Troubled Production / Music Videos

• "Rock Me Tonite", the music video that killed Billy Squier's career, fits this trope. According to the Wikipedia article, he had come up on his own with a concept whereby he and some fans would be shown, in grainy film and subdued colors like American Gigolo, getting ready for a concert and then going to it. The first director he approached, Bob Giraldi, the guy who'd done Michael Jackson's "Beat It", was willing to do it but only if he got a bigger budget, and as he knew Squier's label, Capitol Records, would likely not give him that much money, he turned it down. The second director had his own concept which Squier didn't like. So, with two weeks to go till the World Premiere Video date they promised MTV, and his tour coming up, they were receptive when Kenny Ortega offered to do it. Squier was too nice a guy to refuse to do the video when he saw the set, or tell MTV to wait, or reject the whole thing and do another video. The final result ended making Squier the butt of jokes for quite some time.
• The videos for the first two singles from Fleetwood Mac's Mirage album both suffered from this, due in large part to the band's ongoing interpersonal issues:
  • Simon Fields, who produced the "Hold Me" video, recalls it as "a fucking nightmare." "Four of them — I can't recall which four — couldn't be together in the same room for very long," says Steve Barron, the director. So, then, what better circumstances to spend two days in a sweltering corner of the Mojave Desert shooting a video where you have to play archeologists and painters in a complicated setup based on René Magritte paintings? Stevie Nicks, who threw a fit about wearing the red chiffon dress and having to drag a painting across the sand in matching platforms, recalls that Lindsey Buckingham was still pissed at her not only for the usual reasons but because of her more recent affair with Mick Fleetwood, which Mick had gone and told Lindsey about. Because Mick had then left Stevie for her best friend, the whole band was mad at him. Christine McVie was so upset with everyone else that she spent ten hours in her trailer, ostensibly putting her makeup on. Mick, in turn, "thought she was being a bitch; he wouldn't talk to her." John McVie was drunk, says Fields, and tried to punch him out at one point. It's no surprise that in the final video, most of the band members appear only in single close-ups; Fleetwood and John McVie are the only two who are seen together, and Fleetwood is the only one seen smiling.
  • When he was directing "Gypsy", at the time the most expensive video ever made, Russell Mulcahy, who wasn't familiar with the band's history, says he was constantly being taken aside and told not to pair certain people off because of their past and present romantic entanglements. "I got very confused, who was sleeping with whom." At one point, in the cafe scene, Stevie Nicks, who had to take time off from rehab to do the video, got paired off with Lindsey Buckingham, who she didn't want to be in the same room with at the time. "And he wasn't a very good dancer." It's pretty obvious, about two minutes in, how uncomfortable she is.
• Journey's video for "Separate Ways", one of the most widely derided music videos ever, had some difficulty on location in New Orleans that contributes to its poor reputation. The producer admits the concept, in which the young woman is revealed to be dreaming the video at the end, was "inane." It was Journey's first pure concept video, and the band was nervous enough about making it work. They were told not to bring wives or girlfriends with them to the two-day shoot (where they shot the "Chain Reaction" video the next day in a theater). Lead singer Steve Perry, who for some inexplicable reason had just gotten his signature long hair cut short, apparently missed the memo and showed up on set with his girlfriend, Sherrie Swafford, who was very unpopular with the other guys in the band. She absolutely did not want the model, Tulane University student Margaret Olmsted, in the video, and kept calling her a slut and a whore in her frequent fights with Perry in their trailer between takes (however, Margaret Menendez (as she has been known since marrying the boyfriend through whom she was contacted to be cast in the video) recalls that she got on very well with the other four band members). Then there was the unseasonably cool (for spring in New Orleans) breeze blowing in off the river. While none of this can excuse taking a band like Journey and having them play imaginary instruments (most infamously, Jonathan Cain playing air keyboard in the intro and drummer Steve Smith playing air guitar in several group shots), it's no surprise that they took several years off before their next album and, pointedly calling it Raised on Radio, refused to do any videos for it.
• Everyone involved in making The Jacksons' "Torture" video recalls it lived up to the title. "The crew motto used to be 'Death or victory'", says director Jeff Stein. "I think that was the only time we prayed for death." According to an apocryphal story, the stress was so bad one of his crew lost control over her bodily functions.
