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Below are EXCERPTS from an incredible extended interview with Jennifer Batten, Michael’s statuesque lead guitarist for 3 tours (Bad, Dangerous, and HIStory).
These excerpts are followed by MJJ-777.com’s own commentary on the “Simmons + Media parasite problem” and Jennifer’s fact-based rebuttal to his incredibly ignorant “abuse” claims.
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Michael Jackson's lead guitarist Jennifer Batten gives Sawf News an exclusive and rare insight into the world's biggest pop act who exactly one year ago announced his return to music. Photo Credit: Sawf News
SOURCE: http://www.sawfnews.com/Entertainment/62954.aspx
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Batten was Jackson’s lead guitarist for a decade, accompanying the star on all three of his record-breaking world tours. At 29 years old she was plucked by the King of Pop from complete obscurity. Despite announcing to her mother at age 12 that she would become a professional guitarist, before Batten joined Jackson her touring experience was limited almost exclusively to a brief spell with an Elvis impersonator.
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Inspired by blues legends like BB King and Brownie McGee, Batten began playing guitar at the tender age of eight. As a young woman she attended the Musicians Institute in Los Angeles.
“I was the only woman with 60 guys,” she says. “I didn’t have a problem with it. I could go practice in the bathroom because you get the natural reverb in there and I knew I wouldn’t be bothered.
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Audition for Bad Tour
After the Elvis gigs she lived for several years in San Diego, playing in cover bands. But soon she grew restless so she upped sticks and moved to Los Angeles in search of success on the music scene. It wasn’t long before she fell into teaching at her former school, the Musicians Institute, and it was there – on one fateful day in 1987 – that Michael Jackson’s representatives called asking for musicians to attend tour auditions.
“They were auditioning about a hundred people so it was pretty intense,” she recalls. “When I went, there was just a video camera, no band. The only guidance I was given was to play some funk rhythm stuff so I did that, then I finished off with the Beat It solo because I had been playing that for years in cover bands. I think ultimately that’s what got me the gig.”
Winning her place on Jackson’s Bad Tour in 1987 changed her life, she says. “It was like a paid vacation. I had been teaching and gigging pretty much seven nights a week and all of a sudden I’m on the biggest tour in the world making ten times the money and only working two or three days a week!”
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But soon after hitting the road, Batten discovered a more sinister side to working with Michael Jackson. “I was approached in the beginning by somebody who said I could make a lot of money by talking to the National Enquirer,” she reveals. “I was just appalled. I thought ‘that is just sick’, you know? I just got this great gig. Why would I sabotage it like that? It seemed like a really evil thing to do.”
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Dangerous Tour
“He wanted to come out with the biggest show on earth,” says Batten. “He wanted it to be like Christmas for people. His imagination was like a creative tornado. He would come up with his wildest dreams and then hire people to carry it out. It was really amazing to be a part of that.”
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Child Molestation Allegations
“I figured it was an extortion case, which I still figure it is,” she says matter-of-factly. “Everybody was concerned about him. I think it pains all of us that he was so attacked and so unfairly. Most artists are sensitive and he was talented times ten, so ultra sensitive, and to be slung that kind of stuff… I mean, you can hear it in his lyrics. It’s a real drag because you wonder what kind of music he would have come up with if people weren’t attacking him like that.”
The media, says Batten, has a lot to answer for over its coverage of the 1993 allegations.
“Honestly, I think it would have been considered uncool amongst the press to take Michael’s side. I think it would take a brave soul to do that, which is really sad. Really pathetic. Even at the 2005 trial… I know people who were inside the courtroom and then they would watch the news at night and it was complete lies.”
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Michael’s Death
In the weeks after Jackson’s death Batten says she was unable to watch the media coverage, knowing how much of it was false.
“They were respectful for about two or three hours and then they turned it into a tabloid festival,” she laments.
“I just couldn’t watch it. There were a lot of specials on about him and once in a while I would turn one on and it was just sh*t. I guess it makes money to just bring up negativity and stir up controversy but it’s pathetic and I just can’t watch it. It’s all about money now, not about truth. People can be very cold.”
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This Is It Movie
But thanks to a close friendship with Jackson’s make-up artist Karen Faye, who worked with the star during his This Is It rehearsals, Batten says she’s able to see the other side of the coin. Since Jackson’s death Faye has written on her facebook page that Jackson was frail, cold to the touch and losing weight rapidly.
“She was closer to Michael than anyone,” says Batten, “She warned people that he was not well but everybody ignored her. You didn’t see it on the screen because they took every day that he rehearsed and pieced together the best bits. You didn’t see him when he was struggling up a ramp because he didn’t have any energy and he hadn’t eaten for two days. They’re not going to put that in the film. I mean, one of the songs he was wearing four different costumes. That just tells me that he never sang the song fully through.”
