The Cars video directed by Andy Warhol
While Andy Warhol is best known for his cola bottles and soup cans, the artist always had a deep love for music. In fact, his career was inseparably linked with the music scene of the 1960s and beyond, inspiring musicians, crafting their image and standing as a cross-genre and multimedia icon.
There is a long history of Warhol’s interaction with music. Some of it is well-known, such as his work designing album covers such as the iconic The Velvet Underground banana and The Rolling Stones’ infamous trouser zip cover for Sticky Fingers. Other facts are more niche and nuanced, with endless stories of Warhol’s role in several artists’ careers. He played a role in introducing Nico to Lou Reed. Dylan regularly turned his pen to his hatred of the pop artists, while Bowie played him like a character on an early track.
As an artist who was interested in pop culture and the world around him, music was a vital part of that. His Factory scene was home to many musical legends throughout the years, including The Cars.
The 1970s and ‘80s new wave bands were exactly the kind of act that Warhol loved. In all his interactions with musicians, the artist seemed to especially love bands and singers that were pushing the limits and sitting on the cutting edge of a new sound or style. — the acts that had a clear visual identity and appeal.
The Cars had all of that as they were one of the leading bands merging the guitar rock of the 1970s with a modern intrigue in synthesizers. They were an early pioneer of synth-pop or electro-rock, daring to bring more electronic sounds into a rock band setting.
In 1984, the artist teamed up with the band to direct one of their music videos at the height of Warhol’s commercial success. It was clearly a passion project for Warhol, who had pivoted to almost exclusively making what he called “business art”, designed to simply cash in on his name and make as much money as possible. His experimental film era of the late 1960s was well and truly over, but for one music video, he seemed to make a comeback.
For the band’s track, ‘Hello Again’, they enlisted Warhol and director Don Munroe. Creating a hi-octane tour of the sex, violence and carnage of the 1980s, it’s a perfectly Warholian picture. Starting out as a fake TV show called Rock Talk, a discussion about the “gratuitous sex and violence in music videos” is interrupted by exactly what is being condemned as a car crashes through the set and a stream of seductive clips ensues.
Warhol himself even makes a cameo as a bartender, standing as one of his final sightings and projects before his death in 1987.
Of the project, The Cars’ keyboard player Greg Hawkes recalled, “I think [Warhol] mainly did some of the conceptualizing and showed up to be an extra.” As a fever dream experience, Warhol brought his whole entourage along to be involved, as Hawkes continued, “He invited his various friends to be in it. It was like any video shoot, but with a more interesting cast of characters. And you could always look over on the set and go ‘Hey that’s Andy Warhol.'”
