Alex Van Halen Breaks Down Listening To Eddie

During the CNN Audio podcast “All There Is With Anderson Cooper”, Cooper spoke to Van Halen drummer Alex Van Halen about the passing of Alex’s brother, legendary Van Halen guitarist Eddie Van Halen. Alex was also asked whether he was grieving.

Alex said: “I’m grieving all the time. I’m not running from it, because that doesn’t solve the problem. At times, it can be overwhelming, and the more the more I dwell on it, the more complicated it becomes. When I’m alone and I put on a piece of music and I hear [Ed] play, I break down — that’s it — uncontrollably. But knowing what I know about the human body, you just let it happen. Otherwise it will happen in the line at the grocery store. And that wouldn’t look so good.”

Alex added that he was caught off guard when his brother passed away.

“None of us really thought he was gonna die,” he explained.

“He’d always bounced back. He had the most incredible DNA that I’ve ever seen in anybody. He could do more and more drugs than anybody and still wake up the next day and perform. I don’t think anybody really thought he was gonna die. So when he passed, it was really a shock.”

When asked if Eddie knew how close to the end he was during the final days of his life, Alex stated: “I don’t think he knew. Being human, you think you’re gonna go on one more day, one more day. You keep going forward. But then one day you don’t. So up to the very end, we were still making music and we talked about, what are we gonna do next year? But it was clear that he was going downhill.”

Alex’s memoir, “Brothers”, has been described as a love letter to his younger brother, while still mourning Eddie Van Halen’s untimely death, came out in late October.