What about the Beatles? After a few years of constant touring, in lieu of actually perfoming on shows, they'd send films of them performing songs (like "Strawberry Fields Forever", things like that). Of course, again, there's the question of whether it's a staged performance or a music video, but some of these had creative elements that were rather music video-like...

>Of course, again, there's the question of whether it's a staged performance or a music video

They DID have at least a few films that could qualify as music videos, though. That is to say they weren't performance videos, but films of the band cut to the song...Paperback Writer was one of them (I remember a special on this a few years ago on VH1) but I can't remember the others. I'm sure Austin can.

The Who also had a bunch of music videos...the Happy Jack one is included on The Kids Are Alright (no performance here...it's just the band acting like goofy safecrackers with the song dubbed overtop), and the rest have been released on a separate DVD.

It's an interesting subject...I can't imagine nobody's written anything substantial about the evolution of music videos. If they haven't, it's about time.

I think the Beatles could probably claim they were first to really start to use videos as promos, although good old Wikipedia cites examples as far back as the 1920s: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_video

I've never seen a book around about the history of music video, although there was a good documentary on Channel 4 about 8 years ago. I guess a book wouldn't quite do justice to the medium, but that's never stopped anyone writing about either TV of music...