MTV Ruled the World- The Early Years of Music Video
MTV RULED THE WORLD
The Early Years of Music Video
By Greg Prato
Printed and distributed by Lulu.com
Published by Greg Prato
Book design and layout by Linda Krieg [myspace.com/lindakriegdesign]
Front cover painting by Theresa Dudley [theresadudley.com]
Book proofreading by Catherine Hensley [CLHediting.com]
Copyright © 2010, Greg Prato. All rights reserved.
First Edition, November 2010
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form
or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage
or retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher.
ISBN: 978-0-578-07197-8
Contents
Introduction
Cast of Characters
The Early '80s Music Biz
Todd Rundgren Has an Idea...
Bob Pittman/Preparing for Lift-Off
MTV's Theme Song/Launch of MTV
Initial Impressions
VJs
Early MTV
Some Struggle in the Video Age
Les Garland and John Sykes
I Want My MTV!
Success!
The "MTV Effect"
Fashion
MTV's Policies
The MTV Studios
Big '80s/Party Animals
The US Festival
"Billie Jean" and "Beat It"
Black Artists and MTV
Michael Jackson
Prince
Stories Behind the Videos: R&B and Hip-Hop
Duran Duran
The Police
Stories Behind the Videos: Punk, New Wave, and Alternative
Def Leppard (and Mutt Lange)
Van Halen
Stories Behind the Videos: Heavy Metal
Bruce Springsteen
Stories Behind the Videos: Rock
Madonna
Stories Behind the Videos: Pop Rock
Devo
"Weird Al" Yankovic
Stories Behind the Videos: Oddities
Fun at MTV
Bad Rockers, Good Rockers, Strange Rockers
Portrayal of Women in Music Video
Kiss Unmasks on MTV
1984 MTV Video Music Awards
VH1
"We Are the World"/Live Aid
When Music Video Attacks
PMRC and Censorship
Losing the Plot
The Team Breaks Up/JJ Jackson Remembered
MTV Today
Where Are They Now?
Introduction
"You'll never look at music the same way again" was a slogan used by MTV early on in their ads. And throughout the early '80s, I couldn't agree more. When MTV appeared in my home in the summer of 1982 (a year after it was originally launched because Long Island, New York Cablevision didn't get MTV until then), suddenly, there was a new way to discover bands. Radio at that point had completely lost its pizzazz, and here was a new outlet that didn't seem to cater to one musical genre. If an artist submitted a video, it was played, and if it was good, it stuck around...or so it seemed to an impressionable young man like me. Men at Work, A Flock of Seagulls, Duran Duran, Prince, Def Leppard, Quiet Riot, Madonna — the list is endless of artists who became household names thanks to their constant exposure on MTV during this era. But as the famous saying goes, "All good things must come to an end," and by the mid '80s, MTV had become as regimented and predictable as radio was before it. Instead of continuing to be a reaction of sorts against the standard, it became the standard. And when MTV decided that "hair metal" was the most happening rock genre in the late '80s, it was time for me to tune out. But in all honesty, I didn't completely tune out. Instead of going to MTV to constantly discover new bands as I did during their early days, it was more about trying to catch videos from bands I already liked, rather than just soaking it all in like a sponge. For me, the golden years of MTV were always 1981 to 1985, an era when Blotto and Barnes & Barnes were championed as much as Bryan Adams and Pat Benatar (well, not quite as much, but at least aired on a semi-regular basis!). And I've always wondered, why hasn't anyone done a book that focused on this MTV era and spoken directly to the people (both behind the scenes and the actual artists) that were there during the channel's formative years? The wait is now over, dear readers...
I want my early '80s MTV!
Greg Prato
p.s. Thanks to all my family and friends, as well as Nina Blackwood, Alan Hunter, Bob Pittman, and Les Garland for hanging in there during my seemingly never-ending list of questions.
p.p.s. Want to see what I'm currently up to (and check out info about my other books)? Go to myspace.com/gregpratopage. Want to let me know what you thought of the book or have questions? Email me at gregprato@yahoo.com.
