I Want My MTV

by Craig Marks

  BRYAN ADAMS: Sex, drugs, and rock n’ roll, that comes with the territory. I mean, it’s a lot of guys in film and music, getting together and partying. What do you expect?

  LES GARLAND: John Belushi was a dear friend, and when he died of an overdose, I said, “That’s it. I’m done with coke.” My buddy Glenn Frey, of the Eagles, nicknamed it “the enemy.”

  TOM PETTY: There was a lot of coke on the sets of music videos. I found that coke made all the waiting around even more painful. I didn’t do it much. But the crews, they were cocaine-powered. Nowadays, I can’t bear to look at one of my music videos. I can’t stand ’em. I feel like I can taste the cocaine, smell the arc lamps.

  NANCY WILSON: Jeff Stein was a really fun director to work with. He probably was not on cocaine, unlike everybody else at the time. Including us.

  ANN WILSON: Of course, including us. Otherwise we never would have done some of these videos. In the ’80s, we drank a lot of champagne, we did a lot of blow, and made a bunch of videos.

  Chapter 25

  “THEY DISS THE BEATLES”

  RUN-DMC AND THE BEASTIE BOYS SMUGGLE RAP ONTO MTV

  IF MTV DIDN’T WANT TO PLAY RICK JAMES, JUST IMAGINE how much they didn’t want to play Kool Moe Dee or Roxanne Shante.

  The black artists MTV embraced were mostly nonthreatening figures, like Lionel Richie and (no matter how much he tried to look tough) Michael Jackson. Not for the first time, MTV was accused of racism for ignoring hip-hop. To be fair, from the time it emerged in New York City, rap was dismissed as a passing fad by record labels, radio stations, newspapers, and magazines as well. But with MTV, there was an added chicken-and-egg dilemma: MTV rejected videos by rap pioneers like Kool Moe Dee and Roxanne Shante because they didn’t look very good, and labels wouldn’t invest more money to make rap videos look good because MTV wasn’t playing them. Recognizing this obstacle, Public Enemy refused to even make a video for their first album.

  The cycle was broken by Run-DMC, who were first in many things, including the first rappers to get significant MTV support, and then by the Beastie Boys, whose Def Jam label—founded by Rick Rubin and Russell Simmons—overcame MTV’s fear of rap by making striking and original videos that couldn’t be ignored. On the contrary, they were often the best videos on MTV.

  DMC, Run-DMC: When we did “Rock Box,” everybody at Profile Records was like, “Yo! The video’s on MTV! That’s the first rap video on MTV!” They were so excited. We was like, “What the hell is MTV?” We wanted our videos on New York Hot Tracks and Video Music Box.

  LIONEL MARTIN, director; TV host: Ralph McDaniels and I DJed at parties. We were hip-hop kids. I grew up in Queens, New York. Russell Simmons lived down the street from me. Ralph worked for a TV station, WNYC, which is like a public-access station. In 1984, he came up with the idea to do Video Music Box. I mean, we didn’t see rap videos anywhere else. I don’t think we did it because of MTV. It was to fill our thirst. Our show came on at 11 P.M., but it became so popular that we got an afternoon slot. Kids would come home right after school and watch Video Music Box.

  VERNON REID: They were real pioneers. I saw my first hip-hop videos on Video Music Box, because no one else was playing them.

  YOUNG MC, artist: Video Music Box was my MTV, to an extent. I lived in Queens, and my neighborhood didn’t have cable. It was mostly two-family homes, and it took a long time for that area to get wired.

  DMC: Making “Rock Box” was weird. We weren’t into it—it was just something we were told to do. And the director had the idea to have some little boy chasing after Run-DMC, to show that we had appeal to the younger generation. A little white boy, too.

  “Rock Box” was the first rap-rock record. It took Eddie Martinez’s rock guitar to get us on MTV. Our producer, Larry Smith, came up with the idea. People forget about Larry Smith, but Larry Smith owned hip-hop and rap. He produced our first two albums, and he produced Whodini. The rock-rap sound was Larry Smith’s vision, not Rick Rubin’s. Rick changed history, but Larry was there first. Actually, me and Run was against the guitar. We did two versions of “Rock Box” because we didn’t want the guitar version playing in the hood. But when DJ Red Alert played it on his radio show, black people loved the guitar version more than the hip-hop version.

