Jacko, His Rise and Fall: The Social and Sexual History of Michael Jackson (38 page)

One of the biggest awards of the evening, Best Pop Male Vocalist, went
to Michael for "Beat It." Sisters La Toya, Janet, and Rebbie joined him on
stage in his great moment of triumph. He said, "My mother's very shy, she's
like me, she won't come up." For this award, he even removed his sunglasses, as Katharine Hepburn had suggested to him. One male fan called from the
balcony, "Take it all off, Michael."

The highlight of the evening, the Grammy for Record of the Year, also
went to guess who?-Michael. Before millions, he was like a happy kid,
jumping up and down. One of the presenters, pint-sized Mickey Rooney,
called the ceremony "the Michael Jackson Show." He also entered the history
books, having won more Grammy awards than any other musician before him,
breaking the record set by Paul Simon, who in 1970 had walked away with
seven Grammys for his album, Bridge Over Troubled Water.

When Michael in his falsetto announced, "I love all the girls in the bal cony," a member of the audience sitting behind Lewis and Brooke could be
heard saying, "Yeah, right!"

This was also the night the infamous Pepsi commercials were aired for the
first time. Since news of Michael's hair catching fire had been flashed around
the world, more people watched his commercial than any other TV commercial in the history of the medium. "The executives at Coca-Cola were getting
diarrhea watching it," said one of the producers of the Grammys.

Even as the commercial for Pepsi aired, lawyers for both Michael and the
soft drink company were in negotiations about the fallout from this disastrous
filming.

Despite the events transpiring on the stage, everyone in the auditorium
seemed to be staring at the strange trio who sat up front: Michael, Lewis, and
Brooke. What caused Brooke distress was Michael's insistence that Lewis
remain perched on his lap. Finally, when she couldn't take the scrutiny any
more, Brooke was seen tugging at Michael's arm. "Let's get out of here!
Everybody's looking at us. I'm so embarrassed I think we should make a run
for it."

Michael cuddled Lewis in his arms as he left the auditorium, heading for
a waiting limousine surrounded by his bodyguards. An apparently enraged
Brooke trailed them, looking neither left nor right as she made her getaway.

His previous "girlfriend," Tatum O'Neal, made two attempts to reach
Michael, but was shoved aside by security guards. Behind his dark glasses,
Michael either didn't see her-or didn't want to see her. "How quickly they
forget," Tatum told her friends, perhaps jokingly. "Without me, there would be
no Michael Jackson."

Later that night at the Rex, a deluxe restaurant, where a post-Grammy
bash was held, Michael tasted caviar, drank a glass of champagne, and was
embraced by Arnold Schwarzenegger, the future governor of California. He
even received a kiss from Julio Iglesias, who was rumored to "have the hots"
for his sister, La Toya. Orange-haired Cyndi Lauper greeted Michael with a
wet kiss, as did Eddie Murphy, known to appreciate a "trannie" when he spotted one.

"Michael, darling," came a familiar voice. He turned to confront a still
beautiful, but aging, Joan Collins. "Tell me, dear heart, the name of your plastic surgeon. I simply adore your nose job."

Neil Diamond approached him, reminding him that "your role models,"
Diana Ross and James Brown, had never received a Grammy-"and now
you're carrying home eight." Music legend Bob Dylan also came up to
Michael, expressing his ongoing disappointment that his revolutionary
Highway 61 Revisited hadn't received a Grammy in 1965.

Michael not only won all those Grammys but over the years he would also bank a total take from Thriller that may have gone beyond the $150 million
mark. "Move over Paul McCartney," Quincy Jones was reported to have said.
"Show business is getting a new rich daddy-and he's black."

When Michael in his limousine dropped Brooke off at her hotel,
L'Ermitage in Beverly Hills, she is reported to have said: "Why don't you,
Emmanuel, and I get married? That will give the press something to write
about!" The quote might have been apocryphal.

Back in his bedroom at Encino, Michael spent the rest of the evening talking to "my only true friends in life," a series of six mannequins. Brooke herself had considered the manufacture of a mannequin as a present for Michael
until she learned that she'd have to devote three weeks of her life posing for
it.

One week after the awards, one insulting reporter asked the question on
everyone's lips, "Who do you love? Brooke or Emmanuel?"

