VJ: The Unplugged Adventures of MTV's First Wave

by Nina Blackwood

  It was a very comfortable interview, despite that flub. Bono was as earnest then as he is now, but he was obviously serious about his craft. The Edge was rather quiet. They seemed less frivolous than a lot of the other groups that came through the studio. MTV didn’t have a nihilistic rock edge—we had more of an irreverent new-wave edge.

  Martha:

  If you ask who summed up the ’80s better, U2 or A Flock of Seagulls, I’d have to say A Flock of Seagulls.

  Nina:

  Just before MTV launched, Peter, a friend of mine, took me to the photo session for the cover of Stevie Nicks’s Bella Donna album. Peter was a video producer, and he was very well connected: I only realized later that it was because he was also a coke dealer. Stevie was all decked out in that flowing white outfit, but she didn’t have the cockatoo on her arm yet. She was a bit catty with me. The first thing she did was to comment on my hair: “If it was a little longer, it would be just like mine.” She had to establish her dominance.

  I was doing a lot of things that happened to be Stevie-esque, without trying to copy her: My hair, the type of clothes I like, my harp. I love Stevie, but I never copied anybody—even when my mom would try to sell me on an outfit by saying, “Everybody’s wearing this.” Years later, I spoke with Stevie again. We laughed about our first meeting, and she turned me on to the person who did her hair.

  Mark:

  I loved the Thompson Twins, who I thought were unlike a lot of the trendy bands of the time, in their music if not their wardrobe. They were all about beats and percussion; I’ve always been surprised they don’t get sampled more. I don’t think their arrangements are locked into that ’80s sound, and they hold up really well—especially some of the lesser-known songs, like “Into the Gap.” Tom Bailey, the lead singer, is an artsy guy, but in the coolest possible way.

  Nina:

  Peter was also really good friends with Ron Wood, the guitarist in the Faces and the Rolling Stones. Sometimes I’d have dinner with Peter, because I didn’t know a lot of people in New York, and he’d take me by Ronnie’s place—he was living with Jo, who became his second wife. Ronnie was fond of me, in part because I could drink with the best of them, and I liked him a lot. He was a good-time guy, just a giant kid.

  The early ’80s were not too cool for the Stones—Mick and Keith weren’t getting along. Ronnie was at loose ends, so Peter talked him into doing a one-man show at Town Hall—the idea was that he would sit in a chair and narrate a slide show of his life. Ronnie knew me, and also knew and liked J. J., so we got recruited to host. I was in head-to-toe spandex—one of the few times I ever wore it—plus thigh-high boots.

  The show was a disaster. Peter was completely wasted on God knows what. He dropped the slides on the floor, scattering them everywhere. He was freaking out, but he was not together enough to be able to sort them out. Ronnie was sucking down Jack Daniel’s, plus whatever else Peter was giving him. By the time we got onstage to introduce the show, the crowd had been waiting a long time. They were heckling us; I wasn’t even sure what they were saying, but I shouted back at them. Finally, we got offstage and they brought Ronnie on—and he was so drunk he couldn’t talk, plus the slides were all out of order. It was a total mess, and we were just lucky the show wasn’t filmed.

  After the show, somehow word got to Ronnie that Keith Richards wanted to see him. Keith was staying at the Plaza Hotel, so we headed up there—it was Ronnie, Peter, me, J. J., and maybe one other person. Ronnie knocked on Keith’s door, and he was still loaded. Keith opened the door, and he was so pissed at Ronnie, he practically lifted him up by the collar. Word had gotten back to Keith about what a mess the show was, and he was livid: You didn’t damage the name of the Stones like that. J. J. looked at me, and we both knew this was not going to be our chance to hang out with Keith. We turned on our heels and walked out of the Plaza.

  Mark:

  I saw Jim Steinman onstage playing with Meat Loaf. He wasn’t the front man, but he had the spotlight on him. He wore these enormous gloves, with tassels hanging off them; I wondered how he could possibly play piano in those gloves. Meat Loaf was awful live—he couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket. MTV ended up giving heavy airplay to a video from that tour, a version of “Paradise by the Dashboard Light” that had Karla DeVito on the female vocals, which Ellen Foley had done in the studio.

  Carol and I had dinner with Steinman around the time he put out his solo record Bad for Good. He had a dry sense of humor, but he seemed bitter that everybody gave the credit to Meat Loaf for Bat out of Hell, when it was all him except for the singing—and Meat Loaf wasn’t that great a singer. At dinner, Steinman ordered the whole menu. He literally ordered everything on the menu—he was that rich, and that into the rock ’n’ roll lifestyle. He didn’t want to have to decide; he liked being able to sample from lots of different plates.

  Martha:

  The Who did a press conference to announce their last-ever tour—the first time they ever did a farewell tour. Everybody at MTV was panicking because we wanted Roger Daltrey on the air, but J. J. was on vacation, and he was the one who had the relationship with the band. I went down to the restaurant where the press conference was—they were hoping that if Daltrey saw me, he would feel bad and do the interview. Somehow I convinced him, and he took a cab to the studio.

