Abstract: This month’s MJ Studies Today column looks at Michael Jackson’s career in the late 1980s at a time when the artist was becoming increasingly frustrated by the tabloid media’s focus on the rumours, tall stories, and fabrications about his life. This included fantastical PT Barnam-style stunts such as his supposed interest in buying the Elephant Man’s bones and sleeping in a hyperbaric chamber. Columnist Kerry Hennigan asks if the media would have been any kinder to Jackson if these kinds of stories had never been circulated, irrespective of their source. She also queries if Jackson’s art would have suffered if he hadn’t felt compelled to respond to his critics with songs like “Leave Me Alone.”
Column by Kerry Hennigan, editor of the free monthly newsletter A Candle for Michael, administrator of the fan group “Michael Jackson’s Short Film Ghosts” on Facebook, and an MJ blogger on WordPress. Kerry is a life-long student, holds Certificates in the Archaeology of the Ancient World and the Archaeology of Ancient Britain from Cambridge University’s Institute of Continuing Education and is passionate about Viking longships.
REFERENCE AS:
Hennigan, Kerry. “MJ Studies Today CXVI: ‘What If…?’ pondering Michael Jackson’s life and career minus the ‘hoopla’ of the 1980s.” (14-08-2025). The Journal of Michael Jackson Academic Studies Vol 12, No. 1 (2025). https://michaeljacksonstudies.org/mj-studies-today-cxvi/
The Journal of Michael Jackson Academic Studies asks that you acknowledge The Journal of Michael Jackson Academic Studies as the source of our content; if you use material from The Journal of Michael Jackson Academic Studies online, we request that you link directly to the stable URL provided. If you use our content offline, we ask that you credit the source as follows: “Courtesy of The Journal of Michael Jackson Academic Studies.”
“What If…?” pondering Michael Jackson’s life and career minus the “hoopla” of the 1980s. By Kerry Hennigan
Photo montage © Kerry Hennigan
In 1989, celebrity biographer Todd Gold wrote of Michael Jackson, “He lives the ultimate life and is trapped by it. He is rich beyond accounting and unhappy because of it. He is a lover too isolated to love. He is frightening because he is too scared to admit frailty.”[1] Whether or not one agrees with Gold’s assessment of Jackson in the years immediately following the release of his Bad album and the subsequent world tour, it is arguably a fair assessment of a young man tormented by the fame he had once sought so zealously. Wanting the record-buying and concert-going public to help one achieve the goal of biggest-selling recording artist in the world, requires them finding out about you, which means engaging with the media.
In the 1980s, Jackson’s enthusiasm for “the greatest showman,” P.T. Barnam, and insistence on using Barnam’s autobiography as a publicity “template,” certainly guaranteed he would be a magnet for the media. However, in the long run, the Barnam template likely did him no favours. In her 1990 book My Family, the Jacksons, Michael’s mother Katherine wrote, “a couple of the stories had been spread by Michael’s own people. I’m referring to the silly reports that Michael had slept in a hyperbaric chamber and had made a serious offer to buy the Elephant Man’s bones.”[2] Mrs Jackson clearly wasn’t impressed and it was certainly true that these stories created a public persona of Jackson which he was never able to dispel.
In 1987, an article in Rolling Stone magazine titled “Is Michael Jackson for Real?” queried whether all the “hoopla” might damage Jackson’s “already fragile psyche?” When the question was put to Jackson’s manager, Frank Dileo, the latter reportedly said, “It’s too late, anyway. He won’t have a normal life even if I stop.”[3] Michael himself was well aware of this, having said as much in a demo track he had recorded titled “The Price of Fame” which is clearly autobiographical. (This song was highlighted in MJ Studies Today CXV, July 2025.)[4] Even more indicative of the pressure he was feeling was his plea to the media while on tour in Japan in 1987, asking them to “have mercy. I’ve been bleeding a long time now.” [5]
The Elephant Man’s bones and the hyperbaric chamber were/are still being referenced in books and the media long after their “amusement value” should have expired. But what if Michael hadn’t been photographed laying in a hyperbaric chamber (which he purchased for a hospital burns unit); hadn’t supposedly shown an interest in acquiring the Elephant Man’s bones; didn’t dress like a carnival ringmaster or a military band leader for his public appearances? Would he have become the same Michael Jackson as known and loved by so many around the world today? Would the media have been kinder to him?
