Throughout the ’90s, I regularly spotted Nigel Dick’s name in music video credits on MTV. Oasis’ “Wonderwall” and “Champagne Supernova,” Britney Spears’ “…Baby One More Time,” Cher’s “Believe,” Backstreet Boys’ “As Long As You Love Me,” and Celine Dion’s “It’s All Coming Back to Me Now” are just a few that caught my attention. What I didn’t realize until I read his new memoir, Music Video Mischief: Ozzy to Britney, Oasis to Gn’R, McCartney to Cher: A Lifetime of Rock and Chaos, was that he had also directed Guns N’ Roses’ “Welcome to the Jungle,” “Sweet Child O’ Mine” and “Patience,” Tears for Fears’ “Shout” and “Everybody Wants to Rule the World,” and Band Aid’s “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” And it doesn’t stop there. In his fourth decade of video making, he was behind such iconic videos as “Oops!… I Did It Again,” Elton John’s “The Heart of Every Girl,” and countless Nickelback songs.

The book is a page-turner and absolutely hilarious. I’ve laughed out loud multiple times at his deadpan delivery, in which he is often the butt of his own jokes. I’ve read passages aloud to anyone who will listen, breaking down with laughter before making it through a few sentences. Nigel starts with his boarding school beginnings in his native U.K. and his university years as an architecture student before becoming the messenger boy for Stiff Records, his way into the music industry. Those formative years, during which his role kept morphing, eventually led to his being pushed into the music video world and moving to Los Angeles.

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He then devotes chapters to working with specific artists, speaking about them in a way unheard of before. His candor about those interactions is refreshing. The process of producing and shooting videos should make for a boring read, but Music Video Mischief is anything but. His descriptions of working with Axl Rose, Ozzy Osbourne, Elton John, Celine Dion, Cher, Paul McCartney, Robert Plant, and Tears for Fears are priceless.

What’s left out of the book are his countless awards, including a Grammy and a Brit, and the many films he’s directed, both feature and documentary, including the one he’s currently working on about Seattle’s Central Saloon, an incubator venue for Nirvana, Soundgarden, and Alice in Chains. He also brushes past his co-founding role in the legendary Propaganda Films, which is credited with discovering multiple Academy Award winner David Fincher.

Sitting across from him at the Boulder Dushanbe Teahouse in Colorado, where he has lived for the last decade, Nigel cuts an unassuming figure in a jacket fit for a safari, understated sweater, and denim shirt peeking out from its collar. I picked this spot hoping to generate some home comforts for him with high tea service.

“Do you have just black tea?” he inquires of our server, who assures him they do. When the server brings out jam, clotted cream, and lemon curd, Nigel asks, “Do you have something to put that on?” It’s endearing. What’s even more so is his classic handkerchief, which he pulls out from time to time.

He’s more prone to tears than I am. His eyes fill up intermittently when he shares personal stories about certain artists, which we’re going to leave out of this Q&A. But we’re leaving a lot in. A classic example: When he was staying at the Sunset Marquis with Tears for Fears during the shooting of “Everybody Wants to Rule the World.” They were sitting around the pool when Roy Scheider walked over in his swim trunks, clutching a towel. Without prior coordination, they all started humming the “dun-dun” of the Jaws score in unison, which came out quite loud. Scheider definitely heard them, but he simply picked a deck chair and proceeded to sun himself.

Being a director has a certain glamour attached to it, but you went through a lot of drudgery unrelated to filmmaking before you did any video work.

On some level, I was very lucky because I worked on a pig farm, I worked on a cow farm where you get up at 5 o’clock in the morning, or you don’t get the gig. I did a cab driving job for nine months, having to be ready to work at 4:30 in the morning, which I did not like. But thanks to my parents sending me across the world to go to school for six months, you become very independent. There’s no going home and mum’s ready there with dinner. When you get sent to a boarding school, you have to “make your own bed.” It’s not easy so you figure stuff out.

That reminds me of what you shared about your experience with Robert Plant and how he had no problem riding in the back of a seatless van with you.

