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- Clip Custodian: Neal Jones
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- Art By: William Saint James
- Adam Curry presents the MTV Chronicles - forty-seven stories from thirty years at the network, pulled out of the No Agenda archive and told across two hours.
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- 00 🎸 MOSCOW - THE PEACE FESTIVAL AND THE MAGIC BUS
- HOUR ONE opens where the whole thing opens - Moscow, 1989, the Moscow Music Peace Festival, which Adam calls the big CIA op. Doc McGee's Learjet gets busted in Florida with an unbelievable amount of marijuana on board and the way out is organising a concert in Moscow. Bon Jovi, Motley Crue, Skid Row and Ozzy on the plane, the Scorpions picked up in Frankfurt, and a Soviet audience who had no idea who any of them were except Ozzy. Then the actual 1988 videotape out of Adam's own VHS archive, the 2008 first telling with the Hell's Angels on Java bikes, and a thirty-second button on Red Square at three in the morning.
- 00 The-Magic-Bus-And-The-Peace-Festival
- 01 Moscow Music Peace Festival - Ozzy Wets Himself
- 📺 No Agenda 1779 (6 Jul 2025)
- Adam (NA-1779, 2025): the Moscow Music Peace Festival as a CIA op - Doc McGee's Learjet busted in Florida with a huge marijuana load, the way out being a Moscow concert. Soviet kids had no idea who Bon Jovi, Motley Crue or Skid Row were; they knew Ozzy. Sharon described as a big roly-poly British housewife, and Ozzy wetting himself in the aisle - 'probably the saddest thing I've ever seen in rock and roll ever.' John opens it with his own chicken-guts catapult story.
- 02 The 1988 Tape - Ozzy On The Plane And Hulk Hogan
- 📺 No Agenda 1784 (24 Jul 2025)
- Adam (NA-1784, 2025): real MTV videotape out of Adam's own VHS archive, played on-air the week Ozzy died - the young Adam interviewing Ozzy on the 1988 plane to Moscow, 'the magic bus, or the get-Doc-McGee-out-of-jail-free trip', plus Hulk Hogan and the Circus of the Stars rocket car of death in 1993: 'MTV - and that stands for mucho terrifying vehicle.'
- 03 Moscow 2008 - The First Telling And The Hells Angels
- Adam (NA-25, 2008): the earliest surviving telling of Moscow, from the show's first year - the Hell's Angels chapter on Java bikes that the later versions drop. John was on the trip too and drags the detail out of him.
- 04 Vodka On Red Square With Sebastian Bach
- 📺 No Agenda 1757 (20 Apr 2025)
- Adam (NA-1757, 2025): three in the morning on Red Square with Sebastian Bach of Skid Row, trading T-shirts for Russian fur hats. 'We didn't get arrested. We were there with Ozzy.' Sits inside John's riff about Soviet currency law.
- 01 💜 PRINCE AT PAISLEY PARK
- The long one, and the best-loved. Recorded the week Prince died, and the frame is Adam refusing to be the third ex-MTV VJ on television reflecting about Prince. A Sam Goody commercial at the Mall of America, a midnight phone call, a car downstairs, and Paisley Park lit up purple.
- 00 Paisley-Park-The-Long-Telling
- 01 Prince And Paisley Park
- 📺 No Agenda 819 (24 Apr 2016)
- Adam (NA-819, 2016): shooting a Sam Goody commercial at the Mall of America; a midnight call to the hotel room - 'the car is downstairs.' Paisley Park lit purple, metal detectors, an all-white room, nothing but fruit and juice, wall-to-wall beautiful people. Warned off approaching him because he has a problem with people taller than him, especially white ones - and Prince then compliments Adam on the Halloween shows he did with his daughter. Coda: unmixed Prince 24-track masters found in the attic of Dan Hartman's house.
- 02 🥁 THE ROCK AND ROLL INTERVIEWS
- Four interviews, four different kinds of wrong. Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood falling into a London hotel room in 1976; Quincy Jones bringing his own bottle of Chateau Latour to a live coast-to-coast broadcast; Gene Simmons wanting to know exactly whom he has to blow to get a video on the network; and Phil Collins greeting Adam with an insult that has stuck for forty years.
