I’ve always liked the song “Hot for Teacher” by Van Halen. Oh, it’s got racy lyrics and a saucy theme, sure. But recently, I started noticing something else about it.
The opening is the band’s drummer (Alex Van Halen) wailing away with a pretty fast beat. It always seems like “holy crap, I can’t believe he’s playing that fast”, and then he overlays *another* beat across the top. He does this about 4 times before the guitarist kicks in. It’s a really spectacular display of drumming ability. The dude is really, really good.
The band, Van Halen, was always pretty much about the lead guitarist, Eddie. Eddie Van Halen is arguably the finest guitarist of his generation, and is always considered one of the top guitarists of all time. He’s fast, he’s precise, and he is very, very creative.
Eddie gets so much press, in fact, that you often forget about his brother on drums. I mean, that’s why the band is *called* “Van Halen”. It’s *both* Van Halen boys.
So when I hear “Hot for Teacher”‘s intro, I realize that it’s one of Alex’s only times to really shine without other players talking or playing over the top of him. It’s really pretty special. He was really “showing off” his stuff, because most of the time, you never notice him sitting back there being awesome.
And when I was listening to the song yesterday, I heard the interaction for the first time.
Alex starts wailing away. Then Eddie joins him with a blazing fast guitar solo riff. They crescendo and then drop off to a quiet outro before the main song starts.
They’re brothers.
They grew up together, probably learned to play instruments together. They get along so well and play so well together that they decide to pick up a bassist and a lead singer and make a band of it. But they’re the core of the band. It’s named after them.
These guys really love playing together. And you can just see them, jamming away in their garage before they got big, Alex wailing away on drums and Eddie on guitar, just riffing off of each other and having fun.
And *that’s* what the intro to “Hot for Teacher” is about. These two boys, these two brothers, recording a little jam session together.
It’s very fun.