I Want My MTV

by Craig Marks

  ADAM CURRY: I lived for hosting The Week in Rock. It was the Entertainment Tonight of MTV. But everyone said, “We need Kurt Loder, because he has credibility.” “We need credibility on the channel.” “Kurt brings us credibility.” What the fuck? He wrote a book with Tina Turner—big deal. All of a sudden, this old dude with a bad haircut came in to host the show. It was insulting.

  DAVE SIRULNICK: Kurt’s audition was a little sweaty, but he had a confidence in himself. I asked him to talk about the first concert he went to. He said, “I’ve been to millions of concerts and can’t remember the first one. That’s not really who I am.” And we’re like, We love him. There were various attempts at giving him a wardrobe, and Kurt would say, “Get away from me. I don’t want to deal with you people. Let me wear what I want to wear.”

  ALEX COLETTI: At his audition, Kurt Loder sweat so much, it was running down his shirt. I was like, “This poor guy is just not made for TV.” And of course, Kurt outlived us all there. He was awesome to work with. On Fridays, he’d make margaritas for everyone.

  ADAM CURRY: Kurt liked to drink. He would bring a blender to the studio and make margaritas. He’d have at least one margarita before he went on the air.

  KEN R. CLARK: Adam and Julie were the biggest stars of the second wave of VJs, and they did not get along at all. They would insult each other and take jabs at one another on air. I remember Julie opening a fan letter, asking what she wanted for Christmas. She said with a smirk, “Maybe a blow-dryer, so I can look like Adam Curry.” I tried to arrange the schedule so they wouldn’t be in the studio at the same time. VJ life had become very different then. It was about sending limos as opposed to people showing up in sweatpants. Most of my time was spent negotiating with their managers and agents about whether or not, say, Julie’s makeup artist could fly first class to Spring Break. That’s what that era became about.

  JULIE BROWN: Adam Curry didn’t like me. I probably annoyed him. He’s cool and calm, and I was a bit buzzy and wacky. You either get along or you don’t. So Adam continued getting his hair done by his wife, and I continued disco dancing.

  ADAM CURRY: The evil Julie Brown. Oh, I hated her. The crew hated her. She was never on time and was always bitching.

  JULIE BROWN: I could understand if people thought I was a bitch. I’m very British and to-the-point. If I’m in Ralph’s supermarket, I go to the front of the line. I don’t have time to wait! I made one wardrobe girl cry. When new clothes came in, I’d go, “Okay that’s mine, that’s mine, and that’s mine.” She got a little overwhelmed and started crying.

  ALISON STEWART, MTV reporter: I was hired as an assistant to the VJs, putting Downtown Julie Brown’s wigs in her dressing room, autographing pictures for her. She got a lot of mail from prisoners. She could be a diva. One time, she wanted me to keep her company at some event in Westchester. I thought, Oh, this is a nice thing—older black woman asking a younger black woman to go someplace with you. No. When I got there, she told me I had to stay in the car. I think I was there until 3 A.M. That was pretty rotten.

  GEORGE BRADT: Julie Brown was a nightmare. She was always unprepared. The night before taping, VJs would get a script for the next day. To prepare, they’d need to read the script for an hour or two. She did nothing, ever. She’d show up at the studio, usually late, rifling though her script. We didn’t have a lot of time to fuck around. It had to be really bad for us to say, “That sucked, do it again.” When we did, she would get upset. And the crew would get pissed off, because it meant we were gonna be late for lunch break. One day we came out of a video, into a commercial break, and she said, “Take a Valium and we’ll be back in a few minutes.” She didn’t understand why that was a problem.

  ALISON STEWART: It’s almost like she was born to be a VJ, almost like they made this network around her. Because she had a look and an attitude and she wasn’t really afraid of much. I think she was older than she said she was. She kept saying, “Do I look okay? Do I look fine?” I always felt bad for her. “You look great. You’ve got a rocking body, why are you so insecure about aging?”

