Tessa Watts, who has died of pancreatic cancer aged 68, was a pioneering British producer of music videos and a critical figure in the history of Virgin Records. In her time, what began as simple promotional devices for songs grew into a billion-dollar global industry, serviced by MTV, the 24-hour US music television channel, whose European launch she oversaw in 1986.
George Michael, Culture Club, Beyoncé, the Sex Pistols, Madonna, the Human League and Genesis were among the many artists she worked, and several of the young directors she supervised, notably David Fincher and Michael Bay, went on to big Hollywood careers. She once estimated that she had made at least 1,500 music videos.
Her early life followed the path of many of her 60s' generation. Daughter of Peter and Hope, she was born, as Stephanie Siddons (Tessa was a childhood nickname), into a middle-class family in rural Bedfordshire (her father owned a garage in the village of Harrold), and was convent-educated. Chafing at provincialism, she escaped to London in her teens and discovered the counter-cultural media.
An early employee of the listings magazine Time Out, she shared a flat with Felix Dennis, then a hustling street-seller of Oz magazine, now a multimillionaire publisher and poet. Later, she lived in pre-gentrified Notting Hill, then the epicentre of freakdom, in a huge, crumbling house that had been scheduled for demolition decades before. She was tall and pretty, wore pink hot-pants and Ossie Clark outfits, and did modelling photographs.
It was her good fortune that in the late 60s the British music industry was shaking off US corporate dominance and finding its own identity with new, independent labels recording home-grown talent. After working as secretary for the concert promoter Harvey Goldsmith, Tessa became a PR at the folk label Transatlantic, where Billy Connolly, then purely a folksinger, loved her thorough Englishness and would address her as "Vera Lynn". (Later, living in New York with me, she was PA to the manager of Miles Davis, whose own form of personal address usually included the word "motherfucker").
A spell in the London publicity office of Radio Luxembourg led in 1974 to Richard Branson recruiting her to his fledgling Virgin Records. She became head of PR, but was also a successful plugger, one of few women then in the job, with the tricky task of persuading all-male Radio 1 producers to play her records.
Virgin was located in a tiny mews off Portobello Road. Its initial roster of artists, led by Mike Oldfield (Tubular Bells) and including the Canterbury prog rockers Henry Cow and Hatfield and the North, was almost defiantly un-American, reflecting the anglophile tastes of the label's South African-born co-founder, Simon Draper. But the playful, collegiate atmosphere of the office in Vernon's Yard was down to Branson, with his penchant for exuberant horse-play.
Neither Branson, nor anyone else, ever made the mistake of taking liberties with Tessa, however. She had a warm but forthright manner that could translate as formidable.
Her political incorrectness, softened by a gift for taking people just as they are, endeared her to the next, and more street-wise, generation of Virgin artists, such as Boy George and the Sex Pistols, who were veterans of squats. She was motherly towards Sid Vicious, a lout who habitually stole from the desks of employees, and was instrumental in helping Boy George kick heroin. Occasionally, she washed George's laundry when Culture Club was on tour; and the Human League did their make-up for Top of the Pops at our marital home in west London.
By the time of punk in 1976, Branson's empire was burgeoning and part of his success was due to talent-spotting and promoting individuals to run its new outposts. Tessa's appointment to director of video production was intended to capitalise on the new industry in video singles. In this she proved a brilliant businesswoman, one who brought to her job an invaluable ability to persuade capricious artists and directors that her way was right.
Producing short films to accompany recordings had already happened in the 60s: but by the late 70s, with the shift from film to cheaper video and easy-to-use editing equipment, all record companies and artists wanted their singles to have visual representation. In 1981, Viacom launched MTV in the US. Two years later, the Hollywood film-maker John Landis directed Michael Jackson's celebrated video for Thriller. A once inexpensive marketing tool could now be a lavish artistic statement (more often, harmless pretension), as well as a desirable platform for film-makers, established or aspirant. Thus Tessa dealt with all the important video directors of the era, such as Steve Barron, Russell Mulcahy, Stephen R Johnson and David Mallet, famous for his shoots with David Bowie and Queen.
She commissioned several landmark videos for Virgin in the 80s. The best were perfect little vignettes. Pre-eminent, in 1986, was Peter Gabriel's Sledgehammer, said to be the most-played music video in the history of MTV, and suitably garlanded; its "claymation" animation was by Nick Park, a subsequent Oscar winner for his Wallace and Gromit films. Another highlight was Barron's noirish Don't You Want Me for the Human League (1981). So successful was she with Virgin that MTV finally lured her away, at a huge salary, to head the programming department of its European operation.
But she came to miss Virgin's freedoms. She and I married in 1977, and she was now the mother of two small children, William and Sophie. Unwilling to sacrifice time with them while travelling through Europe, she resigned within two years. Ambition always took second place to home-life.
Remarkably, even greater success ensued as she spotted the new market for DVDs of live performances. Although Tessa continued to make highly acclaimed videos – particularly George Michael's Freedom! '90, directed by Fincher and featuring the supermodels Naomi Campbell and Cindy Crawford – her focus now was on recording and re-packaging concerts for television and retail sale.
Working for Propaganda, Harry Films, Sanctuary, Metropolis and Gravity, her own independent production company, she entered an astonishing golden period in which she shot Beyoncé Live at Wembley, Madonna's Live at Koko (one of the first big concerts to be streamed online), Take That (at Manchester City's stadium) and other stars, and produced video clips for Paul McCartney, Lionel Richie and Michael Jackson. By 2007, when she became executive producer at Blink TV, she was viewed across her industry as the grande dame of music visuals, able to summon to the phone the panjandrums of her profession.
But Blink was her last job. After our separation and eventual divorce in 2008, she moved near to Pau, in the south of France, without knowing a soul and speaking no French. There she found many friends, locals and expatriates, that a frantic professional life had sometimes excluded. Our children visited often and discovered that their mother was loved but considered a bit of a terror. They were not surprised.
William and Sophie survive Tessa, as does her younger sister, Denise.
• Tessa Watts, music promoter and video producer, born 25 October 1945; died 13 May 2014
