I was a pioneer in MTV and I was there from the very beginning. So I saw how that developed and how loose it was and how much fun it was in its looseness. And I was influenced a lot by that.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I worked with three people who were doing video music shows before MTV.
I found out a lot of stuff through MTV, and I didn't even have cable, I just saw it at friends' houses. But my culture in junior high was totally influenced by it.
MTV was such a great training for me. I did live interviews with everyone from Michael Jackson to Madonna.
Until MTV, television had not been a huge influence on music. To compete with MTV, the country music moguls felt they had to appeal to the same young audience and do it the way MTV did.
I am truly blessed to have been a part of the MTV family for so long.
I grew up watching MTV, so it's very surreal to me to think that there might be someone out there watching MTV, looking at us the way I used to look at Davis Madonna and Duran Duran videos.
I was one of the first veejays to take the camera out on location, and that's what was unique about MTV at that time.
I preferred MTV as it used to be when it was about the music - I don't like it that now they just have reality shows. Reality TV rots people's brains.
I've only been on MTV once as one of their 'Closet Classics,' with some bootleg footage of a 1970 tour I did in Holland. They didn't know what to make of my music, but they finally invented a name for it - world beat music.
I was inspired by a lot of people when I was young. Every band that came through town, to the theater, or the dance hall. I was at every dance, every night club, listened to every band that came through, because in those days we didn't have MTV, we didn't have television.