What's going on my fellow rock n' rollers. Don't forget ot hit the bell notification icon to be
notified every time i put out a new video on my channel. Do you guys remember when MTV
used to have those contests with rockstars where you could meet and party with them.
Some of the more famous contests that come to my mind include the Evict Axl Rose contest in 1990
where you would win his Los Angeles condo and he’d throw you a house warming party.
Then there was one that happened years earlier when one lucky fan and a friend
could win a chance to party with Van Halen over 2 nights in 1984.
It was one of the greatest MTV contests ever. Stay tuned to find out the full story.
1984 was tumultuous year for Van Halen. On one hand the band released their record 1984, which
was a massive hit and gave the band their first #1 hit single with Jump, but it also was the source
of a lot of creative tension between guitarist Eddie Van Halen and front man David Lee Roth.
Eddie wanted the band’s music to grow and evolve, while Roth wanted to stay in the gutter. It really
all started the band’s previous record 1982’s album Diver Down when the pair clashed over what
to do with a synth riff that Eddie had come up. Eddie wanted to use it for an original composition
while Roth wanted to use it for a cover, and Roth got his way and the song would become
Dancing In the Street. The song had been covered by many artists and it was originally written by
Marvin Gaye., William "Mickey" Stevenson and Ivy Jo Hunter song that dated back to 1964.
While the band was dealing with creative differences, the tour to support 1984 was
massive to the point that the whole thing got so bloated that drummer Alex Van Halen admitted that
the band made no money on it. Not helping was that the band members seemed more splintered than ever.
Roth was making it clear in the press that he may not be around in Van Halen forever.
It was no surprise that a year laterwhen he was finally out of the group.
One of the brighter moments of the tour was that Van Halen would team up with MTV
to give two lucky fans a chance to party with the band and the contest was called
“the lost weekend with Van Halen” The grand prize was to hang out
with Van Halen for 2 days on the road in addition to getting $1000 of cash,
a Honda NightHawk Motorcycle, a video camera to film the adventure, an atari video game system and
even a private screening of the movie Footloose on the lear jet that would take you to meet the
band. There were plenty of other prizes as well. Here’s a clip of the contest promo that MTV ran
Get ready for the MTVlost weekend with Van Halen. Do you have the guts to enter this contest?
Destination unknown you'll have no idea where you are you'll have no idea where you're going and
probably no memory of it after you go but it'll be the whole weekend. According to the book I Want My
MTV the contest was based off an old movie named The lost weekend, which was about an alcoholic.
It would turn out the guy who won the contest would later become an alcoholic and he also had
a metal plate in his head, something we’ll get to in a little bit. Now a producer for MTvnamed
Richard Schenkman wrote the copy for the promo spot. He would remember shooting the commercial
I showed you and how frontman David Lee Roth would end up sleeping with both models from the promo.
And MTV for their part would receive over a million postcard entries for the contest.
The winner of the contest would be a guy named Kurt Jefferies who was 20 at the time
and he live in pennsylvania. Jeffries initially mailed in 8 postcards
and while the contest was going on he walked by a post office and thought to himself that he should
maybe mail in another batch of postcards, which he did. At the end of the day Jeffries would
reveal in the Lost Weekend Documentary that he mailed a total of 13 postcards in total and it
was the batch of second post cards that got him selected as a winner. . He would end up being
announced as the winner on air by VJ Martha Quinn. Jefferies had a girlfriend at the time who he
surprisingly he didn’t take to the Van Halen lost weekend. Ok, maybe it was a good thing.
It’s like taking your girlfriend to a steel panther show. After Jeffries was announced as
the winner he received hundreds of offers from women offering their bodies , while men offered
him money and even motorcycles to tag along for the weekend. Instead, he would end up choosing one
of his friends named Tom Winnick. Even after he picked his friend to tag along, according to The
Van Halen News Desk, Jeffries was indated with requests from people to get as many souveniers
as possible from the band including hair from a particular part of David Lee Roth’s body, which
you can probably figure out. The whole thing of course was taped by MTV to air on their channel.
The pair would be picked up from their home by a limo and then flown on a lear jet to Detroit
where Van Halen was playing two nights. According to the van halen news desk
prior to landing in Detroit the pair had already started drinking and by the time
they disembarked from the plane their blood alcohol limit was twice the legal amount in
the state of Michigan. Keeping in mind they still had two long days in front of them.
Upon landing in Detroit they would be picked up by another Limo and taken to their hotel.
Upon arriving at the hotel groupies who were waiting for the band recognized the contest
winners and tried to cut some deals with them to get access to the band, but nothing was agreed to.
The pair would be shuttled to their suites where they found various pieces of van halen memorabilia
including tour jackets and guitar picks. The pair then headed off to Van Halen’s concert at
Cobo Hall that same evening. Jefferies recalled being “nervous as hell.”, but fondly remembered
how the band according to him “treated us like one of the guys and really paid attention to us.”
The pair drank with the band posed for photos backstage, and Jeffries was brought on stage
by the band where he was sprayed mercilessly with champagne and hit in the face with a cake.
The real party though started after the show. There were groupies,
alcohol and drugs. And according to one van halen crew member the antics that weekend were “x-rated”
and Jeffries would spend some time with a famous groupie named Tammy thanks to frotman
David Lee Roth who set the whole thing up. One story that was overlooked or forgotten
about was that Jefferies had failed to mention something quite important to the people at MTV.
Unbeknownst to the people of MTV, Jefferies had suffered brain trauma a couple of years earlier,
as a result of falling 13 feet in a stairwell while drunk. He had been in the hospital for
some time in a coma and it probably wasn’t wise for him to be drinking. On top of that
Jeffries was taking anti seizure medication and he would remember the end of the night saying
“I blacked out, and the next thing I remember is waking up in a hotel room bed,”
The second night saw a food fight happen, while Winnick was found locked in a closet wearing a bra
with him remembering “I was in recovery and shock for many days afterwards,” Jefferis recalled.
“They were so friendly and entertaining, as huge as they are. … It was the best time of my life.”
So you're probably wondering, what happened after the contest?
According to Richard Schenkman the filmmaker who shot the entire weekend for MTV
had to sit down with Van Halen’s management and go through the footage frame by frame and the
manager dictated what the band didn’t want shown. Jeffries for his part would reveal in the book I
Want my MTV that I'm in an anonymous program now. I was drinking oil tankers of booze,
smoking plantations of marijuana and heading to buried. My parents gave me an ultimatum.
Today he works as a facility manager at a school and does maintenance work.
Sadly though, he’s now legally blind and diabetic. So that does it for today's video
guys thanks for watching. Be sure to hit the like button and subscribe and if you
guys have suggestions for future topics let me know in the comments section below. Take care.