MTV Ruled the World- The Early Years of Music Video

by Greg Prato

  JULIAN LENNON: I'd only been living in London for a year or so, when I was watching Live Aid on TV. They mentioned this subject [a rumor that the Beatles were going to reunite at Live Aid, with Julian taking the spot of his late father], while I was sitting in my apartment with my friends. We were all in shock with the announcement. I felt like a spotlight had been put on me, and felt really flushed at even the thought of it! I wished it had happened, and was saddened that it didn't. But hey...I honestly think in retrospect, that I wouldn't have been up to the challenge at that point. I was way too young and way too shy. All too much.

  JOHN OATES: We were performing with Mick Jagger and Tina Turner, and also with Eddie Kendrick and David Ruffin from the Temptations. But we closed the show that night. We were the final group. We did our Hall & Oates set, brought out Eddie and David, and did a medley of the Temptations stuff. And then Mick came out and brought out Tina, and that was the end of the show. I remember hanging out in the dressing room area, which were a series of trailers, arranged in a big circle. Everyone was there — Dylan, Madonna, Duran Duran. People were really cool. It was an amazing event.

  ALAN HUNTER: Kurt Loder in Rolling Stone, reviewing the whole thing and our coverage of it, thought the MTV VJs were a bunch of airheads. It's ironic that Kurt would join MTV years later. [Laughs]

  FRANK STALLONE: I wasn't really into that, and I'll tell you why. I almost had the Bob Dylan thought, when Bob went on stage and goes, "Y'know, a lot of farmers could use the help" and then went into the song. In other words, he goes, "All the American farmers are losing their business, but everyone cares about the other countries but their own." That's why I think Farm Aid is so much cooler. I believe in taking care of business at home first. I mean, I think Live Aid was good, but the thing is, take care of your own backyard. Let's see what's going on. But the performers, I don't think half of them could have given two shits about it. I mean, they figure, "Hey man, I'm sitting next to Michael Jackson and Diana Ross, and we'll go in the bathroom and do a line of blow and come back out and sing 'We Are the World'." That's what it reminded me of. I'm not a real big fan of musicians talking politics. Shut up. Because all of a sudden, now you go, "I really like his music...but I hate him so much now. I don't even want to listen to him."

  GERALD CASALE: For me, it was ambivalence, because we really did have a social consciousness and a humanitarian concern about fairness and justice and what's going on with people. But we weren't really associated with that, and we never even got asked to participate in any of these things, at all. Like Amnesty International, when they were doing those big concerts, when they bring in Peter Gabriel. And we would have done so. We realized that it was all just about "the royalty of rock" being invited to a private party. Like, Devo wasn't selling enough records, wasn't "in." They only want the "multimillionaire club" to be there. It's funny. When you watch "We Are the World," you can believe that the people that are singing it there together, do believe that they are the world. [Laughs] It was ironic.

  ROB HALFORD: The other moment was hanging out with Jack Nicholson, who was — and still is — my hero. He was with all the bands everywhere, and we were hanging out together at a party, in some penthouse in Philly. We just talked about this, that, and the other — about fame, music. He's still a big rock n' roll fan. Whenever I see Jack — like I did last night on the sidelines watching the Lakers, and he loses his mind and he's flipping everybody off [laughs] — it just takes me straight back to that day at Live Aid.

  ALAN HUNTER: I remember when it was all said and done, we went back to the hotel, and I partied all night long with Paul Shaffer. [Laughs]

  When Music Video Attacks

  JOHN OATES: It became a one-upmanship contest at a certain point, with budgets and ridiculous concepts. And we got caught up in that — the "Out of Touch" video. And we also did a more obscure video, for "Adult Education" — completely ridiculous. It was an English director who had this vision of this post-apocalyptic world underneath the city of New York, with fire and people in loincloths. It was just completely stupid. Yeah, we got caught up in it as well. I guess as long as the record company was willing to pay for it, we went along with it.

