I Want My MTV (15 page)

 

JANE WIEDLIN:
We'd already had a number one album and we were seasoned rock stars by the time our second album came out. There was a big budget to make “Vacation”—$50,000 or something. We still saw videos as an annoying waste of time. After seven or eight hours we sent somebody out to sneak in booze.

 

KATHY VALENTINE, Go-Go's:
We drank champagne. Lots of champagne. Lots.

 

JANE WIEDLIN:
When I look at that video now and see the parts we filmed at the end of the day—we're smiling and waving our hands, but if you look at our eyes, we're all
so
drunk. We didn't try to make it look like we were really water-skiing.

 

JOHN KALODNER:
The first act I worked with who were dramatically impacted by MTV, both positively and negatively, was Asia. We did MTV's first live concert broadcast from Japan, called “Asia from Asia.” But the guys in Asia were older than other acts who were breaking on MTV, and that showed in their videos. They had the biggest-selling record of 1983, but they quickly became unhip.

 

AL TELLER:
The first artist I saw positively affected by MTV was Men at Work. It was because of “Who Can It Be Now?” which was godawful. But it got a good response from the audience, and MTV started pounding it.

 

COLIN HAY, Men at Work:
I think “Who Can It Be Now?” cost $5,000. Greg Ham, our sax player, had a theatrical background, and I loved to perform. We first came to the States towards the end of 1982, and toured for about four months. MTV was already playing “Who Can It Be Now?” in heavy rotation and may have been playing “Down Under” by the time we left. It was exciting enough for us to be in New York. But when I arrived, people would walk past me saying, “How you doin', Colin?” People would hang out of cabs, yelling out stuff. And that was because of MTV.

 

BRUCE DICKINSON, record executive:
I was a product manager at Columbia Records, and the label had zero expectations for Men at Work. The first pressing was only 7,700 copies. But once “Who Can It Be Now?” went on MTV, things started to explode. Were they classic video stars? No. They didn't look like the guy in A Flock of Seagulls. They were offbeat, and the video got your attention. The album went to number one for something like sixteen weeks. That just didn't happen with a debut artist.

 

BOB SHERWOOD, record executive:
Men at Work exploded because of their videos. That was a turning point. MTV knew how big and important they were. And record labels began to orient more towards the importance of a video. Now, it was a necessary promotion tool. And you'd better do it right.

 

GALE SPARROW:
Acts like the Stray Cats, with no radio airplay, would tour MTV markets and sell out every club they played. Then bands would watch MTV while they were on tour and ask their labels, “How come we're not on MTV?”

 

GARY GERSH:
I signed the Stray Cats to a U.S. record deal. The only thing that kept their album
Built for Speed
out of number one was Men at Work, and then
Thriller
.

 

CHRIS ISAAK:
MTV played “Stray Cat Strut” endlessly. I mean, they wore that thing down. I couldn't believe it—a three-piece band playing rockabilly, and they're showing 'em
on TV
.

 

BRIAN SETZER, the Stray Cats:
We were three brash guys from New York, living in England, when MTV started. We were told, “You're going to make a video. It's the latest thing.” Okay, sounds good. We weren't popular until MTV came out. All of a sudden, we'd go to a place like Des Moines and play for a thousand people. Everyone was showing up in cowboy shirts and trying to look like Elvis.

 

JULIEN TEMPLE:
I'd seen the Stray Cats and found them exciting live. They were quite cartoon-like, with their exaggerated quiffs and overdone '50s look, so I did a Tex Avery–like video for them.

 

STEWART COPELAND:
In those days, the band had to look the part. Your haircuts and sartorial choices were very much a part of the product. And, led by Sting, we were good at it. We would tease Stingo that he couldn't walk past a mirror without primping. And he would say, “Fuck off, it's my job. And yours, too, by the way.”

 

SIMON LE BON:
MTV made bad haircuts look really cool for a while.

 

JERRY CASALE:
Before I shot the Cars' “Panorama” video, Elliott Roberts, who managed Devo and the Cars, said to me offhand, “You know, Ric Ocasek's got a hairpiece.” It had never occurred to me.

