I did the well-known version of Stayin’ Alive yesterday, so here’s the other version. Going off of Wikipedia again, there were three videos that were shot for Saturday Night Fever (1977). However, they were put aside in favor of reshooting them in California when Barry grew his beard back. That’s why you can see him without his beard in this one.
You can also see him without his beard for Night Fever, which, to the best of my knowledge, is also one of the three original videos.
This is the kind of video you think of when someone tells you there is a music video for Stayin’ Alive. It uses quite a few video effects that I can’t say I care for.
They fit the disco sound, but Bee Gees were always more than disco. Go listen to the song New York Mining Disaster 1941 or Lonely Days. I think the other video fits them better than this one.
If you want to see these kind of effects used well, then I recommend the video for Knock On Wood by Amii Stewart.
Regardless, I’m glad this video is out there. It shows more of the kind of style that was used in the 1970s. It helps one to understand where some directors were coming from when they entered the MTV-era. They did more than just concert videos.
It’s hard enough when there are multiple versions of a video. It’s tough dealing with videos–officially posted or not–disappearing. This is a new one on me. Count it off!
1. The official beegees YouTube account posting:
2. The Rhino YouTube account posting:
3. The BeeGeesVEVO YouTube account posting:
They’re all the exact same video–no difference in runtime or quality. And yes, there is a second version of Stayin’ Alive as you might have gathered from the title of the VEVO account posting.
As for the content of the music video…this is a really upbeat song and the title is Stayin’ Alive…have them wander around abandoned sets at MGM Studios??? It reminds me of the video Gowers did for The First Cut Is The Deepest by Rod Stewart except there it made sense for him to be isolated on a staircase. They were probably just opportunistic since they filmed this video on the sets that were next-door to where Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1978) was being filmed. At least that’s what Wikipedia says.
I do like that whatever the reason, the video is showing us the opposite of what comes to mind when you go to put this video on. Also, it’s a testament to Gowers’ talent as a director. Back in the 1970s, he could do something for the Bee Gees, Journey, The Rolling Stones, and he’s the one who did Bohemian Rhapsody for Queen. Cut to the early-1980s and you can still his style at work. Sometimes it made for a funny, but memorable video, like Eye Of The Tiger by Survivor. Other times you got Separate Ways (Worlds Apart) by Journey. I’ll talk about that video at some point since that also brings in ABBA, a famous Italian director, and Bohemian Rhapsody–at the very least.
In 1981, it was Stig Anderson’s 50th birthday. They wrote a song and performed it in his honor since he was their longtime manager. You’ll notice that they are wearing the same outfits that they wore in the music video for Waterloo.
ABBA’s career took off after winning Eurovision in 1974 with the song Waterloo. Anderson co-wrote it.
The title of the song is a reference to Anderson’s hometown of Hova and “Vittne” translates to “witness”.
Courtesy of the book, ABBA: Bright Lights Dark Shadows by Carl Magnus Palm:
…on January 25, the celebratory mood continued when Stig turned 50 and threw a lavish party. To mark the occasion, Björn and Benny wrote the tune for a song called ‘Hovas vittne’ (‘Hovas Witness’, a pun on his place of birth) as a special gift for him.
The affectionately satirical lyrics, penned by the four ABBA members, Michael Tretow and Rune Söderqvist, referred to all sorts of quant characteristics exhibited by Stig. One example was his habit of switching on a vacuum cleaner when he decided it was time for his parties to end. “When he got tired of his guests–no matter who it was–he would bring out the vacuum cleaner and announce loudly: ‘The taxi cabs are here!’ Because he had called for cabs as well,” recalled Rune Söderqvist “of course, it was a bit embarrassing to stay then.”
…
Also, on the day before Stig’s birthday, a special video, featuring ABBA singing ‘Hovas Vittne’, was made. In the video they were wearing their 1974 ‘Waterloo’ costumes, as if to remind everyone of the moment in time when they and their manager had been at their most unified.
A few years down the road, things would get hostile between the group and Anderson. You can read about that here.
That’s exactly how I feel with this retrospective. On and on and on. At least I can take comfort in the fact that some great stuff is coming.
Agentha…
ends up doing a video that is like Fifty Shades Of Grey (2015).
Benny…
and Björn…
will bring us a rock opera with at least one well-known song.
Finally, we get to see Frida…
become a private detective of sorts to expose the guy that I’m just going to assume is the same one who ends up in the Agnetha video, seeing as both songs were written by the same person.
