Eddie’s Wilderness Years ‘Really Made Me Angry’

Alex Van Halen suggests in his upcoming memoir Brothers that Eddie Van Halen was haunted by the “flashes of genuine ingenuity” that catapulted Van Halen into the hard rock stratosphere.

The drummer recently spoke to The New York Times in anticipation of Brothers, which comes out on Oct. 22. The book chronicles Alex and Eddie’s personal and professional relationship, and it finds Alex sympathizing with his late brother and bandmate for his musical genius, which served as a double-edged sword.

“You can spend your whole life trying to make what happened before happen again,” Alex writes in the book. “I honestly believe that’s what cost my brother his life.”

Alex also reflected on Eddie’s turbulent later years, which were characterized by substance abuse, shambolic performances and head-scratching theories about the cause of his cancer. He said revisiting this behavior “really, really made me angry. I wanted to grab him by the throat and shake him and go, ‘What the [expletive] were you thinking, Ed?’ But it’s too late now.”

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Alex Van Halen Says Van Halen Was ‘Getting Ready to Make Another Record’

Even when their lives were in disarray, the Van Halen brothers constantly worked on new music, and the audio version of Brothers will feature the final track they worked on together, titled “Unfinished.” Alex told the Times that Van Halen was “getting ready to make another record” following their final show in 2015, and he admired his brother’s tenacity up until his death in October 2020 at the age of 65.

“I really wanted to emphasize the fact that Ed was brave up until the last minute,” Alex said. “At the end of the day, he’s got nothing to be ashamed of. And I wish that he was here and that I could say, ‘Ed, let’s try it one more time.’ Because I know he had it in him.”