An interesting new interview with co-writer Bruce Woolley followed up by a response from Geoff Downes:
Woolley:
Trevor and I had written two songs, “Clean Clean” and “Video Killed the Radio Star,” and Geoff Downes came in to help us arrange those songs. Now, this is all semantics and terminology, but Geoff didn’t really write either of those songs. Trevor and I wrote them around a piano, and with guitars and a bass – you know, here’s the song, this is the words, this is the chords, this is the tune, and so on. Geoff came in and did some really significant arrangements, and so Trevor and Geoff sat me down one night and said, “Look, Geoff has done these parts for these songs, I think we should cut him into the songwriting.” Trevor and Geoff were really a team by this point (they later emerged as Art of Noise, one of the major production teams of the 1980s), and they were trying to get a deal with Island Records, and it would help them if they had that credit so it looked like they were the creative team. So I said, “Let’s face it Trevor, Geoff hasn’t really written these songs, you and I have, but maybe there is a case for giving Geoff some share of this.” So we came up with this solution: instead of splitting it three ways, we decided to do one song 50/50, and the other song three ways. In order to make the decision about which of the two songs to split which way, we had to toss a coin. I was fortunate enough to get the heads, and so I got the 50 percent of “Video,” and we split “Clean Clean” three ways. I’ve never contested any of that and neither has anyone else. It seemed to be a fair balance in the scheme of things. All of us have done sufficiently well enough since then with our other projects that none of us have ever worried about it or contested any of this, which is quite nice. We are all still pretty good friends, which is more than you can say about a lot of guys who have known each other for 40 years (laughs).
Downes (from his Twitter posts):
Poor old Bruce Woolley seems to have forgotten that I wrote the entire intro, bridge and instrumental sections single-handedly, on top of the key ‘You Are A Radio Star’ melody, as well as the operatic lines and in fact every single melodic counterpart in the song (which he partially used in his less-than-average version). It should have been a 3-way split, and he’s a very lucky bunny he got 50% and we made him so much money!
In fact, truth be told, Trevor and Bruce had 2 verses and a chorus on VKTRS. That was it, before they brought it to me. A very trite undistinguished pop song as it stood tbh. That was the reason why Bruce’s version stiffed like a board. I personally turned it into an epic with all the musical additions for The Buggles. As I said before, Woolley was one lucky f**ker we did that version. Bought his house in Surrey etc etc and he got 50% whereas me and Trev had splits on the other half. #happydaysforhimnotsoforus PS I’m not bitter about it. Just wish he might recognise the truth.
And when someone asked Geoff "Is saying BW had "a long and rather spectacular history as a performer, producer, and songwriter" a bit overstated?", Downes replied: It’s not in my interest to comment on that. But what I can tell you is, it was entirely from the arduous endeavours by me and my management team a few years ago, multiple negotiations with lawyers, publishers and collection agencies that enabled him to reclaim his share of the copyright of “Video” under the US Recapture Laws. You’d think he owed me one for that alone.
The author of the article/interview claims that Woolley's version "is quite a bit more rocking"
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Originally Posted by Geoff Downes
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