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Watching The Music
By Lisa Hood-Anklewicz
Video: “Don’t Come Around Here No More”
Artist: Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers
Album: Southern Accents
Director: Jeff Stein
Released: 1985
Available on Playback from Universal.
In today’s world of big budgets, computer graphics and special effects, it’s nothing short of an impressive feat to come across a music video from the eighties that can still hold its own against its modern contemporaries. Celebrating its twentieth anniversary this year, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers’ video for “Don’t Come Around Here No More” does just that. Directed by Jeff Stein, the video takes you down a twisted version of the Mad Hatter’s tea party from Alice in Wonderland. Stein’s previous work included videos for Billy Idol, George Clinton, Hall & Oates, and The Cars. As well, Stein is responsible (and probably best known for) the 1979 release The Kids Are Alright, documenting 15 years of the career of The Who.
By 1985 when Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers released Southern Accents, they already had a number of unusually creative, for the time, music videos under their belt. Before MTV even existed, the band had taken the idea of a visual promotional clip from a simple band lip syncing shoot, and worked towards the idea of the medium as an art form that could be just as creative and expressive as their music. 1982’s video for “You Got Lucky” was an experiment on the part of the band, where they decided to see if they could get away without singing, simply because they were sick and tired of lip-syncing on camera. As a result, they presented what is possibly the first narrative music video. MTV had only been on air for a few months, and at the time was still only available on select cable systems when the video was released, but “You Got Lucky” still managed to impact a change in the visual medium.
When it came down to making the video for the first single from Southern Accents, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers not only lived up to the success of “You Got Lucky,” but far surpassed it. “Don’t Come Around Here No More” is essentially a song about a failed relationship in which one partner isn’t willing to admit it’s over. However, the visuals created by Stein in the video are so powerful that most people, even twenty years later, can only think of Alice in Wonderland and black and white checked walls when they hear the song, including Petty himself.
The video opens in a giant mushroom field, giant as in huge mushrooms. Our main character, Alice, is immediately introduced, as she weaves and climbs her way through the mushrooms, when she comes across the song’s producer, Dave Stewart from the Eurythmics, atop the largest mushroom, playing a sitar, with an oversized bong billowing behind him. Stewart (whose participation in the video is probably largely due to the fact that not only did he play the sitar on the album, but also co-wrote the song) invites Alice to climb up to meet him, where he presents her with what appears to be a doughnut. Upon taking a bite, three female harlequins, for lack of a better description, dressed all in a checked black and white, pop in front of Alice for just a split second before she tumbles backwards off the mushroom and into a black and white checked room.
This opening sequence has always set up the video to be interpreted as a psychedelic drug trip. The bong is obvious, the mushrooms a little less so, but the item that Alice eats appears to have sent her into a drug induced trip, at the table of the Mad Hatter, played by Petty himself, with the rest of the band acting as guests. The remainder of the video has Alice moving between states of mind common to a drug induced state; confusion, glee, and fear.
“Don’t Come Around Here No More” was nominated for a total of five MTV Music Video Awards but only won in Best Special Effects. Stein makes use of very simple, yet effective tricks to continue the “trip” Alice is having in the checked jungle. As Alice is served tea at the table with the Mad Hatter, she receives a giant serving bowl-sized tea cup and saucer, which after her first sip, becomes an undersized cup and saucer, and then changing again to a normal cup. Simple removal and replacement of items in shots cut together create the illusion of Alice’s adventures.
Once again, the drug interpretations can be brought back into play again at this point in the video, because once Alice has again consumed something, this time the tea, her experiences become even stranger and more confusing. Each sip of the tea results in the change of the cup’s size. With Alice and the Mad Hatter at opposite ends of the table, quick editing cuts between the two of them allow us to also see how her interpretation is changing from Alice’s view point. The harlequin triplets from the opening sequence make a few appearances, once playing a string trio with pink flamingos in place of bows. More memorably, the Mad Hatter goes through some changes of his own from Alice’s viewpoint. His red top hat and suit are suddenly so oversized that Petty’s head looks about the size of a peanut in relative comparison. A further twist on this overgrown look has the Mad Hatter’s sunglasses increased in size to match the rest, with the lenses being the size of your average washroom mirror. Through all of these morphings, Alice is clearly confused and possibly fearful about what is happening, but she continues to sip at her tea and by the end of the chorus, she is in fits of gleeful laughter, enjoying herself. It’s never made quite clear whether or not all of the strange things shown are something being put on by the Mad Hatter and co. for the sake of Alice, or if it is truly Alice’s mind playing tricks.
