I Want My MTV (38 page)

 

BOB PITTMAN:
At a certain point, the labels wanted to get paid for their videos. I sat down with our lawyer, Allen Grubman, and figured out that if MTV could get something out of it, I'd pay. So we asked to have an exclusive window on a certain number of their videos for our world premieres, which at that time was important to us. In exchange, we gave them money, some spots on the air, and gave them some “puts,” which meant they could actually put a certain number of videos into rotation on MTV, even if we didn't want to play them. Because for the first time, there were more videos than slots to play them in.

 

ALLEN GRUBMAN:
Bob Pittman was at my house in the Hamptons. By this point, the record companies wanted to be compensated for their videos, so we came up with a concept that we would pay each record company a sum of money every year for the exclusive right to play certain key videos for a period of thirty days. That gave MTV a big leg up against their competitors.

 

AL TELLER:
When Pittman went around to the record companies to negotiate exclusivity deals, I laughed at him. I said, “Bob, I'm not going to give you an exclusive.” I had no interest whatsoever in seeing MTV become a monopoly for music videos. I thought that would be a disaster for us. But they were clever; they offered multimillion-dollar deals to each of the major labels in exchange for an exclusivity period that was clearly designed to kill off their competitors. Warner Bros. and CBS were profitable, but RCA wasn't profitable, PolyGram wasn't profitable, Capitol wasn't profitable. So when MTV came to them with a check, they couldn't resist. MTV played its cards well. I was overruled by my boss, Walter Yetnikoff, and we ended up making the deal. The music industry has a long history of doing incredibly stupid things at important moments in its history.

 

TIM NEWMAN:
The record industry is in fairly deep trouble today, of their own doing. Music video was a tremendous way to promote music, and they let themselves become captives of MTV. Early on, MTV would take any video and be happy to run it. When the tables turned and there were more artists making videos, MTV could pick and choose. The labels tried to fight back, which wasn't successful. They delivered themselves into a situation where they did not have control over promotion. They had a partner, in MTV, that had a different agenda. The record business is an old-fashioned industry that's had a low level of success in adapting to change. They were shortsighted. They never, ever took the long view—instead of embracing MTV, they should have done everything in their power to create competition for MTV, so there would be more than one outlet for their videos.

JAZZ SUMMERS:
There was a standoff between record companies and MTV, over who had more power. The record companies were paying for MTV's free programming. And they're thinking,
Shit, what are we doing that for?
But their free programming was selling a zillion records. After the mid-'80s, MTV knew they had the power. That's when the record companies said, “Please play our record!” instead of “Why should we give you our record?”

 

 

 

BOB GELDOF LEARNED ABOUT THE DISASTROUS
famine in Ethiopia while watching TV, and he resolved to raise money to feed starving Africans. Geldof was not a music star—his band, the Boomtown Rats, is remembered mostly for the crazy-assassin ballad “I Don't Like Mondays”—but he knew England was full of pop phenoms, and he gathered them to record a song he cowrote, “Do They Know It's Christmas?” The success and attention led to “We Are the World,” an American all-star answer record to “Do They Know It's Christmas?” But Geldof wasn't done exploiting celebrity to raise money for charity. Working relentlessly, using persuasion, negotiation, guilt, and manipulation, he organized Live Aid, a daylong concert held in London and Philadelphia on July 13, 1985, and broadcast around the world.

In the U.S. Live Aid was broadcast live on ABC and MTV, whose VJs hosted the event—quite badly, almost ineptly. ABC's audience was much larger than MTV's, so the VJs' inexperience was seen by millions, including TV critics who hammered the fives faces of the network. “The MTV video jockeys should hide their heads,”
USA Today
wrote. Live Aid raised close to $300 million, and Geldof was knighted, but the countdown began on the MTV careers of Martha Quinn, Nina Blackwood, Alan Hunter, Mark Goodman, and J.J. Jackson.

 

NIGEL DICK:
At Phonogram, I'd made two videos for the Boomtown Rats, when their career was on the way out and the band had no money. One day my boss, Tony Powell, said, “Bob Geldof's gonna make this charity record over the weekend. You need to shoot a video and figure out how to do it for free. And it needs to be ready by Monday evening.” I had five days to plan, shoot, edit, and complete a video for a song which had yet to be recorded. Which actually had yet to be
written
.

When I showed up on Sunday morning to begin filming “Do They Know It's Christmas?” nobody was there apart from Geldof and Trevor Horn, the producer. We had two cameras, so I set up one outside and one inside. People started arriving around noon to do the chorus, and during the day people sang their various parts. All the artists were very focused. At some point, somebody asked, “Hey, Bob, where's the food?” And he completely lost it. He said, “This is a fucking charity record and people are starving. Go buy your own fucking lunch.”

 

GEORGE MICHAEL:
The musicians in England had been slagging each other off all year, and everyone kind of forgot about it for the day. The only person who didn't succumb to the charitable nature of the day was Paul Weller, who decided to have a go at me in front of everybody. I said, “Don't be a wanker all your life. Have a day off.”

 

BOY GEORGE:
I had just got off a flight from New York and I was tired. I'd done a show the night before, and I looked like I'd been beaten up. Cameras were shoved in your face from the minute you got there, but because it was for charity, you didn't complain. Everybody was really, really friendly—I think Simon Le Bon came up and gave me a hug. In front of the press, of course.

 

BOB GELDOF, artist:
The '80s were characterized by greed, in effect. But you must understand, I missed that. To me, the '80s were characterized by overwhelming generosity and kindness. Prior to Live Aid, people had been participating in this phenomenon for months. “Do They Know It's Christmas?” was sold in butcher shops all during Christmas. They weren't selling turkeys or partridges. For whatever reason, this song—not a particularly good song—tapped into a groundswell of compassion. We never said we'd eliminate world hunger, but we could draw attention to a monstrous human crime, a moral and intellectual absurdity. It worked.