  EVERLAST, artist: The first video that blew my mind was Run-DMC’s “Rock Box.” It was like when some kids heard punk rock for the first time.

  BILL ADLER: DMC came up with the concept of “King of Rock.” It’s not “King of Rap,” you know? Alien as it seemed to the average white person, our guys always thought of it as rock. You rock the mic. You rock the bells. In the video, Run-DMC bum-rush a Museum of Rock n’ Roll, and they’re blocked at the doorway by a guy from David Letterman’s show, Larry “Bud” Melman, playing a smirking security guard: “You guys don’t belong in here.” They push past him and shoulder their way into the museum. They diss Michael Jackson. They diss the Beatles. It’s all bullshit to them. There’s an exhibit in the museum with a video monitor. They look at a clip of Little Richard. No. Jerry Lee Lewis. No. Then they see their own first video, which was “Rock Box.”

  Twenty-five years later, they were inducted into the Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame, which didn’t even exist at the time. So not only did they imagine something that didn’t exist, they imagined themselves as part of it!

  DMC: We loved the fact that we walked into the Museum of Rock and got to pull the plug on a TV showing Jerry Lee Lewis, and step on Michael Jackson’s glove. We were sick of journalists asking, “Do you think hip-hop is a fad?” “Where do you think you’ll be in five years?” We felt disrespected. You’re goddamn right we wanted to cuss out the Beatles. We got a lot of grief for that video. They wanted to hang us for dissing Michael, because Michael was god. But let me tell you something—we met Michael a couple of times, and he thought it was the coolest shit ever. He said to us, “Run-DMC, I think you guys are the greatest. I love the way you stepped on my glove.”

  GEORGE BRADT: Thriller had already happened, but in general, the reaction to black artists at MTV was still That’s just not our format.

  ANN CARLI: The only rap videos they would play were by Run-DMC. MTV were comfortable playing Run-DMC because they weren’t threatening; they dressed like cartoon characters, in the hats and the jackets. They came out with a song, “King of Rock,” to try and get themselves on MTV. A lot of their videos had a cartoon quality, and that was an easier fit for MTV.

  RICK RUBIN: I was friends with people who worked at MTV, including Peter Dougherty, and it was a constant fight and struggle to get rap music on the station. I was lobbying them to play our stuff.

  PETER DOUGHERTY: This goes back to MTV’s history of racism—almost everybody who worked there, from Gale Sparrow to the VJs, came from FM rock radio. I don’t think they knew how segregated things were. The only soul music we played was Hall & Oates.

  JOE DAVOLA: We still weren’t playing black music. I wanted to put Cameo on the New Year’s show—I loved that song “Word Up.” My bosses were like, “There’s no fucking way you’re doing it.”

  CHUCK D: Around that time, Night Tracks was on TBS, late on Friday nights, and they debuted rap videos. MTV had to pay notice to that buzz. How could they not? The motherfuckers were based in New York, the birthplace of rap. Either they were totally blind to the fact, or they were racist. And if they were blind to the fact, then they were racist anyway, because they chose not to acknowledge what was happening.

  ANN CARLI: We told MTV, “This is incredibly racist, that you’re not playing rap.” As Russell Simmons used to say, “It’s not limited to African-American youth, it’s teenage music.” Boy, did he get proved right.

  KOOL MOE DEE, artist: Ann Carli and Russell Simmons deserve credit for believing hip-hop artists should be treated like mainstream artists. We were aware that there was one video budget for an R&B or hip-hop act and another budget for a pop act. We had to fight to even have a video budget in our contract. The record label would
tell us we could do one video, and if our single sold 250,000 copies, we could potentially get a second video. Labels didn’t believe in spending money on hip-hop videos.

  LIONEL MARTIN: After hosting Video Music Box, I got an opportunity to direct my first music video, by Roxanne Shante—“Roxanne’s Revenge.” The budget was $400.

  DMC: Jam Master Jay, our DJ, had been sampling “Walk This Way” for years. We didn’t even call it “Walk This Way.” We didn’t know who Aerosmith was. We just knew that in Jay’s crate there was an album cover that said Toys in the Attic, and it had a picture of a toy chest and a teddy bear. We’d say, “Get Toys in the Attic and play number four.”

