I Want My MTV

by Craig Marks

  KIP WINGER, Winger: The first video treatment we got for “Seventeen,” the guy wanted to put us in a theater and have a goat swinging upside down. We were like, What are you talking about? We’re a rock band, get a hot chick and put us onstage. It was the era of big rock music. I wanted to make it. When I met Reb Beach, I said, “I’m going to sing at the top of my register, and you play guitar as fast as you can.” Yeah, we had poofy hair. That was the formula.

  Rick Krim was a huge Dixie Dregs fan, and our drummer had been in the Dregs. Tom Hunter, the president of MTV, was from Denver, and I’m from Denver. Those two things helped them put our first video on the air. And then Abbey Konowitch was really into “Seventeen.” His quote was “This is the video Van Halen should’ve made.”

  RICK KRIM: Yes, I championed Winger, and I still champion Winger. They were my discovery. They were brilliant musicians who wrote really good songs. Kip was the pretty boy with chest hair who posed for Playgirl and danced ballet moves in a video, so they got unfairly maligned. They became the poster boys for fake metal.

  KIP WINGER: I starved myself for a week before the first video, trying to be skinny for the camera. MTV changed my life overnight. It’s rock n’ roll, there are a ton of perks, especially women. I mean, it was a two or three a day when we were on tour. And we did 250 shows a year, so you do the math.

  RICK KRIM: I was with Kip in LA the night he met Rachel Hunter. He’d seen her in Sports Illustrated, she’d seen him on MTV, and they connected. One time I went to his house and she was there in her underwear. That was pretty cool.

  KIP WINGER: On “Seventeen” and “Headed for a Heartbreak,” MTV played us every fifteen minutes. Then we did “Hungry” and thought, Enough chicks, let’s try to give it a little meaning. I had an idea for a mini-movie: a guy is in love with his girlfriend, they get married, and they’re driving in the hills, his brakes fail, and he drives off the cliff and she dies. So we spend $200,000 on the video, but the car didn’t really go off the cliffs. We had to push it over. This is total Spinal Tap. And here we are dressed in what I consider to be our worst clothing choice—I’m in a velvet coat with studs on it and denim chaps—jumping up and down on police cars. It was ridiculous. Guns N’ Roses stole a couple of our video ideas and that was one of them. When they drove a car off the cliff, it was way cooler, because they had more money.

  JOEY ALLEN: Warrant filmed its first video, “Down Boys,” on December 16, 1988. I remember because I got pulled over the night before with Jerry Dixon, our bass player. A female sheriff pulled me over, and we had a six-pack on the floor. She asked if I had any outstanding tickets, and I had a warrant out for my arrest, for bad registration tags. She said, “Are you guys in a band?” I said, “We are. Believe it or not, the band’s name is Warrant.” She let me go.

  JANI LANE: We were told by the label how to dress, how to have our hair done, the whole nine yards. For “Heaven,” we wore white leather outfits. Looked like a bunch of Elvis impersonators. We were pegged as a fluff band.

  JOEY ALLEN: We’d seen the Poison video for “Every Rose Has Its Thorn,” where they had tour footage, and we wanted to copy it for “Heaven.” Because the formula worked. In our genre, once there was a winning formula with one band, the others would follow. There weren’t any hair metal bands winning Video Vanguard awards, that’s the best way to put it.

  JANI LANE: Donnie Ienner, the president of Columbia Records, called and said, “Jani, give me something like ‘Love in an Elevator.’ Sex sells.” I wrote “Cherry Pie” in two or three hours.

  JOEY ALLEN: The Tom Petty “Don’t Come Around Here No More” video was brilliant, which locked us into hiring Jeff Stein for “Cherry Pie.”

  JANI LANE: There was so much pressure to sell sex. Pressure from MTV, from the label, and from the consumer. I was trying to fight that. I have three sisters and a mom.

  BOBBIE BROWN, model: Jani and Tommy Lee were on tour together—I guess Warrant was opening for Mötley Crüe—and they were watching an episode of Star Search on TV. When I came on, they were both, like, “Hey, she’s cute.” Or maybe they were like, “She’s fucking hot.” Then Jani called my agent.

