Michael Jackson’s Last Guitar Hero
From “Beat It” onward, Michael Jackson’s taste in rock guitarists tended toward au courant shredders, which means he basically took his Edward Van Halen template and ran with it, over and over, hiring the obvious fretboard star of the moment every time he felt the need for a rock simulation. For 1987’s “Dirty Diana,” he hired Billy Idol axeman Steve Stevens, who was just coming off five years of work with Idol, plus his solo on the “Top Gun” theme. Then in 1991, Jackson hired Slash, fresh off “Use Your Illusion I and II,” to record “Black or White.”
So when the AEG Live video of the dress rehearsals came out, I had two immediate reactions: (1) Those costumes on the dancers look like they’ve been moldering in a wardrobe somewhere since Paula Abdul’s “Straight Up” video, and (2) Who the hell is that guitarist doing the Lita Ford thing?
Well, her name is Orianthi Panagaris, a 24-year-old Australian of the shredding persuasion. Her official Web site carries a testimonial from Santana and has photos of her posing with Steve Vai — the man most likely to have played a solo on a Jackson album if the King of Pop had recorded something between “Thriller” and “Bad.” And if you tend to notice people other than Carrie Underwood when the Queen of Checotah is on stage, Panagaris played with Underwood during her performance of “Last Name” during February’s Grammy Awards.
To employ the regularly used Staticblog euphemism, Panagaris is “marketable” in a way that the hairy, Testosterone-y Guitar Player magazine cover models Jacko generally recruited are not, and even before she was chosen for the O2 Arena shows, she was clearly on her way as a go-to hired gun. Right now, she’s a footnote in the 24-hour dull ache of cable news, but in this video, Santana says Panagaris is the person he’d “pass the baton to” if he were to retire:
Insert your own euphemism joke here if you like, but what exactly does the “Southwest tie-wearing bolo champ coming straight out of the box with a bowl o’ champ” mean by this? Somehow, no matter how good Panagaris might be at the “Oye Como Va,” I cannot imagine Devadip just kicking it in Napa while he sends “Orianthi Panagaris Plays Santana” out to play “Jingo” on a summer shed tour.
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