Shooting for the Sky
Shooting for the Sky
Director Gary Koepke on how to make Radiohead, Bowie, Billie Holliday and Elvis sing a U2 song.
It’s been called ‘a triumph of postmodern reconstruction, a four-minute-19-second celebration of some of popular music's most beloved and influential figures.’
It’s rare for a rock’n’roll video to find such acclaim but the treatment for Window in the Skies, directed by Gary Koepke of Boston’s Modernista agency, is a class apart. We couldn’t put it better than the The Washington Post: ‘Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Billie Holiday, Marvin Gaye and a shirtless Iggy Pop take turns singing the lyrics on Bono's behalf. Instead of the Edge on guitar, you see Jimi Hendrix, Kurt Cobain, Elvis Costello and a very young Keith Richards. And hey, there's Vladimir Horowitz playing the piano! And that guy from Wilco on bass! And the manic Keith Moon on drums! All thanks to the magic of editing and copyright clearances…’
(Even though The Beatles weren’t in the first edit, they are in the second edit. And in a few days we’ll be premiering an even cooler version of the clip…)
With such a star-studded cast, the video has sparked feverish online discussion about who appears where and at what point. ‘My favourite online comment,’ says Koepke. ‘Was someone asking, ‘Was that Rory Gallagher at 2.37?’
The praise is all the more notable because Koepke has only previously made one rock video: ‘I did one for David Bowie, in two hours flat, after we shot a TV commercial, for his album ‘Slow Burn’. In contrast this video took the best part of three months and up to 20 people. We tracked Gary down in Boston to talk about how it all came together.
When did you first hear Window in the Skies ?
I first heard it back in September, we’d done a video for Product RED, a brand essence piece which explains what RED is all about. Bono shared it with the band who liked the vibe and that’s how we were invited to come up with a video for Window in the Skies. I’d talked with Bono about this idea of a song that never ends, an online thing where someone starts a song and then it just continues – inspired by the Surrealists idea of the ‘exquisite corpse’. I was wondering how you would get people involved in it and thinking about how we could use it for RED – it’s hard to explain but it would be almost like a song that every artist has been singing for ever, where you add the lyrics but it maybe has the same chorus. Then Bono sent me Window in the Skies which was almost a singalong song itself and it got me thinking about all these artists in rock’n’roll who’ve dedicated their lives to their craft, to positive messages. I thought of how difficult it can be to be in a band, what a struggle it can be, of how even when you’re successful you’re not really sure why. Of how being in a great band is not always about training or education but more of a gift. So the thought emerged of a video that would be like U2 thanking everyone for being music fans – thanking the musicians who have inspired them.
So the initial idea about the song that never ends informed your idea for Window ?
You never know with ideas but it was in my head and I talked to Bono about this song that never ends at the same time as he was sending me ‘Window’. There was an incredible moment of synchronicity: here was a song that could hold all those artists together – Radiohead and Bowie and Marvin Gaye and Elvis. You’d think that all these different artists wouldn’t work together in a video but the song is the glue that holds them together. Everybody probably has a different interpretation but to me it’s about time and the power of love.
Did people doubt the actual editing was possible ?
For a while people kept saying to me this idea won’t take off, it will fall apart but all along the way the video kept making itself. People still keep saying to us, ‘That must have been so hard!’ but actually the hard part was calling everybody and getting licensing agreements and getting film rights from the people who shot film. Really the video just made itself. Once people got the idea it didn’t really need selling to them, it was so inspirational.
Where did the idea for the band to appear come from ?
That was from U2: they said that maybe they could be in it, cheering along, so people could see them in the audience. So I went down to Melbourne to film them in the audience as we played back a very early edit. They told me it was one of the best things they’ve done in years - to be in the audience instead of on the stage!
It was always important for the band to make sure that the video didn’t become self-aggrandising. They didn’t want to say, ‘Hey, ‘we’re as cool as these people.’ The idea was to honour these great artists - throughout time, they've been playing music and trying to achieve greatness and we wanted to celebrate them and their passion.
We wanted to get a kind of raw, garage band feel to the footage and I think that’s what makes the video so genuine and honest. We also slipped in an actual garage band that no-one might have heard of - Apollo Sunshine - the guy playing the acoustic guitar at the end. It’s interesting that no-one has ever asked about them - even though everyone else has been named - but I like the fact they are going unnoticed. Like all garage bands I suppose! That connection came through my son Max, one of three editors on the video. He had played with Apollo Sunshine and tossed it in. And it just never came out!
When you see the video your first thought is how difficult the editing must have been - not just finding the right artists but finding footage which would sinc with the song at any one moment ?
I got to pay tribute to Max Koepke, David Brody and Julian Wadsworth, those kids did the editing. If I’d gone to some famous editor with this idea he would have said, ‘forget it!’ but these kids had the fever for it, they knew that it could be done. They were fighting with each other over which artists should go in it! Obviously we couldn’t include everyone and it doesn’t disrespect anyone by not including them – some artists we couldn’t get permission from. We did get the Beatles and Pete Townshend for example but that was after we needed to finish the edit – so we have done this second edit.
On the other hand we couldn’t get permission for some artists, like Chuck Berry, or couldn’t get the film rights for others. We had some Buddy Holly moments but we couldn’t use them because although his mouth was doing the right thing, the band with him were playing way out of sync. We needed to make sure the drum rolls were in time with what Larry was playing. Even a tambourine in shot had to be in time with the song.
What was the thinking behind finishing with African children running on the beach ?
It’s about celebration, kids running, red flowers blooming – these were images that we had used for RED and they seemed to tie in with the song. There are some RED undertones in the video which didn’t interfere with the sense that this is a U2 song - the song is the glue. The whole idea would have fallen apart without such a great song.
