John McClain, the veteran music executive who was co-executor of the Michael Jackson estate and helped engineer the financial recovery of the singer’s legacy and properties, died Monday due to complications from a fall, a rep for the estate confirms to Variety. He was 71.
Estate co-executor John Branca said in a statement: “I am profoundly grieved at the loss of my partner and brother John McClain. One of the great innovators in the world of music and music marketing, John was a visionary, seeing past the mundane and into the future.
“When we were named in Michael’s will, I knew that he would bring great insight into Michael’s music and that his friendship and dedication to Michael would underscore all the great projects that we could bring to the world. He brought a passion and sense of conviction to all that he did and was the most generous of friends. It is difficult to imagine a world without him.” The news was first reported late Monday by TMZ.
McClain rose to prominence as a key engineer behind the rise and superstardom of Michael’s sister Janet, beginning with the release of her breakthrough 1986 album “Control,” and over the years also worked closely with Dr. Dre, Ice Cube and many others. However, his biggest impact in a long and resonant career in music came through his work with the Michael Jackson estate following the singer’s sudden death in 2009.
Jackson was said to be nearly half a billion dollars in debt at the time of his death, due to profligate spending, the significant upkeep of his Neverland property and a large staff, and the backlash from multiple child-molestation allegations against the singer, which he and the estate denied; he was acquitted of one set of allegations after a major public trial in 2005.
Yet within years McClain and Branca, the singer’s longtime attorney, had turned it into a multi-billion-dollar business via such projects as the “This Is It” documenting Jackson’s rehearsals for a planned 2009 tour; the multi-million-dollar “MJ” musical; Cirque du Soleil productions; the sales to Sony of half of the Sony/ATV publishing catalog and, later, of half of the singer’s music catalog, totaling some $1.35 billion; and most recently, the hit “Michael” biopic.
McClain shunned the spotlight and allowed Branca to be the spokesperson and public face for the estate, yet his role in the rehabilitation of Jackson’s image and businesses was immense.
McClain was born in Los Angeles into a musical family. His father ran the jazz venue the It Club, where Miles Davis and John Coltrane performed, and his mother was a pianist who studied at the Chicago Conservatory of Music, appeared with Lena Horne in several films, and performed at Carnegie Hall. Raised primarily by his aunt, McClain began taking piano lessons at the age of 3. He grew up studying classical music but soon fell under the sway of Jimi Hendrix and took up guitar, and in his youth became friends with Michael Jackson and the Jackson family.
He broke into the record business as the musical director for R&B act the Silvers and soon became a session guitarist on studio recordings for such acts as Gladys Knight, Diana Ross, Lionel Richie and Shalimar.
In 1984, McClain took a job as the director of Black music at A&M and was assigned to work on a project with Janet Jackson, who had essentially been written off by the label after a pair of underwhelming early ‘80s albums. He united her with the young songwriting-production team of Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, who had recently been fired from the Minneapolis group the Time after a falling out with that group’s mentor, Prince.
The ensuing album, “Control,” found the singer retooling her previously squeaky-clean image into that of a strong, confident young woman fully living up to the title of the album, which quickly lofted her and her collaborators to multiplatinum status via singles like “What Have You Done for Me Lately?” and “Nasty.” “Control” made Jackson into a superstar, and Jam & Lewis went on to become one of the top hitmakers of the past 50 years.
While at A&M McClain also signed the Human League (leading to their 1987 No. 1 single, “Human”), Atlantic Starr, Jesse Johnson and others, and united Janet Jackson with legendary musician and A&M co-founder Herb Alpert and Janet Jackson for the hit “Diamonds.”
In 1989, McClain, who was managing Janet Jackson by this time, joined the newly launched Interscope Records as an executive, where he worked closely with Dr. Dre and oversaw the company’s deal with Death Row Records. He also led the company into gospel and R&B by signing label deals with Kirk Franklin and Teddy Riley.
He returned to A&M in 1997 as president of Black music and relaunched the careers of Atlantic Starr and Barry White, and signed Ice Cube. He also made deals with rapper Kurupt’s Under Pressure label and Shaquille O’Neal’s Twism label.
However, it was upon Michael Jackson’s sudden death on June 25, 2009, that the final phase of McClain’s career began.
After more than a decade of nearly unprecedented stardom — beginning with his childhood years as lead singer of the Jackson 5, and lofted by the blockbuster albums “Off the Wall” and “Thriller” — Jackson’s reputation was in tatters, following years of controversial behavior and child-molestation allegations. Although he continued to tour successfully overseas, he was nearly half a billion dollars in debt; the New York Times reported that in the first half of 2009, Jackson only generated $24 in revenue from his image and likeness.
But the massive outpouring of public grief following Jackson’s death set those allegations aside for many people, and Branca and McClain quickly sprung into action to rescue the estate from impending bankruptcy. At the time of his death, Jackson was on the verge of launching a series of comeback concerts to be held at London’s O2 Arena, and the estate’s first major act was to compile rehearsal footage into the “This Is It” documentary film, which was released in theaters just four months after the singer’s death. It grossed a whopping $268 million.
In the year after Jackson’s death, Billboard estimated his estate earned $1 billion.
Over the ensuing years, the estate worked aggressively to manage and grow the estate’s assets, in tandem with fighting off a growing number of allegations from men who said that the singer had abused them as children. A lawsuit by Wade Robson and James Safechuck — who are the subjects of the highly critical 2019 HBO documentary “Leaving Neverland” — is scheduled to finally reach a courtroom this fall. Another set of accusers, the Cascio family, is in an ongoing dispute with the estate after an $11 million settlement became public. The estate has strenuously denied all such allegations as Jackson’s legacy, catalog and assets continue to generate billions of dollars.
“What John McClain and I really do with the Jackson estate is manage that brand,” Branca told Hits magazine in 2016. “It’s not traditional legal work… What we do for the estate is not unlike what we do for an artist or a brand — we are involved with records, deal with touring and branding as well as overseeing various aspects of their career. It’s not different than the work we did when Michael was alive, in particular during the ‘Thriller’ era, when Michael did not have a manager.
“What we did with ‘This Is It,’” he continued, referring to the 2009 documentary, “was to try to show the real Michael Jackson, the entertainer and not the tabloid sensation. It was really a rebranding effort.”
