Status: 06/12/2022 05:00 a.m
It’s been exactly a quarter of a century since the “King of Pop” visited Schleswig-Holstein. His appearance on the Nordmarksportfeld is legendary to this day.
Memories are awakened on the Norder. Back then, Stefan Wolf was very close as the organizer.
He remembers it well. Stefan Wolf keeps pointing in different directions while standing on the deserted Nordmarksportfeld in Kiel. “There was the VIP area, over there the stage, on the other side of the site there were two entrances,” says Wolf. 25 years ago he was the local promoter. He had already experienced a lot in this job before. But what Michael Jackson brought to the stage in Kiel and what his managers expected in terms of organization were completely new dimensions for Schleswig-Holstein.
A street on the Nordmarksportfeld for the “King of Pop”
There were very precise instructions from the USA, says Stefan Wolf. “Among other things, a separate driveway for Jackson’s limousine had to be built under the stage,” explains Wolf. The plan: quickly get out of the car and into the VIP area. The pop king was considered extremely shy of the public. But that was not all. “There were street-named areas backstage, such as ‘Michael Jackson Road’ and ‘Marcel Avram Street’ – a maximum security area that only Jackson himself and his closest associates were allowed to enter.” Not even organizer Stefan Wolf was allowed to enter this area.
Marcel Avram – the man with his own street – is a concert manager from Frankfurt. Contact with the “King of Pop” ran through him and his team. “They had Jackson under contract, among others. Because we had a very good working relationship with them, they asked us at some point: ‘Don’t you have a venue in the north for a really big Michael Jackson concert?’ That’s when it occurred to me: the Nordmarksportfeld is huge,” remembers Wolf.
A Genesis concert was used as a kind of dress rehearsal. The rock band had played at the “Norder” a good year earlier, and everything went smoothly.
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1997: Jackson “History” tour with lots of equipment
After the contract was signed, the organization began. It lasted a good six months, with the first deliveries arriving a few weeks before the concert: “I underestimated the amount of equipment,” Stefan Wolf laughs today. The equipment came to Hohn near Rendsburg in several transport planes. Then everything was reloaded and it went on to Kiel by truck.
For example, there was an oversized rocket that belonged to the stage. Michael Jackson stepped out of it at the beginning of the concert. An absolute sensation at the time. “It must have been about 20 trucks – around 30 tons -” estimates Burchard Dreibach. The entrepreneur built the gigantic stage with his crew. “It took a whole week. 24 meters wide and twelve meters high, that was about the dimensions”. The man with the long, gray hair has personal dedications from Joe Cocker and Whitney Housten hanging in his office in Kiel, he has experienced a lot in the pop business – but he also says: “The Michael Jackson concert was definitely ‘something very special, even no question.”
Dark clouds over the Nordmarksportfeld shortly before Jackon’s performance
As concert promoter Stefan Wolf continues to stroll across the Nordmarksportfeld, he still remembers a story that most of the 55,000 fans 25 years ago probably didn’t even notice. The legendary concert almost didn’t take place at all. “At some point the clouds got darker and darker over the Nordmarksportfeld. We had to call the maritime weather service.” And yes, the Seetwetterdienst confirmed the fears of the organizing team. A rain area headed towards the site. But it was only a short shower, they said at the time. “Well, this short shower turned into a huge downpour. As if someone had turned on the faucet. So we got the crisis management team together and considered canceling it completely,” says Stefan Wolf. “But as soon as the ‘King of Pop’ was in town, the cloud cover ripped open. Maybe Michael Jackson actually had a good connection to the weather gods. Thank God.”
When organizer Stefan Wolf enters the grounds of the Nordmarksportfeld today, memories are awakened. “It was such a great concert, everyone had a great evening. The ‘King of Pop’ in Kiel and I was lucky enough to be a part of it,” enthuses Stefan Wolf, even a quarter of a century later.
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