I Want My MTV (26 page)

 

JEFF AYEROFF:
I was one of the first people to point out that MTV didn't play videos by black artists. But the people running MTV weren't racist. Part of the problem was the quality of videos. If you look at the Michael Jackson videos before “Billie Jean,” even those were just him backlit by lasers.

 

RALPH TRESVANT, New Edition:
We didn't have any budget to make our first video, “Candy Girl,” so we had to go home and get our own clothes. Those are our school clothes we're wearing. We shot “Popcorn Love” and “She Gives Me a Bang” the same day in London, while we were on a promotional tour. We shot “Cool It Now” and “Mr. Telephone Man” on the same day, too.

 

BOBBY BROWN, New Edition:
The first time I saw a music video wasn't on MTV, it was on BET. When I saw New Edition's video on BET, I was thirteen, and I felt like a star. Everybody saw it in Boston, so we was the shit in the hood. People were impressed we were on TV. Didn't matter why. We could have robbed a bank . . .

 

LISA COLEMAN, Prince and the Revolution:
We were on tour when “Little Red Corvette” started doing well on radio, so we squeezed in a video. A director flew in, we set up our gear at the venue in Jacksonville, and Prince threw together some choreography.

 

ANN CARLI:
When I came to Jive Records, only one video had been made in the U.S. office, and that was Whodini's “Magic's Wand.” It was awful. The guys in the group just ride up and down escalators—that was the video. Barry Weiss, who managed artist development at Jive, said to me, “I'm never going to make another video, because I almost got fired over that one.” I thought,
Yeah, I can see why.

 

DON LETTS:
Once MTV came onto the scene, a corporate mentality came into play: “We don't want any radical ideas, nothing political.” For directors like me, who were smart enough, you learned to be subtle. I did a video for Musical Youth, “Pass the Dutchie,” five little black guys playing a reggae track. I placed them in front of the House of Parliament, which is a postcard shot of what England is supposed to be. Instead, I replaced it with my vision of London. It was a subtle way of acknowledging the importance of black culture in the UK.

People often say “Billie Jean” was the first black music video on MTV. “Pass the Dutchie” was first. Because they were little and spoke in funny British accents, Musical Youth were deemed as nonthreatening, and therefore non-black.

DENNIS SEATON, Musical Youth:
Kelvin was the youngest, eleven years old, and I was the oldest, fifteen. In our first four videos, which Don Letts directed, the band was always skipping and jumping. You just see the innocence of youth. We didn't see MTV until a year after “Pass the Dutchie,” when we recorded our second album in LA.

 

DON LETTS:
I'm in New York, and I get a call from MTV. They want to interview me about making videos for the Clash. When I get to the studio, everyone looks at me like I've shit myself. After an embarrassing five minutes, a guy sits me down and says, “I don't know how to tell you this, we can't do the interview. We didn't realize you were black.”

 

DONNA SUMMER, artist:
When I began, people focused on my sexuality. I started my career with “Love to Love You Baby,” and when I used to do that song, pandemonium would break out. They would body-slam the stage. But I'd pulled away. I was always trying to have more dignity. I wanted people to focus on the music.

I don't know if MTV knew what to do with me, because “She Works Hard for the Money” wasn't your typical rock n' roll video. It takes you to where people work hard, where lives are tough, maybe thankless. All these different characters who've had to struggle, the waitress and the nurse, are saying, “I've succeeded.” That's why they dance at the end. As a black woman, that might not be the easiest thing for my record company to sell. I don't say this as a racial slur. Because I was black, they just couldn't understand me having that level of creativity. Even though I was forward-thinking, I didn't get the opportunity to do something that, say, Madonna did. That's just pure, institutionalized racism.

 

BILL ADLER, record executive:
The first so-called “hip-hop” video MTV played was Herbie Hancock's “Rockit,” which was great, but there are no human beings in it, except once in a while you see Herbie on a little TV screen. It's a way of programming black music to white youth without any scary black people in it.

