by Greg Prato
ALAN HUNTER: There was suddenly almost competition. When Ted Turner started talking about his video channel, that is the reason VH1 was invented. There was no plan on the books. There might have been some plans for a more "adult" channel from MTV, but they were not thinking about it until Ted Turner made that announcement, and the higher-ups at MTV scrambled very quickly to construct VH1. And indeed, they did, and that killed [Cable Music Channel]. Friday Night Videos was apples and oranges. That was Friday night. We were so big at that point. We were the only game in town. No one could beat us. MuchMusic was in Canada. It didn't really reach into our world at all. I don't think any cable channels had it in America. Top of the Pops across the ocean was sort of the model for MTV, but that was a once-a-week show. So nobody made a stab at it at all.
LES GARLAND: We did it to fight off Ted Turner's music channel that he started. We had been in development on — way ahead of its time — a shopping channel. We had invested some of our resources and were about to invest more into a launch of a shopping channel on television. And we had been in talks with JCPenny. It was going to be like a "JCPenny shopping channel," because we had had some success with a system out in Ohio that was owned by Warner, called QUBE. Interactive TV. So we had this idea about shopping, that was the next network we were thinking of launching corporately. Ted Turner came to us sometime before that and asked if our ad team could represent CNN, on Madison Avenue with the ad agencies. If we could sell MTV on the young demo side and CNN on the older demo side, and they wouldn't compete with each other and our sales people could get better commissions. We had a deal with him, representing his ad time on CNN. If not one of his channels, maybe two — TBS. About a year or so later, he came forward and wanted to know if it would be OK to launch a music channel for the older demo. We were kind of reluctant, but there wasn't much we could do to stop it. We said, "OK," and it was launched. The channel lights up...and they're playing MTV music. We couldn't believe it. The old competitive nature in all of us, from our radio days, came out quickly, and we said, "Whoa. If anybody is going to do music on television, it's going to be us. We really shouldn't let him do this. We need to compete with that."
GEORGE LOIS: I got a call from Bob, and he says, "The shit is hitting the fan. Ted Turner is starting a middle-of-the-road music channel, following MTV." Turner or his people said, "If MTV is successful, why not do a middle-of-the-road one, where even more Americans would go to it." It made some kind of marketing sense. I run over there, and there's a bunch of us talking, and they're going, "What the fuck are we going to do?" And we were looking at each other, and three or four of us in the room said, "Why don't we announce that we got one?" And everybody was like, "What do you mean? We don't have one." I think it was more than me saying, "Let's do some advertising and say that we have it. Let's come up with a quick name and cut them off at the pass. It'll probably be so successful that we'll have to do it." And Bob and everybody said, "Why the fuck not? Let's give it a shot." It took big fucking balls for Bob to do that. It's one thing to suggest doing that; it's another thing to squeeze the trigger.
BOB PITTMAN: You're always worried about the competition, and Ted was put in business by ATC Cable and TCI and encouraged to do it. They made him big promises about the carriage they'd give him. And I had my head handed to me by Cinemax when I ran the Movie Channel. I learned about fighting brands, flanker brands. When you have a big service like HBO, you don't want HBO to fight the Movie Channel. You'd rather start another service to fight the Movie Channel. We decided, "We're going to invent another service to fight Ted Turner, so MTV doesn't have to go into battle." So we started VH1. And VH1 was completely a flanker brand. From day one, we had to do it as cheaply as possible. Originally, we didn't think we could even do videos of the VJs. We'd do audio. And then our head of engineering figured out a way to do it on cheap 3/4-inch, fixed cameras. I went out and hired some big DJs — Don Imus, Scott Shannon, and Frankie Crocker as the VJs — just to get us attention on the radio. It's interesting. We were carried on Manhattan Cable at launch. Everybody said, "How the hell could you get a brand new service on Manhattan Cable?" And the way we got it on was there was a guy named John Gault, who ran Manhattan Cable. And Don Imus would go on every morning on his radio show and say, "We're going to be launching VH1, and I'm sure John Gault is going to be carrying us." And John would call me and go, "I can't carry you!" And I'd go, "Would you want me to tell Don you're not going to carry us?" "No, no, no, don't tell him that!" So Don kind of boxed Gault into carrying us.
