barbee0715
Proud Member
Also talks about Eric Clapton. Good article, I thought.
<article class="span12 clearfix" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 960px; background: transparent;"><hgroup style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0.625em; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-family: Roboto, Arial; background: transparent;">Jennifer Batten: A pioneering guitarist reflects
The former Michael Jackson & Jeff Beck collaborator discusses her six-string love affair and the challenges she has faced as a woman musician.
</hgroup>
By George Varga | 10 a.m. March 5, 2016 | Updated, 10:03 a.m.
</article><section class="span9 col clearfix" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 6.71875px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; float: left; width: 629.75px; background: transparent;"><figure class="story-lead-photo clearfix" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 623.438px; background: transparent;">
<figcaption itemprop="author" itemscope="" itemtype="https://schema.org/Person" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0.4em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 0.8em; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(153, 153, 153); line-height: 1.2em; background: transparent;">Jennifer Batten was in Michael Jackson’s band for three world tours. Ali Haschbach</figcaption>
</figure><article class="story-wrap span12 clearfix" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0.625em 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 629.75px; background: transparent;">Jennifer Batten didn’t think of herself as a pioneer in 1987, when she began a 10-year stint as the lead guitarist in Michael Jackson’s band for three consecutive world tours. Likewise, the former San Diego virtuoso was focused on her playing — not making music history — during her 1998-to-2001 tenure with English guitar legend Jeff Beck. His bands over the previous 30 years had never before featured a female instrumentalist.
But Batten, who performs Friday at Ramona Mainstage with fellow guitarists Uli Jon Roth and Andy Timmons, is no stranger to being a trailblazer.
In 1979, she became the first woman to graduate from Los Angeles’ Guitar Institute of Technology, where she won two awards. She subsequently became the first woman to teach at GIT, which has attracted some of the world’s top six-string artists, both as students and instructors.
“What a tremendous player Jennifer is,” said veteran guitar star Joe Satriani. “She has been at the forefront of what you can do with a guitar.”
San Diego’s Mike Keneally, now on tour as a member of Satriani’s band, is also quick to sing Batten’s praises.
“She was undoubtedly trailblazing during a time when a woman guitarist had to contend with great quantities of small-minded prejudices,” said Keneally, who rose to prominence as Frank Zappa’s “stunt guitarist” in the 1980s. “Those prejudices still exist, of course, but I do think things have improved with time. And anyone with ears had to concede Jennifer was simply a great guitar player, with tremendous musicality and dexterity.”
Batten’s skill and versatility were evident here as far back as the early 1980s, when she was the guitarist in the popular San Diego club band Purl.
Rock, pop, blues, jazz, funk; no matter the style, her range and command were unmistakable. She has since been featured on albums by such varied artists as Jackson, Beck, former “Jesus Christ Superstar” Broadway vocal star Carl Anderson and Latin techno producer Emilio Fernandez. Her credits also include three solo albums, two instructional guitar books and three instructional DVDs for Truefire.com, including “50 Ultra-Intervallic Licks,” which explores an array of tonalities, including the Aeolian, Dorian and Mixolydian modes.
Jennifer Batten, "50 Intervallic Licks" intro
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/bUVjEp8X78o" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px; border-style: initial; outline: 0px; font-size: 17.008px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent;"></iframe>
“Basically, when young guitarists ask me for advice, I just say: ‘Keep your nose to the grindstone, work on your music, and the career will take care of itself’,” said Batten, 58, who used to practice her instrument up to 10 hours a day.
She laughed.
“That advice might be complete bull! But that’s what I tell people. Because I don’t know any magical way to make things happen, other than engrossing yourself in what you’re passionate about.”
Giant steps
A New York native, Batten moved with her family to San Diego in 1969. Inspired by watching The Beatles’ U.S. television debut in 1964 — and jealous that her older sister had a guitar — she began playing the instrument when she was 8. It has rarely been out of her hands since.
“My dad taught me my first song on guitar, ‘Forest Flower,’ by (jazz saxophonist) Charles Lloyd,” she said. “I never played in a band until after I graduated from GIT, when I was 21, because my mother wouldn’t let me go out and play with strangers.”
