Michael Jackson feared for his safety during `This Is It` tour

New York: Emails shown at court during the Michael Jackson trial reveal that the tragic pop star raised concerns about the safety of stage pyrotechnics during his doomed `This Is It` tour. The King of Pop made a haunting remark about his mortality after watching some stage pyrotechnics for his tour less than a week before his death, a jury heard Wednesday. "You aren`t going to kill the artist, are you?" the King of Pop purportedly asked producers after viewing and "endorsing" a test of the combustible special effects, a production manager recalled in a June 19, 2009, email revealed in court, reports the New York Daily News. Concert production manager John "Bugsy" Hougdahl relayed the quote to his boss Randy Phillips, the CEO of concert giant AEG Live, as part of an explanation of Jackson`s sick and disoriented demeanor at the June 19 rehearsal in Los Angeles. Hougdahl said he assumed the comment was a passing reference to the pyrotechnics, but he also said show director Kenny Ortega later observed Jackson acting like "a basket case." "Kenny said (Jackson) was shaking and couldn`t hold his knife and fork. Kenny had to cut his food for him before he could eat, and then had to use his fingers," Hougdahl wrote in the email. "I don`t know how much embellishment there is to this, but (Kenny) said repeatedly that MJ was in no shape to go on stage." The email was one of several in a dramatic chain that lawyers for Katherine Jackson used to grill AEG Live`s co-CEO Paul Gongaware in the matriarch`s ongoing negligence lawsuit against the concert promoter. ANI