another cite with a different answer I have never seen these videos, but I suspect they were filmed at a live performance. (does anybody have this information?)
A promotional video will generally contain material that would be impossible to recreate in a live performance.
Once the concept was established, and the industry began to produce serious quantities of product, the opportunity to start programming devoted to video was seized gratefully by TV companies. (Good material at a relatively low price.) The creation of TV channels such as MTV was a natural progression.
I think the OP may be asking the wrong question. Videos were not created to feed MTV (though the channel may have prompted an increase in their production), but rather MTV was created because the videos were available.
*johncole, you ignore all the pre-Bohemian Rhapsody music videos listed above, or wrongly assumed that they were just films of live performances. The Beatles’ music videos for Strawberry Fields Forever and Penny Lane in the 1960s were music videos in every sense that today’s music videos are.
Going back even further, the Soundies music films of the 1940s, made for coin operated jukeboxes, were not records of live performances, but studio-made films. Here’s the link again:
Other music videos from the 1960s that I have seen include Nancy Sinatra, These Boots Are Made for Walkin’ (with Teri Garr and Toni Basil as go-go dancers!); Neil Sedaka, Calendar Girl (each month his calendar girl is wearing a different costume); and Aretha Franklin, Respect, taped on the streets of NYC.
Nancy Sinatra, in fact, did an Emmy-winning television special in 1967, Movin’ with Nancy, composed almost entirely of music videos filmed around the Los Angeles area. It’s now available on DVD.
I have heard but cannot verify that the first such short --to define it as “material that would be impossible to recreate in a live performance” --was “Travellin’ Man” done by Rick Nelson for the Ozzie and Harriet Show. I reckon that would have been in the 50’s.
The earlier “soundies” were, IIRC, live performances, usually done in one-scene type format. The ones I have seen look like they were done in one continuous take as well.
Actually, “Classical Gas” was aired on the “Smothers Brothers” - Mason Williams was one of the musical talents for the show; IIRC he wrote their theme song.
Sorry, but Sullivan had only live acts on his show. No videos, even for the Beatles.
Rick Nelson’s “Travelling Man” is probably the first video televised that didn’t just feature the singer performing; there was travelogue footage superimposed over him as he sang. However, “Your Hit Parade” had singers dramatizing songs starting even earlier.
The Beatles were the first rock group to do something only as a video – when they stopped touring, they produced short films of “All You Need is Love” and “Hey Jude.” And, FWIW, “Magical Mystery Tour” was pretty much a music video, as was the songs in “A Hard Day’s Night” and “Help.”
Of course, the form is almost as old as talkies: it was common for singers to be featured in a theatrical short subject. Some were merely a record of their performances, but others had plotlines and visuals in among the singing.
Back in 1980-1981 my local cable had a channel called SPN. (Not ESPN, just SPN - Satellite Programming Network, I think).
They had a program called “Video Concert Hall” which was an hour or two long and ran on weekends. It was all music videos. This was before MTV, so some videos obviously existed.
I’m not positive, and I sure don’t have a cite, but I seem to remember my mother telling me that between features at the movie theaters in her day there were not only the newsreels and cartoons, but shorts of some of the famous musical acts of the day performing.
Long before MTV and cable, there was a thing called movies. We would sometimes go to movies with titles like “X in Concert!” some of which were/are distributed as a movie, some of which have since been chopped up to make “music videos.” IIRC, I saw a Rolling Stones concert film prior to 1981.
I remember seeing numerous concerts during which short films would be shown while the band played. After video technology was up to it, a lot of bands showed videos rather than films. I saw Fleetwood Mac (?) in 1980 and they showed video at the end of the concert as a means of escaping without encores/mobbing. At some point, Patti Smith was showing a film that Robert Mapplethorpe had made of her.
Of course, there were also films that set images to music made bu others. “Fantasia” springs to mind.
Sorry, but Sullivan did in fact play videos on his show, and yes they were videos made by The Beatles. The videos were made after The Beatles stopped touring and making live appearences. One of the videos was for Hello, Goodbye.
I’ve argued this before, but for some reason nobody wants go give the cred to the folks who deserve it. The short-format musical film has been around almost since the beginning of talkie films.
They were often the top jazz and swing hits of the day, and often incorporated state of the art special effects, especially but not limited to animation. This list names a lot of the animated music cartoons, including the works of the Duke, Cab Calloway, and Benny Goodman. A fine example which I occasionally still see on cable is Betty Boop being chased by a malevolent Louis Armstrong in the uplifting little tune, “I’ll Be Glad When You’re Dead, You Rascal, You.”
As you can see, a lot of them are probably considered to be in poor taste today. Then again, why not go back and reexamine some of those Journey videos ca. 1984?
In fact, the only major difference I can see is that musical short films were filmed and music videos are videotaped–if they suck. Otherwise, it’s very much the same thing.
I’ve long known that the first video played on MTV was “Video Killed The Radio Star” (as is mentioned earlier). While there were plenty of videos made and shown on television prior to MTV, I always have felt there was some sort of catch-22 about “Video Killed The Radio Star.”
Until MTV came along, I don’t think this song title could possibly be anywhere near accurate. Yet it was the first video to play.
How did this come about? The song title is more prophetic than historical.
[nitpick]“All You Need Is Love” was performed live on television by the band as part of the first worldwide live television linkup, for a program called “Our World.” It was not produced as a short film; the extant footage that is used that way is the archival footage of the show.[/nitpick]