I Want My MTV (78 page)

 

MARK PELLINGTON:
I got out of MTV in '90 as it started to become a global monster. I got the sense that the days of old were declining, and it was more focused on the business. It wasn't just art and freedom and attitude and spirit; now sales and audiences were coming into play.

 

ALAN NIVEN:
I heard rumors of people buying BMWs off video budgets and hiding it in the numbers. There was a day where a lot of people harvested it for all they were worth.

 

NICK RHODES:
By 1990 or so, they stopped even inviting us to the VMAs. I was in LA and thought I would go, and they weren't even interested in giving us tickets.

MARK GHUNEIM:
When I went to work at Columbia, New Kids on the Block was one of the first acts I promoted. MTV was not in love with this band. They didn't care for that type of music. My pitch wasn't, here's great music and you've got to put it on. It was, here's music that your audience needs to see, and I don't care if you like it or not. You want ratings, play New Kids.

 

TAMRA DAVIS:
New Kids on the Block were the biggest band in America, and they no longer would talk with their label. There was no communication. The record company gave me a plane ticket and a backstage pass and said, “Go find them, talk to them, and see if you can make a video with them.”

I started hanging out with them, listening to what they wanted to do. They were having a crazy time, sleeping with lots of different girls every night. I was saying, “You guys better have condoms.” They were totally unsupervised and had everything they wanted, as much as they wanted. Even the record company girls were trying to sleep with them.

 

ALEK KESHISHIAN, director:
When the Bobby Brown track “Don't Be Cruel” came around, a lot of directors passed on it. That was my first video. I met Bobby, and when he finally piped in, he said, “In this video, I want to have a maid and a Mercedes.” Isn't that brilliant? So the opening shot of “Don't Be Cruel” is a Mercedes. The closest I got to the maid was putting the girl in a black outfit.

 

LIZ HELLER:
None of us had any idea of the electricity of Bobby until Alek started filming. That was Bobby's first solo outing and everybody loved the track, but I don't think anybody had any idea that Bobby was gonna turn it on like that until it happened.

 

ALEK KESHISHIAN:
Then they came back to me to do “My Prerogative,” and I said I would direct it only if Bobby did exactly what I asked him to do. Believe it or not, I thought,
Why can't we position him as kind of a black George Michael?
Urban, but stylish and chic.

I wanted him to wear a headpiece microphone, and Bobby goes, “I can't wear that. That's gonna ruin my hair, and my hair is my image.” I went, “Bobby, you don't
have
an image. That's why you're wearing this headpiece mic. That's gonna be part of your image.” “My Prerogative” was his breakthrough on MTV.

BOBBY BROWN:
I didn't expect it—I prayed for it—but once it happened, it was heaven on wheels. The director, Alek, was a cool dude. We had a lot of fucking fun.

 

LIZ HELLER:
I had known Bobby since he was thirteen, and he was very difficult. When we were making “Every Little Step,” I needed to make sure he'd get on a plane and fly in to LA for the video. So I sent a guy who worked for me, named Abe. I had to go through this whole drill with Abe about how he was going to have to knock on the door and physically get Bobby out of bed, onto an airplane, and over to the video shoot. I don't even know if Bobby knew for sure that he was going to be doing a music video. Abe started calling me every twenty seconds, because he couldn't get Bobby out of bed. But finally Abe got him up and got him on the plane. Bobby came right to the video shoot from the airport. He had zero rehearsal. But it's such a great performance, especially if you realize the condition he was in. He just turned it on, did his takes, and left.

 

BOBBY BROWN:
For “Every Little Step,” they asked me to actually write out a script for the video. I was on tour. I said, “Script? Just give me a white background, spell out ‘Every Little Step' in big letters, and let us dance.” That was the most popular video I ever did.

 

ALEK KESHISHIAN:
Bobby had such a raw talent, and once he trusted me, he let me style him and image him. By the time of “Every Little Step,” he didn't even know what the concept was. He just walked out of the limo and I told him, “Here, put these clothes on.” I'd designed a black suit with “Bobby” written down the sleeve. He was like, “Wow, look at these letters.”

