Flutterby™! : Walk This Way

Tremendous reminder of how far we've come: Golden Age of Video: Fear, Racism, Rehab and History: The 25th Anniversary of Run DMC & Aerosmith’s “Walk This Way”

Jon Small: So I’m listening to the song for maybe a half hour when I came up with the idea of the wall. We’re gonna break down the wall because the wall was, in my mind, again, MTV. That was the wall, that was the same wall with Billy Joel when we put the black band in his video. They wouldn’t play ‘black’. That’s when I came up with the idea that the wall was not only separating the music styles but was separating black and white, and I didn’t see any difference in black and white. So, I wrote the idea, they bought it, and then I had to get on this I spoke to Tim Collins, who was Aerosmith’s manager, and he said, “Hey, these guys just got out of rehab.” (Laughter) “There is just no way you, we can do this in New York because these guys— these are heavy junkies. You gotta be out of New York.” So where do we go? The heroin capital of the world — Union City, New Jersey. (Laughter) Bad place. So we set up this thing. I find the location, I came up with the set, the design, the whole thing, and we’re gonna do it, and I convinced them. I got on the phone with Steven Tyler and explained to him. He only said one thing to me that was important. “Please don’t make a fool out of us.” He was really not into — don’t forget, he hasn’t stepped into the video world yet.

Via JWZ.