Michael Jackson (47 page)

That afternoon, Michael took a spin around the property in his electric car, a close copy of the vehicle from Mr Toad's Wild
Ride at Disneyland. From the street, outside the gate, his fans – who were always there – could see him whizzing up and down the
driveway like a little boy so happy that his mother had finally let him out to play. After he put away his expensive toy,
Michael playfully tossed the gown he wore in the hospital over the gate to the fans.

To this day, Michael experiences some pain in his scalp where he was burned. ‘They knew I could have sued them,’ Michael wrote
of Pepsi in his book
Moonwalk,
though most people felt that it was probably the production company, not Pepsi, that was responsible. ‘But I was real nice
about it.’

Well, he wasn't
that
nice. At Michael's request, John Branca pressured Pepsi-Cola into a monetary settlement. He wanted $1.5 million. The company
argued that the sum was way too high. They would pay, but the accident wasn't even their fault; they blamed the production
company. ‘How about a half mil?’ one of the soft drink's lawyers suggested. Finally, under threat of a lawsuit, Pepsi-Cola
paid Michael $1.5 million.

Michael Jackson accepted the money, then donated it to the Michael Jackson Burn Center, which had been established in his
honour at Brotman after the accident.

By February 1984, Michael Jackson's accident had been the subject of news reports for weeks. The publicity had only served
to heighten the suspense about the forthcoming Pepsi commercials, which were to be aired for the first time during the upcoming
Grammy Awards programme. Some people began talking about their ‘debut’, as if they were among the most newsworthy events of
the century. Before the Grammys, the commercials would be ‘unveiled’ at a black-tie event for one thousand bottlers at New
York's Lincoln Center; the commercials would also be screened for the press in New York, have their world premiere on MTV
at no cost to the sponsor, and then, finally, appear as consecrated commercials during the Grammy telecast.

Down to the very last minute, though, Michael gave the Pepsi-Cola Company a difficult time. When he saw the finished product
(actually two commercials: the concert scene and a ‘street’ scene featuring Michael with dancer, Alfonso Riberio), Michael
adamantly insisted that they were not good enough; Michael hated them. There was too much of his face in the concert spot,
he said. The bigger problem was that Michael wouldn't talk directly to the Pepsi executives about his concerns. Either he
was acting spoiled or he was shy. No one was sure.

Roger Enrico then telephoned Joseph to complain that they couldn't make the commercials ‘better’ if Michael refused to talk
about them. No matter what people may have thought about Joseph personally, they respected the fact that he was usually willing
at least to listen to them. If he thought an idea had merit, he would do his best to convince Michael to consider the proposal
favourably.

‘Look, it's not easy for Michael,’ Joseph Jackson told one Pepsi executive. ‘He's got great ideas, but he can't always express
them. Let me help. I can act as a go-between and make it easier on everybody. I know the kid. I know how he thinks.’

A few hours later, Joseph called Roger. ‘I have Michael here,’ he said, ‘and I'm sure you guys can work things out.’

There was a pause.

‘Go ahead. Talk to the man?’ Joseph urgently whispered. ‘Get on the phone, Michael.’

Michael got on the line. He then complained to Roger that he was made to take off his sunglasses during the taping, and that
he really hadn't wanted to do that. He had been promised, he said, that there would be only
one
close-up without the shades, ‘and now I see lots of close-ups of me with my glasses off.’ Moreover, he fretted that there
was too much of him in the commercials, ‘
way
over four seconds of my face.’ The film was too dark. He spins
twice
during the routine. ‘And I only agreed to one spin,’ Michael reminded Roger. Also, in the commercial with Alfonso Riberio,
which he liked and said was ‘magic, just magic’, he wanted bells to sound when Alfonso bumped into him as they danced, ‘like
the sound of a wind chime.’

‘Bells?’ Enrico asked, dazed.

‘Yes, bells.’

Both commercials were quickly re-edited with Michael's changes in place. Michael then took a look at the new product and telephoned
Roger Enrico with the verdict. ‘Hello, Mr Enrico. This is Michael Jackson,’ he said. ‘You know, the person you spoke to the
other day about the commercials.’

Roger remembered.

The commercial with Alfonso Riberio was fine, he said. However, there was still too much of him in the concert endorsement.
He was seen for a total of five seconds. There should only be four seconds of his image, he said. Also, he was seen smiling
in one dance moment.

‘So?’

‘So, I never smile when I dance,’ Michael explained.

‘Oh.’

On 7 February Michael was inducted into the
Guinness Book of Records
during a ceremony at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, in recognition of
Thriller
having broken all records for album sales at twenty-five million copies. CBS Records held a black-tie party for fifteen hundred
guests at the Museum of Natural History. Michael was accompanied to the event by actress Brooke Shields.
Her
‘people’ had gotten in touch with
his
‘people’ and suggested that she would be the perfect date. ‘Why not?’ Michael decided.

When Michael got back to Los Angeles, he met with Joseph, Katherine, his brothers and Don King to tell them what he had decided
about the tour. ‘I want to rename it,’ he said. ‘I don't like “Victory Tour” I want to call it “The Final Curtain”.’

Michael wanted to make it clear that the upcoming tour would be the end of the road for him and his brothers. Once they finished,
he would not work with the Jacksons again, thus ‘The Final Curtain’.

