Exclusively Van Halen: NEWS! USA Today Interview! #ALEXVANHALEN 10/22/24

https://youtube.com/live/_pP90qYQStM Alex Van Halen gets candid about brother's health struggles, tension with David Lee Roth. The world knew him as Eddie Van Halen, guitarist extraordinaire. But to Alex Van Halen, he was Edward, maybe Ed, but never Eddie. He was also a best friend, the sensitive soul who “couldn’t filter out criticism” and a reluctant guitar hero with a boyish grin. And he was a brother, born 20 months after Alex, with whom he would form one of the most influential rock bands in history. In “Brothers” (out Oct. 22, Harper Collins, 226 pages, $32), Alex Van Halen unloads his love for his sibling and the consuming grief he still experiences since Ed died of cancer in October 2020. Their story includes the two-week boat ride from their native Holland to America in 1962 – the Van Halen family would settle in Pasadena, California – the brothers shunning their piano lessons to play rock ‘n’ roll after hearing The Beatles and the Dave Clark Five and Alex’s migration to the drums and his idolization of Cream’s Ginger Baker. As a band, Van Halen pioneered musical techniques (just listen to Eddie’s then-unheard-of finger tapping on “Eruption” or Alex’s engine-purring double bass drum opening on “Hot for Teacher”) while blitzing rock fans with “Jamie’s Cryin’,” “So This is Love?” “Beautiful Girls” and MTV staples “Jump” and “Panama.” Alex, 71, doesn’t scrimp on entertaining anecdotes, such as how the roar that opens “Runnin’ with the Devil” entailed ripping the horns out of their cars, and when on tour with Ozzy Osbourne, the British rocker wandered into the wrong hotel and slept for two days. Alex is also unvarnished when discussing frontman David Lee Roth, whom he thinks was “angry at Ed for being too talented” and expressing his own anger when Ed agreed to play an uncredited guitar solo on Michael Jackson’s “Beat It” (“Why would you burn up creativity on someone else’s record?”). In an interview with USA TODAY, Alex Van Halen plunged deeper into some of the topics in the book, such as his own addiction issues and Ed’s health struggles, while also extending humor and thoughtfulness.