#FlashbackFriday Michael Jackson’s first ever Moonwalk
ON May 16 in 1983, Michael Jackson performed on television special Motown 25: Yesterday, Today, Forever, in which he debuted the Moonwalk dance move during the bridge of the song Billie Jean.
That electrifying moment sent the audience into a frenzy and the Moonwalk came to be known as one of Jackson’s signature moves.
Motown 25 chief recording engineer Russ Terana recalled how Jackson surprised everyone with the Moonwalk.
“My crew just went, ‘What the hell was that?’ You could hear the audience going, ‘Awwww-awwwww!’” he said in an interview with Rolling Stone magazine in 2015.
While everyone backstage was congratulating Jackson for his performance, singer Valerie Simpson noticed that something was off with the King Of Pop.
“He couldn’t respond to anybody. He wasn’t back to himself yet. He couldn’t come down to where he had gone to deal with us. It was just very, very eerie,” she said.
Later it was revealed that Jackson thought he had failed his performance because he didn’t stay on his toes long enough.
The same Rolling Stone article also shared that legendary Hollywood actor Fred Astaire called Jackson the next day to praise him for his performance.
“You’re a hell of a mover. Man, you really put them on their a$$es last night,” Astaire reportedly said to Jackson.
That call meant a lot to Jackson.
“It was the greatest compliment I had ever received in my life, and the only one I had ever wanted to believe,” Jackson said.