On October 24, Alex Van Halen – drummer of the legendary rock band that bore his and his brother Edward’s storied name – participated in a Q&A at Culver City’s Frost Auditorium. The evening was organized to promote his memoir Brothers, which dropped two days earlier and was moderated by noted journalist/writer Ariel Levy, who worked with Van Halen to craft the nearly 250-page tome. Brothers chronicles his life alongside Edward as they emigrated from the Netherlands as children, learned to play piano at their mother’s unwavering insistence and harvested life lessons from their hardscrabble jazz-musician father. Later, of course, they formed the band that went on to rule the rock world from the late seventies to the early nineties and delivered such titanic tunes as “Unchained,” “Panama” and “Hot for Teacher.”
Some key anecdotes shared by Van Halen include:
- The family piano was schlepped along from the Netherlands when the Van Halens emigrated. It arrived in Pasadena battered and nearly in pieces.
- The night that the brothers dropped into Pasadena’s The Ice House to checkout fellow local David Lee Roth as he performed an acoustic set. Of course Roth was tapped, ultimately, to front the band and the original lineup released six records, all of which were certified multi-platinum and two went diamond.
- Neither Alex nor Edward were happy with the sound of their maiden release, 1978’s Van Halen. It wasn’t until the juggernaut 1984 that the brothers finally achieved the sonic signature they’d long chased. 1984, incidentally, was the first of all the remaining VH albums to be recorded at Edward’s home studio 5150.
Edward Van Halen passed four years ago in October of 2020. It was clear on the night that penning this memoir likely held therapeutic value for Alex. It’s not easy, of course, to lose a lifelong coconspirator, collaborator and friend. When the seventy-year-old drummer spoke of his brother’s bravery as he approached death, he had to pause momentarily to choke back tears. Doubtless several in the sold-out audience of 1,100 were partnered with him in that struggle.
Published by HarperCollins, Brothers hit bookshelves on October 22. The event was produced by Live Talks Los Angeles (livetalksla.org).
