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I Shoot Rock Stars: The Wild Adventures of a Music Video Director

by Tim Pope

Behind the cameras of the pop-video boom

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Awards & Recognition

  • Bestseller

    Top 5 UK Sunday Times bestseller

    The source describes this book as a Top 5 UK Sunday Times bestseller.

AlbakiReads Editorial

Behind the cameras of the pop-video boom

Tim Pope’s memoir places his work as a music-video director within the early rise of the pop video, when the form was still taking shape and MTV was creating demand for new material. The account connects that shift in music culture to his collaborations with performers including David Bowie, Queen, The Cure and Soft Cell, while the publisher description highlights the improvised production conditions and unusual concepts behind the shoots. Its subject is both a career in music filmmaking and a period when visual presentation became closely linked with popular music.

Good fit for readers who enjoy

  • Fans of rock and pop music history
  • Readers interested in music videos and their production
  • Those curious about memoirs by filmmakers and creative collaborators

Themes

The rise of music videosRock and pop cultureMusic filmmakingCreative experimentationThe relationship between image and music

Based on publisher information and book metadata.

Book overview

A Top 5 UK Sunday Times Bestseller!

The outrageous inside story of the music video revolution, told by the maverick director who brought David Bowie, Queen, The Cure, The Bangles, Wam!, Hall & Oates, and more to our screens


Tim Pope was there from the beginning, before music videos became slick corporate products, when anything felt possible. I Shoot Rock Stars is his music-obsessive-turned-guerrilla-filmmaker's wild ride inside the birth of the pop video--smuggled cameras, blown budgets, and no idea too strange to try. After breaking through with Soft Cell, Pope found himself at the center of a creative explosion, feeding the insatiable new machine called MTV, directing the artists and moments that defined a generation: dressing Freddie Mercury as a giant prawn; being called a "funny little arsehole" by David Bowie; hanging out with Neil Young on his ranch; and locking members of the Cure in a wardrobe and launching it off a cliff.

Written with wit and unfiltered honesty, I Shoot Rock Stars is a riotous memoir of a time when image became inseparable from music.
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