by Craig Marks
Aside from this, I don’t really talk about the video. I want to tell the story so people get a better idea of how this machine worked. It’s like “Rock Me Tonite” is the MBA course in how a video can go really wrong. On a lesser level, this stuff goes on all the time. I just get to be the poster boy for it.
The wounds have healed and the scars aren’t that deep, because my life has evolved in a good way. I left the music business when I was forty-three. I don’t have to work. Look who’s smiling now! That video is a bad part of a good life.
MICK KLEBER: The lessons from “Rock Me Tonite” are that fame can be oddly fleeting in show business—and that rock stars should always think carefully about wearing pink.
ARNOLD STIEFEL: I mean, lordy lordy lordy. Everybody must die when they talk about this video, right? I saw it last night on YouTube, and I almost peed. I had to keep watching it over and over. All I could do was call friends and say, “You must go to YouTube right now.” The response was extraordinary. “You mean, this was on television?” I said, “It was on television. I promise.”
Chapter 22
“A WEDDING DRESS WITH NOTHING UNDERNEATH IT”
MADONNA TAKES—AND POPS OUT OF—THE CAKE AT THE FIRST VIDEO MUSIC AWARDS
MTV REJECTED MOST NETWORK TRADITIONS: THE cheerful morning shows, the sitcoms, professionalism. But the awards show was an old idea MTV couldn’t resist. To launch the Video Music Awards (VMAs), they enlisted Don Ohlmeyer, a TV powerhouse who has had significant roles at ESPN, Saturday Night Live, and Monday Night Football. The VMAs immediately became more interesting than the Grammys or any other music awards, and the ratings highlight of MTV’s year. But where the Grammys celebrates itself, and the Tonys honor theater, the VMAs celebrated MTV with a display of the channel’s growth, influence, and taste for scandal.
ALAN HUNTER: Nina Blackwood and I were waiting for a cab one day, and a woman in her sixties, shouted, “More Van Halen!” Everybody was watching MTV.
JOHN SYKES: Come 1984, we were finally big enough that we could throw our own awards show. Artists who only two years ago wouldn’t give us interviews or even make videos would show up. Les got Bette Midler and Dan Aykroyd to host, I got the Police to appear, and we were on our way.
BOB PITTMAN: Don Ohlmeyer, who had a business relationship with Nabisco and was one of my old NBC television guys, gave me the idea for the VMAs. We’d been thinking about an awards show, so it was in the back of my mind, but I didn’t know how to do it. Don said, “Look, I’ll finance it through Nabisco advertising, and I’ll produce it. We’ll be partners in it.” So that’s the way it started. We weren’t in enough homes to make it work for national advertisers, so we had to simulcast it on broadcast TV for the first couple of years.
CHIP RACHLIN: Garland called me before the first VMAs and said, “I’m having a little problem with ZZ Top. I don’t care how you get them on the show, just get them.” Their manager, Bill Ham, was quite a challenge—he was a good ol’ boy from Texas. I called and told him to set a VCR to record MTV from midnight Tuesday to midnight Wednesday, and that we would talk on Thursday. For leverage, we’d removed all ZZ Top videos from the air. Bill called me early that day and said, “I looked at those tapes, and for twenty-four hours we weren’t on MTV.” “And you’d like to fix that?” “Yeah, we’d like to fix that.”
RANDY PHILLIPS: Les convinced me that Rod Stewart should play the first Video Music Awards. Rod was the intro to the show, and Ronnie Wood performed with him. Later on in the show, Rod and Ronnie were going to present MTV’s first Lifetime Achievement Award to Quincy Jones, honoring Quincy’s career as a musician, arranger, producer, and humanitarian. So Rod and Ronnie perform, after which they head back to their dressing room and wait for their turn to present. Unfortunately, there was a bunch of booze in said dressing room. When it came time to present this solemn award to Quincy Jones—the greatest producer of all time—the two of them were completely soused. When they walked onstage, Rod was wearing the lampshade from the dressing room, and Ronnie was carrying the ironing board. They were drunk off their asses, and they totally bollixed up the introduction to Quincy Jones. Did I mention that Quincy was best friends with Steve Ross, the chairman of Warner Communications? The calls I got the next day from Les and Pittman were unbelievable. Rod actually had to apologize to Quincy.