I discovered eventually that those people who’d done real jobs before they became a rock star, whatever you want to call it, were much easier to work with than people who went straight from school to the stage where they had a road manager or whatever to wake them up, and would keep the bus waiting while they stumble down the stairs. All this stuff is real work. I still do jobs now where I’m a one-man crew and I drive my van across the country and I sleep in the van. There ain’t nothing glamorous about that, I can tell you, but that’s what it takes to do what I love to do.

It’s fascinating to hear about your early experiences with Oasis, especially since they’ve reclaimed the zeitgeist this past week with the documentary and 2027 tour dates.

Liam was like, “Yeah, whatever,” but [Noel] always really resented my presence. I never wanted to be [Noel’s] friend. Well, it would have been nice, but beside the point. It was just like, “I’m here to do something for you and for your band. I respect the difference that I’m just flown in to shoot something, and you’re up here. I have no issue with that. But to purposefully make it difficult for me to do my job for them, you’re wasting a shitload of money here.”

I was with Noel the day after the “Don’t Look Back in Anger” shoot.

He hated that video. Here’s the really interesting thing. I picked the house. I picked Patrick Macnee [who played the chauffeur], the girls, the whole business. I shot the video, and he just trashed it. No problem. Fine. He now has his own signature guitar made by Epiphone, which is part of Gibson. The promo piece they did for him and the guitar. I’ll give you one guess where it was shot. Not only was it shot in that location, they recreated some of the shots. The video ran long, so instead of everything being during the day, some of it was at night. The shot of him playing his guitar by the tennis court, they recreated it. And it’s like, “You hated this place so much that for your own signature guitar, you went back?”

Have you seen their recent documentary Oasis: Don’t Look Back in Anger?

No, but they kept ringing me up. Not because they wanted to talk to me, but somebody would ring me up, “Hi, you don’t know me. We’re making a documentary about Oasis. We need the outtakes of ‘Wonderwall.’”

“Great, good luck with that. Why are you calling me?”

“You’re the director. You must have the outtakes.”

“Forgive me for giving you a lecture right now. Here’s what used to happen: We would edit the video, they would want their changes, you do the changes, and then you wouldn’t get your second 50% of the money until you sent them all the film so I don’t have it.”

“Well, where is it?”

I mention it in the book, but what I always tell people is, “Have you seen the last scene of Raiders of the Lost Ark, where that guy is wheeling that thing into a massive warehouse, and that’s where it is? The trick is finding that warehouse. There’s some guy sitting in the corner office with his feet up, reading the newspaper with a cup of tea.” 

Then somebody else rings me up a month later, “We’re looking for…” “I told the guy last month,” and then three months later, it happens again.

Your experience with Guns N’ Roses shooting the first videos suggests that Axl Rose was already difficult to deal with in the early days.

My perception at this distance is that he grew up in a very white part of America. I’m sure people said he’s the freak that lives next door. I think he belonged in L.A. in a band like that. Also, the impression I had was that, like many of the people I worked with, underneath it, he was quite insecure. I understand that and I don’t resent that. Looking back, if perhaps I had been older, I would have said, “Look, for the next two days, I’m your best partner. Just tell me if you’re not happy with something. Tell me if there’s something you need. I’ll make it happen for you.” I know it’s weird. Suddenly, there’s no crowd and there’s a bunch of boring old guys with cameras and whatnot.

In contrast the image you paint of Celine Dion is quite amusing and unexpected.

She’s so, so funny. One thing I did not put in the book that is very funny when we did the epic video, we’re working through the night. It’s 3 o’clock in the morning. We’re waiting for something to be lit. We’re both standing beside a table, and the hair person has done this [smoothed her hair] with the brush, put it on the table and walked away. We’re talking and I’m just looking at the table but not thinking of anything. She said, “You looking at my brush?” I can’t believe she just said that with a smile. She’s lovely. I thought it was going to be a really tough gig, but she couldn’t have been nicer.

What was the best and worst thing about directing Band Aid’s “Do They Know It’s Christmas?”

There was really no worse thing about Band Aid. I mean, the worst thing was we started shooting at 11 o’clock on Sunday morning when everybody started arriving, and I had to have the video delivered by dawn on Tuesday. This is in a world where the film had to go to the lab to be processed, then the film came back and we had to—in real time—transfer all the film and color it, and then edit it, and then complete it at the same time as the song was arriving. Even with today’s technology, it would still be a race against time. That was really the only negative part about it at all. Plus, I’d never shot anything in documentary style at all. It was like, “Oh my God, there’s Boy George, there’s George Michael, there’s Sting, there’s Paul Weller.” 

