How embarrassing, I wrote this post last night but I forgot to click on schedule. I guess we’re all goin’ crazy.
This song is from David Lee Roth’s solo album, Eat ‘Em And Smile and it features Roth and his band performing while being watched by two record executives, the Picasso Brothers. As you can see in the video, Roth put together an amazing band for his solo effort, with Steve Vai on guitar, Billy Sheehan on bass, and Gregg Bissonette on drums.
This video was directed Pete Angelus, who also did the music video for Van Halen’s Jump.
In 1983, a reporter accused Van Halen’s David Lee Roth of only writing songs about “women, partying, and fast cars.” Roth realized that he never actually had written a song about a fast car so he wrote one about “Panama Express,” a car that he had seen race in Las Vegas.
The majority of this video was shot over two night at the Spectrum in Philadelphia. A few clips were taken from a performance that Van Halen gave at the Providence Civic Center in Providence, Rhode Island.
This video was directed by Pete Angelus, a long-time associate of the band. Along with directing most of Van Halen’s early videos, he also directed the videos for David Lee Roth’s Just a Gigolo and California Girls.
We take a small break from our annual Horrorthon to present, for your approval, the type of music video that most bands probably couldn’t get away with today, at least not without running the risk of getting cancelled on twitter. Hot For Teacher is both a song and a video that epitomizes both the 80s and Van Halen.
The video follows Waldo over the course of his first day of school. Waldo’s voice is provided by the one and only Phil Hartman. Hartman would join the cast of Saturday Night Live two years later, appearing on that show for ten years and then co-starring on Newsradio. He was also an unofficial cast member of The Simpsons, providing the voices of both Lionel Hutz and actor Troy McClure. Hartman was one of the of the funniest men to ever live. His 1998 murder is still something that I have a hard time accepting.
The teachers are played by models Donna Rupert (she’s the Chemistry teacher) and Lillian Muller (she teaches physical education). While the stripping teachers were considered to be controversial in 1984, what was even more controversial was a brief scene of the members of the band grabbing their crotch during the “so bad” chorus. When the video originally aired on NBC’s Friday Night Video, the crotch-gabbing was covered by a black censor box.
In 1985, during the Al Gore-inspired Senate hearings on obscenity in rock music (or “porn rock,” as Al Gore called it), the video for Hot For Teacher was cited as being a particularly bad influence on young listeners and viewers. The members of the committee took a break from the testimony of Tipper Gore and Frank Zappa to watch the video. After the video ended, U.S. Senator Paula Hawkins of Florida testified, “Much has changed since Elvis’ seemingly innocent times. Subtleties, suggestions, and innuendo have given way to overt expressions and descriptions of often violent sexual acts, drug taking, and flirtations with the occult.” Unfortunately, there doesn’t appear to be any record of Senators Ernest Hollings and Strom Thurmond thought about the video. Van Halen continued to rock long after all the members of that committee had either retired or been voted out of office.
If you live in a place that celebrates Daylight Savings Time, then remember to set your clocks forward an hour.
This is one of those videos where the people involved can tell the story behind the video.
Pete Angelus was the director of the video. He had a relationship with the band that went back to the 1970s.
Robert Lombard was the producer.
Ann Carli was the senior vice president of artist development at Jive Records.
Here’s the backstory from the book I Want My MTV:
Robert Lombard: “Jump” is where the drama really started. Dave wanted the performance video intercut with him doing crazy shit, like driving his chopped Merc hot rod and hanging out with midgets and girls in maids’ outfits. So we shot hours of footage.
Pete Angelus: Rather than doing something bigger than life, which is how Van Halen was perceived, we wanted something very personal. Let’s see if we can get Edward to smile. Of course, we also had to appease Dave, who wanted to throw his karate tricks into the equation.
Michael Anthony: There was getting to be a little bit of tension between us three and Dave.
Robert Lombard: I told the band, “I’m gonna shoot in sections.” Alex would show up, we’d do some drum segments, then bass with Michael Anthony, then guitar, then David. I didn’t shoot them together until the end of the day. I was trying to keep peace, because I felt tension amongst them. David thought he was bigger than the rest of them.
I was in post-production with a rough cut of the video. I knew that if they kept it as a straight-on performance video, they would have a number one single. So I took the rough cut to Eddie’s house up in Coldwater Canyon and played it for him and his brother Alex. I said, “Guys, I’m taking a stand here. If you put in this crazy footage”–which later surfaced in “Panama,” after I was gone–“the video isn’t gonna have the impact it should have.” Eddie and Alex said, “We agree with you, one hundred percent. We’re not gonna release this video unless it’s done this way.”
Two days later, I got fired. Noel Monk, their manager, said, “You don’t do that–you don’t go behind Dave’s back. Here’s your check, never want to see you again.” That video won the award for best performance video at the first VMAs. And I still don’t have my award.
Pete Angelus: I think we spent less money making “Jump” than we did on having pizzas delivered to the set of “Hot for Teacher.”
Ann Carli: The legend was that “Jump” was a $5,000 video. David Lee Roth’s swinging on a rope, but he’s also playing right to camera. Nobody did that. That was a groundbreaking video, and it had an impact on how everybody looked at making videos.
Through the Shattered Lens 