In support of his "Brothers" memoir, out next week, Van Halen drum legend, Alex Van Halen, spoke with Rolling Stone in his first interview since the death of his brother and Van Halen bandmate, Eddie Van Halen.
Says Rolling Stone: "Today, in his first interview since Eddie’s death, he’ll reveal even more, maybe get a bit closer to turning the page. “I just miss him,” he says. “I miss the arguments. I live with it every day. And I can’t bring him back. I can’t make things right.”
The following is an excerpt from the Rolling Stone feature:
One time - Alex can be vague on chronology and details, forgive him — Eddie came to his brother’s house and threw a side project he had just finished onto the kitchen table. It might have been the soundtrack the guitarist recorded for a pornographic film at a low point in 2006, though Alex doesn’t want to specify. “My wife and I were sitting there, and I’m looking at it — ‘What’s this shit,’ right?” he recalls. “And he goes, ‘See? Little brother can do something after all.’”
Alex shakes his head. “Had I been more receptive to the fact that all he wanted was approval,” he says, “I would have said, ‘That is the greatest fucking thing I’ve ever seen.’ But at the time, I was more thinking, ‘Ed, what are you talking about? What more could you want? You already have the…. You are the king of the…’ You know, it just didn’t make sense to me. And now, when I think about it, it makes me want to cry.” He does, choking up for a minute, and we pause.
Alex sighs, and continues. “To have all that talent was probably the biggest curse he ever carried. The fact was that Ed was an incredible player, but in the end he paid for it with his health, paid for it with his life.” When people told Eddie he was the greatest guitar player alive, at least part of him believed it. “You ate it up,” Alex writes in his book, “and then you were overwhelmed with the burden of it.” A toxic mixture of (justified) near-arrogance, self-doubt, and self-loathing — a sense he was unworthy of his own genius — left Eddie with paralyzing anxiety about his playing. He used drugs and alcohol largely to dampen his insecurities, and Alex is convinced the damage that intake did to his brother ultimately helped cancer kill him.
Eddie traced some of his issues to a childhood he saw as traumatic, where his mother berated him as a “nothing nut, just like your father” (the Dutch term was actually “nietsnut”) and forced him to practice piano for hours a day. In classic sibling fashion, Alex’s experience of the same household and the same parents was entirely different. The family came to America from the Netherlands when Eddie was seven and Alex was eight, trying to escape prejudice against their part-Indonesian mom. The kids arrived knowing a single word in English, “accident,” the first entry on the first page of an English-vocabulary book. They faced some ostracism, in the beginning, for their foreignness and Asian ancestry. “You get treated a little bit differently than all the rest of the people,” Alex says. “But you know what? That’s life. Ed really took it to heart.”
At home, too, Alex shrugged off any trauma. There was definitely some weird stuff, by his own account, like how his mother would enlist him to “knock my dad out” when she didn’t like Jan’s behavior. “Our mother was a hyper-overdriven disciplinarian who wanted nothing but the best for her kids,” Alex says. The discipline once extended to hitting Alex’s thumb with a wooden spoon so hard that the nail fell off. “She didn’t know any other way. She was of color, and had been pissed on the majority of her life.”
Read more at RollingStone.com.
Alex recently shared a clip from the audiobook edition of Brothers. The 4:30 clip can be found at Spotify, and features Alex reading a section of his memoir, titled "Overture".
Alex says in part: "I watched you take your last breath. In that moment, all the stuff you did or made in this world, you can’t take it with you. Since you’ve been gone, I catch myself talking to you, yelling at you, in my head or sometimes out loud. I still have trouble believing you’re gone, and probably for me you never will be. Outliving my little brother? This just wasn’t the plan. As the older brother, I was supposed to die first. Same as always, Ed, butting in line.
"I’ve watched, sometimes with anger, sometimes with grief, and other times with pride, as the world has mourned your passing, and other people have claimed to tell your story. But I was with you from day one. We shared the experience of coming to this country and figuring out how to fit in. We shared a record player, an 800 sq. ft. house, a mom and a dad, and a work ethic.
"Later, we shared the back of tour bus, the experience of becoming successful, becoming fathers and uncles, of alcoholism and spending more hours in the studio than I’ve spent doing anything else in this life. We shared a depth of understanding that most people could only hope to achieve. We shared a last name, and we shared a band.”
Alex recently announced two signing events and a live conversation event in support of his upcoming book.
Alex Van Halen’s deeply candid and insightful book, Brothers, is not like any rock & roll memoir you’ve ever read. Alex Van Halen shares his story of family, camaraderie, immigration, music, and loss, and offers a remarkable tribute to his late little brother and bandmate, Edward, a once-in-a-generation talent and transformed our understanding of what it's possible to do with a guitar.
“I was with him from day one,” Alex writes. “We shared the experience of coming to this country and figuring out how to fit in. We shared a record player, an 800 square foot house, a mom and dad, and a work ethic. Later, we shared the back of a tour bus, alcoholism, the experience of becoming successful, of becoming fathers and uncles, and of spending more hours in the studio than I’ve spent doing anything else in this life. We shared a depth of understanding that most people can only hope to achieve in a lifetime.”
Tickets for the book signing and live conversation events, as well as book pre-orders, are available now via Van-Halen.com.
Dates:
Monday, October 21 @ 12 Noon – Barnes & Noble – NYC
Tuesday, October 22 @ 6 PM – Books & Greetings – Northvale, NJ
Thursday, October 24 @ 8 PM – Live Talks LA @ the Frost Auditorium in Culver City
In 1962, Alex Van Halen, his younger brother Edward or Ed (never “Eddie”), and their parents boarded a ship in the Netherlands to emigrate to America for the promise and opportunities it held. Ten years later, the boys formed a band and were launched on the path to international rock stardom. Written by Alex while still mourning Edward’s untimely death, Brothers is a candid love letter to a sibling bond that transcended the public stages. Told with acclaimed New Yorker writer Ariel Levy, this intimate portrait of a once-in-a-generation talent goes far beyond the standard rock memoir, sharing a story of family, camaraderie, immigration, music, and loss.
In his singular voice, Alex remembers the brothers’ childhood, first in the Netherlands and then in working-class Pasadena, California, where early on they struggled with their outsider, immigrant status. They gained different perspectives on life from their itinerant musician father and a very proper Indonesian mother. With Edward on guitar and Alex on drums, they would form an eponymous band that went on to sell over 80 million records and play sold-out shows around the world for four decades.
A fascinating story of a legendary band, its talent, and the passion to create, Brothers takes readers deep inside with tales of musical politics, infighting, and plenty of bad-boy behavior. But mostly Alex’s portrayal of brotherhood, music, and enduring love shines through the drama. Brothers provides the definitive take on Edward Van Halen’s life and death from the one who knew and loved him best.
Publication in the US and Canada will be on October 22, 2024; Harper UK, Australia/ New Zealand will follow on October 24 and October 30 respectively.
The audio book edition of Brothers contains an unreleased song composed by Edward and Alex Van Halen. Titled "Unfinished", it is the last piece of music they wrote together and can be heard as Alex narrates his story.
Alex has shared a snippet of the above-mentioned "Unfinished" via social media. Listen below.
Further pre-order options can be found at Harper Collins.
