Music Video Monday: Tattooed Millionaire

Ever watch a music video made between 1980 and the first few years of the 1990's?

If you like weird imagery, bright colors, and flashy costumes, and also just hate it when things make sense, then you really ought to watch a few. Trust me, that weird shit will be right up your alley.

Case in point: "Tattooed Millionaire"* by Bruce Dickinson:

What Happens In The Video: 

Bruce Dickinson, Iron Maiden frontman, successful solo artist, pilot, and creeptastic peeping tom, has decided to take some time off from being an awesome international superstar and spend a nice relaxing day spying on the citizens of Los Angeles from a submarine.

That is not the hair of someone who does not spend an unhealthy amount of time watching his neighbors have sex through a high-powered telescope.

He probably immediately regrets his decision, as the first thing he sees is the shoddily bandaged victim of some unlicensed back-alley plastic surgeon:

He's so LA! Probably also so infected with every strain of hepatitis.

Then Bruce wanders around the city surreptitiously gawking at people for a while, getting a visual overload of brain-melting weirdness. It starts off with relatively harmless stuff like a douchey rocker dude pretending to drive his red sports car while a tow truck hauls it away and a politely applauding studio audience with spoons hanging off their noses. 

Then there's stodgy-British-banker-on-stodgy-British-banker knife violence, and people wearing unsettling African masks stand near a stately white-pillared building looking like members of some secret cult of congresspeople. Then we see the rocker dude again, and discover that he and his hot wife literally live in three feet of raw sewage. And they don't seem to care one bit:  

Also their closets are infested with fat 80's businessmen. Which happens when you don't lay down traps** for them. 

Then, after bravely putting up with a few more scenes' worth of men wearing shoes on their heads, money being flung carelessly into the air, and women walking down the street in fur coats and lingerie, Bruce packs up his submarine and leaves our shores for the safety and sanity of his native England.

And that's the video. I'm sure it's all very artsy and symbolic of how shallow and materialistic late 80's/early 90's LA was.

What I Think It's Really About:

Bruce Dickinson heard a lot about this super-popular "Los Angeles" place on the west coast of the US and came to check it out. When he got here, he discovered to his dismay that it was overrun with criminally insane lunatics and hightailed it back home. If we're lucky, maybe he won't return with that submarine of his packed with water-to-land torpedoes and a burning desire to cleanse the city of madmen with fire.

*By the way, if you want to watch this video without the sound on for some reason, don't do it late at night. Without the nice upbeat music to put things in context, it looks super-creepy in places. 

**To catch 80's businessmen, bait your traps with money, real estate, and copious amounts of cocaine. Be sure to include the money and real estate or you might trap Steven Tyler by accident.