VJ: The Unplugged Adventures of MTV's First Wave

by Nina Blackwood

  I happily piped up, “I know a guy!” I called Brett, got Jordan’s phone number, and left him a message: “Hey, this is Martha Quinn, I don’t know if you remember me, but we need PAs. Do you want to come work the MTV Video Music Awards?” Jordan came to the Universal Amphitheatre, got his backstage pass, and worked as a PA. We always say that for our first date, he got paid fifty bucks.

  Jordan ferried me around L.A. as we prepped the show. At the end of the night, he dropped me off at my hotel and . . . nothing happened, but I knew that I was into him. We stayed in touch as friends. A month later, Brett gave Jordan an advance for a Morlocks record, a band Jordan had played with up in San Francisco. Jordan spent the money on a plane ticket to New York. We had dinner a bunch of times while he was in town, but . . . nothing happened. One night, he walked me home, took me upstairs to my apartment door, stood at the threshold, held my hand, said good night, turned away, and got back on the elevator. I couldn’t believe it!

  A few weeks later, I visited L.A. and took Jordan out to dinner with J. J. and Nina. J. J. pulled me aside and asked me what the deal was with Jordan.

  I told J. J., “I don’t know. The guy just doesn’t like me.”

  He said, “Oh, he likes you, MCQ. He’s taking his time, but he likes you.”

  “But J. J., he hasn’t even kissed me!”

  “MCQ, trust me. The guy’s just moving slow. I look into those Jesus eyes”—J. J. always said Jordan had “Jesus eyes”—“and I know what’s happening.”

  As usual, J. J. was correct. What I didn’t know was that Jordan didn’t think I was interested in him. Apparently, while he was driving me around L.A. for the VMAs, I had made a comment to the effect of “What are you, seventeen?” So while I was waiting for a sign from him, he was waiting for a sign from me.

  The next morning, Jordan picked me up at the Sunset Marquis and drove me to the airport. Back then, you could walk someone right out to the gate. Brett had advised Jordan, “If she looks in your eyes at the gate, kiss her.” I guess I gazed into those Jesus eyes, because yes, he kissed me. My journey with my future husband had begun.

  43

  Every Now and Then I Get a Little Bit Nervous That the Best of All the Years Have Gone By

  MTV Changes, Not Always for the Better

  Mark:

  I did a segment coming out of the George Michael video “I Want Your Sex,” where I made a comment about how there was a story in the London tabloids saying that his girlfriend was actually a transsexual. I made a joke about it, I was careful to say that it wasn’t from a reliable source, and nobody thought twice about it. Somehow, George Michael’s manager saw the segment, and he went ballistic. George wasn’t out yet, and they were hypersensitive about people suggesting he wasn’t 100 percent heterosexual.

  The channel was trying to get George to appear on the VMAs that year, so they fired the producer who had been on the floor during that segment. They were making a point, both to George Michael’s people and the MTV staff—he should have made me shoot the segment again. It was a knee-jerk decision: This guy had been doing a good job. I was so flipped out that this thing I said got him fired. I called him up and apologized, but there was nothing I could do to get him his job back. The guidelines for what we could say had moved under our feet, and they were vague to begin with.

  It would have been much better if somebody had come and talked to me about the problem and the fallout. That was the flip side of being talent: Sure, you’re protected and catered to, but you’re also kept in the dark about some things.

  Alan:

  I went to the Ritz to introduce Los Lobos, who were strangely alternative at the time. That didn’t make much sense to me—they were a good band, but they seemed pretty mainstream, musically. Anyway, there was a huge crowd of rabid Los Lobos fans, and all I had to do was come out and welcome people to the show. The announcer said, “And now, Alan Hunter from MTV.”

  “Boooooo!” The crowd hated me, hated MTV. They were out of their minds. “MTV sucks!”

  I ran out onstage and ripped through the introduction as quickly as I could, “HelloeverybodywelcometotheRitzit’sLosLobos,” and hustled offstage.

