Bowie, the Cure, Neil Young and the golden age of the video shoot

Tim Pope caught the video wave in 1981 and made hundreds of promotional clips, often three or four a week, edited at night and on-air days later. You’ll have seen them, singles for the Style Council, The The, Iggy Pop, Hall & Oates and many others. For 15 years he was the man to call – inventive, caffeinated, risk-loving, clubbable – and “nothing was too mad or stupid”. He celebrates that magic age of big budgets and creative freedom in his story-filled memoir ‘I Shoot Rock Stars’, just out, and looks back here at …

… the video that made his reputation

… MTV showing six of his clips in a row

… the thrill of Bowie’s silhouette as he walked across the Rainbow stage in 1977: “there was so little footage back then, you’d rarely seen people move”

… his teenage love of Dusty, ELP, King Crimson and Pink Floyd

… shooting seven clips a fortnight and the one time a record label tried to interfere

… Neil Young’s 2,000-acre Broken Arrow Ranch and the “burning fires of his eyes”

… Iggy Pop singing I Wanna Be Your Dog in the John Snow pub in Soho

… “German sausages, lumps of lamb, maggots, a whole party”: the Soft Cell clip that caused a walk-out

... “You’re a funny little arsehole!”: breaking the ice with Bowie

… what he learnt from Mark Hollis of Talk Talk and spending time with his ashes.

Order ‘I Shoot Rock Stars’ here: https://www.waterstones.com/book/i-shoot-rock-stars/tim-pope/9781035426959

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