Barmy pop videos exposed from Freddie Mercury's giant prawn to Neil Young's boxing fiasco

From dressing Freddie Mercury as a giant Mediterranean prawn to accidentally prompting Neil Young to punch himself unconscious, director Tim Pope knew no bounds when turning pop videos into art. During the 1980s and 1990s, the maverick’s iconic videos made him a leading light for the MTV generation. Now 70 and casting for a movie, The Photographer's Assistant, as well as working on commercials and a cinema documentary project for The Cure, he says: “It was a very free-spirited period, before the rulebook was written. “There was no health and safety. I was always causing as much trouble as I could.” This included putting The Cure in a wardrobe and throwing them off a cliff for their hit Close To Me. But it’s the Neil Young incident that still preys on his mind. He says: “I tied Neil Young to a redwood tree when shooting Pressure. “There were these beats in the music which were like doom, doom. So I got Neil to put on a boxing glove and punch himself in the face. He was so committed to it that he actually - and this is not made up - knocked himself out! “There he was, unconscious, tied to a redwood tree as this character. I thought, ‘oh, my god, I've just killed Neil Young.’ Or rather, ‘Neil Young has just killed Neil Young.’ The entire crew and I were like, ‘oh my god’. Then he came to. He stayed in character, and just went, ‘do you want me to hit it harder, Tim?’ I thought it was brilliant.” Born and raised in Enfield, North London, to banker parents, Tim’s inventive, surreal, and darkly playful videos led the way across two decades. But, as his new book, I Shoot Rock Stars, reveals, for a long time he feared it would never happen. He says: “I had no contacts. So I wrote thousands of letters to the BBC saying, ‘just let me in, let me in!’ No one would. Eventually, I found my way through music videos. “My first music video was with a band called Soft Cell, for a song called Bedsitter (1982). I came up with a concept, and me and my old production designer, Alex McDowell, tried to storyboard loads of videos. We couldn't get a foot in the door. But through telling lies, that I'd made this and that, I got myself into a room with Marc Almond, the Soft Cell vocalist… and the rest was history. I was a bit like a kid let loose in a sweet shop. Suddenly, there I was working with all my heroes.” Tim went on to make over 200 music videos. Thirty seven were for The Cure, including Close to Me and Lullaby, and there were creations for David Bowie, Queen, Iggy Pop, Siouxsie & the Banshees, Talk Talk, and Neil Young. Choosing a favourite is tough for Tim. He says: “It’s like choosing between my children. love The Cure’s Lullaby, where Robert [Smith, lead singer] is a spider man. He's this creepy character. And the Neil Young ones are great - he embraced characters that I created for him, such as The Pig Farmer. He's completely demented and just wonderful. Then I think some of The The’s videos, for the sheer danger of how we filmed them. We worked underneath a moving steam train. We filmed in a working brothel in Harlem in the '80s. That was completely crazy.” Tim, who lives in Brighton with his wife Victoria, who he has two adult children with, says not all stars liked his direction. He found a DVD commentary by Queen’s Roger Taylor and Brian May and says: “They were moaning about the video I made for It’s a Hard Life, saying they didn't like Freddie's Mediterranean prawn costume, which I loved. Freddie loved it too. Freddie designed it. So blame him, don't blame me. Robert Smith never said no. That included tracking a huge camera into his mouth and making him wear a mite-infested polar bear suit.” In the forward to the book, Robert recalls making videos with Tim. He says: “The hours left hanging in midair by very painful wires, the hours spent drowning in filthy water, the hours spent being asphyxiated by strong glue, the hours spent being asphyxiated by snakes, the hours being fed into a giant spider’s mouth, being chucked off a pier…” Tim was inspired to write his book by a rediscovered 1990s’ answerphone message from David Bowie. Reflecting on the eclectic characters he’d met, he felt compelled to share his experiences. One of the stand out characters was Freddie Mercury. Describing Freddie as “really very sweet, down-to-earth,” he recalls one incident, saying: “I went to meet him in Munich. He kept making sure I had cups of tea, which he referred to as ‘a builder’s.’ There was a Mirror photographer there. Freddie flounced into the room wearing a big orange dress with breasts larger than Dolly Parton's. He draped himself over my knee and he was like, ‘ooh, darling!’ This Mirror photographer went click, click, click. I pushed Freddie to the floor and sort of clambered aboard him for a joke, to pay him back. The manager of the band came and pulled the 35mm film out of the camera, took Freddie away!” Tim also worked with David Bowie for 12 years. He says: “I christened him ‘The Governor.’ He was just a bloke underneath - albeit a bloke who was quite amazing. He was always the biggest name-dropper I've ever heard. He was always like ‘this person’ and ‘that person’. He was wonderful. I just remember laughing around him a lot. He had this particular laugh, like a Marlborough laugh, very much made from cigarettes. Bowie really liked to be directed. He liked to be told what to do. He was always such a great intellect and a mind to work with. Although he would put his intellect ahead of his heart sometimes.” Tim, who is working on a cinema documentary project for The Cure to celebrate their 50th anniversary, says: “Robert Smith has got 50 boxes of film that nobody has ever seen, which I'm hoping to cut into something special.” But his filmmaking experiences have not always been good. He says: “I made an independent movie called Phone at the start of the '90s, and Martin Scorsese wrote to me to say he loved it. I subsequently went to Hollywood, and I made a film - the sequel to The Crow - under the eyes of the Weinstein brothers. The infamous Harvey Weinstein. Harvey Weinstein told me he owned me, which were the worst three words anyone has ever said to me. “He wanted me to cut a film. I went to supper with him and his brother and he said, ‘Just cut the f***ing film how we want it you b******, we own you.’ To be owned by Harvey Weinstein was not great and put me off making movies for an awful amount of time. Part of the reason I wrote the book was to let that go, cathartically. I look forward to him reading it in Rikers Island jail.” *I Shoot Rock Stars: The Wild Adventures of a Music Video Director by Tim Pope publishes 13th August in Hardback, priced £25.00 (Wildfire)’