Victory Tour

But, um, anyway, um, so I remember this guy, uh, my mom's, uh, suitor, uh, boyfriend.

Inexplicably, they were going to start the first... 'Cause Michael Jackson, during the whole, uh, Thriller thing, never performed live for, for like a year and a half, and then they desi- they being his management conglomerate, designed the Jackson's Victory Tour, which was going to be, um, performed in NFL super stadiums across the world.

Um, and somewhat inexplicably, the first shows were going to be in Kansas City at Arrowhead Stadium, where our football team played.

Um, so there was a lot of excitement and buzz in Kansas City.

Um, I know that the Sun City Girls played, um, at this, uh, venue called The Foolkiller, um, that week, and the most notorious serial killer in our city, Bob Berdella, committed his first murders that week, too.

It was a, a...

People wouldn't know about that for four years later, and obviously, the Sun City Girls, uh, performance relative to the Jackson's Victory Tour w- didn't get as much ink.

But that might give you just a little scene report as to like other shit that was happening in town.

Currently the vice president of live events at Four Wall Entertainment and founder of Eccentric Design, his resume reads like a Hall of Fame roster.

We're talking stadium tours for icons like the Eagles' Billy Joel, Metallica, Justin Bieber, Bad Bunny, and the Jacksons' historic victory tour, plus landmark political broadcasts like Barack Obama's 2008 election night in Grant Park.

His story started at just 14 years old in Athens, Georgia, with a psychedelic production performance called the Aurora Light Show.

Choosing the road over college, he learned from industry pioneers and launched R.A. Roth Inc. in 1975, then went on to help shape powerhouse companies like PRG and Christie Lights.

than it was when I sold it to PRG, but in Chapman kept going, design company, design company.

And I'm like, project, when we have a project, then we'll have a design company.

And so we went out and we pitched this thing, um, for what became the victory tour and our project, pitch and our design and our, um, a guy named Ian Knight, who was a great mentor of mine, a very famous original, the original designers.

He was a designer for Led Zeppelin.

So, of course, the burn unit, right? Michael has his Pepsi burn and he donates a million dollars that he got in the lawsuit to the burn center.

And then, of course, as something that I wish had been included in the biopic is the fact that Michael donated all of his own personal proceeds from the victory tour to charity.

And this was something he issued a press release about in response to some negative pushback from the press and the media about the ticket prices and the way the tickets were being sold and whatnot.

So he actually made it his mission to prove, you know, this is I'm not doing this just for my own wallet, you know, and it's estimated that that donation was about $7.5 million, which is absolutely nuts.

I'm doing all of this to put all of that money toward a humanitarian mission that I have created.

Like that, I think, cannot be emphasized enough and I think should not ever be looked over.

I mean, it's just something that I hope gets mentioned in the biopic, the second film, because like they didn't mention the victory tour.

and i just feel like you know the film was accused i i talked about this in my biopic review but the film was accused of like whitewashing and it was accused of trying to make michael look like a saint and i was just like laughing when i read this because i was like you don't even know the half of it like i'm not saying michael was a saint but i'm saying if you think he was saintly because of what they mentioned here The amount they did not talk about is insane.

we go.

What else we got? We got 1984, the Jackson's Victory Tour.

Sold over 1.1 million tickets in two months.

Surpassing the record for ticket

So when they got back together, him and his brothers, after he done Thriller, then came back and did the tour.

I saw the Ja- the Victory Tour in Giant Stadium in '80, you know, '85.

Giant Stadium?

Giant V- yeah, so you know, right.

Get out of here.

Yeah, he did the Beach Boys, Boston, Hart, and then he did two years with, he did the Victory Tour.

with the Jacksons.

He was the one that would stand outside of Michael's trailer because Michael insisted on practicing dance at least an hour every day.

[laughs]

I saw the Jacksons Victory Tour there and then, and so many years ago at RFK.

Hell yeah.

Yeah.