Doc Holliday

Doc Holliday (1983)

Eddie Stone (Keyboards), John Samuelson (Bass), Bruce Brookshire (Vocals, Guitar), Rick Skelton (Guitar), Herman Davis Nixon (Drums)

Originally from Macon, Georgia, Doc Holliday quickly gained fans and record sales with their 1981 debut album, Doc Holliday. And worldwide acclaim with their second album Doc Holliday Rides Again.

Doc Holliday was a hard rockin' Southern Rock band, touring with bands like Black Sabbath. But, seduced by the dark side of keeping trendy for the Pop charts, German record producer Mack changed DH into a New Wave Techno Southern Rock Pop band. The change brought rejected airplay from MTV, abandonment from their record label and devastation to the band.

Doc Holliday should have been the first wave of the new wave of Southern Rock now coming out of Nashville. Had they kept to their roots, they could have been at the top of the Nashville Class Of '87. Instead they were seduced by the chart success of the early 80's Techno Pop sound. A seduction brought to a number of bands (in other words, it seemed like a good idea at the time).

It's easy to see the mistake now, but it wasn't then. New Wave Techno Pop was the rage and Southern Rock seemed to be old hat. To spice up their sound, Doc Holliday picked up German record producer Mack for their third album. He was known for his hits with Queen and E.L.O. as well as his work with Black Sabbath. So he seemed like the right idea at the right time. Mack stripped the band down to Bruce Brookshire on guitar and vocals and then replaced the rest of the band with synth - or so it sounds. This was a very brave move for the band to "modernize" their sound. Unfortunately the Techno-Southern Rock experiment was a total disaster for DH and for a number of other artists also trying to upgrade their music. ZZ Top's 1983 blockbuster hit album, Eliminator, offered a rare example of a sucessful merge of the two sounds.

I wound up creating two videos for the Doc Holliday album Modern Medicine. A concept video for CITY NIGHTS and a performance video for YOU LIKE TO ROCK. I knew there was something wrong early on when my budget was cut for the videos. I was scheduled to shoot both videos on film, instead they were shot on video and the rest of the budget was put into band road gear. That was the clue. Pull album promotional support and put it into touring.

MTV excitedly promoted the new Doc Holliday video as "coming soon!" When they received it, they totally rejected it. I took this pretty hard. I had never been rejected like that before. I found out later that the entire album had been rejected well before the video arrived.

Now, you may ask, why was a major label act from Georgia coming out of Raleigh? As much as there were a number of area bands failing to get record label attention, there was a small booking / managment agency in the Crabtree area of Raleigh, called CMC who seemed to quietly get the job done. Bill Cain and Jett Matthews ran the office and made some amazing deals. They would helm major label contracts for Nantucket, Doc Holliday and later Glass Moon (as a renamed, Glassmoon). And that, dear reader, is another story.

Eleven months after the production of the Doc Holliday videos, I was to direct my last music video project, a live concert for PKM at The Attic in Greenville, NC. Printed on the announcement for the upcoming shows at The Attic, the week after the PKM concert is a notice of Doc Holliday's last performance.

But like any good story, there is a happy ending. Doc Holliday reunited in 1986, returning back to their roots with the CD Danger Zone, and has since released a number of great albums in Europe. DH is now working on a retrospective documentary.

YOU LIKE TO ROCK

You can hear what this song should have been - a rocker that would be better experienced live, rather than this synthed-out album version. As a performance video, YOU LIKE TO ROCK still holds up. I like the way I shot the performance and, by 1983, the editing was on better equipment, offering a sharper cut to the music. In looking back on my notes for this shoot, I actually planned out each shot. It's nice to see the shots linger on the performance, rather than a more modern day music video. That was a lot of work on my part to go to all of that planning, but it does offer some nice continuity. These days, performance videos are shot with an overabundance of camera angles and then edited in any hodge-podge way. This may sound sloppy, but it can offer something continuity does not offer, more excitement to the performance. [See an example of a modern performance video in a recent clip I shot and edited for Felix Cavaliere.]

