The 30-Foot Statue Down the Danube

WHAT MOST DON'T KNOW

The HIStory album cover, photographed by Dilip Mehta, depicted Michael as a giant Stalinist-era monument staring out from a Soviet-inspired plaza. To turn the image into reality, Sony commissioned Italian sculptors to build nine identical 30-foot statues, each weighing roughly 8,500 lbs, made of moulded fibreglass and steel. The statues were positioned in Berlin, Eindhoven, Helsinki, Rome, Prague, Milan and London. The Budapest barge launch on June 15, 1995 was the most theatrical: the statue arrived overnight from Bratislava, was placed on a 200-ton barge, and floated down the Danube past the Hungarian parliament during the morning rush hour, with a live string orchestra playing Earth Song on a separate boat alongside. The marketing campaign cost an estimated $30 million — the largest single-album marketing spend in history at that point. Critics savaged the imagery as megalomaniacal; the statues themselves became collectors' items. The London one is held at the National Football Museum in Manchester after being installed outside Fulham FC's Craven Cottage in 2011 (owner Mohamed Al-Fayed was a fan) and later removed.

MJ HIStory Statue Floats Down the Danube, Budapest 1995 — Nine giant statues. Nine countries. One album launch.

SOURCES

• HIStory: Past, Present and Future, Book I — Wikipedia ↗