A Perth singer has detailed her family’s special connection to Michael Jackson, recalling her mother’s year-long friendship with the King of Pop after a chance meeting almost three decades ago.
Social media personality Holly Denton has finally decided to open up about the “incredible” friendship that begun when Jackson visited Perth on his 1996 History world tour.
Ms Denton’s mum, Val, and dad, Dean — frontman of former Perth pub rockers the Frames — briefly told The West Australian about the encounter in 2013, but now Ms Denton wants to “share it with the world”.
In a TikTok video — which has now been viewed more than 230,000 times — Ms Denton revealed her family’s relationship with Jackson began after her mum and brother discovered the music icon hiding out in a Video Ezy before his concert at the Burswood Dome.
She said a security guard saw them outside the video store and invited them inside to meet Jackson.
When they walked inside, Jackson was on a phone call and “buying DVDs” so he just waved to Ms Denton’s gobsmacked mother and confused eight-year-old brother Ash, who wondered what all the fuss was about.
Ms Denton said her mum wanted to show Ash exactly how famous Jackson was and decided to take him to a signing event outside the Rendezvous hotel in Scarborough later that night.
At the event, Ms Denton’s mum pushed Ash to the front of the 2000-strong crowd in the hopes he would get a glimpse of the Thriller star, but what happened next sparked a chain of events they never could have imagined in their wildest dreams.
Jackson immediately recognised Ash from earlier in the day at Video Ezy and asked about his mum who was behind him among the other screaming fans.
Ms Denton said Jackson “parted the sea of people” for her mum and asked them to join him in his Scarborough hotel room.
Ms Denton, who was only four-years-old at the time and at home with her dad, revealed that once in the hotel room, her mum was lucky enough to try on Jackson’s clothes, exchange phone numbers and hang out with him until midnight.
She said Jackson was so generous he even offered the family free VIP tickets to his show the next day and asked them to join his entourage before and after the concert.
The family accepted the offer and while they were on the bus on the way to the venue, Ms Denton said WA Police closed off the freeway, claiming that “doesn’t happen unless it’s the Queen or the Pope”.
At the concert, Jackson organised Ash to join several other kids on stage for his hit song Heal the World.
She revealed her normally “shy” brother managed to ask Jackson for his hat, which the singer gave to him.
The family have the iconic black hat on display inside a transparent box alongside the VIP concert tickets and a photo of the family with Jackson.
“It has his name in gold inside the brim, it smells like him and it smells divine. It’s pretty special it’s not one of those hats he just throws out to the audience it is his actual hat to the point they said on the news, ‘Michael Jackson has left the building but he is without his hat’ and my brother was sitting in our lounge room wearing Michael’s hat,” she said.
Ms Denton revealed the concert experience was not the last of their interactions with Jackson, claiming he would call her mum from all over the world after performing at gigs just to have a chat which lasted for about a year.
“That emphasises, if you’ve seen the movie, what you know, how lonely that man was, so I’ll defend Michael till the end because my family was part of it and I know for sure that was absolutely not even in his realm of thinking,” she said referring to child sex abuse allegations Jackson faced.
“He was a very quirky, unique, socially awkward person (but) that malice, that evil was non-existent.
“And that’s just a little part of my life and my family’s life that is just so lucky and so incredible.”
In a separate video, Ms Denton said her family wanted to celebrate their friendship with Jackson privately and haven’t previously spoken about it at length due to the controversy surrounding the late singer who died on June 25, 2009.
Three years before his visit to Perth, Jackson was accused of molesting 13-year-old Jordan Chandler. The criminal investigation found no physical evidence and no indictments, though Jackson ultimately reached a $23 million out-of-court civil settlement with the family.
Ms Denton also made sure to mention that Jackson got permission from her dad to hang out with his family.
“Michael said if you have a problem with me hanging out with your family, I completely understand, however I assure you it’s all lies, it’s not true and my dad’s like ‘we never thought it was anyway but thank you’,” she said.
In another video, Ms Denton tried to get her mum to tell her more than 250,000 TikTok followers about her friendship with Jackson.
However, her mum was hesitant to spill all her secrets but did reveal he “smelt beautiful”, had “maybe a dozen phone calls” and would speak “for 30 to 45 minutes”.
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.perthnow.com.au ’
