First video?

[queenie43]

who made the first music video?

[gwatkin]

I am not entirely sure, but I think it may have been Queen with Bohemian Rhapsody in about 1974.

[Lord Panda]

Ever since the advert of television programmes such as 'Top of the Pops' and 'Ready Steady Go' in the 1960s, musicians have made short films to cover those occasions when they could not be in the television studio at the time the programme went out [remember that these were live shows to begin with]. Originally these were little more than films of the band/singer in another studio, but they then evolved into the beginnings of the videos we know today - the Beatles made a film for 'Strawberry Fields Forever' in 1967 which would not look out of place nowadays.

[Nelli]

I was also under the impression, as was gwatkin that it was Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody.

[charlie]

I seem to rember that Jan & Dean did the first film to go with a pop song. I guess it was a bit early for video. The song was Surf City if I remember correctly and it featured them driving a soft top car. There must be somewhere on the web to check it out.

[mozzer]

Yes, depends what counts as a "video" as opposed to a "promotional film" or whatever. One of my favourite early ones is Bob Dylan's Subterranean Homesick Blues, where he holds up placards with all the key words in the song. It dates from 1965, I suppose.

[horseman]

As mentioned by earlier correspondents, the music industry generally regarded Bohemian Rhapsody as the first formal pop video. It was made in three and a half hours using a prismatic lens - because they couldn't perform the song live on Top Of The Pops. Certainly that was the inspiration for MTV, the pop video channel. But other musicians also lay claim to starting the trend, not least The Beatles who claim that their 'promos' for Paperback Writer and Rain, made in 1966, were the beginnings.