  • At the concept meeting, Michael Jackson sketched out a lot of things he wanted in the video. However, Stein had a feeling he wouldn't actually show up, so he arranged for a wax dummy from Madame Tussaud's in Nashville to play him. Indeed, Michael cited a prior commitment as a reason for ducking out of the shoot when it actually came time to roll the cameras. Then Jermaine backed out as well, basically because it was Jackie's song.
  • Perri Lister, Billy Idol's girlfriend and choreographer in several of his videos (she's the bride in "White Wedding") was originally hired to do that for "Torture". But Jackie eventually had her replaced with his then-girlfriend, a Laker Girl named Paula Abdul.
  • Filming went on for so long (almost a week, long for a video at the time (and even now)) that even Jackie, Marlon, and Tito stopped showing up. The head of the wax dummy ended up in the salad bowl at lunch at one point. The production company went bankrupt as a result of the cost overruns, about the last thing they had expected would happen as a result of hitching their wagon to the Jacksons' star. (See also the Victory Tour.)
• Janet Jackson's video for "Control" (long version) was difficult—the producer, Sharon Oreck, says it was her "worst nightmare."
  • First, the crowd was lured to the auditorium with the promise that they'd see Janet perform. That led them to believe they were getting a free concert when all they got was Janet lipsynching the song over and over. And they started late.
  • Ironically enough given the song's theme, Janet was in the process of firing her father Joe Jackson as her manager at the time, and he took it out on everyone around him. He told Oreck that he wasn't letting Janet sit on the trapeze she descends to the stage in unless the production took out a million dollars of insurance on her. Of course, that was way beyond the budget, but the record company told her to stonewall him ("we don't say no to Joe Jackson"). He was chasing down Oreck and physically threatening her until the director, Mary Lambert, threatened that she and Oreck would quit unless the record company told Joe it was getting the insurance.
  • The record company told Lambert they wanted more white people in the audience. So she tried to innocuously move the white people in the crowd up front ... but then the audience, already ornery from the late start, caught on. There was nearly a race riot until someone from the record company managed to calm the crowd down after Lambert broke down in tears and said she couldn't do it.
• The only reason nobody singles out any particular Guns N' Roses video as one of these is that a nightmarish experience for almost any other band was pretty much the norm for them. Axl never showed up on time, and had issues when he got there (after the onstage closeup in "Sweet Child o' Mine", he was so freaked out by the lights he locked himself in his dressing room for two hours). And, believe it or not, he was a piece of cake compared to Stephanie Seymour whenever she was involved. Oh, the other guys in the band had their drug problems to deal with ... Izzy's presence in "Patience" is almost minimal because the effects of his coke addiction were so apparent, and he spent most of the shoot just hiding in a dark corner, according to the director (to his credit, that was the trigger for him going into rehab).
• Albanian-British pop star Dua Lipa's video for "Blow Your Mind (Mwah)" was hit with several problems, notably finding the vintage outfits for the models cameoing in the video (who were friends of Dua Lipa), finding the right filming location, and discussion over the "right" filming technique, though there was never (according to Word of God) any Prima Donna behavior.
• Ariana Grande's video for "Into You" had troubles with quality of film and finding the right cars as props for the video.
• Young Thug's "Wyclef Jean" music video was this for the director: There was some Executive Meddling over content and an attempt by police to shut down the video shoot, but the main problem was the lack of Young Thug's direct participation - though he did contribute some footage he shot of himself lip syncing part of the song, Young Thug only showed up in person when the shoot was practically over, even then refusing to get out of his car, and eventually driving off without ever stepping in front of the cameras. In order to have something to show for his efforts, the director combined the completed shots he did have (mainly of cars, dancers, and extras) with behind the scenes footage, audio clips of Young Thug pitching ideas for the video, and some captions explaining the background, ending up with a music video about unsuccessfully making a music video. Ironically, as a Freeze-Frame Bonus in the video itself points out, the director's original pitch was setting up a few cameras, literally burning the remainder of the budget, and having the artist dance and mime the lyrics in front of the flames.
• Oddities behind the video for Dexys Midnight Runners' only American hit, "Come on Eileen", including the drummer being fired mid-shoot for not being willing to rub dirt on himself (creating a visible gap in the line-up in later scenes), were celebrated in a famous Pop Up Video.
