Hello. I’m Gavin Edwards, the public speaker and the New York Times-bestselling author of The Tao of Bill Murray, the ’Scuse Me While I Kiss This Guy series, and Kindness and Wonder: Why Mister Rogers Matters Now More Than Ever. If you’re interested in hiring me, click here for more information.
For the fifth time, we see the hourly promo spot for the “Big Bang ’89” broadcast. Lots of quick video clips: Robert Plant points to the sky. Bret Michaels flails his arms around. Kip Winger bashes out a chord. Larry Blackmon rocks the codpiece. Daryl Hall grabs a handful of air. The guy from Escape Club strums his guitar. Bobby Brown adjusts his wireless microphone. The chick from Vixen carries around her microphone stand. Sam Kinison glares at the camera. Sandra Bernhard twitches her upper lip.
The January Man.Again. The second name in the cast (after Kevin Kline) is the late Rod Steiger. Steiger made dozens upon dozens of movies in his storied career; checking IMDB, it seems that I have seen exactly two (On the Waterfront and Mars Attacks!). It looks like The January Man was far from the weakest entry on his resume.
Michelob Dry: this spot. This commercial is scored only with percussion–it sounds like one guy, going to town on a bucket.
Gillette, specifically the “Atra Plus System”: a replay of this spot, I think. I can’t help but notice lots of big patches of white in this commercial: white t-shirts, sea foam, a bride in her wedding gown. The implication is that the world is filled with blobs of shaving cream that you can wipe away.
Our final ad: a black and white screen with the MTV logo, the words “PROMO” and “FAVORITE MUSIC,” and a bar code. We hear the following dialogue:
Bored nasal woman with Brooklyn accent: “Hello, phone sex.”
Heavy-breathing man: “Let’s just say my name’s Big John.”
BNWWBA: “What do you like to do, Big John?”
HBM: “Oh, I like to watch.”
BNWWBA: “Watch what, Big John?”
HBM: “My favorite music, morning, noon, and night.” (That’s odd–I could have sworn MTV played videos only between 2 and 6 am, and sometimes not even then.)
BNWWBA: “Long gasp, I’m so excited.”
HBM, getting loud and overstimulated: “Especially when I’m strapped to the ceiling with a gag in my mouth and I’m–”
She hangs up on him. The screen goes black. She says, “It’s a strange world.”
Two quick Monday links to a couple of friends (and frequent Rule Forty-Two commenters):
The mighty Rob Sheffield has a new blog at Rolling Stone’s website. Lucky us! Recent topics: Rue McLanahan, Broken Social Scene, “The Humpty Dance.”
My grief when Tom Nawrocki shut down his last blog, One Poor Correspondent, was exceeded only by my joy for the debut of his new outlet, Debris Slide. Recent topics: carbon monoxide, Dennis Hopper, little brothers in rock bands.
Taken last month at the annual open house at Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Padadena: a closeup on a campus fire truck. (The name for this file on my computer, by the way, is jpl.jpg.)
Kevin Seal returns! Over the past four-plus hours, he customarily introduces videos only when returning from a commercial break. But coming out of the Poison video, he has a Bruce Springsteen interview clip to set up. Seal notes that Tunnel of Love was Springsteen’s first studio album in four years, but that “a stack of gold records” didn’t mean a bigger recording budget.
Cut to Springsteen sitting backstage, flanked by a road case and a guitar. Oddly, he’s in a puffy white armchair–I wonder if he carried it from town to town, or if it was specified in his tour rider that the Bossly buttocks would never have to be on a folding chair? As the camera zooms in on him, he talks about the home sessions: “Recorded with the windows open and the cars going by, and for some reason, it didn’t pick up on the tape. It was funny.” I guess you had to be there.
The video for “One Step Up” starts with a slow-motion black-and-white shot of what looks like snow falling on a woman’s bare back. Director Meiert Avis also did a bunch of U2 videos around this time, including “With You or Without You,” which this shot evokes, and the two previous videos from this album, “Tunnel of Love” (which we will see later in the countdown) and the lauded but remarkably dull single-shot video for “Brilliant Disguise,” which starts out with Bruce in the kitchen and gradually zooms into an extreme closeup so you can inspect the man’s stubble.
Springsteen stands at a microphone, wearing a black shirt and a suede jacket, gently strumming an acoustic guitar. He’s not as ripped as a few years earlier, but he looks really good for 39 years old. On the lyric “Went out and hopped in my old Ford,” we cut to footage of Jersey taken from a moving car, and you can’t help but wonder if Bruce is going to segue straight into “Woke up this morning, got yourself a gun.”
