by Craig Marks
BOBBY BROWN: That was my diamond bracelet falling off my wrist. I know everybody says it was a package of coke or some shit. They can say what they want. I know what happened. Anyway, why would I pick it up if it was coke? “Wait, wait, my shit fell?!” No.
TRACEY JORDAN, record executive: Oh, I was there for that. I was with Bobby—I’ve known him since he was like thirteen years old. He was dancing around the stage and all of a sudden, something flew out of his pocket. Then he did this elaborate dance step to pick it up and put it back in his pocket. And I’m like, “What the hell was that?” I have my suspicions. It was probably something to, ahh, lift his spirits.
JOEL GALLEN: Bobby Brown dropped his coke vial onstage. The show always runs a bit long, so they want us to take out ten minutes and clean things up for rebroadcast. When I started editing, I was like, “Wait a second—what’s going on?” He was dancing a thousand miles an hour. There was a close-up of Bobby, who looks panicked, then you see a little thing in the foreground—which is definitely a coke vial—then it cuts back to Bobby looking around, like, “What should I do?” Bobby picks it up, puts it in his pocket, and keeps singing. If you look at the clip on YouTube, it’s pretty hilarious.
TOM PETTY: I played the VMAs with Axl Rose and Izzy Stradlin from Guns N’ Roses—we did “Free Fallin’” and “Heartbreak Hotel.” I thought it was kind of a shaky performance. We didn’t get a lot of rehearsal time, because Cher was doing a big production number and there wasn’t much time for us.
As we finished “Heartbreak Hotel” and walked offstage, Vince Neil from Mötley Crüe came running out of the wings and decked Izzy, hit him right in the face. Our sound guy, Jim Lenahan, was walking off the stage with us, and Lenahan was like, “I don’t even know this Izzy kid, but he’s with us,” so he decked Vince Neil. Izzy was getting a lot of black eyes those days. I think he already had a black eye before Vince hit him.
SEBASTIAN BACH: I was on the side of the stage when Vince punched Izzy. Vince’s gold bracelet flew off his wrist as he cracked Izzy. It was a big chunk of gold. Vince was huffing and puffing, and I was like, “Dude, I’ve got your bracelet.” He’s like, “You can have it, man.” In the day, if somebody said something bad about your band, you were obliged to punch him. It was considered totally appropriate.
ALAN NIVEN: Izzy and I were walking offstage when Vince came out of the darkness and whomped Izzy on the face, at which point I threw Vince to the floor and put my left hand around his throat. I cocked up my right arm to bury in his nose, and had a moment of lucidity where I looked at his rhinoplasty, said, “That’s too expensive,” and let him up. Then Axl ran all over the building, trying to find Mötley and extend the dialogue further. It was very timely that Nikki had jumped into a limo and fled the scene.
TOM FRESTON: When Neil Young’s “This Note’s for You” won Video of the Year at the 1989 VMAs, that was our audience saying, “Fuck you, MTV.” And we deserved it.
BOB MERLIS, record executive: “This Note’s for You” was a parody. Neil was at war with the way the commercial world had co-opted music and turned it into a vehicle for shilling products. The look of the bar in the video is a parody of the Michelob commercials Eric Clapton did. A Michael Jackson imitator’s hair catches on fire, and a Whitney Houston impersonator puts out his hair fire, presumably with a can of Coke. It was the era of selling out, and Neil was an iconoclast.
JULIEN TEMPLE: Beer companies and the like were beginning to take over music. A lot of beer ads were using rock musicians. It felt like the line between videos and commercials was blurring, and “This Note’s for You” was a great opportunity to make a piece about that. MTV was making lots of money from those advertisers, so anything that made fun of them was going to be incendiary in MTV’s eyes. We managed to get banned from MTV and win the Best Video of the Year award. That was the peak of my video-making career.
TOM FRESTON: People thought we banned it because the video spoofed us. But that wasn’t the reason. Our ad salespeople said, “If we have products in videos, advertisers aren’t going to bother to buy time anymore. They’ll just put their products in the videos.” And I went along with them. Neil Young made a big stink about it in the press. We looked like a bunch of pussies. We were a bunch of pussies. That’s a fact. Not playing “This Note’s for You” was the biggest mistake I made at MTV.
