As good-time rock legends and solemn grunge trailblazers respectively, Van Halen and Soundgarden might feel like two bands at either side of the rock spectrum, but Alex Van Halen has revealed that he and Eddie Van Halen held secret jams with late Soundgarden frontman Chris Cornell.
The revelation comes in Alex Van Halen’s new interview with Rolling Stone regarding Brothers, his tell-all book about his relationship with his brother, Eddie.
Alex isn’t sure precisely when the jams with Cornell took place, but he does recall Eddie stepping out at one stage, leaving just the frontman and the drummer playing together.
As Alex remembers, the Soundgarden singer was enthusiastic about the collaboration, despite being “in a very fragile part of his life”.
“I got behind the drums, and he started playing bass,” he says. “We played for 45 minutes. This motherfucker got so into it he started bleeding. I said, ‘This is the man you want.’ And then he died.”
While the exact timing of Cornell’s jams with both Eddie and Alex Van Halen are unclear, the drummer’s comments indicate they were in the year leading up to Cornell’s death in May 2017.
Cornell had come into contact with Van Halen previously via Pete Thorn and amp guru Dave Friedman, after requesting Eddie Van Halen contribute guitars to an acoustic version of the title track from his 2009 Timbaland collaboration, Scream. According to Thorn, a reel featuring Eddie’s recordings still exists at 5150, although Cornell never got around to tracking vocals.
Cornell wasn’t the only A-list singer on the cards for Van Halen. Alex Van Halen also references plans for an Ozzy Osbourne-fronted VH album, which were confirmed to Rolling Stone by the Black Sabbath icon himself.
“Yes, we were discussing it,” Osbourne writes. “It is something that if it had come to fruition, would have been phenomenal. 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. [Reality show] The Osbournes got in the way of creating new music at that time, unfortunately.”
Following Eddie Van Halen’s death in 2020, any future activity from Van Halen sounds extremely unlikely – particularly after David Lee Roth reportedly turned down a potential tour over the inclusion of tributes to the fallen guitarist.