  When we were making Raising Hell, we wanted to put something old-school on the album, and Jay was like, “Yo, let’s do Toys in the Attic,” because that beat is real B-boy. If it had been up to us, our version of “Walk This Way” would have just been the beat, a couple of the guitars, and me and Run bragging about how great we are. But Rick Rubin came into the studio and was like, “What are you listening to?” We said, “This is Toys in the Attic.” He was like, “No, the name of the record is ‘Walk This Way’ and the name of the band is Aerosmith.” Then he said, “It would be really great if you guys remade this song with Aerosmith. Not just sample it. Actually do the record over.”

  Jay, being a visionary, goes, “Whoa, great idea.” Me and Run turned to Jay like, “What the fuck you talking about?” Rick took the record off the turntable and handed it to me and Run. He said, “Go learn this song.” We was like, “Nah, that’s bullshit.” We took the record home to the basement, dropped the needle, and we hear Steven Tyler sing “backstroke lover always hidin’ ’neath the covers . . .” We got on the phone with Russell Simmons: “Yo, this is hillbilly gibberish”—we couldn’t even understand what this guy was saying. We definitely didn’t know it was about a dude having sex. We just knew we completely hated it.

  Russell was screaming at us, “Y’all stupid motherfuckers, you gotta do this record!” And we hung up the phone on him. For six hours we sat in our basement in Hollis, Queens, letting the phone ring, me and Run looking at each other, like, “You pick it up.” “No, you pick it up.” We know it’s Russell and Rick, and we ain’t doing this record. So finally I pick up the phone, and it’s Jay. Russell’s in the background, screaming, and Jay tells Russell, “Shut up, man. You know they stupid little kids, you keep screaming at ’em, they ain’t never gonna do this.”

  Jay says, “Yo, don’t bug out, Rick went and got Aerosmith, they’re here in the studio, Steven’s doing his vocals and he’s busting your ass.” Jay was using psychology. But me and Run, we’re crying, “Jay, this song’s gonna ruin us! We already done ‘Rock Box’ and ‘King of Rock.’ We’re taking this rock-rap shit too fucking far.” So Jay said, “Do it like a Run-DMC record. Switch off. Run, you take a word, then D, you take a word.” We went back to the studio and tried it like Jay wanted. And it worked. That record changed our lives. It changed theirs, too. Aerosmith were going through a rough patch in their career when we did “Walk This Way.” That video got them motherfuckers a new $40 million record deal. They should have given us 10 percent of that.

  RICK RUBIN: I don’t think it was hard for me to get Aerosmith to record the song, or to make the video. They were going through a down period. They’d reformed, put out one album, and it flopped. The record and the video had a huge effect on both groups. It opened the door to Run-DMC’s full suburban crossover, and it reminded people how great Aerosmith was.

  DMC: The video was amazing. We shot it at an old theater in Union City, New Jersey. My favorite part is when Steven takes a mike stand and busts a hole in the wall. That was prophetic. It showed our worlds coming together. And that’s what happened when MTV played the video. It went into all sorts of living rooms, and as soon as people saw it, they were addicted to rap.

  BETH McCARTHY: I was a PA on the New Year’s Eve show when the Beastie Boys’ Licensed to Ill had just come out. Mark Goodman almost got into a fist fight with them because they were rude to his wife.

  ADAM HOROVITZ: “Fight for Your Right (to Party)” started as a joke. The goal was “Let’s write a stupid frat song. That’ll be funny.” Then people liked it. So Rick said we had to make a video.

  RIC MENELLO, director: I was a desk clerk at the NYU dorm from midnight to 8 A.M. I knew a lot about movies. Rick Rubin used to come by. Russell Simmons used to come to the dorm. The Beastie Boys would come by, especially Adam Horovitz, because his dad was a play wright and a screenwriter. You pop by Menello at the front desk, bullshit a little, then split. One day, Rubin said, “I think you should direct the next Beastie Boys video.” That was “Fight for Your Right (to Party).” I was like, “No.” ’Cause directing is sacred to me. I knew I would feel bad if I fucked it up.

