Amnesty’s Jack Healey: Low-Key, but Not Down Over L.A. Turnout

For a man responsible for cheerleading a human rights organization in the United States, Jack Healey--the guiding force behind the “Human Rights Now!” tour--sounded surprisingly downbeat backstage Wednesday night at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.

Though he cited the successes of the tour in promoting human rights causes, Healey was plainly concerned about the toll that the global rock tour--now at the halfway point in its six-week schedule--was taking on the staff and crew.

“The guys who set up and strike the lighting and sound gear for each show have started calling me ‘Mr. 24,’ ” Healey said with a smile, referring to Article 24 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which calls for “reasonable limitations of work hours.”

“This tour is really working them, and everybody, too hard,” Healey added soberly, turning to glance at singer Tracy Chapman whose performance was being shown on backstage monitors. “Some of the rewards of this tour have been spectacular, but . . . (the workload) makes me and everyone wonder if this tour won’t be the last for a while,” Healey said.

“I really do think we’ve gone to about every place we could go. Where should we go next? For a whole-Earth satellite link-up? To the moon?”

Amnesty International faces a loss as high as $5 million in mounting the 13-country tour. The Reebok Foundation, however, has underwritten the tour for any loss up to $10 million.

Los Angeles was reportedly the only stop on the tour to date that hasn’t sold out. According to concert promoter Avalon Attractions, 56,394 seats were sold out of 65,000. Box-office receipts reached nearly $2 million, Avalon reported.

While slightly disappointed by the L.A. turnout, Healey said that the tour’s message on behalf of individual political and cultural freedom has been successfully delivered in such countries such as Hungary and Costa Rica, which normally are not responsive to Amnesty.

“This show is really firing people up in those countries about the declaration the way ‘Conspiracy of Hope’ (the first Amnesty tour, in 1986) did in the U.S.,” Healey said. Describing the excitement generated by the show in Costa Rica’s capital city of San Jose, Healey beamed and quipped: “We played in a hurricane there, man--but we outshouted it!”