There’s a reason why Michael Jackson lived a life of pain behind the glittering lights. Before the fame, before the scandals, before “Thriller” changed music forever — there was fear. It began at home. It began with Joe Jackson.

Joe Jackson ruled his household like a drill sergeant. To him, his children weren’t sons and daughters — they were soldiers. They called him Joseph, never Dad. The man who built the Jackson 5 also broke the children behind it. He believed discipline meant pain, and “success” justified every scar.

Michael Jackson often described his father’s punishments with trembling honesty: being stripped, oiled down, and whipped with an iron cord until he felt like dying. His mother, Katherine, would cry out, “Joe, you’re going to kill him!” But nothing stopped him. “I would just give up,” Michael once said, “there was nothing I could do.”

Joe Jackson’s obsession with control wasn’t limited to rehearsals — it invaded every part of their lives. He stalked the halls with a belt in hand, ready to strike for any mistake. The Jackson kids learned early: when you heard Joe’s car in the driveway, you ran to bed and pretended to sleep. Fear was the bedtime story of their childhood.

As the Jackson 5 rose to stardom, Joe’s reign only tightened. “He would throw you against the wall,” Michael recalled. “If he couldn’t catch me, I’d run. But when he did, it was bad.” For him, their success was proof his cruelty worked. When asked about Michael’s fear, Joe once said coldly, “If he regurgitated, he regurgitated all the way to the bank.”

Even decades later, Michael trembled in his father’s presence — fainting, vomiting, unable to speak. “Do you know what you’ve done to me?” he once wanted to ask but couldn’t. That sentence, unsaid, haunted him for life.

Joe justified his violence as “tough love.” He claimed he had to keep his kids out of gangs in Gary, Indiana. “I’m glad I was tough,” he said. “Look what I came out with — kids loved all over the world.” But love from the world can’t replace love from a father.

His daughters, including LaToya Jackson, later accused Joe of even darker acts — of crossing unthinkable boundaries within the family. In her 1991 memoir, she wrote, “When your father leaves your mother’s bed and gets into bed with his daughter, it makes you crazy.” Whether the world chose to believe her or not, the damage was visible in every broken smile, every haunted performance.

Joe’s cruelty didn’t stop at the physical. He weaponized words too — mocking Michael as “Big Nose,” igniting an obsession with plastic surgery that eventually erased his own face. Each operation was a desperate attempt to cut away his father’s voice.

Janet Jackson remembers being hit only once, but even she carried the emotional scars. She and her siblings would play a dark game: “Close your eyes. Picture Joseph in a coffin. Do you feel sad?” The answer was always no.

Through it all, their mother tried to intervene — filing for divorce several times but never following through. “He would be breaking furniture,” Michael said. “And she’d cry, ‘Joe, stop, you’ll kill them.’” But Joe never stopped.

It wasn’t until his final years that the iron man began to rust. In a rare, emotional moment, LaToya asked him, “Can I call you Dad now?” His response was soft: “You don’t have to ask. You can call me Dad if you like.” Too little, too late.

When Michael became a father, he swore to break the cycle. “I don’t lay a finger on my children,” he said proudly. “They call me Daddy — not Michael.” His children — Paris, Prince, and Blanket — knew the father he never had. They knew love without fear.

Joe Jackson died in 2018, just two days after the anniversary of Michael’s death. Fitting, almost poetic — the father who created and destroyed the King of Pop followed him into the grave. The world mourned Michael. Few mourned Joe.

Behind every dazzling moonwalk and million-selling record was a boy who never got to be one. A boy who called his father Joseph — and dreamed of calling him Dad.