Alex Van Halen is set to release the last track he worked on with his brother Eddie as an extra in the audiobook version of his upcoming memoir, entitled Brothers.
The book, Brothers, is published on October 22 and Alex himself narrates the audio version. The new track, simply titled Unfinished, is according to Harper Collins the last piece of music the brothers wrote together before Eddie died, aged 65, in 2020.
And that would appear to be that as far as Alex Van Halen and music is concerned. The 71-year-old drummer raised eyebrows recently when it was revealed that he is auctioning off his entire collection of drums and musical equipment. Not least amongst his former bandmates.
“We reached out to him a dozen times,” Sammy Hagar said in an interview with Ultimate Classic Rock. “Email, text message, phone call, message on the machine… No response. I mean, we made every offer to get together or to just talk or to have breakfast, lunch or dinner. Go to the studio and play. Come to my house or I’ll come to your house. Let’s just do something. Let’s get together. And nothing.”
“I actually texted him on his birthday this month, and I didn’t hear anything back from him,” said the group’s bassist Michael Anthony in a recent interview with Ultimate Guitar.
“I was pretty surprised when I heard about this auction… It appears like he's selling everything right down to his last drumstick. I know that he continues to grieve today over Eddie’s passing. And basically, Eddie was the only person that he actually ever played music with.”
Anthony did say that he was looking forward to reading Brothers. The book has been described by Harper Collins as “nothing like any rock ’n’ roll memoir you’ve ever read,” and Van Halen’s “personal story of family, friendship, music and brotherly love… (It’s his) love letter to his younger brother Edward (maybe ‘Ed’ but never ‘Eddie’), written while still mourning his untimely death.”
“I was with him from day one,” Alex writes in an excerpt from Brothers: “We shared the experience of coming to this country and figuring out how to fit in. We shared a record player, an 800-square-foot house, a mom and dad, and a work ethic…We shared a depth of understanding that most people can only hope to achieve in a lifetime.”
Van Halen has said of the memoir: “This is my tribute to my brother; my way of saying goodbye. Ed, I love you and miss you. When I see you again, I’m gonna kick your ass!”
