by Greg Prato
DEREK POWER: Sykes was the person that was closest to Miles [Copeland, the Police's manager] and me. And he was the one who really was the guy that particularly saw the "videogenic" qualities of the Police as being absolutely identical with everything that MTV was looking to achieve at the time. And as a personality, he was always very funny and charming. He was somebody that was easy to get along with.
STEWART COPELAND: I have no idea what [Sykes] brought to the channel. I know that he brought a lot of laughs and good cheer to the dressing room. That's about it. I know that he was a "business shark." He would have had to have been. A&M was very noncorporate. I'd go hang out with Jerry Moss, and he was the boss, not just the president, but the owner. They would wheel Herb Alpert out every now then on ceremonial occasions, but basically, it was Jerry's gaff, and we'd go hang out with him, and he was a buddy. With MTV and John, he was a friend of the band, but he was very much a corporate animal as well, and that was our first inkling that giant corporations were invading our playpen, the music industry. And with that, we called it "the music industry," just to give ourselves a bit of gravitas. It didn't feel like an industry at all, until we would see Sykesy in a suit.
BOB PITTMAN: John [Sykes] was the on-air promotion genius. John would come up with contests like the one-night stand, where we'd send people out in a jet — at that time, it wasn't Gulfstreams; it was Learjets — and we didn't have much money, so we'd charter one, and we had a magnetic sticker that would stick on the side, that said "MTV." So when it came off the runway, John would jump out of the plane, put the magnetic sticker on, and taxi in, so we could get the press to see the MTV plane there. People would go to a concert, hang out with the band, have dinner with the band, fly home that night — 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning — and they'd had a one-night stand with Fleetwood Mac. But those were John's deal. He got John Mellencamp to agree to paint a house pink and bought a house. So John was "that guy." And John slowly took over more and more of the day-to-day programming stuff there, too, in terms of the music and the contests, and eventually, the production stuff as well. Tom [Freston] was great. Tom was originally our consumer marketing guy. When we launched MTV, I had all the programming and consumer marketing, so Tom reported to me, and he'd been one of our affiliate sales guys in Warner-Amex Satellite Entertainment Company, working on the Movie Channel. I felt Tom was terrific. As a matter of fact, for one moment in time, when we were spinning off the Movie Channel, we were going to bring in Paramount and Universal as partners, and I was going to go run that and leave MTV. So I sent Tom over to the Movie Channel as the head of marketing. Then we decided to merge the Movie Channel with Showtime, so then I had to get Tom back. But Tom was always my go-to guy. A great manager, real solid citizen. I put Tom in charge of affiliate marketing when I took over the whole company. And Tom did a great job of finally getting the cable operators to sign up and breaking through. And then I put him over as the general manager, which was over the programming and consumer marketing side of it. Jack [Schneider, aka John Schneider] was the CEO of the company, from the time I was there until I took over as CEO in '85. And Jack didn't understand the business at all, but was very supportive of us and really pushed the board of directors of Warner-Amex to give us the meeting with Steve Ross and Jim Robinson, so we could really pitch it. He rarely gets credit and certainly deserves it. Steve Ross loved this business and was wildly supportive of it, and supportive of us as creative people, big business people. I would have never gone to the business side from the creative side had it not been for Steve. David Horowitz was the co-COO of Warner Communications under Steve and was our day-to-day liaison and watched over us, was our guardian angel. And was one of my real mentors. Was probably responsible for me becoming the COO of the company and moving into the business side. And David — when we went public — Jack left the company, and they decided I was too young for a public company. So David left as the co-COO of Warner Communications and came down as the CEO of MTV Networks, to be the grey hair and the steady hand and the older, experienced guy. Really loved everybody at the business, and it showed. And was a wonderfully supportive guy. He is sometimes forgotten but should be remembered.
MICKEY THOMAS: Les just happened to be a close and old friend of the manager of Jefferson Starship. We knew Les from his radio days in San Francisco. That helped us get an early foot in the door, as being one of the bands that got some of the most exposure early on, on MTV.
