MTV Ruled the World- The Early Years of Music Video

by Greg Prato

  -- Triumph --

  RIK EMMETT: In the band, we hated that whole Allied Forces thing [the video for "Magic Power"], where we were riding on a guitar in outer space. We called it "birthday cakes in space," because it just looked so stupid. With the wind blowing in our hair, and we're riding on this ridiculous Flying V guitar spaceship, and chicks are dancing around us. It was high concept, and the record company was happy with it. We thought, "Well, it could be cool. You're telling us a star field will be flying by our heads?" But when we saw it, it just was cheesy. It looked so bad. The execution of it, the footage of the band — the whole technical side of things. You'd shoot on video, you'd look at it later, and go, "Oh man, this looks like just bad local cable TV stuff." But if you shot on film, it had a grainy, documentary look to it. It looked so much cooler. And then you realize, "We're idiots. We should have been shooting on film all the time." But somebody said, "It will be cheaper. We shoot on video. It will be great!" And you're like, "It's not great...it looks like shit." We went on a soundstage for a couple of days, and we shot "Magic Power," "Allied Forces," and "Say Goodbye." And we tried to suppress them as much as we could. [Laughs] But MTV was just playing the crap out of the "Magic Power" one.

  -- The Scorpions --

  HERMAN RAREBELL: "No One Like You" is a funny story. When we left the island — Alcatraz, where the video was filmed — first of all, we came there, and the guards opened up the cells for us. But the cells were opened all with one gate and were closed with one gate. Once we were done filming our part, our singer, Klaus, had to continue filming until the early morning hours. So we all went back and slept in the cells. In the morning, we got woken up, and we all went to the boat to drive over the sea back to San Francisco. And as we were in the middle of the sea, we noticed that our bass player, Francis Buchholz, was missing! He got left in one of those cells and didn't wake up. So we had to go all the way back to collect him. "Rock You Like a Hurricane" was a great video. It was filmed by David Mallet in London. I always remember the make-up they used for the girl's eyes. In those days, it was something really spectacular. They had real Scorpions fans that were invited to come to the studio. They built a cage around us, and it looked like we were inside the cage like animals, and the audience were outside. They were really shaking the cage. I thought it was very cool how David Mallet did this. He made the whole thing surrealistic.

  -- Quiet Riot --

  RUDY SARZO: The "Metal Health" video was pretty interesting. It was filmed at the Cal Arts School. It's a school that was started by Walt Disney, in Valencia, California. It's 1983, and think of the students there, who are today's major filmmakers. Probably people running the studios. The whole set was built by the students at Cal Arts. I haven't had the opportunity to look back to see who the alumni was. As a matter of fact, when I'm finished with this conversation, I'm going to Google it. Also, do you know that padded cell in the video? One day, I was walking into Joe's Garage, which was Frank Zappa's rehearsal place. I look at the back of the stage wall...and it's the padded cell! It wound up at Frank Zappa's rehearsal place. It was no budget. It cost $10,000. The Quiet Riot fan club, that existed from the Randy Rhoads days, came over and participated in that. If you look at all the shots, we kept shifting the fan club. Like, if there was going to be a shot from the back of the stage...something very unique about the Cal Arts Theater is that that whole place is modular. It's built on hydraulics. So there's the stage, and where the audience is sitting is actual bleachers that are hydraulic, and you can make them look however you want, different levels. So we just kept shifting everybody around. If you needed a side shot, it's the same people, but on the side of us, behind us, in front of us, wherever. There wasn't really that much time in the budget to get too fancy or think it over. All the extras that you see chasing Kevin [dressed as the gentleman from the Metal Health album cover] down the hallway were all Cal Arts students. ["Cum on Feel the Noize"] was done in June during a break. We were in California. We just shot it, and again, we called upon the Quiet Riot fan club, who came down, and we shot the video. What sticks out is the band doesn't come on until like the second chorus! We watched the intro being filmed, with one of the guys from the crew, who actually became the actor, the kid in the room that is being shaken up. Of course, this is before...nowadays, you can just stick a plug into Final Cut Pro, and you're going to get the "camera shake" effect. Back then, you had to recreate it. It was a room on hydraulics. It was being pumped, and it made the actual room shake. It gives you a really realistic version of what you're trying to achieve, because then things are falling off the wall and stuff like that. It was maybe one or two passes, and then you're done. Nowadays, everything is digital. It's not as expensive. "Mama Weer All Crazee Now" we went from $10,000 and $40,000 budgets, to now, there has to be a storyline. There was a little storyline before, but now, we need an actor. So they brought in this actor — actually, a really good actor — but at the time, he was going through some personal issues having to do with drugs. He was the "hero" character in the video. And it was a "1984 theme," a very Orwellian theme to the video. So the problems were mostly due to the fact that the guy was too out of it to really cooperate and contribute as much as he could have. So most of his parts, he was just sitting there...drugged out. [Laughs] Success can go to people's heads, and I would have to say that it went to everybody's head [in Quiet Riot]. I didn't have the right tools to be able to deal with people whose success has gone to their head as I do right now, and I wish I would have had those tools then. So everybody kind of mishandled everybody else's way of dealing with success. It was a little bit messy, but the whole thing was to make the best video that we could. But there was a lot of drama going on.

