Van Halen!

I did like too that for a new practicing guitarist, he had rhythm parts I could play that weren't boring but helped me stretch a bit

(I think a lot of my earliest learned riffs were from Van Halen's first four lol)

So on the question about how VH could have come up with 1984...

Diver Down was probably the end of the line for a draining cycle of touring/recording/touring over 5 straight years, as others have pointed out upthread. But it was also their pop breakthrough, thanks to those two hit cover tunes. And the Diver Down tour ended early in ‘83, almost a year before 1984 was released. They only played 18 concerts that whole year, down from more than 80 a year every year from 78-82. So for the first time in their career they had a long while, like 9 months, to knock a new batch of tunes into Also, 1983 was the year pop metal exploded - between Metal Health and Pyromania, the latter of which at least could never have existed without their influence, they must have felt both energized and like they had something to prove. No wonder the next record was a coup. Eddie was all of 28 years old when they finished it.

because if the clock was slow he'd be even more tardy

The tardy joke is an immature r-word retort.

didn't the band want to fight EVH on recording "Jump"?

When I was reading about it today it looks like the keyboard riff stretched back a couple of years, but they just didn't quite know what to do with it.

On wiki:

The synth line was written around 1981 by Eddie Van Halen but it was refused by the other members of the band. In 1983, producer Ted Templeman asked Roth to take a listen to the unused song idea. Riding around in the back of his 1951 Mercury, with band roadie Larry Hostler driving, Roth listened repeatedly to the tune. To come up with a lyric for it, he remembered seeing a television news report the night before about a man who was threatening to commit suicide by jumping off a high building. Roth thought that one of the onlookers of such a scene would probably shout "go ahead and jump". Roth bounced this suggestion off Hostler who agreed it was good. Instead of being about a threatened suicide, the words were written as an invitation to love. Roth later told Musician magazine that Hostler was "probably the most responsible for how it came out.

The tardy joke is an immature r-word retort.

― Josh in Chicago, Wednesday, October 7, 2020 7:31 PM (three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

i know this is true yet i choose not to believe it

just remembering from the Guitar magazine interviews in the 90s how much EVH wanted to kick Hagar's ass after they kicked him out.

I think he said the phrase "He better be wearing a fuckin' cup, next time I see him" about ten times.

Kinda liked his bluntness in that interview.

Re diver down. I Think DLR saw the songs more as a vehicle for the musical personalities (individual and collective) of the band. So was into covering rnr "standards" as if to demonstrate the point. They could do whatever material.

Think a big part of the progression to 1984 had to do with evh building a home studio.

Riding around in the back of his 1951 Mercury, with band roadie Larry Hostler driving, Roth listened repeatedly to the tune.

lolmg

The only thing I remember from that guitar interview is "Dave and sam both suffer from LSD, Lead Singer's Disease" lol

Roth possesses a vocal range of five octaves and three notes.[5]

source - VOGUE magazine

(i'd be amazed if he had, like, 2.5....not a knock but lol no way he has 5)

xxpost oh god, the Lead Singer's Disease quote was a good one yeah.

And then the following month's issue had a letter to the editor where some irate Hagar fan wrote "too bad all his brains are in his fingers"

And something about Sammy changing Glen Ballard's introspective, pink floydesque lyrics for the twister song to "some shit like I can't see your diamond ring/through your shooting star"

"and besides I have a plane to catch"

Guess I remember quite a lot of it, actually. I was so young and impressionable.

Ha, I mean, from the open low E on a guitar to the 24th fret on the high E string would be four octaves. xps

took it out of the wikipedia article. NOT ON MY WATCH

Good work

love to see Deflatormouse get all riled up (depite being rong)

My dealer is late; what ya gonna do? <3

The tardy joke is an immature r-word retort.

― Josh in Chicago, Wednesday, October 7, 2020 7:31 PM (three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

i know this is true yet i choose not to believe it

lol no it's not. all these things are just funny things to say to the teacher. they're not telling a narrative. 'you're late' 'i don't FEEL late' is a quality joke. that's all it is. sheesh!

