The Jackson Fireworks

The Heartland Turned Out All Dressed Up for a Church Social and Michael Put On a Supernatural Display

By William Plummer  ~ July 23, 1984, Vol. 22, No.4

Four hours before show time on Friday, the six musicians in the Jacksons' tour band were pacing their rooms on the fifth floor of Kansas City's Alameda Plaza Hotel. Studio and live-show veterans all, they had rehearsed the 110-minute multimedia extravaganza for more than three months (most recently during a sound check that had lasted until 4 that morning), but all the preparation couldn't quiet their opening-night jitters. While they waited to board the unmarked vans that would transport them and the Jackson brothers to jam-packed Arrowhead Stadium, they smoked too much, consulted their watches and horsed around. "My stomach's got a butterfly in it the size of [sci-fi monster] Rodan," laughed keyboardist Pat Leonard, 28.

The Jacksons' sixth-floor enclave—where "Do Not Disturb" signs hung on the doorknobs—was absolutely still. Inside Michael's suite the Man himself was running through vocal exercises. In a room nearby, brothers Randy, Tito, Jermaine and Marlon—minus Jackie, sidelined by a knee operation—were rehearsing harmonies and bracing themselves for the start of the $50 million, 13-plus city tour that could mark the farewell of the family act that debuted in 1965. Little brother Randy was psyching himself up, trying to sear away the pain in his left leg caused by an auto accident in 1980. "You know how a boxer feels before a fight?" he asked. "That's how I feel. I want to knock them out."

"Pain pills," added Marlon. "We tell the audience to bring pain pills when they come to see us. We want to be so good, so strong, it makes 'em hurt."

Gluttons for the sort of punishment Marlon had in mind found it—and then some. The Jacksons packed Arrowhead Stadium for three nights running, and the chief complaints among the 135,000 who witnessed their spectacle was that the brothers hadn't given them enough licks. "I'd like to see twice as much," said 19-year-old Donna Slonaker, from Lydon, Kans., "but I'd pay $30 to see it again."

After months of controversy, suspense and confusion, the Jackson Victory tour—named in honor of the newly released album that has already sold nearly two and a half million copies—was finally on the road, bound next for Dallas, Jacksonville, New York and points beyond. All told the five Jacksons expected to play 47 dates in 16 weeks to the tune of $50-$60 million in ticket sales—and a possible $8 million profit.

When they weren't fielding criticism about the tour's exorbitant mail-order ticket policy (which has been changed) and promoter Chuck Sullivan's demands for reduced hotel rates and free newspaper ad space, the close-knit clan had spent its pre-V-Days polishing the act. There was none of the ambitious partying that once characterized rock tours: Meals prepared by the Jacksons' two cooks were taken in the privacy of the brothers' rooms. Idle moments were devoted to playing riffs and (in Michael's case) autographing photos. The Gloved One slipped out of the hotel (via an elevator leading to the garage) to see Ghostbusters and to announce publicly that he would donate his share of the concert proceeds to charity. On Friday afternoon he accompanied Tito to a local hotel to accept an NAACP award. After that outing, the Jacksons remained en famine until Friday evening, when dressers came to help them into the opening-number costumes. At 9 p.m. the five hopped into a van for the 30-minute ride to the stadium, where the frenzy was cresting.

The audience that awaited them was a Whitman's sampler of Middle America. They arrived in muddy pickups and customized vans and sporty coupes—not just squealing adolescents in T-shirts emblazoned with Michael's likeness, but old people as well, and mothers with toddlers, and a rainbow coalition that only these Jacksons could bring together: young people with their parents. Said Andrea Gilliand of Stanley, Kans., speaking from the promontory of 30, "You're never too old to see Michael Jackson. It's the best concert I've ever been to, and I've seen the Stones and the Beatles. But why didn't he play 'Thriller'?"

Well probably because he wanted to make his fans privy to the movie that screens daily behind his eyes. The script, for which the androgynous idol did the storyboards, is Arthurian legend as if spruced up by Star Wars creator George Lucas, with an assist from Muppeteer Jim Henson. At the show's opening, towering animated monsters thunder onstage, to be challenged by Randy (Michael's creative heir apparent), done up in glittering armor. Randy pulls a laser-lit sword out of a prop rock, slays one of the creatures and commands, "Behold the Kingdom." Belching smoke shot with green and blue and purple, the set elevates and out come the brothers, who make a dramatic descent down a set of newly revealed stairs into a deafening wave of screams.

