We want you back!
Late king of pop Michael to return to the stage with Jackson 5...as a hologram
THE Jackson 5 are set to return to the stage along with their late brother Michael – who will take the form of a hologram.
The return of the chart-topping band of brothers, who had a string of hits in the Sixties and Seventies, would surely rank as one of the most unlikely reunions of all time, elder sibling Tito Jackson, 64, says.
“We’ve thrown the hologram idea around and we’ve considered it,” he told the Daily Express at The Jazz FM Awards at London’s Shoreditch Town Hall this week.
“We’ve been offered a hologram of MJ to have with us so there’s a really great possibility of us featuring that.”
The reunion plan with a hologram follows an announcement that Abba is staging one from their Seventies heyday while Roy Orbison has also been reincarnated.
Tito is visiting Britain next month with The Jacksons in the current incarnation of the group. They played at Glastonbury last year and have two gigs this month, in Oxford and Southampton, on May 26 and 27.
Tito, the second eldest of the brothers, also performs as a solo artist with BB King’s Blues Band.
Originally a three-piece formed in 1964 by Jackie, Tito and Jermaine, the band was joined by younger brothers
THEIR GREATEST HITS
Marlon and Michael soon afterwards to create the five-piece known famously as The Jackson 5.
The band’s big hits include I Want You Back, ABC, I’ll Be There and Never Can Say Goodbye.
Michael, who began performing with the group at the age of five, launched his solo career in 1971 at just 13, and in 1976 the brothers left Motown records and signed with the Epic label.
Jermaine was replaced by Randy and the group changed their name to The Jacksons.
If the hologram idea does come to fruition, it will not be the first time Michael has been brought back in animated form.
Five years after his death from a heart attack at 50 in 2009, the King of Pop was projected on to the stage to sing Slave To The Rhythm at the 2014 US Billboard Awards.
It was believed to have been the first use of a posthumous hologram.
However, it later turned out not to be an actual hologram but a twodimensional illusion technique known as Pepper’s Ghost, named after 18th century British scientist John Henry Pepper, who invented it.
There is a proper hologram of the superstar which features in the Michael Jackson ONE show in Las Vegas, a joint collaboration between Cirque Du Soliel and the family estate.
However, the new Jackson 5 hologram will have to be of a much younger Michael, in keeping with the band’s heyday.