“Okay, Michael,” Don calls from the control booth. “Whenever you’re ready. Michael walks onto the stage, casual clothes, jeans, red shirt, fedora. The music starts and then, about a minute into the song, Michael does it. He moonwalks. Eight seconds of gliding backward while his body suggests forward motion, defying physics, defying expectation, creating an illusion so perfect it looks like magic.
The auditorium falls completely silent. Then Smokey Robinson starts clapping, then Linda Ronstadt, then everyone. Don Mischer leans forward in the control booth. “What the hell was that?” His assistant director is frozen. “I don’t know, but we need every camera on that tomorrow.” Diana Ross, standing in the wings, turns to Suzanne de Passe.
“Did you know he could do that?” “No,” Suzanne says, shaking her head. “I don’t think anyone did.” Smokey Robinson walks backstage looking for Michael. He finds him in the hallway drinking water. “Kid,” Smokey says quietly. “I’ve been in this business 40 years. I’ve seen every dancer, every move. What you just did, that doesn’t exist.
You just invented something.” Michael looks down, shy. “It’s not ready yet. I made mistakes.” “Michael, listen to me. Tomorrow night, 47 million people are going to see that and the world is never going to be the same. March 25th, 1983. The night that will change everything.” Michael’s costume designer lays out the outfit. Black sequined jacket, check.
Black pants, slightly short to show his footwork, check. Black fedora, check. One white sequined glove, check. But there’s something unusual about the socks. “Michael,” the designer says, “I think there’s been a mistake. We only have one sequined sock.” Michael smiles. No mistake. One silver sock, one black sock.
But they don’t match. They’re not supposed to match, Michael explains. I want people looking at my feet. The single silver sock will catch the light. It’ll draw the eye exactly where I want it when I moonwalk. Nothing is accidental. Everything serves the illusion. By 7:00 p.m. the Pasadena Civic Auditorium is packed with 3,000 people, celebrities, Motown executives, invited guests, fans who won radio contests.
They’ve come to see the legends, to hear the classics, to celebrate 25 years of Motown. Nobody knows they’re about to witness the moment when popular culture shifts on its axis. The show begins. Diana Ross performs. The Temptations bring the audience to their feet. Marvin Gaye’s smooth vocals fill the auditorium.
Then it’s time for Michael Jackson. First, the Jackson 5 medley. Michael and his brothers perform their greatest hits. The audience loves it, clapping and singing along. Then Michael’s brothers leave the stage. Michael, alone now in his black sequined jacket and silver sock, stands at the microphone. “I like those songs,” Michael says to the audience, “but especially I like the new songs.
” The opening beat of Billie Jean begins. Michael starts to move, spins, poses. The crowd is already on its feet. And then, at 1 minute and 28 seconds into the performance, it happens. Michael poses, weight on his right leg, left leg pointed. Then he begins to glide backward, smooth as silk. His body suggests he’s walking forward, but he moves backward across the stage as if the floor has turned to ice. 8 seconds.
That’s all it is. 8 seconds of the impossible made real. The audience erupts. Not polite applause, a roar, a a scream of collective astonishment. 3,000 people reacting to something they have never seen before and can’t quite believe they’re seeing now. In the control booth, Don Mischer is yelling into his headset.
Camera three, stay on his feet. Camera one, get his face. In the audience, people are grabbing the arms of those next to them. Did you see that? How did he do that? Backstage, members of the Temptations and the Supremes are watching monitors. Their jaws literally dropped open. Michael continues dancing, spins and poses, but the moonwalk is all anyone will remember.
When the performance ends, the standing ovation lasts so long the show falls behind schedule by four minutes. Michael walks off stage, away from the cameras, away from the applause that’s still thundering from the auditorium, and he starts to cry. His manager rushes over. Michael, what’s wrong? That was incredible.
Everyone’s going crazy out there. But Michael is shaking his head, tears streaming down his face. It wasn’t good enough, he says. I could have done better. The spin on the second verse was sloppy. I should have held the final pose longer. This is Michael Jackson’s curse and his gift. The performance that just blew everyone’s mind, the eight seconds that will change dance history, it’s not good enough for him.
