Music Video Before MTV

~ Cheryl

I woke up this morning to find Kate Elliott on Twitter saying that she was old because she remembered the early days of MTV.

Well, of course, some of us are SO OLD that we remember the days before MTV. But that doesn’t mean that music video didn’t exist. Kate’s post sent me down a rabbit hole of researching the history of the music video, hence this post. It will contain a lot of embeds so for the sake of those who scroll down my home page I’m putting them all behind a cut.

People have been combining music and film since the very early days of film. A lot of pioneering work was done in 1920s Germany. One of the early leaders of the field was Hans Richter who produced Filmstudie in 1925. It is probably way too weird for modern tastes, unless you happen to be a Residents fan.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxIIgnC6bg0

One of Richter’s contemporaries was Oskar Fischinger who later moved to Hollywood and worked on one of the classic works of musical cinema, Walt Disney’s Fantasia. This clip isn’t his work, but it is very cute. Sit back, My Little Pony fans, this is for you.

Film of musicians performing songs dates back a long time. Apparently film of the legendary Bessie Smith performing “Saint Louis Blues” was shown in cinemas between 1929 and 1932. It doesn’t appear to be online but here, from the 1958 film of the same name, are Eartha Kitt and Nat King Cole being awesome.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HkKxGw5SlAk

You can find the whole film online here. Recommended.

Tony Bennett made a promotional film of him singing “Stranger in Paradise” while walking through Hyde Park in 1956. Again I can’t find it online, but by that time the use of movies to promote pop songs had taken off. Here, from 1957, is my favorite Elvis song.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qka6JrKUM5U

By the 1960s, television was a major medium for promoting pop music. However, some people quickly became so big that an appearance on Top of the Pops would have been a logistical nightmare. Instead The Beatles produced promotional videos of their songs. They also made movies, of course, and I’ve seen it said that Help! is just one long music video. Here are the mop-tops performing the title song.

Bob Dylan also got in on the act. His 1965 promo for “Subterranean Homesick Blues” is one of the most famous music videos ever made.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7w4Ak-1pKE

The best bits of that are the places where Dylan deliberately deviates from the lyrics (imitators please note).

The Beatles continued to experiment and their videos for songs such as “Strawberry Fields” and “Penny Lane” are widely praised. Other bands from the era tried to copy the idea, with more or less success. Here’s Procul Harum proving that a bad video and dodgy 60’s fashions can ruin even the best of songs.

Eventually, of course, The Beatles produced a piece of movie genius. There are so many great songs in Yellow Submarine. Fortunately for you, they are not all available individually. However, there is this compilation.

Many people still appeared on Top of the Pops. Mostly the performances were dire, if only because everything was mimed and few bands had any skill in that. However, one or two acts did manage to cause a splash. In 1968 The Crazy World of Arthur Brown had British kids open-mouthed (and their parents outraged) with this:

Being based in Sweden, Abba could hardly drop into a British or American TV studio for a performance, so from the very early days they relied on music videos to spread the word. They worked mainly with Lasse Hallström (Cider House Rules, Chocolat). Here they are from 1975 with “SOS”.

Do those strange things that Hallström does with faces look familiar? They should do, because later that year Queen had a monster hit with the song that is generally credited with launching the music video generation.

Brian May has apparently said that the main reason they made that film was to avoid having to mime to such a complicated song on Top of the Pops.

MTV wasn’t to launch until 1981, but in the meantime many artists experimented with video. One of my favorites is Mike Nesmith’s 1977 hit, “Rio”.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9tpkxKZS4fc

And if you thought that was weird, try this, also from Nesmith (for which my thanks to Rose Fox).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLKGV8k08NY

I can’t follow that.

4 thoughts on “Music Video Before MTV”

  1. Cheryl, that is a fantastic post. Thank you for pulling all the clips together and framing them with a narrative.

    Your clip of “Fire” reminded me of one of my family’s funniest moments.

    It must have been 1968 given the release date. Fire was in the charts at the time.

    One afternoon my mother had an “old” friend in for tea. By “old”, I mean in her eighties.

    One of my brothers returned home via the back door of the house. On entering the kitchen from whence he could not see my mother and her friend having a very polite cup of tea in the dinning room, he started, at the top of his voice, singing, “I AM THE GOD OF HELL FIRE, AND I BRING YOU FIRE!”

    Let us say my mother was slightly embarrassed and her quest was quite startled.

    I do not think that particular lady graced our home with her presence again.

  2. A lovely post, and thank you so much for reminding me about Lucy And Ramona! I haven’t thought about that song for more than thirty years, yet when I played the video the entire lyric was present and correct in my head. If I didn’t have so much of that kind of stuff cluttering up my brain, I’m sure I’d be better at finding my keys.

  3. the Nesmith videos were a wonder and a delight. I have ‘Elephant Parts’ on both laser disc (!) and, finally DVD. Just weird and wonderful music and visuals all the way thru. I still play it a few times a year just for the laughs. Some of those early Brit videos like the Procul Harum were toted for days on teen music shows before finally being shown on USA TV.

    I have some fuzzy memory of a short lived juke box for music clips with a tiny B&W screen made, I think, in the 40’s, but the business failed. Probably because the company that made them couldn’t break the Mob’s grip on the juke box industry in bars.

    Now folks, go find some other old music vids, like Van Morrison playing “Gloria” and “Brown Eyed Girl” on a Spanish show of the period…

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