980s, said the country was likely to be mourning for some time.
Jackson also had a huge fan base in Seoul, South Korea, where his style and dance moves were widely emulated by Korean pop stars. "He was a star when I was little. Learning of his death, I felt like I had lost some of my own childhood memories," said Kim Nam-kyu, 36. In central Mexico City, Esteban Rubio, 30, organized an impromptu homage. Rubio has spent half his life as a Jackson impersonator. "Respectfully, lovingly, I was preparing a show based on him," he said. "I feel sad, as if a part of my life were torn away." In Brazil, movie director and musician Felipe Machado called Jackson "perhaps the best performer that ever existed." Singer-composer and former Culture Minister Gilberto Gil also expressed his sorrow. "It makes me very sad to see such a great and incredible talent leave us so soon - a talent that provided all of us with some wonderful moments," he told Folha Online news service. "I'll miss the King of Pop."
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