Although Jermaine sings lead on three of his own songs and the other Jacksons have their moments, Michael seizes center stage and holds it. Resplendent in a silver sequined jacket with a red-and-white sash (one of his four costumes), he leaps into the air, freezes, whips about, drops to one knee and curls into a fetal position. He's arrogant on Beat It, tender on She's Out of My Life, triumphant on Billie Jean. His Heartbreak Hotel is so full of pops, stops, bangs and breaks that by the time he's done the crowd is inspecting its arms for imaginary bruises.

The Jackson tour is a spectacular production, and it comes with a spectacular price tag: in the neighborhood, says promoter Sullivan, of $15 million. The 375-ton stage, itself a costly proposition, is five stories high, 160 feet wide and 90 feet deep. It has seven computers and five elevators that require 22 men to operate. What with the 120 speakers, 2,200 lights, and the trestles and cables, the Jacksons' baggage adds up to some 65,000 pounds. The crew numbers 1,500, including those recruited locally to stage the finale—a sky-splitting fireworks show.

At Arrowhead more than 170 officers from area police departments kept the peace. They were abetted by 375 security guards hired by the stadium management, nine paramedics, two doctors and six nurses. A helicopter and four ambulances idled at the ready, and the crowd was frisked at the entrances by nearly 70 hand-held metal detectors. In fact security was so tight that Sullivan himself was denied backstage access on opening night when he forgot his pass.

Happily, the Jackson tour brain trust—which had prepared for a disaster on the order of the Stones' 1969 concert at Altamont—was confronted instead with the docility of a church social, a decorous reflection of Michael Jackson himself. Only nine arrests were made at Arrowhead, says a stadium spokesman, most for disorderly conduct. The only real high jinks came from Don King, the fright-wigged boxing czar and erstwhile tour promoter. Supplanted by Sullivan in June he nevertheless continued to hold forth as if he were running the show. "We're traveling virgin territory," he announced as he held court in the Alameda Plaza lobby. "There are no boundaries. If Michael had time to work as hard as Wayne Newton, 150 dates a year, he could make $200 million. But who wants to work that hard?"

The Jacksons worked hard enough as it was. But the threat of exhaustion seemed irrelevant to Randy, who elatedly hopped about on hotel chairs Saturday as he relived the electrifying opener. "It was great to be back up there," he said. "My leg was killing me, but I know it was the best opening show we've ever done. Afterward I couldn't sleep. My mother called just to say 'I love you and thought you were good.' My mother's all about love."

Meanwhile, down in Jacksonville, Mayor Jake Godbold was also falling in love. "It's time we reached for the stars," he said. Godbold had calculated that the Jacksons' three-day stint in his fair city would cost the local government $445,000 in salaries and promotions—a piddling sum compared to what visitors would spend for lodgings, meals, gas and Michael Jackson geegaws. "Seventy million dollars," he told the City Council, lingering over the last word. "Seventy million dollars."

Contributors:James McBride.
 

Michael's First Epistle

In the Midst of a World Tour, the Astonishing Star Breaks His Four-Year Silence to Issue a Cry of Pain from Japan

By Michael Small  ~ October 12, 1987, Vol. 28, No. 15

 

As the clock ticks down toward show time at Japan's Yokohama stadium, the teenagers staking out a closely guarded back entrance grow edgy with excitement. Aware that their fleeting brush with a legend is at hand, they murmur, "Sugu, sugu!" "Soon, soon!" The sight of two vans—one blue, one gold—swinging round a corner brings instant recognition, and the crowd erupts with a joyous roar. As the rockmobiles come slickly to a halt, a lithe young man steps out, and for a second the stadium lights reflect brilliantly off the extravagant silver buckles of his jacket. Then he disappears behind a door labeled, in light-blue letters, Mr. Michael Jackson.

