by Craig Marks
I was not really into California music. I was living in Paris, and we were into a new era, more modern. But I couldn’t refuse to go to LA—it was like a dream. When I got there, I was very disappointed, because there’s a big difference between what I saw when I was a kid in the beautiful old Hollywood movies, and what LA’s actually about. When I listened to “Boys of Summer,” there was something nostalgic—he was looking back, talking about something that he’s leaving behind. The ’70s were dying.
ANDY SLATER, manager: I showed the Axel Bauer video to Henley, and he said, “Call that guy and send him the song.” Some video makers come from technical backgrounds—Mondino was a visionary and an artist. There’s a mysteriousness to the video, an eerie abstractness. I thought of it very much as a film noir. Until that point, videos were more Hanna-Barbera. “Boys of Summer” was closer to something Godard would have made than to Hanna-Barbera. Its success opened up the possibility of doing videos that were not lowest-common-denominator, that didn’t pander.
I brought Les Garland to the recording studio, and we played the record for MTV before it was even delivered to the record label. They got to know Don, and I think that served him well.
RANDY SKINNER: Don Henley did not like making videos. And he didn’t enjoy making “Boys of Summer.” Don’s not a trusting kind of guy, either, God bless him. What Don said at the VMAs that year when he won all those awards was true: “I had no idea what they were doing, but it worked. They made Southern California look like the South of France.”
JEFF AYEROFF: They used to call me the king of video. It wasn’t that I was so fucking smart, I just had good taste and I understood the medium. I even helped get Chicago a hit video on MTV, “Stay the Night.” They weren’t exactly a current act. I thought that if I could create a car chase in their video, and the car got wrecked, how could MTV not play it? And it worked.
STEPHEN R. JOHNSON: If it wasn’t for Jeff, I wouldn’t have had a career in music video. I made a stop-motion animated film at USC Film School that won a bunch of awards, and Jeff saw my film. He commissioned me to direct my first video, for a god-awful band called Combonation. The singer was a great friend of mine from Kansas who I’d talked into moving to LA with me. He was the only other guy in a four-county area of Kansas who knew who Jimi Hendrix was.
Then I made the “Walk of Life” video for Dire Straits. Two videos for that song had already been made and discarded. I went on tour with them to shoot live footage, and Mark Knopfler told me he wanted the video to have sports in it. So I wrangled all this funny sports footage, with bloopers and the like. Mark’s other edict was that he didn’t want to be photographed from the side, because he didn’t like the fact that he had a prominent proboscis. Everyone in the crew was running into each other, trying to avoid that angle.
SIOBHAN BARRON: Dire Straits’ manager, Ed Bicknell, asked me one day what I thought his band needed to do to get on MTV, because they weren’t selling in America. I said, “Get Mark Knopfler to write an MTV-able song. And then let us make the video.” And they did: They wrote “Money for Nothing,” with the famous “I want my MTV” hook, and my brother Steve made a great video.
LES GARLAND: I loved Dire Straits. In 1985, they had the Brothers in Arms album, and they’d released “So Far Away” as the first single and video. Pittman and I were meeting with Mo Ostin and Lenny Waronker, who ran Warner Bros., and I said, “Talk to me about Dire Straits. I’m not sure that track you guys have out now is the right one. But I think that song that mentions MTV is a smash.” They go, “You weren’t offended?” I go, “Offended? Flattered might be a better word.”
STEVE BARRON: Mark Knopfler didn’t like doing videos. Dire Straits had done them before, but they showed the band playing, and Dire Straits weren’t all that interesting. Jeff Ayeroff told me to go meet the band in Budapest, where they were on tour, shoot some live footage, and somehow convince Mark to do a concept video. I really wanted to use a new computer animation technology called Paintbox, which was used to do colorization in commercials and to create logos for corporations. Mark and his girlfriend and I had dinner together, I’m trying to broach the idea that MTV should be shaken up a bit. I can see he’s going to say no. And luckily, his girlfriend, who was from the States, said “Wow, you’re so right about that. That’s exactly what MTV needs.”
“Money for Nothing” starts with Sting singing “I want my MTV,” and the song is damning to MTV in a way. That was an ironic video. The characters we created were made of televisions, and they were slagging off television. Videos were getting a bit boring, they needed some waking up. And MTV went nuts for it. It was like a big advertisement for them. It won Video of the Year at the 1986 VMAs. That was the same year as a-ha’s “Take on Me,” which won Best Director and a bunch of others. I think a-ha was probably the better video.
ADAM ANT: In its initial form, video was a revolution. Then MTV became worse than the record companies, and that’s fucking saying something. That’s harsh, but it became very decadent, like ancient Rome in a way. It was all about who you knew, and how many bottles of champagne you sent them. It began as a tough, groundbreaking, sexy, subversive, stylish thing with a sense of humor. Then it became all business.
I think the golden era ended with Michael Jackson, ironically. You got John Landis in, and you can’t compete with that, because that was big fucking money. Then groups started to hire slick, adept filmmakers. Dire Straits was a turning point, because you had a group that visually was like a Quaalude. They didn’t have a clue, so they hired someone to do an animated film, which is even more expensive, and that set another barrier. When Michael did videos, he was the talent, so I’ve got no problem with that. But when the band aren’t even in it? Like that Swedish group, what are they called? A-ha. That’s all postproduction.
