MTV Europe

Simple Minds did a lot of promotion during this time.

In this period was the prime of MTV Europe and VH1 music channels for me.

VH1 UK had a running feature called 10 of the Best which I absolutely loved.

Artists would select 10 tracks and talk about them in the program and often this was the opportunity when I would discover new music.

...

MTV or whatever your equivalent was, MTV Europe, um, that kind of stuff.

There's also a YouTube channel.

You wanna talk a little bit about M- Iron Maiden Sweden, when you went to the various locations?

I graduated, and I ended up being a freelance journalist for not long, you know, probably a couple of years really.

And at the end of those two years, I had a call from a friend of mine who I'd studied with called Vanessa, and she was at a place called MTV Europe.

And she said, "Have you heard of it?" And I said, "Well, I'm not complete- my head's not completely in the sand, but I know you play music videos." She goes, "Yeah, we do more than that." And I said, "Well, w- but why are you calling me? 'Cause you know I'm trying to be this journalist person." And she said, "Yeah, but do you wanna come and write some scripts and stuff for, you know, the presenters over here?" And I said, "Well, I don't really do that." She goes, "But you can write." I said, "Yeah, I can write." "Well, just see it as a freelance job then.

We're in Camden." So I headed over to Camden, and as soon as I stepped into the place, I knew that this was the place for me.

And I, you know, and so when Desmond did die, he was right.

And it's interesting because rappers, I used to write MTV Awards, right? MTV Europe and the Mobos and stuff like that.

And especially American rappers saying, yeah, you're the guy that wrote this.

Yeah, man.

but just fell in love with it.

Always loved the Brit funk and since I was young, would dig in cassettes and stuff in the shop in Jakarta and then every time I look at the back of the cassettes it's always say like Sony Music UK or EMI UK I was like wow I need to go there one day and then also after school I would be watching MTV Europe and they would play a lot of there would be segments for drum and bass jungle and sorts and this was in Jakarta so then later on when I migrated to LA when I was 16 that was 2003 I was talking to people and they're like what are you talking about like They don't know anything about all the music I grew up with.

So

it seems like it's been there with you for a long time.

You've got to remember that, you know, music video was a huge deal back in those days.

You know, you could... you know you could get away with a lot having an MTV in high rotation at MTV in Europe and yeah it was why I think Jamiroquai did so very very well because he made fantastic videos and getting an exclusive on MTV Europe guaranteed us high rotation and these things were it sounds a bit basic but these were super important

things yeah must have been an exciting time

It was.