The Story Of The Alternate Version of “Hot For Teacher” By Van Halen

The Story Of The Alternate Version of “Hot For Teacher” By Van Halen | I Love Classic Rock Videos

Van Halen for "Hot For Teacher" - VHTelevision / Youtube

In the record label’s vault of Van Halen exists an alternate version of their 1984 single, “Hot For Teacher”. 

The unheard version of the song, along with another revised cut of “Little Dreamer” and four CDs worth of “usable, releasable material,” was uncovered by engineer Brian Kehew 15 years ago when he was asked to dig through the Warner Bros. archives for potential cuts that can make it on expanded reissues of the band’s studio albums.

In a Sunset Sound interview, Kehew said: “‘Hot for Teacher,’ there’s different lyrics all the way through it. Dave’s original vocal had different words. That is a strange one, because Eddie plays bass on that one. … And on the intro, which is that great guitar part, he actually doubled it on the bass. But probably, they couldn’t quite play it live, so they didn’t keep it on the record. But they did keep [the rest of] Ed’s bass track on the actual record.”

Eddie also did a guitar and bass duel with himself on the song, which Kehew said people could visualize when they listen to what Steve Vai and Billy Sheehan did on David Lee Roth’s solo album, Eat ‘Em and Smile. He said, . “If you’ve heard ‘Shyboy’ …they did the exact kind of idea. They took that idea, to do the bass and the guitar doubling and tapping each other in octaves, which is exactly what Eddie tried to do on [‘Hot for Teacher’]”

Watch the rest of the interview with Briah Kehew as he expounds on what he unearthed in the Van Halen archives, including the reason why it took so long for the information to become public.