6 Things You Never Knew About the First MTV VMAs — 40 Years Later

Gabrielle Moss September 12, 2:09 pm

Madonna crawling on the floor at the 1984 VMAs — Madonna performing during the 1984 MTV Video Music Awards at Radio City Music Hall, New York City, September 14th, 1984. Photo by Frank Micelotta/Getty Images.

On Sept. 14, 1984, MTV aired the first Video Music Awards. Today, it’s an annual tradition that competes with more established awards shows like the Grammys and the Billboard Awards, but back then, it was not considered to be in such august company. The Philadephia Inquirer called it “a painful exercise in restrained, yet wretched, excess … MTV’s self-promotional orgy,” and the Nashville Tennessean referred to it as “a dismaying exhibition of amateurism, egomania and Neanderthal incoherence.”

Wretched excess aside, the show was a ratings hit and became one of the most important parts of the channel’s legacy over the next four decades.

But all was not exactly as it seemed at the bouncy, fun, first VMAs, hosted by Dan Aykroyd and Bette Midler. Here are some things you didn’t know were brewing behind the scenes of the famous broadcast.

1. ZZ Top Had to Be Forced to Perform

ZZ TOP: THAT LITTLE OL' BAND FROM TEXAS, from left: Billy Gibbons, Dusty Hill on MTV, 2019.

Abramorama / Courtesy Everett Collection

Though most artists consider it an honor (and a professional boon) to be asked to perform at the VMAs now, at the first one, people were not so sure. Many big names, like Michael Jackson and David Bowie, skipped the event, and Mick Jagger sent in a pre-taped introduction, rather than appearing in person.

And bands were so reluctant to perform like that some, like ZZ Top, had to essentially be blackmailed. ZZ Top’s 1983 album Eliminator was a huge hit for the channel, with videos for “Sharp-Dressed Man” and “Legs” in near-constant rotation. But the band wasn’t sure hauling to New York City to perform in the show was worth their time.

So MTV exec Chip Rachlin made the band’s management an offer they couldn’t refuse. “I called [ZZ Top’s manager] and told him to set a VCR to record MTV from midnight Tuesday to midnight Wednesday,” Rachlin told the authors of I Want My MTV. “For leverage, we’d removed all ZZ Top videos from the air.” The band’s manager called Rachlin on Thursday and agreed to have the bearded Texans play the show.

2. Bubbles the Chimp Attended Without Michael Jackson

Portrait of Bubbles, a chimpanzee owned by popular entertainer Michael Jackson, dressed in jeans and a t-shirt, holds up a photo of himself and the singer, while a plush Bubbles doll stands beside him, Tokyo, Japan, 1987.

Hulton Archive/Getty Images

And he not only walked the red carpet; he also handed the Best New Artist envelope to Jefferson Airplane. Hey, the new show was happy to take whatever it could get — even if that meant a monkey in suspenders. For those wondering where Bubbles is now? He is still alive and well.

3. Madonna’s Famous Floor Roll Was An Accident

Speaking of the show having difficulty getting superstars to perform: That was a boon to a then fairly unknown singer named Madonna, who was able to wrangle a spot performing. Madonna’s original idea had been to sing to a Bengal tiger live on stage, which producers understandably nixed; everyone compromised on the much more conservative option of having the singer stand atop a 17-foot-tall wedding cake in a fluffy white wedding dress, next to a male model dressed as a groom.

But the performance’s most famous moment — when Madonna takes to the floor to roll around suggestively — was absolutely unplanned. In reality, Madonna simply lost a shoe when walking down from the top of the cake; it had dropped onto the ground a short distance away from her. How could she get her show back on live TV? “So I thought, ‘Well, I’ll just pretend I meant to do this,’ and I dove on the floor and I rolled around,” she told Jay Leno in 2012. “And, as I reached for the shoe, the dress went up. And the underpants were showing … I didn’t mean to.”

Immediately afterward, Madonna’s former manager told her, “‘That’s it, you’ve ruined your career’ … I didn’t even know that my butt was showing. I couldn’t compute everything that had happened. And since I didn’t really have a career yet, I didn’t feel that I had lost anything.”

4. Diana Ross Accepted All of Michael Jackson’s Awards Because He Was on a Tour He Hated

Though Jackson was about the biggest thing going on MTV at the time — Thriller was the number one bestselling album in the U.S. in both 1983 and 1984 — Jackson skipped the VMAs. Diana Ross, who accepted awards that night on Jackson’s behalf, told the crowd that Michael was on tour “but sends his love.” But the tour that Jackson was away on was more complex than it seemed.

You likely assumed that, given the success of Thriller, Jackson was on a solo tour to support it. But actually, he was on tour as part of his previous sibling band, the Jacksons, who had just released an album called Victory. Jackson had no desire to do the tour. ”It was the parents’ idea to bring them together because the other brothers needed money,” Michael Jackson biographer J. Randy Taraborrelli told Entertainment Weekly in 1996. ”Michael didn’t want to do it, but his mother appealed to him and he can’t turn his mother down.”

The tour was troubled from the get-go. The show’s ticket prices ($30 in 1984, equivalent to around $91 now) were considered outrageous, and a proposed ticket lottery system angered fans. The promoters were new to live music events. And while it was billed as the Victory Tour, not one song from Victory was performed. Most of the set was tunes from Thriller and Off the Wall, a state of affairs that led the brothers to resent Michael. Fans lined up to attend and the tour made a lot of money, but it also led to a number of massive lawsuits for damages from concert promoters, and strained the relationships between the Jacksons and Michael for most of the rest of his life.

5. Martha Quinn Fell on Stage

Before filming started, VJ Martha Quinn opened the show by getting the crowd excited … and then fell directly onto her face. “I was mortified to the max,” Quinn told Yahoo in 2021. “I was so embarrassed, I could barely function.” Luckily, help was forthcoming … in the unexpected form of Van Halen’s frontman. “I said to David Lee Roth, who’d been sitting in the front row, ‘Oh my God, did you see me trip and fall?’ And he said, ‘Ah, darling, welcome to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. You know how many times I’ve done that? That’s what rock ’n’ roll is all about.’”

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6. Rod Stewart Got Drunk Backstage

Unlike ZZ Top, Rod Stewart was excited to perform at the VMAs. Unfortunately for the show’s producers, he was also allegedly excited about the free alcohol provided backstage. According to MTV exec Randy Philips, by the time Stewart and Ron Wood were supposed to present the Lifetime Achievement Award to Quincy Jones, the two were “completely soused.” That certainly provides a good explanation for why, when it was time to present the award, Wood emerged from backstage clutching an ironing board, while Stewart was brandishing a hair dryer. Stewart apologized to Jones the next day.