VJ: The Unplugged Adventures of MTV's First Wave

by Nina Blackwood

  Martha:

  Paul and I had one horrible experience together, when we went to see The Gods Must Be Crazy, the South African movie about a tribe of Bushmen who find a Coke bottle. It was a comedy, but I was just devastated by it—I thought it was incredibly sad, and I was sobbing. I think I traumatized him so much, he stopped going to movies after that. I would watch Late Night with David Letterman, and periodically he’d say that: “Yeah, I don’t go to the movies.”

  Eventually, Paul thought I was being a tease and that was the end of that.

  Nina:

  I’m so lame about even recognizing when somebody likes me. Sometimes I’d hear about it when a band came by the studio—the talent coordinator would tell me, “So-and-so’s interested in you.” I know that there was a certain element of musicians who wanted to befriend me, or whatever, because they were thinking that being at MTV, I could help their career.

  Steven Tyler told me that he had wanted to ask me out. When I was putting makeup on him, I had no idea he had a crush on me, but much later, he told me that I had reminded him of one of his wives. He’s somebody else who would have been worth breaking my rule for—although it probably would have been a mistake, since that was before he got clean and sober. But it was cool to know.

  Martha:

  I was an egomaniac with an inferiority complex. I managed to believe simultaneously that everybody loved me and that nobody loved me. I don’t think I was especially conscious of being the object of desire, but that’s because I went from one day to the next like a mole, with absolutely no perspective. It’s also hard for me to believe now, because I look at old clips of myself where I look like a boy, and I don’t see the sex appeal. Nina was way hotter than me.

  When MTV hired Downtown Julie Brown a few years later, she walked into the studio and she looked like she was stepping out of a video. When I walked in, I looked like I was stepping out of the back room of a radio station.

  Nina:

  John Cougar came down to the studio very early, when we were playing “Hurts So Good.” I was standing at the table where we kept the bagels, and he literally picked me up, hoisting me up in the air for a minute. Then we did the interview—both standing on the ground—and the crew did not like him at all. They thought he was a loudmouth punk. I liked him as a musical artist, but I didn’t have a crush on him or anything. After we finished shooting, he invited me to a party later that night.

  That night, I went to see Billy Vera and the Beaters play at the Ritz. One of the Beaters, the keyboard player, had been married to the actress Amy Madigan; they had split up, and she was already dating Ed Harris at that point, but she and her ex-husband stayed on good terms. Amy went on to star in Field of Dreams, but I knew her because we took acting classes together in L.A. I didn’t really know her ex, but I had gone to the show to meet him because I was friends with Amy.

  I was sitting at a table with a bunch of other MTV people, and I was talking with one of our producers, Brian Diamond. I told him, “Oh, John Cougar invited me to a party later, at his manager’s apartment.” Shows at the Ritz didn’t start until after eleven, and John said the party was starting at 2 A.M.

  Brian said, “He’s not inviting you to a party.”

  I said, “Yes, he is. He said it was a party.”

  “Trust me—he’s not. You shouldn’t go there alone.”

  So I took the guy I was meeting—Amy’s ex-husband, the Beater—and we went up to the apartment on Central Park West. There was nobody there but John, a pal of his, and his manager. The manager also handled Barry Manilow, so the apartment was this huge, beautiful pad. He gave me a tour, and he walked me through the master bedroom and said, “This is where you and John will be staying.” I could be pretty clueless, but at that point, it was clear that Brian was right, and I was glad I had brought the Beater along.

  We all sat in the kitchen, talking and drinking. John’s friend was a guy from Bloomington, Indiana, who lived in a trailer—I think he might have been the inspiration for “Jack and Diane.” John was getting irritable because he was figuring out it wasn’t going to happen between me and him, and he was a cocky guy to begin with. John and the Beater ended up in this huge argument about everything: politics, religion, stupid stuff. John was ready to punch him out, which worked out well for me, because it distracted him. But even if the Beater hadn’t been there, I would have gotten out of that situation—I always found a way. I’ve walked for miles down country roads in the middle of the night after a guy I didn’t like tried to put the moves on me.