 

BRIAN SETZER:
My hair was my speciality. If you don't have cool hair, don't make a video.

ANN WILSON:
Put your hair up, take it down, rat it up, torment it, put some shit in it, make it bigger and bigger. It was never big enough.

 

NANCY WILSON:
More mousse, more mousse, more hair dryers.

 

VICKI PETERSON, the Bangles:
It wasn't just the hair that was big in the '80s. It was the shoulder pads, parachute pants, everything. For “Walk Like an Egyptian,” I wore
four
pairs of false eyelashes.

 

RICHARD MARX:
In a monologue, Chelsea Handler referred to me and my “fluffy mullet.” The truth is, I absolutely had a fuckin' mullet. But I wasn't the first. Bono was before me. Mel Gibson in
Lethal Weapon
made it seem like a good idea. I remember watching
Lethal Weapon
and thinking,
I could totally rock that hairstyle
.

 

RICK SPRINGFIELD, artist:
I was one of the first people to have my hair big and coiffed on top and long in the back. It was mullet-ish, but to me, the mullet was a Southern thing, super-short in front and super-long in the back.

 

SIMON LE BON:
I had a mullet.

 

NICK RHODES:
Our guitarist, Andy Taylor, had the king mullet to kill all other mullets, but I think we were probably all guilty at the time.

 

SIMON LE BON:
David Bowie had the best mullet of all. And we were huge fans of his.

 

JOAN MYERS:
One morning at work, my phone rang, and it was Stevie Nicks, calling from LA. She wanted us to play one of her videos right away so she could see how her hair looked in it. It was 9:30 A.M. in New York, 6:30 in LA. Les called the control room in Smithtown, and ten minutes later, they played the video.

 

MARTHA DAVIS:
I remember going to award shows, and there'd be Cyndi Lauper, Dale Bozzio, and Terri Nunn. I was the only one with normal hair.

 

KATHY VALENTINE:
I wonder how my life might have turned out different if I'd had a different hairstyle in the '80s.

 

OLIVIA NEWTON-JOHN, artist:
I'd had long blond hair and when I went short brunette for “Physical,” my haircut started a trend. The headband I wore also started a trend, which is hysterical, because it began as a way of keeping the hair out of my face. The record was number one for ten weeks. That was the last time I ever wore a white leotard. Once was enough.

 

JANE WIEDLIN:
I have horrible '80s poodle hair in “Our Lips Are Sealed.” But there's a simplicity and innocence to the video that appeals to me.

 

MICHAEL STIPE:
The bands that were doing successful videos had big poofy hair and insane new wave costumes. I was jealous of their haircuts and their clothes. But we felt like we were the antithesis of that, and we should forge our own path.

 

VERNON REID, Living Colour:
Very quickly, the video realm became about the young and the beautiful, or the odd and the quirky. If you weren't beautiful and hip, you had to be quirky in a particular way, like David Byrne of Talking Heads, or Ric Ocasek. In those Cars videos, Ric is just too tall and too thin, but that was the hook. He was a gangly scarecrow with great tunes.

 

JERRY HARRISON, Talking Heads:
Our first video was “Crosseyed and Painless.” But the band's not in it. David Byrne had befriended Toni Basil, and he did the video with her. They also codirected “Once in a Lifetime,” which showed off David's quirkiness, with him borrowing the body language of Southern preachers and being in a sort of ecstatic state. And he's sweating a lot. “Once in a Lifetime” was about as successful as any early MTV video I can remember.

 

TONI BASIL, artist:
When David and I codirected “Once in a Lifetime,” we shot on a blue screen, because that was the only way to do things cheaply and without bringing in lights and sets.

“Crosseyed and Painless” started when Shabba-Doo—street-dancing star of
Electric Boogaloo
and
Breakin'—
called to my attention an insane dance group called the Electric Boogaloos, from Fresno, California. When they came to LA, I filmed them. That was the first time I saw Boogaloo Sam do the moonwalk, which is really called the backslide. Michael Jackson did
not
create the moonwalk! I showed the audition tape to David Byrne, and he wanted to use that style of dance for “Crosseyed and Painless.”

