How Come Nobody Ever Apologizes to Michael Jackson: The Pepsi Burn

On last week’s edition of How Come Nobody Ever Apologizes to Michael Jackson, we discussed Michael Jackson’s ascension into being the most famous person to ever walk the planet and how that forced him into creating his own new normal. Today, we’re going to be taking a deeper look at Jackson’s scalp burn that occurred by a way of a freak malfunction while filming a Pepsi commercial with his brothers in January 1984.

Not many truly understand how this burn impacted Jackson for the remaining 25-years of his life afterwards, and some have even gone down the route of mocking/making fun of the incident (Eminem for example). Let’s make something clear—Jackson’s burn was never a laughing matter, and hopefully those tempted to make distasteful jokes in the future will read this and look at the incident in a new light.

We’ll start by taking a look at what exactly happened the night of the burn.

The Night of the Burn

On January 27, 1984, The Jackson’s gathered at Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles to begin filming a promotional Pepsi commercial for their upcoming Victory Tour that summer. The concept of the commercial was a rather simple one—to showcase The Jackson’s performing a Pepsi rendition of “Billie Jean” in front of thousands of fans, with Michael’s entrance being a dazzling one.

Enter: Pyrotechnics

The pyrotechnics were to go off right as Michael appeared at the top of a set of steps for a show-stopping intro. Except six takes in they still felt like they hadn’t gotten the money shot (it’s worth nothing, however, that this commercial still wound up running after Jackson’s burn with one of the previously successful takes). We’ll let Jackson tell the story in his words courtesy of his 1988 autobiography Moonwalk.

“I had planned to spend most of 1984 working on some movie ideas I had, but those plans got side-tracked. First, in January, I was burned on the set of a Pepsi commercial I was shooting with my brothers,” states Jackson adding:

“ 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.”

Note: you can watch the video of the burn here. Apparently the full footage of the incident had been previously unseen prior to Jackson’s death in June 2009, meaning, that people had been unaware of just how bad the accident was from a visual perspective for 25-years. What’s more, Jackson’s fast spin appears to have worsened the fire on his scalp as his hair quite literally exploded in flames halfway though the turn.

The Aftermath

Once the fire was put out, Jackson was taken to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, and from there transported to Brotman Memorial Hospital Burn Center in Culver City, California. Upon arriving, Jackson was diagnosed with and treated for second degree burns by Dr. Steven Hoeffin. Now pause for a second—let’s do a little reflective exercise. Most of us have experienced being burned in some capacity whether through accidentally touching a hot stove, burning ourselves while curling our hair, etc. Now, what is our first human instinct? To pull back right? Not only that, but depending on how badly you are burned, the pain can linger on for longer than just a few seconds/minutes, and can even result in swelling/blistering that presents pain and discomfort in the days afterwards. Now imagine your entire scalp being on fire…

Most people have not seen the catastrophic effects of Jackson’s burn, so we’re going to show you now.

NFSW

Looks painful right? Here’s some more of what Jackson had to say about the accident in his autobiography:

“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 Jackson didn’t mention in 1988 was that the pain had never gone away. We’ll detail that shortly, but for now we’ll get back to the initial days after the burn. A January 1984 report from BBC quotes Dr. Hoeffin as saying they were still evaluating the extent of Jackson’s hair loss, and that surgery would likely be needed. As per The New York Times, this surgery would take place in April 1984. Here are some excerpts from the article.

“Dr. Steven Hoefflin, a plastic surgeon, told reporters after the surgery at Brotman Medical Center that the singer’s scalp should be completely healed in several months and he should be able to perform on his scheduled June tour.”

“Dr. Hoefflin said that once the wound healed there should be no scars. The use of the carbon dioxide laser meant there was no loss of blood, he said. The surgeon used the laser to reconstruct a palm-sized burn on the back of Mr. Jackson’s head. He said he was able to stitch the wound without having to transplant or implant hair from other parts of Mr. Jackson’s head.”

Furthermore, it’s been reported that Jackson was no longer able to grow hair in the impacted areas of his scalp after the respective burn and surgery, resulting in him having to wear hair pieces for the remainder of his life. Now let’s think about that for a second. There’s a big difference between wanting to wear hair pieces and being forced into doing so because of medical reasons. Jackson was all of 25-years-old, and having to come to terms with the fact that he could never again walk around freely wearing his hair (which was previously very healthy) without very large and noticeable bald spots. Cosmetic effects aside, what was even more devastating were the immense side effects in regards to his pain.

Karen Faye, Jackson’s long-term makeup artist testified to some of these effects during the 2013 AEG trial. As per the Los Angeles Times, Faye stated that aside from the daily scalp pain he experienced, Jackson was also suffering from intense migraines.

