I Want My MTV (Chips For Free)
Money for nothing, urban signs, bathtubs musings.
Maybe it’s that guitar riff, seared into your consciousness. Maybe its the iconic and oft-misheard lyrics. Maybe it is the drums that thunder unexpectedly right at the start. Or the unprecedented video. Or very likely its that one line, burnt into memory and pop culture. It certainly opened the door to today’s piece about a lasting rock track from nearly 40 years ago.
Hello there, and if you are a new stroller-by to this hole in the wall, welcome to Coffee & Conversations, have a look at this week’s artistically hand drawn menu.
Chips for Free: I Want My MTV.
Friday Find: Bathtub intrusions.
Signs: Signboards & character in China.
With: Being shaped by language, saving franchises, a cult of creativity.
1. Chips for Free
I Want My MTV
Odds are that you recognise the all-time smash hit rock song I introduced above.
The most interesting part of Dire Straits’ Money For Nothing- for me- came after many, many years of listening to it. Indeed, it was only some time in the last decade, I discovered a fact I couldn’t believe I hadn’t known before. That high-pitched generational anthem— “I Want My MTV”— was sung by Sting!
Its one of those things- not knowing it seems incredible, yet also instantly obvious once you do. It is, though, only one of few curious things around this song.
Maybe listen to the track as you read this piece (youtube /spotify) ?
Chips For Free*
Circa 1984. Band frontman Mark Knopfler happens to be in a New York appliance store, as we all might find ourselves every now and then. Beyond rows of microwaves and cookers, he sees a big wall of TVs. MTV plays on all of the screens. Watching them— this might sound familiar— is “a great big macho guy with, you know, a checked shirt on and a cap and a pair of work boots, and he had been delivering stuff at the back”. The delivery man scoffs at what he sees, and is rounding off about rock stars and their fancy lifestyles, not doing anything real- “that ain’t working”, just reaping the benefits of fame & fortune (”chicks for free”).
“Some of his lines were just too good to be true…. I didn’t have a pen with me, so I borrowed one, got a bit of paper and I actually sat down in the window display area of the store and started writing out the lines to Money for Nothing as he said them,” Knopfler has since recalled on a few occasions.
Don’t Stand So Close To My MTV
1985. MTV burst on the scene a few years ago and captured the zeitgeist in the US. These were the early years of an idea and brand that would shape and feed youth culture for the next couple of decades.
Dire Straits formed in London in 1977, had their biggest hit the year after- Sultans of Swing. After a series of well-received but not blockbuster albums, they are recording their fifth studio album, ‘Brothers in Arms’, camped for a few months in a tiny studio in the Caribbean island of Montserrat.
Some time after Knopfler wrote Money For Nothing, he thought it would be cool to include “I Want My MTV” as a refrain in the song.
What, why? Here’s 30 seconds why:
That ad from MTV included The Police (with Sting, of course) clamouring, “I Want My MTV”. Knopfler thought it would work well to set that slogan to the notes of Police’s hit song ‘Don’t Stand So Close to Me’.
Jump to picturesque Caribbean island-
“I remember thinking: ‘Wouldn’t it be great if I could ask Sting to sing that line?’ We were on this tiny speck in the middle of the ocean but suddenly someone said: ‘Sting’s here on holiday! He’s on the beach!’"
The band and Sting knew each other well; the Englishman came over, had some supper, and they played him the song. Would he care to contribute? Heck, why not.
Sting recalled, “Mark asked me to go in the studio and sing this line, ‘I want my MTV.’ He gave me the melody, and I thought, Oh, great, 'Don't Stand So Close to Me', that's a nice quote, it's fun."
Sting sang that iconic line, and some backing vocals, but it was also his presence that gives the song a sense of ‘conversation’ between two delivery men. Engineer & producer Neil Dorfsmann said, “It was one of those things where Sting just sort of did it in three passes, I comped the thing, and then I walked around thinking 'There's something amazing about this.' It was done in about an hour.”
Lightning in a bottle?