FRANKIE SULLIVAN: Look at Les Garland and what he came on to be and what he means to this industry, even to this day. He's irreplaceable. He's done everything. He's brilliant. He's iconic. He's one of my idols. He really did leave a huge mark on our industry.
LES GARLAND: [Pittman and Sykes] both brought a lot — a ton — to the channel. Again, it's like — sorry for the sports analogy — but it ain't just the quarterback. There has to be other players. There was a real team there. And Pittman and I fell into the role of leaders. We were the leaders of the whole thing. We did a very good job of sharing the stage with each other.
ROBIN ZORN: John Sykes was really nice. Bob Pittman was intimidating but so young looking, that when I remember I went in for my interview, he walked in the room while I was waiting to be interviewed, and I distinctly remember thinking that he was an intern. And then he walked around the table and started talking. I was like, "Oh my God...this is Bob Pittman?!" It was not like "us or them," but we were definitely a different group than they were. The people that worked at Teletronics, we were really a tight, tight group. And unless you were there with the hours that we put in, you weren't in that group. And they were not.
ALAN HUNTER: I thought [Bob Pittman] was fairly genius. He was a fairly cool character. People called him "a shark," because he kept his cards very close to his chest, and his coterie of executives underneath him was pretty tight.
KEN CEIZLER: Bob Pittman is not just "a regular guy." He is a unique personality. His intellect can be very intimidating, and he absorbs information. What I always found fascinating about him was his ability to take a lot of information and complicated stuff, organize it in his brain, and then be able to explain it in a very simple way. Bob was always a very "suit-and-tie kind of guy," a very corporate guy. Although he was out of radio and rock n' roll, he wasn't your radio/rock n' roll personality. As a matter of fact, he hired certain people in the company to be those rock n' roll faces of the company. Although he came out of radio, he struck me as not being a rock n' roll/radio guy, as much as a Wall Street-type person.
NINA BLACKWOOD: [Pittman] was basically the executive that oversaw everything. He, along with John Sykes, who I loved, and Les Garland...he was a complete nut! A complete party-man. We always laugh, because he was doing all the things they thought the VJs were doing. Just a "pedal-to-the-metal guy." They were kind of the "holy trio."
ALAN HUNTER: You had John Sykes, Tom Freston, Les Garland — they were really the barbarians at the gates. They were truly the "renegades of executom" back in the '80s. They were really the renegades in the offices of big business in Manhattan at the time, because they could be. They could go out drinking like all the rockers, but be in a corporate boardroom the next day, talking to American Express, Warner Communications, and Viacom. They were sort of everybody's idol at the time.
I Want My MTV!
BOB PITTMAN: We were out trying to get cable operators to carry us. Their first reaction was, "We don't want any of that damn 'sex, drugs, and rock n' roll.' It's nasty stuff, and it ain't going to be on my cable system." And the other ones that were more mercenary would say, "Well...just pay me a lot of money," which we didn't have. One of my guys said, "That's called 'pull versus push' distribution. You create your consumer demand, and the consumer demands it."
LES GARLAND: We had one million dollars in our budget that year, which is really not a lot of money to do anything nationally. And we were trying to figure how we were going to best spend that million dollars to market the channel. By the way, the awareness to MTV in the target audienc
e — which was 12 to 34 — was somewhere just south of 20%. And we really needed to do something that was going to make a lot of noise. My idea that I was working on was no one at that point in time had ever given away one million dollars. And I thought, "The ink that we would get for giving away one million dollars would be worth millions...and it would only cost us a million. Why don't we give away a million dollars in some crazy MTV way?"
BOB PITTMAN: So I hired George Lois and a guy named Dale Pon, who had been my promotions director at WNBC radio, and they had an agency together.
