Thriller had profound consequences on Jackson’s life and subsequent career: it was both a source of his greatest pride, and his curse. Like most entertainers, he was happiest during the heady days of the upward trajectory, and hated the downward journey; his story became uniquely tragic because he viewed everything that came afterward as a failure, and the satisfactions of his private life were not sufficient to compensate. “Michael didn’t see Thriller as a phenomenon,” says Brunman. “He saw it as a stepping-stone to even greater things. We were ecstatic when [his next album] Bad shot past the 20 million mark. Michael was disappointed.”

“To me what happened with Michael is he felt like he needed to top himself,” says Branca, who represented Jackson on and off for the rest of the star’s life and has been named a co-executor of his estate. “That was a lot of pressure. I remember we were in Hong Kong on vacation after Thriller, and I said to him, ‘Mike, you should think about doing an album of the songs that inspired you.’ He said, ‘Why would I do that?’ ‘Well, it would take the pressure off you. Nobody would expect you to have to top Thriller.’ And he looked at me like I was from Mars. And he said, ‘Branca, the next album is going to sell 100 million.’ ”

In January 2009, six months before the star’s death, John Landis and George Folsey filed suit against Michael Jackson and his company Optimum Productions for breach of contract, alleging that they had not been paid their 50 percent of royalties in many years, and accusing Jackson of “fraudulent, malicious and oppressive conduct.” Landis says that over the years he had spoken with Jackson many times to complain that he, Landis, was not receiving the royalties due him, and that Jackson promised to correct the matter. But the entertainer’s financial affairs were chaotic for the last decade of his life as he continually shuffled his business managers. Branca and his own attorney Howard Weitzman report that the “Thriller” video’s accounting records are currently being audited as part of the executor’s obligation to settle the Jackson estate’s debts. “From our perspective Landis and Folsey are priorities,” says Weitzman. “They will definitely get paid what they are owed.”

Ola Ray also sued Jackson, on May 5, 2009, for nonpayment of royalties. “I got the fame” from “Thriller,” she says, “but I didn’t get the fortune.” (The suit is ongoing.) In 1998 she fled Los Angeles and the casting-couch syndrome she says plagued her during the years following “Thriller.” “There were so many big-name directors who told me that if I wanted to do films I had to sleep with them,” she says. She moved to Sacramento to be closer to her family, and is today a stay-at-home mom to her 15-year-old daughter. Ray enjoys hearing from Michael Jackson fans on Facebook and Twitter. “I can’t walk down the street without people recognizing me,” she says.

Ray thinks about Jackson every day, with considerable regret. “I just wish I would have had the opportunity to be a little bit more in his life. I bet he would have been happy with me. It would have taken someone like me who would not put pressure on him or play him for his money or anything other than that I wanted to be with him for who he was,” she says. “I had no other agenda than that.”

Ola Ray and I strongly agree on one thing: we both like to remember Michael Jackson the way he was on the night of October 13, 1983. I can’t forget the way he looked as I peered at him through the glass of the ticket booth at the Palace Theatre: elfin, radiant, ascendant. To me, Thriller seems like the last time that everyone on the planet got excited at the same time by the same thing: no matter where you went in the world, they were playing those songs, and you could dance to them. Since then, the fragmentation of pop culture has destroyed our sense of collective exhilaration, and I miss that.

For Ray, the scene with Jackson later that evening, as he scampered adoringly around her, was a defining experience. “That walk with Michael, when he was dancing around me and singing, I felt like I was the most, I don’t know, blessed girl in the world. Being able to do that and being able to play with Michael, and having him play around me. I felt so in love that night. You can see it in my eyes. You can see it for sure.”

Read more about the King of Pop in our Michael Jackson archive, and see more music coverage.