  KEN R. CLARK: She called John Cannelli a cunt. I’ll never forget that. “Oh shut up, you fucking cunt.” Her favorite expression was “Kiss my clit.” The control room would say, “Julie, you need to redo that segment.” And Julie would say, “You can come out here and kiss my clit. I’m not redoing it.” She could be horribly offensive, but she was also one of the most caring people you could ever meet.

  ALEX COLETTI: Julie would flash people if the energy on set was lagging. And the energy was always lagging. I can’t tell you how many times we saw her knickers.

  LOU STELLATO: Julie Brown was a handful. Two handfuls. Oh my God. She could be so cunty. But I was lucky, because I could make her laugh. I would ask her to do things and if she wasn’t in the mood, she would just tell me to kiss her clit.

  BETH McCARTHY: Julie Brown was a piece of work. A lot of people did not get along with her. She would throw fits in her dressing room and refuse to come to the set. If she did not like you, she made your life a living hell. But she liked me. She always called me “Barf Bag,” as a term of endearment.

  Julie was in a tumultuous relationship with a jerk named Chris. He was also British. He was always, “I’m gonna open a nightclub,” and she would fund his hobbies. And he cheated on her all the time. She caught him in bed with Mariah Carey once, before she had a career, before she hooked up with Tommy Mottola. He was a leech. And when Julie was having a problem at home, she would come in and take it out on everyone at work.

  JULIE BROWN: When I came from England, I was engaged. That lasted a long time, like five years or so, until I broke up with my fiancé.

  BETH McCARTHY: Julie and I would go to the China Club on the Upper West Side. There’d always be big athletes hitting on her. Lawrence Taylor, who played for the New York Giants, hit on her. She dated John Salley, the basketball player. She called me from his house one night because she was freaked out about how big he was. She’s like, “I don’t know what to do.” I said, “Julie, I’m hanging up.”

  JULIE BROWN: I called my mum and said, “I’ve got a date with Billy Idol.” And she said, “Well, you only live once.” I don’t kiss and tell, but I will say Billy makes a good cup of tea in the morning. I think I bored him—I’m not a rock n’ roll chick, I don’t party all night.

  BILLY IDOL: We were quite serious for a while, but in the end, she married some German bloke. We just weren’t 100 percent right for each other. I was a bit of a drug addict, and that was probably the height of my drug addiction. I wasn’t fully committed to anything or anybody.

  STEVE LEEDS: Julie was hired to be our diva. Lee Masters felt that VJs needed to be seen as stars. You couldn’t have Julie Brown be a star on television and then see her flying coach. And mind you, we were now paying VJs a hell of a lot of money.

  JULIE BROWN: Being on MTV, you never paid for anything. There were limos, first-class flights, clothes—it was the first time designers had a big outlet for fashion on TV, so things came in free, from jewelry to shoes to handbags. I was dressing in Gaultier, Dolce & Gabbana, Donna Karan, Nicole Miller. I had a crew of press people taking care of me, backstage passes to everything. MTV ruled. That’s when life was good. Some of the other VJs struggled, apparently, but MTV did me the right way. I had a very nice contract. They did Adam Curry much better, I believe.

  KEN R. CLARK: When MTV started, the VJs didn’t have assistants, and they got paid $40,000 to $50,000 a year. Man, how that changed. Everybody ended up with stretch limos, their own makeup, some people had private security.

  ADAM CURRY: I had a two-year contract when I came in: $150,000 the first year, $175,000 the second year. I was the highest-paid VJ. However, no one got first-class airfare. So I’d bitch and moan to get an upgrade: “I’m a star, man, I can’t be flying in the back of the bus.”

  BETH McCARTHY: I never got along with Adam. Other people loved him. I found him arrogant. We butted heads a lot.

>   ADAM CURRY: The people in charge were idiots. They had no idea how television worked, no idea how cool it could have been. I felt so restricted. They would not let you say or do anything crazy or wacky or edgy. You couldn’t make jokes about the artists, you couldn’t do anything off key or a little blue. And there’s a reason for it: The packaging of cable channels had just started, and a “basic package” came with MTV, regardless of where you were. We had broken through to 40 million households. That was huge. And it brought about a complete clampdown. You weren’t allowed to say “VMAs”; you had to say “Video Music Awards.” I called MTV “the big M.” Nope, can’t say that. I thought that was genius of me. After I did a take, the director would say, “That’s truly funny, man, but you mentioned pubic hair. That’s a burn.” Burn meant we roll back the tape and tape over that segment. It was very annoying. It was television being made poorly, with a lot of politics involved.