But before we get to Frida and her panda…
we still have some more ABBA videos made prior to the break up.
The song shares a similarity with Let There Be Rock by AC/DC. You might recall that Bon Scott screwed up and introduced “sound” before “light”. You can hear it that way in the video and on the album. It was intended to be the other way around, which you can hear in live performances. In the case of this video, they used an earlier version of the song that included an extra verse involving Humpty-Dumpty. That one didn’t get a stereo release until 2011.
The photographs used to make up this video were taken from a concert they did in Las Vegas in 1979.
Except for the information above, the Wikipedia article is pretty slim, and I was lucky it had any information in it to begin with or that an article even existed. I guess why they felt the need to reintroduce people to the members of the band will remain a mystery to me for the time being. It doesn’t even kick in with the line, “He said, “Who am I and who are you and who are we?”
For me, this is one of the weakest videos in the ABBA collection so far. I enjoy the song, but like the video, I’ll forget about it pretty quickly.
IMDb lists ABBA’s late-70s photographer Anders Hanser as the director. Mvdbase lists Lasse Hallström. I decided to go with Hanser. It seemed to make the most sense. You can read a bit about him and his relationship with the band here.
We’re down to the last music video with Harry Dean Stanton that I can find.
Did you ever want to see a music video with Harry Dean Stanton just wanting to be left alone to drink and smoke rather than listen to Owen Wilson’s problems? I didn’t even know such a thing existed.
Okay, he does provide some “words of wisdom” at the start of the video. Granted, Wilson has to pressure him to answer a question by ignoring his simple “no”, but he does talk to him. After that, it’s leave-me-alone time.
In reality, they did three feature films together. Also, they share in common that people will likely remember both of them for a film that had “Paris” in the title–Midnight In Paris and Paris, Texas. Both of which I’m sure would give this video more meaning if I watched them again back-to-back with this video.
The rest of the video is a sad Christmas song about being alone in the reality behind the glamour of Hollywood that you can’t leave because your career depends on you being where the jobs are.
I like the animation. It feels like a cross between Do The Evolution by Pearl Jam and Don’t Answer Me by The Alan Parsons Project.
It has an animated Warren Zevon in it. He shows up when they mention Carmelita since that is one of Zevon’s songs. There’s also a character named Carmelita in Paris, Texas. Unfortunately, it’s been forever since I’ve watched it, so I couldn’t tell you about her character.
Unlike the other videos Stanton was in, this one actually has his name in the song. I think it’s a good one to go out on.
I’m Pilate and Jesus
And I wept when Lennon died
Yet I envied his assailant
When I visited the shrine
I cried for all those Beatle Fans
So old so quick they grow
I follow the example to destroy
What I love most
And I remain on the far side of crazy
I remain the mortal enemy of man
No hundred dollar cure will save me
Can’t stay a boy in no man’s land
I intended this to follow up my post on John Lennon’s Imagine as what could be called the dark flip-side to that video based on the events of 1980 and 1981. Health issues pushed it until today.
The video starts off almost like a reintroduction to the band for those who only remember the Western-inspired sound of the Stan Ridgway years. They are outside in the desert when they come across a clown sitting, not on a suitcase, but a television.
Those lyrics at the start kick in as we are introduced to our main character played by then lead-singer, Andy Prieboy.
He is a bit of an amalgamation of Mark Chapman, who killed John Lennon, and John Hinkley, Jr, who shot Reagan, wounded two agents and the press secretary. They also make several references to the character of Travis Bickle from Taxi Driver (1976), such as our main character going crazy while watching TV. Numerous psychologically pivotal scenes take place while Bickle is in his apartment watching television.
We pan over a family portrait where only his face is shown clearly before crossing their adjoining wall to see the light version of our character.
He sees himself as a budding musician sitting in his room practicing with his guitar.
Taxi Driver (1976, dir. Martin Scorsese)
It’s at this point in the song when we get the next verse:
I once hid my lust for stardom
Like a filthy magazine
I stroked the shaft on my guitar
And watched you on the screen
I’ve become now what I wanted
To be all along
A psychopathic poet
The Devil’s bastard son
The two sides start to blend. We see this begin to happen when the dark one is delivered a heart-shaped box with roaches inside…
while the other one has the box, but with chocolates inside.
Taxi Driver (1976, dir. Martin Scorsese)
This time he is watching the clown smashing a guitar on TV.
