I like what Kerslake did before and after that the most. The part with the performance footage doesn’t do a whole lot for me–except to provide a strong tie between song and video by putting the harder part of the song in there. My first music video–“Shadow Of A Doubt,” for Sonic Youth–used horrible quality, super-grainy performance footage.

The punk rock ethos really drove the visual content, even if you weren’t working with punk bands. I’d shoot Super 8, and play with the color palette to make it more psychedelic. You had great underground labels like SST and Rough Trade, and they’d give you complete freedom. They wanted to be the bad kids on the block, who showed up for those two hours on Sunday night and ran riot. It was a point of honor among bands on 120 Minutes to not show up in regular rotation on MTV.

While the music video is gorgeous, I can’t find anything on it other than a quote from Kevin Kerslake in the book, I Want My MTV: It looks like the consensus is that the song is based on Strangers On A Train (1951)–more Hitchcock.

Shadow of a doubt sonic youth