NINA BLACKWOOD: Poor VH1 was like the bastard stepchild. [Laughs] I went to their studios once for something, and it was this teeny-tiny thing. There was no money involved in that. We never had interconnection really with VH1. It's not like we would have "MTV parties" and VH1 would be there. We didn't. It was really — and I hate to say it, I'm not trying to be mean — kind of a non-entity at the beginning.
LES GARLAND: I must admit now, 25 years later, we did go to the music companies and let them know that it would be frowned on if they cooperated with another music channel, that we would consider it an act of betrayal. And we came guns a-blazin'. 37 days later, they shut that down, and now we were in the position that we have to launch a music channel. So coming up with a name is always fun. We thought, "Video Hits — VH. And there's only one number one, [so] let's grab the number one." So it was going to be Video Hits One. Our greatest fear was that we would cannibalize MTV. So we intentionally tried to make it not great. Am I going to say we tried to make it horrible? No. But we didn't want it to be so good that it would hurt MTV. It was all over the road. It wasn't even middle-of-the-road. It was all over the friggin' road. This network — with very little direction — took on its own life. Like a plant getting out of control. People liked it. We couldn't believe it. We were surprised, and we decided, "Well, it's time to take it seriously," and we brought in some people to do that. Kevin Metheny got moved over there from MTV. Lee Masters, who went on to do cool things, and VH1 became the real deal. It truly was not planned. It was really done more out of defense than it was as an offensive move on the field.
"We Are the World"/Live Aid
NINA BLACKWOOD: Band Aid's "Do They Know It's Christmas?" — to this day, I don't feel like it's really Christmas until I hear that song. I thought it was beautiful. Of course, very sad that there's situations that we have to do that. In the idealistic world, we wouldn't have that. But that's not the real world. I thought that was absolutely stunning, and the same goes for "We Are the World." I'm sorry actually that they did a new version of that [in 2010]. I wish that they would have written an entirely new song. I'm happy that it raised funds. That part I'm very glad about, so I'm not poo-pooing the whole idea. But I thought the first one was perfect. And now, with Michael gone, even more poignant.
DARYL HALL: The recording of "We Are the World" was one of the most bizarre experiences I've ever had in my life. I don't think I'll ever top it. It's sort of a surreal moment. It all came out of this idea — Quincy Jones said, "Leave your egos at the door." And by meaning that, he basically locked the door. Everybody has their posse — their entourage, your tour manager, your assistant, your hairdresser...whatever it is. They were all barred out, and it was just the artists themselves in a room with Quincy. And that put people very much out of their comfort zone. All they had was each other. Musicians have cordial relationships with each other, but they're not friends, because we all live in our own "solar systems." Very seldom are we close friends with other people on our level. It happens, but not with a lot of frequency. We were all people that knew each other, but not really. And didn't know what to say to each other. So everybody sort of reverted back to eighth grade in high school chorus — I think that was the common denominator with everybody — and Quincy Jones was "the choir director," and they treated him that way. Suddenly, everyone went to him as if he were "the adult" in the room. It actually generated into a really interesting, natural thing that was totally out of context with the peopl
e that were in that room.
JOHN OATES: Bob Dylan was off to my one shoulder, and Ray Charles was in front of me off my left shoulder. I remember Ray Charles being really cool and a lot of people deferring to him in a lot of ways. It was great to be in the room. There was a real purity of spirits. Nobody had ever done anything like that before. I had the presence of mind to go around with the sheet music and have everyone sign it. I have it in my studio. Whenever people come into my studio, the first thing they notice is the "We Are the World" sheet music, with all the signatures, and they freak out.
