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Contents
Introduction / by Gavin Edwards
Chapter 1: Got My Back against the Record Machine / Close Encounters with David Lee Roth
Chapter 2: Changes Come around Real Soon, Make Us Women and Men / Life before MTV
Chapter 3: Welcome to Your Life / MTV Hires the VJs
Chapter 4: Step Right Up and Don’t Be Shy / MTV Blasts Off
Chapter 5: Let’s Make Lots of Money / Contracts and Paychecks
Chapter 6: There’s Always Something Happening and It’s Usually Quite Loud / The First Days of MTV
Chapter 7: Don’t Talk to Strangers / The Wages of Semi-Fame
Chapter 8: Sometimes You Tell the Day by the Bottle That You Drink / Life in Hell’s Kitchen
Chapter 9: Ain’t Nothing Gonna Break My Stride / Early Triumphs and Tribulations
Chapter 10: Here in My Car, I Feel Safest of All / Rental Cars and Limousines
Chapter 11: I Hope That When This Issue’s Gone, I’ll See You When Your Clothes Are On / Nude Photographs
Chapter 12: I’m a Cool Rocking Daddy in the U.S.A. Now / The Mighty J. J. Jackson
Chapter 13: Hot in the City / New York City Serenade
Chapter 14: Throw Your Arms around the World at Christmastime / Christmas Songs and New Year’s Eve Shows
Chapter 15: Take My Tears and That’s Not Nearly All / Romance and Its Discontents
Chapter 16: I’ll Kick You Out of My Home If You Don’t Cut That Hair / Makeup and Hairstyles
Chapter 17: And Now You Find Yourself in ’82 / Early MTV Videos-a-Go-Go
Chapter 18: I Know There’s Something Going On / Alan and Martha’s Dangerous Game
Chapter 19: Things Can Only Get Better / Cable TV’s Potholes and Pitfalls
Chapter 20: I Spend My Cash on Looking Flash and Grabbing Your Attention / Fashion in the 1980s
Chapter 21: She’s Precocious and She Knows Just What It Takes to Make a Pro Blush / Martha Quinn, America’s Sweetheart
Chapter 22: They Told Him Don’t You Ever Come ’Round Here / The Irresistible Rise of Michael Jackson
Chapter 23: I Might Like You Better If We Slept Together / Celebrity Flirtations and Liaisons
Chapter 24: You Must Be My Lucky Star / Madonna Louise Veronica Ciccone
Chapter 25: Every Time I Think of You, I Always Catch My Breath / Romance and Regret with John Waite
Chapter 26: That’s My Soul Up There / MTV Hits the Road
Chapter 27: I’ve Seen You on the Beach and I’ve Seen You on TV / The Cultural Impact of MTV
Chapter 28: I Want to Be the One to Walk in the Sun / The Most Unusual Miss Cyndi Lauper
Chapter 29: You Play the Guitar on the MTV / Heavy Metal Thunder
Chapter 30: You May Find Yourself in a Beautiful House with a Beautiful Wife / Mark and Carol
Chapter 31: My Beacon’s Been Moved under Moon and Star / MTV Heads Uptown
Chapter 32: Jokerman Dance to the Nightingale Tune / Paul McCartney and Bob Dylan
Chapter 33: The Kids in America / MTV Contests’ Winners and Losers
Chapter 34: I Always Feel Like Somebody’s Watching Me / Celebrity and Its Consequences
Chapter 35: What a Pity You Don’t Understand / The VJs Versus MTV Management
Chapter 36: I Said to the Man, “Are You Trying to Tempt Me?” / White Lines
Chapter 37: I Was There to Match My Intellect on National TV / The Toughest Interviews
Chapter 38: There Comes a Time When We Heed a Certain Call / “We Ruined Live Aid”
Chapter 39: Love Is a Battlefield / Martha Meets Stiv Bator
Chapter 40: I Guess I Should Have Known by the Way You Parked Your Car Sideways That It Wouldn’t Last / The Final Days of Nina and J. J.
