I Want My MTV (18 page)

 

DAVE STEWART:
“Sweet Dreams” prompted a big argument with the record company. They were pissed off when Annie and I turned up in matching suits, with Annie's hair cropped off. They wanted her to wear a dress. They were like, “We don't understand. Annie is such a pretty girl.” Then MTV got the video and it just went mad. It didn't look like anything else. Annie's hair was so different, and the colors in the video looked amazing. It was shot on 16mm film, but it was very rich. It became a phenomenon.

 

STEVE BARRON:
I believe Human League's “Don't You Want Me” was the first music video shot on 35mm. Everyone was shooting on 16mm; 35 felt like something that was only allowed for the movies.

At the time of “Don't You Want Me,” I was really into the Truffaut movie
Day for Night
. I was intrigued by his idea of a film within a film, and I thought,
We have to go further
.
What about a film within a film within a film?
Phil Oakey was going out with Joanne Catherall at the time, the dark-haired singer. But it was Susan Ann Sulley who did the vocals, so she had to be the lead character. She walks into an editing room and hangs up her trench coat, and she's basically playing a girl I had a crush on, one of the assistant editors where I was working. That coat became iconic.

 

LIMAHL:
Videos were so exciting. I remember watching Human League's “Don't You Want Me” and making no sense of it. It was just a lot of pouting and shoulder pads.

 

JEFF AYEROFF:
I saw the “Don't You Want Me” video and said, “Who is this director? I want him to do all our videos.”

CURT SMITH, Tears for Fears:
When Steve Barron directed “Pale Shelter,” that was the first time we worked with a serious director. The label said, “Steve Barron is the guy. He's doing all these great videos.” And if I look back on it now, it's the cheesiest thing. The highlight of the video comes at the end, when a paper airplane lands in Roland's eye. That's the good bit.

 

JEFF AYEROFF:
Joe Jackson ended up selling many more records than Elvis Costello did, mainly because of the videos he did with Steve Barron.

 

JOE JACKSON, artist:
Music videos weren't even discussed when I made my first album in 1979. By 1982, there'd been a distinct shift. I made videos with Steve Barron for “Real Men” and “Steppin' Out,” and by the time we got to “Breaking Us in Two,” I said to the label, “I don't think this song should have a video.” I was told I had to make a video, whether I liked it or not. “Breaking Us in Two” was a crappy video. I was embarrassed. So I decided in my great wisdom that not only would I no longer make videos, but I would write an anti-video editorial for
Billboard
magazine. I mean, I'm not such a miserable bastard that I won't admit that some videos are great fun. But I believed MTV was beginning to have a negative effect on music.

I'm well aware that refusing to make videos accomplished nothing whatsoever except—how should I put this?—to make my next record less successful. It damaged my career and it never fully recovered.

 

JOHN TAYLOR:
One reason we were able to make the medium work for us better than a lot of our peers was Simon, who had a background in drama. He was much more open-minded and less self-conscious playing a role than, you know, Rod Stewart.

 

SIMON LE BON:
I did a lot of commercials, a BBC TV program, amateur and professional stage work from age fourteen.

 

NICK RHODES:
We shot “Hungry Like the Wolf,” “Save a Prayer,” and “Lonely in Your Nightmare” on a trip to Sri Lanka. When I arrived there, I was dressed from head to toe in black leather, because I'd come from London and it was cold. I felt this intense heat and thought,
I'm not really dressed properly, am I?
I see this guy holding a sign with my name on it, and I think, it's okay, I'll take the limo to the hotel and have a shower, it'll be fine. He leads me to a flatbed truck. It's about three hundred degrees and I said, “How far is it to the hotel?” He said, “Five hours.”

We finally arrived and it was like a mirage—the most beautiful beach you've ever seen. As I was walking up to the hotel, an elephant passed me on the street, I thought,
It can't get any stranger than this.