We see the car that is presumably Springsteen’s: a vintage American coupe with tailfins. It’s painted bright yellow, and looks like a taxicab that got lost on the way to Newark Airport. The car stops at a train track, and a passenger train rolls by.
Springsteen walks into a bar, wearing a black leather jacket, and grabs a stool. It turns out that this is the neighborhood strip club: there’s a dark-haired girl in a red bikini discreetly wiggling on a small stage, separated from the customers by an knee-high iron gate. More threatening to his marriage, perhaps, would be the bartender serving up the beer. I’m not positive, even after repeated plays–the lighting is murky–but I think it’s a quick cameo appearance by Patti Scialfa.
Scialfa sings backing vocals on the track, which is a tender, conflicted ballad about contemplating infidelity and trying to make a failing marriage work. “One Step Up” was recorded in 1987 and released as a single in February of 1988; Springsteen and his wife Julianne Phillips separated soon after. Phillips filed for divorce in August, and by October, Scialfa was on the cover of People, billed as “Springsteen’s mystery woman.” So by the time of this countdown, expensive ironies abounded.
More slo-mo grainy black-and-white: two hands, fingers splayed, moving towards each other. Are they going to high-five? No! Their fingers clasp and intertwine, and droplets of water spray off both of them–so apparently we are seeing two people in love who just got out of the swimming pool.
A flash of lightning segues elegantly into a shot of the stripper, illuminated by a strobe as she demurely gyrates. Springsteen purses his lips, and taps his drink with his left hand, getting his fingers wet. We can see his wedding ring.
A whole series of black-and-white clips, some mysterious–there’s one that looks like somebody’s foot is launching off someone else’s bald head, but I’m sure that can’t be right. At the bar, a guy in a knit cap smokes a pipe and nods at Bruce, in a way that suggests he was a big fan of The River. We cut to Springsteen at the microphone, and see some superfluous effects pedals.
Back to the bar, where Springsteen is now wearing a tan leather jacket. I assume this is meant to underscore that he’s been coming to this bar too often, not to dazzle us with costume changes. He looks thoughtful–Bruce isn’t a great actor, but he can do pensive. At the train tracks, the yellow coupe still waits. Now there’s a train going the other direction.
Despite a few odd choices by Avis, this video nicely complements a lovely, adult song, which felt mature for MTV even in 1988 and would be wholly out of place today. You get the feeling that after a bunch of MTV misfires, Springsteen just wanted to put in a day’s work on the video shoot and not be embarrassed by the result.
The song’s lyric seems to finish with a glimmer of hope: the narrator dreams that he holds his girl in his arms, dancing into eternity. But the final chorus brings us right back to the reality of his crumbling marriage: “One step up and two steps back.” At the bar, Bruce closes his eyes and is tormented by tasteful black-and-white footage of a woman’s hand running over somebody else’s skin, and then a man’s hands, embracing a woman. He opens his eyes, as if he’s seeing the world anew.
“One Step Up” hit #13 on the singles chart. You can watch the video here.
I was lucky enough to talk with Dennis Hopper once. I was writing a short piece for the short-lived Rolling Stone “Cool Issue” about his book of photographs, 1712 North Crescent Heights. (Now out of print, the book is available on Amazon for prices starting at $580. Damn, maybe I should sell my copy.) We spoke on the phone for ten minutes: he was friendly and energetic, if a bit unfocused. He strongly recommended that any aspiring film director first learn to tell a narrative story with a roll of a film, fumetti-style. (I don’t think he used the word “fumetti,” though.)
What I wrote:
Before he was a film director, Dennis Hopper was a photographer. And before he was a photographer, he would walk down the streets of New York City, framing images with his hands. You probably know Hopper for his wild-eyed acting, from the biker in Easy Rider to the bomber in Speed, but he’s always had a secret life as an excellent visual artist. Not just “excellent for an actor”: he makes perceptive, lovely images. Did you think that camera around his neck in Apocalypse Now was just a prop? Decades from now, he may be better remembered as an artist than as a performer.
People are finally starting to notice: a retrospective of his artwork is touring this year from Amsterdam to Vienna to Moscow. An eight-minute video he made about a Dutch homeless girl will be shown in the prestigious Whitney Biennial. And he has a new book of old photographs, 1712 North Crescent Heights (Greybull Press), documenting his life from 1962 to 1968, when he and his then-wife Brooke Hayward presided over an LA coterie of actors and artists. (It’s edited by their daughter Marin, who got Dad’s permission to look through his contact sheets, in search of forgotten happy times.) See Tina Turner trying to get her mouth around an enormous Coke bottle! Teri Garr on the beach! Jane Fonda practicing archery! But even without the celebrity quotient, Hopper’s photographs would beautifully evoke a vision of the ’60s as a playground: innocents in the garden of California.
