MTV Ruled the World- The Early Years of Music Video

by Greg Prato

  COLIN HAY: I remember a lot of people arguing — agents arguing — who was going to get paid the most, which was a little distressing...and not particularly with the right spirit of things, since they called it the "US Festival." But it was great. We were on with the Stray Cats, who were really great, and I can't remember who else was on our night...it might have been the Clash. But it was an extraordinary event, huge. I think it was the first time they had simulcast to the Soviet Union. It was a blur by then. I think that was probably the peak for us, and also, the beginning of the end, really. [Laughs]

  DAVE WAKELING: We got to play with the Clash. We were on tour with the Clash, and it was sort of culminating with the US Festival. There was the big pandemonium on stage. They weren't going to play, then they were going to play. Then the stage crew and their crew got into it, and fights started breaking out. We all had our collars turned up and dutifully spitting at the floor, to distinguish that we were on the Clash's side. I don't think we did much apart from a few flurries, but a lot of posturing, a lot of spitting on the floor.

  RUDY SARZO: It was before the summer. It was May. I don't even think the "Metal Health" video was being played yet. We got the spot on the US Festival about two days before it actually happened, because we were on tour with the Scorpions. We shared the same booking agency. So they stuck us in as an opening act for the Scorpions, who were warming up for that US Festival show. They didn't want to go in cold without playing. We did maybe a two-and-a-half week run with them. And by the time we got to Denver — which was one of the last stops before the US Festival — Barry Fey, the agent who was in charge of booking the bands for the US Festival, really liked us. There happened to be somebody that dropped out of the roster, and they had to shift people around. So there was an opening on the second day, and they asked us if we wanted to play. They said, "Do you want to follow Mötley Crüe, or do you want to go on before Mötley Crüe?" So we figured the first band is going to have the impact, so Mötley Crüe played after us. We finished a show in El Paso. We were full of dust and sand, because it was an outdoor show. We went straight from the stage to the airport. I washed my face at the airport bathroom, got on the plane from El Paso to LAX, drove to San Bernadino, went to stay at the hotel, where everybody stayed for the show. As a matter of fact, when we were leaving, around 10:30 in the morning, because we didn't get the helicopter that everybody else got — we were in a van, and we had to go through traffic — Van Halen was just coming in from partying the night before! What I remember the most about that show is that we had a "skeleton crew." Because that show was booked so hastily, we didn't have a real road crew. Our road crew, instead of coming with us to the US Festival, they went ahead to the next show we were supposed to be playing in Dallas. They just took the truck with our equipment. So everything was rented. First of all, my back-line — that was rented — did not work. I had to rely on the monitors. Fortunately, the company that was running the monitors was TASCO, which did all the Ozzy tours. So I knew everybody in the crew, they understood the problems, and they took great care of me. Second of all, in the old days, we didn't have the type of guitar tuners we have nowadays. I mean, I have a tuner in my iPhone! Back in the old days, the calibration of the tuners could be knocked off very easily, which is what happened to my tuner. On the way from the dressing room to the stage, the calibration of my tuner was knocked off, and by the time I went to refresh my tuning during the guitar solo, I came back, and I was completely out of tune for the two songs that are the ones that were shown on TV — "Cum On Feel the Noize" and "Metal Health." So when you listen to the US Festival, listen to our tuning. I'm in tune with myself but not to the guitar. As soon as we finished playing, we got back in the van, headed to the airport, and got back out to Dallas, where Quiet Riot had scheduled a show.

  ROB HALFORD: I was with Ozzy and Nikki last Friday in Hollywood [in 2010], and we were doing the press conference for Ozzfest. We remembered that [the US Festival] was the last time that Priest, Ozzy, and Crüe were all together on that particular day, almost 25 years ago. It was an extraordinary event. It was a three-day event, and the metal event had the biggest pulling power. You had figures...was it 200,000 people? Was it 300,000? I think once you get past 200,000, everything becomes blurry. It's just too many people to consider. But the thing that I always recall is the only way the artists could get into the event — because it was rammed with traffic, it was just impossible — they flew us all by helicopter from a hotel that was like "base camp." So we all piled into the helicopter about an hour before the show, and it lifted off. It wasn't too far of a flight, but it was over the brow of a hill. As we came over to the top of the hill, we could see thousands upon thousands of cars. It must have been a nightmare when you left the event. When you looked at each other and said, "Can anybody remember where we parked?" Because, literally, a hundred thousand cars, at least. And then when we went past that, we came over to the kind of natural amphitheater, and it was just a mass of humanity. It was just unbelievable. We landed and got off, and the fans were at the chain-link fence, and you do your "Hey, it's great to be here" thing, and then you rush to the dressing room. You go on, a boiling hot day. The fans were being sprayed down, and everybody was having the time of their lives. I think on that day you had Crüe, Priest, Ozzy, Triumph, Scorpions, so it was a fantastic day. And then the following day, we flew back to Spain, to start work on [Defenders of the Faith].