Cast of Characters
Jon Anderson [Yes singer]
Pete Angelus [Video director: Van Halen's "Hot for Teacher," David Lee Roth's "California Girls," etc.]
Carmine Appice [Rod Stewart, Ted Nugent, Ozzy Osbourne drummer]
Art Barnes (aka Bill Mumy) [Barnes & Barnes singer/multi-instrumentalist]
Steve Barron [Video director: Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean," Dire Straits' "Money for Nothing," etc.]
Toni Basil [Solo artist, singer, dancer, dance choreographer]
Jello Biafra [Dead Kennedys singer]
Nina Blackwood [MTV VJ]
Eric Bloom [Blue Öyster Cult singer/guitarist]
Sergeant Blotto [Blotto singer]
Ricky Byrd [Joan Jett & the Blackhearts guitarist]
Gerald Casale [Devo bassist]
Ken R. Clark [PA to original VJs/manager of on-air talent]
Ken Ceizler [MTV director]
Phil Collen [Def Leppard guitarist]
Bootsy Collins [Parliament-Funkadelic bassist]
Stewart Copeland [The Police drummer]
Cy Curnin [The Fixx singer]
Chuck D [Public Enemy rapper]
Martha Davis [The Motels singer]
Paul Dean [Loverboy guitarist]
Warren DeMartini [Ratt guitarist]
John Doe [X singer/bassist]
Thomas Dolby [Solo artist, singer/keyboardist]
Geoff Downes [The Buggles, Yes, and Asia keyboardist]
Jonathan Elias [Co-writer of MTV's theme song]
Joe Elliott [Def Leppard singer]
Rik Emmett [Triumph singer/guitarist]
Lita Ford [Solo artist, singer/guitarist]
Les Garland [MTV executive]
Bob Giraldi [Video director: Michael Jackson's "Beat It," Pat Benatar's "Love is a Battlefield," etc.]
Rob Halford [Judas Priest singer]
Daryl Hall [Hall & Oates singer/keyboardist]
Greg Hawkes [The Cars keyboardist]
Colin Hay [Men at Work singer/guitarist]
Alan Hunter [MTV VJ]
Debora Iyall [Romeo Void singer]
Oran "Juice" Jones [Solo artist, singer/rapper]
Bruce Kulick [Kiss guitarist]
Geddy Lee [Rush singer/bassist]
Julian Lennon [Solo artist, singer]
George Lois [Advertising executive, creator of "I Want My MTV!" slogan]
Dave Marsh [Music journalist]
Eddie Money [Solo artist, singer]
Angelo Moore [Fishbone singer/saxophonist]
Jeff Murphy [Shoes guitarist]
John Murphy [Shoes bassist]
Aldo Nova [Solo artist, singer/guitarist]
John Oates [Hall & Oates singer/guitarist]
W
ally Palmer [The Romantics singer/guitarist]
Mike Pelech [MTV cameraman]
Bob Pittman [MTV CEO]
Roger Powell [Todd Rundgren/Utopia keyboardist]
Derek Power [Stewart Copeland's manager]
Marky Ramone [The Ramones drummer]
Richie Ramone [The Ramones drummer]
Herman Rarebell [Scorpions drummer]
Mike Reno [Loverboy singer]
Stan Ridgway [Wall of Voodoo singer]
Todd Rundgren [Solo artist, singer/multi-instrumentalist]
Michael Sadler [Saga singer]
Rudy Sarzo [Ozzy Osbourne, Quiet Riot, and Whitesnake bassist]
Mike Score [A Flock of Seagulls singer/keyboardist]
Rick Springfield [Actor, solo artist, singer/guitarist]
Frank Stallone [Solo artist, singer]
Frankie Sullivan [Survivor guitarist]
Mickey Thomas [Jefferson Starship singer]
George Thorogood [Solo artist, singer/guitarist]
Glenn Tilbrook [Squeeze singer/guitarist]
Tommy Tutone [Solo artist, singer/guitarist]
Kathy Valentine [The Go-Go's bassist]
Dave Wakeling [The English Beat singer/guitarist]
Fee Waybill [The Tubes singer]
Mark Weiss [Rock photographer]
Verdine White [Earth, Wind & Fire bassist]
Ann Wilson [Heart singer]
"Weird Al" Yankovic [Solo artist, singer/accordion player]
Robin Zorn [MTV producer]
The Early '80s Music Biz