• "Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)" by Eurythmics had a few complications. The label hated when Annie Lennox arrived with her hair short and she refused to wear a dress. A cow was also brought on set and was allowed to run amok. The part where the cow walks up to keyboardist Dave Stewart? It was completely unexpected and they were expecting the cow to harass Stewart and ruin the shot.
• "Synchronicity II" by The Police was a dangerous production. Sting was insistent on getting all the time in the spotlight, which caused director Lol Crème to grow to dislike him. Drummer Stewart Copeland and bassist Andy Summers were performing atop giant scaffolds. The height itself proved to be a danger, but there was also a lot of dry ice being blown around the studio. The air became so dry that something ignited, which caused the scaffolds to catch fire. Despite urges from safety personnel, Crème demanded filming to continue. Sting also spent a majority of the video swinging from a rope; at one point he fell.
• "Jump" by Van Halen was badly affected by David Lee Roth's ego and his clash with the rest of the band. The other three members didn't want to be around him and asked director Robert Lombard if they could be filmed separately. Lombard hated the idea but buckled down with the exception of a few shots. Cameraman Pete Angelus didn't know how to operate a 16 mm camera properly, resulting in all footage he shot being unusable. Roth demanded that he be filmed doing a bunch of crazy stunts. Lombard wanted to cut out Roth's stunts and make the video a performance video to keep it personal, claiming it would make the video more successful. The other three members agreed to this, resulting in Lombard changing the video's format. Roth got word of this and demanded Lombard be fired. Lombard never again worked with Van Halen, Roth's stunt footage would surface in a future video, and "Jump" won the award for Best Performance Video at the first MTV Video Music Awards. It's also seen as one of the most memorable music videos ever made and helped cement the band's already monumental popularity even further.
• Billy Idol's had two notable examples:
  • "Eyes Without a Face" was three days straight of Billy staring straight into a camera. He was given brand new contacts, but dry ice was being sprayed at his face, causing the lenses to become infused into his face. The day after shooting, he had a show in Arizona. He fell asleep in the grass outside the stadium, and the contacts caused his eyes to look so bloodshot, police thought he was doing drugs. He woke up with a gun pointed in his face and had to depend on his crew to prove that he was innocent.
  • "Flesh for Fantasy" fared even worse. Billy and his girlfriend Perri Lister had a screaming match complete with a door slam, leading to the dancers gossiping, causing drama. Producer John Diaz's production company was behind on a prior shoot, causing them to have to push production back several hours and fly the crew in via Learjet to work on the new one. Filming lasted hours on end, with one day of shooting going well over 36 hours. There was a long dolly shot of the final set up and one of the camera-men couldn't do it because he had gone blind due to six days of constant work. Director Howie Deutch stayed awake all six days of production, causing his contacts to get stuck into his dry eyes.
• Bruce Springsteen has a couple of examples:
  • "Dancing in the Dark" was plagued by Bruce being uncomfortable doing a music video to begin with, as he had no faith in them as an art form. An initial attempt had a crane flying by him shooting him, which malfunctioned. Bruce also demanded to be lit a certain way, which director Brian De Palma refused saying they wanted to light him in a way that complemented his masculine features. After hours of failed takes, Springsteen fled the scene without telling anyone, causing mass panic on set. This first concept was scrapped and a second one was created. The second try went much more successfully, but it still had some issues. For one, nobody besides a few select people knew that Courteney Cox was a plant in the audience and some of the E Street Band members were concerned when Bruce picked a seemingly random audience member to dance on stage with him. On top of that, this was done during an actual concert, confusing the audience when the same song was played three times when they had two failed takes. It remains Springsteen's most famous music video and helped him expand his audience to younger crowds.
  • "Brilliant Disguise" doesn't seem like a music video that would be troubled, but somehow one little thing going wrong turned the production into a nightmare. The video is a single take shot in a kitchen. The original kitchen selected by director Meiert Avis was a private kitchen owned by a banker who was always away on business, but the banker's wife then called Avis stating that he didn't want anyone filming in the kitchen just as Avis had already sent the filming trucks to the location. Scrambling and panicking, they ended up contacting the National Guard. They had an officer's house with a nice kitchen they were allowed to use, but changing the filming location caused everything to have to be re-staged, causing stress for the crew. They also had issues getting the single shot to sync up with the music.
