CHAPTER 13: To Live and (not) Die in LA
The filmed footage from the Albert Hall looked amazing and there was definitely a live film there for the future. I decided to use a section of it in the video for the next single. I’d always bridled against a typical pop promo of the band playing along in a studio but this footage was something really extraordinary with the video walls.
There was a lot of pressure to put out Atari Baby as the next single but I refused as I had this fixed idea of Sex Bomb Boogie as the third in the trilogy. It never lived up to the promise of the live feel and perversely it was released only as a ‘video only’ single - my idea of course and as usual too clever for my own good - thus making it ineligible for a chart position.
The real coup of the video came from my all time favourite Arnie movie The Terminator. How did I get release to use all that incredible Terminator Robot footage in the video? JSP knew someone at Hemdale, the UK distributor and for a tiny amount of money a huge 35mm print arrived at the edit suite for us to use, anything we liked, as long as it was not actually the real Arnie. The robot and cars exploding would suit me fine, we could never have shot anything like that ourselves, not even come close.
And I had come full circle. I’d used clips from a pirate VHS in the original demo video I’d made all that time ago, and of course Love Missile has a sample of the voice from the trailer on the record. It was so inspiring and to legitimately have parts of my favourite film actually in a SSS video. Apparently James Cameron went mad when he found out. Millions of dollars of footage and it’s in a Pop promo!! (And I’d felt sure he’d be a fan!...)