BOB PITTMAN: The show was a wicked undertaking. We’d never tried to put on anything of that scale before. And we had never tried to organize an industry event. We made a terrible error the first year; we put VIPs in the first few rows. Industry people are totally jaded, so whenever we cut to a crowd shot, you’d see a bunch of deadpan old people. After that, we always put fans in the front rows.
CHIP RACHLIN: We booked Madonna for the first VMAs. You’d think that at this early stage of her career she’d have been head over heels to be part of it, but that wasn’t the case. She was a bit difficult from the word go. She didn’t want to perform one of her hits. She wanted to sing a new song, “Like a Virgin.”
LES GARLAND: We’re getting closer to the show, we’re building sets, and Madonna had no idea what she wanted to do. I’d call her and say, “Look, we’ve really got to know.” She called me the next day and says, “I’ve got it. I want to sing ‘Like a Virgin’ to a Bengal tiger.”
“What?” She goes, “A Bengal tiger.” And I go, “You mean like a baby one?” “No, no, full-grown.” “You want a full-grown Bengal tiger?” “A white one.” I go, “You want a white, full-grown Bengal tiger onstage at Radio City Music Hall? If it gets loose and kills Walter Yetnikoff, I’ve got a fucking problem. Come up with something else.” And she came up with the cake idea—she burst out of a wedding cake. So we had a seventeen-foot cake built.
It’s rehearsal the day before the show, and it’s time for her to do her number. She comes out in a wedding dress with nothing underneath it, and up the ladder she goes. I’m standing below and looking up. She figures out what’s going on, looks down, and says, “How do I look from down there?” And I said, “Pretty good to me!”
CHIP RACHLIN: I was standing next to Garland. We thought we were out of her sightline. She calls down, “How do my seams look?” Garland shouts, “They look good to me, honey!” To which she replies, “Fuck off!”
FREDDY DeMANN: Madonna was quoted as saying, “My manager was losing his mind,” regarding her performance of “Like a Virgin” at the VMAs. Her dress was splitting open! But she had no doubts, no concerns.
LIZ ROSENBERG, record executive: People were stunned and speechless that Madonna behaved in such a shocking fashion. People came up to me and told me her career was over before it started.
NICK RHODES: She came onstage in a wedding dress and rolled around on the floor. Afterwards, everyone knew she was going to be a big star. There was a confidence about her, an energy and a charisma, that really came across.
LES GARLAND: I thought she was very hot. Who didn’t? A few weeks after the show I said to Freddy DeMann, “Do you think I have a shot?” He says, “Go ahead, but I think you might be too late.” So I’m on the phone with her and I kind of threw it out there. And she laughed and goes, “Garland, don’t think I haven’t checked you out. I heard you like to talk.” I said, “It’s true. If anything happens between us, I’m telling everybody.” I knew I was doomed.
HUEY LEWIS: We played at the Video Music Awards and I saw Madonna for the first time. She was fantastic. After the show, she got a hard time from the press about being so sexual. I said, “Hey, wait a second. I’ll tell you why Madonna is here. She makes great records.” Which was true.
FRED SCHNEIDER: I went to the awards when Madonna did “Like a Virgin,” and Cher was there. I was excited to meet Cher. And Madonna comes up and says, “Do you think that was too shocking?” It didn’t seem shocking to me. Having lived in Athens, Georgia, you see a lot of crazier stuff. But some punk comes up to Cher, and says, “Hey, Cher, where’s Sonny?” And without missing a beat, Cher goes, “He’s home, fucking your mother.�
� That’s the sort of story you remember.
HERBIE HANCOCK: At the first Video Music Awards, “Rockit” vied with “Thriller” for the same awards. We got more than anybody else. We got five, and Michael Jackson got three. At one of the parties afterwards, Michael pulled me off to the corner and asked me, “How did you put that song together?” I have a photograph of Michael and me from that night behind my desk in my office.
