Michael Jackson Fans Flood L.A. Landmarks to Remember King of Pop : Rolling Stone

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Hovering outside the crowd was John Linville, a DJ and attorney who dated his fandom back to the Jackson 5's first and most obscure single. "I go back further than all these people," he said. "A lot of them think Diana Ross discovered the Jacksons, but she didn't, though she kept them at her house for a year while she tried to record them. They were discovered by Bobby Taylor and had a regional hit, 'Big Boy,' in 1968 on Steeltone Records. I'm still trying to find a copy of that on vinyl." He conceded that task might be more difficult now, with eBay asking prices for collectibles having skyrocketed over the preceding hours.

"You know, the King of Rock died at 42, and now the King of Pop has died at 50 — that's kind of young to be checking out," Linville mused. "I heard he was 100 pounds. That's messed up. These guys live the lifestyle of three or four people. Maybe you don't want to be the King of anything."

Around the corner on Sunset, at the behemoth Amoeba Music store, fans were flocking to one of the few remaining local meccas for physical product, and coming away empty-handed. "Man, man, man! I cannot believe they sold out!" exclaimed Juliet Lawrence, coming across the giant, apologetic post-it note where Jackson's catalog should have been. "Well, I guess I can. I ordered all his CDs from Amazon, then decided I wanted them quicker, but they're not here. We're going to Best Buy now."

Longtime Amoeba worker Chris Dealist described the rush on Jackson product after word trickled out as "an annihilation of the section. They Godzilla-ed the section. You know how ants go after food at a picnic — one finds it, then the others engulf it? Everything was gone by the end of the afternoon: posters. 45s, DVDs, LPs, unauthorized biographies." He was bringing out one last souvenirs they'd found in the stock room: a single of "Man in the Mirror" pressed in the decades-defunct CD-3 format, priced at $14.99.

"My first concert was the Jackson 5 at the Forum, when I was 5 and he was 14," added Dealist. "It was like Beatlemania; you couldn't hear which songs were being played. I'll never forget it, because here were grown women screaming for a little boy."

Over at the UCLA Medical Center in Westwood, one philanthropic soul had bought a box of cheap white gloves and handed them out to fans — one per person, of course — who lined up atop a wall in an attempt at spontaneous choreography. A more enterprising type was trying to sell "In Loving Memory" T-shirts, which he said he'd had printed up at 4 p.m. at a cost of $5,000. "Michael Jackson tribute T-shirts!" he hollered, not finding many takers. "Twenty dollars or two for $30! The King of Pop will never die, baby!" Nearby, dozens of onlookers surrounded a man twice Jackson's size who was replicating some of MJ's signature ?80s dance moves, cheering him on and singing along with the decidedly un-mournful "Black or White" and "The Way You Make Me Feel." A 4-year-old Jackson impersonator in a glittery mini-suit posed for photographers and TV crews for 15 minutes at a time.

If the mood outside the hospital was more fun than funereal — almost like a pre-concert parking lot bash — there weren't many apologies to be offered for that. "The crying is over. We're gonna celebrate now," said Ochuwa Oghie, a young Nigerian immigrant who'd been on the phone all afternoon, confirming the death to distraught African relatives. "It's not real, anyway. I'm gonna wake up tomorrow and it'll be 'Chill out, it was a dream.' "

Her coworker Lucy Mirando was also in professed shock. "Are you gonna be OK?" she asked. "I'm not gonna be okay. It's so random. On TV, they were starting to compare him to Anna Nicole Smith. I was like, nooooooo! Let him be him. The personal stuff was odd, and I don't know what really went on with him, but you're not supposed to focus on that stuff. He's free now, and he won't be judged by anybody anymore."

Her friend, Oghie, briefly struck an existential note. "I really thought we'd all live forever," she said. Then she stuck a gloved hand in the air and struck a pose, getting down with her "Bad" self.

Additional reporting by Mikael Wood.

Read our report from the streets of New York — where fans flocked uptown to the Apollo and to Times Square to grieve — here.

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