Alex Van Halen: ‘If Eddie Listened, He’d Still Be Here’

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During a recent interview with The Guardian, Alex Van Halen opened up on Eddie Van Halen.

Eddie Van Halen passed away in October 2020 at the age of 65 after a long battle with cancer. For the last few years, Alex Van Halen has been occupied with writing a book about his beloved brother, Eddie, with the sincere goal of capturing his sibling’s spirit, purging his own sorrow, and moving on.

Alex has been processing his grief, in part, by talking to his departed brother from time to time, including several instances during this very interview. Periodically in our one-hour talk, the 71-year-old drummer addressed his late brother directly, at times to ladle lavish praise on him, at others to curse him to the sky for the self-destructive behavior he believes had a hand in his demise.

Alex Van Halen talks about Eddie Van Halen

“This is probably a spiritually, psychically wrong thing to say,” he said intensely, “but had Ed listened to our dad, he’d still be here. Instead, he did everything he could to f*** that up.”

Brothers will be released on October 22nd and it’s written with New Yorker staff writer Ariel Levy and acknowledges the s*x and drugs and rock n’ roll. However, as the title indicates it’s primarily a chronicle of the drummer’s relationship with his guitar hero brother.

He previously said: “I remember him every day. There isn’t a moment I don’t think about him and what we have done. We were together 65 years. That was a full lifetime of being on the phone yakking, agreeing, disagreeing – that’s what brothers do. But because we had a creative vision, that was the driving force and the motivation.”