MTV Ruled the World- The Early Years of Music Video

by Greg Prato

  MIKE PELECH: I was at the first New Year's Eve party, but I wasn't working. I was a civilian. And it was great. It was crazy. But just to give you an idea of how sparse it was for content, I think it was Jeff Bolton who was directing, and Chris Kelly, the stage manager, came running over to me on the dance floor, and said, "We need to fill a minute, so they want to interview you and want to ask what it's like to be a 'rock n' roll cameraman.'" That's how desperate everybody was for filler! They rolled the camera in, and they were just about to interview me...and he wound up doing something else.

  ROBIN ZORN: It was Karla Bonoff, David Johansen, and I think Bow Wow Wow. The New Year's Eve was really great but kind of hokey. We pre-recorded the opening, with fireworks in the background, and the VJs had to wear these really goofy tuxedos — the guys did — and they hated that. They were different colors. It was almost a high school prom. We were on the air live, they were talking to each other, and it was hard to hear, but it was great. It was really fun. We had cameras walking through the audience, and I remember a camera shot underneath someone's skirt, and the girl didn't have any underwear on. And I remember someone going, "Hey, that's my girlfriend. Get the camera off there!" We definitely got a crotch shot that should not have made air.

  ALAN HUNTER: MTV filled a huge void. And it was unlike all those other programs. It was on as people's "friendly company," at all hours of the night, for college dorms or housewives in the morning. That was people's "feel-good hub."

  Initial Impressions

  GERALD CASALE: When it kicked in, it was like the beta model. People were writing it up and mentioning it, but nobody knew what to think about it yet. And they played the same ten videos all day long, because they had like four from us, and they were playing Rod Stewart videos, David Bowie's "Ashes to Ashes," "Video Killed the Radio Star," "Turning Japanese," and a few others. And it just kept rotating all day with these VJs, who were trying to act hip and who were totally out of it. We would laugh at them. It's like they came from radio, and they acted like what they thought was hip and were like ten years behind.

  MICHAEL SADLER: That was the beauty of it. It was like guaranteed airplay, because they didn't have a huge library of videos to choose from.

  RICKY BYRD: They were begging the bands for videos, because nobody knew what this thing was, and there weren't a ton of videos really being done.

  "WEIRD AL" YANKOVIC: When MTV started, I was working in the mailroom at a radio syndication company, and there was a lot of buzz about this cable TV channel that was playing music videos 24 hours a day. My boss thought it was an idiotic idea that would never catch on, but I thought it sounded really cool. I was living in a one-room apartment in Hollywood with a Murphy bed that folded out from the wall. It was a big investment for me at the time, but I took the plunge and got cable TV, mostly so that I could check out this new thing called MTV. I also figured out how to hook up my TV in stereo, which their promos at the time were coercing people to do. Suddenly, my TV sounded big...and my neighbors weren't happy. I was completely mesmerized. I love music videos, so I would just sit and watch it for hours at a time. Even if I wasn't actively watching, MTV would always be playing in the background, kind of like "video wallpaper." In the early days, they didn't have a huge backlog of titles to choose from, so you'd see a lot of the same videos over and over. You'd also see a lot of bands like Devo, bands who maybe didn't have a huge mainstream following but had the foresight to make a bunch of music videos before they were deemed mandatory. I also remember there being a lot of technical glitches and VJs messing up, which was actually charming. The channel had a wonderful guerilla "Hey, let's put on a show!" feel to it.

  JOHN OATES: It looked crude. It was crude in the beginning, just like so many start-up endeavors are. And the videos were crude. The production values were crude. But then again, there was nothing to measure it against. But it was new and unique. It really did create a buzz. People really did like it. Right off the bat, people got into it.

  VERDINE WHITE: It wasn't the first music channel, to be honest. Actually, BET was doing music videos first. They just hadn't come to prominence.

  RIK EMMETT: I didn't take it all that seriously, to be perfectly frank, because my thinking about television and how it affected rock n' roll, it was never really done very well. Like, even when you'd see the Beatles on Ed Sullivan or the Rolling Stones, and you'd see shows like The Monkees, you had to go for an easy laugh, or it had to be dumbed down. And it always sounded like shit coming out of a television. I always thought that TV turned music into a bit of a cartoon — animated, goofy, sitcom-ish. In its early stages, for Triumph, we were lucky that we had videos, because Mike Levine [Triumph's bassist] had the vision, because we were signed to RCA, and they were coming out with these newfangled VHS machines and really had a corporate desire to try and sell these things. The whole idea of the convergence of different branches of a large conglomerate — that kind of thinking hadn't really taken hold yet, but it was just starting. And Mike went, "Hey RCA, you've got a division where you manufacture these VHS machines, right? But you've also got a record label, right? Well, why wouldn't you have some concert footage of a band that you're trying to promote, put your machines in every record store you can, run a loop of these guys playing, and use that with an RCA television sitting in every store, and you'll be promoting the band, the television, and your VHS machine. This is a marriage made in heaven for you guys." And they went, "Oh yeah, jeez, that makes good sense." So we had these videos that we made in '78/'79, set up on a soundstage somewhere in Kleinburg, Ontario. When MTV started, they were desperate for content. They had very few videos. So they said, "Oh great, Triumph has some stuff? We'll start running it."

