Michael Jackson Room 1818 Concorde Hotel suite

by Zimmermann 054: Michael Jackson

What gets me about the Concorde Hotel suite in Kuala Lumpur is how much of Michael is still in there. He checked into Room 1818 in 1996 ahead of the HIStory World Tour shows, and the space has been kept like a musical sanctuary frozen in time. Walk in and a portrait meets you with 'Saya cinta Malaysia' in gold. Beyond that: a painting of MJ by Dato Imuda carrying his own signature, unpublished shots from the Kuala Lumpur stay, scraps of handwriting where he worked out lines, and the clothes he shed after fans partly ripped them reaching for him. Everything tied to Merdeka Stadium sits untouched, and the room keeps the hush of a guy soft spoken offstage and electric on it. Getting in isn't easy. The hotel has teamed with a few local radio stations for very small special openings, enough for a handful of lucky fans to see it. Pretty much literally a time capsule, dude.