Show 201 – Hotel California

• Solved! One of the greatest Rock song mysteries of all time!
• The true story—and the wildest theories–about a Classic Rock song we all know
• We’ll analyze the lyrics of a Rob Zombie song and you can decide whether you agree with what I think the song is about
• New Ghost, Greta van Fleet, Liliac, Shallow Side, and Skillet
• Rare Hair from Steelheart, Lita Ford, Fastway, and Motley Crue
• Chart-Climbers by Dirty Honey and Motionless in White
• Hits & Deep Cuts from 10 Years, Stone Broken, AC/DC, Rob Zombie, Skid Row, KISS, Queen, Kingdom Come, Damn Yankees, Kix, and more!
• A 17 year-old vocalist you won’t believe is 17
• A Thrash Metal song from before Thrash Metal was invented
• A 5-piece family band
• A rising Metal star who made her made her name doing drum covers on YouTube
• The latest generation–literally–of Metal musicians
• Lyrics to “Teenage Nosferatu Pussy”

  Teenage Nosferatu Pussy by Rob Zombie

  
  Songwriters: John Lowry / Rob Zombie
  Teenage Nosferatu Pussy lyrics © Warner/Chappell Music, Inc
  

  I am shadow, I am tomorrow
  I am a hero with a buggy whip
  I am so hazardous
  My name is Lazarus
  I am a pirate on a
  Devil ship
  

  Teenage Nosferatu pussy
  Turn it on
  Turn it on
  

  Teenage Nosferatu pussy
  Turn it on
  Turn it on
  

  I am the sickness
  I am the quickness
  I am a virgin dying in the spring
  A hungry fat cat
  Look at the black rat
  I am a dark and wicked thing
  

  Teenage Nosferatu pussy
  Turn it on
  Turn it on
  

  Teenage Nosferatu pussy
  Turn it on
  Turn it on
  

  What cha gonna do
  In my head
  Turn yourself around
  In my head
  Everybody scream
  In my head
  The walls are melting
  In my head
  

  Teenage Nosferatu pussy
  Turn it on
  Turn it on
  

  Teenage Nosferatu pussy
  Turn it on
  Turn it on

Playlist

Own the hits and deep cuts you hear on Hard, Heavy & Hair! Click the iTunes/Apple Music or Amazon Digital Music icons to the left of each song.

Fastway – Rock On

Metallica – Fuel

Skid Row – Rattlesnake Shake

10 Years – Novacaine

Dirty Honey – When I’m Gone

Steelheart – Loaded Mutha

Kingdom Come – Get It On

Mötley Crüe – Keep Your Eye on the Money

Lita Ford – Dedication

Kix – She Dropped Me the Bomb

Stone Broken – Wait for You

Rob Zombie – Teenage Nosferatu Pussy

KISS – Shout It Out Loud

Queen – Stone Cold Crazy

AC/DC – That’s the Way I Wanna Rock & Roll

Motionless In White – Brand New Numb

Damn Yankees – Piledriver

Transcript of the Show

[INTRO]

Fresh off last week’s amazing 3-hour 200th show spectactular, let’s start first show of the next 200 with one of the original supergroups, Fastway. We’re gonna rock, gonna bop, ’till the USA goes crazy. Some may say that’s already happened, but we’re gonna rock on regardless.

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Fastway – Rock On
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That was “Rock On” from Fastway. Fastway was one of the first supergroups, founded by Motorhead guitarist Fast Eddie Clarke and UFO bassist Pete Way–get it? Fast and Way became Fastway. They also recruited Humble Pie drummer Jerry Shirley and, on vocals, the guy who would later form Flogging Molly, Dave King. I love Flogging Molly.

Welcome! And thank you for tuning in. I’m Pariah Burke, your hard talking, heavy drinking, hairball of a horny hedonist host, and this is your weekly dose of Hard Rock, Metal, and Hair Bands from the 70s, 80s, 90s, 2000s, and 20-teens. We call that weekly dose the Hard, Heavy & Hair Show. This is show number two-hundred and one.

Did you catch the giant-sized, 3-hour 200th show last week? If not, you really should. Every half hour was a special segment, with blocks of songs related to paying tribute to the Hard Rock and Metal of the Avengers and the Marvel Cinematic Universe; rockers from Boston, Portland, and Florida; two Radio Rewinds to the years 1981 and 1989; the best Hard, Heavy & Hairy songs strippers pole dance to; and, lots more. It’s an insanely fun show, and you can stream it anytime you want, 25 hours a day, 8 days a week, from the home of the Hard, Heavy & Hair Show, PariahRocks.com, that’s P-A-R-I-A-H-R-O-C-K-S-dot com.