‘None of the brothers liked that name at all,’ Marlon recalled. ‘Our parents didn't like it either. Michael was making it
sound like a funeral, like someone had died. But we weren't dying.’

Michael wasn't happy with the name ‘Victory tour’ because of the obvious implication that the tour was, somehow, a victorious
occasion. Actually, he felt that he'd been defeated by being coaxed by his mother into participating in the event. As far
as the new name was concerned, however, he was, not surprisingly, outvoted.

‘How many Grammys do you think I'll win?’ Michael asked Quincy Jones.

Quincy shrugged. Smart man. He knew better, after the
Thriller
outburst, than to make any predictions.

‘Well, all I can say is I hope I win a lot of 'em,’ Michael said with a smile.

A review of the history of the Grammys – the awards programme that the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences established
in the late 1950s as a pop music equivalent of the Oscars – reveals that Grammy winners are not always the true pre-eminent
artists and recordings of their time. For example, Elvis Presley never won a Grammy for any of his major pop vocal performances,
even though he was the most influential pop artist of the last forty years. Chuck Berry was also routinely omitted. The Beatles
only received four Grammys, which is amazing considering their impact on popular music and our culture. Bob Dylan's ground-breaking
Highway 61 Revisited
album won no Grammys in 1965. David Bowie's important
Ziggy Stardust
collection didn't even win a nomination in 1972. James Brown, The Rolling Stones, Sly Stone and Diana Ross have never received
Grammy Awards. Quite simply, the six thousand notoriously conservative people who vote for those awards are not apt to quickly
recognize the importance and significance of new artists.

There are also other, political considerations. It has long been rumoured that both the nominating process and the final electoral
process of the Grammy Awards are dominated by major record companies that have turned the award into a self-congratulatory
sham. By 1983, this contest had come down to a struggle between two large superpowers – the Warner Brothers/Elektra-Asylum/
Atlantic-Atco faction (WEA) and the Columbia/Epic faction (CBS). As a result, it was very difficult for non-WEA and non-CBS
recording artists to win Grammys. Motown artists, with the exception of Stevie Wonder, were usually not even in the running.
In fact, in 1982, CBS won twenty-one of a possible sixty-two awards, including all the major citations.

Michael wasn't interested in the politics of the Grammy Awards. ‘Who cares?’ he once told a friend. ‘All I want is as many
of 'em as I can get.’

He needn't have worried. Michael Jackson was, quite simply, too popular for the Academy to ignore. He was so popular, in fact,
that everyone agreed on his importance; he had become rock music's most commonly celebrated hero, and he was a CBS artist,
to boot. When the Grammy nominations were announced, he received an unprecedented twelve nominations – the highest number of
mentions for any single performer in Grammy history – including Record of the Year (‘Beat It’), Album of the Year (
Thriller
), and Song of the Year (‘Beat It’ and ‘Billie Jean’); a nomination for Best Children's Recording for his narration of E.T.;
nominations for the engineers who remixed the instrumental track of ‘Billie Jean’ for the B-side of a single, and for the
songwriters who wrote ‘PYT’ for his album; nominations for his producer, Quincy Jones; and an additional Best Producer nomination
jointly shared by Michael and Quincy. In fact, Jackson's closest competitor was his producer and occasional arranger, Quincy
Jones, who received six nominations.

Along with
Thriller
, the Police's
Synchronicity
and the Flashdance soundtrack also received nominations for Album of the Year, as did Billy Joel's
An Innocent Man
and David Bowie's
Let's Dance
.

On Tuesday, 28 February 1984, Grammy night, the scene at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles was one of pure pandemonium.
Giant klieg lights cut dramatic white patterns in the dark sky above. Fans in their roped-off areas were ready to scream and
call out the names of anyone they might recognize. When twenty-five-year-old Michael Jackson arrived for his coronation as
king of the pop music world, he wore a spangled uniform with epaulets and the rhinestoned glove on his right hand. With him
was Brooke Shields.

Actually, Michael didn't want to go to the awards show with Brooke. Shortly before the ceremony, she came by the Encino house
unexpectedly to ask him if he would consider taking her to the show. Although they had been friends for two years, it's unclear
whether Brooke, eighteen years old at this time, actually felt attracted to Michael, or whether she knew that going with him
to the Grammys would generate enormous publicity for her. She had already accompanied him to the American Music Awards in
January when Michael swept the night (winning eight trophies) and to the Guinness Awards in February. Her picture, with Michael's,
had been in every newspaper across the country.

Brooke Shields was instantly recognizable back in 1984, but not really a major star. Her career had not been critically acclaimed;
her later films usually flopped. Her famous jeans commercials were no longer airing, and a movie called
Sahara
had temporarily been shelved. Smart and well-spoken, she was attending Princeton University in New Jersey at the time. Brooke
and Michael enjoyed each other's company and related to one another in that both understood the pressure of being a child
star with demanding parents. Brooke's mother-manager, Teri, was delighted by her daughter's association with Michael.

LaToya and Janet were in the kitchen when Michael rushed in to tell them of Brooke's request. ‘I don't want to take her,’
he said, according to LaToya's memory. ‘I really,
really
don't.’

‘Well then
tell her
, Michael,’ LaToya said. ‘Tell her no if you don't want to take her.’