Alex Van Halen is sharing the last piece of work he made with his late brother, Eddie. On Monday, the musician shared a downloadable version of the instrumental track “Unfinished,” which is featured in the audiobook version of Alex’s new book, Brothers.
The six-minute recording, shared on Van Halen‘s website, hears Eddie’s guitars throughout, including a classic Eddie solo about four minutes into the song. The music soundtracks Brothers, which Alex self-narrates.
According to the website, “Unfinished” is ‘the final song that Edward and Alex wrote together.’”
Ahead of the book’s release, Alex sat down with Rolling Stone for an in-depth interview and discussed his relationship with his brother, as he revealed to have “tons of unreleased music in the Van Halen vaults, but very few finished songs, and even fewer with vocals.”
“They’re all little pieces,” Alex told Rolling Stone. “A bunch of licks don’t make a song.”
The musician even said that he reached out to OpenAI to analyze how “Edward would have played something” so they could have guitar solo, and have someone sing over them. “Ideally, it’d be Robert Plant,” he said of the Led Zeppelin frontman. “You’re gonna think I’m out of my fucking mind… But when conditions are right, things will manifest.”
Alex‘s new tribute book to Eddie soared to Number One on the bestselling book charts and Number One on the audiobook charts, one week ahead of its publication date. Eddie died of lung cancer in late 2020.
“To have all that talent was probably the biggest curse he ever carried,” he told Rolling Stone. “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.”
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