  ADAM HOROVITZ: I used to cut school and hang out at Rick Rubin’s dorm room, and Menello would be there at four in the morning, working the desk. We said to Rick, “That guy’s gonna direct the video? Okay, if you say so.”

  RICK RUBIN: Menello knew more about film than anybody. Why did I think he could direct a video? I thought anybody could. Because it was more about the idea than about technical ability. Concept was king.

  RIC MENELLO: Rubin said, “You’re going to do it.” (“I’m not doing it.”) “You’re going to do it!” (“All right, I’ll do it.”) We were two loudmouths and we had knock-down, drag-out yelling sessions. I decided to use Adam Dubin, Rick’s roommate, as a codirector, so if it went bad, I would blame him.

  ADAM DUBIN: “Fight for Your Right (to Party)” caught fire on radio, and MTV said, “We’re holding a spot in heavy rotation. If we don’t have a video two weeks from now, we’re moving on.” It was an ultimatum. What Rubin specifically did not want was any of the slew of video directors who, on any other day, were directing Coca-Cola commercials. So Rubin called Menello. Now, Menello is a great character. He’s ten years older than me, and he knows more about film than anybody you know. He’s like an idiot savant of film, and he would preside behind the desk of Weinstein dorm. He would tell you about Orson Welles for four hours, and imitate him as he’s doing it.

  I’d graduated NYU film school in May of ’86, and I’d produced and directed my own student films, so Menello brought me in. He hit on the look and the feel of the video by saying, “It’s going to be like the party scene in Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” which is really just a long series of gags. In fact, we stole some of the gags from director Blake Edwards, particularly having a guy with an eye patch. We’d known the Beastie Boys for years, and they were knuckleheads. We said, “Who are these guys? They’re the guys who come to the party and drink all your beer, steal your girls, wreck the place, and then leave.” We gave that image to them.

  We had $20,000 for a two-day shoot, which is insane. It was just a wing and a prayer.

  ADAM HOROVITZ: We shot at our friend Sunny Bak’s loft, a block away from the movie theater on Nineteenth and Broadway. The premise was Rick Rubin’s: a party that turns into a food fight. Just about everyone in the video was a friend of ours. My two best friends to this day—Cey Adams, who did a bunch of artwork for us, and Nadia Dajani, who I met in elementary school—were pie throwers in the video. The nerds at the beginning were our old friends Ricky Powell and David Sparks. My favorite thing about that video is that we made it with our friends, and I’m still friends with many of those people.

  TABITHA SOREN, MTV reporter: I’m in that video, with dyed blond hair. I’m still close friends with Rick Rubin, and they needed extras for the video. I worked hard at not getting any pie goo on me, because there was no money for the budget, so they went to the back of a supermarket, and from the garbage, they grabbed whipped cream that had expired and was rancid. The smell in that room, when everybody was done throwing pies, was like rotten eggs. You wanted to throw up.

  RICK RUBIN: If you put a lot of whipped cream in a hot room for a few hours, it ends up smelling horribly bad.

  RIC MENELLO: W
e wrecked the place. We threw pies, we kicked in the door to the bathroom. The idea of the video was infantile rebellion. Some people, like frat boys, didn’t see the satire of it. It’s not so much satire as a kind of blanket, cartoonish rejection of anything adult. It was stupid, but stupidity did not preclude intelligence around the edges. The style was rigorous and exact. It was influenced by Jerry Lewis, the Three Stooges, and silent movies. I played off the song—when the lyric goes, “Your mom busted in,” then I busted in as the janitor. I wanted to be crude. I wanted to raise a fist against videos being very slick.

  RICK RUBIN: It was rooted in Hal Roach’s slapstick comedies, especially his Our Gang films of the ’20s and ’30s. Years later, those three Beastie Boys characters are iconic. People know who those three guys are; they know those characters like they would know cartoon characters.

  ADAM DUBIN: Adam Yauch grabs a guitar and smashes it, which is a gag we stole from Animal House. And it ends in a Three Stooges pie fight, where it suddenly ropes in everybody. Rick Rubin got a pie in the face, and the first one hit him in the chest, so Ad-Rock ran through and tried to stuff another pie in his face. That’s the footage we used.