I Want My MTV

by Craig Marks

  MAK GILCHRIST: I was really into funk, and I thought, I get to be the funky bass player who slaps the bass. As you can see, I insisted on slapping the bass, even though the song had no slapping bass whatsoever. In fact, I’m not even dancing to the tune that’s playing. I am not in rhythm with anybody or anything.

  If you’re looking at the video, from right to left, Julie Pankhurst is the keyboard player. Patty Kelly, the guitarist, is next, standing on Robert’s right. I’m the bassist, and Julia Bolino is on the far right. She’s the one with what we called the autonomous breast, the girl whose boob is swinging to its own tune. And behind us is the drummer, Kathy Davies. Julie Pankhurst is the one whose legs get a close-up.

  We girls were sitting together on lunch break, and Terence slammed a bottle of wine on the table and said, “Right, you lot, get your chops around that.” I got a little tipsy. In fact, I got rather drunk. After lunch, my ankles began to wobble in those heels. My ankle sort of clicked over and I lost my balance. The neck of my bass hit Robert in the back of the head, and his head hit the microphone. That would have been a hilarious outtake.

  JOHN TAYLOR: Robert Palmer wasn’t comfortable doing videos. “Addicted to Love” exemplified how he felt about it—it’s a video commenting on itself. He’s making fun of it. He didn’t really step outside of that. He did “I Didn’t Mean to Turn You On” and “Simply Irresistible,” and they’re both variations on “Addicted to Love.” He was a bit too old and self-conscious by the time videos became important.

  JULIA BOLINO: Robert Palmer was very polite, very professional. His wife was there, so perhaps he had no choice.

  MAK GILCHRIST: None of us felt we were being exploited in that video. That was a shock to me, when people said the video was demeaning to women. I thought the opposite; I thought we looked strong and quite scary.

  JULIA BOLINO: The dresses were by Azzedine Alaïa. We had no idea they were see-through. It was only when I saw the video played back that I was like, Oh my God, you can see my boobs. I’ve always had quite big boobs.

  MAK GILCHRIST: I kept it quiet that I was involved in the video. It did not appear on my résumé. When the video comes to the point where you see me licking my lips, I would go crimson and leave the room. I remember walking into bars, and if it was on TV, I’d turn around and walk back out. I was horrified. My best friend Gil would introduce me to his male friends and say, “This is the one from the Robert Palmer video.” And the guy would look at me in a way that made me want to wash my hands straightaway.

  BRUCE ALLEN: You had to have great-looking babes in your videos. And the biggest arguments, of course, were over who got to pick the girls.

  JOEY ALLEN, Warrant: Once you picked a director, you’d get a book of the two hundred hottest women in LA: models, video girls, actresses, Playmates, Penthouse Pets. We’d say, “Who in the band is single?” And that guy got to pick.

  SIMON LE BON: I had one on-set romance, and I’m sure Nick had at least one. Sheila, who turned into a cat in the “Hungry Like the Wolf” video, she became the girlfriend of our manager Michael Berrow for a year after that.

  BRIAN SETZER: I asked out the girl in the “Stray Cat Strut” video and she said no.

  RICK SPRINGFIELD: When I was shooting “Affair of the Heart,” I pulled an extra out of the crowd and took her in a back room. It was pretty quick. That went on all the time. I was a big extras person, to be honest. Extras were great.

  TOM PETTY: We didn’t go for the sexy video girl thing. I knew it would cheapen our long-term play. I wasn’t happy the way videos started to exploit women. I thought, we’re all better than this, and that the music should do the job.

  HUEY LEWIS: We had some attractive women in our videos. The woman in “Stuck with You” is Keely Smith, Pierce Brosnan’s wife. And the gal in “Heart and Soul” and “I Want a New Drug” is Signy Coleman, who later was a regular on The Young & The Restless. I’d like to tell you that I chose the women in my videos like Diamond Dave Roth did, but I didn’t.

