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THE THRILLER OF ‘VICTORY’ : Snatching profit from the agony of the biggest, splashiest and most troubled rock concert tour in history.

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While Michael Jackson leaped and slithered on stage before 49,415 fans in his final concert appearance a few weeks back, the men who put together the Jacksons “Victory” Tour were sitting in a private glassed-in booth at Dodger Stadium congratulating themselves.

Proclaimed “Victory” presenter Don King, “I am so happy! I am so excited!”

“Ah knock it off, Don,” counseled a less effusive associate who had accompanied the blustery boxing promoter on the Jacksons’ five-month rock ‘n’ roll odyssey.

Within the week, a federal grand jury in New York would indict King on 23 counts of income-tax evasion. Though the charges would apparently be unrelated to the “Victory” Tour, the bejeweled chief cheerleader for the Jacksons would lapse into uncharacteristic public silence.

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But on this final night of the massive tour to promote the Jacksons’ “Victory” LP, King was as flamboyant as ever over the biggest, splashiest--and most troubled--rock concert tour in history: “This is the greatest show ever staged! This is the greatest entertainment spectacular this country’s ever seen!”

At that moment, Michael’s tuxedoed personal manager entered the booth and offered a congratulatory hand to King.

“Good working with you,” Frank Dileo said, solemnly shaking King’s hand and adding with undisguised sarcasm, “Maybe we’ll meet in a bar sometime.”

While the rest of the “Victory” executives laughed, one of them began counting noses and observed that seven of the men who had “made it happen,” including Dileo, were gathered together somewhat harmoniously for the first time since the show hit the road in July.

“Hey,” he said, “it’s the Magnificent Seven!”

Dileo waited for the laughter to die down before he walked out of the booth, harrumphing, “More like the Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight.”

As he opened the door, he was met with a screaming teeny-bopper ovation for the superstar who was performing three stories below on the field of Dodger Stadium.

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Said one of the Jacksons’ attorneys over the din, “Jeez, you believe this? It’s like the ending to a bad Steinbeck novel.”

All of them--promoters, lawyers, advisers, investors--had watched with varying degrees of powerlessness from the very beginning nearly a year before. As the months passed, an indelicate combination of avarice and ego ate away at the Jacksons’ road show and no single force emerged to control the mad scramble for money and notoriety.

The one person who could have unified “Victory” and put a check on the frenzy just wanted to get the tour over with. Michael Jackson made no secret of his disinterest in business details. He left it to his own set of lawyers, publicists and advisers, and to Chuck Sullivan, the Boston promoter that Dileo hand-picked to run the tour.

Sullivan, 42, the Boston attorney who owns the New England Patriots, told The Times in October that he anticipated earning a profit of about $500,000 if he could renegotiate the terms of his contract with the Jacksons. But as the super-costly “Victory” tour was headed for its closing dates in Los Angeles last month, Sullivan was still in the red.

He desperately needed the revenues from those final shows to break even. But Los Angeles almost failed to happen at all when Sullivan stopped payment on a $1.9-million check that was due the Jacksons from their Vancouver shows. That money matter eventually was settled, but promoter and performers were soon battling again . . . over money.

Before the Jacksons would agree to play the last six dates here, they had demanded that Sullivan deposit $3 million in escrow. They finally settled on $1 million. As of New Year’s weekend, the haggling continued over how to divide that $1 million.

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“We’re still in the final death throes,” the Jacksons representative told The Times on condition that his name not be used. “Basically, Sullivan’s still taking the I-said-I’d-pay-you-but-I-really-don’t-want-to stance.”

Sullivan recently told The Times that “discussions have been moving along on a relatively amicable basis.” He still hasn’t broken even, he said, but expects to do so after he has sold off a pair of gasoline-powered electric generators and the lighting fixtures that his Stadium Management Corp. bought for “Victory.” There have been no offers on the portable 365-ton, eight-story stage that the Jacksons built for the tour and Sullivan said he doesn’t anticipate any.

Sullivan spent the two weeks of the L.A. dates recovering from heart trouble. Fast food on the road led to his heart problems, he said, but so did his many quarrels with the Jacksons over money.

Even King agreed that Sullivan accepted a difficult contract at best when he agreed to promote the tour last June. Under the original terms, King and the Jacksons would have received 83.44% of the concert proceeds while Sullivan got 16.56% and was required to pay the costs for virtually the entire tour out of his cut.

As collateral for a $12.5-million loan he obtained from Crocker Bank to make his down payment on the contract, Sullivan put up the Patriots, Sullivan Stadium and a family-owned race track adjacent to the stadium.

“He still could have made it, but none of us realized until Arrowhead how big the stage was,” Jim Murray, Sullivan public relations director, told The Times.

