Jackson vs. Jackson on the Road
On the day of the first show, fans began to assemble outside Arrowhead Stadium hours before sunrise. Inside the auditorium, a five-hundred person security force and one thousand other stage workers geared up for the mass event. Two giant tapestries of a forest scene bordered each side of the stage, and a wooden barrier was erected fifteen feet in front of it to keep fans from rushing the Jackson brothers.
‘Arise, all the world, and behold the kingdom,’ a voice boomed as the show began for the 43,000 fans. Elaborate George Lucas-style computerized stage and lighting systems were the hallmark of the concert, including a hidden hydraulic stage that presented the group – Michael in zebra-print, vertical-striped pants; spangled shirt; white socks; 1950s-type penny loafers; and the white glove – as if they were appearing from under the earth on a waffle grid of two hundred blinding lights. Seen in silhouette, the brothers marched slowly down a staircase, approached the microphones, removed their sunglasses, and broke into the first song, Michael's ‘Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'’. There were red and green lasers, crimson strobe lights and purple smoke bombs – magic, illusion and fireworks. Eighteen songs boomed from a hundred outdoor speakers. Everything from ‘I Want You Back’ to ‘Shake Your Body (Down to the Ground)’. (Oddly, the brothers performed no numbers from their new
Victory
album. It was later explained by Marlon that Michael refused to rehearse them or perform them before a live audience.)
Jermaine performed three of his own songs. Michael's solo hits ‘Billie Jean’ and ‘Beat It’ were saved for the end of the concert. He was in excellent voice, more of a real
singer
now than ever before. By the time the group finished their performance, the audience had been whipped into a frenzy even though most of the audience members had to settle for the distorted images of the brothers that appeared on huge overhanging television screens throughout the gargantuan football stadium. It was clear, though, they had paid the high ticket prices to see only one person, Michael Jackson.
Thanks to his music – not to mention the advent of the video age – Michael's stardom had reached such mythic proportions by this time, no one could share a stage with him. As Jim Miller wrote for
Newsweek,
‘He dances with the breathtaking verve of his predecessor James Brown, the beguiling wispiness of Diana Ross, the ungainly pathos of Charlie Chaplin, the edgy joy of a man startled to be alive. The crowd gasps and screams…’
After the first of three shows in Kansas City, the truth was painfully clear: Michael should never have agreed to do the tour, but for more reasons than the problems with ticket prices and promotion. He was a front man for an act he no longer felt a part of, and the brothers weren't comfortable in their roles as his supporting players, either. Or as one critic put it, ‘Marlon, Jermaine, Randy and Tito seemed mostly ill-at-ease extras at their own celebration.’
Jermaine's odd comments to reporter Simon Kinnersley at this time brought to light the dissension and fraternal jealousy running rampant within the group. He said, ‘Even though Michael is very talented, a lot of his success has been due to timing and a little bit of luck. It could have been him, or it could just as easily have been me. But now I'm doing a lot of things. I'm the hottest brother. It'll be the same when my brothers do their thing.’
To Michael's audience, though, none of the controversy they kept hearing and reading about mattered when
he,
the undisputed star, appeared on stage. All that mattered was his talent, his passion for his work, his charisma, his voice – and the way he could execute one of those impossible, backward glides across the stage. The audience roared its appreciation for him with every song. Not only had he outgrown any family pageantry, one sensed that he was constrained by a fear of upstaging his brothers.
Also, there was a feeling – imaginary or not – that Michael couldn't wait for the show to end. At the same time, the brothers, who entertained with great hunger and eagerness, looked as if they knew that their performance represented the chance of a lifetime for them… and maybe their last chance. However, never for a moment did they appear to share any common values or goals of showmanship with their star performer. And never did it appear that Michael wanted anything more to do with them than necessary. By trying to prove his loyalty to his family, he had distanced himself even further from them. Moreover, maybe he had lost a little of his soul in the process. Certainly he must have felt as if he'd lost
something
when James Brown – one of his idols – refused his invitation to perform onstage with him at Madison Square Garden in New York.
James, always a big fan of Michael's, felt that the steep ticket prices would preclude the attendance of many of the group's black fans. That decision had to hurt Michael, and make him think about whether the tour was worth it to him.
The agony of
Victory
would continue through 9 December 1984 – same show and dialogue each and every performance. Michael is not a spontaneous performer. In concert, he has a set routine, and he rarely veers from it. Bruce Springsteen went to see the show in Philadelphia and afterwards he and Michael had a conversation backstage.
‘Do you talk to people during your concerts?’ Michael asked him. ‘I heard that you do.’
‘Yeah. I tell stories,’ Bruce said. ‘People like that, I've learned. They like to hear your voice do something besides singing. They go wild when you just talk.’
Michael shuddered. ‘Oh, I could never do that. To me, it feels like people are learning something about you they shouldn't know.’
The closer the time came for the tour to be over, the more anxious Michael was to see it end. ‘The way we planned it, this was going to be the greatest tour of all time,’ Joseph Jackson would say in retrospect. ‘But outsiders interfered. Soon the brothers were at each other's throats.’
Without a doubt, the most annoying thing about the Jacksons' behaviour over the years has been their frustrating inability to take responsibility for their own actions. Over the years, all of them have pointed fingers to external sources for their internal problems. Either it's managers, promoters, the public or, their favourite foe, ‘the media’, that is held responsible for their problems – never themselves. Of course, the truth is that they almost always create their own internal dysfunction.
