Alex Van Halen has revealed that David Lee Roth asked Eddie Van Halen to play fewer guitar solos.
In his new memoire, Brothers, released last week, the former Van Halen drummer affirms that Roth's leaving from the band in 1985 was caused by his jealousy over how guitarist Eddie was always in the spotlight.
“He couldn’t handle the fact that Eddie was getting more attention than he was,” Alex writes. “He kept asking Eddie to play fewer guitar solos. Dave was convinced he was going to be a movie star."
Also in the book, Alex describes Roth's disbandment from Van Halen as “the most disappointing thing I’d experienced in my life, the thing that seemed the most wasteful and unjust. Until I lost my brother.”
Brothers, which presents an "intimate and open account—nothing like any rock-and-roll memoir you’ve ever read", about Alex Van Halen's story of "family, friendship, music and brotherly love", covers Van Halen's career up until Roth's departure, excluding vocalist Sammy Hagar's decade-long tenure from 1985 to 1996.
While in a recent conversation with Billboard, the drummer explained his decision to only cover stories from the original Van Halen lineup within his book.
"What happened after Dave left is not the same band. I'm not saying it was better or worse of any of that. ...But the magic was in the first years, when we didn't know what we were doing, when we were willing to try anything."
“I don’t know where things went wrong,” Alex says of the split. “I have nothing but the utmost respect for Dave and his work ethic. I just think some of his choices were really strange to me, but that’s not my job to figure it out.”
He also explains how, despite his frustrations, he's not angry with Roth for leaving. “He was one of the three main components of the band. At the time we didn’t recognize it because we were constantly battling things out."