The really interesting thing was hearing all the voices unadorned. Boy George, suddenly, wow, he’s got a fantastic voice. He flew Concorde, got off the plane, came to the studio, walked in, and the only thing I remember him saying is, “Can I have a brandy because my throat hurts?” He had a shot of brandy, which is quite common in the studio, and he nailed it. You’d expect there to be some sort of status. Everybody was very open. No managers or wives or girlfriends. Well, there were a couple of them. Bob’s wife was there because she was a TV presenter, and he had media there, 72 of them, I counted. I’d never seen anything like that at all.

The things you witnessed Bob Geldof accomplish are mind-blowing, calling up the King of Egypt and getting free passage through the Suez Canal? Who even thinks of doing that?

Bob was ruthless and relentless. I was not there for this particular phone call, but I remember asking him, “Live Aid, who’s going to go on last?” And he said, “Well, I had a conversation with Tommy Mottola who said he really wanted to get Hall & Oates on the show and they can only do it if they can headline.” Geldof told him, “If you want to go on after the reformation of Led Zeppelin, after Tina Turner and Mick Jagger, after Queen, you’ve got it. Good luck.” Of course, Mottola realized, “He’s laid me a trap, and I walked straight into it.” [Bob]’s still that passionate about it.

You speak about everyone you worked with very candidly, which is refreshing in the current time where it feels like as journalists, we’re not allowed to speak negatively about anyone.

Some people you meet are really lovely to work with, and some people are complete assholes, which always mystifies me because for eight hours or however long they’re on set, I’ve got to be their new best friend, so I can get the best performance out of them. I’ve worked with people who I’ve admired and I have every single record they’ve ever made. But on the morning of the shoot, my job is to give them the best commercial for their song that I can. I very rarely get an opportunity to hang out with them. On some level, I don’t know if I want to hang out with them because it would destroy the distance.

Until I read your book, my image was that we journalists were the outsiders, but video directors were on the inside, as part of the artist’s team. You blew that impression to pieces.

I’m trying to think of how many people I’ve directed whose house I’ve been to. I’ve been to Steve Lukather’s house a bunch of times. I’ve known him for 40 years. But that’s a very rare occasion in my career. Sometimes I’ve been to somebody’s house because they couldn’t make a wardrobe fitting at the studio. You come round and blah blah blah whatever, and then it’s like, “It’s been so nice,” and they’re pushing you out the door, which is fine. I get it. Why shouldn’t I go?

It’s interesting to read about your inspiration sources and “idea bricks” that you built your treatments around.

It’s like being an interior designer. If I want to say to an interior designer, “Can you come up with a design for my house?” Quite obviously, the interior designer would want to come around and look at the house to find out what they’re dealing with. So for a video, is this going to be graphic, black and white, color? Is it a story about a lost person or whatever it is? And you can start building from there. Very often they think they’re doing you a favor when they say, “Whatever you come up with,” and you’re like, “Don’t say that! Give me some parameters.” When they say, “You can have them in New York for five hours a week on Thursday, and that’s it.” It’s like, “Alright, okay. It’s going to be in Manhattan, unless I’m finding a stage and I’m just going to put them against a white wall or whatever, now I have something I can start building around.”

You didn’t like a few of the songs you worked on. Do you have to like the music to make a great video?

I mean, you could sit at home and say, “I don’t want to do this. I don’t want to do that,” and some of my contemporaries did that. But eventually you go, “This is my job, and I feel I can do something good for this artist.” I don’t have to go home and listen to it. It’s probably better actually if I don’t. Britney’s first single, I thought, “This is a fucking great record. This is a hit. This is fantastic.” Same with Cher’s “Believe.” What I focus on when I’m making a music video is it’s either a commercial for the band or the song or both. If I get carried away with [an Oasis video] and having falling water in the background, I’ve lost the plot. It’s about Liam with his hands behind his back or whatever. That’s my can of Coke, like it or hate it.