  Years later, I interviewed John on his tour bus and he admitted he had been trying to pick me up. I mentioned the Beater, and he got mad all over again: “Yeah, who was that asshole?”

  Mark:

  I always loved Nancy Wilson from Heart, but I wouldn’t have crossed that line by making a pass at her. It would have been totally inappropriate to hit on somebody I was interviewing. But if somebody else crossed that line toward me, that’s something else again.

  Lou Ann Barton was from Texas, and she was produced by Jerry Wexler, the legendary cofounder of Atlantic Records. She was a bluesy barroom singer with cool songs. I went to Wexler’s apartment to listen to her album Old Enough. Wexler said to me, “Mark, you gotta hear this—it’ll put your dick in the dirt.” We played her video a bit, and when Lou Ann came in to the MTV studio for an interview, she was hugely hitting on me. Afterward, she wanted to go and have drinks. I was tempted, but I went home to Carol.

  Alan:

  After I finished with my morning shift at MTV, I would often meet my brother for breakfast at the Applejack Diner. And Diane Lane, the actress, always seemed to be there. We’d say hello and talk for a little while. She was single, she was totally my type, and I had a huge crush on her. I like to think that if I had been a single man, she would have been interested too.

  Mark:

  I went to the premiere of Purple Rain in Hollywood. The after-party was around the corner, at this old theater called the Palace. I was dancing with Apollonia all night, and I wanted her, but I was too intimidated to make a move. I was pretty well known by this point, but still riddled with insecurity. That was her moment, and she was unbelievably beautiful. I also assumed that she was dating Prince, although they didn’t arrive together. Everybody figured that anyone he produced, he was also fucking. Susanna Hoffs of the Bangles denied it; I don’t know about any of the others.

  David Lee Roth knew Apollonia from before her time with Prince. He told me, “Her name’s Patty, man. I used to go out with her.”

  Martha:

  MTV made a deal where they would send tapes over to a Japanese TV network, which would play like one hour a week of MTV, and I went over to launch that. I did the entire trip without eating any sushi, because I thought I wouldn’t like it. I wasn’t a vegetarian yet, so I spent a week in Japan eating beef. And the week after I came home, I went to the Japanese restaurant near my apartment and tried sushi, and it was really good. Why didn’t I have sushi in Japan? What’s wrong with me?

  I rode the bullet train, and I got to introduce Toto to the audience at the Budokan Arena, which was kind of amazing. Afterward, we all went out to dinner and I hit it off with Steve Porcaro, Toto’s keyboardist. We talked for a long time, and the next day all of us went shopping for pearls—they knew a guy with really good pearls, apparently. Steve bought me a pair of pearl earrings: I felt like I was living the glamorous life. Back in the States, Steve lived in L.A., but we dated for about six months anyway. He wrote me a song called “Astor Place.”

  I used to tell Steve I hated “penis plants”—which is what I called red anthuriums, because of the way their stamens stick out. Every time I’d see one, I’d say, “Who would get those penis plants?” Steve was a sweet guy, but eventually the long-distance thing got old and we drifted apart. I don’t think of it as an acrimonious breakup—we’re still friendly today—but something must have been going on, because Steve sent me an entire bouquet of penis plants, with a car
d that said, “Fuck you.” (Later he told me he had asked the florist for dead flowers, but there weren’t any in the shop!) I wish I still had that card, but it went into the same incinerator as the crocheted blanket!

  24

  You Must Be My Lucky Star

  Madonna Louise Veronica Ciccone

  Alan:

  Mark, Nina, and I were hanging out in the greenroom. A producer came in: Madonna was playing a show at the Limelight that night, and he needed someone to interview her. Nina had something else to do, Mark as well. I wasn’t busy, so I got the nod. Madonna wasn’t huge at the time—I felt like I was more of a celebrity than she was—and we were always balancing what activity we would enjoy on a given night with the work of doing an interview.

