On 24 February 1993, at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles, Michael Jackson was given the Grammy Legend Award — one of the highest honors the recording industry hands out, reserved for artists whose influence has permanently changed music.
His sister Janet presented it.
And Michael, clearly delighted, walked up and immediately made a joke at his own expense — about one of the strangest rumors that had ever attached itself to him. “I hope this finally puts to rest another rumor that has been in the press for too many years. Me and Janet really are two different people!”
The room fell apart.
What followed was the longest acceptance speech of his life, and it turned into something nobody expected. He stopped being funny and started explaining himself.
He began with: “In the past month, I’ve gone from ‘where is he?’ to ‘here he is again.’” “It feels good to be thought of as a person, not as a personality.”
Grammy Legends Awards 1993 ‘- Super Bowl 1993’ Spectacular
He admitted he didn’t read what was written about him — and so didn’t know how strange the world thought he was. “When you grow up as I did, in front of one hundred million people since the age of five, you’re automatically different.”
Then came the part people still quote. “My childhood was completely taken away from me. There was no Christmas, there were no birthdays. It was not a normal childhood, nor the normal pleasures of childhood — those were exchanged for hard work, struggle and pain.”
And he made an argument out of it, rather than a complaint. He said he believed many of the world’s worst problems — inner-city crime, wars, terrorism, overcrowded prisons — come from the same root: children who had their childhoods taken from them.
He finished by thanking the children of the world, including the sick and the deprived, saying simply: “I am so sensitive to your pain.”
His date that night was Brooke Shields. Eight months later, the first allegations became public, and the man who had just said it felt good to be thought of as a person disappeared behind headlines again.