The failed blues musician’s main talent appeared to be devising innovative ways to make his children’s lives miserable – and he reserved the worst abuse for Michael
At the risk of damning a dead man with faint praise, perhaps the best thing you can say about Joe Jackson is that he may not unequivocally be the most tyrannical and monstrous father in pop history. There are other contenders for the title, not least the appalling Murry Wilson, father of the Beach Boys’ Brian, Dennis and Carl, a man whose idea of disciplining his children involved yanking out his glass eye and forcing them to stare into the empty socket and who, in a final act of belittlement stemming from his insane conviction that he was the only real talent in the family, signed away the Beach Boys’ songwriting catalogue in 1969 for $700,000, costing them somewhere in the region of $100m in royalties. An early 1990s court case alleged that Brian Wilson’s signature on the sale documents had been forged.
Related: Joe Jackson, father of Michael Jackson, dies at 89
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