MTV Ruled the World- The Early Years of Music Video

by Greg Prato

  CARMINE APPICE: Pete Angelus did all their videos, and he did our video [King Kobra's "Hunger"], because we loved their videos so much. Van Halen I thought were a tremendous group for MTV, because they went out and Pete did some great stuff with them. The David Lee Roth videos were awesome by themselves.

  PETE ANGELUS: Like all musical groups, perception is everything, right? There was the perception that they all got along beautifully and hung out. And there were a couple of years that went better than others. But I would say, and I'm sure that Edward and Dave — if they were willing to be truthful about it — would admit that there was always some tension, primarily between Alex and Eddie with Dave. Alex was always very regimented in his approach to how serious the music business was. And Dave had a very different viewpoint of it. And Edward was just completely in his own world musically. I don't really think he cared to get in the middle of those approaches [because] he was so involved in his own music. Everything was music for Edward. Edward wasn't as social a person as anyone in the band, because he was dealing with his thoughts and his ideas, all the time. And usually locked in a hotel room playing the guitar, or locked in the bus playing the guitar, or sitting in his bunk playing the guitar. But that guitar never left his hands. With all groups, there is some tension between the members. In 1985, when they announced the break-up, I was with Dave actually at the time. As I remember it, they had been touring pretty consistently for five years. And the idea was simply to take like a year hiatus. And some of them had things they were interested in doing during that year. Dave wanted to spend the time to make a movie [Pete and Dave were collaborating on a movie, Crazy from the Heat, which was never filmed]. When I was on the phone with Alex, Eddie, and Dave, everybody was agreeable to a one-year hiatus. And I can't remember, but it was like a week or two after that I read that Dave had quit the group in Rolling Stone. At least that was how someone in the Van Halen camp was trying to present it. I remember being on the phone with Dave, going, "Will you look at this shit?! We just had an agreement and an understanding, and everybody was on board a week or two ago...and now this?!" It rolled into a lot of very negative feelings, because I think Dave felt betrayed. I don't know how the Van Halen's felt betrayed, because they had agreed to it. Maybe they felt betrayed because he wanted to pursue something in film. But it rolled quickly into some very negative areas. I remember having a conversation with Alex, as to "What exactly is going on here? Because I thought everybody just agreed to take a year off." I remember him being kind of aggressive about it, like, "Oh no, that's bullshit man. We're not going to sit around and wait while Dave makes a movie. You've got to pick sides of where you want to be." I was like, "Well, wait a minute. No one is sitting around and 'waiting' while Dave makes a movie. A few weeks ago, we were talking about maybe it was time for Van Halen to take a year off the road, after so much consecutive touring." And it was like, "No, that's bullshit, man. We're not going to be in a holding pattern for Dave's whims." So that was probably how he perceived it, after having agreed to it. I don't know why his perception changed, but it did. And I don't really remember speaking to Edward specifically about it after that. I do remember him saying, "We're going to carry on as Van Halen." Edward and Alex were always of the mindset that everybody that worked for them was overpaid, in a sense, and they were going to very carefully select their "team." Whereas Dave, at the time, was very optimistic and very open to all creative ideas. So Dave was like, "Will you come with me, and we'll carry on? We'll put a group together. I want to go on the road and I want to keep touring. I don't want this to stop me. I'm not going to sit here in a holding pattern and hope for the best." I was always much closer with Dave, from the very beginning. It wasn't really even a decision as to what was going to happen. Dave and I would continue to work together, as we had in the past. And from there, we put together Steve Vai, Billy Sheehan, and Gregg Bissonette, and we carried on.

  HERMAN RAREBELL: Sammy Hagar is a great singer. But David Lee Roth and Van Halen...that is for me, Van Halen. No doubt.

  ALAN HUNTER: God, that was a great band. I loved the Sammy Hagar years, as well.

  FRANKIE SULLIVAN: They were my favorite. I liked when they did the stuff with Dave and later on with Sam, because it was all based around their performance and what they did on stage. I think that was something that the band was insistent upon. It's like, "We're gonna rock...and you're gonna film it."