JOEL GALLEN: In 1989, Andrew Dice Clay was the hottest comedian on the planet. He was racy and edgy, MTV was racy and edgy, so we wanted to roll the dice with him, so to speak, and give him a spot. He was fine in rehearsal. Night of the show, the stage manager said to him, “We’re running long, you gotta trim your act a little bit.” And he didn’t react kindly to that. He started saying things he shouldn’t say. The Dice incident was fantastic for the VMAs. We wouldn’t admit it at the time, but controversy is great. You want people to talk about the show. You want it to be a show where anything can happen, and there’s spontaneity and danger.
LEE MASTERS: I asked Doug Herzog, over and over, whether Dice would keep it clean, and Doug kept saying, “He’s gonna keep it clean, he’s gonna keep it clean.” And so Dice starts doing his act, and he’s keeping it clean, but no one’s laughing. I was five rows back and I could see it in his eyes: He was bombing and he knew it. And he launched into “Hickory dickory dock, this bitch was sucking my cock.” Or whatever it was. Freston went nuts, and John Reardon, who ran affiliate and ad sales, went nuts
ARSENIO HALL: Dick Clark was producing the show, and he and I were standing in the wings. He had a headset on and I didn’t, so I didn’t know what Dice was saying. Then I saw Dick throw his headset on the podium. He suggested I pull Dice off the stage. I said, “That’s not what I do. I do jokes.” I saw Dice last month, and told him I was given the assignment of pulling him off, and we laughed our asses off. I think Dice knew what he was doing. You remembered him the next day.
TOM FRESTON: It was a scene. It was one of those moments you hoped for at the VMAs. Barry Kluger, who ran communications, said to the press, “We’re banning him for life from MTV.” Which was crazy. Barry had one of those Al Haig moments.
LEE MASTERS: The VMAs were high stress, so every year I’d go on vacation immediately after. That year, I was feeling pretty good. VMA ratings were the highest they’d been since the first one. I said to my wife, “For the last four years, every day I went to work I felt I could get fired. I don’t feel that way anymore. I feel safe.” I went back to work on Monday, and I got fired. If you ask people, they’ll say no, but John Reardon wanted to be president of MTV, and he used the Dice Clay thing as a catalyst to get Tom Freston to push me out.
Two days later, I got an offer to run what was then Movietime, which we turned into E!, which made my career. And a year after he fired me, Freston fired Reardon. To this day, Tom will say, “That was the worst business decision I ever made, when we let you leave.” And I say, “Tom, you didn’t let me leave, you told me to leave!”
ABBEY KONOWITCH: Don Henley was an edgy guy, but we got on. In 1990, I got Henley to come to the VMAs, when “End of the Innocence” was up for a few awards. But this was the year of MC Hammer. Hammer won everything. About halfway through the show, I got bored and went for a walk backstage. I went upstairs in the offices of the Universal Amphitheater, and there’s Don Henley, Don’s manager Irving Azoff, and his wife Shelli. They’re watching a monitor.
This will be shocking for some people to hear, but I knew that in ten minutes, Henley was going to win the award for Best Male Video. And when that award was presented, he couldn’t be up in this office. I said, “So how long you gonna stay up here, Don?” He goes, “For the rest of the night. Hammer’s winning everything. It’s embarrassing for me to sit in the audience and lose to Hammer.”
I said, “Don, it would be helpful to me if you were in your seat when the Best Male Video award comes up.” He goes, “No. I’m not going to. I don’t want to be embarrassed.”
Then I said to Irving, “It would make me feel good if Don cou
ld be in his seat.” He goes, “Ab, he’s not gonna do it!” I said, “Irving, can you please tell him to go sit in his seat.” All of a sudden, Don realized why I needed him in his seat. He fixed his shirt and tie, went downstairs, and accepted the award for “End of the Innocence.”
SINEAD O’CONNOR: It was funny, when we won the award for “Nothing Compares 2 U,” Madonna was raging about it, because she had her “Vogue” video nominated also, and we fucked her. She and Sandra Bernhard had been really nasty about me in magazine interviews, based on how I looked. As if being blond and having big tits and a big ass was more important. Which it is, if you’re Madonna, because your records aren’t great, so all you have to sell is tits and ass. So yeah, I was very pleased to beat the shit out of her that night.
