John McClain, an influential music executive who helped propel Janet Jackson to stardom and, as co-executor of Michael Jackson’s estate, worked to burnish the legacy of the troubled superstar and oversee a posthumous, seemingly endless marketing juggernaut, died on May 26 in Los Angeles. He was 72.
A representative of the Jackson estate confirmed the death, from complications of a fall, but did not say where in Los Angeles Mr. McClain died.
With Mr. McClain and John Branca, Mr. Jackson’s longtime lawyer, as executors, the estate has managed a torrent of Jackson-themed blockbusters since the global sensation’s death from an overdose of sedatives in 2009.
When he died, Mr. Jackson was, according to estimates, nearly half a billion dollars in debt, burdened by years of financial mismanagement as well as the aftermath of lawsuits accusing him of child molestation, which continue to this day. (Mr. Jackson was acquitted in 2005 in his sole criminal trial.)
The estate embarked on a yearslong campaign to reclaim the singer’s image and reignite his status as a commercial powerhouse.
Its efforts have included the 2009 documentary “Michael Jackson’s This Is It”; “MJ,” a Tony Award-winning Broadway extravaganza; two Cirque du Soleil shows; two Top 5 albums cobbled together from unreleased material; and the biopic “Michael,” which was released in April and has earned about $850 million worldwide.
In 2024, Sony agreed to acquire half of Mr. Jackson’s music and songwriting catalog for an amount believed to be the largest sum ever for a single musician’s work. The deal was said to have valued the assets at $1.2 billion or more.
Mr. McClain came to the estate through his deep ties to the Jackson family, stretching back to his friendship with Jermaine Jackson, and other brothers in the Jackson 5, at Fairfax High School in Los Angeles in the late 1960s.
Rising to become director of Black music at A&M Records in the mid-1980s, he helped establish Janet Jackson as a star worthy of the family name, starting with her 1986 breakthrough “Control,” for which he brought in the songwriters and producers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis. Five songs from the album reached the top 5 on the Billboard singles chart, including the chart-topping “When I Think of You.”
“I told her, ‘Let Whitney and Patti sing their lungs out,” Mr. McClain said in a 1987 interview with Spin magazine. “Just concentrate on being a female Michael Jackson, and you’ll give the people something that’s even more exciting.”
Mr. McClain and Mr. Branca were named as executors in Mr. Jackson’s will, in which the primary beneficiaries were his three children. The money continues to roll in. One of the Cirque du Soleil shows, “Michael Jackson ONE,” has been running in Las Vegas since 2013. “MJ,” the Broadway show, has grossed hundreds of millions of dollars.
“Michael,” the recent biopic, has been a hit despite the reservations of some critics. The movie is, Alissa Wilkinson wrote in her New York Times review, “a tale of triumph and glory for someone everyone admired, rather than an estate’s attempt to scrub clean the life story of a star who has been multiply accused, in harrowing terms, of child sexual abuse.”
Mr. McClain was born on June 21, 1953, in Los Angeles. His father, John McClain Sr., ran the It Club, a prominent jazz venue that presented artists like Miles Davis and John Coltrane. His mother, Dorothy Donegan, was an acclaimed jazz and classical pianist.
He started playing piano at 3, but was later inspired by Jimi Hendrix to turn his attention to the guitar, and became highly skilled. In high school, he served as the musical director for the R&B family act the Sylvers, who would hit big with the 1976 disco chart-topper “Boogie Fever.”
That experience, along with his work as a studio musician for Diana Ross, Gladys Knight and Lionel Richie, paved the way for his work with A&M in the 1980s.
Around 1990, the industry powerhouse Jimmy Iovine and his business partner, Ted Field, hired Mr. McClain as a top executive at their new label, Interscope Records. Among his accomplishments there, he helped broker a lucrative distribution deal with the rap label Death Row Records, whose roster included Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg.
Information about his survivors was not immediately available.
Mr. McClain eventually found himself “in the world’s upper echelon of music industry power brokers,” as The Los Angeles Times put it in 1998.
He “played a key role in pushing the boundaries of mainstream pop by transforming underground rappers, gospel choirs, R&B singers and producers into international stars,” the article noted — among them Dr. Dre, the new jack swing pioneer Teddy Riley and the genre-hopping gospel ensemble God’s Property.
“I’m not the kind of guy who needs to take a survey to figure out whether a song is good or not,” Mr. McClain told The Los Angeles Times. “I’m a musician.”
Alex Williams is a Times reporter on the Obituaries desk.
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