This article includes mentions of addiction.
A detective who worked for the Los Angeles Police Department spoke about the condition Michael Jackson’s body was in at the time of his death, and how he was surprised to find out the “Billie Jean” singer was bald. “Looking at his scalp, the top of his head had been severely scarred,” LAPD detective Scott Smith said in the 2019 documentary “The Killing of Michael Jackson” (via the Mirror). As mentioned in Jackson’s autopsy, he had tattooed part of his head black. This was to assist in wearing wigs. “[He had] hardly any hair at all on the sides,” detective Smith added. A contributing factor to Jackson’s baldness was the injuries he suffered filming a Pepsi commercial in 1984.
Part of the scarring that the detective mentioned was sustained when Jackson’s hair caught fire from pyrotechnics while filming the Pepsi ad. “I never saw anything like that in my life,” Karen Faye, a makeup artist who was on the set, testified in court afterwards, per Yahoo! News. “All his hair was gone and there was smoke coming out of his head,” she added.
Almost a decade after the tragic incident, the “Will You Be There” singer underwent reconstructive surgery on his scalp. He was prescribed painkillers for recovery and became addicted to the narcotics. “The medications were used sparingly at first,” Jackson said in a recorded statement in 1993 as he cancelled his “Dangerous” tour, per the Los Angeles Times. That was not the end of Jackson’s substance abuse problem.