Chapter 41: The Kid Is Hot Tonight / Alan Hunter Coast to Coast
Chapter 42: I Don’t Wanna Lose Your Love Tonight / Martha Finds True Love
Chapter 43: Every Now and Then I Get a Little Bit Nervous That the Best of All the Years Have Gone By / MTV Changes, Not Always for the Better
Chapter 44: The Five Years We Have Had Have Been Such Good Times / Martha Leaves MTV
Chapter 45: The Party Boys Call the Kremlin / Billy Joel in Russia
Chapter 46: I’m a Man Who Doesn’t Know How to Sell a Contradiction / Introducing Kurt Loder
Chapter 47: We’ll Be Moving on and Singing That Same Old Song / The Departure of Alan and Mark
Chapter 48: After the Fire, the Fire Still Burns / Life after MTV
Chapter 49: Don’t You Forget about Me / R.I.P., J. J. Jackson
Chapter 50: We Can’t Rewind, We’ve Gone Too Far / Final Thoughts
Endnotes
Acknowledgments
Photographs
About Nina Blackwood, Mark Goodman, Alan Hunter, Martha Quinn and Gavin Edwards
For J. J.
Introduction
by Gavin Edwards
Western civilization began on a Friday night in November 1982. The occasion was marked by spies in trench coats, hypodermic-wielding dancers in leather teddies, and a bullet cutting through the jack of diamonds. At least, that was what I saw the first time I turned on MTV. I was a thirteen-year-old who had stumbled onto the video for “Twilight Zone” by Golden Earring, but it felt like all music, art, and film had just served as a preamble to this moment in history.
If you grew up when MTV was a logical acronym instead of a cruel joke, you probably had a similar epiphany. It might have involved Michael Jackson teaching two street gangs to dance, Duran Duran trekking through the jungles of Sri Lanka, or even the Buggles singing, “Video killed the radio star.” But no matter how you discovered MTV’s quick-cut mash-up of surrealism, new-wave music, and extreme haircuts, when you turned your TV off, suddenly ordinary life seemed a bit, well, banal.
Faithfully guiding us through this 24/7 rush of sensory overload were five stalwart VJs: Nina Blackwood, Mark Goodman, Alan Hunter, J. J. Jackson, and Martha Quinn. Together, they were a five-headed Virgil, taking us through MTV’s Inferno, past the circles of slow-motion table-flipping, girls in cages, and arty black-and-white cinematography. MTV was more fun when you watched with a friend, trying to figure out what was going on in “The Safety Dance” or “Total Eclipse of the Heart.” The presence of the VJs meant you always had a friend watching with you.
This book is the story of the pioneers: the original VJs. Before Alan, J. J., Mark, Martha, and Nina, the term VJ didn’t exist. They didn’t invent MTV, but without them, the channel wouldn’t have become the cultural powerhouse that it did. They were proxy members of the audience—music fans that we could laugh with, learn from, or lust after.
They call themselves brothers and sisters, and being with them feels like visiting your family at Thanksgiving: they trade stories, bicker cheerfully, and elbow for position to get the first serving of mashed potatoes. After everything they’ve been through, it would be understandable if they couldn’t stand each other, but they treat each other with deep understanding and love. When they worked together on this book, only one thing cast a shadow on their collaboration: the absence of J. J. Jackson, who died in 2004 and is still very much missed.
These days, Martha resides in Mal
ibu, California; Alan in Birmingham, Alabama; Mark in New York City; Nina in coastal Maine. But for a few years, they lived in the center of the universe—a better, shinier universe.
1
Got My Back against the Record Machine
Close Encounters with David Lee Roth
Mark Goodman:
David Lee Roth was convinced that he was the hottest rock star in creation. Dave was the funniest guy on the planet—to him. He laughed at all his own jokes. But his mind worked at three hundred miles an hour. These phrases would just fall out of his face—he’d be talking about people who were idiots, and he’d say, “You know, speed-limit IQ.” Or regarding other bands that weren’t as amazing as Van Halen: “Here today . . . gone later today.”
