VJ: The Unplugged Adventures of MTV's First Wave

by Nina Blackwood

  He started telling us he was sick: He was taking all these drugs for the flu, but they weren’t working. We suspected he was drinking too much vodka. Christie Brinkley was traveling with him, and we heard rumors they were bickering. But the interview went great, and then we filmed some promos on the balcony of our hotel.

  The biggest night was the first concert, at this big coliseum on the outskirts of Leningrad. It was packed, and you could tell all these young people in the audience were really excited about the show. It was a major production like they’d never seen before, with top-notch lights and sound.

  The first fifty rows were empty until five minutes before showtime, blocked off by guards: young men in fur hats, standing at attention. And then, just before Billy came on, the occupants of those seats trooped in: the apparatchiks, the old people, the party leaders. It looked like they had all been waiting outside on a bus until they got the signal. There were old ladies wearing mink coats, and guys with the big Brezhnev eyebrows. It was every politburo cliché imaginable.

  Apparently, that was the cue for the stage manager to say Billy could hit the stage. The lights went down, and he started hammering out “Angry Young Man.” Liberty DeVitto was banging away at the drums, and the volume was like an airplane taking off. I checked out those people in the front rows, and they looked like the Maxell ad where the sound hits the guy in the chair. They appeared to be in a state of shock.

  Five songs into the show, all fifty rows left. They couldn’t take it. That meant the guards who had been watching their seats could start enjoying the show, and the crowd really rocked out. Billy did great, except he had an abysmal singing voice, either from the flu or the vodka. He croaked his way through the whole show—when he put out the live album a few months later, he had overdubbed all his vocals.

  That whole trip really adjusted my perspective. At MTV, we were always closely monitoring the cutting edge, trying to find inventive new ways to be transgressive. In the Soviet Union, we got to experience this immature version of pop culture—as if we had gone into the Amazon and observed people who had never seen a TV set before.

  46

  I’m a Man Who Doesn’t Know How to Sell a Contradiction

  Introducing Kurt Loder

  Martha:

  The first time I met Kurt Loder was in the very early days of MTV, after some industry party, maybe the opening of a new recording studio. MTV staffer Gale Sparrow and I shared a cab home with Kurt. I was jazzed to be hanging out with a guy from the great Rolling Stone. Kurt may deny this, but to the best of my recollection, he was totally drunk, sprawled out on the floor of the cab.

  Mark:

  When I first heard MTV was hiring Kurt Loder, I didn’t get it. There were lots of music journalists out there—why him? What made it baffling was that he personally seemed to hate the channel’s existence. He could be reviewing a record, and he’d still find a way to slag MTV. Well, whatever his price was, he whored himself out for it.

  Nina:

  He gave us such a hard time when he was writing for Rolling Stone. He’s very well read, and he’s very knowledgeable, but he was just incredibly mean. And then he ended up working at MTV—what a hypocrite.

  Mark:

  I think Rolling Stone used to be the Word—the authority when you wanted information about rock ’n’ roll. And then MTV became the Word, and on some level, that pissed them off. The flip side was MTV constantly longed for the credibility of print—which is how Kurt got hired. He started just after I left, but it was frustrating to see him work. The guy really knew his shit, which is great, but he made crappy television.

  First of all, he didn’t look like he belonged on the channel. He was also so tight-assed about the whole thing. Sometimes he would crack a wry joke and barely smile, and that was his attempt at lightening things up. It was always heavy, and not fun. And when he interviewed people, he was just a huge suck-up.

  I didn’t mind playing the fan when I was talking to somebody I really liked. But the way Kurt’s enthusiasm would manifest itself was by spilling out how he knew all the minutiae of their career. Check me out: I know all this about you. I don’t think he ever did anything better in an interview than what J. J. or I could have done. By the time I left MTV, I had lightened up substantially about the whole thing, and was more of the mind-set of “It’s rock ’n’ roll—let’s have some fun.”

  Kurt’s big advantage was that because he was known as a writer, they let him write his own news breaks and his own interview questions. Whereas every single interview that I did, I had to fight with the producers to get the questions that I wanted in the order that I wanted, knowing that we were going to create a show. And Kurt, who knew jack about television, was given carte blanche.

  Martha:

  At the beginning of MTV, we VJs interviewed millions of luminaries. But then the news department kicked in, and they figured out it was cheaper to have interviews go up to the office, because they didn’t have to interrupt the shooting schedule down at the studio. They could just put up a little video camera, and voilà. After a while, it became, “Why do we ever need to go down to the studio?” The new division of labor: The news department were the music experts, and the VJs were the channel promoters.

  Mark:

  I think the news department ended up being the most important part of MTV. It defined who we were because of its commitment to causes and because of the way it handled news and interviews and events. I can’t say enough good things about Linda Corradina, who ran it, and Doug Herzog, who brought Linda in. Linda asked me once, years after we had both left the channel, if I had ever asked to be the face of MTV News. I had never even realized that was an option. The executives weren’t going to suggest it, because they thought we were already stretched too thin doing VJ segments. Joining the news department would have meant cutting my salary by two-thirds. I probably wouldn’t have been willing to do that, but in retrospect, it might have been a better road for me.

