Today, see the surprising Buffy the Vampire Slayer connection to George Harrison’s hit song, “Got My Mind Set On You.”
This is “Just Like the Time Before,” a feature where I examine instances from pop culture history where creators did early versions of later, notable characters and plot ideas. Essentially, the “test runs” for future famous characters and stories.
As I recently discussed, George Harrison was the last Beatle to have a solo #1 hit with his 1987 single, “Got My Mind Set On You” off of his Jeff Lynne-produced album, Cloud 9
An interesting thing, though, is that the famous video with Harrison sitting on a chair in a den when everything around him was going crazy was the SECOND video produced for the single.
The first one was about a young man flirting with a young woman at an arcade as he tried to win her a prize at one of the games…
The young man? None other than a then-unknown Alexis Denisof, more than a decade before he debuted as Wesley the Watcher on Buffy The Vampire Slayer, before then taking the character over to the Buffy spinoff, Angel, for most of that series’ run.
I guess you could say that Wesley “had his mind set” on Fred on Angel, but, well, you should never say that as that’s an awful pun.
If you have a suggestion for a future Just Like the Time Before, drop me a line at brian@popculturereferences.com.
I always preferred the original version.