{"id":19600,"date":"2026-05-28T00:18:19","date_gmt":"2026-05-28T00:18:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/2026\/05\/28\/john-mcclain-co-executor-of-michael-jackson-estate-dies-at-71-los-angeles-times\/"},"modified":"2026-05-28T00:18:19","modified_gmt":"2026-05-28T00:18:19","slug":"john-mcclain-co-executor-of-michael-jackson-estate-dies-at-71-los-angeles-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/2026\/05\/28\/john-mcclain-co-executor-of-michael-jackson-estate-dies-at-71-los-angeles-times\/","title":{"rendered":"John McClain, co-executor of Michael Jackson estate, dies at 71 – Los Angeles Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is read by an automated voice. Please report any issues or inconsistencies here<\/a>.
John McClain, a musician and record executive who helped power Janet Jackson\u2019s ascent to pop stardom before serving as a co-executor of the estate of Jackson\u2019s 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.
\u201cI am profoundly grieved at the loss of my partner and brother,\u201d said attorney John Branca, co-executor of the Michael Jackson estate with McClain. In a statement, he described McClain as \u201cone of the great innovators in the world of music and music marketing\u201d and said \u201cit is difficult to imagine a world without him.\u201d
Named to their posts in Michael Jackson\u2019s will, McClain and Branca steered Jackson\u2019s estate from financial and reputational ruin at the time of the pop star\u2019s death in 2009 \u2014 much of it due to the multiple allegations of child sexual abuse against the singer \u2014 to the enormous success of posthumous projects including the concert film \u201cThis Is It,\u201d the Cirque du Soleil production \u201cMichael Jackson One,\u201d the Broadway show \u201cMJ: The Musical\u201d and the Hollywood biopic \u201cMichael<\/a>,\u201d which opened in movie theaters last month and is already among the highest-grossing biopics ever made.
McClain\u2019s oversight of Michael Jackson\u2019s 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\u2019s hit albums \u201cControl\u201d and \u201cRhythm Nation 1814.\u201d (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\u2019s \u201cmaster stroke,\u201d Questlove wrote<\/a> Wednesday on social media, and \u201cchanged music forever.\u201d
McClain was born in L.A., where his father \u2014 described<\/a> in a 1998 Times profile as \u201ca notorious Los Angeles figure who rubbed shoulders with gangster Benjamin \u2018Bugsy\u2019 Siegel\u201d \u2014 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 \u201940s, according to The Times\u2019 story.
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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<\/a> 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\u2019s 1992 smash, \u201cThe Chronic,\u201d and persuaded the label\u2019s co-founder, Jimmy Iovine, to strike deals with the gospel star Kirk Franklin and the R&B auteur Teddy Riley<\/a>.
McClain, Iovine told The Times in 1998, \u201cis one of the great music men in this business. I love the guy \u2014 and I learned a lot from him.\u201d
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\u2019t immediately available.
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Mikael Wood is pop music critic for the Los Angeles Times.
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This is read by an automated voice. Please report any issues or inconsistencies here. John McClain, a musician and record executive who helped power Janet Jackson\u2019s ascent to pop stardom before serving as a co-executor of the estate of Jackson\u2019s brother Michael, died Tuesday in Los Angeles. He was 71.His death was confirmed by Diana […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":19601,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19600","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19600","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19600"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19600\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19601"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19600"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19600"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19600"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}