  RIK EMMETT: It was an extraordinary kind of event. These kinds of things, you didn't get them all the time. Every summer, you'd get to play outdoor shows, but this was on "heavy metal day." Estimates run from 250,000 to maybe as much as 500,000 people. The helicopter flies in, and you just see a sea of people. And then you get into the backstage area, and there's sort of compounds for the headliners, trailers and stuff. And you realize that now you're in this area where, "Oh, there's the guys from Judas Priest," and "Oh, there's the guys from Mötley Crüe," and "Oh, there's the guys from Van Halen." It just never stopped. Everywhere you would turn and look, there were celebrities and television folks. I can remember seeing Valerie Bertinelli walking around with some other actress — her name escapes me — in the backstage area. For me, those kinds of things become a question of, "I just want to get in my trailer, get a guitar in my hands, warm up, and get my game face on." You're in the circumstance where there's going to be bands all day long, but the only thing that's going to set you apart is whether or not you can perform really well. I think some bands around that time, their approach was more like, "This is one big party." So they'd be partying, and consequently, their performance might have been affected by the partying. [Laughs] Whereas my approach was, "No, no, no, I'm going to try and get out there and play as best as I possibly can. Because it's going to be out in the daylight. There's no special effects. There's no lighting cues that are going to enhance the experience. I've just got to get out there, and I've got play music, in a very larger-than-life kind of way. There's going to be cameras right up tight on my hands and my face." Because that US Festival was being filmed, the barricades were so far away from the stage, that the audience was...it wasn't intimate at all. It was very distancing. It felt like you weren't playing for any kind of audience; you were playing to this sea of faceless folks, that were a long way away. So the performance was really for these cameras that were swinging around on remote arms and a grip pushing a thing back and forth across the stage, which had to have its own platform built for it off the front of the stage. So that even pushed the audience further away. And there's these giant screens on each side of the stage — that was a relatively new development at the time — that would be showing what the cameras were shooting at the same time we were up there. You realized, "I'd better get my fingers in the right place at the right time, because it's going to be on a screen that's a hundred feet high!" Wozniak was a really big fan of the band. He had come to the backstage area and had been hanging out. He and Gil were having long conversations and hanging together. He just loved the ban
d, because Triumph was a little different, in the sense that a lot of our music was positive and motivating. The songs were about "holding on to your dreams" and "fighting the good fight" and "laying it on the line." We had this kind of positive bent to what we were doing, whereas a lot of the other bands, a lot of their songs were about raising hell and "rocking you like a hurricane." There's nothing wrong with that, but we were a little bit different from the standard kinds of messages and content of a lot of the other hard rock/heavy metal acts. So Wozniak, I think that's why he gravitated towards our band and wanted us on the bill on the day. My personal memory of that day is that it was extremely hot. It was somewhere between 90 and 100 degrees. And the air quality was really poor. All the smog from L.A. had blown up and got trapped against the mountains. You ran up and down the stage a few times...and then you wondered why your lungs felt as if you'd been in some opium den or something. But we made it through. That particular performance has become one that is the legacy of the act. It was just one show on one day, but it was an extraordinary day.

