The Grammy and Emmy-winning director Bruce Gowers, who has died aged 82 of an acute respiratory infection, enjoyed huge success in American television through his work on high-profile awards shows including the Emmys, the MTV awards, the Academy of Country Music awards and the Comedy awards. He also directed nine series of American Idol: The Search for a Superstar, which brought him an Emmy award in 2009. He masterminded a string of TV specials for music legends including the Rolling Stones, Prince, Fleetwood Mac and Rod Stewart, and oversaw coverage of President Bill Clinton’s inaugural concert at the Lincoln Memorial, which gathered artists from Michael Jackson and Aretha Franklin to Tony Bennett, Bob Dylan and the rapper LL Cool J.
Another standout addition to his CV was Michael Jackson: 30th Anniversary Celebration (2001), a record of two concerts at Madison Square Garden, New York, peppered with guest stars including Marlon Brando, Liza Minnelli, Ray Charles and Elizabeth Taylor. He won a Grammy for the Huey Lewis long-form video The Heart of Rock’n’Roll in 1986, and a Directors Guild of America award for his work on Genius: A Night for Ray Charles (2004).
But if there was a single event that seared Gowers’ name into the history books, it was his work on Queen’s video for Bohemian Rhapsody (1975). He had already worked with the band, having directed a video of their live performance at the Rainbow theatre, London, in 1974, and they then hired him to make the promo clip for Bohemian Rhapsody to avoid them having to mime it on the BBC’s Top of the Pops. Chunks of the six-minute film show Queen performing the song with their customary flamboyance, but what makes it unforgettable are the sequences where the band’s spectrally lit faces loom against a black background as they sing the song’s multi-layered harmonies. The video took a mere four hours to shoot at Elstree Studios in Hertfordshire at a cost of £4,500, but it became recognised as the moment when the pop music video arrived as an invaluable promotional tool for pop musicians, paving the way for the launch of the MTV music channel in 1981.
“At that time it was a new world, the world of videos, and I didn’t think anyone was that into it for making money,” commented Gowers. “The video was just made for Top of the Pops and I don’t think any of us thought it would go beyond that – certainly not to be used live on stage for over 40 years.” In 2018, he claimed that he had been paid a mere $590 for his work on the project, though a proposed lawsuit to reclaim royalty arrears never materialised. The clip has now been viewed more than 1.5bn times on YouTube.
He was born in West Kilbride, to Robert, a teacher, and Violet. The family later moved to Enfield in north London, and Bruce attended the Latymer school in Edmonton. After a stint at the BBC Training College he entered the industry as a cable puller, cameraman and production manager. Subsequently he worked for Rediffusion and London Weekend Television in both directing and producing capacities, involved in programmes at different times with Kenny Everett and Stanley Baxter, before moving to the US in the late 1970s.
As the music video developed into an increasingly powerful dimension of the music industry, Gowers delivered some of its most memorable specimens. His clip for Prince’s 1999 captured the louche exoticism of Prince and his band, while for the Bee Gees’ How Deep Is Your Love he relied merely on some coloured lights and closeups of the artists’ faces. Gowers matched the sheer preposterousness of Rod Stewart’s Hot Legs with a video that resembles a parody of TV show The Dukes of Hazzard, while for Van Halen’s Dance the Night Away he exploited the band’s dynamic stage presence with a punchy live-perfomance video. For Chaka Khan’s I’m Every Woman he presented viewers with multiple Khans in a contrasting array of costumes.
He proved himself flexible enough to move between a variety of genres. Much in demand for comedy spectaculars for the HBO and Showtime networks, he worked with a string of the biggest names in the business including Robin Williams, Jerry Seinfeld, Billy Crystal and Eddie Murphy. He directed episodes of the showbiz magicians Penn & Teller’s Sin City Spectacular, and enjoyed much success with programming for children in the form of the Teen Choice awards and the Kids’ Choice awards. With his third wife, the writer and producer Carol Rosenstein, whom he first met on the video shoot for Rod Stewart’s Tonight’s the Night in 1976, he created the long-running Kidsongs franchise, which includes a TV show, DVDs and music CDs. Gowers and Rosenstein had been resident in Malibu for 23 years.
She survives him, along with his son, Sean, his stepdaughter, Katharine, and four grandchildren.
• Bruce Gowers, television director and producer, born 21 December 1940; died 15 January 2023
