This week on the Pod Cast we chat with Radio Legend Barry Bissel. Well known around the country for his time on Take 40 Australia we chat with Barry about his time in radio and the amazing celebrity experiences he had along the way.
Barry Bissel recounts his weird yet unreal Michael Jackson interaction
“Back stage with Michael, I never got to interview him – they wouldn’t allow him to do interviews. They flew us up to Osaka in Japan to see the Bad tour and we went back stage at the end of the show. There were five radio/media people from Australia.
We were in this meet and greet room and all the Japanese promoters bought their kids in so there was probably about 40-50 people in this room with Michael still in his full stage gear, they are surrounding him looking at him without being rude to the Japanese this is what they tend to do, they bow their heads and look at you in honor and wait for you to do something. They don’t talk to him and he’s standing in the middle of this circle of people look terrified and eventually the promoter sort of broke it up a little.
In the meantime I felt so uncomfortable for him I went over and sat on the edge of a couch and they had a replay of the show on a video screen in the room. I was watching the show we had just seen and Michael came over and sat with me on couch and said “It’s Barry Isn’t it?’ I said “Yes”. He asked if I enjoyed the show and I said “loved it Michael yes!” Then he asked if they had water slides in Australia? And I said Yeah (Which was a very strange question to ask) he chatted on a little bit then he said “Jo here our producer” who was a 7 ft swede (a massive bloke) “we are going up to the suit to watch the replay and critique the show before tomorrow’s performance – would you like to come up?” I said would I like to come up? – Off course this is bizarre.
So I’m with the whole Michael Jackson team sitting watching the screen and it was a revelation because it was on a really Big screen and it had a time code running across the bottom of it, the room was completely dark. Michael sat in the middle in front of it watching it and no piece of paper, nothing and when it finished Jo said to him “So what did you think?” And he said “Oh at point so and so at 23 and a half seconds in this block of it we need to take out half a dance step from that” and he nominated about 7 things that he thought wasn’t good enough – all of his own stuff but he had it completely in his head – he hadn’t taken a note at the time it was 28.23 seconds or something like that and I went wow! “You are a genius!”.
