VJ: The Unplugged Adventures of MTV's First Wave

by Nina Blackwood

  Mark:

  Cyndi and I got along very well in the early days. I interviewed her right as her record was coming out. I was aware of Blue Angel, and we talked a little bit about that. I probably should have asked more questions about how she was working with the Hooters, since they were my pals from Philadelphia. She was goofy and funny.

  Alan:

  She’s So Unusual was a quintessential MTV album—Cyndi was clearly thinking about her look, and it was a big part of her appeal. Girls loved dressing like her: She was the bubbly, colorful fashion icon of the ’80s. She had tons of personality, and she had a cute little giggle. She personified the fun of MTV.

  Mark:

  I wouldn’t say this about everybody that MTV played, but I think Cyndi would have made it without videos. She had such an amazing voice, and the production sounded great on the radio. But the visual element was so strong, and so integral to people getting her—I think Cyndi and us together made it way more of a cultural phenomenon, way faster.

  Alan:

  Cyndi cast Captain Lou Albano, the wrestling manager, in her video for “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun”—he played her father. And then, in the most unusual move that any of us could remember, she and Albano teamed up to do a “Rock ’n’ Wrestling” campaign for a whole year. I think it was the brainchild of her boyfriend/manager, David Wolff. The idea was that she would be “managed” by Captain Lou Albano, and they were going to fight against the forces of “Rowdy” Roddy Piper and other wrestlers.

  So we did a lot of remote “Rock ’n’ Wrestling” shoots and some big events. There was a documentary with a wrestling announcer, and we hosted a two-hour special. Cyndi would go into the ring, taunting females and then wrestling them. Vince McMahon, the head of the World Wrestling Federation, had cut some sort of deal with MTV.

  Mark:

  I interviewed Cyndi in the MTV offices and tried to get some sense of what the hell she was doing with all that Captain Lou stuff. I thought it was a huge mistake for her. I suspect it was simple on her end: She was a wrestling fan and she really liked Captain Lou as a person. I kept beating on that door, and she pulled back into her Cyndi Lauper character. Suddenly she was ditzier than before, and the New York accent was thicker.

  Alan:

  We kicked off “Rock ’n’ Wrestling” with a press conference: Cyndi, Captain Lou, and “Rowdy” Roddy Piper. I was the host. It was all very mock-serious. It was live to tape, so we had to get it right the first time. The plan was that Roddy and Lou would get into a “fight” and I would be the mediator. Before we started, everybody discussed the choreography. “You cold-cock me with a ramma-jamma”—whatever the lingo was—“and then you pull my hair, and Cyndi’s going to hit you with a chair.”

  “Alan, I’m going to take you by the scruff of the neck, and I’ll pull you here.” Roddy Piper was an extremely nice guy, while Lou was crazy, but they both were pros.

  Showtime: I introduced everybody and made my serious announcement. Lou Albano and Roddy Piper got into a fake back-and-forth argument. I tried to intervene, like a referee would: “Gentlemen, gentlemen, we must keep sanity here.”

  Roddy shouted, “Shut up, pipsqueak! Hunter, you pipsqueak!” He came around the front of the press conference table and taunted me: “You little VJ pipsqueak!” He grabbed me, lifted me over the apron of the table, and threw me down. It looked out of control, but the wrestling guys knew what the parameters were. The segment ended, I managed to say, “We’ll be right back,” and we went to commercial break.

  I was dusting myself off, and Roddy immediately asked, “Hey, you all right, little buddy? Sorry about that, man, but that was great!” Everybody was high-fiving each other. It looked real—not real anger, maybe, but physically real. That was my initiation with these crazy people.

  I had grown up with local small-town wrestling, but I didn’t realize until I started working on all these “Rock ’n’ Wrestling” events that these people were unbalanced. The blood was real—they showed me how they hid their razor blades.

  I got to know Cyndi pretty well that year. She was like Jane Wiedlin of the Go-Go’s—they both have ditzy on-air personas. Cyndi didn’t change dramatically when the cameras were off—she always had the thick accent, for example—but she definitely was a real person off camera, and a sweetheart.

