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I Shoot Rock Stars
The Wild Adventures of a Music Video Director
By Tim Pope
Foreword by Robert Smith
Published by Diversion Books
Distributed by Simon & Schuster
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Table of Contents
About The Book
The outrageous insider story of how MTV-era music videos were invented, told by the director who helped create the visual language of pop superstardom while shooting videos for the world’s biggest artists—David Bowie, Queen, The Cure, The Bangles, Wham!, Hall & Oates, and more—at the height of their excess, ambition, and creativity.
Tim Pope was there from the beginning, before music videos became slick corporate products, when they were anarchic, improvised, and wildly inventive.
In I Shoot Rock Stars, Pope—music obsessive turned guerrilla filmmaker—takes readers inside the chaotic birth of the pop video, when budgets were spent recklessly and no idea was too strange to attempt. After breaking through with early work for Soft Cell, Pope found himself at the epicenter of a creative explosion, shuttling between the UK and the US to feed the insatiable new machine called MTV.
What follows is a front-row account of the artists, egos, and moments that defined a generation: dressing Freddie Mercury as a giant prawn; being callled a “funny little arsehole” by David Bowie; hanging out with Neil Young on his ranch; locking members of The Cure in a wardrobe and launching it off a cliff. Pope worked with Queen, Wham!, Hall & Oates, Siouxsie & the Banshees, The Bangles, Talk Talk, and many more, making image inseparable from music.
Written with wit, warmth, and unfiltered honesty, I Shoot Rock Stars is a riotous memoir and a cultural history of a once-in-a-lifetime creative moment.
Tim Pope was there from the beginning, before music videos became slick corporate products, when they were anarchic, improvised, and wildly inventive.
In I Shoot Rock Stars, Pope—music obsessive turned guerrilla filmmaker—takes readers inside the chaotic birth of the pop video, when budgets were spent recklessly and no idea was too strange to attempt. After breaking through with early work for Soft Cell, Pope found himself at the epicenter of a creative explosion, shuttling between the UK and the US to feed the insatiable new machine called MTV.
What follows is a front-row account of the artists, egos, and moments that defined a generation: dressing Freddie Mercury as a giant prawn; being callled a “funny little arsehole” by David Bowie; hanging out with Neil Young on his ranch; locking members of The Cure in a wardrobe and launching it off a cliff. Pope worked with Queen, Wham!, Hall & Oates, Siouxsie & the Banshees, The Bangles, Talk Talk, and many more, making image inseparable from music.
Written with wit, warmth, and unfiltered honesty, I Shoot Rock Stars is a riotous memoir and a cultural history of a once-in-a-lifetime creative moment.
Product Details
- Publisher: Diversion Books (September 1, 2026)
- Length: 336 pages
- ISBN13: 9798895152140
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Raves and Reviews
"TIM POPE IS A TRUE ORIGINAL, A GENUINE MAVERICK, AND I AM VERY LUCKY AND VERY HAPPY TO HAVE BEEN PART OF HIS BRIGHT AND BEAUTIFUL, DARK AND DANGEROUS, AND SLIGHTLY PREPOSTEROUS ONGOING STORY . . . I AM VERY PROUD TO CALL HIM A FRIEND."
—Robert Smith (The Cure)
“Tim crashed the stage, camera on a fishing rod, chasing the shot he was seeing . . . and the next thing I knew, he was pressing it into my forehead . . . The book brought that moment vividly back.“
—Neil Young
“A dirty little page-turner from England’s greatest music video director. Like the man himself, it made me laugh and weep - all at the same time.“
—Matt Johnson (The The)
“Tim Pope is, to my mind, the absolute dog’s bollocks in the world of pop video. He is the OG, the Don, he literally wrote the book.“
—Norman Cook (aka Fatboy Slim)
“For ‘Sex Dwarf,’ Tim threw a bucket of maggots over us as I ran around in a leather jockstrap. There was a moment when we all thought, perhaps this time we’ve gone too far. It’s all in here.“
—Marc Almond (Soft Cell)
“Tim Pope is completely unique in the landscape of film directors. His broad scope embraces music videos, feature films, television programmes and commercials. His remarkable talent never fails to dazzle. Many years ago he endeared himself to me because he was completely delighted and amused when a senior TV exec told him what we had made was ‘formless rubbish.’ If this book is half as good as that then it promises to be fantastic.“
—Jools Holland
“Tim is a strange person.“
–Iggy Pop
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