GERALD CASALE: Around that time, it was the last hurrah of the "old order." No one knew that. No one saw what was coming and how fast it would come, but that's when labels still operated with a lot of power, controlled the means of distribution of music, since music was physically distributed. Had major relationships with radio, where they actually did use payola and whores and blow. And interesting — if not nefarious — characters running these labels because they came up through the ranks...like gangsters. And they knew music. A lot of them were quite smart and knew how to play the game. It was definitely where the artist was a "plantation worker," who had the chance of making millions of dollars, and when they did, the artist would always turn around and screw the record company that screwed them. So it's the old paradigm, not interesting, but unfortunately, they set it up so there would be no other outcome. It's where you got an advance, you got maybe ten or twelve points on your record. From those ten or twelve points, you had to pay back everything they gave you, so that they were in the black long before you could see a penny...and they would pretend that they were in the hole. So that was the situation. And there was plenty of money being made. It was good times, those kind of "Gordon Gekko times." We'd go into the office with a meeting with our A&R man, and at 5:00, he'd open his desk drawer, because people still sat at these old-style desks, as if they'd have typewriters, and he'd yank out a vial, and just casually while he was talking, tap out some lines, and kind of gesture, like, "Cocktail hour, anybody?" It was common. Everybody successful thought this was the drug of privilege. No losers did it. It wasn't addictive. It just was great [laughs]. There was a restaurant called Roy's, where you could have a booth, draw the curtain, and the waiter would bring you lines. It was an arrangement where you were paying a big tip for a "white dessert." We made a deal with Time-Life for [the home video] The Men Who Make the Music, which we took all the videos we had at the time and all the interstitial bits of our in-concert films, where we had created this world where there was big media, and there was one monolithic record company run by "Rod Rooter." Rod Rooter was this nefarious record exec, who basically was an amalgam of everybody we had met and been horrified by. And the best thing about Rod Rooter was everything he said was real! I didn’t make up one line of dialogue for Rod Rooter. I just took everything that we were told that we were horrified by, and put it in his mouth.
DARYL HALL: There was a new music that was happening. 1980, there was a shift in music, and the sound of the '80s started happening. It started in the late '70s, and it sort of came out of the punk scene and the R&B scene, and it coalesced into new wave music. I found it to be very "New York-centric," east coast-centric as opposed to west coast. It was the first coalescing of what we had always done, R&B music and European music...Afrocentric and European music all put together, which we pioneered ten years before that, that was starting to come together. The Talking Heads, us, Prince, and people like that — they were part of a new music sound, a new sort of coalescing of what had gone before.
