I Want My MTV (24 page)

 

PETE ANGELUS:
I think we spent less money making “Jump” than we did on having pizzas delivered to the set of “Hot for Teacher.”

ANN CARLI:
The legend was that “Jump” was a $5,000 video. David Lee Roth's swinging on a rope, but he's also playing right to camera. Nobody did that. That was a groundbreaking video, and it had an impact on how everybody looked at making videos.

 

DON LETTS:
There was a period of six months or so when I was living in LA and working for Limelight. They had juice. The original director Ratt were going to use for “Round and Round” got ill. I was around. Guys with permed hair and spandex pants weren't my thing, but I enjoy a challenge. When that band walked into Limelight, black as I am, it was like a Mexican standoff for a second. They must have been thinking,
What the fuck?

I just wanted to meet Milton Berle. I love having any connection to old-school Hollywood. Milton was funny. He called me a Persian rug—he was talking about my hair. He took total control on the set. “Right my boy, this is how we're going to do this.” He directed me. I would have done anything he asked.

 

WARREN DeMARTINI, Ratt:
Milton Berle was our manager's uncle. It was quite a juxtaposition—this television legend in a bombed-out building in some condemned area of downtown LA, some place that didn't require permits.

 

MARSHALL BERLE:
I put my uncle in the video because I thought it might get some press, like
What the hell is he doing in a hard rock video?
I had the idea for him to play two roles, because he loved dressing up in drag. He showed up with his valet, and he brought his gown, his wig, and his jewelry. Milton's an old-school guy—started in vaudeville, made silent pictures—and he took over. He was telling the cameraman what to do, telling the director what to do. No, we didn't pay him. He's my uncle.

 

STEPHEN PEARCY, Ratt:
Milton just took over, you know? Like, “I'll have control, thank you.” It was all new to us, and we didn't know what to do. He was known as “Mr. Television.”

 

WARREN DEMARTINI:
There was only one chance to do the scene where I crash through the ceiling and destroy everything on the table. There was no cleaning it up and doing a second take. I had to stand on the table and jump up in the air as high as I could, and there were people standing off camera with big trays of powder, to get the effect of dust flying around. Oh, I nailed it.

DON LETTS:
That girl in the video was kind of hot. Not that I'm into putting hot girls in videos, but I was willing to go with that. She was easy on the eyes.

 

MARSHALL BERLE:
I wanted to show that Ratt didn't take themselves seriously, that everything they did was a party.

 

STEPHEN PEARCY:
Milton told us, “Keep it tongue in cheek,” and that stuck with us. You shouldn't take yourselves seriously when you're doing a video. Most of our videos have humor; we didn't do videos with castles and demons, or the devil and pentagrams.

 

MARSHALL BERLE:
It was a big deal that MTV had anyone of Milton's stature in a video, it got into heavy rotation, and that first album sold 4 million copies.

 

WARREN DeMARTINI:
We went from struggling to get decent bookings at LA clubs to opening for ZZ Top.

 

STEPHEN PEARCY:
Milton Berle came back for more in our video “Back for More.” Tommy Lee and Nikki Sixx from Mötley are in the video, beating up Bobby Blotzer, our drummer. We used to hang out, and we started a street gang, called “The Gladiators.” Robbin was
King,
Nikki was
Leader Six,
and Tommy was
Field Marshall.

Robbin and I created “The Three P's”:
pussy, party, paycheck
. That was the decade of decadence. We lived and breathed it

 

MARTY CALLNER:
I'd been working at HBO, directing their music and comedy specials. I'd done Steve Martin, George Carlin, Diana Ross, Liza Minnelli, you name it. I was making a lot of money. I went to see Ahmet Ertegun and said, “I want to try a music video. I have a feeling I'm gonna be good at it.” Atlantic Records had signed a Long Island band they didn't know what to do with, Twisted Sister. They had a song, “We're Not Gonna Take It,” and because of my comedy and music background, they seemed like the perfect hybrid for me.

“We're Not Gonna Take It” is based on the rebellious nature of Road Runner cartoons. I wrote the spoken-word part at the beginning. And we cast Mark Metcalf, who had just come from a hot movie,
Animal House
. “We're Not Gonna Take It” was big, it was bright, it was colorful, it was funny, it was rock n' roll. And it went on to become a classic video.

