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director
Unknown
producer
Mallet Godfrey Mulcahy
studio
Mallet Godfrey Mulcahy
genre
Storyline
source
Love Song [Edit] (3:54)
Love Song (5:03) (for unofficial Videodisc version)
comments
The premise behind the Love Song video was probably thought up by a five year old. And like most things
dreamt up by five year olds, this one was (a) ridiculously simple and (b) a lot of fun. And so the director's
brief was written: "Because the song's called Love Song, the band should get in lots of fights. 'Cause that
would be cool. And there should be loads of violence. And it should be in a club. And stuff."
So, Office Jim gets in the lift and changes clothes to become
DJ Jim, which upsets the girl who’s already in there;
Charlie interrupts a particularly tense game of backgammon (yes, backgammon, this establishment
is very alternative) and gets a brutal kicking;
Derek drugs a guy so he can move in on the girlfriend
and gets beaten up for his troubles;
Kenny upsets someone (probably with his dancing) and is seen being
thrown across the dance floor; and
Mick basically just ASKS for it by rubbing an unspecified flat fish in the
face of the guy eating it.
It’s complete carnage, with most of the band unconscious on the floor before the three minutes is up. However,
the other angry patrons can’t even leave until
Jim’s finished playing the track and gives them a quizzical
look as he leads the battered Simple Minds outside.
Great fun. Great video.
availability
versions
Australian music show All The Rage showed a mirrored version of the video (vertical bi-axial if you want
absolute specifics) which rendered the whole video absolutely meaningless. It was basically reduced to
loads of merged heads and disembodied limbs pulsating around the screen.
This visual scrambling was
probably an attempt to censor
Derek drugging people’s drinks. Nowadays this should be shown as an educational
video that you should never take your eye off your pint and take it to the toilet with you.
Interestingly, this video accommpanies the longer album version of the track. Many scenes are repeated, or slowed down, to
cater for its extended length.
This version is still circulating through collectors' circles.
"I can give you the full story on this clip. It wasn't an
attempt to "censor Derek drugging people’s drinks" but hails back to
the days in the late 70s and early 80s when the ABC had a 5-minute
music video show, aired just before the nightly 6PM news, called
Videodisc which was simulcast with a local FM radio station. They
used to remaster the music clips with stereo soundtracks for this
purpose because back in those days the originals were almost never in
stereo."
"But when it came to Love Song there was a problem - they didn't have
the single edit of the song used in the clip, so they re-cut the video
themselves to fit the album version, and added in the "mirroring"
themselves. Videodisc quite often re-edited their own versions of
clips, even if they didn't need to, and amazingly as far as I know, no
artist or director ever complained that their artistic integrity was
being violated. More innocent days back then I guess."
"For some reason, this edited version remained in the ABC's vaults
rather than the original, and so even today Rage
plays this version - and they are probably none the wiser as to its history nor realise it
is not the original authorised clip." - Brendan
trivia
Jim right eye was swollen during the shoot.
It was shot back-to-back with Sweat In Bullet at Kensington Roof Gardens.
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