  JEFF STEIN: I wanted to cast Josie Bissett, who ended up on Melrose Place, but I was overruled by Jani, who may have been right for a change. Bobbie was perfect for that role. What did I tell her? “Do more of that. Shake it up until it hurts.” She followed instructions carefully.

  BOBBIE BROWN: The director told me it was gonna be sexy, but he didn’t say, “We’re gonna take a fire hose and blow your face off.” Let me tell you, that hose had some power behind it. You can see me turn my head really quick, because it was physically uncomfortable. I ended up fighting a little with the director,’cause he was kind of a dick. He wanted me to get in a tub full of cream. I refused to do that, by the way.

  JOEY ALLEN: Jani was turning on the charm. Bobbie was dating Matthew Nelson at the time, and he came to the shoot.

  JANI LANE: I had a horrible time. The rest of the guys shot for eight hours and went home. I was there for twenty-four hours straight, in the middle of summer in Hollywood, and the stage was about 125 degrees. I think I took eight showers that day. I’ll give Bobbie Brown credit, she was there with me the whole time.

  BOBBIE BROWN: During the video, Jani was being flirtatious, making it very obvious that he liked me. Was there an immediate attraction? Not for me. Jani sent me flowers and kept calling. He went on Howard Stern and said, “I’m gonna marry Bobbie Brown one day.” I was like, Oh my god. He went as far as going out with my roommate and showing up at my house. He was constantly pursuing me, and I go, “Hey, I have your number. If I want to use it, I will.” After we got married, he said, “I was devastated when you said that.”

  But then I broke up with Matthew, because he was jealous over the success of “Cherry Pie.” I called Joey Allen’s wife and told her, mostly to piss off Matthew and rub it in his face, and within five minutes, Jani called me.

  JANI LANE: I had broken up with my girlfriend, who moved on to Richie Sambora. I called Bobbie, because I heard she wasn’t happy with her boyfriend, and said, “I was wondering if you wanted to go to Disneyland.” She said, “I have your number, if I want to call you, I’ll call you.” Then she broke up with her boyfriend and wanted to come out and see a show. We hit it off for a while, not very long. She got pregnant, we got married.

  BOBBIE BROWN: The video made me a weird icon in people’s minds. I didn’t take advantage of my opportunities the way I should have. I was supposed to be in Casino with Robert De Niro—I was going to play Sharon Stone’s part—and have an interview with Steven Spielberg for Hook. I was somewhat of a fuckup—I got a huge ego, and I was fucked up on drugs. I’d walked into a club and the owner would shake my hand and give me drugs, for free. I never had to pay for it. Even my agent, if I had to lose weight, would give me drugs. I try not to dwell on it, but it really sucks. I have a lot of regret.

  JEFF STEIN: I thought “Cherry Pie” was the perfect music video. The concept meshed with the song. This is going to sound full of shit, but I wanted to do a parody of sexism in music videos. And instead, I was accused of creating a sexist video. So I don’t know, if you parody something and people think it’s real, have you done a good parody or have you failed?

  The band knew exactly what they were. They did every hair band pose. That’s one reason the video was perfect. There were bright colors, very bold, in your face. It was like pop art without the art.

  JOHN CANNELLI: We had an internal controversy over the video. Judy McGrath was offended by a woman being hosed down.

  ABBEY KONOWITCH: There was a time when the liberal feminists on MTV’s staff were unhappy with the music programming. We were playing “Cherry Pie,” that kind of thing. It was awkward, because our job was to play the hits of the day.

  JOEY ALLEN: Spraying down a girl with a fire hose? It’s rock n’ roll, give me a break. It was just shock value. “Let’s put this hot chick in here and sell as many record
s as we can.” Rolling Stone called it the most tasteless video of the year. It also sold over a million records for us, real fast.

  JANI LANE: From that point on, I was the “Cherry Pie” guy.

  JEFF STEIN: I’m sure Jani felt he was a great songwriter. If I were him, I’d rather watch “Cherry Pie” than “Heaven,” which is an anthem for eunuchs. Come on! Strap your balls on, Jani! And if you don’t like the video, give me your platinum record!