- 00 Stones-Quincy-Simmons-Collins
- 01 The Rolling Stones - Keith Richards And The Bowie Knife
- 📺 No Agenda 465 (29 Nov 2012)
- Adam (NA-465, 2012): nineteen years old, sent to London to interview the Rolling Stones. Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood fall into the room, disappear into the bathroom to snort coke off Keith's bowie knife, then sit down and do the interview. John closes it: 'Good story. Only on No Agenda.' Contains the disc-of-photographs half.
- 02 Quincy Jones And The Bottle Of Latour
- 📺 No Agenda 1710 (7 Nov 2024)
- Adam (NA-1710, 2024): Quincy Jones arriving for a live coast-to-coast broadcast with a bottle of Chateau Latour, which the two of them finish inside thirty minutes on air. Adam rates him the most interesting person he ever met apart from Steve Jobs - then learns from a documentary that Quincy was drinking six bottles a night at the time.
- 03 Gene Simmons In The Knee Pads
- Adam (NA-362, 2011): the original telling. Gene Simmons in knee pads wanting to know who exactly he has to blow to get his video on the network. John lands the close.
- 04 Phil Collins - Too Tall, Too Much Hair, I Hate You
- 📺 No Agenda 1183 (20 Oct 2019)
- Adam (NA-1183, 2019): the greeting, in full - 'too tall, too much hair, I hate you.' John lands it. This encounter had been reported as absent from the corpus twice before the chapter index found it.
- 03 🎤 THE DIVAS AND THE DIFFICULT
- Three artists Adam worked with and three completely different readings of what they were like when the camera stopped - Tina Turner, Madonna, and David Bowie in Malta, which is not Adam's encounter at all but Patricia's.
- 00 Tina-Madonna-Bowie
- 01 Tina Turner - Tiny Turner And Annie Mae Bullock
- 📺 No Agenda 1558 (25 May 2023)
- Adam (NA-1558, 2023): recorded the week Tina Turner died - how Anna Mae Bullock became Tina Turner, and the 'Tiny Turner' business, told as someone who worked with her rather than as a tribute.
- 02 Madonna Is Not That Nice
- 📺 No Agenda 992 (21 Dec 2017)
- Adam (NA-992, 2017): the original of the Madonna press story, with John dragging it out of him. The magazine and the MTV press chief are both named on tape.
- 03 David Bowie In Malta - Patricias Story
- 📺 No Agenda 790 (14 Jan 2016)
- Adam (NA-790, 2016): not Adam's encounter but Patricia's - Bowie in Malta, and the annoying song turns out to be Space Oddity. Told the week Bowie died, in an episode otherwise about a street sign in Austin.
- 04 🕺 MICHAEL JACKSON
- Michael Jackson twice. The contractual clause that forced MTV to say King of Pop every single time, which cost them an entire weekend of taping when nobody told the talent - and then the hair. And the apple crate, half of which is John explaining the film-industry sizing.
- 00 The-King-Of-Pop-Clause-And-The-Apple-Crate
- 01 Michael Jackson - The King Of Pop Clause And The Hair
- 📺 No Agenda 624 (8 Jun 2014)
- Adam (NA-624, 2014): the contract clause requiring MTV to say Michael Jackson followed by King of Pop every time - and an entire weekend of taping redone because nobody told the talent. Then the hair. John turns it; Adam ruled on 5 Sep that the hair passage stays in.
- 02 Michael Jackson And The Apple Crate
- 📺 No Agenda 670 (16 Nov 2014)
- Adam (NA-670, 2014): Michael Jackson halts the Vanguard taping twice and sends his guy for a crate to stand on. Half the segment is John explaining film-industry apple-crate sizing.
- 05 ✈️ THE ODD ENCOUNTERS
- The ones that do not fit anywhere else. A supersonic flight ruined by the passenger behind him, a movie star on a private jet, a beauty contest in New Jersey, a record executive with a piranha tank, and a soft-rock singer who tried to get Adam fired - which John, on tape, cannot believe is a real person.