  The next day, I told Mark about it: “There’s an audience out there that doesn’t like MTV.” We hadn’t experienced that before; for five years, we had been the alternative rebels on the cutting edge, and I thought music fans saw us as pals. Suddenly, we discovered that some people were perceiving us as the corporate giant—The Man.

  Martha:

  MTV had always had some shows thrown into the mix, like Friday Night Video Fights, or the Friday Night Party Zone, which I hosted, or the Liner Notes interview program. But then they decided they needed to do a lot more of them. It was so they could cater to specific audiences, and so they could sell ads. Club MTV was Downtown Julie Brown’s dance-music show, Headbangers Ball was the heavy metal show, Yo! MTV Raps was the hip-hop show, and 120 Minutes was the college-rock show—people didn’t call that kind of music “alternative” yet.

  Alan:

  We had overseen this video jukebox, where Mötley Crüe and Bruce Springsteen and Howard Jones could appear in the same block of music. But the MTV executives were building a new vision of the future, one based on specialty shows.

  Mark:

  I hosted Headbangers Ball for a little while, but I had no business being on that show—I was not a metal guy. Adam Curry did it after me, and then they handed it off to Riki Rachtman. I hosted 120 Minutes, but just for a few weeks. I got turned on to some great stuff from that show, like the Cure and the Smiths. I watched the video for the Cure’s “In Between Days,” with the armoire that falls off the cliff and floats in the ocean. I thought, “What the fuck is this? What’s that guy wearing?” It was great to see something new. Our rotations were burning hot—even the lightest-rotation stuff you saw too much.

  Alan:

  J. J. did some episodes of 120 Minutes, and then after he left, I became the 120 Minutes guy. They filmed me in black-and-white—they wanted me to be mysterious and cop an attitude. They definitely didn’t want the chirpy me.

  Mark:

  It was funny that Alan ended up hosting it, because even after five years, he was so not the music guy. The show was produced by this British guy Dave Kendall, who’d been working for the channel for years. Eventually, he ended up hosting it himself. Alan (in his best Cockney accent) used to call the show Music That Dave Likes.

  Alan:

  The MTV corporate offices were over on Sixth Avenue, and that’s where a lot of the new shows were created. After a while, we had no crossover with those shows, and I wondered if that was by design—were they trying to keep us apart?

  Mark:

  The MTV executives revered print; ironically, they thought that was the credible medium. Since the press thought we were lightweights and had slagged off all the VJs pretty regularly, the bosses looked to other people when they started new shows.

  Alan:

  The programmers were trying to manufacture irreverence, deliberately replicating the chaotic attitude we had stumbled on innocently in the beginning. The short attention span that we inspired and stimulated wasn’t just in our audience—it was also in the higher-ups who made a new programming decision every three minutes.

  Mark:

  I started to say, “What am I doing here? I’m not getting to do interviews, and I’m not getting to host shows.”

  Alan:

  I wanted to get back into acting. I had an offer to be in the movie Girls Just Wanna Have Fun, which starred Helen Hunt and Sarah Jessica Parker. Bob Pittman blocked it—he told me that he wanted to find a better project for me to appear in, but really, he just hated the idea of the VJs doing anything that he didn’t control. Then Pittman left, and nobody else really cared. I got a part in an independent film called White Heat, which starred Danny Aiello and Tawny Kitaen. I had a whole week off, and I devoted it to this movie.

  One day, we were in Silvercup Studios in Queens, doing
some interior shots on a soundstage. We had lunch: It was me, the actress playing my love interest, a character actor named Cliff Bemis, and Tawny Kitaen. This was after Tawny appeared in Bachelor Party, but before she starred in that Whitesnake video, writhing on the hood of David Coverdale’s car. Cliff was this roly-poly guy; he was in awe of me because he watched MTV, and he was in awe of Tawny because she was this hot girl saying incredibly ribald things.