Hopper’s impressive Pop Art collection can be seen in the background of many of the photos: originals by luminaries such as Warhol, Lichtenstein, and Oldenburg. These days, he says, he relies on phone conversations with Julian Schnabel and Damien Hirst to keep him up-to-date with what’s going on in the art world. (Although he does live in a house designed by Frank Gehry.) “And I doodle,” he says. “I can’t paint, just because I haven’t gotten my studio set up. But I just took some incredible photos in South Africa.”
Asked if his approach to art has changed in the last four decades, Hopper says, “I was in Amsterdam for a month, working on my retrospective, and I saw a lot of Flemish painting while I was there. That changed how I looked at light.” He laughs. “But everything else is pretty much the same.”
(Article by Gavin Edwards. Originally published, in substantially shorter form, as “Cool Secret Life: Dennis Hopper,” in Rolling Stone 893 (April 11, 2002).)
Back from the commercial break, Kevin Seal reorients us: “Top one hundred of 1988, which is quite convenient, because it’s the year that we best remember.” He grins and flaps his hands around, and then starts talking loudly, denoting that this is the official part of his palaver: “Eighty-eight was a pretty good year for Poison! George Bush and Poison were the big winners of ’88. They released their second album–Poison, not George.” Seal leads into a clip of lead singer Bret Michaels talking about making videos:
“You know, it’s just like doing an album or anything that has to do with your career,” Bret says. His blond hair is teased and piled high, with sunglasses precariously perched on top. (Apparently, he actually had his own hair at this point.) “So we wrote the plot to ‘Fallen Angel.’ We’ve written the plots to all our videos, and how we want them to be edited and stuff, and then we worked with him and he did a great job.”
The “him” in question is director Marty Callner, who did a substantial percentage of the videos on MTV in its first decade, including Whitesnake’s “Here I Go Again” and Twisted Sister’s “We’re Not Gonna Take It.” I’m sure he loved taking notes from Bret “Eisenstein” Michaels.
We open on a family dinner: Mom, Dad, four kids. “Great dinner, Mom,” says one of the sons, with a completely flat delivery.
“Glad you like it,” says Mom, who is wearing a puffy-shouldered power suit.
The young blonde daughter, who we will soon call Angel, is played by model (and Michaels girlfriend) Susie Hatton. She is wearing a demure blue sweatshirt, and has an announcement: “Dad, there’s something I want to talk to you about. I’ve decided to move.”
“Move? Where?” Dad is nebbishy, with curly hair and glasses.
“To California,” Angel says. Dad chews, and looks worried. “And I want to leave on Friday.”
As the guitars kick in, we dissolve from concerned looks from Mom and Dad to footage of a bus pulling into Hollywood, neon signs reflected in its windows. Then we see Poison, playing in a huge soundstage, empty except for the neon sign with their logo. C.C. Deville (“Guitar Screechin’ and Hair Bleachin'” was his credit on Poison’s debut album) jumps in the air. Bret Michaels (“Vocalizin’ and Socializin'”) spits out a big mouthful of water. Bobby Dall (“Bass Rapin’ and Heartbreakin'”) smokes a cigarette. Rikki Rockett (“Sticks, Tricks & Lipstick Fix”) stands up behind his kit.
Rock stars often wear different outfits in the course of a video; the usual strategy is to mix up the wardrobe later on in the clip in case our attention flags. But Poison were never about “patience” or “restraint.” In his first appearance, Bret is sporting black leather pants and a red-and-black doo-rag. In his second appearance, approximately five seconds later, he’s got a red wide-brimmed hat that coordinates with a red-and-black suit and red fingerless gloves. This isn’t the borderline drag-queen approach the band had two years earlier, but it’s still delightfully insane.
Meanwhile, in black and white, Angel gets off the bus and onto the Sunset Strip–basically the same scene of the hayseed coming to LA that we saw at the beginning of “Welcome to the Jungle,” out half a year before this video. The difference is that Axl was prettier.
Angel’s adventures are intercut with the band playing, while Michaels sings the narration: “She stepped off the bus and out onto the city streets.” Angel, now in color, the better to show off her pink dress, is meeting with a sleazebag talent manager. He looks like an unshaven, swarthy version of Jonathan Pryce. The budget Pryce spins his finger, indicating that he wants to check out Angel’s ass. She obediently pirouettes. He then brushes her cheek with the back of his hand, and she shies away. Mr. Sleazebag sits down and leers at the camera.