  STEPHEN PEARCY: I was looking through Playboy when I saw a photo of Marianne Gravatte and said, “I want her.” Our manager said, “We’ll get her.” We got her for the “Lay It Down” video. I don’t think I got her that way, but I probably tried. Now the girl in “You Think You’re Tough,” that one I got ahold of. But I couldn’t tell you her name to save my life.

  DON BARNES: Julianne Phillips was in “If I’d Been the One.” She was Bruce Springsteen’s future wife; supposedly, he first saw her in our video. Mercy. It was hard to keep your eyes off her, or even think about anything else in the shoot.

  CAMILLE GRAMMER, Club MTV dancer: I did a few videos, including David Lee Roth’s “Sensible Shoes.” I was one of the two blonde—what did they call them?—oh yeah, “video vixens.” I remember some tabloid calling me that when I started dating Kelsey Grammer. I was in Colin Quinn’s “Going Back to Brooklyn,” which was a parody of LL Cool J’s “Going Back to Cali.” Ben Stiller directed that. I did a Kool Moe Dee video, a Manitoba’s Wild Kingdom video, plus a few others I can’t even remember. I played a prom queen, a bride, a nun. It ran the gamut.

  ANNE-MARIE MACKAY: On one shoot, we had to wait around because the artist—I won’t say who it was—wouldn’t come out of his trailer until his management arranged to fly in—from another country!—some young women he knew. We waited and waited, and eventually these gorgeous women arrived. It was one of those moments where you realize, some people have completely different concepts of what making a video is all about.

  REBECCA BLAKE, director: When Prince’s manager called and asked if I would direct “Kiss,” the first thing out of my mouth was “I’d like to speak to Prince first, and I’m not doing it unless I can bring in my own hair, makeup, models, and choreographer.” A few minutes later, Prince called me. He was charming. The conversation was brief and there was a lot of giggling on his end.

  I was on a heavy vampire kick—I was into Anne Rice very early—so that’s where the black veil on the dancer’s head comes from. Prince was brilliant in terms of dance and choreography. You could show him something and three seconds later he could do it perfectly. He’s also funnier than people know. I’d put him next to a six-foot-tall model and he would give me an expression like, “Are you kidding? Where’s my apple box?” He was the one who decided at the last minute to use Wendy in “Kiss.” They had great chemistry, and they were funny together. Her facial expressions in that video were perfect.

  LISA COLEMAN: At the last minute, Prince asked Wendy Melvoin to be in “Kiss.” Wendy and I were living together, and he called her: “I’m shooting the video today. Why don’t you come down and play guitar?” As it turns out, the stuff with Wendy playing guitar stole the show. She ended up being more of the focus than the hot female dancer with the see-through scarves. When Prince dances up to Wendy and sings “You got to not talk dirty, baby / If you wanna impress me,” and Wendy smiles and shrugs? There was something special about that. But I admit, when I saw that video, I felt a little left out and jealous.

  JEFF AYEROFF: Rebecca Blake was an outlandish, powerful woman. Both she and Prince were over the top. It was a fusion of over-the-top-ness. She directed “Kiss,” which was the most elegant Prince video.

  REBECCA BLAKE: Prince would not talk to anyone but me. No one. Five years after “Kiss,” when I was working on his “Cream” video, a producer said, “I’m gonna tell Prince this and that.” I said, “No, you’re not.” He said, “Yes, I am. I’m gonna talk to Prince.” A few days later, he said, “You’re right. I’m never talking to Prince ’cause he won’t let me.”

  TIM CLAWSON, producer: When I worked at Limelight, I routinely flew to Minnesota for meetings with Prince. We’d get a call from Steve Fargnoli—“Prince has an idea for a video”—and I’d meet him the next day. My favorite Prince pitch was for a video that never happened, for a song on Lovesexy. He was describing a scene where he’d be in bed with a girl, and beside the bed would be a neon sign that said “Lovesexy.�
�� He said, “We can do that at my house.” I said, “We’ll build the sign on the set and have it transported over.”