DARYL HALL: Ray Charles was funny. He kept cracking jokes. Billy Joel kept wandering over to Ray Charles and peeking over his shoulder, because Ray Charles obviously couldn't see what he was doing. Ray Charles was playing the piano, and Billy Joel was stealing all the licks from him. Michael Jackson told me he stole "Billie Jean" from "No Can Do" and asked me if that was OK...and then pretty much hung with Diana Ross for the rest of the time. Lionel Richie and I were talking. We became pretty good friends. I was talking a lot with Bob Geldof and became friends with him. Cyndi Lauper was nervous. Bruce was kind of quiet.
ALAN HUNTER: Live Aid certainly made people take notice that MTV could be the platform for paradigm-shifting things once again.
BOB PITTMAN: A guy named Chip Rachlin, who did our music acquisitions, came in and brought Bob Geldof to see me. He said, "Bob wants to do this show and is looking to sell the rights." We convinced Bob that instead of selling the rights to it, what he should do with Live Aid is try and get everybody to carry it, and do donations on air. Which nobody had really done, except the Jerry Lewis Telethon. We said, "We'll carry it 24 hours." ABC said they'd carry it during primetime, and at the end of it, they would cut it and sell it to HBO or somebody. So we put together this whole package, and the reality is we didn't have enough money to be competitive to buy the thing. But what we knew was we could get our audience very engaged, and I think they raised something like $60 million in donations, which at the time was an enormous amount of money. Really a defining moment for MTV. We sort of "arrived" with Live Aid. We produced the whole show, and we were producing it from both England and Philadelphia [Wembley Stadium in London and JFK Stadium in Philadelphia on July 13, 1985], which was pretty remarkable for us. I still remember running around back there and the camaraderie of it, making the last-minute decisions about what we would do if things didn't turn out quite as we expected. We were very much on the fly, a big live event.
ALAN HUNTER: I think it was the height of [MTV's] "social responsibility quotient." Whether they were doing that for ratings or it was the right thing to do, that's the question with any big corporate entity doing anything like that. I just think it made so much sense for MTV to be the lead outlet for that. It was fairly massive. I would certainly say it was a very uncynical and sincere approach to televise to the world something that big. For us to broadcast that for 17 hours was pretty massive.
NINA BLACKWOOD: A very eventful day. Amazing. Work-wise, for me, it was very intense, because it was live. I remember being really serious that day and being on my toes. The only time I would leave our "home base" was to run downstairs, go to the bathroom, and run up real quick. I don't even think I ate all day. It was just amazing to be a part of that event, because in the world of pop culture, that really was a historic moment. The whole thing was a blur. I don't remember any one particular interview that stuck out, because it was just continuous.
ALAN HUNTER: I found it difficult when I had my hosting duties in little two-hour windows — we all rotated in and out — to come out of such a momentous collaboration and capsulize that in 30 seconds, it was definitely more JJ and Mark's forte. Me, words like, "Wow, that was great!" was all I could muster up, because I just wasn't a journalist. I was a fan, awestruck by the whole thing. I wasn't there to talk about the first blast-off to the moon, y'know? I wasn't "the Walter Cronkite of music." But it was awesome to be there, no doubt.
ROB HALFORD: We were in the Bahamas recording Turbo, and we'd been asked to take part in this event. We just knocked together a quick set-list in the studio, had a quick run-through, flew directly from Nassau to Miami, Miami to Philly. We wanted to get there early, because it was just phenomenal, the talent. I think Priest and Sabbath were the only metal bands on there. I remember doing an interview with Martha Quinn, and I'd had one or two "beverages," and I was in a happy state of mind. I think I kept saying, "Can we start again?" And she kept saying, "No...we're live." One of the things I remember is Priest had covered "Diamonds and Rust" by Joan Baez, and it had been quite a successful release for the band. And we never ever met Joan Baez. I'm sitting outside the trailer before we go on, and I see this gal walking towards me, and I'm like, "Oh my God, that's Joan Baez...and she's walking over towards us!" We met halfway, and I said, "Hi Joan, it's really lovely to meet you. We're huge fans, much respect for what you do." And she goes, "I just wanted to say thank you for covering my song. It's the only song that's been covered, that my son" — her son was a teenager at the time — "my son loves Judas Priest's version of 'Diamonds and Rust.'" And I thought, "How cool is that? That this iconic legend would come and thank us for covering that beautiful song."