- 00 Concorde-Penn-BoyGeorge-Stein-Marx
- 01 Liza Minnelli Ruins The Concorde
- Adam (NA-338, 2011): the earlier and dirtier of the two Concorde tellings - MTV flying him New York to London, and Liza Minnelli drunk in the seat behind, kicking his chair the whole way. Adam ruled on 6 Sep that this 2011 take supersedes the 2020 one.
- 02 Sean Penn On MGM Grand Air
- 📺 No Agenda 864 (29 Sep 2016)
- Adam (NA-864, 2016): Sean Penn on MGM Grand Air - 'hell hath no fury.' The cuttable original rather than the compilation version.
- 03 Boy George Judged A Beauty Contest In Secaucus
- 📺 No Agenda 784 (24 Dec 2015)
- Adam (NA-784, 2015): judging a beauty contest in Secaucus, New Jersey with Boy George as fellow judge - 'and this was after the heroin.' A thirty-second aside inside a Miss Universe news item.
- 04 Seymour Stein And The Piranha Tank
- Adam (NA-2, 2007): from episode TWO of this show, November 2007 - Seymour Stein, Linda Stein and the piranha tank. The oldest piece of tape in either hour.
- 05 Richard Marx Tried To Get Me Fired
- 📺 No Agenda 1886 (16 Jul 2026)
- Adam (NA-1886, 2026): Richard Marx tried to get Adam fired over a hair remark - and the whole segment turns on John having no idea who Richard Marx is.
- 06 📺 GETTING THE JOB
- HOUR TWO starts at the beginning: how the job actually worked. Adam's first big live gig a month after arriving at MTV, the virtual-set experiment that put him inside a television on a diner counter, the reason Spring Break exists at all, and how the Video Vanguard Award got invented in a room.
- 00 TimesSquare-LightSwitch-SpringBreak-Vanguard
- 01 Times Square 1987 - My First Big Gig
- 📺 No Agenda 683 (1 Jan 2015)
- Adam (NA-683, 2015): a month after arriving at MTV, his first big live gig - New Year's Eve on the ground in the Times Square crowd, assigned an off-duty cop with a big gun, with Paul Reiser tossing to him from the booth. Adam on why live shows always bring in celebrities who cannot host: 'they suck. They always suck.' Ends on the Times Square of the era versus the Disneyland it became.
- 02 MTV Light Switch - Me In The Little TV On The Counter
- 📺 No Agenda 701 (5 Mar 2015)
- Adam (NA-701, 2015): a new director of programming arrives with virtual sets. A video ends, you cut to a diner where Tony is making sandwiches, and Adam is inside the little portable television on the counter announcing the next video. His verdict on tape: 'the stupidest thing I've ever seen in my life.'
- 03 How Budweiser Invented Spring Break
- 📺 No Agenda 597 (6 Mar 2014)
- Adam (NA-597, 2014): MTV could not land Budweiser as an advertiser, so rather than build a show for them they went where Budweiser already was. That is the entire reason Spring Break exists on MTV - and Adam had to do the Top 20 Countdown with Spuds MacKenzie standing next to him.
- 04 How The Vanguard Award Was Invented
- 📺 No Agenda 1092 (6 Dec 2018)
- Adam (NA-1092, 2018): how the Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award got invented in a room - 'we'll make up an award' - and the promise, made at the same time, always to say King of Pop. John: 'that idea that you had to say the King of Pop was ridiculous.'
- 07 🎙️ THE INTERVIEWS THAT WENT WRONG
- Four interviews that went sideways, and Adam is the one who comes off worst in three of them. Mick Jagger on Adam's Tourette's, Rosie O'Donnell using her own audition to roast the man running it, and two questions Adam would like back - one of which Mick Fleetwood answered in a way that ended the conversation.
- 00 Jagger-Rosie-Fleetwood-Gaffes
- 01 Mick Jagger, Tourettes And Being Interesting
- 📺 No Agenda 625 (12 Jun 2014)
- Adam (NA-625, 2014): answering a listener whose child has Tourette's, Adam talks about being on television with it and what several people told him in his early twenties - that it made him look interesting. The proof is Mick Jagger telling him he had a weird tic but it was kind of funny. 'That's when you're living.'
