Original subtitles

-In the beginning was the music, music, music...

♪ Time, time, time

-"Video jockey" was added to Webster's dictionary.

♪ See what's become of me

-A new concept is born.

-♪ Well, I remember

-I want my MTV!

[ The Bangles' "Hazy Shade of Winter" playing ]

-We offer more than cars or grain or MTV.

-Let's do it.

-The rise of the music video was a gamechanger for pop music.

-♪ Time, time, time

-Videos, I think, were cool.

Songs became grander and bigger than they were because of MTV.

-♪ Possibilities

-The avalanche of MTV as the --

I mean, it grew so fast like a sort of a virus.

-♪ And the sky

♪ Is a hazy shade of winter

-It just swept everything aside.

-Video music! 24 hours a day!

-I mean, cable itself was exploding,

[ Pop ]

...and we were exploding along with it.

♪ Hey, little sister, who's your Superman? ♪

♪ Hey, little sister, who's the one you want? ♪

♪ Hey, little sister, shotgun

♪ It's a nice day to start again ♪

-It became so huge and so powerful.

It was sort of like, you get a video on MTV,

boom, that's it for you, that's the magic ticket.

-Suddenly, music had another dimension,

and musicians had a new way to express themselves.

♪ 1984

-It was really wonderful to use these visual images to sort of

develop the meaning of the songs.

-♪ 1984 -♪ Hey, yeah

To convey some other depth in them --

that was really experimental at the time.

[ Duran Duran's "Hungry Like the Wolf" playing ]

-♪ In touch with the ground

♪ I'm on the hunt, I'm after you ♪

-I think it was sort of

a whole new level of modernism, you know?

It was a new style, and who are these people?

These people came from nowhere.

Duran Duran -- who are they?

-♪ I want my MTV

-It was a cultural phenomenon that transformed

the way we see music.

-When I was growing up, music was what you heard first

and you maybe saw later.

Today music is what they see first and maybe hear later.

♪

♪

-Okay, then. Okay.

-It'll be an F for you.

-Here we go.

Just one more time.

-Right after I say, "Are you sure?"

Da da da -- yeah.

-Oh.

-Hal, here's how I want to do it. Takes like this.

-All right, it's fun time. Fun time.

-Here we go.

-Oh, really? -17, take one.

-This will be the keeper. -[Laughs]

♪

♪

-♪ Video killed the radio star ♪

-♪ Pictures came and broke your heart ♪

-♪ Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh

I had been exposed to music videos

through my travels in Europe.

I had seen them. I saw the power of them.

-♪ Oh, oh

-I loved this idea.

So I was one of a team of six

who sort of developed the concept of MTV.

-And behold, a new concept is born.

-I had been living, uh, in Afghanistan and India

for 8 years, came back to the States

after my business kind of went kaput.

So then I went to see the guy

who was going to run the music channel.

It wasn't called MTV yet.

He said, "we're looking to hire people

who have no experience in television."

-♪ Can't stop this

-We don't want people from PBS or NBC or CBS.

-♪ Oh

-I said, well, I have no experience in television.

I just came from a country that didn't even have television.

-Television? -No! Check this out.

-Lo and behold, they hired me.

-Ladies and gentlemen, rock 'n' roll.

-Technology was new, the whole concept was new,

that you go to this channel, and it was this world of music.

Starting right now,

you'll never look at music the same way again.

So everybody was young.

Nobody really knew what the hell they were doing.

And musically, there was no videos.

[ Devo's "Whip It" playing ]

-You'd see DEVO every hour

'cause they they needed enough videos

to fill in 24-hour, you know, programming.

-♪ Crack that whip

♪ Give the past the slip

♪ Step on a crack

♪ Break your mama's back

-I think of the 160 videos that we had when we went on the air;

something like 35 of them were Rod Stewart's.

♪

-♪ Kick off your shoes and sit right down ♪

♪ Loosen up that pretty French gown ♪

♪ Let me pour ya a good, long drink ♪

♪ Ooh, baby, don't you hesitate 'cause ♪

♪ Tonight's the night

-He really used to bang out these cheap ones

in front of the fireplace with the acoustic guitar, yeah.

-♪ Ain't nobody gonna stop us now ♪

-It was just these crazy bands from England.

-♪ And I ran, I ran so far away ♪

-So by default, we wound up being really progressive

and really sort of ahead of our time.

-♪ I couldn't get away

♪

-There hadn't been that much on MTV,

so whatever you put on MTV you were going to stylistically

start creating...

what MTV could do.

♪ If I looked all over the world ♪

♪ And there's every type of girl ♪

♪ But your empty eyes seem to pass me by ♪

♪ And leave me dancin' with myself ♪

Yeah, we wanted to push the boundaries

of what was on MTV.

If you know how to shock,

you know how to rock, you know, that's... [ Laughs ]

♪ Dancing with myself

♪ Oh, oh, dancing with myself ♪

♪ Oh, oh, dancing with myself ♪

We had sort of hybrids of punk coming up in the '80s.

Sort of a way forward that, say, may have kept

the sort of energy of punk.

