VJ: The Unplugged Adventures of MTV's First Wave

by Nina Blackwood

  She said, “Okay, let’s stop taping for a minute.” We had to act like it wasn’t his problem. The producer and I went to talk to Sharon. I said, “I really want to make this go well. What can we do?”

  Sharon said, “I think he’ll get better. He gets a little nervous—just keep going.” While we talked, Ozzy just sat there, like a kid at the pediatrician’s office when his mom and the doctor are discussing him.

  We kept going, and it got a little better as he relaxed. I had a long list of questions I never got around to, because I followed the flow of his conversation, responding to whatever he could get out. Some poor editor had to hack the shit out of that interview. But I did ask him about biting the head off the bat—I kind of crawled up to that question. One of the nice things about MTV was that we could ask a clichéd question without too much embarrassment. Even if a story had been told in Rolling Stone, we could get them to repeat it—hey, we ain’t ever told it on MTV before, right?

  Nina:

  Producers would feed us questions for interviews, and sometimes it would be basic stuff like “How’d you get your name?” To my surprise, sometimes we’d get great answers from those fundamental questions. But when I interviewed Roger Waters, I was glad I had some material that went beyond that—I don’t think it would have gone well if I had asked him how Pink Floyd got their name.

  Martha:

  I was flying on MGM Grand, which was an airline that went only between New York and L.A., with every seat first class. In the departure lounge, I spotted Eric Clapton—honestly, I knew it was him only because he was carrying a bag that had CLAPTON emblazoned on it. I’m normally hesitant to approach celebrities out in public, but he was sitting by himself, three feet away from me, looking bored, so I threw caution to the wind: “Oh, are you Eric Clapton?”

  He conceded that he was, and I introduced myself. And then, because I couldn’t help myself, and what the hell, I said, “Hey, can I ask you a question? Is it true that you played Dobro on Corey Hart’s album and you’re uncredited?”

  “Uhhhhh, yeah.” They had the same manager, or something like that.

  I tried to keep the conversation going: “Oh, is it true you didn’t start playing guitar until you were seventeen?”

  He yelled, “I’m not going to do a fookin’ interview!” And I just shrunk into nothingness. I was completely humiliated. The whole plane flight, I was afraid to get up and go to the bathroom, because I would have had to go past him, and I thought he might jump up and yell at me some more.

  38

  There Comes a Time When We Heed a Certain Call

  “We Ruined Live Aid”

  Mark:

  I drank the Kool-Aid on Live Aid. I felt like we were helping something big, fighting hunger in Africa, and I was really proud to be part of it. We were there from start to finish.

  Alan:

  Live Aid was seventeen tough hours for me. I didn’t have anything really insightful to say, about, for example, the reunion of Led Zeppelin. Even after four years on the job, the breadth of my music knowledge was limited. Give me Duran Duran or U2, maybe, but talking extemporaneously about Zeppelin was difficult.

  Mark:

  The American half of Live Aid was in Philadelphia—I was super-excited, because that’s my hometown. I knew the promoter, I knew people working backstage. Nobody hit me up for tickets, but I think everyone I had ever met was at the show. JFK Stadium held a hundred thousand people.

  Alan:

  Our production crew wasn’t feeding us note cards filled with research. Basically, they said, “Three, two, one, you’re on, Al.” Mark had the ability to contextualize what was going on, but we’d come out of something really monumental, and I felt like I should have something better to say about it than, “Man, that was great.” But it was awesome to be sitting twenty yards left of the stage, witnessing one of the biggest musical events in history.

  Nina:

  Live Aid was a hot day and it was a lot of work, but it was cool to be part of something that important. I stayed on our platform pretty much the whole day. I didn’t eat. I think I took a bathroom break a couple of times.

  Martha:

  I didn’t pee once the entire day, from 6 A.M. to midnight. I was totally dehydrated, plus the porta-potties were disgusting.