TIM NEWMAN: I won Best Director for “Sharp Dressed Man.” I was engaged in some bad behavior in those days which renders memories less clear than they might otherwise be. I partied with Godley and Creme. They were prodigious smokers. We used to get so high that you just sort of drifted through wherever you were. I didn’t dance on any tables. I didn’t make out with Madonna in the bathroom. Or if I did, I don’t remember.
BOB PITTMAN: The first year, it was everything we could do to get talent to come to the event and fill the seats. By the second year, every act wanted to be on the bill, and we didn’t have nearly enough tickets to go around. That’s when we knew we had a franchise—something we could go back to year after year and didn’t have to build from scratch. In TV, that’s nirvana.
Chapter 23
“NO CABLE NETWORK IS WORTH $500 MILLION”
MTV GETS NEW OWNERS; THE FOUNDING TEAM TRASHES A HOTEL, THEN HEADS FOR THE EXIT
IN 1984, HELPED ALONG BY “THRILLER”-MANIA, MTV HAD its first profitable quarter, which was a triumph for a network that had faced the possibility of financial failure. But MTV’s two owners were distracted by much larger financial issues.
American Express had begun a high-end shopping spree: They bought up other financial services companies, including Shearson Loeb Rhoades in 1981, Lehman Brothers in 1984 for $360 million, and a few years later, E. F. Hutton, for almost $1 billion. For Amex, MTV’s profit was loose change. The original vision of selling financial services via interactive cable had not panned out and clearly never would. And a company that managed financial portfolios for millionaires was uneasy about being affiliated with Van Halen videos—or with Warners, where executives, the government alleged, were involved in bribery and racketeering. One was convicted, another pled guilty. Amex decided to get out of cable TV.
Warner Communications had astutely anticipated the rise of not only cable TV, but also the home computer, via an investment in Atari that looked brilliant: The Atari 2600 Video Computer System was the first must-have video game console, the top item on every kid’s wish list. Atari sold 25 million consoles, and millions of Space Invaders and Missile Command game cartridges. This success created “a kind of corporate euphoria” at Warners, Connie Bruck later wrote, adding, “There had probably not been another company, in the history of American business, that grew as large, as fast, as Atari.”
But Atari’s collapse was as rapid as its ascent—the company was “hemorrhaging money,” John Lack says. Atari released some bad games (its version of Pac-Man was widely despised, as was its E.T.), and the industry went into pre-Nintendo doldrums. Dragged down by Atari, Warners tallied a combined loss of $1 billion in 1983 and 1984. The stock price dropped from $63 to $17. “One of my buddies was the head of investor relations at Warners,” Jordan Rost says, “and after the Atari failure, he started getting death threats.” Warners had amassed huge debt and needed to raise cash. With a little nudge from Pac-Man, MTV was about to get a new owner.
MTV went up for sale, along with Nickelodeon and half of Showtime/The Movie Channel, as MTV Networks, and a bidding war erupted. One competing party was MTV’s own senior management, who tried to buy control of the network. They failed, losing MTV over what is now a minuscule amount of money. As a result of that failure, and new management that didn’t care for the staff’s rock n’ roll attitude, many of the people who’d made MTV a cultural phenomenon began leaving as though the building was on fire.
BOB PITTMAN: In 1984, we decided to take the company public. Warner Amex needed to reduce debt, so Jack Messman, the CFO, pitched the idea that we could sell 20 percent to the public and use that money to reduce the debt. Everything was going swimmingly, but before the public offering they decided to replace Jack Schneider with David Horowitz as CEO. Which was great for me, because David had always been a big supporter of mine.
JACK SCHNEIDER: Steve Ross didn’t like me. Which is okay, because I didn’t like him either. He was an uncultured slob. You wouldn’t want your sister to marry him. He wasn’t a class act. And I conveyed my appraisal of him to him on several occasions. I knew I was toast. But it didn’t bother me. I had a life before MTV, and I’ve had a life after it. I don’t want it on my epitaph. MTV was just a gig.