  When they fired me, it was usually about the hair. “Cut your hair.” No. “Well, then we don’t want you anymore.” Okay, fuck you. I had big, poofy hair. With short hair, I look like a penis. And the hair made me famous.

  KEN CLARK: The person behind Adam’s hairstyle was his wife Patricia. She was a famous Dutch singer and television star. Patricia would wake up early and set his hair in hot rollers. She did his makeup, his wardrobe, his hair. And Adam’s hair just kept getting bigger and bigger.

  ALISON STEWART: On the back of Steve Leeds’s door, there was a nude poster of Adam Curry’s wife. Adam knew it was there—he may have given it to Steve.

  STEVE LEEDS: Adam’s wife, Patricia Paay, was a big celebrity in Holland. She was a singer, and she posed for Playboy. The poster was a blowup of her centerfold. Adam and his wife insisted I hang it there. He was proud of her and often brought celebrities to my office to show it off. The whole scenario made me very uncomfortable, and many times I asked Adam if I could remove it. I hung it on the back of my door, so most folks would never see it.

  ADAM CURRY: The VJs worked all year, doing the interviews, and on the big night, the VMAs, we wouldn’t even get tickets to sit in the crowd. Kurt Loder was doing the backstage interviews. Like, “Fuck you, you motherfucker.” It was very annoying.

  TOM HUNTER: Judy McGrath said, “Let’s face it, viewers don’t care about the VJs.” So we stopped showing the VJs before commercial breaks. Judy, who’d been promoted to creative director, also took the VJs out of the studio and put them in all crazy locations. The VJs hated these new initiatives, of course. Julie Brown stormed out of a VJ meeting. I said, “We’ll have a better meeting without her.” Some people didn’t want change.

  CAROLYNE HELDMAN: Julie Brown thought of me as this odd bird who didn’t care about fashion, or any of the things she cared about. She realized we had nothing in common, so she didn’t pay me much mind.

  KEN R. CLARK: Carolyne was a hippie. She didn’t shave her pits, she didn’t shave her legs, she had bad eyesight, and wore nerdy glasses. She liked frumpy, flowered dresses, and MTV wasn’t having it. There was an ongoing battle to get her to shave her legs, to wear contacts, to look sexier.

  CAROLYNE HELDMAN: I did an interview with Robert Plant once. I’m a huge Led Zeppelin fan; I still consider them to be the greatest rock band of all time. We were seated right next to each other on little bar stools, and the lighting was very stark. It was very intimate—our legs kept touching—and he flirted shamelessly with me. I held it together—I did a good interview with him—but I was smitten, just smitten with the man. After the interview, Robert said, “My manager and I are going to a comedy show tonight, would you like to join us?” And I said, “Oh sure, I’ll go,” as calmly as I could. So I got myself together and went to the comedy club, and there he was, as advertised, sitting at a table. I took a deep breath, walked over to his table, and said, “Hello Robert, how are you?” And he’s like, “I’m sorry, dear, who are you?” That was a huge blow to my ego. But it was also a valuable lesson: These guys are pros. They know exactly what they’re doing. They know just how to charm the hell out of a naive young journalist.

  BETH McCARTHY: MTV loved that Carolyne was earthy and different, then all of a sudden, some executive saw her and said, “Why is she on the air?” She appeared on the air in shorts once, and they saw that she didn’t shave her legs. They freaked out.

  CAROLYNE HELDMAN: I wore shorts on the air once, and I got into big trouble. They sent me a memo afterwards: “You will never wear shorts again, you violated the terms of your contract.”

  STEVE LEEDS: They were like, “Steve, you’ve got to get rid of her.” I have a master’s degree from the Newhouse School of Public Communication at Syracuse, and I had to have a conversation with Carolyne Heldman about shaving her legs.