Michael didn't answer but launched into an excuse for not marrying. "I
don't like some of the things my brothers do to their wives. I'm never going
to marry. I just can't take it. It's awful, marriage. I don't trust anyone enough
for that."

Later, when he published Moonwalk, Michael had other comments about
the lack of a woman in his life. "My dating and relationships with girls have
not had the happy ending I've been looking for. Something always seems to
get in the way. The things I share with millions of people aren't the sort of
things you share with one. Many girls want to know what makes me tickwhy I live the way I live or do the things I do-trying to get inside my head.
They want to rescue me from my loneliness. But they do it in such a way that
they give me the impression they want to share my loneliness, which I wouldn't wish on anybody, because I believe I'm one of the loneliest people in the
world."

When Brooke was promoting a romance in the press with Michael, she
suggested there was some "real boy-girl interest" there. Years later, she'd be
very candid and admit it was "only a friendship." Before "dating" Michael,
she'd had another highly publicized romance, this time with the Saturday
Night Fever himself, John Travolta. Like Michael, Travolta would live to see
rumors of his alleged gay life splashed throughout the tabloids in blaring
headlines.

When Michael was seriously questioned about his romance with Brooke,
he admitted that he was still a virgin at the age of twenty-five despite his dates
with the so-called Sex Kitten.

For the Grammy Awards, Michael-hired by Pepsi Cola-agreed to film
what was to become the most controversial and highly publicized commercial
of the 1980s. This Pepsi ad received more publicity than the Grammy telecast itself. One of the two Pepsi commercials became such a news event that many
TV stations ran it for free as part of the evening news.

Michael turned out to be a hard bargainer with the soft drink company.
Katharine Hepburn and Paul McCartney had urged him not to do commercials, fearing it would cheapen his image, but he went against their advice. He
wrote new lines for "Billie Jean," helped conceive the Pepsi lyrics, and agreed
to perform the new jingle, "You're a Whole New Generation," in the ads.
Privately, he told Pepsi executives that he didn't drink Pepsi and that he'd
refuse to do so on camera. "For that matter, I also don't drink Coca-Colahave no fears about that. I prefer natural beverages such as carrot juice or bottled water."

Michael's comments met a grim reception at Pepsi. "At the rate we're
paying the mother-fucker," one disgruntled executive said privately, "he
should down a whole God damn case of Pepsi in one gulp on camera. The
arrogant little faggot." Even so, the company official emerged in public with
a smiling face to welcome Michael aboard.

The commercials were to be filmed at the Los Angeles Shrine Auditorium
in front of three thousand or so fans.

Throughout the filming and editing, Michael turned out to be a domineering diva. It was said that he made Bette Davis appear comparatively docile
and cooperative. In complete dictatorial control, Michael demanded that Pepsi
hire Bob Giraldi, who had directed him in the video, "Beat It." He also wanted and got the services of Michael Peters, who had worked on the videos for
"Beat It" and "Thriller."

At first Michael refused to take off his sunglasses during taping. Giraldi
urged, "But Michael, Pepsi is paying to see your face." He shot back that he
would allow his face to be shown in close-up for only four seconds.

That too didn't go over with Pepsi executives. "If a TV viewer blinks,
he'll miss the jerk's face," the same disgruntled executive said. "Jackson
should take a lesson from Gloria Swanson in Sunset Blvd. about how to deliver a close-up."

Michael also complained about the lighting, claiming it was as dark as the
"Thriller" graveyard scene. An early version of the sequence showed Michael
in a dance step that incorporated two spins. He demanded that it be cut. "I will
allow Pepsi to show me in only one spin." On seeing the first cut, Michael sent
word to Pepsi, "I hate the commercials and everything about them." He cited
one segment that "made me furious. I am smiling in one of my dances, and I
am never known to smile when I dance."

The astonished executive asked, "But Michael, if you never smile while
dancing, how did the camera catch you smiling?"

Michael slammed down the phone.

Before the beginning of that day's filming, Michael had dropped his glove
in the toilet when he went to urinate and had "screamed bloody murder," in
the words of one of the cameramen.