  PETE ANGELUS: [Roth's solo career] were great and very successful shows. Unfortunately, what happened later on as time went on — and I couldn't really tell you why it happened, I was just very aware how unfortunate it was that it was happening, and I couldn't really stop it — was there suddenly became a lot of friction between Dave and Steve Vai, and Dave and Billy Sheehan. So one by one, people were exiting the group, for one reason or another. That was very unfortunate, because they came out of the box strong. Probably what I remember the most about [the videos for "Yankee Rose" and "Goin' Crazy!"] was getting away with a fair amount of comedy prior to the songs starting. Like [for "Yankee Rose"] we had the immigrant grocer inside that strange convenience store, the woman who was having constipation problems, [and] the woman who was about to give birth and ending a relationship. And I remember thinking, "I wonder if the song is three minutes, can the comedy be two minutes? Can the intro be that long? Can we get away with it?" And we thought, "Well...why not? If it works with the video, let's give it a shot." And as it turned out, it worked. People seemed to enjoy it. Is ["Goin' Crazy!"] the one where the Picasso Brothers come to the studio? I think I'm driving the car there with the women and Dave, and the car tips over, because he's in a 300-pound prosthetic outfit. That was the same. I wrote a comedy intro for it, to get him into the recording studio, and I thought, "We'll have Dave in this obese prosthetic outfit, and he'll arrive as a big Hollywood record producer to the studio." We just wrote the comedy intro and then thought, "We'll film the band in the studio as part of it."

  RIK EMMETT: As far as Roth goes, he would do so many kinds of goofy things and say goofy things, because he was more of a type of guy that didn't seem to have any kind of "governor" in his head. As it came into his mind, he would just go ahead and say it, whatever he was thinking...or whatever he had carefully written as the joke that he wanted to crack. That came to me later. I started to realize he had more substance than I gave him credit for. He was actually a fairly consummate kind of performer. He would go out there and give everything he had, even though he might have been partying a little too hard, so now, it was hard for him to physically give his best. Or for his throat to have stood up to the torture he was putting it through the last week of the tour or before he played the gig we were getting to witness. In some ways, in the early days, my respect for him was diminished, just because I would see him in his "less-than-ideal-ability-to-sing mode." Later on, I realized the guy really can sing. There was a thing that circulated a few years back on the Internet, where it was "Runnin' with the Devil." It was a vocal that had absolutely no other tracks. Somebody sent me a link, and I listened to this thing, and I was blown away. I was super-impressed with the quality of that vocal. When you hear it all by itself — all the whoops, screeches, and whistles that he does — you think, "Holy shit...this guy is really doing it!" And it's not bullshit; this is hard to do. As a singer, I was very impressed and got fresh respect for the guy. I thought, "Holy shit, this guy is not a slouch at all. He's not a clown. This guy can really bring it." That changed my whole opinion of him. And the latest reunion tour they did, he wasn't doing a lot of goofy histrionics. He was standing there and singing, and he was doing a great job. I was very impressed. He had maybe gone through a process of maturing and was maybe a little bit more humble and maybe more respectful of that gift that he has, and that's part of what performing is supposed to be. It's not just a question of throwing a big party for everybody.

  PETE ANGELUS: I think [Van Halen/David Lee Roth's videos] showed a lot of personality with each individual band member. I also think that th
ey had a sense of humor, that a lot of artists who take themselves very seriously weren't willing to experiment with. I also had specifically colorized those videos in post-production, to make them look brighter than real life and more bold in a sense than real life. So I think that they had a look and a stamp in and of themselves that kind of separated them. Van Halen was willing to push the boundaries of “Let's experiment with this. Yeah, we can try this." Their music spoke for itself, and there was no question about the talent of Edward Van Halen and what he was bringing to the music scene. And there was no question to the bravado and the sense of humor that Dave was bringing to the music scene. I think they felt comfortable in pushing some of those boundaries in those videos, with humor, or making fun of themselves, and also showing much more personality than most other videos did. A lot of those people took themselves very seriously. There was no smiling. They were very, very serious artists. Now, Van Halen were serious musical artists, but Van Halen was a "good time, big show, party band." And as the shows showed a lot of those elements, so did the videos.

