MTV Ruled the World- The Early Years of Music Video

by Greg Prato

  FRANK STALLONE: My brother had used that phrase in the movie. It's just a great record, the perfect record. Again, a shit video. My video ["Far from Over"] is better than that video! I said, "Frankie, you and Dave look like you have a stick up your ass walking down the street. It's the worst video I've ever seen! Your record was bigger than mine, you had a bigger budget...and your video really sucks."

  FRANKIE SULLIVAN: I had a couple of conversations with [Sylvester Stallone], but never about that [writing a song for Rocky IV]. Tony kind of put that together. He said, "You've got to have a song in this film. Why not?" I remember thinking to myself, "Well...why wouldn't we? It would only make sense." But then coming up with the song, that was the hard part, because you don't want to rewrite "Eye of the Tiger." You've got to write something new. My favorite song on that soundtrack was not ours. I thought Robert Tepper did a phenomenal job with "No Easy Way Out." ["Burning Heart"] was fun. We did it where they filmed the fight scenes. Sly was going to come down that day, but he didn't make it. Which is not a diss. He was like that, because he was really busy at the time. We just got up on the stage and performed. Nobody's acting a part or playing a role. There's no script to follow. They're just filming the band performing the song.

  -- Billy Joel --

  NINA BLACKWOOD: I really liked the video for "Pressure," maybe because I could relate to the whole concept, both the song and the video itself. I was living in New York at the time, and New York is pressure-filled. I thought it was clever. A lot of his other videos, it seemed his persona was a flashback to early '60s and the groups that inspired him. And this one was different. It probably is my favorite of his videos. It has elements of his early music, that Beatles-esque melody that's running through it. And then he also has the "Russian thing" [a Russian-sounding piece of music]. I thought the video went along with that very well, because sometimes, these concept videos, you look at them, and go, "What the hell? It has nothing to do with the song!" And this one did. I think it's an example of perfect meshing of video to song.

  -- Men at Work --

  COLIN HAY: The videos that we did were very inexpensive. I think "Who Can It Be Now?" cost $5,000. It was shot by two guys, primarily John Whitteron and Tony Stevens. They were two guys who were responsible for a lot of the other videos that we did. It was a case really of finding a good location and coming up with a couple of ideas that would be interesting. Primarily, Greg Ham and myself came up with what we would shoot, in collaboration with John and Tony. We never went to the cops and got permission or anything like that. We just went in, shot, and got out of there as quickly as we could, if we weren't supposed to be somewhere. "Down Under," we had to fight for another $1,000 from the record label. That one cost $6,000. The great thing about that I think was just finding the sand mine at Cronulla, which was a suburb of Sydney, that great location at the end of the video, that we use to come over the top of the hill. I think that was a beautiful shot, that clip, which is a strong visual and really worth doing. It was kind of an inspired location to find, that sand mine.

  ALAN HUNTER: Certainly, Men at Work were a novelty band. I interviewed Colin Hay and don't remember any of the other members. He was "the guy." I think I did interview them, because I remember asking about Vegemite. That was the only pertinent question, "What is Vegemite?" I think all of America learned a little bit more about them and how nasty Vegemite was. Again, I think the video helped those images. The video helped maintain a sort of frivolous image. They were all dancing around in little tennis shoes and hopping around, and he was such a funny character on camera. Mugging the camera and being lighthearted. That was probably what undercut some of the real good songwriting that was going on.

  COLIN HAY: The young kid we found to play "Johnny" [in "Be Good Johnny"] was great. I think more than anything, our videos had our personality to them. Because, as I said, we didn't have any money for effects or fancy locations or extra stuff. It was just very much, "OK, here's the band, and here's a few ideas." It was pretty much just do everything ourselves, because that's all we really had at our disposal. It was an enormous amount of fun doing them. We really enjoyed putting them together. ["Overkill"] was more introspective. That was around a place I lived, called St. Kilda. There were a couple of different techniques that the cinematographer used and employed in that video. And I think it featured me a lot, that clip. It was really the start of fracturing within the band. During the last tour of the States, it was not a band that had a lot of unity or soul in it. It was probably the start of the end, and even visually...I mean, you can't really see it, but from my memory, there was a tinge of sadness involved with that, because you could almost see what was going to happen in the next couple of years. "It's a Mistake" was a great video. That involved really cool claymation. There was a huge fire that happened then, Ash Wednesday, which was a horrible bush fire. We actually used that tragedy — a few days after the fires had burnt out — as a location for shooting the stuff, which was to simulate a warzone, which was pretty tragic for the people involved, but an opportunity for us to shoot a video that looked pretty authentic.

  -- Hall and Oates --

  DARYL HALL: The first videos we did, we didn't have a clue of what people wanted or what to do. We just stood in front of curtains and jumped around. I felt like Sid Caesar in Your Show of Shows or something back in the '50s. It was an era that nobody knew what they were doing. They didn't even know where to find these "video directors," so they would get people who were sort of underlings in the commercial business. People who had no track record at all. They had a camera or two, threw some lights up, they put the song on, and we'd jump around a few times, and then they edited it together. That was early video. And then it went into the "auteur state," where everybody thought they were Cecil B. Demille, and went into these outrageously over-extravagant, expensive videos, that had very little to do with the music. I always tried to stay out of that world as much as I could, and I — to some degree — had a running battle with what was going on at the time. I'm a purist.

