The Van Halen co-founder and drummer Alex Van Halen recently released the book “Brothers,” telling his and Eddie’s story, and, of course, the story of the band. However, the book only covers the story up to 1984, without mentioning their next singer, Sammy Hagar. The vocalist has previously said that he hasn’t spoken to Alex in over two decades and that the drummer has never returned his calls or messages.
In an interview with Bringing It Back To The Beatles (Transcribed by Blabbermouth), Alex explained why he decided to tell the band’s story just until 1984.
Alex Van Halen explains why he doesn’t mention Hagar in his book
“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 clusterfuck. 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,” Alex Van Halen said.