The first concert Batten attended as a kid in San Diego was by Sonny & Cher. This both amused and alarmed Jeff Beck when he found out years later.
“Jeff put his head down, and whispered to me not to tell anybody that was my first concert!” she said with a laugh. “His first concert was Gene Vincent and The Blue Caps.”
When Batten failed her first audition to enroll at GIT, she spent six months of intense practice with San Diego’s Peter Sprague, who helped bring her jazz chops up to par. He tutored her in playing major and minor scales, and had her learn to play sax solos by Charlie Parker on guitar.
“It was a long way from Jimi Hendrix,” Batten said, citing one of her early guitar heroes.
“There were 60 guitarists at GIT when I was there. And, except for one, we were all into jazz. The big players at that time were George Benson and Al DiMeola. Basically, we were just trying to learn to play over chord changes and songs from ‘The Real Book,’ like ‘The Girl From Ipanema’ and ‘Satin Doll’.”
The only woman enrolled at GIT at the time, she devoted herself to her instrument and her classes. Her dedication did not go unnoticed.
“One of the guys in my class said: ‘You really tick me off!’ What he meant was I was doing all the work,” she recalled. “I just laughed.”
After years of paying her dues, Batten went on to join Michael Jackson’s band, a position that saw her become a role model for a generation of young women rock guitarists. No one was more surprised than her.
“There were pictures of (jazz guitar giants) Joe Pass, Pat Martino and all these heavies on the wall at GIT,” she said. “I thought I’d be a jazzbo and have a record contract within a year. Lo and behold, it was 10 years before I did my first solo album, and my genre completely changed.
Even so, her love of jazz would pay off after the opportunity to perform with the King of Pop arose 30 years ago.
When Batten auditioned for Jackson’s band in Los Angeles, where she moved from San Diego in 1984, she performed an unaccompanied guitar version of jazz sax icon John Coltrane’s “Giant Steps.” Even more impressive, she rearranged Coltrane’s already challenging piece as an Eddie Van Halen-styled tapping solo — which might have proved daunting for Van Halen himself — with each note plucked, then hammered in rapid succession, on the guitar’s fretboard.
“About 100 guitarists auditioned,” Batten recalled of her Jackson band tryout, speaking recently from her home in Oregon. “I really don’t know if any other women guitarists auditioned, because it was a cattle call. Everybody had 15 minutes, and I only saw the person who auditioned immediately before me, and then the one immediately after me. ...
“When I auditioned, there was no band, just me and a video camera. The only guidance they gave me was to say that playing funky rhythm guitar would be the majority of the gig. So I improvised something funky, then soloed freestyle. Then, I played the tapping solo to ‘Giant Steps,’ which ended up on my first album. I ended my audition with the (Eddie Van Halen) solo from ‘Beat It,’ because I’d been playing that in Purl for a couple of years.”
Batten was called back for another audition, but it wasn’t the music that proved daunting.
“At the end of the second audition, the guy videotaping me said: ‘Michael wants to get an idea of your personality, so talk to the camera.’ That was probably the hardest part of the audition!” she said, laughing.
“Several days later, I got a call that Michael was interested, and asking if I could come in to play with his band, and see how it went. And, also, they asked, could I take a year off to tour? I said: ‘Take me anywhere, for any length of time!’ The first tour turned out to be a year and a half.”
The only other woman in Jackson’s band was a then-unknown singer named Sheryl Crow, with whom Batten shared a dressing room on tour.
Starting a revolution
Her work with Jackson led to meeting Jeff Beck, a guitarist Batten had idolized since her teen years. She had taught herself to play all the solos from his classic “Blow by Blow” and “Wired” albums, both released in the mid-1970s. By the late 1990s, she was onstage, trading lines on some of those same songs with Beck.
“I just about peed in my pants when he called to ask me to be in his band,” Batten recalled. “He’s every guitar player’s favorite guitar player; at least any guitar player I respect. He’s right at the top.
“Jeff was very open with me; he shared many solos with me and has great respect (for my playing),. He made a funny comment that gives you a little example of how humble he is. He said to me: ‘I want to give you your own spot in the show with a couple of songs. But, then, nobody will want to see me again when I come back out on stage.’
