Michael Nesmith was strong proponent for music videos. He must have had some experience at some point that made him think it was a good idea to pair music with images. “Crusin’” was included on the long play home video release titled Elephant Parts which won Nesmith the first ever Grammy awarded to the Music Video category.
Michael Nesmith created the show Pop Clips for Nickelodeon in 1980. Pop Clips set the template for MTV.
The general rule is that no one ever invented anything. Anyone who ever did anything first was preceded by someone who had done it previously. The Scopitone was invented in the 1940s. Early music videos that played on Scopitone machines definitely predated The Beatles. “Tell Him” by The Exciters was filmed for Scopitone while The Beatles were still in Hamburg. Scopitone music videos were made popular by French musical acts by the late 1950s.
I think you could safely call the musical montages from The Monkees tv show music videos. They were capable of standing on their own separate from the show.
But consider: TIME/LIFE and other purveyors of “oldies” record anthologies are still making offers on television today (sometimes using entire half-hour infomercials to hawk their wares), still using clips from old music videos and performances. Why, I wonder. aren’t they offering the videos for sale now, when every household has a DVD player?
Yep, YouTube. I have to admit I’ve watched a LOT of older music videos from before MTV, things like Cass Elliot’s “Dream a Little Dream” and David Bowie’s cover of “Sorrow”. And a lot of show tunes, too.
Depending on how one defines “music video”, The Who may have had one before The Beatles. In 1964 filmmakers Chris Stamp and Kit Lambert took over management of The Who, in large part because they needed a band for a movie they were planning. This movie was never made, but they did shoot a short promotional film that they used to help market the band to club managers, etc. I seem to remember reading that this was considered rather innovative at the time, in part perhaps because the film wasn’t just footage of the band playing but a more artistically put together piece that included on-the-street footage of cool Mod kids with their scooters and such. I don’t think this film exists today, but the documentary The Kids Are Alright includes a couple of later videos that the band made, such as this one for “Happy Jack” (circa 1967) that IIRC was created for a television special.
Promo videos were made for a number of reasons: bands who either didn’t tour or made songs too elaborately produced to perform on stage (the Beatles qualified on both), to reach audiences in Australia and Europe where few Anglo-American acts would bother to vist, and arty acts like David Bowie and Devo who just liked making short films. And as far as being too expensive, a lot of those videos were made for a few thousand or even cheaper. Compare that to the big money acts like Alice Cooper and Kiss spent on stage production or the tens of thousands record labels paid independent promo men for big albums. If millions see you on “Top of the Pops” or “Countdown” that’s a much wiser way of promoting an act.
The main source for me pre-MTV were the HBO fillers. Still not a lot of material. OTOH, they played some odd stuff like “Fish Heads” that MTV wouldn’t touch.
I remember seeing an interview with an early MTV vee-jay who mentioned that there were a lot of Rod Stewart videos available so those went into heavy rotation in the early months. Gave his career a big boost. Too bad it was from the “Disco Rod” era.
Yeah, audiences were so small that Monday to Thursday, the network just signed off after the 11PM news- certainly not enough viewers watching for the network to run, say, a talk show with a host, co-host, band, and guests.
To answer part of the OP question as to why record companies forked over cash to pay for pre MTV videos, the answer is they didn’t. Lots of things such as videos, studio time, producers fees, etc were charged to the artist. Either against earnings or the advance.
Lambert and Stamp didn’t get that movie made, but the band was featured the 1965 French filmLes Mods, which documented the Mod subculture. Watching it now, it’s funny to see the interviews–Pete and Kit were so full of themselves!
The 70s music video show in New Zealand was called Ready to Roll, later just RTR*, and was similar to Top of the Pops (or Australia’s Countdown*). It played pre-recorded music videos as it counted down the top 20 pop charts, but though it also had studio-based performances, there were no crowds of people watching the live acts. And it didn’t have a host, either, or even narration until much later. Some of the studio performances were used as the act’s only music video for their singles, though those were entirely eliminated from the format by the 80s when videos became standard.
Most of this is recalled from my memory, I have no cites.
New Zealand also had a more Indie music late night show called Radio With Pictures, and then a weekday afternoon music show called Shazam starring a young Philip Schofield.
*Later still, RTR Countdown
