MTV Ruled the World- The Early Years of Music Video

by Greg Prato

  MARK WEISS: I met them in '78 and started working with them in Circus magazine. David once in a while would fly me in, and I'd just take pictures of him, flying a kite or whatever. So I'd be in his little world. [Backstage] he'd basically turn down the lights, have the little party going, and only girls would be allowed in there. They would have the security guard start giving the speech to the girls. "You've got to be over 18 to get in. I want to see ID, or you've got to leave." And Dave would go to the back room with one or two girls. It was a bunch of flashing lights and music, your typical sex, drugs, and rock n' roll. He would actually give passes out to the roadies. I'd even get them, too. He would [put] your initials on, and if the girl ended up with him in the end, you got a little bonus. I was in the photo pit the whole time, so Dave would give me a little signal, like, "Five rows, center," and I would get it to them.

  RIK EMMETT: Their tour was like a traveling Roman bacchanalia. If there weren't strippers and midgets at every party, it wasn't really a Van Halen concert, apparently.

  PETE ANGELUS: I was actually doing a lot of different things. I was designing the album covers with Warner Brothers, I was designing the merchandise, I was the lighting director, I was the production designer. And of course, as Van Halen became more successful and quickly started headlining, those lighting productions and stage productions got fairly substantial. And I had complete creative freedom in that regard, to design what I thought best-suited the band. And to follow it up to the MTV and video era, when MTV reared its ugly head in the early '80s, I had spent most of my time in high school making short films. It was actually how I got through a lot of my classes, presenting short films. So when MTV came about, I thought, "Well, I can direct these, if we want to do it." So I rolled into it that way.

  MIKE RENO: I think at that time, if I were to think of California, I would think of David Lee Roth and Van Halen. They were the bad boys. They were the hardest rockin' guys out there. I just went, "Unbelievable." And Eddie's guitar playing and his brother's drumming and the bottom end from Michael Anthony...I'll tell you, David Lee Roth became a friend of mine, Eddie's a friend of mine. These guys I really looked up to. I couldn't believe some of the outfits they came up with! They were crazy, crazy ahead of the time, and it was awesome. That to me was a big wake-up call. I said, "Dude, you've got to buy some clothes and get into it." They really impressed me. I tried to take it up a few notches after watching some of their videos. And that's when we started trying to be a little more involved in coming up with some concepts for videos. The first video, we were just told what to do and where to go. And then we started getting into it, shortly after watching these guys.

  ERIC BLOOM: Dave is Dave. He's very flamboyant, and "I want to hump your leg." [Laughs] Especially as a young man back then. It's just great, and he got away with that stuff, whereas many other acts couldn't, because he wore his sexuality on his sleeve, and the videos played that up. Plus, on top of that, he's one fantastic frontman, so he could carry off in the videos what he did live. There's one example right there. They could back up the video with a great live performance.

  GEDDY LEE: I think those were more song-driven, and the fact that David Lee Roth was a flamboyant character, that worked on the small screen. He was larger than life.

  ALAN HUNTER: I'm watching this "(Oh) Pretty Woman" video...I totally forgot this! This was when the conceptual, story-driven video was at its most absurd. But it was Van Halen. They could do pretty much what they wanted to. It wasn't like the Hooters or "nobody bands" that came out and did these concept videos that were shot like mini-films and just fell flat. It had David Lee Roth and his Napoleonic complex, and oh how absurd it was. Eddie's a cowboy...with the "female" at the end. [Laughs]