 

KEVIN GODLEY:
The brief we were given for “Rockit” was to find a way to get Herbie onto MTV.

 

HERBIE HANCOCK, artist:
Godley and Creme explained to me what was going on in the video. It was about our fear of machines taking over. In the video, robots have replaced humans. At the end of the video, when I come on the TV, it gets thrown out the window, because robots are afraid of humans. Or something like that.

 

DEBBIE NEWMAN:
I sent a two-line description of the video: “Herbie Hancock appears on a television screen in a room full of robots. $35,000.” Nobody thought this would ever get played.

 

LOL CREME:
Our concept was to put the robots in a domestic situation, like a family. I had to explain it to the video genius at CBS. She said, “Are you sure you can make robots interesting for three and a half minutes?” That was the kind of fabulous mind in charge of videos.

 

KEVIN GODLEY:
They were hydraulically powered and unstable robots, and there were arms flying around, legs kicking, bits falling off. They were quite dangerous, like something out of
Texas Chainsaw Massacre
. There was one robot having a wank under the bedclothes, which you could not get away with now. It was strange and grotesque—that was something I hadn't seen on MTV yet.

 

NICK RHODES:
“Rockit” was a landmark.

 

GALE SPARROW:
Godley and Creme came to the studio, supposedly for an interview. I set up all our studio interviews, and we had nothing scheduled. They said, “Oh, sorry . . . Well, as long as we're here, we'd like to show you something.” They'd made this mistake on purpose, to play me the Herbie Hancock video. And I was blown away. I said to Les Garland, “We have a problem. Because this is the most fabulous video, and I think we've got to play it.” Word came back from CBS Records that Godley and Creme told them they'd get Herbie Hancock on MTV, and if they didn't, CBS didn't have to pay them. And they did. We played the hell out of it.

 

HERBIE HANCOCK:
I saw the final product in a screening room in London, and I'll admit, I had no idea what I was looking at. We played it for Columbia Records in London, and they went insane. They were congratulating me, telling me how great this was. And I said, “It is?” MTV started the video in light rotation, and the response was so incredible that they sent it to heavy rotation. It just blew up.

I remember being on
The Phil Donahue Show
, and even he asked me why they didn't have videos of black artists before me and Michael Jackson.

 

ABBEY KONOWITCH:
MTV adhered to a rock format, and record companies accepted formats. That's how radio was programmed. We never thought an R&B artist would get played on MTV. It didn't enter our minds until “Billie Jean.”

 

 

 

 

 

CBS RECORDS AND MTV BOTH PROFITED IMMENSELY
from the success of Michael Jackson. But neither party can agree on how it happened, and each, in effect, says the other is lying. MTV says they loved “Billie Jean” and were happy to play it; CBS says MTV turned down the video and played it only after the label threatened to pull its videos, which comprised a substantial part of MTV's playlist.

“The MTV version of the story is bullshit,” says a former CBS executive who asked to not be named. “Walter Yetnikoff loved to fight. So did David Benjamin. They both relished a fight, and there was a sense of justice about it, too.” If key CBS executives are lying, it's to exaggerate their power and importance. If MTV executives are lying, it's to disguise the fact that they had to be forced to play a singer who more or less saved their network. Also, if they did reject “Billie Jean,” it's consistent with Bob Pittman's often-stated commitment to maintaining a rock n' roll playlist.

This much is inarguable: MTV did not immediately play “Billie Jean.” By the time MTV added it, the song had been out for more than two months and had reached number one, and
Thriller
had ended Men at Work's long run at the top of the album chart. A
Billboard
article in March 1983 observed that “some time elapsed between when the tape was submitted [to MTV] and when it was aired,” and writer Paul Grein added in the article, the “decision to add a mainstream black music smash, even if its mass audience appeal is by now rather obvious, is significant.”

