MICHAEL JACKSON'S FATHER 'JOE' PASSED AWAY TODAY AT THE AGE OF 89.{PHOTOS}.

     Joe Jackson has died today at the age of 89 after battling terminal cancer.

TMZ reports the patriarch passed away at 3:30 AM Wednesday morning in LA.

He had been on his deathbed for days as worried family members surrounded his hospital bedside earlier this month, when he was first taken in.

The development comes days after his son Jermaine Jackson, who appeared on Celebrity Big Brother back in 2007, described his father as "very, very frail."

"He doesn't have long. The family needs to be by his bedside - that's our only intention in his final days," he said.Joe, who suffers from diabetes, had gone through a number of health scares in recent years.

He had a stroke in Brazil in 2015 which left him temporarily blind and was treated in hospital a year later with a high fever after falling ill during a routine check-up, it was claimed.

Last weekend, Jackson's Twitter account shared a photo of him looking at the sunset, suggesting he's at peace with his mortality."I have seen more sunsets than I have left to see," it said."The sun rises when the time comes and whether you like it or not the sun sets when the time comes."

But his granddaughter Paris Jackson denied it was Joe who tweeted it, revealing she'd been by his side in hospital at the time it was posted.

"This is a beautiful tweet. though it upsets me to see whoever is in charge of this account taking advantage of it. my grandfather did not tweet this. i’m not sure if he’s ever used this account," she blasted.

"I was with him there’s no possible way for him to have tweeted it."

Retired music manager Joe began working with his sons' Jackie, Tito and Jermaine on their musical group back in the 1960s.

Younger sons Marlon and Michael then joined in with backing vocals until they became The Jackson 5.

By 1969 the siblings were signed to Motown Records in Detroit with their first four singles selling a world record breaking 10 million copies in 10 months.

In 2002 he was awarded a proclamation in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as the Best Entertainment Manager of All Time.

However, while Joe became one of the most successful celebrity managers to have ever broken into the industry, his child-rearing techniques were frequently slammed for being abusive.

Jackson's children documented how Joe would beat and abuse them to work harder, subject them to long and intense rehearsals and even brutalising them with a strap.

But he claimed in a tell-all interview with Oprah that while his methods could be cruel, he wasn't sorry because they made his kids successful and kept them on the straight and narrow. "I don't think [Michael] was afraid of me. What he was afraid of, he may do something wrong and I'd chastise him but not beat him. I never beat him like the media tried to say," he told the famous chat show host in 2010.More photos below.