  We placed Daltrey’s chair as close to the front door as was physically possible—he barely had to take two steps. We were terrified that he would change his mind. J. J. was out of town and Mark wasn’t there, so it had to be me. I was nervous because I wasn’t one of the big boys, but psyched to get the chance, like an understudy who finally gets to go onstage.

  Mark:

  I liked Duran Duran, but I didn’t listen to them at home, which I always thought was the acid test. I did play a lot of Bryan Adams at home. I was a huge fan—I thought he was a great songwriter. Around the time of “Cuts Like a Knife,” I interviewed Bryan and he invited me to his show at the Bottom Line. I decided to bring him a bottle of champagne. “Thanks for champers!” he said. Bryan’s opening act that night was Stevie Ray Vaughan, who was getting known for playing on David Bowie’s Let’s Dance album but turning down the tour that followed. The situation that night was uncomfortable, because everybody was talking about the opening act.

  Nina:

  I went to an AC/DC video shoot, down in Alphabet City at a condemned theater space. I didn’t interview the guys in the band, but I noticed how they were smaller than I was—which was something, because I was tiny—and they were running around manically. It was like something out of The Wizard of Oz: tough little drunk Munchkins with Australian accents. I was told that the production company spent more on beer during that shoot than they did on the actual production of the video.

  Mark:

  MTV sent me out on the road to cover the Genesis tour for their Abacab record; I filed a report from the first gig, which was somewhere in the Midwest, maybe Indiana. I stayed in the same hotel as the band, and bonded with Phil Collins. We had a couple of days before the tour started where we basically hung out by the pool. He was a fan of MTV. We had some great conversations about soul music—although he had seen me on TV quite a bit, it was a shock to him that I had grown up listening to Motown and Stax-Volt. Phil was the sweetest guy in the world; I was shocked and flattered beyond belief when he invited me to his wedding.

  Nina:

  I really liked Cy Curnin, the lead singer of the Fixx. He was an intelligent guy, very well read. I think the band could’ve been even bigger than they were—they ran into some problems with their management and got stalled. They had hits, but they really weren’t handled right. After the band broke up, Cy became a haberdasher. He promised to send me a hat, but he forgot, and now he doesn’t do it anymore.

  Their video for “Stand or Fall” was one of my early favorites, because it had a beautiful white horse in the woods. All videos should have white horses—and unicorns and fairy dust. Martha used to laugh at me because one of my favori
te videos was Fleetwood Mac’s “Gypsy.” I would jump in and live in that video if I could: not the black-and-white section at the speakeasy, but the color section in the magical forest. Martha used to say, “Oh, you and your airy-fairy video.”

  Martha:

  I briefly went out with Adrian Wright of the Human League, while the band was touring behind Dare. We had only two dates, but for one of them I went to see the band play in Toronto, and for the other, I took him to my grandparents’ house, up in Troy, New York, just outside of Albany. I have no idea why I did that: It seems crazy. I was into the fact that my grandparents were super-cool—I went to visit them a lot—so maybe I thought it would be fun to bring him along.

  Adrian ended up sleeping downstairs in my grandfather’s woodshop. My grandparents probably thought, “What the heck? Why is this British guy in a motorcycle jacket sleeping in our basement?”

  Nina:

  The Stray Cats had to go to England to get acknowledged—but they were three kids from Long Island. I thought they were good, but a rockabilly act like that never would have gotten played on the radio if they hadn’t done so well on MTV. One time, I was trying to interview them, and they kept running around the set, like a bunch of kids on the playground. Eventually I had to tell them, “Sit down, we got to do the interview.” I liked them, but I used to call them my little bunch of monkeys.

  Mark:

  I thought Men at Work got short shrift—people treated them like the poor man’s Police. It’s unfortunate that they’re remembered for “Down Under,” which is a fine song, but not their best. I’ve gotten to know Colin Hay much better in the post-MTV years—he’s a cool storyteller with a sharp sense of humor, which comes through in the songs. A few years ago, I told Colin my favorite Men at Work song is “Overkill,” and he said, “That’s the thinking man’s favorite Men at Work song.” Thank you—that’s me.

  I did have my difficulties dealing with Colin’s lazy eye. That goddamn eyeball.

  Martha:

  We did a MTV concert with Foreigner, and they were great guys. But “Urgent” has always made me laugh, because it was so totally written by a guy. Believe me, no girl is calling and saying “it’s urgent” in the middle of the night, unless she’s a groupie. During MTV’s heyday, I guffawed when people complained that the music or the videos were sexist: “Oh, you people have to get a clue. You can’t worry about this stuff.” Now that I have a teenage daughter, I’ve got a long list of songs that make me cringe. “(She’s) Sexy + 17” by the Stray Cats. “Hot Girls in Love” by Loverboy. “Super Freak” by Rick James. “Come on Eileen,” not only because of the title, but because of the lyrics about taking off that red dress. I used to listen to that song over and over. I’d put it on my turntable and hit repeat. Now, my attitude is “Eileen, you keep that pretty red dress on!”