  PETE ANGELUS: ["(Oh) Pretty Woman"] I did not direct myself. I was on the set with Dave and Van Halen. I think it was kind of a group effort. I think everybody was kind of involved with that. What I remember specifically about that video was that the primary cameraman quit in the middle of shooting it, so that was a problem. I don't remember why he quit. I don't know if we were driving him insane, the subject matter was driving him insane...I don't know what he was appalled by. But I remember him leaving in a huff. And then, the other thing I remember about that video is always having to send people around the set to try and find the "little people." We could never find them. People's megaphones were always screaming for them to come to the set, and we could never find them. I later discovered that I think the reason that we couldn't find them was because they were dealing mushrooms on the set, and they were so high that they had disappeared into some field and were having some hallucinatory trip. So I remember that being a problem. And I also remember at one point, again, searching for the little people and going into the trailer of the transvestite, who was playing the "pretty woman." And all I remember was opening the trailer door, and one of the little people had on a black cape, he was nude, and he was like doing a Mick Jagger impersonation, while he was holding the transvestite's penis and singing into it like a microphone. I thought, "You know, man...how many times in life are you going to come across this?" That's all I remember, because it's burned like some some fuckin' horrible nightmare into my memory. So yeah, that's what happened during that video. That video, really as I recall, was a cluster-fuck. There were so many people involved and so many ideas and so many people directing different segments...I'm surprised it came together at all. After that, we got it more together.

  ALAN HUNTER: [Martha Quinn and David Lee Roth] had a little thing going, just a little on-camera silliness. When she interviewed him, she was so into David Lee Roth that she got nervous as hell, and he picked on her like crazy. He flirted with her so much that she could barely get her shit together.

  ROBIN ZORN: I remember her being really excited whenever his videos would come on, and she did get to interview [Roth]. Everybody knew that was her thing. She had a crush on him. It just became known. I know the VJs teased her about it on air. We all just knew that Martha had this crush on David Lee Roth.

  MIKE PELECH: They hit it off, because he's really sarcastic and kind of a wise guy, and she really played off of him.

  PETE ANGELUS: Dave had a great sense of humor, and she was a good recipient of that. It worked out well, because she was always trying to find her footing with the amount of babble that was coming out of his mouth. It probably was so entertaining because it was so uncomfortable so often.

  PAUL DEAN: There's a band that loves to smile! Every video, Eddie would be grinning from ear to ear, every shot of him. There were no bummers in that band ever. It was always totally positive and, "We're having a great time...so you should, too."

  ANN WILSON: Those are funny. They were pretty cool, because they really did translate the band as it probably really was, like a bunch of teenaged boys. So they just came out and were kind of doofuses and funny. [Laughs] I used to laugh at their stuff a lot, the same with the J. Geils Band and that ilk.

  JELLO BIAFRA: I've barely heard Van Halen in my life. You're dealing with somebody who realized that unplugging from the pop culture grid at age thirteen made him a much happier person.

  PETE ANGELUS: "Jump" really was just about personality, really. It was a very simple video. We shot it for nothing. David wanted to incorporate his karate-flipping that he loved so much into the whole thing. The initial concept was just to film them in a very simple live setting, and let the personalities show through. We did it very quickly. Seriously, I think that we probably spent more money on pizza delivery than we did on the video itself. But that was the intention — make it a very intimate, personal feeling, with a very big band.

  NINA BLACKWOOD: I thought it was kind of funny that Van Halen's first number one song was actually synth-driven, even though it was a riff.

  GEDDY LEE: ["Jump"] was really good. You could jump around all you want, but if the song wasn't so good, it wouldn't have clicked.

  PHIL COLLEN: "Jump" was great, so basic and so obvious. You go, "OK, they're just standing
there." But David Lee Roth was so entertaining. And again, it really got the character over of the band. I remember the first time I heard them, I was like, "Jesus...what is this guy playing? This is amazing!" But when you add the visual thing to it as well, you could see that it was a fun rock n' roll band, and that David Lee Roth was crazy. It was so perfect. Then you got it. You got what their whole schtick was about. It was great, him jumping around and Eddie smiling and playing guitar. It was just perfect for them.