There was a moment when “Every Little Step” was gonna be more elaborate. We met at the Sunset Marquis in LA, and I guess some gang had threatened Bobby's life. Me, Liz Heller, Bobby, and Bobby's brother were talking, and all of a sudden the bodyguard goes, “Everybody down!” And we're on the ground at the fucking hotel, still
talking
about the video concept.

My videos were an integral part of creating Bobby's brand, and when all was said and done, I made
maybe
$80,000 for, like, seven videos. That was before taxes. So I walked away. In 1992, when he had another album, Bobby's people were coming back, like, “We have a $500,000 budget.” “We have $600,000.” “We'll pick you up in a limo.” By that point, I'd heard the stories of what he was like, and I just wasn't interested.

 

LIONEL MARTIN:
I loved Bobby Brown from the beginning. He was cocky and spoke his piece. Bobby was like Flavor Flav. He'd show up late, and he had an entourage. He was a major star, and he was just about to marry Whitney Houston. The things he did were kind of crazy. It was a big part of his performances at the time to take his shirt off, even though he had a bit of a belly. In the “Humpin' Around” video I did, he was in an elevator with a beautiful girl, one of the Fly Girls from
In Living Color
. His hands were all over the place. I mean, I turned red. But he didn't care. Girls were coming up to us during casting, like, “We'll do it for free, we just want to be in the video.” He had a lot of juice.

 

ANDY MORAHAN:
When I worked with Bobby and Whitney, they'd just had a baby and they were sweet and happy. They weren't crazy drug addicts. Although at the end of the shoot, Whitney went home with the baby and Bobby came out drinking with us in Miami, and we had to pull him out of a potential fight.

 

LIONEL MARTIN:
Somebody called me from Arista's video department: “Lionel, we're thinking about doing a Whitney Houston video, and we're looking at you, Ernest Dickerson, and Spike Lee.” I was insulted. And I said, “You should go with Ernest, he's really good.”
Click
. I hung up the phone. I had this swagger, because I'd done a lot of hip-hop videos. They called me back five minutes later. I said, “No, seriously, I'm too busy right now.” To do an R&B video for Whitney Houston wasn't something I was excited about.

They flew me to Ohio to meet her, so I guess the cockiness paid off. We sat down and were kind of staring each other down. She said, “I've heard some things about you.” I said, “Well, I've heard some things about you, too.” She said, “I've heard you're kind of arrogant.” I said, “I heard you were a bitch to work with.” That broke the ice right there, she started laughing and talking. And she hired me.

 

JULIEN TEMPLE:
Whitney Houston was very much her own person. She was much less subordinate to the record company than I'd thought she'd be. We shot part of “I'm Your Baby Tonight” at a park on the Hudson River, on New York's west side. When I got there the record company had put up all these black drapes along the middle of the park where we were shooting—
huge
, five-hundred-meter runners. I said, “What the hell are you doing that for?” And they said, “We didn't want Miss Houston to see the homeless people in the park.” When she got there, she went mad. She said, “What the fuck's going on? Take those down. What do you think I am?” It was fantastic.

 

 

 

 

 

ADAM CURRY:
Doc McGhee had gotten busted for importing a huge amount of marijuana. His get-out-of-jail-free card was creating an anti-drug, anti-alcohol concert in Moscow. We left from Newark Airport and everyone was hammered. Ozzy had to take a piss and someone was in the lavatory, so he pissed his pants right there. He's like, “Sharon!”

 

DOC McGHEE:
My conviction had nothing to do with the Moscow concert, okay? I mean, no judge says, “Oh, for being involved in a conspiracy to smuggle seventy thousand pounds of pot into the U.S., you have to put on a concert in Moscow.” They don't say stuff like that. We always wanted to go to Moscow and do the first rock show in the Soviet Union. I wanted to do their Woodstock. Remember, I had gone through rehabs with Mötley and family members, so I said, “Let's do this for kids that are being fried in the brain by electroshock therapy.” Because that's the way they treated kids who abused drugs and alcohol. So how are they going to say
no
to us, if the proceeds from the show go to the Make A Difference Foundation, which I started, and we bring doctors to teach them how to treat addiction? It didn't count for anything in court. It didn't help me—except that it helped me personally, because it was the first rock show ever on Russian television, and it was televised in fifty-two countries.