That's what I wanted to do anyway with my music.

♪

-It was very radical, that energy like, you know,

you can just rip something up to shreds.

It's that horrid we just -- we're just burning this up,

and we're doing something that you've never seen it before.

-♪ Dancing with myself

-I never thought of myself as a punk, per se,

but I was really, really influenced definitely by it.

It was like, I cut my hair, I dyed it.

It was a kind of statement to say that

you're at odds with society.

♪ Sweet dreams are made of these ♪

♪ Who am I to disagree?

♪ I travel the world and the seven seas ♪

♪ Everybody's

♪ lookin' for something

-"Sweet Dreams" -- it was totally surreal.

We were using Buñuel and Salvador Dalí

and, you know, French filmmakers,

Italian filmmakers, as references.

It was like a little weird sort of surreal, uh, vignette.

-♪ Movin' on -♪ Hold your head up

-♪ Movin' on -♪ Keep your head up

-♪ Movin' on -♪ Hold your head up

-♪ Movin' on -♪ Keep your head up

-♪ Movin' on -♪ Hold your head up

-♪ Movin' on -♪ Keep your head up

♪

-It was very much using the visual tools to say something,

but it wasn't a superficial statement.

It was a really profound thing that was more than skin deep --

wearing a man's suit to look like a twin

with the opposite gender.

My cohort in Eurythmics, both of us, we were like equals.

And looking back on it now as an older woman,

I look at that, and I think

I was trying to find a way to be equal.

-So it wasn't really anything like a pop video.

But what happened, MTV had just started,

and they were desperate to have stuff to play.

And every time they showed it,

everybody was going nuts about it.

So this critical mass started to happen.

-♪ Who am I to disagree

-By the time Annie and I arrived in America to play a tour,

when we were in San Francisco, Annie and I got a call

and we were told we were number one in America.

So from being, you know, really experimental

and seeing ourselves more as performance art,

it was like number one in America,

cover ofRolling Stone, Annie on the cover ofNewsweek.

And it was just bang, you know,

all in about the space of four weeks.

-I just remember the sensation of my world suddenly feeling

like in these films when you see a very, very small

cartoon person knocking at ahuge door,

the Hall of the Mountain King or something.

And then, all of a sudden... [ Imitates deep creaking sound ]

You know, the door opens.

And it's like...

♪ My mother told me good

♪ My mother told me strong

♪ She said, be true to yourself and you can't go wrong ♪

♪ But there's just one thing that you must understand ♪

♪ You can fool with your brother ♪

♪ But don't mess with a missionary man ♪

-♪ Oh

-♪ Don't mess with a missionary man ♪

♪ Don't mess with a missionary man ♪

♪ Don't mess with a missionary man ♪

-♪ Oh oh oh oh -You couldn't come out

and just be a normal band playing guitars.

We really went all the way out in experimenting.

Nothing to do with pop music.

♪ Black-eyed looks from those Bible books ♪

♪ He's a man with a mission, got a serious mind ♪

I hear this word "image" and I used to hear this word "image,"

"your image, your image, your image."

And it used to really bug me.

It still does when I hear that -- "your image."

And I think why am I so bugged by this word, "image"?

'Cause I said no, it's not my image. This is who I am.

But at the same time, that wasn't exactly true.

Because it was a presentation.

♪ Believe, believe, believe, believe, believe, believe ♪

-I like the idea that when you make a piece of music,

you make a little play, a little piece of theater.

And it isn't necessarily about you.

There are characters in it.

There's somebody singing who's probably using

the first person singular, "I", but it doesn't mean it's me.

You know Bowie is very good at this.

He often populates his songs with characters

who clearly aren't him.

-♪ One flash of light but no smoking pistol ♪

♪ I never done good things

I've never done good things.

♪ I never done bad things

I've never done bad things.

♪ I never did anything out of the blue ♪

♪ Whoa-oa-oa Whoa-oa-oa.

♪ Want an axe to break the ice

♪ Wanna come down right now

♪ Ashes to ashes, funk to funky ♪

♪ We know Major Tom's a junkie ♪

-One of the things that Bowie brought to the scene,

as did so many of the other "art rock musicians"

like a Brian Eno of Roxy Music,

Freddie Mercury in the 1970s,

they brought a prioritization of the visual into popular music.

-♪ Jean genie lives on his back ♪

♪ The Jean genie loves chimney stacks ♪

♪ He's outrageous, he screams and he bawls ♪

♪ The Jean genie, let yourself go ♪

-David Bowie radicalized masculinity in popular music.

So he changed the way that we think about gender, uh,

the possibilities for how men can stylistically

express themselves in popular music.

♪

-♪ He sits like a man but he smiles like a reptile ♪

♪ She love him, she love him, but just for a short while ♪

♪ She'll scratch in the sand, won't let go his hand ♪

♪ He says he's a beautician and sells you nutrition ♪

♪ And keeps all your dead hair for making up underwear ♪

♪ Poor little Greenie

♪ Ooh-ooh-ooh

-In every sense, David Bowie was the predecessor to so many

of these artists on MTV.