“If he had given me a couple of songs, I would have refused. I saw other guitar players get up and play with him on a TV special years ago, and I just wanted them to get off the stage. I thought: ‘Unless it’s going to be Les Paul playing with him, every other guitar player should just leave him alone and not even bother’.”.
Batten rose to the challenge. She held her own on stage with Beck for two world tours over three years. Fellow guitarist Satriani, among many others, was highly impressed.
“She was backing up Jeff Beck, and I was like: ‘Wow! Who can do that?’ I think only Jennifer could do that, and she did it so well,” Satriani said. “It’s a credit to her incredible musicianship.”
Batten will be a special guest when Beck performs his “50 Years of Beck” anniversary in music concert with Buddy Guy at the Hollywood Bowl on Aug. 10.
Asked to compare and contrast playing with Jackson and Beck, she said: “Instead of being one of seven people onstage with Michael, I was one of four people onstage with Jeff. And, with Jeff, I was responsible for playing all the harmony parts. So, if there was a mistake, it wasn’t very easy for me to hide.
“Michael wanted it to sound the same every night. And every one of the songs we did was a big hit, so people knew every note of the songs. Jeff wanted it different every night. He wanted us to fire him up to go to different musical places, each time we played.”
The first concert on her first tour with Jackson was in Tokyo. Batten, who had never been out of the U.S. before, didn’t even have a passport before joining his band. Regardless, the transition from obscurity to the world stage proved to be a smooth one.
“It was like a paid vacation,” she recalled. “We only performed two or three times a week. We got to see the world, which is very rare for most tours, because it’s so expensive to tour — especially with an entourage of 100, like Michael had. On most tours, you’re traveling and playing shows almost every night. So it was a real blessing for me to be part of those tours with Michael... He certainly he didn’t have a normal upbringing, but he was very kind and respectful, and an incredibly creative person.
“Musically, it was like being in a cover band, except all the songs were by the same artist! So playing his music was pretty natural. But the magnitude of it was interesting. Michael was very kind and respectful. He definitely had a command of the orchestra, so to speak. He knew what was going on in every department.
“I’ve heard lots of stories from other acts, where the leader was just a complete ass and would eviscerate the people in their band on stage. That was never Michael. He always kept his cool, no matter how much pressure he was under...
“At the end of one tour, for the last show, we all put on fedoras. So when Michael turned around and looked back at the band, it was a surprise. He cracked up.”
Jackson’s wardrobe crew and stylists provided Batten and his other band members with a new look and stage attire for each tour.
The results, at least for her, were decidedly mixed.
”Michael had artists draw up looks for each of us, and then hired wardrobe people, and makeup and hair people. In the beginning, I had kind of a Mohawk that looked a bit harsh. I asked him, after a while, if we could make it a little tamer, and he was fine.
“On the ‘HIStory tour, I had a nasty costume I was supposed to wear. Somebody had given Michael a portrait book that was basically full of S&M outfits. My costume was leopard-skin. It had a wig, with a nose strap attached to my head, and a ball gag that was supposed to go in my mouth.
“I put my foot down, and said: ‘Hell, no.’ This was not the message I wanted to send out to young girls. I told Michael, and he was totally cool about it.”
Did people treat her differently after her first tour with Jackson?
“They didn’t wait until the tour was over,” Batten replied. “As soon as I got (hired for) the tour, I’d hear about people who were jealous and saying backstabbing comments. But the same thing happened to the dancers hired for the tour.”
That Batten paved the way for St. Vincent, the lone-named Orianthi (who briefly succeeded her in Jackson’s band) and a generation of other gifted female rock guitarists is undeniable. So is the long, often lonely, trek she had to make.
“When I started playing in Michael Jackson’s band, Wendy and Lisa were in Prince’s band, and I thought the revolution had started (for female rock musicians),” Batten recalled. “Then, 25 years went by, and there wasn’t much change at all.
