I Want My MTV (22 page)

 

CHARLIE WARNER:
A lot of people expected, when somebody did a story about MTV, for Bob to say, “Well, it wasn't my idea, it was John Lack's idea and he gets all the credit for hiring me.” And when he didn't, people were angry at him. But that's the game. That's how you get ahead.

 

ANDY SETOS:
Bob tried to climb over everyone to the top, even though he was but one of the people who contributed to the enterprise. He took credit for everyone else's work. And that put a bad taste in people's mouths. People were grumbling about Bob as early as 1982.

 

JORDAN ROST:
It's disgusting that anyone would take credit away from John Lack. It shouldn't be a controversy. I was in the room after we got an okay from the board, and Schneider said to Lack, “You're in charge. You've gotta make this happen.” But Bob was very savvy in working with the press and managing his career. When people interviewed him and attributed him as the creator, he let it lie. He never dissuaded anyone or said, “No, you got that wrong.” Silence can be telling.

 

CAROLYN BAKER:
MTV was John Lack's idea. He hired Bob Pittman. But there is no way this would have been achieved without Bob. He had that killer instinct. Nobody worked harder than Bob. He worked so hard that I thought he was going to drop dead.

 

STEVE LEEDS:
John Lack is the unsung hero. Most people go, “Oh, it's Bob Pittman.” No, it's John Lack and Michael Nesmith.

 

MICHAEL NESMITH:
The word
invent
, it's inapt. There's not one moment where you flip the switch and it starts running. It's a gradual coalescence of different things, a confluence of energies. It's one of those ideas that nobody really thinks up. It's like justice. Or kindness. Nobody thinks that up.

 

 

 

 

 

NOT EVERY STAR ON MTV WAS BEAUTIFUL, OR EVEN
young. When ZZ Top released
Eliminator
in 1983, the three band members were a combined ninety-nine years old. They'd been recording since 1971 and, in the course of seven albums, had built a sturdy career as a touring band, mostly in the Midwest and South. Texans who wore cowboy hats, boots, and jeans—two of whom had grown long beards—they were unlikely video stars. But these shit-kickers were not stodgy (singer Billy Gibbons adored Depeche Mode), and
Eliminator
suddenly propelled them to pop stardom, selling 10 million albums, as director Tim Newman paired their deadpan cool with much-younger women in sheer clothing. ZZ Top's success cemented the video meme of shapely females used as decoration.

Newman, whose family was a Hollywood dynasty, and who'd come to music videos from the world of commercial directing, became baffled by the economics of videos. A smart director could make a band rich—why shouldn't the director get rich, too? The story of what happened after
Eliminator
, and how Newman was replaced as director without the band's knowledge, illustrates the struggles that continuously emerged between bands, directors, and record companies—usually over money.

 

TIM NEWMAN:
I met a girl who was dating Jerry Casale from Devo, and she had a VHS tape of her favorite videos, including Devo and Duran Duran. I was a very successful commercial director, and when I saw “Girls on Film,” I thought,
I would like to do this
. For someone who did ads for airlines and detergent and cereal, this looked like a lot more fun.

I come from a musical family: My father Alfred and uncle Lionel were screen composers, and heads of the music department at 20th Century Fox, and my cousin is Randy Newman, who had signed at Warner Bros. Records. So I called Lenny Waronker, the president of Warner Bros. Records, and said, “What's this music-video deal?” Lenny had been friends with Randy since they were boys.

Jo Bergman at Warners said, “You direct commercials, and we don't spend much money on these things—maybe $50,000.” Even in those days, that was hardly any money. But I got a call to do the video for my cousin Randy's song “I Love L.A.” We did a day of camera-car work and I wanted to do a lot more. It turned out to be about as much fun as I had ever had filming, probably to this day.

 

JO BERGMAN:
“I Love L.A.” became a classic video, so we had Tim direct ZZ Top's “Gimme All Your Lovin'.” He was responsible for reinventing the band. That key chain? The girls? That was Tim. On the day of the shoot, their manager was looking at the models, who were neither made up nor in costume, and he said, “I don't think these are the right girls. They're not sexy enough.” When they came out of the trailer all dolled up, there were smiles everywhere.