They learnt to be brave from him.

They learnt to put across another persona.

-♪ The Jean genie, let yourself go ♪

-That was Bowie, that was Presley, that was DEVO.

They were very professional musicians

that were putting on an image,

which is what most of rock 'n' roll is.

♪

-At the end of the day, it's show business.

Who are our favorite entertainers, ever?

James Brown, Prince, David Bowie,

because they embraced... the razzle dazzle.

-To take the power of music and put it together

with the power of television was a great combination.

And it certainly showed its strength years before MTV

and in many, many ways.

-♪ In the shadows let me come and sing to you ♪

♪ Let me dream a song that I can dream to you ♪

MTV is a culmination of years

and years and years of visual imagery.

-♪ Let me...

-First it was film...

-♪ Let me live my song

-The musical,

you know, even "the Wizard of Oz."

-All right, Mr. Ritchie, how 'bout a downbeat

for the baby-loving Supremes?

-And then all of a sudden, music comes into the house,

and you have the growth of the visual medium at home.

♪

-♪ Baby, baby

♪ Baby, don't leave me

♪ Ooh, please, don't leave me

♪ All by myself

-I would see Diana Ross and The Supremes

in these beautiful, elegant shift dresses,

you know, with this kind of minimalistic moves

that they all did in synchronistic unison, you know?

And they had this deportment.

But the reason why they learnt to do that was because somebody

had the foresight to say now, you know,

when you perform it has to be like this, and it worked.

Whatever they represented, it had that inherent sort of

dignity and beauty and elegance, and, boy, it was something else.

♪

-♪ So helplessly -♪ Where did our love go?

-♪ You now want to leave -♪ Baby, baby

-♪ Ooh, you wanna leave me

-Television for me was primordial.

I had to have TV.

So I grew up with Ed Sullivan.

I grew up with the Grand Ole Opry.

Anytime Elvis Presley would be on

or James Brown would be on, we were there.

It was like a neighborhood event.

People that didn't have TVs would come over to our house,

and it became, like -- it would be like a party.

-♪ We're going hopping

-And then, of course, you had Dick Clark

and "American Bandstand" out of Philadelphia.

♪ On the bandstand

♪ Bandstand

-Dick Clark used to have a show on on 7:30 on Saturday nights

and it was brought to you by Beech-Nut Spearmint gum,

I remember that. And we used to clap

in the same way, but he -- It was like a cavalcade,

you know, of all kinds of different acts coming on

and singing their songs, so you actually would see them.

-From ABC Television Center in Hollywood -- "Shindig!"

-♪ I got a woman mean as she can be ♪

♪ Well, I got a woman mean as she can be ♪

♪ Well, sometimes I think she's almost mean as me ♪

-"Shindig!" was really the first real rock 'n' roll show

in the United States.

-♪ Well, I sure do it good

♪ I got a woman mean as she can be ♪

-♪ I got a woman

♪ Sometimes I think she's almost mean as me ♪

-♪ I got a woman -Whoo!

-It was all black and white.

Fast cuts, you know, kind of exciting-looking.

And "American Bandstand," it was different, you know,

it was kids dancing, and it was very polite

and, you know, Dick Clark was

sort of, you know, like your dad.

But this wasn't like that.

This was more, you know,

cutting edge-looking and feeling.

♪

I got the gig of being a rhythm guitar player

on "Shindig!" and we'd prerecord most of the tracks.

Sometimes we would play live.

[ Audience screaming ]

But we'd prerecord the music,

and then the artists would sing live.

[ Thunder rumbling ]

[ The Rolling Stones' "Little Red Rooster" plays ]

[ Audience screaming ]

-♪ I am the little red rooster, baby ♪

♪ Too lazy to crow for day

♪ I am the little red rooster, baby ♪

♪ Too lazy to crow for day

♪ I keep everything in the farmyard ♪

♪ Upset in every way

-So you got up close.

It also gave you sense about that band as sort of being

playful, casual, modern, stylish.

You know, you got all these image things

out of whatever they sought to do.

-♪ Paperback writer

-♪ Paperback writer -♪ Paperback writer

♪

♪ Yes, sir or madam, will you read my book? ♪

♪ It took me years to write, will you take a look? ♪

♪ It's based on a novel by a man named Lear ♪

♪ And I need a job so I wanna be ♪

♪ A paperback writer

♪ Paperback writer

-In England, every Beatles song had a movie.

♪

Whether they were singing on a rooftop

or whether they were singing in a room

or they were in the studio,

there was always some visual thing

sent around the world for the Beatles

when they weren't touring.

-♪ Paperback writer

♪ Paperback writer

-♪ Paperback writer

-Everything was covered. Everything was shot.

And everybody wanted to see them.

And everybody wanted to see all of it.

-♪ A thousand pages, give or take a few ♪

♪ I'll be writing more in a week or two ♪

♪ I can make it longer if you like the style ♪

♪ I can change it round

♪ And I want to be a paperback writer ♪

-Because they had the money to do it and they had the platform

to get it out there and they were, you know,

at the time, they were the center of the universe,

so filmmakers and everybody wanted to associate

with the Beatles.