  JOE ELLIOTT: I think we all tolerated certain indulgences in videos, because it was still a new medium. But there was a lot of stuff that we watched and went, "You can't do that." It's dead easy to keep picking on the rock bands, like Twisted Sister, Bon Jovi, or Def Leppard. But truly, if you watch VH1 Classic, when you see Kool & the Gang's stuff, that's where the crimes were committed! Oh boy...silver or gold lamé suits, keytars, dancing around the stage, doing this awful boogie stuff. It was just the worst.

  WARREN DeMARTINI: I saw [music video] as a double-edged sword. It was something that you could take huge steps forward. But the other side of it was you could also wreck your career very quickly. TV could be a very detrimental thing at the same time. Some artists ruined their careers through their TV image. I noticed that, if an artist made the wrong video, and it was putting out the wrong image, it would sort of reinforce this thing that was not what the fans liked about the artist, and it would just poison the whole affinity.

  ALDO NOVA: I was a big fan of Billy Squier's, because he had "The Stroke" and all those songs. I think Billy is a big example of how video had impact, because he did one video where he was dancing around in his bedroom ["Rock Me Tonite"], and that killed his career. It goes to show how powerful video was at this time. It could either make you or break you. I think they weren't expecting that sort of like...I don't want to put to put my foot in my mouth, but that "effeminate" quality. I do remember that a little bit after that, he sort of took a back seat. I don't know what he's doing now. I mean, he was huge. His records were produced by Mack, the same guy that produced all the Queen stuff. He was a huge artist, and he definitely influenced me. I remember playing air guitar to "The Stroke" and "My Kinda Lover."

  JOE ELLIOTT: That's the one when he was crawling around the bedroom, with pink sheets over him? We were watching it through our fingers. I remember saying at the time, "Mick Jagger can get away with that...Billy Squier can't." Sadly, I was right. It's just one of those things, where it's like, "Oh man, no, please, don't do that!" We all loved the Don't Say No album. Things like "The Stroke" are fucking great. But then he goes and does that, and it's like, "You've got to be kidding me."

  PETE ANGELUS: I remember seeing the Billy Squier video, with him dancing around the bedroom by himself, in some slingshot t-shirt or something. I remember thinking to myself, "What the FUCK are you doing?! Oh, I know what you're doing. I might be wrong, but I think you're destroying your career."

  BRUCE KULICK: The album I did with him [Tale of the Tape] I don't think he did any videos for. But by the time he started to become a star, he started doing the videos, and that one where he was crawling around on the floor, I realized — even though I didn't think of him in any way as being homosexual — he came off that way enough that it really hurt him. Which is pretty interesting, because he has an effeminate thing, but so does Paul [Stanley] in a way. He came off in a bad way. So it can damage you. It can hurt you. You had to be careful about that.

  ROGER POWELL: You do something which you think, "Oh, I'm on TV. I've got to do Vegas." And if it's not actually cohesive with the music that you're doing...

  MICKEY THOMAS: It goes back to what we were saying about "falling prey," to being at the whim of stylists, people that come in and you allow them to be in complete control of your image. And that can be a dangerous thing in the world of rock n' roll. I experienced some of that same feeling, but maybe not to the extent that it happened to Billy Squier, where it's like, "You're supposed to be this tough rocker. You're supposed to have this credibility." And then, all of a sudden, you're there with your little hairspray and little poofy shirt. [Laughs] But for some people, it worked, and for some people, it didn't. They were even able to talk Bruce Springsteen into wearing a little white, short-sleeved shirt with rolled-up sleeves. [Laughs] But they could
n't corrupt Bono.

  FRANK STALLONE: Billy...I mean, his moves were always a little questionable.

  WARREN DeMARTINI: We were opening for Billy Squier during that period. We were right there when he went through that whole thing. When you compare that to the video that preceded that — it was jeans, a t-shirt, and a Les Paul Junior. And it worked. It was great, hard to beat. You're not necessarily going to get better with anything different, and why would you want to? We almost never sound-checked, so we were laying around the hotel room, just passing our time watching TV. I was seeing him on local TV channels complaining that he used the wrong director, [that] he was really talked into doing that. The thing that I could never understand was why it wasn't changed or stopped, because it was clearly something that was detrimental. I remember thinking, "Why is this being allowed to continue?"