• Tears for Fears' "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" suffered from being shot in a desert near Los Angeles, which combined intense heat with navigation difficulties for the band and filming crew, who constantly felt like they were lost. Roland Orzabal was in tears on the second day of filming. The band members had to constantly lug their equipment around. At one point one of the 4-wheel off road vehicles got involved in an accident, seriously injuring one of the stunt riders. Another crew member then hovered over the injured rider screaming a Buddhist chant while the rest of the crew scrambled to get a hold of an ambulance.
• Tom Petty recalled the nightmare of the production for "Don't Come Around Here No More". Actress Wish Foley stood in freezing cold water for over 24 hours and didn't say anything throughout the shoot. When they pulled her out, she had hypothermia and had to be given an emergency shower. The complex set with the various large objects presented a challenge for both set designers and actors, making a mess out of staging the video. A pig got loose and escaped the set. The long shoots exhausted Petty and his band members. The final shot in which Alice, played by Foley, turns into a cake was incredibly tricky to pull off as they only had the one cake and had to get the first take perfectly. Wish stood underneath the table for 3 to 4 hours with her head bent at an uncomfortable angle. Upon release, the video was broadcast via satellite and sent MTV into a moral panic as it allegedly promoted violence against women. In spite of this, it continues to be seen as a technically brilliant music video that pulled off a lot with its limited budget and time constraints.
• MC Hammer has had a couple of examples of this with his music videos:
  • According to director Ric Minello, an unspecified MC Hammer video involved being filmed in a club late at night. Allegedly, some gang members were out to kill Hammer that night, and someone spotted some people outside carrying uzis and alerted the crew. Police were notified and the club was evacuated. Fortunately, nobody was hurt, but it was a terrifying experience for everyone involved and certainly a surprise that it was MC Hammer of all people that was targeted.
  • The videos "2 Legit 2 Quit" and "Addams Groove" were shot simultaneously. Hammer, high on his recent rise to fame, had huge ambitions for both.
    • The crew had to rebuild the sets for "Addams Groove" because they weren't big enough the first time. Anjelica Huston decided she wanted to be in the video, but she had a vacation coming up so they had to rush her appearance. The widow of Charles Addams, who created the Addams Family, had complete creative control over the video and was constantly at odds with director Rupert Wainwright.
    • "2 Legit" in particular had a complicated storyline involving a parody of The Hero's Journey, with a sequence where Hammer wanted James Brown to appear. There was a problem, though: James Brown was in jail at the time, so Wainwright had to work with the Georgia Department of Corrections to make sure he would be let out on time. Hammer also insisted that Brown was transported only via private jet, which Hammer was paying for out of his own pocket. Hammer's notorious rivalry with Michael Jackson was getting on crew members' nerves. There were also multiple versions of the video with different lengths, causing confusion for viewers and networks. On top of that, the massive amount of cameos and celebrity appearances proved to be a headache for Wainwright to keep track of.
    • Wainwright recalled the experience as "lasting for 30 days, but feeling like 60". Both videos were made fun of and were the beginning of the end for Hammer as his public image started deteriorating. While they both have their fans, they're frequently cited as two of the worst music videos ever made.
• Speaking of Michael Jackson, one reason Hammer was so concerned with his videos was because Jackson was getting ready to release Dangerous at the end of 1991. The lead-off video for that album, "Black or White", had its own issues, some of which were discussed in Rolling Stone at the time.
  • Jackson was determined to top the titular video from Thriller, and as a result sought its director John Landis for a creative reunion. However, Landis was reluctant to work with Jackson again, due to not receiving his proper 50% share of the profits for both it and the making-of documentary. (This ongoing issue of overdue royalties culminated in a lawsuit in 2009, shortly before Jackson's death.) Still, he ultimately agreed.
  • However, the two-month shoot was a very different one from "Thriller". By this point Jackson effectively had complete creative control over his "short films" and was happily spending money on camera cranes, etc. that he didn't necessarily intend to use but wanted on hand just in case he got ideas. On top of that, due to the actual album not yet being finished and miscellaneous other commitments, Jackson even skipped filming days without giving Landis and company advance notice. From the Rolling Stone article: "Although Landis says he doesn’t have exact figures, he estimates from his experience that 'Black or White' may have cost as much as $7 million"; choreographer Vincent Paterson chalked much of that up to the constant delays.
