by Greg Prato
KATHY VALENTINE: Madonna is really the one who took MTV and ran with it. I think MTV created her. I mean, there had to be something there to create. I don't think there had been a woman...maybe her and Cyndi Lauper — a single, focal point woman. It's easier for an audience to glom onto a single focal point like that. When I think of Madonna, still what pops into my mind is the "Borderline" images.
ORAN "JUICE" JONES: Madonna was "the Lady Gaga" of that time. Lady Gaga is Madonna right now. It was strange at first for me...see, I didn't realize that white people could get down like that. [Laughs] I mean, I knew they had soul, they had rhythm, but I didn't really think they could just let it all out. They could just get loose with it. I'm going to tell you something strange. It might not make sense — it still doesn't make sense to me, even now — but for some reason, when I saw Madonna, I realized that we're all connected. I don't know why; it just dawned on me. Black, white, there ain't no difference. We're all connected. We're all the same people. She just had a swagger with her that was like a breath of fresh air. I really didn't identify with the music, but what I did identify with was her willingness to express herself her way. And uncompromised. No guard, just, "This is me. This what I do. Love it." That fearlessness, that desire to bare all — tastefully — I would hope that all artists will embrace that.
DAVE MARSH: Madonna was, by far, the most controversial thing on TV at that time. I don't even think there was a second place. And she played that for all it was worth and did a great job of it. She made, in many ways, very interesting videos. In my own life, the most important thing that MTV did for me was Tipper Gore [head of the 'Parents Music Resource Center'] had come out in favor of "Papa Don't Preach," so naturally, I was feeling exactly the opposite. And my kids said to me, "You know...you don't understand 'Papa Don't Preach.' You don't understand this 'I'm keeping my baby' thing. You need to see the video." And in the video, it's revealed that "I'm keeping my baby" means I'm keeping my boyfriend, not that I'm not going to have an abortion, is what Tipper and company thought. And that kind of dialogue between parents and children, I was very lucky to have kids who would think it was worthwhile saying it to me and would feel free to. And I'm not bragging about my parenting; I'm bragging about my kids. They had a lot of guts. I can remember it was a real eye-opener for me, what she did with that video. Because she just turned the thing around. I don't know whether she knew she was going to get the anti-abortion crowd on her side and then turn around and smack them in the chops, or whether it sort of came up when the video opportunity presented itself. That was a really important video. Madonna's videos were very, very good. They dealt with the race issue, they dealt with the sex issue, and they dealt with them very forcefully and not in any terms of terribly conventional thinking. And I think, probably, they were, if not a liberating, at least a freeing force. So those I remember as being important. I don't remember very many other important videos...except that it was important that I leave the room, usually.
RICK SPRINGFIELD: I actually stopped watching TV by that point. [Laughs] I know Madonna was really pushing the same thing Prince was — the outrageous thing, trying to shock people. But I don't really have a big awareness of that stuff. I was more into the bands.
TODD RUNDGREN: Yuck. [Laughs] Almost every Madonna video to me is, like, "Yuck." It goes along with my opinion of the music.
MARTHA DAVIS: The girl knows how to work it. She's definitely one of those people that will study, whether it's going to be Marilyn Monroe or whatever, to get the concepts going. And then she plays them off beautifully. David Fincher worked with her after he worked with me, and did some wonderful stuff with her. But it's an interesting thing. I think that transition between more of an entertainer than just pure artist, she probably spearheaded that, in a huge way. She's absolutely great and wonderful, but I don't think of her as the singer/songwriter. I think of her as more of the consummate entertainer, even though I know she writes from time to time. Cyndi Lauper I don't think took it to the stadium level. I mean, she was huge, but there was something about Madonna that was very much purposeful and planned, and the next step was planned, and the next step. Each step was bigger. I think she had a very grand plan from the beginning.
PETE ANGELUS: You have to give Madonna credit where credit is due. She has done an incredible job in the music business. And she's an incredible business woman.
FEE WAYBILL: She was very hip, very cool, very cutting-edge. She probably pushed the envelope more than anybody, which made MTV a little bit hipper, and not quite so "family." She definitely pushed it right to the max.
Stories Behind the Videos: Pop Rock
-- The Buggles --
GEOFF DOWNES: I think [the filming of "Video Killed the Radio Star"] was September of 1979, just before the single was released. We felt at the time that the nature of the song and title of the song, that the stops were pulled out to try and pull off something quite original. We got together with director Russell Mulcahy, and the rest is history. I think he had a wacky idea of how he wanted to make the video, and he was using a lot of the lyrical content — the band in studios, girly vocals, and that kind of thing. It was almost a parallel of what went on in the lyrics. I think it was all done in a day. You'd spend six months making an album, and then you'd spend a day on the video. At the time, no one really knew the impact of videos' connection to records. Radio was still very strong at the time. No one ever thought that radio would really be usurped. So I think you could do these promotional videos later in the day, kind of a postscript to making the album. We had the album, The Age of Plastic, and that's how we saw the band, a product of a technological generation. So the idea of the plastic, the man-made fibers, was very much included in the nature of what we were trying to provide.
