VJ: The Unplugged Adventures of MTV's First Wave

by Nina Blackwood

  Alan:

  I resented having to be self-conscious about working with Martha, but our on-camera interactions changed after that.

  Martha:

  I became very formal when we did the toss after that. “Hello, Alan! Top of the morning to you! How is your wife? Tell me everything about your wife.”

  19

  Things Can Only Get Better

  Cable TV’s Potholes and Pitfalls

  Mark:

  Supposedly, MTV launched in two million households. That was what they told us, but they were feeding us the same crap they told everybody else. From what I understand, we were actually under a million. I never doubted MTV was going to work, but there were plenty of people above me who weren’t so sure. It didn’t feel like we were struggling, but we really were.

  Alan:

  Cable penetration was all-important. People saw the famous “I Want My MTV” ads, with Mick Jagger and David Bowie telling people to call up their local cable company and ask them to add MTV to the lineup. Behind the scenes, they sent the VJs out to glad-hand everybody in the cable industry. I would go to cable conventions and shake a lot of hands and sit in booths with guys who wore Members Only jackets. It was a weird low-rent world. Sometimes I’d sign pictures for guys who provided infrastructure: the actual cable.

  “What do you do, Bob?”

  “I build the Ditch Witch that digs the ditches for the cable to go into.”

  “All right. You want an autograph?”

  “It’s not for me—it’s for my daughter.”

  Mark:

  We called the cable operators the “pole climbers.” We had to hang with them—not just selling MTV, but convincing them that MTV would sell cable.

  Martha:

  The VJs went from town to town, taking pictures with cable operators everywhere from Amarillo, Texas, to Fargo, North Dakota, trying to convert them to our cause. It felt like we were the Jehovah’s Witnesses of rock ’n’ roll.

  Alan:

  Cable was a male-dominated field, and I could see the disappointment in the men’s eyes when they realized that I was the VJ who got sent, not Nina or Martha. I started a lot of those visits by saying, “I’m sorry Martha couldn’t make it.”

  I don’t think they ever sent us out to woo a cable operator that wasn’t on board already. Some of the trips were to make sure they didn’t drop us. I’d fly into a town and get picked up at the airport. Sometimes it was a limo, sometimes it was a limo that had seen better days, and sometimes it was a Camaro with Jenny Sue the manager and Bob the CEO. We were unbelievable rock stars for these people—MTV was so important for them selling their packages to customers. I was never jaded about it.

  Mark:

  We used to have VJ meetings with Bob Pittman every few weeks. But as the head of the company, he got too swamped, so we didn’t meet with him anymore—and nobody else was meeting with us. We just got memos with edicts from on high.

  Early on, Mattel made a major ad buy for their Synsonics electronic drums. It was a toy/musical instrument, so we were all supposed to mess around with it in the studio and look like we were having a good time.

  Martha:

  That was a goofy idea. I thought, “I have to pretend to play a drum machine? Are you kidding?” It was embarrassing, but I sucked it up and gave it my best shot.

  Alan:

  J. J. was disdainful of it. He played with it a little and giggled. I had the most fun with it: It was a toy, and the more toys I had, the better I felt. If I had a prop on the set that would distract people from listening to what I was saying—or not saying—I was much more comfortable.

  Mark:

  J. J. and I were irate—we were doing regularly scheduled commercials for a product, and it felt like MTV was stiffing us. Extra fees for ads is how DJs supplement their income! I called up Pittman and in the nicest, most respectful way, said, “Look, I understand this is a buy, but I usually get paid to do these things.”

  Pittman was very even-keeled, not high-pressure. But he had the demeanor of a southern Jack Nicholson: If you don’t do what I want you to do, I’m going to cut your nuts off. He said, “Well, Mark, if you don’t want to do it, I think we can probably find somebody who does.”

  “Okay, I understand, Bob, thank you.”

  Alan:

  To me, it was all part of the job. But J. J. and Mark always held the flag high for journalistic credibility. Their credibility was more at stake than mine, at least in the music arena.

  Mark:

  I probably wouldn’t have said anything if I had known how much we were struggling for advertising. Because we weren’t getting MTV in Manhattan, we didn’t really know what was going on.

  At about twenty minutes past the hour, there was a local availability: That’s a spot where the local cable affiliate can sell commercials themselves. That hourly spot was part of why cable companies would pick us up. And if they didn’t show anything there, we would broadcast this stock NASA footage—just an astronaut floating in space, set to music. We sold a few national spots, but not a lot, and the affiliates sold hardly any local spots. People used to write to us about how great they thought that video of the guy floating in space was.

  Alan:

  Even though we weren’t selling ads, we were showing that we could sell a lot of records. Stray Cats were a band that nobody knew in the heartland, but through sheer force of video exposure, they were selling a lot of records in towns that had MTV. Suddenly, Duran Duran were selling a lot of records in Iowa.

