On 5 February 1981, Diana Ross was mid-song at The Forum in Inglewood, California, performing her enormous hit “Upside Down.” The show was being filmed for a CBS television special. Partway through the number, she stopped, turned to the crowd, and asked a question.
“Can I get somebody to dance with me? Michael, would you come up?”
A 22-year-old Michael Jackson got up out of the audience and walked onto the platform.
He was on that stage for barely a minute. He danced with her, took the microphone, and sang a funkier version of her own song back at her. And it became one of the most replayed moments of both their early careers.
“Upside Down” – Michael Jackson at Diana Ross Concert (1980)
To understand why it worked, you need to know how far back those two went. Diana Ross helped introduce the Jackson 5 to America at the start of the 1970s, when Michael was eleven. She was Motown royalty, and he was a child. By 1981 he had released Off the Wall, his first great solo album, and the balance had shifted — but the affection had not.
The footage ended up in a CBS special simply called Diana, which aired on 2 March 1981. It ran about 50 minutes and combined concert footage from The Forum with studio material. It was made to capitalize on her hugely successful 1980 album of the same name.
Michael Jackson – Rock With You (Live duet with Diana Ross) 1979
But the best bit is the studio segment. Michael, dressed in white, performs “Rock with You” in an intimate nightclub setting. Partway through, Diana appears on a balcony and comes running down the stairs to join him. They finish the song together, in matching outfits, with her following his dance lead rather than the other way round.
And then they talk, and the exchange is perfect. She tells him, “I love to sing your songs.” He points out — reasonably — that she has an enormous catalog of hits of her own.
Her reply: “But I want your hits.”
They also performed “Ease on Down the Road” together, from The Wiz, the film that had brought them together on set in 1978 — with Quincy Jones playing piano. Quincy had met Michael on that film. That meeting led to Off the Wall, Thriller, and Bad.
Everything that made Michael Jackson the King of Pop runs through that one friendship.