BOB PITTMAN: Originally, MTV had started off advertiser-supported, which means we didn’t charge cable operators to carry us. But now we needed money, so we had to go back and tell them, “Pay us or we’re going to go out of business.” If we hadn’t gotten those fees, MTV probably wouldn’t be profitable today. John Malone, chairman of the biggest cable provider, ATC, decided he didn’t want to pay us a lot of money, and he needed negotiating leverage, so he got Ted Turner to start the Cable Music Channel. I’m not sure Turner realized he was the stalking horse, but he was.
And the day we went public, Turner announced CMC, right on top of us. So we went into the war room and decided a couple of things. We were going to go see John Malone at ATC and try to cut a deal. But first, we were going to start a fighting brand. A fighting brand is: Let’s say you produce coffee, and it’s a great coffee, and somebody starts a competitor. The best thing for you to do is start competitive coffee to fight with the new competitor and keep your big brand out of the fight. HBO started Cinemax as a fighting brand against The Movie Channel. Whatever The Movie Channel would do, Cinemax would do. And that really knocked the legs out from under The Movie Channel.
So we came up with the idea for VH1. Turner was going to be family-friendly, he was going to sell his spots cheaper, he was going to be free to the cable operator. So we came out with VH1 and we said, “We’re gonna be free to the cable operator. We’re gonna be family-friendly. We’re gonna sell our spots cheaper.” Whatever he was, we were gonna be. I think VH1 cost $5 million. It was the cheapest network ever done. I didn’t care if it got beaten up and its teeth knocked out in the fight. I just wanted to keep my baby—MTV—out of the fight. We didn’t care a bit if VH1 was good.
PETER BARON, record executive: When VH1 launched, I made a Kenny G video for $30,000. People began walking into record stores and asking for the album by “that sax player on the beach.”
LES GARLAND: In the beginning we actually tried to make VH1 bad on purpose, because we didn’t want it to hurt MTV. We’d play a country video into an R&B video.
TOM HUNTER, MTV executive: When Lee Masters was hired to run VH1, Pittman gave him two rules to follow. One, stay within your budget. And two, don’t be successful in the ratings. Because the cost per thousand we could command for an ad on MTV was double that of VH1. So if VH1 succeeded and people advertised there, MTV would lose money.
BOB PITTMAN: VH1 was there for one reason: to get rid of Turner. And thirty-four days after VH1 launched, CMC went off the air. After that, David Horowitz and I saw Turner at some cable conference. And he pulled out a white handkerchief and got on his knees in front of David and started waving the white flag.
JAMES D. ROBINSON III: The cable industry had changed. After we formed Warner Amex, it went from simply getting the franchise in an area to having to competitively bid against other cable companies and promise local officials you’d put in a gymnasium, plant trees, do a whole host of things. You were dealing in multimillion-dollar bids to get the franchise before you even put a shovel in the ground or a wire on the poles. Also, it quickly became clear that cable was going to be an entertainment medium, and not a platform for interactive services. And while MTV was a great asset, it scared some of our directors. They wondered how this psychedelic noise fit with the profile of a financial services company. So rather than continue, we agreed to se
ll our stake. We sold too early, but from American Express’s standpoint, Warner Amex had been deemed to be not only nonstrategic, but something of a distraction.
BOB PITTMAN: Jim Robinson had a whole plan about getting into this new cable world in order to retail their services. It did not pan out. So cable came to be viewed as a non-core business. Plus there was a lot of capital expenditure in cable. It ate cash. American Express reevaluated Warner Amex and decided to get out, and they sold their stake to Steve Ross. But the collapse of Warners’ Atari business had made them financially vulnerable, too. They needed money. So the Warners board approved the purchase with the provision that Steve had to sell either MTV Networks or half of the cable franchise business. We were on the inside, so we knew Steve had to sell something. That’s when David Horowitz and I decided to try a leveraged buyout for MTV. We’d lead it, and take the senior managers with us, and we’d all share in the equity. We were introduced to the private equity firm Forstmann Little: Teddy Forstmann, Nicky Forstmann, Brian Little and Steve Klinsky. Steve was a young guy and he championed us. He got Fortsmann Little to commit.