He sees flaws no one else can see. He demands perfection that exceeds what anyone else thinks is possible. That night, after the taping ends, Michael goes home to his family’s estate in Encino. He’s exhausted, emotionally drained, still unsure about his performance. At 10:37 p.m. the phone rings. Katherine Jackson answers.
Hello? Is this Michael Jackson’s residence? An elderly voice asks. Yes, it is. May I ask who’s calling? This is Fred Astaire. I’d like to speak with Michael if he’s available. Katherine nearly drops the phone. Fred Astaire, the Fred Astaire, calling her house, asking for Michael. She calls upstairs, “Michael, phone for you.
” “Who is it, Mother?” Katherine pauses, not quite believing the words she’s about to say. “It’s Fred Astaire.” Michael rushes downstairs, convinced there must be some mistake. Fred Astaire doesn’t call people. Fred Astaire is a legend, an icon, someone who exists in old movies and Hollywood history. But it really is him.
“Is this Michael?” “Yes, sir. Mr. Astaire, this is Michael.” “I watched the special tonight. I taped it and I just watched it again.” Michael holds his breath. “You’re a hell of a mover, kid. You really put them on their asses last night.” Michael can’t speak. The greatest dancer of the 20th century is calling him a hell of a mover. It’s impossible.
It’s wonderful. It’s the validation Michael has craved his entire career. Fred continues, “You’re an angry dancer. I’m the same way. I used to do the same thing with my cane. That moonwalk or whatever you call it, that was something special. You’ve got it, kid. You’ve really got it.” When Michael hangs up the phone 10 minutes later, he’s crying again, but this time they aren’t tears of disappointment.
They’re tears of joy, relief, validation from the one person whose opinion matters most. Katherine finds him sitting on the kitchen floor, phone still in his hand, face wet with tears. “Baby, what did he say?” Michael looks up at his mother. “He said I’ve got it, Mama. Fred Astaire said I’ve got it.” The Motown 25 special airs on NBC on May 16th, 1983, almost 2 months after it was taped.
But something happens the very next morning that tells Don Mischer the show is going to be special. Mischer is in Washington, D.C., scheduled to interview First Lady Nancy Reagan. He walks into his hotel lobby. Everyone is talking about Michael Jackson. He gets in a taxi to go to the White House.
The driver is talking about Michael Jackson. In the East Wing, waiting to meet the First Lady, he overhears staff members talking about Michael Jackson. “Somehow,” Mesher said years later, “even though the show hadn’t aired yet, word had gotten out. People who’d been in that audience were calling friends, describing what they’d seen.
It was spreading like wildfire. When Motown 25 finally airs, 47 million people watch. That’s 47 million in a country of 230 million people. One out of every five Americans tunes in. The next day, everyone is trying to moonwalk. Kids in school hallways, adults in office buildings. Dance studios add moonwalk classes.
Music stores can’t keep Thriller in stock. The album, which had been released in November 1982, explodes. It will go on to become the best-selling album of all time. And that eight-second moonwalk plays a significant role. But the moonwalk is more than just a dance move. It’s a cultural moment that transcends music and entertainment.
For the first time in the television era, white kids in suburban America are spending their allowance money to buy an album by a young black artist and practicing his dance moves in their living rooms. Cultural barriers that had stood for decades begin to crumble. Michael Jackson isn’t just a performer. He’s a unifier. Fred Astaire, who lives until 1987, sometimes does a little moonwalk with his fingers when he sees Michael at industry events.
It’s his way of acknowledging the younger dancer who took the art form he loved and pushed it into the future. Michael performs the moonwalk thousands of times after that March night in 1983. He perfects it, adds variations, makes it even smoother, even more impossible-looking. But nothing ever captures the magic of that first public performance.
The surprise, the audacity, the moment when 3,000 people saw something they’d never seen before. March 25th, 1983. 10:37 p.m. An 83-year-old legend calls a 24-year-old innovator to pass the torch. Fred Astaire is telling Michael Jackson that he’s worthy, that he’s taken dance to a new place, that the tradition will continue in good hands. 8 seconds.
That’s all the moonwalk was in that first performance. But, in those 8 seconds, Michael Jackson showed the world that the impossible was possible, that artists could still surprise us, that there were still new moves to discover. And somewhere, Fred Astaire was smiling, his fingers doing a little moonwalk on the arm of his chair, knowing that the art he loved would live on.
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