Rick Krim joined the staff of MTV in 1982, one year after the network’s launch, and during his twelve-year tenure rose to become a vice president of music programming. He was instrumental in deciding which videos did and didn’t make the cut during the hair band era and beyond.
I don’t even think there was one. There was very little hard rock or metal getting played on the channel. At that time, it was bands like Duran Duran, Cyndi Lauper, and Culture Club that were really branded as “MTV.” Also, it was a lot of UK acts. The Brits got it early on, whereas the American labels were more like, “Why should we pay for your programming by making videos and letting you air them for free?” But then MTV started breaking bands that weren’t even on the radio, and that was the point where the American labels really started to see the potential value.
Quiet Riot’s “Cum On Feel the Noize.” I’m sure there was stuff that was played before them, but that was the one that really broke through, the first real big hit from a band in that lane. Then came “We’re Not Gonna Take It” by Twisted Sister.
Without a doubt. That stuff played better to the mass-appeal audience and probably to the female audience—unless, of course, the band was all cute guys, and then they could stare at them all day. But in general, it just made the videos a little more interesting. It was just fun. It hadn’t gotten yet to the cliché of what the videos became—rain and smoke and cars—whatever the prop du jour was. And it wasn’t misogynistic yet.
You did get numb to it, and I think living in a very, very pre-#MeToo era, when Tawny Kitaen was spread out over a car in a Whitesnake video, people thought that was sexy. I can’t speak for the women who were working there, but nobody really voiced any real outrage. It’s not like we sat in meetings and talked about it. Some people think Warrant’s video for “Cherry Pie” is funny and silly, and other people are offended by it. That said, the Sam Kinison videos for “Wild Thing” and “Under My Thumb” stuck out. It was all these famous rockers standing around watching Jessica Hahn roll around on the ground, you had women on leashes, you had women feeding each other bananas, even spraying Reddi-Wip into their mouths. Those were a bit much for some people to handle and there was likely a larger discussion around them.
I actually was the liaison for a long time with our standards and practices person, so I’m the guy that had to go sit with them every week and go through the proposed edits. I could either fight back or just accept it and relay that stuff to the labels. Every week there were little things, but as I recall, it was usually just “Edit this scene at 3:20” or “Take this one shot out—there’s side-boobage.” The labels generally just did it, because they wanted to be on the channel. Honestly, things like Nine Inch Nails’ “Closer” or Pearl Jam’s “Jeremy,” where the original video has the kid sticking a gun in his mouth, were much more problematic.
Me and John Canelli, who was my counterpart in the programming department, split all the labels between us. He had Geffen and PolyGram, so he had Guns N’ Roses, Def Leppard, and Bon Jovi. I was the Elektra, Atlantic, Columbia, Epic guy, so I had Mötley Crüe, Skid Row, and whoever else was on those labels. We all had our big acts that we had relationships with. You were the liaison for all the business. Submitting videos went through us. The video promotion people at the labels would work us, and we would go into the weekly music meeting and represent those labels. We’d communicate their priorities, push for what they were pushing for. More often than not, we went out of our way to try to take care of people as best we could and to spread it around. We wanted to have good relationships with everybody. And yeah, there’s always some barter going on; if you wanted to do something big with Guns N’ Roses, then you would play the Junkyard video because it was also on Geffen. Nothing illegal or anything. It happens everywhere.
Guns N’ Roses was awesome. I didn’t even look at them as metal. Guns N’ Roses was just this kick-ass, no-frills rock band. They weren’t pretty boys, they were just rock. There was a purity to it that felt like, There’s nothing contrived whatsoever about this. It was exciting to see that. People at the network were like, “Oh my god, this band, they’re so fucking good!” Which I couldn’t say for some bands that came around later on. A lot of bands that followed suit didn’t feel quite as genuine.
I think some of the bands figured out how to get people in the phone banks. It seemed obvious when certain bands would be number one every day, and that didn’t align with what was really going on in America. Britny Fox is the one that sticks in my brain. And Britny Fox was fine, but they were number one, like, every day. Not that they didn’t deserve to be in the Top 10, but number one every day was pushing it. There’s a long history in this business of trying to beat the system however you can do it, and I think they found a way and it worked for them. And others followed.
I got to be really friendly with the Mötley guys. I hung out with Tommy Lee a lot. I was really close with Kip Winger and I was golf buddies with the guys in Warrant. My whole thing was I genuinely liked the people in the bands I hung out with.
Nobody ever likes giving people news they don’t want to hear. That’s never any fun, especially with people that you like and know. But I can’t think of any example where I had a relationship damaged because all of a sudden it wasn’t their day. At this point now, it’s just fun to see these guys. I hadn’t seen Nikki Sixx in a long time and ran into him last year. It was great to sit back and reminisce about those days, realizing what a great time it was and how much fun we had—and how much success.