  One day we had a meeting with Les Garland in the studio’s conference room, which also served as our kitchenette. We sat around the table with the producers, and he told us, “There’s this Australian band called INXS. We’re going to do a huge experiment—the record company is going to spend a lot of money and we’re going to see if we can break this band in America.” Basically, MTV was trying to prove to the music industry that they could single-handedly put a band on the map.

  Nina:

  That was the first time we made a concerted effort to push a band. Luckily, they were worth pushing!

  Alan:

  We had “The One Thing” in heavy rotation and we had promo copy we would read afterward. Half a year later, mission accomplished: INXS were a huge hit in the United States and their album Shabooh Shoobah sold a ton of copies. I was amazed that the plan rolled out exactly the way it was supposed to. I thought it was cool; I didn’t know or care about payola in the music business, and I didn’t think this smacked of any kind of shady backroom deal. As far as I was concerned, we were just making some smart alliances.

  J. J. Jackson, filming a VJ spot in 1982 that went unaired but made its way to an internal MTV outtakes reel:

  “That’s the Finn brothers, a great band from New Zealand: Split Enz, ‘Six Months in a Leaky Boat.’ In New York tonight in midtown Manhattan, there’s a party to celebrate MTV coming to the city. We want to send our regards to all of you at the party: Everyone from Manhattan Cable, and everyone who has come to celebrate with us. And we hope you’re all having a wonderful time at the party—because none of us were invited to the goddamn party! And we’re a little upset about it! We’ve been breaking our balls for a year, and none of us are invited! But you have a good time tonight at that party while we’re just raunching it out. We’ll be here until eleven o’clock. Hey, bring us some cake, a little champagne. . . .” The segment concludes with J. J. singing “There’s No Business Like Show Business.”

  Martha:

  After a year, MTV finally came to Manhattan cable. I was very excited that I could wake up, go downstairs, and watch it. In reality, that meant climbing down the ladder from my loft bed and turning on my illegal cable. But finally, MTV was on my television set. I was flipping out: “My God, this is incredible, it’s really here.” It was very exciting. It felt like we were affecting the world, because our friends would say, “Wow, this really exists.”

  Alan:

  I would roll in from a night on the
town and turn on MTV. There’s Phil Collins, “In the Air Tonight,” and then runaway camera happens—oh, that’s kind of magic. That’s something I don’t usually see on TV at three in the morning. Working in the studio, I hadn’t been thinking about the audience beyond the TV camera—it was hard to grasp that there were dorm rooms full of college kids, partying to MTV, watching everything we beamed out.

  Martha:

  I found myself watching the channel for hours, because there was a major disconnect between what we were doing in the studio and what was broadcast. At home, I could see not only the videos, but all the cool animation and interstitial spots. Like the rest of America, I was obsessed. I would have a car downstairs, waiting to take me to MTV, but I’d keep it waiting too long . . . because I was watching MTV.

  Alan:

  All the time, people would come up to each of us and tell that VJ that he or she played the best music on MTV. That wasn’t entirely accurate, because we didn’t pick the videos, and at that time, MTV didn’t do “day-parting,” where you play different music at different times of day. We all had the same random mix. But what we talked about affected how people felt about what they were watching.

  Mark got people throwing up the horns and saying, “Yo, Mark!” with a Jersey accent. My demographic skewed toward women: housewives who liked Howard Jones and did aerobics to my show. The female viewers saw me as the cute little boy next door, and they just wanted to hold on to me and mother me. And the rockers wanted to sleep with Nina and Martha. Nina got the most heavy metal fans.

  We were only a small part of MTV; we did one-minute segments four times an hour, and the rest of it was videos and interstitial segments and commercials. MTV really was the epicenter of hip. It was on the leading edge, at the beginning of every new trend. The network was always morphing before the viewers had a chance to catch up. For at least six or seven years, it was never behind the audience. We were just the faces of the whole channel—but we definitely thought we were the most important part of the package.

  20

  I Spend My Cash on Looking Flash and Grabbing Your Attention

  Fashion in the 1980s

  Nina:

  Quarterly, MTV would give us five hundred dollars for on-air clothes. I’d go shopping down in the Village and SoHo.

  Martha:

  This was before the era of celebrity stylists. People would wear gowns at the Oscars, but if you look through People magazine in the ’80s, you’ll see photo shoots with stars like Geena Davis who are just wearing mall outfits.

  Alan:

  When I got that first five hundred dollars for clothes, before the channel launched, I went to Macy’s and bought five pairs of the same drawstring pants: vibrant orange and pink and blue. Neon colors were the deal then. And big sweaters with swirling multicolors—the trend was looking like a pack of crayons had melted all over you. And parachute pants, and big shoulders, and flaps of clothing with buttons.

  Mark:

  I really got into buying clothes. I’d go to Charivari, on Seventy-second and Columbus. I loved that place—they had a cool collection of styles, ranging from casual to dressy, all with a pulled-together look. I bought more than one New Year’s outfit there.