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The pattern was set at Arrowhead Stadium, home of the Kansas City Chiefs, where the first concert was held July 6. The eight-story stage that Michael designed and had built in secret took up a third of the field--rendering useless about a fourth of the 60,000 seats.

At that point Sullivan realized that “Victory” might mean Disaster.

Sullivan began asking for relief from the strict contract on grounds that the ticket potential was less than he anticipated and that the sheer cost of moving the stage and 150 full-time staff was crushing. He canceled a promised $24-million letter of credit due the Jacksons within two weeks of the opening and began seeking price discounts from hotels, advertisers, arenas and even the “Victory” cities.

But even the joyous prospect of Michael Jackson coming to town wasn’t enough to induce some city fathers to waive entertainment taxes or reduce stadium fees.

The Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, courted by Sullivan for more than three months, finally refused “Victory” because Sullivan wanted reduced rent. Coliseum manager Jim Hardy said that Sullivan’s top offer was $50,000 a day to rent the 92,516-seat Coliseum for four days while the Jacksons took in a potential $2.4 million on each of those days.

As he was attempting to cut overhead, Sullivan also worked on easing the contract terms--and King likened Sullivan to a crap shooter who loses and then demands his money back.

But the Jacksons gave some contract concessions. The profit ratio was dropped to 75% for the Jacksons and 25% for Sullivan. Two-thirds of the way through the tour, Sullivan was excused from a contract provision that required him to pay the Jacksons $21 for every “Victory” ticket, whether it was sold or unsold. That provision alone had cost the promoter more than $500,000 because at least 30,000 tickets had gone unsold during the first three months of the tour.

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One source told The Times that unsold ticket totals were closer to 55,000 by the first week in October when the Jacksons agreed to make Sullivan pay only on those tickets that actually had been sold.

It was still not enough. By the time “Victory” landed here, Sullivan was telling associates that he was still as much as $4 million in the red.

“Victory” had been rocky from the start. The original promoter, Rhode Island concert promoter Frank Russo, filed a $40-million breach of contract lawsuit several weeks before the Jacksons ever took to the stage.

The suit, seeking $20 million from the Jacksons and $20 million from King and Jacksons adviser Irving Azoff, is still pending. Russo told The Times that he expects hearings on the suit to begin by spring, but Jackson attorneys are attempting to settle out of court or, barring that, to have the lawsuit moved from Rhode Island to California.

“King and Azoff conspired to turn the Jackson brothers against me,” Russo said.

“On March 29 I was summoned along with two other major national promoters to a Los Angeles studio to make a presentation to all six brothers and everyone associated with them. Three hours later, the Jacksons selected me and my company as the national tour promoter. It was without question the high point of my career.”

But within a few weeks, the Jacksons opted instead for what they believed to be a more lucrative contract bid from promoters Cecil Corbett and Lee Silverman.

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By the end of May, just three weeks before the tour was to begin, Dileo influenced yet another change of promoters. He called on Sullivan, an old friend whose biggest previous pop promotion experience involved bringing Willie Nelson to Sullivan Stadium.

“I would never attempt to handle a National Football League franchise,” Russo said. “I would never attempt a Super Bowl. Why Chuck thought he could handle the biggest rock tour in history, I don’t understand.”

Sullivan didn’t attempt it alone. He initially signed on as co-promoter with San Francisco 49ers owner Edward DeBartolo Jr., but DeBartolo backed out after seeing the harsh contract terms.

The tour that began with a lawsuit finished in December with another. California Sports, owners of the Forum in Inglewood, charged the Jacksons with breach of contract and misrepresentation in a lawsuit filed in Los Angeles Superior Court. Claiming losses of $850,000 when “Victory” veered away from eight Inglewood dates last September, California Sports also is seeking $5 million in punitive damages from each of the Jacksons, Sullivan, Dileo, King, Azoff, tour coordinator Larry Larson, tour accountant Fred Moultrie and Jacksons manager Jack Nance.

Including attorneys’ fees, the suit seeks almost $100 million.

The reason Sullivan gave for canceling the Forum concerts was those lean contract terms. In order to break even, “Victory” had to sell 40,000 tickets per show, Sullivan estimated during an October interview with The Times. The Forum seats a maximum of 16,000.

In between those two lawsuits, Michael’s older brother Jermaine sued “Victory” accountant Fred Moultrie for $1 million, alleging that Moultrie’s fee was excessive. That suit, too, is still pending.

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Other legal actions spawned during the “Victory” Tour include:

A San Francisco artist Ronald McDowell said his pictures were used without permission by Michael Jackson and sued him for $6.5 million on Nov. 30 in San Francisco Superior Court. Two of his pictures were used on the cover of Jackson’s best-selling “Thriller” album, he alleged.

Fred Sanford, a Chicago songwriter, sued CBS Records for $5 million on grounds that Michael Jackson and Paul McCartney recorded the hit “The Girl Is Mine” by plagiarizing it from Sanford’s composition, “Please Love Me Now.”

