I'd like to set the record straight right now. I have never had my cheeks altered or my eyes altered. I have not had my
lips thinned, nor have I had dermabrasion or a skin peel. All of these charges are ridiculous. If they were true, I
would say so, but they aren't. I have had my nose altered twice and I recently added a cleft to my chin, but that is it.
Period. I don't care what anyone else says - it's my face and I know.
I'm a vegetarian now and I'm so much thinner. I've been on a strict diet for years . I feel better than I ever have,
healthier and more energetic. I don't understand why the press is so interested in speculating about my appearance
anyway. What does my face have to do with my music or my dancing?
The other day a man asked me if I was happy. And I answered, "I don't think I'm ever totally happy." I'm one of the hardest people to satisfy, but at the same time, I'm aware of how much I have to be thankful for and I am truly
appreciative that I have my health and the love of my family and friends.
I'm also easily embarrassed. The night I won eight American Music Awards, I accepted them wearing my shades on
the network broadcast. Katharine Hepburn called me up and congratulated me, but she gave me a hard time because
of the sunglasses. "Your fans want to see your eyes," she scolded me. "You're cheating them." The following month, February 1984, at the Grammy show, Thriller had walked off with seven Grammy Awards and looked like it was
going to win as eighth. All evening I had been going up to the podium and collecting awards with my sunglasses on.
Finally, when Thriller won for Best Album, I went up to accept it, took off my glasses, and stared into the camera.
"Katherine Hepburn," I said, "this is for you." I knew she was watching and she was.
48
You have to have some fun.
49
Chapter Six
All You Need Is Love
------------------------------------------------------------------------
I had planned to spend most of 1984 working on some movie ideas I had, but those plans got sidetracked. First, in
January, I was burned on the set of a Pepsi commercial I was shooting with my brothers.
The reason for the fire was stupidity, pure and simple. We were shooting at night and I was supposed to come down a
staircase with magnesium flash bombs going off on either side of me and just behind me. It seemed so simple. I was
to walk down the stairs and these bombs would blow up behind me. We did several takes that were wonderfully
timed. The lightning effects from the bombs were great. Only later did I find out that these bombs were only two feet
away from either side of my head, which was a total disregard of the safety regulations. I was supposed to stand in
the middle of a magnesium explosion, two feet on either side.
Then Bob Giraldi, the director, came to me and said, "Michael, you're going down too early. We want to see you up
there, up on the stairs. When the lights come on, we want to reveal that you're there, so wait ."
So I waited, the bombs went off on either side of my head, and the sparks set my hair on fire. I was dancing down
this ramp and turning around, spinning, not knowing I was on fire. Suddenly I felt my hands reflexively going to my
head in an attempt to smother the flames. I fell down and just tried to shake the flames out. Jermaine turned around
and saw me on the ground, just after the explosions had gone off, and he thought I had been shot by someone in the
crowd - because we were shooting in front of a big audience. That's what it looked like to him.
Miko Brando, who works for me, was the first person to reach me. After that, it was chaos. It was crazy. No film
could properly capture the drama of what went on that night. The crowd was screaming. Someone shouted, "Get
some ice!" There were frantic running sounds. People were yelling, "Oh no!" The emergency truck came up and before they put in I saw the Pepsi executives huddled together in a corner, looking terrified. I remember the medical
people putting me on a cot and the guys from Pepsi were so scared they couldn't even bring themselves to check on
me.
Meanwhile, I was kind of detached, despite the terrible pain. I was watching all the drama unfold. Later they told me
I was in shock, but I remember enjoying the ride to the hospital because I never thought I'd ride in an ambulance
with the sirens wailing. It was one of those things I had always wanted to do when I was growing up. When we got
there, they told me there were news crews outside, so I asked for my glove. There's a famous shot of me waving from
the stretcher with my glove on.
Later one on the doctors told me that it was a miracle I was alive. One of the firemen had mentioned that in most
cases your clothes catch on fire, in which case your whole face can be disfigured or you can die. That's it. I had third-
degree burns on the back of my head that almost went through to my skull, so I had a lot of problems with it, but I
was very lucky.
What we now know is that the incident created a lot of publicity for the commercial. They sold more Pepsi than ever
before. And they came back to me later and offered me the biggest commercial endorsement fee in history. It was so
unprecedented that it went into The Guinness Book of World Records. Pepsi and I worked together on another
commercial, called "The Kid," and I gave them problems by limiting the shots of me because I felt the shots they were asking for didn't work well. Later, when the commercial was a success, they told me I had been right.
I still remember how scared those Pepsi executives looked the night of the fire. They thought that my getting burned
would leave a bad taste in the mouth of every kid in America who drank Pepsi. They knew I could have sued them
and I could have, but I was real nice about it. Real nice. They gave me $1,500,000 which I immediately donated to
the Michael Jackson Burn Center. I wanted to do something because I was so moved by the other burn patients I met
while I was in the hospital.
Then there was the Victory tour. I did fifty-five shows with my brothers over the course of five months.
50
I didn't want to go on the Victory tour and I fought against it. I felt the wisest thing for me would be not to do the
tour, but my brothers wanted to do it and I did it for them. So I told myself that since I was committed to doing this, I
might as well put my soul into it.
When it came down to the actual tour, I was outvoted on a number of issues, but you don't think when you're
onstage, you just deliver. My goal for the Victory tour was to give each performance everything I could. I hoped
people might come to see me who didn't even like me. I hoped they might hear about the show and want to see
what's going on. I wanted incredible word-of-mouth response to the show so a wide range of people would come and
see us. Word of mouth is the best publicity. Nothing beats it. If someone I trust comes to me and tells me something
is great, I'm sold.
I felt very powerful in those days of Victory. I felt on top of the world. I felt determined. That tour was like: "We're a mountain. We've come to share our music with you. We have something we want to tell you." At the beginning of the
show, we rose out of the stage and came down these stairs. The opening was dramatic and bright and captured the
whole feeling of the show. When the lights came on and they saw us, the roof would come off the place.
It was a nice feeling, playing with my brothers again. It gave us a chance to relive our days as the Jackson 5 and the
Jacksons. We were all together again. Jermaine had come back and we were riding a wave of popularity. It was the
biggest tour any group had ever done, in huge outdoor stadiums. But I was disappointed with the tour from the
beginning. I had wanted to move the world like it had never been moved. I wanted to present something that would