  Stories Behind the Videos: Heavy Metal

  -- Judas Priest --

  ROB HALFORD: Our label at the time, Columbia/CBS, like every other label, "We have to make videos, because it's going to go straight onto MTV in America." Because let's face it, the rest of the world was playing catch up with this MTV experience. So we were just thrown into the deep end. It was a new medium for us. I mean, we'd had a few cameras film us playing live, but we'd never gone out "on location." We hadn't actually dressed up. We actually hadn't sat down with a director like Julien Temple and had a meeting about the storyboard and the script. Y'know, "Is this going to work for the band? Are we going to look stupid? Is it going to be good for metal?" In those days, your videos were either in a studio — a cheap nickel-and-dime one — or your label threw some money down, and you went out on location, like for "Breaking the Law." We went to Soho in London. We spent all day in the West End. You start at dawn, you finish at dusk, and you just run from different place to place — the seedy part of Soho where the porno shops are, where KK and Glenn had dressed up as Puritan Monks, feeding pigeons. And then you go to an old, disused Barclays Bank, break into it, and steal your disc. Then you get into an old, gold-plated Cadillac and drive over the Westway, past the famous Hammersmith Odeon Theater. And you have a good day out. Then you wait a few days and get sent the final thing. And this is it. This is going out. ["You've Got Another Thing Comin'"] was a pretty simple format. We found this power plant right by the M4 Westway leading into London. It's still there, actually, I think. It was again due to Julien Temple's direction. I know we were rushed for time. The label said, "We need this now. You've got to go in, make it, and we've got to release it." So again, it was just basically put together with Julien's vision. It's a very simple, straightforward one, but of course, it's a combination of the way, feel, and texture of that power plant, which is very "metal." The lighting, the lasers, just the band's performance is very strong. And then you've got "the man," as Dennis Hopper would say — the bowler hat, society, "Mr. Big," "Big Brother" — who was trying to stop the show, trying to crush it. And we kick back by blowing his head up. [Laughs] The funny thing was the explosives guy had been waiting all fucking day. He'd been there for like twelve hours. And by the time he'd got his chance to do his bit, he packed that mannequin's head with C4 explosives. So when it went off, it just obliterated the thing. There was nothing left! And then it falls over, and the pants fall down...which was an unexpected bonus. From a sociological point of view, the people that don't like metal — this is your payback. [Laughs] We're going to blow your head up and let your pants fall down.

  -- Ozzy Osbourne --

  RUDY SARZO: "Iron Man," "Children of the Grave," and "Paranoid" were included in the Speak of the Devil album. So in order to promote that album, they had us play it live at a different place [then it was recorded]. The video was from the Irvine Meadows performance, and the album was from the Ritz performance. My most burning memory of that was the "extra added ingredients" for the filming of that show was they brought in lasers, which were not part of our production. The laser show was tested at the Oakland Coliseum the night before. Now, the Oakland Coliseum is an enclosed arena. So the laser show looked really sharp, because the more smoke and the more of a volumetric environment/atmosphere you have in the place, the lasers catch that, and they are very pristine in their presentation. Whereas when you go into an open-air venue and there's no smoke and no environment...because it's in the middle of summer and a clear, beautiful night — I believe it was in the last week of June in 1982 — the lasers were washed out, and you could barely see them! So they did some "post enhancements." They had to reshoot the lasers, bring them in post, and layer and composite them into the video. But Ozzy was really pissed off when he saw the rough cuts of that. Actually, that video, watching myself during that rough cut, is what made my decision to leave the band, because I saw myself for the first time being really robotic. This was within eight weeks of Randy Rhoads' passing when we shot this. In order for me to survive going on stage was to go into "automatic mode" and not look at the audience or the band and just survive the show, basically. It's very hard for me to watch that video, because it reminds me of the state that I was in. But watching it made me realize what I had become — something I would have never wanted to be like. After the recordings of the Ritz, I called up Sharon and told her that I was going to leave the band.

