For the past few years, Alex Van Halen has been busy writing a book about his beloved brother Eddie, with the earnest goal of capturing his brother’s spirit, purifying his own grief, and moving on.
It still doesn’t work. “We’re not done addressing this issue yet,” he said. “In fact, I’ll probably live with this problem until the day I die.”
In the meantime, he has been working out his grief, in part, by talking to his late brother from time to time, including during this very interview. During the hour-long conversation, the 71-year-old drummer regularly addressed his late brother directly, sometimes lavishing praise and sometimes cursing to the heavens the self-destructive behavior in which he seemed to engage. . his death. “This is probably the wrong thing to say mentally and spiritually,” he said bitterly. “But if Ed had listened to our father, he would still be here. Instead, he did everything he could to ruin it.”
The lessons Alex alluded to from his father had a lot to do with the importance of hard work, the sense of urgency to appreciate life, and the need to sit gracefully with the treasures of one’s talents. In the end, Alex feels that his brother did not achieve his final goal, so he includes a passage in his book titled Brother that angers his brother’s spirit with questions like: Do you know how lucky we are? Do you know how lucky you are to have been born with a gift? Maybe you never believed you deserved it and that’s why you became so self-destructive.” wrote. “You want to destroy what’s most important to you so you can stop holding on to it for the rest of your life.”
These passages make Brothers a deeply emotional read, as well as a rich psychological depiction of the family dynamic that in many ways defined the lives of the two sons. So, during the interview, Alex mentioned his father nearly a dozen times. “We owe everything to him,” he said. “He was an icon and someone we looked up to.”
Alex and Eddie Van Halen. Photo: Courtesy of Alex Van Halen
He was also someone they feared, someone whose devastating problems with alcohol affected their own. It’s no wonder that The Brothers ended up telling a much more complex story than its creators had intended. At the same time, this is a story about the power of familial love, the mystery of genius through Eddie’s paradigm-changing approach to the guitar, and the role of immigration in America with all its associated issues of race and class. At the same time, it’s a classic tale of rock’n’roll excess, told with the kind of bawdy humor you’d expect from a band often synonymous with “party.”
From the beginning, the Van Halen Brothers were a closed team of outsiders, but they found a way to penetrate the culture through their music, becoming one of the most globally successful rock groups of all time. Their parents were also outsiders, living between cultures. His father, a Dutch jazz musician, met and married his Indonesian mother in his home country. Facing prejudice against interracial marriage, they chose to raise their family in the Netherlands, but then moved to pursue the American dream in Los Angeles, the epicenter of aspiration. Alex was 8 years old and Ed was 6 at the time. Neither of them spoke a word of English. Immersion in a new culture helped them learn quickly, but school exposed their deficiencies. “Every time we took any test, it was always language that we scored low on,” Alex said.
Ed took this to heart and believed himself to be unintelligent. According to Alex, Ed took everything to heart and internalized all the negative feedback within and outside the family, while his older brother pushed it all behind his back. Although they were biracial children, Alex said she didn’t experience much prejudice growing up because of her neighborhood. “It was Indian, Hispanic, Native American, you name it,” he said. “Our first bassist was black.”
Interestingly, their biracial identity remained a topic of conversation even after they became world famous. As children of outsiders, they knew the power and pain of “passing.” “If you don’t mention it, I’m not going to say anything,” Alex said with a sarcastic laugh. “That’s how it works.”
At home, the boys had strong roles within the family, with Alex playing the strict guardian to sensitive Ed. Alex’s role as an elder statesman gives him a closer relationship with his father, which irritates Ed and brings out his competitive side. Ed also felt looked down upon by his mother, whose strict standards caused her to sometimes judge her younger son harshly. Alex often wrote that Ed felt like a “nobody” in her eyes, even though he knew she loved him deeply. Their mother enthusiastically encouraged her two children to study music, but not from the rock and roll world they adored, but from the classical world they abhorred. Alex said her enthusiasm for classical music was part of her idealization of “respectable culture” in hopes of winning “acceptance into the white world.” That’s why, to the end, she considered Van Halen’s loud music “disgraceful.”
For the same passionate reasons, his family always referred to Ed as Edward, and he used that name in the credits of all of the band’s albums. “He couldn’t stand being called ‘Eddie’,” Alex said.
The family was poor and his father was forced to take several jobs, including in a factory where teenage Alex also worked. There he quickly realized the differences between class and race. “There were no white people working there,” he says.
The family portrait that Alex paints is loving but rough-and-tumble, with the men sometimes reacting violently to each other. Still, Alex didn’t hold any grudges about even their toughest interactions. The boys idolized their father and imitated his drinking from an early age. “We were ‘pros’ by the time we were 13,” Alex said with a trace of pride.
