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"HIStory World Tour" Production Rehearsals

Michael Prince, studio engineer, The MJCast, Episode 52 (March 19, 2017)

Pretty much, we were rehearsing the entire summer, 'cause I remember how hot it was, especially rehearsing for the HIStory Tour. The final production rehearsals, before we went to Europe and did more production rehearsals, we're in a big, big airplane hangar at San Bernardino Airport, and this place was not air conditioned, and it was about 110 degrees [Fahrenheit]... I just remember, I would just sit there and I would count the drops of water falling off my face, well for fun, every once in awhile, and it was just ridiculously hot. You could barely move. And a little interesting story... Brad is an airplane pilot, and he was working on the pre-production of the music in the studio, and here in L.A., he would drive his car to the Van Nuys Airport, and he would fly a little single-engine plane to the San Bernardino Airport and so everybody else is driving there, right? And then right around rehearsal time, you see this plane pull up [laughs] right up to where the door is and he'd turn the engine off, and he would pop out of the plane, and he'd [flown] home every night. I thought that was really cool. How many people get to fly to rehearsal and fly back? He may be the only person in history that's ever done that, that I know of... But I just remember how hot that was, and it was pretty good for all of us, because if you could live through that, you pretty much knew you were good for a really long, arduous tour. And they finally brought an air conditioner in. I remember watching them bring in this--one of those big auxiliary units, and they're running these hoses and I'm just going, "Wow, this is amazing." This was like the last week. "We're finally gonna get air conditioning", and, guess what, it was all pointing right where Michael stood. So we're still back there just like sweating and sweating and sweating. But at least where Michael was there was some nice cold air, so whenever he wasn't there, we would just take turns running out and just standing there for about two minutes. The only bad thing about it is, you felt awful as soon as you walked away again. So you started to learn after one or two times, it's better just to stay in the heat.