Fans, family members and friends take part in extravaganza celebrating Michael Jackson’s life

They came not to lay Michael Jackson to rest so much as to ease him gently into a warm bath of adulation, hyperbole and showbiz razzle-dazzle tinged with more than a hint of religious symbolism.

The Jackson celebrated today at the downtown Los Angeles Staples Centre in a two-hour extravaganza of song, sermonising and tears was very far from the headline-grabbing, lawsuit-happy eccentric with the multiple plastic surgeries, the sporadic addiction to painkillers and the endless gossip about prepubescent boys.

Rather, it was Jackson the great entertainer, the musical genius, the gift to the world who has all too suddenly been taken away. Fans dressed in everything from sober business suits to sequin-studded T-shirts sobbed, shouted out expressions of love and occasionally jumped up to dance, but mostly sat for two hours in a state of hushed awe.

One by one, speakers and singers alike lavished praise of a sort that might have seemed excessive, or even absurd, in any setting other than a sports arena packed with Jackson-worshipping fans, family members, friends and assorted well-wishers.

Berry Gordy, the overlord of the Motown record label in its heyday who discovered Michael – and the rest of the Jackson Five – when he was just 10 years old, described him as “the greatest entertainer that ever lived”.

Magic Johnson, the legendary basketball player who became fast friends with Michael’s older brother Jackie, said, in all earnestness: “I truly believe Michael made me a better point guard and basketball player.”

A few speakers made oblique references to Jackson’s troubles – his trial on child molestation charges, his dubious coterie of advisers and doctors, his Wacko Jacko reputation – only to knock them down as the “persecution” and “misunderstandings” of ungrateful people.

The Reverend Al Sharpton, the preacher and erstwhile presidential candidate, gave an unequivocal message to Jackson’s three children: “Wasn’t nothing strange about your daddy. It was strange that your daddy had to deal with.”

The crowd lapped it all up. They cried and gave Sharpton a standing ovation, then cried and clapped all over again when Jackson’s fellow survivor of childhood stardom, Brooke Shields, told the audience about Jackson’s favourite song – Smile, from the Charlie Chaplin film Modern Times – and said they all needed, as the song had it, to “cry though your heart is breaking”.

When Jackson’s daughter Paris made her apparently impromptu speech about Jackson being “the best father you could ever imagine”, they gasped in surprise. At last a real flesh-and-blood girl – not a silhouette in a mask, as she had been previously seen – made herself known to the world.

Some of the tributes were articulate and genuinely affecting – including a poem written by Maya Angelou and read by Queen Latifah, who said she was there as a representative of the legions of ordinary fans who knew Jackson only through his music. “You believed in Michael,” Latifah said, “and he believed in you”.

Shields talked about the times she spent fooling around with Jackson, describing the pair of them as “two little kids” when they got together.

Much of the adulation, though, had an unfortunate corniness bordering on the trite, not helped by lines spoken or sung by Jackson during his lifetime projected on to a screen behind the stage: “There is nothing that can’t be done if we raise our voice as one”, one read.

Some people claimed a personal connection to the star, among them television actor Vincent De Paul, who said he had a chance to meet Jackson in person after a concert in Washington about 20 years ago: “We bonded because we were both Virgos.” De Paul could later be seen crossing himself furiously and drowning in a flood of tears.

Throughout, the symbolism of Jackson as a Christ-like figure – misunderstood, persecuted and snatched away from his fellow humans before his time – was subtle but unmistakable. The opening gospel number, sang as the gleaming gold coffin adorned with roses was laid at the foot of the stage, featured the refrain “one more time we are going to see you,” a clear reference to both Jackson and the son of God.

Later, as John Mayer launched into a blues instrumental version of the Jackson hit Human Nature, a concert image of Jackson with arms raised in a pose straight from a crucifixion painting, and light pouring out from behind him was projected on the overhead screen.

If the fans noticed it, they loved it. “Michael, we’ll see you in heaven!” one audience member shouted out. Others responded with whoops and shouts of “yeah” and “all right”. Everything about this ceremony was, for Jackson fans, tinged with magic and instant nostalgia.

