Through rock and roll history, there have been few stars bigger and more important than David Bowie and Paul McCartney. Imagine being a young exec at an upstart cable TV channel called MTV and finding yourself in nothing but a towel, chilling in a sauna in Gstaad, Switzerland, with both of them at the same time! That’s exactly what happened to MTV co-founder Tom Freston. The story is as wild as it sounds.

In The Beginning, MTV Wasn’t A Sure-Fire Hit

In his new memoir, Unplugged: Adventures From MTV to Timbuktu , which Vanity Fair has published an excerpt from, Freston recalled a crazy adventure in the early days of the fledgling cable network. It had been decided that MTV needed an ad campaign with the biggest stars in the business. They set their sights on the then-seemingly impos

See Full Page