Super Bowl and Michael Jackson: The story behind the first big halftime show

Musical acts have performed on the NFL’s Super Bowl halftime show ever since trumpeter Al Hirt and a university marching band graced the inaugural contest in 1967.But over the next 25 years the NFL failed to attract any stellar names in the world of entertainment to perform at its showpiece event, and it finally dawned on the executives that TV ratings were most vulnerable during the halftime show.Whenever halftime rolled around, the Super Bowl broadcast would lumber into its usual lull as tens of millions of viewers rushed to the bathroom or the refrigerator.Things came to a head in 1992, when broadcaster CBS’s halftime rating fell 10 points from game action in the previous half-hour. A staggering 20 million viewers switched over to Fox to watch a live edition of its popular showIn Living Color, rather than sit through performances by former Olympic champion skaters Brian Boitano and Dorothy Hamill and singer Gloria Estefan.READ NEXT:Donald Trump and Michael Jackson: A mysterious friendshipTo maintain viewership, the NFL suits knew they needed to raise their game and recruit the biggest contemporary acts in the world. "Our thought afterward [the Super Bowl in 1992] was we had to step it up a notch,” the NFL’s then executive director of special events, Jim Steeg, recalls.Their mission? Get Michael Jackson.In February 1992, only four weeks after Super Bowl XXVI, Steeg and Arlen Kantarian, the chief executive of halftime show producers Radio City Productions, landed a Beverly Hills meeting with Jackson’s manager Sandy Gallin.It was a start. But in the initial meetings, the pair had a hard time persuading Gallin to accept their offer. “I remember pitching them and them not really having a clue what we were talking about," Steeg said. In a subsequent meeting, Kantarian recalls Jackson asking him, “Who plays in it? What is it?”Gallin said no to the NFL’s proposal three times before saying yes. At one point, when Gallin was told that the NFL pays performers only for their expenses, he told Kantarian: “You’ve got to be kidding… this is Michael Jackson”, before asking for a $1 million fee.The deal-breaker came when show producer Don Mischer pointed out that the Super Bowl would be broadcast in more than 120 countries, including third world nations, and on United States military bases. “Man, I’ll never tour there,” Kantarian recalls Michael saying.READ NEXT:The making of Michael Jackson's Dangerous“We talked to him about the blue-collar football fan that might not otherwise be a Michael Jackson fan and about how he could build a new fan base,” Kantarian said. “He got that as well. He was very sharp and very shy.”The NFL’s proposition also fitted perfectly with Gallin’s new management strategy, which was to place his client in front of the largest television audiences possible. Gallin believed the negative Jackson stories that were appearing in the tabloids were causing substantial damage, and felt his client needed to reconnect with the American public. “I knew that we had to do something drastic and show Michael as a living human being, because his image was just so bizarre,” Gallin said.“I came up with a plan, and when I presented it to Michael, he thought I was insane. He said, ‘No way, you’re crazy, you’re trying to make me the boy next door.’ And I said, ‘Michael, I could work with you for a thousand years and I could never make you the all American boy next door. I just want people to know that you’re human and that you don’t walk around with a snake around your neck’. People thought he couldn’t talk, that he couldn’t carry a conversation, and that he was from Mars.”Michael, manager Sandy Gallin and MadonnaPrior to the Super Bowl Michael had already performed at President Clinton’s Inaugural Gala in Washington D.C., followed by the American Music Awards at the Shrine Auditorium a week later. But the most high profile performance would come at the Super Bowl XXVII halftime show at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, Los Angeles on January 31. A deal was struck after the NFL agreed to donate $100,000 to Jackson’s Heal the World Foundation.When discussions began over the show production, Jackson affirmed his desire to sing new songs from his latest smash album,Dangerous. Michael said, “Billie Jean’s just a tune, it doesn’t mean anything. It’s a new world; this has to be about ‘Heal the World’.”Jackson and his touring band spent 28 days in January 1993 rehearsing at the Rose Bowl. At 7pm the night before the game, Jackson was still rehearsing his routine in a tent outside the stadium. Perhaps for the only time in his career, Jackson was nervous about taking to the stage the following day. "It's live and there's only the time of a couple of potato chip commercials to get the stage out into the field," band member Jennifer Batten said. "I'll tell you, it was the only time I ever saw Michael nervous."On the stroke of halftime, with the Dallas Cowboys leading the Buffalo Bills by a score of 28 to 10, crews had only three minutes and 20 seconds to put together the 75-foot stage, which came in 22 pieces and weighed a huge ten tonnes.[image error]Jackson decided to begin his set with a three-minute medley of ‘Jam’, ‘Billie Jean’ and ‘Black or White’. He was catapulted onto the stage as fireworks went off behind him, before standing motionless in a black and gold military outfit for one and a half minutes to build anticipation, just as he had been doing on tour over the previous six months.Jackson had only informed show producer Don Mischer of his plans for the opening two days before the show. Mischer recalls: “Michael called me at my house at 3am in the morning and said, ‘I want to determine when the show starts. I have a concept for the beginning’. And the cue was, ‘I am going to reach up and take my glasses off. And that’s when you prepare to roll the track’.”Around 40 seconds after landing on the stage Jackson still hadn't moved, and Mischer began to panic. “When you’re directing this, every second is like an eternity,” he said. “And I just start to shout, ‘Michael, dammit, take your glasses off’! He can’t hear me, but I’m just losing it, kind of shouting into my headset. All the camera guys can hear me, but that was the deal I had made with him, and I was not going to jump the queue.”After the energetic three-minute dance set, the show finale kicked off with an audience card set and a choir of 3,500 local Los Angeles area children singing ‘We Are the World’. Musical director Brad Buxer then transitioned into the opening chords of ‘Heal the World’. At this stage, Michael told the audience: "Today, we stand together all around the world, joined in a common purpose to remake the planet into a haven of joy and understanding and goodness. No one should have to suffer… especially our children. This time, we must succeed; this is for the children of the world”.Jackson went on the sing ‘Heal the World’, one of his favourite songs. The final moments of the show, in which he was joined by the choir of children as a giant globe appeared on the stage, were the most viewed in the history of television at the time.Super Bowl XXVII became the first in history where audience figures actually increased during the halftime show, and it became the most watched American television broadcast ever. Ratings increased 8.6% over the previous year, and NBC kept its audience during halftime as well as the game's second half.Suddenly, the entertainment world saw the value of the Super Bowl halftime show. The NFL has never looked back, courting the biggest starts the music world has to offer.Meanwhile, Michael’s time in the public eye continued when he gave a rare interview to chat show queen Oprah Winfrey at Neverland on February 10, 1993. The show, which was telecast live around the world to an estimated 90 million viewers, was a monumental success for Michael. Along with the Super Bowl, it helped theDangerousalbum rise back up theBillboard200chart to number ten, over a year after its initial release. Geoff Mayfield, who managed theBillboardchart, said he couldn’t remember such resurgence at the end of an album’s life, and theLos Angeles Timesdescribed the shock media blitz as ‘the sudden coming-out of Michael Jackson’ in the United States.Sandy Gallin’s plan to ‘humanise’ Michael had worked. “It made him much more accessible, and made him appear more like a real person,” Gallin said. “Michael was thrilled with the results. I knew I would have been fired immediately if it didn’t work.”In March 1993,Sony wrapped up its marketing campaign forDangerous. “We all breathed a big sigh of relief when it was over,” former Epic marketing executive Dan Beck said. “Michael had done the Oprah interview, the Super Bowl, and the Grammys, and we felt that throughDangerouswe had accomplished a great deal with Michael from an image stand point.”The NFL has a lot to thank Jackson for, too.