American culture has one great theme, race, and one great art form, pop music, and the two are and will always be inseparable, will always be the twin helices of our national DNA.
—David Kirby, in Crossroad: Artist, Audience, and the Making of American Music (2015)
Rick’s struggle to force MTV to play videos starring well-known black musicians was one of the most moral actions of his life.
MTV, the first twenty-four-hour all-music television channel, began broadcasting at midnight on August 1, 1981, with a brilliantly selected video by the Buggles, a British new wave band, titled “Video Killed the Radio Star.” As the video’s title implied, MTV’s goal was to supplant radio in the minds and ears of music fans.
Within a short while, MTV became the fastest-growing network in cable television history and was spinning out new musical stars. Owned by the corporate giants Warner Communications and American Express, MTV, after two years on the air, was reaching twelve million homes with videos of popular songs. It was also delivering a dream audience for advertisers: 85 percent of its viewers were between twelve and thirty-four years old.
The problem with MTV from Rick’s point of view was that the station wouldn’t play his work, or the videos of any black artists or groups that had achieved widespread popularity. Over the years, the network rejected all five videos Rick sent it, including those based on “Super Freak” and “Give It to Me Baby.” Other black musicians were also turned away. As veteran video producer Kenneth Matthews told Vibe magazine in 1995, MTV only wanted “images that won’t threaten their audience: safe, non-threatening images of black men.” Matthews called the station “racist.”
Rolling Stone reported that of more than 750 videos played on MTV during the channel’s first eighteen months, fewer than 24 featured black artists. Adding insult to bigotry, the first purportedly “black” video played on the channel was “Rat Race” by the Specials, a seven-member British ska band that included only two black musicians.
Author J. Randy Taraborrelli wrote that MTV’s research and marketing departments seemed to have decided white kids in the suburbs did not like black music and were afraid of black people. Other analysts thought, however, that the nature of television itself accounted for MTV’s stance: to skittish whites, hearing black musicians might be one thing, but seeing them would be another. In other words, who was black and who was white hadn’t been clear over the radio, but it would be on TV.
The station’s only semi-viable defense was that music played on the radio was also somewhat segregated. But that argument ignored the many black crossover artists who were being played on white radio stations. It also overlooked the fact that MTV broadcast thousands more videos per year than any other video broadcasting station, that it was the biggest video broadcaster in the United States in the early 1980s, and that it was growing so fast it would soon dominate the entire music video field. There were many more radio stations than video outlets playing music in America, but no radio station held the dominant position MTV held.
Rick raged against MTV’s anti-black policy on numerous occasions for more than two years at public events, in interviews with the press, and on TV and radio. That he was unable to make any headway during that period shows the depth of American racism in the 1980s, and the hold that racism still had on the popular music business.
Soon after MTV rejected the first video Rick submitted to them, and long before they rejected all five he sent, Rick began fighting for video equality not only for himself but for all black musicians. He pointed out to journalists and music critics that if MTV’s proclamations that its broadcasts helped musicians sell many more records were true, the station was costing him hundreds of thousands of dollars in record sales. “Fuck MTV,” he concluded, calling the channel’s policy “a terrible crime” and “racist bullshit, pure and simple.” In April 1983 he upped the ante by telling Newsweek magazine MTV “probably started out with a requirement of no niggers.” Rick called MTV’s action regarding his own videos “pitiful” but added that even if MTV started showing his videos, he wouldn’t be happy until MTV was “showing a ton of black videos regularly.”
He had expected that other black artists would join him in his protest, but very few did. As Rick’s brother LeRoi Johnson notes, “The only person out there protesting was Rick . . . not Michael Jackson, not Prince, not the Gap Band, not any of those acts.” In fact, one of the only other musicians to publicly join in the criticism was Maurice White of Earth, Wind & Fire, who criticized MTV’s policies on 20/20.
Some black musicians supported Rick privately but were taken in. MTV’s only black video jockey, J. J. Jackson, said Miles Davis once approached him, looked him in the eyes, and said, “Tell me, young man, how come MTV doesn’t play any black videos?” After noting irrelevantly that the long-dead Jimi Hendrix hadn’t made any videos, and that MTV didn’t play any videos by the also-long-dead Elvis Presley, Jackson told Davis, “Believe me, if I thought they weren’t playing black artists because they were black, there’s no way in hell I would be their patsy for that.” According to Jackson, Davis “then looked at me for like 20 seconds—man, it felt like a lifetime—and said absolutely nothing.” Finally, Davis said, “Very good, young man.”
Rick speculated other black musicians were “afraid to offend MTV” because they still hoped the station would play their videos. “I can’t believe how stupid they are,” Rick said. “MTV may play their videos when hell freezes over, but not before.” Newsweek called Rick’s protests “gallant.”
MTV’s power in the music industry was so huge at this time, however, that even Rick, not known for his lack of aggressiveness, pointed out that he wasn’t “talking about a boycott.” A boycott might have seriously upset MTV, and no one, even the fearless Super Freak, wanted to stick a pin that sharp in one of the giant’s toes. Still, Rick was hurt by the silence of other black musicians. “I’m mad at them, really mad,” he told an AP reporter. “They’re going to let me do all the rapping and get into trouble, and then they’ll reap the benefits.” Some other black artists, including Stevie Wonder, Teddy Pendergrass, Nick Ashford, and Valerie Simpson, did complain to MTV execs in private but refused to criticize the channel in public.
