ufoclub said:

Why? Pepsi had nothing to do with it. It was the pyro person/company's fault.

TonyVanDam said:

no shock to me. as i said 'his mother prevailed upon him to do it because the family needed the money'. yeah, mj could say no to his brothers and even joe, but he couldn't say no to katherine, which is why she was put up to asking him.

SoulAlive said:

that's what is said in my post. there was this big power struggle between king and the parents, and some concert promoter, and the media ultimately blamed mj.

Up until I saw this footage, I had alaways thought that the media played up this particular incident. As it turned out, they really down played it.

I wonder why?

Graycap23 said:

i don't know, either. like blackguitarz said, i remember seeing the brief clip of him coming down the stairs shown over and over on tv, but i don't recall seeing flames. (i haven't watched the released video.)

LittleBLUECorvette said:

I remember when this happened and peeps saying it was only a little patch burn. There were, unfortunately at the time jokes about it, and I remember the Bruce Springstein song "I'm on fire" use to be thrown around when referring to the incident. The actual incident was actually shown at the time but it was not as detailed as we see it now.
[Edited 7/16/09 9:42am]

SoulAlive said:

Yeah, but the good thing about that was that we got two great albums (Triumph and Jacksons Live) that we wouldn't otherwise have if he'd ditched the group. Michael always took his solo albums so seriously that he spent ages on them. With the group there was no time for that, and the results were just as good, so for us as music lovers I think it was a good thing that he stayed with them after OTW. His live show was better with them too.

P.S. The Victory Tour suffered though from Jackie not being there. He's not very talented but you could feel his absence on that tour. It just felt like something was missing.

Graycap23 said:

I don't think there was any conspiracy Graycap. Most likely they just believed what they were told at the time, i.e., it was no big deal and Michael was fine. No one had any reason to doubt that story, since Michael was up and looking well within days.

midnightmover said:

I just find it interesting that the media BLOWS up all of the nonsense surrounding Mj, but the man's head was FULLY engulfed in flames and they made it seem rather insignificant. I find that strange, conspiracy or otherwise.

midnightmover said:

Yeah, right. That was horrible.
[Edited 7/16/09 9:51am]

Graycap23 said:

Oh I don't know...to protect the image and reputation of PepsiCo...perhaps?

HatrinaHaterwitz said:

Yeah, Pepsi. They didn't want this to blow up like that, especially if fire killed MJ.

NastradumasKid said:

Hell no! And I'm waiting to see the fallout from it surfacing now. I'm sure heads are rolling all over PepsiCo as I type this!

Why would heads roll at Pepsi now? The people who worked there then don't work there now

scriptgirl said:

It's called "backlash"! Whoever released this video...IMO...did so to focus the world's attention to the "beginning or cause" of Michael's problems. It has been said many times over the years that he began taking painkillers after this incident. If the final autopsy shows that Michael died from drug abuse, coupled with the shock value from this video...PepsiCo is going to have to do some serious damage control because it is going to take a major hit in sales worldwide.

Just like all those people are buying up Michael's music and putting him back on the charts in a huge way. Imagine them hurt, angry and boycotting all things Pepsi.

...
[Edited 7/16/09 11:03am]

HatrinaHaterwitz said:

Beginning? Maybe. Cause? No.

It's a sad and scary video (I could only watch it once), but the damage to Pepsi - if any - is a thing of the past.

If MJ's family didn't push MJ into doing the Pepsi Commericial, maybe MJ would have been a whole different person today.

Michael became insecure with himself after this accident. This when all his problems started. He started going nuts with plastic surgery. Prior to accident, Michael's mind was stable, and he wasn't going crazy about changing his looks.
[Edited 7/16/09 11:33am]

SoulAlive said:

That was in the news footage too don't you remember since you got the whole KSOL playlist in ya head? Who was the DJ that night? You probably remember that too!

suga10 said:

He had already started the plastic surgery process before the accident. However, due to the accident he probably had to have even more surgery on his scalp and then it just became a pattern to him.

TonyVanDam said:

That's very true. MJ was just on the cusp of breaking away from his brothers. But they wanted to do one more tour. Katharine had such an influence on MJ, and he would do almost anything for her, including the tour. MJ HATED that Don King was in the mix as the promoter. It's why MJ got his own people to manage him and handle his money. It's also why he ended up giving his proceeds to charity. If there was any wrong doing, he wanted to dirty money in his pocket. Good move, I think.