But what I’ve noticed is you make a video just to make a video because that’s your job and you enjoy doing it, then suddenly, out of nowhere, you’ll get an email 10 years later or something from somebody who you don’t know saying, “That saved my life.” I mean, if you’ve saved one life, that’s wonderful. Lots of people say, “Why the fuck would you work with Nickelback?” Firstly, they’re lovely guys, which I say in the book. But if you read the comments on YouTube, the thing that’s interesting is how frequently people say they see them as family. How what they do “reminds me of when my brother was killed in a car accident, or when my dad died,” or whatever it is. It’s a very personal family business that they were helped through by Nickelback, quite unlike most of the other people I’ve worked with. It is very interesting to me that somehow they connected with people on that level.

How much do you feel like technological progress has affected creativity?

For me, it certainly affected a lot. I mostly now shoot my own stuff, so it’s all on drives or cards. I have my own editing bay in my house. I do my own coloring work. It’s essentially put a lot of people out of work. Back in Guns N’ Roses days, you would send the film to the lab. The lab would process the film. Then you’d have it colored, and that would be in a $1,000-an-hour room with a colorist. Then it would be handed over to an editor, and I would go in and see the editor every day for an hour or so. Then it would be online. Once it was approved, that was taken to another place. That whole process has been completely wiped out now.

I actually really enjoy the post-production because it’s part of the filmmaking process and you learn a lot from it. I’m now of the opinion that many people on a film crew should know about editing. I think the cameraman should know. I think the director and the producer should know, because there are certain things that you think are going to work and don’t work when you get into the editing bay. Unless you’ve spent time doing that, you don’t really know. It’s part of the education of film. But the good news is a 20-year-old who’s interested in making films can ascend. As long as they’ve got a laptop and mum or dad has bought them a nice camera, they’re off to the races. If they’re sharp enough to use a laptop—and 90% of people are—they can be making films and throwing it up on YouTube. I call it the democratization of film or music video.

These days musicians are a lot more involved in the aesthetic side of their output and have a lot of know-how when it comes to the visual representation of the music.

Plus, they must realize the power of it because it’s right there, “I’ve only got 5,000 likes, I’ve got to up my game.” I’ve had conversations with people about why they signed an artist, and they said, “Well, they had 500,000 followers on YouTube so we figured it was worth taking a shot.” Which is, on some level, sheer laziness by the label or manager or whatever because they don’t have to do that first bit of work. Somebody’s already done it for them.

Like everything else, you have to adapt. In the ’60s, you might have some hit singles, and then, “Oh my God, we’re going to make an album, and we’ve got a whole day to make the record.” Then the album became the thing, and the singles. Then it was MTV. Now I’m told that if you have an album coming out, Spotify is much more interested in leading with a track from the album if there’s a visual attached. By default, Spotify has become the new MTV in a way.

Who’s on your music video bucket list?

Well, I always said I would have liked to have done something with the Stones or David Bowie. Obviously Bowie’s no longer with us. But I think Mick is quite difficult to work with. I met Keith once for 30 seconds, which was hysterically funny in many ways. But if I stop tomorrow, I have no complaints.

I’ve only got one on my bucket list, which is Barry Gibb.

The first job I got when I moved to America was in London with Robin Gibb. Barry and Maurice showed up to watch their brother make a video, and he came up to me and says, “Can I ask you a question?” And I’m like: Look, Barry Gibb is asking me a question. “Sure, ask away.”

“I’ve got my video camera with me. Is it okay if I shoot some video?”

“He’s your brother. Of course!”

Very nice, very polite.

When was the last music video you made?

Last week, for Nickelback. I like making films, but I’ve always been a music fan. I’ve done six and a half movies. Fucking nightmare. Horrendously stressful because you’ve got all these people behind you who are executive producers or producers, and they all have an opinion, and it’s just soul crushing. I’m sure if you’re Ridley Scott or something you can get your own way a bit more. I won’t be working for the rest of my life, but I’m going to make it last as long as I can.

Catch Nigel Dick in conversation with David Schulps at Book Soup in West Hollywood on September 24, and at the Museum of the Moving Image in Queens, New York, on October 23 for a screening and discussion of his music videos.

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