80sonVEVO GAMV Takeover Week 9 w/ FEATURED VIDEO Kim Carnes’ “Bette Davis Eyes”
Kim Carnes in the Bette Davis Eyes music video, directed by Russell Mulcahy
THE GOLDEN AGE OF MUSIC VIDEO has partnered with VEVO (the world’s leading all-premium music video and entertainment platform) with our weekly curation of the 80sOnVEVO YouTube page. Each week, we’ll be dusting off the shelves in the VEVO video vault to spotlight all-time favorites, award winners and lost gems from the decade of decadence. We’ll also supplement the VEVO list with a rundown and info/commentary about our weekly batch of clips right here.
Kim Carnes – Bette Davis Eyes
directed by Russell Mulcahy. This ambitious clip shot on video gave Carnes her signature hit, with Mulcahy creating the slapping motions for the dancers as an homage to the classic Davis films. “The New Romantic thing was getting started,” Mulcahy recalled, “and that was bigger in England, but it was going to a degree in America, and so we pulled these kids in. The music is just called for it, and women slapping men’s faces and all that, was so big in the 1940s. Guys always got a smack from the woman, and it was always very cool.” Carnes and Mulcahy recalled the shoot in this interview.
Daryl Hall & John Oates – Maneater
directed by Mick Haggerty and C.D. Taylor. Haggerty, an album cover designer, and Taylor, a special effects designer, had teamed up to direct many popular videos of the time, but the black cougar on set turned out to be one of the biggest challenges of their music video career. “So we’re at the A&M Studios, and a guy pulled up in this car outside,” Haggerty recalled. “I mean, in the back he had a cougar, and the cougar had two operational modes. The word catatonic I think applies. He was either completely inert, I mean, like a piece of luggage and had to literally be dragged around by his neck and wouldn’t walk or anything, or he was going to tear your f*cking throat out. I mean, this was the scariest animal you have ever seen in your life. And it had four minders, I think. I think there were three or four guys with this cat. This is a dangerous animal. So what happens? We have to make it walk across the stage, and we have to make it move in the dark. We cleared the set, all the doors are locked, the alarm lights are on. Okay, we’re ready to shoot. And we have to take what we’re getting because we can’t make it do anything. I mean, it is truly scary. And so we prod it and prod it and prod it until it gets up and it goes, and it’s mad and it charges around. What does it do? It escapes. It gets into the gap between the cyc and the back of the soundstage, which is about a thirty inch gap where all the main cabling for the entire recording studio at A&M is. Then it proceeds to lie down, and starts chewing on some giant coaxial cable.”
Judas Priest – Breaking The Law
directed by Julien Temple. Temple shot six videos for the legendary metal gods, and said because of his association with the Sex Pistols, it was difficult for him to get directing jobs, but Judas Priest seemed to embrace it. “They were the only ones who would hire me,” Temple said. His other Judas Priest videos included “You Got Another Thing Coming” and “Living After Midnight”.
Neneh Cherry – Buffalo Stance
directed by John Maybury. Born in Sweden and raised in England, Cherry brought a distinctive London vernacular to this dance floor hit. Hitting #3 in the UK and the US, Cherry courted controversy a few times in her career, once having called out Lenny Kravitz for his infidelities by recording the song “Buddy X”. In a strange twist of fate, Cherry lost the Best New Artist Grammy to Milli Vanilli, who later had their Grammy revoked after it was discovered that they had not performed the vocals on their album. Director Maybury later went on to shoot Sinead O’Connor’s iconic video for “Nothing Compares 2 U”.
Ultravox – Passing Strangers
directed by Russell Mulcahy. This bizarre bit of art-film experimentation for Britain’s Ultravox could have gone horribly awry at one point. “In ‘Passing Strangers’ with Ultravox,” Mulcahy recalled, “when the two people kiss by the tree, and they’re meant to run and the tree bursts into flames. On take one, the tree went ‘poof’, and I went, ‘Ah, can we have it a little bigger than that?’ but I didn’t think they’d pour a forty gallon drum of gasoline in there. So then the cameras are ready on the crane, and there’s the kids, and they run towards camera, and the guy had a visual cue where they were going to be, but I think the explosion was a little bigger than it was meant to be, and if you watch the video, the kids still run toward the camera, but he is actually putting his hair out…it just singed his hair a little. But, I mean, we were lucky. I mean, thank God, it’s good that that has never happened again.”
Cinderella – Shelter Me
directed by Jeff Stein. Cinderella, a powerful blues-based band that was unfortunately lumped in with the hair-metal contingent in the 80s, enlisted Stein to create this video with a telethon scenario. Shelly Duvall makes a cameo, as does Little Richard, whom Stein claims thought the telethon was real. Keep an eye out for then-video vixen Pamela Anderson bopping around.
SEE YOU NEXT WEEK!