  After one of her concerts, I was backstage, chatting with her lawyer, Elliot Hoffman. I told him, “I can’t use my boss’s lawyer anymore—I need my own guy.” He agreed to represent me, and I stayed with him from then on. He made better deals for me, and helped me get an agent at ICM. Elliot was an eccentric New York figure: Around fifty-eight years old, he sported a handlebar mustache and rode a motorcycle to work in a pinstriped suit. He also had a role in Cyndi’s “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” video, as the eccentric older dance partner. Everybody loved Elliot—he was a mentor to me. He handled the Who and Barbra Streisand, so I wasn’t one of his higher-paying clients, but he liked the world of MTV.

  Nina:

  My dad and my grandfather had recently passed, so I had my mom visit me in New York. I thought she’d enjoy a fancy New York City party; we got dolled up and I took her to Tavern on the Green, where video director Bob Giraldi was throwing an elaborate bash. My mom turned out to be the belle of the ball. All sorts of people came to visit me at our table and ended up being enchanted with my mom. She was reliving the Roaring ’20s, dancing and generally having a swell time, as opposed to her daughter, who was being her customary wallflower self. I didn’t mind—the less party chitchat, the better. At one point, my mom chastised me for gluing myself to the table. I believe her exact words were “Why are you being such a flat tire?”

  This guy Quentin came up to the table, and gave us his verbal résumé—he was a big-time producer of music videos, including all of Cyndi Lauper’s stuff—and then asked if I wanted to go to lunch with him sometime. I was coy about answering, as I wasn’t blown away by him, but we did exchange telephone numbers. Well, he was just my mom’s style. As soon as he left the table, she began to say, “You should go out with him. He’s so nice, and he looks like Tom Selleck.” Which he didn’t, although he did have a mustache.

  Even after my mom went home to Massachusetts, she kept asking if I had “called that nice young man.” I didn’t, but Quentin called me, and we had lunch. He turned out to be an interesting guy—he had just done a documentary in India about tigers. We started dating. Quentin was about ten years older than me; maybe with the loss of my father and grandfather, I was looking for an older man.

  I went to visit him on the set of Cyndi’s “Time After Time” video, which was shooting down in New Jersey. Quentin said I should borrow his car and meet him there. So I drove his Saab down to this little town in Jersey and pulled into a parking lot off the main street. Word had gotten out that the Cyndi shoot was happening, so there were lots of fans there. They saw me in the car and swarmed the parking lot—and because I had never driven the Saab before, I could not figure out how to get out of it. I was locked in the car, with fans surrounding the car and climbing over it, like it was Beatlemania. I was having a complete panic attack. Finally, one of the fans pointed at the fancy lock control and I managed to get myself out.

  Quentin and I stayed together for almost two years. I liked him, but I didn’t love him. This sounds cold, but maybe it was a relationship of convenience. I guess I needed a relationship of some sort, just for the companionship. But I didn’t know he was going to turn out to be a schmuck.

  One time, I went to L.A. on vacation, and I cut it short to go with Quentin to his high-school reunion in Darien, Connecticut. We were sitting at a table with his high-school friends, and this woman walked up with her daughter, who wanted to get into making videos. He ended up talking to the daughter the whole night, while I thought, “I flew back for this?” At the end of the reunion, Quentin said he’d give the daughter a ride home. Somehow, I ended up sitting in the backseat.

  So he hired this Darien girl, fresh out of
high school, to be a video assistant at his production company. I was friendly with two girls who worked with him, Andrea and Susie. One day Andrea called me up and said, “I can’t take this anymore.” Quentin worked out of his apartment—not only was the Darien girl working there, she was staying there with him. I broke up with him, and then I found out he had been hitting on some of my girlfriends. He was the mayor of Schmucksville.

  Quentin showed up at the MTV New Year’s Eve show that year with the Darien girl. Martha and I were sitting on a couch, getting ready to do our shot, and he got right in my eyeline. Martha was so upset, she said she was going to throw her champagne glass at him.

