“Got My Mind Set on You” [1987]: a “Girl in the Video” update

How could something Beatles-related be completely—truly completely—undocumented? 

Welcome to the madcap step-by-step on how I finally found a person who appeared in one music video more than 30 years ago and has virtually no digital footprint.

Got my mind set on you indeed!

In 2013 and 2014, I ran a series called “Girl in the Video” for which I tracked down and interviewed 50 women who appeared in 42 iconic music videos of the 1980s and early 1990s. 

Some were deep in the shadows. Most had not been interviewed about this before. Some of their stories were amusing. Others were moving. 

Though I was thrilled with the people I found and the number who participated, some declined—or eluded me.

TEN YEARS LATER…

10/7/24

I received a message on Facebook from a person who determined possible identifications for the lead woman of two videos: “Should’ve Known Better” by Richard Marx and “Shake Me” by Cinderella. [I am aware that you can’t accurately call that song or video iconic; it’s just one I remembered, and I am steering this Starship.]

He did this by using a facial recognition site called PimEyes. Like plenty online, it can be used for purposes both legitimate [like research for a writing project] and unscrupulous.

The Marx woman did not check out and I’m still waiting to hear back from the Cinderella one. 

This launched a related mission that would play out over five days.

I used the site to check some of the other women on my “where can I find a woman like that” list.

Only one ended in success—up to a point. 

George Harrison released two videos for “Got My Mind Set on You” [1987], his third and last #1 hit and his last song to crack the top 10 in the U.S. The one that got more airplay on MTV features George playing guitar in a room where inanimate objects moved along with the song. The other video is a girl meets boy scene that takes place in an arcade. 

It was the lead girl in the arcade video whom I’d tried to find in 2013. 

I thought my best lead would be the boy from that video, actor Alexis Denisof [Buffy the Vampire Slayer]. He kindly replied to me on Twitter. Unfortunately, he did not remember her name, which I can understand given the short shoot and time passed. 

Upon plugging a screenshot of the girl’s face into PimEyes, I was directed to a 2022 message board thread about her.

In that thread, a woman posted that she attended the same UK school as the video star, and remembered her name was Sarah. She also remembered that Sarah won a 1986 model contest for a British magazine called Just Seventeen—and she bought a copy of that issue so she could come back and report her last name: REDACTED.

In the UK, many people have the name Sarah REDACTED.

Still, I searched that name with the artist and song title. No luck.

I searched that name with the magazine name and found nothing.

That thread seems to be the only page on the entire internet linking that girl to that video and to that model contest.

On Facebook and Instagram, I did not see someone with that name whom I thought resembled the girl in the video, plus she may have a married/different name now.

I went through an online cover gallery of the magazine. It was a weekly, which initially made me think this was going to be time-consuming, but I soon found a November 1986 issue with Sarah on the cover, announcing her as the winner.

I asked several sources if they could email scans of the article [and masthead], hoping it mentioned details that could focus the search, i.e. city she’s from, name of her parents, etc.

Both a kind eBay seller and a UK university archive did. The eBayer refused my offer to pay him. The university collection is cleverly called Femorabilia.

Alas—and surprisingly—the article had no details about her.

I began tracking down people who worked for Just Seventeen magazine at that time, using both the Facebook page for it and searching for names from the masthead.

It was hard to reach most of them. I’m not connected to any of them on social media and messages sent to strangers on Facebook and Instagram go into “hidden” inboxes that many people don’t know about it and therefore never check.

When names were uncommon, I tried to find emails, and occasionally did.

The few who replied did not know anything about Sarah.

10/8/24 

The November issue of Just Seventeen indicated that the contest had been announced in an April issue, so I revisited the cover gallery, found the issue, and again requested scans of it. Obviously Sarah wouldn’t be mentioned in the announcement of a contest she had not yet entered, but perhaps it would include other names I could contact.

It didn’t.

10/9/24

It sunk in that the April and November issues said that readers voted on the models. Therefore, there would be an issue between April and November that lists all the entrants/finalists...and maybe more.

Luckily, revisiting the cover gallery yet again yielded pay dirt because a July cover not only said “You pick the winner” but also showed all 10 finalists.

I requested scans of that interior where, finally, I learned one more piece of valuable info: the city Sarah was from.

However, that was not instantly helpful because, as I said above, her name is common.

After a fruitless search of name + city, I went back to the message board. I knew it was a long shot that the former classmate who posted there about Sarah two years earlier would see let alone reply to a new post, but I asked anyway: what school?

Incredulously—within minutes—she responded with the name.

I asked this person to email me so I would not clog up the message board with my additional questions.

In the meantime, I learned that the school closed years ago. I went back to Facebook to ask groups connected to the school if anyone knows Sarah or knows anyone who might.

You can’t post to certain groups unless you’re a member, and sometimes such groups don’t accept you if you don’t have a direct connection. Sure enough, one of them declined my request.

I searched for articles about the school with the hope that I’d find alum names for whom I could then find contact info.

I tried to find emails for the admins of those Facebook groups, the only members whose names I, a non-member, could see .

I contacted a newspaper archive in Sarah’s hometown, figuring a local model contest winner would have gotten some press and hoping someone would be willing to check, well, most of 1986…obviously a big ask.

10/10/24

The archive suggested posting to a Facebook group for her hometown, which has many more members than the school groups. Also, the archive could research for me for £35 per hour.

While waiting to see if the hometown group would accept me [which it did, after about six hours], I tried another Hail Mary—looking for any of the nine model contest finalists.

I knew they’d all met because they posed for a photo together, but assumed they didn’t learn much about each other that day—or if they did, likely wouldn’t remember it nearly forty years later.

Most of their names were also common. Of the nine, I did a quick search for six. I found that one had spent three years in isolation in Tibet and adopted a Buddhist name:

Rebecca Tisbury, 23, hugs a friend goodbye as she prepares to embark on 3 years of isolation at the Samye Ling Tibetan retreat, November 7. Rebecca, formerly a top fashion model, will emerge from the retreat in February 1997

I found record of another of the finalists, but didn’t pay to access contact info.

I found a third on Facebook and was surprised that she responded quickly [given that my message had gone into that aforementioned hidden inbox]. She did not know about Sarah but kindly said she’d ask around. I thought she meant the “former models” community. 

Minutes later, she sent a link to a Facebook profile I’d seen the day before but had quickly moved on from because that Sarah REDACTED [who was wearing sunglasses] did not immediately seem to resemble 1986 Sarah. But that was before I knew that Sarah was from the city of REDACTED…and this profile says this Sarah is from SAME REDACTED.

I messaged this Sarah, but instead of waiting weeks or more for her to stumble upon it [her last post visible to me was from 2014], I found emails for some of her Facebook friends and emailed them, hoping someone could connect us or pass along my request.

10/11/24 

Under my post on the Facebook page for her hometown, two kindly wrote that they know Sarah and will notify her. A person I emailed said the same.

Then weeks of silence.

11/4/24 

One of those go-betweens told me she was glad to reconnect with Sarah after at least a decade but also reported what already seemed clear: Sarah does not want to be interviewed.

Hugely disappointing.

But also exhilarating to solve at least part of a mystery that lasted five days, and before that 10 years, and before that 26 years. 

Appropriately, it was there all along in the lyrics to “Got My Mind Set on You”:

It’s gonna take time

Whole lot of precious time

It’s gonna take patience and time

Hopefully one day soon Sarah will feel comfortable sharing her memories of that experience.