Alex Van Halen says he is working with Steve Lukather on a new album

The Van Halen co-founder and drummer Alex Van Halen revealed in an interview with Iron Maiden’s Nicko McBrain on the podcast “Metal Sticks“, that he will start to work with Toto’s Steve Lukather on a new album. However, he didn’t give any other informations about the project, only saying there is a lot of other people involved. “I’m getting ready to do this record with Lukather and a couple of other people. It should be exciting,” he said.

Steve Lukather was a close friend of Alex’s late brother, Eddie, which has led some people to believe that he may be involved with unfinished Van Halen material. While promoting his book “Brothers” in 2024, the drummer said that he would like to complete unreleased songs he worked on with his brother, even mentioning that he would like to have Robert Plant as the vocalist.

“Ed and Steve Lukather were very good friends and they often worked together. There is no one who can do this process with me as well as he can,” Alex told the Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf in March 2025. Asked about that by the newspaper, Steve said: “Did Alex say that? Oh, in that case the news is true. Ed, Alex and I were very close for years. It is true that we worked on it together.”

What Alex Van Halen previously said about the unreleased music

In an interview with Rolling Stone in 2024, the first one after his brother’s passing, Alex talked about the unreleased material. “They’re all little pieces (of unreleased music). A bunch of licks don’t make a song. (I asked OpenAI if they could analyze) the patterns of how Edward would have played something (to generate new guitar solos) .Ideally, it’d be Robert Plant (for the vocals). You’re gonna think I’m out of my fucking mind. But when conditions are right, things will manifest.”