John McClain, a musician and record executive who helped power Janet Jackson’s ascent to pop stardom before serving as a co-executor of the estate of Jackson’s brother Michael, died Tuesday in Los Angeles. He was 71.
His death was confirmed by Diana Baron, a representative of the estate, who said McClain died from complications of a fall.
“I am profoundly grieved at the loss of my partner and brother,” said attorney John Branca, co-executor of the Michael Jackson estate with McClain. In a statement, he described McClain as “one of the great innovators in the world of music and music marketing” and said “it is difficult to imagine a world without him.”
Named to their posts in Michael Jackson’s will, McClain and Branca steered Jackson’s estate from financial and reputational ruin at the time of the pop star’s death in 2009 — much of it due to the multiple allegations of child sexual abuse against the singer — to the enormous success of posthumous projects including the concert film “This Is It,” the Cirque du Soleil production “Michael Jackson One,” the Broadway show “MJ: The Musical” and the Hollywood biopic “Michael,” which opened in movie theaters last month and is already among the highest-grossing biopics ever made.
McClain’s oversight of Michael Jackson’s complicated legacy followed his work with Janet Jackson, whom he put in the studio with producers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis in the mid-1980s to make Jackson’s hit albums “Control” and “Rhythm Nation 1814.” (McClain became involved with the Jackson family through Jermaine Jackson, with whom he went to high school.) The pairing of Janet Jackson with Jam and Lewis was McClain’s “master stroke,” Questlove wrote Wednesday on social media, and “changed music forever.”
McClain was born in L.A., where his father — described in a 1998 Times profile as “a notorious Los Angeles figure who rubbed shoulders with gangster Benjamin ‘Bugsy’ Siegel” — opened the It Club, a jazz spot known for appearances by luminaries including Miles Davis and Thelonious Monk. His mother played piano and appeared with Lena Horne in several movies in the ’40s, according to The Times’ story.
McClain grew up studying classical music and began playing guitar as a teenager; he got his start in the music industry as a session player for the likes of Lionel Richie and Gladys Knight. In 1984, he became director of Black music at A&M Records, where he worked with Janet Jackson and Atlantic Starr, among other acts; later, he moved to the fledgling Interscope Records, where he helped shepherd Dr. Dre’s 1992 smash, “The Chronic,” and persuaded the label’s co-founder, Jimmy Iovine, to strike deals with the gospel star Kirk Franklin and the R&B auteur Teddy Riley.
McClain, Iovine told The Times in 1998, “is one of the great music men in this business. I love the guy — and I learned a lot from him.”
After leaving Interscope in 1997, McClain returned to A&M, then worked at DreamWorks Records before taking the helm of the Jackson estate. Information about his survivors wasn’t immediately available.
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