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Simmons was never with MJ on a tour. He has no idea what did or did not happen in any hotel rooms on MJ’s tours.
The media is amplifying this story he’s pulling out of his @$$ in order to get some attention for himself. What the media gets from that is ratings, website clicks and therefore profit. It’s a disgusting mutually parasitic arrangement between them, and both of them are feeding off of and destroying Michael Jackson’s memory, legacy, and reputation for their own gain and profit.
Jennifer Batten toured with Michael for A DECADE. We’ll take Jennifer’s word on what did or did not happen during those tours, thankyouverymuch, Mr. Simmons. Find some other way to get attention.
As for the media, THEY are murderers as much as Conrad Murray is. They kill people for MONEY. They helped drive Michael Jackson into his grave with their decades of negative slander against him. And as he lay in his grave, they’re still doing it. His blood is on their hands.
And irony of all ironies: Michael Jackson’s morals are stellar compared to Simmons’, who has no room to lecture anyone on morals. Mr. Simmon’s hypocrisy and ability to lie is astounding and only matched by his pathetic need for attention, and obvious lack of conscience and talent.
Furthermore, in the opinion of the management of this site (MJJ-777.com), there are MANY more important things to discuss about Michael Jackson, his life and his murder than what some washed-up attention-starved crackpot like Gene Simmons has to say about Michael.
The lame$tream and most online major media, as per usual, is HELLBENT on distraction, misinformation, and sensationalism, rather than reporting FACTS or even the actual important stories of the day. And they are collectively and vehemently anti-Jackson. It has always been thus.
Whether the issue is health care, climate change, or Michael Jackson, the media is only concerned with the sensationalist headlines that get them the most viewers and therefore the most corporate profit – rather than telling the TRUTH or providing important information to the public to keep them intelligently informed.
Rather, they seem more occupied with keeping the public MISinformed and distracted.
They are very good at it and the public willfully complies by watching, reading, and believing it all, no questions asked. Tabloid Junkies – tsk, tsk.
Since the media has seen fit to splatter Simmon’s ignorant lies all over the intertubes whilst ignoring the FACTS, we presented part of Jennifer’s factually and logistically sound rebuttal here a day or so ago, along with Charles Thomson’s observation that while the media readily parrot Simmon’s LIES, they willfully IGNORED the truth from Jennifer.
Have we mentioned yet that Jennifer was with MJ on tour for a decade and that Simmons never was? WHO would you believe? The person who was there for a decade – or a washed-up narcissist who wasn’t – and who’ll say anything about anyone just to get himself noticed?
And this entire issue is the absolute epitome of the fact that the media as a whole is decidedly, willfully and obviously “anti-Jackson” regardless of what the facts about him actually are and regardless what truly IMPORTANT information about him remains buried in favor of petty, baseless, self-serving, sensationalist claims such as the one coming from Simmons.
There was a murder committed. Yet the media are more concerned with the attention-grabbing tactics of a shriveled crackpot like Simmons instead – who has never been on tour with Michael Jackson but claims to somehow know what happened on them – than they are with getting at the truth of why and how Michael was killed.
Jennifer talks about this media problem in her extended interview, as did Aphrodite Jones, in her book Conspiracy and as did Tom Mesereau, Michael’s attorney during the 2005 trial. And here, yet again, is another instance of it. They occur almost every minute of every day.
Suffice to say that the media’s conspiracy against Michael Jackson is a tad bit noticeable. Before the “Simmons” debacle, they were busily convicting Michael Jackson of his own murder in the court of public opinion, whilst depicting the sidewinding, immoral excuse for a doctor whose hand actually killed Michael as an innocent bystander in the whole thing.
Wow. Just. Wow. The world is officially upside-down and bassackwards.
And why pray tell, are the media so anti-Jackson? Three reasons, IMO:
1. PROFIT. Nothing gets viewers and ratings like sensationalist headlines – true or not. Viewers and ratings = $$$$$. They don’t care. I know they’ve offered people five and six figures for ‘dirt’ on Jackson – true, or not. Just to get a ’story’. They are jackals. ALL of them – whether their acronym is “CNN” or “TMZ”.
2. They are caught in their own lies. If the media suddenly started reporting the TRUTH about Michael Jackson and who he really was, then they’d have to admit that they’ve been LYING about him for 40 years – and that they are furthermore culpable in helping to drive the man to an early grave with their decades of lies, persecution and abuse. They’ve destroyed a man’s LIFE for profit – and they are not about to ADMIT it.
3. MOB mentality. When one does it, they all do it. Monkey see-Monkey do. Copy and paste journalism with zero fact-checking – just like Charles Thomson said.
Tags: Friends, Justice, Photos, Quotes About MJ
