Going Insane Videos

[michelej1]

[Talking about Go Insane, I was thinking how the biggest thing Lindsey had to promote that album was the videos. Those videos were highly praised. We should definitely have them on DVD.]

CHICAGO TRIBUNE, September 13, 1985

Section: FRIDAY \

SORRY, BRUCE, BUT LOOK WHO`S IN THE LEAD
Tom Popson.

Which artist`s videos received the most nominations for tonight`s MTV awards? According to a tally made by the folks at MTV, Bruce Springsteen videos received three nominations, Don Henley and Eurythmics each received five nominations and David Lee Roth videos got six.

But the nominations leader is Lindsey Buckingham , member of Fleetwood Mac, whose videos for `` Go Insane `` and ``Slow Dancing,`` songs on Buckingham`s current solo album, received seven nominations, all in the ``professional`` categories. Both videos are nominated in the categories of Best Special Effects, Best Editing and Most Experimental Video, and `` Go Insane `` is among contenders in the Best Cinematography category.

Buckingham obviously owes a good deal to his editors, cameramen, effects people and director Danny Klineman, who worked on both videos. But it was Buckingham who came up with the initial ideas and moods for the videos, storyboarding in rough form `` Go Insane `` and collaborating closely with Klineman on both clips.

We talked to Buckingham recently about his clips, the MTV awards and
video in general:

Q--Is it a struggle to come up with ideas for a video?

A--It`s a lot like doing a song or coming up with parts for songs. I tend to
be an insomniac. You`ve got this project running through your head, and half
the time you`re lying in bed until 5 in the morning, and you can`t get to
sleep because you can`t turn the brain off.

These things tend to come late at night, for some reason. I try to keep
normal hours, but I have trouble sleeping. The idea for ``Go Insane`` just
started coming one night, and I was writing it down for a period of about two days. I can`t really take complete credit for storyboarding, but most of the
stronger images were presented to Danny in some form first.

Q--How would you describe that video to someone who hadn`t seen it?

A--I don`t know. I`d say it`s an atmospheric video. It has a rhythmic feel to it that goes along extremely well with what the music is doing. Doing it as video, as opposed to film, tended to lend a surreal quality to it. I mean, it is a surreal video all around. It has a lot of references to painters and
certain styles of modern art.

The ``Slow Dancing`` video was more of a quickie. There`s a scene in
``Citizen Kane`` where Orson Welles is standing with his wife in what is
supposed to be Hearst Castle. There`s a huge fireplace about as big as the
whole wall, and he`s actually standing inside the fireplace. I just had this
vision of someone sort of holed up in a house by himself, with a slightly
gothic feel to it. I was much more general in what I was thinking about, and
Danny just took it from there.

Q--Is winning an MTV award important to an artist?

A--In my case, being nominated meant a lot to me because I interpreted it as not only people appreciating the videos. I interpreted the number of nominations as indicating a number of people wanted to give something back, and that means a lot to me.

If you want to talk about awards in general....Having been with Fleetwood Mac through the Grammy trip and all, I think awards are basically a
promotional device and you have to look at them like that. The important thing is to be involved with your work and be dedicated to your work and try to remain fresh and grow--and not get caught up in all that other stuff. That`s just peripheral, as far as I`m concerned.

It`s hard to maintain that attitude all the time, though. In this
society, you don`t necessarily get a lot of pats on the back. Especially now. Radio is very constrictive, very formulized on just about all levels. It`s
difficult to be original and maintain originality and get the reinforcement a person needs to do that.

It may be a little easier for me in the sense I`m not hurting for money.
I don`t have to go out there and tour to sell records to make the money. Nor
do I really have to bow to any pressures that may or may not exist in a record company.

Q--Do you watch much music video?

A--I have a house in Bel-Air, and I have a recording studio in my garage. I have a 24-track (recording console) and a Fairlight (synthesizer) and all that stuff. I don`t work all the time there--it gets to be a little confining, and it has its limitations--but a lot of the way I work is sort of singular.

And when I`m working there, what I tend to do is tune the TV in the
bedroom, which is right across from the garage, to MTV. Then if I come out and take a 10-minute break, I`ll take a random sampling of it. If you do that, the odds are you`ll be pretty current on what`s going on. But I don`t do it only for that reason. It`s also like an alternate music reality. If I walk by, I
might just happen to pick something out of the air that`ll be useful to what
I`m doing.

Q--People often say the music-video field is in its infancy. But maybe it has grown as much as it`s going to, in the sense that the form we have now is pretty much what we`re going to have in the future. New directors, new songs, new styles of music, perhaps, but all in the same kind of format we see now.

A--I don`t see how it could change really, unless the song form changes. Obviously, you can argue that it`s being used in a somewhat moronic way. People jumping up and down in front of cameras, lip-synching to their songs. Which doesn`t reek of being art exactly.

Perhaps there are other things that could be done that haven`t been done
yet, still within a three-to-four-minute time limit. But it`s the same thing
with music in general. There are so many possibilities that could be explored that will never, ever see the light of day. Which is too bad.

As far as video being in its infancy, it`s possible it`s already in its
old age and it`s just a fad that`s not going to last. It`s quite possible that five years down the line people will just say, ``Enough already with this.``