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John McClain, the longtime music executive and co-executor of Michael Jackson’s estate, died Tuesday in Malibu at 71 after years of illness, his rep confirmed.
John McClain, the veteran music executive and producer who served as co-executor of Michael Jackson‘s estate alongside John Branca for 17 years, has died at the age of 71. His representative confirmed the death Tuesday to TMZ.
McClain died in Malibu. Sources with knowledge of the matter told TMZ that he had been sick for several years; whether that illness contributed to his death has not been disclosed publicly.
TMZ’s initial report on McClain’s death, including the rep’s confirmation notes that the estate work was the most public chapter of a long behind-the-scenes career in the music business.
McClain’s biggest pre-estate credit was at A&M Records. As an A&R executive, he oversaw Janet Jackson‘s breakthrough 1986 album Control, a record that defined a generation of pop and helped establish Janet as a solo star out from under her family’s shadow.
His ear was eclectic. McClain urged A&M to sign Mark Wahlberg’s group Marky Mark & The Funky Bunch in the early ’90s. He also produced for Ice Cube, Dr. Dre, and Michael Jackson directly.
The Michael Jackson estate role began in 2009. McClain and Branca were named co-executors following Jackson’s death that June, taking over an operation that was deep in debt and surrounded by legal complications.
What they built from there is the actual headline. The estate has, over the 17 years since, become one of the most lucrative posthumous music businesses in the world, reportedly valued in the billions. McClain and Branca spearheaded the Michael biopic, a Broadway musical, a Cirque du Soleil show, and the 2009 documentary This Is It.
The Facebook post from Dirt Sheet Radio confirming the TMZ-broken news circulated widely across music-industry feeds in the hour after the announcement.
McClain personally produced several of Michael Jackson’s posthumous hits, including Love Never Felt So Good and Much Too Soon. Those tracks anchored the estate’s ongoing music-release strategy through the 2010s.
The Tuesday death is the latest in a heavy week of music-industry losses. TMZ’s running celebrity-death index places McClain alongside Rob Base, the rapper who died at 59 last weekend after a private cancer battle.
The MJ estate continues under Branca’s sole executor role for the immediate future. A successor co-executor has not been publicly named.
McClain was 71. The cause of death has not been disclosed.