“But, in the last five years, not a month that goes by where I’m not knocked out on YouTube by some female guitarist — from here, or some distant country — who’s killing it. Nearly everybody has access to the Internet, so everyone can see them, and it’s more acceptable to see a woman play guitar now. There might have been a lot of women kicking ass on guitar before, but we never would have known it before. Now, we do.”
http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/2016/mar/05/jennifer-batten-interview/
</article></section>
<article class="span12 clearfix" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 960px; background: transparent;"><hgroup style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0.625em; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-family: Roboto, Arial; background: transparent;">Jennifer Batten: A pioneering guitarist reflects
The former Michael Jackson & Jeff Beck collaborator discusses her six-string love affair and the challenges she has faced as a woman musician.
</hgroup>
By George Varga | 10 a.m. March 5, 2016 | Updated, 10:03 a.m.
</article><section class="span9 col clearfix" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 6.71875px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; float: left; width: 629.75px; background: transparent;"><figure class="story-lead-photo clearfix" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 623.438px; background: transparent;">
</figure><article class="story-wrap span12 clearfix" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0.625em 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 629.75px; background: transparent;">Jennifer Batten didn’t think of herself as a pioneer in 1987, when she began a 10-year stint as the lead guitarist in Michael Jackson’s band for three consecutive world tours. Likewise, the former San Diego virtuoso was focused on her playing — not making music history — during her 1998-to-2001 tenure with English guitar legend Jeff Beck. His bands over the previous 30 years had never before featured a female instrumentalist.
But Batten, who performs Friday at Ramona Mainstage with fellow guitarists Uli Jon Roth and Andy Timmons, is no stranger to being a trailblazer.
In 1979, she became the first woman to graduate from Los Angeles’ Guitar Institute of Technology, where she won two awards. She subsequently became the first woman to teach at GIT, which has attracted some of the world’s top six-string artists, both as students and instructors.
“What a tremendous player Jennifer is,” said veteran guitar star Joe Satriani. “She has been at the forefront of what you can do with a guitar.”
San Diego’s Mike Keneally, now on tour as a member of Satriani’s band, is also quick to sing Batten’s praises.
“She was undoubtedly trailblazing during a time when a woman guitarist had to contend with great quantities of small-minded prejudices,” said Keneally, who rose to prominence as Frank Zappa’s “stunt guitarist” in the 1980s. “Those prejudices still exist, of course, but I do think things have improved with time. And anyone with ears had to concede Jennifer was simply a great guitar player, with tremendous musicality and dexterity.”
Batten’s skill and versatility were evident here as far back as the early 1980s, when she was the guitarist in the popular San Diego club band Purl.
Rock, pop, blues, jazz, funk; no matter the style, her range and command were unmistakable. She has since been featured on albums by such varied artists as Jackson, Beck, former “Jesus Christ Superstar” Broadway vocal star Carl Anderson and Latin techno producer Emilio Fernandez. Her credits also include three solo albums, two instructional guitar books and three instructional DVDs for Truefire.com, including “50 Ultra-Intervallic Licks,” which explores an array of tonalities, including the Aeolian, Dorian and Mixolydian modes.
Jennifer Batten, "50 Intervallic Licks" intro
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/bUVjEp8X78o" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px; border-style: initial; outline: 0px; font-size: 17.008px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent;"></iframe>
“Basically, when young guitarists ask me for advice, I just say: ‘Keep your nose to the grindstone, work on your music, and the career will take care of itself’,” said Batten, 58, who used to practice her instrument up to 10 hours a day.
She laughed.
“That advice might be complete bull! But that’s what I tell people. Because I don’t know any magical way to make things happen, other than engrossing yourself in what you’re passionate about.”
Giant steps
A New York native, Batten moved with her family to San Diego in 1969. Inspired by watching The Beatles’ U.S. television debut in 1964 — and jealous that her older sister had a guitar — she began playing the instrument when she was 8. It has rarely been out of her hands since.
“My dad taught me my first song on guitar, ‘Forest Flower,’ by (jazz saxophonist) Charles Lloyd,” she said. “I never played in a band until after I graduated from GIT, when I was 21, because my mother wouldn’t let me go out and play with strangers.”
The first concert Batten attended as a kid in San Diego was by Sonny & Cher. This both amused and alarmed Jeff Beck when he found out years later.
