Van Halen!

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?

if not his henchman, his protective older brother/ yes man/ enabler. He quit drinking in the late 80s and has apparently stuck with it. Yet he was also close to DLR from mid 70s to mid 80s, where as EVH could barely tolerate him; if AL didn't share DLR's omnivorous intellectual, experiential and musical appetites, he certainly was bruhs in arms re: pussy and partying. Also he was as articulate as Dave, moreso than EVH, and was the second best spokesperson in VH.

If you want dark evil Alex stories read Noel Monk's Runnin' With The Devil.

I click submit post
Like there's...no tomorrowwwwww

man it's just so easy to smoke a bowl and run through the whole dlr van halen discography, the longest album is the debut at an outright bloated 36 minutes

s/t: rock perfection
vh ii: every song great, just ever so slightly less great as a whole than the s/t
women and children first: solves the problem of duplicating the debut again by rocking harder
fair warning: same thing except rocking weirder
diver down: exhausted stopgap that's still fun
1984: pop perfection

i love their arrangement of their Dancing in the Streets cover. It sounds a little like Eminence Front, and doesnt quite follow the original melody so it feels kinda new but not reinventing the wheel eithrr

EVH hated it, but what they shoulda done is put in new vocal melody and words, then you gotta new song, in any case a precursor to "Jump" and one of their truly danceable cuts…

I think for the entire Roth period, they cut those records super fast…and any time they have resissued them for remastering, never have they put out outtakes, unused shit, unreleased gems as extras…

I thought the tardy line was BOTH the r slur and “I don’t feel late” in the “mrs krabapple I am INSULTED” way a kid will talk like a grownup to mock the authority figure

you’ll need more evidence then this line in this song to connect the word “tardy” to the r-word partic in 1983, let’s move on

I mean I remember using both the r slur specifically and referring to someone in the abbreviated form up thru second grade

Anyhow I have truly enjoyed everyone else in this thred!

hey wait a minute

Lol <3

not ready to read through this thread yet but finding out about EVH just gutted me. first musician i recall i cried hearing they were gone. one of my first favorite bands. i have to be ready for the dominos to really begin falling soon.

yeah Van Halen was a big part of my teens...those guys and Def Leppard were huge when I was pulling the trigger on Columbia house 12 tapes for a dollar. Eddie's guitar sound, as someone mentioned upthread was incredibly distinct. it was cool back then, you could be into metal, funk, poppy shit and it would all be on the regular radio station. I really wish Eddie would have stuck it out with DLR for one more album. It certainly wouldn't have sounded like "When it's Love".

Dunno what Buckingham is talking about re upthread on EVH in the context of VH; makes me think that he doesn’t listen to hard rock or doesn’t appreciate that the roles and space given to the sole guitarist in a hard rock band would be different to that of the guitarist in Fleetwood Mac or even a jazz fusion setup

yeah, i was gonna comment on that too. I mean who listens to Van Halen's rhythm guitar, and then listens to him break into a lead and says "That is confounding, whereeeee did that disparate sound come from?"

not like the rest of the band is playing Au Clair De Lune while he goes MEEDLY MEEDLY MEEDLY

lol

In 7th grade I had an assignment to write a report on a Central American country of my choice. One guess which I chose

“You see, I was listening to Sadinista...”

Thanks to that incorrect spelling I have invented an emo band.

They built a bunker for their feelings

https://www.pollstar.com/article/irving-azoff-on-eddie-van-halen-unqualified-genius-loving-soul-146599

Apparently they were going to reunite with Michael Anthony for a big tour last year, but then Eddie's cancer returned.

It's also mentioned that Alex and Wolfgang will soon be exploring the 5150 tape vault. I just saw an MTV news story on FB from '98 where Eddie gives a studio tour; arriving at the massive shelves containing the tapes, he mentioned that they'd recently tried log the contents, but the computer they were using cratered. He went on, bringing up a time recently when he got up on a ladder and grabbed a random tape box to listen to, and it was the initial work tape for "Right Now", which dated back to 1983.

Fun fact: Ted templeman played drums on “what a fool believes”

Good interview with Mr. Iommi -- he's seen a lot of people pass but I kinda think this one really has hit hard, not simply because they were fairly close but him being of a younger generation and all.

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/black-sabbath-tony-iommi-eddie-van-halen-interview-1073082/

<3 aw that was lovely. Iommi’s such a gent.

https://i.imgur.com/5WM1oke.png

Have you ever seen a bigger smile on Tony’s face?

Beautiful interview

What would you talk about?
Do you really want to know? [Laughs] I’m not gonna mention that actually. [Pauses]

killing me here

Couldn't find any recent photos of the kids from the Hot for Teacher video... except for one:

https://i.imgur.com/8jA8LZB.jpg

"Michael" (Yano Anaya) was also the mean kid in A Christmas Story and one of the paper boys in Better Off Dead!

Great Memories from Ted Templeman

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/ted-templeman-producer-eddie-van-halen-interview-1073080/

More from Ted, from last May:

https://www.lamag.com/culturefiles/van-halen-ted-templeman/

Wow, some impressive shit-talking in there!

Amazing how Templeman wanted to replace DLR with Hagar...in '77!

Templeman produced Montrose, right? Still, that seems maybe revisionist.

Tora tora is a wink to sabbath right?

xpost no at least according to Van Halen Rising Templeman wanted to replace Roth

Roth's um... limitations as a vocalist was one of the main reasons they took so long to get signed