Director Nigel Dick, who has directed videos for Guns N’ Roses and many other bands, discussed his experience directing Alice In Chains’ “Down in a Hole” music video in a recent GNRCentral interview.
“Every moment of that shoot – which stretched over a few months – was a nightmare. The only happy memory I have from that show is the 1964 Gibson acoustic I bought in a pawn shop in Kansas City while waiting for the first attempt to shoot them – which was subsequently cancelled. That guitar sits in my edit bay to this day and I play it every day.”
He also discussed the relevance of music videos today and working with Axl Rose.
“TRL (total request live) was the undoubted hey-day of music videos but if Taylor Swift releases a new video the web goes nuts for 72 hours and Good Morning America plays a clip from it so I think you can argue that they’re still just as relevant for established artists – but perhaps not so much for emerging talent.”
“Let’s just say Axl and I never exchanged Christmas Cards. I remember one pleasant lunch where we talked for ages about the Electric Light Orchestra but mostly I was handed a short scenario by Alan Niven which he’d presumably discussed with the band and told to flesh it out and make it happen. Incidentally I don’t have bad memories about this process – it was very efficient and pushed me into an attitude of working with bands whose approach and music I didn’t necessarily like or understand which I think was very healthy.”