CHUCK D: I thought Live Aid was fantastic. I was really happy when Run-DMC was a part of it. Run-DMC was my rap heroes.
RICK SPRINGFIELD: We were on the road, and it was just another big event. The "Woodstock syndrome," where everyone knew it was going to be big, but didn't realize it would have the place in history that it did, as really the first big, televised, "let's change the world" music. It was a very brave attempt and said a lot about the state of mind of doing something with the power that successful musicians had, rather than just using it to get laid or buy a bigger house. I thought that was really admirable and probably one of music's finest moments.
GREG HAWKES: That's really the only thing I can compare to the US Festival, as far as its scope and scale. It was really exciting to do Live Aid. Boy, was it big. David Robinson had some electronic drums, and some of his things might have been triggering on their own. [Laughs] Unintentionally. Sometimes, some of those big shows like that, I tend to feel a little "detached," almost. The audience is so big, that it's hard to really connect in a way. It gets a little surreal.
ALAN HUNTER: At Live Aid, I was just wandering around backstage, and Crosby, Stills & Nash were sitting at a picnic table. Our producer wandered over there and asked if we could interview them, and I just happened to be the guy on call. I was a huge CSN fan because of my brothers. The producer whispers in my ear, "Ask David about his drug problems." He had just gone through rehab. It came out of my mouth, and he goes, "You don't want to go there, Alan."
DARYL HALL: It was sort of an extension of the same thing [as "We Are the World"]. You had all of these ridiculously significant artists all backstage, bumping into each other and walking into each other's dressing rooms. It was a very strange backstage.
JOE ELLIOTT: Rumor has it that Queen rehearsed for an entire week, and that the Who rehearsed for 20 minutes. And if that is true, it's a great example to any band that thinks you don't need to rehearse. You're wrong. And I love the Who...but they were awful. They were much better at the Super Bowl [in 2010]. In fact, they were great at the Super Bowl. They'd obviously spent a long time saying, "Let's not do what we did at Live Aid." But I thought Queen were great. They even managed to pull off "Is This the World We Created?" when all the sound started screwing up, because they're professionals. Between them and U2, they were the best things on.
GREG HAWKES: One of my favorite moments was smoking a joint with Paul Shaffer while watching Madonna's show! The other thing I remember is for the TV show, while we were playing "Drive" is when they cut to Phil Collins' airplane landing at JFK, because he did the London show, and then took the Concorde over. When they were showing the Cars playing "Drive," most of the footage was of Phil Collins' airplane landing at JFK!
BOB PITTMAN: My son, who is now 26, was at Live Aid, backs
tage, as a two-and-a-half-year-old. My son looked up and said, "Phil Collins!" And they go, "No, no, Phil Collins isn't here. He's in England, little boy." And, of course, Phil Collins had taken the Concorde, had made it over, and was there, and was the drummer for Zeppelin. In my view, Zeppelin is the greatest rock band of all time, and at that time, I really thought that was true. That was one of the great moments of the whole show.
ALAN HUNTER: I'm sitting there in 1985, and we were 20 yards from the center of the stage, watching Led Zeppelin reunite.
JOE ELLIOTT: It's not really fair to tell, because the sound was so bad. When they started playing "Rock and Roll," the distortion coming out of either Phil Collins' or Tony Thompson's high-hat, that just ruined it all. Robert's voice is cracking a bit, Pagey I think was all smacked up. It's a hard one to call. I think most people were just glad they were on the same stage. It wasn't as bad as everybody made it out to be. Most of it was technical problems.