  I was watching a John Parr video recently, “Naughty Naughty”—he’s in a motel room and all these girls are groping him, and I was thinking, My God, what a horrible message this is. Why didn’t I see that at the time? I have to admit, now I see where Tipper Gore and the PMRC were coming from.

  Mark:

  The Kinks had a big comeback on MTV. Who would have thought that a British Invasion dude like Ray Davies would segue into that? But he embraced videos and loved them.

  During the time that he was together with Chrissie Hynde of the Pretenders, Ray lived in my building on Seventy-second Street. I saw him occasionally in the lobby. I really wanted him to come in for an interview at MTV; I made a request through an executive at Arista Records, but I also slipped a note under his door. Ray agreed to do it, and I met him downstairs so we could ride down to the studio together. He was rushing: “Come on, hurry up, let’s get a cab.”

  I said, “Okay, but we have a little time to get down there.”

  “No, no. I told Chrissie I was just going out for cigarettes. We’re supposed to be on vacation—she’d fucking kill me if she knew I was doing an interview.”

  I wasn’t surprised that relationship didn’t last.

  18

  I Know There’s Something Going On

  Alan and Martha’s Dangerous Game

  Alan:

  Early on, one of the producers said to me, “You know, Alan, I wondered if you’d keep that wedding ring off when you’re on the air. The girls out there, they just want to have their fantasies.” That was fine—I figured “VJ Alan Hunter” was a character, and I’d always taken my ring off onstage.

  Jan wasn’t happy about that. We debated it at home and she said, “You’re married! Why shouldn’t you wear your ring?”

  I kind of agreed with her, but I said, “I didn’t think you were going to be that upset with it, because this is just a role I’m playing.”

  “You need to stop acting like you’re single and stop creating this fantasy world for the fans.”

  There was a tense situation for the first few months: I’d go to work and they’d say, “Take the ring off,” and then I’d go home and she’d say, “Put it on!” I hated being in the middle, but ultimately I had to say that I was married and I wasn’t going to pose. Every day, they would tell me, “Be natural and be yourself.” Well, I’m married, and the audience is just going to have to deal with it.

  Martha:

  My shift intersected with Alan’s, which meant we could do a toss, which was the transition from one VJ to the next. It was the best part of the day, because I could interact with somebody else. We had a very quick, sparky rapport, like Gracie and George Burns, or maybe Regis and Kathy Lee.

  Alan:

  And flirtatious, but just as part of that rapport when we were doing the crossovers on camera. You do what you can to create vibe and atmosphere.

  Martha:

  Well, here’s the truth. I think our rapport was very flirtatious because I was being very flirtatious. When I first met Alan, he reminded me of my older brothers—I always saw them as perfect all-American heroes. I’d never met a guy who was so like them, and I couldn’t believe he was married.

  Alan:

  The camera heightens everything that’s going on. I knew Martha was flirting, and I was volleying back her serve.

  Martha:

  Flirting can be a default conversational setting between a man and a woman.

  Alan:

  The higher-ups would have loved for Martha and I to be an item.

  Martha:

  I didn’t have a game plan. I was unaware that I was playing with fire.

  Alan:

  The VJs had offices up on Sixth Avenue, where the MTV corporate headquarters were. It was pretty token, but we had desks. We could tape our segments and then run up to the office and sit at our little desks, with pens and paper from the supply closet. It always felt like I was playing “office.”

  One day, Martha and I were in the conference room, watching some of our air checks on VHS. We hadn’t seen a lot of them, and wanted to know how we were coming across. We were sitting on the conference table, next to each other, almost like a high-school boyfriend and girlfriend with our legs swinging back and forth. And then Jan came flying through the door.

  Maybe she called and told me she was coming to the office, and I forgot. But when she came in, she flipped. She wasn’t hysterical, but she let it be known she wasn’t happy.

  Martha:

  That night, Jan called me at home. She said, “I want you to stop flirting with my husband.”

  I said, “No, Jan, you’re all wrong. It’s just fun, it’s nothing like that.” I denied it 100 percent. But my heart stopped, because I was busted. Busted!

  Alan:

  I wasn’t looking to cheat, and at the same time I thought Martha was awful cute. I was complicit too—I was reciprocating the flirtation. That whole brouhaha was an early moment when I realized I had to grow up a bit.

  Martha:

  I was twenty-two, and Alan was twenty-four. So at an early age, Jan taught me a lesson that I’ve never forgotten: Respect the sisterhood. Never ever flirt with a
nother woman’s guy. There’s a million fish in the sea: You don’t need hers. To this day, if I run into a married couple at the grocery store, I immediately make eye contact with the wife. I don’t care if I’m better friends with the husband—I talk to the wife.

  Alan:

  I had no idea Jan was going to call Martha. That whole thing was so embarrassing—I loved Jan, but didn’t appreciate her making those assumptions, or acting out like that in front of Martha, who was my new friend and cohort in the best thing that had ever happened in my life.

  Martha:

  Jan sent me flowers later on, apologizing for her “green-eyed monster,” but really, she was right and I was wrong. We wound up being good friends, which speaks volumes about her character.