“When I went, there was just a video camera, no band.”
That’s how Jennifer Batten remembers trying out for Michael Jackson in 1987. Back then she was a guitar teacher in Los Angeles, giving lessons by day and playing gigs almost every night of the week, weddings included. She has said there was nothing on her résumé that stood out.
Michael was getting ready to take his “Bad” album around the world, and his team needed a band. About 100 people came to try out. Jennifer stayed home first and learned his songs inside out. When she walked in, the only advice she got was to play something funky.
So she did. “I think ultimately that’s what got me the gig,” she said years later.
Here’s Jennifer talking about her time on that first tour with Michael.
Jennifer remembers the “Bad” tour
The tour opened in Tokyo in September 1987, with three sold-out stadium shows. Jennifer had reportedly never been outside the United States before that trip. Now she was on a stage in Japan in front of tens of thousands of fans. “I’d never played for that many people before,” she said.
Life on Michael’s tour was nothing like playing weddings. Her “Beat It” solo was faster than the record, and she played it wearing a suit that lit up and changed colors. She put glow-in-the-dark tape on the neck of her guitar so she wouldn’t lose her place in the dark. Michael also reportedly closed Tokyo Disneyland for a few hours so his whole team could have the park to themselves.
She didn’t just last one tour. Jennifer played on all three of Michael’s world tours, about 10 years in all, and she was right there on stage with him at the 1993 Super Bowl halftime show.
Here she is many years later, looking back on her time with him.
Jennifer looks back on playing for Michael
So how did she find out the job was hers? She never got the call.
In a 2025 interview with a Spanish newspaper, Jennifer said Michael never actually told her she had been hired. He simply sent her a plane ticket to Japan. Once she got to Tokyo, she was chatting with Sheryl Crow, then one of the tour’s backup singers, when Michael came up behind her and tapped her on the back. He told her he loved the way she played the “Beat It” solo.
That’s when she knew she was really in the band.