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Elizabeth Merrill
THE LAST SUPER BOWL halftime show for Up with People featured a dizzying array of pastel clothes, tinsel tambourines and perpetual smiles. The group cut loose with a daring Bruce Springsteen/Huey Lewis/Stevie Wonder/Kenny Loggins cover medley.
Jill Johnson has no regrets. She was young and far away from her home in Mallard, Iowa, and its sign that reads Ā«We’re Friendly Ducks.Ā» It was the 1980s.
Collar stretched high and blazer sleeves rolled up, Johnson tickled the synthesizer keys with one hand and danced to the high-octane techno song Ā«Talkin’ With My Feet.Ā» Her impossibly large (and potentially hazardous) earrings bounced along to the beat.
Ā«I’ve got a tingle down in my shoes.
A crazy itch that I just can’t lose …Ā»
OK, so it wasn’t BeyoncĆ©, or Prince doing Ā«Purple RainĀ» in a downpour.
Up with People never claimed to be rock stars. Or professionals. It was a song-and-dance ensemble made up mostly of college students that traveled the world promoting multiculturalism and positivity. There were about 600 of them in the Superdome in New Orleans that night at Super Bowl XX.
The NFL spent $1 million for the first time on the 1986 show, called Ā«Beat of the Future,Ā» which included a futuristic floating city and planets hovering overhead. A planet caught fire the night before and the city never really materialized because of technical difficulties. Still, the group managed an enthusiastic 12-minute pitch for love, acceptance and worldwide harmony.
Jim Steeg, a longtime NFL exec who was in charge of halftime entertainment from 1979 to 2005, remembers making his way up to commissioner Pete Rozelle’s box after the performance.
Ā«He turned to me,Ā» Steeg says of Rozelle, Ā«and said, ‘Never f—ing again.Ā»
told i-D Magazine in an interview published in September that he was fearful ICE would target his shows if he performed in the United States. Green Day, which will perform prior to kickoff, and its front man, Billie Joe Armstrong, also have openly criticized Trump. The president hasn’t hidden his distaste for the acts, recently telling the New York Post, Ā«I’m anti-them. I think it’s a terrible choice. All it does is sow hatred. Terrible.Ā»
Turning Point USA, a conservative group founded by the late Charlie Kirk, promises a counterprogramming option called Ā«The All-American Halftime Show.Ā»
All of this comes on the heels of a federal immigration crackdown and the Department of Homeland Security’s Jan. 24 deadly shooting of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis.
The tense backdrop is a stark contrast to the 1986 Super Bowl, which showcased the lovable Bears, fresh off their hit rap Ā«Super Bowl Shuffle.Ā» Ā«We’re not here to start no trouble,Ā» the chorus thumped. Ā«We’re just here to do the Super Bowl Shuffle.Ā» Arguably the biggest controversy heading into the game centered on quarterback Jim McMahon’s rebellious headbands.
Up with People fit the vibe.
Ā«In Living Color.Ā» While Jim Carrey exploded in his Ā«Fire Marshal BillĀ» skit, back in Minneapolis, Olympians skated on plastic ice and Gloria Estefan and the University of Minnesota’s marching band performed in a show called Ā«Winter Magic.Ā»
Fox took away a chunk of the NFL’s viewership, prompting seismic changes the following year. The NFL responded with a halftime dubbed Ā«An Unprecedented Super Bowl Spectacular Starring Michael Jackson.Ā»
Steeg says it took about four months to land the megastar. They’d never held a news conference about Super Bowl halftime talent before, and then there they were, in the grand ballroom at the Century Plaza Hotel in Beverly Hills, the room Ā«packed to the gills.Ā»
Jackson’s people, who were not particularly versed in football or the Super Bowl, asked if they could move the game three hours back so he could perform in the dark. That obviously did not happen.
The halftime ratings wound up being higher than the actual game’s, Steeg says, and it changed the magnitude of the show and its participants. But it didn’t stop the critiques.
The bigger the acts, the more controversy. There was the Justin Timberlake-Janet Jackson Ā«wardrobe malfunctionĀ» in 2004 and the M.I.A. middle finger in 2012. Last year, complaints focused on a backup dancer who displayed a Palestinian/Sudanese flag, and claims that Kendrick Lamar projected anti-Americanism. Still, his performance garnered higher ratings than the actual game. Ten of the past 15 Super Bowl halftime shows have drawn at least 110 million viewers.
Ā«You’re always going to get letters and complaints about whatever,Ā» Steeg says. Ā«Back when Michael [Jackson] did his, I can’t tell you the number of letters we got [from] people complaining about the number of times he grabbed his crotch.Ā»
CHRIS CONNELLY REMEMBERS watching an hourlong Up with People special on TV when he was a grade schooler in the mid-1960s.
His family bought the record.
All these years later, the former MTV reporter who currently works as a journalist for ABC and ESPN can still recite the lyrics that served as a sort of moral compass for young America.
