Michael Jackson left Neverland DOA. Millions of fans around the world mourned his promotion to the next world with flowers deposited before US embassies in every country. My younger friends in New York reported that on the night of his death club-goers danced to a frenzied and endless cascade of Michael Jackson hits from the Motown years on into the 21st Century. THRILLER was his Mount Everest and the hit-spawning monster sold over 100 million albums. This epic success earned him worldwide recognition, although I never understood how far his influence had penetrated the masses, until I was crossing Lake Poso in 1992. The evening passage across the 1500-meter high lake required a stop at a small shoreside village to avoid the danger of the nightly winds coming off the mountains of Sulawesi.

This village had no electricity. The locals cooked food by fire. They lived in wooden shacks, A young boy strummed on his guitar playing Indonesian love songs. The only other foreigner on the boat was a German. Somehow our conversation turned to Michael Jackson. The German may have been a rave fan.

“Michael Jackon is #1.”

“For dance music, yes, but there’s not one song of his that you could play around a campfire.”

I was immediately proven wrong by the young guitarist playing BEN, Michael Jackson’s first solo #1 hit from a movie about killer rats. Halfway around the world without a radio or TV, this song had reached this remote hamlet on the shores of Lake Poso. The young guitarist’s next song was a slow version of BEAT IT. The boy’s mother placed another log and the flames rose higher, as everyone gathered around the fire to join in the chorus.

We all knew the words. That was the strength of Jocko’s reach.

And few people can beat that.