I Want My MTV (58 page)

 

KEN R. CLARK:
Nina was the first to leave. That was shocking. Then J.J. was next.

JULIE BROWN, MTV VJ:
They gave me a dressing room and I started putting my stuff in there. Unfortunately, Nina hadn't quite moved out. It was revolving doors—I walked in and she walked out.

 

KEN R. CLARK:
Julie Brown hit that place like a ton of bricks. She had an enormous, enormous personality. She was a loaded cannon. You didn't know when it would go off or which direction it would be pointing. She was by far the most volatile VJ we ever had. At that point, I was manager of on-air talent. And the MTV executives' mandate to me was “Keep her the hell away from us.”

 

ADAM CURRY:
I grew up in Holland, where there were only two TV stations, because it was all government-run. I was hosting the music show on Sunday night, presenting videos, and half the country watched it. I was a national celebrity. All the rock stars wanted to come to Amsterdam, of course: “Yay! Hookers and blow!” I spoke fluent English, so I could have a conversation with Mick Jagger or Boy George. Somehow a tape of what I was doing got to Steve Leeds. He called and said, “Would you like to work for us in New York?” Maybe six weeks later, I was on a plane.

My first day was Halloween, 1987. From day one, I was a misfit in the organization. Carol Robinson, who ran the press department, arranged an interview with
TV Guide
. They go, “What do you think of Madonna?” And I go, “Well, she's kind of a bitch.” Everyone at MTV shit themselves: “You can't say that about Madonna!” They were not happy with me. But I was really good at being a VJ. I was fired many, many times, and they'd hire me back the next day.

 

LOU STELLATO:
The rumor was that Adam was paid a lot of money to come to America, because he was huge in Europe. He had a lot of confidence. I got along with Adam, but he could be a dick.

 

VAN TOFFLER:
MTV needed to send the signal that we would evolve, and not grow old with our audience. And that meant new talent, new faces, and new music. We said good-bye to a lot of musicians who were relevant in the early'80s, like A Flock of Seagulls.

 

CAROLYNE HELDMAN, MTV VJ:
I was the music director at a rock radio station in Aspen, Colorado, when I saw a full-page ad looking for MTV VJs. It said something like “Is rock n' roll your life?” I was like, “I don't know. Kinda? Maybe?” I didn't even have MTV at the time. When I got there, Nina and J.J. had already left. Alan, being from the South, was super open and nice. Mark was very big-brothery to me. Martha was not overtly friendly or welcoming. I started in September, and she was let go in January.

 

BETH McCARTHY:
All the original VJs were getting fired. It was pretty traumatizing. Martha was heartbroken.

 

ALAN HUNTER:
When they let Martha go, we all thought the sky was falling.

 

LOU STELLATO:
Martha seemed to embody MTV. On her last segment, she said good-bye on camera, and Beth McCarthy was crying.

 

MARTHA QUINN:
I was devastated when MTV let me go. I thought I was going to be there forever. Sometimes people ask if I can see myself having an opportunity like that again. That's like asking Buzz Aldrin, “Can you ever top being in the first moon landing?”

 

TABITHA SOREN:
VJs came and went. I can't even remember half of them.

 

ALAN HUNTER:
Mark and I said to each other, “Are we gonna be VJs for the rest of our lives?” I had another two years on my contract. Mark and I left of our own volition.

 

MARK GOODMAN:
Alan and I quit on the same day. Most people think the original VJs were fired, but Alan and I chose to go. They had hired Kurt Loder, and I knew Kurt would be doing a lot of the interviews I'd been doing. Which annoyed me, because whenever Kurt reviewed a record for
Rolling Stone
, he would find a way to slag off MTV. But when he was offered a job, it was, “What? You're gonna pay me how much? I'm there!” And he never, ever, ever made great television.

 

DAVE SIRULNICK, MTV executive:
I'd been a segment producer at CNN, and I went to MTV to help develop and create
The Week in Rock
. Adam Curry and Carolyne Heldman became the hosts of the show, but we wanted somebody who could really add to the level of credibility.