STEWART COPELAND: It all seemed very "mom and pop," compared to the way it is now. The record companies and the radio stations, even the big record companies, had a guy that you could talk to, and the chain of command would go up to a president somewhere. And certainly, in our case with A&M, it was a much smaller company, and it went up to Jerry Moss, and that was it. There is no higher authority than him. And also, with each radio station, it would go up to the owner of that station in that city, and it wouldn't go any further than that. The MD and the owner of the station — they were right there in your face. Nowadays, the record company A&M is owned by Universal, which is owned by Seagrams, which is owned by Halliburton, which is owned by the dark planet. And there is no upper-echelon that you could even get to. It's sort of like it disappears off into the haze, the hierarchy. Directives come down, and it's difficult to make requests that go up, to get permits, licenses, or decisions. So in those days, it was much more connected. You could actually meet the people who determined your fate, both within the record company and outside the record company with the media — the papers, the stations. More recently, maybe ten years ago, I was on tour with Oysterhead, and I was saying to the guy, "Hey, let's hit the radio stations!" He gave me a pitying look. "Uh...sure, we can go visit the radio station, they'll put us on the air, but they can't put us on the playlist. That decision is made in New York by some expert. They've legalized payola, and all these stations are owned by a corporation, and they've decided what the very narrow cast demographic for this station is, and the list comes out of New York. You can schmooze all you want." So in other words, in olden times, it was much more do-able. You could do it yourself. You could get yourself out on the road, you could get yourself to the gig, you could call up the station, you could get the guy to come down, and it would make a difference. Nowadays, I don't even know what the levers are that you pull.
ANN WILSON: That was back at the end of the era of payola, I believe. So the music business at radio was not yet quite as pigeonholed as it is today. It was beginning to be, but not quite as much. People relied really heavily on FM radio — there was only AM or FM — and they relied on FM radio to be their big crossover. The only way you could really come into the American living room was sometimes on HBO or Showtime, they would play rock videos between movies. There was the Midnight Special and a couple of other shows that you could be seen on. But it was all about touring. There was no other option really than those that I just mentioned to be seen.
DAVE MARSH: It was a hell of a lot healthier than it became, for the simple reason that they had developed an ability to coordinate album-making/concert-touring/radio-airplay. And that required certain kinds of coordination, and it required fairly hefty budgets. One of the budgets that everybody talks about was a payola budget. There's no doubt that came into it. I doubt if there were many "bagmen" at AOR radio even in its heyday. It just worked a different way. People might have been carrying around bags of joints! [Laughs]
PAUL DEAN: We were kind of the guinea pigs. When we came out, Columbia was trying to make a stand against the independent promotion guys at radio stations, and they said, "Screw it, we're not going to pay payola anymore. We're bigger than that. We don't need to do that." All the independent record promoters said, "Fine...don't pay us! You can kiss Loverboy's ass goodbye." We were just on the verge of breaking through. To me, we made it in spite of that, but who knows if we hadn't have been the guinea pigs, if t
hey had been playing ball as normal. I support their decision on trying to do that. I'm sure it's still going on now. I heard people are using American Express gift cards now for payola, because you can't trace them.
"WEIRD AL" YANKOVIC: That was in the days before peer-to-peer file-sharing sites and BitTorrents…you know, when people actually bought music. But still, it was the general consensus at the time that the music industry was in a serious slump.
FEE WAYBILL: It was obviously a completely different business than it is. It was actually a viable business. This is back before even CDs, and everybody wanted to buy an album. It seems like the attention span has just gotten so much shorter now with the Internet. People used to look forward to those obscure tracks on the b-side. Now, forget about it. Nobody cares. They'll download the one tune from iTunes that they hear on the radio, and that's it. And you had a bigger window of opportunity to have a hit or pull it off. We did five albums with A&M before we ever had a hit, before we ever sold any records. So you don't have that anymore, either.
HERMAN RAREBELL: The big difference in the record industry back in the '80s was that they really backed the artists. Let's say one album didn't go as well as it should go. They'd go, "OK, make the next one. The next one will be 'big time.'" They'd be sitting there, choosing the songs with you together. It was a like big family "build up," where the record company and band built the future together. Where now, the record company is more like betting one song, if the song makes it to the charts, then the band continues. If not, "Goodbye guys...see you." Everything has become really short-lived, so to speak. Back in those days, everything was long-term planned.
RICK SPRINGFIELD: Everything was still being done the usual way, with record promotion. You find a band, you record them, you go on the road. It was still all about selling little black pieces of plastic. It could still be a very lucrative thing. A great song could still break an artist. Although everyone was complaining at that point, it still had the spirit of what radio was founded on originally. It hadn't become the complete corporate nut-job that it is now.