Between a Heart and a Rock Place: A Memoir by Pat Benatar & Patsi Bale Cox

Author:Pat Benatar & Patsi Bale Cox [Pat Benatar & Patsi Bale Cox]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Autobiography
ISBN: 9780061953774
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2010-09-15T20:15:32.553000+00:00

CHAPTER SIX

MUSIC VIDEO THEATER

I LOVE DISNEYLAND AND happy endings.

I’m all about white hats and hate to see good lose out in the end. I’ve never enjoyed movies or books where good and evil are ambiguous. And I’m not big on antiheroes, either. I don’t mind edgy, but don’t think I’m going to be on the side of a bad guy just because he’s the protagonist. I like it when the good guys win, and I know who they are. I have a soft spot for quirky weirdos with hearts of gold being oppressed by the hypocrite with perfect teeth.

This is probably why the next video I made involved the band and me fighting Nazis.

MTV was about a year old when Get Nervous hit shelves, and despite the channel’s game-changing success, shockingly it had not succumbed to the trappings of the music industry (no small feat in a business as cynical as the one we were in). From its inception, MTV had embodied an open-mindedness that had been absent from rock music for too long, allowing bands to rewrite the stale record company formulas. Suddenly there were ways to connect with fans beyond just live and recorded music. Bands that record execs never would have given a chance suddenly found their place because of videos. With its moon-man icon, gritty logo, and hard guitar theme song, everything about it screamed rock and roll, but it was one thing to appear that way, and it was another thing to act like it.

Miraculously, a year into their experiment, their creative vision had not faded. They had changed the industry without compromising their idea of what the channel should be and what everyone wanted it to be. This independence made them an island of experimentation in an otherwise risk-averse musical landscape. Everyone recognized that the medium was still young and the rules were still being written. The network wanted videos that would expand the vision of what a music video could be, and they encouraged artists to take it as far as their imaginations would allow. When it came to videos, everyone—both the network and the artists—felt comfortable taking risks because the risky videos were some of the most interesting to watch. Of course there were critics who held their noses for one reason or another, but it was their job to be the art police. Music videos weren’t for them. They were for the masses.

All of our on-camera interviews with MTV were done in studio, so we spent a good amount of time there. Back then, the studio was constantly filled with all kinds of musicians, both famous and unheard of. People were always coming and going. You’d walk around the halls, and there would be young artists chatting with legendary ones. Every where you looked, there were people wearing all kinds of outrageous clothes and acting like the parents were away for the weekend. But that was the joke; there never were any parents. The kids were in charge and running the show.

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