I Want My MTV (79 page)

 

SEBASTIAN BACH:
I was right there. Tommy said to me, “Your manager's a fucking asshole.” Then he grabbed my bottle of vodka and chugged it—I mean, like, gulp, gulp, gulp, gulp, gulp—ran over to Doc, and punched him in the head. Doc was walking around with tears in his eyes. It was a bad fucking scene. Mötley wouldn't fly back in the same plane with Doc.

 

DOC McGHEE:
Mötley felt like I fucked them, which I didn't. There was a malfunction—one tiny piece of pyro went off on one side of Lenin Stadium. It was a popcorn fart. I was backstage, and I didn't even hear it. When Tommy came at me, I was shocked. I had no idea what he was talking about.

We were all kinda burned out. Nikki almost died of an overdose a year and a half before that. Vince had killed a kid in a car crash with the drummer from Hanoi Rocks, and crippled two other kids. I mean, the catshit was piling up. And when the catshit gets bigger than the cat, you've got to get rid of the cat.

 

ADAM CURRY:
On the way back, everyone was ripped from this ten-day journey. Jon Bon Jovi had his personal doctor along for the ride, and he started handing out yellow pills. It was Halcion. A few years later, Halcion was taken off the market in some countries because people were committing suicide. We certainly slept, but I was fucked up for a week.

 

 

 

MOST OF THE PEOPLE WHO DESPISED MTV CITED
the channel's preference for pageantry over authenticity, which had been the measure of all musical acts until the end of the '70s. Authenticity meant Bob Dylan, aiming his songs against violence, injustice, the government, and conformity. In the video universe, it didn't matter if you wrote your own songs or performed with the assistance of dancers and prerecorded vocals—Paula Abdul and Bruce Springsteen might equally make a great video. MTV grew more confident in its beliefs as time passed, until pageantry became almost the entirety of the channel: lip-syncing Germans, rappers who danced better than they rapped, rock bands whose hair was better than their music, and millionaires whose new songs doubled as beer or soda commercials. MTV needed some balance, and it came from two producers who didn't work at the channel and were disgusted that “hot chicks and cute boys” now ruled the music business.

 

JIM BURNS, TV producer:
Bob Small and I went to a Bruce Springsteen show at Madison Square Garden, and Bruce kept getting called out to do encores. The last encore, he came out alone, sat down on a stool, and sang and played an acoustic guitar. As we were leaving, I said to Bob, “You know, I think that could be a show.”

I've known Bob since 1970, when I was a freshman in college and we worked on the same political campaign for two weeks. My mother got me a job on Wall Street, then she got me a job at the Metropolitan Museum. But I'd always wanted to be in show business.

 

BOB SMALL, TV producer:
I'd been a roadie in college: Bowie, during the East Coast leg of the “Diamond Dogs” tour, Jefferson Starship, Peter Frampton, Elvis Costello's first American appearance. I did a couple of Brecht plays, and after I realized,
This is where the girls hang out
, I became a theater major. You see
Threepenny Opera
and then you see Bowie, and you see a connection. I was driving a cab, working in off-Broadway theaters, and hanging lights with Mark Brickman.

 

JIM BURNS:
We sublet space from Fred/Alan, the advertising agency for MTV Networks. We were their in-house production company, and we did specials for HBO and Lifetime. And we wanted to start pitching shows.

 

BOB SMALL:
We pitched an acoustic music show. They said, “Well, folk music doesn't work on MTV.” We tried to explain, it's not folk music. I'm an old hippie. Music shouldn't be reduced to how cute you are, or how clever the filmmaker is. I directed music videos, and the labels would say, “Could you stretch the video and make them look thinner?” You didn't see fat guys with beards on MTV, you saw hot chicks and cute boys. There are other things besides pop music. I've got a big mouth, so I kept pursuing it.

 

JIM BURNS:
Our one ally at MTV was Judy McGrath. She had us pitch the show to two or three different people, and nobody liked it. They kept turning us down. We also pitched it to PBS, who didn't like the show. Then Judy got some added responsibilities, took over the running of the studios, and she said, “I have a little bit of money. Can you shoot a pilot in the VH1 studios?”

