THE LAST OF JACKSON

8-AD-MJ
THE LAST MICHAEL JACKSON PARTY?
BY JOHN ALBERT


The magician Rob Zabrecky is rail-thin, with raven-black hair and the piercing eyes of a B-movie hypnotist. To the unfamiliar he might appear eccentric, bordering on psychotic, though ever dapper in his modish, tailored suits. A year ago he was an up-and-coming rock & roll star. That’s all over. He’s now an up-and-coming magician, a calling with a much longer career span.

Zabrecky has a lot of obsessions: tap dancing, the Carpenters, avant-garde music from New York, and pop singer Michael Jackson. Last February, after performing in the nightclubs of Tokyo, Zabrecky returned to Los Angeles and the sort of uncertain financial future common to most professional entertainers. “With magic, the curve is very high,” Zabrecky explains. “You have your Siegfried and Roy, your Lance Burton and the guys who are on TV, and then there is everybody else, who are the working magicians and will take the birthday parties and corporate shows. It’s a lot of feast or famine.”

On the morning of February 21 Zabrecky’s phone rang. It was a producer he knew, Roy Johns. “I have a very interesting proposition,” Johns announced. “It’s for a major celebrity, and it’s a birthday party. Today.”

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