  -- Kiss --

  BRUCE KULICK: We went to England [to shoot the "Tears are Falling" video]. I always love being in England. I remember we were using a video director that knew how to do over-the-top stuff. I loved the fact that he wanted to feature me and use the solo dramatically, even if it made me do "the shower thing," and suddenly, I'm doing what looked like a hair commercial! But that was great. Even though we knew it was a one-shot thing, I followed the direction, and I wasn't really that worried about the guitar [getting wet], because hey, I was a rock star, so we'll deal with the guitar. We'll wipe it down. I dug the set. I thought it was really cool. I was really happy how it came out. I was very proud of the band at that time. I was glad to be a "video star." The volcano I thought was really funny. Thank God it worked and went off when it was supposed to. Everything just really came together. We went to England because, at the time — in '85 — the dollar was stronger than the pound, so a $100,000 video might only cost $75,000. I liked that they used a "girl next door" pretty girl [as the female role in the video], not some stripper. The only negative thing with the videos of Kiss is that Gene and Paul would do their "count each other's shots." And I thought that that was a detriment, but whatever, it is their band. I knew I wasn't going to be on the top of the number count, that's for sure! "Wait a minute, I'm playing a solo...why is the camera on Paul? Why is the camera on Gene? Surely, I look good when I play the guitar!" But what am I doing to do? I'm not in the editing room, and who's going to say, "But who's hiring them?" Me? No. So that was the one negative about the Kiss videos, and I say that pretty blankly about all of them. I didn't take it personally.

  -- Ratt --

  WARREN DeMARTINI: Milton Berle was the first icon that I think any of us had ever met [for the "Round and Round" video]. It was a really cool thing. He was really the first guy to ever have a variety show on TV, and he was a cool person to listen to, because he made his career the same way that he knew that we were going to, which is to get on the road. Because prior to TV, it was just vaudeville. He was telling us stories and talking about those days, when him and other comedians of the period would get on a train, travel all night, y'know, Middle America. Raining, cold, get into a hotel, get up in the morning, set it all up, do the show, and then move on. What he described was great,
but it was tough. It was like, "OK, now we're going to be doing something other than playing live," which was the only thing that we were trying to hone. I remember as we were getting ready to do the "falling through the ceiling scene," we only had one chance to do this. I remember thinking, "I have no experience doing this!" There was that dining room scene that was set up, and because of the union rules, they weren't going to set it up and do it again. Once we did that scene, that was going to be it. I had a real moment of just "standing there at the diving board," and it's like, "Do it perfect — with no practice." I got through it, and the shot turned out fine, but it was just one of those one of many detours from the road that we had envisioned. "Lay It Down" was all concept and not one of my favorites, frankly. There's parts I like about it, but like Robbin Crosby and me were always saying, "Why can't it just be a live bit? It just never gets better than that." The "You're in Love" video was probably because we complained so much about having to do a concept video with "Lay It Down," that the next video was a live piece that we shot in Shreveport, Louisiana. It was just a killer gig and a killer show. I had to re-edit that video for the DVD [Videos from the Cellar: The Atlantic Years], because the MTV version had footage of Ronald Reagan and Groucho Marx. It was going to be a licensing nightmare. So I went back and went through the footage and found some stuff that I could put in there — in lieu of all the cameo things — and I was really taken by the things they didn't use. What's in there now, there's a really cool, wide shot going from stage right to stage left and into the crowd.

  -- Twisted Sister --

  MARK WEISS: Twisted Sister — I was at all their videos. It was kind of comic book stuff. It was comical, but it was cool. I did the Stay Hungry album cover, and then I was their photographer. I did everything with those guys. I just remember they got Neidermeyer and Flounder [characters from Animal House for the "I Wanna Rock" video]. I remember Marty Callner, the video director. That was one of his first big MTV videos. And after he did the Twisted one, everyone hired him.

  -- Lita Ford --

  LITA FORD: Making ["Gotta Let Go"] was awesome. That was wild. The directors and the producers come up with a script for each song, so this one was very different. And I liked what they did, because it was so different. You remember Annie Lennox? She used to dress up in so many wacky different ways, and I really admired her for that. And I thought, "Well...why not do something on that scale? And do the ironing or whatever, treat it like an 'Annie Lennox' kind of thing." But for me, it was pretty hard. Even the other day, looking at the pictures from the video shoot, I had to do a couple of double takes to see who that was. And my kids were like, "Mom...who the hell is that?!" So it was such an extreme difference. But it works for the video. It ended up being in heavy rotation. It was awesome. It's such a thrill to be a part of that.