  PETE ANGELUS: ["Panama"] was primarily live, and there were a couple of different people involved. I couldn't even tell you who they were. I think everybody was co-directing it or putting up the ideas for it. Edward wanted to sit down and be playing a piano. I think everybody threw their ideas in the hat, and we were just doing it as we went along. I really don't remember specifically, because they weren't structured videos like "Hot for Teacher," "California Girls," or "Gigolo." [The band members swinging from a cord across the stage] was Dave's idea. He thought it would be funny if people were swinging around on the stage. As I said, everybody was contributing at that time to what we were doing.

  STEWART COPELAND: I only remember one, "Walk This Way," and I thought he was cool. [Upon being corrected that "Walk This Way" was Aerosmith, not Van Halen] Shows you how much I can remember! I have no recollection of them at all, either Aerosmith or Van Halen. You know, there's a snobbery of all musicians that I've found. You don't even see the ones that come out right behind you. You see the ones in front of you — the ones there before you, as the target. You want what they have. Then when you get there, the ones right behind you don't exist. And then ten years go by, and now you're feeling a little more benevolent, and you start saying, "Hey that's pretty good. Good luck kids!" But there's a gap from where we were big for about ten years, where I have no idea who filled that gap, any of the artists.

  ALAN HUNTER: "Hot for Teacher" was more conceptual than "Jump."

  PETE ANGELUS: "Hot for Teacher" — we wanted to take that idea of their personalities and drive that down the road 40 years in the future. So I had the idea of "Where will they all be potentially 40 years from now?" And let's try to make it somewhat humorous. The song title and lyrics itself dictated itself, in a sense, that we were going to be involved with younger kids. I had the idea to get look-a-likes for Van Halen. We spent a lot of time casting that. It was very interesting, too, because when we cast those kids that played the role of Van Halen, when they showed up at the set, miraculously, they started adapting to the personalities of the guys in Van Halen! So the little Alex was fuckin' argumentative all the time with me, the little Edward was very shy, [and] the little Dave was very gregarious and ready to go. It was interesting what happened on the set there with those kids. And then as I said, I wanted to drive it through their school years and where will they be 40 years from now, with Dave potentially being a television show host, Edward being locked up in a mental institution, Alex being a gynecologist, and Mike being a sumo wrestler. One thing I remember about that video that a lot people don't know or maybe didn't see. When Dave turns into the television show host, we had an idea. I thought, "You know...there hasn't been a really substantial urine stain on MTV. Ever, when you really think about it. So let's pour a lot of water on David's crotch. Let's make it look like he really just pissed himself. And then let's see if anyone sees it when we hand the video into the record company and MTV." And nobody did! I know this sounds absolutely pathetic to say, but we probably pulled off the first and most substantial urine stain in the history of television. So we've got that going for us.

  BRUCE KULICK: Think of the escapism in "Hot for Teacher," and them having the "mini-Eddie" and the teacher being a stripper. We were using a vibe like that when I was doing this “Monster Circus” rock band last year in Vegas, where we covered that song, and the girls came out in schoolgirl outfits and were dancing around. Iconic stuff, no doubt. It will be around forever.

  PETE ANGELUS: Waldo [the lead character in "Hot for Teacher"] was actually...I remember specifically a kid when I was in, I don't know what grade. Fortunately, we were doing it behind his back, so it wasn't really hurting his feelings, but there was a very geeky kid, and we referred to him as "Waldo." And I thought, "Let me take that kid further in the video." With the hair and make-up people, I remember saying, "Listen, I really want this kid's hair to be fucked up, as if he's sweating profusely through his entire experience of school." They kept coming out, and it was a little greasy, and I'm like, "No, come on, let's do it up here. I want it to look like he's having a bad experience." And finally, I was like, "Seriously, would you get some fuckin' oil or something and put it in his hair!" But then the next day, his mother comes up to me and was like, "Do you know how long it took to wash that out of his hair? Do we have to go through this again? Isn't there any other way to portray him?!" I think they had him in the shower for like six hours, trying to get that goo out of his hair. A lot of those things came from experiences in the past, and we just took them further, or things that suited Van Halen's personalities.

