As we saw in the last episode, The Boomtown Rats were really trying to push the boundaries with music video. But nowhere is this more evident than in the video for their second huge hit single, I Don’t Like Mondays, directed by David Mallet.
By this stage, The Rats had completely abandoned the performance element of the video. In the late 1970s, they were one of the first bands to do that and were far ahead of anyone else at this stage in their career.
The video for I Don’t Like Mondays was framed like a mini-soap opera. By telling the story through scenes of everyday life – at home and in school - the video wanted to project the sense of psychosis that is the key element of the song. The national press described it as a rock video classic.
The follow-up single to Mondays – one of my favourite Rats’ singles - is Diamond Smiles and this too puts the story of the song ahead of the performance. There are so many elements to this video – including the stuttering edits that emphasise the tragedy of the song.
On the face of it, the video for Someone’s Looking At You – another magnificently powerful single off The Fine Art of Surfacing – is a bit of a back-step. It’s a performance video recorded I think, during their 1980 world tour. Unlike their first promo for Looking After Number One, in this case the video footage is over-dubbed with the studio recording of the song – so lots of odd lip-sync issues! Geldof’s even playing guitar.
But what this video allows the band to do is to share that epic stage set with those not lucky enough (or old enough) to see the band live on that tour. That huge scaffold, with the lights playing ‘noughts and crosses’ cost the band a vast amount of money to set-up, dismantle and then ship from gig to gig. But everyone knew it was worth it.
We’ll end this series of occasional posts with part 5, which will look at how video continued to shape the music business.