So was born the campaign “I want my MTV.” Now we had to identify which stars were the rock-and-roll equivalents of Mickey Mantle and Wilt the Stilt. Lois answered that immediately. “You need to get Mick Jagger. He’s the biggest star in the world.”
Sure, George, no problem.
We had learned some lessons about big stars and MTV. Early on, we had struggled to get permission even to use photos of recording artists. My partner, John Sykes, and I realized we were asking the wrong people. To the record labels, we might as well have been a high school fan club asking for free pictures. They were oriented toward radio and print, not TV. It was worse when we tried to go through the lawyers. They said no as a policy. It seemed to defy logic, but we found that the easiest people to deal with were the hardest people to get to: the artists themselves.
We went off like bounty hunters to bag our targets. Sykes’s mission was Pete Townshend. Les Garland, our hilarious new larger-than-life head of programming, went for Mick Jagger, whom he had met before. I drew David Bowie. This was our Hail Mary shot.
Sykes waited for hours outside Townshend’s manager’s London office. When Townshend showed up, Sykes went into his boyish charismatic mode. “Hi, Pete, I’m John Sykes! I’m with MTV, it’s a new channel that plays music videos. Would you do a promo for us like you do when you visit radio stations?”
Townshend probably assumed his manager had set this up. He asked Sykes when he wanted to do it. “How about right now?” Pon had rented a garage across the street and had his camera set up. Sykes led Townshend over. It took only a few minutes.
Garland took Pon and a video crew to Paris to stalk the Rolling Stone. When he finally appeared, Garland was on him with the full hustle of a seasoned radio veteran. Jagger remembered him. “All you need to say is ‘I want my MTV,’ ” Garland said.
“You want me to do a commercial?” said Jagger.
“It’s really more of an endorsement, an endorsement for a new phenomenon called music videos.”
“Yeah, that’s a commercial. The Rolling Stones don’t do commercials.”
“Mick, we don’t have any money. But, if this is about money, I’ll give you a dollar.” Garland laid a dollar on the table. It could have gone either way, but Jagger laughed.
