FWIW...I heard Alex is just playing doubles with two kick drums that also trigger two more kick drums so that you get ghost notes...4 hits for every two...the first two being his actual attack the second two delayed.
Nope. Although there is now a pedal on the market that does something like that, playing notes on the upbeats when you lift your feet, there was nothing like that available in the early 80's.
Hot For Teacher is not impossible. I can't remember the exact tempo, but it's not inhuman by any stretch - I think it was somewhere in the 120's or low 130's, which is not that fast. It just sounds COOL, and Alex played the hell out of it.
He did use a second pair of bass drums, with the two on the outside connected to the main ones with something that looked suspiciously like the kind of duct you vent your dryer with in the laundry room. The outer bass drums were supposedly to produce extra resonance in sympathy with the primary bass drums, but I think it was basically done because it
looked cool.
Alex
rocks. He was playing 20" crashes with marching sticks, and still capable of the kind of intricacy found in this song. Now that's a manly man.
(He also played a Ludwig snare drum, but it was NOT an Acrolite. Pity.)