  ADAM CURRY: Carolyne got fired because her legs were too fat. That was kind of fucked up. She was hired as the girl-next-door type, and she insisted on wearing shorts. Steve Leeds said, “Please wear long pants.” She refused. And they fired her for her thunder thighs.

  STEVE LEEDS: I was always on the lookout for new VJs. A production guy handed me a tape of Daisy Fuentes, a smoking-hot weather girl from the Spanish station in Newark. She became the host of a countdown show on Telemundo, called MTV Internacional, and I put her on MTV sporadically in the middle of the night. One afternoon, Judy McGrath walked into my office and said, “Who is this bimbo you have on in the middle of the night? Get her off. She’s not connecting with the music.” I said, “We’re working on that.” And eventually Daisy became a regular VJ on MTV. She filled the hot-babe slot.

  Any time a VJ was giving me attitude, I would pull in this NYU college kid to fill in. I’d say, “Adam, you want to make $300? Can you be here this afternoon at four?” That was Adam Sandler. He was doing comedy around town, and he was a fill-in VJ. We also hired Dweezil Zappa, who was a smart-ass. One time, he came out of a hair band video where the hero gets hung, and said, “Kids, don’t try that at home. Unless you’re a Young Republican. Then it’s okay.” I told him, “You can’t do that.” Dweezil said, “Stop telling me what I can’t do. Tom Freston said I can do whatever I want. And I’m not redoing it.” So it went on the air. Judy McGrath said, “Steve, what the fuck? I’m getting angry phone calls.” I said, “I asked him to redo it, and he refused.” Well, that was the end of Dweezil.

  We did a big search at colleges for VJs, all over the country. Kevin Seal’s roommates at the University of Washington decided to audition, and Kevin went along as a goof. His audition was amazing. He had no intention of actually becoming a VJ.

  KEVIN SEAL, MTV VJ: The University of Washington women’s crew team was racing the Russian national crew team, and I was looking forward to attending that, but it was raining terribly that morning, so instead I went with my friends to the MTV tryout. I don’t know what skills I brought to the job, besides frantic gesticulation, near-inchoate ravings, and a palpable distaste for Duran Duran. People assumed I was high all the time, probably because I was all squinty and raving. I think I may have represented the segment of viewers who were high, which was not inconsiderable.

  KEN R. CLARK: Kevin was an engineering major, a total nerd. There was nothing rock n’ roll about him. The story goes, he was tripping on mushrooms when he tried out.

  KEVIN SEAL: People assumed that somebody behaving the way I did must be on drugs. But it’s just a neurological disorder of some kind. Though I was a fan of ’shrooms, so it was not implausible. Not long after I got the job, I did half a hit of acid while we were taping in Philadelphia for Fourth of July weekend. That was the one time I was tripping on the air. I remember feeling it come on at Betsy Ross’s house. I thought I could discover something, but it was just like, “This is Betsy Ross’s house. Rross. Rrrosss.”

  ALISON STEWART: Kevin Seal was sort of the accidental VJ. Once in a while, he’d spend the night in his dressing room. He seemed uncomfortable with the attention, like he thought it was a joke and he was in on the joke. Kind of like how Jimmy Kimmel is in on the joke of hosting a late
night talk show.

  KENNEDY: My favorite VJ was Kevin Seal. I loved his irreverence and wit, and his willingness to look silly. I’ve never heard a bad word uttered about the guy.

  KEVIN SEAL: I was uncomfortable when people would see me on the street and hoot, “MTV, dude!” Since I was not, myself, MTV, I’d shrink from it. I was a fan of David Letterman. Also, as in the Eastern Bloc countries, there was a sense that there are certain things you’re not allowed to say, so you would allude to them obliquely. In that tiny way, Vaclav Havel and I were both struggling within the system.

  DAVE HOLMES: Like Kurt Loder, Kevin was brainy, but in a biting, sarcastic way. A little disdainful, like a David Letterman for the younger generation. In the late ’80s, irony was suddenly the cool worldview. You had Spy magazine, you had Paul Rudnick, you had smart people writing snarky things. Now everybody’s snarky; even socialites are snarky. It’s tiresome, but at the time, it was fresh.