 

JON LANDAU:
“We Are the World” had a huge impact on Bruce Springsteen's career, especially internationally. I couldn't be there the night the thing was filmed. But I was in California a little while afterwards and went to see Ken Kragen, who had organized the thing. Ken says, “Let me show you this.” And when Bruce's bit comes up at the end, juxtaposed with Stevie Wonder, I couldn't believe it. I was so excited. That video arguably had as much impact as any of Bruce's own videos, and it was completely unplanned. And that also became the Bruce that Joe Piscopo and everybody loved to parody.

 

CHIP RACHLIN, MTV executive:
I called a concert promoter I knew, Harvey Goldsmith, who had aligned with Sir Bob. He said, “We're trying to feed the starving in Africa. What do you bring to the party?” I said, “Well, I
do
have a twenty-four-hour music channel playing most of the artists on that song. Why don't we start there?” So I talked to Garland and explained that if we made some sort of commitment to give them inventory on the air, we could get the exclusive on the video. And that led to us broadcasting the Live Aid concert. I did that deal. About six weeks before the broadcast, Gale Sparrow and I left to form a new company.

 

CURT SMITH:
We'd been touring for a year, really hard work. We had five days off and planned a holiday in Hawaii. Then Bob Geldof announced that we were playing Live Aid. He never asked us. Geldof thought he was so powerful that if he announced it, we'd have to say
yes
, or we'd look like bad people. I was pissed off. Whether we played or not wasn't going to make a difference to the amount of money raised. So we went on holiday, because that was the only break we had.

 

BOB GELDOF:
I didn't lie or blackmail very much. I had to announce the gig, and I realized that talking on the phone to a band was one thing, but unless their names were in the paper, they weren't going to commit. Once it was in the paper, they couldn't back out. Bryan Ferry rang me up and said, “Listen, I haven't agreed to do this.” And I said, “Well, it's cool, Bryan, if you want to pull out, that's fine.” Of course, really, he couldn't.

 

DARYL HALL:
It was an unforgettable experience backstage: “Hey, Jimmy Page.” “Look, Madonna.” Jack Nicholson was passing joints around.

 

ALAN HUNTER:
I wish Jack had tapped on my shoulder.

 

MARTHA QUINN:
I said to Jack Nicholson, “I'm Martha Quinn from MTV.” And he goes, “I know who you are.” That's when I realized I was a celebrity.

DAVID ROBINSON:
The Cars had a lot of technical trouble. It was way too hot. We seldom played in the daytime, so that was disconcerting. The electronic drums weren't working when we started “Drive,” and I had to yell, “Shut off all the electronic drums.” There was a rush to get bands onstage and off. I just remember being nervous and hot, and not really liking it too much.

 

JUDY McGRATH:
I was standing in mud up to my knees for what felt like twelve hours, feeding the producers copy and trying to make sure we had our facts straight. I was exhilarated beyond belief.

 

MARTHA QUINN:
Everybody lambasted the VJs for our Live Aid coverage, because the production truck cut to us while Paul McCartney was singing “Let It Be.” How do
we
know what they're doing in the truck? That's not
my
fault.

 

ALAN HUNTER:
Kurt Loder called us airheads in
Rolling Stone
. That was a little mean, but he was not far off.

 

JOHN TAYLOR:
Duran broke up in '84 and there was a rift. Andy Taylor and I were touring with Power Station in America, and Simon and Nick were working on the
Arcadia
album. We met in Philadelphia and did several days of rehearsal, and it was not a friendly or happy situation. The only time we were able to get in the same space together was when we did the photo for the program. Live Aid was the last time the band played together for a few years.

 

RICK SPRINGFIELD:
Eric Clapton asked to meet me that day. I was a big fan. But I was stressed out and I blew him off, which is kind of embarrassing. He probably thought,
Oh, what a dick.

 

TOM BAILEY:
That show was mayhem. We were announced, the curtain went up, and as I walked towards the mic stand, I realized my guitar cable wasn't long enough to get there. It was a shambles.

On the bus back to the hotel, I sat next to a corpse who turned out to be David Crosby. He looked white as a sheet and he was unconscious. It was a bit like the final scene in
Midnight Cowboy
.

There was a big party afterwards, but I went back to the hotel with Nile Rodgers and we played Scrabble. Nile was very good at Scrabble.

 

HOWARD JONES:
U2 established themselves as a global band that day. And Queen established themselves as probably the best band of all time.

JOE DAVOLA:
I told the people I worked with, “I wanna get onstage at some point today.” They were like, “You're full of shit.” When they were singing “We Are the World,” the finale, security had fallen apart. I found Doug Herzog and said, “Follow me.” I ran up to the microphone, got between two guys in Duran Duran, and started singing. That was the MTV attitude: You might as well go for it. No guts, no glory.

 

 

 

 

 

BILLY SQUIER, artist:
I came up with “Rock Me Tonite” on holiday in Greece, swimming off Santorini. I came out of the water and said to my girlfriend, “I've got a hit for the next record.”

 

MICK KLEBER:
“Rock Me Tonite” is often ranked as one of the worst music videos of all time.

 

RUDOLF SCHENKER:
I liked Billy Squier very much, but then I saw him doing this video in a very terrible way. I couldn't take the music serious anymore.

 

STEVE LUKATHER:
Billy Squier was a cool guy. I worked on one of his records. But that video killed his career.

 

PHIL COLLEN:
The first big tour Def Leppard did in the States was in '83, as the opening act for Billy Squier. A year later, Squier learned the hard way that rock singers shouldn't skip through their bedroom, ripping their shirts off. That's in the first chapter of the rock handbook. You should know that straight off the bat.