  GEORGE THOROGOOD: People would say, "I've been thinking about doing this a long time ago," but you couldn't put it on The Johnny Carson Show, y'know? Everybody had a lot of great ideas about things they always wanted to do, but they didn't have an avenue to take it to. They had their doors open 24 hours.

  TOMMY TUTONE: It had a good long-range thinking that "We're going to see how this works, but you've got to give them a while to go." It reminds me of what they say about Japanese businesses, where they have to show profit the first quarter. It seemed like it wasn't profit-driven, at first. It is in the long-range, but first, they have to stretch out and bait themselves. That seemed like there was some intuitive understanding that it was going to take a while before we can make these two be in line, so we have to give them their "sandbox" and let them play.

  GEDDY LEE: In the early days, I would say it was pretty exciting to see. Everybody was watching it. Everybody was looking for what they would see in it. It kind of got you thinking about songs in a different way, both good and bad.

  ANN WILSON: I was completely thrilled. I was really knocked over, because it was the same opening up of possibility that happened when silent films became talkies. It all of a sudden added a whole other dimension to the music.

  JOE ELLIOTT: Not a lot, because I didn't live in America. In 1981, we were in the States with Ozzy for about six weeks and Blackfoot for about a month. And then we were gone. We were back home by September/October '81, preparing for the next album, and didn't know anything about MTV. We'd shot three kind of...I wouldn't call them videos, promo "movies" of three tracks from High N' Dry. Which for us, we knew the only chance we had of getting them shown was on The Old Grey Whistle Test on BBC in England or the equivalent shows in France and Germany. And maybe Don Kirshner's Rock Concert would show one, but normally, they'd have a band live. So MTV was new to us. We really didn't know much about it.

  PHIL COLLEN: It was a little bit like how XM Radio is, because initially, there were no commercials. It was just a really nice mix of a radio station. Different genres and everything.

  MARKY RAMONE: The other Ramones were older than I was, and I understood the vibe of doing a song and presenting the song video-wise for two minutes and thirty seconds. The story of your song, visually. I would explain to John, Dee De
e, and Joey what this was really about. I would say, "If you saw the Monkees, that's basically what it is, but it's going to be different. It's going to be more advanced, and it's going to be our songs, not that stuff. This is the new deal. This is what's going to happen." "Well, we like the songs on the radio." "Well, this is what it's going to be." "Oh, but now we have to travel. We have to go here and there." You had to put a prod on their behinds to do it, but then they understood it. Then they wanted to do more, because they saw themselves on this new medium. No one really at that time grasped the importance of what this medium would turn out to be.

  STEWART COPELAND: It was brilliant. Up until that point, videos were not an art-form. The only place I'd seen them was in England, on shows like Top of the Pops. When there would be an American group that actually couldn't show up, they would send video, which was usually just a camera following the band around a park while they walk around, and someone says, "Hey, get an ice cream! Let's have all the lads eating ice cream!" They were sort of like Monkees videos.

  ROB HALFORD: It just shook everything up. It shook the industry up from top to bottom, much like the invention of the Internet. Everybody thought, "What's this video thing going to mean to the labels? What's it going to mean to the bands? What's it going to mean to revenue? What's it going to mean to everything?" And it didn't take too long to appreciate that this was going to be a really important, exciting development, because primarily, you're going to have your favorite artists streaming into your home.

  MIKE SCORE: I remember in England, we finished our album [A Flock of Seagulls], and it was basically sitting on the shelf, waiting for something to happen. And then Clive Davis, who owned Jive Records, which we were on, came to us and said, "We're going to do a promo clip, because there's a new company called “MTV,” and they're looking out for promos from new bands." So we're like, "OK...what the hell is all this?" They said to us, "Go out, go shopping, get yourself some clothes, and when you come back this afternoon, you're going to make this promo clip." So we talked to the guy that was going to direct. I can't remember his name now. Basically, he said, "Portray your image, and we'll set up a quick shoot." And I think the whole shoot took no longer than about a couple of hours. We either saw it the next morning or that night. It was that quick. And then the next thing you know, it was on MTV.