 

TIM NEWMAN:
The creative brief from ZZ Top's manager, Bill Ham, who was kind of a Svengali type, was “Use the car and put some girls in it.”
Yeah, I can work with that
. By then, music video was on everybody's lips—there was a cover story in
Time
magazine.

 

BILLY GIBBONS:
Tim was the hands-down favorite, because his reel showed commercials he had done for Coca-Cola. If you can do it in thirty seconds, then three minutes is an epic tale. Many of the same elements—cars, pretty girls—felt right for what ZZ Top is: loud, raucous, a good time.

 

TOM PETTY:
ZZ Top were brilliant at transitioning into the MTV era. They figured out a whole new persona.

 

BILLY GIBBONS:
Let me brag on Tim, because directors are rarely credited in the public's perception. When we speak of the early days, support from the label was scant. Tim said, “If we do this as a union shoot, we'll chew up the budget in the first hour.” To avoid falling into the union's hands, we started at 6 P.M. on a Friday, when union hours close, and that gave us until Sunday at 6 P.M. We drove to Palmdale, California, in the high desert, and there was a stretch of road with an abandoned gas station. It was freezing cold. Tim assigned three guys to hold big Mexican blankets to wrap the girls up, because they were so scantily clad.

The little red car was a 1933 Ford three-window coupe. I bought it in 1976, and it had only just come off the finishing line in 1983. When the car was finally completed, there was an outstanding balance, which I didn't have. All told, the coupe cost well over $250,000. I was in debt, but my accountant said if I used the car as a business expense, I would get a tax deduction. So it became the focus of the
Eliminator
album cover. On the day the shoot took place, I was able to go to the bank and borrow the money I owed to pay off the car. Not only did the car become a celebrity, thanks to Tim placing it front and center in the videos, it was a milestone vehicle in the hot-rodding world.

When I saw the girls Tim picked, I said, “Gosh, you've got the eye.” And he said, “Yeah, I've also got the
Playboy
modeling booklet.” There was Daniele Arnaud—she was French and could barely speak English—Jeana Tomasina, and a third girl who mysteriously disappeared. She never came to collect her money. It was just weird.

 

DANIELE ARNAUD, model:
I was born in Nice, in the south of France, and I didn't know ZZ Top. I'm the blonde one who shows the garters. I come out of the car, put my leg up on the hood, and I put my money in the garter.

 

JEANA TOMASINA KEOUGH, model:
People recognize me now only if they know me from
The Real Housewives of Orange County
. I'm the only brunette in “Gimme All Your Lovin'.” When Tim asked me, I said
no
. It was against the union—the Screen Actors Guild and AFTRA—to do those things, because videos didn't pay residuals. And I'd never heard of the band. All their songs sounded alike to me. Not paying attention to music hurt me a lot, because when I had a chance to audition for a guy named Prince in Minneapolis, for
Purple Rain
, I refused to go. I said, “There's no prince in Minneapolis, they must think I'm stupid.”

TIM NEWMAN:
Even though ZZ Top look wild, they're not crazy guys. I was thinking,
What the fuck am I going to do with these guys?
The song seemed to be about a horny, yearning kid. So I had the idea to base it around a guy who worked at a gas station in the middle of nowhere. I would not be making a huge demand on ZZ Top's acting ability if I cast them in the role of mythological characters. If you've read Joseph Campbell, you know there are classic mythological themes in our culture, and the details change but the story remains the same.

 

JEFF AYEROFF:
After “Gimme All Your Lovin',” people said, “Yeah, that video's great. But we're not doing another one.” I'd just gotten to Warners, and I said, “Not only are we doing another video, we're gonna do the same video! And we're gonna spend more money, and it's gonna be even better.”

 

TIM NEWMAN:
When they asked me to do another one, the idea that you would do a sequel in a form that isn't even a form struck me as funny, in a very insidery way. The intention was to keep everything the same: same three guys, same car, same key chain.

