(07-08) 04:00 PDT Los Angeles - --

For a man who lived his entire life at the center of a spectacle, it was fitting that Michael Jackson's send-off was a showstopper like nothing that had ever come before.

Who else but the King of Pop could command a red carpet, paparazzi-lined entrance to his memorial, more police officers than the 1984 Olympics and a Willy Wonka-esque frenzy for tickets?

Jackson, who idolized P.T. Barnum and declared in his Jackson 5 days that he would live to become the greatest show on earth, perhaps got his wish Tuesday, when celebrities, relatives and thousands of fans gathered in the Staples Center to exalt him as the greatest entertainer of all time.

Fans who lined up four hours before the doors opened said Jackson had written the soundtrack to their lives. More than 1.6 million people tried to win the lottery to get one of the 11,000 free tickets to attend the memorial. Another 6,500 were given tickets to watch a telecast at the neighboring Nokia Center.

Traffic was stopped in a two-block radius around Staples Center, and 3,200 officers were deployed at a cost of $3 million to manage the event, police said. News helicopters swirled overhead, making the event sound more like a wildfire than a wake.

Part concert, part farewell

In a service that was part concert, part goodbye, an all-star cast paid tribute to the controversial singer who was described in turns as a global humanitarian, a crusader who broke racial barriers in the music business, an adoring father and a regular guy who once shared a meal of Kentucky Fried Chicken with basketball legend Magic Johnson.

Jackson's eccentricity, from his facial changes to his retreat into childhood at his Neverland Ranch in Santa Barbara County, were brushed aside during his last stage exit. There was no mention of his legal battles, either the 1993 child-molestation allegations or similar charges in 2003, of which he was acquitted, although they dogged Jackson the rest of his life and prompted him to escape with his kids to Bahrain.

The Rev. Al Sharpton, whose firebrand speech lent an air of tent revival to the morning, made one of the only passing references to the controversies.

"He outsang the cynics, he outdanced the doubters and he outperformed the pessimists," Sharpton said. "I told his children, 'There ain't nothing strange about your daddy. It was strange what your daddy had to deal with!' "

Brother Marlon spoke for all Jackson's siblings when he said they would never be able to understand what it must have been like for their brother not to be able to cross the street without a crowd forming.

"All the pain, all the ridicule," Marlon said. "How much can one man take? Maybe now, Michael, they will leave you alone."

Jackson had been renting a home in the Holmby Hills neighborhood while preparing for comeback shows in London. Jackson died June 25, apparently of cardiac arrest, although toxicology tests are still pending.

During his memorial, his bronze casket with 14-karat gold plating was wheeled before the stage - the same stage where he rehearsed the night before he died.

Singer overcome

Mourners gasped at the sight of it, and at one point the singer Usher, while crooning "Gone Too Soon," the song Jackson wrote for AIDS victim Ryan White, stepped offstage to sing directly to it. He broke down at the end, and was encircled by the remaining Jackson 4 - each wearing a glittering glove on one hand in honor of the missing fifth.

But no one said it more clearly than Jackson's 11-year-old daughter, Paris, who spoke near the end of the nearly three-hour ceremony:

"Ever since I was born, Daddy has been the best father you could ever imagine," she said, bowing her head and choking back tears.

"I just wanted to say I love him so much!" she said, burying herself in the arms of her aunt Janet Jackson.

Fan Cody Breedlove of Hollywood got a seat by using a tactic popular with many to get a "golden ticket" - he asked all his friends who didn't plan on going to enter the lottery and give him the ticket if they won.

"Jackson was on his way back - he was going to blow everyone away," said Breedlove, 29, who has spent the past week mourning at Forest Lawn Cemetery in the Hollywood Hills, at the home where the singer died and at all the news conferences at the Staples Center.

Many fans, young and old, said Jackson meant so much more than music. He was the American Dream, the breaker of racial divisions and the physical embodiment of music all rolled into one.

Fans flew from Japan, Wales and Africa just to be there.

Jackson made history when his "Billie Jean" video hit MTV in 1983 and he became the first African American artist featured on the network. He made Motown mainstream and was the first crossover artist to move seamlessly between the magazine pages of Ebony and Jet and Life and Look.

His legendary status is in the stats: 13 No. 1 hits, 750 million albums sold, including the all-time best-seller, "Thriller." He's also the pop star who has given the most to charity, according to Guinness World Records.

Sacramento memories

"I saw him with the Jackson 5 in the early '70s in Sacramento," said Denise Tyler of Placentia, who along with her son waited two hours to sign Jackson's memorial wall outside Staples Center.

"It was electric watching him. Especially for the black community," she said. "Having him die is surreal - I have the same feeling I did when Obama was elected."

When Michael Jackson danced, said entertainer Queen Latifah, he made you feel you were right there with him.

"Michael was the biggest star on Earth," she said. "He let me know as an African American I could travel the world - that there was a world outside America."