JACKSON,
him for the rest of her life. He says: “My father never talked about regret. My mum and dad have been together since high school. She asked him if he was in pain and he said, ‘Uh em’. And then he passed away the next day.
“She will love him until the day she dies.
“It was a true love story. I feel the most sorrow for my mum because she is without her partner.”
Tito says he visited Joe the day before he died and thanked him. Katherine was by his side when he passed. He says: “He couldn’t speak but I thanked him for everything that he has done and the world he had led me to, I thanked him for all the things I learnt from him. He recognised I was there and I was speaking to him. He understood what I was saying but he wasn’t able to reply.”
Tito admits he looks up to his father more than anyone else in the family.
He says: “Out of all the kids, I’m probably the one who wanted to be him. I do a lot of things in my life that he did, things like mechanics and carpentry.
“He played guitar, I played guitar. I smoked the same cigarettes as him. I want him to be remembered as one of the greatest dads around. The thing I really liked about my father is he was a man of his word, he told the truth when he talked, whether you liked it or not.
“He didn’t mean to hurt your feelings but he would just let you know. If he didn’t like it, he would let you know, if he loved it he would let you know. He was straightforward like that.”
The Jacksons have sold 75 million records worldwide but when Michael died aged 50 in 2009, his estate went bankrupt. Then in the years that followed, it generated billions of album sales, the film Michael Jackson’s This Is It and the Cirque du Soleil show Michael Jackson: One.
In 2016, Michael’s estate made another $750million when it sold its remaining stake in a music catalogue to Sony. The deal gave Sony sole ownership of works recorded by The Beatles, Bob Dylan and other best-selling artists.
And in 2017, Michael topped Forbes’ list of top-earning dead celebrities for the fifth year in a row, after raking in $75million for the year.
Tito stresses that his dad was the driving force for all of this, saying: “He was tough in business.
“My dad was softer as he got older. He was soft with his family. He was tough in business. He didn’t want people to take advantage of his children.”
The Jacksons will perform in Edinburgh tonight and Tito knows Michael and his father will be with them.
Before he is whisked off for a rehearsal, he says: “It’s hard to let that go.”
My dad did a great job. You can call it tough love but it was definitely love
Michael was so quick, my father couldn’t even catch him