  Mark:

  We were all cruising on adrenaline. And it was a thousand degrees that day, so we were sweating a lot. I wore shorts at Live Aid that have haunted me in pictures ever since. I’ve taken a fair amount of shit about them, but they were cool at the time. And I was working out, lifting heavy weights. I was in good shape and I knew it was going to be hot. I still have the T-shirt I wore that day: It was a paisley T-shirt that I had cut up.

  Nina:

  Martha got nervous on the day of the broadcast, so I had to step up a bit. It felt good being the one that they were relying on.

  Martha:

  I don’t remember being nervous or overwhelmed that day. We’d done a bunch of live TV with the New Year’s Eve shows, and I knew the bands inside and out. My only problem was that I was overconfident. There were a few times during the day when I thought, “Maybe I should have prepared a little more.”

  Lineup at Live Aid, as seen on the MTV broadcast of July 13, 1985: Status Quo; Style Council; Boomtown Rats; Men at Work (in Australia, part of “Oz for Africa”); Ultravox; Spandau Ballet; Joan Baez; Elvis Costello; Nik Kershaw; the Four Tops; B. B. King (in Holland); Billy Ocean; Black Sabbath; Run-D.M.C.; Sting and Phil Collins; REO Speedwagon; Bryan Ferry (with David Gilmour); Crosby, Stills and Nash; Judas Priest; Paul Young (with Alison Moyet); Bryan Adams; U2; the Beach Boys; Dire Straits (with Sting); George Thorogood (with Albert Collins); Queen; Mick Jagger and David Bowie (video); Simple Minds; David Bowie (with Thomas Dolby on keyboards); the Pretenders; the Who; Santana; Sade; Elton John (with Kiki Dee and Wham!); Madonna; Paul McCartney; London finale (“Do They Know It’s Christmas?”); Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers; Kenny Loggins; the Cars; Neil Young; the Power Station; Prince (video); the Thompson Twins (with Madonna, Nile Rodgers, and Steve Stevens); Eric Clapton and Phil Collins; Led Zeppelin (with Phil Collins); Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young; Duran Duran; Patti LaBelle; Autograf (in Russia); Hall and Oates (with David Ruffin and Eddie Kendricks of the Temptations); Mick Jagger (with Tina Turner); Bob Dylan (with Keith Richards and Ron Wood); Philadelphia finale (“We Are the World”); Paul Young; Ashford and Simpson.

  Alan:

  Roaming up and down that alleyway backstage, it was a smorgasbord of unbelievably iconic celebrities, all just sitting around, waiting to go onstage.

  Mark:

  Some people were there for a reason, because this was an important sociopolitical thing, and others were just hanging out to prove that they were groovy. I guess that’s inevitable with the music business.

  Alan:

  I interviewed Mick Jagger. That dude is short.

  Martha:

  Back in the compound, I passed by Jack Nicholson—everybody still loves him today, but he was major then. He was with a posse, but I called out, “Hey, Jack.” He nodded at me, and I said, “I’m Martha Quinn, from MTV.”

  His response was “I know who y’are.” I was on cloud nine the rest of the day.

  Alan:

  I was walking around with a producer and a camera crew, and we had carte blanche to approach anybody. Crosby, Stills and Nash were hanging out in a little bungalow, sort of a picnic area, and the producer said, “Oh, we got to talk to them.” And as we were approaching, the producer says, “Ask Crosby about his drug problems.”

  This was the heyday of Crosby going to rehab and jail. I said, “No, don’t make me ask that. It’s David Crosby, I can’t.” So I started talking to him about the album, and it was easygoing—they’re fairly nice guys. Once again, the producer whispered in my ear: “Ask him about the drug problem.” I capitulated, and said, “So how are you with the recent troubles?” And he said, with chilly eyes, “Well, I’m not going to go there, Alan.” Th
at pretty much shut down the interview.

  Nina:

  We had the worst seats in the house for actually seeing the show. We were over on the side, and there was a barricade between us and the stage. I did take one little break where I got to see Simple Minds play. Chrissie Hynde had broken up with Ray Davies and was with Jim Kerr at that point—I could see her watching him backstage, which was cool.

