His 1987 Bad tour grossed over $125 million, and he sold the broadcast rights to the Dangerous tour for a record-breaking $20 million to HBO in 1992. 29, was at that point the most popular performer in the world. Jackson, who died in 2009 and would’ve turned 58 on Aug. Mad Michael was going to get sacrilegious, use racial slurs and tell his detractors to stop “ f- with him.” As a Rolling Stone critic wrote in 1995, Jackson was “angry, miserable, tortured, inflammatory, furious” while creating HIStory: Past, Present and Future, Book I - his ninth album. There would be no songs about supposedly fictitious baby mamas, or easing on down the road or keeping on with the force. “So, imagine having that as your epitaph that you wrote a song that everybody knows.For the follow-up to 1991’s Dangerous, which eventually sold over 32 million copies worldwide, Jackson needed to get some things off his chest, and his old ways of making records wouldn’t suffice. He also reflected on the endurance of their Emmerson-penned hit. 'It’s become an anthem,” he said.

Ted Gerow, Five Man Electrical Band's keyboardist, mourned the loss of Emmerson to CTV News. 'I had a sister, but I never had a brother, except I had Les,” he said. The group disbanded in 1975, with Emmerson leading its first reformation more than a decade later. While Five Man Electrical Band never scored another hit on that same level, they did earn regional success with a handful of other singles through the mid-'70s. And it's lived on as a classic-rock staple - Tesla even covered the song for a charting live version in 1990. “Signs,” issued as a single in 1971, hit No. “This stretch of the road, there were huge rocks covered in graffiti, you know, 'Jesus Loves Maria,' stuff like that, and endless advertising signs, go here, do this, and I thought what a shame, all these signs obscuring the beautiful scenery and telling us what to do. “We were on Route 66 somewhere in Nevada, the early evening, the sun setting,” Emmerson told Ottawa Sun in 2004. The tune’s lyrics, bemoaning how nature had been obscured by human directives, were inspired during a drive from Ottawa to Los Angeles.

Their first and only international hit came with “Signs,” the opening track from their second album, 1970’s Good-byes and Butterflies. After releasing a string of modest Canadian hits, the group changed its name and released a self-titled debut LP in 1969. Emmerson eventually joined the band, becoming their frontman and primary songwriter. The Five Man Electrical Band evolved from Ottawa’s the Staccatos, who formed in 1963. 'He had underlying health conditions that made him additionally vulnerable to COVID,' his wife of 34 years, Monik Emmerson, told the publication.

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