Ā«You can’t live crooked and think straight. …
Clean up the nation before it’s too late.Ā»
Ā«And that tells you what Up with People was at that juncture,Ā» Connelly says. Ā«They were this heavily corporate-backed singing group that was terrified of rock and roll, that was terrified of the counterculture, the burgeoning counterculture of the Beatles and Bob Dylan.
Ā«So they tried to use what looked like folk music in the manner of the Kingston Trio or something like that to send very different messages into popular culture.Ā»
Up with People was an offshoot of Moral Re-Armament, an international ideology focused on the tenets of honesty, purity, unselfishness and love. In the 1940s, MRA and its followers were believed to be effective in fighting off communism, and later were considered a counter to the hippies, offering a squeaky-clean, Christian conservative view that was perceived by some as fascism.
J. Blanton Belk founded Up with People in 1965. His daughter, Jenny Belk, was part of the 1986 halftime show. She acknowledges that the earlier iteration carried a cultlike stigma. But she says Up with People actually was formed by something very Dylanesque: a hootenanny.
In the summer of 1965, college students throughout the country were concerned about the Vietnam War and what was happening throughout the world.
Ā«So they had a conference in Michigan and they said, ‘Come with your ideas. What do you want to say?'Ā» Belk says. Ā«You know, non-violence is the best way to protest.
Ā«They came together, they sang songs, one of which was ‘Up with People.’ And there were songs about peace and racial equality and all that stuff that is so important today.Ā»
Belk says her father, who turns 101 this month, felt as if Moral Re-Armament had become stuck in its ways, and was judgmental and Ā«stuffy.Ā» J. Blanton Belk wanted a younger and more positive view of the world. In 1968, Up with People became a 501(c) nonprofit organization.
Large groups of young people between age 18 and 25 traveled the world performing musical shows and doing community service. Up with People members met with world leaders and popes and traveled to China and Berlin. They paid tuition for the yearlong experience and stayed with host families.
They headlined their first Super Bowl halftime in 1976, celebrating America’s bicentennial.
The group, which also performed at the White House and the Olympics over the years, became part of pop culture. Remember the Ā«The CarltonĀ» dance? Up with People alums believe their signature swing clap inspired it. The act was parodied twice on Ā«The SimpsonsĀ» with a freshly scrubbed band called Ā«Hooray for Everything.Ā» In one scene, Homer Simpson comes upon one of their songs while driving and says, Ā«D’oh, I love those kids. They’ve got such a great attitude.Ā»
PAT MURPHY STOOD in front of the bathroom mirror the night before Super Bowl XX and questioned his life choices.
Ā«Who do you think you are?Ā» he asked himself.
Murphy didn’t tell most of his friends back home in the Philadelphia area that he was performing because he didn’t want them to laugh at him if he messed up. The audio for the entire show was prerecorded — lip-synching was common in those days during Super Bowl halftimes because of the lack of technology, and how could you mike up hundreds of people? — but that didn’t alleviate Murphy’s fears.
He was set to perform a song called Ā«Jammin’,Ā» his face flashing on and off the screen for 2 minutes and 10 seconds.
Ā«I just had to say to myself, ‘Look, I can’t get out of it now,'Ā» Murphy says. Ā«Suck it up.Ā»
He stayed up late, until nearly midnight.
In the months leading up to the game, four casts located in different parts of the world — some as far away as China — rehearsed in groups. There was no FaceTime to bring them together during their practices.
On Jan. 2, three weeks before the game, they gathered in New Orleans for final preparations. Jenny Belk was part of the show. Her lineage did not, however, earn her a spot on the stage with the singers and dancers.
Ā«My sister and I both were not talented in the performing arts,Ā» she says. Ā«I have rhythm. I can follow the steps, and I can sing like someone who sings in the shower, but no … So I was very much in the back, and I loved that.Ā»
To this day, Belk has a hard time looking at red beans and rice — or Pizza Hut — since it’s pretty much what they subsisted on. They rehearsed in a warehouse from 9 to 5. Reebok gave each of the roughly 600 cast members a little swag for their efforts — one pair of white sneakers — that they wore at the halftime show, which was a tribute to Martin Luther King Jr.
During the first half of the game, Up with People waited on folding chairs, stunningly close to the field.
The clock ran down, the Bears went into the locker room up 23-3 — not exactly the best scenario for halftime-show watchers. But Up with People was undeterred.
The lights dimmed, the stage illuminated, and a slow, majestic instrumental filled the Superdome, followed by a guitar riff. Then a swarm of people — tiny white dots on the TV screen — ran off the stage in lines. The camera zoomed in, and about three dozen performers stood on stage.
Ā«Hey, somebody turn it up,Ā» a young man in a multicolored fluorescent sweater sang at the highest tier of the stage. Ā«Yeah, something in the sound is changin’.Ā»
What followed was an explosion of thin ties, feathered hair, and youthful energy set to lip synch — all with perpetual smiles. Saxophones swayed, electric guitars jammed, and backup singers spun in circles. A guy with a tambourine was so amped he jumped up and down.