  BOBBIE BROWN: Jani has a love/hate relationship with the song. Yes, it’s the one song that’s keeping his name alive, and people remember him for. But in his mind, as a writer or an artist, it’s not his best work. It’s a song he wrote in the bathroom, in five minutes.

  ADAM LEVINE, Maroon 5: “Cherry Pie” was metaphor-free. It left nothing to the imagination. There’s a scene where a piece of cherry pie falls into her lap, and you’re like, Really? Even at twelve years old, I thought, Wow, how tacky.

  BRET MICHAELS: Our “Flesh and Blood” video didn’t pan out. CC wanted his girlfriend—Tammy was her name—to be in the video. I said, “CC, the video is basically softcore porn. We’re playing Adam and Eve and we’re going to be half-naked and sucking face. Isn’t that gonna be weird for you?” He goes, “Don’t worry about it—she’s a model, she wants to do it. She’s a professional.” So we shot the video, and let me put it this way, it didn’t go over well with CC But hey, if I saw a buddy doing that with my girlfriend, I wouldn’t be happy either. It probably led to our fistfight at the VMAs. One of many.

  SEBASTIAN BACH: We made a conscious decision to not objectify women in Skid Row videos. It didn’t feel good, it wasn’t a good thing to do, and every single video had chicks in it. Not that we don’t like chicks, but it was overplayed at that point. We wanted our videos to follow the lyrical content of the song, intercut with beautiful, slow-motion hair twirling. And I think we achieved our goal.

  Dude, when they talk about “hair metal,” whose hair do you think they’re talking about? I’ve still got it. I’m looking at it right now. And it’s so flaxen!

  WAYNE ISHAM: For Skid Row’s “18 and Life,” about a kid who runs away from an abusive family and ends up getting drunk and shooting his best friend, I knew we were going to have problems with the guns. There was a scene where the kid spray-paints a drippy bullet hole in the middle of his forehead—like a third eye—and MTV made me remove that. You couldn’t predict what they would or wouldn’t allow.

  DOC McGHEE: “18 and Life” was a big video. I mean, you had a kid, Sebastian Bach, who if you put a set of tits on him, he could run for Miss Texas. One of the best-looking guys on the planet at that time.

  SEBASTIAN BACH: I was upstairs with my girlfriend Maria, fucking her on the floor in the video studio. She was riding me and they knocked on the door: “Sebastian, it’s your scene.” She dismounted me, I pulled up my pants. Maybe that had something to do with the video’s success, too, having just got fucked. My hair is tousled.

  Then I saw Nine Inch Nails’ “Head Like a Hole” and thought it looked amazing, so we hired the same company to shoot “Monkey Business.” Michael Schmidt made the tight leather pants I wore. It’s all about the cock, baby. It’s framed perfectly in that video.

  When Rick Krim liked your band, he got your videos on MTV. Here I am today, standing in my huge house with platinum records all over the wall, and I owe that to two things: Rick Krim and my cheekbones. Though my lips had a lot to do with it, too. So I’d like to thank my cheekbones, my lips, my hair, and Rick Krim. And my crotch.

  Chapter 31

  “THE ISLAND OF MISFIT TOYS”

  120 MINUTES AND THE RISING UP/SELLING OUT OF ALTERNATIVE ROCK

  MTV’s CENTRAL RELATIONSHIP WAS WITH ROCK stars—making them famous, interviewing them, playing their videos, keeping them happy. But they also delved into the weird corners of music, where videos were still made on minuscule budgets, often with startling or innovative results.

  The Cutting Edge was a beloved showcase for freakiness, made by I.R.S. Records and licensed to MTV, which kept it hidden on the last Sunday of every month, playing videos from upstarts like R.E.M., Red Hot Chili Peppers, and the Minutmen late in the night, giving weirdos a good reason for showing up to work tired on Monday mornings. “For those of us out in the sticks, it was a lifeline,” musician and newspaper editor Kate Messer wrote years later, “an encyclopedia to certain strata of ‘underground’ culture.”

  In March 1986, MTV introduced 120 Minutes, a two-hour weekly show airing on Sunday at 1 A.M. 120 Minutes went through a number of hosts, largely because it was an unglamorous job that no one wanted to keep. Except, eventually, Dave Kendall.