- 02 Rosie ODonnells VH1 Audition
- 📺 No Agenda 908 (2 Mar 2017)
- Adam (NA-908, 2017): Steve Leeds, MTV's director of on-air talent, wanted Rosie O'Donnell on VH1 and asked Adam to run the audition with her. She spent the whole thing making jokes about him - 'Adam Curry, you're such a Barbie doll, you've got Mattel stamped on your butt.' She got the slot. 'So I take full responsibility. I'm very sorry.'
- 03 Fleetwood Mac - Mick Fleetwoods Reply
- 📺 No Agenda 1311 (10 Jan 2021)
- Adam (NA-1311, 2021): the fuller version of the Fleetwood Mac gaffe, and the only one that carries Mick Fleetwood's actual answer. Adam asks whether Lindsey Buckingham will be back on the tour, or is SHE done with it. Fleetwood looks at him and says: 'if his penis fell off, maybe.'
- 04 The Two Big Gaffes - Buckingham And Jermaine
- 📺 No Agenda 1039 (3 Jun 2018)
- Adam (NA-1039, 2018): the two he still cringes at, told while he and John are working out the Fleetwood Mac line-up - the Lindsey Buckingham question, and introducing Jermaine Jackson to a live audience as Michael Jackson.
- 08 🏖️ ON THE ROAD
- On the road, where most of the job actually happened. A hug from the biggest man Adam ever interviewed, a wave runner at the Beach House, and one celebrity motor race told from both ends - the man who won it and the man who hit the wall.
- 00 Shaq-BeachHouse-Osmond-Denver
- 01 The Best Hug I Ever Had - Shaquille ONeal
- Adam (NA-26, 2008): a TSA agent at JFK who is six foot two and the rare person Adam can look level in the eye, which turns into a hug that nearly gets her fired - and that reminds him of the best hug he ever had, from Shaquille O'Neal, which Adam asked for at the end of an interview because he wanted to know what it felt like to be hugged by someone bigger than him.
- 02 The MTV Beach House - Kennedy Put Me In The Air
- 📺 No Agenda 1777 (29 Jun 2025)
- Adam (NA-1777, 2025): the first year of the Beach House out at Quogue - 'you've got the Hamptons, and then you've got all the poor people.' Mid-segment on a wave runner, Kennedy rams him, he goes over the side onto the edge of the machine, and there is still a crease in his backside. John calls for the story: 'she almost killed you.'
- 03 Donny Osmond Walked The Track At Five In The Morning
- Adam (NA-4, 2007): from episode FOUR, November 2007. Adam raced against Donny Osmond in a celebrity race in Denver during an IndyCar event - 'and the guy's fucking serious.' Osmond won, having walked the track at five in the morning finding the apex while everyone else was out partying.
- 04 The Denver Celebrity Race - My Geo Story
- 📺 No Agenda 1108 (31 Jan 2019)
- Adam (NA-1108, 2019): the same Denver race from Adam's end, eleven years later. MTV followed the Indy circuit; Adam drove a Geo against real cars, hit the wall with the in-car camera running and kept going with the gearstick two feet in the air. The payoff is the broadcast commentary - 'it looks like I'm a grandma who's lost control' - and the race callers going 'oh, there's Adam Curry from MTV. Oh. Okay.'
- 09 🎼 THE GUITAR PLAYERS
- The players. Steve Stevens handing Adam a signed guitar and Joe Satriani teaching him the only lesson that matters, the gold and platinum records still on Adam's wall, and Def Leppard's solution to having no backstage - which turns into a second story about David Lee Roth that has not been told on this show before.
- 00 Stevens-Satriani-DefLeppard
- 01 Steve Stevens And Joe Satriani - The Tone Comes In The Hands
- 📺 No Agenda 1893 (9 Aug 2026)
- Adam (NA-1893, 2026): Adam's case that Billy Idol's guitarist belongs with Hendrix, Clapton and Beck. Stevens walks down the street to the studio with his case, hands Adam his signature Hamer, and Adam still has it. Then Joe Satriani's guitar lesson, which turns out to be about the faces you make - and the line underneath it: it isn't in the gear, the tone comes in the hands.