So someone would say, "Hey, let's make a music video."

-♪ If you must return it, you can send it here ♪

♪ But I need a break and I want to be ♪

♪ A paperback writer

♪ Paperback writer

♪ Paperback writer

-You know, there was a lot of music and picture

and the Beatles, of course,

I had seen all of -- everything that the Beatles ever did.

I went to see "Help!" the weekend it opened.

That's what I would consider

to be one of the first true music videos.

-The Beatles got in on it, you know, relatively early

with non-narrative pieces that connoted a certain feeling

and a certain style, and it allowed you to sort of

re-evaluate your relationship with these artists

and what they were and reimagine them.

-Sometimes we'd call them promo clips.

You know, Chrysalis, they were doing Blondie promo clips.

And you would take them and you'd show them

to radio stations at a party for Blondie.

♪

You know, Blondie, you know, Debbie Harry, she's amazing.

-♪ Hanging on the telephone

♪ It's good to hear your voice, you know it's been so long ♪

♪ If I don't get your calls, then everything goes wrong ♪

♪ I want to tell you something ♪

♪ You've known all along

♪ Don't leave me hanging on the telephone ♪

Because we were international,

we had to make videos, and we made videos from day one.

And, you know, making videos at that point was so inexpensive.

-First it started out just as an art form 'cause it was fun,

it was experimental, it was another way for artists

to express themselves

and it was done pretty much on the cheap.

But done right, it would work amazingly well for an artist.

-♪ Show you my affection

♪ Oh, I can't control myself

-It was so new that there were no ground rules.

For a few glorious years,

you had carte blanche to do whatever you could think of.

When I got the call to do the "Billie Jean" video,

Michael Jackson wanted something cinematic

with -- with something magical.

And so I showed him this idea about this magical Midas Touch

with this private detective on his tail,

and doing some things with old- fashioned filmmaking as well.

I really wanted to do something with glass shots which were

where you put a glass in front of the camera

and you paint a piece of the set

and you just have a little more magic to it.

You know, his manager had said the week before,

he's worked out some dance moves in front of the mirror

so leave a little space for that.

There was a storyboard and then there was a bit

where it was just like, well, this is just you dancing.

And it wasn't until that moment in the studio when the track

came on that we saw what he was going to do.

I was operating the camera and the camera literally

steamed up because of my --

the heat coming from me at what I was seeing.

The eyepiece steamed completely.

Amazing.

Initially, MTV got the "Billie Jean" video

and felt it wasn't for their audience.

You know, there weren't any black artists on MTV.

MTV was music television,

but it was basically... white...rock music television.

It wasn't really music television.

-♪ Everyone's watchin' to see what you will do ♪

♪ Everyone's lookin' at you

♪ Oh

-A lot of the early videos that were played on MTV

were rock video clips.

And MTV didn't necessarily see itself being in the business

of broadcasting kind of diversity of popular music.

-♪ Get it right

-It was basically an exclusionary medium.

The founders of MTV always imagined

that their primary demographic were white males,

um, young males who were into rock music

and didn't listen to anything else.

-♪ Everybody's goin' off the deep end ♪

♪

♪ Everybody needs a second chance, oh ♪

-It was a good point.

I would say that in those days, MTV's format was --

it was a little bit too careful and overly restrictive.

-♪ Do you really want to hurt me? ♪

♪ Do you really want to make me cry? ♪

-But what wound up happening fairly quickly

was we could play Culture Club,

who was basically doing R&B music.

You know, we could play bands that were doing

what black artists were doing, but they were white.

And we weren't playing black artists doing the same thing.

-♪ She's a very kinky girl

♪ The kind you don't take home to mother ♪

♪ She will never let your spirits down ♪

♪ Once you get her off the street, oh, girl ♪

-Rick James was a rock 'n' roll artist who belonged on MTV.

-♪ She says that I'm her all-time favorite ♪

♪ When I make my move to her room, it's the right time ♪

♪ She's never hard to please

♪ Oh, no

♪ That girl is pretty wild now

-♪ The girl's a super freak

-♪ The kind of girl you read about ♪

-♪ In New Wave magazines

-♪ That girl is pretty kinky

-♪ The girl's a super freak

-♪ I'd really love to taste her ♪

-♪ Every time we meet

-He's sitting on the sidelines like "I want to be down.

I have stuff to say, you know, I want to be part of this --

this -- this dialogue that's going on."

-It's a strange thing. I watch MTV

and I see all these acts,

some of them don't have record deals,

some of them don't sell 9 records.

Then there's acts that sell millions and millions of copies

of records and people want to see them, and we're not seen.

Maybe it's the skin we're in.

I don't see many black videos on MTV.

I wish we could see more.

-Michael Jackson broke that race barrier

because of the pressure that his record label

at the time put on MTV,

saying, "If you don't play Michael Jackson's videos,

you're not getting any other videos from the record label."

-CBS at that time really put the foot down

and really, you know, really used their leverage

to get him in rotation and the rest is history.