On the dark side, we see him laying down playing cards–kings–in front of the TV before he looks up as if God is speaking to him.
We see him get a gun in a scene reminiscent of another video.
Shooting Shark by Blue Öyster Cult (1983)
Then we get the equivalent to when Travis Bickle finally pushes his television too far, causing it to fall over and break.
Taxi Driver (1976, dir. Martin Scorsese)
The clown without makeup flips the cards through the screen to himself in makeup.
Note the TV on the left, in the background.
We also see the family portrait fall to the ground and shatter.
For the final verse, we get a reference to Hinckley, whose attempt to kill Reagan was done in order to try to impress Jodie Foster.
I shot an actor for an actress
But he lived to make a joke
Shot two other men who could have been
The bodies of my folks
I stagger toward the future
I stagger day to day
Plot revenge inside of darkness
I am withering in pain
Visually, we get another reference back to Taxi Driver (1976). The band walks down the street, our character walks alone looking normal, and finally we seem him in killer mode.
Taxi Driver (1976, dir. Martin Scorsese)
Taxi Driver (1976, dir. Martin Scorsese)
This is when the video pivots. Up till now, we’ve been building towards some tragic event. In Taxi Driver, it was when Bickle went into where Iris (Jodie Foster) was being held and killed everyone inside except her. Instead, we appear to get our character, before any madness, awakening to this all having been on television…
which he pulls the plug on.
The clown films the band and others in front of the Hollywood Boulevard “You Are A Star” mural.
Finally, the band is back in the desert walking away from the clown, a baby, part of the album title, and the dog from the music video for Mexican Radio.
Mexican Radio by Wall Of Voodoo (1983)
I can’t find a confirmed directing credit on this one. Still, I am pretty sure it was Francis Delia.
He directed Mexican Radio by Wall Of Voodoo. That means he had a pre-existing relationship with the band. Also, while I haven’t seen it yet, I’ve read that Wall Of Voodoo music was used in Francis Delia’s first film called Nightdreams (1981).
We got the callback of the dog.
We got the bit with the gun from earlier that was also present in Shooting Shark. He directed that video.
We see the iguana on a guitar alive. In Mexican Radio it was dead.
Nightdreams (1981) is famous for a food sex-scene. Both this video and Mexican Radio feature food. In the case of this video, it’s the can opening on TV. It’s all over Mexican Radio. You can also see food featured in Somebody’s Watching Me by Rockwell–directed by Delia. He seems to have a thing for incorporating that into the films he makes.
TVs play a role in Mexican Radio, Somebody’s Watching Me, and this one. He both produced and shot 1982’s Café Flesh. That’s the movie that was sampled by White Zombie for their song More Human Than Human. It is about a post-apocalyptic club where the few who can still have sex are forced to perform for those who can’t. All of these have to do with borders between viewing and performing.
If you watch Delia’s material in general, this screams of his work.
Finally, he made a movie called Freeway three years after this video. It had a psychopathic priest played by Billy Drago going around murdering people on the freeway because of some sort of holy mission.
This is one of my favorite videos that I have covered so far. I think it does a good job of taking us into the madness of this person’s mind using two real world, and then recent, people as examples. Then pulling us back out. It’s not like the ridiculous ending to the restored version of Anthony Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange where Alex gives up his life of crime because you have reached the 21st chapter of the book–alleged age of maturity. We also don’t get the ending of Taxi Driver where we know it is only going to buildup again. It comes across to me as an embracement of being a little bit crazy, but ultimately leaving the child and the clown behind. We were just visiting, like the full title of the album says, “Seven Days In Sammystown”.
Seeing as an episode of Star Trek: Discovery is going to air once tonight, I thought I would spotlight the “classic” ear-worm, Star Trekkin’. This thing was unleashed on the public back in 1987 by a group who did novelty songs called The Firm.
The story on the video is that the song was such a success that they knew that it would be expected of them to appear on Top Of The Pops. They didn’t want to do that since, as one of their members put it, a “bunch of balding thirty-something’s…would kill the whole fun element of the thing stone dead!”
The video was originally going to be animated. They went to several production companies, but it was too expense and they needed the video quickly. Luckily, one of the companies they approached were a team of art college graduates who put this claymation video together for them. Each of the characters were based on different kinds of food.
They were so rushed that they only had hours to spare after they finished it before it was set to air on Top Of The Pops. I think they did a pretty job considering the rush.