  JOE ELLIOTT: The only people that could get away with a dance routine was Van Halen, because they were taking the piss. And they did it fantastically.

  PETE ANGELUS: The dancing scenes [in "Hot for Teacher"], the worse they were, in my opinion, the better they were. We had a good time making that video. That was really one of the first bigger videos that we made. I think it was a three-day shoot. And that set the pace for what we did later with "Just a Gigolo," for instance — a lot of different sets, a lot of different casting. And introduced more humor into it as we went along.

  PAUL DEAN: Not to mention that Eddie Van Halen is one of the greatest guitar players ever. I'm a huge fan of Eddie's. He's a tough act to open for, as you can imagine. He's totally one of my favorite guitar players.

  RIK EMMETT: Obviously, Eddie Van Halen changed the face of guitar. And the content of what was going on. I would rank him right up there with the guys like Jimi Hendrix and Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck, in what he did to change the course of rock n' roll guitar.

  RICKY BYRD: [Joan Jett & the Blackhearts] did the MTV Rock n' Roll New Year's Eve Bash in '85. We're set up to open the show, and I think Martha Quinn was the introducer. David Lee Roth...it was when David Lee Roth was hanging out with muscle-bound women. I don't know what phase he was going through. We were all set up, he came on, and they were going to introduce us. He and the muscle-bound women come walking out on my side of the stage and totally walked over my pedals and broke all the wires. And then introduced, "Joan Jett & the Blackhearts!" We go into "Bad Reputation," but my guitar is going [makes a crackling noise]. Meanwhile, my guitar tech, who is standing on my side of the stage, is watching the crowd. If you see the YouTube thing, I'm making believe I'm playing, but all you can hear is [the crackling noise]. It took me well into the break. I don't even think I played the break. All the girls were in gowns and hot, and I think everybody on the stage was more interested in looking at the crowd than watching the band. So it took me a while to get somebody's attention.

  PETE ANGELUS: "California Girls," of course, casting was enjoyable. I'm trying to remember how the idea of the "Rod Serling element" of it came about, The Twilight Zone. I don't remember specifically how The Twilight Zone aspect came about, other than Dave as a tour guide into this Twilight Zone-ish world. And, of course, we wanted to show a lot of different types of females. We shot that at Venice Beach. I think we were down there for two days. That was the thing of it. "Let's give it a weird, cartoon-ish, colorized feel, and let's make him a strange tour guide through this California world." The "Just a Gigolo" video, there were thoughts of Dave being a television host, which showed up in "Hot for Teacher." So we thought we would create "Dave TV." We thought we would march him through some of the video sets that were very popular videos at that time. And then we decided, "Let's not just march through the sets. Let's make something happen in those sets." That's why we "electrocuted" Billy Idol, "hit" Boy George, and Michael Jackson we kin
d of left alone. That was one of the bigger ones that we did, and I think it took three or four days. There were like 18 different set-ups. Then we put a lot of people in the hallway for those scenes, as though it was a television or film studio, with different people auditioning for different things. We had a good time making that video. Basically, I was working with a producer, and we turned in a budget. The budgets were instantly approved, and nobody was really saying to me, "What are you doing?" It wasn't really until I turned in "Just a Gigolo" that one of the executives at Warner Bros. called me — they had just seen the video — and said, "Can you come into our offices for a minute?" I thought, "OK...this has to be interesting. This is the first phone call about any video that we've done, so I'm curious to see what the reaction is going to be." I remember him saying to me, "So...do you think that it's a good idea to electrocute Billy Idol? Or punch Boy George in the face?" And I said, "I personally think it's very funny. I think it is a good idea!" He says, "I just wanted to know what your thinking was, because the next video, maybe you and I should sit down and discuss the concept before you just go and shoot it." But interestingly, they never did sit down and discuss another concept. Maybe they just realized that those videos were garnering enough attention that they should just continue what they do and let us do what we do. They never really interfered after that conversation.