At first, MTV added “Billie Jean” in medium rotation, with two to three plays per day. It was bumped into heavy rotation a month later, only a week before MTV began to play “Beat It.” For eight weeks, both songs were in heavy rotation. Then “Beat It” dropped out, and after four more weeks, so did “Billie Jean.” By early summer, Michael Jackson was off MTV, even as
Thriller
remained at number one. Medium rotation for “Billie Jean,” eight weeks of rotation for “Beat It”: This is strong but not overwhelming support.

At a point when it seemed
Thriller
's run was over, Jackson released the “Thriller” video—strategically, just before the Christmas buying season. The upper range of a video budget was $50,000; Jackson spent $1 million. It was the most elaborate video ever made, and this time, MTV was fully behind it. The decision, and the success it brought MTV at a time when staffers worried daily about the network's survival, effectively ended the policy of playing only rock artists.

 

BOB PITTMAN:
Rick James made the claim that MTV wasn't playing any black videos. I figured, “That's ridiculous, people will watch MTV and know it's not true.” I learned my first great PR lesson there. The press ran with MTV PLAYS NO BLACK VIDEOS, ALLEGES RICK JAMES. All of us realized, “God, we'd better work extra hard to find some black videos.” And the problem was not just black videos.
No one
was making videos yet. But people got paranoid about it, and it began to be a problem. So we looked for artists. And when the guys saw “Billie Jean,” they said, “This is it.”

 

ROBIN SLOANE:
I was at Epic when the “Billie Jean” video came out. MTV refused to play it under the guise that it was not an AOR record. It became a huge battle. Those negotiations were mostly handled by Freddy DeMann and Ron Weisner, who were managing Michael. Michael paid for the video himself. He owned it. We had nothing to do with it. And our head of pop promotion, Frank DiLeo, got involved as well.

 

JEFF AYEROFF:
Quincy Jones called one day and told me to come to his office and meet Michael. He asked me who should do Michael's video. I played them the Human League “Don't You Want Me” video and said, “That's who should do the video.”

 

STEVE BARRON:
Michael Jackson liked “Don't You Want Me,” so his management contacted me. They said he had a new song coming out and he wanted something cinematic. I got the track and loved it. I had this flash to do something magical, where he'd have a Midas Touch, and everything he touches lights up. I'd had a similar idea for a Joan Armatrading video that never happened, and as soon as I heard “Billie Jean” I went back to that idea.

 

SIMON FIELDS:
Steve originally wrote a
Wizard of Oz
–ish concept that cost way more than we could afford.

 

STEVE BARRON:
Michael really liked the treatment I wrote. And the budget was set at somewhere around $55,000 for a two-day shoot. Then he had an idea that would have required a choreographer and dancers and another $5,000. Simon Fields called CBS, and CBS said, “No way.
No. Way.
”

Michael was lovely. Really sweet, soft-spoken, and excited about this next step in his career. He felt like he'd grown up, even from
Off the Wall
. Freddy DeMann called me and said Michael had been practicing dance moves in front of the mirror, so it would be good to save some of the video for him to dance. There's an interview somewhere with Michael where he says the director on “Billie Jean” didn't want him to dance. Which is completely and utterly untrue. Can you imagine me saying, “Sorry, Michael, I don't want to have dancing in your video”?

 

DANIEL PEARL:
Steve Barron and I brought in a guy from England named Eric Critchley. He did matte paintings. We didn't have much money, so we built a small set and faked the rest. We'd set up a shot where the set might occupy only a third or a quarter of the frame. Then we'd put a piece of glass between the camera and the set, and Critchley would paint an extension of the set on the glass. And we'd fill up the whole frame with the blend of the actual set and Eric's painting. For example, there's a scene where Michael is walking down the sidewalk and you see a wide shot of the sidewalk and the buildings. In reality, only the sidewalk and the first floor of the storefront existed. Above the first floor, the buildings were painted on glass. But it looks like one big set.