(4 of 5)
There is also Victory, the Jacksons' spanking-new album, a stereophonic silver lining in search of and, indeed, in need of, a few stray clouds. Earnest, upbeat and insistently optimistic, Victory was shipped out by Epic Records in almost unprecedented numbers (2 million copies hit American record retail outlets last week). The first single, State of Shock, a politely raunchy dance number in which Michael can be heard ducting with Jackson-for-aday Mick Jagger, is doing nicely. But this is very much an album in need of what the record business calls tour support. The most interesting song—or the most curious, at any rate—is Be Not Always, a ballad written and performed by Michael with injections of mournful strings. A sort of nonspecific cry of pain against both personal cruelty and international aggression, the song seems intended as a rejoinder to those who think Michael makes mostly good-time make-out music. As such, it stands in marked contrast to the rest of Victory, whose final cut, Body (written and performed by Marlon), is the ideal anthem for horny aerobicizers, with its chorus of "I want your body, I love your body, I need your body" repeated like a liturgy for ligaments.
The concert features not a single song from Victory. One might deduce from this that even the Jacksons recognize the flimsiness of much of the new material. Such an assumption is arguable—many bands like to wait until records are more familiar to an audience before performing songs from them live—but it would also reflect the sort of narrow spirit that got the tour into such hot water with the public in the first place. Yes, $30 was too much for a rafter seat so high in the stadium that you could be buzzed by low-flying aircraft; and yes, the four-ticket minimum-maximum and the computer-sorted coupons were painfully unwieldy. But they were a plausible means of attempting to cut out scalpers. "We were trying to protect our fans," insists Marlon. Says Randy: "We wanted to have everybody have a fair chance — to see the show without paying hundreds of dollars a ticket to scalpers."
There were other charges in the press: that the promoters will make big bucks on interest from unfilled ticket orders before the money is finally returned (Tour Promoter Chuck Sullivan, chairman of the Manhattan-based Stadium Management Corp., insists the interest will not even cover the cost of processing them); that Sullivan is trying to get stadiums rent-free (in fact he is paying for some, and in any case local promoters stand to profit from a cut of concessions and parking).