How to Really Clean Up by Airing Dirty Laundry

By JOHN MILWARD

June 27, 1999 12 AM PT

John Milward is a freelance writer based in Woodstock, N.Y

The Byrds’ 1967 song “So You Want to Be a Rock ‘n’ Roll Star” offered three steps to pop stardom: Get an electric guitar, learn how to play, and get just the right look in the hair and the pants.

These days, with the first two tips pretty much passe, it’s easy to imagine future chart-toppers studying “Behind the Music,” the successful documentary series on cable music channel VH1 that milks the drama out of the peaks and valleys of pop life.

“Behind the Music” essentially defined itself with the subjects of its first two programs in 1997: Milli Vanilli and MC Hammer. Both came with suitably juicy hooks--the lip-syncing fiasco that fried the Grammy-winning Milli Vanilli career of Fabrice Morvan and the late Rob Pilatus, and the spending spree that saw Hammer squander a multi-platinum fortune while tanking on the charts.

Memorable music would be an advantage to the subjects covered on “Behind the Music,” but it’s not totally necessary. Sex, drugs (with or without the rock ‘n’ roll), death, bankruptcy, car wrecks, naive musicians, manipulative managers--these are the kind of plot points that truly make for a successful episode of “Behind the Music.”

“Behind the Music” has attracted rabid fans in and outside the entertainment business. Jim Forbes, who narrates the series, recently recorded parodies of the show for Chris Rock and Rosie O’Donnell, and the series was a natural to be spoofed on “Saturday Night Live.” (Forbes, a 20-year veteran of TV news, can also be heard on “CNN Newsstand: Fortune.”)

Stand-up comedian Kate Clinton jokes that she likes to watch the show when she can’t get to a 12-step meeting. Randy Newman says he was particularly bummed out to learn about the unhappy lives of teen idols, and joked, “It’s not ‘Behind the Music,’ it’s ‘Not About the Music.’ ”

Jeff Gaspin, the show’s creator and a VH1 executive, would beg to disagree. “We’ve redefined music television,” says Gaspin, “to not just mean music videos on television . . . [but] to also mean programming about music.”

This is hardly a revolutionary concept, but VH1’s schedule is now able to document the pop star life-span from cradle to grave.

“Before They Were Rock Stars” uses everything from yearbook pictures to talent-show tapes that show how even famous people can be dorks. “Behind the Music” profiles musicians who might not possess the historical cachet necessary to justify coverage on VH1’s other biography show, “Legends.” Has-been personalities are given another few minutes of fame on “Where Are They Now?” or transformed into trivia as a question on “Rock & Roll Jeopardy!”

But it’s “Behind the Music” that’s caught the public fancy and provided VH1 with a daily flagship show that scores big with the 18- to 49-year-old viewers coveted by blue-chip advertisers. New episodes debut on Sunday night, with ratings up 160% from the program’s debut. All told, different episodes of the show run an average of three times a day; VH1 also bundles the show into multi-hour marathons.

“Early on,” says Gaspin, “we’d approach an artist and they’d say, ‘I’d rather be on ‘Legends.’ But now that ‘Behind the Music’ has proven to sell records and get the top ratings, people don’t want to be a ‘Legend,’ but a ‘Behind the Music.’ ”

For a high-profile superstar like Shania Twain (6.4 million viewers in her debut rotation), appearing on “Behind the Music” is just another piece of a multimedia promotional blitz to promote a current recording. But the exposure can also help fringe performers. The week before he was a “Behind the Music” subject, six albums in Iggy Pop’s catalog sold a total of 489 units. The week afterward, the number climbed to 1,221.

“Behind the Music” is also the kind of nonfiction program that’s relatively inexpensive to produce. Natural cable companions to “Behind the Music” include the venerable “Biography” series on A&E;, “Intimate Profiles” on Lifetime and “The E! True Hollywood Story.” “Behind the Music” distinguishes itself by putting a beat to contemporary culture’s twin obsessions with gossip and entertainment news.

Newman has a theory about the popularity of “Behind the Music.” “It strikes me,” he says, “that People magazine was either a reflection of the world or changed the world to where personal gossip has become common. Now it’s as if everybody knows everything. And these days, with things like ‘Entertainment Tonight,’ everybody knows about show business. It’s like everybody’s got their own business plus show business. And show business isn’t that big a deal--it’s certainly not as big as Microsoft.”

True, but dope-addled rockers are more likely to produce juicier stories than business moguls.

More than 50 “Behind the Music” programs have already aired on everybody from Boy George to Tony Orlando, with another 50 scheduled to be produced over the next year (upcoming subjects include Natalie Cole, the Bay City Rollers, the Pretenders and the Woodstock festival).

Gaspin figures they can make about 150 shows before running thin on material, but it’s already obvious that there are recurrent elements in these stories:

* Death in plane crashes (Jim Croce, John Denver, members of Lynyrd Skynyrd and, of course, Buddy Holly, Richie Valens and the Big Bopper).

* Substance abuse (Keith Moon, Motley Crue, Ozzy Osbourne, Joe Cocker, Marianne Faithfull, Andy Gibb, David Crosby, Iggy Pop and many others).

* Jail time (Rick James, Crosby, and the Crue’s Tommy Lee).

* Unusual deaths (the murder of Selena, the choking death of Mama Cass Elliot, Sonny Bono’s skiing accident and Karen Carpenter’s cardiac arrest after her struggle with anorexia nervosa).

