Free I Want My MTV by Craig Marks

animosity or jealousy that came to plague the later years.
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    JOHN SYKES: The J.J. Jackson we hired wasn’t the J.J. we meant to hire.
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    ROBERT MORTON: That’s true. Pittman’s one direction to us was “Find a black VJ.” He told us about a guy named J.J. Johnson, and said, “He’s really good. Track him down.” So I looked all over for J.J. Johnson. Subsequently, I found out who he was; a very good-looking black guy who had a great voice. But I couldn’t find him. I called every radio station in the country. Finally I called KMEL in San Francisco and said, “Do you have a guy named J.J. Johnson working for you?” They said, “No, but we have J.J. Jackson .” I said, “Well, let me talk to him.” We auditioned him and I said to Pittman, “Here’s your J.J.”
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    MARTHA QUINN: J.J. was the elder statesmen of the VJs. He had Rod Stewart’s home phone number. And he was the partier. He knew every doorman at every club.
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    KEN R. CLARK: J.J. was the most rock star of the VJs. He would be out at the clubs, surrounded by gorgeous, exotic models, and imbibing all the ’80s had to offer. He kept a tube of Preparation H in his dressing room to shrink his swollen eyes after a hard night of partying. Apparently it’s something models had known and used for years. I recall him saying, “It reduces the swelling brought on by a night of intense partying with the lovely Katrina and Nadia.”
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    ADAM CURRY, MTV VJ: Our car service, Communi-Car, called J.J. “the franchise.” He lived it, man. He’d be out all night and leave the car sitting outside for hours. He was larger than life.
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    KEN R. CLARK: J.J. always came flowing into the studio in his floor-length, black, pimp-daddy mink coat just moments before he was due on set.
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    MARK GOODMAN: I used to call J.J. “Club Man,” because he was always out all night, and he would roll straight from a club to the MTV studio. J.J. had a neverending stream of women, and they were all pretty and exotic. He was a very unusual guy. He was erudite, a great storyteller. You couldn’t help but love him. He was a hugger and a kisser, too; within weeks of knowing him, he was hugging me. He was that kind of guy.
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    PAM LEWIS, MTV staff: The first major celebrity interview we did was with Robert Plant, who went way back with J.J. Plant walked in, with all his sex appeal and swagger, hugged J.J., and said, “You’re wearing fuckin’ makeup.” Our budget was pretty bare bones and we had no makeup artist. J.J. would apply his own makeup and sometimes he’d overdo it, and get a kind of ocher color. He looked like a brick with eyes.
    ALAN HUNTER: I have no idea why they hired me. I think they were desperate. They opened the auditions to every critter on the face of the earth who could speak. Even after I was hired, I kept my bartending job. About half a year into it, J.J. said, “If you’re not making at least $40,000, then you got screwed.” I was like, “Oh, I’m doing fine!” I couldn’t admit to him that Mark and I were making less than that. They picked me out of nowhere, and I was fine with it.
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    SUE STEINBERG: Martha Quinn was the girl next door. Alan Hunter was Martha’s counterpoint, the boy next door.
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    MARTHA QUINN: Al was the funny one. He was our in-house Mork, complete with rainbow suspenders. He was always doing cartwheels, being goofy.
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    ALAN HUNTER: For the first six months, they thought they’d made a horrible mistake by hiring me. I don’t think I was very good on the air. I was only a year out of college, I was scared and uneasy, and speaking extemporaneously about a Styx concert was hard for me. I’d come home every night and say to my wife, “They’re gonna fire me tomorrow.” One day I actually did a cartwheel into the teleprompter at the studio, broke the