  MARTHA DAVIS: I remember seeing it and going, "Oh my God, what has he done?" It's one of those, "Whoops!" But the thing is like any art, any time, anywhere, you can have a very concise picture in your head, and sometimes when you go...even if you're writing a song, you'll start out with this one thing, and it will go its own way. And, sometimes, it will go in a glorious new direction, and sometimes, not so much so. By the time you get to 1984, these videos are not cheap. I mean, we went from doing two for $60,000 to $100,000/$200,000. If you're locked in, you've spent a lot of money. I can see, even if he had second thoughts about it, it's kind of like, "Uhhh."

  JOE ELLIOTT: Pat Benatar came out of this era stinking of dead fish, but she went into it smelling of roses. When she did that dance routine stuff that Michael Jackson had done, it started to kill her. But "Love is a Battlefield" wouldn't have been a hit had it not been for MTV. It wouldn't have been a bigger hit, let's put it that way.

  ALDO NOVA: "Love is a Battlefield" is another example of something that could either harm you or make you. When she did "Love is a Battlefield" with the dance routine, I don't think that helped her career at that point. There's the robotic dancing in the middle. She went from "Hit Me with Your Best Shot"..."Love is a Battlefield" is a great song, don't get me wrong. You hear it on the airwaves, and it stands out. But if you see the video...I don't think it helped her at all.

  MARTHA DAVIS: ["Love is a Battlefield"] was kind of bizarre, because you don't think of Pat breaking into moves. You think of her as the ultimate singer. And I'm sure at that time, there was the pressure, because there was emerging this combo of dance. Before, if you were a rock n' roller, you sang and you played. But then, between Madonna, Prince, and various people, this "dance element" started coming into it. I'm sure somebody said, "You've got to throw a dance thing into it," or who knows, maybe she said, "I've got to throw a dance thing in."

  MICHAEL SADLER: I thought it was brilliant. I thought it was handled really well. Because I think the dance routine was choreographed in a "rock way," in a very tough way. I don't remember having a reaction like going, "Oh my God, they're doing a dance routine in a Pat Benatar video?!" I thought it was appropriate. I thought it was handled really well. It was like that whole "girl power" thing. It really drove home the "we're in charge" kind of vibe. It came off the right way to me.

  PETE ANGELUS: It's like somebody came and said, "We have to have choreography." And by the way, speaking of choreography — that is specifically why I had Van Halen and the idea of, "Let's have the group do a choreographed dance in 'Hot for Teacher.'" Knowing that they would never be able to pull it off. Interestingly, we had a choreographer on the set with us to teach them the fundamentals of those moves, and while we were filming, the choreographer would be pulling his hair out and losing his mind, saying, "Oh no, Alex fucked that up! We have to do it again." And, in my opinion, the worse it was, the better it was. So I never really allowed for that "second take," to try to tune it up. I thought, "This is a statement about everybody who's got to have some dancing in the videos. Here's our take on it."

  BOB GIRALDI: Why would I say something to defend a video that has gone on to be as popular in history as "Love is a Battlefield"? I mean, really, why would I now say, "Well, those people are wrong"? They're totally entitled to their opinion and totally correct in their own opinion, but look at the opinions of the billions who have accessed that video over the years and used it in movies and skits in as many ways as they have. The success of those five videos stands on their own. Once in a while when I'm bored, I'll go on and see what they say about them, and a lot of times, people will say, "Oh, that was so corny." Whatever it was, it's still good. I watched Glee the other night, only because somebody told me they were going to do an interpretation of "Hello," and it was marvelous. It brought back such great memories.

  JOE ELLIOTT: The poor guys in Styx have got to live with that fucking "Mr. Roboto" thing for the rest of their lives. They can blame the singer who's gone now. I always hated Dennis DeYoung. I thought he was a complete nob-head. But the rest of the guys are lovely. Thank God they've got Lawrence [Gowan] in the band now. I mean, I've sat down with Tommy [Shaw] over a cappuccino, and said, "What the hell were you guys thinking, man?" It's just fucking ridiculous. There's no redeeming factors to it at all. Styx were a great band. But grown men wearing robot suits and walking around like a robot...what the fuck is that all about? It's more ridiculous than anything we ever did.

