Foundation Statement on the Quality of Michael Jackson’s Wembley Concert

After the release of the BAD25 collection, which has thrilled Michael Jackson fans around the world, you’re aware.

The King of Pop Foundation has learned about fans’ concerns regarding the quality of the Wembley concert, which will be sold as part of this collection three months from now.

eMey.com has obtained a copy of the Foundation’s online letter that explains this issue. The letter, with some minor edits, reads as follows:

Release via the InternetTo be received by: Jeff Jampol (Jeff Jampol - General Manager of the Michael Jackson Foundation’s Online Team)From: John Branca & McClain (John Branca & McClain - Co-Executors of the Michael Jackson Foundation)Date: May 31, 2012File number: 1019.1.5.3Regarding: The release of BAD25

“Seeing the enthusiasm of the fan community for the release of the BAD25 collection has moved us. Questions have been raised about the Wembley concert DVD. While the press statement is not a place to answer these questions, we are providing you with additional information through this channel:

The U-matic tapes recorded from Michael Jackson’s concerts in Europe and America were all sent to the storage facility for these products in Los Angeles. Unfortunately, sometimes these tapes were taken out of their special cases, but were not put back in. After 25 years, despite extensive review, we do not know where some of these tapes are. Although we are certain that the Wembley concert tape was sent to the storage facility, we have not been able to locate it. Also, due to audio quality issues with the U-matic tapes, the other concerts were not usable for our intended purpose.

We know that Michael had made VHS copies of certain specific concerts he wanted to watch. But we do not know exactly which of these concerts were recorded on VHS. We finally found Michael’s personal VHS copy of the Wembley concert featuring Prince Charles and Princess Diana, which was nothing short of a miracle for us.

While we were still searching for the U-matic version of the Wembley concert, we also searched the audio archives recorded from all concerts, including the Wembley concert. To our great disappointment, the concert audio was recorded based on playback through speakers, and it was determined that the Wembley concert is the only multi-track recording from this tour. The other tour concerts that are available on VHS or U-matic tapes all used live audio mixing techniques, which means we cannot raise the audio quality of these concerts for re-release. Therefore, the Wembley concert is the only available option for obtaining a live audio album.

Since we were going to include a DVD of the BAD tour concerts in the BAD25 collection, the Wembley concert was the only option available to us. For using the visuals, we had only two choices: using the U-matic tape of another concert, or the VHS tape of the Wembley concert. Of course, using the U-matic tape and producing a DVD from it would have been cheaper and simpler for the Foundation than going through the trouble of improving the VHS tape quality. But in that case, we would have lost the magical experience that this concert provides to us and to fans through high-quality audio and video.

In the end, we tried to achieve the best possible quality by using an advanced lab that NASA uses to enhance its own VHS tapes.

We could also have released the Japan concert from the first leg of this tour. However, that concert is a recreation of the Victory Tour, along with only two songs from the album Bad—Bad and I Just Can’t Stop Loving You—at the end. In our view, this was not a concert that could satisfy fans.

We could have dismissed the idea of releasing a DVD of the Bad tour and hoped that one day we would find the U-matic tape of the Wembley concert. But ultimately, we decided to share a magical experience with fans by releasing this concert. We believe that when this collection is released in September, you will agree that we made the right decision.”

To receive the original PDF version of this letter, click.

Source: eMJey.com / MJOnline™, The Official Online Team of The Michael Jackson Estate