--- description: The eccentricities of MICHAEL JACKSON were only beginning to be apparent back in 1984, when his album Thriller was a hit and TIME put him on the cover title: 21 years ago in TIME image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- * [U.S.](/section/us/) # 21 years ago in TIME by [Department](/author/department/) Mar 27, 2005 5:00 AM CUT by [Department](/author/department/) Mar 27, 2005 5:00 AM CUT Director Steven Spielberg has remarked that “if E.T. hadn’t come to Elliott, he would have come to Michael’s house.” He reflects that Jackson is like a hybrid of outer space’s most famous tourist and of Chauncey Gardiner, the video-bedazzled innocent whom Peter Sellers portrayed in Being There … Jackson lives at home in Encino, Calif., with his mother, father and two youngest sisters. He supervised the recent redesigning of the sprawling Tudor house, and the result is a cross between a vest-pocket Disneyland and Citizen Kane’s Xanadu in suburbia. The menagerie, the soda fountain, the screening room are dream toys of childhood and the diversions of Southern California show-business affluence, all awash in the pastels of perennial boyhood. He takes trips to the Disney parks as to a shrine. He has spoken often about doing a movie musical of Peter Pan. –TIME, March 19, 1984 Read the entire article at [time.com/years](https://time.com/years "undefined") 21 years ago in TIME ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/archive/6671824/21-years-ago-in-time-3/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/archive/6671824/21-years-ago-in-time-3/"},"headline":"21 years ago in TIME","datePublished":"2005-03-27T05:00:00.000Z","dateModified":"2026-04-22T06:02:16.003Z","description":"The eccentricities of MICHAEL JACKSON were only beginning to be apparent back in 1984, when his album Thriller was a hit and TIME put him on the cover","url":"https://time.com/archive/6671824/21-years-ago-in-time-3/","keywords":[],"thumbnailUrl":"","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Department","url":"https://time.com/author/department/"}],"articleSection":"U.S.","image":[],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/us/","name":"U.S."}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/archive/6671824/21-years-ago-in-time-3/","name":"21 years ago in TIME"}}]}] ```