  JOHN OATES: What happened was, here again, we were asked, "Hey, MTV needs stuff. Content. And we want you to make a video." So, basically, our first reaction was, "What's a video?" Because we didn't really know what to do. There was no direction really. It was just, "Play the song, lip-synch the song, and perform it." Both those videos ["Private Eyes" and "You Make My Dreams"] were shot at SIR on Fourth Street, I believe, and we were in there rehearsing for our tour. It was the final day and our final rehearsal. I think it was at least midnight, if not even later. The bus was out front, idling, ready to go, and the trucks were being loaded with our equipment. Some guys came in and hung black drapery behind us, and we put on these stupid "private eye" trench coats and fedoras. They brought in the cameras, and we basically mimed the video. That was the video. It didn't take very long. We didn't know what we were doing, and just goofed around. And the moment we were done, we took the clothes off, got on the bus, and went on tour. It's funny, if you look at the Rolling Stones video from that exact same time ["Start Me Up"], they did exactly what we did. They put up a black curtain and jumped around in front of the camera. They probably did the same thing we did because no one was really thinking about anything else at the time. The "Maneater" video was further along. It was shot in L.A., with much higher production values, shot on a soundstage. We had a live leopard. [Laughs] In L.A., you had the infrastructure for the movie, film, and television business, so you had better camera, better lighting, better facilities. So that's where the videos are starting to get a little more elaborate.

  DARYL HALL: ["One on One"] was a Mick Haggerty video. Mick was living in New York. We were all living in New York. He was a pretty good friend of mine. And I just wanted to do a video that really...I was trying to get close to reality with it. I lived across the street from Village Cigars on Seventh Avenue, and we started the video right there and moved up the road, to Times Square. It was a real "New York video." We tried at least to describe the lyrics visuall
y and stick close to the idea of the song, the mood of the song. Which I think Mick was pretty good at.

  JOHN OATES: ["Out of Touch"] was the end of us going crazy with videos and budgets. You have to remember, in the context of the time, we were having huge hit records, one after the other. The record company was basically happy to do whatever we wanted. We shot that in New York, out in Queens. Here again, that was the time where videos were becoming "more and more is better." The mid-'80s, it's kind of like Gordon Gekko. "Greed is good." [Laughs] The guy who dies with the most toys wins, y'know? I just remember Daryl and I being sealed into this giant drum at about 3:00 in the morning, looking at each other, and going, "What the hell are we doing? How did it come to this?!"

  -- The Go-Go's --

  JOHN DOE: [The Go-Go's] were charming. They were adorable. Nobody in L.A. ever felt like they were selling out, because the whole concept of them is just really poppy. They were pretty inventive, I think.

  MARTHA DAVIS: We used to rehearse together in the same room, under the Pussycat Theater on Hollywood Boulevard, in a place called the Masque, which was a famous punk rock place. They rehearsed on one side of the room, and we rehearsed on the other. We got signed first, and they said, "We're going to move our equipment to your side of the room...maybe we'll get lucky and get signed, too." And they certainly did. [Laughs] I played with them recently, and they're still great. They sound amazing.

  KATHY VALENTINE: As we did later videos, we would meet with directors, and they'd have storyboards, and you'd do all this stuff. ["Our Lips Are Sealed"] wasn't like that at all. It was just this real free-forming thing. I don't even remember who directed it. I just remember them saying, "We have this idea of getting in the convertible, and you guys drive around." It was kind of a free-for-all. Everybody threw in ideas. The biggest thing about that video was when we went to the fountain in Beverly Hills, somebody had the bright idea if we were splashing around in the fountain, maybe a policeman would come and give us a citation. And we thought how cool that would that be in the video. But as it turned out...nobody paid any attention.

  DEBORA IYALL: I loved the one where they're driving in the car, and they're singing and splashing in the fountain — "Our Lips Are Sealed." I just thought, "I'm in love with the girls." They were sexy and attractive in their own way, but they're also being themselves, and I love that.

  KATHY VALENTINE: ["Vacation"] was a blast. We had the best time. There's a lot of waiting around, and it takes a long time, so we got pretty juiced up. We were drinking lots of champagne. So when it came to do the water-skiing, the fun and silliness is real. We're just having a good time. We've been drinking champagne for hours. [Laughs] ["Head Over Heels"] was a very dark period in the band's life. When I see that video, I just think about what we were going through, and it kind of makes me sad. To me, it looks fake. The kind of "happiness" — I know it's not real. Charlotte was really deep in her addiction, and maybe we already knew Jane was going to quit. She might have already quit and just agreed to do that tour. So we were frazzled. It was frayed. Everything was unraveling. And yet, we're supposed to look like we're the same happy band that's having fun, fun, fun.