GEORGE LOIS: By the early '80s, I was big in the business [Lois — best known as an art director, designer, and advertiser — created countless famous covers for Esquire magazine in the '60s] and always on the cutting edge of advertising creativity. At that point, Viacom was looking for agencies for Nickelodeon, MTV, and the Movie Channel. And I think led by Bob Pittman's recommendations or ideas about what was going on in the business, it could have been other guys, because he had a lot of guys with him that were very bright and very sharp, and I think they talked to us. They chose us, and they said, "Which of the brands would you like to work on?" And I think they gave us an idea of the billings on them. The smallest billing of them, by far, was MTV. I think it was $250,000. Nickelodeon was a million something or two-million something, and the Movie Channel was larger, too. I said to them, "Well, I really want MTV." And they said, "MTV? Do you understand that MTV is only $250,000? We want a trade campaign." They meant a campaign to the cable operators. I said, "That's the one I really want. Don't get me wrong. I'd like them all, but that's the one I really want." And I think that impressed them. Maybe they thought I was a little nuts. I had a feeling they thought they had a real dog on their hands. I ran into people many years later, who said that they were present at a MTV presentation in a cable convention. It was must have been '80 or something like that. And there were almost cat-calls in the audience. The audience sat there listening to this crazy fuckin' bunch of young guys talking about a 24-hour rock n' roll channel. It sounded like it would destroy the music business by giving away music for nothing. Ad agency people were laughing, saying, "Who the hell would want to advertise on that channel?" Everybody kind of laughed at them. And they thought it was the stupidest idea of all time. So when I said, "MTV — that's the one I really want," they said, "OK...asshole." And they also gave me Nickelodeon at the same time, so I was happy. When we went to talk to them, we did an ad or two talking about "cable brats," and then after a week or two of thinking about it, said, "These guys aren't going to be successful doing this trade advertising." Because if you talked to any of these cable operators, they still had the attitude that the whole thing was really ridiculous. You weren't going to convince them in any way, shape, or form.
BOB PITTMAN: They came, and we explained the problem. "We want something where we can pressure the cable companies to carry us. And rather than spend the money to get the cable company to carry us, I'd rather spend the money on advertising and make them carry us."
LES GARLAND: One afternoon, the phone rings. My assistant tells me George is on the phone, and he said, "Garland...I think I got it. Can you get everybody together?" I go, "When?" He goes, "Today." I go, "Let me see what I can do." Boom, we set a meeting for around 5:30. From my collection, [it was] Pittman, Sykes, Freston, me, and could have been one or two others. George rolls in. You would expect an ad guy to come in with videos and easels and whatever. No, not him. Nothing. He just comes rolling in and starts this whole thing. He goes, "Let me ask you. Who does MTV belong to? Does it belong to Warner-Amex? Warner Communications? The advertisers? The artists? MTV is kind of like 'the color TV phenomenon.' It belongs to those who found it first. It belongs to them. If you're the only youngster on a block that has it, everybody goes to your house to watch it. They take a sense of ownership, those who find it. It's like when you find a new artist, it's yours."
GEORGE LOIS: I said, "Do you guys remember a campaign I did, where famous baseball players, like Mickey Mantle, say, 'I want my Maypo!?’" Maypo was kind of a baby cereal, and I told my client back then, "It's oatmeal. I don't know why it's just a baby cereal. Why can't I do a campaign that talks to older kids, so that you can do it from a baby cereal up to twelve or thirteen-year-olds?" So they're all looking at me and going, "Yeah, I loved that commercial." I said, "OK, now, all you sons of a bitches around the country are going to be saying, 'I want my MTV.' Here's what we'll do. We'll do a TV commercial. And what we do is we fly right by the cable operators, because they don't give a shit. They smoke cigars and think all young kids are fuckin' hoodlums. I'll do a commercial and get a real visceral feeling about the thing. And I'll get footage of famous rock stars. And at the end of the commercial, I'll say, 'If you don't get MTV where you live, call your local cable operator and say...I'll cut to somebody like Mick Jagger, who will pick up the phone, look into the phone, and say, "I want my MTV!" They all looked at me and were like, "Well...hold