  I arrived at the Limelight and had a quick chat with Madonna in a room behind the stage. Our interview wasn’t very long, or incisive. She was serious, though—she was focused as shit. In the middle of the backstage chaos, she told me about her album—not one extraneous word, tough but polite.

  This was before Madonna was groomed for stardom. She was fleshy, and her baubles looked like something she might have bought at a downtown trinket store herself. She looked self-made, not handled, but she had the air of somebody who knew that stardom was inevitable. The subtext of her attitude was “Alan, you have no idea how big I’m going to be. You’ll rue how you weren’t more respectful today.” She was right; I don’t think I even stayed around for her show.

  Mark:

  When Madonna came into the studio, I did the interview. I was a huge fan of hers from the very beginning—that’s why I got to do it, because nobody else really gave a shit. She wasn’t a great singer, and I didn’t even think she was a great dancer, but confidence poured off her records, combined with sex, and that just got me. The Like a Virgin album hadn’t come out yet, and although she was happening for us on that first record, she wasn’t the star yet that she would later become.

  I questioned her about the BOY TOY belt she used to wear: “So what does that mean, ‘Boy Toy’?” And she said, “What do you think it means?” I should’ve stepped up at that moment, but I didn’t, and I’ve regretted it for years. What I should’ve said was, “Well, I think it means that you’re a toy for boys and that you love having wild sex,” which is what we all thought, right? Instead, I said, “Oh, that’s really good, Madonna, you’re just turning the question around on me,” and we moved on. I didn’t follow up the way I should have.

  Mark Goodman, wearing a gray jacket, interviews Madonna, who has a Tintin quiff of hair protruding from her headband, circa 1984:

  MARK GOODMAN: “Do you have fashion influences, let’s say, I don’t know, maybe Vivienne Westwood?”

  MADONNA: “Um, yeah, well, she’s one of my favorite designers, actually.”

  MARK GOODMAN: “Is she really?”

  MADONNA: “World’s End is a great store in England, great clothing shop. Whenever I go to England, that’s where I buy all my clothes.”

  MARK GOODMAN: “Are you the designer of your look, your hairstyle, the clothing?”

  MADONNA: “Oh, yeah. Do you think someone else could come up with this?” (She laughs coquettishly.)

  Mark:

  A couple of years later, I interviewed her again, in Miami. When we first sat down, I said, “I’m Mark Goodman, I interviewed you at MTV before you were Madonna.” She said, “Mark, I was always Madonna.” Okay, point taken.

  I was a little braver at that point. I was talking to her road manager and some of her dancers, and asking questions like, “What’s she like, really? She’s a ballbuster, isn’t she?” They were all saying, “No, no, no, she’s great! We love her!” I knew she was incredibly tough—I had been watching rehearsals for her tour, and she was a dictator—but nobody would come clean.

  Nina:

  I judged a Madonna look-alike contest at Macy’s. They had a whole department of these clothes, during her street-urchin period with the boots and the bow and the streaked hair—not the pointy bra yet. So there were dozens of teenage and pre-teenage girls dressed up like Madonna, and that was surreal. The other judge was Andy Warhol, and he didn’t speak very much: just a couple of words, and he was always staring.

  From The Andy Warhol Diaries (June 6, 1985):

  “Went over to Macy’s to judge the Madonna look-alike contest. They expected 200 girls but there were only 100. They’d spent a fortune, these girls, on the clothes and jewelry. It was over pretty fast, by 5:10, and it’d started at 4:30. . . . Went to Radio City Music Hall for Madonna’s concert (cab $6). And the show was so great. Just so simple and sexy and Madonna is so pretty. Now she’s thinner and just so great.”

