Talkin’ Music with Jack – I Want My MTV

By Jack Coll

     Sometimes Brian and I work late hours in the back of the shop, the front and back doors are locked, the lights get turned down and the gallery lights are turned off, indicating we’re closed.  The music gets turned up, and we’re able to go to a little harder rock and roll then we might have on during business hours.  So we throw in the Stones and Springsteen, and the volume button gets turned up near ten on the dial.  Sometimes it’s Dylan, or Chesney, Marah or Lennon.  Sometimes we’ll start with an artist and wind up playing two or three of their albums back to back, or CD’s as it might be now-a-days.

Well one of my favorite 80’s bands is Dire Straits, Mark Knopfler picks through his cutting guitar riffs, like in “The Sultans of Swing”, or his easy tempo like in “Romeo and Juliet, and the soft sound of “Going Home,” yea, I like em’ all.  This one song starts with this distant heavenly sound, “I Want MY M-T-V” and Knopfler kicks in with this muffled sounding guitar, so Knopfler runs through about 16 bars of this and starts singing:

Now look at them yo-yo’s that’s the way you do it

You play the guitar on the MTV

That ain’t workin’ that’s the way you do it

Money for nothin’ and your chicks for free.

(I always thought it was “Checks for free”, but I think we already covered misunderstood Lyrics)

Right away my mind flashes back to two things, MTV throughout the 1980’s, and I happen to know how and why Mark Knopfler came to write this song.

It was a Saturday morning, August 1, 1981, at 12:01 a.m. Eastern Standard time, MTV launched with the words, “Ladies and gentleman, rock and roll.”  The words were spoken while images of the first space shuttle launched, that was followed by the original MTV theme song playing over photos of the Apollo 11 moon landing with the flag featuring MTV’s logo.  Appropriately, the very first video shown on MTV was sung by the Buggles, you guessed it!, “Video Killed The radio Star,” followed by Pat Benatar’s “You Better Run,” and MTV was born.  A side note to the opening, producers wanted to use the words of Neil Armstrong “One small step for man,” and so on, but MTV lawyers stated that Armstrong owns his name and likeness, and Armstrong refused to allow MTV to use the quote.

Early video’s included groups that radio wasn’t playing at that time, groups like Men at Work, Bow Wow Wow, Human League, Adam Ant, Blondie, the Eurythmics, and Culture Club.  MTV was very cutting edge introducing and playing groups like Duran Duran, Van Halen, The Police and The Cars.  But MTV made their money on two things, premiering videos from the classic rock bands, and delivering live rock concerts.

David Bowie, Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen, Dire Straits, Journey, Aerosmith, The Moody Blues, John Mellencamp, Billy Joel, Genesis, Robert Palmer, Rod Stewart, ZZ Top, Phil Collins, U2, Hall and Oats, The GoGos, Billy Squire, The Who, Paul McCartney, David Lee Roth, Kiss and so many more. MTV concerts included the likes of Fleetwood Mac, and of course Stevie Nicks solo tours, Bruce Springsteen was red hot throughout the 1980’s, Phil Collins, and let’s not forget about Madonna.  One of the biggest acts to get play time on MTV was Michael Jackson.

The music videos were one segment of MTV, but throughout the 1980’s the VJ’s (video jockeys) were yet this whole other segment.  The original five VJ’s included Alan Hunter, who was an Alabama boy and was the first of the five VJ’s to appear on the screen with the words “Hi I’m Alan Hunter.  I’ll be with you right after Mark.  We’ll be covering the latest in music news, coast to coast, here on MTV Music Television.”  Alan wasn’t sure if this music television VJ thing was going to work out so he kept his bar tending job at New York’s Magic Pan Restaurant Cabaret.  Alan’s job at the station required him to attend concerts and late night parties, only to return to the studio early the next morning to tape that day’s program.

Alan Hunter’s on air stint with MTV lasted until 1987, he continued to work for the company but on special assignment duties.  In recent years Hunter has dabbled in films and since 2004 has been heard on Sirius XM Radio’s, along with other surviving original MTV VJs.

Mark Goodman was born and raised in Philadelphia Pa., his career started at Philadelphia radio station WMMR in 1978, and moved rather quickly.  He became the Music Director at WMMR before moving to New York in 1980 to work at the big apple’s top rated rock station.  In 1981 Goodman joined the staff at the yet unknown music video channel called MTV.  In the late 1980’s Mark became an actor appearing in many shows including Married With Children, Police Academy 6, one of my favorites, Don’t Be a Menace To South Central While Drinking Your Juice In The Hood, Man Trouble with Jack Nicholson, Lois & Clark, The New Adventures of Superman and many others.

Today Goodman works his Sirius XM station, along with many other projects including putting music to films and television shows.  Goodman was tapped as music supervisor to help launch the TV show Desperate Housewives.  Goodman also continues to work with VH-1 Classic.