We haven’t hit the chorus yet, but we’ve already reached look #3 for Bret: he’s still rocking the fingerless red gloves, but he’s now got sunglasses, a denim jacket, and a big black cowboy hat.
Three-way split screen! Poison in the middle, rocking the house–Dad on the left and Angel on the right are talking on the phone, wearing matching plaid shirts! Either she thinks Dad can see her through the phone, or she’s telling us that she retains her Midwestern virtue. But not for long, because soon we see Angel looking in the mirror as she dolls up in an outfit with a plunging neckline. Mr. Sleazebag comes up behind her with a necklace and kisses her on the cheek. As the girls in Rock of Love like to say, “She’s not even here for the right reasons!”
And now we hit the chorus, so powerful that three members of Poison must cluster around a single microphone: “Win big! Mama’s fallen angel! Lose big! Livin’ out her lies! Wants it all! Mama’s fallen angel! Lose it all, rollin’ the dice of her life!” Overall, the song’s a catchy slice of poppy hair metal. Despite the chorus, the video is more concerned with Daddy than Mama. While Bret (who’s now accessorizing look #1 with an oversized pair of ski-goggle sunglasses) tells us about Angel’s life in the fast line and how she let her family slip away, we see a flashback of Angel hugging Dad.
A tuxedo-clad Mr. Sleazebag escorts Angel to a white limo. The driver holds the door open; Mr. Sleazebag pats his cheek, like he’s the discount Sinatra. This happens while Bret sings “Caught up in the Hollywood scene / All the parties and limousines.” Apparently, it was cheaper to show a limousine than a party.
Cut back to Bret, who has moved on to look #4, which has a black leather cap and a humongous tribal metal necklace. The constant is the red fingerless gloves, and with a closeup, we can see why: they are fringed red fingerless gloves.
Modeling sequence: Posing for a photographer in a studio, Angel wears lingerie, spins, pulls on her hair, leans over, and generally shows off her young body, not looking morally conflicted. This was pretty much the maximum amount of skin allowed on MTV in 1988.
Nightclub scene, with a half-dozen extras skillfully deployed to make it look like the club is hopping. Mr. Sleazebag, still in his tux, is entertaining three young women. Angel sees him kiss one on the cheek, throws her drink on the table, and storms out.
Guitar solo: C.C. gyrates and hops around, often backlit. It’s not obvious how short C.C. is.
Angel storms out of the nightclub (it actually looks like the front of a theater, but fine). Mr. Sleazebag chases her onto the sidewalk. When he catches up and grabs her arm, she kicks him in the balls. The actor playing Mr. Sleazebag has his big moment, doubling over and grimacing in cartoonish pain. Angel struts down Sunset Boulevard and into the night, not at all concerned about being mistaken for a hooker.
The band kicks up the energy: C.C. duckwalks and the drummer spins his sticks around. Bret hops around on one foot and looks excited.
We soon see Angel walking down the sidewalk with her suitcase. She looks in a store window where a sign reads “There’s No Place Like Home.” She does not click her heels together. The band is now rocking so hard, Callner has to break out the slow-motion to contain them.
The two threads of our video come together as we see Angel on the back of Bret’s motorcycle. For some reason, she’s decided that Bret’s a more reputable escort than Mr. Sleazebag. Angel’s wearing a practical jeans-and-sweater combo; he’s wearing the ludicrous look #2, and even though it’s night, he’s got his sunglasses on. As they ride off into the night, they pass a bus where another wholesome Midwestern girl is getting off with her suitcase. Well, at least it wasn’t the Rock of Love bus.
“Fallen Angel” hit #12 on the singles chart. You can watch the video here.
I have a new capsule review up at the Barnes and Noble Review, this time of Video Slut, Sharon Oreck’s entertaining but erratic memoir of a life spent producing music videos. By the way, Ms. Oreck: that powerful record executive’s name was Mo Ostin, not Mo Austin.
Here we see Dominic Monaghan and Matthew Fox hanging out on the set (under a canopy), waiting to shoot their scenes. Note the DS ring on Monaghan (his character’s band’s name was Drive Shaft) and the wound on his neck (his character had recently survived a hanging).
I apologize to those of you waiting for the 1988 countdown to continue; Bret Michaels went back in the hospital this week after a “warning stroke” (apparently unrelated to his brain hemorrhage). It sounds like he’s going to be okay, but I think good taste dictates holding off a little longer.
