Few have experienced the rise and fall of music videos with the same intimacy as Tim Pope. His work is etched indelibly in the minds of an entire generation thanks to the lucid imagery he created for era-defining musicians: Robert Smith lying in bed drenched in a muslin-thin veil of spider webs; Marc Almond gesturing theatrically in front of a German expressionist backdrop; Paul McCartney bathed in yogi calm while surrounded by vividly coloured Indian iconography; Kaiser Chiefs bellowing ‘Everyday I Love You Less And Less’ and bopping around as jocular skeletons. Whether you consumed them late at night on MTV or via YouTube’s endless archive, Pope’s thread of visuals through the past 40 years of musical history helped solidify the identity of names like David Bowie, Talk Talk, The The, Soft Cell and Queen, while he also directed most of The Cure’s music videos and recorded live shows.

His videos are a well-crafted good time, but they’re also a document of contemporaneous fashions that have endured long past their intended shelf life. Could he have anticipated that people would be watching them beyond an album’s promo cycle? ‘I never realised the impact that any of our videos would have,’ Pope says over the phone. ‘We made these little videos then they went out the door, then we’d make the next one. And how could I have foreseen YouTube? I mean, some of the numbers on those videos reach 140 million!’

Currently preparing the release of his memoir My Weird Eye: Adventures In the Golden Age Of The Music Video, 69-year-old Pope is a pioneer allowing himself a rare moment of reflection, having helped light the touchpaper for the music video’s boom period and watched it fizzle out alongside the industry’s financial decline. ‘My period of making videos was very much a golden era when the cheque books were flung open. I was there at the beginning and I was there at the end. My story concerns the birth of MTV, how much I hated it and how much I railed against it, making many banned videos and taking great delight in that. And then ultimately, how it fell apart when YouTube and other platforms took over.’

Describing himself as a ‘bespoke tailor’ for the people he worked with, Pope’s undimming enthusiasm (which was in plentiful supply during our conversation) and wellspring of ideas propelled him into the orbit of Hollywood in the early 90s, where his slick short film Phone (starring Bill Pullman, Linda Blair and Amanda Plummer) earned him plaudits from Martin Scorsese. His story would then become a cautionary tale familiar to many plunged into the Hollywood grinder during the heyday of Miramax; while making The Crow: City Of Angels, he found himself at the mercy of Harvey Weinstein. ‘I had the amazing experience of playing at Universal Studios,’ he recalls. ‘I thought about the amazing movies shot there; the dream factory. Then I was in the nightmare factory and the Weinsteins cut my film into another film with my name on the credits. I won’t revel in it, but Harvey Weinstein got his karma for what he did to so many people. There were times working with him when I thought I was going to end up at the bottom of the Hudson River wearing concrete wellington boots.’

The toxic world of Hollywood may not have panned out (an aspect of his career which, despite its bleak undercurrent, he discusses with a glint of good humour), but the music industry never failed Pope. His lifelong friendship with Robert Smith has proven fruitful, with an extensive documentary about The Cure on the way.  ‘I love him,’ he said of Smith. ‘I mean, I've known the guy since he was just out of his 20s. When I’m making videos, the mystique of him is there but the real man is too. He’s a very down-to-earth bloke.’ With a trove of projects lined up in feature filmmaking, writing and advertising, there’s little chance that Pope will take his foot off the accelerator any time soon. ‘I see a lot of my friends at the age I am playing rounds of golf. That’s not for me. I’ll probably die on a camera crane… and I hope that is the case.’

Tim Pope, The Dome, North Berwick, 2 August, 2.45pm; main picture: Helen Edwards.