- 02 The Gold And Platinum Records
- 📺 No Agenda 1893 (9 Aug 2026)
- Adam (NA-1893, 2026): what a gold or platinum record actually was - a plated inverse you could prise out of the case and play backwards - and the ones still on Adam's wall, including the Michael Jackson and Aerosmith CD-era plaques. 'I can always connect the story to each one.'
- 03 Def Leppard In The Round And David Lee Roths Surfboard
- 📺 No Agenda 1896 (20 Aug 2026)
- Adam (NA-1896, 2026): Def Leppard touring in the round at the Omni in Atlanta, so there is no backstage and the band gets moved to the stage inside laundry carts before the lights go down. Then the story the source table never logged - David Lee Roth on the Eat 'Em and Smile tour, riding a giant surfboard across the audience inside a road case with a seat and some Jack Daniel's in it, while Steve Vai plays.
- 10 ❄️ THE FIRST TELLINGS
- Two stories in their earliest surviving versions, both from the show's first year, when nobody was listening. The North Pole runs longer than any later telling and keeps going past the point where every other version stops. The Prince story is the 2008 original - the same night as hour one, told eight years earlier, with details the 2016 telling does not have.
- 00 NorthPole-And-Prince-2008
- 01 The North Pole With Metallica And Hole
- Adam (NA-52, 2008): the Molson Ice Polar Beach Party - Metallica, Hole and Courtney Love, a hundred contest winners, a cybercast over twenty-four multiplexed phone lines out of Tuktoyaktuk, and sleeping in the oil barracks. It is his birthday so he dips a toe in the Arctic. The camp is dry, so they go out at midnight to find a drink and the local kids - riding bikes at midnight in the 24-hour daylight - point them straight at the drug dealer's house. Adam ruled the in-point clean, dropping the company framing.
- 02 Prince At Paisley Park - The 2008 First Telling
- Adam (NA-39, 2008): the same night as hour one, told eight years earlier and carrying beats the 2016 version does not - the girl who warns him off in blunter terms, Prince asking after his daughter, 'he's not that small, you think he was an Oompa Loompa', and how the party ended: Prince's men walking through clicking flashlights at the floor, and the room empty inside fifteen minutes.
- 11 👀 WHAT I NOTICED
- Three encounters where the story is not what was said but what Adam saw. Whitney Houston, Raquel Welch and Jamie Lee Curtis - and in the last one it is what she said after the recording stopped.
- 00 Whitney-Raquel-JamieLee
- 01 Whitney Houston - The Non-Blink Stare
- Adam (NA-382, 2012): they started their careers at the same time and Adam worked with her when he was nineteen, around her first big hit. What he remembers is that she never smiled once and never blinked - a complete non-blink stare - which he reads, in hindsight, as someone doing exactly what her handlers told her.
- 02 Raquel Welch And Christina Applegate
- 📺 No Agenda 1530 (16 Feb 2023)
- Adam (NA-1530, 2023): recorded the week Raquel Welch died, and Adam says on tape it is the only story he has about her. Some MTV promotion in the late eighties; she was quiet, almost silent - and what he actually remembers is a fine layer of pale fuzz over her face and arms. The same thing struck him meeting Christina Applegate at the MTV Awards.
- 03 Jamie Lee Curtis - After The Recording Stopped
- 📺 No Agenda 1742 (27 Feb 2025)
- Adam (NA-1742, 2025): an interview at her house around the release of A Fish Called Wanda. The recording had stopped and they were just chatting when she said something he did not get - and then explained it. ⚠️ Adam's own telling about a living person; kept short and ended before the studio commentary.
- 12 👑 ROYALTY AND THE WHITE HOUSE
- What the MTV job opened doors to, and one door that closed before he got to it. Lunch with the King and Queen of the Netherlands, an invitation from Buckingham Palace, an invitation from the White House that arrived too late, and a retired general who knew exactly one thing about Adam.