  Alan:

  I’ve got nothing against Kurt. I liked his writing, and I felt for him when he was enduring the craziness of Woodstock ’99.

  Martha:

  I pulled a weird thing on Kurt back in 2004. Little Steven hosted an Underground Garage festival in New York, on Randall’s Island. I was there because Jordan’s band, the Fuzztones, were playing. There was a lot of white wine flowing backstage, and I had quite a few glasses. Kurt Loder was backstage covering the festival for MTV. I completely resented that he was still working for them, and I was not cool about it. For years, whenever I saw him on MTV, it was salt in my wounds. They got rid of me because they wanted fresh young talent, but they kept Kurt Loder on forever?

  He got me on camera and asked me what I was doing at the show. In return, I asked him why he hadn’t shown up at the memorial service for J. J., who had died earlier that year. What, he had something better to do than go pay his respects? I’m sure they never broadcast what I said. And that was the last time I ever spoke to Kurt Loder.

  47

  We’ll Be Moving on and Singing That Same Old Song

  The Departure of Alan and Mark

  Martha:

  After MTV let me go, I was in a state of shock. My stepmother, Jane, wanted to help me, so she got me into doing speeches on the college circuit. What I should have done was tell funny stories about rock stars, and then answer whatever questions the audience had about MTV. I’m quick on my feet—I could have done that. What I actually did was studiously prepare and deliver a speech about the history of cable television. It was just horrible: “Cable started in rural areas because the antennas could not pick up the broadcast, so they installed cable in order to disseminate the signal, blah blah blah.”

  I would go to these colleges and get picked up in a ratty station wagon. Dinner would be at the Ground Round or Brew ’n’ Burger—the Chili’s and the Friday’s of the era. The audiences were humiliatingly small, like thirty people. I hadn’t been gone long enough for anybody to have any kind of nostalg
ia. I was just the person who was on MTV, but now I wasn’t, so it was very weird.

  Around that time, I was also talking to agents in L.A., and I would dress like a secretary for those meetings—I showed up in suits with shoulder pads, looking like Melanie Griffith in Working Girl. At lunch with one agent, I looked across the restaurant and I spotted Richard Grieco, who at the time was on One Life to Live—he was wearing jeans and a T-shirt. It blew my mind. I realized that was what I should be doing: embracing my rock ’n’ roll background. But I was really floundering.

  Alan:

  Mark and I were standing in the hallway, just outside his dressing room, discussing Martha’s departure and how dramatic a move that was for the company. One of us said, “We can’t be VJs forever.” We confided in each other that we wanted to get out while the getting was good. We were both eager to move to California, and we liked the idea of leaving of our own volition, instead of whenever the channel got tired of us.

  Mark:

  When I started at MTV, I was really naïve. It was the biggest job I had ever had in my life, and I didn’t realize how insulated I was from the world. Part of the reason I quit was because I was frustrated; ultimately, management didn’t believe in us. It went back to the original casting: They selected us as types, not for our knowledge or talent. Anderson Cooper didn’t get his gig because he had silvery hair.

  The other reason I quit was that I had been bitten by the acting bug. I had a private acting coach, who worked with Stella Adler in her New York studio, and also taught Vincent Spano. I didn’t care if I became Tom Cruise or Mel Gibson; I just wanted to appear in a couple of pictures a year, and make a hundred thousand dollars a picture. That seemed reasonable to me.

  Alan:

  At MTV, I learned how to be a good VJ—which turned out to be a specific set of skills that didn’t translate into many other jobs. I left MTV only one year into my lavish three-year contract. My father was pretty incredulous when I told him. He had no expertise in this world, but I ran all that stuff by him, just to get whatever clichéd fatherly advice he might have. “Are you sure?” he asked. “Maybe you just need to stay another year or so.”

  “No, I’m burnt. And there’s going to be life beyond MTV.” In hindsight, he was totally right.

  I gave notice within days of Mark. My agent, Howard Klein, told me that the day before he was planning to call MTV to inform them of my departure, they called him asking if I’d accept a changed deal: They wanted me to forgo the salary bumps in my contract and work for the same pay. Howard said he chuckled as he told them I was exercising my option to leave after one year. He said there was palpable disbelief—they never suspected I’d leave.

  Mark and I high-fived after the official announcement that we were leaving: We were pumped about snatching our own destinies from the jaws of MTV.

  Mark:

  Quitting MTV was my first real career stumble, and it’s weighed on me as the years have gone by. Up to that point, I had no career failures. Everything I set out to do, I did. I never imagined that streak ending. So naïve. I also didn’t consider that opportunity still remained for me at MTV. I could have produced shows for them, and I would have continued being on-air talent if they had wanted that. Why didn’t I just stay at MTV and pursue my new acting interest on the side?

  I left Carol around the same time I left MTV. When I woke up that morning in March 1987, I didn’t know I would be leaving that night. Things had been bad between us for a long time. I had a whole part of me that I was keeping hidden—I had been squashing all my genuine feelings. I was depressed about the situation and emotionally spent. I couldn’t imagine how I would ever leave . . . ever live honestly . . . ever be happy. But suddenly, I decided I was done. I had heard a line somewhere: “The kindest executioner has the sharpest blade.” That night, when Carol got home, I told her how miserable I was, I packed some stuff, and I was out the door in ten minutes.