'but wait, why would he have brought his pencil if he's such a poor student?'

somebody get a wookipedia going for 'hot for teacher'

Agree with Tracer that tardy not a r-word reference but a Cali-stoner joke response to the teacher telling a student they are late. You could imagine this spoken by Spicoli, no problem.

I do agree that the pencil line is a dick reference because of the audible leer DLR puts into that word and because it is DLR.

Folks, we are doing deep line readings of a song called, "Hot for Teacher."

“Reach down in between my legs, ease the seat back”
What is happening here

well calstars when a david lee roth and a woman love each other very much

It's a double entendre because both his penis and the lever/bar to ease the seat back would be between his legs.

I have to admit that was a confusing line for me as a 12 year old... wait, why is he doing that in a moving car??

thanks y’all for rescuing my favorite hot for teacher ad lib

It took a while before I got it too bc ime the lever to adjust the seat was always on the left.xp

is he speaking in the second person or just thinking out loud?

Pretty sure its a triple entendre, as she would also be easing her "seat" back onto his dick.

I feel gross having posted that, but there ya go.

Panamo_O

The song is about a car.

Is he...fucking... the car?

I also used to wonder what the country of Panama had to do with anything else in the song. SO MANY LAYERS.

I like the story that DLR wrote that song because someone tried to insult him by saying he only wrote about girls, parties and cars, and he realized he hadn't actually written a song about cars.

Wiki:

Although the song features some suggestive lyrics, it is about a car that Roth saw race in Las Vegas; its name was "Panama Express", hence the title of the song.

Panama was also the name of Roth's Opel Kadett. He had the hood and bumper mounted in his hallway, which can be seen in his video for "SHOOBop". He has a stuffed deer's behind crashing through the front windshield. A plaque underneath reads, "Your First Deer, courtesy of Panama."

lol

In one classroom scene where the teacher is dancing on the desk, a black board is featured with the numbers “20-9-8-19-25-12-15-8”. Each of these numbers corresponds to a letter of the alphabet. If you read the encoded word from right to left, you’ll notice it spells “HOLY SHIT.” This is the only known instance of such “hidden” gimmicks in a Van Halen video.

None of the other Van Halen gimmicks are hidden, it's true.

I had just bought the story that "Panama" was a model of car but it actually seems vaguer than that. Aside from the two cars mentioned above, there was also some reference tbat the country was the furthest south you could go and 'have a corrupt good time' and there might be a stripper involved as well: https://www.autoweek.com/car-life/a1850441/van-halens-1984-automotive-anthem-panama-far-more-complex-and-meaningful-you-ever/

there might be a stripper involved as well

You could probably add this to the end of any Van Halen story.

I am now reminded of one of my favorite covers from the A.V. Club Undercover series.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2vQce1vI7J4

I do agree that the pencil line is a dick reference because of the audible leer DLR puts into that word and because it is DLR.

This is brought home by the next thing he says: "Gimmie somethin' to write on!".

"I think he said the phrase "He better be wearing a fuckin' cup, next time I see him" about ten times."

the video I tried to post but couldn't yesterday is of the MTV interview with Ed and Alex re: their disaffection with DLR and Sam… EVH describes his mounting anger with DLR's self centered antics backstage at the 1996 VMA, culminating with the very phrase cited above. The entire interview is fucking amazing, easy to find on YT but wouldn't load yesterday…

It took a while before I got it too bc ime the lever to adjust the seat was always on the left.xp

― The nexus of the crisis and the origin of storms (Sund4r), Thursday, October 8, 2020 7:33 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

ime the recline level is on the left, but the bar that lets you slide the seat back in directly under you between your legs - but i guess i've always had shitty cars i know a lot have electronic controls now, given this is the 80s i'd imagine it wasn't electronic

Alex always gives me some real dark vibes
like he was Eddie's henchman

why does he say "I think the clock is slow" then "I don't feel tardy"

Has anyone else misheard this as "i dont feel it turnin" referring to the hands of the clock?