Pop singer’s family reportedly will hold funeral ahead of public memorial at the Staples Centre

As Los Angeles braces itself for tomorrow’s massive crowds hoping to take part in Michael Jackson’s final performance – his memorial – speculation was mounting that the star’s body would be laid to rest tomorrow morning in a private family ceremony in Hollywood.

As the Jackson family and event organisers scrambled to put the finishing touches to the memorial service at the Staples Centre in downtown LA, city officials reported that a pre-emptive funeral would be held ahead of the event and out of the prying reach of the paparazzi. Since the singer’s death on 25 June the family has consistently refused to discuss funeral arrangements.

Jan Perry, an LA city council member who has been acting as temporary mayor, is reported by the entertainment website Radar as saying that the funeral would start at 8am local time tomorrow at the Forest Lawn cemetery in the Hollywood Hills. The assistant police chief Jim McDonnell also confirmed that the family was planning a private ceremony at Forest Lawn, though he did not stipulate when it would happen or whether it would include a burial.

Jackson’s body is understood to be lying near to the cemetery, and crowd control fences have already been put up around it to control any public surge. Residents nearby have reported a buzz of activity in the neighbourhood, including fly-overs by police helicopters.

The cemetery is the resting place of such luminaries from the worlds of acting and soul music as Bette Davis, Humphrey Bogart, Sammy Davis Jr, Nat King Cole, Sam Cooke and Marvin Gaye.

The details of the funeral are as shrouded in mystery as its location and timing. The entertainment website TMZ, which broke the original story about Jackson collapsing at his rented home in Bel Air, said he would be buried in a gold-plated coffin costing $25,000 as deployed for James Brown.

Others have reported that his body would be laid out in the velvet lining of the coffin by his friend Karen Faye and dressed by his longtime costume designers Michael Bush and Dennis Thompkins.

The final act in the Michael Jackson story has been marked fittingly by the same mass of confusion bordering on chaos that was a feature of so much of his life. How the memorial itself unfolds has itself been a subject of enormous speculation, with organisers giving out next to no details in advance.

Among the names floated with varying degrees of confidence likely to appear in some form are Mariah Carey, performing the Jackson 5 classic I’ll Be There according to TMZ, Steve Wonder, Smokey Robinson, Lionel Richie, Little Richard and Jennifer Hudson.

Al Sharpton, the Harlem-based preacher who is a friend of the family and who has been ubiquitous in the past few days, is expected to speak.

An informed guess is that the event will feature some kind of musical tribute along the lines of Ray Charles’ 2004 funeral, which featured gospel choirs and performances by the likes of Wonder and BB King as well as rousing speeches by colleagues, admirers and preachers.

The memorial is being produced by Ken Ehrlich, who stages the annual Grammy awards and whose company, like the Staples Centre, is owned by Jackson’s concert promoters, AEG.

The police are setting up a perimeter several blocks around the Staples Centre, the idea being to keep anyone without a ticket or a wristband out of eyeshot and thus deterring them from sticking around.

Already today, traffic around downtown LA was slowed to a trickle by the steady stream of lucky fans who drove to Dodger Stadium, just north of the downtown skyline, to pick up their allocated pairs of tickets. More than 1.5 million people put in bids for one of the 8,750 pairs of free fan tickets – just over half of them to the memorial itself, and the rest to an overflow space next door at the Nokia Theatre where the memorial will be broadcast on a jumbo screen.

With all eyes now on the front-of-stage celebration of Jackson’s life, the grubbier side of the fallout of his death was also on display. His mother Katherine was in court attempting to stave off administration of his estate being granted to the two executors named in his 2002 will.

But her case was dismissed by the Los Angeles judge, Mitchell Beckoff, who ruled that Jackson’s friend, the entertainment lawyer John Branca, and music executive John McClain will be in charge of the estate out of respect for the singer’s wishes reflected in the will. Their term at the “helm of the ship”, as the judge put it, will run until 3 August when another hearing will take place.

Though Jackson goes to his grave with his finances in an epic mess, a court filing estimates that after debts his estate may still be worth more than $500m.

It includes such cash cows as a 50% stake in the Sony-ATV music publishing catalogue that includes songs by John Lennon and Paul
McCartney.