Chapter 19
“WHY DON’T I JUST TAKE $50,000 AND LIGHT IT ON FIRE?”
THE BACKLASH AGAINST MTV
MTV, EVERYONE AGREES, HELPED MUSICIANS AND their record companies make a lot of money. But not everyone who benefitted felt gratitude toward MTV. Pretty soon, record executives began to look at the channel not as a partner, but as a leech. And they picked a fight—over money, of course—MTV bosses knew they couldn’t win.
MARK MOTHERSBAUGH: MTV changed the architecture of being an artist. In some good ways, because all of a sudden, bands were forced to think about images. Some of them were doing great films.
The bad thing about MTV is, they decided early on that the most lucrative avenue was to let their palms be greased by record companies. They promoted whatever crap record companies put money into. It became a lot of mindless baby pictures. And it changed the way artists worked, because music got punished in the trade-off. There was a one-two punch: MTV was swiftly followed by CDs, and all of sudden instead of a well-crafted album of ten songs, you had to put all your bets on one particular song, and that’s what people saw or heard from you. The rest of the CD was filler. So MTV created the all-or-nothing syndrome in pop music that made for CDs full of shite with, like, one strong song.
Bands had to go for gold right away. MTV got all the money you were making. They got all of your advance, because it went to a video. So you were paying for MTV’s programming, instead of surviving for a year as a band. It’s no accident the term “one-hit wonder” is centered around the ’80s. MTV destroyed the idea of a band being able to do an album or two before they made their big opus, or before they made their strong statement. Videos changed the economics of the industry.
RICK RUBIN, record executive: In some ways, MTV hurt music, in that it changed what was expected of an artist. The job changed. It became a job of controlling your image. Part of it was being camera-ready and having good concepts. Then you started to see artists break who may have been stronger visually than they were musically.
PAUL McGUINNESS: There were a lot of artists for whom MTV didn’t work. They would have large sums of money spent on their videos, and if MTV didn’t like them, their
labels would drop them and they’d have a very short career.
DEE SNIDER: While MTV exposure accelerated your sales, it also shortened your shelf life. Bands had long careers in the ’70s. They came to town once a year and there was no way to experience them unless you went to the show. But with MTV, you could sit in your living room and watch rock bands. MTV created an environment where a three- to five-year career was the norm.
PAUL FLATTERY: On the one hand, MTV was genius. On the other, it could be seen as the great rock n’ roll swindle. The record industry pours millions and millions of dollars into videos. Meanwhile, the artists, for the most part, pay for the videos. And then MTV gets them for free.
PAUL McGUINNESS: They had designed a brilliant business, where they got free programming, paid for by record companies and artists, and they sold the advertising and made a lot of money. I mean, it was wonderful—for them. There was widespread resentment of their business model, which was regarded by many people as parasitic. But look, for U2, the bargain was fair, otherwise we wouldn’t have gone along with it.
JEFF AYEROFF: People who whined about the cost of music videos weren’t sophisticated enough to understand that the better the video was, the more likely it was to get on MTV. The more valuable the video became to MTV, the greater the likelihood that your act could build a brand with MTV, and MTV would continue to support that brand. The greater the likelihood they supported the brand, the greater the likelihood that radio would play your act, and you’d sell lots of records. It’s a simple equation, but record executives spent years not dealing with the visual side of the business.
STEVE LUKATHER: MTV convinced artists and labels to give them videos for free under the guise of “We can’t afford to pay you anything, and we’re great promotion for you.” Everybody said, “Fine, this is never gonna work anyway.” Next thing you know, it blows up into a massive thing and they don’t even pay royalties to the artists or songwriters. We got nothing, and they got to decide whose careers lived and died. We spent millions on shitty videos and they’d never get shown. It’s like, Why don’t I just take $50,000 into the backyard and light it on fire?
JOHN SYKES: We got 90 percent of our content for free. Which made our margins huge.
TOM PETTY: I never thought it was fair. MTV was getting programing for free. I was going in the hole millions because I had to deliver videos to promote my singles, and they weren’t giving anything back. They looked at it like airplay was your payment, but you weren’t guaranteed that airplay.
JOE ELLIOTT: We’d spend up to $750,000 making videos to promote an album, and MTV didn’t pay us a royalty for playing our music. I always thought it was wrong, and I always will think it’s wrong. We get paid for having our songs played on the radio. When, say, The Drew Carey Show gets rebroadcast, actors get paid residuals. When MTV played our videos hundreds and hundreds of times, we didn’t get anything.
TOMMY MOTTOLA: They built the biggest music enterprise in the history of the world off of our backs, off of our money, off of our sweat. Very cagey, very shrewd. As they began to become a powerhouse, they had the big stick, you know? We all went in and said, “Look, we’re spending a lot of money on videos, and you guys are generating millions a year in profits. We need something back.” So we negotiated a big contract with them, and all the other record companies did the same, where they would pay us X amount of money.