The reactions in a reddit thread ‘How in the heck did I never realise that Sting's vocal parts are sung to the tune of the Police's "Don't Stand"!’, are entertainingly representative of how this information is both well known and obscure.
“Amazing. Half of the people here are saying it’s common knowledge. The other half is saying they never even knew it was Sting.”
A blister on your little finger (The Riff).
Your vintage might have influenced how much the song’s distinctive guitar riff has been part of your life; its likely though, that it made an appearance, or hundred. Iconic as it is, some of it was also a happy accident of sorts.
While recording in that small studio in Montserrat, the engineer Neil Dorfsmann recalls how the microphone setup was all messed up, with one pointing to the floor and others haphazard. Knopfler made to fix them, but the engineers asked him to leave it all just as it was, because it was sounding so good.
(There’s another take on the riff, seemingly lost in an obscure magazine article in the 1995s, that claims the band didn't realise a ‘wah pedal’ inadvertently turned on.)
At any rate, bassist John Illsley himself says, “The guitar tone you hear on the record happened by accident: a microphone got knocked to the floor in front of the speaker and it changed the sound completely.”
"I still remember when I first heard that guitar riff. I thought 'this is going to become one of the classic guitar riffs of all time.' _Keyboardist Alan Clarke
We got to move these colour TVs (The Video)
Not many will claim great philosophical depths to this song (though there are some; “a superb entry point for judging the morality of capitalism”^). Yet, it is after all, a conversation between two working class blokes, their view of the rockstar lives of easy fame and crass fortune; a kind of comment on celebrities and pop culture, casually making fun of MTV. So making a video for it- for MTV- must have been an interesting conversation.
Famously, Knopfler himself was not a big fan of videos at the time, thinking they take away from the purity of music. He was (retrospectively) relieved that he was stopped from carrying out his own simple idea for it. What was created was seemingly with neither his explicit blessing, nor resistance. Either way, it became a bright bookmark in the trajectory of music & visuals, even groundbreaking- an early use of computer generated human characters.
(the video) is a perfect snapshot of when MTV headlined pop culture to such a degree that its music, its stars, even its animated interstitials, were all seemingly inescapable
It entered heavy rotation on MTV, was wildly popular, and swept the third-ever Video Music Awards (VMAs) in 1986, with a total of eleven nominations and two awards, including Video of the Year. Amazingly, for that top prize, it beat ‘Take On Me’—that other relentless 80s hit and tireless video, from A-ha. (Both were directed by Steve Barron.)
The video was pathbreaking at the time, but to many will now look crude, amateurish. I say, view the video’s impact not through the prism of today’s animation, or indeed today’s aesthetics. As youtube user @krisoko says, “Don't disrespect the graphics in the video - they're iconic, they have character, and were made 30 years before the blocky graphics of Minecraft were a thing.”
Hear, hear.
Dissonance: Now that ain't workin'.
‘I Want My MTV’ is integral to the song, and passed on into pop culture in myriad ways (including becoming the sign-off sound for MTV for a while). As with much that transmogrifies over time, there is another take to it. Keyboardist Alan Clarke respectfully points out that it was, erm… his idea.
“In rehearsals when Mark first played Money For Nothing to the band, there was no intro and no “I Want My MTV”… During a break in rehearsals, when most of the band were out of the room, I started creating the intro on my keyboards, singing “I Want My MTV”. By the end of the day, the track had an intro. That’s the short version. For the record: the idea was mine.”
Another discordant note, to some- Virgin Records owned the rights to the melody of “Don’t Stand So Close To Me”, and insisted on a co-writing credit for Sting (and hence a percentage of revenues from the track). Sting was not a fan.
“This is very embarrassing to me… I did it, and thought nothing of it, until my publishers, Virgin -who I've been at war with for years and who I have no respect for - decided that was a song they owned, 'Don't Stand So Close to Me'. They said that they wanted a percentage of the song, much to my embarrassment. So they took it.”
Bangin' on the bongos like a chimpanzee.