- 00 Maxima-Elizabeth-Hillary-Flynn
- 01 Queen Maxima And The Hair Flip
- 📺 No Agenda 1024 (12 Apr 2018)
- Adam (NA-1024, 2018): a royal lunch in the Netherlands with Adam seated next to the King, a menu he kept, and a white burgundy John judges too cheap for the occasion. Over coffee afterwards Queen Maxima talks to him for twenty minutes about his daughter, having clearly been briefed - and halfway through, the hair flip. Adam's read on the dossier: 'this Curry guy's kind of interesting.'
- 02 Meeting Queen Elizabeth II At Buckingham Palace
- 📺 No Agenda 1485 (11 Sep 2022)
- Adam (NA-1485, 2022): recorded the week she died. An invitation on a slab of board, a Mercedes through the front gates of Buckingham Palace, a waiting hall of paintings you almost recognise, and the Queen standing on a box in her gloves. Adam did the thing you are not supposed to do and looked her in the eye - 'and I saw nothing.' Plus the champagne, which John rates as a house wine.
- 03 The White House Invitation That Arrived Too Late
- 📺 No Agenda 1894 (13 Aug 2026)
- Adam (NA-1894, 2026): an invitation from the First Lady that arrived at the MTV office while Adam was out on the pro-mogul skiing tour, and had already passed by the time he got back. It carries the sharper detail underneath: the MTV News department hated the VJs - 'VJs were just scum to them' - and never invited them to the Video Music Awards.
- 04 General Flynn And Headbangers Ball
- 📺 No Agenda 1683 (4 Aug 2024)
- Adam (NA-1683, 2024): a gala, a photo line, and Joe introducing Adam to General Flynn with the only credential he thought worth mentioning - Headbangers Ball. Flynn's blank look, and Adam in a suit being sized up as somebody's lawyer.
- 13 ⚖️ MTV.COM - FIRED, SUED, ERASED
- The ending, and it is the whole arc in four parts. Adam registers mtv.com because nobody at MTV thinks the internet is going to be anything, runs a Gopher server off it, and gets sued for it when he leaves. Then the reason he left Headbangers Ball, which he only learned for certain when a book came out. And then, twenty years later, being written out of MTV's own thirtieth anniversary.
- 00 Gopher-Lawsuit-AxlRose-Erased
- 01 The Gopher Server - How I Registered MTV.com
- 📺 No Agenda 835 (19 Jun 2016)
- Adam (NA-835, 2016): Adam registered mtv.com for nothing because nobody was charging, and took curry.com and elvis.com at the same time. There was no web yet, so he ran a Gopher server off it from a headless Sun 3 above a Chinese restaurant in Virginia. Then a cease and desist from the University of Minnesota over commercial use, a $5,000 licence he could not pay, and the settlement he actually agreed: he wore their Gopher T-shirt on MTV. John, on tape: 'I've never heard that story.'
- 02 Suing MTV Over MTV.com
- 📺 No Agenda 1400 (18 Nov 2021)
- Adam (NA-1400, 2021): MTV told him not to worry about the domain - 'we don't give a shit about the internet' - then sued him when he left, and he countersued. Discovery meant days in a lawyer's office with two interns pulling emails off floppy disks in 1994. What stayed with him is sitting there listening to MTV's lawyer present the same facts arranged to make him look like a horrible person.
- 03 Axl Rose Got Me Fired From Headbangers Ball
- Adam (NA-352, 2012): Adam only learned the reason for certain when the I Want My MTV oral history came out, having sat five hours for it. He was taken off Headbangers Ball because Axl Rose made a phone call on behalf of Ricky Rackman. The irony, which John spells out on tape: Adam is the one who fought to get Guns N' Roses played when nobody at the network would touch the electric-chair video.
- 04 Erased From MTV History - The 30th Anniversary Snub
- Adam (NA-322, 2011): MTV's thirtieth anniversary, and Adam is not in it. He is persona non grata - 'it's what happens when you sue a big corporation and win' - while Ricky Rackman goes on to talk about Headbangers Ball. 'They're erasing me. I'm rubbed out from history.'