  And he said, “We can do it at my house.” And I thought, Ohhh, I get it: You have a neon sign in your bedroom that says “Lovesexy.” Right.

  ROB KAHANE, manager: You’ve seen the Wham! videos—two guys running around in shorts, jumping around onstage. The purpose of the Faith videos was to wipe out that image. Starting with “I Want Your Sex,” George Michael looks very masculine in videos. He wanted a kind of throwback, James Dean vibe. And “Faith” is one of the top 20 videos ever made, in terms of launching and executing an image.

  ANDY MORAHAN: “I Want Your Sex” was George doing his version of Prince’s “Kiss.” The girl in “I Want Your Sex” was Kathy Jeung, who was his makeup artist and traveled with him all the time, and people assumed there was something going on between them. She was a useful foil. I think he was terrified about coming out. The blindfold, and the writing with lipstick on Kathy’s body, that was George’s idea. He was one of the first artists pushing sexual imagery on MTV. Personally, I find the blindfold and lipstick to be embarrassing—it was a bit obvious, even at the time—but George was exploring the boundaries of what he could get away with. It was his first solo video and he was trying to make an impression. He knew what was going to push people’s buttons. Like Madonna and Prince, he had a better understanding of his career and the marketplace than his record company did.

  ROB KAHANE: George was very involved in the editing of his videos, to the degree that he would do a complete re-edit of what the director had done, or sit with the director every day in the editing bay. He was very savvy when it came to videos.

  ALEX COLETTI, MTV producer: An associate producer got fired because he said there was a transvestite in “I Want Your Sex.” He wrote it in a script and either Mark Goodman or J.J. Jackson said it on the air, and the producer took the fall for it. That’s when I was hired on a trial basis, to work with the VJs.

  LOU STELLATO, MTV staff: The APs were held responsible for what VJs said. Allie Eberhardt was one of the first floor producers for the VJs, and there was a rumor that he got in trouble because Mark Goodman said the British press was reporting that the woman in “I Want Your Sex” video was a transsexual. Allie was the producer of that segment, and George saw it and called. It was a big deal. It was insane how big a deal it was.

  JOHN DIAZ: Andy Morahan made a man of George Michael. George never exuded any, um, manhood prior to working with Andy. Andy toughed him up, made him look like a ladies’ man.

  ANDY MORAHAN: George’s sexuality was kept quiet. He had armies of girl fans, and people used to think it was important to keep it a secret. But I’ll put it this way: The way he looks on film, you’d be hard pressed not to pick up on it.

  ROB KAHANE: I didn’t pick up on it. I had no idea he wasn’t heterosexual, and he lived with my family and me half the time. Maybe I was naive; my wife knew more than I did. He had a girlfriend, Kathy Jeung, and she spent many nights at my place. They slept in the same room. But I didn’t want to know, because I did not want to lie. So I was probably one of the last people to find out.

  While his mother was alive, George did not want to come out. As soon as his mom passed, he became a different person. He was really unhappy, and didn’t give a shit about a lot of things.

  ANDY MORAHAN: George wanted to be taken more seriously, so it fit for him to harken back visually to an icon like Elvis Presley. George was very aware of what he was doing. “Faith” was a dry-sounding record, so we wanted something more 2D than 3D. That’s why we kept the background white, and shot the jukebox very flat. A lot of people were getting flashy and clever with their videos, whereas “Faith” stripped everything away. It was so successful that a dozen people have claimed they styled George for it. The truth is, he didn’t like any of the clothes a stylist picked out, so we drove down Melrose to a shop called Leathers and Treasures and found a leather jacket. Then we walked across the road to a pawnshop and found an acoustic guitar. George barely even played guitar. When we got back to the shoot, he added pearls to his jacket. He says now that he was giving out clues to his sexuality.

  The girl in “Father Figure,” Tanya Coleridge, was the girlfriend of the director Tony Scott. She had a sophisticated look, kind of harsh, very Helmut Newton, and that fit the provocativeness of Faith. In the video, George is basically stalking her, which was a risky part for a huge pop star to play. He also doesn’t lip-sync in the video. He had sold something like 8 million copies of Faith by then, and the label was terrified by the video. George was braver than they were.