The people that look after the elephants were completely smashed. They drink this stuff called arrack. For “Save a Prayer,” John and I were on an elephant, Simon was on one with Andy, and Roger was on one of his own. And they brought a female elephant who let out this enormous noise, which one of the guys in the crew was taping. He thought,
Oh, this will be funny
, and he played it back through the speakers. Nobody knew that it was her mating call. So the elephant with Roger on its back charges down the swamp and mounts this other elephant. Roger's hanging on for dear life, and all of the mahouts are rolling around, thinking it's hilarious. If he'd fallen off, he could have been trampled to death. It was funny as hell, but also quite hairy for a moment.

 

RUSSELL MULCAHY:
In one shot, the band was standing atop an ancient fortress called Sigiriya. It's a sacred site, so they were in bare feet. It's about 140 degrees out, their backs are to the camera, and while the audio track is playing, “Save a prayer for me now,” they're going, “Fuck you, Russell!
Fuck yoooooooou.
” Their feet were burning.

 

SIMON LE BON:
As soon as Russell said, “Cut,” we started hopping around on the hot stairs.

 

NICK RHODES:
All three videos were made for something like $30,000. We pulled every favor we could from the Sri Lankan authorities. It was cheap to work there, but it was like a SWAT team. Simon and I got dropped from a helicopter onto the top of a monument, because they couldn't land the helicopter. I must have been entirely insane.

 

SIMON LE BON:
“Hungry Like the Wolf” demanded a lot of acting. When other bands made videos with stories to them, you'd see them smirking and giggling. Whereas I acted as though I truly was being chased in the jungle. There's a scene in “Hungry Like the Wolf” where the rest of the band are chasing after me, and it's absolutely convincing.

JOHN TAYLOR:
“Hungry Like the Wolf” had a vague plot. Simon was Kurtz in
Apocalypse Now
, going up the jungle. And we were searching for him. “Hungry Like the Wolf” was like
Apocalypse Now
, and “Save a Prayer” was like
Raiders of the Lost Ark
.

 

RUSSELL MULCAHY:
We shot “Hungry Like the Wolf” in a city called Galle. The first shot was going to be set in the marketplace, with Simon coming through the market. The night before, Simon decided he wanted some highlights in his hair, but the girl did it all wrong, and Simon's hair turned bright yellow. He came out the next morning nearly in tears. Luckily I was wearing an Indiana Jones–type hat, and I said “Okay, stick my hat on him, and pull it down a bit.” If you watch the video closely, when he's coming down the marketplace, his hair is bright yellow under that hat.

 

SIMON LE BON:
I wanted to have blond highlights in my hair, as we did in the 1980s. The hairdresser bleached it orange. The first scene we shot that day was in a busy Sinhalese market—spices, vegetables, legs of lamb with flies buzzing around them. The locals had gathered around the camera in a semicircle. I'm striding along the market with real purpose in my gait, and one of the eaves on a roof caught the hat and knocked it off my head. And I'm not joking, this crowd of three hundred people took two steps back with a sharp intake of breath. I was scrambling to put the hat back on my head.

 

RUSSELL MULCAHY:
After “Hungry Like the Wolf,” an Australian producer rang me up and said “Do you want to do a horror film?” To which I answered, “Yes, absolutely. And what is it about?” That's how I came to direct my first feature film,
Razorback
.

 

JOHN TAYLOR:
After a long tour, four of the five band members took off for Antigua and stayed next to one another in beach chalets. Paul Berrow called us and said, “Don't come home. We're coming down with Russell, we're going to shoot a video there.” It was quite smart. We got the most significant visual of our career on that trip.

 

RUSSELL MULCAHY:
We did “Rio” in Antigua because one of the managers said, “I want to go yachting in Antigua.” So we wrote a video about yachts.

NICK RHODES:
“Rio” was a day or two days of shooting. We were on the boat for possibly three or four hours. And that image is engrained upon a generation of MTV viewers. When we were making videos, we thought they would appear on
Top of the Pops
once in England, then get shown for a couple weeks on MTV. We didn't ever expect they'd be around thirty years later. It was hard to get away from the image of us in suits on the boat.