White musicians David Bowie, Bob Seger, and, later, Keith Richards, did support Rick publicly. During an interview by video jockey Mark Goodman on MTV in 1983, Bowie asked Goodman, “Why do you think MTV doesn’t play black music?” Goodman, surprised, said, “We try to play music for a particular type of demographic and genre.”
“What about all the black kids?” Bowie responded, and Goodman replied, “You got to talk to MTV about that.” Of course, Bowie was talking to MTV.
Music companies employing both black and white artists remained silent during Rick’s crusade. Even Rick’s own record company, Motown, pointed out that its top artists’ videos, while not shown on MTV, had been broadcast on the other much smaller TV video outlets.
MTV president Robert Pittman, a white man from Mississippi, aggressively defended himself against charges of racism by Rick and others. He called people who objected to MTV’s virtual exclusion of black artists “little Hitlers or people from Eastern European bloc communist countries” and said, “I don’t know who the fuck these people are to tell people who they should like.”
MTV representatives also noted that they had broadcast a few videos by the relatively little-known African American and Hispanic group the Bus Boys, as well as the black British reggae band Musical Youth, but that those videos never caught on with their audience.
In a revealing conversation with MTV executive Carolyn Baker, a black woman who wanted MTV to air a James Brown video, Pittman said the station’s preferred audience “doesn’t think that rock ’n’ roll came from James Brown. They believe it came from the Beatles.” In support of this mistaken belief, MTV aired Phil Collins singing the Supremes’ song “You Can’t Hurry Love” as well as Hall & Oates, Men at Work, and other white musicians and groups singing songs originally sung by black musicians.
In the end, however, two years after Rick’s crusade began, MTV decided it had to yield to the forces of progress once they were applied by another corporation that was big enough to scare it. In 1983, CBS Records complained to MTV executives after they declined to play Michael Jackson’s newly released “Billie Jean” video.
Jackson had a big advantage over Rick. Rick’s employer, Motown, had only two superstars, Rick and Lionel Richie, both black. But Jackson, after leaving Motown, had become a superstar for CBS Records, which also employed the superstar act Journey, a white and Hispanic band, and the superstar white band REO Speedwagon.
Ron Weisner, one of Jackson’s managers, told Billboard he took MTV a rough cut of “Billie Jean” and MTV declined to play it. When Weisner told CBS Records head Walter Yetnikoff and CBS head Bill Paley about MTV’s rejection, the two executives told MTV, “This video is on by the end of the day or [CBS Records] isn’t doing business with MTV anymore,” Weisner said. “That was the video that broke the color barrier.”
MTV duly played “Billie Jean,” and also aired Jackson’s next video, “Beat It.” They became the most popular videos in MTV history—so popular that when Jackson’s next video, “Thriller,” was released, Pittman not only aired it but paid $250,000 for the right to air it first. MTV also pre-promoted “Thriller” on-air every time it was going to play, and after every viewing, the channel’s ratings spiked dramatically. “We learned a lot about programming,” Les Garland, an MTV cofounder, said lamely.
Years afterward, MTV was still trying to come up with acceptable cover stories for its refusal to play Rick’s videos. In 2006 Garland argued that Rick’s “Super Freak” video was not aired because “its contents were a little over the top for us,” and he said the network’s “standards and practices” wouldn’t allow it because of the content of the visuals. Carolyn Baker added that the “Super Freak” video was rejected “because there were half-naked women in it,” and called it “a piece of crap.” These arguments are surprising, because while this excellent video implied women might enjoy sex, it showed no flesh you couldn’t see at a high school prom in Iowa in 1965 and no sex acts. It did, however, show Rick flirting with a group of women, only two of whom were black, which may have shocked some MTV execs.
After playing Michael Jackson’s videos, the channel soon began playing videos by Prince, Whitney Houston, Janet Jackson, and Stevie Wonder, generating massive new revenues for itself and for CBS. In 1985, however, apparently still writhing with pain at the thought of being forced to air black videos, MTV relapsed and reestablished segregation by founding another channel, VH1, which played not only Rick’s videos but many other black videos MTV still refused to play.
Rick sort of made it onto MTV itself in 1985 when the channel aired the Eddie Murphy video “Party All the Time,” which Rick had produced and in which he appeared. One of its major selling points for MTV execs was that Les Garland actually appeared in the video, listening to Murphy sing. Movie star Murphy sang the song, not Rick, who played his real role in the song, its producer, on the video. Although Garland said Rick had apologized for calling him a racist by that time, Rick’s own videos remained relegated to VH1.
Racism in the music business will probably never die completely. In 1998 Rick’s managers tried to schedule a performance for him at the Omaha Civic Auditorium. Auditorium managers rejected their application, saying “two other black groups were already booked” for dates shortly before and shortly after the date Rick had requested. Only after Rick protested to Mayor Hal Daub’s office was the rejection rescinded.