(Jackson testified in Chicago that the song he wrote came to him in a dream and Sanford’s suit was dismissed as groundless in late December.)

Two Orange County designers--Sandra Simone and Donn Greer of Cinema City Studios in Costa Mesa--filed a $50-million damage suit against the Jacksons, claiming the group used their ideas and musical instruments without payment and credit.

They alleged in their suit filed in late November that the Jacksons failed to pay them for seven space-age guitars and “light-up boots” that they designed for the tour.

They also contended the Jacksons used the firm’s concepts and art designs for the song “Escape From the Planet of the Ant Men” on the Jermaine Jackson album and in the video “Torture” from the “Victory” album.

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A San Fernando Valley man even renewed his 2-year-old suit against Michael and Pepsi-Cola in U.S. District Court, alleging that the singer conspired with the soft drink company to steal sound engineering “trade secrets” from him in order to make the song “Billie Jean” more seductive to consumers when they heard their hero hawking Pepsi to a whole new generation.

“This is our last and final tour,” Michael Jackson hollered from the stage. “It’s been a long 20 years and we love you all!”

It was an extemporaneous outburst at the end of an otherwise rigidly rehearsed concert that Michael and his brothers had performed by rote 55 times.

For those who had wrung all they could out of “Victory,” however, Michael’s 18 impromptu words spoke volumes: On this final night of “Victory,” the money lust and fraternal jealousies had finally been set aside.

It is now safe to say that it had, indeed, turned out to be the biggest rock tour in U.S. history--with an estimated 2.7 million tickets sold in 17 American and three Canadian cities.

Three years ago, about 2 million fans paid to see the Rolling Stones perform in 20 cities, setting the record the Jacksons just broke. Mick Jagger & Co. grossed something in excess of $30 million. Tickets were $15 apiece.

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The Jacksons also were on the road in 1981, stopping in 36 cities. Michael’s phenomenal popularity--spawned by the well-publicized success of his “Thriller” LP--hadn’t yet fully blossomed.

Tickets ranged from $9.50 to $13.50 when they played the Forum that year. The gross from a tour that covered almost twice the geography as the Rolling Stones came to only $5 million.

The five brothers (Jermaine hadn’t returned to the group) split $500,000 after expenses, said a source in the Jacksons organization, noting that by the time Don King put up $3 million in “Victory” seed money 18 months ago, some of the brothers were in financial trouble.

“This was their last chance and they knew it,” the source said of Michael’s brothers. “They wanted to get every penny they could.”

By the time the most expensive and lucrative rock concert tour in U.S. history flashed to a close at Dodger Stadium on Dec. 9, more than 2.3 million tickets were sold.

More than $100 million was generated by ticket, T-shirt and trinket sales. But just who got what is still largely unanswered.

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Up until the last eight concerts, the Jackson brothers made sure that they each collected their 75% from ticket sales within 24 hours of each concert. Each will ultimately earn in excess of $5 million.

Sullivan said Stadium Management Corp. had more than 20,000 mostly temporary employees on the payroll during “Victory’s” five months. Even though he won’t earn the king’s ransom that he figured at the beginning, Sullivan ultimately will profit from his venture, he said.

Stadium Management has licensing rights to the Michael Jackson signature line of clothing--everything from sweaters to jeans. And, although Michaelmania has cooled somewhat domestically, it’s very much alive in the Third World.

“The range of interest in the thing is terrific,” Sullivan said. “There’s a group coming in next week from Japan, Brazil and Western Europe. Australia and South Africa have made staggering proposals. The licensing thing looks like a grand slam.”

Despite his legal troubles, Don King continues to wear diamond stick pins and hand-tailored suits. He continues to jet-set from Europe to Venezuela to Los Angeles and back to his headquarters in Manhattan, pursuing his primary source of income: promoting big-money boxing matches.

The only one who has publicly renounced his claim to any of the payoff is the 26-year-old rock ‘n’ soul heartthrob whom everyone came to see.

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After all the lawsuits are settled and all the breaches of all the contracts have been mended, Michael Joseph Jackson’s earnings will be split by three charities: the T. J. Martell Foundation for Cancer Research, the United Negro College Fund and the Ronald McDonald Camp for Good Times.

According to Internal Revenue Service spokesman Rob Giannangeli, the singer can give up to 50% of his total 1984 income to charities and deduct it from his personal income taxes.

Whether it is high taxes, genuine altruism or some mix of both, Michael Jackson probably has learned well the lesson of heading off bad publicity through charity.

While his five brothers and an army of promoters, accountants, lawyers and assorted others waged lawsuits, personal attacks, charges and countercharges, Michael extricated himself by giving his earnings away. While the others fought and clamored over money, Michael came to dance and sing.

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