 

JERRY HARRISON:
We thought MTV was a little silly. A lot of the videos, like Duran Duran's, felt more like fashion shoots than films. David directed “Burning Down the House” with Julia Heyward, a conceptual artist, and the idea was that we had alter egos, including a little kid who climbs all over David. He had a tendency to cram a lot of ideas into those early videos, but the one for “Burning Down the House” was actually a hit.

 

TONI BASIL:
On my “Mickey” video, I was the director, producer, choreographer, editor, singer—everything. I'd made very avant-garde 8mm and 16mm films, and hung out with Bruce Conner and Jonas Mekas, who were famous late'60s filmmakers. And I had been choreographing for television since the late'60s, so I certainly knew how to shoot for TV. I didn't have a calculated approach to “Mickey” of
Ooh, I'll wear a short skirt in the video because guys will like it
. If you don't like my talent, then fuck you. A European company signed me to make a video album, pre-MTV. I had to think of seven different concepts for the videos, and I'd been head cheerleader at Las Vegas High School, so I put a cheerleader concept into it. I used real cheerleaders, from Carson High School in LA. “Mickey” went to number one in Britain, and I got an American record deal just about the time MTV was starting, so the timing was great.

 

“WEIRD AL” YANKOVIC:
On “Ricky,” my parody of “Mickey,” the budget was $3,000. We shot on video at somebody's house in the San Fernando Valley, very much like a porno. My friends were extras in the video. There was one scene where I'm supposed to be shaking maracas and nobody had bothered to get maracas. But we had a bowling pin. I thought, “Maybe if I shake it fast enough, it'll look like a maraca.” Apparently, it was good enough for MTV.

 

RICK SPRINGFIELD:
“Jessie's Girl” and “I've Done Everything for You” were so cheesy that now they're cool. “Jessie's Girl” was the only video where I had any real input. I storyboarded that and basically directed it with the camera guy. The big expense was smashing twenty-four mirrors. We wanted different takes, different angles. The scenes are so short, with split-second shots and fast cuts, there's no chance to do any real acting in them. Most musicians can't act anyway, even if they think they can.

 

BILLY JOEL:
For “Uptown Girl,” the director told me, “Look at the picture in your locker as if you're in love with this woman and then dance around with a wrench in your hand.” I said, “Are you fucking kidding me?”

TOM PETTY:
“You Got Lucky” was a real groundbreaker. There was a minute-long scene where we walk through the desert, uncover a dusty old boombox, and push play, and that's when the music begins. Michael Jackson called us, saying what an incredible idea that was. That video was terrific fun. We wrote the treatment ourselves and borrowed a ton from
Mad Max
, something we shared with many videos of that era. That was when we really saw MTV change our daily lives. Not only were teenagers spotting me on the street, older people would spot me, too. We knew it was big.

 

DON LETTS:
I was in Texas with the Clash to shoot “Rock the Casbah,” and Mick Jones showed up one day wearing red long johns, because he was in a mood. I said, “You really want to wear that for a video? If you look like a cunt on film, you'll look like a cunt forever.” So he changed what he was wearing. I'd hit playback and the Clash would just go, go, go. They were like four sticks of dynamite.

Putting a Jew and an Arab in the video was just about breaking taboos. Yes, the Muslim in the video is drinking a beer. They pull into a petrol station and the Arab makes the Jewish gentleman pay for the gas. These days, with all the sensitivity towards religion, you wouldn't get to make that video.

 

MICK JONES:
We were showing how people can get along—by drinking beer and going to Burger King. The idea of the video was about oil, really. We were in America, so we went to the oil fields in Texas. That was the subtext of it. I wanted to wear red long johns, but Don wouldn't let me. That's why I put a mosquito mask on my face, 'cause I was in a bad mood.

 

TODD RUNDGREN:
At first, there was a more eclectic variety of videos on the air, because bands weren't yet making videos specifically for MTV. After MTV was recognized as being a great promotion vehicle, things got more formulaic: smoke bombs, scantily clad women, that sort of thing. There's nothing wrong with smoke bombs and scantily clad women the first couple of times, you know? Then you start to think,
Nobody has any ideas here, really
.