In 1996 Michael Jackson was in Australia for his History tour. I was in year 10 at the time and was just about to start my end of year exams. Mum had bought tickets to the concert for my sister and I and my first exam was the next morning. Even then I remember thinking 'seeing Michael Jackson is far more important than my English exam, it'll stay with me forever'. We had tickets to see the show on the Monday night but it was Friday afternoon when mum picked my sister and I up from school that was the highlight for us of Michael's visit to Perth.
We were all in the car driving down Scarborough Beach Road when mum started to turn into our street. I saw this man and an entourage of bodyguards getting out of a Tourago across the street and walking towards the video store. Michael was hard to miss as he had his white mask covering his nose and mouth. I screamed to mum to stop the car and my sister and I ran over the road. We just could not believe that there was MJ in Video Ezy walking around. His body guard encouraged us to go in and talk to him.
I've never ever been afraid to go up to anyone so I went straight up to him and introduced myself informing him that we were going to see his concert on Monday. Michael was so softly spoken and grabbed my hand and said he was so happy we were going to see him. My sister Lucy and I didn't have our shoes on, it was Summer in Perth and shoes werea hinderance but Michael just couldn't believe we were bare foot. He kept asking us where our shoes were. I aksed him for his signature and then Lucy and I realised that the video store was now starting to become incredibly crowded with word getting out that MJ was in Video Ezy.
All of a sudden poor Michael was cornered against the shelves of videos with about 40 people asking him for his autograph and wanting to see and talk to him. I remember going from a feeling of elation at seeing him to a sadness that he couldn't ever escape that level of attention even when going to select some movies. His body guards ended up kicking everyone out and Video Ezy closed their doors so that Michael could browse in peace. We watched through the window for a while, my heart still pounding not quite being able to come to terms with the fact one of the biggest stars in the world was in my local video store picking up all the VHS tapes he could see. There were 100's! I hadn't ever seen anything like it before.
On the Monday, we went to see Michael perform - it was utterly incredible. At one point he was flying across the crowd as he sung and there was not a dry eye around it was just so overwhelming. I've never been one to well up in tears at a concert but the atmosphere was so electric and mind blowing it was hard not to shed a tear in the utter amazement that was Michael Jackson the Performer.
He will most definitley be missed.