 

ADAM CURRY:
I lived for hosting
The Week in Rock
. It was the
Entertainment Tonight
of MTV. But everyone said, “We need Kurt Loder, because he has credibility.” “We need credibility on the channel.” “Kurt brings us credibility.” What the fuck? He wrote a book with Tina Turner—big deal. All of a sudden, this old dude with a bad haircut came in to host the show. It was insulting.

 

DAVE SIRULNICK:
Kurt's audition was a little sweaty, but he had a confidence in himself. I asked him to talk about the first concert he went to. He said, “I've been to millions of concerts and can't remember the first one. That's not really who I am.” And we're like,
We love him
. There were various attempts at giving him a wardrobe, and Kurt would say, “Get away from me. I don't want to deal with you people. Let me wear what I want to wear.”

 

ALEX COLETTI:
At his audition, Kurt Loder sweat so much, it was running down his shirt. I was like, “This poor guy is just not made for TV.” And of course, Kurt outlived us all there. He was awesome to work with. On Fridays, he'd make margaritas for everyone.

 

ADAM CURRY:
Kurt liked to drink. He would bring a blender to the studio and make margaritas. He'd have at least one margarita before he went on the air.

 

KEN R. CLARK:
Adam and Julie were the biggest stars of the second wave of VJs, and they did not get along at all. They would insult each other and take jabs at one another on air. I remember Julie opening a fan letter, asking what she wanted for Christmas. She said with a smirk, “Maybe a blow-dryer, so I can look like Adam Curry.” I tried to arrange the schedule so they wouldn't be in the studio at the same time. VJ life had become very different then. It was about sending limos as opposed to people showing up in sweatpants. Most of my time was spent negotiating with their managers and agents about whether or not, say, Julie's makeup artist could fly first class to Spring Break. That's what that era became about.

 

JULIE BROWN:
Adam Curry didn't like me. I probably annoyed him. He's cool and calm, and I was a bit buzzy and wacky. You either get along or you don't. So Adam continued getting his hair done by his wife, and I continued disco dancing.

 

ADAM CURRY:
The evil Julie Brown. Oh, I hated her. The crew hated her. She was never on time and was always bitching.

 

JULIE BROWN:
I could understand if people thought I was a bitch. I'm very British and to-the-point. If I'm in Ralph's supermarket, I go to the front of the line. I don't have time to wait! I made one wardrobe girl cry. When new clothes came in, I'd go, “Okay that's mine, that's mine, and that's mine.” She got a little overwhelmed and started crying.

 

ALISON STEWART, MTV reporter:
I was hired as an assistant to the VJs, putting Downtown Julie Brown's wigs in her dressing room, autographing pictures for her. She got a lot of mail from prisoners. She could be a diva. One time, she wanted me to keep her company at some event in Westchester. I thought,
Oh, this is a nice thing—older black woman asking a younger black woman to go someplace with you
. No. When I got there, she told me I had to stay in the car. I think I was there until 3 A.M. That was pretty rotten.

 

GEORGE BRADT:
Julie Brown was a nightmare. She was always unprepared. The night before taping, VJs would get a script for the next day. To prepare, they'd need to read the script for an hour or two. She did nothing, ever. She'd show up at the studio, usually late, rifling though her script. We didn't have a lot of time to fuck around. It had to be really bad for us to say, “That sucked, do it again.” When we did, she would get upset. And the crew would get pissed off, because it meant we were gonna be late for lunch break. One day we came out of a video, into a commercial break, and she said, “Take a Valium and we'll be back in a few minutes.” She didn't understand why that was a problem.

 

ALISON STEWART:
It's almost like she was born to be a VJ, almost like they made this network around her. Because she had a look and an attitude and she wasn't really afraid of much. I think she was older than she said she was. She kept saying, “Do I look okay? Do I look fine?” I always felt bad for her. “You look great. You've got a rocking body, why are you so insecure about aging?”

 

KEN R. CLARK:
She called John Cannelli a cunt. I'll never forget that. “Oh shut up, you fucking cunt.” Her favorite expression was “Kiss my clit.” The control room would say, “Julie, you need to redo that segment.” And Julie would say, “You can come out here and kiss my clit. I'm not redoing it.” She could be horribly offensive, but she was also one of the most caring people you could ever meet.