If magazines like People hadn’t put him on their cover (because, of course, Michael sells magazines) accompanied by the headline: “He’s Black. He’s Bad. Is this guy weird, or what?”[6] would he have still felt compelled to create some of the music his fans love so much – such as the song “Leave Me Alone?” This track was originally an extra on the CD and cassette editions of the Bad album, and was eventually released as a single in 1988. In his autobiography Moonwalk, Jackson explained that, although the song appears to be about a relationship between a guy and a girl, “what I’m really saying to people who are bothering me is: ‘Leave me alone’.”[7] In the following decade, Jackson went on to record songs like “Scream,” “Tabloid Junkie,” “2 Bad,” “Money” and “Is It Scary” to name an obvious few. For them to have never been a part of Jackson’s discography is, in this writer’s opinion, as unthinkable as his never having recorded essential greatest hits like “Billie Jean” and “Beat It.”
In retrospect, what Michael Jackson experienced from the 80s onwards was less a matter of his critics reacting to the crazy stories and misconceptions of him than it was a response to his non-conformity – his “otherness.”[8] Their fixation on the “weird” persona they projected of him caused many observers to miss seeing, much less understanding, the real “Man in the Mirror.” It also made it easier for the more cynical observers to swallow the first claims of child sexual abuse made against Jackson in 1993. The smokescreen of incredulity the tabloid media projected onto him obscured what was most important to Michael himself, his genuine desire to use his talent to heal the world.
“Most people don’t know me, that is why they write such things in which most is not true.
I cry very often because it hurts and I worry about the children,
all my children all over the world. I live for them.
If a man could say nothing against a character but what he can prove,
his story could not be written…”
– Michael Jackson [9]
Kerry Hennigan
14 August 2025
Sources:
[1] Gold, Todd. Michael Jackson: The Man in the Mirror. Pan paperback, 1989 p. 227.
[2] Jackson, Katherine with Richard Wiseman. My Family, the Jacksons. Chapter 16, “Bad News.” St Martin’s Press 1990 accessed at http://jetzi-mjvideo.com/books-jetzi-04/kj/kj16.html
[3] Goldberg, Michael and Handelman, David. “Is Michael Jackson for Real?” Rolling stone magazine, posted Sep 24, 1987, accessed at https://web.archive.org/web/20090703072622/http://www.rollingstone.com/news/coverstory/28852269/page/5
[4] Hennigan, Kerry. “MJ Studies Today CXV: Michael Jackson and ‘The Price of Fame’ – the song as a commentary on his life in the spotlight.” (14-07-2025). The Journal of Michael Jackson Academic Studies Vol 12, No. 1 (2025). https://michaeljacksonstudies.org/mj-studies-today-cxv/
[5] People magazine, 12 October 1987, accessed https://www.truemichaeljackson.com/man/prejudice-injustice/. Also available in Remembering Michael. People Books, Time Inc, 2009 p. 65 and Michael Jackson A Visual Documentary by Adrian Grant, Omnibus Press, 2009 p. 106
[6] People magazine. September 14, 1987. Accessible on Pinterest at https://au.pinterest.com/pin/360991726357934897/visual-search/
[7] Jackson, Michael. Moonwalk. Arrow Books paperback edition, 2010 p. 270
[8] Staszak, Jean-François. “Other/Otherness.” In: International Encyclopedia of Human Geography. Kobayashi, A. (Ed.). [s.l.] : Elsevier, 2020. p. 25–31. Accessed at https://archive-ouverte.unige.ch/unige:166340
[9] People magazine, 12 October 1987. (See [5] above for access options.)
Illustration: “stop doggin’ me around” compiled by Kerry Hennigan using Photoscape X Pro software. No infringement of original photographic copyright is intended in this not for profit, educational exercise.