  MIKE RENO: I think the first time I saw it, I was on it! Here's the deal, as far as I can recollect. We were playing I don't even know where. We were probably doing some kind of a promotional gig, maybe playing with the group Kansas. We were told that, the next week, we were going to fly to Albany, New York, and shoot...they used the word "video," but we never heard it before. Video for us was when you put a video in the video machine and you watch it. So shooting a video went right over my head. They said, "You're going to play songs, and we're going to film you." Now, you learn ten, twenty years later that these videos cost a fortune and they make or break your careers. But we were one of the first bands to deliver a video to MTV. We delivered three videos to MTV the first week they were opened. They were all done on the same weekend in Albany, New York, on the same stage. And apparently what they did is they spliced in clips of people doing funny things and whatever. So they filmed us live, chopped it up, made us look as best we could. We were all skinny rock stars at the time, y'know? Kids. So we looked pretty good. And I remember the first time I saw MTV, I was on it. [Laughs] I thought, "What a cool channel." It's 24 hours of music videos. That was the initial MTV. I thought, "What a great concept." And, because only a few bands were hip to sending in videos, we were on this heavy rotation, which just turned us into TV stars. So it went from us being unrecognized — unless you just did a gig and you walked down the street when the gig got out — to being like super famous TV stars. That's what happened to us. Overnight, I remember the difference.

  CY CURNIN: First time I watched MTV, it was early morning. It was refreshing to see a video instead of a cheesy infomercial or a Bible-bashing preacher. Kids for once had their own channel to start the day. It was the first "national" music station, too, so a hit was a hit nationwide at the same time.

  DEBORA IYALL: The first time we saw MTV, we were on tour for our first album [It's a Condition]. We were somewhere back east, you know where it's really verdant and brick buildings and smaller university towns. I can't even remember if it was North Carolina, outside Philadelphia, or where it was, but we got a motel that had MTV. We were leaving our doors open, because we would have MTV on the TV, and people would be walking in and out to watch it before we went to soundcheck. We were fascinated. I think the first thing I saw on MTV was "I Want Candy." I was pretty excited. It was like, "Wow, a band that we know and dig is on television.

  ROB HALFORD: Each time I would come to America from 1981 onwards, whenever I was in my Holiday Inn in Duluth or wherever, my TV would be on MTV. All the time, 24 hours a day. You never switched it off. Even when you were asleep, you had it on, but with the volume down. There was just an endless display of music, music, music. And interviews. It was just an exciting experience for bands, and obviously, fans.

  PAUL DEAN: I was in Wichita, and we were on tour. I guess it was 1981. I was slipping through the channels, looking for something to do before soundcheck, and I stumbled on MTV. I couldn't believe how amazing it was. I probably stayed in my room all day. I was really fascinated by it. I never saw anything like it.

  RUDY SARZO: The first time I ever heard of MTV was when some of the execs came to visit the Ozzy Osbourne Band. They brought some merchandise — ties, shirts, and coffee cups with the MTV logo. And Ozzy's first reaction to the whole idea of MTV was he thought it was nuts! He'd say, "Who wants to watch a bunch of old geezers 24/7, running around on your television set?"

  RICK SPRINGFIELD: I thought it was a good idea. I likened it to the video jukeboxes from the '60s, where you'd put a dollar or quarter in, and they'd play a really bad eight millimeter film of some guy surfing, while the Beach Boys sang "Barbara Ann" or something. That was my closest image to what MTV was and had been aware of videos because of that, but didn't really understand it would go any further than the little local video jukebox thing.

  ROGER POWELL: My first impression was, "Hell, that should have been us!" But no, my thoughts were this was a perfect creative extension of what musicians were already doing with sound in the studio. And, of course, it was a superb method of promoting what you were doing. So it was really cool that you could make these little companion mini-movies to go along with the music, so people had a visual accompaniment. As an art form, it was really exciting.

  GREG HAWKES: We were excited to do some videos. It's funny, because I remember on the other hand, I think especially Ric [Ocasek] being a little bit reluctant about jumping in a big way, because you've got that double-edged thing of, "The videos could make your song popular, but then, it's got that thing, 'Gee, I can't even listen to that song without thinking of the video.'" So it's got that thing where it sort of imposes a meaning to the song, that the author might not have necessarily intended, or in some ways, it can be limiting. It leaves less room for your own sort of "mental movie" of what might be going on with the song.

  MARTHA DAVIS: I had that "video killed the radio star thing," because part of me is music is the thing where you close your eyes and you envision it. It's like reading the book rather than seeing the movie. So part of that is it's a double-edged sword. But it was so absolutely fun doing it.

  MICKEY THOMAS: It was a new way to interpret the songs and the music. I think a lot of artists didn't like it because of that reason. One of the criticisms early on was, when you put out a song, you put out music, and it's something strictly for listening enjoyment. Then people can form their own images in their heads of the song, what it means to them. Especially if it's a more abstract lyric. Then, the video process, some artists felt, was restricted to the art, and [they] put out a pre-planned image of the way you were supposed to interpret the song. I didn't necessarily agree with that school of thought
. Basically, what we tried to do was have fun with it. We did some pretty silly videos. [Laughs] And those were some of my favorite ones, the ones that were sort of abstract, goofy, and didn't have a whole lot of rhyme and reason to them. I'd like to think that we went with more of the sort Fellini-esque interpretations of our songs and videos.

  PETE ANGELUS: I thought it was a very exciting opportunity for Van Halen, because Van Halen was such a visual group, and David had a great sense of humor. Once we started seeing what the videos were, I felt that when we had the opportunity, we could do something that was pretty different from what was being done on there.