-- The Human League --
STEVE BARRON: "Don't You Want Me?" I remember Virgin Records came along and said, "This is a really strong band. We want to do something a bit stronger than your average video." And they gave us $25,000 or something like that. I said, "If we could get that budget, then we could use 35-millimeter." Everything before that had been done either on video or 16-millimeter, because 35 was unaffordable in terms of the camera size, the film stock, the developing process. So we got 35-millimeter and wanted to do "a film within a film." I was also very influenced by that François Truffaut film, Day for Night. I'd been watching it, and I fell in love with Jacqueline Bisset, who was an actress in that. So I was a bit obsessed with that film at the time and thought, "We've got 35-millimeter. Let's do a film within a film, like the Truffaut film." And then I thought, "Wait a minute...it's a music video. We're trying to push things further. Let's do a film within a film within a film!" So even in the cutting room is a set.
-- Tommy Tutone --
TOMMY TUTONE: ["867-5309"] was a great time. The director had the whole crew from the movie Eraserhead. They thought that we were funny naturally. My partner and I were characters of our own right. He was very preppie, and I was kind of a Midwest guy. And they said, "We're going to make the most of it." If you watch our other video, "Which Man Are You," we wrote that together about our contrasts and made a story out of us. I was the kind of guy that was really shy — except when I was singing — and my partner was pretty urbane and from New York. We made three videos for twenty grand or something ridiculous, just churned them on out. Making records was really boring, and this was pretty effortless and a great experience. That's still a scene [where Tommy is a "peeping tom" and gets busted] that I was really embarrassed by. That look on my face is just...my mom would have laughed at that! Biting my cheek or something. "Get in there and look wistfully," and I didn't know what to do. I think that was the first take. I thought I looked really dumb there, but I guess it had its charm. I liked the way when I turned around after I got the number. I thought that was pretty funny, my double-take. I thought that was good acting. We did that at Perkins Palace in Pasadena, and fortunately, we had already played there a couple of times. It was an old theater. They said
, "You're going to play it three times through. We're going to be out here the first time, up close the second time, and the third time, we have these things going around in circles around you. And that's it." We went on through it, and we had a natural interaction on stage. We were just ourselves.
-- The Romantics --
WALLY PALMAR: "What I Like About You" was in the top 20, going into the top 10 in Germany and the Netherlands. They had pictures but no footage, so they sent a film crew from the Netherlands to film us. We were doing a show in L.A., I believe it was at the Whisky, and we were doing a soundcheck. They filmed us during that soundcheck, two songs — "What I Like About You" and "When I Look in Your Eyes." We're talking 1980, so at this point, there still is no MTV. We were surprised that they were sending a film crew over from the Netherlands to film us. We more or less dressed up in what we were going to wear later that night. They set up maybe two cameras, and it was a straight-ahead performance video shoot. A very simple, straight-ahead cut. No talking, no acting, no nothing — being yourself, performing the song. And that's it. Once again, ["Talking in Your Sleep"] was climbing the charts at a pretty decent speed back then. That was the last song recorded for the album In Heat. All we had was a backtrack, the instrumental part of the song. And we realized it was too good a track to leave unfinished. So everybody put their heads together, and in a couple days, we finished up the song melodically and lyrically. We were out touring, and we needed a video clip, so they set it up, where we filmed it in Detroit. I think we were coming in to play Detroit, so we got in a day or two ahead of time, on a soundstage, very early in the morning. We did our performance piece, and then there was also the added attraction of having a lot of girls in their "sleeping attire" in the video. Starting to film that 8:00 in the morning is not really "rock n' roll hours," but it was interesting, and in itself, was very effective.
-- Rick Springfield --
RICK SPRINGFIELD: I didn't really know why we were doing that [filming a video for "Jessie's Girl"]. There was talk that there was this channel that was starting to get some notice, MTV. And RCA gave me 1,500 bucks or something to just do the video. I didn't really know what would happen with it. I storyboarded it, and then we just shot it "guerilla warfare style" — y'know, without getting permits and shooting it in Hollywood alleyways until cops came. It was really fun, and once it started getting played, everyone started seeing the value of it. It certainly heightened your identity. [The scene when Rick smashes a bathroom mirror with his guitar] was my idea. Actually, that was our big expense, the 24 mirrors I broke.
SERGEANT BLOTTO: I love Rick Springfield! I was just singing "Jessie's Girl" the other day. He was great. Those videos...I can't say I ever watched him on General Hospital, so I didn't know him as an actor. But he certainly was a cute boy, and he made the most of it. And he rocked. "Jessie's Girl" was one of the keys, one of the "door-openers."