I’ll tell you all about what’s coming up on this show after a Metallica favorite and a song from Shallow Side.

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Metallica – Fuel
Shallow Side – Sound The Alarm
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“Sound the Alarm”, the first single from their second full-length album, that’s Alabama-based Shallow Side. And that is the ONLY time I’m going to mention Alabama on this week’s show. Shallow Side is on Thermal Entertainment’s label. The album, Saints & Sinners, came out May 17th. Pick it up if you liked “Sound the Alarm.”

Coming up on the show is

New Ghost, Greta van Fleet, and Skillet in addition to the new Shallow Side you just heard.

Rare Hair from Steelheart, Lita Ford, and Motley Crue

Chart-Climbers by Dirty Honey and Motionless in White

Hits & Deep Cuts from 10 Years, Stone Broken, AC/DC, Rob Zombie, Skid Row, KISS, Queen, Kingdom Come, Damn Yankees, Kix, and more!

A Thrash Metal song from before Thrash Metal was invented

a 5-piece family band

The true story–and the wildest theories–about a Classic Rock song we all know

We’ll analyze the lyrics of a Rob Zombie song and you can decide whether you agree with what I think the song is about

and A 17 year-old metal vocalist you won’t believe is 17

Skid Row’s 1989 debut album is one of those records I can listen to from start to finish without skipping a single track. I love every cut on that album. Here’s a killer cut that that never gets airplay because it wasn’t released as one of the record’s three singles. This is “Rattlesnake Shake” on Hard, Heavy & Hair.

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Skid Row – Rattlesnake Shake
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I’ll have your first Cover Song of the Week clue for you after more recent Hard Rock starting with 10 Years and ending with a brand new track by… well, a truly unique Heavy Metal band on Hard, Heavy & Hair.

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10 Years – Novacaine
Liliac – Not Afraid
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This is the Hard, Heavy & Hair Show, I’m Pariah Burke, and you just heard a unique new band. That uniqueness comes from the double-meaning of the word “new.” The band is called Liliac. Its Facebook fan page says the band is “a family enjoying life, traveling and playing rock music.” That’s a good description because all five members are family–two sisters and three brothers–and the oldest is just 20. The youngest, keyboardist Justin Cristea, is 11. All are Nelson-level blonde.

On vocals and bass is 17 year-old sister Melody. Yeah. Those sultry, growling, mature vocals came from the throat of a teenager.

Liliac got YouTube famous over the last year or so playing heavy covers of songs by Ozzy, Maiden, Metallica, and Janis Joplin. Earlier this year this the family band released their first EP of original songs. You just heard “Not Afraid” from that EP, which is called Chain of Thorns.

Hit the show notes on PariahRocks.com to order the EP or learn more about Liliac.

And Liliac isn’t the only artist on this week’s show who got their start on YouTube. More about that later.

Let’s do one more track and then I’ll get you a Cover Song of the Week clue.

Entering the charts this week at number 39, this is Dirty Honey with “When I’m Gone.”

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Dirty Honey – When I’m Gone
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Let’s get you your first Cover Song of the Week clue, then we’ll get back to the music with 80s Hair by request.

The song was originally released in 1976 and can be heard frequently on every Classic, Oldie, and Adult-format radio station in every English-speaking country on Earth. Though the song is entirely in English, it even gets play on non-English stations. Someone–Julia Miller, the co-producer of the films Close Encounters of the Third Kind, The Sting, and Robert Deniro breakout film Taxi Driver–even wanted to turn the song into a film. The original recording artist didn’t care for the idea, so they nixed it.

In 1998, Guitarist magazine readers voted the song’s guitar coda the best guitar solo of all time. A coda, for those who don’t know, brings a piece of music to an end. So, in the case of the Cover Song of the Week, that amazing extended guitar solo is the end of the song. You DO know the song–I promise–so just think about truly great, enduring 70s rock songs that end with an extended guitar solo.

If you know the song, you also know the original recording artist; it’s the band’s most famous hit.