DEE SNIDER:
Marty and I hit it off. He's originally from Pittsburgh, and I was a rube from Long Island. The first time I met him, at the Palm, I ordered a shrimp cocktail, and they brought out incredibly huge shrimp. I'm like, “Oh my god, I'm used to eating at places where the shrimp is the size of a pea.” And Marty calls to the waiter, “Hey! Bring out a bowl of these things, will ya?”

 

MARTY CALLNER:
Dee was 100 percent ham. Delicious.

 

MARK METCALF, actor:
Dee is just so ugly. It's like God made the ugliest guy in the world, and then He hit him in the face with a shovel.

 

DEE SNIDER:
Me and my four brothers were constantly quoting lines from
Animal House
. I told Marty, “You know Neidermeyer from
Animal House
? Someone like Mark Metcalf would be perfect to play the father.” And Marty goes, “Why don't we get Mark Metcalf? What's he doing, working on a cure for cancer?” I couldn't fathom the idea of getting Mark Metcalf, but apparently for $2,000 and a round-trip coach ticket, we could get Mark Metcalf. When it came time to pick him up at the airport, they were gonna send a PA, and I was like, “Oh no! I'm picking up Mark Metcalf.” I drove to LAX and I stood in baggage claim with my big hair and platform shoes.

 

MARK METCALF:
They paid me a day's wage, the Screen Actors Guild minimum, which I think was $360 at the time. It was a non-SAG picture. I had a girlfriend in LA who I wanted to see, because I'd left some stuff at her apartment, so I took the free flight and slept on Marty Callner's couch that night. When Dee met me at the airport, he was so excited, like a little kid. He loved Neidermeyer so much.

 

DEE SNIDER:
Les Garland hated the video. Somebody told me his quote was “This isn't a rock video. This is method acting.” MTV even tried to cut Mark's famous rant—“You call this a room? This is a pigsty. You are a disgusting slob.” That video was like nitrous oxide on a hot-rod car. A great video will fuel-inject your career. And as huge as that video was, it was never in heavy airplay, because Garland didn't like it. Now it's a classic. It makes every list of the Top 100 videos of all time.

We followed “We're Not Gonna Take It” with “I Wanna Rock,” which was the sequel. We turned the Neidermeyer character into a teacher. In the intro, we paraphrased the
Animal House
dialogue where he's yelling at Flounder. We even brought in Stephen Durst, who played Flounder, to do a cameo. It was a long day on the set, and we were so bored that we made Stephen recite lines from
Animal House
over and over again. “Say ‘The negroes stole our dates!' Say ‘The negroes stole our dates!'”

 

MARK METCALF:
I got a letter from the Screen Actors Guild after “I Wanna Rock”—they caught on because it was so big on MTV. They said, “If you do this again, we'll throw you out of the union.” I also got letters from Universal Pictures' lawyers, saying, “We own the character Neidermeyer. You have no rights to the character.” They didn't go any further than that because in the long run, it was good publicity for the movie.

 

MARTY CALLNER:
The labels did not know what they had with music videos. I actually owned the copyright on “We're Not Gonna Take It.” It's probably the only time a director ever owned a video.

 

DEE SNIDER:
“We're Not Gonna Take it” changed music videos. Everyone, metal bands in particular, started embracing story lines. You don't have Mötley Crüe's “Smokin' in the Boys Room” or Van Halen's “Hot for Teacher” without “We're Not Gonna Take It.”

 

BETH BRODAY:
Marty Callner didn't care about production rules. He did everything his own way. And he made stars, God bless him. But he charged a lot of money. A
lot
of money. I'd never seen anybody charge that kind of money. I love Marty, but he took direction from no one.

 

MARTY CALLNER:
I always tried to make videos sexy without being sexual. I did a video for the Scorpions called “Big City Nights,” and MTV rejected it because there were too many girls in bikinis. So I added seven more shots of girls in bikinis and sent it in, and they aired it.