“Jeff put his head down, and whispered to me not to tell anybody that was my first concert!” she said with a laugh. “His first concert was Gene Vincent and The Blue Caps.”
When Batten failed her first audition to enroll at GIT, she spent six months of intense practice with San Diego’s Peter Sprague, who helped bring her jazz chops up to par. He tutored her in playing major and minor scales, and had her learn to play sax solos by Charlie Parker on guitar.
“It was a long way from Jimi Hendrix,” Batten said, citing one of her early guitar heroes.
“There were 60 guitarists at GIT when I was there. And, except for one, we were all into jazz. The big players at that time were George Benson and Al DiMeola. Basically, we were just trying to learn to play over chord changes and songs from ‘The Real Book,’ like ‘The Girl From Ipanema’ and ‘Satin Doll’.”
The only woman enrolled at GIT at the time, she devoted herself to her instrument and her classes. Her dedication did not go unnoticed.
“One of the guys in my class said: ‘You really tick me off!’ What he meant was I was doing all the work,” she recalled. “I just laughed.”
After years of paying her dues, Batten went on to join Michael Jackson’s band, a position that saw her become a role model for a generation of young women rock guitarists. No one was more surprised than her.
“There were pictures of (jazz guitar giants) Joe Pass, Pat Martino and all these heavies on the wall at GIT,” she said. “I thought I’d be a jazzbo and have a record contract within a year. Lo and behold, it was 10 years before I did my first solo album, and my genre completely changed.
Even so, her love of jazz would pay off after the opportunity to perform with the King of Pop arose 30 years ago.
When Batten auditioned for Jackson’s band in Los Angeles, where she moved from San Diego in 1984, she performed an unaccompanied guitar version of jazz sax icon John Coltrane’s “Giant Steps.” Even more impressive, she rearranged Coltrane’s already challenging piece as an Eddie Van Halen-styled tapping solo — which might have proved daunting for Van Halen himself — with each note plucked, then hammered in rapid succession, on the guitar’s fretboard.
“About 100 guitarists auditioned,” Batten recalled of her Jackson band tryout, speaking recently from her home in Oregon. “I really don’t know if any other women guitarists auditioned, because it was a cattle call. Everybody had 15 minutes, and I only saw the person who auditioned immediately before me, and then the one immediately after me. ...
“When I auditioned, there was no band, just me and a video camera. The only guidance they gave me was to say that playing funky rhythm guitar would be the majority of the gig. So I improvised something funky, then soloed freestyle. Then, I played the tapping solo to ‘Giant Steps,’ which ended up on my first album. I ended my audition with the (Eddie Van Halen) solo from ‘Beat It,’ because I’d been playing that in Purl for a couple of years.”
Batten was called back for another audition, but it wasn’t the music that proved daunting.
“At the end of the second audition, the guy videotaping me said: ‘Michael wants to get an idea of your personality, so talk to the camera.’ That was probably the hardest part of the audition!” she said, laughing.
“Several days later, I got a call that Michael was interested, and asking if I could come in to play with his band, and see how it went. And, also, they asked, could I take a year off to tour? I said: ‘Take me anywhere, for any length of time!’ The first tour turned out to be a year and a half.”
The only other woman in Jackson’s band was a then-unknown singer named Sheryl Crow, with whom Batten shared a dressing room on tour.
Starting a revolution
Her work with Jackson led to meeting Jeff Beck, a guitarist Batten had idolized since her teen years. She had taught herself to play all the solos from his classic “Blow by Blow” and “Wired” albums, both released in the mid-1970s. By the late 1990s, she was onstage, trading lines on some of those same songs with Beck.
“I just about peed in my pants when he called to ask me to be in his band,” Batten recalled. “He’s every guitar player’s favorite guitar player; at least any guitar player I respect. He’s right at the top.
“Jeff was very open with me; he shared many solos with me and has great respect (for my playing),. He made a funny comment that gives you a little example of how humble he is. He said to me: ‘I want to give you your own spot in the show with a couple of songs. But, then, nobody will want to see me again when I come back out on stage.’
“If he had given me a couple of songs, I would have refused. I saw other guitar players get up and play with him on a TV special years ago, and I just wanted them to get off the stage. I thought: ‘Unless it’s going to be Les Paul playing with him, every other guitar player should just leave him alone and not even bother’.”.