  Later on, I interviewed Cyndi Lauper. As we were getting miked up, she whispered, “You know, I went out with Quentin too.” She made this horrible little snorting sound and said, “Isn’t he disgusting?” We were dying of laughter, like two little girls going, “Ew, ew, ew.”

  29

  You Play the Guitar on the MTV

  Heavy Metal Thunder

  Mark:

  Metal fit right into the MTV rotation. We didn’t play the more extreme stuff like Megadeth, but we played a lot of bands on the border between metal and harder rock: Deep Purple, Rainbow, Quiet Riot. That symbiosis allowed for the rise of hair metal. Basically, the channel would rather play any piece-of-shit metal band than a black act. Early on, we played a lot of Judas Priest: “You’ve Got Another Thing Comin’” was one of my favorite videos back then. The best part was a guy walking across a bridge at what appeared to be some sort of oil refinery. And as he makes his way across this scaffolding—blam! His head blows off. Very funny.

  Martha:

  When Mötley Crüe came into the studio, we were terrified. We hadn’t dealt with Sunset Strip bands in any way. We were worried that they would kick over the furniture, spit on us, or throw Jack Daniel’s bottles at the cameras, but they were fantastic. They were excited to be at MTV.

  Martha Quinn, in a short leopard-print skirt and a big red necklace, talks with Vince Neil and Nikki Sixx (both wearing leather jackets, with big scarves and big hair), discussing that night’s installment of the Friday Night Video Fights, a show where viewers got to vote for one of two hit videos. (The show was taped in advance, with two alternate endings filmed, one for each victor):

  MARTHA QUINN: “Tonight’s an exciting night for us here at MTV, and for you guys, I’m hoping as well, because we have your video, ‘Looks That Kill,’ going up against ZZ Top, ‘TV Dinners’—have you seen ‘TV Dinners’?”

  VINCE NEIL: “Oh yeah, great.”

  NIKKI SIXX: “I like that little alien.”

  MARTHA QUINN: “I know, he crawls over that guy eating potato chips. Well, you can use this opportunity to look in the camera and do a little campaigning and convince the American audience why they should call up and vote for Mötley Crüe tonight.”

  VINCE NEIL: (Pointing into camera) “You better call. Or we’re gonna come lookin’ for ya.”

  NIKKI SIXX: “We’ll find ya.”

  VINCE NEIL: “We will.”

  NIKKI SIXX: “Vote for us. Because we’re the bad boys of rock.”

  MARTHA QUINN: (laughing) “I’m scared.”

  VINCE NEIL: “C’mon, call. Pick it up. No, pick it up. Pick it up. Now dial that number.” (He makes a circular dialing motion.) “Now you got it. Okay, perfect, thank you.”

  Mark:

  They had Dee Snider, lead singer of Twisted Sister, come into the studio to surprise me for my birthday. I was in the middle of a segment—suddenly they started playing the Beatles’ “Birthday,” and out walked Dee. He said, “Hold it, hold it. All right, Mark, it’s your birthday. Congratulations. And in honor of your birthday, we’ve got Mr. and Mrs. Goodman from Tuba City, Wyoming. Come on out. Oh, they couldn’t make it? Okay, let’s move on.” He was doing the full-on Dee Snider show, and I was just trying to roll with it. “This is your life, Mark Goodman. We’re going to show you some—what? We don’t have any pictures? Okay, then.”

  Alan:

  Kiss came to MTV for their big unveiling: the boys without makeup. J. J. hosted the special, but we were all down in the studio watching. It was very dramatic. The camera went down the line, like we were looking for the winner on a game show.

  A standing J. J. Jackson interviews the seated members of Kiss: In September 1983, that means Paul Stanley, Gene Simmons, Eric Carr, and Vinnie Vincent. With their makeup off, seated behind a table with name cards in front of them, the quartet look like middle managers in the Kiss Corporation. Gene Simmons explains that people already identified him without his makeup: “It happens often enough, we get into, I don’t know, Madison, Wisconsin, or something, and people invariably come up and say, ‘Aren’t you Gene Simmons?’ It could be the ten-foot sign that says, ‘Hi, I’m Gene Simmons.’ ” Simmons then makes an uncharacteristically discreet allusion to his fondness for groupies, who have also seen him without his makeup: “And we’ve made a lot of friends over the years.”

