Ken Ehrlich, the longtime executive producer of the Grammy Awards who staged televised performances by Jackson half a dozen times, met with the performer at Staples on Wednesday to discuss a television project. "He was very warm and funny. He was having a good time," Ehrlich said.
After the meeting, the singer invited Ehrlich to stay and watch him rehearse.
The show was still a work in progress, with props that Ehrlich recalled as "looking pretty magical" strewn about the venue's floor.
"What I saw that night was a person who was still in the process of learning the show," Ehrlich said. "I watched Kenny Ortega walk him through some stage directions. I know [Michael's] method, and there's a certain reticence when he's not in full make-up and wardrobe to 'give it.' He would have been ready by the time he got to London."
Ehrlich said Jackson showed his pervasive influence: "The hair on the back of my neck stood up. I wasn't watching Justin Timberlake or Chris Brown or Usher or any of the hundreds of acts that have taken from Michael. The modern inheritors of his art. It was him."
Jackson hired Ed Alonzo -- a concert magician-comedian known as "the Misfit of Magic," who also worked on Britney Spears' "Circus" tour -- to create two set-piece illusions for his London shows. One illusion set to the opening number involved an illuminated sphere that would have floated around the singer's body, flown out above the audience and then landed back in Jackson's hand before immolating in a blaze of light.
Alonzo recalled that the singer arrived at Staples around 6:30 p.m. Wednesday but did not begin rehearsing until 9, complaining -- perhaps facetiously, the magician said -- of laryngitis.
"He looked great and had great energy. He wasn't singing at full level, but it was as beautiful as ever," Alonzo said. "He went from one number to the other. 'Let's do that again.' He wanted to look at props for the 'Thriller' number, a gigantic spider. He was dancing, singing, joking with the crew. If he was having any aches or pains, nobody knew about it that night."
Frank DiLeo, Jackson's manager, said the singer seemed upbeat and ready for the challenges of mounting a comeback that he had hoped would restore his superstardom -- reinstating his cultural relevance, erasing part of his massive debt and finally allowing his three children to understand why fans worldwide herald him as the King of Pop.
"He just told me how happy he was and that things were working out the way he wanted," DiLeo said.
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