We couldn't get permits. Russian officials would say, “Sure, this is a great idea,” but nobody would stick their neck out and sanction it. We never had a permit to do anything. I brought sixty-four tractor-trailers into Russia with no permits. That show was absolutely insane. I almost had a nervous breakdown.

TOMMY LEE:
This was the one time when all four of us in Mötley Crüe were sober. And everyone else on the airplane was drinking, doing blow, everything. Geezer Butler from Black Sabbath commandeered the liquor cart and was rolling it up and down the aisle. Ozzy had passed out in his seat. We were in agony because everyone was partying except us.

 

SEBASTIAN BACH:
Zakk Wylde smuggled in Jack Daniel's, and we were drinking it in the back. Geezer Butler was yelling, “Why the fuck am I playing in Russia? I should be at home with my kids.” Then he picked up the food cart and ran down the middle of the plane.

 

JOHN CANNELLI:
I was on the private jet that transported all the artists from Newark Airport. Richie Sambora was dating Cher, who said to me, “Take good care of my honey!” There was really bad tension between Bon Jovi and Mötley Crüe. Mötley thought Bon Jovi were pussies.

 

ADAM CURRY:
Before the broadcast went up to the satellite, it had to go through the Russian censors. They had a gray Volkswagen bus—that was the KGB. At that moment, I knew the Cold War was bullshit, because these guys had no technology.

 

DOC McGHEE:
In that era, you could do the craziest shit, all around the world. I owned it. I was the fucking ringleader. Wayne Isham filmed himself pissing in front of Lenin's tomb in Red Square, in the middle of the night, singing “God Bless America” with the Russian flag flying in the background.

 

ADAM CURRY:
A couple of us went to the hooker boat—a boat that had hookers. But everyone was like, “Let's leave. These are not our kind of hookers.”

 

JONATHAN DAYTON:
Wayne Isham was directing the live shoot and he hired us to come with him to Moscow. We ended up working for three days straight. At one point, I thought Val had died. She passed out and Russian paramedics had to come.

 

VALERIE FARIS:
We had gone seventy-two hours without sleeping, and I was exhausted. A Russian paramedic stuck his finger down my throat to gag me, and I woke up.

There was a group of kids in Moscow that did tattoos with ballpoint pens and electric shavers, like a prison tattoo. We arranged for the guys in Skid Row to get tattoos, and the doctor who was with the tour advised against it. He thought they might catch hepatitis. The Russian kids were laughing that a heavy metal band was scared to get tattoos.

 

SEBASTIAN BACH:
We were on at 1 P.M. So by one-thirty, I was getting fucked up. I could barely stand, and Doc's brother Scott took my bottle from me. I was walking around, looking for booze, while Doc was doing a press conference against alcohol and drugs. I burst in screaming, “Somebody get me a bottle of vodka.” While Doc is talking about not drinking!

Doc's brother Scott McGhee ran at me—he's an ex–football player, for the Chicago Bears—and I ran to my dressing room and shut the door. He kicked the door down and put his knee into my throat, going, “You motherfucker. I love you so much, man. You can't do that.” He's crying, my tour manager—also an ex–football player—is crying. We're all crying, the dressing room is destroyed, I'm fucking shit-faced. Those were some good times.

 

TOMMY LEE:
We were told there would be no pyro—none of the bands were allowed to use it. And Mötley was synonymous with pyro. Then Bon Jovi started their set and they had these big explosions. I ran around the arena to the backstage area and saw Doc. He said, “What?” I ran at him and hit him in the chest. He went flying through the air. I said, “Tomorrow, when you wake up, you can get a job managing the Chipmunks, because you do not manage Mötley Crüe anymore.” And that was it.