  Nina:

  I was very much against anything to do with the devil. I wasn’t brought up especially religiously—my dad was a Methodist Sunday-school teacher, but he wasn’t strict. I just didn’t want anything to do with the forces of darkness. I wouldn’t listen to AC/DC’s “Highway to Hell”—and I would never make the devil-horns symbol that Ronnie James Dio claimed he invented, holding up the index finger and pinkie. Actually, I still don’t do that today. My grandmother was Italian, and in the old country, you made that gesture when you were cursing somebody.

  When I had to interview Dio, I swore he had something to do with Satan, and I stayed as far away from him as I could. In my head, there was an odor coming off of him. Not sulfur—I thought it was the musky scent of evil, but it was probably just his giraffe-skin boots.

  Normally when I’m done with an interview, if I feel close to the person then we hug, and if not, it’s a handshake. Not Dio—I wouldn’t touch him. As soon as it was over, I ran down the hall, heading into a producer’s office. I even thought he looked like the devil.

  Years later, I saw Dio again—of all places, we ran into each other early in the morning in the garden department of Home Depot. I didn’t smell Satan on him that time; as far as I could tell in the midst of all the flowers, he was fresh out of the shower.

  Mark:

  Randy Rhoads, who was the guitarist in Ozzy Osbourne’s band, died in a plane crash in March 1982—the pilot was fucking around, trying to buzz Ozzy’s tour bus. When the news broke, they called me back to the MTV studios, and the news department quickly wrote a couple of segments. After we were done, they had to messenger the tapes out to the broadcast center in Smithtown, Long Island, to get them on the air as soon as possible.

  We did a few replacement segments like that early on: Another one was when John Belushi died. When I shot the Rhoads segments, it was very late in the day—a lot of people had already gone home. I needed to stay serious, because of the gravity of the news. It was, after all, really sad. But Michael Pelech was not helping: He stood behind the camera, making crashing airplane sound effects.

  30

  You May Find Yourself in a Beautiful House with a Beautiful Wife

  Mark and Carol

  Nina:

  I had nothing against Carol, but I didn’t think she liked me, or the rest of the VJs. I don’t know if it’s because she resented not being a VJ herself. And Mark was a different guy when he was around her. He’s always been a big brother to me—over the years, he’s been selflessly supportive. When I was scared of getting a computer, he was the one who told me, “You’re a smart girl, you can do this.” But when Carol was around, it seemed like the VJs would be together, and then Mark and Carol would be in a separate group on the other side of the room. I didn’t feel any kindness coming from her.

  Mark:

  Carol was aloof and a little icy, which led to some people thinking she was snooty or elitist. I was very sociable, while she was the opposite. She was also judgmental: Somet
imes I could laugh at her condescending assessments of people, and I might even have agreed with her at times, but I wanted to be less like that, not more.

  She was also more conservative than I realized: I thought because she lived in the rock world, she would be more of a drinker and a partier. Because I didn’t want to come off as a lout, I had to be more conservative than I would have preferred, in all aspects of our life. All those issues were real, but the problems in the relationship were more about me than her.

  I had no understanding of the gears in my head. One time, before we were married, Carol came home from work and we had a fight. I don’t even know what it was about, but the most heinous insults were coming out of my mouth. I was calling her all these terrible names and saying the most hurtful, ugly shit. I was dumbfounded and flipped out. Not just by the fact that I was having a fight with her, but by the discovery that there was this demon inside of me.

  There was a blizzard that night, but I had to leave the apartment. I got on a train at ten P.M., and went down to Philly. I stayed with my sister that night—I was too freaked out to call Carol. Right after that, I started seeing a shrink; a couple of years later, Carol and I started couples therapy.

  I wasn’t committed to the relationship the way I should have been, but I couldn’t figure that out. If I had been more together, I would have said, “My God, Carol, look at what I’m doing. I’m miserable, you’re miserable. I don’t want to do this to you—let’s cut it short.” But it took me a long time to get to that. I loved Carol, but I was lost and hurting.