-It was amazing to watch.

Then you were on to "Thriller."

And it was like the biggest event --

it was like MTV ran it every hour.

The full-length thing.

-♪ 'Cause this is thriller

♪ Thriller night

♪ And no one's gonna save you from the beast about to strike ♪

♪ You know it's thriller

♪ Thriller night

♪ You're fighting for your life inside a killer, thriller ♪

-And I remember we would be recording,

and we'd be like, "what time is it?"

5 to 8:00. "Okay, wait, hold it.

We're gonna stop for a minute. We gotta go watch it."

And we'd sit and watch the whole video and we'd go,

"Yeah, yeah, that was good." Then we'd record again.

"What time is it?" 5 to 9:00. "Okay, hold on."

-You know, it's coming on television at a particular time

and people are tuning in to it to see this premiere

the way they would, you know, go see a movie in a theater.

-♪ Then any ghoul would ever dare try ♪

-I'm just sitting here for hours waiting for Michael Jackson

to come on, but meanwhile, I'm getting introduced

to Men at Work and -- and -- The Pretenders

and a whole array of metal music and rock music

and synth pop and punk rock and you know...

And they're playing it over and over again.

So suddenly now I'm an expert in pop music by default.

-The reason "Thriller" is the length is it is 'cause

I wanted it to be a theatrical short.

It was a short.

Um, and I wanted it to be in theaters.

In fact, it still breaks my heart

that thevast majority of people

have seen "Thriller" this big, you know.

-Michael Jackson was able to break down those walls.

Whatever the walls that had been set up at the start of MTV,

of who was going to be the audience

for MTV for the future, there was a big turning point,

and then it pushed the walls down

and became what MTV then became.

-It changes the whole notion of what's possible

for a black artist in the age of music video.

-While, in its early days the channel

seriously avoided black music and was even accused

of musical racism, -♪ Huh!

it later realized the power and importance of the genre

and brought rap to the masses with the highly successful show

"Yo! MTV Raps."

-Yo, let's do this. Let's do this.

♪ I'm DJ Jazzy Jeff -♪ And, yo, I'm the Prince

♪ And I'm ready Rock C --♪ Hold up, bust this

♪ We wanna let everybody know where it's at ♪

♪ It's right here

-♪ Yo! MTV Raps

-♪ Box, box, box for you, for you ♪

♪ Fresh, fresh

-The first rap video to be played on MTV

was a record called "Rock Box," which was on our first album.

And at the time, the only other big, huge black artist

was Michael Jackson.

When we came along, it was what the hell is this?

-♪ Artists were heard, but never seen ♪

♪ Until MTV hit the spot

♪ Right and then and there, folks became aware ♪

♪ That hip hop was something quite gothic ♪

-♪ Records went gold and lyrics got bold ♪

[Siren wails] ♪ Violence became

♪ the main topic

♪

-♪ Hit me

-Because hip hop was this new genre,

one in which there were a lot of naysayers

who doubted its longevity,

who questioned its politics or its message,

"Yo! MTV Raps" sort of legitimized

the art form to a lot of people.

And it was able to -- importantly,

it broadcast these songs that might have been recorded

in one part of the U.S., and suddenly made them sort of

nationally available in a way that was instantaneous.

-It became obvious to the people running MTV

that all this music is about cross-pollination.

It's not about any one race or creed or style,

it's about this melange.

[ Madonna's "Borderline" playing ]

-There were those artists that

had watched a couple of years of MTV,

had invented themselves with an image,

and known that their future depended on them having

some kind of an image, whether it was how they dressed

or even the attitude of their music.

It was thought of from a visual point of view.

-♪ Something in the way you love me ♪

♪ Won't let me be

-You know, MTV has got very few female artists at that point

and I'm talking to the people at MTV,

and I'm saying Madonna, Madonna, Madonna, Madonna, Madonna,

Madonna, Madonna, Madonna, Madonna, Madonna,

because Madonna could be a big MTV artist.

-♪ Finish what you start

♪ When you make my love come down ♪

-They quickly realized that Madonna could be a huge star,

and they jump.

And especially when Mary Lambert delivers "Borderline."

-Jeff Ayeroff said to me, you know, there's this girl

and I think she's going to be really big

and I'll buy you a plane ticket to New York

and you can meet her.

I had never heard of Madonna.

I didn't know anyone who had ever heard of Madonna

and he gave me, you know, this record to listen to.

I did not know what to expect.

I didn't know what she looked like.

She sounded like the black girl.

♪ You just keep on pushin' my love ♪

♪ Over the borderline

-With music videos she was really kind of coming out

and showing us what it all could be.

And she used MTV as much as they used her.

-Hi. [laughs]

-So what have you been up to? What's happening with you?

-I'm working on a new album with Nile Rodgers.

We've been working for the past two months and I'll be releasing

the first single, which is called "Like a Virgin"

the first week of June.

-I go to Mary Lambert, and I say here's a song, "Like a Virgin."