Credits

Producer, Director, Photographer, Editor - Steve Boyle

Assistance - John DelGaizo, Ernie Hood, Scott Long

Engineer - John Moore

Location - New York City (May 11, 1983)

Performance - Stewart Theater, NCSU, Raleigh (May 22, 1983)

Post Graphics / Digitizing - Roxanne Hicklin

Post Production - SAS Institute, Cary (May 27, 1983)

Above: Modern Medicine LP cover, The Attic band schedule with DH "Final Performance" listed (9 months after Modern Medicine's release), the key to room 324 of the recently razed YMCA on Hillsborough Street. Below: Bruce Brookshire YOU LIKE TO ROCK!

For additional information on Doc Holliday, visit:

http://www.dochollidayband.com/

http://www.allmusic.com/

http://www.brucebrookshire.com/

CITY NIGHTS

This video was to be a big deal break for me. I finally had a budget in which I could shoot film and I was going to shoot in New York. A couple of weeks before production was to start, I was informed that most of the budget was to be sidelined to road gear for the band - a clue to the disaster that was looming. So I was forced back to shooting on videotape - a format that was still acceptable for music videos in 1983.

I thought that this was the time I could bring in proven elements from previous videos. So here's a quick rundown of what's going on with this video.

NYC

• Shot (finally) in NYC. I tried to shoot Glass Moon TELEGRAM SONG in New York, only to have the camera catch on fire due to the extreme NYC cold.

• I was able to shoot some crane shots with a Barber "Baby" Boom, which had just been sold to a production company in NYC. The Barber Boom had its premiere use on The Spongetones HERE I GO AGAIN video four months earlier. The Barber Boom was used on the bench scene, which is in the middle of the Broadway and 74th Street traffic island, near Lincoln Center. Cherry Vanilla, who I had met in my early days at Max's Kansas City, happened to be walking by and said hello during set-up. Also, there was a rain drain below the bench. I noticed that the dirt inside of the square holes was rounded. I thought this was odd. When night fell and the lights were turned on, I saw twinkling eyes staring into the lights through the holes. I didn't have the heart to tell Bruce that dozens of rats were inches from his ankles while we were shooting.

• Walking down the dark city streets were similar to Luky Owens LIKE A REVOLVER, including finding a side street with a Topless Bar sign. I expected the usual Times Square hubbub of hookers and pushers to walk through, but Mayor Kotch had shut it all down. Times Square at 10pm was totally deserted due to a curfew and the theaters that had shown porn films and live sex acts were now dark. My vision of shooting scenes of the "bad city" was down to this one yellow sign. The ghetto blaster that Bruce is carrying while walking is playing his lip sync track. A chopped budget meant no audio crew, just a blaster.

• Shooting through glass windows is similar to TELEGRAM SONG and LIKE A REVOLVER, where Bruce is sitting and eating a hot dog at Nathan's Hot Dogs on Times Square (Nathan's now long gone).

• The graffiti encrusted subways were still there as we ride the #7 train from the EL in Flushing to Times Square. If you watch closely as the train pulls out of the station in the Times Square station, you'll see Bruce in the train and behind him in a white jacket and black hair is John Del Gaizo. John was the lead singer of my old Punk band, Ears. I would use my band Ears, in 1977, as the launch of my first music video. The only place the video ever played was the bar at Max's Kansas City. I hired John to act as crew wrangler and bodyguard to Bruce.

RALEIGH

• When I first moved to Raleigh in 1978, I live at the YMCA (just like Barney Fife did when he left Mayberry!). The rooms were sparse and depressing. One cot-like bed. A closet with a curtain for a door. A telephone with no dial on it. And toilet and shower down the hall. But I had no complaints, it was cheap, clean and safe. In honor of my first room, I hired it for the day. Bruce is lying on my old bed and staring in the room mirror [room key to the left].

• Eyes! What's with the eyes? I used the eye effect in Glass Moon ON A CAROUSEL, Arrogance WHERE ARE YOU BABY and would use it again for the Accelerators STILETTO. I used it one more time in 1989 for the Alt Country duo Foster & Lloyd BEFORE THE HEARTACHE ROLLS IN. The Foster & Lloyd video was a major label hit and won a number of awards and so finally getting my ode to Village Of The Damned out of my system.

• Performance is shot at Stewart Theater where a number of my other videos were shot. Before shooting, Bruce decided he was NOT going to wear a hat. Since management was not there to enforce the "hat," Bruce's slightly balding head is seen - all to the horror of management.

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