I.

This is what it was like in Jefferson City, Mo. in 1969: The town was mostly segregated and edgy. There were the white townies and the black Lincoln University kids, and the latter group had rioted in 1968 when MLK died, and that didn’t exactly build up a reservoir of peace and love.

I was a white townie kid and I listened to white townie kid music…bubblegum rock, some old-school country, maybe The Beatles if they weren’t being too freaky. The LU students listened to…well, at the time, I had no idea what they listened to (it would be years before I discovered James Brown and Stax Records and the whole soul scene).

But the Jackson 5 changed all of that.

Everybody listened to the Jackson 5. Here was a family out of the Midwest — black, but that didn’t matter — and if you could sit still after you heard “I Want You Back” or “ABC,” well, something was just wrong with you. And then they got their own cartoon show, and started showing up on every 1970s variety show, and eventually started doing variety shows of their own.

And who the hell was that Michael Jackson kid? His voice still had its prepubescent highs, but his singing in many ways was pure old-school. When he sang love songs, he sounded like he knew what he was talking about from lots of personal experience.

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II.

This is what it was like on MTV in 1982: The network had come out of nowhere to rule the music world by showing music videos 24/7. People my age watched it for hours and hours. And almost every featured artist was white.

Michael Jackson planned to change all of that. He recruited Eddie Van Halen — just as Run-D.M.C. would soon recruit Aerosmith — to draw the attention of white rock fans like me. That riff and solo in “Beat It” were among Eddie’s best work, but they weren’t even necessary to drag in White America.

“Billie Jean,” which came out first, was that good.

You heard that beat and it didn’t matter if you couldn’t dance and listened to “hair bands” all day. You were hooked. You went to a club, you heard that beat and you started looking at your feet because they were dancing in place.

Michael Jackson soon was MTV. He even had his own Beatles-on-Sullivan moment, moonwalking on a Motown anniversary special that everybody watched. People didn’t quit talking about it for weeks.

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III.

This is what it was like for most of the 1980s: There was Michael Jackson and then there was everybody else, way back in the weeds. Good Lord, he got so big that he even purchased The Beatles’ back catalog. Sure, there were reports that he was flaking around the edges, that his best friends were a tiny kid and a chimpanzee, that he was sleeping in a hyperbaric chamber. He even married Elvis’ kid for a while.

But musicians were supposed to be weird. I thought Jackson was weirder than most only because he could afford to be weirder than most. I mean, really, who was weirder in his heart of hearts: Jackson or Billy Idol? Jackson or the Thompson Twins? Jackson or Morrissey?

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IV.

This is what it was like after that: People cared less and less about Jackson’s music, and worried more and more about his predilection for young boys.

He had an interview in 2003 with 60 Minutes that upped the squick factor to a whole new level. I watched as he repeatedly told Ed Bradley he saw nothing wrong with sleeping with a bed full of boys.

“When I see children, I see the face of God,” he said. You wanted to buy him a ticket on the Clue Train and walk him to the station.

And then came the inevitable arrest and the trial and the acquittal and that whole mess, and then he took off for Bahrain and it was hard not to feel good about that.

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V.

This is what it was like at the end: First, I was surprised to hear that Jackson was living (and died) in Los Angeles. I assumed he had decamped for good. Second, he was working on his comeback concert, a development that would have neatly given him the classic rise-collapse-and-resurrect career arc enjoyed by so many artist/sinners over the years. And third, according to TMZ, he was using a whole lot of Demerol.

The reaction to Jackson’s death was immediate and predictable, and I’m expecting the immediacy and predictability to continue in upcoming days. And while I’ve never been a big fan, it’s still worth remembering: For a long time in the music world, there was Michael Jackson, followed by everyone else.