The legendary Van Halen co-founder and drummer Alex Van Halen is currently promoting his new book “Brothers” which will tell the story of him, his late brother Alex Van Halen and of course, their band.
In an interview with Rolling Stone, the first one after his brother’s passing, he revealed they have a lot of unreleased material. Some of it will come out with the book but he said that he has plans for other releases and he even reached out to OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT to see if they could analyze Eddie‘s playing and maybe help to generate new guitar solos. He also revealed that the singer he has in mind to complete the vocals on those recordings is Led Zeppelin‘s Robert Plant.
Alex Van Halen wants Robert Plant to finish unreleased Van Halen songs
“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.”
However, the drummer said he hasn’t talked with Robert Plant since 1993.
Alex is also working on a possible biopic of the band
During the past decade many successful biographical movies about bands were released, like the ones from Queen, Elton John and Mötley Crüe. Alex Van Halen revealed in the same conversation he is also working on that said there is no hurry for it, since the Queen movie, for example.
“It’s just a long-term plan. I mean, to put things in perspective, the Queen movie took 30 years to make.”
He is a good friend of the Queen guitarist Brian May and even called him when he was thinking about a possible Van Halen tribute tour for Eddie. He wanted to know how the band worked regarding Freddie Mercury’s legacy and how they paid tribute to him during the shows.