Jessica Frehley is one of the Hard, Heavy & Hair Show’s biggest fans, and I can always count on her to make a request for Steelheart. On Facebook Jessica requested the following song because, quote, “the past week has been a little rough” on her. Here’s Steelheart “Loaded Mutha” by request for Jessica Frehley.

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Steelheart – Loaded Mutha
Kingdom Come – Get It On
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Two requests there, both via Facebook. From Orrville, Ohio Jennifer P. requested “Get It On” by Kingdom Come. There you go, Jennifer! Thank you for the request, and thank you for listening to Hard, Heavy & Hair.

Ready for the latest from Ghost? This is new single “Faith” on Hard, Heavy & Hair.,

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Ghost – Faith
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Ready for another Cover Song of the Week clue?

The artist performing the 2019 Melodic Metal Cover Song of the Week is a relatively new band on most people’s radar, and the band might not have risen to a height to hit your radar yet. So, if you don’t get this clue, don’t worry; the next one, about the Cover Song of the Week itself, is much, much easier.

The covering artist is a band named after one of its founding members, the drummer. She’s an Israeli-American who became famous on YouTube for performing Heavy Metal drum covers of Rock, Metal, and Nu Metal songs. Her channel had more than 60 million views in 2014, with more than 10 million of those going to her drum cover of System of a Down’s “Toxicity”. In mid-2013 she raised $144 thousand from Kickstarter to fund creating original music. Some of that money helped with the foundation of the band she now leads, the band going back to its roots, with a Melodic Metal cover in the Cover Song of the Week.

Good luck guessing!

The Cover Song of the Week itself is coming up, as is

More new tracks from Greta van Fleet and Skillet

A Thrash Metal song from before Thrash Metal was invented

The true story–and the wildest theories–about a Classic Rock song we all know

My interpretation of the lyrics to a Rob Zombie song

And lots more Hard Rock, Metal, and Hair Bands.

This is a Theatre of Pain track released as a promo back in ’85. It’s Motley Crue with “Keep Your Eye On the Money” leading into a three-way of Glam and 80s Hard Rock featuring Kix and Lita, too.

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Mötley Crüe – Keep Your Eye on the Money
Lita Ford – Dedication
Kix – She Dropped Me the Bomb
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“She Dropped Me the Bomb” was Kix’s first single off ’88’s Blow My Fuse LP, released on Atlantic Records. That album went platinum and is the best known by Kix. Kix recently played the M3 Rock Festival in their home state Maryland. There’s an entire Hard, Heavy & Hair Show dedicated to the M3 Rock Festival and the great bands that played it this year. That’s show number 195, the one right before my tribute to Randy Rhoads. You can stream it any time from PariahRocks.com

Before Kix was Lita Ford and “Dedication,” featuring producer and songwriter Mike Chapman on backing vocals. Chapman also wrote hits for Suzi Quatro, Mud, The Sweet, and others before producing Blondie and The Knack.

Let’s slow things down with Stone Broken. This is “Wait for You.”

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Stone Broken – Wait for You
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Cast your mind back to the far flung year of Two Thousand and Thirteen. We hadn’t heard music from Rob Zombie since 2010’s Hellbilly Deluxe 2, though we’d heard his voice as the voice of God in James Gunn’s superhero black comedy Super, and and seen him on TV in Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, Cupcake Wars, and Counting Cars. Suddenly, there’s a new Rob Zombie album out! It’s called Venomous Rat Regeneration Vendor and Best Buy has an exclusive limited edition with a 3D sticker on the cover. You drop the needle on this new Zombie vinyl and suddenly start wondering what it would be like to get laid by a jailbait vampire. This is track 1, side 1 from that 2013 Rob Zombie record.

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Rob Zombie – Teenage Nosferatu Pussy
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“Teenage Nosferatu Pussy.” Despite the obvious vaginal euphemism, I actually think John Lowry and Rob Zombie intend the narrator to be a vampire cat–Felis catus vampirus. Let’s examine the lyrics.

“I am a hero with a buggy whip” could mean the cat’s tail, whipping back and forth, while he does the job the rest of song says is his.

“I am the sickness
I am the quickness”

Cats are certain quick and agile, and they’ve often been mistakenly and sometimes correctly blamed for carrying plagues in Medieval Europe.

“I am a virgin dying in the spring”

That line, I don’t know. What do you think? Tell me on Twitter or Facebook.

“A hungry fat cat
Look at the black rat
I am a dark and wicked thing”

On the nose, sure, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the narrator ISN’T a cat.

