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When the brothers get down to music and launch into Wanna Be Startin' Somethin', Michael, in good voice and fine form, steps forward again. The brothers blaze their way through a set of 16 tunes, and except for three compositions by his older brother Jermaine, Michael sings lead on them all. He spins, prances, glides, soars and generally gives a vivid illustration of why, after the Victory Tour ends, he will resume flying solo. Michael is the clear star of the show—a Thoroughbred running with pacers—but he always was, even in the Jackson 5 days. No readjustments have been made to accommodate him. It is, simply, that the audience's perception of him is different now, and a good deal larger. He remains what he always was: the animating force, the major muscle, the man-child with all the magic.
The tour has both needed and suffered from Michael's heft all along. Besides freighting an amount of equipment unprecedented even for a rock extravaganza—375 tons of it in 22 semitrailers, including two outdoor stages and one indoor stage, 64,000 lbs. of sound-and-light equipment, and eleven hydraulic elevators—the Jacksons had to shoulder the weight of Michael's colossal celebrity. That might not, at first, seem like such a burden. It was the monster success of Michael's Thriller album, which seems to have turned into a kind of long-playing Guinness statistic (35 million copies sold to date: seven Top Ten singles off the album, of which two became No. 1), that made the brothers into a superstar attraction and moved promoters to promise astronomical advances to book the tour. If Michael had decided to stay home and play with the animals in his private zoo, it is doubtful that his brothers could have pulled down an advance of almost $41 million for a tour or driven such tough bargains on profit participation in everything from T-shirt sales to stadium parking fees. Or got so much rotten publicity, either.
According to one of Michael's closest advisers, when it comes to matters of professional strategy or decision making, one of the world's biggest stars just says, "I'm one of six," and casts his vote with Jermaine, Tito, Marlon, Randy and Jackie. This is not a soul-brother Partridge Family: the Jacksons are generously gifted all round. But it is clear to everyone, especially the fans, that Michael is the main attraction. As a result, Michael inevitably took the brunt of the considerable grievances being voiced about the tour.