RICK SPRINGFIELD: ["Don't Talk to Strangers"] was kind of the first big-budget one. It wasn't actually that big, but we had the money to rent cop cars and rent out a motel. It was shot in one day and night. It was never an extended shoot. You felt like you were kind of on the cutting-edge of something new and wonderful, and it felt kind of "movie-esque," to a degree. At this point, it was more kind of the director's vision than mine. I still wanted a performance video, which it was, but there was a lot of people trying to make complete stories out of three-minute pop songs, which sometimes didn't work. I think they were trying to "tart it up" a bit, because they had some extra money, and we could afford a breakaway window [in reference to a scene where Rick jumps through a window]. At that point, I think they were still just trying to interpret the song pretty literally. ["Affair of the Heart"] was the first video that I really thought looked cool. The guy, Doug Dowdle, who became a good friend of mine, he shot the next three or four videos of mine, but "Affair of the Heart" was the first one. And it was the first one where we had an actual preproduction meeting, and they sat and laid out what they thought of doing and talked about it. More money was being put into it, and I was really happy with the final result of that one. ["Love Somebody"] was another Doug Dowdle one. I look at that one and cringe a bit. They were starting to get really into the over-the-top stuff now. Everyone was really high on the videos and throwing the kitchen sink in. We were all starting to get a bit carried away with what we thought the power of it was and what we could get away with. That one really had absolutely nothing to do with the song. Now, I would have shot it completely differently, because "Love Somebody" was one of my favorite songs of the hits I've had. And it was a tougher song, and we kind of tarted it up with this weird tribal/goddess thing. I think we were starting to lose our mind at that point.
-- Toto --
STEVE BARRON: "Rosanna" was one of the first sort of "dance videos" that I did. And I was really lucky. Kenny Ortega choreographed that. He found a space and brought this dancer [Cynthia Rhodes] in to show me, and she was just great. We said, "She'd be perfect for 'Rosanna.' We'll get her doing a West Side Story thing, spinning and twisting through." Actually, off of that video — and this happened a bit during that period — that girl was cast as the lead in Staying Alive, the follow-up to Saturday Night Fever. Stallone was directing it, saw that video, and said, "Unless that girl is a mute, she's in Staying Alive!" Memories of ["Africa"] — there was a great map painter, the guy who painted in the old-fashioned way, used to put glass in front of the camera, and you'd paint a part of the scenery on the glass, directly in front of the camera. In "Billie Jean," we couldn't afford to build above the first story of the street, so the second story was done by a guy named Eric...I can't remember his last name. A really good paint artist. The second story was put in there, and doing that, I think I was doing Toto three weeks later. I thought, "It would be lovely to have a pile of books bigger than one can do, so let's do a 'glass shot painting.'"
-- Survivor --
FRANKIE SULLIVAN: [Sylvester Stallone] was — and still is — really good friends with the president of our record company [Tony Scotti]. Stallone was pretty much done with Rocky III. Where we entered the picture was he wanted something a little bit different, and [Scotti] was very business smart, and saw this as an opportunity. He said, "I have a young band. Maybe you'd be interested in seeing what they would come up with. I can put you in touch with them, and you guys could talk. Maybe they could hit the mark or come up with something you like." That's really where it started. My stories with [Stallone] went back to Rocky III, because when we put the music to the film, he wasn't happy with what was going on. There really wasn't a lot of rock bands doing soundtracks back then. Sly was a guy that really liked a lot of balls and punch. He liked the demo version a lot. He liked the rawness of it. I got a call, and he said, "Will you come out here?" He was struggling with what they were doing, because they were sticking to a standard. By then, you'd get into a soundstage, and they'd have a big screen with two VU meters, and they'd play it really safe, because they don't want the stuff to get printed on the film, and then it ends up in the theater, and it's all distorted. Sly wanted that song slamming. So I was there for about two weeks. I stayed with him. He was very cool, very easy to work with. He put me in the hot seat. That was a wake-up call, because I was 24 years old, and Donny Zimmerman, who's won like 22 Oscars, was sitting in the driver's seat, and Sly was like, "This isn't it. I want more balls!" I said, "Well, we do things differently. These guys like to keep it in the black. We like to ride it up into the red, the VU meters. The more the better. You get the tape compression, you get that low end, you get the drums, [and] everything kind of pops out. And if you get it to the right sweet spot, it gets huge." And he says, "Sit down there." He had the guy get up. He was a big star and had a lot of power, so they're not going to argue with him. He said, "Just do what you do. Pretend they're not here. Whatever you did when you did the demo and mixed it, do it here." I looked at the VU meters and did what I would do if we were mixing a record. He said, "Now we're getting there." We finally
got to a point, and he said, "Print it." They were arguing with him, but he'd just say, "Hey, who's movie is this?" They hushed up pretty quick. He played the whole four minute and 58 seconds of the song at the beginning of the film, so that in itself was a video to me. That was my favorite video version. He did that little montage that he wrote, where he did all those commercials for American Express. If you watch the beginning of Rocky III, you'll notice that. To me, we had a "60-million-dollar video" out there, and we had a guy at the time who was just a huge Hollywood star. He was out there promoting the film and loved the tune, so he was promoting the tune. It was like a double whammy. Our version of the video, I was never really a big fan of it. There are parts that are cool, and there are parts where we're walking around the streets of Chinatown in San Francisco, that I look at, and say, "That doesn't really make much sense to me."
