Kennedy - Kennedy Chronicles: The Golden Age of Mtv Through Rose Colored Glasses

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For Andy

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

My name is Kennedy from MTV. When I started as an MTV VJ in 1992, my manager told me no matter what I did as a broadcaster, when I left MTV that it would always be my first, middle, and last name. I was a VJ from 1992 to 1997, a time when music and culture collided, alternative music became a legitimate genre, grunge was born, and music was everything. People actually bought music they loved in multiple formats, even cassingles! And they watched MTV, lots of it, and grew up with those of us lucky enough to be on the channel.

When I started at MTV I had barely turned twenty, so while my friends from high school were matriculating, I was roaming the streets of New York in mens pajamas and combat boots interviewing rock stars and looking for trouble. I found it all: famous friends, crazy circumstances, a perspective on music I never thought possible, and access to a world where I was a delighted misfit. There was never a greater collision of culture and media, and today the few who break through fight constantly with a disjointed media, social networking, and people doing just about anything to get famous.

Our head wardrobe stylist Jimmy Hanrahan described MTV like this, In 1992 MTV was in full swing, luckily the studio was in a separate building at the time so we all flew under the radar. Crazy things like Nirvana, Keith Richards, and drinking at work were all normal behavior. That being said, the radar was not very powerful as it was a very loose job environment. Bosses breaking their wrists in stairwells, smoking pot at Christmas parties, it all was normal. On the fashion front, rising ahead of trends and keeping the on-camera talent comfortable in their own skin was not an easy task. Being yourself on TV was different than playing a character or even now being a reality star.

In 1992, Seattle musicians set the tone for notoriety: They didnt want it. If you were looking to be famous rather than express your art you were somehow a big phony who didnt deserve a spot on the stage. Being famous for being famous was a crime, and musicians like Donovan Leitch and artists like Sofia Coppola were at risk of being poster children who only gained notoriety by proxy. It was okay to make fun of fame, it was glorious to trivialize empty celebrities who guarded themselves with publicists and lists of taboo questions, but to be vainglorious was a crime worthy of crucifixion. I turned down hundreds of thousands of dollars in advertisements from Kmart and Apple and Discover card and various cosmetics and eyewear companies because I feared looking like a sellout. Can you imagine the Kardashians turning down any kind of endorsement? It was a different age.

Artists were to be handled with kid gloves, but by roughing them up a little I earned a no-bullshit reputation with viewers, but I also endured their wrath. After reciting a series of love poems about hunkified Soundgarden drummer Matt Cameron, his lead singer Chris Cornell got in my face at the Video Music Awards and growled, Stay away from my drummer! Hey, wait, Chris. I thought you were too cool to watch MTV!

As a VJ I modeled for Jean Paul Gaultier, I played dice with Michael Jordan on the floor of the mens room of a trendy bar, and I told Anthony Kiedis his best friend River Phoenix had ODed on heroin. I was banned from the MTV studio on the days Al Gore and Bill Clinton stopped by, and I was never allowed back to The Jon Stewart Show after I asked his guest Rod Stewart (no relation) if hed really had a quart of male DNA pumped from his stomach. I did all these things because thats what you do when youre twenty and wild and living in the moment in a special universe where your future may be uncertain, but ignoring the access would be criminal.

I am writing this book for all the people who came of age during that time. Some are older than me, some are still finding their way, many of us have kids and love to look back and live in that fleeting moment of our youth. It is a time they can never take away, and it sure as hell is fun to relive those passionate, earnest moments when music mattered and time stopped. I am Kennedy from MTV, and no matter where I go someone has a story to tell me about the time we grew up together.

AND SO IT BEGINS

My frustrated, grizzled high school guidance counselor Ed, the one who told me I had nice knees, was fed up with my bad grades and told me I would either become a star, or Id end up broke and homeless and Id regret squandering my precious high school potential as a strangely dressed loudmouth. Two years and two months later I was on a plane bound for New York City ready to start my job as an MTV VJ. There is no more potent force in society than a misfit with something to prove.

Transforming from an average Oregonian teenager to a late-night radio DJ to a certified TV personality waiting for my name to be etched in the annals of pop culture along with the likes of Alan Hunter and Adam Curry seemed like a clever joke that could evaporate at any minute. From 1992 to 1997 that feeling stayed with me, tucked uncomfortably inside my mental pocketbook, as if at any minute, with the wrong insult or impulsive act, it could vanish as quickly as it appeared. How did I become a VJ? Hell if I know. More important, how can YOU become a VJ? You cant, because the job doesnt exist anymore. Like sexual harassment in the workplace and two-martini lunches, VJs are the stuff of urban legend whose time and train have passed, but I was fortunate enough to sneak onto the express and ride it through the greatest age in MTV history. In the nineties MTV was a wonderland of musical genres where hip-hop, metal, and a burgeoning alternative rock scene mingled like shallots and fresh basil in a bubbling, cultural stew. MTV was always finding its voice, lending a megaphone to a new generation to amplify and project its immortal tastes onto a blank, waiting screen. When I arrived it was in blissful transition from metal to grunge, and having come from West Coast alternative radio I was well aware of a shift within the songs and bands I knew, and I was delighting in the domino effect music was having on every part of culture.

As the plane rolled down the LAX tarmac my new and former boss Andy Schuon looked back at me with a bug-eyed smirk that shot bolts of fear and excitement into my abdomen, searing the feeling into my memory like a calf brand. In one look he was saying, This is real. Its happening. You were an intern at the radio station ten months ago and now youre going to New York to work at MTV and millions of people will know your name. Now dont fuck it up. Andy did in fact pluck me from the KROQ intern program. He was the program director at LAs world-famous alternative radio station where at eighteen I started answering the request line, opening mail, and sorting music. One day the cherub-faced wunderkind of modern rock called me into his office and asked if Id like to do an air shift, which meant he was going to let me talk into a microphone and broadcast my eager, nasally voice to the two million people who regularly came in contact with the station. Ive never been short of confidence, a trait that has landed me in serendipity and shit, and I was pretty sure being a radio DJ was the greatest and easiest job in existence. But I thought either I misheard him or hed gone insane, and his last act before they carted him out on a stretcher would be to let me hold the listeners hostage for a few uncomfortable hours.