* Arson (Tom Petty was a victim of it; Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes of TLC was fined $10,000 and put on five years’ probation for torching her boyfriend’s house).

* Financial mismanagement (Billy Joel, Blondie, MC Hammer, Meat Loaf, Mick Fleetwood, Grand Funk Railroad).

“People have said the show works because people like to see their stars knocked down to size,” says Gaspin, “but I think it’s more that they like to see that their heroes are human. To be sure, their problems are a bit over the top--too much sex, too much money--but they still have problems with sex and money, and that’s something the viewer can understand.”

Gaspin came to VH1 from NBC, where he made his mark by creating a real-life bloopers show called “I Witness Videos.” Critics hated the show, which ran from February 1992 through August 1994, but the ratings were OK. Now Gaspin gets praise and good numbers for “Behind the Music,” a show that works best when rock stars go terribly wrong.

“There are times,” concedes George Moll, who oversees production of the show along with fellow executive producer Gay Rosenthal, “when you have to scratch your head to come up with another way to say, ‘And then things began spiraling out of control.’ We’ve found that if you can avoid cliches, the story speaks for itself.”

And if the story is itself a cliche, well, that’s why shows about bands such as Motley Crue, the Black Crowes and Def Leppard can start to look an awful lot like “This Is Spinal Tap.”

About 20 “Behind the Music” shows are in production at any one time. Each show takes about four months to complete. Each episode has a core production team of three or four, with technical crews and legal counsel on call. A major part of the production process is obtaining the necessary clearances for the use of music, videos and clips from TV shows and films. Clearances are typically negotiated for three years with another three-year option, and eat up between 30% to 50% of a per-show budget that’s less than $200,000.

But the first step is always to secure the cooperation of the artist. “During the initial call,” says Rosenthal, who worked with Gaspin at NBC and whose Los Angeles company produces “Behind the Music,” “we get right into the sensitive areas. I need to know upfront if there are any red flags or areas that the artist considers off limits.”

Rosenthal says one show is currently on hold because the subject refused to allow a specific source to be interviewed. Typically, the producers don’t meet such stiff resistance. “If an artist says, ‘I’ll do the show, but I don’t want to talk about these two things,’ ” says Rosenthal, “we’ll get on the phone with management to figure out how to proceed. We try to respect sensitive areas but insist that the reporting be full and accurate.”

The bottom line is that the dirty laundry of most pop celebrities is already in the public record, so the subject is basically offered the chance to use the interview to tell their own story, or to simply pass on the promotional benefits of being featured on VH1.

Those benefits can be substantial. Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers promoted the recent “Echo” album with both a “Behind the Music” episode and “Storytellers,” another VH1 show that features live performances. The channel has also been relentlessly plugging the band’s summer tour.

“We are a marketing arm for the artist, there’s no question about it,” says Gaspin, “and have found that the combination of ‘Behind the Music’ and ‘Storytellers’ is the strongest package.” “The package” offered by VH1, of course, depends upon the marketability of the particular pop star. Sting, for instance, agreed to do a “Behind the Music” because he was confident that it would provide valuable promotion for his upcoming album, tentatively titled “Brand New Day.” His longtime publicist, Kathryn Schenker, who describes watching “Behind the Music” as a “guilty pleasure, like curling up with a trashy novel,” had just the slightest hesitation about exposing her client to inquiring minds.

“My reluctance came from seeing shows where people just seemed to wallow in the mistakes of their past,” says Schenker, “but knowing Sting, I knew that there was nothing particularly outrageous in his closet, so for him, it would be more of an interesting musical journey.”

That’s the superstar view. Other subjects have a different perspective.

Representatives of Poison refused to talk on the record about the obvious--that the upcoming “Behind the Music,” in which the band will recall its drug-addled heyday, will help sell seats on the band’s summer tour. “Behind the Music” will amount to exposure that Poison couldn’t buy. And truth be told, Poison’s dirty laundry will probably make for more interesting television than having Billy Joel and Elton John commenting on what makes Sting such a fine chap.

Similarly, one of the more oddly compelling “Behind the Music” episodes was about former teen idol Leif Garrett. The linchpin of the episode was not Garrett’s string of teeny-bopper hits, but the ramifications of a car crash that occurred when the singer was driving under the influence. The accident left one of Garrett’s best friends, Roland Winkler, crippled.

Winkler was interviewed while sitting in his wheelchair, his long, straw-colored hair bringing to mind Garth of “Wayne’s World.” But there were few laughs on this show, which concluded with the over-the-hill teen idol reunited with Winkler, who forgave Garrett while the cameras rolled.

“It was definitely an uncomfortable moment,” says Gaspin, “but it made for riveting television. We didn’t know we were going to put it in until we saw them together, and it turned into the kind of emotional scene that makes for a classic newsmagazine moment. It struck a nerve and really got people talking about the show.”

The program prompted sales of the “Leif Garrett Collection” at Amazon.com, where some fans posted messages. “Saw the VH1 special 20 times,” reported Shannon. “I’ve taped it, and plan on buying it.”

An L.A. music fan wrote: “I can just hear the song they showed him playing on VH1. Hurry up and release it, Leif. That sound you are working on is gonna be big.”

But until that happens, Garrett will remain in that twilight world where rock dreams and nightmares blur together: “Behind the Music.”*