Batten rose to the challenge. She held her own on stage with Beck for two world tours over three years. Fellow guitarist Satriani, among many others, was highly impressed.
“She was backing up Jeff Beck, and I was like: ‘Wow! Who can do that?’ I think only Jennifer could do that, and she did it so well,” Satriani said. “It’s a credit to her incredible musicianship.”
Batten will be a special guest when Beck performs his “50 Years of Beck” anniversary in music concert with Buddy Guy at the Hollywood Bowl on Aug. 10.
Asked to compare and contrast playing with Jackson and Beck, she said: “Instead of being one of seven people onstage with Michael, I was one of four people onstage with Jeff. And, with Jeff, I was responsible for playing all the harmony parts. So, if there was a mistake, it wasn’t very easy for me to hide.
“Michael wanted it to sound the same every night. And every one of the songs we did was a big hit, so people knew every note of the songs. Jeff wanted it different every night. He wanted us to fire him up to go to different musical places, each time we played.”
The first concert on her first tour with Jackson was in Tokyo. Batten, who had never been out of the U.S. before, didn’t even have a passport before joining his band. Regardless, the transition from obscurity to the world stage proved to be a smooth one.
“It was like a paid vacation,” she recalled. “We only performed two or three times a week. We got to see the world, which is very rare for most tours, because it’s so expensive to tour — especially with an entourage of 100, like Michael had. On most tours, you’re traveling and playing shows almost every night. So it was a real blessing for me to be part of those tours with Michael... He certainly he didn’t have a normal upbringing, but he was very kind and respectful, and an incredibly creative person.
“Musically, it was like being in a cover band, except all the songs were by the same artist! So playing his music was pretty natural. But the magnitude of it was interesting. Michael was very kind and respectful. He definitely had a command of the orchestra, so to speak. He knew what was going on in every department.
“I’ve heard lots of stories from other acts, where the leader was just a complete ass and would eviscerate the people in their band on stage. That was never Michael. He always kept his cool, no matter how much pressure he was under...
“At the end of one tour, for the last show, we all put on fedoras. So when Michael turned around and looked back at the band, it was a surprise. He cracked up.”
Jackson’s wardrobe crew and stylists provided Batten and his other band members with a new look and stage attire for each tour.
The results, at least for her, were decidedly mixed.
”Michael had artists draw up looks for each of us, and then hired wardrobe people, and makeup and hair people. In the beginning, I had kind of a Mohawk that looked a bit harsh. I asked him, after a while, if we could make it a little tamer, and he was fine.
“On the ‘HIStory tour, I had a nasty costume I was supposed to wear. Somebody had given Michael a portrait book that was basically full of S&M outfits. My costume was leopard-skin. It had a wig, with a nose strap attached to my head, and a ball gag that was supposed to go in my mouth.
“I put my foot down, and said: ‘Hell, no.’ This was not the message I wanted to send out to young girls. I told Michael, and he was totally cool about it.”
Did people treat her differently after her first tour with Jackson?
“They didn’t wait until the tour was over,” Batten replied. “As soon as I got (hired for) the tour, I’d hear about people who were jealous and saying backstabbing comments. But the same thing happened to the dancers hired for the tour.”
That Batten paved the way for St. Vincent, the lone-named Orianthi (who briefly succeeded her in Jackson’s band) and a generation of other gifted female rock guitarists is undeniable. So is the long, often lonely, trek she had to make.
“When I started playing in Michael Jackson’s band, Wendy and Lisa were in Prince’s band, and I thought the revolution had started (for female rock musicians),” Batten recalled. “Then, 25 years went by, and there wasn’t much change at all.
“But, in the last five years, not a month that goes by where I’m not knocked out on YouTube by some female guitarist — from here, or some distant country — who’s killing it. Nearly everybody has access to the Internet, so everyone can see them, and it’s more acceptable to see a woman play guitar now. There might have been a lot of women kicking ass on guitar before, but we never would have known it before. Now, we do.”
http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/2016/mar/05/jennifer-batten-interview/
</article></section>