  HERMAN RAREBELL: Over 400,000 people. We played just in front of Van Halen. I thought for the Scorpions that was the big breakthrough in America. I mean, we already had a song in the charts with "No One Like You," but after that festival was over and we came out with "Rock You Like a Hurricane," that song went straight into the top ten, especially in California. As soon as we had done our show, we were flown out again by helicopter, just to avoid the amazing traffic that would happen after Van Halen's performance. A lot of people had already left after our performance. I could see this when we flew over all those people with the helicopter. So there was no time for hanging around with Van Halen. I just remember that David Lee Roth was completely drunk that night, and most of the other bands — Ozzy, Mötley Crüe — came and left already. None of those acts were hanging around. The party-time was actually later, in Los Angeles at the Rainbow. It was not one of those festivals where you could hang around. It was getting in and out, because of so many people and the traffic.

  RIK EMMETT: As far as hanging out with other acts, Van Halen had their own compound, and those guys were having the greatest party of their lives. There had been this thing that had gone on behind-the-scenes — some of the other days, they had a "country day" booked and a "new wave" day — and the ticket sales were really soft for that. So at the eleventh hour, they decided, "We need a massive headliner." So they booked David Bowie, and Bowie had to get a million dollars. That was his price-tag. "No, I'm not available...OK, I'll come and do it, but you have to pay me a million bucks." "Well, OK." Apple didn't care. It was "Apple money." Wozniak had so much money. They had this unbelievable year. They were either going to be paying it in corporate taxes, or they could use it to have some fun. So they figured, "Let's throw a party for America." That was the thinking. Well, they didn't realize that in the small print of the Van Halen contract, there was this standard clause, called a "favored nations clause," which said, "We don't play on any show where somebody else gets paid more than we do." So Van Halen's manager and agent came back to the promoters and said, "Bowie for a million, eh? Well, that means you're going to have to pay us a million and one."

  PETE ANGELUS: I went to that festival, because I was touring with [Van Halen]. I toured with the band from the time they got signed and went out on the road until the time they split up with Dave in 1985. So I was with them all the time. I was also designing the productions and the lighting. Van Halen was being paid a lot of money. I think it was $1,500,000 for a 90-minute performance. And I remember Dave thinking that it would be a good idea to take a substantial chunk of that money and create a "backstage compound," that he could hang out in for like five days leading up to the event. And he could have his friends out there, and there were different trailers, and there were a lot of dancers that were coming in from strip clubs, that were being driven and flown in and out. We also did a short film prior to the event of what was going on in the backstage area. Of course, that was a fabricated piece that we shot a month in advance of the event. But I do remember going backstage probably an hour before they were about to go on and realizing, "Oh man...these five days of partying in this compound has caught up with Dave. [Laughs] He's a little shaky at the knees." Tried to figure out how we were going to deal with that and "wake him up" as quickly as possible. I don't say that in a negative sense. He was enjoying himself. But it was pretty evident in the footage that he was not 100% at his best.

  "Billie Jean" and "Beat It"