  The other actress was throwing Tawny softballs: “So, do you like blow jobs?”

  “Oh God, yeah,” she said. Then she looked at me and asks, “Do guys like it when you take your finger and use that as a ring up and down the shaft?” Cliff was pretty much creaming his pants. Tawny told a story that involved her doing this, and it got more and more salacious.

  Finally, Cliff blurted out, “Do you like to get your butt licked?”

  Tawny didn’t miss a beat. “Oh yeah, I love that.” She was going trashy all the way. Cliff just about fell off his chair. Mark told me some lurid rumors involving Tawny, David Coverdale, and a German shepherd, and I totally believed them—from my experience, she was up for anything.

  44

  The Five Years We Have Had Have Been Such Good Times

  Martha Leaves MTV

  Martha:

  I thought I was going to work at MTV forever. I would watch Mark and J. J. make copies of interviews for their personal archives, and I would just laugh: That’s fine for them, but I don’t need to do that. Now I wish I had tapes of the interviews I did. But Mark and J. J. had jobs before MTV—J. J. had worked at radio stations where they’d literally changed the locks because the format had changed from rock to country. They’d been around enough to know that this was a great job, but it was another in a string of jobs. One hundred percent of my work knowledge was MTV—I got hired right out of college, and it was the perfect gig on the planet for me. It was a huge drama when I got let go.

  Mark:

  Martha’s last couple of years, everybody loved her the most. But she badmouthed an executive, Les Garland, which is why she got fired. He wanted her to do something, and she said, “I’m not doing that.” Guess what? You’re done.

  Martha:

  I don’t know why they fired me. I heard later that Tom Freston wanted to can me the night of the 1986 Video Music Awards. It was his first time at the helm; I was in the audience and I was set to interview Robert Palmer. The question that they gave me was “How did your wife feel about you making a video with all of those girls?” But I couldn’t bring myself to ask him that, because it had just come out in the news that he was getting divorced. So I tossed that question, and because I was wearing Tina Turner’s dress from the “Private Dancer” video, I joked, “Hey, do you think I could’ve been in your video?” Seemed cute, harmless enough—but apparently Tom Freston was furious. What I heard was that he wanted me fired that night. That was September, and my contract was up three months later. But it might not be true—I sometimes console myself by saying that he was starting a new regime and he wanted to make his mark.

  I definitely got cocky. I took my Martha Quinn-ness for granted. That fall, my dad, who was also my lawyer, was calling MTV, saying, “You know Martha’s contract is up.” And they were saying, “Uh, yeah, okay, call us back next week.” But it didn’t seem like anything was odd. And then in December, at my grandfather’s funeral in Troy, my dad pulled me aside: “I need to talk to you.” Being an attorney, my dad had learned to execute justice swiftly. We went onto the back porch and he said, “I talked to MTV. They’re not going to pick you up.” Whoosh. Just like that, my world collapsed. I was already shattered because I was at my grandfather’s funeral—now I felt like the earth was giving way. I got my whole family together, including my next-door neighbor Rich, who was at the funeral because he was a sweetheart. I brought them into the basement (the same one the guy in the Human League had slept in!), and told them all the news. I then proceeded to get totally plastered. Rich drove me back to New York City: I was slumped over in the front seat, drunk as a skunk.

  The next day, I went into work. I didn’t want to leave without saying anything, the way Nina had. I did my shift, knowing what I was going to say at the end. Peggy Polito was the director, and when I finished my shift, I took a deep breath and said, “Peggy, keep the tape rolling.” (As long as the tape was rolling, it could be seen on monitors throughout the building.) “I want everyone to know I have not been picked up. I have been let go, and I want you all to know so you can say goodbye. I don’t want people to feel weird.”

  I was shattered. To this day, I have dreams that I’ve been fired by MTV. In my dream, I’m going to a party. I can see that Mark and J. J. and Al are all having a really good time, but nobody will talk to me because I’m not allowed in that area anymore.