I don’t think many people realized how young Martha Quinn was when she hit the air.  The New York native had just graduated NYU in 1981, the same year she landed the job with MTV. Quinn entered an audition knowing nothing about MTV, she did a four minute audition where she talked about the group “Earth, Wind and Fire”,  MTV executives immediately surrounded her asking, “Who are you?  Two days later Quinn was a MTV VJ.  Today Martha participates on a Sirius XM radio show with other living MTV VJs, is happily married with two children and lives in Malibu California.

     J. J. Jackson, (John J. Jackson) was the old man of the bunch, Jackson was born in 1941 in the Bronx, New York, and was a radio pioneer as he was one of the few African Americans in the country to DJ a top Album Rock radio station.  Jackson was one of the original “fab five” MTV VJs and worked at MTV from 1981 until 1986 when he returned to radio.  Jackson suffered a heart attack and died on March 17, 2004.  He left behind a daughter and three grandchildren, he was 62 years old, and will always be remembered as a MTV VJ.

This brings me to our fifth and final original VJ, and my favorite, Nina Blackwood.  Why my favorite you might ask? Well the Massachusetts born former model appeared nude in the August 1978 Playboy pictorial, “Girls of the Office.”  But that’s not why she’s my favorite, no she was a really neat VJ, that’s it, a really neat VJ. I spent a little time with Nina in Akron Ohio back in the late 1980’s when she was making an appearance at the All American Soap Box Derby. I found her to be a very pleasant person and happy to talk about her MTV days.  Blackwood was one of the five original MTV, VJs, landing the job when she was just 26 years old.  Nina left MTV in 1986, and appeared in a number of movies and television shows along with a number of radio gigs.

Back to Dire Straits and the “Money for Nothing” song off the Brothers in Arms album. I’ve never sat down with Mark Knopfler although I did see him in concert at the Mann Music Center, but I’ve heard him tell the story of the song several times over in assorted interviews.  In Mark’s words, “The song’s lyrics are written for the point of view of a working-class man watching music videos.”  According to Knopfler he was in a New York City appliance store and was standing near the back of the store where the entire wall was set up with televisions all tuned into MTV.  Knopfler continued that in the
back of the store was this guy working, delivering boxes and goods to the store, and standing with him was a store clerk.  Knopfler was looking around at all the televisions, custom Kitchens, refrigerators and Microwave ovens.  As the two men chatted while watching the MTV, with Knopfler nearby, he remembers the guy coming up with lines like “What are those Hawaiian noises?…that ain’t working, etc.  Knopfler actually asked the guy for a pen and paper so he could write some of these lines down, and eventually put the words into the song.

By the way Mark Knopfler refused to make a video for MTV for “Money for Nothing,” but did allow a computer animation to go along with the song.  The computer animation illustrating the lyrics was one of the first of its uses of computer animated human characters and was considered ground breaking in 1985.

We gotta install microwave ovens

Custom kitchens deliveries

We gotta move these refrigerators

We gotta move these color TV’s

Now that ain’t workin’ that’s the way you do it

You play the guitar on the MTV

That ain’t workin’ that’s the way you do it

Money for nothin’ and your chicks for free

Money for nothin’ and chicks for free

Answers to last week’s trivia questions

 #1       In 1961 the Capris came out with a smash hit that I know you have sang, or at least in part a thousand times, this song can be heard in many movies, all together now, “There’s  A Moon Out Tonight.”

#2       In 1964, a group called the Carefrees had a one hit wonder that raced up the charts, the song pertained to their favorite singing group, a song I’m sure you’ve heard, and maybe even sang along to, here we go, “We Love You Beatles,” if you know the next four words of the song, please just never admit it was one of your favorite songs back then.

#3      In 1982 while we were all sitting around with our children playing Pac Man, Jerry Buckner and Gary Carcia had a one hit wonder, you guessed it, “Pac Man Fever.”

This Week’s Trivia

What-da-ya-say we hit you with some MTV trivia

#1     We mentioned MTV VJ— J. J. Jackson, who was born in 1941 in the Bronx in New York.

Another J. J. Jackson, Jerome Jackson was also born in 1941, in Brooklyn, J. J. Jerome had a monster hit back in 1966, can you name his one big hit song.

#2     One of the biggest and longest songs to appear on MTV throughout the latter half of the 1980’s was Michael Jackson’s “Thriller,” Jackson had more than a dozen hits in the 1980’s that garnered a lot of air time on MTV, how about naming just two of the more than dozen 1980’s MTV hits.

#3      What-da-ya say we just stick with the Jackson theme for the final trivia question, In late 1982 Joe Jackson had a hit record that received a fair amount of air play on MTV, I found the video some-what boring, as was the song, but it was a hit none-the-less, name it!