  Mark:

  I interviewed Chrissie Hynde backstage, and she was just bitchy. It was hot and sweaty—I think she was just responding to that.

  Alan:

  I bumped into Mark Gastineau, who played for the New York Jets. I didn’t know much about football, but the producer clued me in, and we interviewed him. He was very funny, and at the end of the interview, he reached down, grabbed me by the ankles, and held me up like a prize fish. Steroids!

  Mark:

  All through the day, Martha kept talking on the air about how Bruce Springsteen was going to show up. There was this lighting rig, and she kept going on about how it was Bruce’s lighting rig. What? There’s no special lighting. She kept spewing this on the air: “Bruce is gonna play, he’s gonna.” And I was like, “Martha, come on, that is not happening.”

  Martha:

  Someone in Bill Graham’s office told me that Bruce might show up. It didn’t happen. In retrospect, I’m sure he wishes he had done it.

  Mark:

  That was one of the glaring errors of that day. Bruce practically lived up the block. If Phil Collins could take the Concorde, Bruce Springsteen could have fucking driven down the New Jersey Turnpike.

  MARK GOODMAN, LATE IN THE DAY OF THE LIVE AID BROADCAST, WEARING AN INCREDIBLY SHORT PAIR OF SHORTS AND DISCUSSING THE LED ZEPPELIN REUNION: “You can’t help but wonder what is going to become of these relationships once Live Aid passes.”

  Sitting next to Mark: Ben Orr of the Cars, in a white dinner jacket, and Martha Quinn, wearing a dress printed with butterflies, a hat with Japanese characters (given to her by Steve Porcaro), and a bunch of laminated passes on a lanyard.

  BEN ORR: “Unbelievable. It wouldn’t happen again in, I couldn’t even imagine.”

  MARTHA QUINN: “Ben, altogether, how would you rate today’s events as a rock ’n’ roll concert?”

  BEN ORR: “I’d give it a three.”

  Mark:

  Live Aid would have been huge no matter what, but MTV was really powerful at that moment, and the fact that we made such a massive commitment to it meant something. People told me that they were watching us all day long, in bars and all over the place. Dick Clark and ABC went on the air late in the day, but everybody was watching MTV that day. It felt like everything we had worked for over the last four years had come together.

  At this moment of triumph, it was also the beginning of the end for the five of us. By the time of Live Aid, MTV was done with J. J. They sent him to Wembley, and they tried to pretend that was special, but we had no real crew there. So J. J.’s participation in our broadcast that day was almost nonexistent—when there was news at Wembley, the four of us in Philadelphia were delivering it. We all felt really bad about that. We knew the sun was setting on him, and he knew it too. He was a smart guy—he could read between the lines. Not that they were especially subtle about it.

  J. J. was philosophical about it, and he resolved to have a great time. The satellite transmission got fucked up during the Who’s set, so J. J. was the only one of us who got to see the whole thing. He was an Anglophile, and a huge fan of Queen, and a friend of Freddie Mercury’s. A couple of years earlier, he had taken me to a Queen show at Madison Square Garden—at the after-show party, they had all these boys in loincloths, running around serving drinks. Queen’s set at Live Aid was, by consensus, the best show they ever did.

  Nina:

  I thought J. J. had the best Live Aid gig of all of us—he was hanging with friends he had known for decades. When he came back, it sounded like he had a blast.

  Martha:

  Paul Shaffer saved the day when the satellite feed went out. The Who were doing “My Generation,” Roger Daltrey sang, “Why don’t you all ffff—” and then the screen went blank. Suddenly, Mark and I had to vamp, but we had no idea when the feed might come back, and we were freaking out. Paul was watching from the side of the stage—he was on hand to be the bandleader for the “We Are the World” finale—and ever the consummate pro, he sprinted over to Mark and me. He jumped in front of the camera and, reprising his Artie Fufkin character from Spinal Tap, apologized profusely for knocking out the plug.

