God Blessed Video

The Hard Rock band Alcatrazz got some airplay with the videos for their songs "Hiroshima Mon Amour" and "Island In The Sun," but nothing like what their photogenic New Wave counterparts were getting. Lead singer Graham Bonnet was watching a Duran Duran video one day when it struck him that a good video could compensate for a terrible song. "It was a gift that video came along and made these great videos of nice looking women in exotic places, but the song wasn't that good, and that's basically what it's about," he told us. "It's like 'Video Killed The Radio Star,' if you remember that song. It was my sort of version of that, just saying, 'Well, if you've got a great video, doesn't matter what the song's like. It'll help you a helluva lot.'"

The band made a video for this song, with the first minute taken up with a skit where an angel and devil discuss music videos. MTV has a history of embracing videos that deal with the medium itself ("Video Killed The Radio Star," "Money For Nothing"), but they passed on this one, which may have hit too close to home with lyrics like "We'll shoot all the crotch shots for 12 year old hopefuls."

Steve Vai, who was the band's guitarist for the Disturbing the Peace album, wrote this song with Graham Bonnet. Vai, who replaced Yngwie Malmsteen in Alcatrazz, left to join David Lee Roth's band. If there was ever a man who blessed video, it was Roth; while Vai got plenty of screen time in the "God Blessed Video" clip, he ceded most of the camera time to Roth in his videos.