Becky Barksdale, Lead Guitarist for Michael During the Dangerous World Tour

Barksdale recalled a concert, in a town she can’t remember, where she got an unexpected surprise from the Man in the Mirror.

It was during Jackson’s mega-hit Beat It, as she ripped through the Eddie Van Halen riffs made famous on MTV. Concentrating on the song, Barksdale was paying attention to little else.

“I came out front with him and we were dancing around and playing guitar, and he was right next to me,” she said, encouraging fans to visit her website to look for photos of the two together. “We never really had any contact with each other. We’re doing the show, night after night after night. One night, I think we were in Buenes Aires, or Chile, I can’t remember which … I had my eyes shut and I’m playing guitar, doing a guitar solo. All of a sudden I feel something on my butt.

I was like, ‘Oh my God, some crazed fan had somehow gotten past security and was on stage. But he was just having fun with me. I turned around and I saw that it was him, and my jaw dropped. And the drummer, I think he skipped a beat because he was laughing so hard,” said Barksdale, who beat out hundreds of other guitarists in a closed audition to win the right to stand on stage with Jackson during the tour.