Skip to main content

Everything about the Victory Tour was overwhelming. When Michael Jackson and his brothers made a trip across the border to play eight shows in Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver in the fall of 1984, a local concert promoter called it "the largest-attended set of concerts in the history of Canada." The sound system and stage, with its groundbreaking seven-storey video screen to carry the Jacksons' fancy footwork to the far corners of the venues, required 375 tonnes of equipment, and took three days to set up. Tickets were $40, a then-eye-popping sum that caused a revolt among fans, but the tour sold out, and Michael donated his earnings to charity.

And all was forgiven, because when the brothers bounded onto the stage in Toronto's Exhibition Stadium to blinding pyrotechnics and the slick shuffle of Wanna Be Startin' Somethin' , it felt like you were at Shea Stadium watching the Beatles in 1965: The place shuddered. Yes, it was a chilly October evening, but you could feel the heat from the fireworks, the lights and the rotating pelvises.

For almost two hours, as the brothers cycled through a series of ever-more-besequined outfits, they offered up a sampling of their careers: eight solo tunes from Michael, a brief medley of Jermaine's songs, and a medley of some of their greatest hits as the Jackson Five, including a nostalgic I'll Be There .

But Michael was the one we were there to see, and toward the end of the show, when the snap of the electronic snare from Billie Jean ricocheted against the stadium's concrete walls, the crowd turned feverish, trained by the Motown TV special in the spring of 1983 to know what was coming. When he glided backward across the stage with his trademark moonwalk, we exploded in delight.

Follow related authors and topics

Authors and topics you follow will be added to your personal news feed in Following.

Interact with The Globe