 

BILLY GIBBONS:
The continuity was steadfast. There were so many lucky moments—at the end of “Sharp Dressed Man,” when the cars are racing into the heat waves, a tiny bunny rabbit came and sat down in the middle of the road, watching the car leave.

 

DANIELE ARNAUD:
In “Sharp Dressed Man,” we had to show ourselves off to the camera, almost like in those nightclubs where women try to get money from the men.

 

TIM NEWMAN:
For “Sharp Dressed Man,” Warner Bros. had made a deal for product placement. Not openly, because MTV was against that. Schlitz, I think it was, offered to put up a bunch of money and my job was to figure out how to work Schlitz into the video. When MTV saw it, they said, “You've got to take that shot out.” Now the label is mad at me because they're not going to get money from the brewery. It left a bad taste in my mouth, so I said, “Fuck you, I'm not doing this anymore.”

The videos made them bigger than life. When we started, they were a hugely successful Midwestern touring band. By the time we were done with those videos, they were international. I was capable of being a loudmouth, and I said, “I would love to have some upside, some form of profit participation—points.” Video directors should have had points in those days. Jeff Ayeroff said, “We're going to straighten everything out. We won't give you points”—because that would have been precedent-setting—“but we're going to give you X dollars for every 250,000 albums sold over a certain amount.” So we did the “Legs” video and it worked out quite well for me, financially. I said, “Why not make the main character a girl?” and that allowed me to do one more
Eliminator
video. Plus we had the spinning fur guitars. But they're all the same video.

 

BILLY GIBBONS:
Kym Herrin was the tall blonde in “Legs.” Kymmy's this groovy hippie chick from Santa Barbara, and I still talk to her quite frequently.

 

TIM NEWMAN:
I dated a girl I cast in “Legs,” Wendy Fraser. She's the one with the glasses who's kind of mousy and afraid. She wasn't my girlfriend when I cast her. Look, you spend time with these people. What can I tell you?

When ZZ Top finished their next album, I came in to talk to Jeff Ayeroff about directing a video for “Sleeping Bag.” Shortly thereafter, Mo Ostin, who ran Warner Bros. Records, stepped in and rescinded the deal. And I refused to work with ZZ Top. I said, “Fuck it, why do I need this?”

 

BILLY GIBBONS:
I was not part of any decision-making, nor was the band. When we showed up to do “Sleeping Bag,” we said, “Where's Tim? Where's Jeana?”

We used to refer to our audience as our “sea of dudes.” However, videos made us more acceptable to the females. I still sign autographs for girls who say, “I was just thirteen and I couldn't wait to dress up like the girl in ‘Legs.'”

 

 

 

 

 

IF YOU WATCHED MTV WITH THE SOUND OFF, YOU MIGHT
not have been able to tell the difference between Duran Duran and Def Leppard (except that women in Duran Duran videos weren't in cages). In both cases, a hairdresser and makeup artist were the uncredited video auteurs. MTV didn't play only new wave bands with outrageous style, they also played hard rock bands with outrageous style. Early videos by Twisted Sister, Def Leppard, Ratt, and Mötley Crüe marked the start of MTV's uneasy romance with metal, and initiated the careers of Wayne Isham, the video director who most closely emulated a rock star, and Tawny Kitaen, a self-described “serious actress” who a few years later became the first video star who couldn't sing. “Until then,” Kitaen says, “girls weren't the focus of videos—the bands were the focus. I came along and changed all that.”

 

DAVE HOLMES:
Videos were very European at first. Then things started to get less Euro and more big-titted and American.

 

DAVID MALLET:
It started with a British sensibility and then the American sensibility took over—i.e., money.

 

DEE SNIDER, Twisted Sister:
MTV needed acts that knew how to present themselves in a visually interesting way. And they noticed metal bands: “Oh my god, these bands are very theatrical.” Anyone who wasn't theatrical was done. Videos inspired a resurgence of metal—heavy metal has never gone away, but it had a really big moment in the '80s. Metal owes MTV for that. But MTV owes metal.