 

JUDY McGRATH:
When they came in with the idea, they said everybody told them MTV would never do the show. The minute I heard it, I knew it would be fantastic for us.

 

BOB SMALL:
Yo! MTV Raps
had just started. It was the height of metal. Nobody took out an acoustic guitar. It just didn't happen. Nobody believed in
Unplugged
. We had four hours to set up the pilot, and four hours to shoot it. The budget was like $18,000. I couldn't get money to hire a director. They said, “You direct it.” I was carrying drapes and hanging them on the set. We couldn't get people there. If you look at the first few shows, the makeup person and the PAs are sitting in the audience. I remember handing out cards in the street, “Come see Sinead O'Connor.”

 

JIM BURNS:
It's a simple idea, which is why a lot of people take credit for it.

 

JOEL GALLEN:
Unplugged
was my baby. It sort of started at the '89 VMAs, with Jon Bon Jovi and Richie Sambora sitting down with acoustic guitars, doing “Livin' on a Prayer” and “Wanted Dead or Alive.” That was the jumping-off point.
Unplugged
came from an outside production company. I was the one who said, “In order for this to be very MTV, we have to do what Jon and Richie did. We have to find big rock bands who are normally loud and electric, and strip it all away and have them play acoustic.
That
would be cool.”

 

ABBEY KONOWITCH:
I needed Bon Jovi to be on the VMAs in 1989. Doc McGhee said, “There's no way they can do it. The band isn't even together on that date. A couple of the guys are in Europe.” I said, “I really need them.” Doc said, “I can't make it happen.” So I said, “If Johnny and Richie sat in the middle of the stage without the band and did ‘Wanted Dead or Alive' acoustic, it would be as good as having Bon Jovi on the show.” So they played “Wanted Dead or Alive” in the middle of the stage at the MTV Awards, acoustic, and it was the showstopper.

 

ALEX COLETTI:
Jon Bon Jovi thinks he created
Unplugged
, but Bob and Jim had a development deal in place for months. A thousand people claim they created
Unplugged
.

 

BOB SMALL:
Please do not credit Bon Jovi for creating
Unplugged
. Jon Bon Jovi thinks he was the inspiration for it. He wouldn't even
do
the fucking show until 2007.

 

JIM BURNS:
The VMAs happened in the first week of September 1989, and Joel Gallen—who was executive producer on
Unplugged
as well as as the VMAs—suggested to Jon Bon Jovi and Richie Sambora that they do an acoustic set at the VMAs. It was a success, people liked it, and that did help sell
Unplugged
to the network. But Jon did not create the show. The credit says, “Created by Jim Burns and Bob Small.”

BOB SMALL:
Joel Gallen was upset that Jim and I got the “Created by” credit. He went after us with a vengeance. I have faxes from him saying, “You can't say this to the press.” He successfully took center stage. By the time the show was getting nominated for Emmys, you would think it was all him. Taking our producer credit away eliminated us from being on the Emmy list. I have said that to him many times, to his face.

 

JIM BURNS:
Bob and I created the show. We sold the show to MTV. Joel did a great job as executive producer, I can't fault him on the work he did. But he has claimed credit for creating it. It's really a character flaw. That's my grievance with Joel. There was always tension between us.

 

ALEX COLETTI:
The fifth episode was billed as Joe Walsh and Friends, and Joe showed up with only one friend—Ricky, his bass player. We thought it meant his famous friends, but apparently that got lost in translation. Bob Small found Dr. John in the bathroom at National Studios—he was appearing on Carol Leifer's talk show. We rolled in a piano, and Dr. John and Walsh did the Eagles song “Desperado.”

 

JOEL GALLEN:
Joe Walsh was our breakthrough show. He played “Desperado,” and Don Henley, who wrote the song, wouldn't give us permission to air it. Abbey Konowitch reached out to him, and Henley sent back a three-page fax about why he didn't want Joe Walsh performing the song. We said to Don, “Why don't you come on and perform ‘Desperado' the way it should be?”

