Alex Van Halen, the legendary co-founder and drummer of Van Halen, has announced an official chronicle of the band created in partnership with Genesis Publications. The new book, which has a working title of “Van Halen,” will open the Van Halen family archive for the first time, offering an unprecedented, personally guided tour of the band’s iconic early career.
Curated, written, and signed by Alex Van Halen himself, the authorized publication will focus on the band’s meteoric rise from 1978 to 1984. The book will chart the journey of Alex and Eddie Van Halen from their childhood to global superstardom, featuring a dynamic blend of rare and never-before-seen images, personal correspondence, tour memorabilia, album artwork, press materials, and photographs of musical equipment from Alex‘s private collection.
This new archive-focused book will be published as a signed, limited-edition boxed set and follows Alex‘s deeply personal 2024 memoir, “Brothers.” In an interview last November on “Talk Is Jericho” with Fozzy frontman Chris Jericho, Alex Van Halen explained that his memoir was a necessary part of processing his grief, as COVID-19 restrictions had prevented him from having a proper goodbye with Eddie.
“Ed and I were tight… But when he was near the end of his life, because of COVID it was very difficult to visit him… There was always either a glass barrier or a plastic something surrounding [him],” Alex shared. “We really had no closure, in that sense… This is my way of saying goodbye to him… It’s hard to describe what it’s like to not have someone in your life that has been there for 65 years.”
While the new Genesis book will unlock the visual and paper archives, Alex also confirmed in that same 2024 interview that the legendary Van Halen music “vault” is extensive, though he reiterated that any potential release must meet an incredibly high standard.
“We’re gonna go through the, quote-unquote, vault and go through some of the musical ideas that were there,” Alex explained. “On the one end of the spectrum is the fact that little licks don’t make a song. On the other end of the spectrum, some of those licks are so unbelievably powerful, it’s too bad that they ended up in the back of the vault, rather than being records.”
He stressed that the process would be respectful and deliberate, true to the band’s legacy.
“Now that Ed‘s gone, none of those things are really valid because all I have, and Wolf [Eddie‘s son and Van Halen bassist] has, is all the recordings in the vault. And they will stay there until we figure out how and why and what to do with them,” Alex stated. “And again, you have to remember, it has to be on the level of where Ed and I, where we used to play. We’re not just gonna shovel it in.”
When Jericho noted that it sounded like more than just a few demos, Alex confirmed the sheer volume of material, giving fans hope for the future.
“Oh, yeah. Probably three or four records, if not more. I’m serious. There was some good stuff, some good stuff in there.”
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