In the early 1980s, MTV brought artists like Tom Petty increased exposure through music videos. Petty and the Heartbreakers filmed a number of music videos that aired on the channel. One of their most well-known videos was for the 1985 song “Don’t Come Around Here No More.” The Alice and Wonderland-inspired music video caused a bit of controversy even before it aired. Petty shared that he had to cut a scene because MTV thought it went too far.
Tom Petty at the MTV Video Music Awards | Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic, Inc
Tom Petty said putting music videos on MTV brought him more exposure
MTV launched in 1981, five years after Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers formed. According to Petty, the push for music videos brought the band increased exposure.
“In those days MTV was so hungry for product, you could have three or four videos an album,” Petty told Billboard in 2005. “Suddenly, we had a lot of stuff on TV, and then your recognition factor goes up on the street. Instead of being on once a year, you’re on all day long. People are seeing you all the time, so we tried to use it to our advantage, and it was so much fun.”
Tom with his @mtv Video Vanguard Award in 1994 . What’s your favorite Tom Petty video? pic.twitter.com/R0AxI3tVmg
— Tom Petty (@tompetty) August 31, 2020
Soon, the band got comfortable pushing the envelope with their videos.
“By the time we’d done ‘Mary Jane’s Last Dance’ [in 1993], I remember thinking, ‘Can we line up stiffs in the video? Can we open on a line of corpses? Yeah! Sure we can.’”
MTV made Tom Petty cut a scene out of the video for ‘Don’t Come Around Here No More’
One of the band’s most popular music videos was for “Don’t Come Around Here No More.” In it, Petty plays the Mad Hatter, who welcomes Alice to a tea party in a psychedelic Wonderland. Video director Jeff Stein explained that he was surprised Petty went for the concept.
“I was little leery of pitching it to Tom, because at the time, in my mind, he was this straight-ahead rocker and maybe wouldn’t be that adventurous,” Stein told Yahoo. “For him to be in basically a costume melodrama, after whatever his image was before, was very daring, I thought. And he got totally into it. It was very Quentin Crisp. I loved it. He really went for it.”
Not everyone was as big a fan of the video as Petty.
“Mike [Campbell] didn’t like it, I think,” Petty said. “The label hated it, [it] was like, ‘What the hell is this?’ [laughs]. It was one of the only times that I went, ‘OK, we’re going to make a single.’ So it was a real satisfying thing to see it work. The video played a huge part in making it work, and it is a damn good video.”
One of the most controversial parts of the video occurred at …read more
Source:: Showbiz Cheat Sheet