 

PAT BENATAR:
When we made “We Belong” with Marty Callner, I was throwing up constantly between takes because I was pregnant. He was very generous and sweet, even though he was crazy. He was like an eight-year-old with money and a video camera. He wore big jewelry—big enough that I could lift it for weights— and he had big hair and a beautiful Israeli wife who ordered him around all the time.

 

NEIL “SPYDER” GIRALDO:
Marty was a maniac. The first time Patricia and I met him, it was 80 degrees out, and he walked into a restaurant wearing a giant fur coat. On the set of “Ooh Ooh Song,” I said, “Hey, Marty, get me a monkey.” And he said to his assistant, “Let's get a monkey in here.” So the monkey was
my
idea. I don't know whose idea it was to have a mime in the video.

 

RUDOLF SCHENKER:
When we were on tour in America, I was watching MTV every day to see who was the right director. We were very careful about choosing. Billy Idol, who is the guy directing him? Oh, David Mallet, he's great. David saw us live and was smart enough to get the essence of the Scorpions into “Rock You Like a Hurricane.” He said, “Don't be serious, let's get crazy.” That video is about attitude, craziness, and sexuality. That's how we survived into the video generation.

 

DOC McGHEE, manager:
Nobody else could come up with “Rock You Like a Hurricane.” You have to be German to come up with shit like that.

 

DAVID MALLET:
The Scorpions are very funny. “Rock You Like a Hurricane” has the girls all shaking their cages.

 

NIKKI SIXX:
Didn't Scorpions have a video that showed women in cages? In our minds, we think we have the power, but we never do. We can't keep them in that cage.

 

SEBASTIAN BACH:
In hindsight, having girls in cages was pretty “Smell the Glove.”

 

MIKE RENO:
For “Hot Girls in Love,” we sang on top of these giant kegs of TNT. Or maybe kegs of whiskey. There were always pretty girls in our videos. There's nothing wrong with a pretty girl in the video.

 

PAUL DEAN, Loverboy:
How are you going to take a song like “Hot Girls in Love” and do a serious treatment for it?

 

STEVE BARRON:
I did a terrible video for Loverboy: “Hot Girls in Love.” Absolutely dreadful.

MIKE RENO:
Loverboy made horrible videos. We still get teased about 'em today. They were really obvious, schmaltzy videos that were probably great for our careers.

 

BRUCE ALLEN:
Nobody's going to say a Loverboy video was brilliant, but it gave the people what they wanted. What is your audience? Good-looking broads lifting their tops up and a bunch of guys with their fists in the air. You didn't need a rocket scientist to make a video; just get some sexy babes. They're falling out of the trees in Hollywood.

 

DEBBIE SAMUELSON, record executive:
I can't remember which video it was, but I definitely saw Loverboy stuff socks down their pants before the cameras started to roll.

 

GALE SPARROW:
MTV binged and purged on heavy metal. In the beginning, we played it to death, and then we pulled way back on it. But research told us we might be losing an audience, so we started a heavy metal half hour in the middle of the afternoon.

 

ALAN NIVEN, manager:
My first substantial encounter with a video production company was on a Great White song called “Stick It,” and it was less than happy. They arrive with half-baked clichés of what rock n' roll is, spend a lot of your money, then walk off and do another video while you have to live with what they've done. If you pull up this video, you'll see it's unfortunate and cheesy, and the best shot was the 1970 Cadillac Eldorado I drove at the time. I was still learning that making videos is a beastly contract with the devil, and it should be as much about the band as possible.

 

DOC McGHEE:
With all the bands I managed—Mötley Crüe, Bon Jovi, Scorpions, Skid Row—I wanted to see them play themselves, not playing characters. Every video director was a Fellini back then. They'd have an idea like,
Let's have Nikki stand by a hot dog stand
. It was bullshit. They don't stand by hot dog stands.
We'll have Vince Neil riding on a horse through the weeds
. The fucking guy doesn't ride a horse. He's at the Rainbow until four in the morning. What does a horse have to do with Mötley Crüe? They're a menacing rock group, that's what you have to show. Most of my videos were done with a live kind of feel to them. To me, the video was an informercial for our live show. MTV was the Guthy-Renker of the '80s; they were infomercial kings who sold millions of records for people.