In today’s music video of the day, Billy Joel lives the dream of every 1980s auto mechanic and works on Christie Brinkley’s car. Just as in real life, this video ends with Joel and Brinkley together. While it is often speculated that the song was written about Brinkley, Joel has said that it was actually inspired more by his earlier relationship with Elle Macpherson.
Billy Joel has also said that he didn’t enjoy making this video because a large group of bystanders kept yelling “Hey, Christie!” during shooting.
Director Jay Dubin also did music videos for John Mellencamp and REO Speedwagon.
This is one of Billy Joel’s best-known songs. For people who grew up at the right time, it will always be remembered as the theme song from Bosom Buddies. (Unfortunately, due to licensing issues, the song does not appear on the show’s DVD release and it has recently been removed by syndicated airings. All ten of Bosom Buddies‘s fans were very disappointed.) In the background of this song, you can hear Chicago’s Peter Cetera and Donnie Dacus contributing backing vocals.
This video was directed by Steve Cohen, who directed several videos for Billy Joel in the late 70s and the early 80s.
I know I have already done two Billy Joel music videos this year, but I opened my big mouth and brought up this one up a couple of posts ago. I figure I’d get it over with now.
Even though I burst through a bunch of the book I Want My MTV when I first got it, I’ve slowed down significantly, and I’m still stuck at the part where people are telling stories of drugs, alcohol, blow jobs, shrooms, cocaine, and even using a penis to sing a Rolling Stones song. I’m not joking about that last one. I’ll get to that Van Halen music video eventually. The point is that I am still stuck in the period numerous people in the book refer to as the Old West with lunatics running the asylum.
I bring that up because this music video has become notorious in the past decade or so for being one of the most homoerotic music videos of the early 1980s. People interviewed in the book bring up that this was a highly experimental period for music videos. That’s how you get crazy music videos like Anger Is My Middle Name by Thor. It’s also how you got Huey Lewis & The News singing to a woman in a bed who must be an incredibly heavy sleeper (Do You Believe In Love). Lewis thought it was ridiculous, but it was hit, so he figured that if that was what people wanted, then that would be their thing. That’s how we got things like Huey becoming Frankenstein’s Monster, The News getting decapitated, Huey finding a Lumiere brothers film behind a door at a party, and a sand shark trying to eat a family, among other things.
So, you take a highly experimental time when people were trying all sorts of things with some people deliberately making nutty music videos, and you wind up not being able to real say that this music video was intentionally homoerotic. Considering all the early music videos I have seen, I think not. One of the early appeals of MTV was that then exotic acts like ABC were suddenly being broadcast in the midwest.
Back then there seemed to be two masters of music videos. You had the women who were at the high-level because the music industry was largely a man’s game, but music videos had to be made, so they pawned the job off on women. Russell Mulcahy is basically the father of the modern music video. He tried all sorts of things. A good example being Total Eclipse Of The Heart for Bonnie Tyler. I think the stuff that is homoerotic was put in because it seemed to fit, and they were trying things no matter how crazy they seemed.
The most interesting part about this music video to me is that while it does have the mostly naked guys, the construction workers, and the unnecessary dancers at the end, it still is a good representation of what Billy Joel’s song is about. Even the homoerotic parts fit just fine into Joel’s intended message until you get to the end. I think the dancers at the end were probably choreographer Kenny Ortega’s idea to go with the whole thing looking like a play rather than reality.
Why the guy in white briefs? You got me. I get why there’s the guy in black briefs throwing the guitar around him in Faster Than The Speed Of Night. Bonnie Tyler’s best music videos are filled with what people perceive as binary, and sexual orientation is just another one of those things. They could have left out the white briefs guy. That just doesn’t have any reason I can think of to be there.
In summary, I suggest you watch the music video three times. The first time watch it how it was intended. The second time watch it for the homoerotic material. The third time combine the two to find that it still comes together.