 

JOHN TAYLOR:
When we were doing it, did we think,
This is going to be one of the defining images of the decade within popular music?
” No. “Rio” was kind of our
Help!
, wasn't it? Think of the Beatles on those snowmobiles. I mean, they did some pretty stupid shit.

 

KENNEDY, MTV VJ:
The first time I saw “Rio” was in the fifth grade at a friend's house. One look at those dudes in lipstick, dancing on a schooner, and I was hooked.

 

BOY GEORGE, Culture Club:
Duran Duran were projecting an entirely different image than we were. They were selling champagne and yachts. When you're nineteen, you think you're in competition with everyone else, and your success depends on someone else's failure. And the '80s were all about the survival of the fittest and the richest. Simon and I are good friends now, but there was a rivalry between us.

 

JOE ELLIOTT:
We got on well with Duran, but we were jealous of them, because they shot videos on yachts, with beautiful suits and women covered in war paint. We did ours at Battersea Power Station, and our women were caged. As much as they were all heterosexuals, you could understand why gay men would fancy them. Especially Nick Rhodes. I mean, even
we
fancied Nick Rhodes.

 

DAVE HOLMES:
The clothes were beautiful, they were on a yacht. It was an escape to a beautiful place with beautiful people, which is what all of television is now. It blew my mind that girls were attracted to Nick Rhodes, because he was so feminine looking. It just didn't seem right. Up to that point, men hadn't been erotic.

 

NICK RHODES:
Our videos became larger than life. People believed,
That's what they must do all day, hang out on yachts
.

SIMON LE BON:
It was kind of quite annoying for a while, that suddenly we were put into that pigeonhole.

 

JOHN TAYLOR:
The success of the
Rio
videos drove us crazy! Every interview we did would begin, “These videos of yours are really amazing! Whose idea was it?” The phrase “video band” started coming up, and it would set us off. We shot “The Reflex” video in Toronto at Maple Leaf Gardens—it was like,
Let's do a live video.
I think that was part of us saying, “Listen, we're not a fucking video band, okay?”

 

DAVID MALLET:
When I made “White Wedding,” Billy Idol was an ex–punk rocker from a silly band called Generation X. He was handsome and charismatic. So I did one thing only: I made him look good. He had one of the biggest star qualities since James Dean, in my opinion. No, it hasn't turned out right. But in those days, he was the greatest looker and mover since Elvis. Before “White Wedding,” nobody would have admitted that was even possible. One look at that video and they got him.

 

PERRI LISTER:
I said to David Mallet, “I'm dating Billy Idol. Can you do the video for ‘White Wedding'? And don't charge what you usually charge. He hasn't got any money.” And so David gave him a good price.

 

BILLY IDOL:
We were thinking about how to create a nightmare wedding between a Goth and a straight girl, with crosses, nails being hammered into a coffin, and me as a vampire.

 

PERRI LISTER:
I played the bride, and I came up with the idea for the barbed-wire wedding ring. Somebody asked Billy in an interview, “Don't you think that's sexist?” And he goes, “No, it was a girl's idea.” We didn't have fake blood on the set, so when Billy slipped the ring on me, I said, “Cut my finger!” That's real blood you see in the video.

 

BILLY IDOL:
Later on, some people made the inference that people attending the wedding make a Nazi salute.

 

DAVID MALLET:
It's not a Nazi salute. It's just people sticking their hands out towards the bride and groom. Yes, I was playing with the power of crowd imagery, maybe a Nuremberg rally. And you'll immediately say, “The Nuremberg rallies were Nazi.” Yes, but the Nazi side of it hadn't occurred to me.

 

BILLY IDOL:
Perri and two of her dancer friends spank their own bums in time to the hand claps on the record. That's the kind of thing they love in England.

 

DAVID MALLET:
Yes, the girls slap their own bottoms. Why not? It was a big laugh, a piss-take on soft-porn. It was an erotic satire of sexuality. It made me laugh and it made a lot of other clever people laugh. All the sexy videos I've done have been comedies.