I love the ants.
It reminds me of the famous animal-selfie case with Naruto as well as people discovering that technically national parks can fine you if you use any picture you take on their land for commercial purposes. I’m not kidding.
The origin of the song comes from a parody of the song I Am The Music Man.
It became I Am The Star Trek Man.
I’m not what you would call a Trekkie. Regardless, I am looking forward to the new series…sort of. I guess I will be able to see the first episode–usually awful–and then nothing else??? It’ll end up somewhere. I’ll see it eventually. I’m not signing up for a single channel’s service though.
Once again, we have club-owner Stanton, but back in the 1980s before he played a club owner in Stop by Black Rebel Motorcycle Club. This time he is under the direction of none other than David Fincher. I didn’t expect to hit a David Fincher music video while going through ones with Harry Dean Stanton.
It’s a shame that the version I found has such a low resolution. I mean there isn’t anything particularly interesting about the video. It’s one of those where a band starts playing to a nearly empty place and people keep trickling in until the club is packed because they can’t resist the pull of the song. But still, you can tell that it probably looked really good when it was shown properly.
I wanted to do a different music video today, but it’ll have to come in the following days due to health issues. On the upside, those health issues might have left another music video with Harry Dean Stanton in it go unfound. Or is that a downside? Yes, I found another one, and I’ll take it as a good thing.
Anyways, this time we get bootlegger-Stanton.
We get to see him travel around following Dylan to bootleg his songs.
I think it’s clever the way they did this video. According to Wikipedia, it did get an official release:
It was originally recorded to be on the 1997 album Time Out Of Mind. You remember Time Out Of Mind, right? That was the album that took Dylan to the Grammy Awards so he could meet the “Soy Bomb”-guy. I’ll always remember that one. The song wasn’t included on the album. It must of leaked out because people had access to it regardless. Cut to almost 10 years later, and Dylan decided to not only release it on an album and call it part of “The Bootleg Series”, but a video was made chronicling the hard life of an old bootlegger.
You’ll notice that Dylan only appears in some grainy stock footage. There’s a comment on YouTube that covers that bit:
A friend of mine called and asked if I wanted to work on a Bob Dylan music video. I said absolutely! However, once we got out to the desert in Palmdale, CA I said where’s Bob? My buddy said “Dylan, isn’t exactly in the video. The video is a concept about an old music bootlegger played by Harry Dean Stanton. Bummer. Harry Dean was a trooper, because it was brutally hot at almost 100 degrees. At the end of the day, Harry got on the guitar and played a Mexican folk ballad. He said “film this and send it to Bob.”
I love that story.
This might be my favorite one of the Harry Dean Stanton videos so far. We see this isn’t just a bootlegger. He is a fan who treasures Bob Dylan’s material, would love to be able to play like him, and is so obsessed with Dylan that he appears to have made it his life’s work to make sure not a performance or song is lost to the wind.
Seeing as it is the International Day Of Peace, I thought it was appropriate to finally spotlight the music video for Imagine by John Lennon.
While this video received a release on its own, it was also edited into a film called Imagine, which was released a year later in 1972.
It’s not the only music video that was made for this song. In 1986/1988 Zbigniew Rybczyński made a new music video for it. Maybe I’ll spotlight that one at a later date if it is still available.
The “This Is Not Here” sign comes from the title of Ono’s art show that was being displayed in New York.
They arrive at the door with the sign on it after walking down the title of a Beatles song (The Long And Winding Road) and proceed to teleport inside the house. Maybe they did that because if that sign isn’t there, then neither are they. Perhaps it’s because the song is about an imagined reality. I’m not sure what they were going for with that.
After that, the video alternates between a closeup shot of Lennon playing the famous white piano…
and a long shot showing Ono opening the metaphorical blinds to let the light into the largely empty white room.
Once she’s done, she sits next to John and proceeds to stare off into space. Honestly, it’s kind of weird.
But then Lennon finishes the song, turns to her, gets a little goofy, and they kiss.
The song has been heard and covered so many times that even the Wikipedia article has a section called “Notable performances and cover versions.” They will often have a full list if they bother to include covers.
The video has had many unofficial postings on YouTube for years, but it took until December of last year for it to get up there officially. I wonder how many people have seen the video in addition to having heard the song.
Today, a video is supposed to go up for a song called One World One Love for the International Day Of Peace. I’ll have to look at that some time.
Through the Shattered Lens 