-Jeff was always, you know, you've interviewed him,

Jeff's always pushing things, and he's never satisfied with

your first idea, or he always knows that you can do better

if you work at it a little bit.

He's great -- he's really great to work --

as an artist, he's so great to work with.

I wrote a script for it, but it was just about her

having two boyfriends, and one of them was soulful and poor,

and the other one was successful and rich and, uh,

he's like, "Why don't you -- you need to think bigger."

"You need to think, um, of a bigger idea.

I want to take this to the next step."

So I just came up with like the most impossible thing

I could possibly imagine.

I never, ever guessed that they would buy it.

Let's have her in a gondola, dancing.

"In Venice?" And I'm like, "Yeah, in Venice!"

And everyone's like, "Yeah! Let's go to Venice."

So we went to Venice.

-♪ I made it through the wilderness ♪

♪ Somehow I made it through

♪ Didn't know how lost I was until I found you ♪

-So like a bunch of merry pranksters,

we go to Venice, Italy.

My fondest memory is sitting on the boat

that Madonna's singing on -- 'cause we're going

under small bridges -- going, "Duck, duck."

-♪ Yeah, you make me feel

♪ Shiny and new...hey

♪ Like a virgin

♪ Touched for the very first time ♪

-It was the most romantic part of the video business

I could recall, you know, and that video just blew up.

It was like a holy alliance, you know?

♪ All my love, boy

In 1985, when Madonna was getting ready to go on tour,

like she was -- she was big,

but it wasn't like she's Madonna.

Like, we got asked to open for her, and we had never

really been on a tour and so we're there,

and every show on that tour, like say the tour started here

and ended here, each place got bigger and bigger and bigger.

Like, they would swap out the place.

Like, no, you don't -- you can't play in the theater,

you have to play in the amphitheater.

You can't play in the amphitheater,

you have to play in the arena.

Like, every day, you know, you know, 500,000 more people

heard about who Madonna was.

-♪ I hear your voice

♪ It's like an angel sighing

♪ I have no choice

♪ I hear your voice

♪ Feels like flying

-Almost every time there was a Madonna video,

there was a controversy -- almost every one.

I remember a video once, "Like a Prayer" when it came in

and, I mean, she had just done a big advertising campaign

for Pepsi-Cola and I think they paid her $10 million

or something and I remember sitting there and watching it

with this fellow who was the marketing guy

from Pepsi-Cola, he happened to be in my office,

and so we both saw it at the same time.

He said this, his reaction was, "Oh, no. There goes my job."

-♪ Life is a mystery

♪ Everyone must stand alone

♪ I hear you call my name

♪ And it feels like home

-She, as an artist, didn't want to be fettered by any of that.

She saw it as just -- as censorship.

-M...T...V,

let it...rip!

The year of "Thriller" was the first MTV Awards.

[ Cheers and applause ]

-Your hosts, ladies and gentlemen,

Bette Midler and Dan Aykroyd!

-My wife and I were sitting in the front row

at Radio City Music Hall.

Danny Aykroyd and Bette Midler were the hosts.

And we're sitting in this row with Diana Ross, Cher,

Tina Turner, I think.

I'm trying to think, but all these divas.

And Madonna comes out.

No one had ever heard of her.

And she was rolling around onstage,

and I won't say who,

but someone really legendary said,

"Take a good look. We're never seeing her again."

-♪ Don't stop me now, don't need to catch my breath ♪

♪ I can go on and on and on

♪ When the lights go down, and there's no one left ♪

♪ I can go on and on and on

♪ Give it to me

♪ Yeah

♪ No one's gonna show me how

-She was sort of Our Divine Miss M, Madonna.

We were sort of born at the same time and, uh, you know,

she was the consummate video artist

who could reinvent herself.

She put money and thought into this.

-♪ Never lasts and then it has to fall ♪

-Madonna made me.

She made guys like me, she made MTV to a certain extent

because she understood the power of what she was doing.

-♪ Give me the bassline

-Madonna, in particular, whose entire brand as an artist

is to be a chameleon and to be protean

and keep changing herself.

She just changed the whole notion that your identity

as a recording artist is singular and fixed.

-♪ Don't stop me now, don't need to catch my breath ♪

♪ I can go on and on and on

-Once you get on MTV and you do well, you gotta do better.

And especially for the artist's ego.

An artist's ego is like...

every song I write's gotta be better

than the last song I write. Every video I got to make,

it's got to be better than the last video.

So you have a multiplicity of combinations of both audio

and visual pressure.

-There was a lot of people who didn't want to do it,

a lot of the older artists.

Bruce Springsteen for a while.

A common complaint was they didn't want

to fix people's perceptions, that this is a story.

♪

-It changed people's focus.

And now they just had something else

that they had to concentrate on.

"Oh, God, I have to do the video."

You know, Tom Petty is notorious for hating doing videos.

-♪ Hey

♪ Don't come around here no more ♪

-I remember having a record that had five hit singles.

And I had to make five videos.

♪ I've given up

-♪ Stop

-It became another job.

-♪ Ooh

-♪ I've given up

-♪ Stop -♪ On waiting any longer

And not only did I have to make five videos,

they were getting expensive and the record company

only would pay for maybe half the expense.