Touring can be a stressful, lonely business for an entertainer, even under the best of circumstances. However, to feel isolated from the people with whom you are performing, let alone if they happen to be your family members, is devastating – especially to someone as sensitive as Michael. The family had already begun to fall apart; the Victory tour seemed to be hastening its complete destruction. At one point in the tour, Michael was so upset with his brothers, he suffered from exhaustion and dehydration and had to be put under a doctor's care.
As a result of such pressure, Michael became increasingly difficult. Some of his demands were unreasonable. At one point, he threatened not to perform unless a certain publicist working on the tour was fired. The publicist had apparently allowed something to be printed that Michael did not appreciate. The brothers ignored the threat. Then, at the last possible minute, right before the show was to start, Frank Dileo announced that Michael would not appear unless the publicist was dismissed on the spot. Of course,
then
the publicist was fired.
In the beginning of the tour, it was agreed that only the performing members of the family would travel in the Jacksons' van. However, when Michael started showing up with Emmanuel Lewis, nothing could have been more annoying to the brothers. Before the tour was even half over, the brothers began travelling in separate vans and limousines – Jackie (who joined the tour midway on crutches, but did not perform), Marlon, Randy and Tito in one vehicle, Jermaine in another by himself, and Michael in still another, alone. When they had to travel by air, the brothers used a commercial airline; Michael travelled by private jet. (A couple of times, Pia Zadora's multimillionaire husband, Meshulam Riklis, who was friendly with the Jacksons, took mercy on the brothers and allowed them to use his private aircraft.) In New York, when the group had to fly by helicopter to Giants Stadium, they agreed that no outsiders would be in the helicopter. Michael then showed up with Julian Lennon, John's son. The brothers glared at both of them during the brief flight.
At one point, the Jacksons received an offer from a producer who wanted to pay them millions of dollars to film the show and release it to the home-video market when the tour was over. They took a vote. Everyone was for the idea, except for Michael. He threatened that he would not perform if they struck such a deal. Furthermore, no one was to videotape the show. Without any recourse, the brothers bitterly turned down the deal, and all of that money.
Then, three nights later, the group was onstage with cameras all about them. Michael, himself, had arranged for the show to be videotaped. ‘I'll give you copies, don't worry,’ he promised his brothers when they confronted him after the performance, but they never saw a copy. (When Michael tried to get them to agree to let him release the video to the marketplace, they blocked him from doing it.)
The brothers stayed on separate floors of hotels in each city; they refused to talk to each other on their way to the stadiums. Every time there was a meeting about anything, there would also be side meetings among the different factions in the group, including the pair of lawyers who represented Michael, the one who worked for Jermaine, and the two who spoke for the rest of the brothers. ‘It was devastating,’ said long-time family friend Joyce McCrae. ‘It amounted to the worst experiences Michael had ever had with his brothers. His success had affected every member of the family. Some were jealous, there was denial, the whole gamut of human emotions.’
During the final week of the tour, Joseph and Don King began making plans to take the Victory tour to Europe. When Michael heard about the possibility of European dates, he couldn't believe his ears. He sent a succinct message to Joseph and Don through Frank Dileo: ‘I will absolutely not be going to Europe with the Victory tour. Good luck to you. Michael.’
On 9 December 1984, after the last song of the evening, Michael hollered out from the Los Angeles stage, ‘This is our last and final show. It's been a long twenty years, and we love you all.’ The brothers looked at Michael with surprised expressions, as if his declaration was news to them. ‘What a little prick,’ one of the brothers said of Michael afterward. ‘How dare he? The little creep.’
‘There's no way Michael Jackson should be as big as he is and treat his family the way he does,’ Don King fumed after the final show, when it was clear to him that he would not be taking the show abroad. ‘He feels that his father did him wrong? His father may have done some wrong, but he also had to do a whole lot right.’
He went on, ‘What Michael's got to realize is that Michael's a nigger. It doesn't matter how great he can sing and dance. I don't care that he can prance. He's one of the megastars of the world, but he's still going to be a nigger megastar. He must accept that. Not only must he understand that, he's got to accept it and demonstrate that he wants to be a nigger. Why? To show that a nigger can do it.’
If it was possible for Michael to blow sky high when he read those comments, he would have done it. ‘Sue his ass,’ he told John Branca. ‘That guy has been pushing my last nerve since Day One.’ John knew better than to drag the Don King experience into a new year with fresh litigation. He calmed Michael down, as he always managed to do, and convinced him to let it go.
As if to rid himself of the bad taste in his mouth left by the Victory tour, Michael donated all of his proceeds from it – nearly five million dollars – to theT. J. Martell Foundation for Cancer Research, the United Negro College Fund and the Ronald McDonald Camp for Good Times.
When Michael wrote of the Victory tour in his autobiography,
Moonwalk,
he didn't mention Don King, Joseph and Katherine Jackson, Chuck Sullivan, or any of the other principal players behind the scenes. Of his brothers, he took the high ground, as he always does, ‘It was a nice feeling, playing with my brothers again,’ he wrote, graciously. ‘We were all together again… I enjoyed the tour.’ Whether or not he wanted to admit it publicly, the real victory for Michael Jackson was that he and his brothers were finally finished as a performing group.
Their future as a family didn't look very promising either.