TABITHA SOREN: Whenever I covered the VMAs, they said, “It’s a party, Tabitha. Don’t ask the rock stars anything serious. It’s supposed to be light.” I always thought, What a waste of time.
ARSENIO HALL: One year I was in the host dressing room, and next to me was Madonna; next to her was Janet Jackson. Madonna’s door was cracked open and I heard her talk about Janet, not in a positive way, and one of Janet’s people heard it, too. It was always a soap opera.
CINDY CRAWFORD: I loved doing the VMAs, because everyone was there. One time, Todd Oldham loaned me a dress to wear, and I was sewn into it. Only later did we figure out that there was no way for me to pee. It was 5 P.M. until 12:30 A.M., when I could get the dress off. That was a long night.
VAN TOFFLER, MTV executive: I was the guy who got Pee-wee Herman to open the 1991 VMAs. I spoke to his manager for months. When he said yes, I danced on Doug Herzog’s desk.
JOE GALLEN: Pee-wee Herman had been arrested a few months before the VMAs, for masturbating in a movie theater. This became the object of jokes on every late-night talk show. Dana Friedman, who nows runs Fox Television production, was his publicist, and I started conversations with her about Pee-wee appearing on the show. After the arrest, he had basically gone into hiding. The first line we pitched him was “Heard any good jokes lately?” We pitched a few other ideas back and forth, but we never could beat that one. His appearance was a big secret. I had to put him in a special dressing room in the basement. We had to make sure it was forty-five degrees in there, because otherwise his makeup would start coming off.
ARSENIO HALL: Pee-wee Herman upstaged my monologue. They told me Pee-wee was gonna open the show, and I’m like, You know what? No monologue can beat that.
BILLY IDOL: I was trying to figure out how I could make presenting an award a bit of fun, not just open an envelope and announce the winner. The pants I was wearing had a large zipper. So I realized I could stick the envelope inside my trousers, zip up, then pull it out of my crotch and read it. When I thrust my hand into my trousers, you could hear a gasp from the audience. I can imagine the director going, “For Christ’s sake, don’t show his balls! If he gets his dick out, cut to anything else.” I love Jane’s Addiction, so I was proud to give them an award.
DAVE NAVARRO: Billy Idol announced our song as “Been Caught Wanking,” because that was on the heels of Pee-wee Herman getting caught masturbating in a movie theater. I accepted the award. This was my first time on live television. I’m saying “Thank you very much,” but in my head the dialogue was “Get the fuck out of here, because there’s drugs at home.” I was a big junkie. I went onstage, took the award, got in the car, and left. Within fifteen minutes of leaving the podium, I was in my cousin’s house, shooting dope.
The next morning, I went to score drugs and the dealer recognized me. He’s like, “Hey, man, I saw you on TV last night.” And he gave me a few extra bags of heroin. At that moment, I realized the power of MTV.
BRET MICHAELS: CC DeVille was completely hammered the night of the VMAs. At rehearsals, he’d yell, “Fuck this, I’m going solo!”
Our original plan had been to play “Something to Believe In,” but it was too long, so we agreed on “Unskinny Bop.” That’s what we rehearsed. By showtime, CC was annihilated. And I’d had a couple of drinks. I’m not innocent here either. So we ran onstage and launched into “Unskinny Bop.” We didn’t realize the show was in a commercial break. We’re up there playing, and MTV is screaming at us to stop. By then we’d already played the song! We didn’t know what to do. All of a sudden CC goes, “What the fuck, let’s go into ‘Talk Dirty to Me.’” He starts playing it, we follow along, and the whole MTV crew is waving for us to stop. But at this point we’re already in. And then CC’s guitar cord came unplugged. He didn’t even know it. I walked over to him and said, “CC, your fucking guitar cord is out of your guitar, no one can hear you.” He’s like, “Oh shit!” And he reaches over and plugs it back in. You can watch it on YouTube, it’s hilarious.