  -- Culture Club --

  MIKE SCORE: I didn't particularly like Culture Club, but I didn't particularly hate them. I felt they were just a "pop thing," with a good figurehead. I don't think they were a huge touring band, which was the traditional way to make it in America — to be a big touring band and gather fans that way. MTV made Boy George what he was in America. He deserved it — good songs, great biography. [Laughs]

  STEVE BARRON: Punk had stamped its authority and thrown down the gauntlet and said, "You don't have to conform," which opened up the door for the new wave world and extraordinary things. It opened its eyes to say, "Different is OK. Different is better. Just do your own thing, and if people want to come along, they come along. If they don't, you're being unique and creative." He was one of those people in London who was doing extraordinary things musically and visually. A lot of that comes out of the fact that videos came along and said, "You can't all just stand there with your guitar and bass on a stage with a few colored lights. Things in this new world have to say a bit more and do a bit more." He was fantastic for that. "Do You Really Want to Hurt Me" is just a brilliant song. He's a pop genius of that era.

  ROB HALFORD: I suppose because of my sexuality, I accepted George instantly, because that's just by my nature. I'm a very unprejudiced person. I accept everything, because I understand what goes behind putting something together. So when I saw George, I thought, "This is cool. This is exciting. This is different. This is what rock n' roll is all about." When I say "rock n' roll," I mean it as a broad label. I thought it was really powerful. And especially when I heard him doing his interviews, as articulate and intelligent as he is. I thought it was a breath of fresh air when Culture Club came on the scene. Driven by him, obviously — he was the man. He took it to its extreme. Because in the gender-bender thing, we had Bowie in his dresses and Bowie as Ziggy, but Bowie was a lot of things. He was the Thin White Duke one minute, and then he was Ziggy the next, and something the next. But here was George coming out in such a flamboyant, androgynous way, that everybody was curious. But he could back it up by the main feature — his voice. He has the most amazing voice. If you close your eyes and just listen to that voice, it's a really unusual, beautiful voice. So again, just an extraordinary moment. It's important, if you look across the decades of rock n' roll — starting with Elvis and I don't know who we're ending with right now in terms of extremity — Culture Club and Boy George has his slot in the "shock and awe" moments in rock n' roll.

  COLIN HAY: He's fantastic. I loved those songs, loved his voice. Loved everything about him. He was really a star. Cool songs and different.

  DEBORA IYALL: I was fascinated by Boy George. I was from San Francisco, so the whole transgender thing was something that I had experienced first-hand. I had some drag queens helping me get dressed for an important gig on New Year's, for instance. Miss X and Doris Fish were pals of mine, who were dressed as women. I liked it that he still kind of looked like a man...and then he didn't. That was kind of neat. That hybrid — I appreciated that. And what was so strange was he looked like that, and he sounded like something else. He had a very soulful voice. And I liked the attitude and content of some of his songs a lot, what he was saying. All props to Boy George!

  MICHAEL SADLER: Brilliant, absolutely brilliant. Because, not to be taken seriously, and the videos come off that way. And him in all his glam glory. I was not a massive fan, but not being a musical snob, I tend to give everything credit if it's of quality. Everything they did, again, very controlled and image-conscious, as most of the '80s English bands were. Boy George took it to another level and created this "alter ego or is it?" kind of thing. I can just imagine the kind of person he was and realizing that he got to play "dress up" for a living every day. He was in his glory. He probably had a lot of control over the videos that they did. I'm pretty sure he had a lot input into the final product and how the band came off looking on screen.

  -- Toni Basil --

  TONI BASIL: I was doing a video album deal, so I was looking for several ideas. The day I shot "Mickey," I think I shot part of "Time After Time" and "Little Red Book" that day. And then I came back and shot the other half of the other video, because I used a different backdrop. They were almost all on white or black backdrops, with very minimal furnishings or set pieces, because I was shooting so many in a day, and I wasn't doing locations, because that takes a long time. It eats up your time if you're doing locations and if you're changing sets. I shot more like you would a musical number on a TV show, on a variety show, with the more progressive idea in the editing. I wore my cheerleader outfit from high school for "Mickey," and I got real cheerleaders from Carson High, and there's real cheerleaders from Dorsey High singing the chant on the record. I think that was maybe something that people didn't expect to see, which was real cheerleaders. At the time, m
ostly you hired jazz dancers, and normally, they would be cheerleaders. But I hired real cheerleaders, and nobody had really seen mounts, when they climb up on each other like a steeple. And most of the girls and the women that they had seen on videos looked different than these girls, especially the girls that were on the bottom that held up the other girls, which were kind of husky/strong-looking girls. It was just a different look, because it was real. It wasn't fake. I was a choreographer before I really started to record, and I also made films. I always made 8-millimeter and 16-millimeter films as a hobby. So between being a choreographer, making films, and understanding editing, my video work looked like it did. My videos were a product of my history. "Mickey" was a product of my history, because I was a cheerleader all my life.

  GERALD CASALE: We knew Toni since 1977. She came backstage with Iggy Pop, Leonard Cohen, and Dean Stockwell at the Starwood. She walks in, and she's wearing a gold lamé vest with nothing on underneath it — black toreador pants and three-inch heels — and says, "Who choreographs you guys?" [Laughs]