Brothers in Arms was the first album to sell one million copies in the CD format and to outsell its LP version
At the 28th Annual Grammy Awards in 1986, "Money for Nothing" won Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal and was nominated for Record of the Year and Song of the Year as well.
Don’t Stand So Close to My MTV: a mashup.
Bonus Track: Mum always knows best.
Another appearance story, altogether different in nature. Red Hot Chilli Peppers’ heady Under The Bridge is a classic from the early 90s alternate-rock scene. The song came from a poem written by lead singer Anthony Kiedis, and then lead guitarist John Frusciante put chords to it. But the band hit a wall during the recording, not sure how to build to an ending.
The legendary Rick Rubin suggested a grander finish, and Frusciante called on… his mum. A choir singer, she came with her friends and together with the the band they devised the very memorable choral climax to the track, one that lifted it powerfully.
Watch this cool excerpt on this from a documentary about the band.
* “Money for nothing, and your chicks for free” epitomises the point of this delivery man’s rants. My offspring, however, have spent the last couple of years believing that the lyrics are, ‘Money for nothing and your chips for free”. I’ll let the world inform them of their error in its own time. And hey, who says no to free chips (be they British or American)!
Sources:
Classic Tracks- Money For Nothing · Who Wants His MTV? · Knopfler on Parkinson · Sting’s interview · Reddit thread · About the Video & its role in CGI · ^ The Hidden Message in ‘Money For Nothing’ ·
2. Friday Find: Is This A Good Time?
Ever so polite tap-taps of existential angst rippling in the bath tub of modern life.
The familiarity of not at all passive-aggressive intrusive corporate nudges.
Amusing voices, done just so.
The reality of a static life.
Comfortable cynicism.
Ennui.
Take about 90 seconds to feel a little of some of these, or a lot of all.
Here’s Is This A Good Time? by Florence Poppy Deary.
3. The Signs
I have always been drawn to signs- on shops, doors, buses, buildings. I find their design and typography have an immediate effect on surroundings. A street, a block, a neighbourhood’s character can be— maybe disproportionately— shaped by the aesthetic of the signs that inhabit it. A hand-painted wooden board, a filament neon sign, a flapping fabric with brush strokes, a metal sheet with rivets. Each conjures a different look, a different feeling, a different invitation. Sometimes these feed of a communal aesthetic, at other times they’re haphazard. All too often, in urban environments, they are cookie-cutter, products of low cost and high volume.
[ I’ve even done casual photo series called ‘Reading The World’ or ‘Reading London’, back in the day when I travelled and used this wondrous device called a camera.]
These thoughts came afresh when I read a piece titled The Icon of Chinese Urbanism Everyone Loves to Hate, which looks at the ubiquitous red signs in urban China- formulaic, covered in massive fonts and saturated colours that demand attention.
As China’s real estate boom fades and gentrification gains momentum, these red signs have become symbols of a bygone era, even if no one can quite agree on their place in today’s society… Commerce, after all, draws vitality from the surrounding community, and a refined sign is meaningless if the store beneath it has no story to tell.
The piece is also seen through the context of artist Huang Heshan’s digital project ‘Too Rich City’ and an upcoming exhibition.
Masala Peanuts
(where I share stories or tidbits I find interesting).
Read: “English continues to expand into diverse regions around the world. The question is whether humanity will be homogenised as a result.” The New Yorker explores this in How Much Does Our Language Shape Our Thinking?
Chuckle: Does anyone know what Marvel multiverse we’re in? And will anything ever happen in Westeros again? The world’s biggest fantasy franchises are in trouble. Luke Holland claims to have figured out how to save all those beleaguered franchises.
Read: Apparently, the first known written use of the word ‘creativity’ didn’t actually occur until 1875. This conversation with Samuel Franklin, author of a new book, ‘The Cult of Creativity,’ looks at the surprisingly recent history of an idea that has become an ideal.
“Success I adore.
It means I can buy 1959 Gibson Les Pauls and Triumph motorcycles.
But I detest fame. It interferes with what you do and has no redeeming features at all.”
_Mark Knopfler
Enjoyed reading it