Martha Quinn:
When Dave was doing publicity for Van Halen’s Diver Down album in 1982, MTV assigned me the interview. I was ecstatic—I couldn’t wait to be the one to cut through Dave’s razzle-dazzle façade of one-liners and reach the true person underneath. I was determined to stay strong, and not fall for his schtick. I didn’t get that his schtick is his genius. During the interview, he threw out his best Daveisms—“What you see onstage with Van Halen is what you’re gonna find underneath the stage”—and I remained stone-faced. I refused to jump into the hot tub of fun that was Dave.
At one point, he said, “If you take a Van Halen record and you stick it in your collection, it’ll melt all your other records.”
Cut to me, dead silent. Finally, I said, “I’m trying to think what my Van Halen records are next to.”
I thought if I didn’t fall for his trickery, he’d reveal his soul to me, and we’d live happily ever after.
Mark:
Before MTV, Van Halen were already pretty big—they were playing arenas by then. But videos took them to another level. Pete Angelus had been Van Halen’s lighting director, but he started directing the band’s videos. And that let people see the band’s attitude: They were badass guys, they were cool, they were funny. The sense of humor was there in the songs, but you had to pay attention. The videos hit you over the head with it.
Five highlights from Van Halen’s “Panama” video:
1. David Lee Roth swinging over a stage, suspended by a cable, listening to a boom box.
2. Diamond Dave being dragged down a hallway by two cops, wearing only a towel, white athletic shoes, and handcuffs.
3. Eddie Van Halen sitting at a piano in a white tux, blowing smoke rings.
4. The lyric “Model citizen / Zero discipline.”
5. David Lee Roth wearing a T-shirt decorated with a picture of David Lee Roth.
Mark:
Dave’s lyrics had a Tom Waits vibe: a storyteller with this weird attitude. He was great at painting a picture with a sentence, like in “Panama,” when he did that monologue: “Reach down between my legs and ease the seat back . . .” It was rock ’n’ roll, it was about sex, but it was also poetic and had a noir feel. Sure, there was a ton of ego, and he had a teenage boy’s sense of humor and fantasy, but I always believed that he was deeper than he cared to let on.
Martha:
He was one of my big crushes. I interviewed him a couple of times, and I always used to wonder, “Why doesn’t Dave ever ask me out? Doesn’t he see how much I get him?” I wanted to be Mrs. David Lee Roth, but I had no idea how to make that happen. Recently I saw a picture of one of our interviews: I was wearing a Boy Scout shirt, buttoned up to the top, and a tie! A Boy Scout shirt! What was I thinking? With that shirt, and my hair super-short, I looked like a boy. No wonder Dave never asked me on a date. A magazine—Circus, or maybe Creem—printed an item that Dave and I were romantically linked. I cut that out and pasted it in my scrapbook. A rumor to treasure.
Mark:
I connected with Dave at the US Festival in ’83. Van Halen had a compound: They were paid around a million dollars to play, and they basically spent it on the compound. It was all kinds of trailers, and tons of booze. Dave was totally hammered: coked up and drunk. We did this interview where we just sparred back and forth. I asked him what he wore under his spandex pants, and he made an allusion to circumcision: “All Jewish boys have this. You know about that, don’t you, Goodman?” And I was like, “Yeah, Roth!” The two Jews recognized each other and tacitly agreed that we were members of the same species. Still, he was being outlandish Dave, dancing with a drink on his head.
Excerpts from the US Festival interview, on May 29, 1983. Mark Goodman is in a yellow mesh shirt, while David Lee Roth sports tiger-print spandex pants and a torn fishnet top:
DAVID LEE ROTH, CHANNELING ROD SERLING: “Dave Roth, trapped in a desperate struggle against time. Will he be able to take the stage, armed with nothing but a microphone and the will to survive? Dave Roth, somewhere at the US Festival.”
MARK GOODMAN: “Have you learned what software is?”
DAVID LEE ROTH: “I have! I just learned that a floppy disc isn’t a record you left in the sun. . . . In about ten minutes, the tailor lady will come in and suck all the air out of my pants at the cuff. We’ll seal them off and be fully prepared for tonight’s presentation.”
MARK GOODMAN: “When you come to the US Festival, the whole theory is camaraderie . . . and here’s Van Halen in their own private compound. Why is that?”
