Today’s music video of the day is an early one from Van Halen. Coming from 1981, this video was a product of the time when videos were usually performance clips that focused on showing off the skills of the musicians.
As with all of the early Van Halen videos, this one balances the technical skills and talent of Eddie Van Halen with David Lee Roth’s sense of showmanship. David Lee Roth and Van Halen had their conflicts but they were always at their best when they were performing together.
Director Bruce Gowers, who died in 2023, started directing music videos in the 70s and worked with everyone from the Rolling Stones to Queen to Journey, Michael Jackson, Toto, and Rod Stewart. He was one of those directors who worked every everyone who was anybody. He also directed a lot of television, doing countless MTV Movie Awards ceremonies and also working as a director for American Idol.
A woman has been kidnapped and it’s up to Van Halen to save her! Eddie’s a cowboy. Alex is Tarzan. Michael Anthony is a samurai. David Lee Roth, not surprisingly, is Napoleon. This video says a lot of about the appeal of early Van Halen, which really was a mix of Eddie’s technical virtuosity and Roth’s showmanship. Van Halen was a band that knew how to make amazing music but, at first at least, they were also a band who knew how to have a good time.
Playing the damsel in distress was International Chrysis, a transgender performer who worked in a number of revues and off-Broadway productions in the 80s, along with appearing in Sidney Lumet’s Q&A. International Chrysis died of cancer in 1990.
This video was shot at Indian Dunes, near Valencia, California. Director Roberto Lombardi was a musician who also acted and worked behind the scenes in a number of productions. He appears to have been one of those people who dabbled in a bit of everything as far as his creative outlets were concerned.
In 1982, this video was considered to be so controversial that MTV banned it from the airwaves. Of course, as Tipper Gore later learned, trying to censor something only made more people want to watch it. The video has since been unbanned but MTV gave up playing music videos a long time ago. I don’t know what the M stands for now but it’s definitely not music.
Perhaps due to the controversy, Van Halen’s cover of Roy Orbison’s signature tune because one of their biggest hits.
Time to get back to our “Greatest Guitar Solos” series with a short but awesome rock instrumental from the one and only Eddie Van Halen.
“Eruption” was part of the band Van Halen’s self-titled debut album in 1978 and announced the arrival of one of rock’s guitar gods in Eddie Van Halen. Just like Jimi Hendrix’s “Little Wing”, this track was short (less than two minutes) but was very influential with future musicians.
The song itself has Eddie Van Halen mixing it classical music structures and cadences (he uses a section of “Etude No. 2” by Rodolphe Kreutzer in the beginning of the track. Eddie’s use of classical musical theory and melding it with the face-melting technique of hard rock will usher in an era of rock guitarists from all genres from hard rock to black metal where classical music is not seen a stodgy music, but a strong basis and foundation to create of the great rock songs for the next half-century.
I was trying to figure out what song to pick for song of the day when I happened to see that today would have been Eddie Van Halen’s birthday. I nearly picked Panama for our song but then I saw this video for a song called Mean Street on YouTube and I felt the video showed off Van Halen’s guitar playing a bit more than the video for Panama.
And that’s how Mean Street become today’s song of the day!
(Plus, I want to save Panama for whenever we get around to officially annexing it.)
At night I walk this stinkin’ street past the crazys on my block and I see the same old faces and I hear that same old talk and I’m searching for the latest thing, a break in this routine, I’m talkin’ some new kicks, ones like you ain’t never seen
This is home, well, this is Mean Street, it’s our home, the only one I know
And we don’t worry ’bout tomorrow ’cause we’re sick of these four walls Now what you think is nothin’ might be somethin’ after all Now you know this ain’t no through street, the end is dead ahead The poor folks play for keeps down here, they’re the living dead
Come on down, huh, down to Mean Street They’re dancin’ now, Lord, out on Mean Street Dance, baby
It’s always here and now, my friend, it ain’t once upon a time, it’s all over, but the shouting, I come, I take what’s mine We’re searching for the latest thing, a break in this routine, talkin’ some new kicks ones like you ain’t never seen
This is home, mmm, this is Mean Street, it’s our home, only one I know
See, a gun is real easy in this desperate part of town, turns you from hunted into hunter (yeah), you go an’ hunt somebody down, wait a minute, ah, somebody said fair warning, Lord, Lord, strike that poor boy down
Songwriters: Edward Van Halen / Alex Van Halen / Michael Anthony / David Lee Roth
This song and this video finds Sammy Hagar filled with optimism about his future with Van Halen. That optimism wouldn’t last for long but both Sammy and Van Halen still went on to create a lot of great music, both together and separately.
This performance is taken from Live Without A Net, a concert video that was recorded at a show in New Haven, Connecticut.
For today’s Labor Day music video of the day, we have one of the earliest videos from Van Halen.
Jamie’s Cryin’ first appeared on Van Halen’s debut album and it was the third released single to come from that album. Though it didn’t chart, it was a favorite of both Eddie Van Halen’s and David Lee Roth’s. Eddie would later say that he regretted that Jamie’s Cryin’ was not the first single to be released from their debut.
Today’s music video of the day is an early one from Van Halen. Coming from 1981, this video was a product of the time when videos were usually performance clips that focused on showing off the skills of the musicians.
As with all of the early Van Halen videos, this one balances the technical skills and talent of Eddie Van Halen with David Lee Roth’s sense of showmanship. David Lee Roth and Van Halen had their conflicts but they were always at their best when they were performing together.
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.
Today’s music video of the day is one of the highlights of the Sammy Hagar era of Van Halen. This song peaked at #2 on the Billboard rock chart and it was also used as the theme song for a Sidney, a short-lived sitcom starring Eddie Van Halen’s then-wife Valerie Bertinelli.
This video was directed by Andy Morahan, who was nominated for a Video Music Award for his work here. Morahan also did videos for Wham, Kim Wilde, Simple Minds, Pet Shop Boys, and Guns ‘N Roses. He also directed the third Highlander film but he didn’t write the script so don’t be too hard on him.
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.
Through the Shattered Lens 