With new memoir, Tom Freston hopes to show young people there are multiple paths to success

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NEW YORK (AP) — Tom Freston could easily fill a book with stories from the formative days of MTV and his celebrity encounters _ Bono would merit a few chapters on his own. Ultimately, though, Freston feels that his life has a more valuable lesson to offer.

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His memoir, “Unplugged,” shows by example that trying to follow a straight line to success is not the only path.

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Freston, 80, was at MTV from the start and became its leader, along with sister networks Comedy Central, VH1 and Nickelodeon, at their greatest periods of success. He rose to become CEO of parent corporation Viacom before chairman Sumner Redstone’s impatience led to his ouster in 2006.

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Since then Freston has largely freelanced, advising the likes of Oprah Winfrey and Vice, before its implosion. He made a memorable return to business in Afghanistan, and has been chairman of the ONE Campaign, the anti-poverty organization devoted to Africa that Bono spearheaded, for nearly two decades.

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“I was improvising,” he said. “It was like a bebop lifestyle, hitting notes instead of having a long, set classical structure.”

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His wanderlust unsettled Freston’s suburban Connecticut parents when he took a gap year after earning an MBA at New York University. They had reason to believe he had gotten it out of his system when he took a job at a Madison Avenue advertising agency in the early 1970s.

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Saying no to a life convincing people to squeeze the Charmin

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He soon faced a crossroads when he couldn’t muster enthusiasm for a role on his agency’s important Charmin account. An old girlfriend said to him: “All those years of school, that fancy MBA degree, and you are selling toilet paper? You’re better than that.”

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She had a point. It was January 1972, and the woman invited him to hitchhike through France and Spain, then eventually into the Sahara Desert. He left the agency behind.

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Thus began several years of travel, where he particularly fell in love with Afghanistan and India. Freston started a business importing clothing from Asia. The company, Hindu Kush, was successful for a time before restrictions on imports during the Carter administration killed it.

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Freston landed back in New York. He read an interview where an executive in the nascent cable television industry talked about starting a music network built on videos and reached out for an interview for a marketing job. He met with a 26-year-old Bob Pittman, who wondered about the appearance of “Afghanistan” on his resume.

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Pittman suspected Freston was a hashish smuggler, but that “seemed to make him like me more,” he wrote. Hey, it was rock ‘n’ roll. Freston got the job.

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To encourage cable systems to carry the new network, Freston directed film crews that ambushed Pete Townshend on a London Street and David Bowie on a Swiss ski slope to record ads saying “I want my MTV.” Its rapid rise has been well documented, and by 1987 Freston was running MTV Networks.

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Music always played in Freston’s office, giving the young, creative employees the sense that it wasn’t a suit in charge. Former employees say he wasn’t afraid to take risks and empower people. It was almost a requirement — particularly