In the Internet age, unless one was able to jump on the story of Michael Jackson’s untimely death in its first hour or so last week, it wasn’t as though it would be breaking news for most websites. Everyone knew soon enough, all over the world. What we’re each really left with are personal perspectives.

I wasn’t surprised by the reaction of fans (of all ages) and understood that, for many in their 20s and 30s, he was their Elvis, whether older folks like it or not. In fact, when Elvis went, I wasn’t the fan of him I’d become later, discovering the Sun Sessions and such. For me, it was the loss of John Lennon — whose life was taken not by choice of any lifestyle, but by murder — that hit me the hardest (as it did so many, again, all over the planet). But there’s no doubt that the passing of Jackson has had the greatest impact on our collective pop consciousness since Lennon or Elvis — all three crossed generations.

Forget the child molestation accusations. Many will bring it up and hurl it out in anger, though it was never proven — or it was squashed and paid off to become silent, some have said. If you can put it aside to look at the artistry and craft when it was there, try.

Look to the musical legacy, from The Jackson 5 in the ’70s through his solo recordings of the ’80s. Yes, by the ’90s, most of his music was formula, painted into a corner (though not all of it). I don’t have to name the songs that matter. They’re different for each of us, but there’s plenty of common song ground in there. Watching my little boy do a “Thriller” dance routine as a choreographed zombie with other children at a school fair just a month back, as he’d discovered Michael Jackson when he was still creating a special magic that transcended music charts, made his recent death all the more ironic and sad in our house. What would his “comeback” have brought? We’ll never really know.

While I felt that, by the ’90s, his concerns over and focus on the business of music — the marketing, the image — had grown more important than true creativity, I could never deny all those hits and hit videos that did more than simply make a mark.

But what I’ll never really forget is a time when Thriller and even the album before it, Off the Wall, were still to come.

I was working as an assistant manager in a B. Dalton bookstore in Encino, California. It was just blocks from the Jackson family home (where all the fans and media have been gathering since last week). Michael was famous already, most certainly, but he could come into the bookstore (next door to the Melting Pot restaurant — both buildings demolished some years back) and not be bothered at all.

It might have been 1979 or so. Michael wasn’t a regular, but he did come in the store a few times. He was soft-spoken with that tenor, boyish voice. He was shy. He was close to the same age as me, and he was interested in books on inventions. I seem to recall telling him I enjoyed so much of the music (like, hey, “Enjoy Yourself” and the more obvious already classic hits). But my job was to help him find those books he wanted, and I did. I also looked some up on the microfilm at the info desk (Computers? What computers? This was ancient times.)  I think he did order some books and even left a phone number, which I’m sure I called to leave a message when the titles were in (I pretty much ran that store through a succession of managers, having no interest in the company’s management program).

Again, he wasn’t ultra-isolated from the world yet, though judging by how shy and quiet he was, that was simply his nature. His path toward eccentricity is something none of us will likely ever understand or comprehend. It’s been said mega-fame can be a monster that devours you one way or another, and it appears that’s what happened to him…but we’ll never know all of it. Ever.

We still don’t know how he really died, and the tabloids talk, so far, of too many prescription drugs, too many medical procedures and so on that brought on his death at so young an age, which is speculation at most so far. Really, that doesn’t matter, does it?

What does matter is the music, despite what might have been true or not about the way he lived his adult life — how he raised his children and all the other quirks you want to run through on a list. We can judge — anyone can judge anybody. Sinatra was said to be a jerk at times, but that doesn’t change what he recorded. Elvis was considered tragic at his end, which doesn’t change the rock ‘n’ roll blast that altered a universe in the ’50s or his wow of a comeback in ‘69. And John Lennon wasn’t always mister peace-and-love either; he even admitted to being a pushy snot when he wanted to be one. But ultimately, he knew it was okay to say “Help!” and that, in the end, “All You Need Is Love.”

Whatever your memory of Michael Jackson might be — the kid who sang with his brothers like a little soul dynamo, the sleek dancer of “Billie Jean,” the modern ballet rumbler of “Beat It,” the dancing zombie of “Thriller,” or one of his other incarnations — hang on to that rather than the accusations and tabloid hyperbole, even if some of it might have been valid.

For me, part of what he was will always be that quiet, shy young man in his early 20s who came into his neighborhood bookstore on his own a few times and never acted like a star. He was just a guy who wanted books on inventions. I always wondered what he thought of Da Vinci…but I never got to ask him.