David Mallet | Through the Shattered Lens

I’ve mentioned this song several times as an odd exclusion from Clear Channel’s post 9/11 no-no playlist, so I figured I’d actually get around to talking about the music video. I was going to do a ZZ Top video, but their stuff really needs a retrospective to do it properly. They not only have an interesting history with MTV that got them a whole chapter in the book I Want My MTV, but the videos hang together. That said, AC/DC also has an interesting history with music videos as well. While this is one of their best, you can go all the way back to 1974 and see them performing Can I Sit Next To You Girl? with original lead-singer Dave Evans. That’s quite the trip. It gets even weirder if you go back to Bon Scott’s 60s band The Valentines singing Build Me Up Buttercup.

Of course the weirdest has to be watching Rick Astley do Highway To Hell.

Thunderstruck is a great song. It’s classic blood-pumping play-to-the-back-row AC/DC.

Prolific music video director David Mallet made it. Among his many other credits, he directed 12 music videos for AC/DC.

David Gardner edited it. He worked on a few music videos. They were mostly with director Nigel Dick.

Bill Laslett was the art director. He seems to have been the go-to person to be the production designer on award shows and concerts after 1995 or so. That’s hilarious considering this music video. Before that, he worked on television shows.

Jacqui Byford was the producer on this music video. She doesn’t appear to have done a bunch of music videos, but they are memorable ones. She did White Wedding by Billy Idol, Photograph by Def Leppard, Total Eclipse Of The Heart by Bonnie Tyler, True by Spandau Ballet, and Distant Early Warning by Rush, among others.

Peter Sinclair is the star of the show. The reason I go back to this particular AC/DC music video over and over again is for the cinematography. He has done a bunch of TV and music work. Just like Laslett, some of them have been concert films. It’s a little difficult to pin down his credits, but he seems to have shot Material Girl by Madonna.

He also did some directing, such as for Karma Chameleon by Culture Club.

I love his work here in particular. It seems like everyone came together well here to produce an excellent music video.

Enjoy!

Happy Columbus Day! Or if I was still living in Berkeley, CA; then the parking meters would be telling me this was Indigenous People’s Day. I couldn’t think of a better time to do my first Iron Maiden music video. Sadly, there isn’t much to say.

The song tells us the story of Europeans coming to America and brutally taking the land from the Native Americans. They tell the story from two different points of view. The first is from the Native Americans. The second one is from the European point of view. The second one takes up the majority of the song. This makes sense since it mirrors how the story of the New World is often dominated by the European side of things. So much so that we got plenty of Westerns like the one they intercut with the band performing the song on a stage.

There is one issue with writing about this music video. There are two different versions of this listed on mvdbase. There is the version above, and one from 1985 that was directed by Jim Yukich. To make matters even more confusing is that there is a version called the Camp Chaos version.

That version is even marked as unlisted on YouTube. I stumbled upon it because it is the version that IMVDb has embedded into their entry for this music video.

All things considered, I’d say that the first and second ones are the same one directed by David Mallet. The only difference being that they took out the old movie and replaced it with some animation instead. You can still see people in the comments on this music video that think the song is racist, so it’s no surprise that they made a different version of the same video. Also, people called the band Satanic back then because of the name of the title track for the album this song is on. In addition, people thought that this cover…

of a Native American in Hell fighting a demon was equating Europeans with devils, and got angry about it. You think? The song isn’t exactly subtle, and neither is the music video.

David Mallet appears to have worked on around 130 music videos in his career

I couldn’t find a music video that they did, so here is just the song We Live from the Native American band XIT.