Jacqui Byford | Through the Shattered Lens

I wanted to hold off on this video till later, but the sun and the moon made other plans. So, let’s go through it.

Why is Bonnie here in the first place?

Is the bird practicing to be thrown later?

Swinging lamps…

on loan from Harden My Heart by Quarterflash.

Harden My Heart (1981)

It’s safe to look at Total Eclipse Of The Heart…

but don’t look at the total eclipse of the sun today with the naked eye, or you could end up like this guy.

Doors also on loan from Harden My Heart.

Harden My Heart (1981)

It’s a Russell Mulcahy video. You can usually be assured that his videos will contain metaphoric liquids and/or homoerotic imagery.

Is this the same bird from earlier?

The Reflex!

The Reflex by Duran Duran (1984)

It was nice of Godfrey Ho to let Mulcahy borrow some ninjas.

Gentlemen, welcome to The Skulls.

Another thing from Harden My Heart.

Harden My Heart (1981)

Since both videos were filmed in Holloway Sanitarium, I like to think that while Bonnie was upstairs, Ozzy Osbourne was being chased around the basement by a werewolf for Bark At The Moon.

The Judas Priest dancers reaching for Bonnie.

And Bonnie’s reaction…to the entire video.

There’s more Harden My Heart in here, but I choose to show this person upside-down instead.

Definitely Mulcahy.

Pressure.

The Thin Wall by Ultravox (1981)

I love that they almost missed Bonnie with the altar boy.

Exactly how many birds is he supposed to have? We could see some others earlier, and there are a few behind him. Does he just wait around to throw them at people who pass by?

Wild Boys cameo

The Wild Boys by Duran Duran (1984)

Then Bonnie is rescued by an angel from the clutches of Mulcahy.

Or is she?

In reality, it was a bit of both.

Here’s what Mulcahy had to say about this video in the book, I Want My MTV:

I collaborated on the storyboard for Bonnie Tyler’s “Total Eclipse of the Heart” with Jim Steinman, who wrote and produced the song. Jim is fabulously, fabulously crazy. We would banter ideas over a bottle of red wine. I’d say, “Let’s set it in a school and have ninjas in one scene,” and he’d say “Let’s have a choirboy with glowing eyeballs.” We shot it in an old abandoned insane asylum in London. We had one sequence, which was Steinman’s idea, where a shirtless young boy is holding a dove and he throws it at the camera in slow motion. Bonnie came around the corner and screamed, in her Welsh accent, “You’re nothing but a fucking pre-vert!” And she stormed off.

There was nothing perverse intended. The imagery was meant to be sort of pure. Maybe slightly erotic and gothic and creepy, but pure. Anyway, the video went to number one, and a year later Bonnie’s people rang up and asked if I would direct her new video. And I told them to fuck off, because I was insulted about being called a fucking pervert. And I was a little mad because pervert wasn’t pronounced correctly.

So the bird throwing kid was Steinman’s idea. Interesting. Perhaps her comment is why he isn’t shirtless in the video.

I wonder what video Bonnie’s people wanted him to come back to direct a year later. I ask because the video for Faster Than The Speed Of Night, which came out the same year, puts a kid throwing a dove to shame.

Faster Than The Speed Of Night (1983)

Needless to say, regardless of their falling out, this kind of video became Bonnie Tyler’s thing for awhile.

Holding Out For A Hero (1984)

If mvdbase is to believed, she even got Jim Steinman back to co-direct If You Were A Woman (And I Was A Man). It’s something you’d hardly notice if you watch the video.

If You Were A Woman (And I Was A Man) (1986)

I’m glad she followed up Total Eclipse Of The Heart with similar videos. The songs are great, and the videos make them unforgettable.

Enjoy the eclipse!

30 Days Of Surrealism:

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.