In 1994, a film about the early days of the Beatles in Hamburg was released. The film was called Backbeat and it starred Ian Hart as John Lennon, Stephen Dorff as Stu Sutcliffe, and Sheryl Lee as Astrid Kirchherr. In order to promote the film, a supergroup called The Backbeat Band recorded covers of several of the songs that the Beatles performed while in Germany.
The members of the Backbeat Band were:
Dave Pirner (Soul Asylum): vocals (Paul McCartney)
Greg Dulli (The Afghan Whigs): vocals (John Lennon)
Thurston Moore (Sonic Youth): guitar
Don Fleming (Gumball): guitar
Mike Mills (R.E.M.): bass guitar
Dave Grohl (Nirvana): drums
Henry Rollins (Black Flag): vocals (Stuart Sutcliffe)
The video for Money features clips from the film, along with Stephen Dorff, Ian Hart, and Scott Williams (as Pete Best) pretending to perform the song. The video was directed by Nick Egan, who went on to do videos for Duran Duran, Oasis, and Alanis Morrissette.
I don’t know if there’s any abuse that can really compare to being forced to listen to Silverchair but some may disagree, The group’s lead singer, Daniel Johns, for instance, said that this song was an answer to all of their critics. Go ahead and abuse me, the song says, I’m still going to play my music. Johns also once said, in answer to the band’s many critics, that, “every song I’ve heard sounds like another song I’ve heard.” That’s certainly true if you’re listening to Silverchair.
This song was the band’s second biggest hit in the U.S. Much of that popularity may have had something to do with this video, which is a pretty good video regardless of what you think about the band’s sound. It was directed by Nick Egan, who also did videos for Duran Duran, Oasis, Alanis Morissette, and many others.
It’s another Canadian holiday that is on my calendar today. Thankfully there are more musicians from the Great White North than just Rush. Otherwise I’d run out of music videos very quickly for other Canadian holidays. It’s my understanding that this “Civic Holiday” is something called a “public holiday” that basically is a day set aside for whatever a particular place decides to celebrate. I am going to co-op this Canadian holiday to celebrate that Alanis Morissette decided to pull a Tori Amos in 1995, and we got the album Jagged Little Pill as a result. To be fair, she was a decent Paula Abdul knockoff before she changed her tune. I could have started with her earlier videos like I did with Ministry. However, I already did the equivalent by spotlighting the early 90s cheese fest of Nothing My Love Can’t Fix by Joey Lawrence back in July. That’s how her music videos used to look.
I remember back in 1995 when I was up in Lake Tahoe, CA with my parents, and saw this music video for the first time. I’m not sure how I wound up watching MTV considering I used to watch the Weather Channel all the time when I was up there for reasons beyond me. Kennedy was interviewing her late at night if memory serves. This was an odd time to release an album like Jagged Little Pill. 1994 saw the height, and deathblow to the early 90s musical renaissance. Kurt Cobain killed himself that year, which brought Nirvana to an end. We also saw the release of Dookie by Green Day, The Blue Album by Weezer, The Downward Spiral by Nine Inch Nails, Throwing Copper by Live, Purple by Stone Temple Pilots, Smash by The Offspring, and Superunkown by Soundgarden to name a few. The next few years we went through a transitional period, and this music video was at the center of it. It’s a great song and good music video, but just like bands such as Bush and Collective Soul, it was part of an aborted second wave of musicians following in the footsteps of Nirvana. A few years later we would be neck deep in boy bands, pop princesses, nu metal, and faux-punk/alt.
The video today looks like they took a standard “just put the musicians in front of the camera performing and add a few arty scenes elsewhere” then passed it through an Instagram filter. It’s a simple music video. The question is does it complement the anger of the song? Yes, it does. Does Alanis really look that angry? No, but that’s not really her fault. She isn’t the type that conveys that easily, which is probably why we’d get much more peaceful stuff from her after this. No, I’m not going to say it. Just enjoy this time capsule. I think 21 years is enough time for us to have gotten over it being played to death.
Through the Shattered Lens 