  Alan:

  I thought Mark was a dopey dresser at the beginning. He would wear these cream-colored Hush Puppies. Then again, I was Mr. Tennis Shoes and Suspenders.

  Mark:

  The other jocks used to make fun of me because I had this giant puffy Norma Kamali down-filled coat. It was black and shin-length. It was designed to be born worn by a guy or a girl, but the girls’ coats were usually white or bright iridescent colors. Not a lot of guys were wearing Norma Kamali at that time.

  Martha:

  To me, cutting-edge fashion was a Pee-wee Herman T-shirt.

  Mark:

  J. J. would wear his marine lapel pin on the air, or corduroy jackets. Or sometimes, a turtleneck sweater and a jacket like Hugh Hefner. The executives had issues with his wardrobe choices.

  Alan:

  I was also Mr. Padded Shoulders. David Byrne’s suit in “Once in a Lifetime”—I was into that all day long.

  Mark:

  We used to go to the Parachute store downtown in SoHo. I had a Parachute jacket—it was a black canvas thing with a big collar and zippers. I was so excited when I met the guy who ran the showroom for Go Silk. I stocked up on shirts, pants, suits—whatever I could get. I loved their clothes, Jagger had been wearing their suits—and what the fuck, they were free!

  Alan:

  We weren’t copying any of the bands, but we were going to Parachute around the same time as Duran Duran. We were wearing clothes that were ahead of the time, so I guess we were trendsetters.

  Mark:

  When I went back home to Philly, I felt out of place, in the best possible way. It’s a working-class town, and people didn’t wear clothes like that.

  Alan:

  The ubiquity of rock-star fashion on MTV allowed people not only to dream about it, but to dress like that. Go to the mall and get a Madonna-style outfit, or get your scissors and chop up your sweatshirt. Put the bandanna on like Mike Reno from Loverboy. That was one of the great things about MTV—everybody could join the party.

  Martha:

  Fashion in the ’80s was about throwing convention out the window, in favor of asymmetrical hair and neon colors. It was a time of big dichotomies: chunky socks with high heels. Sweatshirts with pearls—I worked that a lot. We could wear two different earrings! We were rebels!

  Nina:

  I had this one outfit with jagged edges and tights, and it happened to be green. It was a little Peter Pannish, but Pat Benatar wore that stuff too. I mean, it’s not like I made it at home. And I was really skinny, so I could wear that stuff—I was five foot four and a half, and I weighed ninety-five pounds, tops. Mark told me that outfit made me look like Miss Pippi, the host of a children’s TV show in Pennsylvania. He gave me some career advice: Don’t wear it.

  Mark:

  The character was actually named Pixanne—she had a kids’ show in Philadelphia when I was growing up. She dressed up like Peter Pan, with green tights, a green skirt and top, and a little hat with a feather. She was cute and warm and completely nonsexual, and yet I always wanted to go on her show and hug her.

  Martha:

  After a while, they would send a stylist out with us when we went shopping. One stylist took me to Fifty-seventh Street to buy a cashmere sweater. I was saying, “We’re going to blow all my money on this one sweater. Are you sure this is a good idea?” And she insisted. J. J. gave me the purple cashmere sweater she’d convinced him to buy—for years, I wore it as a dress.

  Nina:

  Having the “video vixen” reputation helped me get a little more high-fashion stuff. Norma Kamali and Betsey Johnson sent me clothes, and a lot of up-and-coming designers sent me pieces as well.

  Mark:

  The labels would send us lots of band T-shirts—obviously, they were hoping we’d wear them on the air. I collected them: I had drawers and drawers full of them. And I was working out, lifting heavy weights, so sometimes I would cut off the collar and the sleeves.

  All five of us got sent replicas of the red leather jacket Michael Jackson wore in “Beat It.” I have no idea what happened to mine.

  Martha:

  That makes me feel so much better—I don’t have mine either.

  Alan:

  I have mine!

  Mark:

  Of course Al the pack rat still has his. J. J. used to wear his on the air.

  Martha:

  I saw an old photo where I was wearing a short-sleeved button-down shirt, tucked into a pair of khaki pants. I looked like a Yalie. It seemed fine at the time, but looking back, the preppy look was not sexy.

  I interviewed Lenny Dykstra and Roger McDowell of the New York Mets, wearing a jean jacket and jeans. I looked like the batboy, but Lenny Dykstra flirted with me anyway.

  Mark:

  All
the executives at MTV wanted to sleep with Martha—which I think means they were all perverts. She looked like she was twelve.

  Martha:

  If I could have dressed like Vanity, I would have. One of the reasons why I always drove in the cute lane instead of the sexy lane is that I have a physical deal. I was in Keds 90 percent of the time because I can’t actually wear any kind of heels. My right side is smaller than the left side of my body and doesn’t really work as well. My mother says the doctors told her that I had cerebral palsy when I was born, but she never told me that was the diagnosis when I was a kid. I don’t know if that’s actually the case, but whatever it was, when I was growing up I had to wear a big brace on my right leg to stretch it out.