 

ALEX COLETTI:
Julie would flash people if the energy on set was lagging. And the energy was always lagging. I can't tell you how many times we saw her knickers.

LOU STELLATO:
Julie Brown was a handful. Two handfuls. Oh my God. She could be so cunty. But I was lucky, because I could make her laugh. I would ask her to do things and if she wasn't in the mood, she would just tell me to kiss her clit.

 

BETH McCARTHY:
Julie Brown was a piece of work. A lot of people did not get along with her. She would throw fits in her dressing room and refuse to come to the set. If she did not like you, she made your life a living hell. But she liked me. She always called me “Barf Bag,” as a term of endearment.

Julie was in a tumultuous relationship with a jerk named Chris. He was also British. He was always, “I'm gonna open a nightclub,” and she would fund his hobbies. And he cheated on her all the time. She caught him in bed with Mariah Carey once, before she had a career, before she hooked up with Tommy Mottola. He was a leech. And when Julie was having a problem at home, she would come in and take it out on everyone at work.

 

JULIE BROWN:
When I came from England, I was engaged. That lasted a long time, like five years or so, until I broke up with my fiancé.

 

BETH McCARTHY:
Julie and I would go to the China Club on the Upper West Side. There'd always be big athletes hitting on her. Lawrence Taylor, who played for the New York Giants, hit on her. She dated John Salley, the basketball player. She called me from his house one night because she was freaked out about how big he was. She's like, “I don't know what to do.” I said, “Julie, I'm hanging up.”

 

JULIE BROWN:
I called my mum and said, “I've got a date with Billy Idol.” And she said, “Well, you only live once.” I don't kiss and tell, but I will say Billy makes a good cup of tea in the morning. I think I bored him—I'm not a rock n' roll chick, I don't party all night.

 

BILLY IDOL:
We were quite serious for a while, but in the end, she married some German bloke. We just weren't 100 percent right for each other. I was a bit of a drug addict, and that was probably the height of my drug addiction. I wasn't fully committed to anything or anybody.

 

STEVE LEEDS:
Julie was hired to be our diva. Lee Masters felt that VJs needed to be seen as stars. You couldn't have Julie Brown be a star on television and then see her flying coach. And mind you, we were now paying VJs a hell of a lot of money.

 

JULIE BROWN:
Being on MTV, you never paid for anything. There were limos, first-class flights, clothes—it was the first time designers had a big outlet for fashion on TV, so things came in free, from jewelry to shoes to handbags. I was dressing in Gaultier, Dolce & Gabbana, Donna Karan, Nicole Miller. I had a crew of press people taking care of me, backstage passes to everything. MTV ruled. That's when life was good. Some of the other VJs struggled, apparently, but MTV did me the right way. I had a very nice contract. They did Adam Curry much better, I believe.

 

KEN R. CLARK:
When MTV started, the VJs didn't have assistants, and they got paid $40,000 to $50,000 a year. Man, how that changed. Everybody ended up with stretch limos, their own makeup, some people had private security.

 

ADAM CURRY:
I had a two-year contract when I came in: $150,000 the first year, $175,000 the second year. I was the highest-paid VJ. However, no one got first-class airfare. So I'd bitch and moan to get an upgrade: “I'm a star, man, I can't be flying in the back of the bus.”

 

BETH McCARTHY:
I never got along with Adam. Other people loved him. I found him arrogant. We butted heads a lot.

 

ADAM CURRY:
The people in charge were idiots. They had no idea how television worked, no idea how cool it could have been. I felt so restricted. They would not let you say or do anything crazy or wacky or edgy. You couldn't make jokes about the artists, you couldn't do anything off key or a little blue. And there's a reason for it: The packaging of cable channels had just started, and a “basic package” came with MTV, regardless of where you were. We had broken through to 40 million households. That was huge. And it brought about a complete clampdown. You weren't allowed to say “VMAs”; you had to say “Video Music Awards.” I called MTV “the big M.” Nope, can't say that. I thought that was genius of me. After I did a take, the director would say, “That's truly funny, man, but you mentioned pubic hair. That's a burn.”
Burn
meant we roll back the tape and tape over that segment. It was very annoying. It was television being made poorly, with a lot of politics involved.