Jackie Adams was the producer on the music video. You might recall her as the producer of both Rio for Duran Duran and Pressure by Billy Joel.
Doug Dowdle was the editor on the music video. He did a mix of editing, directing, and writing for music videos. He apparently even directed a music video for his own song Burning In Me. We’ll see him again when I finally get around to doing Bonnie Tyler music videos because he directed Holding Out For A Hero.
I’m really not sure what to say about this other than to watch it. It is one of the best music videos I have spotlighted so far. That shouldn’t be a big surprise since it is Russell Mulcahy directing a Billy Joel music video. For whatever reason, Billy Joel’s music videos are some of the best I have seen. Russell Mulcahy is an excellent director of music videos. It’s a winning combination.
I guess there are two things I want to make particular note of in the music video. First, is that it uses a modified version of the training montage from The Parallax View (1974) at the beginning. The second thing is that I love how Mulcahy used water and liquids in general as something that not only builds up pressure when attempts to contain it are made, but also as something that can consume you if you cannot handle pressure as the song says. It is much like the television that winds up capturing the kid within it since it is also a source of pressure along with magazines and other mass media.
This is another one of those music videos where we know more than just the director.
Andrew Dintefass was the cinematographer on Pressure. He shot a few other music videos with Russell Mulcahy, some other music videos, and did a few other things as well.
Doug Dowdle edited Pressure. He also edited, directed, and wrote a few music videos.
Keith Williams wrote Pressure. He wrote over 60 music videos, which includes a bunch of Russell Mulcahy ones. I found an IMDb entry that I am pretty sure is him and includes numerous producer credits.
Jackie Adams was the producer of Pressure. She seems to have exclusively produced music videos directed by Russell Mulcahy.
I love when I come across a music video that has this much documentation available.
Since I did Pearl Jam’s Do the Evolution yesterday, I thought I’d go back about 10 years to when Billy Joel did something similar. His music video didn’t focus on the worst of humanity, but more like a condensed version of The Wonder Years if it spanned many decades. As the decades fly by, it has Billy Joel in the very fake house looking like he couldn’t care less as he plays with drumsticks or a slinky while the people around him are oblivious to him being there. A very “been there, done that” attitude to what is new to the people in the house. Also, a person waiting for what they know is coming. The titular fire that will leave the house burnt.
I’m sure it was no mistake that they had Joel dressed as the man in black throughout this video. That of course being a reference to Johnny Cash’s song Man in Black. It’s probably why when we get the portions that are devoted to Billy alone at a table with a fire behind him, there is often a disturbing picture behind that fire that stands in contrast to the events inside the house.
I love how at the end, it flashes back over the decades, and the studio that was the house is left exposed just as Mom looks over at Billy for the first time now that she has caught up to his time. We are left with a final shot of the couple from the beginning leaving the house as they entered, just before Joel, sitting at the table, suddenly disappears. Yes, I’m sure the couple is a reference to Brenda and Eddie from Billy Joel’s song Scenes from an Italian Restaurant. In a way, you could call this music video a companion piece to that song.
I’m not sure if the music video is a positive or negative look towards the future. It comes across to me as reminder that a destructive force is always at our backs. It’s not necessarily destroying humanity as a whole, but it does destroy the world as we know it with each passing year as it does the house the people inside thought would never change when they were in the moment. It’s also a force that burns down the walls dividing fantasy from the reality of that room Joel sits inside at a table, or does it?
This is one of those music videos where we not only know the director, but some more people who worked on it. I was kind of hoping to avoid him for a little bit since it’s such a cliche to mention him this early. Unfortunately, he was one of the producers on this music video. That person being prolific music video, feature film, and TV director Russell Mulcahy. You could argue that he invented what we know as the fully-formed music video. He was making them back in the 1970s and even directed Video Killed the Radio Star by The Buggles that kicked off MTV back in 1981. I’m sure we’ll see him again.
Through the Shattered Lens 