The procedures didn’t stop with that first April 1984 operation—in fact, that was only the beginning. Courtesy of our friends at True Michael Jackson, here’s a brief transcript from one Jackson’s doctors, Arnold Klein, that details how Jackson’s lupus (which we are going to cover soon) prevented the wounds from ever healing properly.

Klein: “What happened is he used a great deal of what are called tissue expanders in his scalp, which are balloons that grow up — blow up the scalp. And then what they do is they try to cut out the scar. Well, because he had lupus, what happened is every time they would do it, the bald spot would keep enlarging. So, I mean, he went through a lot of painful procedures with these tissue expanders until I put a stop to it. I said no more tissue expanders, because he had to wear a hat all the time and it was really painful for him.”

When asked what Jackson’s scalp looked like without any hair piece or hat, Klein replied:

“Well, he had a big raised ball on the top of his head because of this device. It would expand the tissue, which you cut out. And I said I can’t deal with this anymore. We’re going to deal with me as your doctor or you’re going to have to find another doctor if you want to work with him.”

1993 Scalp Operation

By 1993, almost a full decade after that burn, Jackson’s pain still hadn’t gone away, resulting in him undergoing yet another painful scalp procedure to as confirmed by his second wife Debbie Rowe. In November of that same year, Jackson announced publicly that he would be concluding the second leg of his Dangerous World Tour due to seeking treatment at a facility for a painkiller addiction. This, of course, was also a few months into the 1993 allegations (which we will be covering down the line). Now I want you to pay very close attention to how what Jackson said was misrepresented by the media. In that New York Times article I linked above, the opening paragraph reads:

“Michael Jackson has announced he is canceling his world tour to seek treatment for his addiction to painkillers. He attributed his dependence on the drugs to his anguish over accusations that he had molested a 13-year-old boy.”

Except that’s not what he said. The Times tried to make it seem like Jackson became addicted on the painkillers solely because of the allegations, and that’s not true. Here’s what Jackson actually said in his televised statement from Neverland:

“The pressure resulting from these false allegations, coupled with the incredible energy necessary for me to perform, caused so much distress that it left me physically and emotionally exhausted. I became increasingly more dependent on the painkillers.”

The words “more dependent” indicated that the dependency had been there prior—as in before the allegations. Also, lock the early 1993 scalp surgery into your brain because it’s going to be important later. Jackson’s usage of the pain medications (which once again was not anybody’s business) he took have been well documented, so we won’t go into that here. That said, even the initial combination of medications he was given at the time of the burn were pretty powerful with a history of causing dependency issues.

As for Jackson’s struggles in this regard—I offer no judgment. It’s very easy to say what you would and would not do when you’ve never experienced something and aren’t in someone else’s shoes. Most of us have very a low tolerance for pain (and even those that do have their personal limitations). If something happened to you that put you in a tremendous amount of pain 24/7 and that pain was only worsening over time (partially due to the negligence of doctors), you too would probably be looking for something to take away/minimize the pain so you could function properly. I know I would, and it would be disingenuous to claim otherwise.

Some people have also chosen to take issue with Jackson’s usage of hair pieces—specifically when he switched to wearing wigs in the 2000s. To those that have an issue with this, I’d like for you to watch this video of Jackson from a 2007 photoshoot.

In the video, you can see him wincing in pain as his hairstylists attempted to fix his hair. This video (which was not released until years after his death) tells me what I’ve always believed—that the hair pieces and extensions Jackson used for roughly twenty years after the accident were painful to install and keep in, and despite that pain, he continued wearing them to match the curls he had been wearing before for nearly two decades afterwards with the exception of a few occasions. Was he not allowed to get tired of that and go with the more convenient and less painful option? And for those that take issue with his choice of straight wigs—how is that an indication of him “self-hating” when he used curly hair pieces for twenty years after the burn?

Additionally, Jackson was far from the first Black male entertainer to wear straight styles. How come it’s only “self-hate” for Jackson (who had a legitimate medical reason to do so), but that criticism isn’t extended to the others?

See the contradictions and double standards?

I will end this segment on a positive note—some of Jackson’s time at Brotman Memorial Hospital Burn Center in 1984 was spent visiting and speaking with the other patients at the facility. Rather than suing Pepsi for the accident, Jackson instead had them donate $1.5 million to Brotman’s Burn Center, which was renamed the Michael Jackson Burn Center by the facility as a gesture of gratitude. Here’s what he had to say about the center in his autobiography:

“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.”

And even in immense pain, Michael Jackson still understood the power of a legendary moment as that shot of him waving his glove as he was being taken to the hospital did indeed become iconic.

To be continued…