  CARMINE APPICE: "Bark at the Moon" was wild, because me and Ozzy were doing the album in New York. I was actually the associate producer on Bark at the Moon, initially. And then we flew over on the SST — me and Ozzy — to London. It was like a three-hour flight, so we weren't that jet-lagged. The next day, we were at this old mental hospital, where we did the video. That was a crazy experience, because while Ozzy was getting that make-up on — which took him about four or five hours — we would be on set, walking around, looking around, and checking out the place. It was a pretty horrible place. It was all falling apart. It was a real mental institution. We found embryos in bottles in the closet. It was abandoned, and it was probably 200 years old, if not more. It was a spooky place to do that video. And then they showed the rain scene. We were standing outside at the funeral, and they were shooting up the water on us, to make it look like rain. It was damned cold out there! We had these top hats on, and you see the rain dripping off the top hats. After those scenes were done, we had to be wrapped in towels. It was hard for Ozzy, because he had to put that make-up on. Any fun that it would have been was killed for four or five hours.

  -- Rush --

  GEDDY LEE: The first "Tom Sawyer" video we did was just filming us recording at Morin Heights, and you can see us playing in the studio with the big glass window surrounding us. You can see the winter outside. So that was kind of a "let the camera into the session" kind of thing. And then when we were on tour, we filmed another version of it, and that became another thing that got a lot of airplay. Again, because we were unsure of any kind of image to attach to us, we just went with us playing. "When in doubt, just play." We recorded ["Subdivisions"] in, appropriately, a suburb of Toronto, in a rehearsal hall. And we used a local production company to gather footage of the kind of environment that we had grown up in, which were these bland suburbs outside of Toronto, and these kind of endless, treeless landscape shots. It was kind of a homemade event, where we tried to show us playing and cut back and forth with these kind of abstract shots of suburban life. ["Distant Early Warning"] was one of the "big-budget productions," and that was really a lot of fun to do. We used David Mallet, who was a fairly proven director, for that. Was kind of the complete antithesis of the "Subdivisions" video. We recorded that in England, in one of his places he liked to shoot. It was a really big set, and he took this whole Speilberg-esque attitude to creating this story and creating this mystery. I really loved what he did. We talked a lot together, and it was one of the first videos where we got very involved in helpi
ng shape out the little story of the video. He used his tremendous skills to create this mysterious, and yet kind of fun, video. That was one of our most successful "big-budget production videos." "The Big Money" we shot in Toronto with a Canadian director, Rob Quartly, who at the time was kind of an up-and-comer. Originally, we had two storylines — this comedic storyline and us playing on this big Monopoly set/stage. And when it came time for them to edit it together, the storyline did not work. It just was not funny. [Laughs] So in the end, we said, "Look, dude, it's not working." So we shot it together with the band playing, and that's what it ended up being.

  -- Blue Öyster Cult --

  ERIC BLOOM: "Burnin' for You" was a hit in '81, and it became evident that the "fledgling video place" we were going to have to jump in, having not done it before. We weren't exactly a young band. Our first album was in '72, so it was nine years later. I think we'd done an album a year, so we were up around our eighth album. We went out to California, and our management found a video company, and we did two videos in 24 hours — "Burnin' for You" and "Joan Crawford." MTV wouldn't show the "Joan Crawford" video, because there was something about it that was too racy for them. But "Burnin' for You" got a ton of airplay on MTV in 1981 and 1982. We made ["Burnin' for You"] in the storm drains of L.A. If anyone has seen the movie about giant ants, called Them!, with James Whitmore, it was filmed in the same place. I can't remember the name of the director, but we had the same video guys do two or three of our videos. We came out to L.A., the script was sent on over to us, we approved, and we went out to the location. I think we were there a good twelve straight hours. We had a bunch of extras and pyro, because we burnt a car. And that was all done as "on the cheap" as possible and with low production values and bad editing. But we had fun doing it, because it was new to us. And like I said, I think we did the "Joan Crawford" video earlier in the day, on location at some house that was rented. Then straight from there, we had to do the "Burnin' for You" video at night. Some scenes were filmed and edited elsewhere, like the actor driving the car. Some of that was filmed at a different time. We thought [the car on fire scene] was very Hollywood, very cool. They had to have a Hollywood film/pyro guy there, who was licensed to burn shit up. He had propane tanks, and he had to have a hulk of a car to burn. It was fun. It was a little taste of Hollywood for us.