  STEVE BARRON: I did the "Don't You Want Me?" video for the Human League, which went to number one in America. Michael Jackson liked the look of it apparently. He was completing Thriller and was looking for people. I got a call from my partner, Simon Fields, who said, "Michael Jackson's manager is interested in the 'Don't You Want Me?' 'cinematic look' and doing something. Sort of a magical-story-type feel." And would I be up for doing an idea on it. They sent the track, "Billie Jean," no lyrics, no real idea, except the manager did say in terms of background, that Michael Jackson was very keen on Peter Pan and that sort of magic. Coming up with the story, as soon as they said "magical" and things like that, I think I had the "lighting up/Midas touch" idea for another artist that didn't happen. And immediately thought that really belonged to the atmosphere of this track, that it could be a strange land and some yellow brick road. I supposed I went into the yellow brick road thing a little bit in terms of Peter Pan, and that would be a good idea, to have everything he touched be turned...to the Midas touch, basically. So I wrote out a treatment, [and] they really liked it. They said, "Come over to L.A." I was in London at the time, flew over there, and met with Michael. I had a storyboard and went through it with him, and he was really curious and very excited about it. Oh, and after I sent the treatment in, the manager said, "The 'new Michael Jackson' will be dancing. He's been rehearsing some dancing." He actually said, "He's been practicing in front of the mirror." And that was just an interesting image, of him practicing his dance in the mirror. But I didn't know what that dance was or what it would be. I didn't have any clue. There wasn't going to be any rehearsals or anything like that. So he said, "Leave some space for that." So, in the storyboard, I put a couple of panels and said, "I left this chorus for you to dance. It's up to you with what you want to do." Two choruses I thought it was. So I just drew a couple of panels of him in that "mode." He liked the idea of he goes by the camera shop, and the camera shop all comes to life, and the picture is taken of him. He said, "What about we do another store. It's a tailor store, and these mannequins jump out of the store window, and they dance with me?" Which I thought was a fabulous idea. This was literally two days before we'd film. I go to the producer, and he said, "Well, we've got to change the shot, get some dancers, do some rehearsals, get a choreographer." And the budget of the video was like $55,000. That would be an extra $5,000. He went to the record company, and they said to him, "No way. This is already a high budget video." Again, this is six or seven weeks before the album had been heard by anyone. Nobody had any clue that it was going to be that big. They were excited about it, but there was no hint that it was going to be massive. So they said, "No, you can't do that." And I thought, "Well, I hope they're going to tell Michael, because that's a hard one for me to say no to." Funny enough, the night before we were due to shoot, I got a phone call in my hotel from Michael, saying, "You know, the idea of the tailor store...I don't think I want to do it in this concept." So I just said, "Sure, whatever you think. That's fine." And I thought, "Well, I'm not going to tell him that they already said no...now that we're not doing it anyway!" Later, I realized that he wanted to save that for "Beat It" to have the people dancing on "Beat It" and "Thriller" and to leave this one purely how it was. It was two days. He was really sweet, really soft-spoken. I've got some nice photos of [him] on the shoot, just me chatting with him. Someone showed me the rushes recently, and there's a bit of me doing that "spinning dance" at the bottom of the stairs. There's a bit of me doing that, to him! Whic
h looking back, it's like, "What are you trying to tell him?!" He knew I had a little baby actually, and he was really curious about [it], in a sweet, personal way, really interested.

