Van Halen scholars around the world are reeling over publication of a long-awaited critical work from the distinguished Van Halenologist, Professor Herman J. Pesterbeer. In the short time since its release, professor’s 371-page deconstruction of the group’s 1984 opus “Hot For Teacher” has polarized opinions and set tempers flaring within the somewhat insular community of Van Halen researchers.
“Hot For Teacher” has long been hailed as a masterfully concise statement of longing, riddled throughout with dark underpinnings of existential angst. August Zissere, curator at UCLA’s Lita Ford Museum (no stranger to controversy himself—Zissere once dismissed Paul McCartney’s forays with Wings as “the biggest, fattest load of suckage this side of Hanson [sic]“) praised it as the most kick-ass slab of wax since Grand Funk Railroad’s “We’re An American Band.” Noted surrealist poet and hair rocker Bret Michaels ranked the song in the same pantheon as such pivotal and transgressive works as Stravinsky’s “Le Sacre Du Printemps” and “Nazareth’s Hair of the Dog.”[1]
The Director of Rutgers’ Institute of Advanced Van Halen studies, Pesterbeer is best-known for a definitive four-volume treatise that adroitly traces the influences of several prominent hair bands—most notably Winger and Warrant—back to the works of the 17th century Welsh metaphysical poet, Henry Vaughan. As a result of Pesterbeer’s work, one of Vaughan’s more obscure poems, “My Big Meat Pie”, is now thought to be a strong influence on Warrant’s 1990 smash, “Cherry Pie.”
Many feel that it is this work, more than any other, that was critical in repairing Pesterbeer’s reputation, which was damaged following his savage refutation of Quiet Riot’s thesis that “metal health will drive you mad,” an incisive and merciless piece of criticism that sketched out this landmark theory in a mere 132 pages.
While space obviously precludes an in-depth discussion of many of the controversial arguments Pesterbeer sets forth in this provocative work, here are a few that are considered to be among the most incendiary.
The Title
A common thread linking the scores of critical analyses of “Hot For Teacher” is the issue—still hotly debated—of the origin of the song’s title. Pesterbeer wastes no time in demolishing Zissere’s notion (long considered gospel truth) that the song started out as “Hot For My Teacher” and was later shortened to its final form, for reasons that have never been made completely clear. This was a drastic revision of Zissere’s own somewhat radical theory, put forth some years earlier, which suggested that “Hot For Teacher” was shortened from “Hot For A Teacher” which in turn was a modified version of “Hot For Mrs. Smeckman.”
Pesterbeer argues that in an early manuscript in Alex Van Halen’s own hand, which surfaced a few years ago in a basement storage room in the National Archives, footnotes exist that suggest that the elder Mr. Van Halen quarreled bitterly with his sibling over the title, taking umbrage at the flashy guitarist’s insistence that “Hot For The Teacher” was awkward, grammatically incorrect, and “just plain retarded.” A row ensued and two sofas, an ottoman, a diminutive Romanian man and his parakeet, and a hamster cage were hurled from a seventh floor hotel window into a patch of hydrangeas. This ruckus cost the band $7,241 and found them barred from the Ramada Inn chain for the next two decades.
The Anthony Conspiracy
In what is perhaps his boldest assertion of all, Pesterbeer argues that Van Halen bassist Michael Anthony, best known for a physique more suited to a stevedore or a WWF steroid gobbler, succeeded in making a Machiavellian power grab within the band just before the release of Van Halen II. After that, claims Pesterbeer, the burly bassist was replaced with a body double and lived on a yacht anchored off California’s Catalina Island, where he has manipulated the band over the course of the past several decades. Testimony from a number of shadowy sources relate Anthony’s intense paranoia, obsession with cleanliness and his increasingly bizarre pronouncements, many of which were painstakingly inscribed on the side of small dogs using a little wee electric razor.
Mikels, writing in the Journal of Post-Modern Bass Studies, wasted no time in dismissing this theory out of hand when rumors began to surface nearly three years ago. This caused a well-publicized schism with Pesterbeer—his former mentor—and culminated with the two engaging in a nasty slap-fight at the Battle of the Bands gig at 2007′s International Conference of Van Halenologists. Blagard, on the other hand, not only supported this seemingly farfetched theory but expounded upon it, suggesting that Anthony was aided in his coup by future Van Hagar frontman Sammy Hagar, whose well-known ties to the Sandinistas may have helped the pair round up funding and weapons for this bold venture.
The Teacher
Who is the teacher? There are as many answers to this question as there are Van Halen scholars. Some have gone so far as to suggest that the truth may never be known.
The theories have run the gamut from well-reasoned and carefully considered (Valenzeula’s notion that the “teacher” is nothing more than a subconscious projection of the songwriters’ juvenile sexual longing) to farfetched (Arnie Smith’s scandalous assertion that the teacher is none other than Mr. Ferdly, Alex Van Halen’s third grade music teacher).
Pesterbeer insists—in no uncertain terms—that the teacher is none other than the Prioress from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. This is a bold but not totally unreasonable theory, particularly when we take into consideration that “Diamond” David Lee Roth was a Chaucer scholar of some renown before casting aside the strictures of academia, donning fur boots and setting forth to go running with the devil.
Almost immediately after the publication of Pesterbeer’s monumental analysis a controversial email began making its way through the community. In it, Irving Snaggles (best known for his much-disputed claim that he coined the phrase “are you ready to rock?”) wondered how, even if we permit a measure of dramatic license and allow that the Prioress was indeed the teacher, could we ever have leapt to the bold assumption that she was hot?
Pesterbeer, for his part, quickly replied to Snaglee’s challenge, noting that the subtext of these particular passages from Chaucer strongly suggests that the Prioress was an absolute fox. He also put forth the possibility that Snaglee, who turned 93 this year, is still smarting over being passed over for the drummer position in Faster Pussycat in 1985. This was a position Pesterbeer himself held for just two weeks before an acute case of tendonitis sidelined him.
Got What?
“Got it bad, got it bad, got it bad.”
Got what, pray tell? It’s a question that has vexed Van Halenologists from that fateful day in late 1983 when a poorly dubbed cassette copy of a demo tape first began circulating. In 1987, Professor Venus Smetch, a noted Proust scholar who now serves as frontman for one of the world’s preeminent Ratt tribute bands, followed his landmark transcription of “Eruption”—Eddie Van Halen’s famous guitar jam—with a monograph that considered the Kabalistic significance of the fact that this phrase is repeated three times.
Upon hearing of this theory, Pesterbeer is said to have laughed so hard that he sprayed the better part of a mojito through his left nostril. Chapter 11 of the work finds him dismissing this theory out of hand, devoting nearly half of the chapter to his arguments and throwing in a few choice remarks about the sexual proclivities of Smetch’s saintly mother, just for good measure.
While the controversy over Pesterbeer’s book is likely to be with us for quite some time, he is said to be moving boldly forward. The sharp-tongued critic was obviously quite distraught over the cancellation of Rice and Webber’s ill-fated Van Halenesque, which was set to make its debut on the London stage in 2011, and on which he served as technical advisor. However, he is said to now be working on an audacious and monumental work of criticism that takes on the whole of the band’s 1988 epic masterwork, OU812. Pesterbeer, for his part has remained tight-lipped, refusing to confirm or deny these rumors.
[1] “Now you’re messin’ with a sonofabitch.” Indeed.
Watch: “Hot For Teacher” [at youtube.com]
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