So I'm spending millions

by the time I've done, you know, five, six videos.

♪

♪ Don't come around here no more ♪

♪ Don't come around here no more ♪

♪ I don't feel you anymore

The biggest complaint I had with it was it really

nailed down the movie to the song.

♪ Whatever you're looking for

♪ Hey!

No one hears "Don't Come Around Here No More"

and doesn't see "Alice in Wonderland."

♪ I've given up, stop

Except me.

-MTV, like David Bowie and Madonna,

knew that they had to morph and change and morph and change,

which is, if you think about it,

it is the psyche of a young person.

-New concerts, new guest... -VJ.

-...New specials.

There's always something new on MTV, 24 hours a day on cable TV.

-Too much? -Too much is never enough.

And as soon as MTV comes along with its fast-cutting videos,

and its different kind of lifestyle

and its VJs and all of that stuff,

there becomes a saturation point.

So when you all of a sudden slow down, you make that turn,

and you go, "Now for something completely different."

[ Cheers and applause ]

Here's an intimate look at Eric Clapton.

[ Cheers and applause continue ]

Who some people in England call God.

"Eric Clapton Unplugged."

What a genius thing.

[ Cheers and applause continue ]

-You know, I recall that Eric was a bit nervous

before that performance.

You're used to playing in big arenas or stadiums,

and it's kind of easy to hide in that mass.

-Thank you very much.

[ Applause ]

-But when you are in front of a hundred people, maybe,

in that room, and you're stripped down,

you don't have the loud amplifiers,

it's just you and your acoustic instrument,

you got to come up with the goods, baby.

♪

-♪ What will you do when you get lonely? ♪

♪ No one waiting by your side ♪

♪ You've been running and hiding much too long ♪

♪ You know it's just your foolish pride ♪

♪ Layla

When I started recording in this country

with people like the Yardbirds and I was introduced to,

you know, like a studio with lots of microphones,

every amplifier, every instrument had a microphone on,

it was all -- it had become so complicated

and sophisticated that it was almost impossible

to hear the room anymore, you know?

And you -- people were adding effects.

♪ Tried to give you consolation ♪

So I was always going for simplicity in my own work,

if I can, and my journey was always about

going backwards anyway.

♪ Like a fool, I fell in love with you ♪

♪ You turned my whole world upside down ♪

♪ Layla

-He did the show not thinking about releasing it as a CD,

and so when the label said, "Why don't we put this out?"

He didn't want to do it.

♪ Darling, won't you ease my worried mind ♪

-I'd done videos for Eric, and they were pretty good,

but they weren't breakthrough videos.

♪ Make the best of the situation ♪

-It wasn't till Eric did "Unplugged"

that Eric's career just skyrocketed.

-♪ Go insane

♪ Please don't say

-"Eric Clapton Unplugged" sells 5 million copies.

-Ch...

-Isn't that weird? I've never used it before,

but they're a lot lighter than sticks...

-Check, check, check, check, check, check.

-MTV was powerful enough at the time

that you didn't say no to them.

You can't imagine what the climate was then.

It was so different.

-Can we get on with this? We're like an hour late.

-You know, I think it was like pop radio,

uh, you know, back in the '50s and stuff with payola.

If you didn't play ball, you know, good luck.

-What are we doing?

-They're hearing some kind of buzz from this.

-And a band that might not want to do it.

-Is Scott ready now?

-There's management, there's the record label

that says, "You got to do this."

-Yes. -Okay, I'm here.

-Okay, we're ready.

-Kurt saw it as an interesting thing to do,

as an experiment, as a one-off.

-[Bleep] you all. This is the last song of the evening.

[ Laughter ]

-No one was doing it for like any sort of career opportunity.

There was the passion and the energy of what everyone

was doing because it was all for the thrill of playing.

[ Tuning guitar ]

-Scott, how out of tune is my vocal?

-No more than normal. -Meaning what?

-It's fine.

-Swear to God?

-I think they chose to do some songs that were not originals,

even though MTV at the time was like, "Play the hits,

play the hits, play the hits."

-♪ In the pines, in the pines

♪ Where the sun don't ever shine ♪

♪ I would shiver

♪ the whole night through

♪ My girl, my girl

♪ Where will you go?

♪ I'm going where the cold wind blows ♪

♪ In the pines, the pines

♪ The sun don't shine

♪ And I shiver

♪ The whole

[ Exhales ]

♪ Night through

♪ -ough-ough-ough-ough

♪ -ough-ough-ough-ough

♪ -ough-ough-ough-ough

♪

-That song showed all the torment

that Kurt was going through.

♪

-I still get chills thinking about it.

♪

-And Kurt loved how it came out.

Which is really important

because later on when they put it out as a record,

it wasn't putting out something that he wouldn't have liked.

It was actually -- he loved it.

After Kurt died, when it was decided to put that out

as an album, the powers that be had me remix it for a CD.

Having to revisit that and remix it after his death...

was haunting.

