Next Tuesday, the hotly anticipated Alex Van Halen memoir Brothers lands on shelves, but the buzz has gotten even stronger this week after he dropped some bombshells that won’t be included between the bindings. The book tells the story of the unbreakable bond between the drummer and his younger brother, Edward, beginning with their childhood in The Netherlands and subsequent move to Southern California, where they would create their namesake band and go on to change the face of hard rock forever.
Interestingly, the tale ends around 1984, when original frontman David Lee Roth split the group or was kicked out – depending on whose narrative you believe. During interviews to promote the book ahead of its release, Alex revealed a couple of astonishing names who were slated to sing for the mighty Van Halen, as well as why there hasn’t been a tribute concert to date for his younger sibling Edward, more than four years after the guitar wizard passed away.
Roth’s replacement at the microphone, Sammy Hagar, who spent this past summer on the road paying tribute to his time in Van Halen, doesn’t even get a mention in the book. The consensus is that Alex is still angry at Hagar’s own tell-all, which came out in 2011 and painted a less-than-flattering portrait of Eddie Van Halen, detailing the dissolution of their friendship brought on by the guitarist’s drinking and substance abuse.
Van Halen turned into one of the greatest soap operas in music history, with Hagar losing his spot to the singer he initially replaced in 1996, and Roth almost immediately jettisoned in favor of Extreme frontman Gary Cherone. Once it was clear Cherone wasn’t going to work out, the band went into a period of inactivity before turning back to Hagar, who joined them for a disastrous tour in 2004. Roth returned for a final time in 2007 and would stay in his rightful place until the final VH tour in 2015.
Not only does it take a mathematician or a scorecard to keep up with all that, but it turns out the revolving door of lead singers was even more active than previously thought in Van Halen. Speaking to Rolling Stone, Alex confirmed plans were in place to record an album with Ozzy Osbourne in the early ‘00s.
“When you get a dog, you don’t expect it to be a cat,” the drummer said. “When you get an Ozzy, you get Ozzy. Play the music, he’ll sing, and it’s gonna be great.”
At the same time, however, Osbourne had a meeting with MTV to discuss a reality show that became the pop culture smash The Osbournes, which scuttled any musical endeavors.
“It is something that if it had come to fruition, would have been phenomenal,” Osbourne confirmed to the magazine. “Eddie and Alex were great friends of mine for a very long time and it’s a regret of mine that we never got it together. The Osbournes got in the way of creating new music at that time, unfortunately.”
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Alex said he and his brother also jammed with Chris Cornell, the late Soundgarden frontman who died by suicide in 2017. The timeline presented is a bit wonky, though it’s likely to have been around the same time as Osbourne. He said Cornell was “in a very fragile part of his life,” which was probably right before the grunge icon joined Audioslave in 2001 and not right before his untimely passing as alluded to.
Even more bizarre is what might come from the infamous vault of recordings Van Halen kept at Eddie’s home studio, 5150. Alex said there are a bunch of “little pieces” of music, and that he’s reached out to the company behind ChatGBT, OpenAI, to discuss a way to build fresh guitar solos from analyzing the patterns of his brother’s playing.
And let’s say that does come together. Who might sing? Roth? Hagar? Cherone? Ozzy? Try Robert Plant. That’s right, the frontman who has turned down dump trucks of money to reform Led Zeppelin in favor of following a less traditional path, like linking up with bluegrass songstress Alison Krauss.
“You’re gonna think I’m out of my [expletive] mind,” Alex said of invoking Plant’s name. “But when conditions are right, things will manifest.”
One thing that doesn’t appear to be on the horizon is any sort of tribute show or tour to honor Eddie. Alex says that plans were put in motion to launch a tour under the Van Halen name with Roth singing, Joe Satriani on guitar, and original bassist Michael Anthony returning to the group for the first time since 2004. But when Alex told Roth that at some point during the concerts, they would have to honor his brother, the frontman “popped a fuse…The vitriol that came out was unbelievable.” And so, the soap opera continues and will likely get even more dramatic once Brothers drops next week and more revelations become known.
The book is available for preorder now, and there’s also an option to go with the audiobook narrated by Alex himself that comes with a bonus in the form of “Unfinished,” the last piece of music the siblings recorded together.
A version of this article appears in this week’s print and online editions of my syndicated Rock Music Menu column under the title “Alex Van Halen delivers revelations ahead of memoir release“
The Chronicles of Michael Christopher 
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