A stadium full of fans was on its feet. One song had just ended and the band was ready for the next one. Then Michael Jackson stopped everything.
He wasn’t fixing a microphone. He was calling his security team out onto the stage.
One man had a perfect view of what happened next. Jonathan “Sugarfoot” Moffett was sitting at the drums right behind Michael, and he never forgot it.
If the name is new to you, Moffett was Michael’s drummer for years. He played with the Jacksons on their Destiny tour (1979 to 1980), the Triumph tour in 1981 and the Victory tour in 1984. Then he was back behind the kit for Michael’s own HIStory World Tour, which ran from 1996 to 1997. He’s also toured with Madonna and Elton John, so he has seen plenty of big stages and plenty of big stars up close.
Michael, though, was special to him. In 2013 Moffett talked with The National newspaper about his favorite memories of the man he played behind for so long. Some of his favorites were small and personal, the kind of story only someone on that stage would know.
Before we get to the stadium moment, it’s worth hearing Moffett in his own voice, because this podcast is the drummer himself looking back on his years with Michael.
Michael’s longtime drummer looks back on their years together
So, back to the HIStory World Tour.
The music had stopped and the security team was heading for the stage. Anyone in the crowd would have guessed something had gone wrong. Maybe the sound had cut out. Maybe there was a problem with the equipment.
It was neither. Michael had spotted a bug.
A little bug, out on the stage floor, where somebody could easily step on it once the next song started. Michael wasn’t going to let that happen.
“There was a bug on stage and he did not want to crush this bug,” Moffett told The National.
So the King of Pop held the show. Moffett says Michael “called his security team to get the bug before we could start the next song.” A member of his team took the tiny visitor away, and the audience cheered.
The moment was caught on film. Years later, in November 2021, the footage went viral on TikTok. People who had never heard the story finally got to see it for themselves. In the clip, Michael tells the crowd: “I don’t want anybody to step on this.”
A fan has posted the moment on YouTube too, so you can watch how a stadium audience reacted when Michael Jackson paused his own concert for something so small.
Fan footage of Michael pausing his HIStory tour show
Moffett has plenty of other warm memories of Michael, and one of them is about his own name.
Fans know him as Sugarfoot, but Michael had his own name for him. “Michael called me Foot. Most of the other members on tour started calling me that too,” he told The National.
Sometimes Michael went one better. “But on occasions he called me Footery because of my unique foot techniques,” Moffett said.
And Michael couldn’t resist a joke about it. “He would joke that I should open up a foot store with that name.”