  We staged a runway show for the video, and that sequence has been ripped off God knows how many times. I think “Father Figure” stands up really well. I mean, apart from the way George looks.

  ROB KAHANE: A few years later, when George came out to me, I was in Brazil with him, to do Rock in Rio. He said, “I need you to come to my hotel as soon as possible.” He never called me like that. So I raced to his hotel, and he walked out of the bathroom with his entire head shaved, like a Freddie Mercury haircut. He’d cut off all those beautiful locks, and we were about to go on national television. He said, “You hate it!” I said, “Wait a second, I need to get used to it.” Then I go, “Yeah, I hate it.” At that point, he indicated to me that he was gay. I said, “Okay. Now on to phase two.”

  Chapter 28

  “THE LEGION OF DECENCY”

  CENSORING VIDEOS, FOR FUN AND PROFIT

  A MOTHER WAS WATCHING TV WITH HER YOUNG daughter when Van Halen’s “Hot for Teacher” came on. The six year old, demonstrating a precocious ability to follow plot, soon asked, “Mom, why is the teacher taking off her clothes?”

  The mother, Tipper Gore, was married to United States Senator Al Gore, and as she spoke to her circle of friends, many of whom were also married to politicians, she discovered a shared fear: Music videos were corrupting their children by exposing them to stacked blondes in bikinis, dancing on school desks. But it wasn’t only sexuality they feared. On another occasion, Gore and her six year old saw Tom Petty’s “Don’t Come Around Here No More” video—some other parent, having gone through the “Hot for Teacher” incident, might have learned a lesson and banished MTV from the home—and the girl was “disturbed,” Gore said, “because the last scene showed [an actress] turning into a cake and being sliced up.”

  Gore and her friends formed the Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC), and for a few months they wrote articles and gave interviews denouncing what they called “porno rock.” In September 1985, Senator John Danforth, also married to a PMRC member, convened a congressional hearing to discuss the excesses of rock music in the age of cable TV. And that is how the Commerce Committee of the 99th Congress of the United States, like millions of other Americans, watched “Hot for Teacher” and Twisted Sister’s “We’re Not Going to Take It” when they should have been working.

  “Graphic sex, sadomasochism and violence, particularly toward women, are rampant on MTV,” Tipper Gore testified. MTV had been asking bands to edit and tone down videos ever since “Girls on Film.” By the time of the PMRC hearings, the network had created a formal system of review, in which a (one-person) standards and practices department examined every video before it could air. Officially, MTV had a policy against excessive sex or violence—though to the delight of most viewers, the policy proved to be pretty flexible.

  TOM PETTY: Dave Stewart and I wrote and produced “Don’t Come Around Here No More.” We were talking about the video while we were in the studio, and he said, “I’ve always wanted to be the guy sitting on a mushroom with long nails and a hookah. You know, like in Alice in Wonderland.” And I said, “That’s it. We’ll do Alice.”

  Jeff Stein just had a big success with the Cars’ “You Might Think,” and he really caught on to our idea and took it forward. When I saw the set, I went, “Oh man, we killed it.” We didn’t use any special effects. Everything that’s big was big, and every
thing that’s small was small. It was a two-day shoot, and each day was fourteen hours, way into the night. Even for musicians, those were challenging hours. But we knew while we were doing it how shit-hot it was.

  The girl who played Alice was named Wish. Stan Lynch, our drummer, dated her for years. And our bassist, Howie Epstein, had a kid with one of the other girls from the video. Videos were a great place to meet really hot women.

  WISH FOLEY, actress: When I went to the audition, there were fifteen or twenty girls coming in at the same time. They were models, in skimpy leather outfits with short skirts. Boobs everywhere. It was kind of gross, they would stand in front of a mirror and do their “come hither” look. And here I am, dressed up like Alice in Wonderland.