the world has reacted with immense shock and grief to the first rock n roll assassination. it was like in one moment the 60s and the 70s got murdered. in his life he s given more love than most men and women on the face of this earth. we re here to prove that love is not dead, even though john is. you know, you start the decade with the death of a beatle. you don t really know where you re going to go from that point, you know, culturally or musically. for a while it seemed there was nothing new on the horizon. announcing the latest achievement in home entertainment. the power of sight. video. the power of sound. stereo. mtv. music television. we all are so excited about this new concept in tv. we ll be doing for tv what fm did for radio. at the time the world was saying, we don t think anybody is going to watch videos over and over. but we knew we had something special. ooh, my little pretty one,
unbelievable. then there was the domino effect. suddenly you see prince videos from warner bros. do the same thing. tonight we re going to party like it s 1999 prince wasn t just materializing out of nowhere. where was he before this video was done? prince was a huge star on black radio stations. i mean, people he had a real underground cult following him. he was a very sexy, hot performer. the sweat of your body covers me can you, my darling, can you picture this prince loved the idea that he was taking his punk-funk music and turning it on to a white audience, and that wouldn t have happened if not for mtv. this is what it sounds like when doves cry when i was younger, i always said that one day i was going to play all kinds of music and not be judged for the color of my
bowie for that matter, realized if you want to make it, you ve got to be on mtv. but there s one group that s not happy with mtv. many black artists who have been told their music doesn t fit the format. that s what s happening. we re being sat in the back of the bus television-style. and if pittman gets away with this and there are other cable shows that form, they re going to try it. mtv doesn t exclude black acts. what mtv does exclude is music that s not rock n roll. mtv came out with no consideration on how to infuse black music into their mix. i m just floored by the fact there are so few black artists featured on it. why is that? we have to try and do what we think not only new york and los angeles will appreciate but also some town in the midwest that will be scared to death by prince or a string of other black faces. interesting. okay. thank you very much. when are we going to see anybody of color on mtv, because you said music television. when are you going
the floor in front of the tv. you couldn t believe what you were seeing. i would say the moonwalk was really one of the first viral moments that affected rock history. the next week thriller started selling a million copies a week. i like michael jackson because he can sing good, he s bad, he knows how to dance. he s so sexy and so gorgeous. he s exciting! michael jackson is the man of the 80s. mtv starts to get pressure from cbs records, which was michael jackson s label. rock n roll in itself was really the thing that broke a lot of rules. when you re very successful, you try to make your own rules occasionally. as the story goes, cbs essentially said we will pull every other artist we have on mtv if you don t play this. they had to be essentially blackmailed into doing it. it doesn t matter who s wrong or right just beat it he was the artist that mtv really needed. they didn t know they needed him, but boy, when we started to see those michael jackson vi
drew fire from police because a new wave. you were working as a waitress its album straight out of in a cocktail bar when i met you by the early 1980s, new wave compton talked about brutal is used to describe these sleek, violence against police for the dressy, cool bands that are coming out of england. area. they gave us the gritty gang banging streets of compton. this is what s going on with us. don t you want me baby don t you want me, oh after i leave, when i come back, i m straight out of compton. british artists all understood how to use visuals in a way that i think american artists didn t necessarily get that quickly. do you really want to hurt me do you really want to make me cry do you really want to hurt me? is a good song. are we supposed to dance? it s a song old people like and young people like. so i think the proof is in the pudding. buy it and eat it. boy bands without dancing are just ok. get a better than just ok unlimited plan w