The public address announcer introduced the next song.
The beat of the future is all around us. It’s the players on the field, the kid in the stands dreaming of being out there himself someday. It’s a feeling that’s hard to describe, and when you can’t say it with words you can always say it with your feet.
Ā«Talkin’ With My FeetĀ» was considered a filler song, one you get through to move on to more meaningful songs. Years later, descriptions of the song from various cast members range from Ā«sillyĀ» to Ā«it sucked.Ā» But the crowd apparently found it catchy.
It was a tension point for Jenny Belk, one of the people on the field tasked with marching in formation to make four giant feet. Months were spent working on this formation, but then the foot came in tight, nearly crashing into a camera man, and Belk’s foot looked like a popsicle.
The show went on. Dressed in a yellow shirt, and flanked by two Ā«backup singers,Ā» Murphy strutted, sidestepped and sang with confidence. He held his arm in the air as he mouthed the last Jammin’, remembering one of the tricks of their training.
Ā«If you’re on a close-up,Ā» he says, Ā«just hold the mic over your lips so that nobody can really see.
The public address voice boomed over for one last song.
Ā«As our small planet travels through the universe and those of us who live here try to imagine the future, we share Dr. King’s dream that we’ll be there someday in a world where there’s room for every nation, every race, every creed.Ā»
Then cast members walked across the stage waving flags from different countries for the song Ā«Room for Everyone.Ā» Jenny Belk says it gave her chills.
Ā«At that moment, I didn’t feel like 10 million eyes were on us,Ā» she says. Ā«I just was kind of caught up in the excitement of it.Ā»
THEY DID NOT stop at Sardi’s for the rave reviews. Outside of the loving opinions from family and friends, there weren’t many of them.
Super Bowl XX was anticlimactic, as the Chicago Bears pummeled the New England Patriots 46-10. Reviews of the halftime show landed with a similar thud.
For years, various outlets have reported that Rozelle held an emergency meeting the next day and told everyone there were three words he never wanted to hear again: Ā«Up with People.Ā»
Steeg says that meeting never happened — no need after Rozelle made his feelings quite clear in his box right after halftime.
But Steeg recalls Rozelle’s decision wasn’t necessarily a commentary on cheesy lyrics or dance moves. He says it was more of a reflection on an Ā«overly ambitiousĀ» show with expensive props that didn’t translate to television.
Steeg, himself, has nothing negative to say about Up with People’s performance.
Still, in the weeks leading up to every Super Bowl, all-time lists are abundant, and that 1986 crew is sometimes mentioned as one of the worst ever.
Decades after their last show, Entertainment Weekly said, Ā«If you’re too young to remember Up with People, let’s put it this way — they are the music that gets played in hell’s waiting room.Ā»
Belk shrugs most of it off.
A finite number of souls can say they’ve performed on the halftime stage of the Super Bowl, one of the biggest sporting events in the world, and Belk and thousands of other seemingly average citizens are among them.
Ā«I think most people that make fun of it didn’t understand it,Ā» she says. Ā«They didn’t know what we were doing. They just saw these kids and they’re like, ‘Oh, everybody’s smiling.’ Well, everybody’s also smiling on Broadway or, you know, if you’re a cheerleader or if you’re a dancer.Ā»
They don’t let it ruin their memories, or the enormity of what they did. They’re bound by that moment, and everything that led up to it. Every January, as the NFL season winds down, Jill Johnson, now a film and TV exec, inevitably plays a YouTube video of the Super Bowl XX halftime show, and she calls or texts old castmates and they laugh and lean into it.
She says Up with People led her to a life that most little girls growing up in rural Iowa couldn’t dream of having. It gave her the fearlessness to research whales in the Mediterranean Sea, and exposed her to different cultures and beliefs.
She believes that if Up with People is still being lambasted after all these years, it means it has relevance in a world that lacks an attention span.
Ā«Do I think it was a bad halftime show? Not for the time,Ā» she says. Ā«If you were going to insert Up with People into a Super Bowl halftime show now, it would be like, ‘How could you possibly come to that conclusion?’
Ā«Because now they’re so big and the expectations are so high and there’s so much money on the line with advertisers.Ā»
The world was on the precipice of change after that final show. Less than 36 hours after the Bears were crowned champions, the space shuttle Challenger broke apart 73 seconds into its flight, killing all seven members on board. One of the astronauts — Christa McAuliffe — was a schoolteacher, and many children watched the tragedy live.
Three months after that came the Chernobyl nuclear power plant catastrophe.
Ā«It was not simpler times,Ā» Johnson says. Ā«That’s what makes me crazy.
Ā«Tell me when it was a simpler time,Ā» she says, citing the Great Depression in the 1930s and wars in the decades that followed.
Ā«Well, right now, the last couple weeks were kind of f—ed up. You know what? I have a bright North Star. We will work stuff out. You have to, because people are innately good. I’m not going to stop believing in people. I’m not going to stop believing in the stuff that I sang about for years.Ā»