Backstage at this ninth Japanese concert of what is to be a yearlong world tour, Michael Jackson radiates energy: His arrival sends a jolt of pre-show electricity through the cast and crew members who had been lazily hanging out around his simply furnished dressing room. Jackson rolls his head to limber up; gazing in a full-length mirror, he flicks a speck of loose makeup off his cheek. His toned, 5'10" frame seems imposing, quite at odds with the waif like image he presents to photographers. "I'm getting a little worried about my voice getting thin," says Jackson in a voice stronger and more assured than the shy squeak of his rare public pronouncements. "But so far things are going good."

Out front, the stadium is a powder keg awaiting the match. Christened Typhoon Michael by the Japanese press, Jackson has taken the nation by storm. The 38,000 seats for tonight's concert sold out (at $40 per) weeks ago, and some fans desperate to hail the man they call My-ke-ru have paid scalpers $700 to get in. But here in his dressing room the rock phenomenon lingers over a cup of tea, calmly ignoring the gathering clamor from the arena and the rising nerves of his 15 backup musicians and dancers. A crew member recites a brief prayer, then Jackson huddles with his cast like a football quarterback. They clap their hands and stomp their feet. "Whatever we play," yells Jackson, his smooth, sculpted features relaxing into an engaging grin, "it's got to be funky!" A moment later, to a burst of bright lights and thunderous applause, they jog onstage.

So goes the stage life of the world's most popular rock star: glitter, fame, excitement and wealth. Real life is, of course, another matter. The August release of Bad, his first album in five years, brought with it a flood of wild rumors. Jackson has been accused—and, despite his denials, accused again—of using chemicals to make his skin lighter, of transforming his entire body with plastic surgery, of taking female hormones to keep his voice high and of refusing to bathe in anything but Evian water. Having said no more than a few words to the press since 1983, Jackson left it to his stogie-chomping manager, Frank Dileo, to explain away his plastic surgeries (just the nose and chin were done, he said) and his attempt to purchase the bones of the Elephant Man ("Well, everyone has a skeleton in their closet," Dileo told PEOPLE). Probably the tall tales only enhanced sales of Bad, which has already zoomed to the top of the charts in at least eight countries. But the rumors' effect on Jackson, 29, has been anything but salutary. "It's really horrible to have these lies printed about me," he says. "It hurts."

Driven to the brink during his Japanese tour, he did something last week that reveals a sorely troubled man very different from his magical persona: He sat down at the desk in his room at the Capitol Tokyu Hotel in Tokyo and, on the back of a piece of hotel stationery, wrote what he said would be his only discussion of his private life. "Like the old Indian proverb says," wrote Jackson, "do not judge a man until you've walked 2 moons in his moccosins." The singer's two-page missive reveals him to be a complex mix of boy and man whose personality matches the themes of Bad, an album so full of bright, catchy dance tunes that it's easy to overlook the lyrics that express dark fantasies and hyper-romantic dreams. Jackson offers forgiveness to the rumormongers who have upset him: "Animals strike, not from malice, but because they want to live, it is the same with those who criticize, they desire our blood, not our pain." At the same time, he expresses himself with the desperate tone of a child who has been unfairly punished: "I cry very very often because it hurts.... Have mercy, for I've been bleeding a long time now." His casual spelling and punctuation speak of backstage tutors and self-teaching, but his expression of pain is clear.

If what he wrote is what he truly feels, Jackson's powers of concealment may be his most dazzling talent. From all appearances, he has complete control of what he has described as the only solo tour of his career. While the 150 crew members of the Jacksons' 1984 Victory tour felt chaos around every corner, Michael alone directs the 90 members of his solo show. He approves every photo and backstage pass, and he personally signed off on every detail of a 100-minute, 16-song show that costs about $500,000 a week to produce and includes lasers, explosions and a breathtaking magic trick that levitates him across the stage. (After Japan, Jackson plays Australia and New Zealand before returning to the U.S. in December.) His own performance—as a singer and dancer whose moves seem to defy the laws of both physics and aerobics—has been worked and reworked to perfection, and with a repertoire that includes only two songs from Bad and lots of old favorites from Thriller, he has thoroughly wowed his every audience in Japan. Sheryl Crow, who duets with Jackson on the ballad "I Just Can't Stop Loving You", says, "I have a hard time keeping my eyes off him. When he's onstage, he just keeps drawing you in."

