The 9th music video to air on MTV on August 1st, 1981 was the video for REO Speedwagon’s Take It On The Run. However, due to technical difficulties, only 12 seconds of the video were aired before the Speedwagon was replaced by a black screen, which, to me, sounds like an improvement. Though MTV moved on to the next video, the video for Take It On The Run would eventually be aired two more times over the course of August 1st.
REO Speedwagon does have its fans. I’m not one of them but they are out there. This video was the type of concert clip that celebrated bands like REO Speedwagon in all of their light rocking glory.
Though it was not my original intention, it looks like I’m going to end up sharing every video that MTV aired on August 1st, 1981, its first broadcast day. Let’s keep things going with the 8th video that aired on that day, the video for Todd Rundgren’s Time Heals.
Though it was never as big a hit as some of his other songs, Time Heals was a very personal song for Rundgren. He wrote it while he was still dealing with two traumatic events. First, he and his girlfriend were the victims of a violent home invasion in August of 1980. Just a few months later, he learned that, before the assassination of John Lennon, Mark David Chapman made a trip to Rundgren’s home town of Woodstock, New York. Before fixating on Lennon, Chapman was reportedly obsessed with Rundgren and there was much speculation that Rundgren was Chapman’s original target. The song was about how Rundgren needed time to heal all of those recent traumas.
Rundgren produced this video with the music that he made from producing Meat Loaf’s Bat Out ofHell. At the time, expensive music videos, like this one, were unusual. Though it may not longer seem so, this was considered to be very avant-garde for 1981. At that time, most music videos were just performance clips, often lifted from concert films or TV appearances. MTV would soon change that forever.
The sixth music video to air on MTV on August 1st, 1981 was Cliff Richard’s We Don’t Talk Anymore.
The seventh was Brass in Pocket, by the Pretenders. Up to that date, Brass in Pocket was the band’s biggest hit and the video — which featured a narrative theme with Chrissie Hynde as a waitress — also represented the future of direction of music videos. Today, it can be surprising to see how many of the first music videos were simple performance clips. In the days before MTV, videos were viewed as a novelty as opposed to a necessity. Due to the popularity of MTV, future music videos would have more in common with Brass in Pocket and Video Killed The Radio Star, designed to generate buzz as well as to show off the music.
When the song was first recorded, Hynde hated it and said that listening to her voice made her cringe. The song was released over her objections and went on to become one of the Pretenders’s first and biggest hits. For the record, Hynde says that her feelings on the song have since mellowed and she enjoys it now because “it’s served me well.”
Over this past week, I’ve been sharing the first music videos that played on MTV on August 1s,t 1981. Little Suzi’s On The Up was the fifth music video to be shown on that day, following The Who’s You Better You Bet. Unlike many of the music videos that played that day, Little Suzi’s on the Up was not just a performance clip but instead used the type of camera trickery and bizarre humor that would become the signature of many subsequent music videos.
I don’t know much about Ph.D, beyond that they were a British new wave group. The name of the band was play on the last names of the members — Phillips, Hymas, and Diamond. Their biggest hit was I Won’t Let You Down in 1982. Unfortunately, around the same time, Jim Diamond contracted hepatitis and could no longer tour, which led to the dissolvent of the band. Watching this video, I’m reminded a bit of Madness.
The video for The Who’s You Better You Bet was filmed at Shepperton Studios in March of 1981 and it provided a look at the new Who as this was the first video to feature Kenney Jones on drums. Jones, of course, replaced Keith Moon after the latter’s tragic death.
The video for Pat Benatar’s YouBetterRun was the second. As opposed to the video for VideoKilledTheRadioStar, YouBetterRun is a performance clip. There’s no special effects but there’s a lot of Pat Benatar, which is just as good.
Back then, MTV was short for “Music Television” and it actually played music videos, something that you don’t see much of on the channel anymore. Today, MTV is best known for cheap reality programming and countless shows in which D-List celebs watch YouTube videos. But before MTV became the Rob Dyrdek network, it actually used to play music.
In fact, MTV revolutionized music and, along the way, it also provided a chance for several talented filmmakers to show off what they could do with just a few minutes of screen time. David Fincher started out directing music videos. So did Spike Jonze. But before Fincher and Jonze, there was Russell Mulcahy, who went from directing trippy music videos to directing Highlander.
Appropriately enough, the very first video to air on MTV was directed by Mulcahy and it was for a song that predicted what MTV would eventually do to the music industry. Video Killed The Radio Star was the perfect debut video for MTV. Produced on a budget of $50,000 and filmed over the course of just one day in South London, Video Killed the Radio Star featured actress Virginia Hey in a test tube and Hans Zimmer playing keyboards. Hey later went on to appear in several Australian films, including Mad Max 2 where she played the warrior woman. Hans Zimmer, of course, went on to find fame on his own as one of the busiest film composers around.
Even before it was featured on MTV, Video Killed The Radio Star was aired on British television and was considered to be controversial because of the exploding television, which was seen as encouraging violence. It was a much more innocent time.
Best known as one of the Danzig songs that is not a remake of Mother, DirtyBlackSummer appeared on Danzig’s third album, HowTheGodsKill. It was one of the more popular songs to appear on that album (which, overall, is considered to be one of Danzig’s best) and the band continues to regularly perform it to this day.
The video is unique because it was directed by Anton Corbijn, the Dutch photographer who directed videos from Depeche Mode, U2, and Nirvana. (He was the director behind the video for Heart–ShapedBox). Corbijn has since gone on to direct feature films as well, Control, The American, and Most Wanted Man.
Long before Hugh Jackman got the role, Glenn Danzig was considered for the role of Wolverine in a potential X-Men feature film. I think he would have rocked that roll.
Depending on the source, the “paper in fire” that John Mellencamp sings about in this song either refers to the dreams of those looking to get out of living below the poverty line or a verse in the Bible in which Hell is called “paper in fire.” One thing that everyone agrees on is that the line “we keep no check on our appetites” is a reference to Hud, which is one of Mellencamp’s favorite movies.
The video was shot outside of a house on a dirt road near Savannah, Georgia. Mellencamp wanted to highlight the poverty that many Americans were living under. This video was also shot at a time when Mellencamp was still trying to escape from the “Johnny Cougar” persona that was forced on him early on in his career. (In fact, at the time this song was recorded, he was still officially known as John Cougar Mellencamp.)
Through the Shattered Lens