Eddie Van Halen in 1982. Photo: Icons and Images/Getty Images
The parents’ low status in society aroused a righteous reaction in their sons to succeed at all costs. Inspired by the music they worshiped, primarily Cream and Led Zeppelin, they were “playing from the moment they woke up in the morning until the moment they went to bed,” Alex said.
Given their unwavering values and the tremendous success they brought, the Van Halen story represents the ultimate expression of the immigrant dream. As such, Alex said he feels the current political targeting of immigrants is “offensive.”
As teenagers, the brothers formed Van Halen with bassist Michael Anthony and singer David Lee Roth. Nagging disagreements soon arose between the music-obsessed brothers and the frontman, who was drawn to his glamorous role as an entertainer. Although the brothers were often disgusted by Ross’s clownish behavior, they recognized his commercial power and went along with it. In the book, Alex often belittles Ross’s singing ability, stating that he could not be on time or sometimes sing on key. When they recorded their first album in 1978, their producer, the legendary Ted Templeman, wanted to fire Ross and replace him with Sammy Hagar. (The latter eventually joined Van Halen after Roth quit in 1985.) That sparked one of the many fights the brothers had with Templeman. “He was looking for the Doobie Brothers,” Alex said. “We wanted to be more ‘Led Zeppelin II.’ We wanted to improvise. He wanted us to sound really tight, like his hairstyle.” I was there.”
On their debut album, they had to struggle to push through Ed’s solo song Eruption, a 1 minute and 42 second revelation that revolutionized guitar technique. The album was a huge hit, but due to a shoddy contract they made with Warner Bros., after a highly successful 12-month tour in support of it, they paid the company $2 million. I was in debt and had to rush back to the studio to cover it.
Fortunately for them, their albums were selling better and better, but things were falling apart internally. In the book, Alex barely mentions bassist Anthony. At that time, he praises the background singing more than the main instrument. Alex calls Anthony “a nice guy, but he wasn’t part of the equation.”
Roth’s insistence on hogging the spotlight and emphasizing dazzling sound over sound infuriated the brothers, made worse by what they saw as Roth’s jealousy of Ed’s status as a creative titan. Additionally, Ed questioned Templeman’s disappointment with his solos and even songs like the No. 1 smash “Jump,” which, according to Alex, neither the producer nor Ross thought was worth recording. I felt tied down because of what I did. There was also a tension within each brother between their own tastes (leaning towards uncompromising artists like the Mahavishnu Orchestra and Allan Holdsworth) and their unyielding desire to remain super popular. there were. Things came to a head after Ed recorded his iconic solo on Michael Jackson’s “Beat It” without telling others. “What the hell are you doing playing that record?” Alex recalled of his reaction. “Don’t you realize you only have so many great solos? Don’t give them to Michael Jackson!”
According to Alex, Ross used Ed as an excuse to leave the band. Considering how popular the singer became due to the video that embarrassed his brothers, it looked like he could have a great career not only in music but also in film and television. But it didn’t work. “He was paranoid,” the drummer said. “He’s not an actor.”
Still, Alex said, “When Dave left, the spiritual part of the band disappeared.” That’s why he finished writing the book in 1985. The band continued to enjoy great success with replacement frontman Hagar, who later wrote a scathing book about his time with the band. In response to Hager’s complaint, Alex said: Is he really that scary? ” That’s what people do when they try to put someone down. ”
When Ed died, so did Van Halen, but Alex still hopes to find a medium for his brother’s unreleased songs. His quest helps distract him from his sadness. Further problems he had in dealing with cancer came from his anger towards his brother for not taking it seriously enough. When Ed was first diagnosed with tongue cancer in 2000, “Rather than go to an oncologist, I went to an oral surgeon, who cut out part of my tongue with a knife strong enough to knock down a tree.” “,” Alex said. “Ed, what the hell are you thinking?”
Alex believes that his brother’s particular reaction to intoxicants has something to do with his sense of invincibility. “He could take more drugs than anyone and still be at his highest the next day,” Alex said. But “the very thing that allows us to live like that makes us think, ‘I’m exempt from that.'”
In 2020, Edward Van Halen passed away at the age of 65. He was one year younger than his father when he died of alcoholism. “That says it all,” Alex said. “Ed had to prove something.
“Maybe he knew something we didn’t know,” Alex said. “Maybe he was just passing by. Ed was an angel in human form.”
After all, that’s what Alex most urgently wants people to know about his brother. It is also what he values most to cope with, along with the belief that Ed will continue to live on in some form, just like his mother and father. “Among the last people alive are entire families,” he said. “I don’t know if our little brains can see it, but it’s certainly there. And I’m definitely paying attention.”