The next sequence of the video moves into a feast of sorts in which the full band participates as guests of the Mad Hatter, along with Alice. The harlequins are still floating around in the background; that is, if you can catch them. The black and white checked costumes blend very well with the black and white checked scenery. As the feast sequence progresses, there is a theme of gluttony that appears, but with a sense of humour. One shot focuses on one character who carefully dips a large doughnut into his tea only to proceed to gobble down the tea cup. A version of musical chairs gets played and Alice and the Mad Hatter eventually end up switching ends of the table, at with point, the Mad Hatter jumps up and throws him self the length of the table, knocking Alice over and taking his chair back.
Alice’s emotional mind frame changes again at this point, where she no longer is enjoying herself, but appears hurt and in response, the Mad Hatter rolls a baby carriage out containing a baby version of Alice crying. As Alice becomes confused, the baby then becomes half Alice/half pig and finally full pig before coming back to baby Alice again. As Alice’s mind state during the feast was relaxed, she appeared to be enjoying herself and “dug in” like the others. The baby carriage was at first a metaphor for her emotional fragility but then became a mirror of her behaviour at the table. The special effects used to accomplish the change from baby Alice to pig and back was simply an editing tool. Each stage of the transformation was shot individually and then in editing, the main character Alice would look away from the carriage each time and when she looked back, the next stage of the image would have been edited in.
Moving into the next sequence of the video, Alice is chased around the checked jungle by both the Mad Hatter and the harlequin triplets, before finding herself swimming in the Mad Hatter’s cup of tea. Again, some creative editing with two sets that would have been shot separately, spliced together and we get a great sequence of the Mad Hatter tossing sugar cubes and a doughnut into his tea. As for poor Alice, she is being drenched and attacked by the sugar cubes and the doughnut becomes a life preserver. Just as Alice has something to hold onto to keep from being drowned in the tea cup, the Mad Hatter brings in his spoon to stir, which cuts to our final and one of the most memorable sequences in music video history.
Ever since the feast sequence, the video hadn’t lost that thread of gluttony, and in the final sequence, the gluttony becomes so bizarre it can be interpreted as moving into cannibalistic theme. All the characters of the video that have played and tortured Alice are gathered round looking down on her with hungry eyes, as the Mad Hatter begins to slice and serve pieces of her to all. Very cleverly, Stein has managed to create a life sized slab cake in the likeness of Alice, except that he has worked it so that the head, hands and feet are still that of the real Alice, the rest is just sugar and flour. Alice is glancing around terrified as pieces of her body are being served up and devoured greedily while everyone is still standing around and over her. When she finally finds her voice to let out a scream, we cut to the camera pulling back from the mouth of the Mad Hatter, who literally swallows Alice, gives a small burp and dabs at his mouth with his napkin.
This one sequence itself can be interpreted and analyzed from so many different angles, violence against women, crimes against humanity, the general ignorance of the state of the world, but most likely none of that was on the agenda for the video shoot. But the chances are more likely that the idea got tossed around as a joke and someone thought it might be worth a laugh, just to see if the could not only pull it off, but get away with it, kind of like the “You Got Lucky” experiment. Then again, maybe it was just another way to follow the theme of ingestion that started when Alice at the doughnut and fell into the checked jungle to begin with.
Twenty years later, this video could be played alongside the big budget flashy videos being made now and still hold its own. Sure the means to achieve its special effects seem outdated, and simplified by today’s standards, but some of them are in the same line of those used on the Lord of The Rings trilogy, trick of the eye by placing an item in just the right place, or creative editing to make something appear to be more than it really is. Yes, its twenty years old now, but the video carries two of the most important elements of a video that will stand the test of time, the quality is outstanding and the imagery is powerful. “Don’t Come Around Here No More” in a visual format, will never lose it’s drug interpretations, and in an audio format, no matter when or where you hear it, if you’ve seen the video, the song will never be without Alice.
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