♪ In the pines, in the pines

♪ Where the sun don't ever shine ♪

♪ I would shiver the whole night through ♪

-TV is the most powerful promotional tool

that's ever been made

and for the period of time, MTV was in its prime in terms of

exposing new music and playing it a lot

and creating excitement in the industry.

It was the strongest time the record business had ever seen.

-Bruno, your brother's here. -What'd he say?

-Hello?! -♪ Do something crazy

-Find out what happens... -When people stop being polite.

Could you get the phone? -And start getting real.

-"The Real World."

-If you turn on MTV now, good luck seeing a music video.

-This Tuesday, can anyone put out Tony and Madison's fire?

-I mean a long time ago, MTV started

doing original programming that wasn't just music video.

-Is this chicken what I have or is this fish?

I know it's tuna, but it says "Chicken...by the Sea."

[ Laughs ] Is that stupid?

-MTV had gotten a bit stale,

and we decided we were in many ways

stuck to the vibrancy of the music business.

-Shut up! -Take it easy, big guy.

-So we said maybe we could be not just about music

but we can be a lot of the things that the music's about --

fashion, you know, there are some --

we can beef up news, we could talk about movies.

-Don't miss an all-new "Real World Skeletons"

this Tuesday at 10:00, followed by "The Challenge."

I always thought we couldn't rip music out from MTV and just

become something else entirely.

And, uh, you know, but they have ripped music out.

[ Tranquil tune plays ]

♪

The music business is a whole different thing now

in terms of its economics.

-♪ Swinging in the backyard, pull up in your fast car ♪

♪ Whistling my name

♪ Open up a beer and you say, "Get over here" ♪

♪ And play your videogames

-The communal experience of listening to music in a group,

listening to a radio station

or watching MTV with a group of friends is kind of diminished.

I mean, people are watching online,

not on a TV screen, but leaning forward

and seeing it on a -- on a, you know, on their smartphone.

But music videos still play a big role.

-♪ Go play your videogame

-With this technology that even 20 years ago

we could scarcely have dreamed of,

the possibilities are kind of limitless.

Anybody can make a record in their bedroom,

can turn on the camera on their laptop

and suddenly they've got a video on YouTube.

We've even seen, um, big pop stars made this way.

-♪ Is that true?

-You know, YouTube, the Internet,

is just MTV on so many steroids,

they make Arnold Schwarzenegger look like the puny guy

on the beach that got sand kicked in his face.

-Your first question -- what is your aspiration in life?

-Oh, my aspiration in life. Wow, that's a great question.

-If you look at Beyoncé releasing a all-video album...

-♪ Lungs

♪ Ghost in the sheets

-No one ever had the power to not promote a record first,

just take the Internet

and, you know, carpe diem to a certain extent,

seize that moment and do it all at one time

and have a huge album in one week --

no one had ever done that.

♪ Where will it be?

-♪ I know if I'm on to you

♪ I'm on to you

♪ On to you, I'm on to you

♪ On to you, you must be on to me ♪

-If you look at Beyoncé through the filter of Madonna,

through the filter of David Bowie,

you go, zoop, zoop.

-♪ You want me?

-You see the reinvention process.

She just basically looked at her career

and said, "what haven't I done?"

-♪ Slap me, I'm pinned to the doorway ♪

-What can we do that no one has ever done?

[ Beyoncé's "XO" playing ]

-♪ Your love is bright as ever

When I'm connected to something,

I immediately see a visual or a series of images

that are tied to a feeling or an emotion,

a memory from my childhood,

thoughts about life, my dreams, or my fantasies.

And they're all connected to the music.

♪ Your heart is glowin'

And I think it's one of the reasons why I wanted

to do a visual album.

I wanted people to hear the songs with the story

that's in my head 'cause it's what makes it mine.

♪ Ooh, baby, daylight's wasting ♪

[echoing] ♪ wasting, wasting, wasting

♪ You better kiss me ♪ kiss me, kiss me, kiss me

♪ Before our time has run out

♪ Mmm, yeah

-You make music and you make decisions artistically

at the level of your ambition.

Beyoncé's an artist who wants world domination.

She's not trying to just have a couple of records

that play good in the hood.

Beyoncé wants to be played in India.

-When someone like Beyoncé puts out an album overnight

with no lead-up whatsoever, which is almost unheard of,

it's all about the particular image they're trying to shape,

and I think more so than sales numbers,

what artists are concerned about in a day of social media

and 24/7 news coverage is they're really self-conscious

about image and about brand.

-♪ Pretty hurts

♪ Pretty hurts

-It's no different than Michael Jackson

doing "Thriller." You know they all --

everybody takes a look at what happened before,

they observe it, they morph it,

they put it through the machine,

and they make it their own.

They regurgitate it as some other genius piece,

some other idea no one had,

and that's what I think a lot of artists do today.

And they all know what visuals mean to them.

♪

-♪ Yeah, yes

[ Static crackles ]

0 C1

♪

-"Soundbreaking" is available on DVD.

The companion book is also available.

To order, visit shopPBS.org or call 1-800-Play-PBS.

♪