  Nina:

  When Paul McCartney was playing “Let It Be,” the director wanted the VJs to sway along with the song. I didn’t sway, and I stayed off camera. But he cut from McCartney to the swaying VJs, and the critics just ripped us to shreds. It hurt, because we were really proud of the work we did that day.

  Mark:

  We ruined Live Aid. People were pissed off at us, and it just made no sense to us.

  USA Today: “The MTV video jockeys should hang their heads.”

  The New York Times: “Unhampered by even the vaguest notions of rock’s history and heritage.”

  Rolling Stone: “MTV made matters worse by constantly segueing from performers to close-up shots of swaying veejays.”

  Alan:

  That was the most criticized part of the whole day. Well, whose choice was that? That’s not my fault—the director is cutting away to us swaying and singing. Sometimes as VJs, we got blamed for things we had nothing to do with—but sometimes we got credit for things we had nothing to do with either.

  Mark:

  We arrived very early and stayed very late. I put in eighteen or nineteen hours of nonstop work. As they were closing the day with “We Are the World” at JFK, the director pulled me aside and said they had decided to do a one-hour wrap-up show—and by the way, Mark, you’ll be hosting it. I was a little worried about weird feelings from the other VJs—“How come Goodman’s hosting?”—but okay. There was no teleprompter or anything. We just pulled information together, and I went for it. At the end of the day, the director told me, “Mark, your stock is really high right now.” We all had our moments, but Live Aid is one of the days in my career I feel proudest of. That’s why the beating we took in the press was especially hurtful.

  Martha:

  Mark was amazing all day long. I’ll never forget his intro to Led Zeppelin: “This is rock ’n’ roll . . . and they’re doing ‘Stairway’!” What a rock star.

  Alan:

  Afterward, I ended up in Paul Shaffer’s hotel suite—tons of other people from the day were there. Yes, people brought coke. And there was a huge glass table.

  39

  Love Is a Battlefield

  Martha Meets Stiv Bator

  Martha:

  The Lords of the New Church visited MTV for an interview. I met the lead singer, Stiv Bator, and thought he was funny and clever and cool. I heard Stiv say that he was staying at the Mayflower Hotel, so that night, I called the Mayflower and asked for his room.

  The front desk connected me, and I said, “Hey Stiv, it’s Martha Quinn, ummmm, we just met—”

  “This is Steve, I’m his dad.”

  “Ooooh, hi, could you tell him I called?”

  Stiv was leaving town, so we didn’t get together, but a few months later, he came back to New York to do “Sun City,” the Artists United Against Apartheid record with Little Steven, and he called me up.

  Stiv Bator (sometimes Bators) was lead singer of the Dead Boys, a punk band famous for “Sonic Reducer.” After they broke up, he moved to London and started the goth-flavored Lords of the New Church with members of the Damned and Sham 69. Bator’s onstage trademark: pretending to strangle himself with the microphone cord, a stunt that went awry at a 1983 gig when some fans started pulling on it. Rushed to the hospital, Bator was clinically dead for two minutes. He later said, “I once died onstage. How do you top that, for Christ’s sake?”

  Alan:

  Martha
brought Stiv down to the studio, and I could see the electricity between the two of them. I asked if they were dating, and she said yes. I loved Stiv—he was a sweetheart. But it was an odd pairing, to have the girl next door, who I thought of as a sister, dating a full-on punk rocker.

  Martha:

  I saw the Lords all over the country, from Virginia Beach to Orange County, in weird little joints. That final tour was rough for the Lords—the crowds were thin. It was kind of heartbreaking.

  Alan:

  As time went on, Martha became more enigmatic for me. When she started dating Stiv, I was thinking, “Wow, what is her taste?” I assumed she liked blond-haired all-Americans, like me. But apparently she went for rockers and roadie types, which made her seem more grown up.

  Martha: