Australia in the 1980s

So, what were your favourite Australian clips of the 80s and do you know who made them?

Before he became a Hollywood film maker, Russell Mulcahy produced some imaginative clips, despite having lower budgets that his overseas counterparts. Mulcahy made clips for people like Air Supply, Little River Band, Icehouse and Richard Clapton. He moved to London and made videos for Elton John, Paul McCartney and most other members of the English rock royalty.

Crowded House and INXS always seemed to have great clips. ‘Don’t Dream It’s Over’ and ‘Kiss the Dirt (Falling Down the Mountain)’ come to mind and I recall that they were both made by Alex Proyas’ production company Meaningful Eye Contact. Proyas was a prolific clip-maker and he too became a Hollywood film director (The Crow, Dark City, I Robot).

Richard Lowenstein made an amazing clip for the Hunters and Collectors song ‘Talking to a Stranger’. My namesake Peter Cox made a stack of excellent music videos, including the clip for Cold Chisel’s ‘Cheap Wine’. There was an adults-only clip for the Stephen Cummings song ‘Gymnasium’, directed by Kimble Rendall. Midnight Oil’s classic ‘Beds Are Burning’ had a great clip directed by Claudia Castle.

On the humorous side, there was that clip where Paul Kelly was driving a taxi – was it ‘Before Too Long’? — and just about anything that involved Mental as Anything.

Some of the notable clips that I recall from overseas artists in the 80s are ‘I Wanna Be Loved’ by Elvis Costello, ‘Cry’ by Godley & Crème, ‘Girls Just Wanna Have Fun’ (Cyndi Lauper), ‘Relax’ (Frankie Goes to Hollywood), ‘Sledgehammer’ (Peter Gabriel), ‘Money for Nothing’ (Dire Straits), ‘The Boys of Summer’ (Don Henley), ‘You Might Think’ (The Cars), ‘Take on Me’ (A-Ha), ‘Dancing in the Street’ (Jagger and Bowie), ‘Rockit’ (Herbie Hancock) and ‘Jump’ (Van Halen). There are literally hundreds, thousands of others but the big daddy was Michael Jackson’s epic clip for ‘Thriller’.

And what about those Robert Palmer clips? Does anybody epitomise the suave, affluent 80s more than that guy?

I love the literal versions of 80s video clips that have appeared on the web, with revised, banal lyrics that match what’s happening on the screen. Check out literal versions of ‘Take on Me’ by A-Ha and ‘Head Over Heels’ by Tears for Fears.

What do you remember as the iconic 80s music video clips of the 80s?

I’m hoping we can show some classic video clips in this 1980s exhibition we are planning. Video clips were crucial to the development of both music and television in the 1980s. This was the decade when, as the Buggles had predicted, ‘Video Killed the Radio Star’. In fact when MTV, the 24 hour-a-day music television cable channel, commenced in the USA in 1981, the first item shown was the Buggles’ prophetic clip. From this time music was consumed increasingly on TV rather than just on radio. It came with an explosion of imagery and movement, as artists would use clips to parade their style and update their look. Celebrated as an original way to promote recording artists, video clips had a profound influence on record and concert sales and shifted the place of music in daily life.

I found some useful internet resources associated with the USA’s Rock ’n’ Roll Hall of Fame. There are some great 80s music web links here.

Music video existed for years before MTV, in the form of film clips inserted into TV shows, as far back as Brian Henderson’s Bandstand . Without buying into insoluble arguments about what was the first music clip, I would point to Crash Craddock’s ‘Boom Boom Baby’, which got a lot of airplay on Bandstand around 1960. It made the singer a star in Australia, although he was relatively unknown back in the States. In terms of creativity and originality, the trail was blazed by Bob Dylan’s ‘Subterranean Homesick Blues’, a clever black and white clip filmed in 1965 by D A Pennebaker. Included as the first scene in the film Don’t Look Back, it didn’t get much TV airplay until later but was highly influential.

In Australia, the ABC’s Countdown is remembered as a 70s phenomenon but it was equally an 80s thing, as it continued until 1987. Aimed specifically at a teenage audience, Countdown helped to consolidate the age of music video by screening the latest clips from overseas. It introduced hundreds of Australian performers to a mass audience and developed a capacity to create stars and hit records. Being a national program, it had the power to make Australian acts well-known all around the country.

Also in the 1980s, a lot of clips were seen on the Saturday morning TV show Sounds. It was an important vehicle for promoting music but rarely receives the recognition that Countdown gets. I think I am right in saying that in 1974 Graham Webb had started The Sat Today Show, which only showed music video clips. Sydney DJ Donnie Sutherland took over as host and the show became Sound Unlimited (later Sounds) and ran until December 1987, live for three hours a week, 52 weeks a year. Sounds not only introduced a generation of Australians to rock music, but, in the years before MTV hit American screens, it ushered in the era of music video. Sounds could not compete with Countdown’s insistence on the right to premiere new clips, but it presented an unparalleled breadth of Australian and overseas talent. Check out this 1980 promo for Sounds.

Around the time of Countdown’s demise in 1987 (I won’t mention the short-lived Countdown Revolution!), the ABC launched its long-running weekend music program Rage, playing clips through the night and into the morning. Rage remains an important platform for emerging Australian talent, screening videos from various genres and eras without commercial pressures.

Just weeks later, the Nine network launched its new music program MTV, a kind of local, free-to-air franchise of the American cable channel. You will remember Richard Wilkins as the genial host. Now there’s a character who emerged in the 80s. He was actually a singer in the early 80s and I recall that he toured Australia with Grace Jones. More about her later!

What are your memories of music video on TV in the 80s?

Decades cannot easily be categorised. They are mathematically arbitrary and have become a clichéd journalistic convention. But I suspect that our audience will latch on to the notion of an exhibition about the 80s as an idea that has legs.

Other decades are defined by slogans – the roaring twenties, the boring fifties, the swinging sixties. What defines the eighties? The greed decade? The mean decade? One big party?

The 1980s have been characterised as a period of consumerist excess, riding on the back of an economic and industrial boom, expressed in a contemptuous flaunting of wealth through expensive homes, cars and designer label fashion. A superficial and frivolous decade. The ‘greed is good’ thing is a stereotype, there is something to it. Business and finance seemed to be dominated by tycoons like Alan Bond, Christopher Skase, Rupert Murdoch and Kerry Packer. In many ways it was a period when conservatism was re-asserted. After all, this was the era of Thatcher and Reagan, monetarism and economic rationalism.

However there is another side to the 1980s. Paradoxically, it was also a period of change. There were significant developments in the roles of women in society. Homosexuality was decriminalised in most Australian states. Environmental issues came to public attention, especially with the aftermath of 1979’s Three Mile Island nuclear accident and 1986’s Chernobyl disaster. Cigarette advertising in cinemas was banned, smoking decreased, cocaine apparently became fashionable. The personal computer appeared, and video games like Space Invaders and Pac-Man became popular. The Walkman and video cassette recorders took off. AIDS appeared and safe sex followed. Cities were redeveloped. Australia celebrated the Bicentennial of European settlement. Brisbane held World Expo ’88. The late 80s saw the fall of the Berlin Wall and end of the Cold War, a monumental shift.

I found a useful 80s popular culture site called inthe80s.com. Check it out.

Maybe we should question the ‘greed decade’ and conservative decade stereotypes. Do they do justice to the importance, diversity and creativity of the time. What do you think?

Australia in the 1980s is such a broad subject for an exhibition. I am pondering how to give it a clear focus.

Somebody once said that history doesn’t have to be ancient, just relevant. What would our Gen X audience find relevant? I’m thinking that they would hope to see an interpretation of the 1980s in terms of what they experienced as young people, within the broad sweep of popular culture. An exhibition about their everyday life, making reference to their favourite TV shows, movies, music, products, celebrities, fads and newsworthy events. It is all about how people spent their leisure time, what they ate and drank, the clothes they wore, what shows they went to see, their first encounters with computers etc. The emphasis would be on the experiences of ‘ordinary’ Australian people, not just the great, the powerful, the brilliant and the beautiful.

The idea is for an exhibition about Australian life in the 80s but we cannot ignore what was going on in the world. So there would have to be a global context, a background of national and international events. I wonder what is the best balance. I mean, an exhibition about the 80s needs to at least mention crucial events and people like the trial of Lindy Chamberlain, the death of John Lennon, the wedding of Charles and Di, the Falklands war, the Ash Wednesday bushfires, the AIDS epidemic, the America’s Cup victory, Bob Hawke, Cliff Young, Olympic boycotts, the first Apple Mac, AUSSAT, Allan Border, the Sydney Swans, Chernobyl, the Challenger disaster, the stock market crash of 1987, the Bicentenary and Brisbane World Expo ’88, the fall of the Berlin Wall and Tiananmen Square. Maybe we need an illustrated timeline as a kind of backdrop to a bunch of other yet-to-be-determined themes. I’ll keep thinking.