The 16th music video to be played on MTV on August 1st, 1980 was also the first heavy metal song to ever be played on the network.  Appropriately enough, the song and the band performing it were both named Iron Maiden.

This is a performance clip, taken from Live At The Rainbow.  It was not easy to find this video on YouTube.  Doing a search for “Iron Maiden music video” returned a lot of results, none of which were this one.  Finally, I had to go with “Iron Maiden 1980.”  To the best of my knowledge, this is the video that was played on MTV.

Enjoy!

The First Videos Shown on MTV:

1. Video Killed the Radio Star by the Buggles
2. You Better Run by Pat Benatar
3. She Won’t Dance With Me by Rod Stewart
4. You Better You Bet By The Who
5. Little Suzi’s On The Up by PH.D
6. We Don’t Talk Anymore by Cliff Richard
7. Brass in Pocket by Pretenders
8. Time Heals by Todd Rundgren
9. Take It On The Run by REO Speedwagon
10. Rockin’ in Paradise by Styx
11. When Things Go Wrong by Robin Lane & The Chartbusters
12. History Never Repeats by Split Enz
13. Hold On Loosely by .38 Special
14. Just Between You And Me by April Wine
15. Sailing by Rod Stewart