on. First of all, in a million years, you're not going to get a rock star. The rock business hates us and doesn't believe in us…in fact, thinks we could be destructive. No way." And I said, "Someway or another, I will get a rock star." And then they said, "Even if you do, what happens then?" I said, "What will happen is thousands and then millions of young rock fans will look up their cable operator, dial it, look into the phone, and say, 'I want my MTV!' and maybe even make a second or third phone call to the guy." And they said, "Huh?! Really?" And then part of that thing was when I was describing the commercial, I said, "Right away, I'm going to take that logo that you've got, and I'm really going to make it work for you. Inside the 'M,' every time I show the MTV logo, I'm going to have a Rolling Stones logo coming out of it, a fist coming out of it, a picture of a star - every time you see the logo, it's going to be doing something." I think they thought I was full of shit. And at the same time, they knew I had a record of really exciting marketing and advertising breakthroughs. And finally, I think Bob Pittman said, "I guess we have nothing to lose. It's interesting." I said, "We'll do it. There will be an explosion of some kind, and at that point, we'll prove to the cable operators that something is happening." I think Bob wound up saying, "Give it a shot." Anyway, we ended up getting Mick Jagger. And they kept saying, "We can't help you get a rock star." I mean, when they hear a phone call from MTV, their agents say, "Go fuck yourself." So I called Bill Graham, who I knew, and I told him what I was doing. I said, "Can you help me?" He wound up helping me, and before you knew it, we had Mick Jagger. Not only did Jagger show up, but he shows up and says, "I've brought Pete Townshend and Pat Benatar. Would you like to shoot them also?" I said, "Holy shit...I think so!"
LES GARLAND: He goes, "Garland, do you think you can get Mick Jagger to say, 'I want my MTV?'" And it hit me. I said, "That's it!" He goes, "We need the biggest rock star in the world first, and then we can get the rest of them to do it. Garland, you think you can get Mick to do it?" And I'd been friendly with Mick through the years, and I said, "I think so. I'd like to give it a shot, that's for sure." I go off to France in two days, and we're in Paris. I had Dale come with the production crew, I was so sure that I could talk him into it. I had my meeting with Mick, I went into the suite to meet with him, and it was very friendly. "Hi, good to see you again." We sit down, and he says, "Garland, you've come all the way to France. You must want something." I go, "I do," and I explain what we were about to do. I said, "I'd like to see if you'd be kind enough to let me roll the cameras, and you look into the camera, and say, "I want my MTV!" Mick says, "You want me to do a commercial?" So we get into the discussion if whether this is a commercial or not. And I said, "No, I really don't believe it is. I think you, being Mick Jagger, with the greatest rock n' roll band in the world, are actually voicing your support for a new phenomenon, which is music videos. We just happen to be the venue where music videos is what you'd be doing." And he goes, "Yeah, but that's a commercial." I go, "Well...not really." So we get into that for a minute. And I go, "So you're saying you don't
do commercials? Jōvan presented your last tour. And there you were, on a poster with Jōvan. If that's not a commercial, I don't know what is." He goes, "Well, yeah. We got paid a lot of money for that." I go, "So that's what this is all about? This is about money?" And Mick says, "That would make it a little easier to do, yeah." I said, "Here's the problem. We've only got a million dollars to spend in media, so we don't have any money. We really don't. But if it would make you feel better at all..." I reached into my pocket, pulled out a dollar, put it on the table, and said, "I'll pay you out of my pocket. I'll give you a dollar." He goes, "You're serious?" I say, "Yeah, I'll give you a dollar...because I have to give everybody else a dollar." [Laughs] He's laughing and goes, "Garland...we'll do it. But, I want you to make out a little contract right there. We're doing this, and I'm doing it for a dollar, but I get final right of approval." I said, "OK, we can do that." I write out this thing, "I, Mick Jagger, hereby agree to allow Les Garland and the MTV crew to shoot 'I want my MTV!' at 2:00pm tomorrow — blah blah blah — for one dollar, with final approval." So we shoot it the next day, get back to America, and from there, now we're on the phone to everybody, that Mick is already in the can. Well, David Bowie...no problem. John Mellencamp...no problem. Pat Benatar — bam, bam —we had them lined up now. And we had the spot together within a week.