The Victory Tour was almost called The Final Curtain, but they didn't want to emphasize the finality of them performing together. When the tour was over, MJ said to the last audience that it was the last time they would perform together, surprised to some of the brothers. You can exactly take back stuff you say live in front of 20,000 people.

I think Kate convinced MJ to do a lot of stuff he might not have thought the smartest move, but in the hindsight of it all, it seems to have worked out perfectly. Thriller came out when it was supposed to, the tour happened when it was supposed to, etc etc.

suga10 said:

I don't think Michael wanted pity. Sadly, if he had come out with this, some people would probably have still had negative shit to say about him because some people just have asshole embedded in their genetic structures and can't help it I guess. He was truly a strong person to keep all of his pains and problems to himself like he did instead of crying to the world like some famous people do every 10 seconds. I commend him for continuing in the midst of chaos. It's definitely not easy to keep your head held high while watching your life slowly crumble around you.

whatsgoingon said:

He did have plastic surgery before for his nose, but I don't think he was intending to change all his facial features to make himself look a like a whole different person like he did right after 1984 accident.

He just went nuts with the plastic surgery afterwards. What rational person goes changing all their face features to the point of looking nothing like they did before? Michael Jackson became a mentally instable man after the fire and started having an unhealthy obsession over his looks maybe because he felt like looked deformed as a result of suffering burn injuries on his head. This is when the body dysmorphic disorder started in my opinion.

Notice how drastically his face changed even from Bad to Dangerous? If you compare his facial transition from Off the Wall to Thriller, its nothing in comparison. He still looked like himself

Poor Michael
[Edited 7/16/09 11:57am]

phunkdaddy said:

Ugh, I can't stand that triffling, judmental, crochity, badly aging, two-faced bitch...never could stand her long before all the MJ reporting...trick makes my skin crawl everytime I'm channel surfing and I accidentally stop on her show. She's a fucking cunt and I can't believe she has two precious twins that are going to be subjected to her for the rest of their lives...I feel soo sorry for those innocent little children. I really hope she's a better mother than she is a commentator, because I just want to slap the piss out of her. Thou Shalt Not Judge, Nancy; since she wants to act all religious and holier than thou....like God took a vacation and chose to leave her punk ass in charge of the judgment department. She needs to sit her ass down and just be mother and keep that hole in her face shut.

daPrettyman said:

it was Pepsi that funded and engineered the whole thing to advertise their drink. What does Jackson really have to do with Pepsi? Nothing. Because they were latching onto a popular artist and pushed for this sort of spectacle in order to merge his image with their drink, the money was spent to hire the special effects crew, the director, the choreographer, and Jackson.

midnightmover said:

Not very talented? He wrote the best songs on Triumph and Victory (Can You Feel It, Your Ways, Everybody, Time Waits For No One, Torture and Wait)

Awww! Feel like crying

LittleBLUECorvette said:

Dude..stop naming so many great tracks! (I think Marlon wrote "Body" though. It was his song, and he did a video for it as well.) "Everybody" and "time Waits For No One".....AHHHHH such a great F-ing album, Triumph. I remember loving the video for "Can You Feel It", and Michael shared vocals w/ Randy on that one.

It was a stage accident. Calm down there folks. This happened in 1984--a long time ago.

RipHer2Shreds said:

I got a Coke and a smile that says otherwise. Wanna bet?

suga10 said:

I agree. Sadly, Body Dysmorphic Disorder is becoming more and more prevalent nowadays...especially with breast implants (the bigger the better to some; for me the bigger the grosser ) Michael had it bad and I agree with you that it was probably due to this incident, but his family didn't help any by calling him big nose for years prior to this terrible accident and he also had really bad acne too. All of these factors, constant public scrutiny, issues with self-esteem, and loads of money helped in making his BDD even worse in my opinion, but sadly he's just one of many cases out there. There's that woman, Sarah Burge, who has spent over $200,000 on plastic surgery just to look like Barbie...which I don't believe she does, but that's just my eyes. She's even had two body lifts, which I had never heard of before. Her plastic surgeons had warned her both times that she could die, but she insisted and is still very much alive and the mother to 3 children. Joan Rivers needs to stop to, but out of all those people doing it, nobody bets this woman:

Jocelyn Wildenstein


She is the poster child for BDD, hands down. It's sad, because there was never anything wrong with her face...she was beautiful before all the surgeries. She needs a therapist more than a plastic surgeon and it's sad that these 'Doctors' don't seem to understand that they took an oath to help people...this isn't helping them at all.