  -- Spin̈al Tap --

  MARK WEISS: I remember when Spin̈al Tap came on [MTV], and nobody knew who they were. They didn't say who it was, like it was Lenny and Squiggy [It was just Lenny, aka actor Michael McKean, not Squiggy.]. I didn't know either, and the VJs didn't even know. So they started asking them questions about how they were in England. I didn't know too much about international bands, so I'm trying to schmooze with them, like maybe get a gig. I didn't know I was talking to Lenny and Squiggy! Afterwards, we found out, and it was a good little joke.

  -- Mötley Crüe --

  RUDY SARZO: Van Halen was more tongue-in-cheek, whereas Mötley Crüe were sometimes trying hard to be bad boys. That was the image that they wanted to put across. They were really working hard at it. [Laughs] And, of course, they succeeded — on stage, off stage, and in front of the camera. Whereas Van Halen was like, "Hey, this is what we do 24/7. Come to our party." It's like the whole world was a big backstage party to them.

  WARREN DeMARTINI: When I moved to L.A. to join Ratt, Mötley Crüe had just released Too Fast for Love, and they were well-known and established in the L.A. area. That was a very exciting time, because you could still see them in a small place, like the Troubadour or the Whiskey. Back then, they would do two shows a night, and people would line up around the block and stand out there for hours. Robbin was friends with Nikki, and we were starting to get known as a group, so we could get in through the backdoor. When we used to see them at the Whiskey, there was maybe a couple thousand people who knew who Mötley Crüe were. And we were one of them. So skip ahead to seeing them on TV — that was great.

  HERMAN RAREBELL: I remember in 1982 I walked into the Whiskey A Go Go. And two guys approached me, Tommy Lee and Vince Neil. "Hi, aren't you Herman from the Scorpions? Would you be interested to produce us?" Later on in the evening — the next day, actually — they gave me a tape with some of the songs on it, and asked me to produce them. And because I had to go back to Germany and play drums on the next Scorpions album, this prevented this. Otherwise, I would have produced the first Mötley Crüe album. This was how close I was to it. I loved the band. I always thought they would make it big.

  MARK WEISS: I was at [the video shoots for] "Smokin' in the Boys Room," "Too Young to Fall in Love." I was at a lot of their videos. I was one of the first — if not the first — photographer who gave them a national layout. I shot Mötley Crüe for Oui magazine in 1981. I hired a bunch of girls that went topless, and we went to the Rainbow afterwards, and there was shit going on under the table. They were living the dream. Their videos...if you look at them now, "Smokin' in the Boys Room" is kind of hokey, but "Too Young to Fall in Love" was kind of cool — the one with an Oriental kind of thing, with gang fighting, geisha girls. That was fun. There were a lot of girls around that one. In between takes, I would grab Vince and just shoot him with some girls, provocative poses. I remember Mick Mars had a thing with...I don't know if they used it, but there was a sushi thing and him taking the fish and hitting someone with it.

  CARMINE APPICE: I thought Mötley Crüe's videos were great. They were better than the band at the time. I thought the best thing in the band was Tommy. I became friends with Mick. Mick is actually a pretty good player. And I became friends with Nikki Sixx. Me and Nikki used to live close to each other, and I played him a song from King Kobra called "Raise Your Hands to Rock," and then Nikki ripped my title off and wrote a whole new song to it! They gave me a credit on the album — "Thanks for the title." How about you should have gave me some royalties? I lent them a couple of bass drums for the second album, because Tom Werman, the producer, didn't like the way Tommy's bass drum sounded.

  FRANK STALLONE: I wasn't into the hair bands, Ratt and all that stuff. I couldn't stand that shit. Quiet Riot, I mean, Kevin DuBrow, I said, "Kevin...what are you, on smack? What are you doing?" I hated it. I used to hang out at the same place, the Rainbow. They were a little younger than me. I would say probably the best of them all was Mötley Crüe, as far as a band, if you really listen to them. It was just weird, guys with teased hair and black fingernails, and could be in better shape to wear the clothes they were wearing. When I see guys walk in wearing skin-tight spandex and they're really in bad shape, like they've got cellulite...it doesn't work, man. You've got to come in strong. Yeah, carrying some cottage cheese on a guy isn't good.

  Bruce Springsteen

  JOHN OATES: I think Bruce was smart to do a video ["Dancing in the Dark"] that was live, because that's what he was all about. His live performances were the centerpiece of his whole career. So he kept true to his thing.

  DARYL HALL: I think, like a lot of his career, it was very calculated, and he needed a hit, because he wanted to be part of that. So he manufactured his only real single and did it and made a video, like everybody else.