“A WHOPPING, STEAMING TURD”
THE WORST VIDEO EVER MADE
BILLY SQUIER, artist: I came up with “Rock Me Tonite” on holiday in Greece, swimming off Santorini. I came out of the water and said to my girlfriend, “I’ve got a hit for the next record.”
MICK KLEBER: “Rock Me Tonite” is often ranked as one of the worst music videos of all time.
RUDOLF SCHENKER: I liked Billy Squier very much, but then I saw him doing this video in a very terrible way. I couldn’t take the music serious anymore.
STEVE LUKATHER: Billy Squier was a cool guy. I worked on one of his records. But that video killed his career.
PHIL COLLEN: The first big tour Def Leppard did in the States was in ’83, as the opening act for Billy Squier. A year later, Squier learned the hard way that rock singers shouldn’t skip through their bedroom, ripping their shirts off. That’s in the first chapter of the rock handbook. You should know that straight off the bat.
BILLY SQUIER: I had an idea for the video, based on the ritual of going to a concert. If we admit it, when we’re getting ready to go out, we’re checking our clothes and our hair. So I wanted to show me doing that in my apartment, then cut back and forth with kids getting ready to go to a Billy Squier concert and sneaking out of the house. In the last chorus, they get to where they’re going, I get to where I’m going, we’re all in it together.
The first person we went to is Bob Giraldi, the biggest video director in the world. I sent him the song, he loved it, we had a meeting, everything was good. Three weeks later, he called my office and said, “I’m out.” He decided it wasn’t something he’d want his kids to see. I was like, “Huh?”
BOB GIRALDI: Having seen the video, he was right: I should have been the director.
MICK KLEBER: Giraldi said he was routinely turning down projects that were underfunded. He was interested, if we could enlarge the budget. Compared to other labels, Capitol budgets were conservative. Bob understood and politely bowed out.
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