Going back to the beginning of the song is the line “I am a pirate on a Devil ship”. Cats were often brought onboard sailing ships to help control the rat population.

I really do think “Teenage Nosferatu Pussy” is a narrative song from the perspective of a cat. I picture a slinky black cat with glowing red eyes hunting shipboard mice under moonless skies. What do you think? I’ve posted the complete lyrics to the song in the show notes on PariahRocks.com for Hard, Heavy & Hair Show No. 201.

From 2013 we jump back in time to 1976, to an album called Destroyer.

To quote Tuff, [clip: American Hair Band “let’s Shout It Out Loud for a band called Kiss” match cadence, talk over]

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Kiss – Shout It Out Loud
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What song did music magazine Q describe as “thrash metal before the term was invented”? It’s a song Metallica covered on last week’s Hard, Heavy & Hair 200, and one that I promised I’d play the original of this week. Believe it or not, Queen was the band that played Thrash Metal before there was a Thrash Metal.” Listen for yourself. This is “Stone Cold Crazy” from 1974’s Sheer Heart Attack album.

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Queen – Stone Cold Crazy
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Listen to Brian May shred! And Roger Taylor’s machine gun drumming! Oh, man! What a great pre-Speed Metal Speed Metal song!

At the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert in 1992 James Hetfield joined Queen and Tony Iommi onstage to sing Metallica’s more aggressive, darker rendition of “Stone Cold Crazy.” Both the original and Metallica covers are incredible pieces of music.

Ready for some new music? The Cover Song of the Week is coming up shortly, but let’s do two new music debuts back-to-back before I get you your third and final clue. This is the latest Greta Van Fleet, “Lover, Leaver” on Hard, Heavy & Hair.

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Greta Van Fleet – Lover, Leaver
Skillet – Legendary
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“Legendary,” Skillet’s newest single. Following their certified-Gold 2016 album Unleashed, which gave us tracks like “Feel Invincible” and “The Resistance,” new album Victorious will be out August 2nd on Atlantic Records. “Legendary” is the first single from that upcoming album, though Skillet simultaneously sourced another song, “Anchor” exclusively to Christian radio.

[Clip Forest Gump – Have You Found Jesus]

Hard, Heavy & Hair doesn’t qualify for the Christian radio distribution list because too many people at Atlantic Records have heard this debaucherous and hedonistic show, though this week’s show is pretty tame. There’s no one giving me head under the console, no naked women in the studio this week, and I’m not even talking about the bottle of bourbon I’ve been pouring three-fingered shots from since the top of the show–it’s Wild Turkey 101, if you’re interested. BUT, there is that Cover Song of the Week a lot of people think is about Satanism. Why don’t I tell you about that in the final Cover Song of the Week clue before I reveal all in the Cover Song of the Week segment itself.

There are many, many, MANY theories about the meaning of this very famous song by one of the most famous bands of the latter half of the 20th Century. Here are some of them. People think…

That it’s about a hotel. It’s about a mental institution. It’s about Satanism. It’s about a specific Christian church abandoned and taken over by a Satan-worshipping cult. It’s about cocaine addiction. It’s about a brothel. And, one of the more bizarre theories, it’s about a fireworks factory that burned down near a hotel.

I’ll tell you more about those theories and the REAL meaning behind this famous song we all know after new Motionless in White and old AC/DC ’cause That’s the Way I Wanna Rock & Roll.

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AC/DC – That’s the Way I Wanna Rock & Roll
Motionless In White – Brand New Numb
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“Brand New Numb” is brand new but definitely not numbing from Scranton, Pennsylvania’s Motionless in White. MIW has a new album, Disguise, dropping June 7th on Roadrunner Records. “Brand New Numb” hit the Billboard Mainstream Rock chart this week at 38, just ahead of Dirty Honey’s “When I’m Gone,” which you heard earlier in the show. MIW is currently on tour co-headlining with Atreyu. Later this summer they’ll hit the road in North America with Alice Cooper and Halestorm.

Before MIW was “That’s the Way I Wanna Rock & Roll ” from AC/DC’s 1988 LP Blow Up Your Video. The album title was taken from a line you heard in the song.

[cow]

Did you guess the Cover Song of the Week?

