Jarvis Cocker breaks his silence over Michael Jackson's death

Friday 03 July 2009 13:23 BST
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Jarvis Cocker - who infamously stormed the stage while Michael Jackson performed at the Brits - has broken his silence about the star's death, calling the singer's musical demise "a tragedy".

And the erstwhile Pulp star said Jackson's real genius was that "he invented the moonwalk".

Cocker became infamous in 1996 when he ran on stage as Jackson performed Earth Song at the Brit Awards, wiggling his bottom at the singer.

He said: "If there's a tragedy about the whole thing, I would say that if he'd kept making records like he did in the mid 80s up to now, that would have been great. But ... for the past 20 years he didn't do that - for me, that's the tragic part of it."

Speaking on BBC1's Question Time he told host David Dimbleby that he disrupted the Brits because of the pomposity of Jackson's performance.

"He was pretending to be Jesus - I'm not religious but I think, as a performer myself, the idea of someone pretending to have the power of healing is just not right," Cocker said.

"Rock stars have big enough egos without pretending to be Jesus - that was what got my goat, that one particular thing."

Cocker, who is now pursuing a solo career and joined spoof rock act Spinal Tap at Glastonbury last weekend, said he had been inundated with requests to speak about Jackson when the news of his death came last week.

"I'm linked to him for a certain incident in the dim and distant past. My phone went mad with texts, people wanted me to talk about it, not that I have any particular interest in it."

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