During a recent appearance on the Brazilian show “Kazagastão,” legendary Van Halen drummer Alex Van Halen sat down with host Gastão Moreira to discuss his newly released memoir, “Brothers.”
The conversation quickly turned to one of the book’s most talked-about creative choices: ending the story in 1984. By stopping the timeline there, the memoir completely bypasses the band’s massively successful commercial era fronted by Sammy Hagar.
When asked why he chose to omit those later years, Alex Van Halen explained that he simply views the band’s original incarnation as their creative peak, regardless of later record sales:
“Well, I can only answer it one way, that was the publisher never mentioned it. They said this is the meat of the story. Yeah, there was good music made and all that, but the essence and the spirit and the balls to the wall was the first model. And that’s nothing to do with other than everybody has a peak in their life. I don’t care what anybody says, because it’s simply not true. Just because you sell more of anything doesn’t make you better or more creative. It’s just you learn how to sell more [laughs], like BIC lighters. So it was not meant to be anything other than he wasn’t there during that time period. And if somebody really wants to, that’ll be the next book. [Laughs]”
Host Gastão Moreira noted his own personal preference for the band’s early days with David Lee Roth. Alex agreed with the sentiment, reflecting on the profound loss of his brother, Eddie Van Halen, and the true purpose behind writing the book:
“There’s one thing to remember, and that was, this book, it was selfish, if you will. It was my way of putting all these open-ended things to bed. My brother [legendary Van Halen guitarist Eddie Van Halen] died [as] he tried to create more stuff. He didn’t have to do it. I don’t know whatever reason prompted him to do it, but he died trying to go further. And this is not just about playing more hits, about more Number One records. That stuff is gonna fade. We’re glad that we had them. I don’t wanna lay on my deathbed and look up and go, ‘Man, Ed, I wish we should’ve done this,’ because you can’t take it with you. We did our best work with Dave.”
The drummer also took a moment to analyze exactly what made the original Van Halen lineup so unique and explosive. He pointed out that the constant clashing of musical backgrounds—and David Lee Roth‘s notoriously restless personality—created the necessary tension to make great art.
“I think it was an interesting collection of different influences. Because of the exposure from my dad, who we worked with, and the different kind of musical tastes. And the fact that Dave is a very restless kind of guy. He couldn’t settle on one thing for one day. The next day he’s on something else, which some people might think is a negative. And it is, if it’s left alone by itself to fester and become something that it shouldn’t. In my personal opinion, if you see what happened when he went solo, that was it. You need conflict. You need open space. You need contradiction. You need friction. Without friction, you got no heat. Without heat, you got nothing. I can’t think of the rest of the lyrics. [Laughs] But, no, a creative environment is an extremely different, difficult kind of a thing to foster and to keep in check and keep it balanced. Now, you don’t want it completely balanced because then it becomes inert, then it becomes predictable, it becomes another record. And we were very concerned about ending up doing the same thing over and over again. The real question comes, are you doing something new just to be new or because you’re hearing something different? And you have to be honest with yourself. Yeah, we could have cranked out more records, more Number One records, whatever, but that wasn’t the point. And sometimes you make mistakes. Ed and I, we made some really bad choices.”
In a December 2024 interview with “Bringing It Back To The Beatles,” Alex said:”[The Hagar era wasn’t included] because the original band was the band that was the driving force. That was the connection between the disparate parts of the musical world, if you will. And we were young. The first record going platinum — it’s incredible. That’s something you can really never expect to happen again. Later on, it was different — that’s for another book — but the excitement and the confusion and the groping in the dark, if you will, and all the mistakes that we made, and all the B.S. we had to endure, and then to recognize at the very end, maybe we had one more record in us, it was very… You can’t take it back, but those are the things that are in the back of your head. The old expression of, if you don’t go over the edge, then you can’t come back. You have to go too far to come back in. Does that make sense? Unfortunately, we’re human and we made some bad choices. The US Festival, for instance, was just a clusterf**k. Nobody knew what the hell was going on. All we said was, ‘You make sure you have enough power, and we’ll play.’ That’s it.”
In October 2024, Alex offered a somewhat different response to USA Today when questioned about why he chose to conclude the book at the point when Van Halen’s original vocalist David Lee Roth first departed the band over four decades ago.
“For me, the spirit of the band ended in 1984,” Alex said. “We did good work after that, but the primary spiritual aspect, the magic, the potential, the looking to the future together, all of that stuff, our mutually strange backgrounds — that’s what made Van Halen. Ed and I were outsiders. Dave was an outsider. Those kinds of intangible things make the fabric of how we were tied together.”
“Brothers” leaves out Sammy Hagar’s era with Van Halen, along with Extreme singer Gary Cherone’s time in the band, and also skips over Van Halen’s reunion with Roth that began in 2007.
“What happened after Dave left is not the same band,” Alex told Billboard at the time. “I’m not saying it was better or worse or any of that. The fact is Ed and I did our best work whenever we played. We always gave it our best shot. But the magic was in the first years, when we didn’t know what we were doing, when we were willing to try anything.”
Hagar took over for Roth in Van Halen in 1985 and went on to record four studio albums with the band — 5150, OU812, For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge and Balance — each of which reached number one on the U.S. charts. Sammy, Eddie, Alex, and Mike last played together in 2004 during a U.S. summer tour. Reportedly, Anthony had to accept a pay cut and give up his rights to the band’s name and logo in order to participate.
