make people say, "Wow! That's wonderful!" The response we got was wonderful and the fans were great, but I
became unhappy with our show. I didn't have the time or the opportunity to perfect it the way I wanted to. I was
disappointed in the staging of "Billie Jean." I wanted it to be so much more than it was. I didn't like the lighting and I never got my steps quite the way I wanted them. It killed me to have to accept these things and settle for doing it the
way I did.
There've been times right before a show when certain things were bothering me - business or personal problems. I
would think, "I don't know how to go through with this. I don't know how I'm going to get through the show. I can't
perform like this."
But once I get to the side of the stage, something happens. The rhythm starts and the lights hit me and the problems
disappear. This has happened so many times. The thrill of performing just takes me over. It's like God saying, "Yes,
you can. Yes, you can. Just wait. Wait till you hear this. Wait till you see this." And the backbeat gets in my backbone and it vibrates and it just takes me. Sometimes I almost lose control and the musicians say, "What is he doing?" and they start following me. You change the whole schedule of a piece. You stop and you just take over from scratch and
do a whole other thing. The song takes you in another direction.
There was a part of the show on the Victory tour where I was doing this scatting theme and the audience was
repeating what I said. I'd say, "Da, de, da, de" and they'd say, "Da, de, da, de." There've been times when I've done that and they would start stomping. And when the whole audience is doing that, it sounds like an earthquake. Oh! It's
a great feeling to be able to do that with all those people - whole stadiums - and they're all doing the same thing
you're doing. It's the greatest feeling in the world. You look out in the audience and see toddlers and teens and
grandparents and people in their twenties and thirties. Everybody is swaying, their hands are up, and they're all
singing. You ask that the house lights come on and you see their faces and you say, "Hold hands" and they hold
hands and you say, "Stand up" or "Clap" and they do. They're enjoying themselves and they'll whatever you tell them. They love it and it's so beautiful - all the races of people are together doing this. At times like that I say, "Look around you. Look at yourselves. Look. Look around you. Look at what you have done." Oh, it's so beautiful. Very
powerful. Those are great moments.
The Victory tour was my first chance to be exposed to the Michael Jackson fans since Thriller had come out two
years earlier. There were some strange reactions. I'd bump into people in hallways and they'd go, "Naw, that can't be him. He wouldn't be here." I was baffled and I'd ask myself, "Why wouldn't I? I'm on earth somewhere . I've got to be somewhere at any given time. Why not here?" Some fans imagine you to be almost an illusion, this thing that
doesn't exist. When they see you, they feel it's a miracle or something. I've had fans ask me if I use the bathroom. I
mean, it gets embarrassing. They just lose touch with the fact that you're like them because they get so excited. But I
can understand it because I'd feel the same way if, for instance, I could have met Walt Disney or Charlie Chaplin.
51
Kansas City opened the tour. It was Victory's first night. We were walking by the hotel pool in the evening and Frank
Dileo lost his balance and fell in. People saw this and started to get excited. Some of us were kind of embarrassed,
but I was laughing. He wasn't hurt and he looked so surprised. We jumped over a low wall and found ourselves on
the street without any security. People didn't seem to be able to believe that we were just walking around on the street
like that. They gave us a wide berth.
Later when we returned to the hotel, Bill Bray, who has headed my security team since I was a child, just shook his
head and laughed as we recounted our adventures.
Bill is very careful and immensely professional in his job, but he doesn't worry about things after the fact. He travels
with me everywhere and occasionally he's my only companion on short trips. I can't imagine life without Bill; he's
warm and funny and absolutely in love with life. He's a great man.
When the tour was in Washington, D.C., I was out on our hotel balcony with Frank, who has a great sense of humor
and enjoys playing pranks himself. We were teasing one another and I started pulling $100 bills from his pockets and
throwing them to people who were walking down below. This almost caused a riot. He was trying to stop me, but we
were both laughing. It reminded me of the pranks my brothers and I used to pull on tour. Frank sent our security
people downstairs to try and find any undiscovered money in the bushes.
In Jacksonville, the local police almost killed us in a traffic accident during the four-block drive from the hotel to the stadium. Later, in another part of Florida, when the old tour boredom set in that I described earlier, I played a little
trick on Frank. I asked him to come up to my suite and when he came in I offered him some watermelon, which was
lying on a table across the room. Frank went over to pick up a piece and tripped over my boa constrictor, Muscles,
who was on the road with me. Muscles is harmless, but Frank hates snakes and proceeded to scream and yell. I
started chasing him around the room with the boa. Frank got the upper hand, however. He panicked, ran from the
room, and grabbed the security guard's gun. He was going to shoot Muscles, but the guard calmed him down. Later
he said all he could think of was: "I've got to get that snake." I've found that a lot of tough men are afraid of snakes.
We were locked in hotels all over America, just like in the old days. Me and Jermaine or me and Randy would get up
to our old tricks, taking buckets of water and pouring them off hotel balconies onto people eating in the atriums far
below. We were up so high the water was just mist by the time it reached them. It was just like the old days, bored in
the hotels, locked away from fans for our own protection, unable to go anywhere without massive security.
But there were a lot of days that were fun too. We had a lot of time off on that tour and we got to take five little
vacations to Disney World. Once, when we were staying in the hotel there, an amazing thing happened. I'll never
forget it. I was on a balcony where we could see a big area. There were all these people. It was so crowded that
people were bumping into each other. Someone in that crowd recognized me and started screaming my name.
Thousands of people began chanting, "Michael! Michael!" and it was echoing all over the park. The chanting
continued until finally it was so loud that if I hadn't acknowledged it, it would have been rude. As soon as I did,
everybody started screaming. I said, "Oh, this is so beautiful. I've got it so good." All the work I'd put in on Thriller , my crying and believing in my dreams and working on those songs and falling asleep near the microphone stand
because I was so tired, all of it was repaid by this display of affection.
I've seen times where I'd walk into a theater to see a play and everybody would just start applauding. Just because
they're glad that I happen to be there. At moments like that, I feel so honored and so happy. It makes all the work
seem worthwhile.
The Victory tour was originally going to be called "The Final Curtain" because we all realized it was going to be the last tour we did together. But we decided not to put the emphasis on that.
I enjoyed the tour. I knew it would be a long road; in the end, it was probably too long. The best part of it for me was