  The situation wasn’t wholly of my own making, but I was the source of a lot of our problems—starting with my inability to commit. To this day, I feel guilty about how I handled everything with Carol. Many times since then, I sent her a letter or an e-mail on Yom Kippur, saying that I was sorry. A few years ago, Carol and I accidentally bumped into each other in the hallways of the Sirius studios. After that meeting, I hoped that maybe time had done what it does best—but when I tried to get in touch with her again, I got no response. I understood.

  I moved into my acting coach’s apartment, while he stayed at Vincent Spano’s apartment—Vince was off doing a movie. A few months later, in July 1987, I moved to California—my agent had convinced me that I had to be in L.A. if I wanted to pursue acting. I felt so guilty, I left virtually everything in the apartment with Carol, including furniture that had been in my family for seventy-five years.

  When I arrived in California, suddenly I felt free. I said it over and over again, to anyone who would listen: “I’m jettisoning everything in my life all at once.” I quit my job; I quit my marriage; I quit the city that I lived in. I didn’t know what I was heading to, but I felt free and excited.

  MTV offered me a part-time deal for one year, which I took—I agreed that I would come back to New York one week a month to do VJ shifts, and that I would also do other stuff for them in L.A. as needed. Being a private contractor was a good deal—I ended up making more money that final transitional year, working only one week a month, than I did when I was on staff.

  My last show was during a special weekend in La Jolla. I did my final segment with Richard Marx. I made a little speech about leaving MTV, and walked away from the camera, down the beach into the distance. It was beautiful.

  Alan:

  There’s lots of stuff I didn’t learn during my time at MTV. Only years later did I figure out that I shouldn’t take anything for granted. Weirdly, I wasn’t worried about being replaced, maybe because I had never believed that I had a lock on a talent that nobody else did. Adam Curry came along, and he was smooth and hip, and I thought, “Wow, he’s good.” Julie Brown did her “wubba wubba” thing, and I thought that was valid. I just felt lucky to be one of the first.

  Mark was already in L.A. by the time I did my last show. I tried to script out my last thirty seconds on the air, like I was Walter Cronkite signing off for the last time. What was my epitaph at MTV going to be? But I got distracted with our big move to L.A. I had to get Jan and Dylan to the airport that afternoon, and I was going to stay another couple of nights to pack up the house for the movers.

  I was on the set, and the crew was moping around, sorry to see me go. I kept trying to move everything along, because we were running late and I didn’t want Jan to miss that plane. “That was the Go-Go’s, let’s go, news, boom, bang, nothing extraneous here.” Finally, I got to the last segment. I gave a shout-out to Martha and Mark and Nina and J. J., and then I said my last words, “Well, it’s been great here and I hope to see you soon.”

  It was unsatisfying, but honestly, I could have worked on it for months with a team of writers, trying to make that two-minute segment magical, and there was no way I was going to encapsulate my entire MTV career.

  There was no cake, but I hugged every member of the crew. And then I activated the ejector seat—I told everyone, “Hey, I’m just going to the bathroom. I’ll be right back.” I walked out the door, headed straight into the car that was waiting for me, and never came back.

  48

  After the Fire, the Fire Still Burns

  Life after MTV

  Martha:

  The loss of MTV may have been more difficult for me than for the other VJs—every last drop of my personal identity was tied up with MTV. Any psychologist will tell you that if you take away a person’s identity, it makes them way more vulnerable to depression. Getting humbled not only made me more compassionate, it also made me funnier. I joined an improv comedy troupe and I took a comedy class. Heather Locklear was also in my class, but she showed up only a couple of times. She was married to Tommy
Lee, and I was awed by how glamorous and cool she was. After class, we were both driving over the hill—I was in my Honda Accord, and she passed me in her Porsche Turbo Carrera. She was going home to her husband, Mötley Crüe’s drummer—I was heading back to Sherman Oaks, where I had a roommate because I didn’t have the money to pay the rent myself.

  I did a little bit of stand-up. My first real joke was, “I just moved to Los Angeles from New York, and the biggest difference is the driving thing. Here, you can’t go out and have a glass of wine, because you have to drive home. You just can’t. But in New York, you can go out, have all the drinks you want, and hail a cab. Then a totally drunk stranger drives you home.”

  Alan:

  My first acting coach in L.A., referred to me by my managers—yep, I had a whole retinue of agents and managers—said I had one year to make an impression. After that, I was just another blond guy in Hollywood.

  I got a job hosting a brand-new show on the Disney Channel called Videopolis—it was a music show for kids, filmed live once a week at Disneyland. I was heading over to the studio for my wardrobe fitting, and my manager called me up: “Don’t go to the fitting—you don’t have the job anymore.”

  Apparently, Jeffrey Katzenberg got wind that I was going to be the host and didn’t want any element of MTV involved with Videopolis—that was way too edgy for them. I was saying, “I don’t have to be edgy! I could be different!”