In his first interview since Eddie Van Halen's death, Alex Van Halen tells all – including the story behind a cancelled tour with David Lee Roth
fell apart. He can prove it. There’s photographic evidence right here on his phone, which also happens to be a repository of unheard, unfinishedsongs. Spend the day with him, and he might play a few. But first, he’ll scroll to that image, an MRI of his spine with a gaping hole in it, a missing piece., and Alex without his brilliant, maddening, agonizingly sensitive baby brother, his best friend and bandmate of five decades, the “sweet guy” he jammed with nearly every day.
THERE WAS A MOMENT WHEN it seemed like Van Halen, the band, might survive the death of its guitarist. Rumors of a planned post-Eddie tour, with Alex back on drums behind frontman, were true. Shortly before the shooting-range incident, Alex and Roth began early rehearsals for that tour, with two musicians from the singer’s solo band serving as “seat fillers.
To be fair, there were more singers, at least potential ones, than the world knows about. Circa 2001, while the band was between frontmen, the brothers sat down with’s wife and manager, Sharon Osbourne, and worked out a plan for an Ozzy-fronted Van Halen album. “When you get a dog, you don’t expect it to be a cat,” Alex says. “When you get an Ozzy, you get Ozzy. Play the music, he’ll sing, and it’s gonna be great.
Alex has never been able to absorb the fact that he was a hero to other drummers. “I never had the time to do that, because I’m too busy working with Ed,” he says. “I believe in what Buddy Rich said: ‘I’m here to make the other guys sound good.
The other project Alex is working on, slowly, is a Van Halen biopic, for which he’s currently seeking a producer. “It’s just a long-term plan,” he says. “I mean, to put things in perspective, the Queen movie took 30 years to make.”
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