Collection

Michael Jackson – Stockholm Olympic Stadion, Stockholm, Sweden, 17 July 1992

Portraits and visual memories from the international music scene

Collection: Meet the Legends

Author: Torleif Svensson

In 1988, through the Pepsi connection around Michael Jackson, I had been promised the chance to photograph him at Madison Square Garden in New York. I bought a cheap flight pass with several stops. My first time in the USA. When I arrived at Madison Square Garden, there were neither tickets nor accreditation waiting for me. Nobody cared who Svensson was. I found out where Michael Jackson’s band was staying and became an exotic Swedish photographer among dancers and musicians. Jennifer Batten was there, the guitarist with the big hair, along with several other colourful figures around the tour. In the end, I sought out the manager Frank DiLeo, the man with the cigar. He did not want any freelance photographer there, but he gave me a free ticket to the next concert. I smuggled a Leica in through my trouser leg and got my first images of Michael Jackson. This image was taken four years later, during the Dangerous World Tour in Stockholm. By then I already knew that the road to an image could sometimes be longer than the concert itself.

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