BOB PITTMAN: At a certain point, the labels wanted to get paid for their videos. I sat down with our lawyer, Allen Grubman, and figured out that if MTV could get something out of it, I’d pay. So we asked to have an exclusive window on a certain number of their videos for our world premieres, which at that time was important to us. In exchange, we gave them money, some spots on the air, and gave them some “puts,” which meant they could actually put a certain number of videos into rotation on MTV, even if we didn’t want to play them. Because for the first time, there were more videos than slots to play them in.
ALLEN GRUBMAN: Bob Pittman was at my house in the Hamptons. By this point, the record companies wanted to be compensated for their videos, so we came up with a concept that we would pay each record company a sum of money every year for the exclusive right to play certain key videos for a period of thirty days. That gave MTV a big leg up against their competitors.
AL TELLER: When Pittman went around to the record companies to negotiate exclusivity deals, I laughed at him. I said, “Bob, I’m not going to give you an exclusive.” I had no interest whatsoever in seeing MTV become a monopoly for music videos. I thought that would be a disaster for us. But they were clever; they offered multimillion-dollar deals to each of the major labels in exchange for an exclusivity period that was clearly designed to kill off their competitors. Warner Bros. and CBS were profitable, but RCA wasn’t profitable, PolyGram wasn’t profitable, Capitol wasn’t profitable. So when MTV came to them with a check, they couldn’t resist. MTV played its cards well. I was overruled by my boss, Walter Yetnikoff, and we ended up making the deal. The music industry has a long history of doing incredibly stupid things at important moments in its history.
TIM NEWMAN: The record industry is in fairly deep trouble today, of their own doing. Music video was a tremendous way to promote music, and they let themselves become captives of MTV. Early on, MTV would take any video and be happy to run it. When the tables turned and there were more artists making videos, MTV could pick and choose. The labels tried to fight back, which wasn’t successful. They delivered themselves into a situation where they did not have control over promotion. They had a partner, in MTV, that had a different agenda. The record business is an old-fashioned industry that’s had a low level of success in adapting to change. They were shortsighted. They never, ever took the long view—instead of embracing MTV, they should have done everything in their power to create competition for MTV, so there would be more than one outlet for their videos.
JAZZ SUMMERS: There was a standoff between record companies and MTV, over who had more power. The record companies were paying for MTV’s free programming. And they’re thinking, Shit, what are we doing that for? But their free programming was selling a zillion records. After the mid-’80s, MTV knew they had the power. That’s when the record companies said, “Please play our record!” instead of “Why should we give you our record?”
Chapter 20
“DON’T BE A WANKER ALL YOUR LIFE”
“DO THEY KNOW IT’S CHRISTMAS?,” “WE ARE THE WORLD,” AND LIVE AID
BOB GELDOF LEARNED ABOUT THE DISASTROUS famine in Ethiopia while watching TV, and he resolved to raise money to feed starving Africans. Geldof was not a music star—his band, the Boomtown Rats, is remembered mostly for the crazy-assassin ballad “I Don’t Like Mondays”—but he knew England was full of pop phenoms, and he gathered them to record a song he cowrote, “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” The success and attention led to “We Are the World,” an American all-star answer record to “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” But Geldof wasn’t done exploiting celebrity to raise money for charity. Working relentlessly, using persuasion, negotiation, guilt, and manipulation, he organized Live Aid, a daylong concert held in London and Philadelphia on July 13, 1985, and broadcast around the world.
In the U.S. Live Aid was broadcast live on ABC and MTV, whose VJs hosted the event—quite badly, almost ineptly. ABC’s audience was much larger than MTV’s, so the VJs’ inexperience was seen by millions, including TV critics who hammered the fives faces of the network. “The MTV video jockeys should hide their heads,” USA Today wrote. Live Aid raised close to $300 million, and Geldof was knighted, but the countdown began on the MTV careers of Martha Quinn, Nina Blackwood, Alan Hunter, Mark Goodman, and J.J. Jackson.
NIGEL DICK: At Phonogram, I’d made two videos for the Boomtown Rats, when their career was on the way out and the band had no money. One day my boss, Tony Powell, said, “Bob Geldof’s gonna make this charity record over the weekend. You need to shoot a video and figure out how to do it for free. And it needs
to be ready by Monday evening.” I had five days to plan, shoot, edit, and complete a video for a song which had yet to be recorded. Which actually had yet to be written.
When I showed up on Sunday morning to begin filming “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” nobody was there apart from Geldof and Trevor Horn, the producer. We had two cameras, so I set up one outside and one inside. People started arriving around noon to do the chorus, and during the day people sang their various parts. All the artists were very focused. At some point, somebody asked, “Hey, Bob, where’s the food?” And he completely lost it. He said, “This is a fucking charity record and people are starving. Go buy your own fucking lunch.”
GEORGE MICHAEL: The musicians in England had been slagging each other off all year, and everyone kind of forgot about it for the day. The only person who didn’t succumb to the charitable nature of the day was Paul Weller, who decided to have a go at me in front of everybody. I said, “Don’t be a wanker all your life. Have a day off.”
