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Sally Jo and dad David with the banner souvenir |
Not a bad work experience souvenir
After the tragic death of Michael Jackson, woman recalls night she got a precious memento
USUALLY work experience doesn’t pay and you’re lucky if your lunch and travel is covered.
But 15-year-old schoolgirl Sally Jo Murphy got a 30ft banner of the Michael Jackson Bad tour during a placement with a firm that built the King of Pop’s stage in 1988.
Now a 37-year-old mother of one, Sally Jo can still remember that magical summer when she spent seven consecutive nights watching the King of Pop perform at Wembley in one of his most famous stadium concerts in the UK.
“It was mesmerising, phenomenal beyond belief,” said Sally Jo. “I’ve been to a lot of concerts, but that was the best one ever.”
Sally Jo was given the banner, which had been hanging above an exit gate, after approaching the production manager.
He had a word in someone’s ear and minutes later the plastic banner – which weighs at least two stone – was at her feet. She rolled it up and her dad drove it back to their Tufnell Park home where it has spent the last few years in a cupboard. As a teenager she would get it out twice and week and would even roll it out in the street for her friends to look at.
“People like me don’t get things like that,” she said. “And to be part of it – I was there every night – it was mind-blowing.”
Sally Jo learned of Jackson’s death last week while driving home with her father David.
“I just said, ‘My banner! We’ve got to get it out and have a look at it,’” she said.
Darren Julien, of Julien’s Auctions, based in Hollywood, said he thought the banner could fetch up to $10,000 in the US. Julien’s were planning to sell thousands of items of Jackson memorabilia in February until Jackson intervened.
Mr Julien said: “[The banner] is something that we would consider to sell at auction but it would have to go to the right type of collector who would have the space to display it.”
MJ: ‘A dream performer’
TO the outside world, Jackomania may have seemed like madness. When millions of people sat down at their computers on March 13 to try and buy a ticket to see the comeback gig of all time, millions more sat back and asked why.
Putting aside his flaws – which admittedly for many overtook his talent – the reason I joined his army of fans that morning is simple but hard to explain. He’s one of a kind and irreplaceable. He’s always been there. I’ve always loved him. Kids throughout the decades have practised his moves in the playground.
I cried when I heard the news last Thursday.
Seven years ago I sat down to write my dissertation on the gloved one: “To what extent is Michael Jackson a representation of the American Dream?” was the question I asked, little realising he would end up dying by the sword or that it would come to sound like a rhetorical question.
As a massive MJ fan, I could stomach just about everything, even the questions marks surrounding his relationship with children. But the one thing I couldn’t bear was his sense of victimisation, his refusal to take responsibility for anything. He died from a prescription drugs overdose because he had no control over himself, apart from his looks. He must have been infuriating.
His early years came to represent everything that is good about the American Dream, and later came the bad. He was the epitome of the Dream, and it killed him.
I spent three hours, from 6am, trying and failing to get a ticket – but for the pity of friends who had been luckier, I would have been bereft.
Jackson, or Jacko as he has unkindly come to be known, may be considered a freak but he has secured a place in history for his dancing and song-writing.
He was the talent no one could touch.
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