Originally released in 1976 by the Eagles, “Hotel California” has inspired many, many theories behind the meaning of the song. Some people think it’s about a real hotel, usually one located in Baja, California. Others think it’s a mental institution. Someone even stated he knew the song to be about the Camarillo State Hospital between LA and Santa Barbara. Others think it’s a metaphor for cocaine addiction. Still others think “Hotel California” is about a brothel–women can “check out anytime they like, but they can never leave.”

The most bizarre and oddly detailed theory was posted to a Usenet Newsgroup by Thomas Dzubin of Vancouver, BC. Dzubin said, quote: “There was this fireworks factory just three blocks from the Hotel California . . . and it blew up! Big tragedy. One of the workers was named Wurn Snell and he was from the town of Colitas in Greece. One of the workers who escaped the explosion talked to another guy . . . I think it was probably Don Henley . . . and Don asked what the guy saw. The worker said, ‘Wurn Snell of Colitas . . . rising up through the air.'” [chuckle] I think that might be a joke. It certainly bears a strong resemblance to the story of Deep Purple’s “Smoke on the Water.”

The most prevalent and persistent of all the theories is that “Hotel California” is about Satanism, devil worship. A related theory is that it was specifically about a hotel purchased by Anton LeVay, the founder of the Church of Satan.

So what’s the true story?

I know the truth, and I’m about to share it with you.

If you DON’T want to know the true meaning behind “Hotel California,” if you’d rather keep a little mystery in your life, then here’s your chance to keep it. I’m going to countdown to the truth, and I will speak the truth for exactly 10 seconds. All you have to do is put your fingers in your ears or turn down the volume on the radio while you count 1 Mississippi, 2 Mississippi, and so on. At ten, turn the volume back up.

[clip Yoda – Hear You Nothing]

Here we go: 3…2…1…

[spoiler alert]

Both Don Henley and Glenn Frey have said in interviews that the true meaning of “Hotel California” is far more boring and mundane than any of the theories. It’s an allegory for the hedonism and greed in Southern California in the 70s, particularly in the music industry, which seduced and corrupted rock stars like the Eagles and their peers.

In a 2002 interview with 60 Minutes, Don Henley told Steve Kroft, quote, “It’s basically a song about the dark underbelly of the American dream, and about excess in America, which is something we knew a lot about.”

A couple of years later, Glenn Frey said the same thing, telling Rolling Stone, quote, “We were all middle class kids from the Midwest. ‘Hotel California’ was our interpretation of the high life in L.A.”

In the 2013 History of the Eagles documentary Henley was even more concise his reiteration of the song’s meaning: quote, “It’s a song about a journey from innocence to experience.” End quote.

Spoiler over.

The cover of “Hotel California” is by Iraeli-American, self-made drummer Meytal Cohen’s band, Meytal. Their rendition of the song is from their new 2019 album The Witness. It’s a drum-heavy song because the band is lead by, and named for, its drummer. And, she got famous for DOING drum covers of huge Rock hits.

Without further adieu, here’s “Hotel California,” first by Meytal and followed immediately by the original version by the Eagles.

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Meytal – Hotel California
Eagles – Hotel California
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That was “Hotel California,” the original version by the Eagles, following Meytal’s version on the Hard, Heavy & Hair Cover Song of the Week.

For a reason I never quite figured out, “Hotel California” became my personal anthem my senior year in high school. Our lunch room had a jukebox. Every day I ate in the lunchroom, I mean every. single. time, “Hotel California” would be playing when I walked in. And I didn’t always go in there at the same time. But it never failed. I’d walk in while Henley was singing the first lines of the song. It was weird, like a Twilight Zone thing.

This is Hard, Heavy & Hair Show number 201. Thank you for listening. I mean it.

If you want to share Hard, Heavy & Hair with your friends, point them to PariahRocks.com, that’s P-A-R-I-A-H-R-O-C-K-S-dot com where they can listen to this show, last week’s show, and more than 200 hours of Hard Rock, Metal, and Hair bands from the 70s, 80s, 90s, 2000s, and 20-teens, including the newest releases, biggest hits of all time, rarest hair, and deepest deep cuts. Every previous Hard, Heavy & Hair Show is available to stream on-demand 25 hours a day, 8 days a week, from PariahRocks.com and on the MixCloud mobile app.

I’m Pariah Burke, your hard talking, heavy drinking, hairball of a horny hedonist host (and producer). And I’m a piledrivin’ man. I’ll see you next week right here for another all new Hard, Heavy & Hair. The Damn Yankees are going to play us out.

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Damn Yankees – Piledriver