  VALERIE FARIS: The Cutting Edge was an hour-long show that aired once a month, on Sunday night. It was hosted by Peter Zaremba, the singer of the Fleshtones. Peter is a music lover and historian, so he lent some credibility to the show.

  PETER ZAREMBA, host, The Cutting Edge: It was MTV’s alternative music show, the precursor to 120 Minutes. As host, I got paid $1,000 a show, which was a lot of money for me. We’d air offbeat videos MTV wouldn’t show. We played Madonna before MTV put her videos in rotation. And we’d film artists playing just for us—we’d go to a sound check, or invite R.E.M. to some interesting location, and they’d do acoustic versions of their songs. The Red Hot Chili Peppers’ first national TV appearance was on The Cutting Edge. We had the Replacements, the Minutemen, Hüsker Dü, Alex Chilton, Jonathan Richman, and we also had Willie Dixon, Jimmy Cliff, and Tom Waits. Iggy Pop wanted to be filmed up in a tree. Morrissey insisted on no interviewer, because he didn’t want to be sullied by talking to a host.

  JONATHAN DAYTON, director: It was bands that otherwise might not appear on MTV. This was the one place where you could see Henry Rollins reading his poetry. We filmed Morrissey in his bathroom at a hotel, and gave him a stack of envelopes, each with a single word inside. He would open the envelope and talk to a little camera. The word might be “beauty,” so he’d talk about beauty. There were no VJs or happy talk. It was very homemade. No one was making much money, so in exchange you were given a lot of freedom.

  PETER ZAREMBA: Two of the show’s producers, Valerie Faris and Jonathan Dayton, went on to become big-deal directors. They did lots of music videos, and later they directed Little Miss Sunshine. They were very mellow. They put up with a lot of junk.

  MICHAEL STIPE: Everyone I knew would find a television set, have beers, and watch The Cutting Edge. It was like The Island of Misfit Toys. All the miscreants and the outcasts and the punks and the fat girls and the kids with bad skin and the queers could gather together around this universe. Pre-Internet, and before the instantaneous sharing of information and knowledge about music or about art, that was it. That was for the Lee Renaldos and the Kim Gordons and the Courtney Loves and the Michael Stipes.

  DAVE HOLMES: MTV helped create the trench coat–wearing, Cure-loving, zine-reading kid of the ’80s. Echo and the Bunnymen came to St. Louis and there were all these kids dressed the same who knew every word, but the band wasn’t getting played on the radio. Somehow, they’d all gotten the same message, and it was from watching MTV late at night.

  DAVE KENDALL: I was cleaning a woman’s apartment the first time I saw MTV. She felt bad for me, a young kid having to clean apartments to pay the bills. So she said, “Hey, we’ve got MTV!” And I was like, “What’s that?” I’d come to New York from London on a student exchange.

  To be honest, I wanted to work for any company that would allow me to stay in the States legally. I was getting laid for the first time in my life; that’s probably why I stayed. I would’ve worked for a burger stand if they could’ve gotten me a work permit. I was a music journalist, writing for Melody Maker in England, and Judy McGrath hired me to write 120 Minutes. Then I started producing it as well. There was a parade of hosts: J.J. Jackson, then Mark Goodman, Martha Quinn, Alan Hunter, Kevin Seal—whoever was available. Hosting the show wasn’t a plum assignment.

  But 120 Minutes was cult
urally important, because there was nowhere else to find this music in 1986, so I felt a sense of satisfaction. These were the days when VCRs were available, so people started to tape the shows and watch them later. MTV was always conceived to be both an art and a business. There was a desire to cater to a smaller audience that was not the lowest common denominator.

  RICK KRIM: The first times I met Bruce Springsteen and Bono, the conversations were about 120 Minutes, because they both loved that show.

  MARK GHUNEIM, record executive: 120 Minutes was the Pitchfork of its time.

  DAVE GROHL: On 120 Minutes, you’d see a video that was made with a Pixelvi-sion camera and Super 8 and bad lighting. I found it endearing. Like, This band made their own video? That’s pretty fucking cool. Like in R.E.M.’s “Driver 8,” where they have images projected on their faces and they’re shaking the car to make it look like they’re driving. I’d much rather see a school play than a Broadway musical.