The Queen Bee

Michael Jackson's favorite guitarist

Screenshot from “Beat It, Guitar solo,” youtube

It’s not strictly accurate to call Jennifer Batten “underrated.” She is just not that well known to the broader music-listening public. But professional musicians know who she is and are the audience that counts for her. In that regard, she is like some of the other superstars hiding in plain sight: she is appreciated by the people who matter.

I’ve written about a number of bass players who are less well-known than they should be. Batten is a different species altogether: she is a lead guitarist. No position in modern popular music is more associated with machismo than electric lead guitar, so the role brings special demands. Batten has had no trouble meeting those demands.

First and most important, she is simply a monster guitarist. She can go hard, shreds with the best of them, and does beautiful, thoughtful leads and solos.

Second, she has a tremendous presence. She is physically imposing, and for much of her career, she doubled down with a huge mohawk and other flamboyant outfits and hairstyles. None of the dudes from the hair-metal era have anything on her.

Third, she is a tireless and active live performer, stalking the stage and commanding space even while doing complex guitar lines.

Batten was born in 1965 and started learning guitar when she was eight. She has said little about her formative years, except that she was playing the underground rock scene when she was “discovered.”

She has played with many brand-name musicians but is best known for being Michael Jackson’s favorite guitarist. She played lead on several of his world tours and his 1993 Super Bowl show. A billion-and-a-half people worldwide tuned in just for that show — far more than watched the game itself.

Batten also toured several times with Jeff Beck, whose taste for blues and fusion allowed her to play a whole new repertoire. She considers him the most innovative musician she has ever met, saying he “invented” the electric guitar. Not literally, of course, but she says he invented how modern lead guitarists play. One of the clips below features the two of them doing some guitar dueling.

Batten teaches as well and is considered an authority on advanced guitar techniques, including two-handed tapping. She has published books and video courses on guitar technique and gives live workshops as well.

Like most women forging their way in a blatantly sexist industry, Batten has dealt with her share of weirdness. During her storied 10-year run with Michael Jackson, Jackson’s manager tried to arrange for her to appear in Playboy. She turned it down, saying, “What the fuck? I’m a guitar player!”

Years later, the same manager offered to pay for her to get breast implants, saying it would help her become more famous. She initially thought he was trying to insult her, then realized he was serious. He clearly thought he was being helpful, so she just laughed it off.

Batten is a genuine guitar hero and is still doing her thing, touring with her own band, appearing in Michael Jackson tribute shows, giving guitar seminars, and writing and publishing books and articles on music. She also does artistic glasswork, because, hey, why not?

“Flight of the Bumblebee” (Rimsky-Korsakoff, interlude from his 1900 opera “The Tale of Tsar Saltan”)

This is a classic bit of musical gymnastics, written as a transition between two parts of the opera. It is far more well-known today than the opera itself. It was written for a full orchestra with violins playing the melody in unison. Thousands of versions exist, featuring various lead instruments and even vocals.

This is Batten’s rendition, one of the very few to feature an electric guitar. She plays the entire thing using two-handed tapping. You’ve also got to love the footage of her sitting there, covered with actual bees. Queen Bee, indeed.

“Beat It” (Michael Jackson, 1982) Guitar solo, 1987 tour.

While recording “Thriller,” Jackson and his producer, Quincy Jones, wanted to include a hard-rock song. This was partly because Jones sensed that the pop-disco-funk thing that had been Jackson’s strength to date was about to hit a wall. Jones wanted something that could cross over to another audience. He asked Eddie Van Halen to do the guitar solo, and Van Halen agreed, even offering to do it for free. He was uncredited when the album was released.

There have been a number of conflicting stories over the years about why Van Halen did this. In some interviews, he said he was thrilled to work with Jackson and was just doing a favor. His bandmates were furious and suggested he had been duped. Others close to him later said that he was afraid it might be an embarrassment in the hard rock and metal world to have worked with Jackson and that he asked not to be credited.

Van Halen, of course, had a day job, so Jackson had several guest soloists perform the song with him until 1987. That is when he recruited Jennifer Batten as his lead guitarist. She not only played lead for the whole show, but unlike his previous leads, she could nail the solo on “Beat It” every time. She would become his go-to guitarist for ten years.

Jeff Beck and Jennifer Batten: “What Mama Said” (Live, 1999)

Early in his career, Jeff Beck was considered part of the “holy trinity” of British blues guitarists, along with Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page. Over time, Clapton and Page focused on more commercial sounds, while Beck remained resolutely focused on experimentation. Ultimately, he became widely acknowledged as the most innovative and influential guitarist of that generation, rivaled only by Hendrix.

Jennifer Batten describes almost stalking Beck to try to meet him in person and finally getting to spend an afternoon with him, at which time she left him a copy of her solo album, not expecting more than to get an autograph. To her shock, he called her a month later and proposed working together. After five years and many near misses, they did a tour together, and then another, and another…

Here is their appearance on Letterman. The end of the interview is hilarious — Jeff Beck was a man of few words. RIP Jeff.

Sources:

• Jennifer Batten official website https://www.jenniferbatten.com/

• “Jennifer Batten Interview” (2008, youtube)

• Alison Richter: “Jennifer Batten on the sexism she faced as Michael Jackson’s guitarist, and how Jeff Beck shaped her view of innovative guitar playing” (Guitar World, 2022) https://www.guitarworld.com/features/jennifer-batten-2022

• “Jennifer Batten: Meeting Jeff Beck for the First Time” (The Sessions, panel at the 2023 NAMM convention)

• Wikipedia pages on Jennifer Batten, Michael Jackson