  • Landis later claimed in the 2011 oral history I Want My MTV that during the shoot Jackson proudly showed him his artificially-lightened chest — by this point, his issues with vitiligo had driven him to extremes to maintain an even appearance — and when Landis said that whoever was responsible for it "was a criminal" whom Jackson shouldn't go to again, he was deeply upset.
  • Landis and Jackson also clashed over the closing "panther dance" sequence, with Landis arguing that Jackson's suggestive dance movies were inappropriate for a performer with a large following of children. Again, he was overruled.
  • In addition, Jackson's people were making unusual demands of MTV in particular for the opportunity to air the video and its followups, the most notorious of them the insistence that virtually every mention of Jackson by their on-air hosts include the nickname "[The] King of Pop" (which while a Forced Meme at the time, eventually became a widely-accepted honorific for Jackson).
  • Still, the public wasn't aware of the drama. The 14-minute "Black or White" clip warranted a behind-the-scenes cover story in TV Guide in the run-up to its unprecedented world premiere on November 14, 1991 — in the United States, it aired simultaneously on MTV, VH1, BET, and Fox, right after an episode of The Simpsons in the last case (Jackson famously, albeit under a stage name, provided a voice over in that year's season premiere while Bart and Homer have cameos at the end of the video). Aaaaand... rather than the parade of cameos (most famously Macaulay Culkin) and cutting-edge special effects, all anyone could talk about was the panther dance, not only for its suggestiveness but for its violence, especially because tons of kids were watching it. Jackson hastily apologized and the video was re-edited several times (first removing the sequence, then restoring it with racist graffiti added to the windows he was smashing). However, given that the scene was so easy to cut/alter and even the people making the video were concerned, there is debate to this day whether the dance was a genuine artistic expression of disdain for racism, or merely Jackson manufacturing an artificial controversy. The subsequent VHS release Dangerous — The Short Films includes news footage covering it, suggesting the latter.
• Aerosmith worked for 35 hours straight on the video for "Love in an Elevator", and then were advised that they had to wait three days for the director, Marty Callner, to prep the final shot, which went on for several hours and required special location filming permits. Callner made a mistake when filing the paperwork, saying they'd be done at 10 PM when he meant to put 1 AM, so when he tried to continue the shoot past 10, the police stopped him and told him they'd arrest him if he didn't shut down the shoot.
• Bon Jovi's "Blaze of Glory" had to have a drive-in movie theater built from scratch in the middle of the Utah desert. Getting the screens and cars all lifted onto the butte was a complicated process that proved to be obscenely expensive, so much so that nobody who worked on the video can tell you exactly how much it cost. Jon Bon Jovi had to perform on the edge of a cliff, which proved to be a dangerous shot. The crew had to cope by drinking margaritas on set.
• The crew for Vanilla Ice's "Ice Ice Baby" didn't have a set to film in, so Ice and company invaded an abandoned building in downtown Dallas. They had to climb the fire escape to get up there, lugging the heavy camera equipment up with them. Because they technically weren't allowed in the building, they had to rush the filming process. The vehicle that Ice was driving also had no gas, so in the scene where he's driving off, it had to be pushed by two of his friends on set with him.
• R.E.M.'s "Losing My Religion" was a frustrating experience for both the band and its director, Tarsem Singh. Since English was his second language, he didn't fully understand the concept of the lyrics, so he was mostly winging his ideas for the video. He staged for vocalist Michael Stipe to show various poses related to Indian religions, but it didn't look right. Singh also had a stomach bug and was rushing back and forth to the bathroom. That's when Stipe said "Just let me do my thing," which resulted in the random choreography of the video. Despite its lack of structure, it's a beloved video of its era and turned the song into R.E.M.'s biggest hit ever.
• Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" suffered from a clash between lead vocalist Kurt Cobain and the video's director Samuel Bayer. Bayer wanted to have a video full of attractive women and a high glossy production, Cobain demanded the women in the video look more average and the video have a dirty, gritty tinge to it. If you've ever asked yourself why the riot in the video looked so realistic, it's because the audience really was rioting. Despite efforts from the director and crew to settle them down, they started tearing the set apart. This ended up doing the video a favor, as it made everything look authentic, but it was a nightmare for the crew and the band. Drummer Dave Grohl recalled the situation as a giant headache. Once filming was done, Bayer insisted on showing more footage of the janitor than of Cobain. Cobain had a record executive force control out of Bayer's hands. The video proved to be massively popular and almost single-handedly ushered in the Grunge era of popular music.
• Thomas Dolby's '80s classic "She Blinded Me With Science" was troubled due to its backwards process. The entire video was storyboarded before the song was even written, creating a headache for Dolby. He also took on the production process almost entirely by himself with a barebones crew. Dr. Magnus Pyke, who was a real scientist and television presenter, but not an actor, barely took the shoot seriously. Pyke intentionally flubbed lines and was apparently a jerk to everyone on set.^note This may have been a case of Beware the Nice Ones, as Pyke was usually a consummate professional in whatever he did, but felt he was being messed about by everyone except Dolby himself. The song turned Dolby into a star and the song became one of the biggest hits of The '80s, especially due to the video.
• Another case of a video's concept making it a pain to produce was Semisonic's "Closing Time". It's made up of two Oner shots running side-by-side in a split screen, focusing on lead singer Dan Wilson and an actress playing his girlfriend as they to go meet each other at a club. It was shot on a street in Los Angeles and had to be finished in three days, since the record company needed a video quickly after the song started breaking out on radio. Since it involved two cameras filming a single shot without an edit, everyone had to hit specific marks at specific points in the song, and every take had to be shot for the full length of the song. Wilson had two instances where he was off camera and had fifteen seconds to run to other end of a city block to reach his mark. The band and the cast extensively rehearsed before filming. However, one big issue developed when the actress playing a waitress who walks into the shot at a crucial point in the climax kept ruining takes by mistiming her steps. Then the second day of the shoot was rained out, forcing double the work on the third day. That said, the unusual gimmick got the video immediate MTV attention, turning the song into one of the signature One-Hit Wonder moments of The '90s.
• The tunnel/sewer from The Prodigy's music video for "Firestarter" (actually the abandoned Aldwych tube station on the London Underground) was indeed as dank and dirty as it looks - the production crew were forced to wear masks during the shoot, while Keith Flint had to breathe all that dust in for a full day of shooting^note The Aldwych station has since been rebuilt specifically as a film set, if you've watched anything in the last 15 years or so that depicts the London Underground it was likely shot there.
• Audioslave's video for their debut single "Cochise" was a hell of a production shoot for multiple reasons...
  • Director Mark Romanek envisioned the band playing atop a construction rig, but given that there was a lack of buildings under construction that were suitable for filming, they had to build one from scratch near the Sepulveda Dam in Los Angeles.
  • Meanwhile, the band's status was under question, having never played for a public audience before, and rumours of lead singer Chris Cornell quitting the band started spreading, before it transpired that there was a conflict between his management, and the former members of Rage Against the Machine. As such, the video shoot of "Cochise" was the first time they had actually played together, and there was great trepidation from the band members.
  • Then the biggest hurdle came about when a test for the pyrotechnics used in the video prompted the local residents, still shaken only a year after 9/11, to make hundreds, if not thousands of calls to the police and news station concerning fears of a terrorist attack. As such, they were only permitted to fire the pyrotechnics off six times, prompting an expansion of the camera crew to get more coverage of the band.
• The seemingly-cheery music video for Girl Group Bananarama's "Cruel Summer" actually hides the rather miserable experience the band members had to endure, as recounted by band member Siobhan Fahey. She recalled the shoot for the song, which revolves around the grueling summer heat, took place during an actual heatwave, in August and with over one hundred degreed. Fahey said that their HQ was a tavern under the Brooklyn Bridge, which had a ladies' room with a chipped mirror where the band did their makeup. Fahey also added that, one time after the band returned to the tavern for lunch after an exhausting morning shooting in the city with the heat, they made some small chat with some local dockworkers, who, upon learning of their situation, shared something with them to placate their hunger: vials of cocaine. "That was our lunch," said Fahey, who had never tried the drug before. She said that in the video, one can recognize the scenes where they look tired and miserable as the scenes shot before lunch, and the scenes where they look all euphoric and manic as the after-lunch shots.