When we came offstage, I walked one way and CC walked the other, and he made a few comments to me that I won’t repeat. I said, “Go fuck yourself.” He said, “Fuck you.” I’m not a guy to back down, so I’m like, “Wait a minute, if you want to talk, let’s talk right now.” He shoved me, I shoved him, and bing bang boom, we were on the ground, kicking and punching each other. We fought on the side of the stage, in between Eddie Van Halen and Cindy Crawford. Then MTV bitched us out like crazy for the performance. They crucified us. It wasn’t like we were trying to be malicious. It was an innocent mistake.
ARSENIO HALL: I was standing in the wings and I saw Prince pass me with no ass in his pants. That shocked me, and I thought, “He has hair on his ass.” So I picked up a yellow pad and started to write no-ass-in-pants jokes. When a man from Minneapolis has no ass in his pants, the jokes kind of write themselves. A week later? A black-and-white suit with no ass in the pants was delivered to my office, from Prince and his tailor. I still have it.
MICHAEL STIPE: The VMA awards for me are like weddings and funerals. It’s such high-pitched emotion coming off of everyone in the room that I can barely breathe. And so I tend to just kind of black out.
With “Losing My Religion,” 1991 was our year at the VMAs. Dennis Hopper presented to us, and I kind of rushed him. I came out from the side, wide-eyed and yelling, and I scared the life out of him. He looked at me like, Who the fuck are you?
TARSEM SINGH, director: The evening of the VMAs, I went to the restaurant where I’d worked as a busboy two years earlier. And the cook said, “You’ve got to show people your heritage. Here, wear my turban.” So I walked into the MTV awards wearing a turban, which I’d never worn in my life. I went up to accept an award wearing the cook’s turban from Bombay Palace.
People don’t know how to treat you when you wear a turban. They think you’re a holy man, not a foul-mouthed moron. Dennis Hopper bowed and said, “Namaste” to me. He’s a hero of mine, and I was like, If I open my mouth, he’s going to call me a cunt, so I bowed back.
CINDY CRAWFORD: I was a Midwestern girl, thrown into this rock n’ roll world. We were backstage at the VMAs looking for people to interview, and Chris Robinson of the Black Crowes was there, wearing cool suede pants with leaves embroidered on them. I asked him, “What kind of leaves are those?” He’s like, “Cannabis.” Then it was like, beat beat beat . . . And I said, “That’s pot, right?” I wasn’t playing the ingenue, I really didn’t know.
At the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert in London, they said I was going to interview Def Leppard, and a whole group of guys was walking over. I asked, “Which one is he?” They’re like, “It’s a band, you idiot.” I wasn’t Kurt Loder, and I didn’t have to be.
ALISA MARIE BELLETTINI, MTV producer: House of Style always did shows from the VMAs. One year, Anthony Kiedis from the Red Hot Chili Peppers came up to Cindy at the end of the night like he was on fire. He picked up her underarm and said, “I want to lick you.” I pulled her arm down and said, “Get the fuck out of here.” It was invasive.
CINDY CRAWFORD: My kids love the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Anthony Kiedis and I both live in Malibu, and I see him a lot. I tell my kids, “He tried to lick my armpit once.” Those
moments only happen at the VMAs.
Chapter 30
“I’D LIKE TO THANK MY CHEEKBONES”
JON BON JOVI AND TAWNY KITAEN TAKE HAIR METAL TO THE TOP
MANY PEOPLE AT MTV HAD A LOVE/HATE RELAtionship with metal; they hated the way women were depicted in the videos, but loved the ratings generated by the music’s rabid fans. Metal, rock critic Deborah Frost wrote in September 1984, was “more popular than ever,” and she attributed the success to MTV, where approximately a third of all videos were by hard rock bands: “Suddenly, rock’s most extreme fantasy genre looked bigger, brighter, more fantastic than ever before,” she wrote. “And MTV is in the fantasy business.”
Seven months later, Bob Pittman suddenly announced that MTV was deemphasizing metal. “We want to play music that’s on the cutting edge,” he said, dismissing heavy metal as “a quick, crass, easy buck for record companies.” Ironically, metal outlasted Pittman at MTV. Once he left, a new set of programmers gorged on hair metal bands whose male singers were nearly as pretty as the girls in their videos. In this era of MTV, you might see Great White, White Lion, and Whitesnake consecutively. And having outlasted criticism from the PMRC, hard rock bands grew more brazen than ever, creating a pantheon of video absurdity, usually involving explosions and cleavage.