"It sounded like a shrill woman," said a sound engineer, "one who had just
had a 14-inch black dildo shoved up her tight ass. It was even more convincing than Janet Leigh's scream for Alfred Hitchcock in Psycho."

The famous glove was fished out, dried off by wardrobe, and placed back
on Michael's hand.

Michael later told Giraldi that the accidental dropping of the glove in the
toilet "is a bad omen. Maybe God is telling me not to go through with this
Pepsi thing. It is, after all, a lie since I don't drink Pepsi. Maybe God will punish me for lying."

The first commercial was filmed without incident, depicting a group of
children dancing in the street, one of whom is dressed as Michael in a red
jacket from his "Beat It" video. Suddenly, the young actor, Alfonso Ribeiro,
confronts the Moonwalker himself, and looks absolutely astonished. Then
Michael and his brothers join the children in a song-and-dance routine that
honors the Pepsi generation.

Michael became enchanted with the handsome young boy, and the professional relationship blossomed into a private friendship. When Ribeiro released
his first single, "Dance Baby," in 1984, it was dedicated to Michael. Ribeiro
went on to TV sitcom fame when he played Carlton Banks in the 1990s series
The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, produced by Quincy Jones. Because of their age
difference, there was speculation about the relationship between Michael and
the young boy, but nothing approaching the "scandal" caused by Michael's
association with Emmanuel Lewis.

Ribeiro, who today has developed a passionate interest in auto racing, was
descended from parents who immigrated to New York from the Dominican
Republic. In January of 2002 he married his girlfriend, Robin, and they have
a daughter named Sienna.

In the second commercial, it was agreed that Tito-not Michael-would
be seen drinking a Pepsi. In lieu of his face, Michael agreed to allow his
gloved hand and his sequined socks to be filmed. "My fans will know it's me
just by looking at my glove and socks."

The re-shoot began as Michael appeared at the top of the stairs in his
famous cocksure pose with hip jutting out "like a Saturday night whore" in the
words of one critic. The writer for Rolling Stone would have a different slant,
calling the celebrated stance "a whole physical catechism of cool."

It was 6:30pm on the night of January 27, 1984. Michael faced a worn-out
crew, exhausted after four days of filming and reacting to his often outrageous
demands. But it was Giraldi who was holding the crew after hours. He wasn't satisfied with the intensity of the flash bombs in the previously filmed
sequences. After the first bomb went off, Michael headed down the steps,
dancing to the tune of "Billie Jean." For the second blast, the technical staff
increased the intensity of the pyrotechnics. Suddenly, a piercing scream came
from Michael, a sound that dwarfed his earlier yell from the toilet.

"Tito, Tito, I'm flaming," Michael shouted.

After a magnesium bomb was detonated two feet from Michael's head, his
face disappeared in a cloud of bluish smoke, like the kind of haze that filled
New York speakeasies in the Twenties. The intense heat of the magnesium
bomb, amplified by the klieg lights, had ignited his hair. Flames shot from
Michael's head as he screamed in horror. Yanking his jacket up over his head,
Michael attempted, unsuccessfully, to put out the fire.

Security guard Miko Brando rushed to rescue him, putting out the flames
with his bare hands, but badly burning his own fingers in doing so.

Michael was in such panic that he fought off rescuers trying to save him.
They had to wrestle him to the ground, spraying him with a fire extinguisher.
Jermaine later recalled that he thought at first that Michael had been assassinated by some crazed fan.

Michael defied the men wanting to slip him out the back exit of the theater. Although in pain, he still had enough media savvy to demand that he be
taken out the front. He wanted the medics to let him keep his sequined glove
on. A video of him on a stretcher covered with blankets, his head bandaged
and taped, but with the gloved hand protruding from the wrappings, was
shown on television broadcasts around the world.

With dome lights flashing, Michael, with Miko at his side, was rushed to
Cedars Sinai Medical Center.

"Michael Jackson was no brave soul," one of the ambulance drivers later
told the press. "He screamed all the way like a pig at castration time. I thought
he was a complete sissy. I'd served in Vietnam and had seen patients with
missing arms and legs, with their guts split open, bravely enduring their death.
From Jackson, we got screams loud enough to curdle blood. Forget about any
macho image for that boy. The kid is a piece of lavender-colored cotton
candy."