From the moment Jackson stepped off the plane to face a Nikon tiring squad of 600 photographers and 1,000 fans, the Japanese have given him a welcome reminiscent of the Beatles' first trip to the U.S. Jackson posters line city walls; his face decorates shopping bags. In the heart of ultra-high-rent Tokyo, Nippon Television set up a store that stocks only the fast-selling paraphernalia endorsed by Jackson-san. Two amusement parks shut down to provide free access when the reclusive singer and his entourage requested private playtime.

Fans Emiko Haga and Miki Ikeda, both 20, are traveling with a pack of several other girls who have saved their yen so they can follow Jackson around Japan for his entire tour. "We are trying to see him every minute of every day, except when we sleep," exclaims Haga. After meeting Jackson on Japan's Bullet train, Ikeda started to cry. "I said, 'I love you,' " says Emiko. "He said, 'Thank you.' It was unbelievable."

Equally unbelievable is the commercial consequence of all this adulation. The money is flowing into Jackson's bank accounts in cataracts. About 450,000 people will attend his 14 sold-out stadium concerts, and Bad is confidently expected to sell 500,000 copies in a country where only phenomenally successful records sell 200,000. All told, Michael will gross at least $20 million in Japan alone. Not Bad.

The temptations of the road that have led so many rock performers into deep trouble seem not to be a problem for Jackson. Never romantically linked to anyone during the years that he confined himself to the Los Angeles mansion he shares with his parents, Jackson has not been spotted with a date on tour either. He has visited with friends Gregory Peck and designer Issey Miyake, but mostly he socializes with two favorite companions: his manager, Frank Dileo, and his chimp, Bubbles, from both of whom he seems to derive a good deal of fun and comfort. It would be difficult to imagine a figure of less physical resemblance to Jackson than Dileo, 39. Portly, short and balding, the colorfully loquacious Dileo has become Jackson's most trusted confidant. Determined to erase unflattering descriptions of Dileo by the press, Jackson calls him "my shield of armor, my other half. We dream together and achieve together." As for Bubbles, a 3½-year-old chimpanzee released from a cancer lab in 1985, he eats at the table with Jackson, mimics his master's moonwalk, plays hide-and-seek, plays dead, blows bubbles and joins in pillow fights. The Japanese find it all fascinating. When Bubbles arrived in Japan on a separate flight from Jackson's, he got a Very Important Chimp reception from 300 photographers. The Mayor of Osaka later entertained Michael and Bubbles at a formal tea ceremony. "Bubbles is so popular here," says one Tokyo merchandiser, "that if he announced he was doing a concert tour, he'd sell out."

On off days Jackson has ventured out to shop for clocks, Japanese art books and a colorful Oriental screen. He also plundered two of Japan's biggest toy stores: Dileo won't disclose what the singer purchased, but jokes, "His hotel room is a mess. I told him it's starting to look like his room at home."

If Jackson does at times resemble a child, it may be because he identifies so closely with children. Quietly he has given rafts of free concert tickets to handicapped youngsters, visited Japanese schools and sent condolences and $20,000 to the family of 5-year-old Yoshiaki Ogiwara, an Osaka boy who was kidnapped and murdered recently. At one concert he dedicated his tour to the boy, a gesture that brought tears to the eyes of adoring fans. "People just don't have a realistic picture of who Michael is," says makeup artist Karen Faye. "He's innocent and inspiring without being preachy—and a lot of fun to be around."

To his public, however, Jackson remains an enigmatic figure, and his handwritten message from Japan will do little to change that. Given his near total blackout on personal press, one can only assume he wants it that way: Anonymity serves his stagecraft. Last week in Tokyo's gaudy, neon-lit Ginza district, throngs of young people crowded the sidewalks, drawn by the rumor that Jackson was to appear for a PEOPLE photo shoot. When he arrived the screams rose to a frightening pitch, and the hysterical young fans hurled themselves at his barricade of bodyguards. Yet, while the photo op dissolved in chaos, Jackson remained implacably calm. He smiled broadly, threw up his arms in a dramatic gesture, then vanished into the night.

The effect was stunning, Olympian: A god had come and gone. Offstage and out of costume, the Michael Jackson who was "sent forth for the world, for the children" could hardly help feeling chagrined that his stage persona is only an act. Gods, after all, do not feel pain.

    Contributors: Todd Gold.