  FRANK STALLONE: By the time anything happened at all in my career, I had been in the business 21 years. I didn't get to do my first video until 1983, and that was for Staying Alive [the song "Far from Over"]. I think it was voted "the shittiest video." It was horrible, it was just really bad. Don Zimmerman directed it, and Don was an Academy Award-nominated film editor, but he really couldn't direct. He wasn't a director, unbeknownst to me. It's almost like one of those things they used to use when they sold bad records, a bad infomercial-type thing. But I didn't know any different. It was a big mistake. I was getting a lot of airplay because the record was huge. It was a bad video, but compared to a lot of other ones, it couldn't be any worse than "99 Luftballons," with little flash-pans and a girl with hairy underarms. That was a bad video. ["Far from Over"] was a bad video, and in spite of it, the record did OK. It really wasn't my video, because I was at the mercy of the movie business. There's a lot of stuff from Staying Alive and a little bit of me in between. ["Far from Over"] was filmed on a little stage. I don't even know where the hell it was. Some backlot somewhere. But I remember they had tinsel behind me. There's no camera moves. It's just me standing on a stage by myself with my guitar, wearing black leather pants, a red headband, a leather jacket, and playing my song. It's very uninspired. It's not like it's a great production with a lot of people around. I think there was maybe five people there, including the crew. Put it this way — VH1 Classic doesn't really show it too much. My second one, "Darlin,'" you can see on YouTube. It's done pretty good. I'm dancing, jumping all around, doing spins. I never had a great-looking band. They're kind of shleppy-looking guys, but they were good friends and good players. After that...oh man, this is a nightmare. My next single was going to be "If We Ever Get Back." So I convinced my brother to direct it. He was the biggest actor in the world at the time. They were very excited about it. So he showed up with all this fanfare and had some girlfriends at the time of his that were like strippers. He put them in the video, which had nothing to do with the Goddamn song at all. So I'm sitting there, and I'm doing the video. I'm getting excited about it. Now, this is a whole different scene. We've got 50/60 people there, Sly's there...it's a big thing. And he didn't show up the next day. We were supposed to shoot, and he never showed up. Just disappeared. So that didn't really look too good for me with the label, and I wasn't really too happy about it. And we didn't get to see the strippers anymore. But that was really messed up. I show up to do the shoot, and they go, "Where's your brother," and I go, "Isn't he here?" And they go, "No." So that didn't help my career too much at that point.

  JOE ELLIOTT: There's a "literal version" of "Total Eclipse of the Heart." You have to watch it! Go onto YouTube, and put up
"literal version" of Bonnie Tyler's "Total Eclipse of the Heart." Watch and listen, it's hilarious. That sums up a lot of those videos in the '80s — they were there to be mocked. It took the Kurt Cobain "irony videos" to really turn the whole '80s into "it's the emperor's new clothes, and he's not wearing any." Now that I've seen the literal version, I can't even think about the proper version. It's beyond over-the-top. I mean, we've done arty-farty things, but I think because, again, it's not a solo artist where there's this indulgence, and it's not necessarily on Bonnie Tyler's part. It could be the director. When we did the "Hysteria" video, it's a very "adult video." Y'know, dancers on the dance floor, we're all wearing buttoned-up black shirts and jackets, because it wasn't a "metal song." We wanted to do a video that tastefully represented the visual side of this piece of work that we'd recorded. Most songs, they don't necessarily need a visual kind of guide or compass. But you had to do it, because it was that time. It was the '80s. If it was going to be a single and you thought the song was good enough musically to go on the radio, you had to make a video, or it wouldn't be as big a hit. So you were always whoring yourself up to a point. I can understand why somebody like Roger Waters would go, "I'm not fucking doing this." Because in fairness, [Pink Floyd] don't do "songs." You listen to the whole album. We weren't the same kind of band. You could see why it doesn't fit certain artists, and other bands thrive on it. But I think our "Hysteria" video, you can't really mock it, because it's a very tasteful video. There are plenty of other videos we made that you could mock. "Total Eclipse" and videos like that are just way too self-indulgent and way too much money spent on them. But they got the job done. The song was a hit. As I've always said, I must add the disclaimer, "Who am I to slag anybody else's work off? Mine is not perfect."