  I was offered a job as the morning DJ on WNEW-FM, which was the big rock station in New York, and I didn’t take it. I often wonder what I was thinking. I just sublet my apartment and bailed on New York. My plan was that I would go to Los Angeles, be with Jordan, and take Mary Hart’s job on Entertainment Tonight, but I didn’t even have an agent. I had no self-awareness. I was just rolling from one situation to the next, with very limited coping skills. It was like I was in outer space.

  So I moved to L.A. Bob Pittman was a total prince and kept me on the payroll for six months, which meant I was able to get a house. For years, people had been telling me that I had to have my wisdom teeth taken out, and I had always delayed it. Just before my extended contract was up, I called Jordan’s dentist and said, “I have to have all four wisdom teeth taken out by next week, because I will no longer have health insurance.”

  When the six months was up, I went on unemployment, because I couldn’t pay my rent. That was my lowest point: Less than a year after that Robert Palmer interview, I was standing on line at the unemployment office in Van Nuys, California, praying that nobody would recognize me.

  45

  The Party Boys Call the Kremlin

  Billy Joel in Russia

  Alan:

  Mikhail Gorbachev was running the Soviet Union and he was rolling out perestroika and glasnost, opening up the country. Billy Joel decided he wanted to tour the USSR, which had been starved for Western rock ’n’ roll. He did shows in Leningrad—it was Leningrad at the time, not Saint Petersburg—and in Moscow. I got to go over for a while, for a documentary on Billy Joel and life behind the Iron Curtain, called Rock in Russia. After years of immersing myself in frivolity for MTV, it was satisfying to do something meaningful, reporting on a country in the middle of fundamental change.

  The Russian kids had bootleg tapes of MTV, but they were approximately ten years behind on the music and fashion trends. They were making their own clothes, trying to style themselves like Westerners. Metal was big over there, but if they wanted to dress like a headbanger, they glued some studs on a strip of leather. Sometimes all they had was a little photo clipped from a magazine: “I want to look like the guy from Bon Jovi. I have a wristband and a headband.” It was primitive, but it was cool.

  It was a fascinating time to be in the country. We’d be driving around town, with our translator and our liaison, looking for people to interview. The first day, some guy came up to the van: “I will help you. I am Dmitri. Where are you trying to get?” We told him. “Oh, let me take you there. I will show you how to get to that part of the city.”

  “Okay, hop in, Dmitri.” Dmitri rode around with us all day, showing us how to get where we were going. The next day he was gone, and I asked our liaison, “What happened to Dmitri?”

  He said, “KGB.”

  “What?”

  “He was informant.” Apparently, the KGB thought we were there for some subversive reason, instead of trying to fill an hour on MTV with a documentary on Billy Joel and Soviet youth culture. After that, it became a daily question: Would we be infiltrated by the KGB that day? The answer was always yes. Another person would show up and offer his services. It was laughable—we were at the t
ail end of the Communist era, and these guys were still playing their spy games.

  I said, “I’m sorry, they’re really doing that?”

  The liaison shrugged. “Yeah, what else they got to do?”

  When we interviewed artists, they were outspoken: “Fuck Communism, I’m going to speak out.” They talked mainly about oppression of music and the arts. We talked to some of these guys in back alleys so we wouldn’t attract attention; you could feel the nerves everywhere. Little old ladies would be looking out their windows—if I looked up, they’d quickly close the blinds. If we tried to talk to an average citizen, no way. They’d hide their faces and walk away. The whole country was covered with a veneer of intimidation. Gorbachev was promising the Soviet Union that people wouldn’t end up in the gulag anymore, but who knew for sure?

  I was pumped to interview Billy Joel. He was on the softer side of the MTV playlist, but I was a big fan. When he arrived at the interview, he had huge bags under his eyes. Our producer was hopping around, trying to figure out how to broach the subject, but Billy brought it up himself: “What do you think, guys? These things are killing me.”

  “Well, do you want to keep your sunglasses on?”