 

JIM BURNS:
Before that, the show was two groups doing a couple of songs each, then doing a song together. Jules Shear was the host. But when Henley came on, he didn't want to play with anybody else. And Jules was very awkward with Henley. That's really when it changed.

 

BOB SMALL:
Don Henley kept an audience waiting outside in the sun in LA for four hours while they tuned a piano to his liking.

 

JOEL GALLEN:
Once Henley did
Unplugged
, more people took notice. We got a call from Capitol Records saying Paul McCartney wanted to do it. I said, “Let's have this be the first one-hour
Unplugged
.” Until that point, we only did half-hour
Unplugged
s.

We went to London in January 1991, when the first Gulf War was under way. We flew over about four days before the taping and drove to McCartney's farmhouse, north of London. He had a barn he'd turned into his rehearsal space. Paul said, “Okay, Joel, let me run the set for you.” He and his band did twenty-two songs, and something like nineteen of them were Beatles songs. “And I Love Her,” “We Can Work It Out,” “Blackbird.” And on the Beatles songs, he's reading the lyrics off pieces of paper. I said, “Paul, when we do the show, you're not gonna need a music stand, are you?” He explained that he hadn't performed many of these songs since he'd recorded them, because the Beatles stopped touring so early. There's a charming moment in the show where he botched the lyrics to “We Can Work It Out.” He actually stopped it and had to start again.

 

BOB SMALL:
During the Aerosmith taping, there was a girl between Steven Tyler and Joe Perry whose panties you could see on camera. Apparently, when McCartney did the show, he said, “Make sure that doesn't happen to me.” We had Crosby, Stills & Nash, and Steve Stills's throat closed up the day of the show. David Crosby said to me, “Listen, I don't care if you stitch his mouth together, if you put a hot girl in the front row, he'll sing.” So we did that.

 

ROBERT SMITH:
The only time I've been nervous about performing was
MTV Unplugged
. It was so stripped down and bare, and the audience was so close. There was no escape. It was one of the best things we ever did, actually.

 

JIM BURNS:
The most difficult
Unplugged
was Neil Young. We shot him at the Ed Sullivan Theater, the same night we shot Aerosmith. Neil was onstage, he was singing, and suddenly, for whatever reason, he got agitated and ran outside. He ran down Broadway, and Alex Coletti ran after him. Neil never came back to finish the show.

 

BOB SMALL:
Neil came running out of the Ed Sullivan Theater and jumped over a police barrier. I said, “I think we've got a problem.”

 

JIM BURNS:
Elton John kept people waiting for hours. We had a piano tuner come in, but at rehearsal, Elton said, “It's out of tune.” So the piano tuner started from the beginning again. After an hour, Elton said, “No, it's still out of tune.” Another three hours, Elton came out, played the piano, and said, “No, there's still a little problem.” Finally, he said, “When I was starting out, I played in bars that didn't have half these keys. Let's just do it.”

The biggest star behavior I saw was Mariah Carey. She had a hair person, of course; a makeup person, of course; a costume person, of course; and a woman who made tea for her.

 

BOB SMALL:
When Mariah Carey came in with her two lighting designers, the show went from credibility to prima donnas.

 

JIM BURNS:
The only image I can remember from the
Yo! Unplugged
show is LL Cool J's deodorant. He had a wife-beater on, and when he lifted his arms, all you saw was his caked-on white deodorant. But he did a great job.

 

BOB SMALL:
Is that the kind of thing you stop a show for? This is the greatest show ever done, are you gonna stop filming because the audience can see his deodorant? And we're still talking about it to this day, so there you go.

 

RICK KRIM:
I remember fighting Abbey to do Pearl Jam
Unplugged
. It was unprecedented to do an
Unplugged
on a new band. I don't remember how, but I finally convinced him, and we taped Pearl Jam at 1 A.M. on the same day we taped Mariah Carey, to save money. I still get chills thinking about that show. It was one of the few times in my life that I saw a show and thought,
This band is about to become huge.
The moment where they did “Porch,” and Eddie stood up on his stool and started writing “PRO CHOICE!!!” on his arm, that was a seminal moment in their life. Mine, too.