INTERVIEW

Frank Zappa, MTV, USA
1984, 18 min 59 sec

MTV is helping with that syndrome because all video outlets and that’s basically the focus of the music today as whether or not what you do is video acceptable let’s let’s look at it realistically if a person likes music that is not enough in the 80s you can like music and you can play music you can sing you can dance you can have all these things going for you but you’re not even going to get to first base unless you have science fiction hair and diagonal zippers on your clothes forget it you go to a record company to make a deal and the first thing they’re going to do is look at your bubble isset a picture if they don’t like that they won’t even listen to the tape in fact they don’t even care about the tape because they can always get Trevor Horn to fix it and so after Trevor is fixed it and they’ve approved your publicity photo then you get the video treatment and everything gets formulated according to the Warner Brothers aesthetic it goes onto MTV and it goes on to any other competitor that hasn’t been bought by MTV yet and the group gets exactly one chance to do one thing and their musical lifespan is in direct proportion to the interest that the audience has in the way they look because the whole thing is based on a visual merchandising so what happened to music?