  Martha:

  I never met Madonna, although I got the celebrity nod from her once on Fifty-seventh Street when we were walking in opposite directions. She got lambasted recently because it was reported that her camp made the people who worked at the Toronto Film Festival look away when she was walking down the hallway. And she denied it: Oh, I would never make people turn away from me, that’s outlandish, who would say that? Well, maybe it didn’t happen then, but I saw that very thing happen backstage at Live Aid: Madonna and Sean Penn were heading to the stage, surrounded by a phalanx of people, and their bodyguards told people they had to turn away. So I know for a fact she would do that.

  Mark:

  I don’t think most musicians think of themselves in opposition: When I was a kid, people talked about the Beatles versus the Dave Clark Five, but they were just two superstar acts. I never understood the whole Madonna versus Cyndi Lauper thing, because they were completely different. Cyndi had a much better singing voice than Madonna. There was no comparison.

  Madonna says she made MTV. And she’s probably half-right.

  25

  Every Time I Think of You, I Always Catch My Breath

  Romance and Regret with John Waite

  Nina:

  A friend of mine from Cleveland flew in to visit, and I took her to Madison Square Garden to see Pat Benatar. We went backstage afterward for the party—there was always a party afterward—and this guy with red hair came up to me. We had a spark of recognition—we were both very hyper. He said, with an English accent, “Do I know you?”

  I said, “No, I don’t think so.” He scribbled down his name and number. The next day, I looked at this little piece of paper, and it looked like it said “Joe Dante.” Eventually, I figured out it was John Waite. I had seen him on The Midnight Special, singing with the Babys. My friend Robin kept saying I should call him; I never did, but I ran into him on Halloween in a restaurant in Greenwich Village. We drank like crazy and wandered around the Village—and New York on Halloween, it’s just whacked out. I picked up a pay phone, and it had shaving cream all over it.

  John and I had a really intense connection. It felt poetic, like we had known each other in a past life. He was doing his first solo album, Ignition, at the House of Music in West Orange, New Jersey, and he invited me to visit. That was why he had been at the Pat Benatar show—her husband and guitarist, Neil Giraldo, was producing the album. And Timmy Pierce, this guitarist who had played with Danny, was playing on that session with John, which was weird.

  John and I didn’t see each other much, but we talked on the phone a lot. He was going through a bad period—at first I thought it was just career-related, but he was prone to depression. At one point, he was even going to give up singing. I gave him a lot of encouragement. We weren’t often in the same city, but one night he was in New York and we went out to a saloon. John drew a picture-perfect version of Rodin’s The Kiss and gave it to me. He was wearing a light aqua scarf, some type of Indian print—he ripped it in two and I kept half. We sent little gifts back and forth, and met up now and then. John epitomized the tortured poet artist, the romantic figure that’s my big weakness. He was a walking Byronic archetype, down to his look and his cologne. I absolutely loved the guy.

  A couple of years later, my friend Ida invited me to a party. She
said, almost in passing, “Oh, John may show up with his new wife.”

  My stomach tied itself into knots. All I could say was, “What?” Apparently, he went back to England and got married. Even though John and I weren’t officially a couple, I thought we had a deep connection—I was totally thrown.

  By this time, he was making his second album, No Brakes. They were recording in New York. He phoned me up at my apartment; it sounded like he was crying. He was calling from the studio, and he asked me to come down. I told him I couldn’t—I wasn’t the sort of person who was going to be with a married man.

  A few weeks later, John called again. He said, “I have a song. I was thinking of you when I wrote it, and I want you to hear it.” So we met, not too far from my place, on West Fifty-seventh Street, in Little Steven’s apartment. I don’t know why we were there—I didn’t even know they were friends. Neutral territory, I guess.

  John played me the song, and it was “Missing You.” I didn’t tell many people that he said he had been thinking of me when he wrote it. I did play the song for J. J., who knew that I cared a lot about John. J. J. thought John was a fabulous singer—which is true—and when he heard it, he said, “That’s going to be a number one hit.” Which it ended up being. John gave me a gold record, which I still have.