Tim Pope Memoir Reveals How Director Put Rock Stars in Peril

Torture for Art: Placing Megastars in Peril

During the golden age of MTV, director Tim Pope built his trademark style on putting high-profile musicians into extreme, physically taxing scenarios. According to The Guardian, Pope dressed Queen frontman Freddie Mercury as a giant Mediterranean prawn, locked members of the Cure inside a flooded wardrobe before throwing it off a cliff, and nearly electrocuted two members of the Psychedelic Furs. Pope humorously attributes this inclination to early influences, noting, The core of my work seems to be sadism, while cheekily wondering whether it was revenge for childhood primary school brutality or mere cruelty.

Megastars like David Bowie and Paul McCartney willingly subjected themselves to Pope’s artistic demands. In the foreword to Pope’s memoir, I Shoot Rock Stars, the Cure frontman Robert Smith praises his time working with the director, despite enduring hazards such as drowning in freezing water, asphyxiation by snakes, and nearly getting knocked in the teeth by a camera running inside his mouth for the video Lullaby. Bowie showed similar trust during their 1980s and 1990s collaborations. As Pope explains to The Guardian, he once strapped a camera to Bowie and had him fall forward, a stunt that could have impaled the legendary musician if executed incorrectly.

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Defiant Individualism Versus the MTV Playbook

Pope’s journey into film began at Latymer Grammar School in Enfield, London, where a new film studies class introduced him to auteur directors like Alfred Hitchcock and Roman Polanski. To fund his early hobby, he worked a paper round and a chip shop job, eventually smuggling an 8mm camera into an Emerson, Lake and Palmer concert hidden down his trousers at immense pain to himself. After film college, he worked training politicians for television while moonlighting to film live bands for 100 pounds a pop.

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When Soft Cell achieved a global smash with Tainted Love and urgently needed a follow-up video for Bedsitter, Pope collaborated with art director Al McDowell to produce a storyboard that opened the floodgates after airing on Top of the Pops. This emergence aligned with MTV’s 1981 global launch. However, Pope firmly rejected the network’s strict rules, which mandated Spandex, big hair, and glamorous babes. Instead, he championed what he termed defiant individualism, stating that rebellion was in his DNA and that he wanted to cause trouble.

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Rejecting off-the-peg aesthetics, Pope operated like a bespoke tailor, personalizing each video to fit the specific song and artist. For Soft Cell’s Sex Dwarf, he filmed the band surrounded by chains, raw meat, and maggots, which resulted in the police confiscating the film. For the Style Council’s Long Hot Summer, Paul Weller playfully stroked bandmate Mick Talbot’s ear, prompting Weller’s father and manager John to call and question what was happening with his boy. Pope also directed Paul Weller when he wore lipstick, viewing it as a rebellion against standard pop image norms.

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Pope directed 37 music videos for the Cure. For the track Close to Me, he drew inspiration from Robert Smith’s childhood claustrophobia during a bout of chickenpox, trapping the entire band inside a wardrobe. For The Lovecats, Pope secured the keys to a house from an estate agent’s window display and clandestinely shot the video inside, leaving neighbors to wonder as the band piled out of a van. His career also included filming bands underneath steam trains, inside a Spanish Harlem brothel, and blasting Talk Talk singer Mark Hollis with an aircraft engine.