DAVID LEE ROTH: “With the private compound, it’s not so much that we build walls to keep people out, but that when people get inside walls, they feel more comfortable. . . . You’re inside someplace, as opposed to merrily under the stars with your sleeping bag. Although there will be a few people under the stars after tonight.” (Roth laughs and leers at the camera.)
Martha:
Van Halen picked up where Black Sabbath and Blue Oyster Cult left off, but with sex appeal. Van Halen’s audience doubled because girls wanted to see them as much as guys. For one blond reason: David Lee Roth.
Nina Blackwood:
The classic Van Halen video would have to be “Jump.” It captured the dynamic of the band, and David Lee Roth’s performance could have been in the circus. Eddie looks adorable, with that little smile he gives while he’s playing his butt off, and you felt like you were in the audience watching them, only you got really good seats.
Martha:
Eventually, I did get to see the real Dave—when I least expected it. At the very first Video Music Awards, in 1984, they had me stand on a hydraulic set, warming up the crowd. The plan was that I’d finish my speech, the stage would lower, and the show would start. I looked out into the crowd at Radio City Music Hall and saw luminaries like Herbie Hancock, Rod Stewart, and Quincy Jones. I gave a dramatic “Let the show begin!” and threw my hand up—but nothing happened. I stood frozen with my hand in the air, like the Statue of Liberty. Still nothing. Finally I walked offstage—and as I reached the edge of the proscenium, the hydraulics kicked in. Teetering on the edge of a dropping platform, I tried to leap to safety, but tripped and fell.
I was crushed. I had wiped out in front of the whole music industry! All night long, it was all I could talk about, to anyone who would listen.
David Lee Roth was sitting in the front row; I was sent down to interview him for a bumper into commercials. Before the camera started rolling, I said, “Oh my God, did you see what happened?”
With great compassion, Dave said, “Aw, darlin’, you know how many times I’ve done that? Welcome to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.” I’m eternally grateful to him—in the middle of a live broadcast, he pieced me back together. And he gave me a coping mantra I’ve called on many times since then: “Welcome to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.”
From the broadcast of the Video Music Awards on September 14, 1984:
Martha Quinn is wearing fingerless white opera gloves. David Lee Roth sports sunglasses, a bright red jacket, and a bleary smile.
MARTHA QUINN: “David, congratulations on your award. How do you feel?”
DAVID LEE ROTH: “Hey, Martha. Life, after all, is really a kung fu movie. . . . Like my d
addy said when I was real little, he said, ‘Dave, if you ever get in a contest, it doesn’t matter whether you win or lose, it’s how good you looked.’ ”
Mark:
Off camera, Dave was a smart, interesting guy. He liked to cut his own path by doing all that crazy macho shit—on the cover of Skyscraper, that was really him climbing the rocks. He traveled to the Amazon and he was into martial arts—he was like a rock ’n’ roll Hemingway. Dave was in amazing shape. He could drink and smoke nonstop, but it didn’t ever affect his performance onstage.
Alan Hunter:
I went to a rock festival in New Jersey; Van Halen and a bunch of other people were playing. Daryl Hall and John Oates were onstage, but I was hunting around for Mark. I walked around backstage, going from trailer to trailer. I knocked on a door, opened it up, and Mark was in there with David Lee Roth. “Hey, come on in, close the door.” I walked in and they were sitting at a little table—Dave had a big vial of coke. They invited me to join them.
I said, “I didn’t mean to horn in, but okay.”
We partook of the coke and had a grand time. And then people started knocking on the door: a producer or a friend or something. And one by one, they came in and sat in another part of the trailer while the three of us stayed seated, chatting, having a beer, doing another line. Before we knew it, the trailer was packed. No one was sitting with us, because they didn’t know David—we did. And they were all just watching us do blow. It was like we were royalty; we were completely nonchalant about fifty other people watching us do blow. People in the TV world, publicists, people we didn’t know. Any of them could have gone out and said, “Man, we’re watching two VJs sit there with David Lee Roth doing blow.” It was like people at orgies watching other people have sex.
VJ: The Unplugged Adventures of MTV's First Wave Page 1