  BOB GIRALDI: I was a fairly successful commercial director, rolling along. And I met a young man named Antony Payne, who turned out to be my executive producer. He was a Brit, I think born here but raised there. He was hip to the new industry that was just beginning to start. He came to me and said, "Would you like to do a video or two?" I've always liked music and done some musical commercials. I was also at the beginning of the phase when Broadway advertising turned to commercials, and there was a lot of histrionics about that as well, a lot of negativism about doing that. But I remember Bob Fosse did the first Pippin commercial, and I think I came second with A Chorus Line, Michael Bennett's play. So I liked that genre of the commercial business. So I said, "Sure, let's go for it," and he made contacts with...actually, we started with Michael Jackson, of all people. He was a very charming man, and [we] started a relationship with Michael's two agents at the time and got a meeting for us and showed him my commercial work. Michael was taken by a couple of things I did, specifically one commercial. WLS TV in Chicago came to me, and they depicted something that was on their station one time. It's the story of an old couple in a sort of tough section, an area in Chicago where the white families left, the black families moved in, and an old blind couple refused to leave and stayed. And, in staying, threw a block party for the new kids of the neighborhood. So here I have all these African American boys and girls going to this block party, given by this white couple in their 80s, who can't even see. It was really quite moving. In all the years I've shot, I've never been that moved. I had to stop shooting, take a walk, and compose myself. And the two actors that I got to play the blind couple were very good and moving. Michael saw that and was taken with it, and was willing to meet the person that did it. So we met, and he was very charming, and very smart. He asked me to come up with a scenario. We talked about ["Beat It"] and the anti-violence message of it. I remember going to the beach with my family, and instead of hanging out with my kids, I was lying on the beach with headphones, listening to the song over and over again and coming up with the scenario. Which over the years, most media people have written that it's a take-off/rip-off/knock-off of West Side Story. And it's absolutely not. It absolutely has nothing to do with West Side Story at all. Nothing. Not a movement in it. It was only about me and my childhood. As most people do when they write, they sort of personalize stuff, growing up in Paterson, New Jersey, and how everybody appeared to be and tried to be tough, when we really weren't tough at all. So I depicted that sort of "street maneuvering" as I knew it and did it in dance. And luckily, found Michael Peters, who was the choreographer or associate choreographer at the time of A Chorus Line and Dream Girls and a lot of great things on Broadway. He worked exclusively with Michael Bennett. I was lucky to find Michael. Because I had shot the A Chorus Line commercial, I met him on the set and started a relationship with him. He was one of the biggest influences in my life of shooting videos, and probably everybody. Because let's not forget, that dance sequence in "Beat It" was not choreographed by Michael Jackson. "Beat It" was choreographed by Michael Peters and was the beginning of what was known then as "street dancing." And the fight [sequence] — of tying their wrists and the fight — had nothing to do with West Side Story. It was a story that was told to me when I was working in a factory as a kid, by one of the tough guys that worked there, of a fight that he witnessed in the Bronx between two gang leaders, who ended up tying their wrists together and killing each other. It was pretty gruesome, and I utilized that in the sequence. I worked for weeks. It was really great watching Michael Peters take these dancers and bring them into this sort of new kind of street dance. Less disciplined, just a lot more emotion. I'm not sure I know how to describe what it is or how it's gone on to become hip-hop/pop culture, but it was the beginning of it then. And Michael Peters created it. I always thought one of the nice anecdotes of the whole thing was Michael Peters played one gang leader — with the white jacket — and the other gang leader, played by Vince Patterson, went on to become Michael Jackson's favorite choreographer for many, many years. And he and Michael Peters were living together at the time. I remember him coming to me and saying, "I'm living with this dude who can really kick ass and dance, and he's white." So we gave him an audition, and he was incredible. At the meetings, Michael...when I came up with the idea of "Beat It" and explained it, all he asked was I get the real Crips and the Bloods from Los Angeles to be in the video. I said, "Michael, how am I going to do that? Who am I going to call?" He said, "Don't worry. I'll take care of it," and he got a hold of the police department, who got a hold of the gangs. They were there on that first night — not the second night — in all of their glory and all of their hatred of each other. It was quite fascinating. The dance culture mingling with the rogue culture. In the early evening, everything was going right, because I think everybody's fascinated by film and crews and how you put it together. But like every time you watch a movie being made, you get terribly bored. It's like watching paint dry. It's boring to watch, and nothing really happens a lot. So the Crips and the Bloods — after they stopped flirting with the girls — started getting a little rambunctious, and there was an altercation. Two members of the opposing gangs started smacking each other around, and cops stopped it. It got a little hairy. It was late, and we were down in the barrio of Los Angeles. It was tough. We were in a warehouse. And I had not planned to dance for a while. I was waiting to do the big dance number on the second night, naïvely thinking that the Crips and Bloods would come back again. But it was apparent that they weren't getting along, and the police came to Antony, our producer, and said, "I'm sorry, but I've really got to close it down. It's getting a little dangerous, and we're responsible for this. You don't really know what goes on between these two. They've really got some deep-rooted issues, and we shouldn't take a chance." I said to the police, "Do me a favor. Let me just try one thing. If it doesn't work, I'll absolutely close it down." I decided to dance, and I told Michael Peters, "Michael, I'm sorry, but get your kids ready. We're going to go in and dance." "Yeah, but we're not ready." "We have to be ready. The only chance I've got is if I start to play music. It maybe is going to calm the soul." So he said, "OK, let's go for it." I got everybody ready, and at the last second, I told Michael Peters to jump on that forklift and got somebody who was able to drive it, [and] that will be his entrance. Now, you've got the Crips and the Bloods all lined up with dancers. That alone is a wonderful image, guys playing tough guys and guys who are tough guys. The music started playing loudly, and we started dancing. And we danced and we danced and we danced. I'll never forget the looks on the faces of those gang members, all lined up, watching something that they knew in their hearts and souls, that as tough as they were, they could never ever do in their whole lifetime. And it was beautiful, because admittedly, most of those kids dancing and kicking ass there are gay, and this is the complete opposite of who these people are, but the look of admiration and awe on their faces was something I'll never forget. Because they just saw something that their brothers could do, that they'd never be able to do. And then I got smart and cocky and changed the rubber knife to a real knife and gave it to Michael and Vince without telling them. I sprung that one on them — I made my AD make the switch without telling anybody — and that's what's in the film. If you watch it carefully, you'll see how really gingerly they were avoiding a real knife. We shot well into the early morning. When the dancers come to you and say, "Bob, the blisters are beginning to break," you know it was time to stop. But it was over then. We had won. We had gotten past that first night. We didn't need the Crips and Bloods again to tell the story. We didn't know we had history, but we knew we had something.